I'm really bad at this blogging thing

So sorry for the freakishly long delay. I got the new power-cord for my laptop absolute ages ago, and completely forgot to update. So, in the past few weeks, I have:

• eaten "pain frites". The French, in all their culinary ingenuity, decided that french fries make wonderful garnish on sandwiches. And (at least on college campuses) this has been taken even further, and you can buy a small baguette stuffed with fries. I kid you not. I believe it ranks up there with twinkies on the scale of how likely the food is to give you a heart attack
• become obsessed with two French musicals, "Notre Dame de Paris", and "Le Petit Prince", both based on novels. Le Petit Prince is one of my favourite stories of all times. I cry like a baby every time I read it. Notre Dame de Paris is better known as the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Ohmigosh, that show has the most intricate staging and choreography. It's so cool to watch.
• studied the subjunctive tense. Again. There's a wide range of ability in our class, and three or four people hadn't ever studied it before. As it's rather important, we're being drilled on it once more.
• gone to Lyon again. I had to go for a medical exam to get my "carte de sejour" (think the French version of a green card). I got my lungs x-rayed, got weighed and measured, and they checked my vision and blood pressure. I'm all nice and normal! I also visited a bunch of churches while I was there, and we discovered a Starbucks! YAY!
• eaten at "Quick", which is a French fast food restaurant. They make amazing burgers! Definitely a rival of McDonalds ("Macdo" in French) on that front. McDonalds still makes the best fries anywhere. Still trying to find Tex-Mex. I am totally attacking a qdoba burrito as soon as I'm back in the States
  

Other than that, my life is still pretty routine. I started a "Culture and Civilization" class, and an Art History class, and both of those are pretty fun. I've got the same teacher for each class, and she's absolutely insane! She gets so enthusiastic about everything. One of the girls in my Art History class and I decided she's like Professor Trewlany from the Harry Potter books. So that's about the whole of it. For serious, if anyone ever has questions, or ideas about what I should blog about, let me know! I feel all boring, since I almost never go anywhere.

My laptop is busted, so I won't be posting until I can get a replacement power-cord. Hopefully I'll have exciting things to post then!

Surviving

So I found out that despite the warning on the packaging, you can indeed nuke the samosas, and they taste just fine. It was so nice to eat something that wasn't a sandwich for dinner. I'll definitely buy them again. Once I have some oil or butter, I can try frying them, since the microwave makes them more chewy that crunchy.

Also, in France, people put butter on sandwiches, the way we'd put mayo or mustard on sandwiches. It was a big surprise, biting into my sandwich at lunch today and getting a mouth-full of butter. Though apparently this isn't completely uncommon in the US. My friend Erick says that he uses butter on sandwiches when he hasn't got any other condiments.

In other, non-food oriented subjects, class is going well. I feel kind of stupid sometimes, because it seems the more we go over passe compose vs. imparfait, the worse I get. I take heart in knowing that I'm not the only one who has problems with this. And we went over this already! We spent two of the three weeks in the crash course on the same topic. It gets really boring sometimes, but in a class so small, it's hard to let your mind wander without getting caught. It was really gray and dreary today, and the forecast calls for more rain tomorrow and Saturday. I suspect that the weather is going to get steadily chillier as the month goes on. The sun came out for a little bit in the afternoon, though. Not that I saw much of it. I took a glorious nap. I sleep a lot here. Trying to use French all the time is exhausting. I think I'll make an early night of it. I fell asleep listening to my iPod last night, and woke up in the middle of the night wondering what was on my head---my headphones, of course. As is rapidly becoming my custom, I shall end the post with yet another photograph, this time of a sign I saw in Puy-en-Velay, for a "WC canin". A WC is a "water closet", or toilet, and canin obviously refers to "canine" or "dog", so I'm assuming it's some sort of toilet for dogs? I have no idea. It was truly bizarre.

Sleeeepy

I am so freakin' tired! I had my first day of "regular" courses today. It's still mostly Americans in my class, but we also have a girl from China, a guy from Sudan (who plays Basketball professionally in Europe and Africa), and a girl from Japan. My teacher is the same as the one I had for the three week course, Mme Marie Berger. I feel like these classes won't drag so much because the class is so much smaller. I've been so spoiled at Bellarmine, having only four or five people in a language class. Granted, I take French and Chinese, not the most popular language choices on campus.

