Fête de la Mirabelle

After a long day of traveling on Friday, I decided to “take it easy” on Saturday. My original plan had been to travel to Strasbourg for another day trip, but the thought of a 1.5 hour train ride and lots of walking did not seem fun. Instead, I decided to go into downtown Metz for the finale of the Fête de la Mirabelle. This is a two-week festival celebrating a small plum, called the Mirabelle. The festival votes on a queen and princes. It includes a carnival, parades, markets and performances.

Mirabelle Market

This Saturday we went to the open-air market. There were over 100 vendors selling all sorts of things! There were lots of stations selling crafts, jewelery, porcelain, pottery and embroidery. However, my personal favorite part were all of the food vendors. There was all the French food that one could ever hope for: baguettes, cheese, macaroons, sausage, crepes, waffles, chocolate, pastries, wine, liquor and beer! Needless to say, I didn’t eat very much before coming to the market. I did some cheese tasting, liquor tasting (who knew that was a thing?), Mirabelle pound cake tasting… and many more! I also ended up buying a couple of things to try with my friends. We had Mirabelle macaroons, Mirabelle pie and Mirabelle beer. It was all so delicious.

We then went next door to the market to a children’s carnival. It looked like so much fun! There were so many bouncy houses, slides, and small rides. There was even a Merry-Go-Round with Dumbo on it! We wanted to go on the rides but figured that we were too big and were too afraid to try and ask the workers in French. Yet another reason why I need to learn French ASAP. Did I mention that I accidentally ate baking soda instead of sugar the other day because I couldn’t read the label? Yeah, that happened…

L’Americain

After the market, We walked around downtown Metz for a while. It is so much more fun when there are actually people there. We did some more window shopping and went into a French chocolate store. It was very hard to resist all of the delicious looking chocolate. Then we had dinner at this Kebab place called Snack. Yep, it has no official name, just Snack. It also seems like Kebab places are everywhere in Europe! I had Kebabs when I was in Luxembourg, so I didn’t really want to eat Kebabs again. Instead, I ordered “L’Americain”, which is basically just a cheeseburger and fries. It was only 5€!! Unheard of!!

Finally, we went to the Le Grand Soir de la Mirablle (The big night!!). There was a live electo/pop/rock concert, acrobatic performance by Voála Project and fireworks!! It was all so cool. The music was also all in American, which I thought was very funny. It seems as though all of the French people like to listen to English music even though they don’t know what the words are saying. For example, One Direction was playing in the grocery store when I went the other day. I obviously wasn’t complaining.

I’m also pretty sure there are no regulations or restrictions for fireworks in France. I was scared for my life on a couple of different occasions. There were fireworks shooting off from behind the stage AND on the sides of the crowds. First of all, I could feel ash falling on my face during the performance. It also smelled like a million matches were just blown out. I have never been able to smell fireworks before because I don’t think I’ve ever been that close to the launch point before. As we were leaving a little early, the finale fireworks went off, so we stopped to watch them in the parking lot. I kid you not when I say some red fireworks dropped and hit the ground maybe 50 feet away from me. Some people were even standing about 15 feet away from where they bounced and dropped and didn’t even seem phased. It was quite confusing.

The acrobats were pretty! They were all harnessed into the cables hanging from a structure on the crane. They performed some pretty cool stunts with un-clipping and re-clipping their cables in different formations. They also threw confetti and streamers. However, after seeing the Cirque du Soleil, this all seemed pretty safe to me. I was able to take a lot of really cool pictures:

Fireworks and confetti!

Love this photo with the crowd

Right over my head 😮

All in all, it was a really awesome performance and very fun to see in my own little French backyard!

Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

This past Friday, I spend the day exploring Luxembourg, which yes, I didn’t know was its own country until this past summer. Luxembourg City, the capital of Luxembourg is only 45 minutes away from Metz via train. It was the perfect getaway for only our second weekend abroad and before we activated our global unlimited Eurail passes. It seemed as though everyone from GTL had the same idea.

Luxembourg city is so much bigger and more beautiful than Metz. Everything just seems brighter and more lively there. We spent the earlier part of the day wandering around the city and exploring the surrounding. We stopped at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Luxembourg. It was very pretty, but not quite as impressive as our cathedral in Metz.

Notre Dame Cathedral in Luxembourg City

The Altar   

The organ

Then, we wandered to the tourist office passing by the Gëlle Fra (Golden Lady).

