Weekend #2: Les Fetes de la Mirabelle

I'm a little behind on blog posts (my apologies).

2 weekends ago (August 27th-29th) was the Mirabelle Festival in Metz.  The festival celebrates the mirabelle which is a small plum/grape-like fruit.  One of the professors here brought some mirabelles in for us to try.  They reminded me of muscadines because of the pit, but they were more grape-like in texture.

I had French class until 8 PM on Friday, so I was a bit later getting downtown for the beginning of the festival.  We ran into most of the other GTL students in Place St. Jacques (the main square in downtown Metz where many a beer is had).  All of them had crazy clothes on and they took us to a tent near the cathedral to partake in the crazy clothing extravaganza.  Basically, you could buy a toke for 2 euro and "shop" in the tent of used clothing.  The point was to create the most ridiculous outfit that you could come up with and then the attendants would take a picture so you could be included in the competition for the best dressed.  I came out looking kind of like Janis Joplin.  The boys kept joking about me having illegal drugs in the folds of my many skirts and dresses.  It was GREAT fun and probably a great way to fundraise (which I assume was what was going on).  It would be a great idea for a Pride or OPA event next semester!  Here are some of the costumes:

After our shopping spree, we danced to the music of some bands in the same square before heading to a bar.  We went to Comedie Club and did a shot and had a beer or two.  Afterwards, we decided that we wanted to find a club (or discotheque) so we could go dancing.  We ventured out again and ended up running into our dorm manager, Benoit.  We asked him if he knew of a club we could go to and he said he did and offered to pay for our taxis to get there.  Benoit and his friends got in the taxis with us and we made our way to La Rouge.  There were about 8-10 of us (2 girls and 6-8 boys) plus Benoit and his two friends.  We made it to the club and Benoit bribed the bouncer to let us in without paying cover.  We had a lot of fun dancing on the main dance floor for an hour or two despite a few awkward instances when Benoit danced with me.  Benoit led us off the dance floor after awhile and we thought we were leaving, but we were actually going to the VIP lounge.  He bribed the second bouncer and we went upstairs to the much smaller VIP dance floor.  We danced for several more hours and both Benoit and his friend, Hugo, danced with me and Siri several times.  I was still having fun, but it just seemed like a strange situation since I have to pay my rent to Benoit.  I guess it could be considered a conflict of interest....oh well.  I had fun and so did everyone else despite those weird moments.  We got home around 5 or 6 in the morning...crazy night.

The next day I slept in for a long time to catch up on the lack of sleep from the night before.  After I woke up, I went downtown with some people and had a kebab and a beer in Place St. Jacques.  We wanted to make it to the Celtic concert and fireworks display, so we hoofed it over to the field near the Centre Pompidou.  There was a bagpipe choir already playing on one of the smaller stages and we watched them for a little while before the real concert began.  A famous musician played the penny whistle with a band and I really enjoyed listening to it...reminded of my Celtic Women CD (ha, embarrassing).  Once the concert finished up, the fireworks show started.  It was probably in the top 5 best fireworks shows I've ever seen.  There were crazy fireworks that looked exactly like a flame and a sheet of fireworks that burned for several minutes.  I loved it! Right before and right after the fireworks show, some of the spectators broke out into some Celtic dances.  Siri, Guillaume (one of the French graduate students that we've befriended), and I joined one of the dances and acted like we knew what we were supposed to be doing.

Sunday was dedicated to a market and the parade, which featured the 2010 Mirabelle Queen.  The parade was only okay to me because it seemed poorly organized and only featured bagpipes and floats.  I liked bagpipes a lot, but I think I've had my bagpipe fix for awhile.

Click here to see pictures from this weekend.

