Whoa

I'm failing at posting. But here's one now!

So, first, I should explain something about myself. I hate crowds. The fastest way to stress me out or make me completely miserable is to put me in a large crowd of people. I usually deal with this for things I like - football games, going out with my friends (bars and house parties are usually crowded), and hockey games. But there's a definite limit. You'll rarely see me going out after a football game. If there's a football/hockey game on the same weekend, while I will be THRILLED, I can also guarantee I'll be headed home to sip tea and do things... well... not surrounded by people... afterwards. It's never really been a problem, my hatred of crowds has never stopped me from doing things I enjoy, but I always knew there would be a point where I just couldn't take it anymore. I've always totally understood agoraphobics and their hatred and fear.

So, uh, that said, Taize was great! The music was fabulous, talking to people from all over the world was absolutely amazing, and the MUSIC. Dear God - so freaking beautiful to hear 4,000 people singing in harmony.

But there's that 4,000 people part. Have you ever tried to get dinner with 4,000 people? It's kind of like a football game. Four times a day. Have you ever tried to get into one area with 4,000 other people? It's also kind of like a football game. Have you ever lived in an area of less than five acres with 4,000 other people? It's like the dorms, only worse, and there is nowhere. to. get. away.

So, on the plus side, I found that limit I always knew was there - the amount of people and crowds I can deal with. I can, apparently, deal with a football-sized crowd for about 4 days. And then I start having panic attacks.

But Taize was beautiful - It's definitely on my list to make it back in, like, February.

So, after realizing that my options were to starve or to... starve... since I couldn't handle going through the line for food again, I hopped the bus to Macon (a frighteningly small town in France that has absolutely nothing of note) and checked into a hotel and laid on the bed enjoying aloneness. And then I wandered the town, which was absolutely gloriously dead, and continued to enjoy the space.

And then I used the week I thought I'd be spending in Taize in Paris!

My first day was spent strolling around the city and visiting the sites that I could visit without going in - the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triumph, Notre Dame, walking along the Seine, and the like. The next day was spent in the Louvre. I discovered that, with my visa, I get the same prices that EU citizens get, ie - free. 6 hours in the Louvre! Then I took a tour of Montmarte and, although the tour was dreadful, I met a few friends and we went to dinner and out for a night on the town in Montmartre. I don't know if you know, it's mostly a lot of strip clubs and sex shops. So really, we went to dinner, walked around, and got creeped out. I also made it to Versailles - it's crowded! Yeesh! But Marie Antoinette's "peasant village" was really cute - like Disneyland. For princesses.

Paris was beautiful, I stayed at a fabulous hostel - a Korean guesthouse that offered both breakfast and dinner! Breakfast and dinner were both Korean food (with the option of the baguette and jam in the morning), so I am now a master of chopsticks. Great hostel, I highly suggest it. Quiet, friendly, unfortunately far away from the city center, but other than that, just ideal!

Currently, I'm in Loches, enjoying the peace and quiet and the fabulous food and having puppies around!

Dublin

Dublin's been great! My hostel is this huge old Georgian home that's spacious as hell. The only downside is the miles of stairs to climb to get to my room. But totally worth it.

I've spent the past couple of days relishing a more violent history than I've been looking at for the past couple of months. Sure, the Romans were great. But then you get to Celtic history - grar!!! There's a very creepy museum here that goes through all the Viking and Medieval history of the area. I call it creepy because somebody, somewhere made the executive decision that creating wax recreations of life would be a good idea, so you wander through this ill-lit museum of Vikings marauding and women sacrificing animals and men in prison. It's weird.

But today I went to a museum that deserves a shout-out. I suggest you go to the Prado, if your thing is art, and I suggest you visit Chenonceau if your thing is cool buildings, but no matter WHAT you like, I suggest you visit the National Leprechaun Museum in Dublin. Definitely one of the coolest things I've seen in a while. Let out your inner child for a day and know that, for once, it will not at all be insulted. The museum is really to teach the art of storytelling, so there's very little of the history of the Leprechaun and a lot about the fairy stories of Ireland. AND IT IS AWESOME.

And I'm going to admit something to you here - the Giant's Room is awesome. I say this as a 21 year old woman. It's a room where everything is scaled so that you're leprechaun sized (1/3 of human height, says the poster as you enter), and you just get to climb on shit. And I would have felt stupid, if there weren't four other early-twenty year old girls doing exactly the same thing. When I say climb on things, I don't mean "climb on the areas of the exhibit where it's obviously stated you should climb," you could just climb (and I mean CLIMB, there's a picture on some stranger's camera of my legs flailing helplessly off the side of a giant table) on everything! Tables and chairs, the fireplace, the cabinets. I'm not joking that this is like... My six-year-old self's dream come true.

But, after fooling around, what inner-child day would be complete without a story? And here is where the museum really really really shines. Because there are storytellers. Good ones. So after climbing around in the Giant's Room, climbing under the Giant's Causeway, you come to the end of the rainbow (obviously!) and enter the story room. Again, this is not a museum entirely for children (although it's very child friendly), and the stories certainly don't insult your inner child either. They're scary, they're thrilling, there are ghosts... Stories so good you don't want them to end. This was really what won my heart - our story teller was so good he left you with that unsatisfied feeling you get after a good book or a play when you're almost upset that it's over and nothing else is going to satisfy the craving you have to get back to that world - that world, not another similar world, that one.

I guess the closest comparison I have is that, yes, in a way, this museum is for children. But unlike most things for children, it's not insulting. Much like The Hobbit, it respects the darker side of things, and because of that, it's really just a joy to everybody who walks through the museum.

I can't stress this enough. Go. I wish I had the time to go again. And the girls I went through with today? Were there for their second time as well. Seriously, gooooo. This museum is a good book. I have the exact same feeling I get when I finish a life-changingly awesome book - one of the ones you start reading again immediately or get upset that the author didn't make the book longer.

http://www.leprechaunmuseum.ie/

Memphis > London

Here's a few things I've noticed:

1) Both Memphis and London are completely un-walker friendly. Entirely. Yes, there might be sidewalks, but both cities have spent time expanding out, rather than up, so they're both absolutely huge. I like to walk, so that's not usually a problem, except that neither city has anything to look at between point A and point B. Office buildings - yeehaw. Added to this are the "Walking Paths" outlined on some maps. The one I strolled down yesterday took me through a car park (not shitting you) and through an unloading dock before abruptly ending and telling me if I walked forward, it'd be trespassing. If you're traveling in London or Memphis, I advise you, rent a car.

2) You must rent a car because of number 2. Both cities have absolutely no comprehensible system of public transport. Now, in Memphis, this is largely because of political corruption and bad management. In London I believe you might be able to get around on a good day, but they get placed in this category because a few lines are under construction but there's absolutely no way to figure out which lines and how to get around these lines or others ways to get around. London is the only city in which I have declared defeat and hailed a cab.

3) They both have King's houses. And all of these houses are tourist traps. The Brits went so far as to install moving walkways in front of the crown jewels to keep people moving. If you want a blatant tourist-herd, go to the real King's house, Graceland, where at least the visitors dress interestingly enough to keep you, well, interested.

Now, those are my arguments as to why Memphis = London, but that's not my main thesis.

Why Memphis > London

1) Food. Meat Pie is awesome. Great invention, good job British. But then they named the rest of their food "spotted dick" and "toad in a hole." Who wants to eat that when you could have fried chicken, gravy, sweet tea, shrimp po-boys, and, obviously, BBQ? Come on. This one's a no brainer.

2) Soul. Memphis has it, London doesn't. End of story.

3) Memphis is hundreds of times cheaper. It's four pounds to take the metro here. FOUR. That's before conversion rates! And it's two to take the bus - and there's no way to buy a pass if you have to switch buses, you have to buy a new ticket on the new bus.

As you can see, London hasn't really done a good job of impressing me much. It's actually done a super good job of being completely unthrilling. On a scale of one to ten, judging how much you need to visit this city, I'd give London a three. Now, Memphis on the other hand...

A surprise patriotic moment

Today I took it kind of slow - slept in, went for a run, moped around the hostel, and generally didn't get going until afternoon. But I headed up to the Edinburgh castle, which is pretty sweet. Edinburgh lends itself to Gothic novels (you can just imagine some loved-crazed woman fleeing the castle towards her lovers shack chased by the dogs of her husband... Or something...). The castle isn't a let down in this respect either. Dark stones on a giant crag of a mountain. Way cool looking, and apparently despised by everybody who lived there - the royals didn't, if they had any other option.

