picnics and elephants.

i’m fairly certain the majority of humankind agrees with me when i say that weekends are one of God’s greatest gifts to His people. weekends in france are definitely no exception. actually, they’re a little better, because the french took it upon themselves to boost the weekend relaxation quotient by ensuring that NO ONE can do anything on sundays, and then many businesses are closed on monday as well. it’s a hard life.

anyway, this weekend (just like the last one) was faaab-u-lous. friday was the most beautiful day of all time. ok, not really, but the weather was STUNNING (60F/16C – blue skies) and i was a little high on sunshine. since i don’t have class on fridays, i decided to make it an outdoors day. natalie and i stopped by superU to get some lunchy things, and then we packed picnics and biked into town. i still can’t get over how beautiful angers is – in the 20 minute, 4 km ride into town, i pass by some of the prettiest, most historic buildings i can imagine. and the rest of the town is all that great, classic french architecture, scattered with the random stone wall or timber-framed building. i love it. we biked a little further into town than usual, so natalie could run a couple errands before our picnic. i popped into monoprix to complete my picnic with a baguette and a tarte. we headed down a little park right near the river, at the base of the cathedral steps. there is this huge fountain and a little garden too. plus, there’s a cliff that some of the oldest buildings in town were build on top of. it was a picturesque setting, to say the least. we spread our little picnic out and soaked up the sun for a solid hour – it was awesome. i had my baguette with cheese, yogurt, an apple, raisins and some apple juice. for dessert, we split the tarte. can you say perrrfecttt? yum.

after the picnic, we headed back up the hill next to the chateau. we parked our bikes and walked down a little side street to the “galerie david d’angers”. rachel met us there, and the three of us toured (for free!) one of the coolest little statue galleries i’ve ever seen. it’s in a renovated church, with a glass ceiling! since it was so sunny, there was a bit of a greenhouse effect (it was sweltering in there) but the effect of all that light on the statues was breathtaking. it was so bright and vibrant, the work seemed to come to life a little. there are really only two main rooms, so all these statues are just gathered in the main hall. some are lifesize, some are wayyy larger than life, and there are lots of little ones too. david sculpted quite a few major figures in angevin and french history. it was cool to see the people whose names i’ve been seeing on bus stops, roads signs, even dorm residences. while we were there, a class of probably 1^st or 2^nd graders was visiting as well. SO CUTE. they had to draw a statue, pick one to imitate, and do some class exercises. i wanted to steal one to bring home, they were so stinkin’ precious. but i feel that way about all french children. rachel, natalie, and i did a few statue impressions of our own, and then headed out. natalie went back to school to nap, and rachel and i spent an hour or two walking around town, shopping a little bit (the semi-annual sales are ending this week :( ), and soaking up the sunshine. we stopped by the train station to buy our tickets for saturday’s daytrip (details later!) and then biked back home. there is a hill about three-fourths of the way back to the dorm that is BRUTAL. i still haven’t made it up all the way – i have to walk it. i’ve made it a personal goal to bike up that hill before i leave angers this summer. anywho, after we got back, i rested for a bit and then skyped with my family. around 7:45, shane and i ran down to superU to get things for dinner. we made the usual, and chilled out in the kitchen with jessie and emma. around 11, the four of us walked over to the other belle-beille residence, where the spanish students had organized a party of sorts. i suppose it was fun, but that is just so not my scene. i didn’t really enjoy it too much, and headed back to my dorm around midnight. being around that many people and being so out of my fun zone put me in a bit of a funk, so i was not in a very good mood when i went to bed. but, sleep is always good for the brain! i did a little research for saturday and then hit the hay.

