I can't believe it has already been 22 days! The fact that it has passed so quickly already is just proof that this whole experience is going to go by so incredibly fast! It's ridiculous too that I haven't even started classes yet! But having a solid routine will be nice. I still have no idea what classes I am going to be taking, Bordeaux 3, the university for humanities starts February 1st, and they still haven't released the times for the classes. It just sucks for us California kids because we actually have a choice of classes, and therefore need to know the schedule, while all the French kids just show up on the first day and get their schedules. No worrying for them! I was also going to look in to classes at the university for foreigners, DEFLE, which starts this week, so we will see how that goes. I also have to email my french major adviser to see if I can get credit for all my classes! Hopefully it's not too difficult to get the credits.
But anyway, this past weekend was my first trip out of Bordeaux! Morgan, Candy, Collin, and I went to this beach town called Arcachon to visit "the GREAT dune of Pyla/Pilat" (there are some discrepancies on the spelling). We left Bordeaux bright and early by train at 7:30 am, and after an hour, arrived in Arcachon, where we waited for the bus that took us to the dune, adding another 30 minutes to the journey. The dune "grows" out of a forest, which made walking toward it very strange. It looks so out of place!
From the other side there is ocean, which at least matches in terms of geography, but it is definitely quite the anomoly. We hiked up the whole thing: 500m wide (from East to West) by 3km long (from North to South). Its height is 107 metres above sea level! It was really cool. I was glad that I was so impressed by it, because initially I was mostly confused by the idea; I decided to go because it was 10euro round trip for the day!
The forest
The Atlantic Ocean (on the west side)
After about 2 hours walking around, taking pictures, and finally hiking back down, we took the bus back to town and went to find some lunch. Our bus driver recommended this restaurant called "le Bouée" (the Buoy), which we decided was a local favorite; it was packed! The food was great, and we all tried some oysters, which weren't too bad in my opinion.We walked on the beach a little bit too, but by that time (4pm) it was starting to rain. It was great that we went so early in the morning, otherwise the weather would have made it pretty miserable. We were the first ones out there! It was a very successful first trip! Nice and low maintenance, cheap, and we didn't have to stay overnight anywhere. Totally successful!
But the day was not over! Morgan's host sister, Diane (pronounced: Deeahn), invited us to go to a concert at this hipster french club that night. The DJs playing were from LA, "Acid Girls," so obviously we had to go. We met up around 10 and went to her friend Edouard's house, which was filled with fairly drunk french men. Very hip drunk french men. This one guy David, was dressed like a greaser, was obsessed with 80s music, and insisted it was not even remotely comical; he was very serious about this, and ended up pretty much hating us since we refused to stop mocking it. This other one was named Clement and he was dressed like a Spanish Boy George, big hat on the back of his head, string bow on his neck and all. He was very drunk and very temperamental, but liked us for the most part. These two were the most interesting, the rest were just French, which is always funny. There was also Sebastian, who ended up getting too drunk and sleeping on a bench in the club for a while until he got kicked out at the end, when he then proceeded to eat an entire sandwich; like the French equivalent of a foot-long, but bigger. haahhaa.
Acid Girls was really great, definitely much more familiar than the music the house DJs were playing before they came on; It was all over the place, absolutely no continuity: it would go from like do-wop to crazy 60s stuff to weird 80s music, mostly impossible to dance to. The place was pretty small and by the end of the night was a cigarette smoke hot box. My eyes were going crazy. Luckily there was a courtyard outside.
So that was all very amusing, and everyone is so nice about learning the language; they always correct you when you say something wrong, or if there is better slang for it in French. So that is really helpful. They all want to speak English all the time though! And they love California. Since the place was so small and Diane kept telling everyone where we were from, it got around that we were from the States and all these people swarmed us! I was sitting there just being bombarded with questions from like 8 different people. It was crazy. Better than being shunned I guess. It's really strange when that happens; kind of overwhelming.
It ended up being the longest day ever. We had to go back to Edouard's house so that Diane could get her hat, but had to wait for Edouard for like 20 minutes, then we got stuck in the house for a while, and by like 4am we decided just to wait for the buses to start again at 5, but then leaving took so long that I didn't end up getting on a bus until like 6:30am! Getting back to your house at 7am sucks. I don't know how people do it. And so many people at the apartment were making themselves drinks at 6am, I have no idea what time anyone actually goes to bed! Thankfully we found a place to get french fries ("frites"), otherwise I don't know if I would have survived. What a great night.
Ok this has gone on far too long, the rest of the pictures from the sand dune are on my facebook!
