The forecast didn't call for rain...

The sound of rain is not uncommon in Nantes. What is uncommon is hearing the sound of rain coming from inside the house….

Side note - For the following story some background knowledge of the layout of my host family’s apartment is necessary. I live in an apartment building but there aren’t multiple apartments per floor. For the most part one floor = one apartment but in my case we have one and a half floors. So the fifth floor is ours and half of the sixth. My room is on the sixth floor (along with one other bedroom and a bathroom) and there’s a very narrow staircase that connects the two floors. Okay, enjoy! 

So when I came home from school on Friday, there was water on the stairs leading up to my room. I drew it to my host mom’s attention, who immediately called a plumber, because the hot water heater was leaking. I had never noticed it but it’s attached to the ceiling above the stairs. If you, like me, are thinking that’s a weird place to put a water heater, it’s there because that’s where it was before the two apartments were connected and they just left it when they created the staircase. So she called a plumber but it was Friday afternoon so she was told to wait for Monday and in the mean time stick a bucket under the drip.  

Saturday morning comes and I get up, go for a run (in order to procrastinate a little on a paper I needed to write), and when I get back I take a shower. So I’m getting dressed in my room after I finish taking my shower and all of a sudden I hear a sound that sounds a lot like rain but it’s coming from my hallway. First feeling…dread…but then I was like okay Taylor go find your host mom, adults always know what to do right. So I grab my bath towel and throw it on the stairs under the stream of water, which does a whole lot of nothing, and go searching for my host mom. Of course, nobody is home, my host mom doesn’t answer her cell phone (I left a message that I’m pretty sure made zero sense as I know none of the vocabulary necessary for dealing with a broken water heater), and I have no idea where to turn off the water.

So for about ten minutes I’m kind of panicking, looking for things to catch the water. I eventually found one bucket but had to settle for using our nightly salad bowl and assorted Tupperware to catch the rest. I also pulled every towel out of the linen closet and put them on the stairs to try to protect the wood. At this point, I was like I NEED to turn off the water so I decided to try and ask a neighbor for help (it seems to take times of extreme duress before I’ll finally ask strangers for help lol). Of course at this point I’m pretty wet and I’m not wearing shoes so I was like I should probably grab some slippers before I go barging into someone’s house. So I run up through the water and back down, now slightly more wet but equipped with shoes, and run down the stairs to start ringing doorbells. The neighbor, who’s finally home, of course chooses not to open his door to me but tries talking through his door. At first I tried to explain but finally I pulled the “I’m an American living with the people upstairs and I need help” card which got the door open at least. So he understands me enough to show me how to turn off the water in his apartment (same format as ours) so I run upstairs and turn it off…which doesn’t do anything.

So at this point, I’m just emptying buckets and Tupperware waiting for I don’t know what and the doorbell rings. My first thought was oh it’s probably the neighbor come to see if it worked so I whip open the door to my oldest host brother and immediately I’m like Help Me! He was a little taken aback so I just pointed in the direction of the stairs…he pretty much repeated my reaction and then started trying to track down his mom.

Eventually she got home and the neighbor came upstairs and a plumber who was willing to work on Saturday was found and all was merry in our household but in the meantime I learned some new vocabulary related to hot water heaters, vocabulary related to disasters with hot water heaters, and some cuss words related to disasters with hot water heaters.  

Netherlands: When in doubt smell it out / Moooommm, the telepathy broke again

The Netherlands was great! (we get two four day vacations, so I went to the Netherlands with two friends for the first one). But 'fun/normal' stories are never fun so I've got two small anecdotes for your pleasure.

