{"id":3120,"date":"2017-08-01T22:22:58","date_gmt":"2017-08-02T02:22:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/?p=3120"},"modified":"2017-08-01T22:22:58","modified_gmt":"2017-08-02T02:22:58","slug":"trois-chateaux-et-une-abbaye-week-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/2017\/08\/01\/trois-chateaux-et-une-abbaye-week-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Trois ch\u00e2teaux et une abbaye: Week 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

June 4-10<\/p>\n

I moved up a quarter-level this week. (Those six levels I mentioned last week are further divided into four sublevels apiece, so we\u2019ve got A1.1, A1.2, etc. You move up a quarter-level at a time, so you\u2019d move from A1.1 to A1.2, for example.) The class I was originally placed into felt too easy for me, and my professors agreed that it was. So they let me move up.<\/p>\n

That is, my professors agreed that it was too easy for me when it came to reading, writing, and even speaking. But I took my first oral comprehension test (that\u2019s how well you can understand something you hear) this week, and I absolutely failed it. Everyone has different levels of competency in different areas of the language, and oral comprehension is definitely my lowest. Luckily, I\u2019m in a really good place to practice that.<\/p>\n

Outside of classes, I was barely in Tours this week. Last weekend my host parents went to visit their country house in Chinon, which is about 45 minutes southwest of Tours, and invited me and Thomas to join them. Two of my host parents\u2019 grown children joined us there too, and we spent two days hiking, exploring the pre-15th<\/sup>-century underground house on my host parents\u2019 property, going to French Mass, and of course, speaking a lot of French.<\/p>\n

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Here’s the house at Chinon. It dates from the 16th century. I asked my host mother to repeat herself three times to make sure I wasn’t translating that date incorrectly.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Hiking in Chinon<\/em><\/p>\n

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Hiking in Chinon<\/em><\/p>\n

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I made Thomas take this picture of me because I really liked this giant dandelion. You can already see the farmer’s tan I got while hiking the day before. My sleeves are rolled up in an (ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to even out those tan lines.<\/em><\/p>\n

Then, on Wednesday, I went to visit two castles. Tours is right in the middle of the Loire Valley, which is where French royals throughout history built practically all their castles. So there are a ton of castles within an hour or two of us. The Institute organizes trips to them on Wednesday afternoons, when there\u2019s no class, and I signed up for as many as I could. This Wednesday we went to Langeais, a castle built in the 15th century with a very medieval-fortress feel, and Villandry, a castle built in the 16th century with a much more Renaissance-palace feel.<\/p>\n

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Langeais<\/em><\/p>\n

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The original keep of Langeais, dating from the 10th century. The rest of the original castle of Langeais was destroyed.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Villandry<\/em><\/p>\n

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The gardens at Villandry<\/em><\/p>\n

Then, Friday, I went with my host mother to tour the Marmoutier Abbey, an old abbey just outside Tours. The current standing abbey dates from the 13th century, but its grounds have ruins from three different churches, one from the 4th century, one from the 12th century, and one from the 13th century. It\u2019s surreal to visit places that have been around literally longer than my actual country. We don\u2019t have 1500-year-old church ruins in America. The abbey tour had a guide whom, luckily, I could understand pretty well. And I\u2019m glad I could, because I learned my favorite France story so far: Around the 13th<\/sup> century, the abbey was home to a brotherhood of monks. One of your standard 13th<\/sup>-century miracles occurred, and a miraculous spring bubbled up outside the abbey. The monks, of course, didn\u2019t want to waste their new gift. So they built a brewery and used it to make beer.<\/p>\n

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Here’s the abbey. You can’t tell from this picture, but it was built directly into the hill behind it.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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Here are the ruins of the churches. They built each new church on top of the ruins of the old one, so the ruins are all stacked on top of each other.<\/em><\/p>\n

And then, on Saturday, a group of friends and I went on our own to visit the castle of Chenonceau. Chenonceau has been called the most beautiful castle, and I definitely agree (although my experience is so far limited to three castles).<\/p>\n

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Here’s Chenonceau from the side. It bridges the Cher river, which incidentally was the border between France and Vichy France during World War II. Its galleries were used as a military hospital in World War I.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Can you tell I love history? I’m a complete history nerd. I’m here to learn French, but getting dropped in the middle of a valley full of French history, literally from Roman times through World War II, is such an added bonus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

June 4-10 I moved up a quarter-level this week. (Those six levels I mentioned last week are further divided into four sublevels apiece, so we\u2019ve got A1.1, A1.2, etc. You move up a quarter-level at a time, so you\u2019d move from A1.1 to A1.2, for example.) The class I was originally placed into felt too … Continue reading Trois ch\u00e2teaux et une abbaye: Week 2<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1169,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73607],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-france"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1169"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3120"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3133,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3120\/revisions\/3133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}