But there was a thing I wasn't expecting in my tour. They had a special exhibition on the prisons that used to be there - housing POWs as well as pirates. The exhibition was a little silly - wax works and sound system "prisoners stories," but they did have a couple of old doors that prisoners had carved graffiti into.

Most of these were carved by POWs during a rebellion, by French men and others, and a couple were carved by pirates, treated lower than the POWs. Pirates and rebels, British men who fought against the king...

... and flew the American flag! (That's what that is.)

I just wish I could have gone back and told this man thanks... Not to wax eloquent or anything, but it really struck me that somebody over 200 years ago and thousands of miles away believed so strongly in his cause. He didn't know me, or even if they'd win, but I still have a country that this man fought for. A whole "thanks to all our troops" moment, if you will.

After that I went to The Elephant House - where J. K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter!

Morocco

So aside from my own status going from "super exotic" to "totally mundane," Morocco to Scotland has been quite a fun switch. I just went from getting a sunburn in seconds to huddling under the comforter for heat. Another note - it's 10:15 and the sun's still up. Yay high latitudes!

But I haven't fully explained about Morocco yet.

It's rather hard to take in. There's just so much going on. And while I quite liked Morocco, it's also quite obnoxious. The Jemaa El Fna, the grand square in Morocco, is unlike anything I've encountered before. It's huge and loud and bustling from about 11 AM to 3 AM. It's also there completely for the sake of tourists - snake charmers and henna artists and musicians and monkeys. Even knowing this though, knowing that it's there to satisfy your ideas of oriental culture, it's so hard to avoid how alive it is. How completely overwhelming everything is. I'm not tripping over myself to go back, but it definitely takes your breath away when you see it.

Vendors in Marrakech are ridiculously pushy. They'll grab you by the arm, follow you down the street, do absolutely anything they can think of to get you into their store. You're doomed if you do go into a store - once there the owner won't let you go until you've looked at all his wares. Saying you don't want to buy anything seems to be some kind of personal offense.

But the heat was so wonderful, it was hard to dislike it. After a rather rainy spring in Aix (a very bizarrely cold one, too), and constant rain in Spain (which did stay mainly on the plain), getting to a city that was appropriately warm was wonderful. Now I'm back in abnormally cold places. Brr...

But I did have an adventure in Morocco. I had my first couch surfing experience! My travel partner had been talking to this couple for quite a long time, he was in charge of the surfing part of our trip.

The couple we stayed with lived in Imin Tadert. They live about 3 km below Setti Fatma - a village based entirely around the tourists who come to climb to see the falls. Imin Tadert usually gets driven past entirely, however. Mostly because it's on the other side of the ravine from the road...

So we meet up with our hosts - two very hippy, dred-locked, absolutely kind-hearted people with two adorable dogs (one who was unfortunately teething). And we head towards their house -

Down steep steps carved out of the mountain, sometimes a winding path, inches away from a fall to a bridge. You remember those bridges on playgrounds when you were a kid? The ones you could jump up and down on and shake? Alright, now stretch that bridge out from ten feet to about a hundred, make it wobbly not only up and down by sideways, instead of the super-safe nets on both sides have nothing but one steel cable, and change the even, kid-approved planks for uneven, unevenly spaced logs. And add bags. Then up the other side to their house - a basic, unattractive cinder block house, like every other house in the entire village.

Inside was covered with carpeting and the walls were painted with symbols and Arabic and Berber words. Inside was beautiful.

The next day we woke up and climbed the mountain (our host was a mountain tour guide who took us up for free). And then we returned home, exhausted. But my adventure is only beginning. That night our host and, by extension, us were invited to a local wedding. I have mixed feelings about crashing this wedding, mostly because I know if several uninvited, unknown guests showed up to my wedding I'd probably be furious, but it was a whole lot of fun.

My poor travel partner was sent off with the men-folk to do manly things, and the women all clustered in a room to do what women do best - coo over the bride. She was absolutely beautiful. All the women were beautiful in sequined robes and matching headscarves. I hold to my jealousy - women in headscarves look so damn pulled together! Argh!

They brought us dinner - loaves of bread which we took and ripped apart and scattered around the table, and then two chickens, which we ate using the bread we'd distributed evenly before. I know all of two things about Morocco table manners, and they are as follows.

1) Try to eat out of the sliver of the plate directly in front of you. (Don't steal other people's food.)

2) Don't use your left hand.

So, using one hand, I grabbed a piece of bread and tried to dig into the chicken. With bread. Have you ever tried to tear apart a chicken wearing hot mitts? That's kind of what it feels like.

But I realized how easy it was - pieces of chicken were always directly in front of me on the plate. Like magic. Or like super nice women saving me trouble (and face). And then, the grandma next to me must have got it into her head that I was either eating to slowly or starving; she started handing me food before I'd even put the other bite I was holding into my mouth, she kept pressing me to eat. I've been overfed before, I DO live in the south and I've been fed by Southerners, French women, and Italians, all of whom love to overfeed guests. But I've never felt so stuffed in my life. I nearly made myself sick on the chicken, and that was before the second course came out - lamb! Lamb is much easier to tear with pieces of bread, but that didn't stop my guardian from picking me pieces and handing them to me. And the dates that came with the lamb. And whatever nuts were also floating in the sauce. So much food! So delicious, all of it!!!

After dinner it was time to amuse ourselves until the other women arrived to escort the bride to the dance. And amuse ourselves we did (or rather, they did and I was a fortunate bystander). Drums, singing, and dancing were the order for the day. And don't let anyone tell you Berber women can't dance (not that that's a stereotype I've ever heard). Because they can shake it enough to make Shakira jealous. Berber dancing involves hopping from foot to foot - kind of like polkaing but much much smaller - and moving your shoulders in time to the music. And then shaking. And that's where it gets entirely beyond me (I tried, to much laughter). I can't properly describe it, suffice it to say, "cool."

Unfortunately, my story ends here. My guardian and my host were both tired and wanted to go home. As much as I wanted to stay, I couldn't stay without my invited hosts, so I had to tag along home, walking the treacherous paths down to our house in the dark. Admittedly, this was past midnight and the main party hadn't even started, I was quite exhausted myself.

The next day we headed off to Essouria and showers. Did I mention - our hosts had no running water? Oh! And a Berber Toilet (that would be a hole in the ground with a sort of... cover... thing? Google it for yourselves). The no running water bit actually worked out quite well, since we ran down to the stream (that we'd crossed on the terrifying bridge) to get whatever we needed. We couldn't drink the local water anyway, so we were drinking bottled and had been since we got to Marrakesh, and aside from not being able to shower or wash my face, all other tasks were quite easy to accomplish.

But I was quite glad to get back to WiFi and showers. I'm a bit of a travel princess. I can deal with crappy showers and sketchy bedding and all manner of other things, but I really dislike being dependent on a stranger for my comfort level. I'm not cut out for couch surfing, even though I admit all the "cool" kids are doing it.

The rest of Morocco was fabulous, our hotel on the last night was one of the nicer ones I've stayed at, and that's by hotel standards, not just hostel standards. It was beautiful, I'd recommend it to ANYONE going to Marrakech, not just poor students.

I have mixed feelings about Morocco. The greatest part, by far, was waking up early one morning and hearing quiet - no sounds of snake charmers or drums or anything - nothing but the morning call to prayer sung from five different mosques all over town. It's right up there with bells for early morning mass. It's an eerie, lonely kind of beauty.

Tidbits and pictures!

I had originally planned to run downstairs for a few minutes to check my email, but I timed it to when the cleaning lady decided to "mop" the floors by soaking them with loads of soapy water. I think she's going to come back to wipe them up, but right now, I'm suddenly stranded in an accidental bath.

So I'll tell you a little about the Alhambra, which was stunningly beautiful, and Marrakesh, which is even more awesome.

The Alhambra was built a looooong time ago with people with the same evenness issues I have!

It's all so intricate, so awesome, and so beautifully even. The Alhambra inspired M.C. Esher to begin his drawings, which, after walking around, isn't that hard to imagine. It's also the place were Isabella sent Columbus on a crazy journey (with hints that Ferdinand might have wanted him gone because Columbus and Isabella were fooling around).

The Alhambra is beautiful.

And Charles V decided that he wanted a "normal" house, so he built a palace along side it. It just looks silly and severe next to the spacious Alhambra.

Morocco is amazing.

I haven't taken photos here yet, mostly because I'm not sure what I'm "allowed" to take photos of and what I'd have to pay to take photos of... I want pictures of the monkeys in the market, but I know I have to pay for that. And I wanted a picture of the man playing the banjo with a chicken on his head, but again, probably would have to pay.

