Madelyn's Blog

I’ve been safely nestled in America for a few days now and it feels great. Alex picked me up from the train station in Holland and I’ve been living the good life in Grand Haven for 2 days now…not sure if I’ll ever leave. Coast Guard Festival is this week and I’m very much looking forward to all the festivities. 🙂 Thanks for following my blog…I’ll try to get the final batch of pictures up this week!

Stomach is somewhat better today. I ate a real meal for the first time last night…though today I’ve stuck to fruit and plain pasta. Two more days and I will be home. It’s hot here today…glad to be keeping cool indoors and relaxing. I need to re-pack my suitcase tonight…tomorrow morning is going to be an early one. The train leaves at 6:30am. I’ve been catching up on some much-needed sleep the past few days. I’ve been really tired, I’m not sure if it’s from all the sleep I lost in Pau or being sick or both. Cahors has been very easy though, sleeping in and meeting friends and walking around.

Paris bound in the morning!

Warning: This post is whiny. I apologize in advance.

Yesterday afternoon I ate a piece of delicious steak. It was a little on the rare side for France’s standards, meaning in the US it was nearly raw. I didn’t think until after…”Hmm. Maybe I shouldn’t eat raw meat in a foreign country.” And so for the past two days I have been battling painful stomach cramps, a headache, fever and exhaustion all due to a small piece of under-cooked beef. At least I think that’s what it’s from. It could also stem from the fact that I haven’t slept more than 4 hours a night for the past month, or that I’m just generally worn down from travelling. I don’t know. What I do know is that in 4 days I will be on a plane bound for Chicago and until then, I am a vegetarian. Today I traveled to Amadeo’s family’s house in Cahors, about an hour from Toulouse. Their house is gorgeous…I have the 4th floor all to myself. (Thank you Amadeo for hauling my 50lb suitcase up 4 floors on a spiral staircase.) I wish I could enjoy Cahors more but I am just exhausted and to say I don’t feel well would be an understatement. Also there is a medium-sized spider living in my window and there is no one awake to dispose of it.

I am going to sleep now. Sigh. Tomorrow will be better.

Bonne nuit

I have arrived in Toulouse, France’s 4th largest city. I had a little trouble finding Amadeo at the train station, but all is well now. I met Amadeo’s friend, Laura, and we walked around Toulouse and had ice cream before dinner. The city is huge, and every time I turn a corner there is another giant, historic building. The town halls is enormous, and there’s a great old cathedral too. There’s a river along one side of the city, and Amadeo told me that during the plague the people of Toulouse segregated the sick to one side of the river and then destroyed the only bridge to protect the healthy. It’s hard to imagine living in a time like that, where half your town is deathly ill. It makes you wonder what lengths you would go to in order to protect yourself or your family.

On a brighter note, I was starving after the walking tour of Toulouse, so we ate dinner at a fantastic Italian restaurant. I had tortellini with tomato cream sauce, ham and mushrooms. Amadeo’s appetizer was hot goat cheese on toast with honey…DELICIOUS. I made a note of it in my phone so I won’t forget to try to make it when I get back home. I have quite the list of French foods, actually, to try to replicate at home. Good thing I have such a wonderful guinea pig, I mean boyfriend, to try them out on.

I am off to bed, can’t believe I’ll be home in 6 days!

Tonight is my last night in Pau! I finished up school today with my Haitian history exam which was way easier than most exams I’ve ever taken. (Organic Chemistry II, anyone?) I resisted the urge to nap after school and started watching a movie and packing…a grander endeavor than I imagined. I’m about 80% done, I just need to put together my backpack and purse in the morning. The luggage rules for the train are different than on an airplane…you still can’t put more than 50lbs in one bag but you can have up to 3 checked bags and 2 carry-ons at no additional charge. However, unless I plan on dumping off a bunch of stuff between here and Paris in a week, I need to make sure my belongings abide by plane rules. I’m going to see how far I can push the “personal item” definition…I’ll use a large re-usable shopping bag filled with souvenirs as my carry-on, then my backpack will become my personal item. I think I’ll shove my purse in the shopping bag until I get on the plane, and as for my pillow, they’re just going to have to deal with it. (I hope.) There were a lot of people on the way here with way more stuff than I had, so hopefully it won’t be a problem. Plus, I’m small, my pillow can sit on my lap and still take up less room than the average traveler. I’m a little nervous about traveling tomorrow, seeing as though I’ve never been on a train, but it can’t be any more confusing than transferring airports and changing planes mid-day in Paris. (Already conquered that.) I’ll leave Pau in the afternoon tomorrow, then stay with a friend in Toulouse for 5 or 6 days before heading to Paris to catch my plane. Amadeo has promised to be at the train station promptly at 4pm to “recover” me, and then I’m his responsibility until next Tuesday. We’re planning to take the train to Paris and stay the night with friends of his parents who have  an apartment there. This is a wonderful plan, since hotels in Paris start at about three hundred US dollars a night. Amadeo has assured me, “Tout se passera bien,” (Everything will be fine.) and I’m sure it will be. If not, I’m sure dad will activate the GPS on my phone and it won’t be more than half a day till I’m rescued by some crazy middle-aged man in camouflage pants running around Paris, shouting in English and causing a scene. Typical tourist. Reminds me of the time we went to NYC and couldn’t find the Empire State Building because someone wearing a fanny pack “who knew exactly where we were going” had the map upside down. A-hem. Dad.

