Paris and more!

Hello again everyone!

Once I again I have somewhat dropped the ball on blogging, but after a two week hiatus I am back with more fun tales from France. When I last wrote, I was preparing for an expose and a fiche bibliographique that were to take place the 17th and 24th of March, respectively. The expose went ahead as planned, but as has become common, the class for my fiche was cancelled. As for the expose, it went pretty well. I filled my time, and actually went a few minutes long, and had only a few minor errors in French that I noticed (I am sure there were plenty more that I did not). Overall, my classmates told me it went well and no one was falling asleep so I would say it was a success. As for the fiche, it will now take place on April 14th, which I am not looking forward to given that it is the same day as my French exam and the day after my paper for Sociology is due, but I suppose that's life.

It has become exceedingly common for classes to be cancelled here, though I am unsure why. Professors seem to miss and reschedule courses pretty often. The hardest part of this is that they reschedule based on the program they are in (all the students here are divided into groups and those groups all have essentially the same schedule), and the new times often conflict for us because we are in courses in both the first and second year. In addition, nothing is posted online, which amazes us given the emphasis the French place on environmental awareness and protecting the planet (you would not believe how much paper they waste). Instead, everything is printed out and put onto a poster board in the main lobby of the school. So, for those of us who do not have class on Mondays, it is often a surprise when we arrive at 8 am on Tuesday and no one is in class (Yes, this has happened to me, 3 times now). I have even tried having someone check the board for me, but sometimes they are posted so late in the afternoon that they do not see them.

Waiting in the street in Rennes for the bus

Moving on, the following week was relatively quiet after realizing that I no longer had to present my fiche. I have nearly finished it, but decided to look at other work, and prepare for my weekend in Paris. The trip began Thursday night (or Friday morning) at 2 a.m. As usual, we were told to be there by 2 (initially 1) and the bus did not show up until 3. Upon our arrival, we were greeted with a gift bag including a scarf, tshirt, stickers, some important logistical information for the weekend, and of course, a beer. As it turns out, this weekend is essentially a time for students from around the country (and who are supposedly its future leaders) to get very drunk, wear face paint and capes, and cheer until they can no longer make anything but a whistling sound when they speak. In fact, many of the students who came were not participating in any sport, they simply came for the party. This made the bus ride into Paris fairly interesting, though I managed to sleep the entire way despite what was an apparently rowdy bunch.

"Sciences Po Rennes, Allez! Allez! Allez!"

Upon our arrival, we went to the breakfast tent where all of the other Sciences Po schools were gathered and cheering on their respective towns. This resulted in the burning of many flags by enemy schools, attempted theft of memorabilia, and fights in an attempt to get it back or simply protect their honor. I, of course, have many wonderful pictures and videos of these events, but only a select few will make the cut as some of them can be a bit racy. We were also given a list of cheers to encourage Rennes pride and berate the others, but again, many of them are very, very offensive, so I will only list a few.

Burning Parisian Flag. Slogan loosely translates to "Shove it Paris!" (the French one is a bit more vulgar)

Soccer Field (Turf, it was very nice)

My Friday was focused mostly on soccer, since we had two games (at 1 and 3). So, as soon as we arrived (about 9 am) we went to the stadium to watch the earlier matches and get ready. As you may have guessed, we did not once start on time. The team we were supposed to play at 1 had a game schedule at 11 at the same field. They did not show up, however, until 11:45. So, our game did not actually start until about 2 because we had to wait for the game in between the two to finish. When we finally started, the game went pretty well. I scored the first goal about ten minutes in off of an attempted shot (that turned out to be a pass on the ground to the penalty mark). The second was scored minutes later by the other international student, a German student from last semester who came back just to participate, after a very impressive save from the goalkeeper deflected back into the box. The game stayed 2-0 until late in the second half when some defensive laziness in clearing gave the other team too many opportunities and they finally put one in. Nevertheless, we won 2-1 and were off to a good start for the tournament.