Ah well, I'll just keep walking around and getting "unofficial tours" that I don't particularly want and then having people expect money from me. The easy bit is that they tend to walk ahead of you (at least the two guys who tried it with me), so you just duck down an alley when they aren't looking.

I bought Nun Cookies!

Kristie, I was going to write this in that letter I so desperately owe you, but I want to share this here. But imagine it's handwritten in a letter... :/

Today I woke up and took the free walking tour of Granada. On the tour, among many other cool buildings and facts, our guide mentioned that there's a nunnery in town that sells cookies. They're cloistered, they can't see people, but they're supposed to make AMAZING cookies.

You better believe I bee-lined it there as soon as the tour ended. Mostly because I love cookies and because you can't say no to nuns selling cookies, but also because I was intrigued how they conquered the issue of being cloistered and doing business.

The nuns are, as stated, cloistered. So you walk into this room where there's nothing but a little window with a lazy-susan style turnstyle that takes up the entirety of the window and, next to the window, a PA system. Nicely outlined in Spanish and English are instructions - push the button, wait for response, say what you want, get cookies, pay, go away.

Which is exactly what happened. I pushed the PA button and the turnstyle shifted just enough to hear a voice - "Si?" I said what I wanted, the voice went away and was replaced by cookies! I placed my money on the turnstyle, which seemed to know when I had because it immediately turned.

And I plopped myself down right outside and dug into my delicious nun-cookies.

Granada

"Here's your free drink coupon and there's paella in the kitchen - we're running behind checking people in, you don't mind, do you?"

With paella and sangria? Nope, all good here.

I'm safely in Granada, after quite a silly hassle with the buses in Madrid (Note: Just because you bought the ticket with, say, Greyhound, does not mean you won't be riding on a Megabus bus...).

So a recap of the last few days (over a week now, eek!):

June 2nd: I completely flubbed my final oral exam. I got quizzed on poetry in French. In Verlan (the French word-reversing slang - reverse = versere), "august" should sound like "Hugo." Stupid me for not combing through the entire poem looking for juvenile word play.

June 3rd: Headed to Loches! I had forgotten how simply beautiful Loches was, and I was staying with some absolutely wonderful family friends. I'm already excited to go back to visit the Days (and their dogs) in July! In proper Alabama fashion, I was greeted with a drink on the porch (only here it overlooked the beautiful countryside).

June 4th: We headed into Tours for the Musee des Beaux Arts and the Cathedral there. We also looked at the remnants of an older, grander cathedral that had gotten destroyed somewhere along the way. But was huge.

June 5th: Another house guest of the Days, Laurin, and I went exploring in Loches. Loches is where Joan of Arc convinced the prince to try to seize the throne of France AND where Agnes Sorel, first official mistress of the king and ancestor of nearly all of the French royalty, is buried. They have a dungeon, royal lodgings, and a lovely church, where we got to hammer nails into a stump.

June 6th: Chateaux! Chenonceau - possibly the most beautiful chateau on the planet - Azay le Rideau and Sache. And a little piece of French advice: Ladies, do you want a quality husband? Then marry whoever you like, and honeymoon to the Loire Valley, to look at chateaux. "Maybe head to Italy for some history..." But really it's about the chateaux. Then you'll have yourself a quality husband.

June 7th: Unfortunately, I had to leave Loches for Bordeaux. My thoughts on Bordeaux - when you're older, richer, and have a lot of money to spend - go. Definitely go. When you have money. Not exactly a student friendly city. But I had a FABULOUS hotel - not fancy, but the owner went far out of his way to make sure we were comfortable. He even had flowers in my room when I got there! (In an Evian bottle, which is just cute.)

June 8th: Exploring Bordeaux, lots of churches, lots of wineries, lots of cows. Then hopped on the all-night bus for...

June 9th: MADRID! I stayed with the daughter of the family I'd visited in Loches. And I spent all day (after a nap) in the Prado museum. Holy crap. I thought that a museum having one Titian was cool. Maybe a couple of Titians, an El Greco, you know, you're impressed. Then you go to the Prado. And you immediately enter an entire room full of Titians (who's one of my favorite painters). And your jaw drops, and does not close again until you leave. After one room full of Titians is ANOTHER. Followed by solid walls full of Rubens, Rembrandts, and Velazquezs! And El Grecos - an entire suite of rooms devoted to El Greco! And then some more - Bosch and Fra Angelico and Caravaggio and...

June 10th: Tried to go to the Royal Palace, but it was closed. So I spent the day in the Prado again. Did some walking around Madrid, ate some (delicious) ham. Went to the ham museum.

June 11th: Got on a bus, came to Granada, got some sangria, and am quite happy.

I exist!

So it turns out I'm pretty bad about updating here. But I promise something will be up soon.

After exams (on the 2nd) I headed to Loches, then Bordeaux, and am currently in Madrid. Today I head down to Granada.

There's lots to update in there.

But I have to catch my bus...

Love you all!

History

So I'm reading a book, off and on, about the History of France. It's appropriately named the History of France... Anyway, it starts off something like this, although I'm completely making this up...

"So the Gauls were fierce fighters and all that, then they got conquered by the Romans, who built a city called Aix-en-Provence on an even older Gallic city and ruled the area."

I mean, that's a summation. But Aix is mind bogglingly old. It appears in the first chapter of a history book! I've never lived in a city that old - unless you count Memphis in a history of the Yellow Death in... Memphis... Or maybe a history of the cotton industry, I bet Memphis would feature heavily in that. (And music, but we might not make the first chapter of that book, either.)

But I left beautiful Aix to visit a city even more beautiful - Avignon.

Avignon is home to the Papal Palace, and, through politics incredibly difficult to understand, was the home of the Pope from 1303 to 1378 (or 141...something, depending on which Pope you followed in the Papal Schism). It's complex, and a prime example of politics and religion.

But it also resulted in a huge building.

HUGE.

There, in all it's rather stout glory, is the

Papal Palace.

And below are lots of children dressed as Russian dancers for the "We are the Future" round-the-world exhibition that mostly feature Russian children. At least I think they were Russian, since they sang, spoke, and received instruction in Russian, which the French are not known for speaking particularly well.

But I've never been quite so put to shame by 11 year olds before. They were amazing.

But back to history - I've realized a strange interest I didn't know I had - giant rooms.

This is the Tinul, where they held banquets for the guest of the Pope. I'm standing in the area where they would keep the food warm - separated from the rest by a giant wooden wall. The Pope would be at the far end, on a dais, eating all by himself. Poor guy.

He'd also be the only person in the room to have a knife. It was described as "delicate and ivory." Consolation prize for eating all alone?

Big room #2 - The Ecclesiastical Court -

capable of handling up to 8,000 cases a year. And you better hope they ruled in your favor, because they were infallible and you had no where else to go if they didn't.

Have I mentioned I love Gothic Arches?

Imagine this filled with enough people to take care of 8,000 cases a year. And 10,000 letters! Mind boggling. And when this was in use? America = not even discovered.

But I've been living in a 2,500 year old city for five months - what's 700 years?

So then it was over to the Pont d'Avignon, the Avignon Bridge, that was rather unimpressive actually. But it did result in the creation of a saint - Saint Benezet. As a poor shepherd boy living in the mountains, he heard the voice of God telling him to build a bridge in Avignon (the British guy telling me this story on the headset got into being the voice of God quite a bit). So he goes down into the city and starts to spread the word. Like most prophets, people laugh at him. Eventually, he shouts out in front of the visiting Bishop (maybe Pope? this is in like, 1050, 1100) "I've been sent by God to build a bridge!" Everyone laughs at him, and some local leader responds, "If you've been sent by God, pick up that stone and lay the foundation stone yourself!" And he points to a giant stone left over from building the city walls. Naturally, Benezet picks up the stone with the help of God, walks to the river, and chunks it into place.

You can't not build a bridge after that...

Saint Benezet is now the patron saint of architects.

And then to the Petit Palais museum, which featured three floors of iconic art. It was awesome, but by the end, my eyes were glazed over with gold. They also held a "surprise Botticelli." And I say that because I was just strolling through the museum and walked right by it the first time, came back searching for it, turned around, and there it was in the least visible, least likely place. It wasn't exactly in a well planned out spot. Pretty sure the curator for this museum had little to no knowledge of museum layouts.

But it was awesome, and I got to geek out to all the art. I realize I mumble to myself in art museums, excited about the changes in style. "Ooh! The Byzantine-style halo! And look at the beginning experimentation with perspective!" This wasn't helped by the fact that I was the ONLY person in this museum.

