Last week in Pau

The view from campus of Les Pyrénnés

All the building were blocked off two weeks ago because of the "grève". French students love to go on strike. When they're tired of school they just decide to take a vacation!

Funiculaire. This is free transportation down to the train station.

The funiculaire uses no energy because one goes up while the other goes down.

The train station in Pau

A popular going out spot

They've turned Place Clemenceau into a Winter Wonderland!

I love the constrast of the palm trees with the snowy christmas trees that they added for the Holidays.

Place Clemenceau

Place Royale

Laura, Peter, and I at my french swim meet. Peter and I are the only Americans who have ever competed- go us!

Prêts, vas!! (That's me on the left)

Me swimming the Quatre-nage (IM).

Outside of our dorm

Christmas picture in our dorm hallway. I can't get enough of those peach walls. haha

Bouche de Noël at the repas de Noël.

Putting presents under the christmas tree. Everyone was supposed to bring a small gift and then you were allowed to take one after the Christmas dinner.

USAC kids before le repas de Noël. (Except Mathise on the right, he's a french friend who lives in my dorm).

With our friend Nick (he's British) who decided to dress very festivly for le repas de Noël!

Hanging out with Bernard

USAC dinner at La Brasserie Royale

Alpha Love! Kelsey is an AOII from the University of Arkansas. There are AOIIs everywhere! :)

Un salade avec le fois gras

Saumon grillé

Le Dessert du Jour

I can’t believe that this has all gone by so fast. Even though I have been here for several months it feels like I was just getting off the plane in Paris, with so much ahead of me. I have met so many amazing people, and I am so glad that I got to share this experience with them. In retrospect, my whole abroad experience has flown by. As we go into our last week in France, half of which will be spent in Pau and the other half in Paris, the sentiment is definitely bitter-sweet. I am so excited to come home to see everyone, but I will definitely miss all of the incredible people whom I have met here, who share my love of the French language.

This past week was a whirlwind of excitement, but at the same time a little stressful. I had a finally exam for my french classes and then had a two-day-long exam for my Business French class. The test is given by the Chamber of Commerce and all of your test materials are sent to Paris to be graded. If I pass this test I will be certified by the Chamber of Commerce to work in France or Europe. The test was pretty brutal; we had a three hour section with Expression Écrite, Compréhension Écrite, and Compréhension Orale. Then we had to come back later in the day, at our designated time, for an entretien, or job interview, in French. The interviewer definitely asked some tough questions that would even be tough to answer in English. Then the next day we had to do an impromptu presentation in French. They sat us in a room, one at a time, and we each had 15 min to read an article about something political or cultural, which was chosen at random, and then had to do a 15 min presentation in front of a test proctor. My topic was the American food culture haha. I was the most nervous about this part, but I think that it ended up going the best!

I did have a lot of tests this past week, but also a lot of fun stuff! On Tuesday we had a repas de Noël at the Vague, an on campus restaurant, that one of my teacher’s organized for all of the international students. Evelyn, Laura, and I attempted to take a Christmas picture before, so we were dressed in very festive, Christmas colors at the repas de Noël. The food was incredible; we had confit de Canard avec des légumes (duck with vegetables), quiche (you all know what that is), et pour le dessert Bouche de Noël( a really famous French Christmas log cake). It was so good- I’m definitely going to miss eating duck all the time lol. To make the soirée more entertaining they had people sign up to perform talents. A lot of Americans sang and this girl from Venezuela in my french class danced the Salsa. It was definitely interesting seeing what everyone came up with. It was definitely a fun night!

The next day I had my french final in the morning and then my very last l’Histoire de l’Art class with Bernard. This was definitely one of my favorite classes, and most of the other students agreed since our entire class had a crush on our teacher, even my gay friend Patrick gets giggly in class! The only person that didn’t was my friend Peter, but he said that he still admires him haha. Anyway, after class Bernard had organized for us to go to prendre un verre after class to celebrate the end of the quarter. We went to a bar called Imparfait. He brought his 9 year old son and 14 year old daughter with him. At first it was just me, Natalie, Peter, and Addie and Bernard and his two kids. The kids speak perfect french, obviously, so Peter and I were having fun talking to his son about school, music, etc… About a half hour later more people arrived and we pulled up more tables and chairs. This is the same teacher that brought us to Toulouse and Lescar to go look at art and architecture. I was scared to take this class because I would have to learn a completely different subject taught in French, but it ended up being awesome!

