The international "DO NOT TOUCH" symbol

You know you're in for a good semester when you have a chandelier in your classroom.

Permettez-moi expliquer un peu.

Tours, France is the heart of the french chateau country and many things here are either really old and historical, or really modern replacements for stuff that was destroyed by the war. (As the father of my french host mother liked to point out "Les Américains...") So when walking in Tours, you might find yourself surrounded by really old pillars of a former church, with little shops and boulangeries that popped up in between.

The town itself is very pretty. All of the buildings are white and every thing is really smushed together. No one here knows how to drive. (Among our group, bets are being placed upon who will be the first one to get hit by a car) The best pain au chocolat (the best lunch food there is) has been found on rue nationale, the equivalent of Michigan avenue in Chicago.

Oh yeah, and during the moth of January, the entire nation of france goes on sale during the month of "Soldes" to completley liquidate their stock of clothing at the end of the winter season. Yes folks, 30%, 40% up to 70% off this week! I've only made one purchase, the contents of  which shall not be exposed for a while.

Anywho, because the town cant decide if it wants to be 15th century or 21st (I finally know what time we live in, thank you Jim and Dennis), the Intsitute that the group takes classes in has three buildings. One very modern one with automatic doors, one with a computer lab, and one is as my host brother discribes "a real chateau" and has chandeliers in every classroom with a grand staircase in the entry way! Yeah, it's pretty malade.

The institute is very cool. In my class, there are four American girls, one Italian from Florence, two Colombians, three Kuwaitis (that occasionally show up), three South Koreans, one from Taiwan, One from Spain, and a 40 year old libyan doctor who uses a Jonas Brothers pencil case that would look really classy save for the picture of Kevin, Joe, and Nick on the back. My teacher, Marie-Jose is the french Glinda the good witch who threatens to kill anyone who uses a pencil in composition.

At the institute, Davidson students have also discovered the presence of free cooking and wine/cheese tasting classes! Guess who finally learned how to use a knife properly...

Also, did I mention how good Hugo, the new Martin Scorsese film, is? Did I also mention how good it was the second time in a french version? If it's still available in the states, please go see it. I'm still smiling.

The institute also offers excursions to go visit the regions various chateaux. For all of you humes heroes and heroines, I'll actually be visiting Mont St. Michel in a few weeks and I will finally understand everything that we were supposed to learn about european gothic style in architecture. Another humes point, I'm very glad I took last semester humes. Being at my level of french, knowing something about renaissance art before hand is really helping my comprehension skills in the institute art history course.

Last weekend, we got a real hands on learning experience when we visited the chateau Langeais and (I'll butcher the spelling) Azzay-le-Rideau. At Langeais, we truly felt as though we were part of the wedding of the famous Charles VIII and Anne of Bretagne as some of group joined the mock wedding party that took place during our tour. As we soon learned, not all historical sites are so keen on letting its vistors really absorb the fifteenth century experience. At Azzay-le-Rideau, alarms would go of if you stepped into an unroped portion of a room.

Whatever. Not everyone understands that the large red circle surrounding a little picture of a hand with a line through it means that you can't have fun.

Don't worry ya'll. I'm 48151623.42% sure that I'm not going to get kicked out of France. 

Traveling Quincy

(P.S: Roll Tide)
(P.P.S: All of my blogs are written in real time and I don't edit them. Ever. So I apologize if I make blatant errors that make me sound slightly foolish.)