Strasbourg Reunion in North Carolina
After my reunion with UVA friends in Charlottesville on Monday, I spent the rest of the week in North Carolina with some friends from Strasbourg.
Back in Cville again
It felt great to get back to Charlottesville for twenty-four hours this week! I stopped by overnight on my way down to North Carolina and had a little reunion with some old friends.
On Sunday night, I met up with the summer SotL crew (my old theater group). We walked down to the Corner and had a round of beers at Mellow Mushroom, one of my old favorite hangouts. Then, after a stop at Jonathan’s frat, we went to the Historic Downtown Mall for dinner at the Nook.
Just a few iPhone snapshots from my last week in Strasbourg. It was so hard to say goodbye to the city (and especially to my friends!) but part of me is also really excited to get to Boston and start my graduate program. For now, I’m staying with my parents in Stuttgart, but in four days, I’ll be on my way! I can’t wait!
Team Tartine at L’Épicerie
It was Lily’s last day in Strasbourg today. It’s hard to believe the year’s drawing to a close, but everybody’s either leaving or getting ready to go these days — we’re all balancing our time between all the necessary moving-out errands (closing accounts, packing, cleaning, etc.) and spending as much time together as we can before we go our separate ways. I’m so jealous of everyone coming back next year, but I have to admit, I’m also really excited for my own plans — Boston! (More on that soon…)
For Lily’s last lunch, we all met up at L’Épicerie, a cute little restaurant in Centreville I actually hadn’t visited before. (After trying it, I wish I’d known about it all year!)
I had the tartine de chèvre aux amandes et au miel (tartine of goat’s cheese with almonds and honey) — delicious! It’s not a combination I ever would have considered before coming to France, but now it’s one of my favorites.
Everyone else trammed home afterwards, but I decided to take my time wandering through Centreville on foot. It was lunchtime, sunny and warm and crowded, and one of those days when I feel like I’ve been sucked into a movie about my life in France, complete with the café and street market backdrops, black-clad, smoke-trailing extras, and poignant accordion soundtrack.
A lot of the time life in France is just… life that happens to be in France. It’s living with roommates and going out with friends and figuring out bills and grocery shopping — just harder, because it’s all in a language and culture I’m still struggling to learn. But sometimes, I still have these moments when I can see my unspoiled romantic (cliché) fantasy image of la France. The more I learn from living here, the more I feel like that image should start to recede… but it’s hard to let go of entirely, especially in a city as beautiful as Strasbourg.
On the quai
With all the nice weather the last few weeks, we’ve been spending a lot of time on the quai. It’s a nice place to sit outside, enjoy the sunshine, and watch people walk and cycle by. Sometimes the ducks and swans even come hang out, looking for food. (It’s all fine as long as the ragondin stay away — they’re so incredibly disgusting that you kind of can’t look away. The other day, as we were discussing how gross they are, one crawled out of the water about twenty feet from us and started eating dog poop. Really.)
“Ball Night” at Ikea
Did you know Ikea’s Swedish meatballs were half-price on Tuesdays?
Neither did I, before moving to Strasbourg. I have no idea how we ever figured this out, but now it’s become one of our most beloved routines. Every Tuesday at 7:30, our group assembles at a tram stop on the outskirts of Strasbourg to catch the free shuttle bus (read: party bus) to Ikea.
Ten minutes later, that glorious golden sign is beckoning.
We skip the miles of pathways through all the merchandise and go straight to the cafeteria. The first few times we came, the staff seemed a little confused, but now the cashier recognizes us. “Ahhh, les étudiants arrivent!”
And here’s some more French vocabulary for you: “Une petite portion de boulettes, s’il vous plaît.” (File that one under “Phrases I didn’t think I would use this frequently in France…”)
MIAM-MIAM!
Field trip to Stuttgart
When you’re a poor student in Europe (or poor English assistant, or poor anything, really), there’s nothing better than a cheap adventure. Most young foreigners probably come here hoping to travel, but with a limited budget, sometimes it’s hard to come up with an affordable weekend getaway. (Especially for my group, since we’re all saving up for a BIG ENORMOUS EXCITING trip in a couple of months… More soon…)
So Stuttgart seemed like the perfect destination this weekend. My parents had kindly offered us a free place to stay only half an hour from the center of town, and thanks to a couple of Baden-Württemberg passes from Deutsche Bahn, we were able to travel all weekend for about 15 Euros each.
Thanksgiving
This year’s Thanksgiving was not the one I pictured, but that’s okay — it was even better. I think that for most people, Thanksgiving is as much about the comfort of tradition as it is about giving thanks, and I’m no exception. Growing up in Germany, good old-fashioned pilgrim food was a way to feel connected to my native culture. In college, when my family was far away, I at least made sure I was eating the same kind of turkey and mashed potatoes and pie my mother would have made for me. This year, I fully expected to spend the holidays indulging in tradition again. For the first time in awhile, I was going to be on the same continent on my parents and was planning to celebrate the holidays with them. But when a family emergency came up in the States two weeks beforehand, my parents had to fly back to help, and I was on my own again.
Happy Birthday to MEEEEEE!
Today was my 22nd birthday, and I had an amazing time with the girls! First, Angie, Katharine, Kaichen and I drove out to Staunton to see The Comedy of Errors at the Blackfriars Playhouse. Blackfriars is a replica of Shakespeare’s original indoor theatre, and it’s a really amazing place to see Shakespeare performed. (Since we’re all members of “Shakespeare on the Lawn,” a Shakespearean student theater organization at UVA, this is VERY EXCITING to us.)
The show was surprisingly cheap (since we got the student rush price) and hilariously funny, and afterwards we got our picture with Bill (and one of the Dromeos lurking in the background!) before heading back to Charlottesville, where we linked up with Kaitlin and Casey and went to dinner at Outback. So much fun!
Spring Break 2009
Since UVA’s spring break was ridiculously early this year (as usual), the beach was really out of the question. Instead…
ROAD TRIP!
One result of graduating from a DoDDS high school is having friends scattered all over the country! I decided to play a little game of connect-the-dots along the East Coast and catch up with some of my closest friends.
My first stop was my friend Jessica, who attends the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Jessica’s getting married to another high school friend in a couple of months, and it also happened to be her birthday that week, so we had a great time shopping for wedding dresses, getting our nails done (thanks, Jessi’s mom!) and hanging out with her awesome roommates.
After staying with Jessica for a few days, I took a gorgeous drive through the mountains to visit Michael at Clemson in South Carolina. I thought Charlottesville was a small town, but it’s got nothing on Clemson! (Gorgeous campus, though… not to mention BEST BBQ EVER.)
We spent a day catching up and touring around, and then headed down to Augusta, Georgia, where our friends Matt and Elizabeth live. HIGH SCHOOL REUNION! I had seen Elizabeth the summer before at her wedding, but it had been about two and a half years since I’d seen Matt, who’d just gotten back from a mission for his church a few months before. We all piled in his car and headed out to lunch… where we unexpectedly ran into another Patch grad! I guess it really is a small world!
After lunch and a walk along the canal, it was back to their parents’ house for pictures, and then back to Clemson. The next few days were a blur of driving, retracing my way back to Virginia, where I stopped along the way at Radford to pick up my brother from school, since his spring break was starting.
All in all, it was a great trip! Sometimes it’s hard to stay in touch with old friends after your lives take you in different directions, but it’s nice to know that four years later, in different places and on different paths, we can still get together and have a good time.
