Angers, Je t'aime

So I guess it's been a busy week as I haven't updated you all on what I've been up to?! Sort of. I wouldn't exactly say my life is busy and jam-pack full of adventures, but this week I was busy most nights planning spring break, or spending time with my girls.
I will give the highlights of the week I guess...
Chantal left for a few days, and suddenly returned with children in tow...yep the grandbabies are here again...and I have a feeling they'll be here til' we leave for spring break. Oh well.
I can't remember much of the week, so that probably tells you how important it was...ha.
We'll start with thursday events, since that is about as far back as I can remember...sorry guys.
Okay, so Thursday class was rather tedious but okay overall, my langue professor was sick, but instead of canceling class as is par for u.s. universities...we had a sub. c'est quoi ca? zuit alors! oh well, she was nice and I ended up feeling rather bad for her, as our class is very much in a pre spring break lull and did not cooperate very well with answering her...picture eager grad student subbing in for a class and asking questions and in reply she gets......silence.....yeah, hence the feeling bad. Oh well. In traduction, we got our papers back and I got a 16.5 which pretty much made my day...or week. We also are all such a small class that we laugh and have a pretty good time during it, which makes me love the class. That night Liana and I hadn't exactly planned on participating in activities, but Cassie called us from town and was alone, so being the girls we are, we put some pants on, and headed to meet her at a bar. We were soon joined by Cassie's friend Miao, and had a lot of fun doing girl-talk and just laughing. After a little while we spotted our friend Alex, and he sat with our ever growing table. Of course we were at Soft, which is basically a CIDEF hangout, so not much later we were greeted by a group of students from class, of whom we knew about 4, but we all relocated to a larger location and spent the better part of a half hour talking together and laughing. That was when Liana and I realized what time it was, and decided to be at least slightly responsible and head home. I can honestly say that the nights spent at soft with my girls, and whoever else shows up, prove to be the best ones I've had here.
Friday consisted of a very lethargic me going to class only to find our sub still in tow. Poor substitute grad student got an even worse response during our 8am friday class, mainly because not many students showed up, and the ones who did....well let's just say I'm pretty sure all of us had either a coke or a coffee in front of us. After class I spent the better part of two hours making a powerpoint on Quebec, and the difference between Quebecois french, and France french. Heather and I will be presenting it to our langue class on Tuesday. Which brings me to lunchtime. I met Heather to show her the powerpoint, and get some lunch. We went to a small cafe near the galerie lafayette, and sat on the steps eating it. The sandwhich was great, the sun was out, and it was hotttt. We ended up talking on the steps about everything n anything for close to 2 hours before walking back towards school. (Heather had class still to attend)
Later on, Liana ,Nikki and I met up to buy our tickets from Marseille to Nice, and back...which was a feat in itself. The man was grumpy, and we ended up buying a ticket from nice back to the airport in marseille....oops! We plan on going back wednesday to correct this problem, and to purchase our tickets to Nantes for Saturday! Liana and I also need to buy our tickets from brussels to home.
After this, we wanted to get out of the heat and enjoy some girl talk, so we grabbed some dinner at Mcdoner and I managed to get basically a glorifed grilled cheese, and it was amazing. =) We also got some ice cream out of the deal and it was also pretty spectacular to have due to the hot weather we are experiencing right now.
Saturday we headed to the market and met up with Leah and Nikki. We bought strawberries, a few baguettes, some bottles of water, two dif types of cheese, and some sort of coconut cookie things (YUM). We packed it all up, and hopped a bus across the river. From there we hiked our way back to the lac de maine. We got a little turned around during our hike and ended up plopping down in the middle of the woods to have our picnic.
It was sort of spectacular though, because the meadow we were in was quiet, and there were 0 people there besides us. We also saw some bunnies jumping through. Once finished with our rather amazing lunch, we hiked to the actual lake, and not 30 seconds after spotting the beach, we had dropped our bags, stripped off our shoes and ran for the sand....which was sort of gritty.
My poor feet are not used to being barefoot, and are becoming more and more abused while in france, and they didn't appreciate the gritty sand...and the water smelled...off. sort of like cow poop...weird. We ended up sprawling out in the grass but in the sun and laying for a while.
This would have been great had a woman not sat in front of us on the sand....and proceeded to take off her dress. Okay, now this wasn't the worst thing ever, because men in France prance about in speedos like us seeing their junk on display isn't a big deal or anything...uhm. ew. anyway. So miss-I-love-my-body-how-it-is then proceeded to finish taking off her dress....revealing her thong bathing suit bottom, and oh it gets...er...better? (not so much) She stripped off her top. and then proceeded to rub lotion onto...them....for quite some time. After she finished with this, she kept rolling into different tanning positions and just letting it all show/hang out...ugh. culture shock 101.
I have a feeling maybe this was getting us ready for spring break and what we will experience while on the Mediterranean. Oh best part? Liana took my camera and snapped a photo of the lake...and miss-not-self-conscious.

After our long lake trip we went to monoprix and grabbed some supplies for dinner. Liana and I made chili and it was quite delicious if I do say so myself. We will be enjoying the leftovers for lunch tomorrow afternoon. I soon realized I was sunburnt (only slightly) and spent the rest of my night watching Burlesque online, and then heading to bed.

Today wasn't all that eventful, Liana, Nikki, and I got some drinks from the Spar, and sat in the Jardin des plantes for seriously hours just talking. it was lovely =) After this we ended up grabbing pasta and enjoying it in the jardin du mail. We spent quite a lot of time just sitting and talking today, and I can honestly say I am going to miss days like the ones I've been having in France lately.
I am slowly loving this place more an more and can honestly say I don't want to leave. I miss the people from home, but I can already tell Angers will forever hold a special place in my heart.