Bretagne in Nantes
So its been a while since the last time I have updated my blog. I still have not been too busy though, I probably should be taking more of an advantage of our limited homework load.
Last Thursday though I went to my first discocoteque. Their was a Tonus that night, which as I understand is a party thrown by students in a particular college at the University. We went to the Tonus Medecin, and it is one of the biggest ones, because IES offered to buy our tickets. The Tonus was at the largest Discoteque in Nantes at the Banana Hanger, where there are a strip of clubs in old airplane hangers. We had a lot of fun, but we ended up leaving after the buses and trams stopped running (b/c they stopped at 12:30) and we had to walk all the way home. I spent the night with some friends who live closer but it still ended up being an hour walk in the cold. I then had to wake up though before classes and I got on the tram to go home while everyone else was on the tram going to work at 7:00 in the morning.
I ended up sleeping most of Friday after only getting two hours of sleep the night before. I stayed in Friday and ate dinner with my family. We ate Raclette, which is meat and cheese cooked in a small oven on the table and then once the meat is warm and the cheese is melted you remove it and eat it with potatoes. It was really good, my weakness since being here is definitely cheese, it is all so good. The next day I hung around the house again, watched Amelie and worked on my internship stuff. That night though I went out with my host dad's brother and Christina and I learned some of the Breton dances. It was so much fun, unfortunately though this is only a weekly thing and they were not also wearing the traditional costumes. Everyone was so nice there, it was primarily middle aged people, and there were a few younger my aged people there too. I even had the opportunity to learn one of the more complicated dances because this one guy was persistent and insisted that i needed to learn it. It looked almost like an Irish dance, they cultures have the same origin and similar customs today.
On Sunday I tried Oysters, which surprisingly I like. Most of the host families don't even bother serving their students oysters because they assume Americans don't like Oysters. I told my host mom that I wanted to try them because they are a specialty and they are also everywhere here. We also had food from the market because my host mom goes to the market every Sunday and purchases meat and potatoes and the best bread ever! After trying all of this new food though and eating so much meat I was ready to return to my vegetarian ways, so this week I bought raw vegetables, so for lunch I can eat my raw vegetable sandwiches and then try something new and different for dinner.
I think one of my favorite things is my teaching internship. I go to a private Catholic school twice a week and give an English lesson to five different classes. My students range from 4-7 so it is a bit difficult having to adjust the curriculum, but it is a lot of fun. The teachers are also so nice. In my last class on Thursday the teacher was an au pair in Atlanta for two years so she will speak English with me. It is nice because there are not really communication barriers, but sort of frustrating b/c I don't get to practice my French, which I desperately need to do.
I am almost done before my first break, I have only Phonetics lab this evening, which I also love. Typically it reminds me of Love Actually where Colin Firth goes to learn Portugese, but at the moment the University still has the greve going on (so they are all still on Strike) and the university is blockaded. Though b/c we are American and they don't want us to be too affected by the Greve we still have classes, just at IES instead of the Universite de Nantes. I love the class though because I feel like it actually helps, I just wish it could be everyday of the week, which is weird but I feel like I would be a million times better if it were everyday. Anyways tomorrow I am off to East Midlands, then Dublin, and then back to London. I am traveling with a friend and we are sort of completely playing it by year and have very little planned so we will see how it goes. Though I looked at the weather and it is supposed to snow Saturday so that scares me a little bit...but I know that it will somehow all work out.
Last Thursday though I went to my first discocoteque. Their was a Tonus that night, which as I understand is a party thrown by students in a particular college at the University. We went to the Tonus Medecin, and it is one of the biggest ones, because IES offered to buy our tickets. The Tonus was at the largest Discoteque in Nantes at the Banana Hanger, where there are a strip of clubs in old airplane hangers. We had a lot of fun, but we ended up leaving after the buses and trams stopped running (b/c they stopped at 12:30) and we had to walk all the way home. I spent the night with some friends who live closer but it still ended up being an hour walk in the cold. I then had to wake up though before classes and I got on the tram to go home while everyone else was on the tram going to work at 7:00 in the morning.
I ended up sleeping most of Friday after only getting two hours of sleep the night before. I stayed in Friday and ate dinner with my family. We ate Raclette, which is meat and cheese cooked in a small oven on the table and then once the meat is warm and the cheese is melted you remove it and eat it with potatoes. It was really good, my weakness since being here is definitely cheese, it is all so good. The next day I hung around the house again, watched Amelie and worked on my internship stuff. That night though I went out with my host dad's brother and Christina and I learned some of the Breton dances. It was so much fun, unfortunately though this is only a weekly thing and they were not also wearing the traditional costumes. Everyone was so nice there, it was primarily middle aged people, and there were a few younger my aged people there too. I even had the opportunity to learn one of the more complicated dances because this one guy was persistent and insisted that i needed to learn it. It looked almost like an Irish dance, they cultures have the same origin and similar customs today.
On Sunday I tried Oysters, which surprisingly I like. Most of the host families don't even bother serving their students oysters because they assume Americans don't like Oysters. I told my host mom that I wanted to try them because they are a specialty and they are also everywhere here. We also had food from the market because my host mom goes to the market every Sunday and purchases meat and potatoes and the best bread ever! After trying all of this new food though and eating so much meat I was ready to return to my vegetarian ways, so this week I bought raw vegetables, so for lunch I can eat my raw vegetable sandwiches and then try something new and different for dinner.
I think one of my favorite things is my teaching internship. I go to a private Catholic school twice a week and give an English lesson to five different classes. My students range from 4-7 so it is a bit difficult having to adjust the curriculum, but it is a lot of fun. The teachers are also so nice. In my last class on Thursday the teacher was an au pair in Atlanta for two years so she will speak English with me. It is nice because there are not really communication barriers, but sort of frustrating b/c I don't get to practice my French, which I desperately need to do.
I am almost done before my first break, I have only Phonetics lab this evening, which I also love. Typically it reminds me of Love Actually where Colin Firth goes to learn Portugese, but at the moment the University still has the greve going on (so they are all still on Strike) and the university is blockaded. Though b/c we are American and they don't want us to be too affected by the Greve we still have classes, just at IES instead of the Universite de Nantes. I love the class though because I feel like it actually helps, I just wish it could be everyday of the week, which is weird but I feel like I would be a million times better if it were everyday. Anyways tomorrow I am off to East Midlands, then Dublin, and then back to London. I am traveling with a friend and we are sort of completely playing it by year and have very little planned so we will see how it goes. Though I looked at the weather and it is supposed to snow Saturday so that scares me a little bit...but I know that it will somehow all work out.
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