We are experiencing technical difficulty...

I am not incredibly tech-savvy.

There, I said it. 

I've been madly uploading pictures for the past month, not knowing where they were going or how they were being stored. 

Last night, after a very full day in Lyon, I tried to upload a bunch of pictures, and then got a message that I have exceeded my 1GB storage limit for pictures. After a whole bunch of swearing and mucking about, I've found out where the pictures are being stored, and I think I've figured out how to shrink the file sizes of the ones that are on here. 

Unfortunately, this means that I have to go back and shrink all the pictures I've already posted on here. And that may muck with your ability to enlarge the pictures to see them better. I'm sorry. 

This also means that I'll be working on this most of today and tomorrow (there are about 300 pictures on here already), and that I won't be able to post anything new until I've got this storage situation under control. Merde. But I'll get it sorted out ASAP (Act Swiftly, Awesome Pachyderm!), and hopefully there'll be something new on here tomorrow afternoon. 

À bientôt!

The last few days

Got out yesterday to do a little adventuring with a new friend. We had some sun (for the first time in about a week), and I had no school. It was wonderful.

As tempted as we all are to look down at the sidewalk (and here, it's an especially good idea because people don't clean up after their dogs), I've seen the most amazing buildings when I look up. The brickwork and the soot-stained house beside it were pretty neat. 

Cars here are itty bitty! Mostly because the streets are so small, but also because gas here is crazy expensive and smaller cars use less fuel. I haven't seen a single pickup truck. Even the vans are tiny!

I love this poor little car. The stars on the roof and mirror are adorable. Dents on doors are just something that happens when people park on the street. I see so many cars parked on the sidewalk, it's nuts. The girl reflected in the window is my new friend Bronwyn from Clark University in the States. 

Mmm, nougat cake. This one was gingerbread flavour, and didn't last long between the two of us. 

We also bought designer chocolate. Don't worry, we walked for about 4 hours to work off all the sugar. 

This is an adorable gazebo at the Place Wilson. 

This is a gateway from Place Wilson to Place de la République. This will be stunning in spring. 

Someone's backyard. Awesome.

Place de la République. This is a monument to all those who died in WWI and WWII. The soldiers are looking up at Lady Peace. 

This photo turned out better than I had thought. This is the other side of the monument. The guy on the far left is kissing his family goodbye. 

This soldier represents the battle at La Marne, also called "the miracle of La Marne". It was a decisive victory against the Germans after a month of bloodshed during World War I. 

This fellow represents the Battle of Verdun (also WWI). The battle was technically a victory for the French against the Germans, but it was costly for both sides. 

You know what they say about statues with big feet...

Dijon is trying so hard to have spring! These persistent little flowers are everywhere. So cute!

So pretty. 

This is what we have instead of grass for the most part. There's so much moisture here that little plants are choking out the grass. 

Buds on trees. Spring is happening. 

A courtyard on our street. I walk past it every day, but yesterday I noticed it for the first time. Must have been the sunlight. 

Lava stones in a garden on my way home. Apparently there's a volcano not far from here, and a lot of gardens have volcanic rocks in them. 

Our garden beside the garage. It slopes steeply down to the main garden. In a few weeks, when things wake up here, I'll take some pictures from the garden. 

Coffee here is infuriatingly small. You may wonder, HOW SMALL IS IT?!?!

So small it makes my iPod look gigantic!! It takes 6-7 of these bad boys to wake me up in the morning. They're gone in 2 swallows. Grumble. In other news...

... I'm going to PARIS!!! The first weekend of April, right at the beginning of spring. I got my train tickets in the mail today. I'm so pumped. Here is my to-do list:

Cass has challenged me to do everything at once, and take a picture. Challenge accepted.

Frédéric and Mathilde have decided to try something new at the house: English Wednesdays. Every Wednesday night we'll speak English together. Frédéric is happy to have a chance to practice, but Mathilde is a little nervous. It's been 17 years since she's taken English in school, but I think it's cool that she's willing to try. So Wednesdays here are going to be supercool. I'm excited.

Big shoutouts today to my Cash Suite homies at ATB Financial. I love your emails and Facebook chats!
To Angela: CONGRATS!!! I love you oodles, and am so happy for you! Much love.
Jason: Not a day goes by that I don't think about you. Feel better. I love you more than songs can say.

Frédéric and Mathilde are away from Thursday to Sunday, so I'm all by me lonesome for the weekend. Saturday is a day trip to Lyon, so I have to get all my homework done before I can enjoy my weekend. It's almost bed time, so I'll sign off for now.

À bientôt!

Gastronomical exploits

Food here is exquisite. I just have to get that out there. France has a reputation for wonderful food and wine, and I'm happy to report that the rumours are true. This week has been particularly excellent.