The a little flanning, a little appreciation of the giant wall surrounding the city, and home for the night!

I love this wall. Maybe it's not just "big rooms" but "large constructions in general." This wall was REALLY COOL and actually did go around the entire city.

An American Moment

Everyone traveling, living, working, or studying in France has had a moment at which he threw up his hands and said "America is so much more efficient! This is driving me crazy!" Eventually you get used to it and kind of like the attitude. But then you receive things like this from your professors, which I'm putting here, directly, in French, so you can check the dates and know I'm not making this up:

"Bonjour, il nous faut rendre les notes avant le 4 sept., donc il faut rendre vos travaux avant le 20 mai, afin que nous ayons le temps de les corriger, de faire une double lecture, d'harmoniser la notation!"

- Hello, we have to turn in grades before September 4th, therefore you much turn in your papers before May 20th so we have the time to correct them, reread them, and harmonize the notes (between the two professors).

Yeah, my professors need two and a half months to read fifteen 8-page papers.

Not my proudest moment

So I'm a little embarrassed by this one, but oh well.

I hate liaison. Liaison is another one of those things the French invented to make their language sound beautiful (which is does) and harder for foreign speakers to understand. There are several letters that change sounds in front of another word that starts with a vowel (or an h). For example, an X becomes a Z sound and slides into another word - Deux heures is pronounced deuzeures. There are others, but that's the important one for this story. If you ever think you can't tell one French word from another listening to it, that's because it's spoken all as one long, beautiful word.

Point number two is military time, which is AWESOME. You can never accidently set your alarm for 7 PM when you use military time, I'm a huge fan. I've gotten used to all my professors saying times in military time. So much so that it doesn't even cross my mind that they'd ever say something in 12-hour time.

So anyway, I'm making excuses for a really stupid mistake.

When my professor announced the time of our exam I heard douze heures a seize heures. 12 to 16, awesome. I show up the day of the exam, 12 PM, ready to go - nobody there. No note. No class. Nothing. So I figure (he'd been vague; when I say "announced" he'd more like... polled the class to which they responded "eh, maybe" and he vaguely switched back to the old time and... anyway, I could have very likely been confused) that we'd go back to the normal hours of our class, which had been the original time of the exam. So I show up a little before three to find... Our exam had started an hour before. Douze heures a seize heures can also be spelled/read Deux heures a six heures - two to six. Goddamnit! Seize heures a sizeures don't even sound that much alike, but I was so used to military time that I didn't even consider that it'd be six o'clock.

Aside from the wicked embarrassment, I had plenty of time to do the exam. In fact I finished early. But I sure as hell wasn't going to waltz in late (read: run in mortified) and then leave early...

New food treats!

So I make it a habit to try a new pastry or other delicious thing every once in a while, but, as you can imagine, there are a lot. And were I to eat a new pastry every day... Well... Continental wouldn't let me on the plane in August. So I'm still discovering some.

Fougasse - Google image search it - it's basically cheese bread, but it's France, which is known for both it's cheese and it's bread. So it's not like... cheddar sprinkled on top of a loaf of bread. It's fabulously moist, excellent bread filled with Roquefort or goat cheese. AND IT'S SO GOOD. The lady at the bakery I go to (the 24 hour one, Kristie, although I frequent Jacob's too) even warms it up for me. Which definitely means it's another one of those things I never make it home without eating.

Religieuses - I've known about these for a while, but I'll give them a shout-out now. Like a snowman eclair (look them up too)

Honey - Another shout out about honey - Acacia honey absolutely rocks. Soooooooo light and sweet. Perfection.

Yup. Life's good here.

On fluency and mooshy bananas

So I dread the question "Are you fluent?" Because, in short, no. I'm not. Not by a long shot. But saying that makes people think I'm a complete failure at speaking French, when that's not the case either. My definition of fluency has changed, and, to sum up lots of frustration and self-growth - Speaking a new language is HARD.

The idea of fluency as fluid is hard to get across if you've never tried to become fluent (at least I flounder and end up looking stupid when I try to explain), and I've been thinking of ways to explain my fluency for a while now and I've decided - fruit.

English, oh my natively English speaking audiences, is like a grape. The actual meat of the fruit isn't affected by the skin. Actually, crunching through the skin is kind of fun - there can be lots of unexpected juice hidden in a particularly good grape. English usually doesn't get in the way of saying what you actually want to communicate. It can be fun, you can actually play with it with puns and jokes and double entendres. It's enjoyable to have the skin on a grape (have you ever sat around actually peeling grapes? The result is kind of... weird...).

When I got here, French was like a pineapple, but I was armed with a machete. It was hard as hell to get my point across, but, with the generous use of a dictionary, I could usually, eventually, get to some fruit.

Now, on the fru-ency scale, French is a banana. A particularly hard to open banana. After lots of straining and trying to figure it out, one can open the fruit. Usually the meat's pretty smooshed by this point, but it's there. Also, nobody can eat a banana and retain their dignity. You just look stupid doing it. Which slightly strays from my metaphor, but you get the point. I can get to the banana meat, but I'm going to A) smoosh it and B) look reaaaaaaally stupid.

Tah-dah. Hopefully, now, when I hesitate to call myself fluent, you'll understand why. French is not a grape. It's not even an apple or an orange yet. And probably wouldn't be for quite a few years. But it's a smooshed banana. And I'm pretty satisfied with that.

Barcelona, Part 2!

Okay, days 4 and 5...

Day 4 - Went to the National Catalonian Musuem of Art. Which is in a palace. The

National Palace, actually. There's a lot of famous artists who were either Catalonian or from the area. But, due to renovations, the Renaissance and Baroque sections were closed. These were the sections I was most excited about, too. Boo. Major boo. But still, looking at the oodles of apses of churches took up a large part of my day. The rest was taken up by making sure I found nearly all of Gaudi's houses in the area. I thought about going in one, but turns out the wait was two hours AND it was 18 euros. So it didn't happen. I then returned to the hostel for a chocolate making session and another fabulous dinner with fabulous sangria. Paella this time.

I also met Extremely Negative Man. ENM was a European who absolutely despised Americans. Granted, everything he sited was pretty true: we dress badly, don't try to learn the local languages, and tend to unthinkingly assume that everyone will have the same manners we will (American's like to talk, even to strangers, and sometimes about things that other people consider offensively personal). But he was so negative about every culture he mentioned, I just couldn't take him

seriously. According to ENM, Russians are drinkers, the Spanish can't speak English, and the Portuguese refer to everyone who's not from Portugal as a foreigner. Which offended him so badly that he eventually moved away from Portugal (he's not Portuguese; they wouldn't accept him as a local). There's my first run in with an extreme anti-American.

Day 5 - Day 5 was spent at the Picasso Museum and back at Park Guell enjoying the last few hours of sunshine and going to the Gaudi Museum. The Picasso Museum was awesome except that I'm not really a huge fan of Picasso. I love his early, Impressionist work and some of the Blue Period. The man was an artistic genius. But then he became cubist and surrealist and he loses me. I just don't like him. This actually seems to be the opinion of a lot of people I met - so a poll - anyone like Picasso? The majority of the museum is his early work though, so that was neat, and it was also set up in chronological order with explanations of what happened in his life and in the world at the time of each of his major movements. It was neat. But chronologically, the early stuff he did is better, IMHO (heh, "I liked Picasso before he was popular."). The Gaudi Museum was neat, but after looking at his architecture, his chairs were a little less exciting...

Final thoughts -

I have pity on anyone I try to speak a foreign language with. Thanks to eighth grade Spanish, I can sort of get through a minor conversation. I at least know "hola" and "por favor." The difficulty is that, in my brain, there are two pathways. They are "maternal language" and "other language." No matter how long I stand in line thinking "Speak Spanish, speak Spanish" it would come out as French/Spanish. "Hola, je prenne uno mas? Por favor... Merci!" It was truly a disaster.

Anyway, at 11:45 PM I hopped on the bus back to Aix. After a surreal ride of being woken up several times and informed we needed to get off the bus (for the required breaks), I ended up at my apartment and crashed for the rest of the day.

Until my conversation exchange - my exchange family bought me peanut butter!

Barcelona!

So last Thursday, all of seven days ago, I decided I should go somewhere for spring break. Turns out Zurich, Lyon, and Geneva were all extremely expensive and usually out of hostel rooms anyway. Boo on that. So instead I took some advice from the Newsies - "Go West Young Man!" - and went to Barcelona. (I know it's Horace Greeley, but I learned it from the Newsies.)

The end result?

