wooohooo. Wifi has come to my house in France!
(this is indeed what I am offering as an explanation of my uncommunicativeness ;)

So, this post should mark the new era of the 'nearly a post a week' phase.
Oh, and by the way, wifi when pronounced with a French accent is hilarious. My family kept telling me excitedly that we were getting weeeefeeee at the house...I think they were disappointed because it took several minutes for my enthusiasm to register!

Much has happened since my last post in (yeeks! December??). I will do my best to bring you up to speed with as little droning and as much vivacity as possible.

For those of you who may be confused (and justifiably so) about my current location, I am in Nantes, Frances, roughly two.5 hours SW of Paris and 35ish minutes from the coast.

I live behind the top-right royal blue shutter of the pink house on 5, rue Montbazon with la famille Gaumain...a lovely, auburn-headed, energetic bunch.

My papa is either a psychologist, psychiatrist, physical therapist, or physio-therapist...the night they told me I was really tired and all of these words sound the same. I am currently gleaning clues from comments made at the dinner table and else-where. The most recent escapade papa told was about a crazy woman with a back problem. Very conclusive.

My maman is an artist, a maman, and a one-day-a-week elementary school art teacher. The warm aura of her artistic organized chaos is evident in the decoration of the house, the preparation of meals, and our frantic-funny conversations. We paint together every Thursday afternoon.

Jean-baptiste and Francois-Xavier (no, not Catholic saints or sword brandishing warriors) the two eldest brothers no longer live in the house. JB (we do not really call him this;) lives in Nantes with his wife and two oh-sooo-darling daughters, Blanche 18mo and Alenoir 2mo. Fix (his actual nick-name as Francois-Xavier is a mouthful) lives in Paris but his fiancee lives here in Nantes so he comes home every weekend.

The three daughters at the house, Anne-Edith (22), Marie-Camille (19), and Louise-Marie (15) are responsible for more than half of my improvement in French and roughly 70% of my laughter. For example, last night (during dinner) Louise-Marie and Marie-Camille were arguing about the rules of rugby. To clear up the confusion, Louise-Marie grabbed me, Anne-Edith and the remaining half-baguette and the three of us plus our make-shift ball acted out the complicated play for Marie-Camille. Then we ate the baguette with cheese for dessert.


Wow, this is already more long-winded than my intention!

Boring but necessary paragraph: My daily life in Nantes consists of alot of walking mixed with alot of bus taking, usually some sort of flakey buttery pastry, 2-3 classes at the university, and dinner with my family. In general, life is much less frantic than at home but (not complaining just stating ;) it is sometimes tricky to balance school-work (which takes more than double the time because it's all in French), enjoying France, traveling, and planning for next year (housing, applications for scholarships and grad school etc).

So, traveling...
(my English profs should be proud of that classy transition)
Last week was France's winter vacation which I took full advantage of by traveling to Ireland and London with my friend Lauren who is studying this semester in London. I figure your attention span may be running short, so I'm adding pictures to bribe you to keep going! Or, I was going to add pictures to keep you going but they aren't uploading at the moment!


Humph, well I'll try again later. I'll just say that Ireland was as sheepy and rolling-green-hilly and delicious-stout-beery as one would imagine. We visited Dublin (and of course the Guiness factory), Cork and Kilarney (in the south). Shockingly, we had mostly sunny blue skies which I had previously thought was impossible for Ireland in February (this assumption was confirmed by every Irish person we met who was as dazed and giddy as we were!). In Kilarney, a quaint town close to some of the national parks, we rented bicycles and spent an idyllic day gliding through stunning countryside and whirling Sound of Music style in the mountains (ok, that was actually just me).
London was just as fantastic but in a much (ouch) more expensive and much less countrysidey way. It was the perfect combination of seeing out-of-the-way places that Lauren loves and seeing all of the things one must try to see while in London, including but not limited to: the national gallery, trafalgar square, the british museum, the tate modern art museum, buckingham palace (here I was disappointed because I thought buckingham palace was windsor, and was quite confused at the rather drab and official looking building that I was expecting to be a castle!), tower bridge, big ben and parliment, westminster abbey, a show (ironically we saw Chicago!), hyde park, high tea at the orangery in kensington gardens, and etc. Thankfully, the museums in London are free...that way one can afford to spend 3 pounds* on a latte.

*3 pounds = 6.08 dollars**

** and you thought starbucks was expensive


Well friends and family, I've got to run. We are having a pic-nic at the castle this afternoon, hats and your favorite chocolate required.
But don't think it's all pic-nic's and castles...I have a grammar class afterwards where we are covering the most obscure of the 16 French verb tenses!

bisous,
Brianne

FYI: the post starts to get really confusing below.... I had major problems with uploading pictures and formatting etc. So, directly below you will find a comentary of the pictures that follow in a thrid post. (at the beginning of the comentary, I say 'see the pictures above'. what I really mean is 'see the pictures below'.) You'll probably only want to navigate the following mess if you're family ;)

The formatting is driving me nuts! I appologize for how inconvenient this is, but really, I've been re-arranging for hours! next time i'm sticking to pictures in the center of the page!

So in order of the pictures of the post above:
1. A beautiful cathedral right next to the writer's museum in Dublin....mostly this picture is just to prove the unbelievable blueness of the sky!

2. The colorful river-front in down town Dublin.

3. Me gazing at the green pastures and puffy clouds of our beautiful bus ride from Dublin to Kilarney.

4. Old cathedral and grave yard that we passed on our bike ride in Kilarney.

5. Me twirling at our pic-nic spot.

6. The national park and castle near Kilarney (we took our bikes!)

7. (out of order) Me standing in front of what London claims is 'buckingham palace', ha!

8. Back to Kilarney...a picture showing its sheepy-ness.

9. The awesome slides at the tate modern art museum in London.

10. High tea at the orangery in Kensington gardens...complete with raspberry jam and clotted cream.

11. More blue skies and Big Ben.

12. Back to Dublin...Lauren and I doubtfully contemplating our HUGE pints of Guiness that came with our factory tour.

13. Lauren and I drinking something we're a bit more comfortable with :)


Again, sorry about the formatting. I can assure you that it's probably driving me nuts more than you!!

Bisous,
Brianne