The Updated Version

Hey Everyone! So I'm going to apologize un petit peu for being so lax with the bog stuff over the past month. I can't believe I let it go for a month. Anyhow, below you will find the entries from our break at the end of October. That was one of the most incredible weeks of my life. Since then we have had two weeks of class, nothing too major to report.
The grading system in France is really really out of wack. Everything is out of 20, and if you get a 15 out of 20 that doesn't directly convert into a percentage grade. The first grades I got back were 15/20, 16/20, and 17/20. I saw those numbers and got really really upset. I was like well, so much for my 4.0 this term. However, the top of the paper said "Tres Bon". My face immediately contorted with full out confusion, hand shot up in the air, and it was about all I could do not to blurt out "You french people really out of our F*ing minds!" It turns out that anything above an 15.5/20 is great. Like on the edge between A and A-, and a 20/20 is essentially unachievable. A mentality like that makes you really want to strive for perfection...NOT.
In other news, I haven't gotten arrested. I finally got a bike, and have been riding a lot like. Sunday rides are usually about 130 km (80 miles), and I will update on the rest of the stories at a later date. Im tired, thats all for tonight. Check out everything below, too. New news. A bien tot.

BARCELONA!

So after spending three full nights (including Halloween) in Barcelona, I can safely say I have a solid feel for this city. It is INSANE!!!!!!!! The Spanish have the most messed up daily routines on the face of the planet. We'll start with lunch (because we never actually woke up early enough for breakfast). Lunchtime in Barcelona is about 3 PM. Most restaurants that are "chic lunch places" are either closed or totally empty until about 2-3:30PM. After a long relaxing lunch, everyone goes and does their thing for a bit, and then at around 5-6 the city shuts down: Siesta time. Stores close, full restaurant staffs go home, and the only thing left open in the whole city (it feels like), is STARBUCKS! The city then rallies around 7-8 PM to get moving in the dinner direction. Dinner is about 10 PM. Mom and Dad, we should move to Spain, we'd fit in better (minus the Jewish and non-spanish speaking parts). After dinner, the clubs and bars open at about midnight, people go crazy, and start stumbling home at around 4:30-5 AM! You try doing that for three days and tell me how you feel.

I feel like garbage right now, but it hasn't stopped us from seeing the most incredible sights in the world. We saw Sagrada Familia, aka the Gaudi Cathedrale today. I have never been so awestruck by anything in my entire life. No joke. I spent three hours walking through the church (still being built, thats how big it is), trying to keep my jaw off the floor. Unreal.

We also saw the city from the highest possible points. Really cool, just undescribable scenary! Pictures below tell all (and the casualties of the trip, yes all of us).

Dames, Dams, and Graachts

I know it has been a really long time since I have written an entry. Sorry everyone, it has mostly been the same old, and there are only so many days with an obnoxious professor and thursday nights at O'Connell's that one can write about. Anyhow, I will tell you about the past few days.
I feel like nomad. Starting last Wednesday, I have been a world traveler. My parents arrived last Monday to Paris, and I went on Wednesday to see them. Thursday afternoon they came to Rennes and were there 'til Saturday. On Thursday night, my parents (Jon and Gloria) came to my house in Rennes to eat dinner with my host parents (Marguerite and Daniel). Everyone was nervous. I was the only one who was able to carry on a full conversation in both languages. Margeurite and Daniel spoke french, Jon and Gloria spoke english, and it worked. I had minimal translating to do, but when all was said and done, everyone understood eachother and we had a great dinner.
Continuing the nomadic-ness, on Saturday I left Rennes with my parents and we went to Brussels. Cool city. On the list of "must see" cities in Europe. Decent food, AMAZING BEER and cool sights. After two nights in Brussels, it was off to Amsterdam. Amsterdam is often referred to as the drug and sex capital of the world. No one tells you, however, that those two industries are the most highly regulated industries in all of Europe. I still have never smoked weed, but here its easy. There are security cameras on the corner of every street in the Red Light District, and if one were to talk a picture of the girls in windows, they will walk outside, chase you down and throw your camera in the canal. Don't mess. We also got to meet up with Chloe (she's studying there right now), and she showed us around which was great. Tomorrow, back to Brussels, and then onto Barcelona!!!!!!!