On Thursday I had my Business French test and then that night we had our final USAC dinner at Brasserie Royale downtown by Place Royale. They served us a three course french meal; I started with Un salade complet (salade with fois gras), then I had Saumon grillé, and for dessert I had the Dessert du jour, which was some kind of tart with ice-cream. It was fabulous! Then our USAC directors gave us the group picture of us that was taken the first week in Pau. It was crazy to see how much people have changed in such a short time. Then Jean, the Masters student that helps out with USAC, came in dressed as Santa Clause handing out Bayonne chocolate. It was a really fun night and definitely a good way to end the week. A group of us walked home, which was definitely needed since I ate way too much, and took pictures of the Christmas lights. One thing that I have noticed is that the entire town of Pau is decorated with Christmas lights, but individual houses aren’t. Electricity is very expensive here and I that is a big factor in the lack of individual Christmas lights.

This weekend I get to start packing and clearing out my dorm room. It is going to be quite the endeavor! I only have two days of classes next week and since we’re done with finals we aren’t really doing anything. We are finishing watching a french movie on Monday with Mme Fraisse, and then on Tuesday, with my other teacher Isabelle, we are having a petit déjeuner with our class, and watching a movie also. My train leaves at 8 am on Thursday morning for Paris. We will be spending two nights there and then flying home on the afternoon of Saturday 20th. I am really excited to go back to Paris, especially to see the Avenue des Champs-Élysées lit up for Christmas and to go ice skating by Le Tour Eiffel.

I hope that you have all enjoyed reading my blog these past few months!! I can’t wait to see you all next week! À la prochain fois!

Je t’embrasse! Gros Bisous!

Marché de Noël

Outside the Macaroon shop in Bordeaux

Perusing the macaroons

Christmas trees & snowmen

Part of the Christmas market

Hot wine is their christmas beverage of choice ( go figure...). It's made from the combination of wine & spices and tastes kind of like a cider.

Christmas lights in Bordeaux

The arch in Bordeaux

Christmas lights at Place Clemenceau in downtown Pau

On Saturday we went one last time to Bordeaux for the Marché de Noël. Where they had the carnival last time there was a flee market. Then on one of the main streets there was the Christmas market where they were all sorts of booths selling possible christmas gifts. It was very festive and now I'm super, super excited for Christmas!!

Barcelona, Spain

The group who prepared the most amazing Thanksgiving dinner!

Stuffing!

Before Thanksgiving dinner

Yum!

La Sagrada Familla

La fontaine Montjuic

La Boqueria

Christmas logs

Chocolate & Churros

Mt. Tibidabo

View from Mt Tibidabo

All the AOIIs reunited

Lft to rt: Tracy, me, Whitney, Evelyn

For my last big trip I decided to venture back across the border into the Spanish paradise of Barcelona- or should I say Bar-th-elona (since everyone speaks Spanish with a lisp there, if they’re not speaking Catalan).

We left early on Thursday morning and didn’t arrive until around 4pm. First, we took the train from Pau to Bayonne. We were originally going to take an earlier train, but decided that some extra sleep would be invaluable for the exciting weekend ahead. What we didn’t realize though was that by leaving later we had to wait for 2 hours at the train station in Bayonne before catching the train from Bayonne to Hendaye (the last french town/ train stop before Spain). Not only did we have to wait in the freezing cold train station for 2 hours before continuing our voyage, but our train was replaced by an “autocar” (bus). The bus was 30 minutes late, but at that point we still had plenty of time to get to Hendaye and then to catch our flight out of San Sebastian. I thought that the bus would take us directly to Hendaye and maybe that the bus driver would step on it since he was so inexcusably tardy, however, he took his sweet old time, stopping at the train stations in several french villages along the way. We ended up in some little french village that I have never heard before and he couldn’t even find the train station. We were just driving around the town for 15 min or so trying to find it. When he finally did find what he thought was the train station, he tried to turn around on this little street and couldn’t do it. He almost hit a car, I think he might have, and then ended up just backing out. He was not a very skilled bus driver and was inches away from hitting all sorts of things the entire way. He eventually asked the other passengers on the bus if anyone needed to get off there and everyone replied, “Non!”, so he decided to skip going there altogether. Evelyn and I were freaking out at the point because this part of our trip was taking way too long and we were seriously worried about missing out flight! When we finally got to Hendaye we would have to take another train into San Sebastian and then somehow get to the airport to catch a flight that left 2 hours from that moment- remember we’re not even in Hendaye at this point. Mence! I was so mad at this frickin’ bus driver and was sure at that point that we would be staying in San Sebastian for the weekend; not a bad place to be, but I had already planned to meet some friends from Cal Poly there so it would have been really disappointing to not make it there.

