La Fin

Seeing as I’ve only been home for 10 days, I’m not sure if it’s been enough time to really reflect and grasp what a fulfilling semester I had and how much I learned.  I know going abroad will probably be one of the best life experiences I’ll have, but it’s hard to qualify it as such just yet.  Being home with my family for Christmas is making me so happy right now that the ache to go back to France hasn’t hit me full force, but I’ve been warned that it will, and the more I think about it, the more it starts burn.

The purpose for me going abroad, particularly to Dijon, France, was to challenge myself, and I know I succeeded in that goal.  I went to a country where I didn’t fluently speak the language, lived with a family I knew nothing about, and traveled internationally on my own.  Although I go to college far from home, I gained even more independence in my four months in Europe.  I gained more awareness of the world and how I fit into it.  I also gained a different perspective on the complicated relationship between the U.S. and France, who are so alike, yet so different.  I’m coming home with new friends at Wake Forest, new Canadian friends, and what hopefully will be a lifelong friendship with my host family.  

If I wasn’t a Francophile before I went, I am a serious Francophile now. 

Dijon

Things I LOVED in France:

Day at the beach in Saintes Maries-de-la-Mer—Maya the dog—driving through the countryside of Bourgogne—wine—Monoprix—pain au chocolat—Normandy beaches—chevre chaud—Tour Eiffel—École de Barbizon painters—Marie Antoinette’s hamlet—street sandwiches—tomme de Savoie cheese—profiteroles—hiking in Chamonix—my host family—Musée d’Orsay—7^th arrondissement—Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe—Christmas lights—moelleux au chocolat—vintage advertisements—the je ne sais quoi of French fashion—brioche—Perrier—Honfleur—baguettes—tea with my host mom—Monet exposition—Zara—Christmas markets—regular markets—French Special K—Le Bon Marché—Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in Sainte Chapelle—the TGV—the view from the Arc de Triomphe—macaroons—the lock bridge—ice cream cones—crêpes Nutella—Prince cookies—tartes framboises—walking everywhere—Stéphan the bus driver—boulangerie/patisseries—Madame Sabard—host family dinners—new friends 

host family minus Etienne

Hope you all enjoyed the blog and that I gave you a good visual of my life in France!

Gros bisous,

Ellen

La Capitale de Noël

Once I got back from Paris, I had a day to catch up on homework, and then my group left Monday morning for Strasbourg, aka the Capital of Christmas (I didn’t make that up).  We arrived in the city in the afternoon with about an hour to kill before our walking tour.  We headed straight to the famous Christmas markets to scope out future purchases, only after beelining it to the stands with vin chaud (mulled wine) and beignet bretzels (donut pretzels).

Petite France

We then met up with our guide at the Office of Tourism for our walking tour around the town.  Because it’s located in the region of Alsace, Strasbourg’s history is marked by war.  The region traded hands between France and Germany several times, giving it a confused French/German identity.  It was also bombed quite a bit (by the Americans) during World War II, so a lot of it had to be rebuilt, but they kept the original style.  In addition to being the Capital of Christmas, Strasbourg is the seat of the European Parliament, which, in a way, symbolizes France and Germany’s strong friendship now.  Our tour took us through the center of town, Petite France, and l’Église St. Thomas, which has an organ that Mozart himself played.

Unfortunately, it rained throughout the entire walking tour, so at the end, we ducked into a café for a quick hot chocolate while we waited for our bus to take us to the hotel.  After we refreshed at the hotel, we all took taxis to the restaurant for dinner, where I ordered an unidentifiable meat that turned out to be pork.  I decided I would try to be adventurous in choosing my meals and attempt to eat all regional specialties.

l'Horloge Astronomique

cathedral interior

Tuesday started with a tour of the cathedral, which managed to survive the wars.  It houses l’Horloge Astronomique, or the Astronomical Clock, that dates from 1843 and still functions perfectly, even though it operates 30 minutes behind.  Next, we got on a boat tour (thankfully it was covered and heated) that took us around the island holding the center of town.  It was cool to see the city from another point of view, and we got to see some of the European government buildings.   After our tours, we went to lunch at a restaurant/brewery, and I continued my quest to eat local foods by ordering flammekueche.  Flammekueche or tarte flambée is kind of like a pizza with a very thin, cracker-like crust covered with crème fraîche, onions, cheese, and bacon, and I added mushrooms to mine.  It was pretty delicious.      

boat tour

Marche de Noel

Our itinerary left the rest of the afternoon free, so I wandered around the Christmas markets with some other kids in the group.  I bought a couple of ornaments and some Christmas cookies for my host family, but we went back to the hotel after only a couple of hours since it had started raining again, and we were all freezing.  After a much needed nap, we went to dinner, and I ordered my most adventurous meal yet:  choucroute.  Choucroute is essentially sauerkraut and various types of meat (including sausages, a hot dog, and pork) together in a big dish.  I was afraid I wouldn’t like it, but it was actually really tasty.  Dishes like this one make the German influence pretty obvious.

