24 June 2008

I'm not jetlagged anymore

I've been home for twenty days, and I find myself sleeping in. Uh-oh. Ok, so maybe 9 am isn't sleeping in for most people, but for me it is. It makes me feel like such a slacker! Last week I housesat for some of my favorite people in the world. At first it was really strange, sleeping in my friend's room without her there. I even dreamed that the parents had asked more people than just me to watch the house, so all during the first night I had woke up thinking that I had heard someone open the door. After that, though, it was a fantastic way to roll back into my old life.

I had a lot of time to myself, most of which I spent trying to upload photos to Facebook. I mostly succeeded, and now all of my good (well, I mean, you know) photos of France are there. I still haven't finished Berlin, Prague, Dublin, or London. Silly Facebook sometimes just decides that I'm not allowed to create any more photo albums.

I haven't even been home a month and already France is beginning to fade in my head. I remember everything, don't get me wrong, but I also nearly feel like I was never even there. I've even asked myself a couple of times why I was so shy (pride) to speak when I first arrived there. This morning I went to buy some new running shoes, and just as I was walking to a bench to be helped my mom made a passing comment about how my old shoes made it far, but only as far as the other side of the world. Of course this ended in me explaining to the guy helping me that I had been in France. He asked the second of the only two questions people ask me when they find that out, "So are you fluent now?" (The other is, "So how was France?")

I shrugged. "I can get by. Maybe in conversations about philosophy and politics I'll lag behind a little, but I can handle myself pretty well."
"Cool." He sounded really amazed, and it made me think of how very few people in the States actually learn languages except to fulfill college requirements. I personally believe that every college student in America should spend at least a semester abroad, if not an entire year.

You know all the cliched reasons: it looks good on a transcript, you learn a lot about yourself, you made lasting friendships...blah, blah, blah. Transcripts don't matter very much when you've been in the working world fifteen years and you still don't understand why that dumb secretary can't ever remember to put certain files in a single drawer. And you change. You could learn a lot about yourself, even more, by climbing a tree in a field and journaling every day. Oh, and those lasting friendships? I can count on a single hand how many of my friends from the program will be talking with me longer than this summer.

Going abroad made me realise how small I am, and how no one, not the French, not the Americans, ever really listens to one another. So much talking and no listening. We lie too, about understanding things said to us. Something about not wanting to make the moment awkward by making the person repeat what they had just said. But why not make it awkward? Why not make some people uncomfortable? Isn't that what we're here for? To learn and teach? Grow into the people God created us to be?

I think that of all the things I wish I had done differently, I wish I had tried harder. I wish I had been able to better connect with Elisabeth, even though our personalities were so incredibly different. I wish that I had reached out more to the French monitors working with our group. I wish I had requested to be in the advanced level classes.

You can see that I have a lot of wishes, but I've also realised that I don't really see them as regrets. Regrets have sadness and a lack of satisfaction, I believe. I'm not sad. I did what I went to do. I learned that speaking out may take courage, but whether you get the response you wanted or not, you have to do it, otherwise you'll never get any response at all. Asking questions will always be hard for me, in English and in French, but now at least I know that in English, I can backpeddle just as fast as the best reporter in the world.

No worries, no fears, no more waiting for someone else to be amazing before me.

17 June 2008

Beginning to look back

I don't even know if anyone is still reading this, since I'm home, and what could possibly be interesting about being back in the States? I've typed out so many stories, so many experiences. I look at the number of blog posts I created and wonder what in the world I actually wrote about.

I've been home 12 days. That's almost two weeks which feel like more than a month. All my friends are busy or somewhere else, so I've been spending my time in and out of boredom. I told myself that I was going to do some writing (finish an illustrated children's book, for one) and some art (chandeliers as usual, and maybe a collage). As of yet, I've read through the first three *chronological* Narnia books, and have watched a small mountain of movies.

So that's the summation of my life, though I'm sure I've made it sound much more pathetic than it really is. I'm fine with being home...but that's just it. I'm only fine with it. Like any person remembering something, I can remember all the amazing times I had in Rennes. Such as all the times when my host parents actually had complete conversations with me, without those miniature silences where everyone just sits staring at the TV. Nearly awkward, but not quite.

Things I am glad of:
1. If I'm not really hungry, I don't have to eat. I don't have to explain why I'm not hungry, and that I'm not sick, and that no, I don't just want some soup.
2. My CAR.
3. My CDs in my CAR
4. Chai tea whenever I want it.
5. Being able to be utterly sarcastic with a deadpan glare and not having to explain myself or recover after getting an answer to a question I wasn't really asking (did that even make sense?)
6. Having wireless internet that works
7. Making cookies with my sister

Things I miss
1. Speaking in French on a regular basis
2. Having friends nearby and pretty much at my beck and call
3. Cote d'Or Dark Chocolate and Hazelnut
4. the cafe on every corner
5. my international keyboard with all the accents on the letters.
6. All the gardens and pretend forests.

I could go on and on, but then I'd feel even more like I were complaining, and I really hate that. I keep rolling France around in my mind, like dough for a cookie. I think I'm satisfied with everything that I did and everything that happened. I know now what I would have done differently and what I wouldn't've changed for all the scholarship money in the world. I guess that's the most I can ask for at this point, right?

Now if only the rest of my friends will free themselves up and come home.
Except for you bums who are already home but actually have jobs this summer. Psh. Money? Who needs money?

11 June 2008

"How to check in at the airport", 101

On Tuesday night after I finished repacking, I went downstairs and talked to the front desk guy about what time I needed a taxi to get to a flight that left at 10:20 am. The conversation started in English and moved into French once we both figured out that we both spoke French. He told me that he would call the guy and would have him at the hostel by 7:45 at the latest. It would take 25 minutes or so to get to the airport, and that would totally be enough time.


The next morning I walked out of my room at 7:36 with all my stuff. I rolled it all over to the elevator...which was out of order. I looked at my suitcases and laughed. There was no way in the world I was going to lug all that down three flights of stairs by myself. I carried the two small bags down, then went back up to get the suitcases. Just as I opened the door to upstairs a couple walked past me, grabbed something from their room, and headed for the stairs again. I had learned my lesson, I apologised for interrupting them and asked if they could help me get my bags down the stairs. They agreed and the guy reached for one of the suitcases, I got the other.


Downstairs, I waited for the taxi driver to get there. After five minutes, I grabbed a glass of orange juice. After ten, I grabbed a piece of baguette. After twelve minutes, another girl needing a ride to the airport showed up, and we agreed to share the taxi whenever he got there. He didn't come until 8:20. I forget what his name was, I'm not even sure he told us, but he bowed once he stepped into the hostel lobby. He cited two accidents on the road up to the hostel as reasons for being late. I guess I believe him.

On the way to the airport he asked me which terminals our flights were in. Neither of us had any idea, we just knew that I was Delta and she was American Airlines. He drove first to Terminal 1, and ran inside to ask. Nope. Both were in Terminal 2. He drove us up to where he knew AA to be. It was then 8:55. He helped us out of the car, apologising that he didn't know where Delta was. He asked if I wanted help with my bags, but I, envisioning a surprise charge or even just being more late, politely refused.


I walked in to the terminal and walked left, checking with an official looking woman wearing a nametag as to where the Delta Airlines check-in desks were. She told me to walk the other way. I turned around and walked the other way before stopping a man with a nametag and asking where Delta was (this is all in French by the way). He pointed me back the way I'd just come. "I'm pretty sure it's in 2E, but you should talk to the info desk lady hidden behind that wall to make sure." I found the hidden desk and sure enough, I needed to be in 2E, whereas at present I was in 2A. They're on the same side of the terminal, but on opposite ends. The woman pointed me in the right direction and told me to walk 12 minutes that way.


12 minutes later, sure enough, I found the Delta desks. I went through the mini security checkpoint, let the lady sticker my bag, and because I was flying stand-by was led out of the normal line and told to fill out a piece of paper and then to talk to the guy at desk 12. He smiled when I asked if I could borrow a pen and I thought, "Sweet! A nice French person!"

And then he looked up at me and said that he couldn't get my bags on the flight. It was too late. I asked if he was joking. He said no, but that he would call. He made two phone calls and came back with a negative. No-go for the bags. I asked him, with my snazzy use of French subjunctive, what I had to do next. He laughed at me a little (Americans don't really grasp the subjunctive, and I'm pretty sure I pronounced my conjugated verbs with a silly sort of self-satisfaction) and told me to head over to the Delta desk to see if they could get my flight changed.

I pushed my cart of suitcases and carry-ons behind all the other people happily checking in, let myself out of the barrier, and went to talk to the desk lady. Again, in French. So proud of myself. I handed over my papers and explained the situation, and in under two minutes I was set for a flight going to Cincinnati. I went back to the mini check point, and back in line for the stand-by desk. The man was gone and a woman had taken his place. When it was my turn, she just barely glanced up at me. I swear she rolled her eyes at my accent, too.

Then she handed back one of my papers and told me that she needed a date. Date? Date of entry into the company, she said. I was flying stand-by on a buddy pass from Gwen, who loves me, and I hadn't put in the date of when she started working for Delta. I looked at the page and sunk a little into the ground. I didn't know the date, much less even Gwen's last name. The woman told me to go talk to the Delta desk to see what they could do.