I like Barcelona a lot. It's an absolutely beautiful city.

And a major part of that is Antonio Gaudi, an architect who lived around the turn of the century and made really really wild buildings.

This is the Sagrada Familia, which, on my first day in Barcelona I made the mistake of walking to. I happen to hate metros if there are other ways to travel, and I like to walk in new cities anyway. In Greece I was a master walker. I

always knew where I was within a few days of arriving and I was never daunted by the walk from our hostel to the Parth

enon or other sites. Barcelona defeated me - I walked from my hostel to the Sagrada Familia that first day. It took an hour and a half, and it wasn't even halfway across the city; I may have walked a third of the way across the city. It was a beautiful walk, but I took the train back.

Anyway, the Sagrada Familia. It's a cathedral that's doing it's best to prove that all our ideas of having faster building methods today than we did in the Middle Ages are ridiculous. The first stone for this building was laid in 1882. All those cranes you see in that picture? They're there because this building isn't even closed to finished yet. The estimated finished date is 2030.

But it's beautiful already.

Honestly, I could try to give you the background and reasons he made the building like this, but I keep getting lost for words. It's so pretty! I will say - the columns are supposed to res

emble trees (they even have knots before they branch out! Look!) and that Gaudi was pretty much always

inspired by nature in hi

s shapes and his colors.

But I'll try to give a quick recount of my trip. I'm no travel writer though. Here goes -

Day 1 - Saturday - Bike tour of Barcelona. The most exceptional thing about this was careening around tiny streets packed with people. It was one of the scariest things I've done in a while. Barcelona is beautiful, but don't believe the packet that says "travel the way natives do - by bike!" because it's a lie. Barcelona was not built for bikes. But then I went on my fateful walk to the Sagrada Familia, which completely took me out of commission for the rest of the afternoon. That night I joined up with a girl I met on the bike tour and we went to the Magic

Fountain (cheesy, but fun; how often do you get to see a fountain dance to "I want to break free" and "Every breath you take" in the same night?) and then to a bar to watch the Madrid/Barcelona soccer game.

Day 2 - Sunday - The Madrid/Barcelona soccer game might not have just ended with the end of the game. So I slept in. That afternoon I switched hostels and then went to explore Park Guell. Which is simply amazing. (And was design

ed by Gaudi, in our theme for the post.)

After spending hours there, I went back to the hostel, where I was instantly invited to join a wicked game of Spoons. It got competitive. There was bleeding. Also felt bad because I realized at one point I was the only non-German speaker in the group, therefore they were all s

peaking English because of me. But German? Awesome language. And, FYI, "spooning" is "spooning" in German (translated directly I mean, as in word-for-spoon+some form of verb ending) (and in Dutch it's "little spoon little spoon"). At least I hope these things are true. I'm repeating what I've heard. But so few things translate like that, it always makes me happy when they do.

Day 3 - Monday - Warning, this day started off like many of my days in Barcelona - Lost as hell. I don't know why I had such a difficult time finding my way around, but I

did. Searched for the tour group visiting Gaudi's buildings, couldn't find it in time. Searched for the National Museum, but when I did find it I realized they weren't open on Mondays. So instead spent the day exploring the Gothic Neighborhood which is also wicked. And ended the day by going here -

The Cathedral!

This place is really cool. Inside you walk from alcove to alcove where they have beautiful beautiful art from all the different eras of religious art. And they have GEESE!

Also made it to the Dali Museum, which was set up really strangely (appropriately enough, it's Dali). There were several places that you just walked through curtains to get into tiny, ill-lit rooms to look at his art. And a couple that didn't even look like other rooms, they looked like wall hangings, but you'd realize somebody had disappeared through them... Wildly cool.

That night at the hostel, the in-house nutritionist (yeah, that's right) made us a traditional Spanish meal of goat cheese and olives, gazpacho, fish noodles, and fabulous chocolate. And a bucket of sangria. He also told us the "national secret" for making sangria. Fanta. Half orange, half lemon fanta. Classy.

Two more days to describe, but the office is closing and I have things to clean before my family dinner tonight.

I’ve now eaten escargot. They are, as anyone who has eaten them can attest, rather chewy. And that’s about all there is to say about them. They’re not very flavorful, just a little chewy eraser in a fabulous garlic sauce.

Some French phrases to look out for...

J’ai chaud – I’m hot!

Je suis chaud – I’m really turned on.

J’ai fini. – I’m done

Je suis fini – I’m dead! (“I’m finished.”)

Je suis pleine (lit. “I’m full”) – I’m a pregnant animal. (Go with “Je n’ai plus faim”)

Un baiser (noun) – a kiss (and an innocent one at that, your grandma could ask for a baiser)

Baiser (verb) – to screw

*This one’s my favorite. In French and in English it’s usually a safe bet that you can turn nouns into verbs and vice versa, “google” pretty easily became “to google” (“googliser” in French), “text” became “to text” (“texter”). Somewhere in the history of the French language, “a kiss” became “to screw.” It gives me no end of joy. And confusion. I’m never really sure what people want to do to me in the streets…

Je suis bien. - I'm good!

Je suis bon. - I'm good in bed.

Fabulous Foods

There are, naturally, all the delicious foods in France you’d expect. Those foods are great. But this list isn’t for those foods. This is a list of the foods I eat often, and is, in a way, what I’d ask for if I wanted a care package from France (are you listening Sarkozy? You’re not doing so hot in France, maybe you should start greasing the wheels with the Americans… Namely me…). This is how France does Mac and Cheese. If France were okay with the whole powdered cheese sauce.

Baguettes – Obviously. But did you know how many things you can put on a baguette? Nutella, honey, and cheese are obvious. You can also stick hot dogs in them, which is currently how I’m manging my baguettes. I suggest it. But very rarely do I even make it home with a full baguette, usually I end up ripping off the end and digging in on my way home. Ashamedly, I’ve eaten entire baguettes this way while out running errands. So a piece of advice – buy your baguette last.

Crepes – Specifically from Crepes-a-go-go (Kristie just got a craving somewhere in the greater NY area – sorry!). This stand has been around since like the 70s, and they know how to do crepes right. Fabulously right, since they have everything from coconut to whipped cream to nutella to jams to fruits… Since most stands have just nutella and sugar, this rocks my world. It’s awesome. There’s also a “OH SO BRITISH” Crepe (that’s how the sign says it) that I want to try with steak hache and ketchup… Maybe for lunch tomorrow…

Beignets – These are probably right under crepes as far as “well known French food” goes, but they’re awesome. They’re super fluffy donuts filled with chocolate or caramel. The ones at Paul are by far the best, although they go fast, and I have no idea how many times I’ve walked in, looked at the empty beignet tray, and walked right back out.

Lavender Honey – A guy at the market sold this to me by yelling “Goutez! Goutez!” And naturally I’m not going to turn down a free taste of something. Lavender honey is white in color and has the texture of clover honey that’s gotten slightly crystallized. Not all the way, crunchy, needs to be put in the microwave crystallized, juuuuust enough to feel even better than normal honey on the tongue. And it goes wonderfully in tea. Wonderfully.

Chevre Aux Herbes de Provence – Goat cheese covered in herbes de Provence (I absolutely ADORE that “goat cheese” is just “goat” in French); this is my favorite type by far, although the salempempa is good, just spicy for a cheese.

Espresso – I do like espresso, although I much prefer my morning coffee (solely because you can’t sip an espresso and stare straight ahead while you slowly wake up; you have to like… DRINK IT AND WAKE UP; far too intense for 7 AM); but the espresso I’m referring to here is the espresso and other espresso drinks sold from the vending machines at the Fac. Café vanille is the voted-on favorite, although I personally go classic espresso. All of this deliciousness for 50 centimes, and it’s close enough to your four-hour class to make it during your smoke break (which is admittedly longer than any American class would even consider breaking for; even better is how angry the students get if deprived of their breaks. Or rather, almost deprived. If a professor forgets, students will always, politely, but with a tinge of warning, remind him. They’d go on strike if you took away their break, but then again, half-way through a four-hour class, so would I).

Pizza Capri pizza – 1.80 for a fourth of a pizza keeps me coming back; but Pizza Capri is one of the most delicious things I’ve ever tasted. Thinner crust, like a Memphis Pizza Café pizza except not overly crunchy (which is my major beef with thin-crusted pizza; it’s like eating a cracker), but as greasy as any Papa John’s you’ve had. It’s SO GOOD. And if you splurge the extra sixty cents and get chorizo (it’s pepperoni!) it gets even more greasy and fabulous. Oh man.

