First days in Angers

I'm in Angers! and sick. Colds and study abroad trips are not a pleasant combination. Angers is nice, though. From what we've seen, it's very quiet here- all of the students have left for the summer, so it feels like the city is pretty empty.

Today we were given a walking tour of the city (while wearing our backpacks for school, which was not so fun) and a tour of the school and a bit of the surrounding area. Then we went to class, and I had my first french class here in Angers. It's still intense. Today we talked a bit about French culture and politics, and she corrected our pronunciation a lot, which was great because I have no idea how to pronounce the words properly. At first she spoke very fast, but the more blank stares I gave her, the slower she spoke, the more I could pick up from what she said. Hopefully I'll be able to learn quickly enough for this class.

We also went grocery shopping by the school. I do love shopping for groceries in foreign countries. It's kind of fun when you have no idea what's going on. Well, it's kind of fun until the checkout. Then you just feel like an idiot when you can't understand what the cashier is trying to tell you. Still, though, that's one of the great experiences of living abroad- trying to figure things out when you're clueless.

This experience is one of the many reasons I prefer to stay in one place for a while rather than bounce from city to city, from hotel to hotel. I don't think I really gained all that much from our travel days in Austria and Germany. They were great, and the cities were awesome, but it very quickly became WAY too much touristy stuff. In a finite period, there are only so many castles and churches one can take, and there are only so many hills one can climb, because after a while, all of the valley and river views blend together. When you bounce from city to city, your view of the world just becomes flat. You don't see anything out of the ordinary in a city, you just hit the tourist high points, and those are in no way an accurate depiction of the town or the culture. Everything gets oversimplified, and there's no struggle, because in the tourist spots, everyone speaks English to you. I need to spend real, substantial time in a place.

As difficult as they will be, hopefully I will enjoy these next (almost) two weeks in Angers.