Abbaye aux Dames and Strikers

I love Thursdays. I have no responsibilities or obligations on Thursdays anymore, because I have no class and no job. This morning Daniel and I went jogging for about two miles (and stopped because of my stamina, not his), then I slept/read/journaled for awhile, made lunch, and this afternoon I walked to the Abbaye aux Dames. This Abbaye, founded in 1062 by Queen Mathilda (William the Conqueror's wife), is truly a celebration of the faith of women. It isn't as grand or as beautiful as the Abbaye aux Hommes, founded by William the Conqueror, but it was still very beautiful. My favorite part were the little banners made a couple of years ago with saints and women from the Bible embroidered on them.



I then went to the castle to read a little bit as the weather was nice, but I had only delved into a few pages of Second Glance (the first Jodi Picoult book I have ever begun to read) when I heard the chanting, the songs, if you will, of angry men and women. I jumped off the wall I had perched myself upon and ran down the stairs from the castle to see. It was a teacher and student strike against some new policies by Sarcozy. They're pretty bad reforms; they have every right to be angry. I don't always say that about the strikers. Especially when they affect my travel plans.

For pictures of the Abbaye and the strikers, click here. They should be on pages 2 and 3 of that album.

I can haz scholarship?

Fromage du jour: Grassy Camembert that's gone missing.

Hello there blogosphere! (I wanted to say "Hello there podcast listeners," like Ira Glass, but that wouldn't have made sense. I wish I had a podcast, though.)

I’ve been back in France for about four days. It has been pretty crazy. I live on a diet of almonds, raisins, chocolate, and Camembert. I think one of my wheels of Camembert rolled off of my windowsill… but the guy at the market sold it to me when it was very close to its expiration date so it was no big loss. The older Camembert is, the drier, and the more it tastes like grass.

France is lovely. The weather has been great despite it being February. It hasn’t rained (though it snowed a flake or two!), it hasn’t been terribly cold (especially not compared to Kentucky, so I hear!), and I’ve even seen the sun! That has been such a blessing, especially for the new students who are exploring the town for the first time. My dorm is as ugly and icky as it’s always been, but it’s warm and has been made warmer by all of the oatmeal, hot chocolate, and books that I stashed in every spare corner of my suitcase. There’s also a slight chance that I may get internet in my dorm. It would be expensive, so I have to see if it fits into my budget.

My first night here I went to my friend Emilie’s apartment and she made crepes. You couldn’t ask for a better welcome to France than to have crepes prepared for you by a French girl, especially when they are filled with Nutella and coconut! I introduced her and her friend Leticia to Reese’s. I also brought a jar of peanut butter, but felt that it is just as important to know what peanut butter and chocolate tastes like as it is to know what peanut butter tastes like alone.

Besides being reunited with the familiar faces I have met some new faces that I am very excited about being with this semester. There are two students who occupy what were formerly the bedrooms of Erica and Courtney, and there are a lot of fun Aussies who came here for their international studies program who hang out in my dorm even if they don’t live there.

But it hasn’t been all crepes and Camembert! France wouldn’t be France without hiccups and debacles. Catastrophe de catastrophes, I am not enrolled in the university and I currently do not have a scholarship. The Twinning Committee of Deauville, for some reason, did not think that I was returning this semester, and so until things are worked out with them I am not technically a student. I can’t imagine that I won’t get my scholarship back, and so I’m not that worried. They’re still letting me go to class… for now! C’est la vie—debacles occur, and there’s nothing you can do about it!

That’s all for now, folks. Tune in next time to find out if I’ve found a job as a teaching assistant, if I ever find my old wheel of Camembert, and if I’ve been deported for not being a student anymore!

This was written on Sunday.

There was a crazy time change today (Sunday)! I had completely forgotten that France had started doing that. Emilie sent me a text message to remind me but I didn’t get it until I had already gotten dressed and headed out the door for lunch at 10:30 AM… I thought it was 11:30 because the time changed automatically on my computer but not on my French cell phone, and I trusted the thing actually purchased in France. Silly me!

I spent part of the day wandering around the open market, and part wandering around parts of the Chateau Ducal that I had not yet seen. There are a few staircases that wind down from the top of the castle walls that are barred off, probably because descending down them would be treacherous… but I still want to know where they used to go! I also visited the sculpture garden by the castle which is reminiscent of the White Witch’s garden in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I found a good reading spot on the lawn amongst some lovely trees where I sat and read Harry Potter à l’ecole des sorciers. In case you were wondering, Hogwarts translates into Poudlard. Not quite sure why…

After coming back from the chateau I found my friends at the dorm, and they were all in a frenzy, trying to figure out what time it was. We were all so terribly confused that I sent Emilie a text message to ask her to tell me for the second time that day. They do the time change thing to save on energy, which I think is interesting. Gas and electricity must be much more expensive here than I thought. Things we wouldn’t even think about, like toasters and hot water boilers, make their bills go up.

