Coucou tout le monde!

So apparently we were the only family that turned our bikes into icecream machines?

The start of the Tour de France

The end of the Tour de France at McDonalds.

Train station in Tours

The Great Hall at Chenoceau

The gardens of Chenoceau

Chateau at Blois

The horse with the inaccurate legs. So obvious right?

A very exasperated gargoyle.

I've realized that all I do at the chateaus we visit is take pictures of beds. A personal favorite.

Who knew child labor could be so darn cute?!

One of the many gems at the chocolaterie museum

Putting my camp counselor skills to work

Well I've officially kept my promise of not writing frequently so you're welcome. The temperature has actually reached double digits here so I have been in a consistent good mood since my return from les vacances de fevrier, in which I visited Venice (for Carnivale), Berlin, and Prague. I know, it's a rough life I lead.

Life in Tours is wonderful. Before vacation we took (attempted) a bike Tour to Villandry, a chateau about 20km from Tours. The weather was beautiful and it seemed like the perfect little velo ride, UNTIL we got lost approximately 15 times and just so 'happened' upon a McDonalds. Being the dedicated Americans that we are, a few of us decided it was the best course of action to enjoy a lovely meal there, rather than journey on to a famous chateau. I think you will all agree with our decision. Some other noteworthy events before my departure was our second excursion with the Bucknell group where we visited chateau Chenoceau and Blois, as well as a visit to a Max Vauche chocolaterie. The chateaus were beautiful to say the least and I finally got to see a real castle with a moat at Chenoceau. Some fun facts from this excursion was that the artist who created the horse sculpture shown below committed suicide after this was displayed because the legs were in the wrong position. Naturally we all noticed how HORRIBLY off the legs were first thing and understood his decision. The chocolaterie was bizarre to say the least. They had a mini 'museum' if you will when you first entered that showed a little bit about how the chocolate was made at their plantation in Sao Tome. The previous semester I had to do a report on the labor exploitation and human trafficking in the cocoa industry, so naturally I came ready to make some arguments. I was a little surprised to find that they did all of this for me during their guided tour. The museum consisted of sculptures of small children wearing tattered clothes picking cocoa. We were then ushered into a room where we watched a 20 minute documentary on the owners of the plantation and their visit to their plantation in Sao Tome, in which they brought their workers used clothing. The movie also featured some very amusing English subtitles, one of which translated the word chocolate to greed. Fortunately, at the end of the movie they gave you some delicious chocolate mousse to make you forget all of the sweat and tears that went into making it before you ended at the gift shop, and by this time exploitation was the last thing on your mind. It was a very well organized tour to say the least.

The most important thing that occured before my departure was the meeting of the nicest man in all of Tours, dare I say all of France. For our program, we had to do a module of integration project where we basically had to pick some aspect of Tours to research that required us to interview/ talk to people around Tours. Naturally this was no one's idea of a good time, seeing as the people of France are not the biggest fans of Americans (although there are apparently a lot of Polish and Italian immigrants in France so I'm not sure why I don't fit right in), but my group had chosen dessert so there really couldn't be that much of a downside. Our first stop was a briocherie that, as we learned, is internationally famous. At one point the owner had 5 stores in NYC and his recipe is still used at the Waldrof Astoria. Anyhoo, the store has been in one family for 4 generations, and the current owner is wonderful. He was so excited to talk to us and for the first time we felt like someone in Tours might actually like us! He also gave us a free loaf of brioche and mini nutella brioches, which also helped his case. The fact that he smoked the entire time as he was baking really made the experience feel more authentic as well. Needless to say since this visit I have come to frequent his magasin, which is really helping me get into the French fitness level.

One of the things I have noticed after spending almost two months in France, and Europe in general, is there is a much more concerted effort to save energy here. I noticed it first with my host family who takes 5 second showers (which is fine with me seeing as those are not my favorite things to do) and how they ALWAYS turn the light and TV off when they leave the room. Even if they're coming back 10 minutes later. In public places all they have is air dryers for your hands and most lights are automatic/dual purpose with heat bulbs. It's just a much more conscious mindset I feel in terms of waste than I have ever seen back in the good ol' U.S. of A so it's been nice to jump on their energy efficient bandwagon.

This week we have the DELF exam on Friday, which is basically like an SAT but measures your profficiency in French. It's just a concrete way of saying your French competency and if you d well, it means you can go to grad school in France, or at French speaking universities which is pretty cool.