I knew that there was no way they were going to be able to help me if I didn't even know Gwen's last name, so I stepped again outside of the check-in area and sent my mom a text message (calling wasn't working). Then I stood there, waiting for a reply. After four or so minutes, she replied, and in less than ten I had all my information. For the third time, I made my way through mini security, where I think they were almost starting to recognize me. The woman was still there, and she took my papers this time and I was all set to go through. The only problem I had after that was that one suitcase was 20 kilos, and the other was 24. The limit is 22. A little bit of switching was necessary, but in the end I got everything onto the conveyor belt and I myself headed to real security. I almost lost my ticket on the ground, and I could barely move because of the 70 pounds of carry-on baggage I was carrying on my shoulders (yeah, it was fun dropping things on the ground and trying to pick them up without putting things down).

Once through to my gate, I had no energy left to go and buy chocolate, as I had wanted to do. That's the thing I hate about airports. You can't leave your bags anywhere. People freak out if you do, and that means that it's that much harder to go to the bathroom and to shop. Even buying a bottle of water was difficult, since of course there was a minimal amount of room between the counter and cafe-style chairs. I think I spilled a couple of drinks then. Oops.

From there everything went smoothly. I flew first class from Paris to Cincinnati (thank you, Gwen). Oh, man. If you can fly first class at all, do it, but flying internationally was just fantastic. Free movies, I got to choose my lunch, AND I got to lay down to sleep and listen to music. Best thing ever, not even joking.

Cincinnati was fine, I learned my lesson in Paris and before I even took more than one step away from the security point, I went up to the info guy and asked him which terminal my connecting flight would be in. Saved: twenty minutes of lost walking. On my flight home I sat in normal class next to an older man who talked to himself and his seatbelt. He'd put on the belt, look down at it, and mumble, "Yeah, that looks good. That's where it goes. Right there. Yeah." It was kinda...interesting. I spent my time looking out the window, trying not to fall asleep.

My family was waiting for me in Denver, as was my friend Stephanie, who hid behind a pretend tree and then jumped out at me when we walked by. We drove home and had dinner with the Rudds (enchiladas.....I don't think I've ever been so happy to eat spicey food....yum...).

10 June 2008

Lost...a lot

Sunday afternoon, after I checked in to the hostel and used the elevator to get to my room, I tried to recuperate by sitting in the window sill. It helped me to cool down, but then i was a little restless, so I decided to just get moving again, and I made my way to the Louvre. I should have done this sooner, but I was having a lot of problems with getting up once I’d sat down.

So I went to the Louvre and ate a whole grain chocolate chip hunk of bread I had purchased at the Fournée St. Michel in Rennes Saturday morning. It was delicious and I loved it. When I finished I followed the trail of people to the giant glass pyramid which everyone hates but I think is more a source of hilarity. You know that the guy who designed it told the city planners that there was only going to be one pyramid and that it was going to be invisible? At least, that’s what the tour guide said today, and though he had rather an affinity for lying and then laughing and telling us he lied, he didn’t do that after this statement, even though it does sound a little cooky. “I think they let him do it just because they wanted to know what he actually meant,” he said.

I was only able to be in the museum for less than an hour. Since I had stayed in my room so long trying to convince myself that I wanted to get up, I had wasted all the time I could have spent looking at Italian and French sculpture. It’s fine, though. I got to see the major things that everyone sees, I got to walk briskly around a bunch of the rooms, and then I got shooed out of the Louvre by real Louvre workers.

Oh, and my clever thing of the day was picking up the French version of the map and walking around with that so that everyone thought I was French. Mwa haha…

When I got back to the hostel room it was almost 7. I sat in the window sill and was starting to actually physically write in my journal (I’ve been relying on blogs to relate that sort of info) when two new people came in, Vanessa and Danny. They were actually part of a group of six friends traveling together. The three of us started talking, and two hours later the three of us headed down to the bar to meet up with their friends.

I thought it was amusing that at 21, I was the youngest person in the group. Some of them were already graduated and talking about how their parents hated that they were lazy and didn’t have real jobs. I laughed. When we got downstairs they introduced me to everyone. There was Leah, who attached herself to a curly-haired guy who only spoke Farsi and a couple paragraphs of English. The other girl was Carrie, or Cara, or something. She was the girlfriend attached to the ribcage of one of the guys, whose name I can’t remember at all. I just remember that he was so tall that his girlfriend’s head only came up to his ribs, and that made me laugh. Of course, she was only about 5’2”. It’s not very hard to only reach up to people’s ribs at that height.

Then there was Hannibal. Oh, Hannibal. He greeted me with, “Are you a nice person?” I of course grinned and told him that I’m nice to people who are nice to me. He was very nice, in fact, and I got two glasses of white wine from him (well, everyone at the table got drinks from him. Yay rich friends…slash acquaintances!). The group as a whole was really fun, and I ended up hanging out with Hannibal, Danny, and George, a guy from our room, while the girls laughed over the tranny.

Uh. I was debating about this part of the story. I’ll just say that we met this woman…man….it…thing who creeped out me and all of the guys, but had Leah and Vanessa bent double with laughter. Especially when…nevermind. Some things are just so awkward. Haha, poor Danny. After about an hour or so (two hours? Maybe?) at the bar we jumped on the metro and saw the Eiffel tower.

You know, both times that I’ve seen the tower, it’s been at night? We didn’t go all the way up to it this time, we just got off on Ecole Militaire and then hung out on the grass lawn out front. Leah and her boy were cuddling on the ground, CarrieCara was so drunk she feel asleep on the grass. Her boyfriend took her home after we’d been there about ten minutes.

The rest of us stayed until about 1, when George and Danny and I decided that we were ready to go home and go to sleep. We left Leah, Vanessa, Leah’s attachment, and two random Frenchmen talking and rolling cigarettes on the grass. The guys and I walked towards what could have been a main road, trying to figure out where a taxi would be. After only walking about a minute Danny was already tired of things, so he yells, “Where’s my taxi?!?!!” All of a sudden, a taxi drove around the corner, stopped, and let out a couple. We all laughed and jogged over to claim it as our own. We got back to the hostel but instead of sleeping, we headed down to the basement and talked about music, politics, and religion until 3 am. Typical.

On Monday I slept in as long as I could despite the jackhammers, then ate breakfast, took my time getting ready, and headed out to the free walking tour. It wasn’t too bad, even though I didn’t have an umbrella when it started raining. At least I had actually taken my camera, when I was walking around on Sunday I had left it in my room. It was also a little sad doing the tour alone, but I got over it.

When the tour finished at about 2:30, I decided to find the antiques marché in northern Paris. Ha. This ended up to be a good idea and a bad idea. The bad idea part came first, because I apparently hadn’t thoroughly enough checked where exactly the market was supposed to be. So I ended up taking the metro to the correct stop, but once again walking the wrong way down the road. When I finally figured out the right way to be going, I didn’t take the most direct route, I took the round-about-hey-look-the-ghetto route. That was interesting. Remind me not to be so French when I get dressed to walk around next time. The French version of "How YOU doin'?" is a lot creepier when you're half lost somewhere between the 18th and 19th arrondissements of Paris.

Wearing black apparently only aggravates the matter.

I walked for at least an hour before thinking about giving up. But I pushed myself forward, because the real reason I was looking for the antique market was to find a present for my mum. I had bypassed the handpainted traditional Breton plates because I just KNEW that it would break on the trip home, whether I kept it with me in my carry-on or not. So I had held off, telling myself that I would find something worthy in Paris.

By the time I found the market, most of the shopkeepers were closing up. Long silver hinged doors were falling down into place all over the block. My first task was to find the single ATM in the area; and then I went looking for a good store. I finally found one down a little alleyway. It was right next to three shops all selling things in silver. Silver spoons, silver platters, silver thimbles...I walked up to the other shop and saw handpainted plates and figurines (150 and 210 euros, respectively) and found a display of gold jewelry: pins, earrings, bracelettes. After walking around for a little bit and looking at the fantastic collection of antique clocks, I went back to the earrings.

By the time I got home that night I couldn't move, I was so tired. I got a supermarket dinner of yoghurt and a sandwich and then sat in my room typing and listening to music. The next day I woke up a little early to get ready to go to Versailles. In order to get there, I had to take the RER (regional train). The stop was near the center of the city, so I had to take the metro before getting on the train.

My timing ended up being perfect. I stepped off of the metro, checked the screen listing departing trains, and saw that my train was just pulling up to the platform. I ran down the stairs (so much easier to do when you don't have 150 lbs. of baggage to take with you) and jumped on the train, and settled myself in.

The only thing to do on the RER is to look out the window, and I started keeping track of our stops. But for some reason, I couldn't find all of them on my little map. I figured that it just wasn't listing all of them. After fifteen minutes, though, I looked on the other side of the map. Oh, look, those are the same stops we're stopping at! I groaned and rolled my eyes. Of course. I'd gotten on the wrong train.

I started laughing at myself and my haste to get on the train. I was on the yellow line, the C line, but I had taken the long way. If you look at the map, the C line really does run in a backwards C shape underneath Paris. Both ends go to Versailles, so I didn't have to switch or anything major. It just meant that I would be on the train about 10 or 15 minutes longer than I had thought.