Big boys' FAO Schwartz

I have realized it has been about a week since I have blogged. Sorry. I was tired. I will try to be a little better about it this week. I will skip Thursday night, because nothing was going on and I fasted all day, so nothing major. Friday I had no class, so I went to the bank and got my REAL EUROPEAN DEBIT CARD. Believe it or not its different. Most places here have the real swipers for credit cards like we have back home. However, some places only have the things for Euro cards. Basically there is a special thing on the front of the card so you only have to insert it 1/3 in and then they hand the whole unit (its WIFI, pretty cool), and you punch in your pin number, and it prints your receipt then and there. One of the few efficient methods of doing a simple process that I have run into in Europe. (I feel like everything just gets done in the most difficult way possible.)
Anyhow, Saturday was awesome. 3 of the 4 Union guys pulled a day trip to Paris to go see the "Salon Mondiale Automibile" or the Paris Auto Show. It was incredible. There were over 500 brands of cars there. No, not 500 cars, 500 BRANDS of cars. It was everything from the new Corvette ZR-1, to the new Ferrari California, to the even newer electric and hydrogen cars. Really interesting stuff. We spent from 10 AM- 7:15 PM there. It was almost from the time it opened to the time it closed. It was so much fun. I felt like I was picking out which toy I wanted from the wall at FAO Schwartz, only the prices ranges from 10,000 euros- 800,000 euros. So exciting. Anyhow, test tomorrow, so that's all I have for tonight. A demain.

Normandy

Intensely breathtaking weekend. Omaha Beach, Point d'Hoc, Harbor at Arromanches, and much more. So many cool stories. I don't have the energy tonight. SO, all the pictures from the trip are now at http://gallery.me.com/skigabe. Should be good. There will be stories to go with the pictures tomorrow. Also, everyone who is reading, sign up as a follower please. I just want to know who's following and I can keep track of emails and stuff this way too. EVERYONE! A bientot.

Alright fine...I'll go out!

Sorry to everyone for not having blogged since Tuesday, but the weeks are starting to get fairly rhythmic here, so no one needs to hear about the day to day disasters in classes that appear be lacking the same sparkle and interesting material that classes at Union have. Regardless, there were a couple interesting events. First of all, there is a 28 year old Turkish woman in my class. She married a french dude, and the two of them along with their two friends live on a little farming compound a la Campagne (in the country). This girl is weird, OK? Like, she is the kind of weird that had the rolling back-pack up until the handle broke off of it in the middle of 11th grade. Then she might have even bought another one. Anyhow, we had this miniscule homework assignment. I think it took me about 15 minutes on the TGV home from Munich to actually do it. This girl spent 25 minutes arguing with the professor about how the assignment wasn't clear and blah blah blah, nobody cares, you didn't do your homework, get over it. I guess you could say I was pretty sympathetic towards her *sarcasm*.
The other thing that got me in classes this week was a more legitmate issue. Prof. Ndiaye had an afternoon discussion with us on Thursday to just talk about life. He mentioned to us that some of the professors had mentioned to him they had some weird experiences. For example at Union, every student goes to class puts a (silenced) cell phone, iPod, and a bottle of water, or a cup of coffee on the table/desk they are sitting at. That's just the way it is. Everybody walks around with a bottle of water. Not here. The french don't hydrate. Bottled water is pricey, and a Nalgene or a Sigg...what's that? So anyhow, we walk in to class with bottles of water and apparently it weirds out the Profs. The same thing with any kind of headcovering....ANY KIND. We have an Egyptian girl in on of my classes. She's Muslim and wears the typical Muslim Hijab (name for the headcovering I think), and the Professor FINDS IT WEIRD. It is kind of ridiculous. A baseball hat I can understand, but if you have a problem with it, come out and say it. We are all 20+ years old. We are adults. We can handle someone saying take off your hat. We're not going to run out of the room crying if we get spoken to. It's nuts.
In other news, last night was Thursday night...duh. O'Connell's is becoming the traditional starting point for our Thursday outings. I really want to get a job there, but I'm not so sure my visa will let me. It is kind of weird, but if I could work one night/week and make some extra dough, it might be good. Anyhow, we're chilling at the Pub and these 30ish French dudes roll up to the table and offer to buy the ladies a drink. We (as in those with Y chromosomes) somehow became invisible. So while these skeevy, smelly French dudes were crawling on the girls, I noticed a couple packs of BIIIIG guys in jerseys starting to come in. Somewhere in the midst of this inflow of dudes, the 30-somethings had offered to take the girls to a coke rave over the weekend (not CocaCola), and they ran away. By the time we were rid of them there were about 100 rugby players in O'Connell's. IT WAS A RUGBY DRINK UP! A REAL RUGBY DRINK UP! I was in rugger heaven. The game had been earlier that day and it was the Rennes Firefighters team v. The Welsh Firefighters team. In other words, more than half the people in O'Con's last night spoke some form of fluent English. And Welsh, now thats an intimidating language. Regardless, it was so much fun. We sang songs, we drank great beer, talked about rugby, and I made great buddies with the MBE/CEO of (from the research I have done), what may be one of the biggest brand management firms in Europe. Keeping to not mentioning names here, said new friend used to work for IBM marketing AND, he's a sailor and a rugger. The connections that you run into around the world are wild! Thats it for tonight. Normandy tomorrow. Bonne nuit.

