wow it goes

hi to all

it's been a while.  since my trip to london, I've been busy.  We had a soirée at my house with some of my friends from the university two weekends ago, it was really a great time.  It was cool to mix these two worlds that I've been living in here in Bordeaux, with some of my Californian friends and some of my friends from the classes I'm taking.  We had a long table set up in the dining room with candles and spaghetti and lots of wine.  There was even a fire going in the fireplace.  Erika was so excited to have people over, I was so thankful for all her help in making the dinner and allowing me to have people over.  The night ended with some piano and guitar by the fire.  Erika made it by far the most classy evening I've spent with friends, at the insistence of all those dinner party components.  I really have an amazing situation here in my homestay.

The day after that, Aurélie (the "sister" from the original homestay) and I went to St Emilion, a small wine town in the countryside.  It's a quaint place with vineyards literally in and around the city walls.  There were the remains of a moat surrounding the town and beautiful cobblestone streets running throughout, with tons of wine distributers.  The town is renowned as a place for wine tasting (dégustation), but we didn't end up doing that.  I had a great time with Aurélie, it's been really cool keeping contact with her even though I moved out of her house.  We switch english and french very casually, it's nice when it works out that both people feel around the same comfort level with both languages for conversation.  She's applying to go to Finland to study Urban Studies there, and I've been helping her with her letter of motivation and CV.  I've also looked over the letters of two of my good friends here, Laura and Charles, who applied to go to California next year.  To be able to help these people with their letters has been a really rewarding experience for me; it's made me reflect on the things I've learned here and the amazing opportunity I've had while in France.  I really hope that Charles or Laura (or both hopefully) make it into the UC program, it would be amazing to show them my home and help them with arrangements after all that they've done for me.  I'm going to Laura's birthday party in Saintes next weekend, looking forward to seeing yet another city here.

This past Friday I went to see Arcade Fire in Lyon.  My roommate and couple other girls came with me, and it was really cool to have people there for the concert and the whole experience of another city.  Bryce (my roommate) was really easy to travel with; she was always ready to go when we needed to be somewhere, we shared groceries to make it cheaper to eat, and she and I had some really great conversations.  Arcade Fire was great, I really enjoyed that they played a balanced mix of old and new songs, and their stage presence was fantastic.  However, the sound guy was situated just to the right of the stage, and sometimes the sound didn't mesh very well, which was frustrating because they have so many instruments going at once. it was easy to lose instruments like the violins in the madness.  Overall though I really enjoyed the city of Lyon.  It was interesting to see the city, after debating between Bordeaux and Lyon for my study abroad.  I think I would have enjoyed Lyon just as well as Bordeaux.  Friday afternoon it snowed, but thankfully not too heavily (it was very cold that night).  I didn't know this, but Lyon was the capital of Roman Gaul for a couple hundred years (around 0-400 AD).  While on the way up to this enormous castle-like church called La Basilique de Fourvière, we came upon the ruins of a roman theatre and markets.  It was so cool.  I really love the history that you see in the French (and european for that matter) cities, it's fantastic they're able to keep some of those structures in good shape for posterity.

well, I have three more weekends here in France.  It's wild.

prague/london

it's been a while since I last wrote, sorry to those who check this occasionally.  back at the end of october, I went to prague for 5 days to visit. I had heard it was a fun and cheap place to visit, but other than that I didn't really know much about it.  I stayed in a hostel for a couple nights and spent the other two nights couchsurfing with a guy who lived near the center of town named Jiri.  For those of you unfamiliar with couchsurfing.org, it's basically a site for people looking to meet others, but primarily while traveling.  People post that they have a couch where people can stay for a couple days, and then people traveling through the city can send messages to those people asking to stay for a period of time.  The site provides different options to make you feel comfortable, like reviews of the person (on both sides) written by people who either stayed with them or had them stay on their couch.  I really enjoyed my experience with Jiri, it gave the city a face of a person, rather than just the buildings or souvenirs I saw throughout town.  We played music together (he had this accordion that he let me play, it was really cool I'd like to buy one), went to a pub, and talked about disappearing languages.  That said, the city is beautiful with amazing architecture, most of it preserved from the destructions of WWII.  There is a lot of history in the town, with two castles on either side of the Vltava River from the 9th and 11th centuries, churches from the 12th century, and some remnants of Soviet rule.  I met some cool people on a free tour, and we spent the next two days visiting the city together, going to different museums and tourists spots.  The Czech beer was delicious and in most places, there was a large selection for cheap.  The city is definitely a tourist destination for a lot of Europe, I think in large part to the fact that things are "relatively cheaper" there.  The city is flooded with souvenir shops and western european stores, but there are still certain areas where you'll find people who don't speak english.  Most of the time I was able to ask in english for things like a menu or for a particular restaurant, which kind of surprised me.  To me the tourism was so strong there that it somewhat sucked away the Prague from Prague, especially in the Old Town, where there was a huge square filled with food and music and these old gothic church towers brooding above us.  Above all, I enjoyed going to a place that I had never heard much about and didn't know the language of the country.

Last weekend I went to visit Sylvain in London for two days.  I flew directly from Bordeaux through Easyjet, one of these new cheap airlines that has sprung up in Europe.  I arrived on Friday and met up with a friend from the Bordeaux program who happened to be there by chance at the same time. We went to this Wellcome Collection Museum, which had an amazing combination of things in one building.  The wealth of Britain was crazy in the 1800's, as seen in this guy Wellcome's collection of artifacts and list of donations and contributions.  After that I left the girls and met up with Sylvain.  It was pretty cool to see how he was doing in London, doing that whole grown-up thing, working 12 hours a day and what-have-you.  We went to a couple pubs that night and then got McDonalds around 2am, which was disgusting.  They're everywhere here in Europe.  And unfortunately they're the only thing open at that hour.  Saturday we got up and went to the London Bridge, Camden town, Big Ben, the London Eye, and all that jazz.  I especially liked the Tate Modern Art Museum because not only was it free, but it had modern art that wasn't too much to handle.  Sylvain and I get along pretty well, which is cool, because we're family, and we really didn't have too much interaction while we grew up.  It's good to feel like we can keep that family relationship going.  Sunday I had a really early flight (it was the cheapest) so we didn't get to do anything, other than see the Underground at that hour.  I minded the gap everytime I got on and off.  London wasn't as crazy as I imagined it, it was actually really pleasant.  I'd definitely go back to get a better feel for it.

I'm starting to feel the fact that I leave this place in a month and a half, and it's making me reexamine my actions.  It's as if each day counts a little more; I have to speak french as much as I can, eat as much french cuisine as will fit in my stomach, and stop to appreciate the little things more.  This weekend my friend Thibaut (maxime's cousin who showed me around Paris) is coming to stay with me in Bordeaux.  My housing situation is so cool, I just asked Erika if he could stay with us and she responded "sure he can stay in Bryce's room" because she's gone in Amsterdam.  The fact that she was so receptive to the idea surprised me because most people's homestays are very strict situations, but I guess what I'm trying to say is I appreciate Erika's welcoming personality.  I'm excited to be able to show Thibaut a little of Bordeaux, as he took the time to show me Paris when I was there at the beginning of my trip.