Gëlle Fra

The tourist office is located very close to the main square in Luxembourg. Here there were all sorts of street performers and venders. The most impressive one was the balancing act in the picture below. I was super confused about the physics behind it for the longest time until they took a break. The statue man on the top stayed put, so a structure was built to hold him up. I’m thinking there is also a chair holding up the woman. Sorry… my engineering brain kicking in here 🙂

How??

Next, we decided to take a self-guided tour of the Bock Casemates, one of the casemates in Luxembourg. The term “casemate” comes from the word “chasm”. They are a huge underground military defense system built into the rocks and have switched owners many times throughout history including Italian, Spanish, Belgian, French, Austrian, Dutch and Prussian. Unfortunately, we were only able to see a fraction of what this fortress used to be because of its partial dismantling after the neutralization of Luxembourg. Still today, there are miles of tunnels over multiple levels. That meant lots of narrow spiral staircases… I slipped and fell on one of them. Whoops 😮

Tunnels in the Bock Casemates

Boom Boom

From the Bock Casemates, we had a picturesque view of the Barrio Grund, a region in Luxembourg City. People put the cutest locks on the fence of the cliff like they do on the Pont des Arts bridge in Paris. There weren’t nearly as many here though.

Barrio Grund

Panoramic View

60th wedding anniversary lock ❤

Finally, we took a tour of the Grand Ducal Palace. Luxembourg follows the political system of a “parliamentary democracy with a constitutional monarch”, headed by the Grand Duke. This palace is where the current Grand Duke Henri and the Grand Duchess currently live. Unfortunately, we were unable to take any pictures inside the building but it was very interesting. It is not what I would consider your typical castle. It used to be the cities town hall and was then renovated into the Palace. The building belongs to Luxembourg, but all of the belongings inside belong to the family. Many of the Grand Duke’s and Grand Duchesses have renovated the interior design giving it many different looks. There are classic portrait paintings of the families next to modern light fixtures.

Thankfully, the Grand Ducal Palace tour was short because all of us were physically and mentally exhausted after a long day of sightseeing… we walked over 7 miles. I guess I better start getting used to this considering I will be traveling every weekend!

Semaine Un

Mardi, 19 août 2014: Orientation and First Day of Classes

It was a long first day after a long day of traveling. We had real croissants for breakfast from Paul, a French bakery chain: http://www.paul.fr/. Afterwards, I sat through lots of long, boring presentations about the program, rules, and Metz and then went on an awful tour of the GTL building by a French woman who barely spoke English. Thankfully, the building isn’t very big, so I should be able to find my way around on my own.

I had lunch at Paul (again). I feel like I am going to be eating there a lot. Metz Technopôle isn’t very big. It almost seems like a college suburb. The only things that seem to be around here are other universities and other dorms and apartments for those students. I can’t wait for the French students to start in September. This whole area seems very dead.

After an awful experience with trying to communicate to the Paul employees, I had my first French 1001 class. I am so glad to be taking this class so that I can communicate with the people here. However, it is going to be very challenging after already learning Spanish. I think I will be speaking some form of Sp-rench-lish (Spanish, French and English). I have already accidentally caught myself reverting to Spanish when talking to French people. 😮

To end the day, we had a catered dinner to the GTL building and then took buses into downtown Metz to explore the area. I had authentic French macarons!!! They are heavenly. I basically just ate Macarons for dinner… whoops!

Macarons and chocolate!

Then we went into downtown Metz. I walked around for a while just taking pictures and taking in the beauty of it all. Yes, I was an American tourist with my camera out the entire time. If you want to see the picture I took, look at my “Exploring Metz” blog post: https://littleswanbigworld.wordpress.com/2014/08/23/exploring-downtown-metz/

Mercredi, 20 août 2014:

I didn’t start class until 17:00 today. Everyone only uses military time here. I am trying to get used to it. However, I went to the GTL building pretty early so that I could check on the status of my lost bags and register for classes. They found my bags and they were delivered to me later that day! Thank goodness.

Registering for classes was another ordeal to go through. GTL kept telling me that I would just register when I got here. It turns out that their registration system is completely online and I could have signed up earlier. One of the classes that I was signed up to take became full. Thankfully I was issues an override permit to register for a full class. Then, I found out that the Engineering Economy class I planned on taking is only 1 credit even though it is equivalent to a 3 credit course at Vanderbilt. My options were signing up for another class, getting extra work from the professor to make it a 3 credit class or drop the class completely. I ended up deciding to drop the class. It was a distance learning class basically on skype to Atlanta and it seemed like way too much work for a 1 credit class. Then, I had to figure out a new class to take so that I could graduate in time. I ended up getting permission from Vanderbilt to enroll in a class that I don’t have the prerequisites for. It was a long process, but it’s all over now!

