I Still Exist!

Two month followup coming soon.

In the meantime, if you REALLY REALLY want to read more about me, start checking my United States blog at:

lifeisapond.blogspot.com

--G

Move it to the exits

Avignon
June 8^th, 2008

I think this might be the last time I update this blog from France.

So let's make it good, I guess is the moral of the story..

I'm sitting in my room at 34 Avenue de la Trillade, Avignon, France. The four white walls, two chairs, one desk, one bed, one window, and three decorative rugs that no longer bear that terrifying unfamiliarity they had on my first day here. In the two and a half months I've spent here, they have become familiar to me, so that even closing my eyes I can envision them.

My one window is propped open for light and air, and outside I can hear the telltale hiss of the Mistral whispering through the leaves. For most of this morning that sound has been the only sound, and then it began to remind me that I'm going to be in the air myself in a few days, and then I turned my own music on—nothing evasive, mostly slow and quiet stuff. The Mistral accompanies it, calling me like home starts to call me.

Every now and then I stop to wonder if I should even be inside right now. I wonder if I should get up, get out, just walk. Walk around the city, take in those sights that will be lost to me in a short four days' time. I wonder if I should go to my kebab on the corner and order a steak-frites from the vendor who wears thick glasses and tells me “grazi.” I toy with climbing to the top of the Palais and watching the Rhone. And invariably I decide that right now, I'd rather be here, cross-legged on my bed, listening to my music, the Mistral, and taking some time to just contemplate where I am. Six hours until dinner. I can afford to use one of them writing down a few of the thoughts that have been swirling nonstop through my head since I passed the one week mark.

Because while the Mistral and the gorgeous blue sky are outside calling me, I look around my room and have no choice but to face the reminders of the week to come.

I've taken my suitcases out of the closet where I stowed them away two months ago. I peeled the baggage check labels from March off the handles, and started to pack. The smaller suitcase is almost full now—the lid is stuffed as full as it can get without bursting the seams, and the larger part is nearly full of souvenirs, presents that I continually pray to the powers that be are adequate. My swimsuit, some other clothes I know I'm not going to wear again in the next four days. The larger suitcase is the bigger intimidation—almost completely empty, it lies open against the wall and looking at it reminds me that I'm going to have to try to stuff the rest of my life in France into that unassuming piece of cloth and plastic.

My desk chair, the one that has never moved since I arrived, now serves at coat rack for the outfit I'm flying home in. I went ahead and decided, so that I could put those clothes aside: pants, tank top, t-shirt, collared shirt, blazer—the idea's to wear as much home as I can wear without looking too much like a freak.

On top of the desk are three piles. One of stuff that'll only be of use to me once I've left Avignon—my American cell phone, my American money, little pieces of my life back home that were useless over here. Counting out the US currency was surreal in its unfamiliarity. The sizes of the bills and the coins seemed all wrong. The bills were all the same color, and a quarter feels freakishly light. The other pile is of things I need to finish classes: four books, one French-English dictionary, all of which will be put in the suitcases by Monday night. The third is what I won't be bringing back to the US at all—the booklets, box, and charger to my program cell phone. The phone itself is out of minutes and I'm trying to make it the rest of the trip without buying any. It'll be a nice alarm clock until I turn it in on Wednesday.

All that being said, the rest of my earthly possessions in France are either in my closet or piled on my bed. Looking around this room there is no mistaking an eminent departure. And that is both thrill and fear for me. Just like the passport I had to take back out, like the reservation codes and flight numbers I have neatly written out beside it. Thrill and fear, tempered with a heartbreak I never in a million years expected to feel.

“Once we get to the one week mark, I'm sure I'll be totally ready to come home.”

How many times did I say it, each time trusting its truth implicitly? I always figured that by this point in the program, home would be calling me so strongly that I would actually want to leave sooner. Point blank, I thought that by now I'd want to leave...and I don't. Not completely, and not yet. And while it's true that an enormous part of me is already aching for home, a part of me is devastated that the final goodbye is so close.

I have changed on this trip. I figured I would, but not as drastically as I feel like I've changed. I feel independent, and I feel like I know myself. “We talked about you last night,” Cat told me, “Talked about how much you've changed here.” And not all of us can say that. There are people here who say they haven't changed a bit. There are people who called this quarter a waste of their time. There are even people who claim their French has gotten worse. But I can feel it—I can feel that I'm different.

And this trip hasn't been perfect. Let me pause to assure you of that. As in any kind of life, a life abroad has ups and downs, has enormous highs and the lowest of lows. On this trip I've felt despair that practically had me non-functional. I've felt anger the likes of which has made me want to strangle something. But that's not what this journey has been about. It's like I've found a part of myself that was hiding over here all along.

When I look at my passport, it reminds me that re-entry is coming. If France has made me what I am right now, can the changes even survive the US? Will I go back to my old life and lose everything I've gained? Will that part of me I found here stay behind?

Every moment now feels like the end of something. My final Friday and Saturday are already gone, I have four lunches and four dinners left, only four nights to wander the city at night with my friends. That's why I've started packing. Now that I can hear the countdown clock ticking at every moment, I want the bags packed. I want the homework done. I want every last minute with my friends in France that I can manage. Going home last night at 1:30 in the morning felt like a loss, because the others stayed out later. How can I spend any of my precious remaining time doing something as menial as packing?

I guess that's why I'm still thinking that I should be out walking instead of sitting here writing. But maybe at least if I can say some of the stuff I'm thinking, then I won't have to let it bug me anymore. Maybe if I can just spend a quick half-hour wallowing in the fear, I won't feel obliged to deny it.

I am a compulsive, self-critical, anxious person. That much won't change. For the next for days there will always be that little voice inside reminding me of the passing time. But I will not spend the last four days in Avignon bracing myself for the end.

And in five days, I'll be home. No matter how afraid I am of losing this experience, being home is a thrill that counters the anxiety blow for blow. I'm going to see my family. I'm going to see their faces and for the first time in two months, they won't be the frozen smiles in my handful of photographs. I'm going to play with my dogs. I'm going to talk to Sam, whose voice I've barely heard since leaving. I'm going to have a house I can sing in, a house I can live in like I belong there. I'm going to eat dinners I choose, I'll have ranch dressing and co-jack cheese and ohmigawd Cooler Ranch Doritos and ohmigawd popcorn. Peanut butter hasn't been that big of a deal for me, but MAN do I want some popcorn. I'm going to have a showerhead that attaches to a wall. From pretty details like food all the way up to the immense joy of hugging my Mom and Dad for the first time since March, everything about home is calling to me. It's the high to counter the low that is leaving.

I have made real, true friends here. They have changed me, they've showed me myself as they see me, they've made this experience what it is and has been. They will be my classmates next quarter, although I wonder if we'll ever be this close again. They will forever be happy memories of the people who helped change my life. Leaving that will be difficult to say the least. But then I picture myself running through the airport into my family's arms, and I realize that I'm just in a four-day state of limbo. No, not the “how low can you go” kind of limbo. I just mean someplace sullen, someplace where all I can do is reflect, and take it day by day, and hope I have more than just suitcases to take home from three months of living in France.

I can't stay inside anymore. I'm getting my shoes and I'm going for a walk.

I expect I'll write once or twice once I'm home. After all, the end of this journey is nothing if not a new beginning, a new launch point, a new pond to jump in. I've got my toes on the edge of dry land, and in four short days I'm going to take a flying leap.

I love you and miss you all, more than ever before.

-G

Universite d'Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse
June 10th
1:45 pm

This is the final post from France. I'll see you at home.
Thank you for letting me share this adventure with you.
I'm deeply grateful.
Love you, miss you.

I'm coming, guys, I'm coming,
G

Gather all your jackets...

Avignon
June 6^th, 12:39 AM.

Well, I guess I should start by profoundly apologizing for being the girl who cried blog update a few days ago. I suppose I was just so sure that I'd get around to it, and I shouldn't have been. See, with the program winding down like this, we all seem to have realized that we want to spend time together, we want to go places and take pictures and savor like it's our last day. But that's another blog entry. It's far too late at night at this point to get so depressing, even if I do want to write some metaphorical stuff. Maybe if you would find it interesting I could get metaphorical and introspective and things a few times after I get back home, I just hope it doesn't seem too narcissistic of me to keep a travel blog going after I get home. It's awesome that you have all enjoyed it so much, and heaven knows I've certainly loved writing it, but I understand that this is a blog about a journey, and that journey is going to end. Well, I've gone and gotten all depressing anyway.