Kayserburg

Wednesday morning, we left Strasbourg, but on our way back to Dijon, we stopped in the picturesque town of Kayserburg.  This town also had a Christmas market, but we got there at lunch time and almost every store was closed.  There was nothing else to do except walk around a little and eat lunch.  We landed in a restaurant where I ordered another flammekueche, and by the time we finished eating, the shops had opened.  I did pretty well at the Strasbourg Christmas markets, so I didn’t buy anything, but the town was adorable and all decorated, so it was fun to wander around.

We got back to Dijon in the early evening and had some time to go home and put our luggage away (I just went to my friend Caroline’s since my house is further away) before we had our last big group dinner.  We ate at Le Grand Café in Centre Ville, and it was a fun dinner, probably because everyone was more relaxed and excited about going home.  We were all a little sad to think that our adventures abroad were coming to an end.

Family Weekend in Paris, Part Deux

Thursday, after another short presentation and my final, I went back to Paris to spend one last full day there with my family.  That night, the hotel had suggested Café de l’Homme for dinner, which looks out on the Eiffel Tower (not to be confused with Jules Verne in the Eiffel Tower).  We had a spectacular view for when it started sparkling every hour for 10 minutes.

Friday, we went to another one of my favorite museums, Musée d’Orsay.  I love Monet, Manet, Renoir, Degas, and Sisley, and they can all be found there.  Emily and Laura were entirely thrilled about going to another museum (they had been to the Louvre the day before), so they raced through the exhibits and found a bench to sit and wait for my mom and me.  

We spent the rest of the day shopping in the 7^th arrondissement, which might be my favorite neighborhood in Paris.  It’s incredibly quaint and less touristy than the shopping on the Champs-Elysées or around Opéra Garnier.  When I go back to Paris, I would probably want to stay in this area since I’ve seen the majority of the main tourist sites multiple times now.

view from the top

That night we went to a restaurant that served traditional Burgundian food (made me feel like I was at home in Dijon!) and had a delicious last meal in Paris.  The restaurant was in walking distance from the Eiffel Tower, so we walked there after dinner and climbed to the top, as a sort of last hurrah.  It was freezing up top, so we walked around quickly and got on the elevator down as the tower started sparkling.  It was the perfect way to end my last night in Paris.

Place Vendome decorated for Christmas

My mom and sisters left for the airport early Saturday morning, but I slept in and got breakfast at the hotel before I did some last minute shopping and went back to Dijon.  I was welcomed back by more homework, but I had our last group excursion to Strasbourg to look forward to and one week left in France (sad).

Dicus Girls do Dijon

Being in Dijon was a real test of my family’s French skills (I give them a D-, which is generous).  Not as many people speak English as in Paris, so they were much more dependent on me.  Since it is a part of wine country, I was able to find some English tours to send them on while I was in class. 

I didn’t have class until 1 on Monday, so I showed them how to take the bus to the Olympic-sized pool on the outskirts of Dijon.  Having two swimmer sisters necessitated finding a pool for them to work out, and the city must have prepared for their arrival by building the pool last year.  I took the bus back right away to do more homework before class, but they managed getting back on their own, and we had arranged for them to go on a little walking tour related to the Dukes of Bourgogne while I was in class. 

I met back up with everyone at the hotel that evening, and we took a taxi to my host family’s house for the big meeting of the families.  My Wake professor came to help with the translation since my family speaks no French and my host family speaks limited to no English.  We didn’t really have any communication problems, and I was so glad my two families got to meet, especially so my real family could see where I’d been living for the past three months.  My sisters were nervous about what they would be eating, and we started with champagne as an apéritif and my host mom made salad, duck with mushrooms and rice, cheese, and Poire Belle Hélène (vanilla ice cream with pears and hot fudge) for dessert along with some macaroons, which all went over quite well.  Everyone got along great, and I was glad it ended up working out to have my families meet.  It’s too bad my dad wasn’t able to come for the festivities.

I spent the night at my host family’s house, so my mom and sisters were on their own for most of Tuesday.  While they went to the pool in the morning and on a wine tour in the afternoon, I had class in the morning and skipped my afternoon classes to work on a presentation for the next day.  I ended up missing my last wine class with my group (they tasted 10 wines) and missed the wine tour with my mom and sisters, but I had homework to catch up on.  I reunited with my family for dinner at Le Grand Café before heading back to my host family’s house.

I had class on Wednesday, and my sisters went to swim before they caught a train back to Paris that afternoon.   They managed to get back to their hotel by themselves (impressive for their level of French), and I stayed back in Dijon to do my presentation on the French education system (for which I had to interview a real French person), finish up an internship application that was due back in the U.S., and study for a final the next day.  The prospect of going back to Paris again helped me through (and sort of distracted me from) my studying.  

