Au Revoir

I really did not keep my word about finishing up this blog with something other than a cheeseburger. 

It's July now, I've been in the States for a little over a month. I've found a job working at a front desk of a hotel, which does not satisfy me nearly as much as frolicking around Europe. I've started a countdown until school starts up again. 63 days from today. 

In other words, this blog has now become obsolete. However, I will continue to be part of the blogging community. If you ever find yourself wandering around aimlessly on the internet, feel free to stop by eganwrig.blogspot.com. I promise there will be something to read, whether it is good is another story.

A tout a l'heure, mes amis,

Danni

Royally Cheesy

- And you know what they call a... a... a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?
- They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with cheese?
- No man, they got the metric system. They wouldn't know what the f*** a Quarter Pounder is.
- Then what do they call it?
- They call it a Royale with cheese.
- A Royale with cheese. What do they call a Big Mac?
- Well, a Big Mac's a Big Mac, but they call it le Big-Mac.
- Le Big-Mac. Ha ha ha ha. What do they call a Whopper?
- I dunno, I didn't go into Burger King.

- Vincent and Jules, Pulp Fiction

It all comes down to this. I've have succumbed to going to Mc Donald's in France, only to use their free wifi.

These past several days have been great. I've been driving around western France with my dad, getting lost in all the round-points, involuntarily listening to Bono repetitively, visiting family friends, drinking wine, and mooching off of bad American fast food joints. But now, my time in France is about to come to a close. I arrive in Denver in just a little over 48 hours. Crazy.

I hope to conclude this blog with something more creative than this lame post upon my return home. It should be something to keep me occupied until I find a job. (On that note, know anyone who's hiring?)

And yes, I've had the McRoyale with Cheese. Several times.

Note Bono: When renting a car in Paris, be sure it has a working radio antenna. Or you will be stuck listening to the left-behind U2 CD over and over again to the point where you desire nothing else but to throw it out the window and set yourself on fire.

Soeur Sombre

One of my passions is watching movies. 

In France, I have all the time in the world to watch movies. It is also a good way to become more familiar with international film and further train my ear in the French language. Discovering that I can get into the Rennes Gaumont theatre for €5.50 with my metro card, I have jumped on this opportunity.

But this afternoon, I realized something about my choices of films. They have all been depressing. Really depressing. 

Soeur Sourire

Don't be fooled by the cheery "Sound of Music-esque" photo, this whole movie was anything but one of my favorite things. A biopic of Soeur Sourire, or Sister Smile, this film fed on the irony of her stage name and the brief success she encountered in the 60s. Those who are familiar with Debbie Reynolds's interpretation of Jeanine Deckers in The Singing Nun, you would be devastated to find out how the real story ends.

Moral: Women are never really free... We are forever doomed if we don't get married and start a family or if we fail to carry out our vows in a nunnery.

Coco avant Chanel

"Coco before Chanel" with Audrey Tautou (or Amélie) is probably the least depressing out of the bunch, however there is still a sort of melancholy present. Although appearing rather menacing, Coco Chanel is a much more likable character than the aforementioned Soeur Sourire. You sympathize with her through all her grief and dejection. You rejoice when she eventually achieves her dream in high fashion. Yet even in the final scene, Coco's face still channels a history full of sadness.

Moral: Women can liberate themselves... With hard work and useful connections, we can be successful without getting married or going to a nunnery.

Welcome

No, I did not make a mistake during my Google image search...Welcome is the official French title. But for fun, "bienvenue" is the translation. Although the main story line may seem funny - a boy's obsession to learn how to swim so that he could cross the English Channel - this film approaches a variety of serious topics such as immigration, civil law, justice, and prejudice. From the very beginning there is a small flame of hope that things will turn out well, but in the end it gets extinguished and all is unwelcome.

Moral: No one is free... Prejudice is so prevalent that it is impossible to marry the one we love or even think about fleeing to a nunnery.

Je te mangerais

During "le printemps du cinéma" festival in late March, "I Would Eat You" was the only movie that was not sold out yet when we arrived at the theater. Judging from the poster and title alone, you are not wrong to deduce that it is very bizarre. However, you must not take the title too literally. The verb "manger" also denotes a sexual meaning. And that was exactly what this movie was about. It is an hour and a half of confused psychological frustration and tragedy, leaving you with anxiety and a developing mistrust in all of your close childhood friends.

Moral: Women have too much freedom... If we don't marry and have a family or join a nunnery, we will go insane and attack our lovers of both the same and opposite sex.

I must see something happy before I leave. Or I might get the wrong impression of today's French cinema.

The Search for Harry Potter: Part 2

Although unsuccessful on our quest to find the real Harry Potter in Dublin, Aberdeen, Glascow, or St. Andrews, we did not give up. We packed up our things and moved on to the lovely Edinburgh, Scotland...where a poor and depressed J.K. Rowling began writing what would instantly become a worldwide phenomenon that would bring her fame and a higher income than that of the Queen.


And that small café where J.K. Rowling wrote the beginnings of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is the Elephant House. A Mecca for Harry Potter fans.


So we had lunch there.


Then we found the prestigious George Herriot School, the original inspiration for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It can be seen from the Elephant House.


And a possible inspiration for Fred & George Weasley's joke shop?


Before leaving the magnificent Edinburgh, we climbed Arthur's Seat, the large hill in the background, to see if its views would allow us to find Harry.