Let's talk about Marseilles and things.

Well, last Friday we met after Oral Production class to bus down to Marseilles for the weekend. Actually, we spent Friday afternoon hiking around the calanques. (Side note: why do program directors not tell you that you'll be hiking on this program, and that maybe you should bring some hike-appropriate shoes?) The calanques are gorgeous, and each photo was totally worth the hours-long climbing on trails of rocks (if you have facebook, go look at my Marseilles photo album and you'll see the kind of hiking I'm talking about.). The whole time I was thinking about the incredible stuff I've seen and done on this trip, and hoping against hope that someday I really truly will come back to Europe. My inner realist has already started reminding me that there's no guarantee I'll ever be back, but there's always that hope that someday I'll be able to get back, maybe hit Italy, which is the one thing I genuinely wish I would've done that I didn't. Man, I'm apparently pursuing depressing material tonight. The calanques hike was roughly three hours, a great deal of it uphill and over enormous rocks (I mean, you couldn't see dirt between the rocks there were so many rocks), but it was one of my favorite things I've done on this whole trip. Talking linguistics on the way uphill with Major, quoting Robert Frost poetry on the way downhill with James, and everything in between was pretty fantastic. I use very dramatic adjectives, don't I? Fantastic, gorgeous, incredible...I guess that's a good thing that I can use all these great expressive words.

After we were done in Cassis (that's where the calanques are, it's not technically Marseilles,) we went to Marseilles and got a little time in our hotel (Hotel Relax) to shower and get ready for dinner. Dinner was at this rather fancy place called La Maison Blanche, and it was one of the most fantastic meals I've eaten in a long while. And keep in mind that I am in France, so I've had a lot of other fantastic meals on this trip. This one blew most of those away. First course was eggplant with goat cheese and bacon on top. I've learned to like goat cheese, but only in small quantities, not that you'll find that particularly interesting. Anyway, the bread and salad were great too, and the water was pretty good (funny thing about France, you've pretty much got the choice of wine or water with dinner. I've been drinking lots of water since I got here.) Then the main course was seafood risotto complete with mussels, squid and, get this, baby octopus! Which is pretty good if you can get past the fact that your food has small tentacles. That was disturbing the first time I ate one, marginally less disturbing the second time, but seriously, they weren't half bad taste-wise. That's one way I think I've changed over here: I've definitely gotten used to eating new foods almost without hesitation. I don't even ask what things are anymore, I just pick up a fork and dig in.

Oops. My alarm goes off in seven hours. Seven hours is more sleep than I've gotten in quite a while, so I'm going to take advantage. If nothing else at least I'm pretty sure this is getting posted tomorrow, and I'll at least finish talking about Marseilles if I've got time. Worst that can happen is that I leave you in suspense for a while.

Anyway, let me at least conclude in case I don't add any new material tomorrow. I'm officially in my last week of the program, which is uber depressing although I have never been so anxious to see my family before. We're spending a lot of time going out at night, walking around in the afternoons, and just generally spending the rest of our time in each others' company enjoying the last moments of our incredible life in France. So I hope you at home will understand if I am not the most faithful of blog-keepers from here on out. I hope to put up at least one more good-sized update, but please understand that I have to leave this country knowing that I lived every moment to its fullest, and I've got to be spending as much of this time with my friends enjoying Avignon as possible. No promises, I'm going to try, but just keep that in mind.

Plus in a week I'll be with you in person, and I'll have a ton of stories to tell in person. Hopefully I won't repeat my blog entries too much and bore you all. I'm so excited to see you all that I hardly recognize myself. One week and four hours from now I'll have landed in Columbus. I will see you SOON!

Until then, miss you all, thinking of you all (and really sorry that I'll probably beat my postcards home, but that's another entry...)

-G

Avignon
June 6th, 10:09 AM

Alright, well I guess I'm going to try to add a little to the entry as I wait for my turn to give my final talking presentation for Oral Production.

I guess I had left you off with dinner at La Maison Blanche. After dinner we randomly walked around the port for a while but we were all pretty exhausted from the calanques, so none of us stayed out long. Kendall and I were both into our room by 11:30, and decided to go French channel surfing. Since I have gotten to France, I have watched a grand total of about two hours of television, and 95% of that was all weather or news reports that Danielle sometimes turns on for background noise. So the opportunity to go French channel surfing was pretty fun. We found many bizarre things, dubbed in about ten different languages, only two and a half of which I understood. However, let me share with you the magnificent adventure that IS the fact that

They show Battlestar Galactica in France! It was dubbed and magnificent and it was even from the early seasons before they ripped up the plot. It reminded me how much I miss my US television, which is funny because I don't even really think I watch that much television at home, compared to other folks my own age at least. But as soon as I heard the theme song I wished I could just kick back and watch some TV. That'll be something to do once I get home. Watch some television.

The next morning James, Ian, Major, Kristen F., Melissa and I met in the lobby and started randomly walking around the city. We almost ended up going to Chateau d'If but we didn't feel like paying 15 euros apiece so we decided to go to Notre Dame. Melissa and Kristen took the little tourist train, but the boys and I decided to walk.

Cue: second enormous uphill climb in a twenty-four hour period.

Again, it was so worth it. Great view, and climbing all the way there really made me feel like I earned the pictures. After that we got some steak-frites and met back up with Melissa and Kristen (silly them and getting driven up the enormous hill...). After some cafe time a bunch of us went over to the beach for the rest of the afternoon.

It was really cool, and I jumped in another pond (which for those of you who don't know is a metaphor for doing something cool or adventurous that I wouldn't do at home,) but I just don't feel like advertising it on the blog. I've been jumping in several ponds lately, and each of them are stories for getting home. Don't worry, they're not racey or anything, I just figured I should reserve some stories that can only be heard in person. That way I don't get home, try to tell all my fun stories and get a lot of "yeah we heard that, yeah that was on your blog, yeah we heard that already too."

Eek! Presenting time. Hopefully I'll update more after I present but if not,
Miss you all, see you in LESS THAN ONE WEEK.
G

Did he just call me...Avril?

Start checking for a new post should new posts interest you. I can't guarantee it'll be today but if it's not today it'll probably be tomorrow.

(Cassis, Marseille, Bill and Avril, jumping in ponds...)

Rock on.

(New music! Haha, this blog's playlist is awesome, and continuously under construction.)

Well folks, I hope it's not too inhuman of me, but I'm going to tell you about my week.

On the grand scale of things, this last week has been pretty awesome. I'm really having the time of my life over here. Between decent classes, a great group of friends, and all the random (usually unexpected) adventures, it's true what everyone told me--I wouldn't trade this experience for anything. I can't wait to come home and start putting these changes into practice. And I do feel like this trip has changed me as a person. But that's another entry.

Right, the telling of the week.

I believe I last updated a week ago today. Tuesdays are my big days of magical accomplishment here, so that's the best day to sit down and write blog updates. Here's how I've been since then:

Wednesday we met seven French resistants. That was incredible, and it was really something else to hear accounts of the resistance from those who lived in it, who participated, who hid messages in the handlebars of their bicycles and sheltered wounded pilots. Some of them were arrested and deported, one was a liaison agent, and even though a few of them had thick provencale accents I loved listening to their accounts of what they had done for their country. I particularly liked hearing from Mireille (she was the liaison agent.) She told us about one of her most emotionally difficult moments during her time as a resistant. There was a woman who had turned in the names of 40 communists, and Mireille had to carry a message that said that this woman could no longer be trusted, and had to be killed. She said it was very difficult for her to deliver that message because she knew that the resistants would kill this woman to keep her from giving more information. I cannot even imagine what that must have felt like, to hold that message in your hand and be responsible for delivering it.