Steak Hache – hash-e like café I just can’t find the accent aigu without my computer automatically doing it – This is basically a baguette with ketchup, hamburger meat, and French fries on top. It’s delicious. Like, for real, beyond acceptably delicious.

Kebabs – Kebab stands need to come to the US ASAP. As does the tradition of putting fries on sandwiches.

Hot Toddies (French style, or, without the tea) – Yeah, these both exist in the States and aren’t particularly French, since I always thought of them as British. But since they seem to be the required French prescription for any throat ailment, one of which I’ve been stuck with for the last month and a half, and since I started drinking them here, I’m going to count them. Also, I want to evangelize a little – they’re awesome. Apparently, you're supposed to mix in tea, but you don't really need to - hot water, the juice of an entire lemon, a shot of rum, and a whole lot of (lavender) honey. I don't even know if it's got all the delicious, bacteria-killing properties it's reported to, but it does soothe the throat and put you right to sleep.

And MAN those steak haches are good.

Strange things I'm going to miss about France when I go home

Alright, so I've talked about being homesick, missing outlets, and being so tired of French men hitting on me. Good Lord.

But there's a lot I'm going to miss about France.

Number one being daily trash service. THIS IS THE COOLEST THING EVER.

Forget to take out the trash? No worries, do it tomorrow.

Know how we take it out? Throw it next to our doors and the trash guys come by and pick it up. Done!

You have no idea how awesome this is. All I gotta do to take out the trash is tie up the bag and throw it outside. And it doesn't matter when I do it either! No more "Oh crap, it's Monday morning!"

It's awesome.

I'm a fan.

Avoiding Homesickness

I have a long-standing theory that it is a very bad idea to try to “go home” before you can actually go home.

This is, I find, especially true when talking about food. Actually, it nearly entirely applies to food, although I imagine it might apply to American Football games here as well…

Point being – if you attempt to “go home” with food while you’re abroad, you’re going to be strongly disappointed and realize just how “not home” you are.

I realized this when I was abroad for the first time. I got really sick on one of our last days in Paris, and, as I was getting better, I wanted Don’s spaghetti. My parents go out for the night and come back with take-out spaghetti. It was delicious, perfectly seasoned and buttered and sauced. It was wonderful. But it wasn’t Don’s spaghetti. It was French spaghetti.

One that’s happened to nearly everyone on our program: the French Hot Dog. Apparently all the Americans studying abroad this semester adore hot dogs, since we’ve all hit this one. But if you order a hot dog here they will, most likely, slice it up and put it on a baguette with lettuce, tomatoes, and the sauce of your choice. Not. A. Hot. Dog.

Now I love trying new foods, and one of my favorite things about traveling is trying things I wouldn’t get back home. And the French-baguette-hot-dogs are rather delicious, if you make sure to tack on “French style” in your head at the end of your order.

But when you’re already dreadfully homesick, probably feeling down, and wandering hopelessly around thinking about how far away from your friends, family, and an understandable university system you really are, and you suddenly see a sign for a hot dog and think, “That sounds perfect! How comforting would that be? A hot dog!” Then you order a hot dog, thinking of the juicy, beefy goodness of an American hot dog, unadulterated by any vegetable, on a fluffy, airy bun, smothered in ketchup,

And you get a sandwich that just uses hot dog as the meat.

It’s the final straw that makes you realize how far away from home you are and how long you have until you go home again. And it’s entirely distressing.

Anyway, it’s a bad idea all around. Just continue walking. Don’t fall to the siren call.

But there’s a reason I’ve explained my theory. It’s because I fell into the trap, despite being fully aware of it. “Don’t do it!” I said, multiple times. “You’ll regret it!” I warned myself.

But no. I really

Really

Really

Wanted cookies.

The French make delicious pastries. They do. But they cannot make cookies. You could take the greatest French chef of all time, bet him $100 and a French meal that he can’t make a chocolate chip cookie, and you would win this bet. Maybe it’s below them. I mean, compare a cookie to the fabulous tarts in all the patisseries here, and it does seem pretty lowly and unassuming.

Now there are cookies in France. They’re just not what an American would deem cookie worthy. First – they’re hard. Always. They’re quite crunchy. There’s not a gooey inch in sight. Second – they nearly always use dark chocolate chips. While I know there are proponents of dark chocolate out there, I’m not one of them. I fall very firmly on the milk and white chocolate side of life. It’s very distressing to find that the entire country of France disagrees with me. I’m living in a dark-chocolate lover’s Heaven.

But I wanted cookies.

Gooey, half-baked, milk-chocolate-chip cookies.

So I decided to make some.

This was greeted with enthusiasm among my American friends; three of us decide to set off to the grocery store, confident we know how to make chocolate chip cookies, how hard can it be?

First step – buy chocolate chips.

We don’t find any. We scour the entire store. Nothing. Confused but hopeful, we settle on a bag of M&Ms, because really, they’re almost the same thing.

We continue down our list – flour, sugar, milk, eggs, vanilla – everything’s going great so far. Brown sugar.

No brown sugar. Anywhere. Still hopeful, we decide we can add extra regular sugar and vanilla and create something similar to the cookies we all so crave.

So we go in search of baking soda, ready to try to make our cookies.

No baking soda is to be found.

But we’re still determined. How much baking soda did they have during the frontier days? Surely they had cookies out there. I think I remember Laura Ingles Wilder writing something about cookies. What’s the point of settling vast amounts of land if there aren’t cookies?

So we bring our ingredients back to my apartment where my French roommates join us as we make our cookies. Using the “tasting” method, we create something similar to cookie batter. With some hasty guessing conversions, my roommates and I pick a temperature for the stove (which is in Celsius).

Five minutes later, we have… something similar to a cookie. It’s gooey looking, has chocolate and sugar, and probably would have done the trick. Honestly, had we stopped here, we probably would have been successful enough to satisfy our cravings.

Except we make our final mistake.

We listen to the advice of my French roommates.

Remember my previous statement. There are cookies in France, just nothing an American would deem cookie-worthy. And remember why.

And thus their advice – “It’s not done! Put it back in the oven for another ten to fifteen minutes!”

And we do.

Ten minutes later, biting into a perfect replica of the hard, crunchy, un-cookie-like cookies that are cookies in France, I got that feeling again.

Shouldn’t have tried to go home.

*

But I don’t want this post to have an unhappy ending. This theory only holds true to food from home cooked by someone who’s not from your home. Cookie-disaster aside, usually cooking’s a safe bet – if you cook it, it’s what you were expecting. Had Don been able to make me spaghetti in France, it still would have been Don Spaghetti. This is just one of those extreme cases.

Upon the failure of the cookies, we made Mexican food, it was delicious, and it did satisfy that spicy, Mexican food craving which was, honestly, stronger than the cookie craving. We were successful in the end. Happy ending!

*

PS - Baking soda does exist in France. Apparently you buy it at the pharmacies. It’s not out, you have to go up to the pharmacist and ask for it. This is what I’ve been told; I haven’t tried to get it yet. And brown sugar also exists, according to my roommates. Also, molasses would have worked. They were however stumped as to why they would even make milk chocolate chips. We’re determined to try again and succeed. Partially because we never learn our lesson, but now it’s also a matter of showing my roommates what real cookies should taste like.

*

PPS from several days later (since I write these before I post them) – Betty Crocker Cookie Mix has been found! It is also in the treasure trove of a store that sells Kraft Mac and Cheese, Pop Tarts, Dr Pepper, and Cadbury Eggs. Hurray! Thank you, numerous American and English expatriates who refuse to leave behind their easy food, tons of tea, and other cookie-like items. (It is a mostly British store, so there are lots of other non-cookie like cookies (“biscuits,” although they’re not biscuit like either).)

Running Abroad

So I've continued, albeit not as regularly, my running habit. And I wanted to comment on what is apparently a French pastime.

Careening.

I thought, when I first arrived, that "meandering" might be appropriate to describe how the Aixoise walk. Then I switched to "wandering." But I've realized they have a much more determined and violent air in their walking. They don't meander, they careen. There is absolutely no possible way to determine where a fellow pedestrian will go when they start coming at you and they will not, under any circumstances, move to accommodate you, even if there are five of them abreast and there's clearly no space for another pedestrian to move to accommodate them. I have been run into walls, off of sidewalks, into trash-cans. Aixoise will not share the road. If you add in that a frighteningly large number of them are carrying (and waving) cigarettes in their hands, it becomes a terrifying prospect as a runner.