Game two began around 4:30, and was another solid match for us. This team was slightly worse than the first (though they were both good teams), but they had a stronger attack. Once again, I started the scoring in the first half after sneaking into the far post unmarked and putting away an easy pass from my teammate. Though the score stayed 1-0 the rest of the match, it was very exciting. After several brilliant saves from our goalkeeper and a save by the post (finally it happened to someone else!), we came away victorious. Given the  weak performance from the other Rennes teams, our fans were very happy. In fact, we were one of only 3 to make it beyond the first round of games.

After our two matches, we watched some of the other sports, people began their drinking and we headed to dinner at the University restaurant. This involved a lot more chanting, standing on tables, some food throwing, drinking, and a little bit of eating. After dinner, we proceeded to the party at the Palais des Congrès where they had music, dancing and an air guitar competition. The buses picked us up at 2:30 a.m. and, after first taking us to the wrong place, eventually got us to our hotel.

Saturday, I woke up extremely tired (we had to leave at 8 a.m. for our game) and headed to the location of our game for the day. We had made it to the semi-finals after our two wins on Friday, but had to wait until after the tie-breaker to see who and when we would play. Since the team we beat Friday won the tie-breaker, they said we could not play them again and so we played Paris. This game did not go so well for us. They only scored one goal in the first half off of a deflection from a defender right in front of the goal. In the second half, they got another goal after the linesman (a Parisian student...) missed an offside call. So, down 2-0, we decided to pull up our center defenders who were both about 6'5 and pretty solid attackers. However, we had a pretty weak bench and our new defenders were two slow to keep up with their attackers and Paris ended up scoring three more times (each on a breakaway) to end the game at 5-0. While this was a very disappointing result for us, the fans were all still very supportive (by now they were used to losing) and it meant we did not have to play at 8 a.m. the next day.

Us in the Centre Pompidou

After the game, I decided to hang around and watch a couple other games (I ended up taking a nap next to the field) and then we headed back to see Pétanque (Bocce ball, very popular sport which was actually invented in France). Following a little run in with the locals (they were not happy with the noise and damage being inflicted by the non-Parisians) and a win by the Pétanquers to take them to the semi-finals, we headed off to dinner. Once again, dinner comprised of chanting, drinking, food throwing, flares and even a fire alarm (they don't mean much here since they go off so often, almost always falsely, no one looked up from their meal except for the girl dancing to the 'music' from the alarm). After we headed toward what was supposed to be the "Barathon" (Bar crawl) and ended up just being everyone gathered in the Centre Pompidou (really ugly modern art museum) drinking and socializing. This was a pretty fun night, consisting of more cheering, flares and a crowd gathering to observe the crazy Sciences Po students, after which we headed back to the hotels for another night of little sleep.

"Elle est a nous (elle est a nous), Et pas a eux (et pas a eux),
Et ce qu'il faut c'est la garder, la cuillere en bois doit rester
 chez les Rennais!" (It is ours and not theirs and we must
 protect it, the wooden spoon must stay in Rennes!) to the
tune of "Oh When the Saints Go Marching In".

We cleared our stuff out of the hotel and departed to observe the finals for various sports around 10 a.m. Sunday. We managed to get completely lost on the way there, so we missed breakfast and just went straight to the Rugby final, which was between Paris and Toulouse. We watched for a few minutes, but instead headed next door to the McDonalds for some breakfast before watching some games that actually included our team. After breakfast, we returned to watch our sole surviving 'athletes', the Pétanquers. Eventually, we got slightly bored with it (it is really not the most interesting sport to watch) and ended up heading toward the center of town to hang out and see the more scenic parts of town. We stopped by Place St. Michel (with the famous fountain), Notre Dame, and ended up at a coffee shop near Centre Pompidou. We stayed there til dinner, then headed over to the university restaurant once again. After dinner, we departed for the final party of the weekend at the Grand Dôme where they held the pom pom contest and announced the winners of the events. First, I would like to say that the French idea of Pom Pom girls conforms almost exactly to every terrible film about cheerleading, minus the actual cheerleading. Essentially, the girls dress and dance like, well, sluts, and I use that term only because it is how the cheerleaders actually referred to themselves ("Salopes" in French). The routines involved little of the gymnastics element, if any, and mainly consisted of waving pom poms and disrobing by both the male (also called "Salopes") and female performers.