Once I got to Versailles and the palace, the sky was cloudy, there were tourists everywhere, and I had to walk a bit to find the right road. Luckily there were maps and hundreds of people all going to the same place. Walking up to the chateau of Versailles is an amazing thing. It's HUGE. Enormous. Ginormous. Not to mention a rather quiet shade of pastel something. Is pastel salmon a color? It took me an hour to stand in line to buy my ticket, buy my ticket, and then stand in line to actually get into the chateau.

For 13.50, I got an audio guide in French and access to the chateau and the gardens. If I ever go back, I'm getting the ticket to go into Marie Antoinette's domain. It's the one thing I missed because of time and sheer exhaustion.

The chateau itself was really cool. The hall of mirrors wasn't as impressive as I had hoped it would be, but that might have been because of the fat American dude that kept on getting in my pictures, or maybe because no one was dressed in ballgowns covered with diamonds and pearls. The mirrors weren't even that...mirrory. It was, however, a beautiful room with fantastic chandeliers and gold statues of women (goddesses?) holding pillars to put candles and flowers on top of.

I won't describe the rest of the chateau, it's a useless description. The gardens were lovely, of course I saw them in the rain, which was just fine with me. I had brought my umbrella along, but I had had to leave it with some dude keeping everyone else's umbrellas and backpacks and strollers. It was still up there. I talked to a security guard who thought I was lost for a couple minutes. I think he asked me out? Haha...I'm not really sure. One minute he was asking me if I was looking for something, and then he was acting surprised that an American could have such "good French". He told me that I should have brought my umbrella along, and when I explained to him what had happened he grinned and told me that I'd have to get warm sometime. Upon walking away he waved and said, "There's a cafe over there, maybe I'll see you later?" I smiled and replied "Maybe" and turned around and walked away.

I spent the rest of the afternoon at the hostel packing up my stuff and talking to an Australian, a new guy in the room. I had packed everything really well when I was in Rennes, but I needed to pull some books out to put them in my carry-on, so that my suitcase wouldn't be so heavy. This turned out to be more difficult and time-consuming than I thought. It took me about an hour to get everything in order. I had so much stuff. Once I finished I got up on my bunk, stuck in my earbuds, and finished up the metro story for the blog.


How many staircases can a metro have?!?!?

Paris is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, at least, that’s what we’re all told. I personally only believe this statement half of the way. It is beautiful, but it’s also a city, and that means it’s dirty and sometimes creepy and not at all romantic.

I spent Saturday half with Jessica and half with my host parents. In the morning I went to the marché with her. We bought cidre and seriously considered buying flowers for our host moms, but the prices were really high that day, and we ended up not doing it. I think I’m going to send something, though, to Michel and Elisabeth once I’ve gotten home and all. I did write them an adorable (ok, well, sweet, I guess…my own opinion of my own writing, haha) thank you letter. I left it on my desk right next to the pile of three English books that I couldn’t fit in my valises and didn’t really care about. I mean, I care, but they were cheap thrift store books anyway; and I’m going to choose the Petit Robert over the Hunchback of Notre Dame any day.

Yet, of course, I still managed to have like 7 books to pack. My suitcases are so ridiculously heavy, I don’t even walk to think right now about how many fees Delta is going to throw at me. I dunno, is it better to be overweight a little on each, or to have a surprise extra bag? For some reason I think you’d get charged less doing it my way, but you never know. It’s not like I fly a ton. At least, I haven’t flown the huge airlines a lot, and especially not flying back into the States. I actually haven’t done that since Freshman year of high school. Weird. I can still remember that.

I was pretty much finished packing that night, except for my facewash and everything, which technically I had packed, but I had to keep pulling it out to use. My last dinner in Franch was pureed potatoes and tiny Breton sausages. I laughed to myself a little when I saw it all. Oh, it was good. It was more the ambiance of the dinner that got me. None of this, “Oh, you’re leaving and it’s so saaaaaad!!!” It was more along the lines of: “So…you’re leaving in the morning. Are your friends happy to be leaving?” And then we talked about how many natural disasters there have been lately.

In the morning I woke up and got ready the same way that I did every day during the semester. Said hello to everyone, made my tea, ate my bread and butter (apparently I don’t like fig jam. Go figure). Michel was in and out, Elisabeth was cleaning. We didn’t have to leave until about 10:20, so I took my time getting ready. Actually, I took my time because I just wanted to take my time. I discovered while packing that if I took as long as possible to pack things, then they wouldn’t get packed, therefore prolonging my stay! Isn’t that genius? Yeah, I know…pathetic. I laugh at me too.

Elisabeth didn’t ride with us to the train station because Michel was going to Lorient to “work in the fields” directly from dropping me off. So I gave Elisabeth my bisous (cheek kisses) and my thanks, slung my bags all over my body, and we went out to the car. The ride was really quiet. I don’t really know what you’re supposed to say in those situations. Do you talk about how you’re feeling, or about the graffiti on the walls? The amazingness of the new van? I didn’t have any idea, so it ended up with us only talking about a couple of things. Michel pulled the car up to the drop off area, which is technically still quite a ways from the front doors. He gave me the bisous, helped connect my suitcases together, reminded me to keep in touch, and walked away. I did the same, only barely looking back at him and the van, with Baloo in the back seat.

I made my way to a corner next to the escalators where I could see the panel and wait for my quai to be announced. I only had to wait for a couple of minutes before it was up on the screen, and then I restrung all my bags over my shoulders and headed to the elevator. I must have been quite the sight. Just picture two good-sized blue suitcases, strapped together. On top of both of them, and tied by its strap to the long handle, is a khaki and orange mini duffel. I myself was carrying my laptop case, my orange bookbag, and my red purse. Blue, orange, red. Ok. And then in order to have everything balanced I had things slung across my chest in opposite directions, and my purse kept on falling off of my shoulder.

I got down to the platform and still had to wait about 6 or 7 minutes for the train to actually pull in, and at first I was feeling really confident about it. There were only a couple of people standing around, so I figured that since it was a Sunday morning things were going to be pretty empty. Ha. Wishful thinking. Even though I was magically standing exactly in front the car that my seat was in, suddenly a group of about 20 others was doing exactly the same thing. And a good handful of them had suitcases. I saw my chances of getting on the train first and getting my bags out of the way quickly diminishing. By the train had come to a full stop, they were completely gone. Everyone else got on before me, even pushing me over so that they could step on. The only people who got after me were the people who had noticed that the train was leaving in one minute and had just come from running down the steps.

Finally I got my turn at the steps up into the car, and this is when I truly discovered how heavy all my bags were. I set down the duffel and thrust the laptop and the orange bag onto my back, pulling up as hard as I could. After one or two seconds I watched the faces of the people below change as they realized that I wasn’t going to be getting that stuff on the train in the next couple of minutes. The woman who was closest feebly tried to push up on the second suitcase. It didn’t work. Then, suddenly, I was able to pull it all up. I got it into the small interim car and looked around for a spot to put the bags. No room.

I had to just leave them there, off to the side…I can still remember leaning out from my seat to look down the aisle, through the door, to see how people were faring without much room to walk around. It turned out all right, even though I was terrified that the controleur was going to come demanding for Mademoiselle Michelle Graham, and that she pay for all the trouble her monster suitcases were causing.

My seat was on the aisle, next to a man about my age who I swear rolled his eyes when I came up and put my stuff on the seat. Oh, totally forgot, I have my umbrella, too. And is it a cute little half size umbrella? Nope! It’s a full size you-can’t-stick-this-in-your-suitcase-haha-you-loser sort of umbrella. My problem is that I love it to much to give it up…that’s probably what he was rolling his eyes about. That and I was sweating. It was cold and raining in Rennes that day (fitting, I thought), so I wore something warm. But heavy lifting apparently makes your body warmer? Interesting…

I felt like I should be crying on the train. The woman in the aisle seat next to me almost was, when the train was pulling away she was waving to a guy standing on the platform. He looked like her son; and she would wave, then stop and put her fingers to her lips and look like she was concentrating really hard on something. I felt sad for her and wanted to pat her on the shoulder or something, but that just doesn’t happen in France. I sat forlornly for a while before deciding to begin my new French book: Les Trois Mousketaires! Yay!

When the train pulled into Gare Montparnasse I thanked God that it was the terminus and that I wasn’t going to have a time limit to get my things together and pull them off the train. This time I was smarter and brought the big things down one at a time. I did some organizing (this would turn out to be one of my favorite pastimes while getting to my hostel) and then set off.

I don’t know if any of you know anything about Paris, but Montparnasse is in the 15th arrondisement, and my hostel is in the 19th. These two neighborhoods of Paris are on opposite sides of the city. By metro the trip from one to the other should take about thirty or forty-five minutes. It took me…about three hours. The train pulled into the station at 1:30 pm, I checked into the hostel around 4:30 pm. Did I just give in to the realization that my bags were way to heavy and cumbersome to be dragged onto public transport like that and call a taxi? No! Of course not! I had to prove that I could do it. I proved it all right. And now standing and walking hurts and bending my arms hurts but straightening them stretches the muscles and I’m soooo tired.