After class, I ate in the cafe instead of the Resto-U. I think the prices are just as good, and the food is better at the cafe. I may start eating there more often. I got a steak-frites and a coke, and it was absolutely delicious. Then I went to the bank, where I finally picked up my bank card. I also went to the Centre-Deux to go grocery shopping and to buy a uniform for Aikido. Of course, I accidentally grabbed the wrong size (I HATE CENTIMETERS!), so I'll have to see if they'll let me exchange it.

Tonight, instead of going to Taekwondo like I normally do, I went to rock-climbing with some of the friends I've made here. It was a good experience, and I'm glad I went, but I think I'm gonna stick with Taekwondo. I am not at all fond of heights. I tend to panic if I get more than five feet off the ground. The only nice thing about rock-climbing is that it lets out earlier than taekwondo, so dinner doesn't have to be as late. Speaking of dinner, I have no idea what I'm going to eat. I bought some samosas at Auchan, but I don't have any oil to fry them in, and the packaging suggests NOT making them in the microwave. I'll probably just fix a sandwich, and drink some more of the wonderful Auchan-brand version of Orangina. So I'll do that, and maybe start on the essay that's due thursday. Or I'll watch a movie. Who knows. I shall leave you with a picture of the view outside my dorm's kitchen:

Pictures!

Okay, so here's just a few pictures of my stay so far in France. Sorry that they're so crowded into here. The top left photo is at the Roman ampitheatre in Lyon, as is the bottom right photo. The top right photo is St Charles Cathedral, where I've been going to church in St Etienne. And the bottom left photo is part of St Jean in Lyon, which was gorgeous. I wish I could have gone in there while I was there. Enjoy the pictures!

Augh! Again I'm sorry with the infrequent updates! I've just been so busy lately that all I ever seem to do is go to class and sleep. With heavy emphasis on the sleep.

To give you an idea of what a typical day is for me, I get up at eight and have some breakfast, and do all the usual things that need doing when one starts the day. Then I walk about 10-15 minutes to la Site Dennis Papin, where I have my CILEC courses for French. Classes last from 9-12, and we work on grammar, vocabulary, speaking, listening, and writing skills. Because this is an intensive three week course, everything is review right now. We get one break in the middle of the morning, and I usually use that time to grab a snack or to hang out with some of the other international students. Once class is out, I either eat at the Resto-U, or go back to my dorm to fix something. On Wednesdays, we have "ateliers", or workshops. I took a theatre-workshop. The scene my partner and I worked on was basically the French equivalent of "Who's On First?", using mix-ups with the words "Caen" the city, and "quand", which means "when"; "Car" meaning "bus" and "quart" meaning "quarter past the hour"; and "Sète", another city, and "sept", or "seven". All of these words, of course, sound nigh-on identical

After class and lunch, I either take a nap, or head off to the mall to shop at Auchan, the French equivalent of Walmart/Krogers. I can buy a week's worth of groceries for under 20 euro! Plus they sell this great off-brand version of Orangina, so I can get a liter and a half for less than a euro. After that, I do homework and make my own dinner. Usually, I just make sandwiches, because I'm too lazy to cook anything. I spend a lot of time on the internet, hoping to catch friends back home to chat with. I take a shower in my waaaay-too-small bathroom, and usually crash by midnight.

I do work out four nights a week, though. On Mondays and Wednesdays I go to Aikido, which is loads of fun. I really like learning how to fall. And then on Tuesdays and Thursdays is Taekwondo. I like that it's on the same days as I'd be practicing back home. It makes it a touch more familiar.

Everyone in France that I've met so far has been really friendly. People seem very willing to go out of their way to help foreigners, and are kind enough to correct me when I make mistakes. I like it when people mistake me for a native speaker. It makes me feel like I don't stand out too much, that I'm not too obviously American. And apparently I don't sound American when I speak. They can tell I'm not from St Etienne, and once I goof up, they know I'm foreign, but they don't automatically assume I'm American. They have to ask where I'm from first.

A random, cool thing I've learned about spoken French. The "ne" in "ne....pas" is optional. Instead of "Je ne suis sorti pas hier soir", you'd say "Je suis sorti pas hier soir" Well, at least I think it's cool. Anyway, that's about all for now. Again, once I figure out how it works, I'll post some pictures. I've taken lots. I'm just horribly lazy, as y'all well know. A bientot!

...Oops?

Ack! I am so sorry it's taken me so long to post, but I've only had the internet for a couple of days. Until recently, my only options were to use an internet cafe (which is expensive, and I'm cheap) or to walk to the Centre de Jeunesse, which is a half-hour away on foot. I've settled in nicely. My dorm is starting to look more like I live in it, and less like it's somewhere I crash. I've made friends among the other international students, and I've done some exploring.