After these performances, there was about an hour of music and dancing, and finally the declaration of prizes. As the Rennais had hoped, they once again won (and I use the word "won" loosely) the "Cuillere en Bois" (wooden spoon) which is given to the team with the overall lowest score. The Parisians won the tournament overall, surprise, surpsise... Finally, there was some more chanting, and then the buses arrived to take everyone home. Since most of the students had Monday morning class, they were all very civil on the bus ride home (or so it seemed, I was sleeping almost the entire way). We arrived in Rennes around 7:30 a.m. and I headed back to my room to finally get some real rest.

While it was a long weekend, it was definitely worth the exhaustion and the money. I got to meet a lot more French people, hang out in Paris, compete in a soccer tournament, and experience a generally competitive and "school pride" type of atmosphere that I haven't had in a while. On the one hand, I fear for the future of the country after seeing their young leaders in a three-day drunken stupor, but on the other, it was fun to see them let loose for once and experience first hand the French that we normally only see in soccer games on television. I have, once again, gone a little long and detailed with my blog post, but I hope you enjoyed reading and will continue to do so in the coming weeks. I promise, I will have a new post for you this Sunday, though I cannot say it will be very interesting...

A plus,

Tom

Me and "Orange Man" (that's our goalie)

Expose

Hello again!

I apologize for the lateness of my post, but I have been working on my first expose (to be presented tomorrow) and I never got around to the blog. As for the past week and a half, it has been pretty eventful. We started classes again last week, and I have spent the last week and a half gearing up for my presentation tomorrow and my fiche bibliographique (document explanation) for a week from tomorrow.

My expose is on a subject of my choosing that compares something in the United States and France, so I decided to go with Sports. As usual, I realized that I have too much to talk about and had to significantly limit the presentation from what I was initially planning. At first, I had planned a large numeric analysis of the stadium sizes, number of foreign players, average attendance for different sports...as you can imagine that was beginning to be a little overwhelming, not to mention I doubt the other members of my class would be too interested in a bunch of statistics. So, I decided to do something far simpler. It is now a comparison of the most popular sports in each country, and how the two are becoming much more similar (eg. Soccer is growing in the U.S. and Basketball in France). I have made less progress on my fiche and it is far less interesting so I won't bore you with the details.

As for my life outside of school, it has been relatively uneventful. We had soccer practice again last week after our break and people are starting to get pretty excited about the 'Crit ( 'Monarcrit' - the large competition of all the Sciences Po schools). In fact, a bunch of students from Sciences Po Paris invaded the IEP the other day dressed in odd outfits in yellow (their school color for the competition), interrupted some classes, and stirred up the rivalry with some of the students here. I had initially not been able to go because the sign-up happens in the fall and the waiting list was already quite long, but a friend could no longer go and offered me their spot. I am very excited now because it means that I will get to play in many competitive games and get to see what the French school spirit is like. As most of you probably know, I am just a teeny bit competitive when it comes to anything with a winner (and several things without one...), so I think they are in for a surprise when our schools name is on the line. It is a bit expensive (130 euros), but it is a three day trip (25,26,27) which includes the train to and from Paris, all of our food and activities, and some school gear. Normally I could not get to and from Paris for less than 100 euros so I figured it was worth the trip. Sadly, however, I will be missing the Prospect High School exchange by less than 1 day! I had spoken with Mr. Russell about trying to meet up with the class while they were there, but they leave on the 24th and that is the day of my fiche presentation.

I also finally got to play some piano in privacy this weekend. I found out where the practice rooms at Rennes 1 are and wandered over there to put some time in. The place is half an hour from where I live and they only have two practice rooms in total (for use with any instrument), one with an upright piano and one with an electronic piano. The room with the upright was taken, but I was not feeling too picky and was happy to play the electronic. I stayed in there for a few hours to get my fix and then was on my way. I found out the rooms can be reserved so I will likely be doing that for a couple of hours every Friday from now on.