This is the closest I've come to French poutine. This is for you, Shawn. It's called tartiflette. It's potatoes with a sauce made from onions, cream, and bacon, with an entire wheel of cheese cut in half and melted on top. Heaven. The salad is cabbage, with a vinaigrette I made myself. I'm getting to be a decent cook!

You can see the crust of the cheese that's melted over the potatoes. Hardly fatty at all. Ha. 

This is what was for dinner tonight. Stingray. I have to admit, this dish scared the hell out of me. I mean, look at it. And it smelled... wierd. But at the same time, it looks very interesting. I'll try anything once. 

This is what it looked like after it was cooked in a pot of water with onion, bay leaves, and various spices. Very delicate. 

I made a sauce using capers and cream to go over the ray. We ate it with fresh potatoes. I was shocked at how good it tasted. The meat was delicate and flaky, and tasted wonderful. The bones were strange and hollow, jointed like bamboo, and very flexible. 

This is the pie that our guests brought for dessert. The pastry was made by hand, and the filling is cherries, blackberries, and currants from the garden. A bit tart, but so good. 

This is our cat, Grisou. Frédéric and Mathilde rescued him about a year ago, and they figure that he's about two years old. He was found, months old, in the winter in the motor of a car. He's terrified of new people. It took me two weeks here to be able to get close enough to pet him. Now we're best friends. Here he's all tuckered out after a good play. Look at the smile on his adorable little face. 

Yes, I finally bought my basket. I got it at market yesterday morning. It's colourful and tough, and awesome. Right now, it's for laundry and market (not at the same time, I hope). I love it. Now I need a new project to work on. I've found the mustard store, and bought my basket. Any suggestions??

To all my friends back home, have an excellent Monday off, and a relaxing Reading Week (if that applies to you). Thanks for all the excellent Skype chats!

À bientôt!

Market Day!!

Got up obscenely early this morning to go to market. This wasn't too bad, though, because I got to chat with Jason before he went to bed. I love you, handsome man.

We actually got to market before a lot of the outside vendors had set up, but as I was wandering around there were more and more tables opening up.

Chairs for sale next to pansies and fruit. 

Just yesterday, all this space was a parking lot. 

Random clothes for sale. Mom would love this. 

Guys unloading mattresses for sale. Strange, but the prices were ok. For sketchy street sale mattresses. 

Beautiful little potted flowers. 

Wallpaper...

Kind of neat Arabic/costume/other clothing. 

Tables full of books. 

Jeans and shirts, children's clothing, etc. 

(Cheezy TV commercial announcer voice) Flowers, boots, mattresses... the Dijon market has it all! 

The best yogourt in the world. Seriously. The label on this one says myrtilles, or blueberry. I didn't have a spoon, so I drank a bit, then bent the lid into a kind of scoop to eat some more, and then licked the rest off my fingers. It was glorious, but not one of my prettier moments. 

This is me making bread last night under Mathilde's close watch. Nothing is measured.

I was worried that I would over/under mix it and ruin it. This is why I love my bread machine. No guessing. Put ingredients into pan, put pan in machine, push buttons, and wait for it to beep. Then enjoy tasty warm bread. Easy. But this was super cool. 

I put all the dough into 2 pans, and left them overnight to rise. Mathilde threw them into the oven yesterday morning before I got up. They were delicious. We ate one yesterday, and the other will probably be gone before the end of today. Mathilde says that now I can do it all by myself. I'm less confident, but I'll try. 

Thank goodness today is Friday. It's been a long week. I have Grammar this morning (yuck), and this afternoon I have 2 options. Literature and Politics. I'm going to try them both, but I'm guessing Politics probably won't be where I want to stay. We'll see. I may leave at the break (if there is one). 

We left the house before I could get any coffee into me, and I'm exhausted. I'm going to go find something to wake me up. 

À bientôt!

p.s. I just realized that I forgot to buy a basket today. Merde. Looks like I'm going back tomorrow. 

European vegetarianism

So school started this week.

I'm in level 5, or C-1. That's the highest level I can be in for the time I'm here. C-2 exists, but it's only for people who are here for more than one semester. So woo C-1! As it stands, I have 15 hours a week of necessary classes, and I have to choose 3 out of 8 options to follow. If I wanted to I could go to all of them, but that would be a lot of work. So I'm going to try them all, and decide what ones I want to do for the semester. It's kind of neat that it's only 4 a week, though, so the classes alternate. This week is Theatre, Contemporary Art History, Literature, and Politics. Next week will be Economics, Philosophy, French Song, and Contemporary History. Theatre was ok Monday, but it's the only class I have all day Monday. If I can find something that works better with my schedule, I'm going to go for it. Art History sucked. Bad. The prof lectured for an hour and a half, and showed us pictures from a book at the front of the class. No slides. He opened a book and pointed at pictures. It was not good.

In other news, there are chickens on campus.

These guys live in a huge glassed-in area in the middle of a bunch of offices in one of the buildings on campus. I was looking for a quiet place to study, and was shocked and wildly amused to find them. 

