Saturday, March 6, 2010

Tour de France, Part Deux

Sometimes life in Alençon can get boring. We only work about 12-15 hours per week, and while some of our extra time is taken up by making lesson plans, we still have a lot of free time that we need to fill up. I bought a bike and go around town and the surrounding areas, I go to the local swimming pool with two other assistants, we take train trips to Paris every once-in-awhile and we even try to watch French films at the local movie theater (I saw Avatar for my birthday and got the gist of most of it…). BUT, even after factoring in that stuff there’s still quite a bit of down time, so I think I’ll be happy to go back to school next year: I have applied to the Middlebury French School. I love France and I plan on doing grad school in Paris through Middlebury, but my plans can still change.

I love the food (I have yet to try foie gras, though…) and the cheese and the wine and the bread and the pastries and the people. Did you know that France has almost 500 different varieties of cheese? Normandy is pretty much the cheese and milk-product capital of France because of how many cows there are (I would estimate that there are two cows for every person in Normandy!), so I also love that...I don’t love the smell all of the time. All-in-all France is great and my first post-graduate year isn’t going too poorly. But I often find myself missing Oberlin and wishing that I could transplant Oberlin College to France with me!


Michelle Zanni

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