S.S. Yesterday

Au revoir

2007-07-09T14:42:00.001-05:00

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.

De la poésie

2007-05-07T11:15:00.000-05:00

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.

Eurovacay

2007-04-06T12:23:00.000-05:00

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.

Pendue!

2007-03-21T15:33:00.000-05:00

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.

France vs England

2007-03-18T15:09:00.000-05:00

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.

Ski

2007-03-15T09:52:00.000-05:00

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.

Mutually exclusive

2007-02-26T13:02:00.000-06:00

"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."

Mais bien sûr

2007-02-18T09:03:00.000-06:00

The clock in my host family's apartment stopped. There were no batteries in the house. So they took the batteries out of the computer mouse and put them in the clock. Apparently telling time is more important than accessing the world wide web; whatever, that's their priority, fine.

Last night it was 10:30 before we had dinner. I went into the kitchen to get a bowl of cereal for dinner (this is simply not done, but I was hungry and ready to go to bed). My host mom rushed into the kitchen and began to whip up a light supper of soup, an omelette, and salad despite my protestations that cereal would suffice. "No, no, this is for everyone, no one's had dinner yet even though it's so late. We lost track of time."

Emploi du temps

2007-02-16T10:41:00.000-06:00

I'm finally settled into the semester, having decided that twenty hours of class a week (plus student teaching, plus the private English lessons I give) sounds about right, since there are no books to buy or huge papers to write.

Mondays I have a required grammar class which sounds horrible but is made bearable by the enthusiasm of the professor.  I have always hated grammar, preferring to feel my way blindly along the treacherous cliffs of French, but it's probably time I really crack down.

I'm also taking a translation class which is split into two parts:  French to English and English to French.  The latter is by far the more difficult, and I didn't make things any easier by calling attention to myself the first day by showing up a minute or two late.  The professor immediately started picking on me, but once he learned I'm a native anglophone he became much nicer. He had me to explain the difference between white trash and redneck-- in French.  No easy task but I pulled it off.  The French to English hour is super easy and fun, with the added bonus of the professor being adorably British.  It's nice to be better than the French students for once.

On Wednesdays I have a science class..  It's called "Evolution Planetaire du Climat et de l'Environnement."  Awesome, is all I have to say.  So awesome.

I have three civilisation classes on my schedule: Decolonisation politics, Governmental Institutions of France, and (French) International Relations.  I sometimes get into a funk about school and think, what is this all about?  Why don't I just quit, and join the Peace Corps, or open a hippie bakery in Paris, or marry that guy who sells cheap jewelry at Sainte Anne (I could, we've been set up for the sake of me being allowed to stay in France by the guy who sells Tin Tin posters at the table next to him)?  And then I take classes like these, and fill up pages of notes on the European Union and Algeria and Segolene Royal and international laws, and I remember that this sort of stuff is what I do.  It's fascinating.  It's as close to a calling as I've got.  (Sorry, jewelry vendor dude.)

So now that we've had two full weeks of school, it's time for winter break.  I'm going to Paris to see the Louvre and the Musée du Quai Branly, then to the island of Guernsey for a day or two.  The weather has been gorgeous for the past few days.  The trees are budding, the daffodils are blooming, the people of Rennes are unwinding their scarves from around their pale, delicate necks.  I hope it lasts, but hope for snow in the Alps through March, as I'm going skiing for Spring break.

Edit: Whenever I talk about my classes with my host sister, she asks me whether they are conducted in French. Of course they are, all of them. I didn't fly 3,000 miles and give up Pop-tarts for ten months to take classes in English.

Recap

2007-02-01T03:24:00.000-06:00

I'm still alive and kicking here in France, blog-neglect and unresponded-to emails to the contrary. I've been too busy having a life; why, I haven't been to Subway in weeks!

I've procrastinated too long to properly write about my mom and sister being here. Paris was amazing as usual. We stayed in a hotel in Saint Germain des Près, among embassies and fancy ministry buildings. My favorite was the ministry of global warming and climate change. The first night, my mom and sister and I walked to the Eiffel tower and then ate at a tiny creperie two steps from its glimmering lights. We also did the Arc de Triomphe, Sacré Coeur, bateau mouche, and lots and lots of pastries and onion soups. Paris is so clean, crisp-edged, pleasant. I loved being back there with people who have never been there before.

London. The city of salt shakers that cost £40 (about $80) and glasses of water that cost £1.80 (about $3.50)--I just can't seem to let that go. We were only there for about ten hours, so we took a bus tour and saw the city from a red double decker bus with hilarious commentary. Trafalgar Square, Picadilly Circus, Pall Mall, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Harrod's... um, Starbucks. London was so much busier and bustling compared to Paris, which seemed staid in comparison when we got back.

I was proud to show my mom and sister around my Rennes. They met my host family one night at the Haricot and translating for them was a surprisingly unstressful experience. We also went to Saint Malo and Mont Saint Michel, both freezing cold and eerily quiet and beautiful. It seems like so long ago that they were here.

The three weeks since have been busy. I saw snow for the first time in my life (I had a whole post devoted to snow; it went something like this: OMG!1!!! SNOW!! But then I felt bad about posting out of order, so I deleted it.). I ate chili for the first time in my life. People get really funny when they find out that a half-Canadian, half-Texan like me had never seen snow nor tasted chili. I started a tutoring gig for two girls whose mother would like them to hear English once a week. I organized a picnic to meet the new people; they seem nice but unnecessarily shy. One afternoon I was bored, so I went to the cinema and bought a ticket for the only American, version originale movie playing, not wanting to have to deal with unnecessary nudity or bad dubbing. It happened to be L'incroyable destin de Harold Crick (Stranger Than Fiction). It was wonderful and I spent half the movie freaking out at the even more wonderful, Spoon-filled soundtrack. Plus, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, and Maggie Gyllenhaal all in one movie? Yes, please.

I also started classes at the university. In a word: terrifying. In several words: I went to and subsequently dropped several classes that involved obligatoire 15 minute speeches. Public speaking in front of French students? No, thank you. I have found three that are just lectures and that I think will transfer back to Texas A&M as international studies credit. Next week, the rest of my classes start at the foreigners' department. Which I suppose means I'll be spending more time in the wifi zone on campus, and theoretically blogging more frequently.

