Laura's travels

Spring Break in Review

2007-05-07T07:47:00.000-07:00

Whoops! I have been a bit busy and I realize I left you all hanging with a teaser about my trip to Italy. I was informed that you have been looking at my last post for over a month now and you are more than jealous. So I had better put up something else.

So here are some pictures of my Italy trip. Since it is taking a ridiculously long time to put up pictures again, you only get a small sampling of the literally hundreds of pictures that I took.

First stop was Milan, which most of the se pictures are going to be from because I started at the beginning and quickly got annoyed and ran out of time. This is in front of The Victor Emanuel II Galleries which is apparently where everyone got the idea for the indoor mall. It now houses fancy designer stores. If you were to turn to the right you would see the Duomo, a big fancy church.

This is the view off the top of the Doumo. It is totally worth it to pay the 4€ wand walk to the top to see the incredible view.

We later met some Italian guys who were really nice. We ate pizza with them and then they showed us around a bit. Here we are in front of the soccer stadium. It was the largest sports stadium I have ever seen.

These two pictures are of inside the Doumo .

After Milan we headed over to Rome complete with crumbling riuns and everything.

We had one hostel in town for a couple days and another at the beach. So here we are at the beach in Ostia.

This is the view out the window of our hostel. It was pretty sweet. Yes, that is the ocean there in the background. Sorry it's sideways, the computer and I don't seem to be getting along.

After the beach we jetted over to Venice. We had a bit of trouble getting there, but after that and a long nap, things were great.

After venice we went to Pisa where I met Shereen, Lian and Itay. We all toured around Pisa and searched for the leaning tower, which was a lot harder than you would think.

We went from Pisa to Lucca where we found the house of Itay's parents. We also went to a restaurant in the middle of nowhere that was delicious. It apparently specilized in mushrooms and I had a pizza that arrived covered in crazy looking mushrooms. It was a bit scary but good. Which is really a big step for all those who know my previous aversions to all things mushroom-y.

It the next couple of days we went to a cave and went hiking. The weather was amazing!
I know that if I don't post this right now, I will jsut save it and it will never get posted, so that is all for now, but look for more soon and I will try to keep you up to date on what has been happening lately.

Also, don't worry about and news you hear about rioting french people. They get cranky about things and like to go into the street and yell about it.

Ciao!

2007-04-01T04:59:00.000-07:00

I am on spring break in italy! jealous?

I don't have much time because I am at an internet cafe (we had to book some online tickets and stuff).
Right now I am in Milan- we tried to go see DaVinci's Last Supper but apparently we had to have made reservations a couple weeks in advance. So we couldn't. But we did go to palm sunday mass at the Doumo which was really interesting.

Je suis encore vivante!

2007-03-19T09:09:00.000-07:00

I know my last post was a review of feburary and it is now mid march, but really the lack of frequent posts should be taken as a good sign because it means I am busy doing things and not wasting away in front of the computer, right? Ok, I will work on posting more. In the meantime here are photos from the past month or so.

This is on the beach at St. Malo on our Mont St Michel trip Feb. 10th. I practically had to drag everyone to the beach for some rock climbing... But look how much fun they're having!
left to right : Lian, Shereen, Sam, me, Meghan.

This is us in front of Mont St Michele, unfortunately I can't keep my eyes open in many of the pictures from this trip. In my defense, it was really windy.

Here we have Meghan and I on the walk up to the abbey part of Mont St Michel. The walk was, of course, lined with tourist traps, they certainly are cute though.

We have now jumped ahead in time to Saturday March 17 (aka St. Patrick's Day). My host family went skiing and said I could have some friends over, so here we are eating a classy dinner. Notice our meager attempts to wear green. Also notice that Sam looks huge because he is closer to the camera. Left : Sam, Celeste, me, Meghan, Katie, Shereen, Lian.

After that we went to a less classy but equally fun street party in front of the Irish Pub.

Moving backwards in time We now arrive at my birthday. Here Jeanne-Marie, my host mom, is bringing out the fruit tarte while my fiends are singing.

Since my camera broke I bought a new one. This is me taking a picture of it in the mirror.

Time travel to Friday March 16. It was georgeous weather so Katie and I took the ferry boat across the Loire to the cute little town there.

Moving back in time a couple of weeks, Katie and I went to a soccer game. Nantes vs Nancy. Nantes won 2-1. It is really funny because everyone wears these scarves (so of course we had to get our own). Ok everyone except that guy in the background.