The Resistance museum is in a place called Fontaine de Vaucluse, which is gorgeous if not, as Danielle puts it, "tres touriste." Good thing about touristy places, though: always good ice cream. I got a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of caramel. I also like ice cream cones now. Before I used to just throw the cone away but after I ate the cone a few times I started to like it. Random only semi-interesting tangent, sorry.

Anyway, Fontaine de Vaucluse is...I guess I'd call it a natural spring? I think that's the best way to put it. I'll put some pictures up on the blog when I've posted this entry. Gorgeous, although the water is freezing. Just ask Amanda and James, who jumped in. That was one of the funniest moments of the trip thus far, and I am jealous of them for having done it. Now that it's all said and done I wish that I'd jumped in there with them, just to say I've done it, but oh well. I didn't have a change of clothes with me and wasn't interested in wearing freezing wet jeans to the museum.

Hmm...other highlights...I've got lit class in half an hour, here, so I've got to condense. I figure that I've got so little time left here (relatively speaking) that I'd better start hitting harder with the blog entries. Once I get back in the states I'm thinking that my readership is going to drop significantly. I'm not offended or anything, I just figure that my French adventures are more interesting than my random commentaries on life in Ohio.

(Barracuda just came on...hold on, I've gotta air-guitar for a minute. Picture me doing so, should you so desire!)

Thursday I think was one of the nights we went to Place Pie. There have been a lot of late nights out with friends this week, so they're starting to run together. Funny how at the beginning of this program I used to know exactly what I did, what I ate, who I saw on any given day of the week. Now a week goes by and it feels like an hour, and all the meals and faces and jokes all blur into one another. Anyway, we went to Place Pie and hung out for a while. My first (hopefully ONLY) major headache of this trip hit that night though, so I turned in earlier than everybody else. Big thankya to Ian yet again for walking me home.

(Can't...stop...air guitar-ing!)

Friday in Oral Production we learned weather words, a source of much sarcasm throughout the group as we had already learned pretty much all the vocab list...in MIDDLE SCHOOL. Cath and I cobbled together a weather report for our participation grade, and then reveled in our free Friday afternoon. Friday night Kristin went to Le Comptoir (snooty bar/resto) and I wasn't really interested, so I went to the island with a bunch of the others for the evening. I've already told the story of island night so many times that I'm just going to sum up, but long story short...

1) I've learned not to hang out at the island at night anymore
2) I know how a French person reacts if you flip them off and yell something vulgar (for the record, I DID NOT DO THIS)
3) Ian got head-butted in the face, and
3b) Ian gets sorta scary when he's really angry.

Got home late again, slept in semi-late Saturday morning, then spent Saturday walking around randomly shopping/eating ice cream/sitting in parks with Catron, Kristin, and Caitlin. Caramel ice cream from the magical corner. We also watched random creepy guys jump on and off the carousel, and found the park where Petrarch met Laure. It was a grand adventure. Saturday night was...Place Pie again, I think.

Sunday was rainy and rather lousy out, so I spent the day straightening up my room, reading, napping (may or may not have been multiple naps...) and then Kristin and I walked around the block after dinner to stall doing our history and resistance homework. Hung out in Cathy's room for the night, catching up since we hadn't really seen her since Friday.

Then last night was Lit, History, and then our second Resistance test. Two long essay questions, each of which we'd already discussed more or less completely in class. I feel like I did fine, but we'll see once I get the paper back, I guess.

Last night we hung out at Catron's apartment for the night until after 2:00 in the morning, and it was pretty awesome, listening to 90s music I had no idea I still knew ever word to, singing Chicago, and eating potato chips for the first time since leaving the states.

Sorry I'm getting really brief and un-detailed, I've got ten minutes to lit and like I said, little description is better than none. I can always go into more detail later but if I don't get the time, at least you know something.

Today it was pretty hard to drag myself into Writing Workshop, but I wrote my bio for our project (more on that later) and feel like I did decently at it. Now I've just got lit left today, then some kind of "neighbor party" in the city tonight, then we're going over to Catron's apartment again. Tomorrow there aren't any classes, but Thursday I should be back online and I might even have a halfway decent entry to put up. I miss having the time to sit back and write metaphorical ones. I could wax eloquent for so long about how this trip has already changed me, and how I feel about how much time I've got left here, and all sorts of pensive stuff that's a little more "a la Grace." So I guess the moral of the story is keep checking back here. I haven't forgotten the blog, I'm just trying to really live up my last few weeks. Partying like it's 99, as it were.

In the meantime, hang out here for as long as you want and listen to my awesome music. Air guitar optional, but encouraged. Rock on.

Love you all, miss you all daily,
-G

Trapped in Thursday

Yes, I am well aware that it is Tuesday. It's a metaphor. One I don't really feel like explaining right now, but it has to do with being stuck between metaphorical Wednesday and metaphorical Friday.

Right now, I'm trying to kill three hours between Written Prod and Lit. Technically, there's probably work I could be doing, but whatever it is I don't feel like doing it. In fact, it's been sort of tough to get back in touch with my motivation ever since I got home from Nice. That's why I haven't updated for a while--I was waiting for it to blow over.

I'm not sure if it has blown over, but at least an update now will be more civil than it would've been a few days ago.

Most of the group seems to have run out of steam this week. I'm not sure if it's possible to explain, or if we just have had to start working harder in order to care. The novelty's gone by now, and maybe we're all just starting to run a little low on patience. They told us this would happen, and frankly I didn't believe them. I figured I would hit rock bottom at the beginning of the program, and then the only way to go was up. Instead, I find myself prey to the very slump they were warning us about in February. Anyway...

I haven't updated since Nice, apparently?

Well, the train home from Nice was pretty uneventful (especially in comparison to the Barcelona group's travels, or so I'm told,) and when Cathy and I got back to Avignon, it was raining. Typical Avignon by my definition. Last year's group claims it rained about four times total during their quarter. This time around it's at least once a week, more like twice. Monday there weren't any classes, so we started back with class on Tuesday. Not much to note about Tuesday-Friday.

Well, actually, Wednesday the history prof was a no-show, so Amanda, Kristin, Justin, Caitlin and I went to the gardens at the top of the palais to kill the time before our quote-unquote "excursion." Discussed the magnificent use of metaphor in "Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife." And oh BOY did I ever put a heaping dose of sarcasm on the word "magnificent." Then we met at the Palais to walk around as they set up the stage for the theater festival (kind of a big deal...haha...picture Cannes only for live theater, and there you have the Avignon festival.) The In-Off happens in July, but they're already starting to set up for it. Like I said, big deal here.

But here's the real interesting part of the update. I'm sure you guys drop by this thing to read about my lovely adventures, not about me being grumpy and bored in class.

Saturday we had a group excursion to Uzes. The weather was okay at first, at least okay enough for us to shop in the market for our picnic lunch. Kristin, Major and I bought bread, cheese, strawberries, some magnificent lemony cake-pastry thing, all for the picnic lunch we thought we'd be having that afternoon. The plan for the day was to have a picnic lunch and then canoe to the Pont de Gard.

'Course this is back before we knew we were going to be here for the rainiest spring in Avignon (probably not actually a valid statistic, it just feels that way.) We had finished shopping, hanging out in a cafe for an hour, and walking back to the bus when it started raining. So we ate our picnic lunch on the bus waiting for the rain to pass, as Chrisophe called the canoe people and tried to sort things out.

Long story short, we spent an hour and a half sitting on the bus in the parking lot at Uzes, the rain ended up making the water too high and the current too violent to canoe, and we improvised. Definition of improvisation: call up the Haribo Candy Museum and see when they're open.

Like most other establishments in France that have employees, the Haribo Museum closes for a few hours at lunchtime. So we had to wait until it opened to go. Hence the whole "sitting for an hour and a half on a bus in a parking lot" thing. Haribo makes gummy candy. How shall I sum up the place? Uhh...museum leg of the visit lasted about fifteen minutes, gift shop leg of the visit lasted significantly longer.

Huge. Stinkin'. Gift shop.

Enormous.