Sprookenladder

2007-01-15T09:19:00.000-06:00

I can't fathom posting about the past dozen or so days all in one go, but I have uploaded some pictures. Click on them for a bigger view.

I'll always remember Brussels as the city with the disappearing Pizza Hut. I could have sworn I saw it not too far from Quick (a Belgian fast-food chain), but when I returned to the location after seeing The Fall of Icarus among other culturally healthy works of art at the museum, it was nowhere to be seen. I settled for a panini in a quaint little café, but was slightly disappointed nonetheless.

That night I watched a delightful three-hour made-for-tv movie about global warming and corporate fraud. It was awesome. It was in English but had Flemish subtitles, and I have decided that in my next life I shall walk around saying things like "sprookenladder" and "xanthoom" and "mooie."

After Brussels it was Paris, London, Saint Malo, Mont Saint Michel, and Rennes with my mother and sister. It was great to have them here but I will save writing about it for another time, because it merits its own post.

Since Saturday, when Mom and Leah got on their train home, I've washed laundry, restarted my teaching internship, and thought about what classes I'll sign up for at the rentrée next week. The girl at Subway started making my sandwich even before I ordered, and I saw the same people on the 10:10 number 3 bus that I always see on Monday mornings, and the cat sat on my knees for hours last night as I started the second Eragon. It's back to routine. Until, that is, the next extremely long break when I'll have weeks at a time to use up all my money on train tickets, because no matter how cool anywhere else may be, it feels so good to come back to Rennes.

Dog and Cheese

2006-12-30T12:17:00.000-06:00

When it comes to drunk Frenchmen, I need to grow a thicker skin. On Christmas eve, someone offered me cheese and I turned it down because it was three in the morning and I needed sleep. The Frenchman in question couldn't fathom not wanting cheese (they already think I'm an ignorant barbarian for not liking foie gras), and he was drunk, so he assumed I simply didn't speak French. "FROMAGE!" he shouted. "FROMAGE, CHEESE! CHEESE!"

"Thank you, I know what 'fromage' means," I said calmly after considering the alcohol factor. He continued to shout various dairy-related vocabulary, and frankly, it hurt. Talk to me about fromage when you figure out that cheddar isn't white.

The next night, though, almost the same thing happened, only with a different inebriated Frenchman. The conversation was about a family with a dog named Texas, and I said, "Really? The dog was called Texas? What was the significance to that?"

"Chien. DOG," was the response.

I rolled my eyes. "Thank you I know what chien means!" Seriously, fromage and chien? It's amazing, alcohol. I repeated my question.

"Oh. Sometimes, in France, people just give really stupid names to their pets for no reason."

Cassé! Okay, that was just rude. But not unexpected.

Noël

2006-12-26T09:03:00.000-06:00

Not being home for Christmas was very, very strange. But a lot of things are just not normal these days. I went to Strasbourg on Friday all by myself, which sounds kind of sad but was actually quite enjoyable. There's no TGV (the fast train) to Alsace yet, so the voyage from Rennes to Paris to Strasbourg took more than six hours! Once I got there I found my hotel, dropped off my backpack, then wandered around the city. A few friends had gone there a few weekends ago, and they told me to go to the Christmas market. Only, that's like saying, "Go to the car dealership in Houston!" or "Go to the creperie in Rennes!": There are many. I sampled hot apple cider, warm spiced-and-honeyed orange juice (so good! Strange, but good!), spice cake, churros, and pretzels from countless stalls. There was other stuff for sale besides food of course-- twinkling ornaments, tiny model maisons à colombage, toys, jewelry, books... I took a boat ride tour of the river and canal, then retired earlyish to bed so that I could watch the finale of Star Academy, the French version of American Idol. I flipped through channels for a while, and I tell you, nothing makes me feel more fluent in French than watching German tv.

The next day I climbed to the top of the cathedral, 332 steps to a magnificent, if a bit foggy, view. I hung around at the top for a while and was rewarded when the clock struck noon and the bells started clanging like mad. In between peals the chiming from other, smaller cathedrals about the city echoed in response. I filled in the afternoon by hitting a few more Christmas markets, drinking some more hot orange juice, and listening to a rehearsal for a Christmas concert at a Protestant church. Cold and tired from the barrage of French and German, I found a movie theater and saw A Prarie Home Companion, which was great if you like Garrison Keillor and the radio show itself, which I do.

My train back to Paris was at nineteen minutes after midnight and and I didn't sleep a wink because it stopped every ten minutes. I got back to Rennes at 10:30 on Christmas eve. My extended host family was there and dinner was an affaire that lasted until 5:00 am. The foie gras course lasted almost four hours because of a slippery knife that sent my host mom to the emergency room. I fell asleep at about 3:00, but missed only three courses.

On Christmas itself, no one left the house at all-- the mountains of presents kept everyone occupied. I got a huge box of chocolates and a Rennais scarf that could double as a shroud or a tablecloth and mittens that are normal sized. We had a meal at about 6:00 and I was so delighted to finally be eating at a normal hour, but that turned out to be lunch.

I don't know what the next few days hold, probably just a lot of crocheting and reading and speaking French and wondering when I will eat next, and what meal it will be.

Amis

2006-12-16T13:09:00.000-06:00

I'm depressed these days. My friends are all leaving me. The semester people go back home in a week, and I'm heartbroken. It's nice to have friends-- I even had a birthday party this year, a surprise slumber party that included a scavenger hunt and a game of sardines and a wine bottle full of Smarties-- and they're leaving me behind in this forsaken country. Thankfully, not all of them; there are 15 of our group here all year and I like them a lot.

I have three days left of finals. Notes are so strange here, but I'm doing fine, especially considering that Texas A&M receives grades on a pass/fail basis. Next semester I'll be taking all but one of my classes with French students, rather than with other foreigners, and I'm excited about that. And terrified, because as far as I've come with my French (I can say Rs now!) I still have a horrendous accent and comprehension issues.

