Two months in France, and I just had my first wave of homesickness yesterday. I was pretty glum for a couple of hours, but a Skype session with my roommate back home and a Kinder Bueno (the greatest chocolate bar ever invented) cured me pretty quickly.
We’ve been doing a lot of traveling lately. Last weekend I went to Barcelona with two other Maryland girls to meet up with our friends from home. It was great to see my friends from home and hear all about their adventures in Spain. I only really got to spend one full day in Barcelona, and it was pouring rain, but we slogged through it and did all the touristy things we could handle. We saw the Sagrada Familia, which was gorgeous and has been under construction for, like, over a hundred years. We also saw the Arc de Triomf (the Barcelona one, not the Paris one), and I dragged my lovely hostess Alexis down to the beach, despite the tropical storm that was drenching our socks and decimating my umberella. That night, we went to a bar called L’Ovella Negra (the Black Sheep), where we split a 20 Euro giant jug of sangria, which strangely came with free popcorn. I wasn’t about to turn down a free snack, though.
We also had tapas and the Spanish version of hot chocolate, which was pretty much the most amazing beverage I’ve ever consumed. (And I really love beverages. The lack of Diet Dr. Pepper on this continent may or may not have been a major contributing factor in my aforementioned homesickness.) Anyhow, Spanish hot chocolate is just melted, delicious, hot chocolate, which you can eat with a spoon OR you can dip fried bread (Xurros) in it and have it fondue-style.
Two weeks ago I went to Rome, where it also rained, although not nearly as much. The food was amazing and so were the people. My only complaint is that we forgot to figure out how to get to where we were staying from the bus stop, so we had to wander around lost for two hours until we finally figured things out, but clearly that was our own fault. We had a terrific dinner the first night; the most delicious pizza ever. It was exactly what we needed after a ten-hour bus ride and our lost wandering through the city. Then we napped for four hours before heading out for the night. The next morning we were tired, but we dragged ourselves out of bed to go be touristas.
First we bought some delicious sandwiches and gelatto for lunch. Then we saw the Pantheon, the Coliseum, the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain and the Roman Forum. The fountain was definitely my favorite. It was just gorgeous, despite the huge crowd of people you had to squeeze through to get a good view. The pigeons in Rome were the boldest, most obnoxious things ever. They had no fear at all. One flew straight into my head. Terrifying.
I do have more serious beef with study abroad at the moment. The classes at the university here just aren’t good. Or maybe they are good, but they’re too different from American classes for me to appreciate them. Or be able to learn anything. The teachers just don’t seem very interested in helping you understand when you have a question, and they don’t give grades or correct homework until the midterm and the final, so it’s really hard to judge how you’re doing in class. It doesn’t help that its 65 degrees and sunny, and sitting in a cold classroom feels like the ultimate form of torture.
I also have a confession to make. I know French food is supposed to be fantastic, but so far its been consistently unpredictable, and not in a good way. Some things are AMAZING. For example I could eat pain au chocolat all day long every day for the rest of my life, but the cold rice with mayonnaise, tomatoes and hard-boiled egg my host mom made for dinner last night was not so amazing. Speaking of dinner, it should be soon, and I’m slightly nervous.
We splurged the other day and ate a ginormous amount of Chinese food for lunch. YUM. Two girls, two appetizers, four rolls of sushi and lo mein. The French were probably appalled by our sloppy chopstick maneuvers and gluttony, but it was totally worth it. I definitely had a food coma afterwards. I apologize for my fixation with food in this post; I’m just real hungry.
Tonight my friend Jen and I are going to see Black Swan at the movie theater (in English with French subtitles). We’re excited to see some American style cinema and have an insanely expensive soda and some popcorn. French popcorn is different; they eat it with sugar instead of butter and salt. Sounds crazy, but it’s not bad.
Update: Dinner tonight was dumplings (like the kind you find in chicken soup sometimes) smothered a sort of nacho-esque cheese. Kinda yummy, kinda weird. Very squishy. A second, more solid dinner post-movie may be a necessity.
That’s all for this time. Spring break is in three weeks, so next time I’ll have stories from Berlin, Madrid, Dublin and Rome. Merci for reading!