Oh, la vache, I have been home, away from Rennes and back to Texas, for over a month now. It seems like another world I've left behind. I think about France and my friends there and the patisseries and their rows of golden pains au chocolat and the metro of burnished steel and yellow plastic the same way I think about the novel I'm reading.
It's a story-- not that it makes it less real-- that I can flip open any time, to remember anything. The mountainside fondue lunch I had in Tignes. A boy who was teaching his little brother how to talk as the train pulled into Paris from Vienna--"Les-belles-fleurs-dans-la-campagne"-- and my relief at hearing French after two weeks of incomprehensible German and Hungarian. The hollow pong of a soccer ball on the mall by the grocery store. The expressionless gaze of the people on the metro. Making a coffee last three hours in a cafe with the best friends I've ever had. Trying not to fall asleep during two hours of lecture on environmental law-- Breathe easy, France! I would never dare construct a building 100 meters from the water!
My last couple of days in Rennes were somewhat miserable. It's my friends who really made the whole year fantastic, and I left a bit after them. I was lethargic and restless at the same time. I repacked my suitcases four times, eager to get going now that it was over. (And then nearly broke my neck four times over dragging them-- one was 25 kilos-- down the three flights of stairs by myself at five in the morning.)
America is great, I'm very glad to be back. Everything I missed, I appreciate, which is all anyone can ask for. The clothes dryer, tivo, months' worth of toilet paper, and my real bed are all astounding and make me feel like royalty, a sensation that is healthily counteracted by the forty hours a week I put in folding jeans at my old summer job tout en waking up at seven every morning for class at the community college
So that's it, nine months of vie a la française. On a whole, it was great, and now it's over. Il me manque mais je suis contente d'être retournée.
Monday, July 09, 2007
Monday, May 07, 2007
De la poésie
Perhaps a selection of flippant limericks will make up for not posting anything in over a month!
De la grammaire
French grammar avec Madame Noury
Is always a cause of some worry
The problem with French is
There are fifty-nine tenses
And they're starting to get a bit blurry.
(A total lie. I rock at French these days.)
Kinder Buenos are also pretty good
The best thing about Batiment E
Is the horrible café machine
Its pungent aromas
Of potage and faux mochas
Wake you up for just forty centimes.
Il pleut!
The thing about weather in Rennes
It can be cloudy and rainy, and then
Tout d'un coup
The sky turns blue
Before going gloomy again.
(Using two languages makes Scrabble and Limericks a lot easier.)
The International Studies/Poliics and Diplomacy/French major in me feels obliged to make some comment about the French presidential elections that took place yesterday. Might I just say that I will never take any more ribbing about being from "Bushland" anymore; France has just elected their own version of W. With Tony Blair leaving in two months and George Bush's term over in 2009, things are starting to get interesting.
Bretagne is a somewhat left-leaning region and while I'm not totally thrilled that Sarkozy was elected, I was looking forward to the rumored protests and riots that were to take place should he win. No such luck. Tomorrow's a holiday and it seems that everyone in town "fait le pont"--made a long weekend out of it. Downtown and campus and the metro were eerily quiet and I saw nary a burning car, alas.
De la grammaire
French grammar avec Madame Noury
Is always a cause of some worry
The problem with French is
There are fifty-nine tenses
And they're starting to get a bit blurry.
(A total lie. I rock at French these days.)
Kinder Buenos are also pretty good
The best thing about Batiment E
Is the horrible café machine
Its pungent aromas
Of potage and faux mochas
Wake you up for just forty centimes.
Il pleut!
The thing about weather in Rennes
It can be cloudy and rainy, and then
Tout d'un coup
The sky turns blue
Before going gloomy again.
(Using two languages makes Scrabble and Limericks a lot easier.)
The International Studies/Poliics and Diplomacy/French major in me feels obliged to make some comment about the French presidential elections that took place yesterday. Might I just say that I will never take any more ribbing about being from "Bushland" anymore; France has just elected their own version of W. With Tony Blair leaving in two months and George Bush's term over in 2009, things are starting to get interesting.