I did, however, get a fantastic assortment of people to help me. The first was a guy, maybe 26 or 27, and he actually walked with my for a long while helping me get my stuff up and down the stairs until we got to where the cars come in. He asked me where I was going and what I was doing, I told him I’m staying with a friend for a few days. Then he asked me if I wanted him to come with me all the way to wherever I was going. I politely refused, thanking him for his trouble, but not mentioning that having a servant would have been amazing. I’d just rather not have a French man know where I’m staying three nights in a row, thanks very much.

The amusing part was when he warned me to keep a close eye on my things, because there were mean people who liked to steal around. I think that was about how he put it. I smiled and told him that I already knew and that I would be careful. I don’t think he believed me, but he left and I continued my odyssey.

Two of my favorite being helped moments were when I was changing lines. On the 4 a Spanish couple was standing right next to me with their own suitcases. We didn’t talk on the metro, but when we got off and I had problems with my things (of course. If there’s a moment when I didn’t have problems with all that stuff, I want to know so I can write it down and get the paper preserved. I can’t for the life of me remember right now what the name of it is when you get it covered in plastic film…boy do I feel dumb.

The Spanish couple was older, probably in their 60s or so, and they spoke to me in French, and to the person next to them who they bumped into in English. That made me smile a little. We did end up talking a few seconds, in English, and the husband helped me get my suitcases up the first two flights of stairs (there was a third but I found that out later, after they had gone). He of course did it man style, which means that if I tried to help he would ward me off with waving hands or the shaking of his head. I thanked them profusely and continued on my way.

In the middle of my way, however, and around the corner, was another flight of stairs. I came around the wall and literally started laughing. I mean I had remembered that there are stairs in the Parisian subways. Of course there are stairs. But so many? Geez!

I pulled my suitcases up the first three steps. This took about a minute for me to do. Why didn’t I disconnect everything and just do it one suitcase at a time? Are you kidding me? Leave one of my suitcases at the bottom of the stairs so that I could get the other one to the top so that I could leave that one blah blah blah. So pretty much a lot of very mild fear went into how I chose to do things.

Back to the stairs. By this time, all I want to do is sit down and go to sleep. I just had to make it to the top of the stairs, make the change, and it would only be two more flights of stairs to the exit. That’s pretty much the only thing that was on my mind. Then, all of a sudden, this grandma asks me if I would like any help. I smiled at her and said thank you, but I think it’s too heavy. Then her two daughters and grandson came around the corner. Everyone grabbed something and we made it up to the top. On the way up one of the women asked me what I had in the suitcase, which made it so heavy. “My entire life and half of the universe as well,” I told her. She laughed and they left me.

I couldn’t give them anything in return, but I hope God blesses all of them with reciprocated experiences from someone else. Even to the last creepy guy.

It was the last run of stairs, and a black guy was helping me when this really short Arab came up and started helping us (is it bad that I typed that out, considered saying it another way, but can only think right now of how diverse my helpers were? Haha). He didn’t say anything, he didn’t ask if we needed help, he just kind of went for it. The black guy I guess felt like the Arab was doing a better job or something, but he left. Arab Dude helped me all the way up the last of the steps, even up through the moment on the second to last stair when I started to lose my grip on the handle and had to set the stuff down. As I stood up into the cooler air of the heavens, he accepted my thanks, wished me a good night, and walked away.

This is the part where I decided to walk north-west instead of south-east. I walked that way, along the correct road, of course, for about twenty minutes. I was exhausted. I could no longer keep my grip on the handle of my wheeling suitcase. The wheels themselves were starting to squeak, as if even they were complaining about how much I was making them do. Luckily I suddenly began to think that maybe looking at some addresses on the sides of buildings would be a good idea. 222. Ok. I was looking for 159, so that couldn’t be too bad. Ten seconds later I looked at the next number. 223. Oh no. NO! no!!! I started laughing, for the second time that day, out loud. I could barely stand up and my feet hurt so much and I was still wearing that dumb sweater.

I stopped at the corner of a building to regroup and succeeded in readjusting my bags and rewrapping my jacket around the pull-out handle. Then I switched the load to my left hand, adjusted the orange hippie bag and my laptop, and set back on the other side of the road. I didn’t just want to stay on the same side of the road cause I didn’t want the creepy French people who had just seen me walk by in front of their store see me walking back the other way. Not that this idea really matters that much, or that it really made a difference (I’m sure the French have good vision and could see me walking on the other side of the street)…but it seemed to be important for me.

I made it back to the metro I had come out of and then continued walking the other way. One hundred and fifty meters later, I found the Holiday Inn Express. Given my experience with the Brest hostel, and having ended up that time with a hostel that was actually a chain hotel, I started laughing to myself again. But then I walked around the corner, and in the same building I found my hostel, St. Christopher’s Inn. It’s on a canal part of the Seine, and I have a fantastic view of the canal from each of the three huge windows in the room. It’s a ten bed dorm, but it’s all super clean and organized, each of the bunks even has a little curtain to draw across so that you have privacy/darkness.

Of course, it doesn’t block sound, which began at 7am this morning with the sound of jackhammers. And I don’t mean that metaphorically. They really were jack hammering something at 7 am this morning. I don’t understand why, but they did.

31 May 2008

The Day Before

I finished packing.
I can't pull myself away from the computer now, I keep on thinking that I've forgotten something, that I missed some directions or something. But I haven't...I've written down instructions and prices and directions to almost everything in Paris.
My bags are packed and waiting along the wall to my room, my laptop is in it's bag thing.

The only things left are a pile of three english books I'm leaving here and a paperclip.

I'm starting to get nervous about being in Paris alone, though I know it will be fine.
More I'm worried about all my bags and how I'm getting them on and off the train, and then to the hostel and to the airport. It'll be fine, I know, but really...

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!

30 May 2008

Packing

This morning I went with Sophia to the gare to help her get her suitcases on her train to Paris. It made me worry even more about how I'm going to get my bagages on and off my own train on Sunday. Michel and Elisabeth will be taking me to the gare to catch the train, so I'm not really worried about that part. It's the part when I have to get off the train, up the stairs to the métro, and through the métro to the youth hostel...with two large rolling suitcases, a mini duffel, and whatever purse type bag I have. Oh, and my laptop.

I had left the house before 8 to catch the bus down to the center, and it felt really weird after 9 heading back up to St. Grégoire. I felt like I was walking backwards, since 9 is usually about the time when I'm heading down to classes. When I got back home I made myself some tea and went in my room to begin the project of the day: PACKING.

It took me two hours to pull everything out, go through papers, organise stuff on my bureau...move the stuff to my bed...move the stuff to my desk... and then I looked out the window for a few minutes. My life is so exciting.

I do, however, now have a completely full trashcan. I'm very proud of this fact, mostly because it's full of school papers that I don't think are useful to me anymore. This idea makes me feel smarter, even though I don't feel like I've gotten better...in fact, my French feels worse. More about that later, though, when I have a tad more hindsight.

I ate lunch with mes parents and then set back to work trying to fit a semester's worth of my entire life into my suitcases. The funny part is that I'm planning on buying cidre at the marché tomorrow morning, yet I have no reason whatsoever to believe I will be able to fit it in my suitcases. Oh well, we shall see. I hope that it works, since of course I managed to fit everything but final souvenirs in my three bags. OH the amazingness of me!

The event of the day was the opening of Michel's art atelier expo. Atelier is a fancy word for ... uh... work place thing. Studio? Something like that. What I did figure out is that this atelier is kind of like taking art classes at the city cultural center. Five "classes" of adult artists got together and showcased their work. It was adorable. I really felt like I was judging the middle school art fair at Faith again. Some of the oeuvres were really good (aka Michel's work, and two or three other artists...out of 120). Others were pretty much duplicates of things I created in high school. That was the cute part; especially when I put it in relief with the mass of people participating in the aperitif drinks in the main entry.

One French lady came up with her husband and was talking to us about her life. She was boring but very knowledgeable about the subject. Elisabeth and I made fun of her afterwards. Oh, don't worry, it was in the nicest way possible: Frensh style! I was just glad to be able to remember some of what she said, so that I could repeat it. It helps that she mentioned five times that she was the president of some sculpture association. Fuel for the flames of French satire! Sadly, she is no longer president. It was just so demanding, you know?

After standing around for about an hour and listening to French with my ears and watching Angelika page through a book of modern art done my a guy my age, we headed back to the appartement for dinner. Ratatouille! Yum! Halfway through dinner Elisabeth got a call from her sister (Yes, she answered her phone during dinner. The French apparently don't consider this as rude? Or maybe it's just my family), and while she was talking in the kitchen Michel asked me what I think I'm going to miss the most about France.

The first thing to pop into my head, of course, was him and his philosophical discussions. Then I thought of Elisabeth and decided that I was going to miss her too. For some reason, though, I didn't feel like I could actually say that out loud. I held it back and instead mentioned some other French, like Lucie and Noury and Blanchet. Then he turned the conversation to what things I was going to miss. Fromage blanc and yoghurt.

That's what I'm going to miss. The yoghurt here is...it's a dream in a small glass jar. That's what it is. I actually acquired a spoon so that when I'm in Paris and want cheap lunch/snacks I will have something to eat yoghurt with. It's better than candy or icescream, I promise.

