Week Eight: Green Birds and Roller-Coasters

Hello Readers,

The beginning of this week was quite the roller-coaster. Jeff switched host families because his original host family wasn't really interested in being a family. We think that she was just doing it for the money. She had no interest in spending anytime getting to know Jeff and would shun him when he attempted to communicate with her. That and her son would have friends over and party in the house until six in the morning and the host mother would just leave and come back in the morning. Jeff talked to the housing director Margaux and she said that she could definitly move Jeff and put him in a family with people who will want to be a family to him and really spend time getting to know him. So far it has been a much better experience. They have been incredibly kind and welcoming. Jeff already feels more at home with these people. There is a host mother (Santa), a host long term boyfriend (Frederic), a host sister (Marie), and a host dog (Victor). Marie is 17 and a very hard working student. She is nice and quiet and likes reading. Frederic works in antiterrorism and went to college for a major very similar to political science. He likes motorcycles, current events, cars and he collects and writes magazine articles about knives. Santa is a teacher who likes talking and travel. Victor is a small brown dog that is a little scraggly but is a nice little fellow. This house is a good fit for Jeff.

We had our hardest midterms this week and one of the midterms was for our Economic Globalization class. This class has been the least organized mess of a class either of us have ever taken. We started the class with a teacher who was unfamiliar with teaching english students and was from Eastern Europe and had a very thick accent that was difficult to understand. This teacher would always start the class with a plan for the class. Telling us her plan would take half the class and then we wouldn't have time to cover all of the material she had outlined so we were consistently behind. This teacher was replaced a quarter of the way of the semester and the new teacher came into the class thinking we had covered all the information we were supposed to when we had really covered about half of it. Everyone in the class was very stressed about the midterm because none of us had learned the information we were supposed to. The second teacher is the polar opposite of the first. She goes way too quickly and doesn't really go into enough depth for anyone to get a real feel for the information. We would really just like a happy medium. The positive of all of this is we have good professors for our other classes and we will probably never have to take another class with these teachers. 

On top of our scary midterm, this Wednesday Carly's phone was stolen. Which just added a whole lot more stress to an already poop of a day. Carly and I spent the day teaching ourselves the information and doing our best to understand it. We took the midterm that night and we both felt okay about it. We still haven't received the midterms back so we do not know yet, but that is very indicative of how this course has been run.

Friday: After a tough week, we hoped to be able to relax when the weekend arrived and we were not disappointed. We took a slow train to Toulouse. It took us about 4 hours to get there and on the way we saw many great things. During the ride we past a cool castle in the town Beiezers, we watched two episodes from the most recent season of Top-Gear, and we passed Narbonne and Carcassonne (a cool, old, fortified city). We arrived at the station and walked from there to our hotel. We were both starving so we went in search of food. We found a local thai food place and we decided that is what we wanted. The owner was very unfriendly and slightly unkind but the food was phenomenal. We were very happy to finally have some good thai food in France. After food we were full and tired so it was time for bed.

Saturday: We woke up and ate free hotel breakfast. The food was not nearly as good as the free breakfast we had had previously but hey, it was free. It was raining so we donned our raincoats and umbrellas and headed out to explore. We saw a few very cool sights that you can view in the pictures (we did better picture labels this time). We had local pizza hand made in front of us. It was delicious. We took a rainy day nap and watched one more Top-Gear before heading out and seeing a play at the Toulouse National Theater. We stopped before getting to the theater and had a quick meal at an American restaurant. The food again was really good. We got to the theater and got our tickets and some coffee and headed into the play. The play was L'Oiseau Vert. It was captivating. It was completely in French which was a little tough but we both understood most of it. It was a great experience and the play was really well done. After the play we headed back to the hotel and went to bed. 

Sunday: We woke up and ate hotel breakfast again. We went and saw more sights and we walked along and across the river. Everything was closed on this day (because Europe closes Sunday and Monday). We walked around a little more then we went to the only open place we could find Haagen Dazs where we ordered a chocolate fondue. This came with a bunch of balls of ice cream, some fruit, some cookies and brownies and toppings for all of this. It was super yummy and terrible for us. We had a great time eating it and after we headed to the train station and headed home. On the train we finished the third season of Sherlock. 

It was a wonderful trip and we both really needed a reset after the week we had. 

Pictures from Toulouse:  http://imgur.com/a/okZ46

Until next time,

Carly Ward & Jeff Popek