Cou Cou!

Cou cou!

I survived my first midterm, but won't know how it went until next week... My next exam is tomorrow for grammar. It will basically equal death :(

On Tuesday night i had a unique opportunity to go to a French movie premiere here in Nantes. The film was called La Premiere Etoile (The first star/memory). I went with a friend from IES who had gotten an invitation to attend the premiere from a friend she met here in Nantes. It turns out that her friend was actually the cousin of the director of the film though! And the director was at the premiere! So we got to meet him. He was also the principal actor in the film, so it was cool to see him both on screen and in person. It was wicked cool. I love movies. Afterwards they invited us out to have drinks with them. It was fun to be surrounded by so many movie loving folk.

The guy in the middle with the fur hat and plaid scarf is Lucien Jean-Baptiste, the director/actor I met.

Wednesday morning I was on a mission to find a nail clipper, but instead, came home with a new spring coat... It's navy blue, light weight, and pea coat style. There's also a belt that goes around the waist. I think it was a good purchase :) Of course I wore it today. I really can't resist wearing new things.

Today has been a really great day. I had my first visitor in Nantes! Mary Kay, a cousin of my mom's, took the train in from Paris for the day to hang out and see a little bit of the city. We saw the big sights, the chateau, the cathedral and the Loire river. We also covered most of downtown Nantes, but avoided the shopping. We ate lunch at a delicious creperie in the older part of downtown. I think she was impressed by the crepes! You really can't go wrong with them :) It's probably one of the things i'll miss most about being here. The accessibility of crepes...haha.

Mary Kay also brought me a bag of chocolate chips and Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookies! Oh man, I am excited to attempt making cookies again! And thin mints are definitely something they don't have here. The French girl scout equivalents sell pastries and cakes here. They're good, but i'm not sure they can live up to thin mints...

Some other big news around my household is that my family's eldest daughter, Virginie (who lives in North Carolina), had her baby last Friday, the 20th. It was a boy and they named him Simeon, pronounced Si-may-on. My host mom is basically freaking out with excitement. She leaves for the states next Wednesday and will stay there for 10 days to hang out with her new grandson. My host dad is struggling with being called grandpa...he's not quite ready to enter that age category yet... And Guillome refuses to be called an uncle. He says that the baby and him are going to be friends. Again, i think he thinks the word 'uncle' sounds old.

In the meantime the family also continues to plan and prepare for Segolene's wedding. My host mom has started working on outfits for the kids who will be in the wedding and she helped Segolene with the wedding list and invitations last week. Segolene has also started getting material together for her dress, as she's making it herself. I have no doubt it is going to be gorgeous. She showed me the dresses that she was going to take some ideas off of, and those were beautiful. I'm excited to see pictures of the final product!

As you can see, it's kind of crazy around here with all of these big life events taking place. But everyone is just so happy and smiley all the time. It's great :)

I don't have much planned for the weekend. I think i'm going to take the time to get started on some papers and such that I want to have done before the beginning of April. Of course i want to blow them off until the week they're due, but i know how that goes. I'm trying to grow and learn from my past procrastination experiences...haha...or something.

I hope you all have great days! Tomorrow is Friday! Woo!

Love you!

Kelsey :)

p.s. Spring has arrived here in Nantes. The birds are out singing, and as my host dad says...the birds DO NOT LIE.