Keeping You Pau-sted

So it rains here. ALOT. I'm talking equivalent to Seattle and London. My biggest regret so far? Not bringing my rain boots. I have other boots that i've been wearing, and all day i've had pruney toes because the water soaked through all the way to my socks. Gangreen here i come. Thank you mom for constantly saying "oh you're not going to need those." Things i actually don't need: A blowdryer, because the humidity makes my perfectly straight blown hair turn into shirley temple curls, so i just let it air dry now and say "bof" to everything.

They have no squirrels here. It's weird.

Currently since i've been in Pau i have eaten, not 3, not 4, but 5 galletes!! What is a gallete you ask? A lemon cake like thing. What is it for? Well being the pagan baby that i am, i couldn't really tell you. Epiphany this, Jesus that, 3 wise men and a baby somethin', i don't really know.  But they put a "feve" inside the cake and if you get that piece then you are humiliated by having a crown (similar to the burger king paper crowns) put on your head, and since i've had 5 of these cakes i have won twice. Yay. It isn't enough for me to eat bread for breakfast lunch and dinner, but i then i have it as a dessert 5 times in the last 10 days. I need to find a gym. My program director told us to talk to Aguy if we want info on the gym. "Aguy" (A-GEE) is apparently a teacher to my suprise.. not just a guy, which is good because i'm sure i would have brought up some reason as to how that is sexist and then gotten kicked out of the program for protesting for women's gym rights in france.

I burnt my fish last night because i read the french instructions wrong. My goal by the end of the year has just changed from "Become fluent" to "Be able to successfully make yourself dinner."

I'm trying to figure out places i want to go over break, suggestions are welcome. There are lots of people who are studying abroad in Europe, so maybe i'll have a competition between my friends to see who i get to go visit. By the way, today i bought a baguette on my way home from class, caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection, and for the first time really felt like i belonged here. It was only 80 centimes for the baguette, and it was so fresh. These are the little things that will be hard to live without back in the states.

Pau Revoir,

Mari

A Polack in Pau

So my schedule is as follows. LONG. I haven't had this much class in one day since High School which i've managed to put out of my mind in the last 3 years. Starting on monday i have class from 3-6 then from 6-8. There is an upside though, I can return from a trip early monday and still make it to class. The rest of the week i have 5 hours a day except for fridays which is just 1 class from 9am til 11. My teacher is awesome. She is so enthusiastic and sarcastic and, sticking with the theme here, all around fantastic. How pau-etic...Anways my other teacher is Mustafa. His name says it all. Yes he's awesome, and no he does not have a son named Simba. He teaches my Francophone literature class which is very interesting, and definitely trumps any Loyola class i've taken. Lets hope it counts for more than just an elective, but knowing LUC it probably won't even be recognized that i ever left the country.

Enough school talk, on to the fun stuff. So last night me and my friends went to a restaurant called Le Berry, and we were there for a good 3 hours. I had Duck (pretended it was chicken due to my past with raising my ducklings) and some weird random cabbage soup. We ordered a bottle of 2005 Bordeaux, because it was the cheapest and our waiter suggested it, we all ordered everything the waiter suggested merely because we didn't want to struggle at speaking the language. We must have only said about 5 words in french before the waiter gave us an english menu haha. So apparently it's fun in france for the waiters to slip alcohol into your drinks because we were brought coffee with whiskey in them. I'd like to see how that would play out in Chicago... After that we were brought apparatifs and realized that we should probably ask the waiter if this was all being charged, thank dieu it was not. After the restaurant we went to an Irish Bar and mingled with the locals, and to those people who says Europeans don't like to drink in excess and that they drink for the taste i say, you're wrong. Very wrong. These french people were all over the place. For once we as American's looked classy in comparison. The night quickly came to a close when we all remembered that we had class bright and early, and we went on home.

Saturday:
I bought a cardigan. I lost/got my cardigan stolen= I hate france
Sunday:
Went back to same store. Bought same cardigan for 15 Euro's less= I love france again

This weekend we're going to Biarritz for the day. I've been waiting for 5 years to be able to say that. We're gonna eat crepes and drive vespa's. Life's good :)  Miss you all

Ciao

-Mari

P.s if you have any fun pun's that include "PAU" i'd love to hear them because i can only think of so many