Oh, yeah...I'm going to Paris! Haha... since it suddenly occurs to me to actually announce it, there you are! Tomorrow is my last day in Rennes, and on Sunday morning I leave for Paris. I'm going to be pseudo alone, as a friend of mine from UNC-Greeley is there right now doing a study program. I'll be staying in a youth hostel and seeing all the things I missed when I was in Paris in January with the huge group.

I'm planning on seeing the Louvre, the Musé d'Orsay, and Versailles, along with lots of the Seine and bridges. Be sure to look for me in Colorado on Wednesday night, though! Haha, assuming I don't get stranded! Oh man, that would be so horrible...

29 May 2008

Allergies? What?

I apparently am allergic to France.

Yeah, I know. Ridiculous. I've never been allergic to anything in my entire life, and now that it's spring and raining and all green and stuff, I can't stop sneezing. I can't go to the lavanderie by the river anymore cause there's some flower/plant thing over there that makes my eyes all itchy. Not even exagerating, the last time I was down there with Jessica last week, by the time I got home I could barely keep my eyes open (they hurt so much), much less look at them in the mirror to see how red they were.

I had Christmas eyes that day...ha...ha....uh. That means they were bright red and green.
Today wasn't as bad as that, but this is annoying. I'm ready for dry Colorado. Forget the green grass and blooming flowers. I want some dead foliage and no more tiny bugs flying around.

Classes ended this past Wednesday. Today felt like Saturday, even though it was Thursday. I spent the day with Johanna, Jessica, and Sophia. I think we hit every mall in Rennes...there are three. The first was totally the ghetto mall, the second was about on par with a Mills mall, and the last was really just Super Walmart with a Printemps department store on the side. Yay for souvenir shopping!

One fantastic thing to note is that the weather people keep on telling us to expect rain, but the past two days have been sunny and bright. Hopefully this continues for about a week. I don't mind rain, or walking around in it, but I seem to really hate carrying around a jacket or umbrella which I don't need.

Today was the first day people started leaving. Mark's gone back to Indiana, and tomorrow Sophia leaves. I'm going with her to the train station to help load her suitcases on the train, and then I'm going to head back home to pack my own bags. Jessica and Sarah will be at the beach (hence another reason to hope it's sunny tomorrow) and Collin is hanging with his real parents, so I'll have no reason not to have all my packing done by Friday night. Then I can spend Saturday with Jessica running around and buying things to make my bags too heavy to carry. That's the point of going home, right? The day-before-you-leave souvenir rush? Oh brother.

I just hope everything fits. And that nothing breaks!

28 May 2008

Portrait #4: Isabelle NOURY

Isabelle NOURY, PhD
Professor of Languages
AKA coolest prof ever

This woman was by far the best French professor I have ever had.
Picture a woman of somewhere in her fifties. No one really knows how old she is, because like the classic French woman, she is in wonderful shape. She has short gray hair with undertones of black, and her eyebrows are a very dark brown, so she must have been a brunette when she was younger. Mme Noury is also Bretonne, which means that both of her parents were born in Bretagne, and her ancestors are Celts. The Bretons are very proud of their heritage.

Noury wears a lot of dark colors, but not as much black as most French. And of course she has the chic square frame brand name reading glasses. Which French person doesn't? I'm really starting to wonder if Europeans know what contacts really are...

The real reason Mme Noury is so amazing is that she scares us all to death. She knows everything about the French language, and though she doesn't speak English, she's been teaching so long that she can read student papers without knowing who wrote them, and then tell us whether the author was anglophone, hispanophone, asiatique etc. It's scary. When she explains things to us, she gets really close, like a foot away from your face. Sometimes you're in class doing work and suddenly you realise she's speaking and you look up and she's right there talking to you and you're not even the one who had asked the question!

If you ask her why something is the way that it is, she'll not only go through why that is that way, but why this other thing which is kinda similar is the same way, and then she'll go through the exceptions to all the rules that she just explained.

Every student I know is slightly terrified and completely in awe of this professor. She introduced herself on the first day of class as the Princess of CIREFE. I had her for my Written Expression class, which for the first month was in a non-CIREFE building a three minute walk away from where everyone else has/had classes. Now, no French university building is pretty. They don't care what you put on the outside of buildings, it's what goes on on the inside that counts (which is why their computer labs suck and all their students wear Louis Vuitton and Puma...hm......incongruity!). At the end of that first month, Noury decided that she didn't like having class down there. She wanted to be in the "clean and pretty" batîment E, where the rest of CIREFE was.

So Mark and Johanna's Written Expression class got moved to the building we had been in, and our class moved into the room they had been using. Princess!

Her class was also one of the hardest. She didn't grade us easy. She told us she was going to grade like a French teacher, and she graded like a French teacher. I can remember getting one short page-length essay back from her. On the top was written 13/20, and next to it was "très bien". I almost died from happiness. Remember that they don't use a point system, so the 13 I got was really like a B or something. The "très bien" next to it didn't just mean it was "very good"...it meant that I had done good work.

Noury was also one of the only teachers this semester who would remember my name outside of class and greet me on the sidewalk outside of the building. The other prof who did this was Monsieur Blanchet, another wonderful person.

I wish that I had had more time with Noury and her intimidating teaching style. She actually made us want to work in order to please her...

20 May 2008

Le weekend des châteaux

Saturday morning the program required us to wake up way too early in order to be on the bus, which left the school parking lot at 8am. I don't care who you are or what time you usually wake up in the morning, 8am is too early. People are supposed to be waking up at 8, not already being somewhere besides their bedrooms.


We all were loaded onto the bus and we sat rather calmly for about two hours before we stopped for a picnic lunch (which really just means that Andrew handed each of us 10 euro and let us go find our own food in whatever little town we were in). We had paninis and quiche. It was cheap enough that we felt good about having money left over. Like we were getting paid back some of the mountain of money that we paid to be here in the first place.


After lunch we drove some more and then we stopped at Ussé (say "oo-say"), which is the château of Sleeping Beauty. It was raining. And I mean RAINING. It wasn't like in Bretagne, where the rain is kind of nice and stops pretty quickly after beginning. Rain in the Loire Valley, on the other hand, gets a good running start and just keeps on going. Of course I had left my umbrella in my room that morning. I remember looking at it thinking, "Of course it won't rain. It's supposed to be 19°C...I'll just leave it here and that way I won't have to bring it with me everywhere."


Well, the good thing was that I didn't have to drag my umbrella all around the château. The bad thing was that I was completely soaked from the moment I stepped off of the bus until some random time about four hours later, after we had seen our second château.

Ussé was really cute. It was rather small, although I'm sure that every American says that after they visit châteaux in France and are confronted with the fact that château doesn't necessarily mean 'Versailles'. Go figure. It was decorated like it was the 20s, complete with mannequins in period costumes. These things scared the crap out of me. I mean, seriously...a smiling mannequin? That's going just a tad overboard.


The upstairs of the château contained rooms set up with the story of Sleeping Beauty. Yes, complete with mannequins dressed up as the fairy tale characters. It was cool and hilarious, especially because I'm pretty sure that the mannequin who was supposed to be the evil witch was wearing a Halloween Maleficent costume. Maleficent is the name given to the evil witch in the Disney version of the story.


The view from the courtyard was fantastic, you could see over the valley and the river, and with the rain and mist it was like we were in one of those sad moments just after the princess pricks her finger and falls asleep for a hundred years.


Just when the rain was letting up we left the château and headed to Azay le Rideau (say "ah-zay luh ree-doe"), another pretty sweet spot. The château is half in the water, and is built with an open air staircase right in the "middle". I put "middle" in parentheses because it's only the middle from a couple perspectives. The guy who built the place totally was going to have everything symetrical, but something went wrong with financing and the king hating him, so in the end it's nearly symmetrical on one side, and on the other...well it works.


One thing I loved is that the château itself was relatively small, and it had it's own tree-lined lane to lead up to it. We had fun with that. Our tour guide was cool too. I don't remember his name because I never heard it. We were standing in the gift shop when we suddenly realised that the entirety of our group had been transfered outside and was listening very intently to the French guy tell them everything about the lovely mansion.


I do, however, remember his beard. Oh man. You know those beards that all 20-something men want to be able to grow but never can? Yeah, it was totally that beard. He of course was slightly balding, and it looked like his salt-and-pepper beard had been electrocuted. It had to have been at least a foot long...


At Azay I frolicked across a field of daisies with Jessica and Johanna. Not even joking. It was pretty much the best thing ever.

That night we ate dinner and stayed in Tours. Most everyone else ended up partying the night away at bars and clubs...I decided to go "home" with my friends after one drink and go to bed. In the morning over half the bus was hung over and a couple people even were hurling, apparently. Fan-tastic. Gotta love those smart ones.


On our way to the first château of the day the driver got lost for an hour. He went the wrong direction, and stopped twice in front of cafés to ask for directions. I didn't really mind this since I was half asleep, but the people who were wishing they could tumble outside and hurl.