Don't get me wrong, a lot of these people I'm talking about are little old ladies, and I'm firmly of the opinion that little old ladies can chose to walk wherever they want and it's my job as young-person and runner to get out of their way. If I only knew which way they would go! Since either my "fellow pedestrian radar" is completely a-whack, or, as previously proposed, they're careening without thought for life or limb, this is a nearly impossible task.

It's like playing Frogger with your life.

Strange things I miss #2 & #3

Okay, first, I would like to announce that today I answered a question in class! In front of all the other students! And, upon being asked, I reminded the professor what reading she had given us last week. Huge victory!

Now, back to strange things I miss. Although neither of these are really things I miss, more just... difficulties in speaking normally...

Being able to make small talk.

I realize this falls roughly under “Speaking English” as one of those things I should have expected to miss. But I actually really enjoy speaking French, and I can do it, although by no means perfectly, pretty well. My conversations are filled with many grammatical errors and mispronounced words, but they’re recognizable as conversations.

But there’s the whole other heading under this category. Small talk. Especially, and specifically, small talk made while standing in lines, which, by the way, happens quite often (lines, or what passes for them in France).

For example, today, at the grocery store, I was carrying two large bundles of toilet paper (it was my turn to buy) that were unwieldy, but obviously not very heavy. A very nice looking man in front of me asks if I want to put them on the checkout counter. (Small but relatively important side note – the check out rolling… things… that brings your food closer to the cashier are really very short at this store. Placing my toilet paper there would have taken up the whole… what ARE those things called?... and been very much in this man’s way.) I smile and say, “Thank you, no.” But it’s so frustrating that I can’t say, “Oh, no, thanks, they don’t weigh anything, it’s no big deal.” Or, “Thanks! But it’s alright, don’t worry about it.” Or, “Nah, thanks, I’m tough” and then make some sort of flexing motion to show how little they weigh and how strong I am. Anything, really. It’s tough to be formal all the time. “Non, merci” and a smile are just about all I’ve got.

Speaking of being formal and “Strange thing I miss #3,” is knowing the nuances of etiquette. I’ve got the big ones – hands above the table, don’t chew with your mouth open, smile and say hello to people you meet, etc. – really, they’re pretty much the same (except for the hands above the table during the meal, but that’s one I think that American’s say you shouldn’t do [“Hands in your lap!”] and then do anyway). These aren’t what are causing me distress.

Instead, it’s when to say “Thank you.” During the last day of the two-week intensive course we had when we first got here, our professor says, “Ah, Americans, you say ‘thank you’ all the time. Why? It’s insulting!”

“Insulting???” We reply, since we certainly say “Thank you” all the time for the express purpose of being not-insulting. This is news.

“Well, yes,” our (very stately, patches-on-the-jacket-elbows style) professor replies. “It implies that what this person did for you they normally wouldn’t have done. That they’re not normally that nice.”

Since then, and mind you, that’s nearly two solid months ago, I’ve been absolutely terrified I’m accidently insulting people by telling them “thank you.”

There is an alternative, used especially between students and young people. Translated, it is “You’re really nice!” But I don’t want to tell somebody they’re nice when I’m supposed to say thank you, so usually I end up with something like “Thanks, you’re really nice!”

Naturally, I’m trying to listen to native French speakers to hear when they say one versus the other, but I’m still stumped on this one. I picked up a coin for somebody at the market, and he said I was nice. Then I did it again a few weeks later, and the guy said thanks. (Maybe the second one thought I was terribly rude and wouldn’t normally pick up dropped coins for strangers?)

For now, I’m just going to continue saying “Thanks! You’re really nice!” and hoping (as the stereotype goes) that they know I’m American and thus say “thank you” all the time anyway.

That or my professor has played an evil evil joke on us all.

Raclette

So last night I had a conversation exchange, in which I helped the two sons of a family with their English homework in exchange for a dinner held in French. I win in three ways, one, it's time for me to practice French, two, it's a free dinner, and, as I discovered last night, three, is that the mother of the family happens to be a fabulous cook, so it's a fabulous French meal. For free, which is a big deal.

Last night we had Raclette. Which is simple, easy, and more delicious than anything I've had here so far (because I'm cooking for myself and doing so on a student's budget). I'm bringing this meal back to the States (although I'm sure it's already there). Basically, it's potatoes, ham, pickles, and melted cheese; but with the invention of the table-top cheese melter, it's as much fun as fondu!

Also, I taught them about asking Oreos questions. We didn't have Oreos around for me to demonstrate, so they're still skeptical about asking a cookie a question, even after my assurances that this is a no-fail way to see universal truths and to find out if Jimmy has a crush on you.

But the real reason of this post is to offer fore-warning. The mother of the family asked whether I'd eaten snails yet or not. I haven't.

She will be changing this at some point.

Her sons have, for a while, been bugging her to try cooking frog legs again.

These will probably also be in my future eating horizons.

I'm excited.

Bizarre things I miss, #1

So there are things I expect to miss - like friends and family and classes in English. There's obviously the entire section of "food." But then there are the things I wasn't expecting to miss, like...

American-style outlets

This isn't because I don't have a converter and just wish that all my things could plug in anywhere. I do have a converter, and most of my things (of the four I can think of anyway) are now French style outlets anyway. But the plugs! They're so big and unwieldy. And the outlets for them are these huge, gaping wholes in the walls. They're just not pretty in the least, and slowly, as time passes, I become more and more afraid of them. I miss the tiny, petite, graceful American outlets.

Yup. Bizarre things I miss.

A non-exciting post about classes

So I'm sick. And France has no chicken-noodle soup OR macaroni and cheese. What do ill French people eat? And it turns out that a semester abroad has actually class work involved (who knew?). Anyway, all of these things, although mostly the first two, have combined to make me grumpy-mc-grumperson for the past week. But I'm feeling better now, and thought I'd share my class list with all y'all so you don't think I'm over here traveling and enjoying myself all the time.

Written Expression - Monday, 3 to 5 PM - This class is exactly what it sounds like. Written. Expression. We write and talk about writing in French. The plus side is that the professor will read over any papers we turn in here and critique them for us. That's about it, think an intense grammar and writing class.

Hell, Paradise: A History of Man - Tuesday, 11 to 3 PM - Yeah, that's a four hour class. The professors switch out after two hours - so from 11 to 1 we study modern interpretations of Hell and Heaven (although, since we're studying the modern period, it's admittedly mostly Hell). Professor 1 is... interesting. Last class he was wearing a quilted, army-green onesie that zipped up the front. I've never been so worried a zipper was going to fail. Another class he was wearing leather pants, which I'm just not used to professors wearing. He's a lot of fun though; I think I like him because he's a) interesting and b) talking about the history of literature I'm interested in anyway. But we're reading Rimbaud and Artaud for his part of the class. Professor 2 for this class, from 1 to 3 PM is a lot less exciting and does ancient interpretations of Heaven and Hell. Sometime in the 12th century, they rewrote the Aeneid in French. So we're reading part of that. It took me a long time to figure out who Eneas was (pronounced with a French accent, it's understandable).

Discovering Opera - Tuesday, 4 to 7 PM - I love this class. We watch operas and discuss them. Love! Later we're going to the factory where they make the costumes for the local opera festival every summer.

Fundamental French Texts - Wednesday, 3 to 5 - Only two hours! Holy crap! What a short class! We're reading Baudelaire right now, the professor is great but hard to understand (for a non-French speaker). This is the first class I learned a rule of being a foreign student in France - never admit to knowing what a professor is talking about. The professor asked who knew Dos Passos and I tentatively raised my hand. His first response, "Well of course, you're an anglophone..." made me smile, his second, "Well, why don't you explain it to the class?" just terrified me. So again, never admit to knowing anything in a French class. Ever.

Stories of Real and Imaginary Voyages - Thursday, 8 to 12 - Another two professor class. The first professor is really really boring. We're reading Terre Australe Connue (Australia... known? As in discovered?) which is from the 1600s and really difficult and boring. So that's exciting. The second professor is much better, and very nice. And she's very tuned in to the "confused anglophone" face and somehow always knows when she needs to write a word on the board. She's doing the "real" voyages part of the class, although I'm not entirely sure if that's true because we started with Bergerac's Voyage to the MOON. Which is entirely unreal. So I'm not entirely sure how the class is split up, since at the moment it seems like entirely imaginary voyages, but we're beginning real ones soon.

Faux-class for Foreign Students - Friday, 10 to 12 - this class is with the same professor who is teaching the Fundamental French Texts class. It's basically "all those books French kids read in high school and you didn't." There are no tests or essays, just reading and talking, which is a relief.

There you have it. I AM doing work here.

