It's vacation it's vacation it's vacation...

Hello once again!

It has been a while, so I hope you're prepared for a long post. For those of you who don't know, the title from this post is an excerpt from my brother Sam's "Vacation Song". If you have never heard it, I strongly suggest you ask him to perform it for you and be sure he does the dance that goes with it. That said, it's update time.

So, since it has been about two weeks since my last post, I'm going to start from the beginning. The week following my last post was, as I had mentioned, spent working almost entirely on my Centre Pompidou expose. I gave my presentation on Thursday and surprisingly, she did not tear me apart. In fact, it seemed like she kind of liked it. She had one reproach on my organization which made it a bit repetitive and she was right too. I managed to get away with going about 24 minutes (it was supposed to be 20) without her saying anything, so I was of course happy about that. Overall, I was happy with my work and to be honest, if she told me she didn't like it I would have been pretty upset since I read a thesis, the book based on the thesis, and numerous articles about it and spent countless hours trying to figure out a plan (Ask me anything about it, I dare you). To Amy: Thanks for the link, but I had already done my presentation. I read a lot about how iconic it is for the architecture world and in some ways I understand why, but to be honest, it really is a hideous building. Moving on...

Luckily, the work was not yet over. I got to write 4-5 page paper for my economics class on the economic crisis and household consumption. One of the students had told me he would find me a copy of the expose someone had done on the topic for the course, but Thursday afternoon he sent me a note saying that there wasn't one. So, I stayed up all night writing the paper (and maybe taking a break for the Bulls game which was at 1 a.m. here) and finished around 7 in the morning. This one I was far less proud of. It was only about 4 full pages (although with our smaller paper size it would have been more like 5-6) and the organization was difficult to do and caused some problems with the content. In general, it wasn't great, but I have an oral exam in which I think I will do much better. I walked to school Friday morning around 8 to drop my paper off and returned home to find an email from my friend saying someone had just posted the expose. So, yea I was a little upset because, if it were me, I would have asked around (the class is only 18 people and it meets every week) on top of checking the server at school to see if someone had posted it. But, I had already turned it in so I did not stress about it too much. Instead, I reflected on how, once again, the word "French" proved synonymous with "Late".

I spent most of the rest of Friday sleeping and then packing for my trip to Amsterdam and Paris. I spent the next 24 hours or so freaking out that I would somehow miss a method of transportation (train metro bus train2) or that I had already boarded the wrong bus and was headed to Spain instead. Of course, this was not the case and I arrived safely in Amsterdam Saturday evening. I met up with my friend from Beloit and got settled in. Luckily, I had brought a little cash with me because apparently the only cards that work in most of the shops in Amsterdam are the Dutch ones, which is surprising for a city overflowing with tourists (Seriously, the entire time I was surrounded by at least 4 different nationalities). We spent most of the week walking around town, hanging out in the city center where they had a carnival, relaxing in the park (which was filled with neither heroine needles nor tons of people on LSD...Dad...) and of course seeing some of the sites. I met up with my friends from Rennes to do most of the touristing as I did not feel like Jake wanted to be dragged through museums all week that he had probably already seen. I will not go into too much detail on the touristing, but here's a brief overview. First, we went to the Heineken museum. We thought it was a tour of the brewery, but as it turns out "The Heineken Experience" is mostly just a museum. Nevertheless, they gave us a few beers along the way and we learned some fun facts about how it's made. Next was Anne Frank house. This was very interesting and depressing at the same time. They had a lot of quotes from her diary on the wall and video interviews with people who knew her playing in different rooms (getting to which was nearly impossible since the stairs were smaller than my feet and basically went straight up). Last on my list was the Van Gogh museum. I particularly liked this one and spent a lot of time there. They also had a Picasso exhibit that was pretty interesting. Overall, the touristy stuff was fun, but I mostly enjoyed having a calm week without having to focus on schoolwork. I ended the week with a pre Queen's Day celebration (I left Saturday which was Queen's Day) on Friday night when we went to Den Haag to celebrate. The whole country gets pretty excited about the whole thing and to be honest, it seemed a lot more interesting than the Royal Wedding (which I unluckily caught the end of while it was playing in a bar). That's the basics of my trip to Amsterdam. To those of you looking for stories of debauchery and legal prostitution: Sorry, no dice.

My bus left Amsterdam Saturday morning and that afternoon I arrived in Paris. Not surprisingly, we were greeted by several customs agents and a drug dog who preceded to sniff every suitcase and everyone on the bus (the dog not the agents). For a moment it seemed they had caught two women and we were about to see a drug dog attack or at least an arrest, alas, we were not so lucky. I met up with Morgan and her friend from home and we started our plan to sneak me into the hotel. They dropped my stuff off in their room (telling the guy at the desk that they had bought a new suitcase) while I waited outside. We then wandered around town and then saw Thor (the original version). It was not bad, but a bit cheesy for my taste. Upon return to the hotel, we discovered it would be much harder than we thought to get me into the hotel. The guy at the desk saw me try to walk in behind them while they spoke to him and called us on our bluff. In stereotypical French fashion, he proceeded to be extremely rude, call us typical Americans (think we're smarter than everyone) and be generally condescending. He then of course pretended to apologize while simultaneously telling us that he had done nothing wrong (funny right?). Apparently, the hotel had already changed which building they were in and switched their room the next day (which involved moving all of their things while the were out with no notification), so as you may imagine we were expecting a bit more hospitality despite our deception (which we also felt was justified).