How on earth do you put that much candy in one room? Plus random things like Haribo umbrellas, keychains, postcards. And for one reason or another, the candy is all really really cheap. Therefore, folks seem to take this as an excuse to load up on as much candy as they can carry. The man in front of me in line had his basket full to the point of overflowing, and things kept spilling over the sides. He wasn't the only one. This made waiting in line with my relatively small amount of purchases rather trying. But I guess if you're going to an enormous cheap candy store you might as well load up and then coast on it for a while. I bought myself a bag of gummy fries (about as basic as you can get...) and congratulated myself on NOT going overboard like a kid in a...*sigh* I just lost the desire to complete that metaphor.

Go figure, by the time we'd left the Haribo factory it was perfect canoeing weather, aside from the whole "killer current" thing, but we did still get to go to the Pont de Gard.

Funny thing about the Pont de Gard, it's not actually a bridge. It is bridge-shaped, but it's technically an aqueduct. What is it with the French and calling things bridges that aren't technically bridges? Between the Pont de Gard and the Pont St. Benezet, they're not exactly batting 1000 with describing their landmarks.

The Pont de Gard is a Roman aqueduct. Oh wait, I mentioned that. So once you've looked at it and thought to yourself "wow, that aqueduct is really really old," there's not much to do but go sit on the rocks and put your feet in the river. And watch snails. There are lots of snails there. And spiders.

By this time I was pretty tired, and didn't really feel like searching for amazing adventures, so most of the group just sat around and climbed on rocks until it was time to go back to the bus. Or, in Kristin's case, take pictures of snails. And talk to said snails.

Once I got home it was definitely naptime, since we had plans to go out to the museums that night. It was the Nuit des Musees, which basically means that most of the museums were free for one night, so the group made plans to dress nice and meet at the carousel. That sort of all collapsed around us and long story short, I spent more time talking to Major than I did actually giving a darn that I was in a museum.

However, there was this one really neat museum that had a bunch of Egyptian and Greek statues (known amongst the group as "the museum with all the rocks.") Sam, you'll appreciate this: they have four or five red figure kraters!!!!! I was tres geeked, although I'm not sure anyone else got why it was so impressive that I knew what they were called.

Got home pretty late, feeling particularly exhausted and like the day hadn't lived up to its potential.

For the first time since getting here, I slept past 9h00 in the morning. I never EVER sleep past 9h30, but Sunday morning I gave myself until 10h45, by which time Amanda had already texted us and wanted to meet up with us for the afternoon. We went to the park and sat around talking until we noticed the very creepy man staring at us from the next bench. Then we decided it was time for some steak-frites. I didn't go to my usual kebab, but it was still pretty good, being a steak-frites and therefore awesome by default.

After that we spent a little time at the internet cafe, and then we just hung out in Amanda's apartment for the evening. It was exactly what I needed-socializing that required nothing but lying on the couch and talking. I miss "just hanging out." When I see people here, it's always at Place Pie or O'Neill's or something, we never just go to someone's house and chill. So Sunday afternoon was pretty nice.

Yesterday, class. Same as always. Civ is now officially torture. Even those who liked it at the beginning of the quarter have lost faith in it. I wrote a journal about it, but it was a little grumpy to publish here. Bottom line: if he's not going to put in the effort to help me understand, I'm not going to put in the effort to pay attention.

Then for Resistance I hadn't done the reading (shh...don't tell Christophe,) so it was pretty slow going. Then IMing with Mom and Dad, then home.

Dinner last night was exactly what I needed: something totally frivolous. You'd never have guessed I was in a bad mood: we talked American television. It sort of turned into a guessing game: Danielle describing an American show, us guessing it, then offering our opinions on it. It was intriguing, since this was a native French woman spouting American pop culture. Here's a sampling of foreign TV according to Danielle.

Baywatch.
Beverly Hills 90210
Hawaii 5-0
Columbo
Mission Impossible
Silver Spoons
Dallas

For the very first Monday night since getting to France, I didn't go out. O'Neill's international night was a question mark (although Irish boy was last spotted on Friday night,) so I decided I'd rather get some work done and watch cartoons with Cathy than hike out to a pub. We did go out to Place Pie on Sunday night to celebrate Cathy finishing Shades of Grey. I had a Coca and a crepe, and we talked old school Nickelodeon shows.

That's about all I have to tell, unfortunately. Lackluster, non? At least a little?

Let me sum up:

Tempers have been touchy and tense, classes aren't any more demanding, but require more effort. Journal entries getting tedious, missing home and feeling guilty about thinking I'm about ready to come home, mood swings from class to class, but I'm still going to say that I'm 83% happy, and that's a solid B, so I consider it a victory.

I'm thinking that I'm going to write another blog entry tonight, maybe get a little more metaphorical like these used to be, and then you'll have something more interesting to read. Until then, this one'll have to tie you over.

Hopefully I'll get out of Thursday. Tomorrow we've got our excursion to meet real French resistants! Probably going to be a long day, but interesting!

Well, I'm going to go get lunch before the cafeteria runs out of sandwiches.
Missing you all,
G

A Splendid Afternoon

Baie des Anges, Nice
May 9th, 2008, 3:49 PM

Several years ago, I received a small handwrtten note from a man I loved very much, a man who meant a great deal to me.

Grace: Look at the ocean and wonder.

That man is gone now, gone from my sight. He remains only in memories, in each precious letter of that note, in the photograph of him following his own advice. He gazes into the sea, facing the horizon, the ocean stretching out at his feet.

And today I find the ocean at my feet, my face turned to the horizon.

The sailboats inch along the distant horizon, looking like the great fins of some giant creature gliding through the water in the distance. The seabirds are out fishing--they fly into the wind, wings pumping frantically although they gain no forward motion. They sustain this aerial treadmill until they tire, and then they stop flapping and let themselves be thrown backward. They watch the swells below, those hills of water that will give birth to waves. Suddenly they bank their wings, plunge into the water, come shooting back again. They are not usually successful, but the pattern repeats as long as it must.

All across the water, all the way to that horizon, tiny whitecaps appear fleetingly, peppering the deep blue of the water. The sea is coming up for air.

Closer to land, that midnight blue becomes a vivid turquoise and, nearer still, a minty green. Where clouds have filtered it, the sunlight has painted the waves a grey-green. Here in this space between green and grey , the waves build, build, begin to rise up, and as the water wrinkles they curl in on themselves, left to right, to come sighing against the shore in a white band of salt and foam. Here they linger, stretch themselves thin, then fall gently back, carrying the stones with them. The wave has two sounds: one, the crash of the water falling against itself. Two, the rattle of a multitude of stones tumbling in the aftermath.

One wave need not wait for the next. They build on each other, draw strength from each other. Slowly, ever so slowly, they approach me as I contemplate them. My thoughts seem to draw them nearer.

All along the rocky shores of Nice we are watching the sea. Children skip out into the spray, then come skipping back as the foam and spray comes chasing after them. The rest of us lie on our backs against the slant of the hill, front row seats to the natural symphony in its timeless dance at our feet. Our thoughts are our own, but with all of us scattered along the shore together it feels communal. Our thoughts belong to us, but it is the same ocean we watch. And in the same way it is communal by distance, it spans times. I think of years and years of men watching these waves, these waves that pound on from one day, one year, one lifetime to the next. And doing so I think of him.

As I step forward, barefoot, and let the waves tug at my ankles, I wonder if they tugged his. I wonder what thoughts he offered the sea, that day a photo was snapped of him watching the waves. I wonder what instinctual fascination pulls our gazes to the gentle bow of the horizon line. From here the world seems endless. As the sun begins to fall, my shadow to lengthen, I wonder at that neat seem between sea and sky. I wonder how many of us, in how many years, how many nations, languages, how many humans are bonded by the eternal call of that horizon past the waves. How many of us take time to stand in the waves, look at the ocean, and wonder.

I wonder where he is now. Sometimes I wonder that. I know we share the wisdom in his words, that watching the ocean is like a way to be with him again, but still I wonder where he went after sending his thoughts to be carried out to sea with the waves. The spray blowing against my face, the foam churning around my ankles , the sound of folding water all feel like he's still in my life. Six little words, precious in their simple beauty and precious in his handwriting, anchor his memory to my life here today.

Look at the ocean and wonder.

I'm looking. I'm wondering. I'm thinking about life and love, and I'm thinking about him.

I love him. I miss him.

