Get Ready

Les vacances: Vacations

So the one nice part about French life style is that we get to take vacations very often! This week being one of them. So, I decided to take advantage of my free time to visit one of the few places I've always really wanted to see: Bordeaux, France. To say the least, it was a busy weekend..

Friday started out with me finishing my last course for the day and making my way to the north of town to pick up my package that Kylie and my mom sent. It was a bit difficult because I had never been to this part of town where the package was waiting, so I had to take the one and only bus line out there - but thankfully the bus driver was really nice and showed me exactly where I needed to go. But at this point, I was racing again the clock, but also my friends because I had already planned to go somewhere with them but had no idea it was going to take this long to go there. So I get off the bus and run because the Post Office closes at 6 and it was..6! When I arrived there, the outside gate door was still open so I walked through and then went inside the main door and walked up to the lady and she gave me the look like "How are you in here??" so I explained to her that the door was open so I thought you might still be open but I told her I only need to pick up a package. Unwillingly, and rightfully bothered a little bit, she went and got it for me and came back a bit more cranky, but again, understandable considering her day was finished. She asked me for an ID to verify and my first thought was to pull out my American passport [there are some cases when, obviously, you don't want to use it - but in this case I thought it would be best] so maybe she will understand, so I give it to her and the first words she says, "Ooh I understand now!" and from right then and there she lightened up a bit and started talking with me and right before I left I apologized once more and she told me not to worry about it because she hadn't finished her work. It was just nice/funny to see how quick one's personality can change. Afterwards, I was picked up by Paul, Veronica, and Judith and we went to a laser tag place and met up with a few other people and we played a couple games there. It was tons of fun and I finished 6th out of 18 people for the first game and finally 2nd for the 2nd game. After we were finished there I went home to pack my bags because I was leaving for Bordeaux for vacation!! Just as soon as I finished packing, my host mom asked if I wanted to come with her to pick up my brother from the train station, so I said of course I would love to! But as soon as she walked away, my friend Dimitri called to ask if I wanted to come to Paris to spend an eveing with him, Manon, and our other friend Alex [To make this story a little more exciting: I'll note that it was 11pm at this moment]. So I told him that I was actually on my way to the station so I would love to join them and I can just take the next train into town. I get to la gare and the train to Paris is just about to leave.. the conductor asks if I'm coming and then says "go go" as he is pushing me on the train. I go find a seat and take a little "nap" until I get there. The most interesting part of this journey, however, was that I didn't have time to buy a ticket so I waited until the workers came by to check that I needed to buy one [I later found out that I am supposed to go search for the workers because it looks better than sitting and waiting for them because then it looks like you were really trying to travel for free], but nobody ever came to check so I rode to Paris for free! Finally, I get to Dimitri's apartment (for the first time!) nearly at minuit [pronounced: min wee; midnight] and shortly after that we went out for a night on the town. We went to one place for a quick glass of wine and then went to one club, but they wouldn't let us in. We decided to go to another club but again they wouldn't let us in! So we finally made it to one more club (because now it was just a goal to get in) and they let us come in and it was really fun! It was just absolutely crazy to be driving/walking around Paris like it was normal and to be with friends - was amazing. We finally left around 5:30am and at this time, there was almost no point to sleep because my train to Bordeaux leaves at 10:10am and I still needed to grab my bags from home, so they took me to the train station and I jumped on the next train to Orléans. But again, this train was leaving just as soon as I got there so I had no time to buy a ticket but I made it all the way back home without a ticket again! The only scary part about this train was that it stopped at each little stop between Paris and Orléans so it took longer than normal and I made it home by 8:45 which gave me 30 minutes to run home - grab my things - and meet everyone at the train station. But, of course, I made it on time..

Saturday: I met with Veronica (Venezuelan who is in my class), Judith from Germany, and Isabela from Romania, and we all left for Bordeaux. Nothing too exciting happened on the train - at least that I knew of considering I was too busy drooling all over myself and I'm sure a couple snores nsuck their way out. We made it to Bordeaux and dropped our bags off at the hotel. We immediately went out to start site seeing and we really saw A LOT. 

After we went to eat at a restaurant where the man at the hotel recommended and it was a really nice little place. We came back to our place and cleaned up and then we went out for a couple drinks but sooner than we expected every place shut down because it was already 2am so everyone was leaving and we we were all walking in the streets but the girls werent ready to go to bed yet so I went up to a couple guys who I thought seemed like they were decent people and I asked if they knew where a club was at that was still open. I explained we were internationals on vacation and they were more than happy to show us what turned out to be a really cool place. So our new friends Stéphane, Quentin, and Alex got us into the club and we spent the rest of the night there. Around 5am the girls decided they were ready so we left but Stéphane and Quentin invited me to come watch the final match of the Rugby World Cup [New Zealand v. France] with them in the city center on a big screen so I said yes without hesitation!