We finally got to the château, Chenonceau. It's honestly one of the most beautiful châteaux ever. It's often called "Le Château des Dames" (Castle of Women) because of the women who influenced its design... just plain for living there. Among the famous gardens are the gardens of Catherine de Medici and Diane de Pointiers. It's the most visited castle in France.

After Chenonceau we headed to Amboise, a much smaller but rather cute castle. Those of you fairy tale lovers might recognise the grounds as the ones which were filmed in the movie Ever After. At least, Johanna and Jessica and Sophia and I are all convinced that they are the same. Besides, Amboise was the living place of Leonardo da Vinci for a chunk of his life, so why not film it there? We even saw his house on the neighboring hill!

The visit at Amboise was rather short, even though the guide was really nice; it's just a very small château. Afterwards we gathered up for a group picture and Andrew told us that since the driver had gotten lost that morning we has kinda earned twenty five minutes of wandering on our own. I went up to the "gardens" with Jessica and Sarah (quote because the garden totally turned out to be bushes and gravel...haha oh you Frenchies), where we found Hugo, one of the French moniteurs. We walked down with him and while everyone was hanging out in the area in between the souvenir shop and the bathroom Hugo and I had a great French conversation about why you would or would not want to fry an egg on your head.

Hugo speaks really fantastic English, so he was familiar with frying an egg on the sidewalk when it is really hot outside. But he's also French, so the joke part of me telling Sarah to buy eggs and fry them on her hair (which was really hot) kinda missed him. It was a lot like an hour earlier, when Jessica and I were talking to Nicolas, another French moniteur, and he corrected her on a mistake she made of pronounciation. She thanked him sarcastically and he was halted. "But why are you thanking me?" he asked. We laughed.

The French like to take things seriously, apparently. Even funny stories about myself and my friends don't flow as well in French as they do in English. Sad.

We got home late Sunday night, Staci ended up driving us home, which was just lovely of her to do. Sophia and Jessica and I had actually just been trying to figure out which of us was going to go ask for the ride when Staci got on the bus speaker system and offered the Saint Grégoire girls a ride home. She lives in Betton, a suburb even further north of Rennes, so it was no problem for her. When I got home my parents had actually only been there for about five minutes. Apparently when I'm out of the house for the weekend they go to friends' houses to hang out.

And then I started studying for my finals...haha

15 May 2008

Des Invités: Guests

Yesterday I got home in the early evening, after having wandered around with Sophia for a little bit. It was Wednesday, so i was expecting Elisabeth and Michel to both be out. Usually Elisabeth is volunteering at the hospital library, and Michel is out doing errands or something like that. But this time Michel was out on the terrace smoothing out a fresh patch of concrete, and three minutes after I got home Elisabeth walked in the door with a bag full of groceries.

I grabbed some water and my homework and sat in the living room to do homework, half waiting to see if there was a conversation opportunity and half waiting...for food! After a few minutes Michel asked when "they" were coming. 6:30pm. I asked who "they" were, and all Elisabeth said was, "Some friends." O...k...

At 6:32pm the doorbell rang. I was in my room writing letters; Elisabeth had half kicked me out of the living room so that she could set out all the things for the aperitif. I had no idea who these people were or even how long they were going to stay, so I adjusted my ponytail, put on my mocassins, and headed out to the salon where all the 'adults' were. I really did feel like the child walking in on the adults getting ready for dinner. Our guests were Auguste and Louise (I actually can't for the life of me remember the woman's name, so for now she's Louise, until I can remember it). They were host parents with CIEE for 20 years. They also hold the record for having the most students hosted in their home: 28.

The Massons had talked about them before, and when I found out who they were I relaxed a lot. This meant that they would know how to actually include me in the conversation! We've had other guests over before, sure, and they were all super nice, but since they were just plain French they just kinda left me off to the side, letting me sit there and wonder if I should be there or not. But Auguste and Louise directly asked me questions about my stay here, and talked about things that they found out interested me.

Auguste was really cute, he reminded me of a leprechaun because he was really short, but in really good shape for 70 years old. He had one of those beards that's almost an Amish beard but it was trimmed very short in a cute little white circle around his face. He also had the roundish glasses and kind of figety ways of a little Irish imp, and I swear his French had a celtic lilt to it every once in a while.

His wife was the same size as him, almost exactly. I think her head came up to about the middle of my upper arm. She was really sweet and reminded me of a cross between my grandma Bert and Terri Opeka, if you know who they are. She had short brown hair and kept on clasping her hands and complimenting Elisabeth on the appartement. Elisabeth replied to everything Louise said in the most proper French way possible: "Oh, thank you, I suppose we do what we can..."

The French don't believe in accepting compliments, even if what you say is perfectly true and not a way to flattery, they always say something like "Well, yes, if you say so" so that they don't seem to be prideful. They definitely don't give compliments by the handful like we do. You don't get a "oh you look so cute today!" from the French. Nope. You know if you look good if when you get on the métro the people there give you the up-down. If they just glance at you, you're ok. If they give you the up-down and then look away, you've got it down. If, on the other hand, they look at you and continue to just stare at you the entire way, you are probably very obviously american that day.

During our aperitif, which I quickly figured out was actually our entire dinner, not just the drinks that go beforehand, I tried to practice listening to two conversations at once. At first the women were talking about (go figure) having children and the men were talking about painting. I guess they were each talking about what interests them the most. My strategy didn't work very well. I can still only focus on one thing at a time. I discovered this when I had been looking at Auguste but listening to Louise and Auguste asked me a question. Totally failed. But it's ok.

There were two interesting conversational occurences during dinner. The first was when Auguste tried to ask me if I felt prepared for France's something by the something of the something. Please, if anyone understands this question, let me know. Haha...What happened is that he asked a question beginning with Hilary Clinton and Obama. Then he talked about Evangelism and science in schools, and then about culture. Then he wanted to know if I had been prepared for France. Or something in France? I have no idea, and I told him that I had no idea what the question really was. He tried to explain it again, but it was hopeless. Each time I tried to answer he said that it wasn't that which he was talking about. "Uh...ok!"

At the end of that conversation I got to experience my very first really super awkward French pause. We sat there, kind of smiling uncomfortably at one another, thinking, "Well, great, the American doesn't get it...now what?" Luckily Louise jumped into a new subject within a couple of seconds and everyone was off again. The French are very good at switching subjects, but usually we actually complain about it because it means that we can't follow part of the discussion, form a retort or comment in our heads, and use it later. By the time we have something brilliant to say about global warming, they're talking about coffee. The real mystery is how they actually get from one topic to another. No one really knows....

The second funny thing was actually really hilarious. It shows perfectly how the French think. Auguste asked me what I wanted to do after my studies at CU. "I'm not positive it'll work out, but I would love to be a children's book writer," I said. He smiled and nodded, and so did Michel and Louise. Elisabeth, on the other hand, turned to me and exclaimed, "But you told me that you're studying to be a journalist!" I grinned a little, I believe, as I contradicted her.

"No...I said I'm studying journalism. But I want to write fairy tales for kids."
"Then why are you studying journalism?" Oh the age-old question. I braced myself in my mind as I began to explain what I've told her three times before. It's also something that people find difficult to understand in English, much less French.
"Well...one of my...biggest faults (of course here I completely forgot the word for 'weakness') is that I tend to be shy and non-assertive and I never know what questions to ask of people."
"But you're not shy!"
"It's taked work. I decided that to make the fault go away I needed to study journalism to teach me how to ask questions. Does that...make sense?"

Everyone looked at me and smiled. Elisabeth furrowed her brow and told me that she didn't understand and that it was strange. I agreed. Then Auguste did the switch and started talking about a writer's conference that had been at St. Malo a weekend or so ago. He wished that he had known that I liked kid's stories sooner, otherwise he would have tried to get me to go. I found this interesting simply for the fact that last night was the first time I had ever met him. So this means that Elisabeth and Michel talk about me to them, of course, that makes sense.

The problem that Elisabeth had is a problem of many French for the one reason that the French don't study one thing but go and do another. If you study journalism, you become a reporter. If you study english, you teach english. You don't have any way around it. So in her world, as permeated by Americans as it may be, it's not possible for me to study journalism but to try to enter a career as a story teller. It just doesn't work. I still want to write it out for her, to try to get her to understand what's happening. Part of me feels like if they could just understand this one thing, everything would be perfect. Not necessarily true, but a nice thought nonetheless.

Oh, and I accidentally told Elisabeth that I hate all the other people in my program. No, it's not true. I don't hate anybody. Sure, there are people I don't hang out with, but that's generally a time/schedule issue, not likes and dislikes. We were talking about immersion and how the students who succeed with families with children are the students whose level of French is higher than others' levels. Someone asked me a question about whether it's easy to spot the Americans in France or not. "Of course," I answered, "In fact, when me and my friends see them, we actually try to avoid them!"

Auguste smiled and said "Well, like that you become more French!"
Elisabeth shook her head: "No, she just wants to stay in her own american group!"

I didn't have time to register what she had said until about a minute later, and by then the subject had changed and it was too late to correct her. We had been talking about tourists and high school students, and she took me to mean that I stayed away from the other kids in my program! Immediately afterwards I felt like sort of an idiot for letting that slip by unchallenged, but you can't catch them all, I guess. Haha...