--G
In memory of Larry Larson

It's the name of a town AND an adjective that describes that town!

So...I've got to say it. Forgive me.

Nice is nice.

Wow...so nice. But this is just a quick shoutout to all you folks that I got in safe, have my hostel, have already spent a couple hours lying on the beach working on my tan, taken a few pictures, seen more topless tourists than I wanted to, and am having a ton of fun already.

Despite our train having been late this morning due to a fire on the tracks.

And the fact that I'm running on four hours of sleep.

Yeah, I could do without that.

Cathy's up in the room taking a nap, but I'm not very good at midday napping. Only when I'm sick, or when the clocks have changed recently. So I decided to hang out downstairs with the free internet. There are eight computers at the hostel, six of which work. I changed out of my swimsuit, took a shower (yay, the showerhead could be mounted on the wall, unlike chez Danielle) and am killing time until dindin.

Yeah, I said dindin.

I'm feeling a little spastic right now, can you tell?

Well, the longer this post gets the more I figure I'll just go ahead and say. I don't remember quite when the last time I got an update up was--Monday? Tuesday? One or the other, but I forgot to look. Well, I'm just going to skip over classes and hop straight to this morning.

A 6h42 train, a desperate sprint through the train station to our track only to find out that it wasn't necessary and the announcement "your train is at the platform right now" was a lie, another sprint to the train car, four hours of train ride through a series of progressively more gorgeous towns, and here I am in Nice, right over by Italy. On the Cote d'Azur. That's the French riviera, folks.

Take THAT.

And as you take that, picture me doing a happy little victory dance involving copious arm waving and maybe a little "running man" or "the sprinkler." Or both.

Our hostel is so close to the train station that we can hear that FREAKING three-tone SNCF jingle that precedes every announcement. I'm going to dread those three notes for the rest of my born days by the time this trip is over. Cathy and I dumped our duffel bags onto our bunks (top bunk for me--just like band camp!) and headed in the general direction of the ocean to see what we could see.

We saw many things. Like tourists. And STORES. Lots and lots and lots of stores. That sell things for the tourists to buy. We also saw Justin! Just bumped into him. Like...hey, here comes one of the twenty people from the Avignon group, just walking down this street by us at the same time by pure coincidence.

I'm going to do a better Nice post when I have more time. The function of this one was really just to let you all know I got here safe, despite late trains, track fires, ambiguous methods of addressing buildings in France, confirmation codes, etc. etc.

I'll be in Nice until Sunday afternoon, so I may or may not be hopping down here to the internet room at night to do a little catchup work. I didn't bring my laptop here, didn't want to deal with it in a hostel, so I won't be able to do any big fancy blog posts until I'm back in Avignon, but feel free to comment and email and things and I'll probably find some time to return them between adventures.

Ciao, bellas!
--G

You got peanut butter in my vegemite!

Avignon—April 30^th, 2008

Just over two hours remain in the month of April, and I still have not ceased to be amazed that so much time can honestly have gone by. True, I have settled comfortably into a routine here, but when I think about an entire month spent living in France, it's enough to make my head spin.

Yes, there is something of a rhythm now, I'm finally learning the room numbers for my classes without having to look at my schedule. I can officially walk to and from school without actively thinking about where I'm going. I even know the traffic patterns well enough to jaywalk. (The pedestrian signs in turn lanes turn green at the same time the traffic lights do, so it's better to cross when the pedestrian sign tells you not to. Go figure, not even the traffic signs are straightforward here.) And I guess that when I think about all this, that's when it's easiest to sit back and realize that no matter how much this might feel like a quick vacation, I am living in France.

My last update was either on Thursday or Friday, I can't remember which, but the point is that I still haven't talked about the excursion yet. On Saturday morning we all piled into the tour bus (everyone was on time this time!) and headed out to the Village de Bories for leg one of the Saturday adventure.

This bus trip was different from that of two weeks ago. On the Baux excursion, we were all sitting near each other, leaning into the aisle to talk to each other, all of us singing. This time, we were more spread out, conversation was much lighter, and more of us slipped on earbuds and watched the gorgeous French countryside roll by to our own personal soundtracks of choice. The difference? Well, two more weeks of near-constant contact. We have classes together, we spend our breaks together, we go out at night...together, we have excursions together, heck most of us live together in pairs or my trio. And while I wouldn't say we're sick of each other, I think it's safe to say that we have grown accustomed to each other.

It was maybe forty-five minutes to the village, or more specifically to the parking lot in the middle of nowhere where we had to wait for our tour guide to arrive. We stepped out of the bus and congregated in the empty gravel lot. Jenna and Ian found a metal hoop to kick back and forth. Major and Kristin passed the time as Richard and Madeline, their filthy rich British alter egos. I became their German servant girl, Bertha. I don't even bother asking anymore...

It turns out that in order to get to the village, we had to squeeze twenty four people into a bus-van hybrid that I'm guess-timating had twenty seats max. Once everyone was nice and...not comfy, we embarked on the most complex series of twists, turns, narrow roads, and terrifyingly close scrapes with small cliffs I've ever ridden through. All of this took us back to the Village de Bories.

A borie (which can be a masculine OR feminine noun, either is acceptable. Ooh, ahh.) is a dwelling made out of rocks. Okay, I'm being vague again. Bories are made entirely of short, flat rocks stacked in a shape somewhere between a rectangle and a dome. It's amazing the things they could make out of rocks a few hundred years ago—dwellings, storage buildings, pigsties, doghouses...of course, they all looked exactly the same to me. I only know what they were because there was a large stone outside each building with its purpose inked on it in black ink, and in three languages. I have no idea whose job it was to distinguish the function of one borie from the borie next to it, but I don't imagine it's particularly easy work. It was all rocks and dirt floors to me.

Then again, being there with nineteen friends, with the morning sun shining and hills rolling casually across the horizon all around us, I have never been happier to tour a village made of rocks. We were all a little camera-happy that morning, there was lots of posing and smiling as we trailed after the tour guide, who had a noticeable provincale accent that I found amusing to listen to. All of her nasal vowel were kicked up a notch, like they do in Quebec, and she pronounced more vowels than the Parisians do, and...well, I shan't bore you with the linguistics of it. As for the content...well, I'm not sure I remember any of it, aside from that the style of architecture dates back to 2000 years BCE. Funny thing about listening to her talk—I was hearing the sounds way more than I was hearing the words.

After we'd finished in the stone village, we squished ourselves back onto the van-bus. About halfway back to our tour bus we found ourselves hood to hood with a police car. The driver leaned around his seat, and with a quick hiss of “assiez-vous! Les fliks!” told everyone who was sitting on a lap to get on the floor so the cops wouldn't see them. That got a good round of laughter as we edged past the police car on the narrow walled-in street, our side view mirror and his just barely missing each other.

Gordes is where all the French celebrities and various well-to-dos have their summer houses. Danielle lived there for twenty years. It is situated on a big hill and, when we hopped off the bus (quickly, the bus can only stay stopped for two minutes!) and got our first good look at Gordes, it was as though we'd stepped straight into a postcard. This was not my first “living postcard” experience. Les Baux was the same way, and the top of the Palais gives you that feeling too. Anything with a view of Le Pont St. Benezet, of course, it's as though that bridge was built to have its picture taken from every conceivable angle. Just think, if every old landmark here had its own song, maybe they'd give the Pont St. Benezet some competition. The Pont St. Benezet is probably half the reason people like me knew that they city of Avignon even existed. Weird to think of that now, but I digress...

There was more posing and grinning and we went through the age old camera shuffle—a duo or a trio throws arms around each others shoulders and poses, and suddenly the whole group is on them, shutters clicking. Then one or all of the people in the photograph give their cameras to friends, then the friend snaps the picture with both cameras, hands them off and joins the picture. Rinse. Repeat. We had a group picture taken, too (who's got the copy of that?) and then reluctantly abandoned our scenic view and carefully made our way down the hill we were on, then up the hill Gordes is on.

