Tours!

Ah, the first post. Now that I have Wifi in my room I really have no excuse not to write it. I've managed to survive my first week with little or no trouble. School seems like it won't be terribly hard. Only French . . . it's like my dream come true! My favorite so far has been my phonetics class because we have this little recording machine and so the teacher says something, we repeat it, and then we play it back and listen. It's pretty amazing how much difference the little things can make. Everything is in French, of course, and it really has to be because there are students from all over the world. Therefore, the only language that everyone has in common is French. There are people in my class from Libya, Saudi Arabia, Korea, Japan, Mexico, Columbia . . . etc. I also take two French culture classes, one historical and one modern. I'm pretty sure that the professor for those classes is my favorite, even just after one week. He's very interesting and quite funny. He also does the local tours that the school has for the students on some Saturdays. Robynne and I went on one yesterday that I will tell you about shortly.


My family and housing situation are wonderful! Their house is absolutely huge for a French house, and they have a lovely garden. We cannot enjoy the garden now though because it's exceedingly cold and there's snow and ice everywhere! Apparently, it *never* snows here . . . that would be my luck. Robynne has been sufficiently cured of ever finding joy in snow again however, I believe. Anyway, I have my own room (with a fireplace!) and it's connected to Robynne's by a little walkway with a W.C. and a closet. So we have our own little wing, awwww. I don't have very many pictures of the house except for one from the outside, and then I have some pictures of my room.

The house is only about a 15 minute walk from the school, and pretty much everything else for that matter, so that's extremely nice. We live with a lady named Genevieve, who is extremely nice and helpful with our french, she is a little older and does not leave her room though. However, her son, along with his wife and son come over every day and make dinner and such. So we have a big family dinner every night, and the food is AMAZING! I'm pretty sure there's no way I can ever go back to eating in a cafeteria now. Anyway, they're all very nice and take good care of us. And little Matthias is a doll. He's six and doesn't speak English at all. We play some interesting games though . . . haha. And earlier today we went to the movies and watched Madagascar 2, all in French of course.

Yesterday, like I said, Robynne and I went on a tour of Old Tours that our school had. I found it extremely interesting. He talked a lot about the architecture and ways to tell what time period or century certain things came from. A lot of it had to do with windows and the shapes of the windows. For example, the oldest windows are the round windows, and then there are the double windows with the pointed tops, such as this,
Then they proceeded on to the square shape with a round stone over them, to a square with a stone cross for support, and then to merely the square shape when they had improved the glass making technique and could make larger pieces of glass. I have pictures of several of the different types of windows but the photos are a little obnoxious to deal with on this blog, and I have more interesting photos to show.

That is the main building of my school. It was built in the 18th century and at the time was a house. However, as the professor kept pointing out to us, it was not just any house. The ordinary house was built right off the road with any gardens in the back (like the house I live in which was built in the same time period. So the really rich people built their houses futher back with a gate right off the road. This gave the impression of a castle, and most importantly, power. That is also why it doesn't have the ordinary square/rectangular shape, but rather the two sides stick out slightly further. This was to give the impression of towers, also like a castle.

After the school, our next stop was the St. Martin Basilica. Apparently, St. Martin was a very important person in Tours, or at least they decided so after his death. He was buried there, and a huge cathedral was built over his tomb. Then, a highly religious community developed around this cathedral (which was a short distance away from the actual town of Tours which was built right off the bridge). Eventually the two communities merged forming one single city. Anyway, the cathedral over the tomb of St. Martin was destroyed, and a new much smaller basilica was built for his tomb.


On the right, the basilica from the back. And above, me in front of the basilica from the front.













Alright, I have lots more but I need to get ready for dinner. I may finish tonight, or it may wait until tomorrow.