I went grocery shopping at Cora and Simply today. That was a different experience! It becomes easy to forget that we’re living in a different country when we are surrounded by other American students at an American university. It only took one trip to the store to realize that we are very far from home. Cora is similar to our version of Target with a grocery store and Simply is just a regular grocery store. It was so overwhelming! Everything is in French (obviously). I had no idea where things were, what things meant, or how to ask for help. I really need to learn basic French ASAP. Furthermore, they don’t refrigerate their milk or eggs… how weird! I suppose it’s good in terms of the eggs because it means they’re very fresh, but I am suspicious of this milk. I ended up buying super safe groceries like cereal, yogurt, bread, cheese and pasta. I have a feeling that I am going to be living off of carbs here… unless, I become bold enough to buy and cook meat.

The milk aisle…

Jeudi, 21 août 2014:

Today was just a regular day of classes. I had 3 classes: Introduction to Media Computing, Statistics and Applications and French 1001. I really hope that my classes aren’t very hard. The last thing I want to do while I study abroad is study haha. Now that I have all of my clothes, I was able to work out. I went on a run with some friends around the lake near the GTL building. There were swans in the lake!! I wanted to take pictures, but I was running… struggles. Today was a good day. I feel as though I am getting into a rhythm.

Vendredi, 22 août 2014:

I didn’t have class until 15:30 today. I just lounged around in the morning and then tried to stay awake during that class. Seeing as though it was Friday night, I decided to go dancing in downtown Metz with a group of friends in my dorm. Unfortunately, our groups got split up while trying to catch the bus (called the Mettis). The group I was with ended up going to Comedié Café, a student bar in Metz. It was fun! The bar reminded me of Nashville. 🙂 There were a lot of GTL people that I got to meet while I was there.

Samedi, 23 août 2014:

I woke up feeling sick today :(. I hope I didn’t catch the infamous “plague” that happens when you put a bunch of new people together in small living conditions. However, I decided to go into downtown Metz with a group of people to explore and shop. I didn’t do any real shopping, just window shopping for now. There were a lot of stores that I was familiar with including Sephora, H&M, Zaras, etc. On the subject of shopping, the people in France are so stylish!! They all wear blazers and leather jackets and heels and look oh-so-fabulous. I love it! We did go to “C’est deux euros”, France’s equivalent of the dollar store. I bought picture frames for my room. I love pictures and everyone at home.

C’est deux euros…

Then, we got gelato… heavenly!! How are these people not obese?

Yum!

We then walked down to the Mosselle River. It was so beautiful. I saw the famous Le Temple Protestant with all the swans outside! My long lost family obviously.

Me and my swan family!

Finally, we got dinner at this cute little French restaurant where I shared fondue with Carolyn, a friend of mine in the program. It was not at all what I was expecting but still delicious. They served us raw chicken on a plate with salad and potatoes. You put the raw chicken in the hot white wine soup and let it sit in there and cook. Everything was touching the raw chicken! I guess salmonella isn’t a thing here… I still ate everything and didn’t get sick, so I guess that’s good. I don’t know why I was expecting cheese fondue with chicken. Oh well, it was still delicious.

Fondue!

Dimanche, 24 août 2014:

Nothing is open on Sundays. That’s a lie. Only the McDonald’s is open. I wanted to go to Cora again today, but I guess that’s not happening. I can’t run my errands on Sundays anymore like I used to at home. That also means I can’t run out of food on Sundays and be forced to eat McDonalds.

7.20€ for a McDonald’s meal!!

I ended up playing pick up soccer with a bunch of GTL students. It was a lot of fun and great exercise (especially after unfortunately eating McDonald’s). We were out there for over 2 hours! I’m definitely going to be sore tomorrow.

I can’t believe it’s only been a week! I feel settled in already. I know my way to and from school and the stores. I have also navigated the Mettis aka how to get from downtown. The streets of downtown Metz are also starting to become familiar. I am so happy I decided to study abroad!

Exploring Downtown Metz

On our first day in Metz, GTL bussed us into downtown Metz so that we could explore the city that we will be living in for the next 4 months. Downtown Metz is so beautiful, especially compared the suburb life in Metz Technopôle, where GTL is located. The first pictures were taken at Cathédrale Saint-Étienne, a Roman catholic cathedral named after Saint Stephen. It has the largest expanse of stained glass in the world! Who knew that such a world renowned landmark was in my no-name French city.

