March showers bringing April hail?

And whoa lord in heaven. Where does the time go? I swear. I was warned that the second semester would fly by. But I really didn’t realize how FAST. Cripes!
So…to recap!

February:
I had a week break. Went north to Lille for a couple days with Alicia. This was basically epic. Once everybody got there…that was an adventure. Two days before we were supposed to meet up there was a huge…and I mean huge…nasty train wreck north of Lille just outside of Brussels, Belgium. This promptly resulted in…you guessed it…TRAIN strikes! Whee. So, I had delays, delays, delays, the whole way north and rolled into Lille about four hours later than planned. I had it easy! Alicia, who was actually supposed to be coming through Brussels…had quite the adventure. Of trains, waiting rooms, more trains, some busses, a bar, and a gaggle of fellow travelers. She got in around midnight. Oh yes.

But, once we were both in Lille we had a lovely time! Walked around, saw the sites, went to a zoo! Yes, we are old ladies. And we love it. Shut up. We also went to a local market, ooogled spice, fruit, clothes, and then bought chicken legs off a spit. Sat on some ancient church steps and ate them. Yummy!

Lille as a city rocked. Old, light, gorgeous redbrick buildings, parks everywhere! And the people! Oh gosh. See, Lillie has only been French for about 200 years…give or take. So it’s really not that French. (No jest. Most of France has been French since it was Gaul…in the Roman era.) Meaning the culture is totally different. Alicia had to help me understand some of the food on the menus, which are more like what they have in Germany. Everyone we talked to was super friendly and very cheerful. We went to a great local restaurant where they brew their own beer, and the waiter actually bantered with me! What? It was so much fun.

Sadly, my planned continuation to Belgium was looking like more of a hassle that it was worth, so I came back down to Poitiers sooner that originally planned. But it was nice just to hang out. Though I did have a little adventure on the train back down south. It was a direct train from Brussels down all the way to Bordeaux [I picked it up in Lille, and could ride straight until it stopped in Poitiers. A good four or five hours later.], and, at least in my car, there weren’t that many people on it. I just chilled in my seat, read a bit, looked out the window.

Segue: In France, I have what is called a “Carte 12-25”, it’s a rail pass you can buy if you are between the ages of 12 and 25 and it gives you really good discounts on train tickets. You buy the ticket, get the discount, and then show your card with your ticket to the conductor on the train. You must present your Carte with the ticket if you had the reduction. End segue.

So, it’s been maybe three hours, nobody has come to check my ticket. This doesn’t worry me much. Sometimes you get checked, sometimes you don’t. Usually the TGVs check, but hey, who am I to judge. I had my ticket and my Carte. I didn’t care. Well. I’m sitting there, innocently biding time, when all of a sudden there are TWO conductors standing there. They had flanked me! I was in a window seat, with an empty seat between me, the aisle, and two very official looking conductors. They ask to see my ticket. I pass over the ticket and my Carte 12-25.

One of them looks at the ticket, then looks at my card. He goes, so you were born in ’88? I work out that he’s suspecting my Carte, or me, of being fake! So I try and correct him and say my correct year of birth, which is ’89. Now comes in a Lucy problem…I have…and have always had…trouble with the number 80 in French. I often switch it with 40. So I was trying to be careful and say 80, not 40…screw up and say 99. Cue French lesson:

80 in French is quatre-vingt. Literally translating to “four twenties”. 90 is “quatre-vingt-dix”…or “four twenties and a ten”. So the mistake of 89 and 90 is not actually that strange. Especially when I already have troubles with this number set. BUT…this conductor doesn’t know this… so he goes…

“ ’99 eh…that’s not good…” and I’m going in my head “ohgodohgodohgod” and say, “Non, deslolée, 89!” And he repeats, “that’s not good” and asks to see a piece of i.d. And now I’ve worked out that he really isn’t trusting me, and the other conductor is just standing there looking menacing. So I start to dig in my purse for my student id then, thank goodness, I have the brilliant idea to hand over my passport instead. Well, they take one look at the “look I’m not a French person” piece of id and everything changes! They get all nice, go “oh that’s why you made such a [numbskull] mistake, to which I reply yes I have trouble with that ha-ha, and we all have a nice chuckle, they compliment how nice the new US passports are, hand everything back, and melt away. Lawks.

So there I sit…taking in some deep breaths and trying to chill. I don’t know if it was because I didn’t say much, or because I have a much better accent than I thought, but they hadn’t known I was foreign until I handed over my passport. And thank goodness I did that instead of a French student ID or I probably would have been trying to answer even more questions…though that probably would have also made it clear that I was foreign and had number issues. But still. Not bad!

The rest of February is mostly a blur. Stuff happened, but nothing uber exciting. Classes run my life.

March:
Again, mostly dominated by classes. But my mom came and visited! Nine months of no mom, and finally she made it out here! We spent a weekend in Paris, then she chilled in Poitiers during the week, while I took midterms. Then we spent the weekend before she left in La Rochelle, a little coast town about two hours by train from Poitiers. La Rochelle is awesome. The streets are “arcaded” meaning have arches over them that protect from the rain I guess. I don’t really know why.

We got to see their Saturday market, which tops everything I’ve ever seen. It was huge and beautiful, and we literally stumbled onto it coming out of our hotel. Score one for the good guys! We bought local made cheese, bread, and fresh piaia with shrimp, mussels, and spicy sausage! The town itself is beautiful, right on the water. It was overcast and windy while we were there, and utterly gorgeous. Something about the ocean on a slightly stormy day is so special.

We also went to the Aquarium. Which is the biggest in France I believe. It. Is. So. Cool. SO COOL! I have a failed “video blog entry” that I had planned to post…but it was too rambly even for me. I may post a clip of me in rapture over fish…but it’s fairly ridiculous…so maybe no. But the fish were totally worth going into rapture over. And I got to see sharks, and sea turtles, and big fish, and little teensy fish, and eels, and rays, and awesome awesome creatures. Go. So awesome.

Yes. Then life continued in its whirlwind of crazy funtimes. Mostly…classes. Whee! Though it is important to note that the third week of March, Tuesday I believe, was National Strike day. So everybody went on strike. Oh yes. No joke. National Strike Day. I LOVE IT HERE! Also that I’m now the happy receiver of CAF, meaning I’m part of the socialist support system, and I love it! I get a monthly rent reduction because I’m a student living in France. Socialism is starting to win me over hard core.

I’ll seriously try and get another post up about what I’m taking and the hijinks of being a student in France. But only if you are interested! So…tell me if you are! No interest…then I don’t want to bore you all!
I’m currently on spring break. We get two weeks here. Yay. I go traveling for part of it, Germany and then a city in the north of France to see the famous tapestry of 1066. Oh so excited!

I hope all is well. And I do promise more soon! Happy April!

Oh! PS: I have a return date. I will be back in the “home land,” if all goes well and I don’t miss a connection due to any untoward circumstances (like customs), as of June 9^th, arriving at PDX around 9 in evening. Almost exactly a week less than a year after I flew out of the same airport.