This is the stadium. Nantes is yellow. The stadium is close enough to my house that we can hear the crowd celebrate.

Monday the 11th I walked along the river to go to my class at the university. For some reason I am having a boat fixation lately. Maybe the Puget Sound is calling me.

More boats! and scenic downton Nantes.

Well I hope all that time travel wasn't too difficult for you. Also if all goes well there will be more pictures this week. Coming attractions: Normandy, Paris, Nantes.

Feb in review

2007-03-01T08:20:00.000-08:00

I realize that my birthday post stoped just before my birthday with nothing to follow. Sorry! This is going to be a quick summary because I don't have much time.

FEB 11th - Birthday. I went and walked around the Chateau in Nantes. It had been closed for renovations for the past 12 years so there was a grand opening. After that I met a few friends in town and brought them back to my host family's house where we had champagne and the most beautiful fruit tart I have ever seen. We went out to dinner in town and I ate kangaroo! haha but seriously I did.

FEB 16th - 21st I head to Paris for a few days because we have winter vacation and my friend Chelsea is studying there. Paris was a lot of fun. It involved alot of walking, art, crepes, crypts, museums, and even a hot air balloon ride! Unfortunately, my camera got a little to into the Paris history and had its own personal revolution or strike or something. Point being, it wount take anymore pictures. I had my parents call sony (which didn't help). I sent a email to sony (which didn't help). I even took it to the camera repair store ( The monseiur said he dosen't actually repair cameras there he would send it somewhere which would take a month and another month to fix it). So I still don't know what to do about that. Let me know if you all have suggestions.

FEB 23rd - FEB 25th Chelsea came down to Nantes for a couple days. It was great to play tour guide! There was quite a full house that weekend because the grand kids and Emily the past IES student stayed there too.

FEB 26th - MAR 1st This week has been pretty uneventful. I have gotten a few really bad nights sleep, I keep waking up at night and then not waking up to my alarm. It, plus the camera fiasco, has made me rather cranky all week. This weekend we have an overnight trip to Normandy, which should be really interesting.

Mon Anniversaire!

2007-02-13T01:08:00.000-08:00

So, as many of you know my birthday was on sunday! Here is a summary of events
Friday- IES visit to musee Dorbree which is literally a block from the IES center where I take classes. It was pretty cool, favorite part: pair of white porcaline dogs. And Jewlery.

faceted amber according to the description- much prettier in reality than in this picture.

Saturday- We went on a day trip to Mont St Michel and St Malo. I had a great time! We had to meet at 7h45 and my host parents said they would drive me. So I was hanging out in the living room in the morning ready to go. We don't end up leaving until 7h39. Alain was driving me and he took a very roundabout way which he claimed was faster. Everything was going alright until we got to a circle that they are doing construction on. End result, we were driving on the sidewalk, avoiding trees and outdoor cafes when Shereen called asking if I was coming because the bus was leaving. When I finally ran on the bus, the kids and family of M deBerranger (the director) were in the front so I thought that I had gotten on the wrong bus and almost turned around and got off! On the bus ride there the weather was georgeous- blue sky and sun. There was also a herd of sheep crossing the road that we had to wait for. By the time we got to Mont St Michel it had clouded up.
We walked around and toured Mont St Michel. It was very pretty with a history back to the 11th century. Unfortunately about two rooms into our tour my camera died. So I will have to get pictures from others.

A few of my friends and I ate at a little creperie where I had my first french creme brulee which was delicious. After lunch we had to race back to the bus so we could go to St Malo.

Shereen, me, Meghan, and Lian in fron of the Mont St Michel

The walk up was lined with cute stores and cafes.

This was the location of a pretty garden and also the death of my camera. I will put up other pictures after I get them from someone.

By the time we got to St Malo it was pouring. It is a walled city on the beach. We walked all the way around the ramparts on top of the walls before going to the beach and climbing on the rocks. I now own a small collection of french seashells. I also displayed my knowledge of shore wildlife by explaining the difference between barnacles and limpits. The weather had gotten a little better by the time we went to the beach so it was really fun. I basically had to drag my friends there by saying it was my birthday and I wanted to walk on the beach. But they were thanking me after because it was such a good time.

My camera came back to life for one last picture, which turned out beautifuly and is now my desktop background on my computer.

