Le week-end

This weekend has been great! We have just been adventuring around Dijon and eating good food and seeing cool things.

On Saturday I woke up late and that afternoon we went to the Musee des Beaux Arts in Dijon's city center. It was much larger than I thought it would be and I really enjoyed it. I didn't even get through it all because we got there with only 1 1/2 hours til closing. I very much liked the religious them through out the whole place. Obviously, France has a very catholic heritage, so there were Jesus statues and paintings everywhere. It does make me sad that people here look at them like artistic depictions of an old fairy tale. I got pretty emotional looking at this AMAZING diorama of the Passion of the Christ. It was so beautifully done and it portrayed Jesus carrying his cross, the crucifixion, His mourners, and His burial. It was quite beautiful and I imagine it took someone hundreds of years ago QUITE some time to make. I just stared at it for like 5 minutes. It didn't feel long enough.

After the museum, we had dinner at a little Italian restaurant and let me tell you, it was amazing. I had taglioni a la creme blanche and tiramisu. The tiramisu was so much better than any I have ever had in America. So amazing.

After dinner, we all came back and hung out in one room and watched "An American Horror Story" on the internet. Why I agreed to this, I have no idea because I was terrified last night. However, I want to keep watching it just because the plot is so good. We tried to order pizza at 10:30 pm but apparently that isn't French because no one was open. Boo.

This morning we went to the market because they were having a special even called "Bienvenue a la ferme" (Welcome to the Farm). It was fun, but we didn't spend a lot of time there because it was pretty crowded. There was a very spirited little instrumental band playing. They played "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", we were confused.

For lunch we went to another little cafe and we got PIZZA because we were still craving it from the night before. On our way home we ran across a little flea market in the streets and let me tell you, French flea markets are WAY better. They didn't have junk, they had cool things! I bought an old poster for my walls of an old perfume advertisement. It's really pretty.

We continued home and then ran into a candy shop. We stood outside of it for awhile deciding whether it was an awful idea to go in or not. It probably was, but we did it anyway. Now I have this amazing sucker to show for it. I swear it is an everlasting gobstopper. I have been sucking on this sucker for over and hour and it hasn't shrunk any. At all. I think they have Willy Wonka locked up there.

Anyways, now I am in my dorm for the day. I need to do laundry and homework. I guess life happens even when you are in France.

So school begins...

So we began classes yesterday. It's terrifying how easy my class is. Yesterday we worked on introducing our neighbors and we learned how to say things like "What is your name?" "Where are you from" and the like. Gosh, really??? Realllly? Today we learned the rooms of a house. A FREAKING HOUSE. My homework is to label the rooms in a house. I did this in ELEMENTARY school. There has to have been some sort of mistake. I really don't know how I ended up in this level.

I talked to my two professors today (along with another OSU student and 2 Canadian girls) about moving the next level, but honestly I think I would have to move 2 levels to really feel like I am in the right place. This sucks. My prof is going to read something I wrote and consider moving me. Pray that he will because if I am in this the whole time, I really don't feel like it is even worth it to be here. Ugh.

First week in Dijon!

Alright folks, I have been in France for one FULL week already! Wow! Time really does fly. I am going to do a rundown what we did everyday:

Sunday Oct 2:

We arrived in Paris at about 7 am and we had QUITE the trip to get to Dijon from there. First we had to take a airport shuttle-train-thing from our terminal to the last one. From there we had to figure out how to get train tickets to Dijon. We got those and we got on the Paris subway system, which let me tell you was not fun with about 90 lbs of luggage… We had to do one subway line switch when we arrived in Gare de Lyon (the train station). Then we had to figure out how to get from the subway area to the actual station, which was way harder than it sounds. Then we got on our train to Dijon, after more confusion because it said it was going to Belfast… That day, chaos reigned. After we were on the train we had a relaxing quick trip to Dijon and when we got off (after thinking we had lost our friend Gretchen) we were greeted by man holding a sign that said our program name on it. I have never been more happy to see another human being (that’s probably not true, but we were really happy). He took us to lunch in the city and then we got on a bus to our dorms.

