Monsieur, can we take a picture of your mustache?

Things are winding down over here so I haven’t had a whole lot of time to write. But here’s a quick recap of the weekend. My friends and I had not one, but TWO picnics. The first one took place under the shade of the castle and it was so successful we planned another for the next day under the gazebo in the Jardin du Mail. We had so much food that I wasn’t even hungry for dinner. There were baguettes, chocolate croissants, wine, cidre, chocolate, cookies, sausage, ginger butter (like peanut butter, but it tastes like ginger snaps), and of course a variety of cheeses: brie, coulommiers, camembert, rocquefort, etc. And since we are very resourceful, poor college students we used the round cheese container as a Frisbee (I wouldn’t recommend it for distances greater than twenty feet).

After the second picnic we had an Angers Photo Scavenger Hunt, created by your truly. We split into two randomly selected teams and set off to take pictures with all 32 objects/places. Some of the things on the list included finding someone wearing a beret, someone with a mustache, French graffiti, French car, French phone booth, a purple flower, a snail, a happy face traffic light, French people holding up a peace sign, something with the name Angers, bridge across the river, our school, a street sign with the word “ecrivain” (writer), a fountain, etc. We met up at the chateau at the very end and everyone agreed it was one of their favorite things (the only thing our team couldn’t find was the happy face stoplight).

Today I leave for Paris! I’ll be gone for an entire week because I have yet to visit the museums and actually see the Champs de Mars and the Eiffel Tower. I’ll also be representing Merrimack at the European Writing Centers Association Conference with Professor Kathy Shine Cain, the director of Merrimack’s writing center. Our topic is “Positionality and the 21st Century Writing Center: Interdisciplinary, Transdisciplinary, and Cultural Border Crossing.” In case that sound totally foreign to you, essentially I’m going to be talking about the different relationships in the writing center and about my experiences as a second language student.

Wish me bonne chance!

Heidi