you need a girl with electrical hair
so. here i am back in eugene. yes, i've been back for a couple weeks, but i haven't got internet at home (and may never! eep!) so it's harder for me to get to a computer. yay for the
honors college and the
emu.
so where to start? maybe where i left off. oh boy, that was a long time ago.
bastille day fireworks were on saturday july 13th, instead of the 14th, which is actually
bastille day. this happened only in angers, as far as i can tell, and is apparently because they didn't want all the state employees to have to work on sunday. or something. it wasn't really clear. but anyway, it was good 'cos we were on a field trip all the next day. the firework display was interesting -- again, apparently only in angers, though i didn't really talk to anyone from anywhere else, it was a 'yay for united europe' display, not a 'yay for france' display, which i thought was quite strange. then came field trip #4, sunday july 14: mont-saint-michel and saint-malo.
mont-saint-michel, as you may or may not know, is a little island with a big abbey on it. well, sometimes it's an island, and sometimes it's not, because of the tides. it's quite pretty, as you can see from the photos on the site i just gave you, but it's extremely toursity. also it contains a lot of steps. too many steps, in my opinion. after that we went to
saint malo, which is a town not too far from mt-st-michel. the point of saint malo is that the old town (now the tourist part) is a walled city. it's cool. you can walk all the way around the old town on the wall, but it gets boring after a while 'cos there's not much new to see except roofs (rooves?) and people on the beach, but if you get off the wall you're in a different part of the city and you can't find your way back. at st-malo i bought
caramels au beurre salé, which means 'salty butter caramel.' it sounds weird but it was quite good. then sometime around there we went to the
château d'angers -- the castle of angers. it was the coolest one, in my opinion, because it's a real castle. they use the word 'château' to mean castle, like functional war castle, as well as really big spiffy mansion that a lot of rich people hung out in. most of the othes we saw were of the latter variety, but angers was a functional castle. it had big thick walls and towers to shoot at people from. from which to shoot at people. it was used up through WWII -- the germans occupied it and used it as a military base during the war. and in it lives
the biggest tapestry in the world. (sorry i couldn't find a better site about it; lots of places have posters of some of the panels, but no one has a very good informative one, except
this one in french.)
well, in the last blog i said i'd talk about future travel plans, but future travel plans have since become past travel plans, so i shall just continue in a somewhat chronological fashion with what i did after that.
i finished school on july 27. i got a 'bien' on my diplôme, which means B+ or A- or so. it's hard to tell. but anyway it was ok, and i passed. (which is really great, because it means i don't have to take french 416 here! woo!) the last day of the term, there's a big thing called the soirée internationale -- international night -- and all the different groups do a little presentation. most of them involved a traditional song or dance. all the african students did some dances, which were way cool. the polish nuns waltzed or something. the japanese kids taught us 'head, shoulders, knees and toes' in japanese. then the americans went, and it was terrible. first of all, only about 9 out of the 100-some-odd americans were participating. it was ok at first, 'cos a cute girl with cute sneakers and cute glasses and a guitar sang 'ain't misbehavin,' so that was all right. then this middle-aged-ish southern woman karaoked 'love can build a bridge,' and it was awful. she sang relatively well, fortunately, but she said 'everyone should get up and find a new friend and hold their hand! because we need to build bridges!' and yeah, i'm all for being friends and not bombing people, but i do not like cheesiness, and it was quite full of cheese. tiffany and i did not stand up, but the WHOLE rest of the room did. anyway, i survived.
then the next morning erica, christina and i got on
the train to
paris, where we got on
another train which took us to
london. there, we found our way to the proper station to get to
edinburgh!! yaayyy scotland!! it was a day of too much train -- we left at 8 am and we got to where we were staying at about 9 pm i think, with an hour time change -- but we were so excited to be in scotland! we stayed in a three star hotel the first night. we had originally be planning to stay in liverpool that night and then come to edinburgh, so we had reservations at the
hostel starting the next night, but we didn't have anything for the night we actually did arrive. the hostels were all booked up, and the cheapest thing we could find was 29 pounds, and this three-star hotel was 30 pounds/person. so we stayed at the
apex hotel. it was pretty spiffy. that night we just ate and went to bed. then the next day we went on this hop-on, hop-off bus tour around edinburgh. i can't remember the name, though, so i haven't got a link for you. in any case, it took us all around the city, to the gardens and to see big cathedrals and things. then that evening (i think?) we went on a
ghost tour which was not as cool as it could've been. we went under the city in
the vaults and things, but the guide was cheesy. then the next night we went on
another tour, which was way better! and not only because it involved literature and alcohol. the tour guide sang. and i won the prize -- a cd of the tour! -- at the end 'cos i knew the trivia question. anyway, i think we were in edinburgh for three nights, and i think i've accounted for all of them. so then the next day christina had to stay behind to get her visa to russia, and erica and i got on
the bus to do our lovely tour! we didn't go very far, though; we looked at some stuff, we went to
scotland's smallest distillery, and then erica and i got off in
pitlochry and we stayed there for a couple of days. the first night, it started raining really hard, and then after it had stopped a little we tried to go to the grocery store. a block away from the hostel, we discovered that the street to the grocery store was flooded! we went back and around the other way and discovered that the parking lot to the store was full of about a foot and a half of water. so we went out to dinner that night instead. the next day we went to the fish hatchery, then for a
nice 7 mile hike up around the town. the book said there were standing stones somewhere off the path, but i couldn't find them. i was quite disappointed but it was a nice walk.
now i am tired of typing so i will leave us in pitlochry. soon you will meet willie the kilted bus driver, and other interesting people! like stevie the loch ness monster man!