I was so tired last night after doing so much French that I actually went to sleep before midnight. This was good because I had a test at 8am this morning in my writing class. Everything went very well except, of course, for the first question, in which I informed my teacher that the word for "ear" is masculin. Yeah, it's definitely feminin. Woops. At least my fairy tale turned out well...that was the essay portion. I rocked it.

love.

14 May 2008

13 mai: la Fête!!!

Today was Tuesday, and tonight we had a little fête with CIEE. It was (most of) the students and their families. Michel and Elisabeth went for I believe a grand total of about 15 minutes. I was really confused. One minute I was running in the door with them to get out of the rain, the next I was finding my friends and trying to figure out the etiquette for introducing (do you leave your parents where they are? Do you introduce your friends right away? Do you stay with them? I don’t know!!!!), and the next they were just gone. Vanished. Michel did have his atelier artist workshop thing tonight, but it doesn’t start until 20h30, and the aperitif started at 19h00!! We had even gotten there early but stayed in the car for 15 minutes while they waited to see if the rain would let up.

I think this was the French in them. I was totally all about just running for it. But no, we had to wait. Haha…I found it pretty amusing.
[sidenote written later: I found out that he had to be early cause he and his painter peeps are getting ready for a 120-person show really soon. He asked me why the other Saint Grégoire families hadn't shown up. When he asked me, I had no idea. I found out today that Sophia's family "forgot" that it was on Tuesday night, and that Jessica's family were "too tired" to go)

Jess and Johanna and I wore our sundresses to the party. Most everyone else was in jeans. We didn’t care, though. Got a great “what are you wearing?” French look of wonder from Michel, though. That was fun.

Staci and Andrew had asked us to write a couple lines about what we think of our families. I wrote mine last night and emailed it to Staci, and everyone’s stuff was read out loud to the group (anonymously, of course, and they had the native French speakers read them, so besides everybody’s horrible grammar they sounded amazing!). It was a very strange feeling to hear something I’d written get applause, and it was even stranger to see Staci and Andrew shaking their heads (you know, the good shake, the ‘wow’ head shake) and saying to one another that it had been really good.

We hung out for a while, talked to Mark’s and Collin’s parents, and I encouraged Collin’s host brother to keep messing around. He was dodging around and tapping people’s shoulders, then hiding. I joined in the game when he was around our group. I think Collin wanted to kill me. Haha. He didn’t want kids in his French family. I still wish I had gotten some, but oh well. It turned out well.

Mark’s mom invited us officially to her home on French Mother’s day. Mark’s making steak and stuff, and he had already asked us to come over and to make dessert. I didn’t know that it was Mother’s Day here, though, and all of a sudden I’m wondering if I should be going or not. I mean, I know that if I stay here Elisabeth probably still won’t let me do anything to help her. It’s like they’re afraid of us Americanizing their clean floors, seriously, I don’t get it. I actually MISS doing my own laundry!!! What is up with that?

So I’ll have to watch Elisabeth's reaction when I say I’ve been invited somewhere on a Sunday. I hope it’s ok. It’s not like she’s my real mother, but she is kinda…there… all the time. Then again, something I just thought of, I'm totally going to be home for dinner, the thing is simply for lunch. Haha I guess we all really suck at this whole French etiquette thing. Even Jessica is wondering if she should be staying at home for lunch, and her host parents don't even really include her in things! Well, I mean, they do, but they don't at the same time.

It's so complicated. One minute she feels really included and like she can actually talk and not be afraid, and the next she feels like the last person in the world they want in their home is her.

La Forêt Domaniale de Rennes

On Monday (the 12th) we went to a French forest. I think I took a total of three pictures, it was really sort of a disappointment. Let me explain.

Jess and I left St. Gregoire at 11h03 in order to get to centre ville buy picnic food, and catch the 12h15 line 50 bus up to the forest (since it was a jour férié each bus line only ran once an hour). We stood in the marché for about half an hour, half thinking that Collin was going to come and choose food with us. Nope. We got meat and cheese, two water bottles, and a green apple. Collin met us at the bus stop, we hopped on, and about twenty minutes later Mark got on when we reached his house. Lucky him, being the closest to the forest.

At Juteauderies we jumped off and walked straight down the road for sevenish minutes before hitting the forest. It was very beautiful. It was great to see real trees, not the poor mutilated things that we’re used to all over Rennes. The French believe that flowering trees are so much more beautiful when you cut all of the branches so they all look stubby and swollen. During the winter they look like poor handicapped plants; though in the spring and summer the blossoms do look pretty cool all so close together…

The forest was paved. Not even exaggerating. Maybe I should have taken more pictures of it just for that reason. We walked in on the blacktop and thought, “Ok, sure, it’s just like this cause it’s the entrance.” Wrong! It’s like that cause the French are afraid to actually be out in the wild. Not that walking trails are “the wild”, but seriously, people. Seriously? Sidewalks in a forest?
The four of us walked for a while before sitting down on a concrete water aquaduct (? Yeah, I don’t really know…but it did sound like there was water flowing through it) and ate our lunch. Bugs bit me, and this one huge flying beetle which looked like a mini scarab kept on flying past my and Jessica’s faces. Mark beat it away with the plastic tray from the lunch meat. I still have bug bites all over, and not just from moustiches. I have tiny little bites on the top of my left hand, too, and I’m really curious as to what got me there.

We left the forest around 3 and ended up at the stop about 45 minutes before the next bus was going to pull through, so we just started walking. We walked about two or three stops down, checking each time to see how long we had to wait for the bus. We finally halted when we had about 15 more minutes to wait. It was hot. I was in jean shorts and a tshirt, and it was HOT. Bleah. It doesn’t help at all that Bretagne is getting just a tidge more humid as the weather gets warmer. I think part of it has to do with how much it rains.

But it was hot, and while we were sitting there in the 34*C spring sun, Mark remembered that there is a McDonalds at the stop right before his house. Yes, dear friends, yes we went to Macdo’s. But only for the icecream! I had a McFlurry with kit kat turds in it. They were so good. Sorry about the turds part. They were just really tiny balls.

Of coursem since we stopped and hung out, and left the shrine of American consumerism just a few minutes too late, Jess and Collin and I missed the next bus down to centre ville. We walked to another line, got there half an hour before the next bus, and decided once again to just walk the road until we had less than 20 minutes to wait.

Once in centre ville Jess and I did this again one time since we had missed our bus by twenty minutes. Buses only running once an hour is kind of a huge pain in the butt. I did get a rather nice even burn on my arms, though. Not too bad, just enough to have people come up to me just so that they can push their fingers into my skin and watch it leave white marks. I find immense joy in telling them that my skin always does that. It’s just a bit more pink than it usually is.
I got home around 6 and the night pretty much progressed as Sunday did.

Funny how it’s suddenly become so easy to just fall into my France routine. When people ask me questions in French, I like to think that I answer them. Maybe I don’t. Maybe that’s why conversations that I begin are so awkward. They’re still reveling in the fact that I tried to introduce a subject.

12 mai

Today was yet another French holiday: Pentecost!! Honestly, I don’t know what I’ll do with myself when I actually have to go to an entire semester of classes without having at least one or two four day weekends. Of course, not having classes on Fridays really is the way to go. If you can ever not have classes on a Friday, or maybe even a Monday, go for it.

Yesterday morning Jess and I went for a two hour bike ride to Betton, a suburb to the north. There’s a good-sized marché there every weekend and we wanted to look around for a little bit. Luckily we didn’t take any money along, otherwise I would have really been tempted to buy a watch and a pair of jasmine pants. The style is getting really popular here, and though it hurts my insides to want something that everyone else has, you have to admit that it would be super cool to have a pair of Jasmine pants with sequins embroidered into the belt. Maybe it will be a project for when I get home this summer and have nothing to do…

After the marché and the end of our ride Sophia pulled herself away from her homework and came to my house for lunch, which was the rest of the fruit salad from the night before, the yoghurt that the boys had left in my fridge, and vanilla wafers and a little bit of chocolate. Should I use this moment to say that I really miss vegetables? I eat so many potatoes and so much bread…I think I’m going to be a temporary vegetarian when I get home, just so I can cleanse my body of all the starch and carbs and other junk I’ve been putting in my body this semester. It’s not that the food is unhealthy; it’s actually fresher than most everything that we eat in the states. But when half your meal is potato and the other half is meat and bread and salted butter, you start to wonder why one of the first foods you learned in French was “green beans”.

When lunch was done we walked to Jessica’s house, I took the bike, and we watched Mary Poppins in French. The voices, we were rather surprised to notice, were done very well. We’re used to French dubbing picking the worst, most annoying voices to perform. It seems that in the years of Mary Poppins the standards were much higher. I rode home after that, didn’t get a huge hello from my returned parents, and took a shower. Afterwards I went out on the terrace and was reading. I tried to start a conversation with Elisabeth, but she didn’t really jump on the opportunity. I’m so confused. So they think that I don’t talk enough…but when I start a conversation, they don’t…respond in full. Ok. Whatever. They really expect me to start sharing my heart and dreams and frustrations with them? Elisabeth still doesn’t seem to understand that I’m not going to be a journalist, even though I’m sure I’ve explained about 10 times that I hate reporting. Then again, this really is a French thing. The French do NOT study one thing and go and do another. This is one thing I’ve discovered while here. It’s like my grandmother thinking that I’m studying to be the pretty face that reads a teleprompter…uh…no way. I’d rather encourage children to be fairies and pirates, thanks very much.