The hill Gordes is on is immensely, incredibly, murderously steep. Tiny little stone protrusions pretending to be stairs are more hindrance than help, and we were glad that there were gorgeous brightly-colored flowers taking advantage of every patch of dirt—stopping every now and then to admire the flowers gave us an excuse to stop and catch our breaths. I stuck to the back of the pack, moseying along and trying to figure out who kept calling my cell phone. We have program cell phones, so I knew the only people with my number were the other group members and Mom and Dad. Since the sun wasn't even up at home and all the group were with me, I figured it was a wrong number. I finally did answer.

“'Allo-oui?” I asked, playing it safe and answering in French. A long pause, then “Allo?” I paused too, then decided on, “Bonjour, c'est qui?” Who are you? Succinct, to the point. It frightened them off, and they hung up on me, never to call again. French wrong number. Crazy. And since I couldn't possibly have done all this and hiked full-speed up the hill of death at the same time (would that you could hear the sarcastic tone I imagine with the word 'possibly...') I hung back with the moseyers.

Once at the top of Mt. Gordes, we were given a few hours to wander freely, find some lunch (yes, mine was on a bun!) shop, do the whole tourist thing. We wandered uphill, downhill, uphill, downhill, into a church*, into a zillion tourist stores, and wondered how exactly all the snobby French celebrities move their furniture into their lavish homes. Verdict was that they must have the stuff airlifted in by helicopter.

*Okay, random observation, that I possibly have already mentioned before. One of the crazy things about France that I have discovered since getting here is that there are big beautiful churches and chapels and whatnot thrown into the weirdest places. We can be walking through a crowded, narrow street cluttered with shopfronts and graffiti, turn a corner, and BOOM! There's some really old sinfully pretty church tucked in amongst the shops like a Van Gogh in the bargain bin.

Where was I? Gordes. Well, I kept my spending to a couple postcards and a ham sandwich (told you it was on a bun.) Then I tailed random people for the rest of the time, watching Amanda ambush people with her spray-on sunblock. Lucky for us, there was no more hill-hiking planned for the day, and the bus met us at the top of the hill to take us to Roussillon.

Here's what I know about Roussillon. You cannot possibly visit that place without hearing the word ochre. I think it's the same word in English...err...ocher? Spell-check says that's right. Ocher. Pigment.

So we toured an ocher factory. Our tour guide was, as Amanda put it “pretty.” Umm...he was a man, but a pretty man. I realized when I read back over that that “pretty” is ambiguous unless I specify gender. We hiked over the fine, red sandy ground and listened to him narrate the process of ocher-making. Here's what I got...

Step one: Dump copious amounts of dirt in a stone trough.

Step two: Wash dirt.

Step three: Drain water.

Step four: Take remaining dirt and put in a reservoir.

Step five: Wash dirt.

Step six: Drain water.

Repeat...repeat...cook remaining dirt, grind it up, and there you have ocher. By that time most people had put their cameras away (except Jenna, of course!) so I decided to take some pictures to distract me from the fact that I was in a dirt factory. They burned incense in the gift shop, so we retreated outside and played hide and seek in the “sculpture” on the lawn. Said sculpture was a forest of brightly-colored wooden cubes just big enough to play hide and seek in.

Back onto the bus, for a drive into Roussillon proper. Again, they cut us loose with a suggestion of some nice ice cream places, and what huge killer hills to hike up for a scenic view. I got a scoop of chocolat and a scoop of Cookies, and hiked up half of one killer hill. Very nice red dirt cliffs and, further into the horizon, a glimpse of enormous snow-covered mountain. Then Major and I investigated random bookstores, rock stores (I'm not kidding...it was a rock store—not rock music, rock stone rock.) and then I ran into Amanda.

We were sitting on a wall outside the three-story bookstore complete with cafe. Suddenly this family walks by with a troupe of kids of varying ages, and they sit down on the wall next to us. Somewhere during the process Amanda and I discovered to our delight that the little kids were speaking...

They're Italian! Amanda and I mouthed to each other in glee, scarcely able to believe our good fortune. As linguistically intimidating as young children are, young children speaking foreign languages are still fascinating, and oh joy, these ones were jabbering away in Italian.

“Giocchiamo!” one of the boys crowed, which I actually UNDERSTOOD to mean 'let's play!' and then they were chasing each other around. They played hide and seek for a while, and Amanda and I gleefully whispered the numbers one through ten around with the counter. As far as I was concerned, I speak Italian like a six year old anyway, so these kids were right at my level! Katy walked by, politely looked only a little puzzled at why Amanda and I were sporting enormous grins and surreptitiously looking at the kids.

“They're speaking Italian!” we whispered.

Well, the Italian kids left, and then a bunch of us ended up in a cafe with Katy. Keeping true to typical French cafe tradition, I got charged for water...eye-roll...

We stayed in the cafe until meet time, making idle chitchat in French. Katy told us about how the airport confiscated her peanut butter from her carryon bag, dismissing it as a spreadable. “Like I'm going to make a bomb out of peanut butter,” she sighed in English. I couldn't remember the last time I'd heard Katy speak any English, but as soon as I'd noticed the codeswitch, she moved straight back into French, which was fine by me. I realized about ten seconds after climbing back onto the bus that I'd forgotten to buy any postcards, and listened to grumpy music halfway back to Avignon.

Not that my postcard streak has been perfect...I'm trying to buy a postcard for myself at every city I visit, but...and you're going to laugh...I didn't buy any in Paris.

It was a twenty minute walk home, then I scraped the ocher dust off my shoes and dozed off a little before dinner. We told Danielle that we wouldn't be joining her and her daughter in law in Sorgues on Sunday morning—we all chose to sleep in a little rather than visit the market for a third time. But she was also going to take us to some event Sunday afternoon that she just described as a “party” over and over. Cathy opted out, but Kristin and I met yet another of Danielle's friends (I forget her name...I forgot her name five minutes after meeting her, I was rather tired...) who offered a handshake rather than a set of bizous, which was a welcome change. I'm used to bizous now, used to meeting a perfect stranger and being swept into the routine—right first, then left, then right, with cheeks touching and audible kissing noises. It is a little startling the first few times, but it's another of those things I've gotten used to now, like paying for water or the concept of a coin that's worth over three dollars.

The “party” turned out to be the Fete Saint-Marc, and we missed most of it. All that remained of the artisans market was a few stalls sticking it out until the end of the day, and one organ grinder (no monkey, unfortunately) who whistled very loudly and popped more balloon animals than he completed. Apparently, the traditional dancing was set to start at 3:30, but schedules in France, much like pirate codes, are more like guidelines than rules. (Sorry if you didn't get that joke but I couldn't resist a good Black Pearl reference.)

The dancers appeared over an hour after the scheduled time, but it was interesting. I've seen traditional Provencale dancing before—at market, at that place Michelle took us, traditional dancers pop out from around corners all the time here—but this was different. The dancers grinned, and whistled, whooped, and waved around farming implements! Rakes, baskets, scythes of various sizes, fake torches, wooden shoes, fake horses: these people had more props than you could shake a rake at. The music was live, the dancers really knew their stuff, and all in all it was a really fun afternoon. Kristin and I compared which dancer's skirt was our favorite, exchanged a grin when one of the dancers did the worm to great applause, and snuck into a pastry shop for some nutella-themed goodness. Nutella, by the way, fantastic.

Then it was home for dinner, then time to face facts—we had a Resistance test on Monday, there was journaling and reading and studying to be done.

It's all part of this weird double-standard—vacation and study. Weekends packed with adventure after adventure, weekdays stuffed end-to-end with class and work. On excursion weekends, it's a little too easy to forget the 'study' part of 'study abroad.' Then the classes suck you in come Monday, get you feeling trapped...Rinse. Repeat.

Monday night, the crazy trio and Amanda fought our way through a deluge to O'Neill's in hopes of meeting our respective British Isles boys. Kristin and Richard, Amanda and Scott, me and Ireland (I do know his name but I'd rather call him Ireland than spell it wrong). It was pouring down rain, plus wind, and my shoes and socks were thoroughly soaked, and my jeans were saturated up to the knees. The umbrella had done no good—not even my three layers of shirt (long sleeve, short sleeve, button up) were safe. In the end, only Muhammadu showed, Cathy's correspondent, and those of us hoping for a glimpse of the British boys were disappointed. We greeted Laurent with a stubbly set of bizous, taught Muhammadu to play poker with my dog-eared Nightmare Before Christmas deck. Headed home pretty early.

