Soo I have been in France now for about 15 days and so far so good. I left Paris about 5 days ago and since then I've been to a couple of awesome places and I am now in Lille, where I will be studying the next few weeks.
The first cool place I visited was St. Mont Micheal. This place was awesome!! The church is on top of this massive hill and the whole city has about 20 people who actually live there and all the others are tourists. Our guide told us that they have tourists come from all over the world and also people who are on pilgrimages since the church is considered one of the closest places to God since it is so high in the air. For all those non-Catholics that read this blog...if anyone reads this blog...St. Micheal is considered the connector of heaven and earth. He is also commonly referenced as the Saint that kills Satan or forces him back into hell or something along those lines. That is why whenever you see a statue of St. Micheal he has a sword in hand and is standing on a serpent or dragon or something else ferocious. Also, all churches named St. Micheal are high on a mountain or hill indicating the connection between heaven and earth. So back to my point, tons of tourist come from all over the world either for the religious aspect or historic. St. Mont Micheal also has tons and tons and tons of steps that you get to climb when you visit, which I did. I'm not sure exactly how many I climbed but I was little sore at the top. The church itself is really cool because it has been rebuilt a couple of times and the church that is there now has architecture from both the Gothic and roman periods. This is because the structure wasn't built correctly at first and certain parts of the church have collapsed into the crips below them and were rebuilt architecturally different later on.
The next place we stopped was at the D-Day beaches. I saw the memorial, beaches, and of course graves. The area is beautiful and its hard to picture what happened there. However once you see the 9,000 graves placed in the middle of this huge field it makes the picture clearer. This day was the most depressing one but I am very glad I saw it and recommend the experience to anyone, it makes you appreciate the young men who lost their lives even more.
After leaving Normandy, we finally made it to Lille. The days being in Lille, about 5 now, have been crazy. This city is definitely...colorful. When we first arrived, it was over-cast and chilly. It definitely wasn't what I was expecting. Then we went to our dorms which are, in all honesty, crappy. The rooms are very small (I was lucky and the biggest out of the group so I can't really complain), to turn on the shower you have to push in a button so the water turns off on you constantly and the light is time sensitive so every shower so far has resulted in me being left in the dark, and I found out that instead of two classes I have four!! Needless to say the first couple of days were a little hard to adjust too, but now that I have, I really like it here!! The main issue is the rain but when its sunny and warm, those are the best days.
Sooo some crazy experiences:
Gay Pride Parade: This was an intense and unexpected experience. A couple of days ago me and my girls - Kelsey, Katie, and Morgan - were out shopping (where I got this beautiful dress for 19 euro!) and then stopped for lunch at a creperie where we got the best pizza I have ever tasted. We started hearing all of this music coming from outside the window. When we eventually made it out of the restaurant, we were in shock. They were transvestites everywhere! Men dress in two pieces and other attire. Clothing that resembled a man's member and a lot of public gay affection. We started walking and eventually caught up to the back of the parade. The music was so loud on the first "float". On it people were dancing like they do in this form of dance called "Teck-tonic" which is all the rage here...its interesting to say the least. Everyone in the streets around it were dancing too. The music was like thud thud thud and everyone was jumping up and down. There were gay right signs everywhere and a lot of people were wrapped in rainbow flags. So naturally me and my friend joined in. We went crazy dancing...well sort of, not compared to the actually members of the parade...and then we ran into some other kids from our group. We were jumping up and down for awhile but then it happened...a horrible burning sensation hit my eyes, throat, and nose. I thought someone had blown a lot of cigarette smoke in my face or something but I looked around and everyone was making a similar face. We think it was pepper spray or something from a protester. The burn lasted for awhile but no one got it too bad. However after that we just walked along side the parade and enjoyed from distance....
Fishbowls - so there is this bar here called Pirates and it is themed after pirates of the Caribbean movie. When you go there you can order this drink called a fishbowl which about 4 or 5 people can drink from. It is basically a bowl full of different types of liquor and yummy stuff to make it taste good and gummies! So this is a must try! Me and my girls went out one night with our new friends we met in our dorm named Kurby and Derek and got two fishbowls...one for us and one for them. They were more daring. When it came and we tried it for the first time, we all knew we had made the right choice! It tasted so good and it was cheaper than everyone buying one drink! Needless to say fun night and that fishbowl will probably not be my last.
Well there have been more adventures but this blog is long enough so I'll post more later!
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