September 2013 – Restless Spirit Syndrome

I lived in Tours, France for the month of January to complete an intensive French language course at the Institut de Touraine.

My Multi-National French-Intensive Class

A small town in the Loire Valley, Tours is about an hour by train south of Paris.

Courtesy of www.transitionsabroad.com — Courtesy of http://www.transitionsabroad.com

Tours is the quintessential quaint little French town and it has a very historic feel to it thanks to its old city center, Place Plumereau (a.k.a ‘Place Plum’) with buildings dating back from the Middle Ages.

I did another home-stay in Tours, this time with a lovely elderly woman and her older daughter. The house I stayed in probably predated America, so the heating system was a tad sketchy and the high cost of heat in France meant that it was a very, very cold January. Truth be told, the hot water was so sparse in my shower that I learned how to bathe in 5 minutes, every other day (and that’s 5 minutes from clothes off to clothes on). But did I mention the glorious French windows in my bedroom overlooking a park? Totally worth it.

The Park Across the Street from my Window

My host mother and her daughter were some of the sweetest, most hospitable people I’ve ever met. They picked me up at the train station one Sunday afternoon completely disoriented and barely able to keep my ‘Madame’s and ‘Señora’s straight. It didn’t take them long to figure out that I barely spoke French (nor me very long to determine that they spoke only slightly better English) so our first few dinners were spent around a very large French-English dictionary. But they were patient, and I got better… eventually.

One thing that I have to gush about is how damn good the food was. My host mother was a fabulous cook and I inhaled weird things like snails (land and sea) and beets (previously a mortal enemy) with gusto. My favorite thing that ma mère made, however, was a classic from her native Brittany (in the north-west of France); buckwheat crêpes with ham, Emmenthal cheese, and a fried egg, served with alcoholic cider. Yum. Yum. Yum.

I should have a picture of this fantastic dish, of course, but I was too busy scarfing it down to snap a photo so forgive me.

Instead, enjoy this photo of me eating a caramel and hot fudge crêpe!

What is it about coming back to the familiar that leaves one completely distracted and disoriented?

It’s September now, about 3.5 months since I stepped off that plane and onto American soil. I can’t say that I experienced reverse-culture shock so much as I just got thrown back into the daily grind and lost myself in picking up where I left off.

Sometimes I look back on my travels and think that it was all just one long, extensive dream. Then I check my bank account and know that it definitely wasn’t.

It’s shocking how quickly one can fall back into a routine. I only have two semesters left for my undergraduate degree and this summer has been a flurry of finding an internship, getting an apartment (major big-girl step – YIKES!), preparing (ok, procrastinating) for thesis, and trying to resuscitate my bank account. I met a few really interesting people since getting back and didn’t get to reconnect with half the friends and family that I promised I would. I even squeezed in an adventure or two, but I didn’t record them (Shame! Shame! Shame!).

I still have a lot to share about my travels, studying abroad, and traveling in general (my whole Spring semester is still undocumented… whoops) but the funny thing that I’ve learned about time is that it doesn’t stop. I insist on blogging about the adventures of last semester, belated thought they may be, but I also want to start incorporating some current material. Restless Spirit Syndrome more accurately reflects my personality than one year of my life, so here’s to keeping the good times – and the posts – rolling.

This and Facebook will be how I avoid writing my theses.

Month: September 2013

My Time in Tours

Here We Go Again