I believe that is all that I have for this update, besides some of the usual complaints about the French system. For example, the birth certificate translation that I gave to school and I was told would be given to SMEBA, my insurer, did not get there so I received a letter asking for it from SMEBA. I am still receiving monthly bills from the housing office and the amount payable is going up, implying that the IEP has yet to pay it. We, of course, checked in with the housing office to correct this and they told us not to worry because our name is on a list saying we don't pay, which apparently has not stopped them from sending a bill. Most importantly, I still have yet to receive my stipend for the month of March and it is currently more than half way through the month. I've determined that the French do not quite understand the benefits of online banking, such as the fact that transactions can be immediately transferred from one place or updated to an online bank statement. While this is extremely frustrating (as currently have no money left in my French account), there is not much I can do about it but complain, which I suppose is why I have a blog :).

That is all for now, I will be updating you again soon with the results of expose (fingers crossed!) and the activities of the rest of my week. Hope all is well in the good old U.S. of A. and my regards to anyone with family/friends in Japan.

A bientot

Tom

Une Repose

Greetings after another week in Rennes!

This one was much more quiet, so I do not have a lot of interest to discuss. After returning from the weekend at Margeaux's on Monday, I spent a large portion of the week watching tv shows on my computer, doing internship searches and applications, and research for my courses here. It quickly became a daily formula. I generally woke up around 10:30, which is surprising given my normal propensity to sleep into the early afternoon ("faire la grace matinee" as the french would say). I would then begin the slow process of waking up: making breakfast, watching an episode or two, making lunch, shower, etc. Around 1, I would attempt to start working. This normally took a while, but with a lot of focus and procrastination I was generally able to get some solid work done. I would then eat around 7, watch a little more tv, and try to get some more work done before going to bed.

Since most people were out of town all week, this schedule was rarely interrupted. I did stray from the routine once or twice to play piano at school, go for a walk or two (the weather has started to get much nicer this week), go out to dinner and other regular "break" activities. As usual, I would have liked to get a lot more done than I actually did, but I think that overall it was pretty productive. More importantly, I had a nice break from our very intimidating professor, catch up on sleep, and just generally relax. The weeks following break begin the real onslaught of work, so I will do my best to keep you all updated on how exciting that is and still get out and have some adventures worth talking about (and of course pictures of them). I hope all is well in Beloit, Mt. Prospect, Michigan, or wherever you may be. Thanks for reading!

A bientot!

Tom

Vacances!

Salut!

After a somewhat uneventful week, we have started our week of winter vacation. The week was spent doing the usual: schoolwork, summer internship searching and resume work, and we now know all of our controle continu (the semester-long assignment for each course) and can finally start working on those. The work is really starting to pile up with those assignments, expose presentations, and trying to keep up with the international student coordinator who teachers our History and Civilization course and Conference de Method: she is a very strict professor who apparently passed very few international students last semester. While this information, including her telling us the average grade she gives is a 7 (10 is passing), is making me very nervous, I think that it should all come together all right as long as I manage my time well. This is something I am going to have to learn to do even better as well since the school library is only open until 9 Mondays through Fridays and the other three libraries in Rennes are open on average 5 hours/day 5 days/week. This makes finding time to actually go to the library very difficult as the open hours often coincide with my class times (none are open after 7 except the at school). But, thanks to the internet, I believe I will be able to manage even with the minimal library time.

Enough about school, it's finally vacation time and it started with a very relaxing weekend. Friday night, we spent some time with three other international students (1 English, 1 German, 1 Canadian/Chinese) and made dinner as a group. Using a Japanese cookbook belonging to the Englishmen, we found a recipe for Gyoza Skins (Dumplings) and Teriyaki Stir Fry. After a long trip to a very large grocery store in a nearby mall, we stopped for a little McDonald's to hold us off until dinner could be made. After snacking a little, we headed back to the Canadian/Chinese girls apartment. We made ourselves the dumplings and stir fry, both of which were delicious, and finished with a fruit tart that we had bought at the supermarket. As you can imagine, by the end of this process we were quite full. We had planned to watch a movie, but cooking and eating took us so long that by the time we were done, we had to catch the bus to head back to Patton. As someone who very much loves eating, however, I was completely satisfied with a night of cooking and socializing.