E-mail Update

Dear friends and family,

I told you that I would update you a few weeks ago, and so finally here I am! In case you were wondering, my fractured nose is healing nicely. Right now it sports a tiny bump and a couple of scars, but it's not too noticeable. Other than tracking the recovery of my sniffer, I have been enjoying la vie française!

Since I last e-mailed you, I've been on some excursions, my favorite so far being in Bayeux. It's absolutely one of the most charming towns I have ever seen, and if you're ever in Normandie, make sure you spend part of a day there. I think we'll go back for Thanksgiving to eat at the restaurant we went to—best food we've had in France so far! Next week I'll be going to Paris for the first time, and I'm so excited! We'll be visiting Pere Lachaise on Halloween—spooky. In two weeks we'll have some days off of school and I will be staying with my host grandparents in Deauville for a party for students involved with the Twin Cities organization. I'm here on scholarship because Lexington is Deauville's sister city.

Caen is treating me as well as the places I've been visiting. The classes are challenging and the professors are so sweet and patient. Though my kitchen contains only two burners and a sink, I've been managing to find things in the store that do not require refrigeration, microwaving, baking, or any more utensils than a pot and a spoon, that actually aren't bad! My favorite of my meals is pasta with basil pesto. I'm aware that pesto needs to be refrigerated, but part of the challenge of cooking here is lowering one's standards for what needs to be kept cold…

Despite the fact that Caen isn't a very big city, there's a lot to do. Last Friday I went with two French friends, Emilie and Marie, to go see the opera of A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was in English with French subtitles. I enjoyed it very much, as did the other two girls. I think I'll be seeing Le Mariage de Figaro in Paris next month. It makes being away from my voice lessons and voice teacher at UK so, so difficult.

That's all for now! Thank you so much for your e-mails, prayers, Skypes, phone calls, and your letters. I can't tell you how wonderful it is to hear from people I love, especially because some Americans have a Crazy Switch flipped in their brains once their feet hit European ground (but let's not go there)! All of my mail is put on my wall to add some color to my room. I really, really appreciate it.

Á bientôt!

Suzanne Emmert

Don't worry, kids!

I'm fine!

Some of you may have heard that I got to experience French healthcare first hand! It's true, it's true. My friend, Erin Risch, whom some of you may know, is studying in Paris currently and she came to stay with me. On her last night here, I took some NyQuil to alleviate the symptoms of a cold that was hindering my sleep. Something, whether it was a lack of enough sleep or something else, reacted badly with the NyQuil and when we woke up in the morning I fainted. As I fainted I hit my nose on the edge of my bed, then hit the floor. While I was unconscious, Erin used the emergency phone on my dorm floor and then knocked on the doors of my friends. Very soon firemen came and took me to the hospital.

I'll spare you a lot of the detail, but I will say that a lot of nausea and dizzyness was involved, plus a bit of a headache! They took an X-Ray and found that I had broken my nose, just slightly. I was surprised to find this out because it didn't hurt that badly, and it wasn't very swollen. After I had been on an IV for about ten minutes I felt perfectly fine and ready to go home, but the nurses and doctors would have none of that. They told me that I had to stay the night, just to be on the safe side. Everyone was very, very sweet, and apologized for their broken English (which was silly, as it was I who needed to be apologizing for my broken French!). My friends were so good to me. Erin called a lot to make sure I didn't need her to come back to Caen and stay with me, and I told her that I had to stay at the hospital overnight so she couldn't. Erica stayed at the hospital with me for hours, and later Emilie (French friend) and Courtney (American) came to visit with a goody bag of magazines, Jane Eyre (which I read most of during my stay), a brush, mirror, apples, and chocolate.

My roommate was a woman named Valerie whose husband stayed with her as much as he could. I noticed her looking at my chocolate earlier in the day and when her husband left I offered her some, and she took it. Today I think she became overwhelmed with her condition (which I think has to do with depression-- I think she OD'd on some medication), and her husband wasn't in the room so she sat on my bed and held my hand for a long time. We talked, and I told her that I was a Christian and would pray for her. She closed her eyes and nodded, and I held her hand some more. Later, her husband came in and gave me a gift of fine, dark chocolate, for which I was grateful! Later, she had to be moved to a different room, and when she said good-bye she cried and hugged me so tightly and kissed my cheeks.

I'm not going to say that it wasn't a hassle going through all of this. I feel awful for how badly I scared my friends, and I hated being hooked up to an IV for so long! But you know, if I went through it all to give a sad woman a piece of chocolate and a hug, it was all worth it! Please keep me and the rest of Caen in your prayers. It's been a rough couple of days!

