First month in Tours.

Le chateau d'Amboise.
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Hello from Tours! I have been here for just over a month, and I guess it’s about time I shared some news. Tours is the largest city in the Loire valley, but it still feels pretty small. There is no metro system and I can walk pretty much anywhere that I would need to go. It is a beautiful city with parks and gardens (with swans) and old churches. It definitely has a very European feel to it. And it feels very different from Paris. At first it was actually pretty hard to adjust to being here. After spending an action-packed month in Paris, I had to learn how to slow down because Tours moves at a much slower pace. I am living with a host family- the Khefachas. They are so incredibly nice, and I feel like I was matched perfectly with them. The father works in Paris and is only home about once a week, and the older brother is away at a university in another town, so in the house it is just me, the mom (Veronique) and the fourteen year old daughter (Maude).

In Normandy.
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The house is very colorful- the bathrooms have different colored mosaic tiles and the living room is filled with bright colored furniture and artwork. It’s really pretty. I eat breakfast and dinner with the family- and the mom belongs to a local veggie cooperative and eats all organic, which is something that is important to me too. It has actually been great to see that you can eat delicious, gourmet French food in a sustainable way!

In terms of school… I am there ALL the time! I have an intensive language course five days a week for three hours, then I history class that meets three hours a week and a literature class that meets three hours a week. This is almost double the amount of hours that I take in an average Guilford semester, but it doesn’t really feel overwhelming. I am learning a lot. The school brought in the history teacher just for the Davidson students and the lit. class is taught by the Davidson professor who is leading the program. I like my teachers at the Institut de Touraine a lot too, and over all class has been a very good experience.

Mont St. Michel
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I have made some good friends on the Davidson program. A few weeks ago, I went with a group of friends to the city of Reims, in the Champagne region, which was great! We walked around the town, visited the cathedral (where all the kings of France were coronated), and went on a tour of the champagne caves owned by the Taittinger champagne company.

The weekend after that, I went to Paris to meet Anna (one of my closest friends from Guilford), who spent her fall break in France and visited her friends from her own semester abroad here. We met in Paris for the weekend, and I got to experience my very first French strike (of which there are so, so, so many). Between the metro workers being on strike, and it being the weekend of the Rugby world cup final match, things were extremely hectic, but of course very fun! It was great to be back in Paris, and I realized even more how much I love it there and how happy I feel when I am there. I got a chance to do some new things, and also revisit some of my favorite places. And of course, it was so great to see Anna. I have missed Guilford a lot while I have been here. I have realized all over again what a very special place it is because of the students and the teachers, and the whole atmosphere.

MSM again (actually all the pics except the last one are from Mont St Michel).
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The weekend after that was really great too because Ben came to visit me! Unfortunately, our visit became a little bit hectic due, once more, to the strikes in France. This time it was Air France on strike, which unfortunately was the airline that Ben was supposed to fly with. His flight was cancelled, and he got on another one but it arrived in Paris after the last train for Tours had already left. Fortunately, I was able to hop on the last train to Paris and so we were able to meet up that night. And, of course, I can’t get enough of Paris, so we spent one more night there, and had a great time walking around Montmartre and then visiting the Louvre. When we finally did make it back to Tours, we were able to visit the Chateau d’Amboise and also go wine tasting in Vouvray. This region of France is very well known for its white wines, and Ben has been working at a winery for about six months (in North Carolina), so it was really fun to be able to visit the wine caves here. Also, the tour guide spoke only French so I was able to put my translating skills to the test so I could explain to Ben everything that she had said.

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Last weekend was the French fall break and so the Davidson group took a long weekend trip to the coast. We went to Normandy to visit some World War II memorial sites, graveyards, battle sites and museums. It was really incredible, and it made a huge impact on me. I have learned about World War II all throughout my life, but never in a place where the people had experienced it. To be walking around somewhere where there was still physical evidence of the war was unlike anything I had experienced before. It was very intense. And it felt very different being an American in this area (as opposed to other areas of France), because of their appreciation and memory of our war efforts. They had American flags flying, and the American cemetery there was beautiful.

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We spent a night in St. Malo, a tiny little town completely surrounded by medieval walls, and on the other side of the walls was a beautiful oceanfront. The town is so old and small, and still has so many buildings from medieval times that our coach bus could not fit through the town gates and we had to park it on the outskirts of the town and then walk to our hotel. It was so gorgeous and so old; I have never seen anything like it before.

Then we went to Mont St. Michel which was an incredible place! It’s a very small town on a very steep mountain with a cathedral on the top of the mountain. The first constructions were done during the 8^th century. And the cathedral that we see there today dates back from the 11^th century. The cathedral was so amazing, and the view from the top was really beautiful. The mountain is surrounded by completely flat and sandy earth- actually the sand is similar to quick sand. After seeing the cathedral I had a lot of fun walking around on the sand because if you stand in one place for more than a couple of seconds you definitely begin to sink down into it! After our visit to Mont St. Michel we boarded the bus and headed back to Tours.

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Now everything is back to normal! There is a strike in Paris again early next week but I am not going anywhere that requires transportation beyond walking, so I won’t have to worry!

I hope everyone is doing well I miss you all! Thanks for reading my blog, and I will put more pictures up as well if I can (I don’t know exactly what the limit is on this website). I will write again soon. Take care!