-JChamp

First week of classes

The first week of classes has come and gone.  This semester I'm taking the following:

MSE 2001

ISyE 3770 (Statistics)

HTS 2084 (my ethics requirement)

FREN 2001

To be honest, I was most worried about my French class because I didn't know how advanced some of the other people in the class would be.  I was SO nervous before the first class, but I think I'll be okay.  Some people took AP French in high school and have kept up with it some, so they are significantly better.  Nevertheless, if I keep up with the class like I have been so far I think I'll be just fine.  My other classes should be okay too.  MSE 2001 is a little weird because it is a distance learning class.  It was originally supposed to be a recorded class and not a live one, but on the first day of classes Josyanne (the academic director) told us that it would be a live class and we would have to report at 3 PM on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  The two of us in the class that were at the meeting were severely disappointed and frankly pissed the fuck off because one of the perks of coming to GT Lorraine is that you get 3 day weekends every weekend and having class on a Friday afternoon defeats that.  Josyanne told us to email the professor and ask if the class could be a recorded one again since we need it to graduate and it conflicted with another one of my classes anyways.  He emailed back later that day and said that it should be fine to make it a recorded class.  I don't know if it will work well or not...he's been kind of weird and standoffish and borderline rude about some of my questions...we shall see.

I'm continuing to make some awesome friends.  I really like the hall where I live.  There are 8 GT students all grouped together on my hall and we keep our doors open and chat all the time (reminds me of freshman year).  Most, if not all of us are upperclassmen too which I think brings us closer too because we all know what it's like to be beaten down by Tech for a few years.  We also know how to work hard and play hard, which is the secret to success at Tech.

This weekend is the Mirabelle Festival and its been a lot of fun.  Pics and a blog entry will be dedicated to this later.

-JChamp

GTL Facilities

Today I accidently slept in until 1 PM (guess I can blame that on the jetlag, right?).  I used most of the afternoon to unpack and then I headed over to the GTL Administration offices to introduce myself and to pick up the towels and textbook that some awesome friends (Justin and Morgan) left me.  Thanks guys!  The administration ladies were about to leave, though, even though they said we could come in until 5:30 PM (it was only 4:30 PM).  Apparently this is typical of French people?  So, I have to go back tomorrow to pick up my key to the building and get some information about the semester.

After the trip to GTL, I met up with some people that just got to Lafayette today and we all went to Cora to get groceries and have dinner.  Cora was very similar to Walmart and I bought things I needed around the apartment mostly.  I did get a litre of Orangina Light, but I'm going to buy my food at the closer (and supposedly cheaper) Simply Market.  After dinner a bunch of us chatted in the hallway for awhile.  I'm really excited about making new friends and new memories here!

Here are some pics of my apartment and GTL:

Face of GTL main building

Residence Lafayette (my apartment building)

BRIGHT red hallway leading to my room

Kitchen area

Bathroom

Table and Stools

My door and room number (for my stalkers)

Left side of closet

Right side of closet

Shelves and dresser

Desk

Bed and Shelves

View from my window

More tomorrow, maybe...

-JChamp

GTL Arrival!

After almost 24 hours of travel by plane, train, and taxi, I finally made it here to the Lafayette apartment complex.  My lodgings for the semester are a lot nicer than I was expecting.  I'll take some pictures once I have everything unpacked and looking nice.  I was expecting to have to share a bathroom with someone, but I have my own!  Also, some nice person left a few hangers for me.  I might buy some more at the local "hypermarche", Cora (basically the French Super Walmart, but bigger and better).

The only bad parts of my trip here were that my favorite GT duffel bag broke when I disembarked at JFK and that I couldn't get my phone card to work at Brussels-Midi train station because I didn't have Belgium's country code.  I think I did a better job navigating myself through Belgium and France than I expected.  I freaked out and stressed a little on the inside today, but nothing major.  I got to all my destinations on time and sometimes even early.  I think I'll be even more relaxed next time I'm navigating through train routes and I feel a lot more confident about what to do at a foreign train station.

Once I got to Lafayette, the building manager checked me in and showed me to my new room/apartment.  I ran into a bunch of GTL-ers while waiting for the building manager to finish his phone call.  One of the girls, Kayla, invited me to dinner with everyone else.  We went to a crepe restaurant in downtown Metz and I got to meet pretty much everyone that is here so far.  Everyone seems really chill and funny and I know that everyone is going to get along really well.  We all walked around downtown Metz at night and accidently stayed out too late for the bus to take us home, so we walked all the way back.  Not what I was expecting when I put on my new shoes to wear to dinner tonight, haha.  Here are some pictures from tonight's walk:

Getting off the U-line in downtown Metz for dinner

Cathedral in downtown Metz (Construction is being done on the steeple right now)

Centre Pompidou at night

It is definitely time for bed.  I think I've had less than 5 hours of sleep in the past 36 hours.  Pics tomorrow of the apartment, hopefully!

-JChamp