As we approached la gare d’Hendaye we gunned it for the door and ran into the train station to figure out this other train we had to take into town. The lady pointed us to another building where we found the train to San Sebastian. We were pretty stressed at this moment and I was frantically inquiring about when the next train, using my best french and then the lady holds up a piece of paper with the prices, and we realize that she only spoke Spanish. With my limited knowledge of Spanish, a couple words, and some English and french we figured out that the next train would come too late. So we decided to take a Taxi. I thought that the taxi would cost like 100 Euro to take us all the way to San Sebastian and then to the airport, but we were running out of options, and knew that we wouldn’t be refunded if we missed our flight-the beauty of cheap airlines. We were in a border town so the taxi driver spoke French, thank god, and we found out that the airport was actually right across the border, and that the taxi fare was actually bon marché! We arrived at San Sebastian airport within five minutes and realized that if we had taken the train into central San Sebastian we would have had to take a taxi back out of town to go to the airport. Aey! So what we did was actually a better option.

So in the in end the crisis was averted and we checked in for our flight and now had lots of time to kill at the airport. It was such a relief to know that we were going to make our flight. We both thought simultaneously “I need a drink” lol.
After hanging out in the airport for awhile we boarded the plane. We had to walk outside, so I assumed that we had to walk up the steps to the plane- pas de problème, but then I saw the plane and had to pause for a minute. It was a small propeller plane that probably only held about 40 people. Not gunna lie I was a little scared, but at this point was like, “well, when in Spain…”
We got on the plane and arrived in Barcelona an hour later. We took the RENFE train from the aeropuerto right to Tracy’s apartment- only took 10 minutes-awesome. Ouffff, what an adventure!

We didn’t waste any time once we got there! We started peeling and boiling potatoes to bring to a Thanksgiving dinner at Tracy’s friends Michelle and Ashley’s apartment. We were in charge of potatoes and since there were going to be about 15 people there, we had to prepare potatoes in mass quantity! We arrived at their apartment and were amazed at how nice it was. If you were living in this same apartment in San Francisco it would cost a million dollars! It was so nice. There were two American girls living with two Spanish boys and one Spanish girl. The other American girls had friends from home visiting too so there ended up being a good group of us to celebrate Thanksgiving together. They actually found a turkey at a Spanish market, so that was awesome. We had Turkey, Mashed Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, Green beans, Salad, Bread, Stuffing, and Apple Pie. It was just like home, sauf the cranberry sauce, one of my favorites. Cranberries are impossible to find in Europe because they don’t grow them here. Oh well, I will have to make extra when I come home for Christmas dinner this year!!

The next morning Tracy and some girls on her program left to go to Tarragona. It was already planned and paid for so she went there while we slept in, for quite awhile since her room stays dark all day lol, and then we began our site-seeing that afternoon. We took the metro to La Sagrada Familla, which was incredible! It was so immense that I couldn’t even get the entire thing in a picture. We went inside and saw the phenomenal stain glass and high-ceilings. There was also a museum underneath so we explored that too. We excited on the other side and were amazed at what we saw. The back side looks completely different from the front, amazing, but really gaudy. There was just way too much going on back there that is was kind of ugly from that side. Ironically, the guy who created the Sagrada Familla was named Gaudi. Maybe that’s where the word “Gaudi” meaning cluttered and ostentatious came from?? Pourquoi pas?