i woke up pretty early on saturday, because rachel and i had planned a daytrip to nantes! and for only 16 euro return - yay! nantes is about 90km south of angers, towards the atlantic ocean. it is the capital of the pays-de-la-loire region. it’s much bigger than angers, but just as pretty! our train was at 10:36, so we met at 9:45 at the bus stop. we made it to the train station in plenty of time, got our tickets stamped, and hopped on the train. the ride was only about 30 minutes, through the beautiful loire valley countryside. at one point, we passed a little manor house that looked like it should have been in a jane austen novel – it was gorgeous! i only got a glimpse of it as we passed by, but i remember marveling at the thought of who lives there. probably an old couple, who tend their animals and gardens and live 45 km from the nearest anything. we arrived in nantes around 11am, got a map from the welcome desk, and headed towards the closest “office de tourisme”. through my research, i’d found that the city of nantes offers “day passes” that can get the cardbearer free entrance into museums, complementary treats at various restaurants, and unlimited access to the public transit system. for students, the 24 hour pass is only 9 euro!! it’s an absolute steal, and pays for itself in a few tram rides plus one museum entry. we bought our passes at the office located on the same plaza as the cathedral. once we had our nantes guide/passes, the game plan was to go grab some lunch, head to the “ile de nantes”, and then work our way back. we ate at this great restaurant called “le molière” – rachel had a croque monsieur and i had a ham/butter baguette. the sun was shining right onto our table, so we stayed warm and enjoyed the atmosphere of a bustling french cafe on saturday afternoon.

after lunch, we walked down to the island for what proved to be an amazing experience. in 2007, the city of nantes started on a project they call “les machines de l’ile” – the machines of the island. the designs are inspired by the drawings of jules verne (native of nantes) and da vinci. the first phase of the project was the construct a 40 foot tall, 50 ton robot elephant. i’m not exaggerating, this thing is enormous. and it’s completely hand-crafted, with beautiful artisanship. luckily for us, saturday was the opening day for 2011, so we got to ride the elephant on its maiden voyage for the year! we got to the hangar where the elephant lives around 1pm. since the box office didn’t open until 2, we sat in the little cafe/gift shop to chill out for a bit. at 1:45, we got in line to ensure our places on the elephant. sure enough, by 2pm, the line was pretty long! we bought our ticket (the only thing i purchased all day besides the pass!) and went upstairs to watch the video about the machines project. it was fascinating! the amount of talent that goes into these animals is incredible. the next phase of the project is a giant tree called “the heron tree”. they’ve only built on branch so far – the prototype branch. it is attached to the hangar, right above the cafe. it’s probably about 60 feet high at the highest point, and has three off-shoot branches. seriously impressive. the artisans are also working on a marine-themed (thanks, jules) carousel. amazing. at 2:45, we boarded the elephant, making our way to the top deck. it was so cool! the whole ride lasted 45 minutes, but we only went like 200 yards. it’s not a very quick robot elephant. but it was neat to see the head move around, the ears flap, the trunk raise up and spray water, etc. there is an engine that propels the elephant, but the legs still move like the elephant is walking. the experience was worth the 5 euros – now i can say i’ve ridden a robot elephant! yes!

after the elephant, we decided to pass on the gallery of other animals, because the line was much too long. we walked back into town and caught the tram to the chateau. it’s a beautiful building, with outer fortressing and pretty and ornate interior buildings. our passes got us free entry to the chateau museum, so we decided to check it out. it was SO NICE. seriously, nantes has to have some money, because this was the nicest, most technological museum i think i’ve ever seen. plus, it was enormous – like 35 rooms! we followed the flow of the tour and came out about an hour later. sidenote – france has some very attractive public servants. all of the employees were quite easy on the eyes. this is not an uncommon trend. anyway, after we finished touring through the chateau, we took a lap on the top of the outer wall and then took some pictures by the moat. there is a street in nantes called “rue crébillon” that is famous for its window displays – they’ve even invented a verb (crébillonner – to window shop on the rue crébillon). the shops are verrry luxerious and fancy, so that was a pretty street. :) we ended our tour with a little treat at “la cigale” – one of the most famous restaurants in nantes. it opened in 1895, and still maintains its old-time charm. the interior of la cigale is AMAZINGLY ornate and fancy, with lots of gold trimming, mosaics, and mirrors. our pass got us a complementary hot chocolate and two little slices of cake. WIN. the hot chocolate was VERY rich – almost like pure melted chocolate. and the cakes were chocolate too – i hate to say it, but i experienced a bit of a chocolate overload that day. we meandered back down to the tram way and headed back to the train station to go home. there is so much to do in nantes that we hardly scratched the surface, but i had a great time visiting a new place!

