aaaaaand now it hits me!

Today was the first day where pretty much everything I was doing was strange and foreign to me; it definitely felt as though the front that had been approaching for the past two weeks since I've been here hit, about 1:30 this afternoon.

All last week, during our on-site orientation at the school in Nantes, it was pretty typical stuff - granted, we were learning things like how to buy a cell phone or a bus ticket, and how to be street-smart on the bus, and what classes are going to be like. But it was most the typical class information and name games and all those fun things. There were some cultural adventures, especially with my host family, but mostly things I'd experienced before or were not that different (though the self-cleaning bathrooms are always going to crack me up).

However, even though we were doing fairly normal things, there were lots of little tidbits of French culture that I've been picking up and accumulating; the clouds have been forming for sure. For instance, all the stores close at 7, people don't pick up their dog's poo on the sidewalks, the church bells ring ALL MORNING on Saturday mornings, because that's when people get m

arried, and also that there are no bridal parties at weddings - people just have little kids d

o flower-girl things like that (probs because French babies are fricken ADORABLE), and the person who signs the marriage license as the witness is the best equivalent to a maid/man of honor. They also eat dinner every single night at the same time, no matter what, which is usually

around 9-9:30. They approve whole-heartedly of graffitti (which is really almost beautiful in some cases, so that makes sense) and also hazing in schools...or what would constitute hazing in the US for sure (<<

costumes selling candies for 1Euro to raise money for their class trip, and the seniors were there 'supervising,' we'll just go with that. It was quite entertaining). Also, my host dad just came home with legit 2 ducks in his hand, and went to the kitchen to butcher them. Apparently we're having some canard for dinner tomorrow! He was so shocked also that I'd never butchered a duck myself....and let me watch and showed me how. Julia Child would be SO proud.

And....they LOVE Michael Jackson. Holy cow, do they love that man. Last weekend, we went out to hit the town in Nantes. Friday night, it was Hannah's birthday, so we went out to dinner at this amazing, authentic Greek restaurant where the adorable owner told us that he's been serving Americans from IES for the past 20 years, and he always loves to meet the new group

and hear their stories. So we talked to him for a while, and he welcomed us to Nantes with some free baclava. Then, we met a guy that Alexandra met the night before and he took us out to l'Isle de Nantes, which is a big island in the Loire River, and basically just a giant bar. But we went to one place which seemed pretty cool but no one was dancing. Of course, we couldn't help it so we started to dance, and pretty soon the whole bar joined in. Then the DJ played Michael Jackson and literally the entire place broke into Thriller and would not stop. After about 25 minutes of MJ, we decided to take off, but it was hilarious. Then Saturday, I went out again with some other friends and we found an Irish pub (there's an awesome international district called le Quartier Bouffay, and there's pretty much every kind of food/culture you could want. Plus a castle with a moat. It's my favorite). Eventually, there were about 20 Americans in this place, making quite the scene, and people started coming up and asking questions and whatnot. I met some lovely people, including 2 gay couples who are going to come to

our conversation table next week with me to practice their English. Yay making friends and speaking "fluent" French when you're not quite sober! haha.

So all of these observations and activities have just been adding up, and I was just starting to really feel like I was in France. Until today, when I had my first venture onto the campus of the Universite de Nantes. First, my friend Hannah and I had a few hours before our class began, so we decided to figure out the library. Easier said than done. Library actually = libraries. Many of them. All over the place. So that was quite the adventure, and we actually found 4/6 of the books we needed (see photo), and successfully registered our library cards. It was quite exciting.

Then we ventured into amphi D (amphitheatre, obviously). It was so terrifying, but absolutely fabulous. Not only have I never had a class of more than 35 people, I have never taken a class where I was one of two Americans. As the class filled up, and Hannah and I took note of everyone around us, we felt more and more out of place. Then the professor came in and began the 3-hour long lecture on French Constitutional Law. I know nothing about the French Constitution! We could barely understand full phrases and heard things like 'the privatisation of certain enterprises,' and 'the American system is unnecessarily complicated,' and 'Georges Bush.' Then he started going in on the history - and if you know any French, dates are just ridiculous to easily comprehend. He would say 1987 (which is dix-neuf mille, quatre-vignt sept...quite the mouthful) and we'd look at each other, try and calculate that in our heads, and then by the time we figured it out we would have completely missed what happened in 1987.

It was absolutely hilarious. Omygosh. We had so much fun, and thank god there were these 3 freshman girls in front of us who would relay the important information like homework and that to us. A semester of this is going to be pretty great.

But the best part was when it dawned at me that this is what I was here for - that I really, truly felt like I was finally studying abroad.