#1 - When in doubt smell it out

In my program we stay with host families and one of the 'perks' is that we can do one load of laundry a week with their machine/soap etc. Laundry in Europe is really expensive and people try to use dryers the least amount of time as possible so I've been trying to be better about not washing everything I own after wearing it once. So, the day before I was going to leave for the Netherlands, I realized that I have like no clean clothes....at all....I've worn all my shirts like three times, my pants like a million,

(for Disney channel lovers)

and everything's starting to smell like I've worn it a million times, but I can't ask my host mom to do laundry right then and there cause then everything would have been wet. However, my friend was like it's totally cool, when we get to my cousin's house (we were visiting her cousin who lives/studies there) you can do laundry. So I decided to take practically my entire closet's worth of dirty clothes all the way to the Netherlands...where I ended up not being able to do laundry. Thankfully, I was able to borrow shirts from my friends but it was still pretty rough. When I got home Sunday night though, I was like I NEED to do laundry right this instant, of course it was no problem, my host mom was like totally, we'll put it in right now and then you can use the dryer for the things you need to do tomorrow. So we all sit down to dinner, I recount everything I did on my vacation, it's all good. Then when dinner ends, and my 12 year old host brother and host dad are still in the room, my host mom whips my laundry out of the washer (the washing machines are generally in the kitchen in France) and is like sorting through my stuff, like "oh do you need this pair of underwear for tomorrow"....but at this point I was just so happy to have clean clothes lol



#2 - Moooommm, the telepathy broke again

On the way to and from Utrecht, we had to take three trains which was about 6 or 7 hours. The way there was no problem, excitement of the trip and all that jazz but on Sunday we were all definitely ready to be home in our beds. So on the second train our assigned seats were all in different train cars but one of my friends was like maybe the seat next to you will be empty like I'm just going to sit here until says something. I was in total agreement, like I can't deal with anymore strangers today, So we're getting closer and closer to the time the train is supposed to leave and no one has asked her to move but she's getting kind of antsy and saying like maybe I should move. So she finally goes, like the train is full, I'm going to go find my seat, just as this rather attractive guy (conveniently around the same age) comes up the row. And this is the type of situation where when you're on public transportation and see that one really attractive person you're like there's no way in hell am I that lucky, he's not sitting next to me.
A picture to have in your head, to fully understand the situation:

(I know he's not Irish, but still)

And he goes, in an Irish accent, 38? to my friend Clare...and she's like yeah, I was just moving it's all yours. And, having heard us talking about wanting to sit next to each other, he goes oh that's okay, we can just exchange seat numbers. She was like oh thank you so much, like it's in blah blah car or whatever and I was like telepathically sending every signal in the book...to no avail. He left and I was like...pourquoi, do you secretly hate me? It was great to sit next to her though; we had a fun train ride...and to be honest I wasn't smelling so great in my less than clean clothes.

Surprise!

My host brothers were on vacation from school for two weeks and my host dad decided to take a week off too so the house was full (normally my host brothers aren't home during the week cause they go to boarding school and my host dad works in Paris and comes home on weekends). It was really fun getting to see everybody more, but one morning at breakfast my host mom casually mentions that it's my host dad's birthday that day...and the only reason she said it was that we could hear him grumbling about his computer in the other room and she said they were going to go buy him a new one that day for his birthday.
So here I am like what's the protocol for your host dad's birthday...do you get him a present? are you invited to the family birthday dinner? and it was that day so I was like okay Taylor you got this, get him a really casual present that's not over the top. So I decided on Ferrero Rocher chocolates and I gave them to him just before dinner and he really liked them (we did 'faire la bise' for the first time which is the cheek kiss thing).
Then we all assemble for dinner and I ask the mom, oh did you buy the computer today? and she kinda shook her head at me and gave me this look, now this look is generally reserved for when I say something that she doesn't understand at all, sort of blank and confused, and I was like no I remember you told me you were going to buy a computer for his birthday and then all of a sudden it hits me, it's a surprise present and I just announced it in front of the birthday guy. And like I tried to play it off but I'm not even good at that in English, let alone French, so he totally knew. However, not all the kids were in the room at that moment so when it came time for him to open presents one of them was like Dad guess what we got you....and he was like well my money's on a computer....I was so embarrassed...but I think overall they got a kick out of it. I'm sure next year my host mom will make sure to warn the host student or just not invite them at all lol.