The Resistance test didn't quite kick my butt, although the first essay question did a little. Plus I got As on the graded papers Chistophe handed back to me, so I left feeling pretty good relatively speaking. Tuesday started off with Creative Writing out in the courtyard (recipe poems. I wrote: Recipe for a Poem A La Major, which according to Major is dead-on accurate.)

Recipe for a Poem A La Major (roughly translated.)

Ingredients: 500 grams sarcasm, 500 grams cynicism, a spoonful of humor, a pinch of effort, and one crazy idea.

Mix the sarcasm and cynicism, let them boil for two hours. The humor must absorb the taste of these items. Use the mixture of humor and cynicism to create a crazy idea. Put the idea on paper, and while waiting for the end of the two hours, speak with an English accent. Say that you can't write poems. After two hours, read the poem. Savor the bitter taste of sarcasm. Finish with an awkward pause, a little confused applause, but always with a smile.

And I repeat, I received a participation grade for this!

After classes on Tuesday Christophe cancelled the scheduled film screening for Resistance and we played petanque instead. (That's peh-TONK, for you non-francophones.) I was actually more of a spectator slash photographer, but I think it's basically boccee ball. You throw the little yellow ball, then each player gets two chances to get as close to the little yellow ball as they can. The old French men play it in flocks. Two of them even wound up seated on the hoods of cars watching our group play. Christophe, Katy, and Professor Bory (our lit professor) cleaned up the competition, but it was fun anyway. Professor Bory is really cool, and suggested that the next time we have a tournament that the losers need to buy the winners a drink. I think it's because he's so confident in his petanque skills—the man has his own petanque set, for goodness sake, I'd feel confident about beating a bunch of rookie Americans too if I were him. The only way it could've been cooler to play petanque with Professor Bory would be if he'd worn one of his trademark neckerchiefs during gameplay, but hey, the world isn't perfect I suppose.

Avignon, May 1^st, 2008

Wednesday we had classes because of the long weekend this weekend. Civ was akin to torture, and as usual Professor Boura (Boura, Bory, I can hardly keep them straight...) lectured gleefully past the scheduled end time for the class. Then lunch break, then Bory's class, which was significantly better. Problem is that any day starting out with Civ just shuts my brain down for the rest of the day. I feel bad for Bory—I'd pay so much more attention to him if we didn't come to his class straight from Civ, aka the Bane of Grace's Existence On This Continent 101.

Today is the start of the first of two long weekends, as well as the first day of May. Which means that every establishment in France that's got employees is closed. Makes it difficult to track down lunch. We hung out in Amanda's apartment and ate Ramen, and ordered train tickets. Cathy and I are going to Aix-en-Provence for the day tomorrow. We went to the train station and bought our 12-25 cards, which make train tickets cheaper if you're between the ages of 12 and 25. They cost 49 euro, but between the Aix trip, next weekend's as-yet-undetemined location, and the train back to Roissy to fly home, they should pay for themselves.

The train to Roissy. Wow, it's hard to believe that that ticket is starting to become more and more pressing a need. Exactly six weeks from this moment, I will be on a plane home. Hopefully with a better in-flight movie than Bee Movie. I'm just about at another big milestone: halfway through the program. That's in a few days. Today I had to sit down and ponder the fact that I officially spent the entire month of April without standing on US soil. Without seeing my family, playing with my dogs, eating Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in real cheese sauce, and doing all the other things that I've been taking advantage of for years.

Avignon, May 3^rd, 2008

When I wrote that date, I tried to write 'April.' Whoops.

As I write this, I am officially closer to coming home than I am to leaving home. Today is my halfway mark—39 days behind me, and 39 ahead. More on that later.

Thursday, Cathy and I went to Aix for the day. This involves walking, bus, train, bus again, walking again, bus, train, bus, and walking. See, there are two train stations in Avignon: Avignon centre is right in the middle of the city in easy walking distance. Avignon TGV is where all the big trains pass through on their way to Paris, Marseilles or other bigger cities. There are buses that run from centre to TGV and back, so Cathy and I hopped one of those. On said bus, we met an Australian couple who heaved enormous sighs of relief when they overheard Cathy and I speaking English. Soon, we were hearing about the wife's studies in Sydney (Italian and Linguistics, small world right?) about studying abroad, receiving another encore of the “aren't you lucky to be just at the perfect time in your life to be doing this?” speech. Cathy and the wife (never asked her name) did most of the talking, while her husband and I just nodded and smiled a lot.

We punched our tickets, got on our train, and had been moving for about ten minutes when the train slowed, and slowed, and then stopped. Our TGV had some technical difficulties, and we were to expect a delay of fifty minutes. Lucky for us, it was only about thirty in the end. I hid behind my sudoku and my headphones, listening to the little kids across the aisle play a card game and the businessman sitting next to me muttering on his cell phone. I could've taken a picture of the man and in the background you would've seen the “turn cell phones off” sign pasted over our seat. Eye roll..

Usually being stuck on a train is something that would freak me out a little, but I was curiously laid back, considering. After all, I didn't have any deadlines except for my return train seven hours later, I had stuff to do, people to watch if I got too desperate, and it was a pretty strange moment. I realized that I would usually be really anxious in that type of situation, but that I'd somehow learned to look at the bigger picture. Sure it was hot, and the businessman was blatantly ignoring a posted sign that prompted courtesy, and our train was broken, but what did I care?

Once we got to Aix TGV, we had to take another bus to get to the city itself. Go figure, TGV stations are all in these crazy remote locations perfect for scalping tourists on bus fare. Aix en Provence has an even stronger feel of tourism about it than Avignon does. In Avignon, all you have to do to escape the tourist vibe is walk away from the Palais des Papes and the Pont St. Benezet. In Aix, it was pretty obvious everywhere we walked. There were lots of stores involved in that afternoon, a lemon slushie, and a museum of natural history involving several dinosaur eggs, the freakiest fake ostrich I've ever seen, some dinosaur bones, a sound box playing reptilian screeches, and big plastic replicas of other dinosaurs. Amusingly enough, placed in what used to be a hotel, with painted cherubs gallivanting over the ceiling of every room.

After we were done in the city, we hopped the bus back to the train station. Our train was headed for Geneva after it stopped in Avignon, so needless to say we were very careful to be at the doors in time for our stop. Then we took another bus back into town, and walked home. It was past dinnertime, but Danielle had potato chips and leftover quiche for us.

Yesterday we decided that we'd rather stay in town than take another day trip, so I ended up leaving the house at lunchtime, getting a steak-frites, and sitting in my park for five hours.

Samedi, le 2 mars.

Translated from the original French journal entry.

I'm not in Arles today.

Danielle says that it's too bad we stay in Avignon so much.

But this afternoon is perfect. I have two benches in the park—one's in direct sunlight, the other in the shade. I move from one to the other when I feel like it. I listen to my music, read, write a little in French, write a little in English. I watch the people walking by. I'm happier like this than leaving Avignon for leaving Avignon's sake.

My bench in the shade: an old woman (black skirt, white hat) breaks a baguette and throws the pieces to the birds in front of her. There are thirty or thirty-five of them. She doesn't have a particularly happy air—her expression is more pensive than content. She has a somber rhythm about her actions—break, pause, throw and again—break, pause, throw. The living sea of wings and beaks is thrilled.

My bench in the sun: a child, barefoot, plays in the fountain with a purple balloon. He kicks the balloon. He thinks it's funny the way it floats away. The English tourists like it too. Like me, they are watching the boy in the fountain, like one watches a mildly amusing film.

I ate a steak-frites from the kebab on the corner—the one with the man in the glasses, who says “grazi” instead of “merci.” I think he recognized me today, this is the third Saturday I've come. He wished me bonne journee for the third time, and for the third time I replied Merci monsieur, bonne journee.

Back to the bench in the shade. The little boy isn't there anymore. Now there's a little girl (pink hat.) She plays in the water. Her father takes photo after photo. Her mother holds her sandals. I wish I could play in that fountain, barefoot like a kid. Children don't see the strangers who watch their game with envious smiles. For us, the simple pleasures aren't so easy.

