Castle Quest

The bus map has little castle icons on it, but no description of the castles. Ever since we moved here we have wanted to go see what they were like, so finally we bought an all day bus pass and went questing! Most of the castles are owned privately.. I just did a report on this as a matter of fact. Out of tth 6450 "Chateaux" enrolled as historical monuments in France 5550 are owned privately. Some of the owners get a stipend from the government to help maintain their chateau because they are considered historically and culturally significant. Anyway.. Here's what we saw.

This is the first one we saw. There is obviously someone living in it.. but it was still fun to see. Its right in the middle of a big park with a couple ponds surrounding it.

 There was a dad and his little boy there feeding bread to the ducks

This one won!

There were also these wierd.. turky vulture duck.. looking things. Kinda scary. 

A box elder bug that isnt! Just like the reverse ladybug, some things we think are familiar are actually not..

Castle #2. This one is now the club house/conference center/snack place of a golf course. The golf course is pretty big, but definitely not as pretty as Logan River.  

 This is the part of the golf course directly in front of the castle

 side view. I loved the stairs!! and hated those darn blue umberellas.

This was in the parking area behind the castle. I thought it was nice. 

 Self portraits are difficult.. you can almost see what we're trying to capture behind us.. just to the side of my head..

Attempt two.. success! This is a really old mill. Kinda cool..

The country side is beautiful. This is only like 3 blocks away from the mainstreet and about the same distance from the golf course. The picture doesnt do it justice.

This is about as well as you could see the third castle. It is also being used as a house, and there is a huge grove of trees and a walking park around it. You can only catch a small glimpse of the castle here and there. It was a pretty place to walk anyway.

Spring is here!

And as we cut through the running park on our way home we came across a huge peacock!

night

There's not a whole lot to say about these pictures.. We went to see the movie Rango at the theater downtown. We were quite excited to see it, and as chance would have it they were playing an english version at the theater, at 10pm! Opening night we went, bought our tickets and sat through a half hour of previews and adds. They show a ridiculous amount of adds before movies here. When the show finally started.. it was in French! I didnt mind so much, but felt like it would be a waste for Kennan to sit through it. I ran out and talked to the guy we had just bought our tickets from. He told me normally the english version would play at this time but they didnt have the English track ready yet. He ended up giving us a couple vouchers to come see it the next night. So on our way home we decided to finally get some of the pictures we've been wanting. Im sure we'll take some more night shots before we go, but here is a start!

 These are the pictures kennan has wanted to get. This bridge is SO pretty at night!

Vive La France!

I have been very excited to tell everyone about our fun experience yesterday! (Monday March 21)

Our ward has a family night get together for all the young adults and the missionaries in the ward every Monday. I usually can't go because of class, and Kennan doesn't usually like to go alone. During our vacation from school we were both able to attend. It was a lot of fun! Like always we had a little lesson and then played games and ate treats provided by the elderly missionary couple.I was feeling espcially talkative that night so I started chatting with the missionary couple. They were very nice to listen, and be patient with me while I struggled to communicate. We got on the topic of unique French foods and I told them I was interested in going to a nice traditional French restaurant but was too scared because Im such a picky eater.  I think the couple missionaries last name is Boureau, anyway, Sister Boureau suggested we have a French food tasting night. She said she would prepare some of the "strange" French foods and bring them to family night for everyone to try. I was so excited! A safe place to try scary foods where no one would judge me if I didn't like them! I still don't think she understands how much I appreciate that!

So, we decided we would have our tasting night on the 21 of March. I skipped class to be able to go, and it was well worth it!
The first "course" was "Huitres" (oysters).. fresh from the sea
The second "course" was Escargot
And the third "course" was "Cuisse de grenouille" (frog legs)
Here are the pics!

This was before we all started eating. The chef is the lady standing at the head of the table.

Side note: After she had prepared all of this to bring to the church and loaded most of it in their car she thought she'd run inside to see if they had forgotten anything.. As she took a step she didn't realize the handles of one of her bags had entangled her legs and she ended up falling. Her face was cut where her glasses had dug into her nose, and her knee and hand were scraped, her glasses were broken, and as scraped up as she was, but she was still so happy and kind all night. She wouldn't let me take a picture of her however because she had a bandaid on her face... "Next time", she said

Kennan and oyster number one!