As for winter break, I have a bunch of little trips planned, but I don't want to be gone from my host family's for too long because I'll need to be territorial about my bed. Eleven people (host mom, host sister 1, host sister 2, host sister 3, host sister 1's boyfriend, host babydaddy, host nephew, host cousin 1, host cousin 2, host uncle, possible host aunt, host cat, and me), okay, twelve/thirteen beings including me and the Noisette the cat will be spending Christmas in a none-too-large host apartment. And yes, that's how I refer to them all, but it's even more awkward in French-- famille d'accueil, chat d'accueil, etc. I also plan to cook a lot and crochet and finish Harry Potter en francais. I'm also tempted to try Eragon, but that might be just because of the high-quality eyebrows of the boy on the front cover; I'm shallow like that. Les Champs Libres, the library/museum here in Rennes, is amazing and I think I'll be spending plenty of time there in the next month or so.

After that I might go to Belgium. And then Mom and Leah are here for a week in January. I spent a fortune on London and Paris guide books that only I will be able to read, but I'm so excited for them to be here. London-- specifically, the rumored record number of Starbucks-- is the bright point in the near future. I can't wait to order things in English again, if only for a day.

Joyeux Noel et Bonne Année to everyone if I don't get around to posting again before then.

The Unexpected City

2006-12-04T11:23:00.000-06:00

Lyon is a perfectly fine city. I imagine it wouldn't be horrendous to live there. But... it's not Budapest.

My friend Rachel and I woke up super early Thursday morning, ready to skip our classes for the rest of the week and spend an awesome four days in Budapest with two other friends, who were already there. The plan was to take a train to Paris, then transfer to the airport to catch our flight. All went well at first. I managed to wake up before five in the morning, and once in Paris, we figured out how to get to the airport: metro from Montparnasse to Austerlitz, then the RER (the suburban train), and finally a shuttle to Orly. The RER...

Is....

So....

Slow...

So we were late to the airport. We got there twenty minutes before the flight (which, yes, is very late for an international flight) but ten minutes after the gate closed. Luckily we're going to be reimbursed the airport taxes, which comprise a big hunk of the ticket costs, but still, we were so disappointed.

We decided to profiter of the weekend and go to Lyon instead. This decision was made entirely thanks to the fact that the random souvenir shop in the train station happened to have a guide book on Lyon. Upon arriving dejectedly in The Unexpected City as one brochure so aptly puts it, we trotted over to the office of tourisme, only to find that there was not a single hotel room left in the city. It really put us in the Chrismas spirit, having nowhere to sleep. But wait! Here's one! It costs 186 euros a night! Well, it was that or sleep in the train station or in a park somewhere. So, with great plans to use every single towel and take every cake of soap back with us, we arrived at the hotel, only to learn that they had double booked our room.

At this point we were seriously freaking out.

Someone, though, was looking out for us; in the time it took us to march back to the office de tourisme to demand a refund and maybe a recommendation for a nice bridge to sleep under, someone had cancelled at a much much cheaper hotel.

The rest of the weekend was a mix of self-pity and trying really hard to take advantage of what we did have. It was kind of hilariously surreal, though. We wanted to go to a silk workshop/museum, which ended up being closed exceptionellement. We sat there sadly, trying to think of something to do in the next several hours, and lo and behold, across from the silk workshop was a Hungarian restaurant. It was closed, too, of course. It kind of made me want to cry.

We did see a few really cool things in Lyon. We went to the Lumiere museum, which was interesting, because of the French Films course I took last semester. We also ate at a bouchon, for which Lyon is famous, and saw a Guignol (puppet) show. We also went to a symphony, which was lovely and relaxing. In the depths of our self pity we ate at McDonald's. It was amazing. I hate to diss Rennes, my beloved host city, but I have to say that the guys are much more handsome in Lyon. I didn't see a single dreadlock in three days!

It could have gone so much worse. I was so glad to be with Rachel, who's an amazing travel buddy, even if we were stranded in Lyon. And after the airport fiasco I'd say we handled things pretty well and even had a sort of rueful fun.

It just wasn't Budapest.

Recap

2006-11-29T09:49:00.000-06:00

Thanksgiving dinner in France was interesting. I was a little disappointed in some of my fellow Americans, who showed up drunk, and in the toast, which basically was a brutal smackdown of the US. I didn't expect that from the Franco-American Institute; it was hurtful even though I usually don't take that sort of stuff personally. The food made up for it, though. The best part was that everything, from the turkey to the potatoes to the strangely warm cranberry sauce, was served at once, rather than over several courses as I've become accustomed to. There was some more anti-Americanism from a French guy sitting across from me. He was saying something about everyone in the South being backwards racists-- this was after he knew I was from Texas-- and instead of sitting there and taking it, I replied that by saying that, he was just as bigoted as every Southerner supposedly is. I'm just tired of hearing about how horrible my home is; even people from other areas in the States know nothing about it except for its death penalty statistics. But the sweet potatoes were awesome, and they even has whipped cream for the pumpkin pie, so it was all good.

I went back to Saint Malo on Saturday. They've started putting up Christmas decorations, making the city even more loveable and cozy. I'm going back there at least once before Christmas, and then again in January when my mom and sister come to France. And also, I wouldn't mind living there someday.

Sunday, I joined a friend and her host family on a randonée in Brocéliande. The hike was supposed to be just under 30 kilometers, but we got lost numerous times and ended up walking almost eight hours, well into the night. The countryside was beautiful and muddy. Les Français never cease to amuse me. There we were, stopping to eat lunch in the middle of nowhere. I pull out my tin of tuna salad and a hunk of bread; around me people are producing full bottles of wine, a cheese course, chocolate cake, and a thermos of still steaming coffee. Amazing. At the end of it all, I had blisters and shriveled toes and sore calf muscles along with a high of endorphins, a bit of a sunburn, and some amazing photos.

And tomorrow I'm going to Budapest.

Thanksgiving

2006-11-23T08:45:00.000-06:00

I have this corner in my mind where I carry some of my favorite moments. Some are inane inside jokes that never made sense in the first place. Some involve other people: friends who I only knew for a month at a time, or glimpses of strangers, or my family. Some are just moments I guard jealously to myself, because I don't know how to write about them. I've tried before; they come out flat and I know some things are just mine.