Oktoberfest Chapter 2

After about an hour on the train from Augsburg to Munich, we got off and had no idea where the Oktoberfest grounds were. "FOLLOW THE LEDERHOESEN!" Someone from our group yelled those wide words and the 75% of Munich that speaks english looked at us and shook their heads. Great, we're now the laughing stock of at least three cities in Europe. Regardless, we did actually follow the lederhoesen for about six blocks and miraculously wound up at Munich's pearly gates. It was a sight beyond what any of us had ever possibly imagined. There were literally thousands of people doing the "bob-and-weave" trying to get into this Disney World of Bier. We walked in, and we were all in awe. Not only were there tall placards of bier halls all over the place, but there were roller coasters, ferris wheels, dizzy swings, the works. I thought to myself, what person...no...idiot after putting down a couple liters of real Oktoberfest (5.6% alcohol I think) lager, and eating schneitzl, would say, "Heidi, I shtink I'm gonna go and get on the svings das go circles 50 meters above the ground. Ya das vould be fun."
After spending what probably amounted to 30 minutes totally awestruck, we finally wandered over to the Hacker-Pschorr biergarten, found some seats, and ordered a few beers. So I have consumed every kind of beer from frat party garbage beer, to the hand made beers that you can only get in very selected places, and NOTHING compares to how this tasted. NOTHING. This was far and away what a beer made with real Bavarian hand picked hops is supposed to taste like. And they poured it out of an oak keg that was so big I couldn't fit my arms half-way around it. Oh, and we ordered a couple of real pretzels. They were about the width of my shoulders, no joke.
A while later we decided to leave the friends we made at the table we were sitting at and move to a different tent. I was happy with the beer we were drinking and the seats we had, so I didn't really want to move. Anyhow, we moved to the Lowenbrau tent. It was even more awesome there. It was a zoo. There were real, big German beer "wenches" (thats really what they're called) running around with ARMS full of beers. This one lady could carry 20 beers. Thats 20 liters and about 32 lbs of beer. I don't care who you are...that's awesome. Anyhow the Lowenbrau tent was great, except for the grabby italian guy that got himself hit by a Union girl. And, not only did he get a right hook from her, but he also got a big nasty mean beer "wench" to break a beer stein over his head. He was a hurtin' unit.
Now to skip to the major event of Oktoberfest. Now I have been very limited with the names I have mentioned in this blog, and to protect the idiocy of my wonderful fraternity brother, his name will also be omitted from this. We started to go our own ways as it got closer to sunset. We were all staying at the same hostel but some people wanted to stay later than others. I was cooked, so I left with the first group. We checked into this great hostel (HUGE ROOMS), and about two hours later, we got a phone call from the stragglers: "Have you guys seen E? We lost him about two hours ago." Long story short, "E" spent the night wandering around Augsburg trying to find the hostel. He finally found the hostel at 3 AM, passed out in the laudry basement until the housekeeping staff rolled in and told him to go find his friends. At about 7:30 AM, there is a knock on the door. Totally hungover, I tumbled out of bed to see who was adding to my brain burn, and it was E. I didn't know if I wanted to hit him or hug him. I hugged him, learned the story of his night and all was well.
At about 12:30 PM on Sunday we got on the DeutscheBahn (German TGV), and headed for France. Half-way home the driver popped up over the loudspeaker and said in three different languages (German, French, English), "Ladies and Gentlemen, just so everyone is aware, we have just accelerated to about 350 kmh, in our terms, that is 217 mph. Thats the fastest I've ever gone on land. It was awesome. C'est ca.