Its views were marvelous, but Harry was not in sight. We sighed and fled to King's Cross Station in London to try our luck at Platform 9 3/4.


It turns out that I am a muggle and did not sucessfully make it onto the Hogwarts Express. But I did stumble upon the St. Olaf House, which does not quite resemble the beautiful St. Olaf College...the "Hogwarts for Lutherans."


Losing hope, we took a visit to the Queen at Buckingham Palace to ask for her advice.


She suggested looking for Harry at Madame Tussaud's wax museum. There, we ran into another friend, President Nicolas Sarkozy.


But we missed Daniel Radcliffe, the actor who plays Harry Potter in the Warner Brothers films.


Sad and broken-hearted, I finally called a taxi to take us to the airport so we could return back to France.



Overall, we were disappointed that we were not able to find the real Harry Potter, but we had an excellent time in the United Kingdom. 

I know Harry's out there, somewhere. In the meantime, I'll be waiting.

The Search for Harry Potter: Part 1

I apologize to any regular readers for my recent absence. But you must excuse me, I was on an epic quest to find Harry Potter.

Several years ago when I was still in high school, a friend predicted my future. She told me that I will marry the real Harry Potter. Despite what readers learn in the last installment of J.K. Rowling's series, Harry Potter and I were meant to be. Now, years later, I was finally given the chance to fulfill my destiny. Here, I will recap my journey to find Harry Potter during spring vacation in the United Kingdom.

To start our journey off right, we first grabbed a pint in Dublin, Ireland. Guinness of course.


Not quite the UK, but there's the possibility that Harry would be visiting his Irish neighbors. Such as my best friend, Oscar Wilde.


There is also a castle in Dublin that Harry could have been haunting, tired of his home at Hogwarts. But he was no where to be found.


Convinced that Harry was not in Dublin, we hopped over to Aberdeen, Scotland...the city of granite.


Deciding that the city was too gray and depressing, we perked up with a coffee break in the lively Glascow.


Or not so lively Glascow.


We then took our chariot of fire and sprinted to the beaches of St. Andrews.


Found its beautiful ruins...


...and Harry Potter!


Or so we thought. We quickly found that we were mistaken. He was only a poser. And he was a Scot. Alas, would we ever find him?

23 Surprises

I have a Kinder toy army. 

Kinder eggs are a godsend. As you can see above, I have eaten a few too many Kinder eggs (along with my Jif peanut butter from home). And I have managed to not get a single toy twice.

An inventory of my collection:

3 crazy-haired kids with removable modes of transportation on their backs

4 animal characters from the Dreamworks film Madagascar 2

2 bumper cars with stickers of ridiculous kids in costumes

1 regular miniature race car

3 animals (an elephant, a dog, and a cow with antlers?) with interchangeable body parts (meant to create chimeras) 

1 yellow pencil topper in the form of a face 

1 hockey-playing cat

1 wobbling tiger

1 red-bearded man on a fancy skateboard

1 meditating figure with a "computer" face that changes emoticons

5 pirates; 3 of which are human, 2 of which are monsters 

And yes, Kinder chocolate is excellent with peanut butter.

CIREFE Caféteria

I spend too much time in the CIREFE caféteria.

First of all, the French "caféteria" does not hold the same connotation as the English "cafeteria". Instead of being a location where you buy unappetizing lunch and eat at long tables with your friends, a caféteria is a space where you can sit and drink café. In other words, the CIREFE caféteria serves as a break room for students and teachers.

The CIREFE caféteria is actually a small crowded room with a few wooden benches and fewer stainless steal tables to set your tasse de café upon. There are newspapers ranging from the local Rennes paper to the national Le Monde available to read. The best part of the CIREFE caféteria are the automatic coffee and snack machines. You can get a candy bar or a soda for about 80 cents (except Coke for some reason is a euro). Or better yet, you can get a very small cup of coffee - regular, crème, cappuccino, macchiato, chocolat - for 40 cents. Unfortunately, the coffee only lasts for a few sips...but the price is right.

The CIREFE caféteria is also a place where French is rarely spoken. English-speakers, Chinese-speakers, and Spanish-speakers congregate together to take a break from their French. Americans are the worst. It's rather disappointing, but you cannot escape it when all your friends are laughing and talking as you sit on those wooden benches. The conversations they have are also of the most ridiculous sort. One afternoon, people were heating up over whether masculine and feminine words existed in English. Someone even tried to prove that the pronunciation of "the" entailed the gender of the word. (Of course that was stupid, for the pronunciation of "the" is dictated by the presence of a vowel or consonant following it.) Because these conversations are so loud and fierce, it's impossible to read or study to the point where you give up and let yourself become part of the discussion.

When Americans in the CIREFE caféteria are not participating in absurd debates, they like to sing and dance. Beyoncé's "All the Single Ladies" for example is popular. There are several people who have been working on learning the dance and will occasionally practice their moves in the small space, attracting attention from those passing by in the hallway and even those in the classrooms. There has also been a rousing chorus of the "Star-Spangled Banner" where even our friend from Saudi Arabia, who is probably more American than most of us, joined in.

All in all, the CIREFE caféteria is an unusual and unreal place. I don't know why I spend so much time there, but I know when I look back at my days in Rennes, the caféteria will always be a part of that memory.

Liz, being herself, in the caféteria.