Chambord

2007-02-08T01:35:00.000-08:00

The last castle that we went to on the Tours weekend trip is Chambord, it is the largest castle in the Loire valley, but it was only built to be a hunting lodge for King Francois I.

This is the view from the back. We are in fornt of a really nice restaurant that we ate at before touring the castle.

This is the view from the front. Since it wasn't built to be a fortress it really dosen't have any defenses. Although Francois I apparently wanted to divert the Loire so that he could take his boat right up to the back door but it didn't really pan out.

There are four big towers, this is the one that Francois I lived in.

Interesting fact: Chambord has a giant double helix staircase in the center of the castle. This is a picture of it. Imagine two staircases that spiral the same way, placed one on top of the other. So one person could walk up while another walks down and they would never see eachother.

Unless they looked out these little windows! In the center there is just a long shaft that both staircase spiral around. That is Shreen looking out the window and some random people at the bottom.

At the top there is a regular staircase that goes up to this tower that has the fleur de lis at the top, the sybol of France.

Pretty. Fact: all of the furniture and tapestries are brought along wherever the king goes, so when people aren't there, it is completely empty.

We also got to go on a special guided tour to the king's chambers (which was empty) and the servants' quarters. The servants lived in the highest parts of the towers because it was hard to heat. This is a picture of the roof which is all jointed wooden beams with wooden pegs.

Blois

2007-02-08T00:25:00.000-08:00

The next day (saturday) we went to two more castles. The first one is Blois.

This is the entrance including a larger than life size statue of Francois I (I think?) and his horse.

After you walk through that entry way, there is a large courtyard with buildings on all four sides. The interesting thing about this castle is that it was built over a period of about 400 years, so each side of the courtyard is in a different architectural style. Stright ahead is the most recent addition in a neo-classic stlye with romanesque columns. You can't really tell in this picture, but they ran out of money so the construction is not quite finished some of the colunms are only partially carved. The part on the right with the ornate saircase is older and more of a renaissance style.

If you were to turn around, the other side of the coutyard is from the middles ages so it has a completely different style.

This is me and my friend Louis-Claude.

This is a really fancy firepalce. It has the symbols of the king Francois I, the dragon on the left, and ??? I forget who, but his symbol is the weasel on the right.

Speaking of symbols, if I was king (or Queen I suppose) I would definitely pick a random mascot and put it everywhere. ie: porcupine.

This is the view of the inside of the big staircase.

This is me and my friends Lian and Shreen. (That's right, I have friends that aren't statues).

Cowboy Joe came too.

Chenonceau

2007-02-07T07:50:00.000-08:00

Chenonceau is the second castle that we went to, scenically located on the river.

It has a forested part where the kings and nobles would go hunting. You walk down a grand tree lined path.

There is also a labyrinth (which I made it to the middle of first) that has a vine covered gazebo in the center.

I don't really know what this is but I am guessing the maintenance workers' quarters...

They also brew their own wine.

In this picture we have the well (center), guard tower (right), and castle entrance (left).

This is the view of the castle from the side. Imagine the guard tower in the previous picture to be on the other side of the arch on the far right. Also notice how the arches have water running through them, yep it is built ON the river.

Stained glass in the chapel.
Makes you kind of want a canopy bed, doesn't it?

This is taken through the window towards the guard tower.

Photos of Chateaux

2007-02-01T00:45:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I ran out of time when I was posting pictures before which is why there were no labels or descriptions or anything. For some reason it is taking between 10-15 minutes to post each picture. Any suggestions from anyone on how I can speed that up would be appreciated!

Anyway, on our trip to Tours we went to four different castles. These pictures are of Amboise.

You have to walk up a bunch of stairs to get to it, as a defence strategy, I presume.

When you get to the top, there is a big courtyard with the church on one side (in photo) ....

...and the rest of the castle on the other side overlooking the river. Interesting fact: this castle had big spiraling ramps so that the king could walk around on his horse instead of taking the stairs.

View off one side of the river.

View off the other side of the town below. Interesting fact: In the distance is Leonardo Da Vinci's house but you can't really see it in this picture.

This is where we ate lunch. It was good.

We walked around the town a little this is a picture of a doorway. (I know you all were lost when there were no labels...)

Photos

2007-02-01T00:12:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone,

Hope all is well. I finally brought my laptop to the IES center so I could use the internet, which means I have pictures!