after hurrying to catch the last bus back to campus, we made it home around 9:15. i was EXHAUSTED but hungry for real food (not chocolate). shane hadn’t eaten yet either, so we made pasta. somehow, i’m not sick of it yet! it was delicious. we sat in the kitchen and talked to djamel and danielle, who had gotten a pizza. around 11pm, i came back to my room and got ready for bed. it was a very long but fun-filled day.

today (sunday) has been pretty lazy, after my active busy friday/saturday. i woke up early to skype for a while, since TWOG got to record their electric ep/album in Oceanway last night and i wanted to hear about it. drew and i talked from about 9am-10am (france time – he was up late!) and then i went back to sleep until noonish. yeah yeah, shameful i know. but i needed the rest. i got up and took a lonnnnng shower, which felt amazing. and i dedicated the rest of my day to getting chores/homework/blogging finished! so i’m in the middle of that. my first test is coming up on wednesday – it’s a translation test, which shouldn’t be too difficult. i’m just going to revise my homework and go from there! i'm going to try to watch my church service at 6pm - i really hope the internet is good enough!! :P

and last but not least, tomorrow is valentine’s day. i’d be lying if i said it didn’t absolutely SUCK to be away from my valentine this year, but physical separation can’t diminish how i feel. so, happy valentine’s day, froffie. i love you, and i’ll see you in 170 days. :P <3

and to all my other loved ones, happy valentine’s day to you too!

love from france,

jill

PS- i've linked a few pictures of things i'm talking about in this post, but my facebook album 'february in france' is much more thorough if you want to see what i've been talking about! :)

houston, we have mobility!

hey everybody!

first off, sorry for the pause in posts! this week of classes was actually a little bit busy, and i found myself saying “oh i’ll blog tomorrow” a couple times. :/

but here i am, on thursday afternoon, with four days to recount! so, here it goes.

monday, 7 february.

the first thing i learned on monday was that the packers won the superbowl. huzzah! i don’t like ben roethlisberger. unfortunately, i wasn’t able to watch the game, considering it was on from 1am-4am here and i don’t have tv. sooo.. yeah. but that was alright, i caught the highlights on espn.com. somehow, i can sacrifice one football game for living in france. monday is my long day of classes, mostly because they are very spread out. i have art history from 9 to half 10 each morning, which is a bit of a struggle. it always takes a few minutes to get back into french mode, and that professor definitely doesn’t dumb down the lecture for the handful of foreigners in my class. he set the date of our first test for the monday after winter break – which i’ll be spending in london. thankfully, i’ll have all of sunday to study! natalie kept nodding off throughout class, which i found entertaining. she’s a skillful in-class sleeper, her head never once hit the desk! after class, i went to the library to do a little research / watch last sunday’s church service. the wireless connection in the library is killer fast, so i was able to watch the whole thing without one single pause! yay! i REALLY enjoyed the message – this month’s series is called “Love>” (love greater than) and each week has a different topic; lust, feelings, sex, and self. it’s going to be an awesome series!! anyway, i watched that and then headed to superU to buy a sandwich for lunch. i ended up getting a tuna sandwich and some green beans to snack on – the total was 1.40 euro, which translates to roughly 2$. yes, my meal was 2$. word. my loooong class on mondays is from 1:15 to 4:15 – “langue française”. that’s the one where the teacher is super nice and wonderful, though, so the time passes quickly! i had just enough time after class to come relax for a bit before my conversation workshop from 6 to half 7. lots of my friends are in that class, so it’s a good time. we had a discussion about anti-tobacco laws, which brought me right back to last semester at belmont! afterwards, i headed back to the dorm and started thinking about dinner. as i had just made my budget for the semester, i was feeling like i needed to eat pretty cheaply this week. so shane and i decided that it is the week of pasta/red sauce (not that i haven’t eaten that for 80% of my meals here) and that we would suffer through it together. we added some onions/carrots/spinach to the sauce to make it a little less boring though. i skyped for a while after dinner, and then went to bed.

                tuesday, 8 february.