Also, a little later they asked how old my dad was, and then my mom (sorry parents for disclosing said info) but I successfully said oh my dad's 59 but then I was like yeah my mom's 68 (instead of 58)... the look on their faces was priceless. then I put a french accent on the word cougar and asked if that translated...i got some grins so i took that as a yes

It's hard to eat things that still have a face

We had a guest over to dinner tonight and, you know, new people always make me a little nervous until I hear them speak and can determine if they're easy or hard to understand. Turns out uncle George was a very nice person who spoke very clearly; however when I came down to dinner and saw this as the first course I was feeling a little put off...

In case you, like me, do not know exactly what these are they're crayfish. Those little itty bitty things we used to catch in ponds as kids. Apparently you can eat them and they're actually pretty tasty. I was really freaked out by the eyes though and had no idea how to go about trying to get to the edible part.

...hello my pretty...

Thankfully, it was written all over my face as per usual, and I got Louis (my 12 year old host brother) to demonstrate that all I needed to do was rip of the head section and take off the hard outer shell. So that was one of my more interesting dinners so far.

Vocab of the day: l'ecrevisse = a crayfish

Would you like that yogurt with a side of brown sugar?

There comes a point in time when it's just too late to fix a misunderstanding. As I ate breakfast with my host mom the other day, I realized we had come to that point. She offered me a yogurt and, when I accepted, grabbed it along with the brown sugar and put it on the table in front of me. (I mentioned in an earlier blog post that on the first night I was in France I translated oatmeal into "hot cereal"  and ever since they think I eat brown sugar with my cornflakes; however, I have no idea where she got the idea I eat it in my yogurt) Here's the thing though...I didn't know what to do when she put the brown sugar down in front of me....so logically, I ate it. I put brown sugar in plain yogurt. And i ate it. In other words, I've officially reached the point of no return. She has now witnessed me putting brown sugar into yogurt and now I'll always be the weird American who liked brown sugar a little too much...

The next night she tried out a new recipe for dessert featuring, you guessed it, brown sugar.

So a bird walks into a bar...

Le Nid is a bar on the top floor of the Tour Bretagne (a 33 floor skyscraper). There is a fenced-in balcony so you can walk around the entire building and see the city of Nantes in all directions. I forgot to take a picture of the inside but I found some courtesy of google images...

So the inside has this giant bird that wraps around the whole floor and all the chairs and table look like hard boiled eggs. I'm not really sure why exactly but it's a pretty cool. The body of the bird (right) is where you can order drinks.

Here's a few of the pictures I took out on the balcony:

The look of confusion says it all

Miscomunication of the Weekend:

I was going to let a couple of friends leave some stuff in my room at home because we had been shopping and were going to a carnival later on and when we walked in my 16 year old host brother (who I met for the first time the night before) was sitting at the table. So I introduced them and tried to say that we just wanted to leave our extra bags in my room. I think what I really said translates to "We want to leave all our clothes in my room".......so that happened.

Comment dit-on "I need a lawyer"?

So I visited one of my IES friends at her house on Friday night. It's important to note that her host parents were gone for the weekend (visiting the ocean *sigh*). I asked if she could show me around her house before I left cause it's fun to see the different places people are staying. This was a super nice three story house with a cute back garden. Walking around we got to two doors that had post-its stuck on them saying "Do not open the door" (in french) and something at the bottom that we couldn't read (it's also important to note that the french teach cursive a little differently than we do so it's kind of difficult to read some letters). I don't know about french kids but I know that if I read that, the first thing I'm going to do is want to know what's behind the door. So she's like oh it's totally fine, we'll just crack open the door so I can show you this super nice room with a bunch of breakables.....
10 seconds after we open the door an earsplitting alarm goes off and we freeze. Turns out that last word we couldn't read was "alarm." You know what "alarm" is in french?...."alarme"..../: Of course we don't know how to turn it off and we're freaking out cause we think the police are about to burst through the door at any second. And while it wasn't really a laughing situation, we looked at each other and couldn't stop giggling which added to our unproductivity. Thankfully, a french university student is also living there so she was able to call the host mom and get instructions on how to turn it off. So no harm done, no police record...don't really know if I'll be allowed back over to her house but you win some you lose some.

21st century...Is that you calling?

It's hard not to enjoy a flashback to life before the iphone. Thought you'd all enjoy this gem....