Our dorms are pretty nice (aside from it’s GHASTLY internet connection). We each have a single room with a bed, a desk, a shelf, closet, mini refrigerator, and a bathroom with a sink, toilet, and shower. Let me tell you about our bathroom. Stand one way and you an touch both walls with your hands, stand the other way and you can touch both walls with your ELBOWS. Oh my gosh. The bathroom on the plane was bigger. However, I am just extremely thankful that we have our own bathrooms.

Monday Oct 3:

We had a placement test the next day at 9 am. Guess no recovering from the flight for us. It wasn’t too difficult, or so I thought at the time… more later. After our test we went to lunch down the street where I had a croque monsieur, because I am stereotypical.

After our 2 HOUR lunch (they like their relaxation here) we had a presentation about the city of Dijon, which was interesting, but a bit long.

Later we went back to our dorm for dinner and some rest.

Tuesday Oct 4:

This was a fun day! We had a group excursion to Beaune, France. This city is fampus for its wine and we got to see a lot of vineyards and some beautiful castles and architecture. We toured an old hospital from the 1400s called Hotel Dieu. It was very interesting and very beautiful. After our tour we had lunch and some wine! It was a very good day. I have pictures on facebook if you want to see some!

Wednesday Oct 5:

This was our day to tour Dijon. We went out with our instructor and he basically stopped at every single building in the city center and told us something about it. We also got to see Notre Dame de Dijon. It was very, very beautiful and has a ton of history! During the French Revolution, people smashed off all the religious carvings on the outside of the façade, so those are lost to history. However, there is a little carving (about 6 inches) of an owl (la chouette) on the side. It is tradition here to rub this owl with your left hand and to make a wish or prayer and it will be answered. Because of this tradition, there are owls EVERYWHERE here, which is fun because I like owls.

We also traveled to Carrefour this day. Carrefour is a GIANT supermarket similar to Walmart or Target in America. This place is crazy. Some of the workers get around on rollerblades. Insane. After we explored awhile and finally found were we were going and it is a great place to shop (we did get lost on the way there and ended up walking about a mile in the wrong direction, more to this story if you want to hear it).

Honestly, some of my days are starting to blur together, so I am sorry if I tell you something on the wrong day, but I think we went to the center for some wine this night, so that was fun. We also got to meet some of the other international students. There are people here from places like Canada, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Japan, China, Korea, and the list just goes on and on. It is very interesting to meet all these new people!

Thursday Oct 6:

This day we didn’t have anything to do early in the morning, so we kind of just got some things done that we needed to. You know, just errands and the like.

That night we also went out with some international friends and got to really get to know them, so that was fun.

Friday Oct 7:

We found out our placements that day… I got put in level 2 out of 5, too low for my liking. I am going to try to see if I can get into 3 at least… I am very frustrated by this, so I am would not like to talk about it more.

We went to Carrefour again Friday because we don’t get fed on the weekend, so we needed to get some groceries to eat in our dorm over the weekend.

This night was the most fun of all. A local club was having a party for the new international students in town, so went out to a local favorite bar of the students first for some kir (a white wine with crème de cassis ((a berry flavoring)) in it, Dijon’s specialty) and then we headed over the club. It was very fun dancing with our new friends.

Saturday Oct 8:

We slept in and afterwards we went to Toison d’Or, which is a huge shopping mall here. It was crazy busy and we don’t know if that is normal for Saturdays or what, but it was nuts.

We all got some article of clothing that we seemed to have forgotten when we were packing and even got to see a fashion show that was going on. We pretty much shopped til we dropped. We are all very tired from all the walking we have been doing.

We stayed in Saturday night and just hung out a bit. We all needed a little rest and repose.

Today is Sunday and so far all we have done is continued our quest for good internet to a second McDonald’s only to discover that their wifi doesn’t work for half of us. This internet thing is getting very frustrating. Skype is blocked at out dorm along with a few other video chat services and we can’t seem to find a good place on campus to do it, so we don’t know if we will be able to see our friends and families for awhile. It is very annoying. We start our classes tomorrow, which we are all kind of worried about. I think it will be okay though. We got this.

Please keep praying for me as I continue my trip. I know God will get me through everything well and that He is watching over me. So there is always tha