Bright and early the next morning, we hopped on the train to visit a French girl who lives down the hall and invited us to come visit her home in the country. The town is called Montourtier and is about an hour East of Rennes. It is very small (Population about 300) and nearly everyone living out there owns a farm. We arrived by train in Laval, the biggest town nearby, and Margeaux, our friend, and her mother picked us up. Before heading to their house, we stopped at a store, of which I took a photo, that may not interest most of you, but I'm sure my mom will be happy to see. This is the French equivalent of Home Depot, which is nearly identical on the inside.

So, from there we took the scenic route through several villages to Margeaux's home in Montourtier. The countryside there is absolutely beautiful and I wish I could have gotten some better pictures of it. I attempted to take a video (as you'll see on the left), but I do not think it quite does it justice. We also got an interesting history lesson on the way through the towns. For example, the department (French equivalent to counties) they live in is home to several horse trainers because, according to Margeaux's mother, one of the first in the world to train race horses. As you would expect in a country famous for their cheese, there were also cows nearly everywhere.

That brings us to the second activity of the day. After a light breakfast and some lunch, Margeaux's mother organized for us to visit a nearby farm. This particular farm produces mostly milk, but was also home to pigs that we, sadly, did not get to see because there had been lightning which set off an alarm in that area of the farm. But, we did get to see their cows, of which they had 73, and calves. We got to see the process of milking the cows, feeding it to the calves, and how they take care of the newborns. It was all very exciting and reminiscent of my childhood at my grandparents house. Here are some pictures from that trip.

 Outside the farm, about half the cows are under the building in this photo and the other half were in the one to the left that you can't see, which is the one we went inside.

 The milking apparatus. It was quite sophisticated. The machines that attached to the utters had a laser guided system that would search for the utters first, then place the suction machine on them once they were found.

 Cows galore! (French Translation: Oh la vache!)

Newborn calf: This one was only about 2 days old! There were a few others as well, all less than 4 days old and all very hungry (they would not stop licking my hand) and very playful.

 Feeding system that brings the milk from the cows in the other room to the newborns.

To continue our small town adventures, we visited the site of a Roman Fortress at the Museum of Jublain, where Margeaux used to work. Margeaux gave us the walking tour of the remains of the fortress in addition to some of the artifacts indoors. The fortress dates back the the time of the Roman Empire, which made this a particularly interesting trip for us, since there is really nothing quite like it in the United States. Being able to stand inside something so old, with so much history behind it was truly mind-blowing, and an experience I will not soon forget. Some photos of the fortress and museum are below.

 The path into the fortress.

View from the inside. This is one of the main reasons it was built here. It is hard to tell from the photo, but there is an amazing view from all sides, making it quite ideal for a fortress site.

The living room and fireplace area in the officers quarters.

 Layout of the village with the fortress in the middle.

The three of us in front of the theater area.

After the trip to Jublain, we returned to Margeaux's house for the night. We then prepared for a night of family dinner and games. Following the French tradition, we had cidre and a snack around 6, since dinner is normally not until around 9. We then decided to make bagels for the family, since they had never heard of them. This was quite an adventure seeing as neither Morgan nor myself had actually ever made bagels before. Still, they turned out quite well, though a little small, and the family loved them. While they were in the oven, we had an aperitif with the family, which consisted of champagne and cidre, then sat down to dinner.

What was really amazing was that every meal was a true endeavor for Margeaux's mother, who was the chef of the household. Each one consisted of an appetizer, main dish, cheese, dessert and coffee and they were all phenomenal. She made us traditional French dishes both Saturday and Sunday for each meal and even bought some special cheeses to show us.





Overall, it was a very relaxing weekend and Margeaux's family was very nice and accommodating to anything and everything we might need. They were all very helpful when we had troubles with French, though they complemented us on our ability, and even tried to speak English with us from time to time. Below are some pictures of Margeaux's house and family.

 The front of their house.

 Margeaux's mother with the chocolates we brought them as a thank you gift.

Me and Morgan playing a card with Margeaux's younger brother Allan.

So, that concludes yet another installment of my adventures in France. I hope to have many more interesting things to tell you at the end of my vacation, though there is a high probability that most of those things will involve me studying or sleeping in. In any case, I will of course keep you posted with all of my activities as they happen, and I should have another post up by next Sunday. Thanks for reading and bonne vacances!

Tom