Weekend in Pau

The view of the Pyrennes this weekend in Pau- notice the snow!

From left to right: Natalie, Paula, me.

This weekend I decided to stay in Pau. I have been traveling so much that I haven’t fully gotten to explore the city that I am living in!
On Friday the university provided all of the international students with a complimentary breakfast. Free food is always a plus, but I was more excited about the french students that I met there. I sat by 2 french girls who want to teach french abroad, in the U.S., Ireland, or England. One of the girls, Pauline, studied abroad in Ireland and hopes to teach there. The other girl, Neole, was undecided. A couple of friends and I are going to invite them to a Halloween party, which they were super excited about since they don’t really celebrate it here. All of the American students in the dorms are going to dress up anyway! They were also telling us about la fete de Noel in Bordeaux, which takes place the first weekend in December. It’s supposed to be one of the best Christmas celebrations in France- I might have to go! :)

Saturday my friends Natalie, Paula, and I went to the market at “Les Halles”. They have this every day, but a lot more vendors come on Saturdays. There were all sorts of vendors outside the building, kind of like farmers market at Cal Poly. This was just the start of it though- you walk inside this huge building where you can get all sorts of french cheeses, bread, meat, fruit, dried fruit, sweets, prepared meals……..anything you could imagine. I got some dried apricots and pineapples, le fromage de Pyrenees, homemade cherry jam, plums, and bananas. Between Natalie, Paula, and I we got 4 kinds of cheeses that we all shared bits of later. We took the bus home to put away all of our produce and then headed off downtown again. This time we decided to walk- it was a crisp chilly day, but nice and sunny. We went to the train station to buy tickets for Toulouse, which we’re going to with my Art history class in two weeks, and saw the most amazing view of the Pyrenees. It rained a couple of days last week, so the mountains were covered in snow! This was definitely the clearest that I have ever been able to see the Pyrenees. They were so beautiful!

After the train station we sauntered around downtown, got lunch, shopped a little and then went home. Later that night a group of us went to see a french movie- no subtitles. The french cinema was similar to an American cinema only in this one you had to wait in the lobby until your salle (theater room) number lit up on this board. It was kind of bizarre. Also, when we looked up movie times it said that the movie started at 10:00 pm, but that was actually the time that they let you out of the lobby and into the theater. The movie previews didn’t even start until 10:20pm. The french are always on their own time schedules, and are often late, so that’s probably why they say that the movie starts earlier than it actually does. The movie we saw was called “Entre les murs” which means “between the walls”. It’s about a school where a lot of juvenile delinquents go and tells the story of a new teacher there and his experiences with his class etc.. In typical french movie fashion, there are all sorts of bizarre side plots. There were no subtitles, obviously, but I was surprised by how much I could understand. There were a couple of scenes were all of these kids are all speaking at once in the classroom and yelling over each other. Those scenes were definitely hard to understand, but I still got the gist of it. Overall I really enjoyed my french cinema experience and my relaxing weekend in Pau!

We start the rest of our french classes this week and now will have 20 hours of french a week in addition to our other classes. It’s going to be a lot, but I can’t get enough of french right now so I’m excited to kick off the week!