Hey there!
Comin' to ya live from the library in Nantes.
It's been one week since I've written. I suppose there have been plenty of things going on lately. Last weekend, IES (my study abroad program) took a field trip to Mont Saint Michel and Saint Malo. Mont Saint Michel was so beautiful...and has been used since the 7th century. Everyone refers to it as a "rocky tidal island," but the actual abbey itself has monks that live and work there. Famous French writer, Chateaubriand, has his tomb there on a tiny island just off the shore. It was incredibly fascinating! Saint Malo is a little port town on the north coast of Normandy, right on the ocean, full of life. The sun was actually shining, and I had the chance to roam around the beautiful town in awe, tasting regional treats, doing some shopping, relaxing with other study abroad students. All in all, it was a pleasant field trip. Here is Mont Saint Michel:
Sunday after the field trip was a particularly low day. Nantes was hazy, rainy, and grey. Everything in the city is closed on Sundays, even grocery stores, which left me with nothing to do. Not wanting to sit around my host family's apartment, I roamed around Nantes for honestly a couple hours before finding a café that was open where I could read my book, Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, for the second time. I just finished it and loved it even more than the first time. My favorite citations:
"...sometimes I can hear my bones straining
under the weight of all the lives I'm not living."
"She was funny and full of life. She liked to run around her empty house without any clothes on, even once she was too old for that. Nothing embarrassed her. I admired that so much, because everything embarrassed me, and that hurt me. She loved to jump on her bed. She jumped on her bed for so many years that one afternoon, while I watched her jump, the seams burst. Feathers filled the small room. Our laughter kept the feathers in the air. I thought about birds. Could they fly if there wasn't someone, somewhere, laughing?"
Don't you just adore that? It makes me smile every time. I loved that book -- really gave me some perspective, kind of made me think of how much life I have left to live, and how I have so many beautiful, inspiring people in my life to remind me of how grateful I should be on a daily basis.
The rest of this week has consisted of trying to pick classes for the semester. I attend classes at the Université de Nantes, and if I don't like them, I choose not to take them. So far, I'm 3 for 3 for disliking the classes I've gone to. Fantastic. I think I'm going to end up taking two literature classes at the university, one focusing on Marcel Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, the other studying Marguerite Duras' Un barrage contre le pacifique. In addition, an art history class caught my interest as well, one that focuses on 19th, 20th, and 21st century photography! I am also taking a phonetics class, which will most definitely help in my pronunciation of words. No other classes really fascinated me, but since there is a minimum of 15 credits, I'm forced to take another class. Ideally, a drawing class would have been great! Unfortunately, those are only worth 2 credits. Thus, I'm going to be taking the second section of a translation class I took last semester as a "filler" class, if you will. It'll be easy, so that's relieving. On top of all this, I teach English two times a week to two different groups of lil kids, work here in the IES library 7 hours a week (minimum wage, baby!), and occasionally babysit for a family when the parents want a date night! All in all, I am a workin' woman, trying to save up for spring break. (Rome...here I come!) Besides the whole class schedule and working shtuff, I've been laying low, feeling very very very fatigued & lethargic.
Enough about me. I've been missing my friends & family so much since returning to Nantes. Winter break was like a tease -- I saw them shortly, but then head to jump across the Atlantic Ocean all over again. Luckily, we have all been keeping in great touch, thanks to Facebook and Skype. My heart hurts from being so far away from everyone: my family (especially my little Godson and nephew, Bennett!), my Loyola friends, my high school friends, the friends I made while abroad last semester...I miss everything about every single one of them.
You are all perpetually in my thoughts & bring me such joy, whether or not I've said it before.
I miss you more & more every day :
& many many many many many others.
You are constantly inspiring me!
I'm off to class. There's a strike today in Nantes sooo we'll see if public transportation is working or if I even have class. Who knows, some of the professors are on strike. Oh, France.
Until next time,
Feel Ridiculously Fine,
MG
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