French words that have made it into my English vocabulary

So one of my favorite thing about learning a new language is learning the words that don't have equivalents in English, in part because it lets my language get more efficient and in part because it's a joy to finally have a word for all those things that I actually have to describe in English.

So here are three words that are making it into my English vocabulary.

Flaner - properly anglicized as "to flan" and "flanning" - it means to explore, to walk for the express purpose of seeing people and a new city but not for any specific site or purpose - all the 19th century moody poets did it, and I find I usually do it to. I like to explore new cities and to get purposely lost. But really, I'm just flanning.

Drageur - This is the asshole that wants to sleep with you. Or your friend. Or the girl on the other side of the room. He's not picky. But he woke up this morning with the express purpose of going home with a woman. He's also crass, rude, and forward. "Drageur" is a really insulting word for this kind of guy. So offensive that the majority of the time, if you get enough disgust in your voice and call him a "drageur," he catches on that not only is his attention unwanted, he's actually repulsive to you. It's a beautiful, useful word.

and finally...

Fanfaron / Fanfaronnade - This is for all the men with the cars with special paint jobs and their name across the top of the windshield, the skeeze bags with the greasy hair and bad music who do the head jerk and say "Hey baby." (My professor explained it like that, then added "You know, the Italians.") They also have no jobs and no visible means of support. (Scrubs, but sleezy ones.) The men are fanfarons, and I read Baudelaire use the word fanfaronnade, which I assume is like a skeezy promenade, but I don't honestly know.

Well it's not like I'm going anywhere

So there's some hassle with my credit card, and, while I wait for help from people much more experienced than myself (my parents) I figured you could benefit!



I've been reading The Three Musketeers in French (I'm a badass), which has been mostly a help to my vocabulary rather than an enjoyable read in a foreign language. But I got to use one of the words I learned today!

As I was washing my hands in the restroom one of my classmates comes up and asks
"Tu n'a pas un mouchoir?"

In The Three Musketeers, a mouchoir is what men are constantly carrying into battle and pining over and what women are embrodiering and dropping in corners for their lovers to pick up. There's quite a lot about mouchoirs and lots of intrique about whose initials are on whose mouchoirs, etc. In short, it's a handkerchief. So aside from a moment's confusion about why she would be asking me for MY mouchoir to give her lover and wondering whether she was working for the Cardinal, I quickly logicked my way into the modern meaning of a mouchoir and answered her question correctly!

Hooray!



Okay, I'm going to celebrate the festival of crepes!!! Yummy!!! Credit cards will have to wait until later tonight...

Well that was awkward...

So this morning I was buying wine and the lady in front of me in line was talking bad about Americans who come in and buy bad wine, excited about how cheap it all is. I'm awkwardly standing behind her, buying cheap (and apparently bad) wine. Being American.

I get to the front of the line, determined to say as little as possible in the hopes that they won't notice and get awkward. I get the first word "Merci" out, and bam, instant, awkward silence

in the store.

"You're American?"

"Ouais..."

Aaaawkward.

But aside from the awkward bit, I traversed the market this morning entirely in French! It's so fabulous. All of the vendors kept shouting "Goutez! Goutez!" and handing me pieces of cheese and olives. One guy determinedly handed me olives, and after I said I wanted to buy some he continued to say "Goutez!" and handed me more. And so I kept trying some and telling

him I wanted to BUY them. I don't believe he understood, so I gave up and just bought my apples.

But here are the purchases I made:

That would be, from left to right, lavender honey (sooo good), some of that cheap, bad French wine that is now kir, a baguette, and a faaaabulous piece of Roquefort cheese.

Voila my lunch!

And, as demanded by my mother...

Here's my room. Isn't it seventies? On the bed is the most useful thing I've ever bought in my life - my basket-bag-thing. Not only handy for groceries, but also for taking laundry to the laundromat, hiding under, and being basically American-visiting-France. I'm in love with it and it's utter usefulness.

THERE ARE NO SQUIRRELS IN THIS CITY.

The continuing saga of sheets

So a few of you were around when I first talked to my landlady here. And, while I understood the majority of the conversation, I got confused about the sheets. I wasn't sure if she was providing sheets, lending me sheets, or if I was going to have to buy sheets. I arrive, still unsure of the sheet situation, to discover that, indeed, she was providing me sheets. For a while...

So I have to pay $10 for the loan of the sheets, with the understanding that, when I'm free I'm going to buy my own "draps" for the bed. These include: two pillows, two strange-long-round-pillows, two bottom sheets, two stop sheets, and covers of various types.

"Draps" are, literally translated, sheets. But this covers a lot of confusing English terms (there are equally confusing French words that, frankly, I don't know) - fitted sheets, pillow cases, covers, mattress protector things, the whole shebang. While playing charades with my landlady, I went through each item and asked if I needed to buy it. I even looked up the words for pillows, pillowcases, and covers. I was certain, I knew what I needed to buy. So I go out and buy a bottom sheets, a couple of covers, and two pillows. Luckily, with the sales, all this isn't very expensive.

So today I returned the sheets, pillows, etc. to my landlady. She nodded sagely, but then started looking confused. I assume that this is because not everything is there - sheets and pillows for two beds takes up more than an armful and I hadn't brought everything back with me yet. I explain that I'm going back for the other pillows and my landlady asks me why. Thinking the answer to this question is obvious, ("I'm returning them") I was stumped.

She assumes that this is because I don't understand, and begins speaking rapidly in my direction and gesturing about pillows and sheets. She goes on to repeatedly ask me why I'm returning the coverlets - "You don't need them? Are you sure? Did you buy some? Why did you buy some?"

She then hands me one of the pillows back, sans pillow case. Confused and standing in the foyer of an apartment building, I try to explain to my landlady that I had bought most of these things already, and had outfitted my bed myself. She continues to press the pillow into my hands (remember she had originally given me two) and tell me I don't need to return the other, strange, long, round pillows.

But I have an extra pillow now?

***

In other news, my landlady did adamantly tell me she prefers my hair the way I'm wearing it today as opposed to usual. Usual is down, but today I'm styling "unwashed for three days and pulled back tight enough to satisfied a frumpy librarian." Apparently, it's working for me.

Monaco and other breakthroughs

Monaco was fabulous. It was an admittedly whirlwind tour, but I wouldn't have been able to afford anything if we had had enough time to go in places anyway... We also stopped for a tour of the Fragonard perfumerie where I bought my first real purfume! I'm a real lady now!

But, slightly more exciting (rather, a story I can tell without pictures since I can't connect my computer yet), coming home from the grocery yesterday, my French roommates invited me to have apertifs with them! I was also informed, as we all slowly got tipsy ("pompette") at six pm, that this is a regular occurance. I knew I liked these people.

It appears that one of the regular pasttimes in France, after skiing of course, is attempting to teach Americans how to say "frog." In French, the word is "grenouille," and is admittedly tricky. The French R is difficult enough for an anglophone, but preceeded by a G it's nearly impossible to pronounce. After the first syllable comes a string of vowels long enough to trip up any lazy-tongued American... It is, in a word, the reason Americans have accents. And is thus great fun for native speakers.

Next time it happens, I'm getting them to say "squirrel."

Everything else is well, aside from that one professor who likes us to sing in class.

Grocery Shopping

So I've discovered a new love. It's a cereal with nutella in each bite. And it's fabulous. (I have the breakfasting preferences of a six year old.)

But to accompany my new-found cereal love, I needed milk.

Milk is difficult to buy for a few reasons,

1) It's not refridgerated. It's got the little plastic seal thing you get on condiments on it, so I figure, like mayonnaise, it's safe to leave unrefridgerated until it's opened. It just makes it extremely difficult to find in the store.

2) Not anticipating the problem, I didn't look up skim, 2%, or other ways to denote milk fat... So, faced with the choice of Creme and Demi-Ecreme, I bought the latter and prayed I wasn't buying half-and-half.

3) It's good until March 17. Which doesn't really cause a problem in actually buying the milk, but it certainly threw me off. March 17??

So, minor difficulties aside, I'm the proud owner of a bottle of, I think, 2% milk that is happily sitting in my fridge and hasn't killed me yet. Success!

I'm off to eat lunch - a sandwich with my new favorite condiment - dijon mayonnaise. And maybe some nutella cereal to accompany it...

So I've been here a couple of days now. Which is long enough to realize that, second to learning the language, learning my way around the city will be a major skill (as will learning my way around a French keyboard). Aix is, however, stunningly beautiful.

It snowed here today, which was case enough for a front page headline reading "Snow! Marseille in a state of alert!" and the cancellation of two days of exams.

Testing... testing...

Hello?