Halloween in France

Julie writes the following about Halloween and October in France:

So apparently the French have recently begun to celebrate Halloween, but it is a touchy subject. The older generations do not like it at all because they consider it an "American" holiday, and they are not happy that it has started to seep into their society. But shops do decorate and the younger people love to celebrate it. The other weird thing is that since there is no Thanksgiving here, shops begin to decorate and promote Christmas by like the first week in October- that's even earlier than I am used to in the states! It will be interesting to see if the commercial side of the holiday is played up as much here as it is at home.
In other news, we had a great time in Paris with Rotary. I WILL post pictures soon; sorry for the delay. Mark won a magnun-sized bottle of champagne, we met a lot of other cool scholars, we got to visit the great "passages" de Paris, which we probably wouldn't have ever done on our own; the passages just aren't exactly big tourist attractions (the passages are basically different covered, sometimes indoor sometimes outdoor shops, famous streets, bookstores, etc.). This trip also allowed Mark and I to have our first experience staying in a hostel, as we opted to stay with the rest of the scholars rather than pay for our own hotel room. It wasn't as bad as some would imagine, but I will say that those places just seem to have a special smell...
Aside from Paris, my classes are still going well. I need to get started on more of my papers; they are not due until the week after Christmas break, but I hate to spend the holidays doing homework! I don't really like the idea of exams after the holidays; that is yet another difference in American and French education. My note de synthese course will end in 4 weeks; I received a 13 out of 20 for the first half (which I am VERY happy with; that course was grueling for me). The grading system is as follows: 10-12=assez bien, 13-15=bien, and 16-20= tres bien, and almost NO ONE receives the mention tres bien. My friend Soline, who is from Nantes, received a 12- for the first half of the class and she is really smart, so I'm sure the professor was grading me leniently.
This past weekend we went with a group called Autour du Monde to the beautiful Italian city in France called Clisson. It is called an "Italian" city because an Italian architect living in France rebuilt the city to look like Trivoli, Italy. We took a guided tour of the city, had a picnic on the castle grounds, and visited the park. Funny story- as we were learning about the aquaducts, 3 little French boys were sitting under the water way eating sandwiches. When they saw all of the students looking and taking pictures, they all 3 stood up, turned around, and mooned us!! Haha, it was classic. Then they jumped down and ran off. After our tour of the city, we visited the Musee vignoble nantais to learn about the process of making Muscadet wine, the specialty of this region. Then we headed out to a vineyard, and we were invited to take a tour of the vineyard, caves and home of a private winemaker. We had a wine tasting (six different types!), and he even let us taste wine in the process of fermenting, but not done, straight out of the vats in his cave. That night we stayed and had a pizza dinner in his cave, complete with more wine, crazy French entertainment, and lots of singing and games. The pizza was made in a wood-burning oven, by a friend of the winemaker. He kept making more and more pizza, at anyone's request; I bet he cooked over 50 pizzas throughout the course of the night. This experience is really indescribable. I still can't believe we actually got to visit this vineyard and spend the evening having dinner in a French winemaker's cave. We purchased some of the wine we tasted, and we got back to Nantes at about 11:30 Saturday evening. This evening was by far the most incredible experience we have had yet. Oh yes, and I must mention, Mark's team lost the wine quiz game (mine came in second), so they were forced to sing the first song. No one wanted to do it, so finally Mark stood up and sang the chorus to this old French folk song that I learned in Caen; he knew every word because I used to sing it all the time at home. It was quite entertaining!!
That's about all of our news so far! I will give about 3 speeches in the coming weeks, and it is almost time to submit my first report to Rotary- I can't believe how quickly time is going by here!

No bloggers yet

Okay, so nobody has posted any blogs on here, but the link works from the website...this must mean that I am not cool anymore (assuming that I was at a certain point in time). Maybe I'll give money away to bribe some people to post here, but until then I am only conversing with myself...what a nerd! Okay, so I'll say goodbye to myself and tell myself that I will see me later.

Mark

2nd Posting

Again...testing to see what new post does as compared to the first blog posting...test...test....test

First Blog

This is my test page to see if it actually works!

Mark