Occasionally, I pull them out or remember them accidentally; they're like finding Easter candy in September while cleaning out the sock drawer in an frenzy of organization. I know my spontaneous foolish grin startles the metro people and annoys professors, but I'm so glad I have them. That's what I'm thankful for: having beautiful things to remember, and collecting more as I go.

Metro

2006-11-21T06:40:00.000-06:00

"Station Kennedy. Terminus de la ligne. Nous vous demandons de bien vouloir quitter la rame. Merci."

No, Thank YOU, Rennes Star Metropole, for your stunningly efficient and cute public transportation -- spontaneously gender-changing announcement voice notwithstanding. Thank you for your friendly blue-and-yellow clad workers, ever vigilantly checking tickets and cards whilst chatting amongst themselves, for your plastic-in-plastic Korrigo passes that I'm totally going to steal upon my return to the States, even though it's technically not my property. Such accommodating hours! Such green, energy-saving escalators! Such opportunity to use the word composter at least daily!

The stairs may be occasionally slippery or clogged with Frenchmen offering fliers; I may have feared for the well-being of my personal bubble in the occasional drunk-filled metro car (but at least they're not driving!). And there was that one time that the bus doors shut on my backpack and held me there like a kid just a little too curious about his pet turtle.

But, Rennes Star-Metropole, I cherish your efficiency. Without you, I wouldn't dare dream of leaving the apartment as late as 8:05 to make my 8:15 class with time to buy a coffee on the way. In the beginning, I doubted the timing of the buses, I'm ashamed to say. Surely transportation devices piloted by erring humans, rather than near-divine driver-less computer systems would have some margin of lateness? Oh, how wrong I was. I humbly took back any assumptions while pacing the block so as not to be forty minutes early to my appointment.

I have many goals during my sejour in Rennes. One is to find a garcon who is a) taller than I, b) doesn't wear a scarf, and c) doesn't harbor contempt for my country. You wouldn't think that would be all that difficult, but I've not had any success; the first two qualifications really narrow it down. Anyway, another mission is to take my unlimited Korrigo card and ride every bus line and descend at every metro stop. I'm about thirty percent there. You, Rennes public transportation system, merit discovery.

Fest Noz

2006-11-18T04:54:00.000-06:00

In tenth grade Latin class, I used to while away the time not declining verbs but doodling. I had entire notebooks covered with a single long squiggly line that snaked around and doubled back on itself, coiling around the page.

A Fest Noz is just like that, except not. Instead of the dank moldy smell of the E building, there's the scent of cigarette smoke, sharp hard cider, a hundred moving bodies, and galettes sizzling with onions and sausages. And there's no droning of flourescent lights or tap of chalk on the board: bright music from guitars, fiddles, flutes and accordians bursts out from the doors along with lyrics in Breton and a tangible vibration from the dance floor.

If I'd known what a Fest Noz was before getting there, I wouldn't have gone. I don't like dancing. Flinging my body about to the tune of profanity-laden music I don't even like in the first place has never appealed to me. For all I know, the music at a Fest Noz might be nothing but gros mots, but as I only know about twenty words in Breton, none of them vulgar, it's just an oddly tempting aural mix that got even me, Miss "I'll spend a hundred bucks on a prom dress but don't expect me to dance in it," out with the crowd.

I think the fact that there's some structure had something to do with it; you don't hop around randomly but rather link hands or pinky fingers in a long chain and hop around in specific patterns according to the tempo of the music, swinging 'round, just barely holding on and regretting that cider, when the line doubles back on itself. I improvised during the group dances but sat out, watched in awe, and regretfully turned down invitations to dance when the music picked up even more and people started swirling around footless two by two. I've started lessons, though, so that next time I won't have to. Possibly. It's one thing to join hands and follow along in the communal cheek-by-jowl, armpit-by-shoulder human chain; the scary part's leaving that coil and actually have to know what the heck to do by myself. And that's what it's all about, n'est-ce pas?

French lesson

2006-11-12T09:20:00.000-06:00

My friends and I usually speak French amongst ourselves, because if it's less efficient than speaking English, transitioning back and forth between the languages is getting increasingly harder so it's best if we just stick to one.

We went to St Malo on Saturday by bus. On our way back it was pretty empty so we sat across the aisle from instead of next to each other, which meant instead of whispering, keeping our accents private, we had to speak in normal tones of voice.

A French guy a row back mocked us. He made fun of everything from the fact that we put on our seat belts (it's the law, and thanks but I'd rather not die in this country) to our accents. He mimicked our French and laughed maliciously about the occasional English word that we used.

I know my accent is bad. Every word that comes out of my mouth is painstakingly prepared, but it just doesn't work. I can get a point across, I can tell stories, I can understand jokes and food labels and radio programs, but every minute of it requires concentrated effort, and I have worked so hard on it during the past two and a half months. So have my friends. I'm proud of the progress we've made in this ridiculous language.

This idiot on the bus tore that down. You don't make fun of people. You don't make fun of people who are sitting less than two feet away from you, and you don't assume that they can't understand you. You just don't. But he did. My friends shot him evil looks, and his girlfriend, to her credit, tried to get him to shut up.

After they got off we discussed comeback tactics. I don't know what to think about it, even in retrospect, because what he did was so incredibly rude and hurtful that it's hard to believe it actually happened. We should have turned to him and said "Excuse me, and are you bilingual?" or "You know I can both hear and understand every word you're saying," but he probably would have repeated it back to us with a gross nasal mimicry of our own accent. Same with a sentence formed of the most colorful of insults, which are my weakest point in French because I have no interest in sounding more like a slob than I already do.

And of course he's not bilingual. Anyone who has struggled to learn a second language, or ever chosen the difficult over the easy would never make comments like that. I suppose I should pity him for his own pathetic ignorance.

Most people are decent enough to ignore that I can't make Rs or Ns the proper French way, that I mix up masculine and feminine nouns, and that I sometimes forget to use the subjunctive. Some people, like the lunch ladies at school, for example, correct me. Occasionally, very occasionally, curiosity strikes a person I encounter and they ask whether I'm English (they never guess American first). And my host family has mentioned a couple of times that I've made progress since first getting here--that's the closest thing to a compliment I've gotten on my spoken French, but still, positive enough.