There were parks on both sides of the street outside the Sagrada Familla and there were all sorts of outdoor vendors. I did some haggling and had to attempt Spanish. We did some souvenir shopping and then realized we were ravenous for some hardy food. There weren’t many restaurants around so we decided to go into a McDonalds. I know, I know don’t judge me! I guess I really am homesick If McDonald’s sounded good haha.

Tracy got back from her trip around 5pm so we met her back at her apartment then, and proceeded to get ready to go out to a Barcelona fountain show. These are really popular in Barcelona. They have this fountain they light up with all sorts of different colors and alternate the water pressure to create a show. It was like a fireworks show which music and everything, but with water! We hiked up the stairs to this museum on Montjuïc where there is a great view of Barcelona at night and of the fountain show. We met up with some of Tracy’s friends that we had hung out with the night before and we all went out to dinner together at a restaurant called Princessa 23. We ordered the most amazing nachos with all sorts of toppings and of course tried from Sangria, the Spanish specialty.

Saturday was our big sight-seeing day!! We started off going to Place Catalunya where there is awesome shopping, and then continuing to La Rambla, which is a street where there were weird street vendors (selling birds and rabbits and random stuff like that), and crazy people who dress up. There was this guy that was juggling a soccer ball and Tracy said that he does that all day, every day! There were also people dressed up like statues, pirates, etc… We went to a Spanish market called La Boqueria that is held in this building called the Mercat. This market was incredible! It was like the Les Halles in Pau times 5. I bought a big pack of raspberries for under a euro! They had all sorts of tropical fruit, gelato, candy, meat, fish, anything you could imagine, and it was all fresh.

We met up with some of Tracy’s friends and then went to get chocolate and churros, a Barcelona specialty. On the way we walked through a Christmas market. Barcelona was all decked out for Christmas, which was really exciting. The one thing that caught my attention was that they sold logs at all of these vendors that we dressed up with red hats and faces. I asked one of the girls studying in Barcelona what they were and explained that they are a Spanish tradition. She said that young kids in Spain are given a log like that before Christmas. They take care of it for a couple of weeks before Christmas and then on Christmas Eve they are supposed to chop it up with an ax and cover it with a blanket. Then they leave it under the Christmas tree in the morning they find their presents under the blanket. You learn something every day!

Then we took the metro, followed by the tram, and the funicular up to Mt. Tibidabo. It was well worth the voyage since you could see the entire city from up there! There was a big church and a theme park at the top; kind of a random combination, but it worked. You could see all the way out to the water and we spotted the Sagrada Familla and the rainbow building from the top.

Then we took a siesta at Tracy’s apartment before our Taco night. My friend Whitney, also from Cal Poly, came over for taco night. I was super pumped that we were able to find refried beans! You can’t find those in France! That night we met up with some of Tracy’s friends at some bar called Black Sheep and they took us out for a crazy night on the town. We started off there and then went to Chipitos where they have all these crazy drinks. We ordered this one called the “boy scout”. They basically light the entire counter on fire and you roast a marshmallow in the flame. Then they do some weird caramelizing thing to your drink and you drink your drink and then eat your marshmallow after. It was a little bizarre, but awesome. Then we went to some other place called the Mega Black Sheep (this is all translated of course from Spanish). We hung out there for awhile and then went to a night club called Razzmatazz. It was incredible, 5 stories, a live band, and way too many people. The band played for the first hour or so and then they had a dj that played a lot of crazy Spanish techno. It was really cool to see a club in Barcelona! I don’t know how everyone who lives there can stay out that late all the time. I definitely couldn’t- guess I’m not that hardcore lol. Nothing opens until 11am though to account for the late-night life style. France is quite the opposite, with the early to bed early to rise, but students definitely stay out late at disco-techs especially on the weekends!

It was really great seeing Whitney and Tracy-definitely a taste of home. I’m super excited for the next quarter at Cal Poly now!! We left the next morning and arrived safely back in Pau. What a fun-filled weekend! My last big trip was definitely all that I could have hoped for! Thanks Tracy for being such an amazing host!