Me and my oyster. I almost ate one of these in Samoa but chickened out. So this was my first one. In France they typically eat oysters only on Christmas or special holidays because they are kind of expensive. I hadn't realized before coming here how much French culture is influenced by the ocean and coast, however a large portion of France in bordered by the ocean and it does play a big part in their culture.

  

This is Marie Poznanski. Her dad has just been called to be the mission president here in France. Marie did a study abroad in the US and speaks English very well. During her study abroad she actually spent some time in Logan!

And.... GO!

Marie's reaction

I did it. YUCK. I will not be eating these again. They were quite litterally fresh from the sea. And whats more, they were still living! Poor thing.. It mostly tasted like I was eating a chunk of sea water. And then Im afraid the poor little guy tried to cling onto my stomach in an effort to escape...It took a few hours before my tummy felt normal again..

Kennan's plate. Kennan was not satisfied with just one. He finished off four. He was also enjoyed telling Marie stories of other crazy things he had eaten and watching her cringe.

Escargots! I had tried these before while on our cruise to Mexico, however those ones were not still in their shells. Sister Boureau told me you just buy these frozen and stick them in your oven! I don't mind eating escargot. I found them especially pleasant when I compared them to the other things we ate this night.

The grand finale. This is a dish full of frog's legs. They are psychologically challenging to eat. haha!

It was not what I thought it would be.. for some reason in my head when I pictured people eating frogs legs, I imagined them eating the complete leg.. bones and all. I was pleased to learn that you dont actually eat them that way at all. You just eat them off the bone like you would eat chicken off the bone. They tasted more like fish than anything. Sister Boureau actually prepared these ones.. dipped them in butter and then flour and other things and then baked them.  

I feel that this picture will help show why I said that it was psychologically challenging to eat these.. their little feet and spines are what got me..

poor little froggies.

It was a very fun night. We also played pictionary in French/English. Often there are more Americans there than French people. There are two other exchange students in our ward, one from the US and one from Mexico. They go to the one of the other universities in town.

Anyway, that was our fun "Taste of France" night. I brought Sister Boureau flowers to try and show her how much I appreciated her doing this for me. Im sure glad we've been able to meed such nice people here!  

I also want to tell you a funny story from today! One of my professors is the man that arranges the study abroad programs here at the university. After class today he came up to me and asked which university I was from. I told him Utah State and he smiled and said, "I've got two professors from Utah State down in the lobby waiting to meet with me, would you like to come meet them?" Of course I did! They were two ladies from the Huntsman College of Business. It was fun to chat witht them. They are headed home tomorrow and I wished I had something for them to take with them to deliver to my family, but I sure didnt have anything cool on me :(. It was kind of funny to randomly run into teachers from the university here in Angers.

Well, I think those are all of my new stories! I was thinking about grandpa Cahoon during our food tasting night! I know he likes hearing about foods from different places and I just thought he would have loved to be there!  

A la prochain!

The Running Park

The Parc Saint-Nicolas

This is the park I run to when I get up the motivation to run in the mornings. It is a spectacular place. I have heard that to make the full loop around the water you would have to continue along this trail for 14 kilometers. We have only explored a couple offshoots of the main trail, but there are a lot, and it is so beautiful!

Along the trail there are all sorts of fun things. There is this little "cave"...

..and a little waterfall..

..a playground..

..and some animals. It reminds me of Willow Park in Logan. They dont really have any spectacular animals, bt its fun to walk around and see them.

The flash made this goat look evil, but he's my favorite goat. :)

This is double chin pig. The pigs at the park are all impressively large..

The Bambis! As we were taking pictures of these guys, a little French girl ran up yelling to here dad," Papa! Les Bamabis!" It was cute.

Thats a mountain goat up there. This one liked to climb.

This one had long hair.. he seemed to be the boss. 

There is a little pond in the middle, you have to walk down the stairs to get to it. Its very pretty. Theres a couple little waterfalls running into it. This is where the swan lives.

