I'm utterly exhausted. It's not even that I haven't been getting enough sleep...it's 9:13 and I plan to be in bed and falling asleep within the hour. It's that every second is packed with things to do, and even when I'm just sitting around with someone, I have to speak in French which means thinking in French, alors my tongue and head are exhausted (the French language literally uses more tongue than the English language...I'm used to being lazy and slurring my words together and using a million contractions, and now I have to produce crisp, clear French dialect). Then of course, there's the fact that I spent well over three and a half hours walking today.
Rachel, Haley, and I decided to walk to the center this morning, which is a totally legitimate thing to do--we're doing it again tomorrow. BUT. We decided instructions were for the weak, and instead approximated the direction. Needless to say, we picked the wrong one. It took an hour to arrive, and that was with the help of an iPhone map at the end. During this venture, we caught our first glimpse of l'Île de Versailles, which is the island in the middle of one of Nantes' rivers. Also, I almost got run over by le Tramway, which is just like the MAX except it's lines are numbered instead of color-coded. It's pretty much silent too, hence my near-death-experience.
We had the usual orientation shenanigans in the morning, and then we were released for lunch. I've been trying to get to know as many people as possible, but there are four people I've spent quite a bit of time with, and the five of us decided to head out in search of a cheap crêperie we'd heard about. We wandered around in the general direction (this is becoming a theme in my life) and finally decided to ask for some help. I stopped two French students around our age and asked them if they knew the crêperie. They didn't, but I pulled out my orientation book and showed them the address. They pointed us in the right direction, and we took off. It turned out we were only about a block away, and we found the place easily enough...but it was closed. We were just walking away when we ran into the same two students, and when we told them it was closed, they offered to walk us to another crêperie. On the way we conversed about study abroad and school and Nantes, and then we found ourselves in the cutest little French crêperie ever. Like literally, ever.
We headed upstairs (the students had left once we found the place), and ordered delicious crêpes. Addie, Eric, and I got the chevre chaud which was a giant buckwheat crêpe filled with melted goat cheese. It came with a salad covered in a mustard vinaigrette. Cory made his own crêpe and Elise had an omelette inside a crêpe. We sat there marveling at the food and the ambiance and the fact that we had just hung out with real French students until it was time to head back.
Now it's time for me to recoop so I can go out adventuring tomorrow.
I hope I'm able to get a full night of sleep, but my mind is always so full of France that I can't really do it. J'essayerai.
À tout de suite!
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