Sunday: But I had to be sure I was awake by 9am to make it there and what not. It was a bit of a walk to get there, but in fact the walk was along one of the longest commercial streets in France, so it made it seem even longer to get there. But as I continued to get closer and closer the crowd kept getting louder and louder and finally I made it and there were thousands of people there! Everyone was dressed up for the match and I had to climb through the mob of people and somehow found Stéphane and Quentin there. I can say that this was one of the coolest things I have ever done. The fact that I was with all these people and for the time being everyone was best friends hanging on each other and what not and singing songs and yelling the National Anthem after we scored was by far the coolest thing ever. Unfortunately, France lost by one point so there was no big celebration afterwards like I expected. I left them to go meet the girls back at the hotel and we went out to go do some more site seeing. I have no idea how I was functioning at this point but there was no reason to complain at all since it was all my choice to stay out like that. But we had beautiful weather so we took advantage of the day.

Stéphane worked at a candy/ice cream store and was nice enough to let us have whatever we wanted.

I found it very ironic that I just happened to meet a friend who would work here..

Monday: We woke up and the girls wanted to go shopping on the commercial street so I accompanied them so I wouldn't be by myself and then at 13h30 [1:30pm] we went to the tourism office because we had bought tickets to go on a wine tour. So we jumped on the bus and headed to our two destinations. I did learn a bit from the trip like: Wines normally get named by the city or area that they were located. They are forbidden to put anything in French wines because it must be natural, however, they can blend wines. You don't choose by the variety of the wine but rather by the name. I found this the most interesting because when you go to the supermarket in the states you shop by Merlot, Pinot Noir, etc. so in this case if you say "I'm serving a Merlot" it's better to say the specific name of the wine so you're precise rather than the variety because that can be easily seen from the bottle. Overall, the tour was fun and full of laughs. Our guide couldn't really speak English but she couldn't really speak French either [of course she could speak French but she had no idea what she was doing]. I think that now that I have done it, I would be willing to pay a little extra to get a full grasp on everything rather than just a quick show of some things and that's it. The first Chateau that we went to, the owner was in a huge hurry with us and we really only spent maybe 15 minutes there. It was also interesting at this place because the fact that we couldn't go out to the vineyards because it was raining and we couldn't go into the factory because they were working in there. Before we left, we did have the chance to taste two of her wines and they weren't horrible but it wasn't as good as we thought it would be. But the second Chateau that we went to was better and the owners were very nice. The husband and his wife were an older couple who's family has been there for generations. They let us try 3 different kinds of wines: a white, and two reds and each was very tasteful. They also gave us bread with some of their own homemade jam (which was super delicious!) 

After finishing up there we got back to the hotel around 6pm and went out to do some more sit seeing. Later that night we went to one bar that I found and I bought all of us a bottle of wine and we spent the evening just talking and having a good time. Without forgetting to mention, in Bordeaux there is an area where they have water that makes the ground look like a mirror and the whole weekend we were there we tried and tried to find it, evening passing just in front of it a couple of times but when we finally found it, it wasn't working!

Tuesday: Time to leave. The girls wanted to go check out some more of the stores and then we came back to the hotel and grabbed our stuff - checked out - and made our way to the train station. Unfortunetly, it was raining this day as well so we really had 2 beautiful days and 2 not-so-beautiful days. But on our way back to Orléans, I had already planned to go to Beaugency [which is about 20 minutes outside of Orléans] to visit my friend Fabienne. So I got off the train a little bit earlier than the rest of our group and I had dinner with her family because it was her brother's birthday. We had a wonderful dinner with a delicious dessert and I got to build some paper airplanes for her nephews! But I was so tired that I was sure that everyone went to bed by 10:30pm but the next morning Fabienne assured me that it was well past 1am..! Finally, I made it back home and had to go to my Immigration meeting to give them all my documents and then enjoyed lunch with Manon and Fabienne [which I was extremely happy about because normally Fabienne is in the south of France for school] and later that evening Manon, her mom, and I went to see a movie called Polisse. It turned out to be, in my opinion, one of the best movies I've seen this year. Just when you take into account all the emotions the director makes you feel and how into the movie I was..it's been a while since a movie has done that. After the movie, I went home and slept like I've never slept before...  THE END!

 I'm writing in a journal for the restaurant who keeps tabs on who's visited the place.

Good People

Il fait beau!: The weather is beautiful!

Sorry for the delay. But school is beginning to finally keep me a bit busier.

Last Saturday, the university had organized a trip to Château de Chambord and turned out to be a lot of fun! At first, I wasn't sure if I wanted to go because I had already been before and as beautiful as they always are, not much changes, but obviously I made up my mind that I wanted to go for the sake of spending a weekend with friends and it never really hurts to see a castle like this! But once we arrived, I stuck with a group that turned out to be a lot of fun. We toured the castle, ate some lunch, went for a walk in the forest, and rode in a boat around the castle. Couldn't have been more fun.

