Day 6: Pau, France

In case any of you forgot, this is the view out of my window. 

Today was my first day at the University, though not for classes.  I was to meet at 9 at the school for orientation so after a typical French breakfast, my host mommy walked me to school.  (If you are in Europe(France) and you hear the term "French breakfast", know that this means "not a lot of food". I am fine with this.  Breakfast is dumb.) Anyway, beginning at nine, we had an orientation session for the abroad program.  There are about 30 American students here at the University de Pau.  I am writing this a day later, and I honestly can't tell you what was discussed in that session.

Afterwards, we went to E.LECLERC which is like a weird grocery shopping mall walmart kind of place.  We took our ID photos there, and then we had a really long lunch break.  Like, two hours.  It was very nice.  Lots of people already knew each other, because they did the optional "Paris tour", but I made friends pretty quickly.  There are students from all of the country, and most of them are girls.  Whatever.

If it looks very suburbanite, it is.  There is a walmart type store as well as some clothing stores, a salon, and a few cafes.  There are rumored to be 30 boutiques in E.LECLERC. 

After lunch we went on a tour of campus and then took a bus tow town and did a walking tour of downtown.  It is really fantastic.  Pretty much exactly what you would expect from an old European city.  There are tons of shops and boutiques and cafes and beautiful architecture.  I didn't take many pictures, mostly because I was too absorbed in looking around. I really only took one photo the whole time:

This is take from near the town center which is on a bluff, looking over the valley with the train station below and the Pyrenees in the background.

After the tour I returned home, and it was almost dinner time.  I helped make Tien, a traditional local dish.  It is similar to what we might call Ratatouille, but it was more like a casserole than a stew. Then for dessert, was the best creme brule I have ever had in my entire life.  Not even worth comparing to anything else I have ever eaten.