tuesday was a glorious day. it’s so wonderful to have a break from classes in the middle of the week! i woke up around 9am, got dressed, and went to meet natalie in the lobby. we headed in to town... to get our bikes!! the city of angers has a company called “velocité” (‘velo’ being the french word for ‘bike’ – win) that rents bikes to students for FREE. so, for the next 4 months, i am the proud possessor of an adorable blue with red accents bike, with a basket!! joy. we rode around town for a while, slowly making our way back to campus. upon our return, i took a short nap and then made a new rule for myself:

i am only going to buy a baguette if i bike to get it.

that way, i’m at least working off SOME of the calories that i intake by eating a whole baguette!! haha! so, i tested out my new rule by biking back into town to go to monoprix. it’s 4km each way, which is less than 3 miles. since the path is through the city, it takes about 20 minutes. i loved getting to explore the streets though, because it’s so much easier to learn your way around a city that way! riding the bus everywhere doesn’t give you a very good sense of directional awareness, and i feel much more knowledgeable now. :) i did my shopping and then headed back to school. all in all, i think i biked nearly 10 miles on tuesday!! not too shabby! shane had run out of spinach, but the baguette did make the second consecutive pasta/red sauce dinner much more bearable. and, i’ll admit it, i bought a little tarte at monoprix too. so i had dessert. :) after dinner, i skyped a bit more and did homework. i was up much too late on the computer, but no harm.

                wednesday, 9 february.

wednesday is another heavy class day. and by that, i mean i have three classes, for a total of 4 hours. struggle. my morning class (from 10 to 11) is translation from english to french, so that’s slightly more challenging. as is my habit, i came back and napped through lunch, and then headed to my speech class at 3. here’s the thing about university in france – public universities are essentially free for french students. and they act that way. they don’t really respect the whole “you’re here to learn” mentality.. for them, going to college means they don’t have to get a job for a few more years. so it kiiiinda feels like i’m back in middle school or high school, with the way french girls are CONSTANTLY talking through classes, not paying attention, disrespecting the professors, etc. it’s frustrating. but i just sit at the front and try to ignore it. anyway, speech class was fine. that professor is great about trying to integrate foreign students, so i have a french partner for my group project! this is HIGHLY preferrable, so i am pleased. :) immediately after speech, i have my culture class. that professor is SO CUTE and bubbly and spunky, i love her. based on the survey we did last week, the topics for our class are geography, gastronomy, and social events. we spent the course filling in maps of france with mountains, rivers, etc, and talking about different climates. it was interesting, because i definitely didn’t know everything we covered! at 6pm, that class ended, and we all headed back to the dorm. it was night #3 of pasta week, so shane and i got cooking around half 7. i think we’re officially approaching the wall on pasta. i stayed up talking to emma and jessie for a while, and then i got some homework done. drew and the rest of TWOG had a show at belmont wednesday night, and i was sad that i had to miss it. but oh well.

                thursday, 10 february.

today has been absolutely grand. i had two classes this morning, both translation. one was from 10-11 and the other was from 11-12, so my weekend started at noon (like it does every week!). those classes are always funny, because they’re translation from french to english. i’m always so tickled to hear the translations that the french students offer. sometimes they’re great, exactly what i myself put down. other times, not so much. and the fact that they learn british english just makes it funnier. the best weird translation of the day was in the second class. last week, that professor had translated the french adjective “combatif” (which essentially means combative, competitive) to “fightful”. yep. so this week, the phrase at hand was “avec le chant du coq” – literally translated to “with the song of the rooster”. i had put down “with the crow of the rooster”. fairly logical, i thought. her answer? “at cock-crow.” rachel and i were HIGHLY amused. but it turns out, emma had put “cock-crow” too!! it must be a british/irish/european thing. i thought it was hysterical. the rest of the passage was pretty poorly done, mostly because it had a REALLY difficult syntax. think 25 lines of text, with 5 line run-on sentences. it was an excerpt from ionesco’s ‘the colonel’s photograph’, so i guess i can’t be too surprised – he was a playwright/author in the theatre of the absurd.