The following day, we had hoped to visit the museums of Paris since they are all free the first Sunday of every month. What we had not considered, was that it was actually the French Labor Day so they were all closed (typical). So we instead went to the Pere Lachaise Cemetery (where lots of famous people are buried), got some ice cream and wandered around Paris. It was a pretty relaxing day, followed by a nice dinner where I tried escargo for the first time and surprisingly kind of liked. Our train left at 10:05, so we spent some time hanging out around the train station and then headed home.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable and relaxing trip. I got to see a couple friends from Beloit, hang out in a beautiful city, and see some sides of Paris I had not previously experienced. As for the rest of my semester, it will be back to work. I have two papers to do this week and then it's exam time. But, I'll be finished with my exams on May 19th, so I'll have some time to travel before May 30th, when I leave. I welcome any suggestions on locations. Here are some pictures from the past couple of weeks.

Amsterdam Central Station

View from Jake's apartment

Carnival downtown

Vondel Park

Dog swimming in the park

Outside Anne Frank (there was no line when I went)

Outside the cemetery

Oscar Wilde's grave. Apparently a lot of women don't know that he was gay...

Fountain at the Centre Pompidou (That's not it in the background, it's way uglier.  Don't believe me? Google it.)

Concert in Den Haag for Queen's Day

Behind Notre Dame

View of Paris from a bridge over the river

That's all for now folks. I hope you have enjoyed reading and I will be keeping you posted on my adventures, boring/studious as they may be, through the coming weeks.

TTFN

Tom

Work, Work, Work...

Hello all!

Not much has happened this past week, so this will be a fairly short post. We have just finished our last official week of classes, which is both exciting and odd considering we are here for another 6 weeks. The upcoming week is when we make up any classes that were cancelled and not rescheduled during the regular school year. So although the 'last week of classes' is past, all but one of my classes will be meeting this week, one of which will meet twice.

As for the past week, it was mostly spent studying and attending class. I gave my fiche presentation on Jean-Paul Sartre on Thursday, which went pretty well overall. I think the professor disagreed on a few points with the author but to be honest I'm just happy that I am almost done with her course. I also had my exam for my French course, which also went pretty well. There were one or two parts that had me stumped (like subjunctive conjugation of recevoir...) but overall I think I did well and will end up with a good grade. I also did a lot of work on my paper for Sociology, which is due tomorrow and I finished and had corrected by my student mentor last night. I tried doing more work on my Centre Pompidou expose but a plan still eludes me. I don't know if I have mentioned this before, but she has a very specific requirement for the format of these exposes. Basically, they must be in the following format:

Problematique (Pose a question)

Introduction

A.
   i.
   ii.
B.
   i.
   ii.

Conclusion

Aside from allowing you to occasionally add a third major section or subsection, there is almost no wiggle room. In addition, whatever topics you choose for your sections have to follow a general chronology of the topic, which makes mine difficult because the entire project of the Centre covers about 8 years at most and the topic is actually the revolution of the Centre (but not after its construction, just how it in and of itself is revolutionary). Essentially, I currently feel like I know a lot about the Centre Pompidou while actually knowing little of what she will want me to say. But, now that I am finished with my Sociology paper I can give most of my attention to this expose. In addition to this, I also have a 5 page economics paper due on Friday, so it will be a busy week.

Despite all of my work, I am getting very excited about the following couple of weeks. After my class on Thursday (and turning in my paper to the office Friday morning) I will be officially on vacation for two weeks. So, on Saturday the 23 I am leaving for a trip to Amsterdam, where I will live with a friend from Beloit for about 5 days and then meet up with a couple people in Paris for two days before heading back to Rennes. I have already been told of several places I have to see while I am in Amsterdam including the Ann Frank house, the Van Gogh museum, the Red Light District (if only for a moment just to say I was there) and a park the name of which I am unsure how to spell. If you have any suggestions, let me know! Since I have already done most of the touristy things in Paris, I am going to try to visit some of the less popular attractions such as the cemetery where Oscar Wilde is buried and maybe just wander around and enjoy the city.

Once I get back from this trip, it will be back to work. Exams start the 9th of may, when I will have two more papers due. After that, I will take my last 5 exams and be completely done by the 18th or 19th of May (one professor does not know when his exam is...). Actually, I am not entirely sure because the system is somewhat confusing. Basically, each professor just chooses a 2 hour time slot in which they want to have our exam and send it to the office which coordinates that. Then that office posts the information. As it turns out, two of my exams are at the same time on the same day, and one of them is written so I cannot simply give my oral exam and proceed to wait my turn for the other course. This is apparently common because this happened with multiple courses, but I am just hoping that I will still be done this early so I won't need to drag out my stress for only one course. If I am done by the 19th, I am hoping to make a short trip (just a couple days) to the south of France to get some sun and see a different part of the country. We were thinking of doing Bordeaux or Aix-en-Provence, but again, if anyone has any (affordable) recommendations feel free to let me know.

