Window shopping

Amazes me everytime what they can make
Originally uploaded by supermarioguy

So I've given up on the Halloween quest, I found a chocolate place that sells a few halloween themed candies so I might check that out later, but I'll explain this picture. Now it's been a good amount of time, and things are starting to get normal, but it is still incredible to imagine how bakers do what they do here. Sure, in the US, we have good bakeries, and cakes, and well-decorated cakes and cupcakes, all of that. But this is another world. Walk down the street and you're never too far from some of the most beautiful and delicious pastries you've seen in your life! This photo is from a place that I like to visit every once in a while, the owner is Laurent Petit. He studied how to make le macaron at Laduree in Paris, the place to go for macarons...That is one of the main products, but as you can see in the picture, he knows how to make other desserts pretty well. I don't know how they do it, but the art of French patisseries and boulangeries is just mind-blowing, every single time.

Funny translations

Propre=clean in French, funny to see this
Originally uploaded by supermarioguy

There you go, one of the funniest French-English translations of the week, good old Mr. Clean, had to get a picuture of it when my host mom was cleaning. It's interesting to see how sometimes the english name will be saved and sometimes other words will translated into French, makes for some funny moments. Well October is coming to an end, just pre-ordred Gerald De Palmas' new cd, can't wait for the next few weeks. Enjoy Halloween everyone, I'll let you guys know what I find on Halloween over here.

Something to think about

Top 10 drinks
Originally uploaded by supermarioguy

Wow, that picture was taken at a cafe in Paris two months ago! I flew into CDG on Aug 26, and sure enough, here we are in the last week of October. I've seen and learned a lot these first few months, and the next two are going to be just as great, if not better. Everything is getting more normal, I went to the market today even though I thought I wasn't going to, it has just become a habit. Over the weekends, I cook with my housemate Andrew instead of taking meals with my host mom, so we have a little fun. This weekend, our restaurant was certainly open. He made some Monte Cristo sandwiches, sausages, eggs, all kinds of things. I bought some vegetables from this guy at the market who uses no chemicals or anything, things I've never seen in my life. I made some good fries with potatoes on the stove, they were blue potatoes, incredible! He has all kinds of different vegetables that are totally foreign to me, incredible..I'll be back there.

This will be an interesting week to see if the amount of Halloween influence there is over here, I've heard to not expect much. Also, I register for CMU classes on Tues, that should be a little easier than what I had to go through a few weeks ago.

An unexpected, but required trip to the east

Train and Concert ticket, Gerald De Palmas in Lyon!
Originally uploaded by supermarioguy

Shown in the picture are train tickets (SNCF) and a concert ticket from FNAC, basically an electronics store, except they also sell tickets to concerts, sporting events, all kinds of things. More useful than an electronic store is obviously the high speed train: the TGV. It is incredible. I'll give an example.

I've probably mentioned that I was going to see my favorite French artist in Nantes in late November, well yesterday Gerald De Palmas cancelled most of his fall tour dates..this made me very mad for a few hours until I saw that a few dates were still on, including one in Lyon..in the east of France. So today I got to FNAC as quick as possible, exchanged my ticket for the show in Lyon, which just happens to fall on my 5 day break starting on Wed Nov 11! With that in hand, I went to the train station and bought my tickets for a great price to Lyon, it's less than 4 hours by train! And just like that, within 24 hours, I had solved my problem and I will be able to see Gerald De Palmas and one of the most interesting, and populated cities in France. at the same time! I'm sure that this concert will be incredible and the city will be just as good. This is all possible thanks to the ease of the TGV.....can't wait for Nov 11!

Daily Life Essential #3

Daily Life Essential #3
Originally uploaded by supermarioguy

Voila, an essential item in France, no joke! I've seen everyone from 5 to 85 years old wear these, it is really big over here. So I bought a few, they are pretty cheap so it's fine..of course you can find them in any texture, color, length, whatever you want. I like wearing it with knot but there are several ways to do it. The first day I wore the scarf in public I felt a little weird, because I'm not used to doing it, but I'm used to it now. Also, you don't have to take it off when you're in class, it's as much a style item as it is for warmth, pretty cool. If you're planning on coming here, either get ready to get a few scarves, or pick a few up along the way...coming in 2nd place is the sweater tied around the neck, that's popular too, but not as frequent as the scarf, of course.

And fall continues..

Well it's mid-October and it's starting to get a bit chilly, but that's not stopping the people from getting out to the weekend markets and getting their clothes and food. It was just as crowded today at my local outdoor market as it was in the beginning of September! These people are very dedicated, and this is not 30 or 40 vendors either, it's way more than that.

Also, here we are less than 2 weeks from Halloween and the start of November, and I have yet to eat a piece of pumpkin pie...mind you I haven't searched for it yet, but I could really go for a piece right now, even if I have to sadly attempt to make it myself. Maybe I'll walk into a patisserie one day and there will be a good slice with my name on it, or maybe I'm just dreaming. It's time for the Sunday afternoon homework session, something you can relate to back in the US :)

Daily Life #2: Bread ( mostly the baguette)

Eating a baguette on the way back to the train station
Originally uploaded by supermarioguy

I'm legal! Today I went back to Nantes and got everything squared away with a mandatory gov't visit. It feels good to have all of the paperwork behind me...what a great feeling. So I went back to the great wine bar and had a class of good white wine, bought a baguette, walked around Nantes, and came back here..But I had to mention the baguette because it was different than most of the others that I've had here..Now for those who don't know..not all baguettes are created equal. It is just the stereotypical image that we think of like the one you might buy from Panera Bread or the ones you see in pictures, I'll try to show you what I mean eventually, but baguettes can have different widths and textures and all kinds of things, that's what makes going to different boulangeries great..You can get the traditional French baguette, the ordinary baguette, a baguette with corn flour, 7 grains, etc..But the one in the picture was really different, not only does it look really simple compared to a lot of the baguettes I've seen, but the texture was great. The crust was really crunchy but easy to eat, and the inside was perfectly soft, it was like it was just made and it was meant to be. Hah call me silly, but there after a while you notice a difference between good and not so good bread here, and this was exceptional... More on this subject to come, I can't say enough about it!