anywho, after class, i WAS going to come take a nap. but then, i thought to myself, ‘jill, you’ve had a nap every day this week. stay awake for once! see what the afternoon is like.’ so i did! i made a little lunch (of leftover pasta.. yeesh) and opened my window to feel the nice breeze. i was on couchsurfing.org for a while, looking for places in london for rachel and myself. and then i headed down to the sécretariat to pay my rent for the month. it was such a beautiful day, about 57 degrees and partly cloudy. so i invited my friend jessie to go on a walk. we headed down to the lake and did a big lap, probably about 4km. we had a good talk. :) and i even got too hot with a cardigan and sweatshirt! it was awesome to have to take OFF clothing while being outside. i do NOT miss the cold. on the way back, we decided to do spinach burgers for dinner, which i was overjoyed by (no pasta!). when we got back, she headed to class, and i came to write this post. i’ve just been sitting with my feet propped up on the window sill, computer on my lap, listening to the sounds of the world outside and feeling the breeze roll softly through my room. in a few minutes, i’ll probably bike down the street to the local bakery to snag some baguettes for the dinner group.

france is beautiful this week! hope everything is going well where you are. :)

cheers,

jill

ma madeliene à moi

yesterday, i learned the origin of a cultural allusion i’d heard been hearing for a while. have you ever heard someone say that something is their “madeleine”? maybe not, if you’re not into french culture and whatnot. but here’s the jist; whenever writer marcel proust ate the french pastry called a ‘madeleine’ as an adult, he was momentarily transported back to his youth, to a time of childlike trust and naive innocence, when all that mattered was the deliciousness of the treat. whenever something is ‘your madeleine,’ it does the same thing. it could be a certain type of food, a smell, an article of clothing, a song.. whatever brings you back to that time in your life. over the last few days, i’ve had a couple pseudo-madeleine moments. not so much ones that take me back all the way to childhood.. just moments that, if i close my eyes, i could be at home. or at school. let me explain..

friday night (as i said in the last france-related post) was a going away party for a friend of mine here at the university. stephen had studied here the previous semester, but is going to spain for this one! he decided to stick around angers for january because spring semester for him doesn’t start unti later this month. the little soirée was at his apartment over on the opposite side of town from my campus. as we were getting ready, it started snowing!! giant, fluffy, wonderful snowflakes. it only lasted for about 30 minutes, but the sight of the snow swirling around in the air was beautiful. i quoted elf – “have you seen these snowflakes, they’re GINORMOUS!” no reaction. a bunch of my friends hadn’t seen elf!! i was baffled. we planned an elf date for the following evening. anyway, several of my good friends here at school were friends with stephen last year, so i knew the majority of the attendees. we had a grand time chatting with stephen’s french flatmates and goofing off. at one point, a few of us (keith, john, shane, andrea, and myself) got into a peanut-catching competition. my record was ten successive peanuts tossed and caught in my mouth. the game evolved into partner peanut tossing, and then target tossing. keith finally launched a peanut directly down my throat, which was startling but very hilarious. we called a cab to go home, because the buses had LONG since stopped running. jessie summoned a 7 passenger van to come pick us up, and i got stuck riding shotgun with the driver. which was actually great, because we had a lovely conversation about how there are still so many societal problems in the southern united states. yeah buddy, in french. haha! the six goofballs in the back sang ‘bohemian rhapsody’ all the way back. once we returned, i stayed up talking until the wee hours of the early morning (just like the previous night, all of the sudden it was 7am). there is nothing quite like a heart to heart in the middle of the night – i absolutely cherish conversations like that one.

saturday morning, i woke up around 1pm and got a lot more done. i cleaned and did more homework and did stuff on my computer until dinnertime. it was a typical dinner – pasta with a rosé tomato sauce and a veggie side. as we had decided the previous night, it was time for ELF. we put on shane’s fake fireplace that he downloaded and ate cookies for a while, and then turned on the movie. it was like christmas all over again! that was definitely a madeliene moment for me.. elf is such a classic, and we watch it every christmas at my house! i loved sharing that joy with my new friendsies. :) after the movie, i got to bed pretty early so that i could get my sleep schedule straight.

