some kinda saturday

today was another international group exploration of the town day. met up with 4 czechs, 3 romanians, 3 americans and my dutch girl alineke and we saw l'abbaye d'epau on the other side of town. it's a twelth century abbaye, now just a relic, but it's reverently and classicaly pretty. the grounds were spacious with plenty of natural green, and it instantly reminded me of a scene from the beginning of(disney's) "beauty and the beast," where belle runs into her backyard/forest, singing, "there must be more than this provincial life!" there was a fashion show/display inside several rooms of the abbaye, with dresses made out of wood, miniature house models and eerie hanging childrens' gowns. it was nice to see the exhibits, but they were in a place that men and women renounced all material things and wore the same habits every day; it was a bad kind of irony...
j'ai fait mes devoirs, my first homework assignment. i have to read about 14 pages of a small history book within a week; sounds simple, but with looking up words and comprehending what i have to read, it took me 20-30 minutes to read one page. i juggled some of this with a nap, and then met up with the crew again for our third night of the light show, le nuit des chimieres avec le son-et-lumiere. so cool! we spent about two hours watching the shows on the cathedral and old roman walls. this kind of thing is popoular in this region, the loire valley, during the summer and can cost up to 10 euros to watch one show; in le mans, it ended this weekend, there are 6 shows and all are free. then we met up with the two ukranian dimitri's (or dima's), who are really funny guys that act like an old married couple, and had hot chocolate at a cafe.