Guerande salt fields

One more blog to wrap up Suzanne's visit! 

But before that, I've been wanting to write down a couple of the things I've learned about spoken French living here this year that surprised me, or that I felt I really should have known. For starters, the pronunciation of the word le shampooing. I always pronounced the -ing like they do with most words in French like le parking. Not so! A few other Americans and I were so surprised that it's pronounced like shampwa, kinda but more nasal-y. I told my class of all girls studying English how we had thought it was pronounced and they thought it was hilariously cute :) 

Also interesting were some phrases I hear allll the time like "tu m'étonnes" and "t'inquiète".  These would translate to something like "you shock me" and "worry yourself." But mean more or less the opposite it turns out. "I know right [you don't shock me]" and "don't worry" respectfully. Which is so funny, because they've dropped the ne and the pas which make verbs negative. Also funny since way back in the day the ne made verbs negative and other words like pas and jamais were added to emphasize what was being negative (ne pas originally meant "not a step" ne jamais meant not ever.) For whatever reason, the ne pas stuck to be used for all verbs. Today just a few of the other extra words like jamais remain. But in spoken French the ne is dropped and all you have is pas, which makes little sense considering the history. But in the above sentences you drop both ne and pas and your friendly foreigner is confused! Language is a funny thing.

Back to Zan's visit. We drove out towards the coast and stopped on the way when some ruins caught our eye- an advantage of driving vs. the train.

Passing by beautiful chateaux on the way makes for one nice car drive.

We stopped in the very quaint old town of Guérande on the way to the salt fields.

And here are the fields where the world famous Guérande salt is harvested.  We got a lot of rain that spring so everything was flooded.

 

From there we headed south to Nantes and stopped in the coastal town of Le Croisic for lunch. 

 

Back in the car for a stunning drive along la Côte Sauvage.  

We really weren't in any rush to get anywhere so we stopped once again, this time at Pornichet.  It's not as famous as neighboring La Baule, a Parisian resort town. But still very pretty and the main thing, I really wanted to see the ocean and walk in the sand. :)

And final destination before home: Nantes! Suzanne got to see the castle, even if it was dark. 

And we stopped in a funny bar where every room was decorated like a room in a house. We could see people sitting in a bath tube in the next room. We happened to be there in time for a concert by an R&B/Soul/Hip hop French singer named Audrey Lopes. She was sooo talented and sooo shocked when she learned we were American, I think because she sings only in English. She had everyone there wish Suzanne a happy birthday and got back to performing. It was such a great, random night!

 

Friday. One last day in Angers spent shopping till we drop and having a sunny lunch by the fountain. I'm smiling but bummed that the week flew by so quickly. 

Friday night. Making cheese labels.

 And Saturday morning. Off to Charles de Gaulle bright  dark and early. Hope you loved France Suzanne! :)

Au revoir Belle Beille

The campus I taught at is in an area of Angers called Belle Beille, kind of a hike from le centre, on the other side of la Maine. This semester I had class at 8 am on Thursdays. Once the sun started to rise earlier and earlier, it made for a stunning bike ride on Thursday mornings. In honor of this, here's a picture from my last morning commute for an 8 am at Belle Beille. I'll miss my these sunrise rides, and just biking to work in general. You miss out on traffic, being annoyed by idiotic drivers (ie drivers texting and swerving in the highway lanes) and probably more that I happily can't think of since it's been a while I've had to drive in rush hour traffic.

 
I like this very tree-y part by the Humanities campus.

Here's the view from our bureau. BUA is the bibliothèque universitaire, the school library. I always thought all the buildings around Angers had these little smoking porches (see the rails to ours?) to increase the productivity of French workers. Approximately everyone smokes, including my students.  However one of our lecturers was threatened to stop smoking from there, so I don't know if I've been wrong all along about these smoking porches. (I've got to show you though, there's so many office buildings that have multiple porches on every floor. They def aren't emergency exits.)

Now back to the test-grading... Bonne soirée à vous!

Parks

For shame! It's been too long since my last post. But let me explain, my laptop hasn't been charging lately. So I conserve the battery as much as possible, and when it's not charging I'm probably too grumpy about it to write a blog. But in my mind I have so many topics for blogs and catching up to do.

So, it is summer vacation! The teacher kind, where it starts with lots and lots of grading. This can be amusing when you're grading people writing in a second language. I cannot believe the school year is over. I have learned so much, and I survived. At the beginning I remember being so overwhelmed and lost by a lot of things. I learned to just take one step at a time and things usually turned out easier than I thought. It is really something else, teaching at the university here after teaching at UC the last couple years. My friend Dan, another lecturer, and I have really missed the organization and technology we grew so used to back home. But the students were great, and by the end I realized I really enjoyed my time in class teaching even if teaching English isn't my passion.

Summer means time for other things. Like planning trips (to Corsica with my friend Jenna!!), visiting Paris with family (Ahhh I can't wait) and JOB HUNTING. This now has become my main occupation. But not to fear, still finding time to enjoy France. This morning I went to Jardin des plantes. There were cuddling bunnies, chickens (reminded me of Nina Camic and I wondered who let them out in the morning) and, oh, the flowers. The combinations of colors is just so unexpected and so beautiful. I forgot to hit HDR on my phone for the first half, so they do even less justice than normal, not picking up as much color as with HDR.

Last week I went to Jardin de Maille where they have a picturesque cafe perfect for sunny afternoons. I got the best ice cream here with Samantha, my partner-in-(French desserts)-crime. Afterwards I strolled around and snapped a picture or two of the recently stunning flowers.

Then I headed back home, and there was a sweet old couple outside my apartment building. 

Ok, one more park picture from last week at Parc St Nicolas across the river. I passed through out of curiousity on my way home from school. Et voila, some parks in Angers!