Okay, so I lied. I wasn't able to blog on Sunday due to a Monday morning midterm (which was pretty hard), so I apologize. But I after a busy Monday and an 8am class today, Tuesday, I am ready to share my experiences of this weekend.
*I would also like to apologize for the glaring grammatical errors in my posts. It's the European keyboard. Don't judge*

Friday: After suffering from a slight hangover still left over from the night before (don't worry it was totally worth it), I found a way to make it out of bed and get myself over the to IES center for lunch. I had signed up to visit an area, called Des Machines D'ile (Machines of the Island), in Nantes on the itty-bitty island they have here. It's basically a warehouse where they're building animal contraptions out of machinery like steel and wood. The intention (as I found out via informative video there) is to build a kind of amusement park where people from all over the world would gather to ride these animals. Not "ride" in the usual sense where the animals walk around the place or people would ride on some sort of rollercoaster, but the visitors would able to sit in seats built within the animals and move levers, that in turn, move wings, eyes, tails, flippers, and maybe even shoot some water. Plans already in the works: numerous animals already completed (see pics below), a giant Heron tree where people will be able to walk around and even fly around the top of the tree via Huron birds (kinda like an amusement ride where the car you're in spins around while the entire contraption slowly moves upwards... know what I'm saying?), and a giant carousel for these animals. They want to bring people together with the idea of the animals,and have complete strangers meet by playing a part through the interaction of the levers. Probably the coolest part about the whole thing though, is that they have already built an elephant (yes, an elephant) that actually walks around and shoots water out of its trunk. And oh yea, it's 2 stories tall. Don't believe me? See for yourself:


And thus, the really cool walking elephant of Nantes. As you can see people can hang out under the pagoda on top, or on the lower level. Water shoots out the trunk (I got sprayed)! Apparently there's a spider they built too, but I got the impression that's currently touring Asia. The pictures I saw looked super cool though!

Other animals:

Manta Ray!


Scary Fish! I forget the name, but it's in Finding Nemo?



My friend Abe and I got to ride the squid!! I pulled the levers that controlled the tentacles way in the front and turned a wheel that rotated the front of the body around.


Sea Serpent!



This is the carousel they'd like to eventually build to house all the animals. I don't remember when they said it was going to be finished, but they haven't started on it yet.

Saturday, I went on a day trip to a city pretty close to Nantes, called Angers. Clotilde is moving there this Thursday to start her work as a pharmacist! I went with another IES student, Ellen, who goes to Miami with me. We left pretty early for a Saturday - around 9am and got in around 9:30am. We spent a good portion of the morning visiting the chateau there, which houses a centuries-old tapestry called The Apocalypse. It was woven all together, spans more than 100meters (basically lines all the walls of an entire room), and shows scenes from the end of the world. I managed to sneak a few pics even though I wasn't supposed to (heehee)


Kinda hard to see because I couldn't use my flash, and my camera was waist-level so the lines are off, but here's a picture of the tapestry along the walls of the building


Picture of the Angers Chateau. It has 17 turrets!

Later on Ellen and I wandered into the old cathedral and I'm so happy we did! Inside were gorgeous 12-century stained glass windows, which are really rare to find considering a lot of them were blown out during World War II. What a treasure!


The stained glass windows


Finally, the REAL reason Ellen and I decided to go to Angers in the first place: The musical Cleopatra! I cannot even begin to describe the costumes, the scenery, the lighting... Just think Hollywood special effects onstage. It was so freaking cool. It totally made up for the fact that the actors spoke really fast and the play was in no way historically accurate (Cleopatra was married to Julius Caesar at one point) but hey, winners can't be choosers.




Sunday was pretty low key - I slept in and got some homework done.

TONIGHT HOWEVER!!!... I made the American dinner for my host family!! It went as well as I could have hoped!

The biggest hit was by far the grilled cheese (called it)... but anything with cheese in it is sure to be a homerun with the French. The other great successes of the night included my Noodle Salad (it's becoming world famous!) and the pancakes. I had thrown together a fruit salad last minute as a back up in case my Noodle Salad didn't go over as well, but I had nothing to worry about. The PB&J, as expected, wasn't as grandiose. But as I told my host family, it was just an introduction to my childhood. And I cut the bread into 4's, so they didn't have to each the whole sandwich. Surprisingly though, I think my mom host didn't mind the taste? I may have gotten her hooked after all ! But my host family was wonderful about letting me use the kitchen and the essentials like sugar and vinegar. Marie was great about helping me cook too- she told me she really enjoys cooking so it was fun to make the grilled cheese and pancakes together :) And now she gets to share that wonderfully simple meal with all her friends haha (talk about a win-win!).

All in all, it's been a great past few days. I'm still doing great here. There's so much to look forward to I don't know how I could really dwell on being homesick. I mean it's happened, but nothing out of the ordinary. I'm currently the most excited about my Halloween weekend excursion to Amsterdam, which includes hopeful visits to the Van Gogh Museum, the Anne Frank Museum, the Henekin Experience, the Sex Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. See Mom, I can be culturally well-rounded too :) That's not to mean, however, that visits to the Red Light District won't be expected. Should be an interesting weekend, to say the least haha

Can't wait to update again with more fun tales! Thanks again for all the prayers, love, emails, and thoughtfulness. I appreciate all of it :)

Love you!
Mollydolly