Learning that I have lots to learn...

This weekend has proved to me that this experience is going to be so much more than I anticipated. I honestly have been preparing for this for as long as I can remember…and I thought I had some idea of what I was getting myself into. Not so much. But it’s so much better!

For instance – this weekend (from Thursday to Sunday, after we had one night in our host families) we have been on a petite vacance in a small tourist city called Vannes, which is the city on the Atlantic where the Loire meets the coast. I thought that, because they called it ‘orientation’ on the schedule that I saw in…what? February? that it was going to be very academic and we were going to jump right in to the school aspect of this experience, and do things like our placement tests, and choose classes and whatnot while we were here. Typical orientation activities….in les Etats-Unis, apparement. Because their idea of orientation is throwing all 91 of us together in a gorgeous coastal hotel, telling us to speak French as much as possible, and then taking us to these amazingly gorgeous medieval French chateaux yesterday, and an amazingly gorgeous, quaint island in northern Brittany today. Let me just tell you what my itinerary for today and tomorrow is: go an hour north, pick up our pre-made pique-niques, take a ½ hour boat ride across the gulf to l’Isle de Moyens, pick up our rented bikes, and explore this island for 7 hours. What??? It was amazing! I don’t know how many times today that I heard people say ‘I can’t believe I’m actually in this place,’ or ‘I’m pretty sure I’m never going to leave.’ Then come back for a 4-course French dinner and an apparatif. Tomorrow, go to a fort from WWII, then go to a creperie for lunch. Then go to a seafood festival and a guided tour of an ancient town full of ancient buildings and cave drawings. It’s like French Stonehenge, apparently. Then, come back for another 4-course French meal. It’s just so cool that not only do I get to go to these places, and to experience them with actual French people who are part of the culture, but that I didn’t even know they existed. I’ve never heard of l’Isle de Moyens – and I’m pretty sure I’ve never met anyone else who has heard of it. There’s so many things to see and learn and experience and it blows my mind, all the time, what I don’t know. That might sound weird, but there’s just no way I can comprehend everything that’s out there.

So anyway – this island. It was honestly a fairy tale. Every single house was amazingly gorgeous. A lot of them were fairly new, though the island is pretty historic. But ah! It was amazing. They all had amazing gardens too, and around every turn there was another quaint yard, or a towering church, or a spectacular, panoramic view of the gulf around us. Apparently, because the river and the ocean coming together creates a really good current, there are bi-annual regattas there, and lots of crew races. So, when we were at the top of the island, we could look out and see about 500 sailboats, and also a cool mussel farm (just like on the Dirty Jobs episode! Except French!). But my gosh. It was honestly breathtaking. We had one of the best LOR’s ever, mama (that’s Lunch On a Rock for everyone else). Our picque-niques were enjoyed on a stone wall over looking all of this. Really, words won’t suffice. I’ll post pictures on my facebook when I can, I promise.

Apart from how awesome this all is (which is really hard to distract myself from) its really cool meeting everyone. Like I said, there’s 91 of us, which is an insane amount. Every time I go up to someone new I’m like, ‘Bonjour! Je suis Emilie!’ and then continue with the conversation. It’s also kindof hilarious that we all are speaking French. It’s really great practice…especially because we are actually taking our placement tests on Sunday. But we’re all sharing stories, struggling over our verbs together and trying to combine our vocabulary knowledge to string sentences together. I love it, because we’re all more or less the same level, but we’re definitely all in the same boat so everyone’s totally comfortable. OH and the director of our program – Mme. Roucher – is absolutely fabulous. She’s extremely eccentric, but I LOVE how she speaks – I understand every single word, and she makes French sound all sparkly and wonderful, but like I’m capable of doing it as well.

I could probably keep talking forever about today, but I’ll for sure have even more to talk about tomorrow (I already apologize to the people who will be around me when I come back. I’ll probably be insufferable – please, just tell me to shut up eventually). We’re off to the town of Vannes (which is actually like a mile walk from the hotel) to bond over some lovely bière de Britagne!