Bretagne is a somewhat left-leaning region and while I'm not totally thrilled that Sarkozy was elected, I was looking forward to the rumored protests and riots that were to take place should he win. No such luck. Tomorrow's a holiday and it seems that everyone in town "fait le pont"--made a long weekend out of it. Downtown and campus and the metro were eerily quiet and I saw nary a burning car, alas.
Friday, April 06, 2007
Eurovacay
Forgot to mention, I'm spending my Spring break in Eastern Europe, land where pants are optional. Actually, I'm currently in Frankfurt, Germany, which is a geographical blunder and not quite actually east, and a long story. I've already been to Salzburg and Vienna, Austria which were both amazing and beautiful, and tonight I have an overnight train to Budapest. That's right. I'd say more but my internet access runs out in about thirty seconds and I'd rather spend my money on apple strudel.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Pendue!
Today a seven-year-old Française who speaks no English (beyond the 200 or so words I've taught her) beat me at a game of hangman. Again and again my stick figure self died sadly amongst a smattering of poorly guessed letters-- and the sad thing is, I actually was trying. Shoulder? Purple? Jeez. I countered with 'strawberry' and it didn't faze her one bit: the scaffold remained blissfully empty. Perhaps next week we'll downgrade to tic tac toe.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
France vs England
Several months ago, one of my host sisters had a party at the apartment. I was there, and never have I felt so awkward. It started out fine. One of my host sister’s friends happened to know one of the other Americans in my group so we were able to small talk about our mutual aquaintance. But when the rest of the guests started to arrive, the situation got strange. Everyone did the same thing: entered the room, gave two kisses to everybody already there while murmuring their name to those they didn’t know (me), and joined the conversation. At which point I became invisible.
If you were at a gathering with a small group of friends you knew well, and there was suddenly a new person there, wouldn’t you want to know who she was? Wouldn’t you ask, How do you know so-and-so? I did try and join the conversation, but anything I said was met with no more than half of a nod. So I know they heard my accent, but no one wondered where I was from. No one even asked my name. I gave up on this bizarre form of socializing and went to bed, mumbling to no one that I had an early class the next morning. The instant I shut my bedroom door, I heard someone ask my host sister about “l’Americaine...” Rather than actually speaking to me, they made me the topic of conversation as soon as I left the room. Nice.
The hostel where we stayed in Tignes was full of Brits. It was paradise, a little oasis of Englishness nestled in the French Alps. Skiing was absolutely amazing, but the best part of the trip was the people, by far. At dinner the first night, people actually talked to us! With eye contact and jokes and everything! Our table-mates, two guys around our age and their dads and some other guys, insisted we try snowboarding and the tequila-flavored beer they were drinking. At the next table over there was a group of rowdy people in ridiculous costumes drinking and laughing. Some of them were our roommates and they tried to get us, newcomers who they’d known for five minutes, to join them in dressing up and drinking.
Another night, a couple of the guys stumbled into the common room, a bit more than tipsy, and declared their love for our adorable accents and our general adorableness, which I personally don’t get all that much. At another dinner, every other sentence was a question that began with “In America...” Any time we asked for the butter or the water, people giggled. It may have been that we were two of the only girls in the place, not the only two Americans, but everyone was so pleasant and friendly.
I know it’s not fair to compare these situations. The Brits were on vacation and in wonderful moods. There was no language barrier. There was plenty of alcohol (but then, so was there at my host sister’s party). I really shouldn’t hold up a mid-week French get-together next to a week of English snowboarding. I love France and all its Frenchness, but getting on the train to go back to France after a week among the English was difficult. It was hard to get back into the routine of whispering “pardon” after the tiniest accidental physical contact, and ignoring passersby rather than saying hello to them. It’s cultural.
It’s a little bit sad.
If you were at a gathering with a small group of friends you knew well, and there was suddenly a new person there, wouldn’t you want to know who she was? Wouldn’t you ask, How do you know so-and-so? I did try and join the conversation, but anything I said was met with no more than half of a nod. So I know they heard my accent, but no one wondered where I was from. No one even asked my name. I gave up on this bizarre form of socializing and went to bed, mumbling to no one that I had an early class the next morning. The instant I shut my bedroom door, I heard someone ask my host sister about “l’Americaine...” Rather than actually speaking to me, they made me the topic of conversation as soon as I left the room. Nice.