.....my cell phone while I'm abroad. Anybody remember T9, actual buttons, and limited texting /:

Orientation in Vannes

So everybody arrived by Wednesday and they gave us most of Thursday to sleep but on Friday we got to take a 3 hour exam to determine our proficiency in french...needless to say no one was feeling super confident. But they semi-bribed us because after the exam they took us to Vannes, a city in Brittany by the sea, for the weekend. They called it an orientation but while we were all expecting it to be like the first few days of summer camp, lots of name games etc, it turned out to basically be a vacation without adult supervision. It's pretty crazy but they actually treat us like we're adults here....we're all not really sure what to do with that yet but it's pretty fun. The first night we got to explore downtown Vannes and check out the local bars (with our "social coordinator" of all people). There's a drink called a "Monaco" like the place that was pretty good. New vocab of the night: petite joueuse = light weight

The next day was spent on the l'Ile aux Moines where we road bikes all day, hung out on the beach, and swam. We met this super cute dog on our bike ride. He was sleeping by the fence while his owner worked in the garden and when we asked if we could pet him she told us his name was Ceasar (/say zahr/). He looked like a golden retriever puppy but she told us he was full grown...they have golden retrievers that never grow up....MIND BLOWN

On Sunday we visited three different cities, Saint Goustan, Plougoumelen, and Rochefort en Terre. They were all really picturesque and beautiful (see pics below).

Saint Goustan - those were ramps you could climb to get to the top where there were more shops and houses.

This is the view from the top of those stairs. I was standing on the bridge when I took the above picture. 

Plougoumelen - where we ate lunch at a creperie. A savory crepe is called a gallette; this one was cheese and ham. Very yummy (:

 Rochefort en Terre - This was what a lot of the houses looked like

I took this at the chateau there. There was a huge wishing well with a crank the size of a car tire.

Until next time, au revoir!

Le Vol, Le Train, et Le Taxi (the flight, the train, and the taxi)

Having never been on an international flight before, I was expecting the worst from an 11 hour flight (San Fran to Paris). The reality, however, was much better than I expected. They served us dinner and breakfast, as well as, an ice cream sandwich in between for a snack. I was in the middle seat which always kind of sucks but my neighbors never talked so that was awesome. The best part was the TV screens in front of each seat basically offered On Demand with a bunch of movies, shows, and games. All n all one of the better flights I've ever taken.

I had about two hours to kill at the Parisian airport before my train to Nantes and I decided it was the perfect time to exchange the few dollars I brought with me to euros. It was my first interaction with someone whose primary language was French in France. I walked up with a "bonjour" and proceeded to understand nothing of what she said in return. My blank look must have spoken volumes though cause she immediately switched to English and said "oh you don't speak french." Not exactly the greatest first interaction. With that morale boost, I set out to wait for my train.

I don't remember much of the train ride because by that point it was about 2 am US time and those of you who know me know I can barely stay awake until 12. But I managed to get off at the right stop where two of the IES teachers were waiting for us to put us in a taxi that would take us back to school. The whole car-pedestrian dynamic is really scary in France. I'm not sure who has the right away and I don't think they do either...our driver almost took out about five different people on the five minute drive. I was a little over tired at the time and got the urge to yell out 20 points if you get the grandma but I restrained myself.

At that point I thought we were supposed to have an on-site orientation for the first few days before we met our host families, but instead they took us to the school so the the host families could pick us up. So they could pick up our jet lagged, hungry, English speaking selves for our first dinner. Tons of great impressions were made that night which made for some interesting stories the next morning. (: The best was probably the guy who told his host mom he had brought them chocolate covered penises for a host gift (he tried putting a french accent on the word "peanut" because he couldn't remember it in french). I myself was trying to explain that I generally eat oatmeal for breakfast but tried translating it as "hot cereal".....they now think I put brown sugar on my regular cereal and put it on the table every morning.  

Mis-communication of the day: If you directly translate "I am full" like at the end of the meal...."je suis pleine" what you're really saying is you're a pregnant deer

Where's Taylor?

Nantes is the sixth largest city in France and is the capital of the Pays de la Loire region, It's about 30 miles from the Atlantic Ocean and about two hours away from Paris by train.