Cathédrale Saint-Étienne

Cathédrale Saint-Étienne

Cathédrale Saint-Étienne Crucifix

Some of the stained glass in Cathédrale Saint-Étienne

Michel Ney statue

Les Mis

I love the buildings here!

“Take the time otherwise it will take you”

Hidden Carousels

Le Temple Protestant

Traveling to Metz

I’m pretty sure everything that could have gone wrong with my travel, did go wrong. My original plan was to travel from San Francisco to Chicago to London to Luxembourg and then catch a free shuttle provided by GTL to get to Metz. Most of that did not even happen (thanks American Airlines and British Airways).

First of all, my first flight to Chicago was delayed by about 40 minutes to the point where I was worried about making my flight to London. Thankfully, I found out the flight to London was delayed by 45 minutes giving me the time to make that next flight. In the end my flight to London ended up being delayed by about 2 hours, so I was pretty sure I was going to miss my last flight to Luxembourg. Thankfully, I was able to meet up with 3 other GTL students who were on my last 2 flights, so I didn’t have to go through this travel misery on my own.

On a happier note, the person next to me on my flight overseas never showed up! I was so happy to have an aisle seat and a free seat next to me! So happy that I took a selfie 🙂

As expected, my delayed flight to London caused me to miss my flight to Luxembourg. When I got off the plane, the travel assistants told me that the next flight to Luxembourg was full and they would have to put me in a hotel overnight in London and fly me out the next morning. Unfortunately, I needed to be in Metz that night to check into my dorm and attend orientation and classes the next day. The only solution was to re-route to Paris, take the TGV from the airport to Lorainne and then a shuttle to Metz and a taxi to GTL campus. So… that’s what we did! The whole process took about 8 extra hours. Yay for over 24 hours of traveling!

After finally arriving to the Paris CDG airport, I was so happy and relieved!! … Until my two checked bags never showed up. Apparently, the airline messed up my re-routing and thought my final destination was still Luxembourg so they sent my bags to Luxembourg on the flight that I wasn’t allowed on. Getting on the TGV was another endeavor to go through. The TGV is much different than the Caltrain haha. You actually have an assigned seat in an assigned section. In this case, I was so excited to not to have to carry around my luggage. The scenery of the French countryside was the light at the end of the tunnel after a long day of traveling:

On the TGV from Paris to Lorraine

After getting to Lorraine, we took a shuttle to the Metz train station and then a taxi to our GTL dorm. This was a little more challenging since none of the employees spoke English, but we made it!! Shout out to GTL for having pizza waiting for us.

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Current Motto: “Keep calm and make it to Metz.”

Au Revoir États-Unis

I can’t believe the day has finally come! Today, I leave to study abroad in a country that I have have never been to with people that I have never met. I’m so excited to be starting a new adventure, but at the same time, I am terrified and nervous about leaving everything I know and love. Today’s goodbye to my family was very hard. Good thing we snapped this photo before the tears started…

Bon voyage a mí.

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Current motto: “If we all waited until we were 100% ready, nothing would ever get done” – Bob Swanson (dad)

Ready OR NOT, here I come…

One week until I leave for my semester abroad! The countdown has begun…

I have my plane tickets, my passport, my visa and my global eurail pass. That’s all I need, right? Wrong. I have several disclaimers before I start my experience abroad.

 I don’t speak any French. Thankfully, I will be taking a French 101 class while abroad. However, I have currently only made it to level 2 on Duolingo…

I don’t know anyone in my program. Because this program is through Georgia Tech and not Vanderbilt, I haven’t met anyone I will be spending the next 4 months with. Hopefully, I will make some friends? TBD.

I didn’t attend a single orientation meeting. Again, all program specific orientation meetings were held at Georgia Tech, so I was unable to attend any of them. I was able to obtain the materials shared during these meetings and there will be a final orientation meeting once I arrive in Metz.

I still have no idea what I will be doing with my cell phone. European plan, global plan, new phone? I’ll let y’all know once I figure it out.

I had no idea Luxembourg was a country. I am flying into Luxembourg, the closest airport to Metz. It wasn’t until after I booked my plane tickets that I learned Luxembourg wasn’t just a city, but also a country. Whoops!

I haven’t read a single travel guide. I have no idea where I want to go, what I want to see or things I want to do.

For those of you that know me, this is VERY uncharacteristic. I am a researcher, a planner and a list-maker. However, this whole experience has been freeing. I will check back in later about the success of my lack of planning.

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Current motto: “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”