In a few days I'll send another update about the rest of my life in Caen. It's an amazing place, and every day I wake up so excited that I get to spend another day here. I miss my friends in the United States very dearly, but I'm so grateful for the experiences I get to have in France! The city, my classes, and my friends are all wonderful.

Boat party

Michael stands in the front of the boat, and says that he’s king of the world within the first hour, or I give you my next paycheck. --Jim, "Booze Cruise", The Office

I live here and I'm confused as to what part of France I live in. It was finally cleared up today: I am in Lower-Normandy, in the Calvados region, in the city of Caen, which is the prefecture of Calvados. For some reason I thought Calvados meant Normandy plus some other areas, but no, it's a region of Lower-Normandy. Got it. In a month I will have my residential permit for Calvados, which will be nice to get out of the way.

Caen is a small city. Much smaller than I had initially thought. It has about half the population of Lexington in a much, much smaller space. I feel like I've seen almost all of the town, excluding the residential areas that aren't of much interest, and that makes me feel much more at home. Let me tell you, the French may be a wee bit behind on technology when it comes to internet access, but they are decades ahead of America on public transportation, even in a small city like this. It couldn't be easier to get around unless you just had a personal taxi driver.

Today the foreign students are being taken on a boat party, or, as we Office fans call it, a Booze Cruise! We're all very excited about it because we have no idea what it consists of. Hopefully pastries. I just got a loyalty card at my favorite patisserie today!

Today I was in an information session with all of the foreign students who will be staying here for the year. There were seven westerners, a handful of Ghanans, a handful of Koreans and Vietnamese*, and the rest were Chinese. Soooo many Chinese! They're the cutest and sweetest people in the world. I feel so sorry for the Asians because they struggle so much with French. The English, Spanish, and Italian speakers among us have it sooo easy. I admire them so much for being brave enough to come here, and I'm so glad they have so many others who speak their language so they won't be lonely!

I got my first postcard the other day! I felt so loved! Personal mail is like gold here. My friends were very jealous.

Hope you all are having a good day! I'm now off to bombard my parents with more e-mails about what to put in my care package.

A Holiday at Sea

Kylie and I are watching a movie on her bed and vegging out. Practice classes began today. Mine was far too easy, and so I hope to be moved to a higher level. After we took a test we did an activity in which we had to converse with a small group of people and then tell the class a few interesting things about one of them. Next to me was a man named Curtis. About him I said that he was from Vermont, he loves Nutella, normal things like that. . . and then he proceeds to tell the class that I am American and I love France, but the one thing I don’t love are the lack of toilet seats here. The toilet seats! After he asks me tons of questions about why I study French and what I like to do, that’s all he can remember to say! It was part of a long conversation in which our group (Erica, Courtney, Curtis, and me) talked about the differences between France and the USA. I was so embarrassed! I wasn’t complaining about the dorms or anything, but I’m sure it looked like I was a spoiled brat American to the teacher.

Today I felt like a real French girl because I went to a bakery and cremerie to buy a baguette and Camembert for dinner for Kylie, Erica, and I (Courtney doesn’t like cheese). That and a chausson de pomme from my favorite patisserie makes a great meal, though I’ve discovered that I am not fond of Camembert.

Classes are over by lunch time and we have the rest of the day to do as we please. This is kind of a problem because right now there is no homework, and nothing to do unless we want to spend tons of money. I’ll be happy when sports begin (oh my gosh, did I just say that out loud?).

(Two days later… it’s such a hassle to update blogs when you don’t have internet!)

Yesterday my friends and I visited the Abbaye aux Hommes, which is next to the Hotel de Ville (which we did not go into). William the Conqueror’s tomb is in the church, so we went to see him, or rather, his leg, as the rest of him was dug up and destroyed during the French Revolution. The church was gorgeous, dark, eerie, and reverent. And old. I can't stop thinking about the hands that made the castles, walls, and churches hundreds of years ago!

After that Kylie, Robert, and I took a bus to the beach at Lion-sur-Mer, which is an adorable town. The beach was cold and beautiful. There were tiny cave-like structures along the cliffs that we climbed on until an old French man either told us that the rocks would fall, that we would fall, or that we were not allowed to climb them, or a combination of the three. It was too windy to hear him! We spent a couple of hours walking and talking on the beach, then went to a little cafe to have cheese and baguette while we waited for our bus.

In other news, I'm in level B-1, which is almost where I wanted to be (B-2 would have been preferable). This permits me to do many things that I wouldn't get to do in the A level, and so I'm pleased.

And in yet more news, food is exceedingly difficult to find on Sundays!