Daily Life Essentials #1

Daily Life Essentials #1
Originally uploaded by supermarioguy

So I figured I'd try to give some of you who don't already know a taste of the daily life, and literally you can get nutella at your local supermarket, so that's good. But this is pretty much as common here as peanut butter is in the US, you can put it on something for breakfast in the morning, have a crepe with nutella, they sell paninis with nutella, all kinds of possibilities! But it is hard to go through a semester, let alone a week, or a day even, without spotting this somewhere. I wish I had my camera at the supermarket the other day, because they had a big shrine of nutella on sale, it comes in all sizes, and it is certainly abundant in France...Personally, I never really had it that much in the US, but now I really like it. I think there's room for nutella in the mornings when I'm back home this winter, that's for sure.

Crazy week at UCO

Setting the schedule
Originally uploaded by supermarioguy

As I said before, this was the first week of actual semester classes. And I thought that on Wed I had decided what my 4 option classes were going to be, before trying art history and literature and deciding that neither of those were working out at the moment. So it's French for Business, Translation English to French, Socio-Cultural Studies, and Writing Expression...for now, at least....

At the beginning of the week, they place you in a level with a language professor, and based on that level you get the piece of paper shown in the picture, and you get to go to any class on there and try to set your schedule, a lot different than it is in the US, huh? In fact, I'll be setting my CMU 2nd semester schedule a few weeks from now, unheard of over here right now. So it was a busy week of trying to decide what to take and figure everything out, but I'm pretty happy with how it came out. In other news, I finally won a game at the table tennis club last night, before getting destroyed by a 10 year old kid who had incredible technique, can't win them all..

School is in session

Ok it's day 3 of the first week of semester classes, and I think I have a good schedule after trying some classes out. I'll be taking 6 hours of language per week, that is mandatory, followed by 3 hours of translation english/french, 19th century lit, a writing class, and french for business. It won't be all fun and games, but it'll be good for the future and I will learn a ton! Also Tues and Wed I start at 8 am, so I get up around 6:30, if you think about that a minute, that means that I pretty much get up when some of you are going to bed, gotta love the time change. I wanted to watch the Tigers last game but the time change gave me no chance, no way I'm watching a game that starts at 11 and goes until 2 or so my time when I need to get up 4 hours later, oh well, it was a good season..

Putting it all together

The family!
Originally uploaded by supermarioguy

Today was a great last day in the south. Sarhad took us to Aix-en-Provence, a beautiful city with great colorful buildings and art. It is also a big college town as far as French and foreign students go. It was great. After that, we came back and had an amazing dinner with the family (as pictured). Lucie can really cook some incredible dishes, and over the past few days Keith and I have eaten Armenian and French cuisine...nothing like fresh food done right, great stuff! Also, we had the local drink: pastis. It tastes like black licorice gone weird, but it isn't too terrible. I love the French family dinner, afterwards Sarhad and his brother debated about a topic for 30 minutes. They barely looked at each other, and they could never come to a resolution, a great French debate...it was funny for Keith and I to watch.

It's hard to put it all into perspective this soon, but this weekend has really been incredible, meeting the family and friends has been great, and they were nothing but welcoming and loving. It's great that we were able to communicate and share a great weekend here just like any family would.. Now time to get back to Angers and get back to business, bonsoir.

Busy Friday

Cassis, France
Originally uploaded by supermarioguy

Wow, what a great day we had. Sarhad and Lucie took us to Cassis, a nice fisherman's town a little ways from Marseille, it was beautiful. We also went in and saw more relatives in town. I'll get better pictures of them tonight because they are coming for dinner, should be fun.

After a busy day, we headed out to town with one of Sarhad's daughters, Seta and her husband..They took us to a spanish place to eat tapas with some of her colleagues, she is a teacher.. It was incredible food..We got to talk to a lot of different people and they were very welcoming to Keith and I. It was a great day and it just made us love the south even more! I look forward to posting the family pictures in the next few days, tonight is our last night here.

For those of you back home, GO BLUE! And hockey has started, GO WINGS!

Marseille: Incredible!!!

Originally uploaded by supermarioguy

Well here we are in Marseille for 3 days, and it's going to be incredible! Keith and I are staying with my distant relatives and they have been incredibly nice. They showed us around the city a little today and then prepared an amazing dinner. They are Armenian by the way, so we had some great stuff tonight. I can't say enough about Marseille so far it is an incredible city!! Maybe it's the sea, or the great views of the city that we saw, or the atmosphere,but it is incredible. I almost want to say that this is my favorite city, but it's a little early to say that, so we'll address that question later. Alright, should be a great weekend, I look forward to sharing more about this place soon!