...The angry swan. He's pretty grumpy and not very grateful! We took him some bread once, and he wouldn't eat it.. but he does like to try and bite your shoes, and hands, and the wooden fence.

These pictures are from a Saturday when we went for a walk. It was a very nice day. When we got to the cave, the clouds started rolling in and we started to worry it would rain. We had our umbrella so we still werent in a hurry to leave. When it started to rain we decided we better get home, and by the time we got to the exit of the park it started pouring, then started hailing, and then came the thunder and lightening. It was wild! Even with our umbrella we got soaked. It took us about 15 minutes to get home and by the time we reached our house the rain had stopped and the sun was coming out again. I guess that is normal for this time of year!

Things are still going well here. School is getting more intensive as the semester is progressing. Im starting to think that taking 4 translation classes wasn't the greatest idea! Its been fun though. We had our winter vacation but we just stayed home. We are saving up to buy a France rail pass here in the next couple of months.

Kennan has been writing a lot! He has lots of good ideas for stories and he's been happy to have the time to start writing them down and developing them into stories. He isi picking up some French and the people in the ward are always excited to hear how he is progressing.

A few saturdays ago we went to the indoor ice rink, "patinoire" in French. It was pretty fun. We also visited a exposition at the Musee de Beaux Arts called Vu-Pas-Vu (Seen not seen). The artist had used lights and glass and other materials and arranged them so that just looking at them it looked like a pile of broken glass, or random things but when the light shown on it, it created a reflection on the wall behind it. It was pretty impressive.  

Us infront of the patinoire

I was shutting our shutters the other day and saw a reverse lady bug. I thought it was cool and wanted to share it with everyone. :) We have also seen some bugs that look like box elder bugs but they have a different design on their wings.

Well, thats all for now!

The Latest

Lets see.. Whats new..
I got a bike! Im pretty sure everyone I know here is sick of hearing about it.. but its so cool!  

 Now it takes me only 15-20 minutes to get to school. (instead of 40) I am quite out of shape.. but I hope to be able to take the hills a little faster with time.  The first few minutes after riding it I have to be careful going down stairs... my legs dont quite hold up like I think they will and my legs have almost collapsed a few times! It always makes me laugh.. and shake my head.

We have also learned that stocking up on groceries is not as fun when you have to carry it a quarter of a mile home with you.  We decided we would finally start our grocery budget and wanted to stock up on a few things before we did.. this trip we unwisely got 6 1.5 L of coke, 6 1 L milks, 1 1L orange soda, a 16 pack of yogurt (the best yogurt we have ever had!) ice cream, cereal, bread, eggs.. and some other stuff. We had only brought two grocery bags with us, and while in line we debated whether we should buy another one. We decided not to and we ended up carrying quite a bit of this home stacked in our arms. And it was HEAVY! Even though we were each carrying one handle of our grocery bag we had to keep stopping to put the bag down. We were pretty sure we would NEVER make it home. Now we are more thoughtful of the walk home when we buy our groceries!

 Babybel cheese comes with a thick red wax covering it.  After the cheese is gone you can mold the wax into whatever you want! I am not very good at it, but Kennan is pretty good at making little models with it! We are getting quite a collection. I only have picture of the first two, but I'll post more as he makes them.

 Heres a couple views of the first one he made.. a rose. :)

 Kennan is loving life.  He is in the process of writing a novel. Its quite an interesting story! He hopes to have the first draft done by the time we come home. He is on chapter 5 right now.  He is taking some French classes at the Institut Municipal in town. He is picking it up pretty well! He has gotten a couple new DS games since we've been here and he sure likes to play them! 

 
You can see our litte heater in the background of this picture.  Its a little electric one that does its best.. but our ceiling is about 14 feet high and there is no way to get the heat to go anywhere but up. On cold days its impossible to get our house warm, but luckily days that cold are rare. Normally we stay pretty warm.

At my school library they have a whole big section of movies that I can check out for free. I had had a song from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers in my head for a week straight and thought I'd see if they happened to have a copy.  They did!! In a French college library. I had to laugh. Kennan had never seen it, but he enjoyed it.  I think its a great one. It always makes me laugh.

