France looks like Ohio

My academic advisor slash scholar mentor Dr. Morgan gave me this book before I left (kind of a gag gift) that's a reproduction of a WWII GI Guide to France that the governement had written up. This book is hysterical for anyone who has studied french culture at all because it's just so wrong on so many levels. Like at the time it probably served its purpose very well and it was written in a very effective "regular Joe" kind of style, but really it's just the funniest thing on earth. One of the representations of France that this guidebook provided was that France looks like Ohio. Well they're not entirely wrong.

I spent a total of 8-9 hours saturday on the road to and from Mont St Michel and France does look rather like Ohio. Farmy, with some trees, and fairly flat with the occasional slight hills. Ohio. The major difference is that the cute little towns you pass have a heavy dose of frenchness.

Mont St Michel is super cool. Giant cathedral on an island in the atlantic. It did not rain while we were there so it was great. The prof who was with us was really super knowledgeable about everything and it was great walking around with him and learning all about everything. The cathedral is a victim of bad planning, wars, picky kings, and budget cuts. First of all most of the island is sand, not rock so the medieval builders had a hard time getting the building to stay up. Then they had a problem with france and england being in perpetual war and they had to build huge walls around everything. Then the kings were like hey let's make this a prison. And the monks were like, well we don't have a choice do we? and the kings were like nope. So there's about four different centuries of archetecture in this one building. Very neat.

We then went to St. Malo (where it did rain) but we had galettes and crepes and gelatto so it was ok.