So why is it this one single absolute jerk that gets to me so much? I'd like to plop him down in the US somewhere, see how he likes living among strangers who assume he's simple-- but I don't think he'd make it.

Butter

2006-11-07T12:26:00.000-06:00

I made a huge slip-up the other day. I'm not referring to when I dropped the telephone in the cat's water dish (the phone is fine), or when I accidentally spoke to a professor using tu, the familiar form of you.

No: I accidentally mistook margarine for real butter. Heads exploded all across Bretagne when I washed the empty butter dish and placed something greasy and yellow in it without reading the foil wrapper. My host sisters were horrified at my betise. "That's margarine!" they admonished, as if speaking to a small child who'd put her shoes on the wrong feet. "It's just for baking." I stammered something about not being able to see the difference.

Apparently that's not something one says in the land of cuisine au beurre, where store windows and food packaging are proudly emblazoned with the words "pur buerre," assuring potential customers that they wouldn't dream of using anything but the purest, the realest, the best butter humanly (bovinely?) possible, where boulangeries and patisseries exude airborne particles of butter, where even ham and cheese sandwiches sport a thick layer of butter in the place of mayo and mustard.

My host sisters freaked out that I couldn't tell the difference between butter, the golden fat of the gods, and lowly margarine, which only exists to be and incorporated into a limited number of food items. "Of course I can taste the difference, I just can't see it," I tried to backtrack, having realised my faux pas, but it was no use. They made me taste some bread with butter on it, and then, practically gagging as they watched, some bread with margarine. The mom walked in while I was belatedly praising the qualities of butter-- its saltiness, solidity, and all-around deliciousness.

"She doesn't know the difference between butter and margarine!" The mom gasped, drawing air over her teeth ever so Frenchly in dismay. They all looked at me and I could see the cogs of pity churning in their heads.

I've got a lot to learn.

St Malo, Halloween, and Toussaint

2006-11-02T05:30:00.000-06:00

They say that the French don't celebrate Halloween-- my host mom explained to me that it was "a la mode" a few years ago but less so now--but that's not precisely true. Kids in polyester costumes and waxy makeup are scurrying about on the street in search for candy, but judging by what's going on in this apartment, I don't think they're having much success. My host family forgot to buy candy. We had about six or so trick-or-treaters, and each of them has climbed three flights of stairs in vain, the poor things. If this were the US, they would have come pre-saturated with sugar from a school party and would know which houses not to bother with by who has pumpkins and porch lights. But maybe it makes actually finding candy all that much more worth it. Like a Skinner box.

An American friend had a Halloween party at her host family's house last night. I went as a French chick; my costume consisted of a fake cigarette and two scarves wrapped tight and high around my neck, like one of those braces car crash victims wear. And apparently my new haircut "looks French"-- well, it should. I showed the coiffeuse a picture of what to aim for vaguely, and then went along with her suggestions. It turned out amazingly, actually. It's the best haircut I've ever had mainly because it's about seven inches shorter than it was, but also because it's highly cute, in my own humble opinion.

Last Sunday, I went to St-Malo with my host mom who put flowers on her parents' graves for Toussaint, All Saints' Day. I walked through the cemetery for a while, among the giant glossy tombstones of people who lived and died three and four centuries ago.

Later that day, we ate lunch on the beach in a lucky patch of sunshine and watched the boats go by. The Route du Rhum, a transatlantic solo race from St-Malo to Guadeloupe, had started an hour before, and we could just barely see the sailboats (along with their entourages of news helicopters and sightseeing speedboats) on the horizon. The wind picked up, bringing clouds, as we walked the ramparts that surround the city. We got coffee and looked at the shops within the walls before heading home.

I definitely require a repeat visit to St-Malo; I love a city where it's virtually impossible to get lost, or to have to walk further than twenty feet to the nearest creperie, glowing warm and yellow against the dreary outdoors. Everyone in my host family save the new baby was born in St-Malo, and there was a general expression of disappointment that wee Raphael is a Parisian by birth. My Brittany travel guide says "Foremost a native of St-Malo, a Breton perhaps, and a Frenchman last," and I think I saw a glimpse of that this weekend.

Parrainage

2006-10-22T09:45:00.000-05:00

Two months in, and I finally meet some real French people. I should qualify that by saying that I don't consider my host family, professors, the Council monitores, the kids I teach, their teachers, various shopkeepers, fellow straphangers, or the occasional drunk guy in the street shouting the Gallic equivalent of "heeeey baby!" really French. I take my classes with other foreigners, mainly American and Chinese, but there's this "parrainage" program that hooks up us with French students who want to meet us. They really do; apparently some were turned away on account of there not being an even number. It's nice to feel wanted.

I freaked out a little bit right before we were to be introduced to our people: "What if I get one of those weird guys with the years-old dreadlocks? Or a girl who wears tapered jeans?" But my worries were alleviated when I met Celine, a totally nice, clean-cut, normal looking girl; I can stay in my bubble for at least a little bit longer. She's from Normandy and studies the UHB equivalent of my own major, International Studies. We both speak French, English, and Spanish, or at least part of each, though we speak in French because mine is apparently better than her English. She took me over to meet her friend, who was chatting with her partenaire. There are definitely people here I don't like, even a few I actively avoid, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was Rachel, one of my best friends in the group. I wondered, listening to French people speaking a delicate and pretty Queen's English, how my French sounds to them. I'm taking a phonetics class with a lab, so I hear my own voice, like a sheet of aluminum foil, thin and unyielding as I try for the millionth time to pronounce my Rs and make liasons in the right places, but I have no concept of how they perceive accents. I have not been swooned over or asked to repeat things like some Americans ask of people with certain accents, so I tend to think that my accent's heard as neither pretty nor delicate. Alas.

Celine is the only person in the 18-25 demographic, besides my own brother, who does not have an email address. What do people do without the internet? Without Facebook? I have her cell phone number, but mine is broken, and anyway, I don't know what to do after the initial meeting, where there were crepes and wine to provide structure and fill in the inevitable pauses in conversation. But it's good to broaden my social horizons.