My first weekend was a bit rough, because I didn't know anyone, and couldn't get ahold of my parraine (speaking partner) because he was on vacation. But by my first Monday here, I'd met my parraine, Fab, who's really nice and speaks English very well. The next day, I met some other students with the ISEP program, who both happened to be from Kentucky, studying at UK. As it happens, there are four of us from Kentucky studying here at St. Etienne, which is kinda mind-blowing, when you think on it.

St. Etienne is gorgeous. I really love the city. It's small, and I can walk just about anywhere I need to go. Everyone is really friendly here, and they go out of their way to help me understand things when they speak. The stephanoise accent is difficult to understand sometimes, and they speak so rapidly that I can't always catch everything the first time around. If they speak slowly, and use simple ideas, I can usually figure out what's going on. There are only two things I don't like about the city. 1) People don't clean up after their dogs. There is poo all on the sidewalks, so you really have to pay attention to where you step. 2) My dorm is at the top of a large hill/small mountain. Walking up it with groceries is very much not fun.

Speaking of my dorm, it's really quite cozy. Once I got over the shock of how very tiny it was, I started liking it. As long as I keep my stuff picked up, I have enough room. I have a teeny tiny shower/bathroom thinger. It's about the size of a closet, maybe a bit smaller, and has a toilet, shower stall, and sink shoved in. Jan, on of the ISEP students, joked that we can brush our teeth, take a shower, and use the toilet simultaniously. He's very nearly right!

I haven't started up regular classes yet, the past two weeks have been intensive French courses. It's just review, really. All we've studied is Passe Compose, Imparfait, Conditionnel, and pronouns. There are two absolutely hilarious older British ladies in the class. Today, to help them with pronoun order, I taught them the "me te nous vous" song that Keebee and Shannon taught me. They kept making me sing it over and over! They thought it was brilliant.

I spend a lot of time with the other ISEP students, we've started the new tradition of group dinners once a week. We all chip in for food costs, take over one of the kitchens, and make a dinner together, and share the clean-up. It's loads of fun, and saves us money on meals. We can usually have a very satisfying meal for under 3 euro. I've also gone to a few bars with the ISEP kids, and have met native French speakers to practice with. Alcohol is really cheap here, you can get a beer for as little as 1 euro, probably cheaper at some places.

Last weekend, a group of us took a train to Lyon, which is about an hour to the northeast of St Etienne. The city is muuuch larger that St Etienne, and much older. St Etienne has buildings dating back to the 15th or 16th century, Lyon has Roman ruins. The ruins are amazing. I spent a happy hour or so climbing on them with my fellow tourists, and they have a really spectacular Gallo-Roman museum. I took some great pictures before a nice museum worker told me that it wasn't allowed. I also ate real French cuisine while I was there. I had lamb with a mixture of potatoes and carrots, a salad, and some water. Wine was really expensive at that restaurant. Because we tend to share everything around, I also tried some beef tartare (it's practically raw! Gross yet tasty all the same) and some rabbit. Rabbit has an odd flavour. It's not unpleasant.

Now that the important details are out of the way, I'll go ahead and sign off, and post again soon with more trivial things, and pictures, once I figure out how. Thanks for reading!

Preparing to Leave

I'm all packed up, and one would assume that I'm ready to go. I've got my suitcases crammed with all the stuff I'll need, plus some extra stuff in my carry-ons. I'm really glad I managed to stuff my "501 French Verbs" book in. I would totally die without it. Especially if I'm going to be writing papers.

I'm looking foreward to seeing how my French will improve throughout the year, but I wish my friends were going to be with me. I know I'll have Keebee and Shannon in France with me, but they're still a couple hours away by train.

Speaking of trains, I'm kinda hoping I won't be riding the TGV to St Etienne, so I can try and get some pictures of my trip from Paris. If I have to stop over in Lyon, I'll definitely be taking pictures of the station. Thanks for reading, and by the next time I post, I'll be in France!

Welcome!

I'm assuming that if you're reading this blog, you already know me, but for anyone who doesn't, I'm Corinne, and I'm preparing to spend a year in France. I leave in a matter of weeks, And I intend to use this space to let everyone back home know how I'm doing. I'll post pictures, and talk about my experiences, and use this as an area to analyze the year I'll have.

I will be studying at a university in St Etienne, France during the 2008-2009 school year, improving my fluency in French and learning to adapt to a new culture. "Allons y" means "Lets Go [there]" in French, and the phrase, "Allons y, y'all!" became my catch-phrase of sorts during my senior year of high school. Thank you for taking this journey with me!