This is really early in the morning of Jan. 9th at the Sea-Tac airport. I think we managed to get a good picture of everybody. (left to right me, dad, mom)

This one has nothing to do with my trip, but it is too good to keep to myself. Here we have dad wrangling some kiddos (Rachel and Ben).

I brought along a friend. He was jealous of Don Quoixte and wanted a grand adventure too. Location: JFK Airport, New York.
Time: Sunrise.

password?

2007-01-23T01:30:00.000-08:00

I suppose it's time for another update, since the numbering system went over well, I think I will stick with it for now:
1. I had to change my e-mail password and apparently made a typo so now I can't log in unless I make the same typo (which I was able to do a couple times, but not recently and not when I am trying to change the password). I used another e-mail service to contact the UPS help desk to see if they will help me. But for now, no e-mail for me.
2. I went to go to my sociology of immigration class at the university of Nantes but another class was in the room. Apparently it dosen't start until next week. I was supposed to know this by looking at the bullitin board and finding the note. Of course to do that I had to determine which of about 10 bullitin boards was for sociology and which of about 25 pieces of paper was about my class. But now I know.
3. I am knitting a scarf. It is a lot more complicated than anything I have knitted before. It involves cableing and fancy stitches. My host mom is helping me get started.
4. On saturday I went shopping at this mall on the outskirts of the town because we thought it would be less expensive. It was less expensive, but about all of france had the same idea. It was like going to the mall on the day after thanksgiving. I bought some gloves that are really nice.
5. On Sunday almost all the stores are closed so I went to the park that is near my house. It is huge! And apparently the thing to do on sundays is go to the park. There were little kids and old couples and dogs and people playing games! It was so cool, one of my favorite things that I have done yet.
6. Emily, the pervious study abroad student, was only here for the weekend and she ended up getting really sick with some kind of stomach flu. But it sounds like she will be back frequently.
7. I found out that my host mom's son lives in Italy and does commentary for the Italian soccer games. It is really funny to watch the soccer games with my host family because occasionally I will get personam tidbits about their lives, example: 'One player was married to this woman and after 3 months she ran off with this other player, but now both guys play for the same team'
8. I have a class soon, so I have to go, but love and miss you all

Bonjour!

2007-01-16T06:02:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone,
I haven't written in a while because we went on our weekend trip to Tours and it is a little tricky to get internet. So here are some updates:
1. My luggage finally caught up to me on Sunday so I am able to wear my own clothes again. My host mom had loaned me some of her son's clothing and washed the clothes I wore on the plane.
2. My host family is really nice, they have been host parents for a few years now so they know how everything works, even if I don't. Right now, its just the parents (Jeanne-Marie and Alain) and I, but assuming that I understand what is happening, one of the past study abroad students is coming to stay with them as well because she is working at the school nearby. They have a daughter who is studying in England and a son who used to play professional soccer but now I don't know what he does.
3. The keyboards in France are just a little bit different than in the US. Similiar enough that you forget about it when you are typing, but different enough that you keep making mistakes like typing a 'q' when you want an 'a'.
4. The public transport system is really good here so I take the tram from the house to the downtown and walk to the school building each morning. We don't sign up for classes until Friday so this week is more orientation and language.
5. I have a ton of pictures of the chateaux that we visited over the weekend but they are on my camera still. I will post some here as soon as I can.
6. I miss you all!
7. I was unable to say goodbye to all the people that I wanted to, especially everyone from work! So someone should pass on the message that I didn't mean to skip the country without saying goodbye, I love and miss everyone immensely.

I'm Here!!

2007-01-10T06:16:00.000-08:00

Well, everyone will be happy to know that I have arrived safely in Nantes. You may be less happy to know (because I cetainly am) that my luggage did not arrive safely in Nantes. The airport will call and ship it to me when they find it, hopefully soon. Aside from that everything is fine. We are going to our orientation in Tours tomorrow. I have yet to meet my host family, but the IES center (where I will take most of my classes) looks cool. It is in this creaky old buliding with a lot of character and the smallest elevator ever.

I will write more when there is more to say, but for now rest easily knowing I am safe.
Love to all,
Laura

Preparations

2007-01-08T15:28:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone!
I am getting ready for my study abroad trip, I leave tomorrow morning! Wow, I still have a lot to do. I plan on keeping this website fairly updated so that people who care can see what I am up to overseas. I am not sure how frequently this will happen though, it all depends on the availibility of internet access.

Thank you to Chris for helping me set up this website.

I guess that's all for now, but keep checking back for photos and details about me!