It's a gorgeous day, rainy, cold, and grey. The emo kid in me was in a funk around the time of my last post because it had been sunny for almost two solid weeks, and I felt gypped, having chosen Bretagne in part for its supposedly gloomy climate. I made chocolate chip cookies today with no brown sugar and with what I think was baking soda. Some of them turned out okay. I felt totally at home when half of them stayed raw on the top and burnt on the bottom, just like always happens chez nous. Some things never change.

Scrunchies

2006-10-17T10:46:00.000-05:00

They say that Europe is in general more fashionable than the US. It's true that you don't see much in the way of pajama pants in public over here, nor do people schlub around in flipflops and hoodies on a day-to-day basis. But if the tradeoff is an epidemic of greasy dreadlocks, men carrying purses and wearing barettes in their long hair, and a widespread proclivity towards scarves that resemble neck braces, I think I prefer the stateside end of the fashion spectrum.

Every morning, when I get on the metro, and see yet another presumably straight guy carrying a Louis Vuitton purse, or have to maneuver around a couple macking in the stairwell, or hear French for the first time, I have this instant of despair where I remember where I am and realize that I have do it all over again-- pronounce simple words like bread and okay wrong, get corrected by the lunch ladies when I forget for the millionth time that yogurt is feminine (or is it masculine? I forget), suffer through awful dubbing of awful American TV shows, and endure strange looks should I open my mouth to say pardon to someone on the metro.

I keep busy enough so that there's no pining or unexpected bursts of nostalgia or homesickness, except when it comes to The Weather Channel and clothes dryers, of course. It helps that my host family is entirely nice and that they also have free long distance. I'm planning trips with some friends-- skiing, Belgium, a rugby match in Paris-- so it's not as if I want to go home, it's just that eight months from now seems so far away. Usually it's nothing but a moment of "oh, damn, not again" that passes in a couple of minutes as I tap into this humility that I never even knew I had.

On the topic of humility, I taught my first classes yesterday. It was a bit awkward-- I wonder how much they understood of what I had to say regarding the song about frogs that I taught the five-year-olds, but the second grade class went much more smoothly and I was rewarded at the end by a covey of girls who approached me to excitedly ask if I would be teaching them every Monday. One showed off her hair tie which was shaped like a candy, and one boy showed me the picture of a cow caca that he'd drawn for the letter C, which I took to be signs of acceptance and perhaps even admiration. To them, I'm a cool 20-year-old American girl--- they don't know any better, which is a huge reason I chose to teach in an elementary school and older grades, where the students would surely be wiser to my lack of coolness.

Chateaux a velo

2006-10-10T11:21:00.000-05:00

The classes I'm taking here aren't exactly easier than the ones I've taken back home, but they are a lot less work. This time last year I'd already written a couple of papers and taken midterms; here, there's not even required reading except for the handouts we get in class. No books to buy, no hours spent at the online card catalogs or on Wikipedia. I'm learning lots but it's not time-consuming-- not yet, anyway. So I have a lot of time on my hands.

So this weekend, a friend and I decided to go to the Loire River valley. We managed everything ourselves-- train tickets, hotel-- and everything worked out surprisingly well. After an uneventful yet nonetheless exciting TGV ride from Rennes to Blois via Paris, Rachel and I found our hotel with no problem. Feeling the need for some ice cream to celebrate the fact that we didn't get lost, miss any of our trains, or lose one another in the pickpocket's paradise that is Gare Montparnasse, we wandered around Blois for a while in the pouring rain. Blois is not a bustling metropolis at 9 pm on a Friday night during the tourist off-season, let me tell you.

The next morning we went to the chateau there, having found it the night before after an hour's wandering and an hour's worth of "Does that look like a chateau?" and "No... I think that's a gas station," etcetera. It was pretty cool; definitely worth getting up early so as to be first in line of the massive crowds of mid-October tourists. I'm kidding, of course-- there were a few other people there but Rachel and I were the youngest by approximately forty years. Some sort of fancy car society, Club Hotchkiss, had all of their fancy cars parked out in the front of the castle.

They would follow us later to Cheverny and Chambord. They drove their fancy cars; we rode our rented bikes. The Loire valley has a system of neatly marked bike trails that zigzag through the woods and between corn and sunflower fields and tiny quiet villages. A map isn't even necessary, though we had three, as at each fork in the road there's a little green person on a small green bike marking the way. It's a weird sensation to be in the middle of nowhere, to see no person, to hear not even a single distant passing car, and yet trust this tiny signage utterly. It was a little over 18 kilometers to Cheverny, if you don't count the two times we missed the sign and had to backtrack. After hours of biking, more physical activity than I've done all at once since I was 15, we got to the chateau there, but the highlight of that day, I think, was the food. A baguette, cheese, and tomatoes never tasted better. We returned to our bikes after only an hour or so's visit, not wanting to be caught in the middle of the woods on an unlit trail in the middle of the night.

Sunday morning we woke up at 5:30 am. We were on our bikes by six. It was pitch black. Freezing. We rode south over a bridge over the Loire out of Blois, the mist rising eerily over the water, a full moon glinting off of the empty streets. Luckily, the first leg of our journey to Chambord was through a little town with streetlights, but it was still dark as we pedaled over dirt roads through fields of dry corn. The sun eventually rose quite beautifully, but if anything, it got colder. After almost four hours the novelty of this bucolic tour started to wear off. The dogs that chased us got to be a little bit annoying, I started to worry about getting shot by one of the bird hunters that dotted the empty fields, and about getting bird flu from the aforementioned birds. I have also never been so cold in my life. When we finally got to Chambord, 22 kilometers later, I thawed out a bit, but that only made me more aware of the pain in my feet and backend. We considered taking a taxi back. But frugality won out, and thank goodness, because the return trip was entirely pleasant, faster, and rather downhill-- I had been so busy trying to ignore the chill that I hadn't even realised it was uphill on the way there.

The biking aspect overshadowed the magnificent chateaux, but it would have been boring if we'd been lazy, and who needs to spend more than an hour at the largest chateau in France? Sitting down on the train was exquisite, although even that hurt a little bit, albeit in a good job-well-done way. The best thing was there were no groups to follow around, no itinerary to stick to. And it was cheap. We planned and executed the whole thing ourselves, and were willing to rough it, which was a bit scary and could have gone horribly awry, but everything was perfect.