I will update again tomorrow assuming I have WiFi in Toulouse. (It’s the 4th largest city in France…so I’m guessing yes.)

Au revoir, Pau!

(I think on my last few posts I got off on my day count…anyway, I checked and I have, in fact, been here for 26 days.)

Today was a relaxing day. I ate at a quaint little French restaurant without a menu. You paid a flat rate and the chef served you several courses of delicious authentic French food of his choosing. There was an onion/potato/briscuit soup, a couscous/tomato dish, pork with some kind of bean, cheese and bread, and fruit for desert. Everything was wonderful and the restaurant was filled with old French men (a sign of authentic French cuisine…not the watered-down touristy version.) I found out today that Pau has another, smaller chateau on a hill overlooking the whole city. It’s surrounded by an enormous park / nature reserve and there is a small vineyard on the hillside next to it. I was originally planning to go on the USAC excursion to the Pyrenees today, but decided not to in order to avoid hiking for 3 hours in the rain without proper hiking or rain gear. I would have liked to have seen the mountains, but I didn’t want to ruin the experience by being unprepared and miserable. My family is gone for the night, but this time I was prepared with sandwich supplies. It doesn’t hold a candle to the 4-course dinners I’m used to here, but I think I can handle it for one night. I miss cooking, and I miss my Gemignanis Italian Restaurant food at work. I can’t believe I’m leaving France in 10 days, the time has absolutely flown by and I really didn’t believe that it was going to. I think about how much I’ve learned, though, and it seems like I hardly spoke any French at all when I got here compared to how much I know now.

All in all it’s been a great month but I can’t wait to get home. I’m not usually very fond of being away from home for more than a day or two, but being with a family here has made it so much easier.

A demain

The weather in Pau has not been nice lately! This is not the south of France I have come to love. Yesterday I was tired and homesick and all I wanted to do was come home…but today I took a nice long nap and after dinner I realized how much I’m going to miss my family here. Augusta styled my hair today…she told me I looked like someone from The Little House on the Prairie. I’m amazed at how much American pop culture the rest of the world knows. 80% of the music on the radio here is American…and a lot of the TV shows are American shows dubbed in French. In other news, I bought my train ticket for Toulouse today. I leave Wednesday afternoon, and then I have a feeling my last week in France is going to fly by. I hope the weather is nice…I would like to spend another day or two at the beach before I go home. We’ll see though, if not I’m sure I’ll find something to keep me occupied. Toulouse is the 4th largest city in France, so I’m sure there is something going on. 🙂 I’m off to bed now, I am going to try to start sleeping more at night to avoid getting worn down and sick. The last thing I want is to return to the US ill!

A demain!

p.s. My bus driver today looked JUST like Josh Groban.

Today was a fun day. 🙂 I went to a chocolate/jam/sweets factory/museum/store with USAC, then made pasties for my family. It was a huge success! I made 10, 8 were eaten at dinner and Jean Baptiste has already reserved the other 2 for lunch tomorrow. I didn’t get to take my daily nap today, so although this post was awfully short I am off to bed. Only 4 more days of class! I promise to get another batch of pictures up before I leave Pau.

Bonne nuit tout le monde!

Today was another long Tuesday of class. Carolyn and I gave our presentation on former Haitian president Rene Preval, and we started another movie in my French class. It’s called Madame Irma, and it’s kind of like a French version of Mrs. Doubtfire. No subtitles on this one, but my listening skills are getting so much better from being immersed in French in class and at home. Tomorrow I’m going to a chocolate factory/museum/store with USAC. Can you say souvenirs? 🙂 This is our last full week of class, Saturday is our trip to the Pyrenees national park, and a week from today the session is over! I can’t believe how fast it’s gone. When I got here, 4 weeks seemed like an eternity and now I’m wondering where it all went. I’m excited to go see Amadeo and his family in Toulouse, and spend a day or two in Paris before I come home…but all in all I’m ready to come back. I am looking forward to some time at the beach in Grand Haven and sleeping on a normal schedule before going back to school.

I will take lots of pictures at the chocolate factory and put them up soon! (Since now I know how to post them!)

A bientot