Which brings me to the topic of vegetarianism. Meat here, frankly, sucks. The chickens (maybe because they're organic, I don't know) are small and tough, and I don't even want to get started on the beef. Boeuf bourgignonne is alright, but I had a dish for lunch yesterday that had "beef" in it that looked like mushrooms and tasted like urine. It may have been goat. I also tried a burger today at a bakery (homemade bun, tomatoes, cabbage, onions, cheese, beef patty) that gave me food poisoning. The patty wasn't cooked enough, and I've been throwing up for about the last hour. Not cool. So I'm seriously contemplating taking up vegetarianism for the rest of my stay. 

After classes this morning, my friend Miriam and I went back to the Musée des Beaux-arts. We paid for the audio tour, and were there about 2 hours. The place was huge. 

A cool-looking staircase that I took to get from one area of the museum to another. 

This museum is in a building that used to be a royal palace of the Dukes of Burgundy. I bet there's a sweet dungeon downstairs, and other creepy things upstairs. 

This is a smaller version of a statue in one of the gardens here. Its bigger brother is a life-sized polar bear. When I get a chance to do the walking tour of the city, I'll take pictures of the big one. This little guy was pretty cute. 

The view out the window of the museum. We finally had sun today, after 2 days of rain. I can picture Disney characters frolicking through the streets. I could be (and probably am) mistaken, but I think the church in the back is Notre Dame de Dijon. 

A wooden sarcophagus in the Egyptian wing of the museum. This was closed the last time I came here. 

A gorgeous picture that used to be attached to a stone tablet. I don;t know how it got separated from the tablet, but I'm amazed it's in one piece. It's millimetres thick. 

A couple of stone sarcophagi. Very different styles, but both are incredibly detailed. 

A female burial mask. 

This is a smaller, earlier version of one of the scenes that appears on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. It shows Lady Victory leading the French soldiers. Apparently they're naked because they're brave. 

This is a bust of the guy who carved a lot of the images on the Arc de Triomphe. His name was François Rude, and I think he had a sweet beard. 

A painting of the room that the tombs of the Dukes of Burgundy originally rested in. The tombs themselves are currently in the States. This painting is hanging in the room where the Pleurants are being exhibited. 

A sculture room that I didn't see the first time I visited. The ceilings are incredible!

This is about the size of a dinner plate, and is on the ceiling where the lines intersect. You can see one in the picture above this one. Amazing detail. 

At this point, I was really tired of looking at statues. I was way more interested in the walls and ceilings than I was in the artwork. 

But this guy was really cool. 

I got colossally lost on my way home. At first, I was pretty worried, but I decided to suck it up and take in the scenery. Downtown is set up in a way that, if you walk enough, you either find the Chouette walking tour stones on the ground, or you find the Rue Darcy. It's the major street downtown. So I wandered, and took pictures of the beautiful day. The sunlight really makes the Burgundian roofs shine. 

A little courtyard just off the street. There were chickens in the coop on the right. These little green spaces in the middle of the noisy downtown area always take me by surprise. Charming.

The back of Notre Dame de Dijon. When I found this, I wasn't lost any more. This is the church that has the little stone owl on the wall that brings luck to tourists. I was relieved. 

Mom, this one is for you. This is a vendor on the street outside the market. There are a lot of stores along here that have tables that they pull out for market day, or any day the weather cooperates. Even though today wasn't a market day, this vendor was loving being outside. 

Another store with a street-side display. I promise to take more pictures of the street vendors on Friday when I go to market with Frédéric. 

This is what the market looks like when it's not Market day. Just as a point of reference for later this week. 

Another neat little alley. As I finished taking this picture, I looked up to see two very serious-looking police officers looking at me very seriously. They asked why I was taking a picture of an alley. I batted my eyes at them, smiled, pretended to not know what they were saying, and swiftly walked away. 

A sidewalk café and carousel in the middle of a public square. I definitely wasn't lost any more. The Rue Darcy is to the right of the carousel. 

From there, I hopped on a bus and found my way back to the house. All told, the museum took about 2 hours, and being lost took another 3. But it was time well spent. Today was wonderful, but it's time to hit the books. I'll post again after Market on Friday. With special pictures, just for Mom. :)

À bientôt!

p.s. Valentine's Day was rough. I was super homesick, and ate far more chocolate than I should have. The electronic pubic notice boards in the city displayed love notes from one person to another all day, and I felt terribly lonely. Even the ducks in the canal had dates. That's the first time I've ever been jealous of a duck. I miss my boys (Jason and Samson), my family, and my friends a lot. Thanks to everyone who sent thoughts and wishes of love. I do appreciate them. As of this very moment, there are 121 sleeps before I return home. I will do my best to get everything I can out of the days that are left here, but I want them to go by quickly. I need a steak and some Tim Hortons coffee. Badly.