The Election!!!

How could I not blog about this!?!?! Today was the french presidential election!!! It was between Nicolas Sarcozy for re-election, who is pictured here on the right, and Francois Holland, who is pictured on the left. One can place Sarcozy's political views rather close to those of Obama's and in France Sarcozy is considered to be a right winged politician. Francois Holland is a socialist, and considered here in france to be a left winged politician. What this then concludes is that the whole political system of France is moved over about one step to the left compared to that of America. What makes that realization even more interesting, is that the Socialist candidate was elected today! At 8pm today after just having finished dinner my host mom ran to the television to see what the results were. I currently live in the Pays-de-la-Loire Region of France, or more specifically the Maine et Loire Valley. This region is typically known for being right winged, so as you can imagine my host parents were not happy. I then received a pretty interesting explanation for how Holland, their new president, is going to seriously upset the European Union, which I can understand since his political view points are very far from ever being elected in America. But what made it the most interesting for me what simply that I was only an observer. In America I find myself getting frustrated and annoyed with politics and having to decide on who to vote for, but here in France, I just got to sit back and watch the elections unfold, and then how they effected those around me. Another interesting thing about French elections is that the new president takes office almost immediately. When I asked my host mom the date Holland would be moving in she said Um I'm not sure, probably Monday. It was very surprising! But made me think of our program as a little excessive. I then watched both the former and new president give speeches on television, both saying nice things about each other, but both coming down to the same phrase, no matter who one this election one thing still stands true, they are still all French and love their country, which then concludes with Vive La France!!!! But I did hear some Holland supporters saying Vive La President!! Overall it was a very interesting thing to experience. I think I will forever remember being in France when the socialist president was elected. 

                             
These pictures are posted up on signs right on the side walk, I walk past them every morning on the way to the bus!!, they are currently vandalized, I can add that picture on a different day lol

Ahhh the Infamous French Baguette!

I see everyone greatly enjoyed my video about the typical french sandwich, so here I have a video for you about the infamous french baguette, and to be honest, the think I am going to miss more than anything from France, since it is practically impossible to find in America! Unless I find the perfect recipe!!... It might become my life goal... Just a thought... :)

Tours!!!

Hey everyone! Sorry I haven't been blogging in a while, I've been rather busy, or well maybe the better word would be lazy ;) In that time though I did do some traveling. The first city a visited was Tours! A beautiful city only about an hour east of Angers. The train was less than 30 euros round trip so me and my friend Anastasia took a little day trip there.

Not knowing much about the city we just banked on the fact that in practically every city in France you can find a beautiful church, an impressive castle, and most likely a pretty river of some sort. We we're lucky and went 2 out of 3 on our presumption. Tours has one of the most beautiful church's I've seen so far in France, and is another one of the many cities in the Loire River Valley Region, but it's castle was not at all interesting or impressive from the outside, and on the inside we found ourselves looking at very specific french photography about the reconstruction of Tours about 60 years ago. It was interesting, but we we're very distant to it, since we had no idea any reconstruction had occurred. It was kind of similar to looking at pictures from the Great Depression in America, but if you weren't american and had a hard time understanding all the short lacking explanations underneath the photos. If you were american you would understand and appreciate them, but otherwise you lack a little emotion... 

So since the cities castle was nothing worth taking pictures of, I have here some pictures of the beautiful church :)

The sun started to shine literally the instant we got off the train, and this Cathedrale could not look prettier with the blue sky behind it!

I thought this to be a little interesting and definitely surprising. One thing one definitely doesn't see often in France is large, bald, leather wearing men, and here we find four of them leaving the Cathedrale in Tours, I had to document it!

This is the inside of the church, I once again tried to show how amazing tall it is, maybe here we can use Anastasia as a reference point.

This is me in front of the Church, it was hard to get the church in entirely behind me, but look at that amazing detail! C'est Incroyable!!!

La Loire et Un Quais, meaning the Loire and a walkway

We stumbled about this completely by accident. It was pretty funny, it just emerged between two stone walls and I caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of my eye. This tree was HUGE! For anyone that's every read Le Petit Prince, this is absolutely the Baobab tree he was afraid of!!!!

This translates to--- "Seeds of the Baobab" The Little Prince, "All baobabs, before growing big, start by being little"

Now if you translate that phrase word by word it doesn't exactly say that, but I'm starting to realize in order to preserve some of the poetry in French you have to translate the meaning of the sentence, not the individual words, otherwise it sounds silly and awkward :) lol