So that is about all for this week. Something interesting has come to my attention recently so I will leave you with this fun anecdote. When I first arrived in January, I had to validate my visa through an office called the OFII. While there, they told us they would send us first a confirmation that our visas were validated (which came about 3 weeks later in the mail) and then eventually a letter telling us when we would have to go see a doctor for a chest x-ray (which would cost 55 euros, despite the physical I was "required" to get at home, and was never asked about), which I believe is to ensure that we do not have TB or some kind of deadly virus that would wipe out the country. As you may have already guessed, this letter has yet to come (knock on wood...). At this point, I don't think it would matter if it did come since I am leaving in 6 weeks, so I imagine I will not be getting any x-rays.

Anyway, I think I have filled my quota of complaining, French bashing, and updating for this week so I will leave you all for now. I will try to get a post in before I leave for Amsterdam, because I doubt I will be bringing my computer with me. If not, you will definitely hear about my trip following my return. Until next time, best wishes and happy easter if I do not get a chance to update you again before then!

Tom

Beach trip!

I'm back!

I have once again completely missed my blog deadline, though this time it was not out of laziness but instead a lack of anything interesting. There was almost nothing that happened between the Wednesday that I posted and the following Sunday so I decided to leave the next post until today.

In the past week, I have again been working diligently to get all of my things together. Since my courses keep getting cancelled and rescheduled, nearly all of my work is now packed into the next two weeks. As a result, I have been having a hard time splitting up the amount of time I spend on each course. As you  may expect, I have spent nearly all of my time working on my expose and fiche for the History and Civilization course because the professor does quite frighten me. It may seem difficult to understand that anyone could be so intimidated by a teacher in a foreign country who is supposed to be the one helping you learn and accommodate to the culture, so I will do my best to explain. Every time someone presents a fiche or an expose, she spends an equal amount of time telling them why it was not good enough (not incorrect or necessarily insufficient, but not what she would have done, thus not good enough). She is, literally, impossible to please. As one of the French students put it: every time you turn something in she repeatedly tells you why it was not what she would have done and why her way is better, until you finally get it exactly the way she would do it, which is when she says to you "That's plagiarism!". Surprisingly, it gets worse. In class on Tuesday she spent 20 minutes telling a girl who looked bored that she should leave if she didn't want to be here because she doesn't care if we show up and does not keep track of attendance (which is a lie). Then, on Thursday the first thing she said after a student gave his expose were the following: "I'm bored and kind of annoyed...". Granted, his presentation was imperfect, and needed improvement. But, as it happens, this was also the student who she admitted to giving a difficult topic (hand chosen because he arrived to school late after returning home to Scotland to take his fall semester exams) and proceeded to give absolutely no guidance on the subject. Whether or not he should have done better or she should have helped more is not really my problem, but instead that she was (and not just in this case, but in general) extremely rude. So, I think it is clear why my work for my more reasonable (and generally very helpful and nice) teachers has been put on the back burners.

Nevertheless, I have made some good progress on my fiche, one of my papers and my expose. My French exam is also this coming Thursday, which has me a bit worried but I am fairly confident I will do well. So, my past week has been spent almost entirely doing work. In order to ease the tension a bit, we decided to take a trip this weekend. We were initially planning to go on a day trip with several international students to celebrate our friend's birthday, but the group went somewhere fairly expensive, so we went to St. Malo instead. For those of you who have not seen on facebook, I just recently booked a trip to Amsterdam with some of the other students and to visit a friend, so I am trying to save money where I can. Luckily, St. Malo is close and fairly inexpensive to get to.

Train station in St. Malo

We took an early morning train and arrived around 8:30. We wandered around the town for a while until we found a suitable beach to hang out at for the day. We spent most of the day laying on the beach. I did some reading, took a nap or two and walked out briefly into the ocean (it was very cold). I managed to find some cool shells and I even found my first piece of sea-glass! It was a beautiful day in St. Malo (about 75 degrees, though a little chillier with the wind on the beach) so we of course did some sunbathing as well. We saw some of the sights, wandered aimlessly, and got some delicious ice cream (of which there is little to none in Rennes). Overall, it was a wonderful and relaxing day and I managed to get some good reading done on the Centre Pompidou, which is the subject for my expose. Upon our return, we met up with the group who had gone to Vannes for Cindy's birthday for a soirée and some cake. It was an eventful and relaxing weekend that helped distract from the stress of my work, even if only momentarily. I've included some more pictures below to give you an idea for how the trip went. I hope all is well state-side and everyone is enjoying the beginning of spring!

Ferry to England

Thought this was interesting...

Cool retractable bridge

Garden outside the city

Wall around the city

Island fortress

Same fortress at low tide

Yea, they have them here too...

Pirates?

A bientot!

Tom

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