sunday was pretty grand. i slept in to get my sleep count back up, and then got ready for the day. around 3pm, a group of us decided to go on a little outing to the city centre for a walk in the park. it was awesome, but it would have probably been more enjoyable if it hadn’t been absolutely freezing. and it’s a humid cold, so it feels even worse! yuch. we walked around the jardin des plantes, which has an awesome little bird sanctuary! there were some gorgeous exoticly-coloured birds there, it was such a pleasant surprise! we walked a bit further into town and found this sweet playground near the bus depot on the main drag in town. shane, john, keith, patty and i played on it for a while – there were some seriously cool playground things there. they were so fun!! except they seemed pretty dangerous for a small child! i kept thinking how, if i were at home, these kinds of things would NEVER be at a playground. too much liability. it’s a shame that children are denied such fun just for the sake of someone avoiding a lawsuit. oh well. we continued our afternoon walk around town, stopping for hot drinks in a bar before heading back to campus. we all cooked together again and sat around talking for a while. it was lovely, as usual!

monday morning was an early one, since i have an art history class at 9am. i had hoped to take the 10:30 section, but last week, the professor was mad because the 9am section had 4 people and the 10:30 section had about 25. so he pretty much insisted that some people switch. i figured i could drag myself out of bed for a 9am once a week, so i obliged. hopefully that put me on his good side! he is such a sweet little man though. yesterday he wore a magenta-ish collared shirt with a black v-neck sweatervest and a black bowtie. and over it, he wore his long black coat with a matching magenta scarf!! and he has this awesome silver hair (and moustache) with these round glasses.. he’s fantastic. we talked about raphael again for a while and then moved into mannerism. after that class, i came back to the dorm for a bit before heading into town to run some errands with shane. except that was a total fail, because nearly everything was closed! silly five day french work week, with shops closing for sunday and monday. oh well, i still got a delicious baguette at monoprix, half of which i had eaten by the time we got back. i had a little snack (aka the rest of the baguette) and then headed to my 3 hour french grammar course. it’s part of the program for foreign exchange students, so there were no french students in my class. but there were several italians, germans, japanese, and british! in addition to a polish girl and a romanian girl. so it was a good mix. and oh my gosh, the professor is phenomenal. i seriously pray that i look like her when i am her age. which could be anywhere from 40 to 60, i honestly could not tell. she has this beauuuuutiful silvery hair, and her skin is perfect. she’s tall and thin and stylish and SO FREAKING FRENCH. gosh, she’s awesome. her voice is so kind and soothing and she was just so sweet and funny.. man. that class is going to be great. the three hours passed really quickly, which was an added bonus!

i had a break after that class until 6pm, so i decided to venture to the magical land of lidl with jessie and keith. lidl is a cheap grocery shop, related to aldi. it is only 3 bus stops away from us, but it still doesn’t beat the convenience of superU. it was indeed super cheap though! i got loads of stuff to stock up my pantry for just 7 euro. win. and i saw some great products, including a cereal brand that had choices including “nut flakers” and “honey balls” – i’m mature, i promise. we headed back and i made my way to the final course of the day – a conversation workshop. it was awesome – out of the 20 people there, only 3 were american. the others were irish, canadien, spanish, italian, polish, and romanian. it was EXTRA awesome because like half my friends are in that class, so i was already super comfortable about speaking. the “teachers” were two upperclassmen (native french speakers) who are studying to teach french as a foreign language. we sat around this big table and talked about random stuff for an hour and a half – including introductions, comics, music, etc. it was pretty fun.

