Madelyn's Blog

Today I was surprised to learn upon arriving to school that we had a mandatory scavenger hunt downtown after class. Apparently they told us this on the first day, in French. Lo and behold, I missed that nugget of information. Class today was interesting…we spent the first half doing a reading comprehension activity on the computer (I didn’t know Windows XP still existed…it does.) and the second half arguing about bears. After class we ate lunch and met at the Place Royale to start the jeu de piste. We were divided randomly into teams of 4 or 5 people, but luckily there are so many Americans that no matter how they divided us we knew someone in our group. It was 80+ degrees out, and not knowing about the scavenger hunt I wore dark jeans today. Bad choice. I’m from the UP…we can deal with 30-below windchill, but as soon as the thermometer tops 75 we are melting. By the end of the game I was hot and sweaty and irritated with the Portuguese girl who took over our team, so Kelsey, Heather, Jessica and I decided to get ice cream from Georgio to cheer up. Georgio is a French man with an ice cream truck who makes and sells his own ice cream and sorbets downtown. The word delicious does not even begin to describe the amazing mood-altering quality of these frozen treats. I had mango, Kelsey and Heather had raspberry, and Jessica had passion fruit. I could have eaten any of them for days. I came home after ice cream to an empty, quiet, cool house, and couldn’t think of anything but taking a nap. I slept for 2 hours and woke up bright-eyed and hungry, but my French mother was no where to be found. Jean Bernard and I sat on the couch and watched the news for a while, waiting for someone to come home and feed us. France has rendered me largely helpless…I have not cooked or done laundry or gone grocery shopping for anything other than chocolate since I’ve been here. Hopefully when I return to the states my people will take care of me until my domestic skills return. (cough Sam & Alex cough) It’s almost time for bed, we have to be at school at 8:20am tomorrow to leave for the pays Basque and the beach. Hopefully it’s a sunny and warm as today!

Au revoir!