11 May 2008

Fougères

On Saturday we went to Fougères to see the castle there. It took about an hour to get there by bus, though we noticed that it would have taken about 25 minutes if we had had our own car. The ride there was gorgeous! Everything is green now, since the weather has been going absolutely insane for the past few weeks. It will be rainy and freezing one day, and then sunny and in the 80°s the next. The grass doesn't know what to do with itself besides grow...a lot.

Once in Fougères the four of us (Me, Jess, Mark, and Collin) jumped out of the bus, which had been ridiculously warm, and headed to a boulangerie for some nourishment. The boys got their sandwiches while Jessica and I sat on the side of a fountain and broke into her bread and camembert (man I'm going to miss that cheese). A little girl was running all over the plaza waving a toy fan thing in the air. I can't think of the name of it right now, of course it's probably just "fan thing", but it's one of those spinny things that you swish back and forth to get the colored fan moving. She had like six mini fans on a big red plastic stick, and spent a good chunk of time trying to figure out which way to run in order to get the best wind.

The castle at Fougères is pretty cool. It was built in 1166. It's remarkably intact, and shows off the first drawbridge ever...at least, it still has the tower that had the bridge leading into it. The bridge itself hasn't been there for a while, though you can see the new stones which were laid to fill the hole. We got a 3 euro half hour tour of the insides. It was, of course, in French. I understood a good chunk of it, but the guy was just so excited and was talking so phenomenally fast...it was difficult. Maybe if I were taking architecture with Mark and Jessica and had already heard all the terms that he was talking about, maybe then I would have been able to pay better attention. But no. It wasn't meant to be.

We got back into Rennes around 17h30 and headed up to St. Grégoire (yes all of us) and met Sophia at E.Leclerc to buy stuff to make dinner. Leclerc is huge, about the size of Super-Walmart, and sells about the same things. We were there for an hour, and finally came out with the makings for chicken, pasta and cream sauce, and fruit salad. Haha sometimes it's just ridiculous, how long it takes us to do things...

We got all the way up to Jessica's house and discovered that it wasn't, after all, as empty as it was supposed to be. Her host sister Lucie and Lucie's bf Gerard were there, making their own dinner. Luckily, my host parents were gone as well, leaving my apparte completely open for a quiet dinner party. Of course, we listened to music and were probably talking much louder than normal French people would talk while we were eating dinner on the terrace, but hey. We totally deserve to be able to actually make our own dinner and clean up after ourselves every once in a while.

The boys made the chicken and cream sauce, while the girls occupied themselves with the fruit salad and setting the table and then standing around and wondering why there wasn't more to do. It was a really good dinner born out of me showing Mark where the spices were and him exclaiming "Oh, real spices! Real un-French spices! Curry!" and Collin taking charge of the sauce. It had ananas in it--pineapple. Yummy.

After the boys left to walk down to the bus stop at almost midnight, Sophia and Jess and I watched the Incredibles on the laptop in the living room. It was brilliant. I love that movie.

Portrait#3: Monsieur LAVANANT

M LAVANANT
Professor

Classic French male (in most ways). One of the younger teachers, Lavanant is tall, dark haired, and before vacation I ran into him smoking with some other teachers on the stairway on the outside of the building. I don’t think there has been a day that he hasn’t worn black. Like Mme C, he’s a good Frenchman and re-wears his clothing multiple times a week. And like a good Rennais, which I’m not really sure he is or not, he wears black leather hippie shoes. There isn’t much shape to them except for oval, and they have red shoelaces.

When Lavanant walks to and from the white board, he kind of stalks to it, approaching it carefully. His class is Oral Comprehension, and is relatively difficult, if only because we listen to songs and watch videos in French with the aim of perfectly understanding everything which is said. Think of it this way: The normal anglophone doesn’t even understand everything in English songs, much less songs sung in their second language.

What’s even better is he makes fun of us. Rather, he’s simply a sarcastic Frenchman who makes laughs at us when we say stupid things. The other day he was complaining about loud children in Parc Thabor. He leaned against the wall in between two of the large windows in the classroom, with his arms crossed. “I mean, you go to the park, a beautiful park, and expect to be relaxed; but then the children come…oh and they yell and yell and yell…”

“But they’re children…”
“Oh bof…” This translates roughly as “Well, sure, yeah, whatever” and it was hilarious to see the reaction of the brasilienne who had responded to him. He even tells us to be sarcastic with children. “They need to learn to be tougher.”

I just want to say that in the week since I first wrote this, there has been a single day when Lavanant wore something beside black. It was apparently khaki and white linen day on Thursday. Jessica and I almost died of shock.

Portrait #2: Monsieur DELEBEQUE

M DELEBEQUE
Professor

M D is my Civilisation teacher. My other friends, who are in classes of levels above mine, have Civi (say “see-vee”) classes which talk about French politics and social security. My first class was a degustation of Breton specialties (our prof brought Breton cookies, crêpes, and cider to class and we “deguster”d them. That was franglais for 'we “taste”d' them). We talked about them and then ate them.

M D has four kids, and I think he’s in his forties…maybe older, or younger. I don’t even know. Everyone dresses the same here, and a greater percentage of people are actually in good shape, and these things combined make it very hard to tell what ages people actually are. Delebeque wears jeans that, as Abby described them, are generally only worn by gay men. But that’s how it is all over France. Men wear the weirdest pants.

He’s short and small, but in good shape it looks like. Balding as well, so he shaves his head, or at least, keeps his hair so that it’s really really really short. His head is very round. He wears only long sleeve shirts and jeans, which isn’t a bad thing, but sometimes I look at what he’s wearing and wonder how he decided to like it.

The class itself is very easy. He answers questions, actually, he spends a lot of time trying to get us to ask questions. There isn’t very much which is confusing when it comes to French Social Security. Wait, no. That’s a total lie. It can be very confusing. But at least we know that when it comes to the final test, we’re not going to have to have everything tiny memorized. He doesn’t quiz us on things that are hard to remember. Maybe that’s why we also don’t ask very many questions…when one of the questions on your test was “Name a French wine” you kind of lose all fear of failing the class.

I don't have much else to say about Delebeque, since I very rarely have anything to complain about when it's Monday morning at 10h30 and I'm looking at two hours of him having us discuss French Social Security and underemployment and food.

Portrait #1: Madame CIESLARCZYK

Mme Françoise CIESLARCZYK, PhD
Professor

Picture a woman of an age somewhere between 50 and 60. She’s about 5’7”, yet somehow rather stout. Her family is Slavic, I think. I mean, obviously, look at her last name. She has a long, wide nose and wide, thin eyes, though sometimes it’s difficult to tell because she wears classy French glasses which just barely manage to magnify her eyes, but not quite. I think she only has three outfits in her entire closet, because, like a good French woman, she re-wears everything during the week, and thinking about it now I can only see one outfit in my mind. It’s a brown pinstripe A-line skirt with a matching jacket. The fabric is linen, from what I can see. I could very well be wrong. Her hair is short and auburn and highlighted liberally with blond and brown.

Mme C is my étude de la langue teacher (Language Studies). I see her three times a week generally without fail, unless God smiles upon me and my classmates and we don’t have class either Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. Her style of teaching is thus: Give students a piece of paper loosely explaining the idea of the day. Don’t explain the paper. Order students to orally create examples of what is on the paper. Stand in exasperation when the Asians, Brazilians, and Americans just sit and stare at you. Give students another piece of paper containing exercises related to the first piece of paper. Order students to complete it. While everyone is working, be sure to stand just behind their shoulders while rustling your papers and tsking whenever they make a mistake. Don’t answer questions. If a student does ask a question, pretend to answer while walking away, then say that you’ll come back. Don’t come back.

I’m sure that Mme C is nice outside of the class. Goodness knows that she tries to make jokes and laughs at things that French people must understand. We smile out of politeness and laugh every once in a while for fun. My favorite phrase of hers is, “We won’t talk about this now because it’s something for students of Avancé.” I just don’t understand how someone who can’t teach has lasted so long at CIREFE. Shouldn’t you be able to teach if you’re going to be a professor of foreign students in a university? I don’t know, maybe that’s just me…
I can remember spending a good amount of time complaining about Mme C with all my American friends in the first week at classes. Now, I just let things go. I can’t really change whether she actually answers questions or not, and maybe it truly is that we’re asking dumb questions.

“Madame, I don’t understand this thing.”
“But we just talked about it.”
“Yes, I know, but I think I missed something. Why can’t I say this like this?”
“We just talked about it. Haven’t you learned this sort of thing before?”
“Maybe. I don’t remember…”
“Ok. I’ll come back.”

This is a typical ‘question conversation’ between Mme C and Julia. Julia and Abby and I are always sitting next to one another near the windows of the classroom. Escape dreams? Definitely. Unfortunately, we are on the fourth level of the building, making survival that much less achievable. Some people count down days to seeing friends and family...I count down how many more classes of hers I have to sit through.