Photos are forthcoming, but the wifi at Subway can only handle so much at one time, and I'm currently downloading the newest episodes of Lost and Grey's Anatomy; we're going to Cornouaille this weekend--the whole group, in a cushioned and heated bus-- and I'll need something to watch on the way there if I'm not to spend the voyage pedaling.

Mamaji

2006-09-30T05:50:00.000-05:00

A few days ago, right after getting my carte de sejour, I had several hours to kill, so I decided to get on the first bus that came my way and see where it took me. I've done this in College Station too, though it's somewhat more interesting to do it here. I got on with my beloved unlimited bus/metro pass and took a seat. Immediately, a woman approached me, clipboard in hand, and asked me to participate in a survey. First question: What is your destination? Answer: Uhh... I don't know? I told her the first bus stop that I thought of, which of course was in the opposite direction, which of course she informed me whilst giving me funny looks. The rest of the interview followed along the same vein. I need to learn how to BS in French.

Yesterday I explored by foot and happened to find not only the school where I'll be teaching but also an amazing swimming pool. In Paris a few weeks ago, I tried to find the Piscine Molitor, the pool in Life of Pi, but alas, it shut down in the late eighties. This one, Saint-Georges, might come close as far as awesome French swimming pools go, though. Even the exterior is impressive. It sits amid a cloud of chlorine in all its art deco glory in the middle of town, just across from the Jardin du Thabor.

Also, there are approximately twelve thousand coiffeuses in this city, and the only thing that's keeping me from chopping all my hair off these days (without Mom and Leah to forbid me to do so) is that I can't decide which one to patronize. The student discount doesn't help matters; there's very little keeping me from being cheap and stupid all at once, here.

One thing that I haven't found in my wanderings is cheddar cheese. It's a real shame but I guess the French like their cheese white and/or gooey. I'm going to attempt to make macaroni tonight, with Parmesan and Gryuere as mediocre substitutes. Then I'm going to see Le Diable s'habille en Prada, in version francaise. I tend to think that dubbing is a mediocre substitute for subtitles, but I can't say for sure yet.

Normandie

2006-09-25T12:09:00.000-05:00

The weekend began cheerfully at 8:30 Saturday morning, with such good weather that I can't even remember whether it was warm or cool. Our first stop was a bell foundry in Villedieu-les-Poeles. There were a bunch of bells there. A group of us had a picnic lunch of pizzas in a park nearby; I ate four slices but was somehow famished three hours later.

From there, we proceeded to the Caen memorial museum of World War 2. Although I'm fairly familiar with this section of history, it's interesting to see it from a somewhat different angle. The most emotional part was a film, half an hour long, portraying the D Day landings from the point of view of the invading Allies and that of the Nazis in France. The screen was divided into two halves; on the right, the Nazis, on the left, the Americans, Canadians, and British forces. At times, though, it wasn't clear who was who, which I thought an especially poignant way of emphasizing the Victor Hugo's argument that all war is civil war-- they were all people killing and being killed.

On the way to the youth hostel, we stopped at one of the D Day beaches, Arromanches. Overlooking the families playing on the beach from a cliff thirty feet high, it was uncomfortable to imagine the violent history, but the remnants of the artificial harbours built by British forces still stud the water.

Sunday morning, we saw the Bayeux Tapestry, which I wouldn't exactly call a tapestry, per se, as it is more of a super huge embroidery. Gorgeous though. Another violent battle. I took the French version of the audio-tour and managed to understand most of it.

Et après ça, the Cimetière Américain, and its too many rows of white crosses. Then to la Pointe du Hoc, a battlefield still pocked with enormous craters and fringed by barbed wire at the edge of 100-foot cliffs. (James Earl Rudder led the 2nd Ranger Battalion up these cliffs to destroy the German guns, and later became president of A&M University.)

After this weekend, a Monday in class was quite peaceful. I had a linguistic breakthrough this morning: A guy walked up to me and asked me a question which not only did I understand and know the answer to, but I also knew how to say the answer in French! Usually it's much harder to speak with people who don't already know that I'm only a pseudo-Francophone, so this was kind of exciting. I go to apply for my carte de sejour tomorrow morning if my host mom has got the papers I need from her all ready. Then for the rest of the day I have nothing else to do, so I have plans to thoroughly explore the city and possibly upload some photos if I have time to spare.

Chiant

2006-09-19T04:53:00.000-05:00

I think that the French media is obsessed with 9/11. Images of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center, the buildings collapsing, and people falling from the top stories are all over the tv, in montages for news shows as well as ads for documentary specials, which have not stopped even though the anniversary has passed. I'm not a fan; it feels sensational and cheap, not to mention disrespectful to those who died and were hurt in the attacks and their families. It's not like this in the US, is it? I don't remember seeing this kind of graphic images tossed about so casually. My host family and I were talking about the movie World Trade Center last night, and I explained that the two men in the film were the last two of twenty survivors pulled from the rubble. The mom said, "Oh, but American movies always have happy endings." "Yeah, that's really annoying," replied the daughter. That kind of struck me as not very nice, considering it's a true story.

You know what ticks me off? The lack of a clothes dryer. I hung out my laundry on the patio to dry and when I retrieved it a giant spider had built webs in the legs of my jeans. Other than that, the "irritability" phase of culture shock's fine so far. Although if I have to say "Non merci" one more time to someone plying me with YET MORE FOOD, I might explode

I signed up for my classes yesterday morning: aside from the core, my electives are international human rights and French economy, so graduating on time might still be an option. I'm also going to be teaching English classes once a week in an elementary school in Rennes. If I would man up and teach at the higher levels, I could get paid, but since I go by the "sounds right to me" method of English (and French) grammar, I don't think I should presume to be qualified to do so.

Oh that's brilliant

2006-09-15T08:05:00.000-05:00

Last night I went to a bar, because unlike in College Station Texas, "bar" doesn't necessarily mean "stinky night club with ear-splitting, profane music and throngs of sweaty dancing drunk people" here, which is why I tend to avoid them back home. I met some friends at the metro stop at Place Saint Anne and while we huddled under umbrellas for a while waiting for the last of our group to arrive, a Scottish girl came up to us and started chatting, evidently hearing our awful accents. She's studying law at Rennes 2 with Erasmus, and was waiting for her "always late Swedish friends" to show up. They've only just arrived in Rennes as well, and we decided to meet up Friday night at an Irish pub for the sake of international accord.