The hostel where we stayed in Tignes was full of Brits. It was paradise, a little oasis of Englishness nestled in the French Alps. Skiing was absolutely amazing, but the best part of the trip was the people, by far. At dinner the first night, people actually talked to us! With eye contact and jokes and everything! Our table-mates, two guys around our age and their dads and some other guys, insisted we try snowboarding and the tequila-flavored beer they were drinking. At the next table over there was a group of rowdy people in ridiculous costumes drinking and laughing. Some of them were our roommates and they tried to get us, newcomers who they’d known for five minutes, to join them in dressing up and drinking.
Another night, a couple of the guys stumbled into the common room, a bit more than tipsy, and declared their love for our adorable accents and our general adorableness, which I personally don’t get all that much. At another dinner, every other sentence was a question that began with “In America...” Any time we asked for the butter or the water, people giggled. It may have been that we were two of the only girls in the place, not the only two Americans, but everyone was so pleasant and friendly.
I know it’s not fair to compare these situations. The Brits were on vacation and in wonderful moods. There was no language barrier. There was plenty of alcohol (but then, so was there at my host sister’s party). I really shouldn’t hold up a mid-week French get-together next to a week of English snowboarding. I love France and all its Frenchness, but getting on the train to go back to France after a week among the English was difficult. It was hard to get back into the routine of whispering “pardon” after the tiniest accidental physical contact, and ignoring passersby rather than saying hello to them. It’s cultural.
It’s a little bit sad.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Ski
The Alps are freaking HUGE. I had never really seen snow before this week, let alone skied, but I thought I knew mountains. On the overnight train from Paris, we woke up and were already surrounded by enormous giants, and the train kept snaking around them for a few more hours until we arrived at our destination, a one-road town called Tignes at the bottom of a valley. You have to look straight up to see the peaks if there aren't any clouds halfway up. You can ride a single skilift straight up for three quarters of an hour, or a funicular can take you dozens of thousands of feet into the air, if you're really stupid enough to believe that a piste marked "green" and named "verte" might be easy.
As for getting down the mountains? They don't accommodate people who chicken out. They make you get off at the top and then there's no way down unless you ski, or, in my case, ski ten feet and then fall and slide. Fall and slide as world-class snowboarders swerve and spray powder in my face, fall and slide as groups of three-year-olds follow their ski prof like ducks with sticks strapped to their feet on a snow-covered 50 degree slopes. Fall and slide. But I have no shame. I actually think I did pretty well and even started to get the hang of real skiing towards the end. And it's fun, I love it in the strange way it's possible to love something totally terrifying. I'm afraid I've spoiled myself for any future skiing by learning to ski in the amazing French Alps, le plus bel espace de ski du monde.
As for getting down the mountains? They don't accommodate people who chicken out. They make you get off at the top and then there's no way down unless you ski, or, in my case, ski ten feet and then fall and slide. Fall and slide as world-class snowboarders swerve and spray powder in my face, fall and slide as groups of three-year-olds follow their ski prof like ducks with sticks strapped to their feet on a snow-covered 50 degree slopes. Fall and slide. But I have no shame. I actually think I did pretty well and even started to get the hang of real skiing towards the end. And it's fun, I love it in the strange way it's possible to love something totally terrifying. I'm afraid I've spoiled myself for any future skiing by learning to ski in the amazing French Alps, le plus bel espace de ski du monde.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Mutually exclusive
"La question n'est pas d'être logique, la question est d'être français."
My grammar professor uttered this sentence in response to why in French a week is eight days and two weeks are fifteen days. But it applies to a lot here, especially this past week, sometimes frustratingly so:
"It's not a matter of logic, it's a matter of Frenchness."
My grammar professor uttered this sentence in response to why in French a week is eight days and two weeks are fifteen days. But it applies to a lot here, especially this past week, sometimes frustratingly so:
"It's not a matter of logic, it's a matter of Frenchness."
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