but did you ever see me? me, absolutely? me, but all you, but still me?
sorry if i disappointed anyone last week. i had been planning to write a big fat post, so i emailed everyone saying to go read it, and then when i was about halfway through writing it, the computer got angry and i lost it all, and i was too frustrated to start over. the only one who noticed was
bill -- or at least, he was the only one who commented. in any case, here it is.
where to start? i'm in
angers now, where i am going to
school at a catholic university!! ack. but the program is not catholic, so no one makes me go to mass, like they did in belgium. mostly all we do is talk about stuff. sometimes we watch the news, and then we talk about that too. i placed into the highest level, thirteen out of thirteen, and i think it's hard to teach us because there's nothing definite that we need. we all understand 'most everything, if not all. we all have pretty good grammar. all we really need is vocabulary and idiomatic expressions that we couldn't get unless someone told us. so that's what we do. it's ok but can get kind of boring. but all the people in my class have very different levels of speaking ability, so in our conversation classes it gets kind of entertaining sometimes. we also have to do a kind of a research kind of project-y thing, the point of which is to get us to go out into the community and talk to people. i'm doing mine on the jewish community in angers, which means i'm going to services on friday night at the synagogue. my pal naomi from ?pennsylvania? is going to come with me, too.
the school organizes several field trips around the nearby areas; they are included in the price of
the program i'm in, so i have been to all of them so far. field trip #1, friday july 5: a trip to someplace called
puy-du-fou where they have a big show about history. it was pretty hard to follow, and i didn't understand very much of it at all. but it was interesting to watch, and there were little spotted piggies. field trip #2, sunday july 7:
les châteaux de la loire, an all-day trip that involved getting up at 6am, but it was very fun. we went to three castles:
azay-le-rideau,
chenonceau, and
chambord. (dunno what the pages are all about – just look at the pretty pictures.) i had a good time, even though was kind of worn out with castles by the end of the day. my favorite was chenonceau, though chambord had a very nice forest around it. of course, i took tons of pictures. i've not developped them yet, because it's way expensive here, so when i get home i'm going to send it all to
photoworks and then i'll make a page with the scans they give me. anyway, that was a nice day. field trip #3, friday july 12: an afternoon trip to "l'anjou troglodytique." anjou is the region that anger is in, and troglodytique comes from the greek word for "hole" – basically, we went to look at caves. but fun caves!
caves that people lived in! apparently, in this region, during the middle ages it became kind of popular in a functional kind of way to live in holes in the ground. they had the right kind of rock: it was easy to dig, and it wasn't too wet once you got inside; also, they could sell the rock that they dug out, 'cos it was used for fertilizing fields, and then they would actually make money while they were building their houses. they started building them in the middle ages, but they were used up until the beginning of the 20th century. then after that, we went to a
winery, also in a cave, where they make champagne-like wine, but they can't call it champagne, 'cos it's not from champagne. that was fun but stinky and moldy inside. then the last stop was at a restaurant, also situated – you guessed it! – in a cave. we ate a lot of mushrooms there, which i enjoyed a great deal.
coming soon: field trip #4, sunday july 14: mont-saint-michel and saint-malo; le château d'angers, bastille day fireworks, future travel plans, and other interesting things.
email me.
