I know I haven’t updated in forever, and I’m sorry. I know, I know, I’m terrible at this whole blogging thing. I keep telling myself I’ll update it, and somehow I never seem to manage it. So here goes…talking about the last 1-¾ months in one long post.
I’ll start with classes, just to get that out of the way. My classes are up and down. I can tell that my FLE class has definitely helped to improve my French-I can catch more of my errors before I make them, and I can better formulate responses to what’s going on around me. My linguistics classes are going fairly well - I understand the material fairly well and my professor is pretty understanding when I don’t. My hardest class by far is my Renaissance Literature class. The professor tends to mumble, to the point at which I truly cannot understand more than a few words here and there of what he is saying. The exam will be very difficult for me not only for that reason but because the format is a type of essay that I haven’t had to do before (and certainly not in French). That is the one thing I am most worried about for the end of the semester. I know that I am taking more credits than USC will give me credit for so even if I don’t do very well on the exam I should be okay with my credits (though no one on either USC nor UHA’s end seems to be able to give me a clear answer as to how my credits will transfer, as individual 3-credit courses or as one large 15-credit course). At this point, all I can do is study my readings, learn as best I can the proper format for the essay, and then do my best on exam day.
Now for the fun stuff - trips. Since I last posted, I have visited Colmar, Strasbourg (3 times), Basel (again), Freiburg, and several mountains. The accounts of these visits are somewhat out of order, so bear with me.
Colmar is a very typical Alsatian town between Mulhouse and Strasbourg. Some of us who weren’t able to go home for the winter break because we live too far away or had to work decided to visit it. As those of you with Facebook (hopefully) saw, the buildings are of the typical Middle Ages design, with many of the ground floors (known as the “rez-de-chausée” in French) now hosting modern stores. We saw the church in the center of town. It was nice, but not the most interesting of the churches I’ve seen since arriving in France. We also visited the Musée d’Unterlinden, which is the art museum and is located inside a former convent. Having seen some of the modern paintings in the museum, I would just like to say: I don’t get it. Some of these paintings I know I could have done, so I have no idea why they are considered art worthy of a museum. It doesn’t make sense to me. I guess that’s why I’ll never be the person who chooses what art gets placed in collections and what doesn’t. We also went to see the history museum, which had an interesting feature on Coptic Egypt, as well as several displays of bugs, including one extremely large Japanese spider that if I ever saw it in real life would cause me to run screaming from the room in terror. All in all, Colmar was a nice town, but I don’t know if I’ll go back unless I decide to take my mom and dad there when they’re here.
I’ve visited Strasbourg three times now, two for enjoyment and one for necessity. The first time was the first Saturday of winter break. Caroline and I went to meet our friend from USC, Michelle, who was arriving in Europe that week. I got to eat my first tarte flambée, and I immediately fell in love (as much as one can fall in love with food). The best way for me to describe tarte flambée to one who was never heard of it is to say that it is essentially a pizza with a very thin crust and no tomato sauce, but it is absolutely fantastic. After we met up with Michelle at the train station, we went to visit the Cathedral. The Cathedral in Strasbourg is, well, amazing. It’s really, really big, so you can see the spire from far away but it is situated such that you can’t see the whole front until you turn onto a specific street and then it completely fills your line of vision. There is a large clock on the inside that turns every hour and has several different forms of measurement. One of the more interesting things to me, as an American, was just to the side of the clock. It was an inscription on the wall near the choir that commemorated the American soldiers in World War II who gave their lives to free Alsace. I found it surprising not that there was a commemorative sign, but that it was on the inside of the Cathedral. I don’t know where I would have expected one to be, but that wasn’t it.
My second visit to Strasbourg was exactly one week later with a few of the exchange students (mostly the same ones as the trip to Colmar). We visited the Cathedral (of course) but the main highlight of this trip was the boat ride on the River Ill. If you have ever been on the bateau-mouche in Paris, this was essentially the same thing. We got on the boat and there was a set of headphones on each seat, which provided running commentary in about eight languages about each site we passed. On the ride, we passed the European Parliament and government buildings, which I had wanted to see but were too far to walk to easily. Other than that, we spent much of the day walking to and from different sites of the city.
My third (and possibly final) visit to Strasbourg was just last week so I could finish the second part of my visa (the titre du séjour). I had to arrive in the morning for the medical exam, which involved an x-ray of my perfectly healthy lungs in order to check for tuberculosis. I then had to wait to talk to a doctor about my medical history so he could sign off that I could stay in France for the duration of my visa. I was glad to see that the whole process only took about an hour and I was able to leave quickly.
I visited Basel for a second time during Carnaval to see the Morganstreich. Morganstreich starts at 4 am, so the exchange students all took the special train at 2:18 am in order to secure a good viewing spot. We then waited until 4, at which time all the lights on the street went out and the colorful lanterns were lit to start the parade. The parade is made up of people dressing up as what appears to be cartoon versions of historical and current figures. There is a lot of piccolo music and drums, and there appears to be no single specified parade route. It was completely different than anything I’ve seen at home, though I must admit that I was too tired by the end to appreciate everything that was happening.
A few weeks ago Karolina and I visited Freiburg, Germany. It is a little more difficult to get to Freiburg if you don’t have a car (which of course, we don’t). We took a bus to Müllheim and then a train to Freiburg. We spent the day walking around parts of the city as well as some of the surrounding hills. I was even able to get Starbucks for the first time since arriving in Europe! I’m planning on heading back to Freiburg on Tuesday to see my friend Naomi from Oakton who is currently studying abroad there, so I will write more about it then.
Ahhhh…the mountains. The Vosges Mountains are very near to Mulhouse, and there are lots of little trains to connect to them. Last weekend, Karolina, Mar, Francesc, Sherif, and I decided to visit Mont Ste. Odile, which is the location of an abbey that dates from the 7th century. In order to reach the abbey from Mulhouse without a car, one must take the train to a town called Selestat, then take a smaller train to a smaller town called Obernai, then take a bus to an even smaller town called Ottrott, then either take a taxi or hike 763 meters up a mountain. I think everyone reading this knows what we decided to do, and it wasn’t to take the taxi. We randomly met another guy at the bus about our age that is currently doing an internship in Strasbourg, and he ended up climbing up and down the mountain with us. The way up was difficult because…well, we were climbing a mountain. It was definitely worth it, because the view was incredible. We could see quite a few small towns, many of which are known for their wine. The abbey itself was nice, but I personally felt that the view from it was more impressive than the buildings themselves. It was difficult to get to from Mulhouse (just getting to the bottom of the mountain can take almost 3 hours) and VERY tiring, but it was a lot of fun.
WHEW! This has been a very long post that took me over an hour to type up. Note to self: don’t put off blogging, it’ll be painful if you do! The next two weeks are spring break, then there are two more weeks, then its exam time. I’m pretty sure I’ll be taking some solo trips this week, and then next week my parents are coming to visit so I will definitely have more stories to share (if anyone is actually reading this).
