Kayla, the Citadel and Crepes!

This weekend, Kayla came to visit! We had lots of adventures and it was so much fun to have her here in France. On Friday, we did a little grocery shopping after her train got in and then we cooked dinner and watched a movie and just caught up. My host mom went to Munich to see her daughters last weekend so she was gone and we had the house to ourselves, which was fun, especially for cooking.

On Saturday, we ventured to Besançon, a petite ville about an hour away, for a day trip with Kathryn. We knew what we wanted to see there, but we hadn't planned anything more than that, so it ended up being a bit of an adventure! It was actually pretty cool to go somewhere and just explore and wing it for once. When we arrived, we had to figure out how to get from the train station into downtown, but thanks to our wonderful deductive reasoning skills we found not only the bus stop but also the right bus. We were starving, so we basically went to the first cafe we saw to get sandwiches. It turned out to be a totally traditional French cafe! It was quite an experience. It was run by an old man named Max, and his friends made up the majority of the clientele. They were just hanging around at the counter talking and joking. He came and talked to us for quite a while before he gave us menus and he told us about his son, who goes to school in Wisconsin. He went and got his University of Madison mug and showed it to us, and he asked us about where we were from. He made all the food himself, and it was a typical slow French experience (they traditionally take a lot of time to make and eat their food). We waited for our check for quite a while because the French like to just sit there and talk for hours. The people at the bar kept looking at us like we were the most exciting thing to come to Besançon in a while, and one of the men stole our drinks off the tray when Max was bringing them to us. ''That is what it is like to be a man in a French cafe,'' Max said. Another old man came up to us and asked us questions, too. It was really cute and felt sort of like something out of a movie. It was also fun to translate everything for Kayla ;)

When we were done with lunch, we spent rather a large amount of time walking around trying to find the signs pointing us to the citadel. It was pretty dreary and cold outside, and it seemed like the signs kept pointing us in opposite directions. By the end of the day, we were convinced that the tourism office doesn't actually exist. Eventually we found a map and some questionably placed signs and made our way towards this citadel. It was kind of a long walk, but we finally found the citadel-- about 300 feet above us on a cliff. We stared at it for a minute, decided that we would not want to be one of the people in the tower on the edge (the wall was pretty much flesh with the side of the cliff), and set about trying to find the path up. This presented another struggle, and after concluding that we probably shouldn't walk through the tunnel all the cars were driving through to get there, I asked at a tobacco store. He told us there were stairs just to the left, so we went on yet another hunt and eventually found them (quite a ways down from the left, I might add).

So we climbed and climbed and climbed. It wasn't all that bad, but the stairs were super old and steep. When we finally got to the top, though, the view was so worth it. It was gorgeous! The buildings of the citadel were pretty, too-- built under the reign of Louis XIV! Over the years, it has contained defense resources, a school for cadets and a prison, as well as prisoners of war captured and, for the most part, executed by Germany, who seized the citadel during WWII. Now, however, it houses a zoo and botanical gardens, which were cool, but slightly depressing-- it was about thirty degrees outside and the lions and flamingos did not look at home. We got to climb to the very highest towers, though, and walk along an open path between them. We ended up at the exact spot we had been staring at from below just an hour earlier and which we had decided looked like it was about to topple off the cliff. Luckily the rocks held up for us and the most eventful thing that occurred was lots of picture-taking of the breathtaking view.

On Sunday we walked at the lake and met up with some other Dijonettes to see The King's Speech and just hung out. It was a great weekend, in all, and so fun to be able to have a little bit of Puget Sound here :)

that looks stable, right?

the view from the highest point!

This week, by contrast, has been pretty stressful-- I think my worst since getting here. We got our midterm exams back and while I didn't fail, it didn't exactly give me lots of confidence about receiving As for my work here, and the whole system is just confusing and frustrating. We've struggled a bit the last couple of days, but now the week is over and I have a free weekend, so I am going to reorganize and try to really work. My host mom said she would help me and made me feel better about the whole situation. Also, a few of us made crepes for dinner and dessert together earlier this week and studied and it was really fun. I made my first crepe ever! It was very fun, and I really enjoyed my savory crepe! I'm still not a huge fan of dessert crepes-- but don't worry, I'll make them for you when I get home anyway. ;)

the crepe i made!