I had my first test in a translation class on Wednesday... I think I might have failed. I didnt realize that is was a real, relevant test so I had done homework for the next section instead of studying what we had already done. I decided not to worry about it, because I was sure there would be a few others to average out my score. After the test, I talked to a British girl who is in my class and found out that in fact, it was one of two tests that make up our final grade... Oops.

Other than that school is going well.. Im starting to get a little better at translating. There are still some awkward moments trying to talk to people, but I'm still hopeful that that will get better.

I think I misunderstood a conversation I had in church on Sunday with a great family who had mentioned it would be fun if we'd come to dinner this week. I got a message from them tonight on our answering machine asking if we were coming to dinner tonight.. I know we talked about it, but didnt think we had made any concrete plans. We had been out grocery shopping and running errands so we didnt get his message until 11pm.. Oh dear. I guess we'll find out tomorrow if we accidentally blew off a nice French dinner. Im just feeling ill about it.

Well, thats the latest from us! Hope everyone is doing well! Its been nice to talk to some of you on the phone!

Kiley and Kennan

Tears in the morning, but success overall

I am 'following' a class called Techniques d'Expression Français. Basically we work as groups to research an approved topic and then present it to the class. 

I had met with my group (2 French girls and me) a couple times this week to prepare our presentation that we were to give today. Each time we met I left feeling like they thought I was a little slow.. and that they weren't sure how much I'd really be able to contribute. I had typed up most of what I was going to say and they seemed to approve.

Today I got to campus at 11:30 to go over what I was going to say and try and print off the couple pages so I could have a guide if I got lost during my speech. 

By the time I was ready to print it was 12h10. I asked the librarians if there was a place on campus to print, because the computers in the library aren't hooked up to printers. I was in luck and just down the hall there is a copy room with one computer and 3 copy machines. I plugged in my USB drive and pushed print. The big copy machine made a noise but didn't print. I noticed on the side of the beast there was a place to insert a card. It didnt say what kind of card, so after a couple of failed attempts at printing I decided my lack of card must be the problem. I tried my student card. No go. In desperation I tried my bank card.. My heart stopped as the card taker made a horrible noise. I was sure I'd never see my shiney French bancard again! Luckily it was able to make its way out. I tried to coax the machine to do what I wished it to, but to no avail. A couple other students came in and hurried through the process. One was buying something on the back wall.. a card! When she was done I went to buy one. The machine only took change. Just like every other machine here.And like every other time I try to purchase something from one of these dreaded machines I only had paper money.  Luckily I found 20 centimes in my wallet! The minimum purchase was 2 euro. 

Luckily there is a cafeteria next to the library! I went in and asked the lady taking money if she could give me change. No, she said they couldn't possibly do that, and she doesn't know where on campus they would! Tears of frustration were threatening to pour out at this point. Things like printing 2 pages of notes should not be an impossible feat at a university campus!

In desperation I ran up to the study abroad advisors office. It consists of 2 nice ladies who are here to take care of all of us foreigners running around campus lost and confused. I asked them for change but they didnt have any either. But! They would let me use their printer! 

We pulled up the file and.. the computer didn't have the write program to open it. Apparently the computers in the library use some random word processor that isn't used anywhere else on earth. 

Its now 12h30. Classes here start between 5 and 10 minutes late so I wasn't too worried. I hoped that I would be able to pull up my file on one of my group members' computers.  Luckily I was able to and we got through our presentation. 

After class the teacher gave us some feedback. I was told by him and my 2 group memebers that I don't need to speak so fast! Fluent French speakers! Telling me that I speak to fast?! I took it as a compliment and slowed down my speech. It is easier to speak when you dont feel like it all has to come out at once. 

After class I found out that my next class was cancelled so I tagged along with my group memebers and their friends. (this is not something Im used to doing. Look at me attempting to be social and speak French!)

We eneded up at the library for the next hour. I understood at least 75% of what was said and even helped one of my new friends with some of her english homework.

Im half exhausted and only through one of 4 classes today but I just wanted to write about my silly struggles and my great successes of today while I am still caught up in the moment. 

Thus far in my experience, even when I am so upset im crying, I cant really feel bad for myself. I am here in France living my dream and not failing completely. :) 

Life Is Good.