Family Weekend in Paris

First of all, my apologies, I didn’t realize it had been almost a month since my last post!  The last 3 weeks in France were a blur, and I’ve been home for a week, but doing anything productive has been a struggle.  That said, here is a wrap up of the end of my time abroad…

As soon as I got home from London, I had to start mentally preparing for my family to come visit me.  My mom and two sisters, Emily and Laura, flew into Paris on Thursday morning (Thanksgiving), and after class, I took a train from Dijon to meet up with them and at least spend a little bit of time with them on Thanksgiving.  Imagine my surprise when I got to their hotel room around 8 pm and they were ASLEEP.  In the fog of jet-lag, they got up to say hello, and I just ended up going down to the hotel lobby to do homework.  I skipped out on the big dinner planned for our group in Dijon to see my family, but apparently they couldn’t keep their eyes open anymore.  Happy Thanksgiving to you too?

Friday morning, everyone but me was up bright and early, still not quite adjusted to the time difference.  After some coercion, I got up and ready to go on our Cityrama bus tour.  The tour was a perfect introduction to the city for my mom and sisters, who had never been to Paris or to France before.  We drove by sites like the Opéra Garnier, Place de la Concorde, Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, and the Louvre plus others, basically all the major monuments.  After the bus tour, we took the metro to Musée Rodin, one of my favorite museums.  It was freezing cold outside, so the outside portion wasn’t as enjoyable as the last time I was there, but I still love all the Rodin sculptures.  From there, we stayed in the 7^th arrondissement and walked to lunch at a restaurant called Au Babylone.  The restaurant was incredibly French (and a little terrifying for my non-French-speaking family members), but they survived.

The Thinker, Musee Rodin

Our next stop was Le Bon Marché, a department store in the 7^th.  My host mom had suggested it as a good place to shop, and I loved it.  It was so much less crowded and less overwhelming than Galeries Lafayette.  In addition to the beautiful clothes and shoes, there is also a Grand Épicerie or food hall, essentially a French Dean & Deluca on steroids.  If I lived in the neighborhood and could afford it, I would do my grocery shopping there.  We left Le Bon Marché without buying anything and it was snowing.  At first, it was a beautiful snow in Paris, but it turned into wet, fat flakes pretty quickly, so we found refuge in a café for coffee, crêpes, and tea.

outside the Grand Palais, looking down the Champs Elysees, toward Place de la Concorde

Since I learned about it before my last trip to Paris, I had been dying to go to the Monet Exposition at the Grand Palais, so after our pit stop at the café, I dragged everyone back across the river to wait in line.  It was possible to pre-order tickets, but as soon as I finally knew when my family would be in Paris, the advance tickets were sold out until January, so we had to wait in line.  My host mom suggested going in the evening, so we worked it out to get there around 5:30 and only ended up having to wait about 50 minutes to get inside (compared to a friend who waited 3 hours).  I love Monet, so the exposition was phenomenal.  It was incredibly crowded and sometimes difficult to get up close to the paintings, but I am so glad I went.  There may not be another time that I’ll get to see that many Monet paintings in the same place (they brought in paintings from France, the U.S., the U.K., Russia, the Netherlands, and other museums).  My sisters were definitely not as enthused, but the theme for the trip was being open-minded, so they put forth effort, although very little, to learn something about Monet. 

Flag on top of the Grand Palais

After Monet, we headed back to the hotel to rest and refresh before trying to find a place for dinner.  I researched in my French guides for some suggestions, but we found out the hard way the necessity of making a reservation.  Luckily, after some walking, we found a place called Royal Madeleine that had an open table for four.  Not going in with very high expectations, we had a delicious dinner.  We ordered a bottle of wine for the table and my sisters were a little shocked when the waiter served them a glass without batting an eye.  The drinking age in France is 18, but if you’re with your parents, drinking wine is no big deal.  They happily partook in this part of the culture, and Laura was pleased to learn that putting your elbows on the table isn’t considered bad manners in France.

Notre Dame de Paris getting ready for Christmas

The first day in Paris for the family was tiring and probably overwhelming, so everyone slept in on Saturday.  We headed to Opéra Garnier first with intentions of taking a tour.  Upon seeing the line and learning that the actual theater was closed for rehearsals, we decided to go find some lunch and make our way over to Notre Dame.  We walked through the gorgeous cathedral but were just a minute too late to climb up to the top.  Feeling as though most of our attempts at seeing things had been a grand failure so far, we tried our luck at getting tickets to the strings concert at Sainte Chapelle (fortunately, our luck turned).  Even though the church wasn’t heated, the concert was amazing.  They played Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and some Bach, and the lead violinist was unbelievably talented.  It was even more amazing considering how cold their fingers must have been.  We had to stop at a café across the street afterwards for some hot drinks to try and warm up.  From there, we headed to a delicious dinner at Le Train Bleu, the restaurant inside Gare de Lyon (the train station).

concert in Sainte Chapelle

views from the top of Notre Dame

Sunday we had train tickets to Dijon, but we hurried over to Notre Dame to climb up to the top before we left.  It was an adventure getting through the Sunday crowds at the train station, but we made it with plenty of time and got to Dijon in the early evening.  Everyone was hungry, but it’s impossible to get dinner anytime before 7 or 7:30, so we went and got coffee and crêpes after checking into the hotel.  Emily and I had some homework, so between coffee and dinner we did some work, and then we walked down the street to Gril’ Laure to get some pizza (still delicious even though it wasn’t in Italy).