same story after class for dinner – we gathered in the kitchen and got to cooking. natalie made this delish bolognaise sauce with tomato sauce, onions, spinach, and tuna while i provided the pasta and made some potatoes as a side. yummy, as usual!! :) the second madeliene moment came after dinner, when we were SUPPOSED to watch a movie (but everyone bailed). instead, i sat in shane’s room with my eyes closed and listened to him play guitar. it was almost like being back at belmont.. which was bittersweet. but still, listening to fantastic guitar playing is always fun! and then a little bit later, i got to have a skype date with my boooo back stateside. i always love that. :)

anyway, today is my weekend-in-the-middle-of-the-week day, because i have no classes on tuesdays. (win.) so i just wrote all morning, and doing a couple things on my massive to-do list. i also watched the footage from TWOG's show last sunday about a zillion times. around 4pm, i went back into town to retry those errands from the other day. shane ended up finding the book he needs, but its 20 euro!! excessive. we stopped by the library to look for it, but no luck. i did finally get my library card though! :) we stopped by monoprix, where we bumped into andrea. the three of us got our shopping done (which included shane dropping a bag of frozen peas, which split and sent peas flying everywhere) and headed back to school. on the bus, i ate about a quarter of my DELICIOUS baguette. seriously, heavenly. it was even still warm.... oh lord. it was wonderful. we're about to cook up some curry for dinner and then watch despicable me. life is good!

à bientôt!

-jill

special post; check out this band!

okay. this post is pretty much going to be shameless friend promotion (one step above shameless self-promotion). but i really want everyone to hear/read/experience the awesomeness that is my favourite belmont band. and yes, i may be slightly biased, but that doesn't take away from the talent.

at belmont, there exists an overwhelmingly talented and extensive musical population. it seems like everyone you meet there plays at LEAST one instrument, if not more (myself being one of the few exceptions). thanks to this talent pool, it is not surprising that within a few months of starting college freshman year, i'd become pretty good friends with some seriously gifted musicians. these musicians are mitchell blom, stone meyer, stephen palmer, and becca bradley. they used to sit around in the atrium and play their songs for people walking through, and it was always so fun to see them having such a good time. and then this past fall, another blessing was added to the band (and my life) in the form of drew smyser. and thus, The Weight Of Glory (TWOG) was born.

the first official band photo.

back in september, TWOG decided (practically on a whim) to audition for the christian showcase. each year, belmont puts on four big concerts (christian, urban/pop, rock, country), each featuring four belmont acts. so, TWOG tried out. and, you guessed it, made the showcase! it was a huge deal, and the show went incredibly well. we were all so, so, so excited and proud of them! in a few short months, they'd gone from playing acoustic stuff in the atrium to being a part of one of the showcases! amazing. TWOG spent the rest of the semeter writing and recording at various belmont studios. they are so fun to watch record - always having a blast.

at the christian showcase, rockin' it out.

a few weeks ago, drew found out about a battle of the bands contest sponsored by a radio station in his hometown of huntsville, alabama (about two hours south of nashville). the winning band would get to open for the Rock and Worship Roadshow to take place on january 30th, with the following acts including the afters, thousand foot crutch, and mercyme - all big christian groups with huge followings. also on a whim, drew submitted a video of a live TWOG performance from november. and then about two weeks ago, he found out that they'd been chosen as the winners!!! pandemonium ensued.



the two weeks preceeding the show were filled with rehearsals, press coverage, carpool arrangements, and nerves. check out some of the articles written before the show! the belmont vision, indievisionmusic blog, the view from college blog, even the huntsville newspaper! the hype was unreal. and then here are a couple post-show articles; blog.al.com's chris welch and the rock and worship roadshow's own article.

the rock and worship roadshow.

and then sunday finally came, and TWOG had an amazing experience getting to play for over 6,000 people! if you'd like to see footage of the performance, find TWOG on facebook. there is a 12 minute clip of their whole set! i was so sad that i couldn't be there to support them. but it was still amazing to know how much God has blessed them!

and as if that wasn't enough, TWOG released their acoustic EP this past week as well! this is stone's description of the EP - "So after much deliberation, The Weight of Glory thought that its first EP should be this. No editing, no automation, no nothing. This is just us. All set up in one room. Doing what we love. Though the EP doesn't really have a name, I think there is one word that I would use to describe it... Honesty. Have a listen!" and you should indeed have a listen by visiting this link. the band put up the EP for FREE download on a website called noisetrade.com, where artists can get their work out in the world. TWOG has been in the top 4 downloads on the site since the EP was released. way to go, friends. :)

so, moral of this story. i have ridiculously talented and awesome friends, who are constant blessings in my life! please check them out. :)

-jill