 This was labeled: "The Californian, The German, The Spaniards, The Chilean, The Venezuelan, The Mexican, and the Romanian"

While we were there, I saw a couple taking their wedding photos in front of the castle. I couldn't help but think how amazing that must be to have the chance to just say "Hey, why don't we just go take our photos at the Chateau today?" So of course I had to take a picture, but since I wasn't their hired photographer I didn't want to be blatant. But it actually turned to be a really cool photo..

Later that night I spent some time with Dimitri and Manon. Afterwards, I passed a week of school. I've got a lot of tests coming up so we've been working really hard. I did get the opportunity to join the basketball team for the school! Thursday was the first day I went, so I had trouble finding the place because it was a little ways off campus and kinda tucked away. So I showed up and signed in and jumped right into drills. It was great to be doing this again, because I haven't done this since high school. So I meet each Thursday from 12-2 for practice and then from what I understood, we will have games starting sometime next month. There are about 15 other people playing so it's perfect. But I'm pretty sure that I about died after the first practice. At one point, I asked one of the kids if we finished at 2pm?? Because I was thinking that I had been there for well over 2 hours, but sure enough, I had only been there for maybe 30 minutes!
Other than this, there's not much to update on. Vacation starts next week so I'm sure there will be plenty to talk about soon..! Au revoir!

What I Got!

Il est américain: He is American

This weekend started out as a bit of a surprise, other than Saturday because I knew my plan since the beginning of the week. But, nonetheless, to start out Friday..

Friday started out a little different than normal. My friend, Côme, invited me to his house to have lunch. So instead of ditching out of class early for some food, I decided to wake up a little earlier and attend the other group's morning class rather than my group's afternoon class [essentially they are both the same class, but because there are so many of us there are two groups within my group and each of the two groups have flip-flopped schedules]. So I finished and headed over to the Fac de Droit [here you say which faculty you study in rather than the school in general. In other words, it's just a little bit more precise as to where/what you study on campus] where I met up with Côme and his girlfriend Justine. We headed to his house which wasn't far away and of course, was beautiful like always and we walked down through his backyard to the Loiret [a part of the Loire river] and we all talked down there for a bit. Then, we headed back up and I met his mother - who just got home - and she made us a fantastic lunch! So, as normal, we spent lunch time talking about the differences between our two countries and things we like and things we don't like. So after we finished, I headed for home and was trying to figure out my plans for the night. I ended up playing a little game of cricket with my brother and then I worked up enough courage to ask some random guys if I could play pétanque with them. So of course they were more than happy for me to join and I had a lot of beginner's luck. But I loved the game, and eventually some more of their friends showed up so we had a 3v3 game going. I helped out a bit but a few of the guys on the other team were really good. But I did win one game for our team so I was pumped about that! I think now I will try and play a little more if I have the chance. Then we all ate dinner together and then made sure everything was ready to go for tomorrow..

Saturday morning I woke up and got ready because my host mom, Virginie, my host sister, Mathilde, my host brother, Axel, and myself were leaving early to go to their grand-parents house to help prepare for the family reunion. So we left and my host dad, Antoine, and my other host brothers, Adrien and Pierrot, would arrive later. We got to the house and it was a beautiful house with a large yard. Slowly but surely, other family members showed up and I was introduced to all as "the american" in some form or another. Every wore name badges to help make recognizing a little more easy. On my badge I wrote, "Grant Bingham/Gilliot" and everyone got a kick out of that. Once everyone arrived, we all jumped in our cars and drove over to a restaurant that wasn't too far, but was set back in a beautiful part of the woods. So after spending a few hours there, we headed back to grandma's house and spent the rest of the evening talking but mainly all the kids playing sports. We played a little bit a cricket, I showed everyone how to throw a football [granted it was with a rugby ball, but eh, it worked], then we even got a little rugby game going. Then, just before everyone called it a night, the family gathered for a photo

  and just when I thought we were gonna head out, everyone waved me over to join in on the family photo, so one more was taken..

 and I think my face says it all in this picture. I was very grateful to be given the invitation not only to come, but to also be included in the family photo. So after this, I was really in the photography mood and wanted to take one more except with just my host family..

 Finally, on Sunday, I went to messe [mass; but in French it's pronounced "mess" which I find kinda funny] and then afterwards we went back to grandma's house to enjoy a lunch before everyone left for their different cities. This, of course, also meant a little more extra time getting to play frisbee - which I absolutely enjoyed! Then finally, we headed back home and everyone completely crashed! But once again, a great weekend which a truly amazing family. Merci encore!