A bike, French family, a town called Bitche and a nutty professor

So right now, I should be reading a French short story for tomorrow, however, my brain really cannot focus right now after writing my first paper all day.

On Thursday, I decided to rent a bike. It took me a month to finally decide to get one. I haven't had a bike since I was eight years old, and that didn't have handbrakes. This should be interesting. Slightly worried about hitting a person, a car, a building or nothing? I was riding on this little sidewalk and it was somewhat slanted, and I was worried at what point would my bike start tipping to the side. Is that a stupid question? I tend to think about things like this. Then today, I stopped and all of a sudden another bike came whizzing up behind me. How am I supposed to know if there is someone behind me! I would probably feel more comfortable with at least the helmet. But of course the French are too cool for that, except for the one person I see every 17 days who wears one. Then there could be me, the girl with the helmet and who stops short at curved sidewalks.

Anyway. Thursday night I was invited to my cousin's apartment in Strasbourg for dinner. Yes, apparently I have all this family in France. But, no, I am not French. Strange how family is. It went pretty well and they were very friendly. Parts of the time, I just sat there because they started talking about things I knew nothing about or I couldn't understand. Oh well, they still said I spoke pretty good French. Haha I'm sure.

Yesterday, Saturday, my French history class went on a trip to Bitche. Pronounced like so. The awkward name town sits about a hour north of Strasbourg in Lorraine (the other area with Strasbourg that was passed between Germany and France). When my host family had me asked me at dinner last weekend where I was going to dinner this weekend, I answered "Beeache." Trying to make it sound a different then it was spelled. My host sister and brother both just looked at me first, then I repeated it. And they said "Oui, c'est Bitche." Then the brother goes, oui, comme "you fuckin bitch." hahahah I almost fell off the chair.

So what is in Bitche you might ask? Well, not that much. We went there to visit the Citadel a Bitche, a large stone fortress used during the Franco-Prussian War that was used by the French for protection while they were under attack. It was huge, and really cool actually. There were really nice views over the side and then we took a tour with these huge headphones. It took us from room to room with a movie they made reenacting what life was like inside the citadel during the war, which was very rough and the French lost, obviously. After a hour and half, we left to lunch. I just must comment that Syracuse does not go cheap with these meals for trips. We must have had about a 3 hour lunch. It was so funny. But we all loved it, just sat and ate after our insignificant 4 hours of sleep the night before.

Then we headed out to stop at the battlefield where the war took place. So the bus pulled up to a large green field with apple trees. Three monuments stood built, some with German writing, because after the war, the area was given to the newly formed Germany. But the funny thing was basically, we stood, stared at the monument and then walked a bit, picked some apples, and then found some horses and began feeding them. Here we are French history kids, standing on the battle field fielding nice horses apples. It was great. So funny.

Our last stop was a teeny museum dedicated to the war located in a small town nearby. We watched a 10 minute movie that used pictures of their little figurines in the museum as images in the film. Hahaha.
Meanwhile, our professor, Monsieur Grille, is just such a funny man. He is just saying the most random funny things. He would just whip out this large camera and snap a pictures of the group at the citadel, at lunch. At one point he stared telling us jokes about what the difference is between French and Portuguese women, or the story last year about when the group left him behind at the museum when he was locked in the bathroom. Or in the middle of the film at the museum, he was standing behind, and made some loud large noise, and I screamed and seriously flew across the room. NOT embarrassing AT ALL. He laughed, and so did the class. Oh boy. Normal occurrence.

Exhausted from the day in Bitche, I stayed home last night, while my host mother had this big dinner party going on. I fell asleep at 12ish and I still heard dishes clinking. She parties harder than me, it's fine.

I'd say it was really good week. I'm finally feeling pretty good about things. I just hope it keeps up.