"Zut alors," I said, remembering. "I can't come. I have to go to Paris this weekend." There's a sentence I never thought I'd ever say with disappointment. Of course I'm not really, but a whole two and a half days of speaking nothing but French-- no lazy lapses into Franglaise are allowed with my host family-- are a bit daunting. We're going to Paris to celebrate someone's birthday, spending two nights camped on the floor of the sister's apartment and who knows what else.

The language classes I'm taking this past week and the next have been incredibly useful so far. As a part of the Civilisation Francaise course, we had lessons in slang, vulgarities, and this horrible thing called verlan. After that class I could suddenly understand my eighteen-year-old host sister with a hundred percent more clarity. She wasn't saying "un ananas" (a pineapple) insulted her on the metro today but rather "une nana," a chick, for example. You'd think I could get that from context but she talks so incredibly fast that it's all I can do to get the gist of things, much less understand her word for word. Yesterday there was a wine-tasting lesson, in which I drank more alcohol than I've drunk in my entire life combined, which amounts to about half a cup. I can now describe a grape's anatomy, the various types of soil of vinyards, and life cycles of fermenting wine, a fascinating addition to my vocabulary, and useful, I'm sure.

Wifi gratuit au Funky Munky

2006-09-12T08:37:00.000-05:00

I have made it to Rennes, moved in with my host family, started classes, and at long last found internet access. So much has gone on in the past few days, and I have so much to say about it, I don't know where to begin.

Ma famille d'accueille is a mom with three daughters and a giant black cat, Noisette. As I predicted, they live on the top floor with no elevator. Despite all the "culture shock" brochures they handed out on the bus from Paris warning us not to enter the kitchen, open windows, go barefoot, use the "tu" form, and other supposedly important details about the French, this family is totally normal without being sacks of sawdust. They're funny and frank, and when I hesitated to get something out of the fridge, said "Don't be silly, you live here now." The 18-year-old and I have so far watched Lost, Grey's Anatomy, and "Les Experts" (CSI) dubbed in French. I can get along with anyone who watches as much tv as I do.

On Sunday we went to Cancale, a little town on the coast between Saint Malo and Mont Saint Michel, to visit an aunt an uncle of the family. Lunch--and I exaggerate not-- lasted for four hours, from the entrees to the cheese course to the gateau. I haven't seen many fat French people so far, but I cannot understand the magic behind eating four or five times as much as I do yet staying skinny. Even I can now fit into my skinny pants again-- glad I brought them-- which must be a cause de the eighteen million stairs that exist everywhere.

Sunday, by the way, was entirely English-free. It's exhausting, physically exhausting, to speak in French all day, but I manage fine. For the most part the family was catching up with one another; one daughter lives in Paris and I guess they haven't all been together for quite a while, so for the most part I was a spectator. With all my concentration focused on comprehension, there's not much I don't catch, which was a surprising aspect of the first few days of immersion. When it's my turn to talk, though, it's a lot harder, of course, but I can feel it getting better already. My host family has told me I "speak well" and "better than the last girl" who lived with them last year, but it comes and goes in waves, depending on how tired I am.

On a similarly amazing note, I am currently wearing a sweater! Half of the group is from Minnesota or somewhere frigid like that, and always say "qu'il fait chaud!" ("it's so hot!") whereas I am enjoying what's Christmas-like weather in Texas.

I think I'll like it here!

Paris

2006-09-04T07:04:00.000-05:00

I think I've gotten maybe three hours of sleep in the past thirty-six. My ears failed to equalize during the descent into Paris; I think I have a sinus infection on top of that, and so I cannot hear a thing, save for the odd creaking pops within my head as my French reawakens ever so slowly.

But it's all good: I'm in Paris and I think I might be getting a new burst of energy. It's colder here at 2:00 pm than it is home at the crack of dawn, and that alone is enough to make me forget that in a quarter hour I'll have to lug my eighty-nine pounds of suitcases up four stories of spiral staircase.

Coming soon: signing a contract to never speak English, inevitable panic attack. Chouette.

Prête

2006-09-02T17:58:00.000-05:00

I'm leaving for France tomorrow! My suitcases weigh approximately 17 tons and I'm hoping that my host family doesn't live at the very top of an elevator-less apartment building, unless they have a strong firefighter in the family to help me with all of the stuff I'm bringing.

I'll write more once I actually have something to say, perhaps from Paris in a couple of days.

Travel

2006-08-11T00:06:00.000-05:00

I have to keep reminding myself that there wasn't actually a terrorist attack yesterday. The way CNN has been acting-- all furrowed brows and scrolling marquees and shots of discarded toothpaste-- it's easy to forget that nothing really happened, per se. My family flew home from Canada last night, and I'm grateful that I didn't know about any of this before they got safely home, for as chill as I usually am about my own stuff, I worry a lot about other people.

I'm not scared that the second leg of my trip to France-- Newark to Paris, three weeks from now--will be attacked by terrorists. Dying in a plane crash is actually on my top ten list of best ways to perish. It's why I always go for the window seat. But according to this article, the foiled plot had something to do with cell phones and ipods, and I'm sure that laptops and digital cameras are also interdits past security points.

In one way, it is a relief to not have to juggle all my necessary electronics (yes, they are so) in and out of their cases to turn them on at security; I am not the most graceful person, especially when rushed and nervous. But to leave my precious, vital technology in an unlocked suitcase of questionable quality? That's nervewracking. Then there's the whole "no liquids" mandate, which I'm not even sure will apply to my flights, but I absolutely do not like the idea of arriving fuzzy-mouthed from lack of toothpaste, or completely blind from wanting contact lens solution, if I may be so shallow and self-centered.

I suppose hoping for the best and praying for a joyful reunion with my checked baggage at the other side of the ocean is all there is to do.

Inspiration from the number cinq

2006-07-29T14:28:00.000-05:00

I designed this blog myself, with help from Thur's Templates for the template foundation; Squidfingers for the background; and the DK World Atlas for the banner photo. Much more to come.