In the sun: tourists. Italians this time. They enter the park, take pictures, leave the park. My precious corner of France is nothing but a photo opportunity to these people. In the fountain, three brothers have followed the girl with the pink hat's example. They throw their shoes and jump into the water.

A young couple has taken my bench in the shade, but I'm not concerned. The sunlight is the gentle sunlight of early evening now, and I can stay here. I have three hours until dinner. I've been here for four hours. An afternoon wasted, Danielle would say. Danielle doesn't like waste. But I'm not thinking about Danielle anymore. She can do what she likes with her afternoons.

Another old woman (sunglasses, blue sweater.) She's talking to herself, with a very serious air. Tourists (English again, I think,) enter the park. Watch the girl in the pink hat. A dozen photos, and they leave my sacred corner. Hour after hour, week after week, May after April after March, the grand parade of tourists never ends. I can see now that the grand parade will never finish. They will always come into the park, smile into each other's camera's, and leave. This park is my sanctuary in Avignon. For them it is a row of flowers in a photograph.

A French boy (Spiderman t-shirt) is speaking rapidly to his mother. She isn't listening, I can tell even though he can't. Her son will speak French effortlessly, and so much better than I will.

Tourists. I'm not exaggerating. They come, they approach the fountain for a wave of photos, they leave.

I've decided to put my feet in the fountain. It's not important who's watching me, just like it's not important that Danielle thinks I should leave town more. If the girl in the pink hat can play in the water, I can slip off my shoes too. We aren't that different, she and I, but for a country and a language. I just need a pink hat and a carefree laugh. Or, she needs glasses and a tendency to observe details that others find insignificant.

The pigeons are making a noise like old mens' laughter. Yes, maybe that's the metaphor. I've been trying to think of one for the past hour.

Tourists. Americans. Same game.

The girl in the pink hat has left the park, and the pigeons have retaken the fountain. They're thirsty, and nobody is playing in their fountain anymore. Some kind lady has brought a bag of birdseed. Ten, twenty, fifty pigeons—a bigger crowd than for the pensive old lady in the white hat.

A little girl just took my picture. She thinks I didn't see her, but I did. Am I particularly interesting, or is she just the younger French me, finding strangers more fascinating than the average person?

Two hours until dinner. Five hours spent here, four pages in my journal, three Aerosmith albums, a steak-frites, one phone call, and a slight sunburn.

I am profoundly content.

Not much to do today, except marvel that this is my halfway point, that for the first time here I'm closer to coming home than I am to the day I left. I wonder if I'm going to change. I wonder if things are going to be different after June 12^th, 2008. I wonder if, come the morning of June 13^th, I will be a different person than I was on March 26^th. I wonder if I should buy myself a cookie tin for when I'm home, and if I should stop making my French journal entries so long and metaphorical. I wonder if Ireland will be at O'Neill's tomorrow, and if, despite what I've said in my journal*, if I'll let a regret or two surface once I'm home.

*Jeudi, le 1er mai

Translated from the original French journal entry.

Six weeks from this moment, I'll be in a 767, destination Boston Massachusetts, USA. It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. And it's true that I want to see my family, that I want to live a familiar life again, but at the same time I don't want to think of this future. June 12^th will arrive without me thinking of June 12^th. I want to think about May 1^st, 2008.

Cathy and I are staying in town today. We have tickets for Aix tomorrow, and maybe we'll go to Arles on Saturday or something, but I'm not sure. So today I cleaned my room, I read a little out of the forgotten books of old students, I write. [...] Now almost everything that needed done has been accomplished. All that remains is two hours of reflection in the journal before dinner.

Danielle doesn't think we should stay in Avignon. At every opportunity she always says that “c'est dommage, rester en ville.” It's like everyone wants me to leave Avignon at every opportunity. Danielle doesn't understand why I prefer to stay in town on Wednesdays and weekends. But I'm not here for Danielle. I'm not here to live the life others want for me. I think I'm happier staying in Avignon with my friends than leaving town alone for eight hours in a town I know nothing about. Everyone has their advice for me, but they're not here. Can they really understand the choice between a day alone in Nimes and an afternoon on the island with two baguettes and three good friends?

I'm nothing less if I choose to spend my free time where I'm happy. It's no less of an adventure. I'm not going to regret one single thing. I will refuse the idea of having regrets of my life here. Good or bad, I'm taking it as it is. What's the value of having been here if I start thinking of everything I didn't do, instead of everything I did?

So I don't say anything when Danielle starts with “c'est dommage.” I have my excursions, I have Aix tomorrow, and somewhere to go next weekend. That's enough leaving for me. If I'm so happy here in Avignon, why on earth should I leave just because others say I should? And I don't have to explain myself. I'm too lucky to be here, I've worked too hard, to live eleven weeks in France for other people.

I think I've lived too much of my life for other people, loathe to make their opinions of me suffer. Maybe if that's what this trip is going to change about me, then I won't be so afraid of letting it change me.

Stream of consciousness post, so let's see if the content is worth anything...

I had to run off to class at the end of the last post, sorry about that.

The time between the last day I described and this one...pretty routine. On Sunday we went to Sorgues again and saw a dance involving one woman, three children, and two pieces of rope. I've had two picnics on the island since I last updated: a quick trip into one of the supermarkets, a free ferry ride across the Rhone, and an afternoon spent lying in the sun in the grass doing nothing of great importance. Times like that have been really quite fantastic, excellent opportunities to get to know people. I feel like going out to the bars at night is fun and all, but that the music is loud, and I tend to feel a little more disconnected on those nights. So a couple of baguettes and a wheel of Camembert is a welcome alternative. Plus the weather is finally like it should be!

The sun is out, the rain is gone, the Mistral hasn't been around much lately. The weather is absolutely gorgeous, and for the first time I really feel like I'm in the south of France in springtime. Danielle jokes that we "brought the bad weather from Athens in our suitcases," and that's why it's been rainings so much since we got here. I'm glad to have stopped wearing the same sweater all the time, and haven't needed said sweater for a few weeks now. I'm still sticking to long sleeves, but that's a personal preference thing.

Classes have been a little tough for me to sit through this week: lots of work for Resistance, lots of dull lecture in Civ, and I'd already read the poem we analyzed in Lit yesterday. In written production (creative writing, essentially) this week, we walked around the city and wrote poems. I wasn't really feeling it, I cobbled one together from words I gleaned from street signs.

BLUE ZONE- FORBIDDEN
Green Zone-Forbidden
SECURITY ZONE- ABSOLUTELY FORBIDDEN
Do not park here
GIVE PASSAGE to the public
LONG LIVE LIBERTY, antiques, ARTISTS,
Pain au chocolat, ROMEO AND JULIET, and
LOVE in concert
WELCOME TO the free ZONE, knock and enter.

Roughly translated, but you get the idea of the kind of thing I'm expected to do for my participation grade in that class. In Oral Production today (that's the other half of the production class: that and written make up four credit hours together) we wrote commercials. Cathy's and my oven cleaner commercial was awesome. I keep doing things like that, and I get my participation grades, and that's that! Wish all of the classes were that simple.

Well, what can I say? It's about lunchtime here in France, and all the French students are getting out of their classes. Ian's correspondant has attracted a small crowd and they're all talking to him. Makes me realize that my correspondent hasn't answered any of my emails since February--hit and miss, I guess.

This post feels very frivolous compared to the ones I write as word documents, haha, but I did say that I'd try to update again this week. I never know what kinds of things you folks like to hear about--grand adventures, everyday stuff, or both. Would you rather I describe my excursion or my dinner? Or both, actually? I have an excursion tomorrow so a "grand adventure" post should be forthcoming, although I do have to get motivated to write some journal entries sometime this weekend. And I think Danielle is going to Sorgues again, though I can't decide if I want to go. I never buy anything, and it's crowded there to the point of claustrophobia. I don't do well with five different people bumping into me all at once from every side.

It feels fantastic to have classes overwith until Monday, I can tell you that much. I'm usually so busy during the weekdays that it's not until Friday that I can sit back and marvel that yes, another week has really sped by. Tomorrow is possibly the biggest milestone I've encountered since leaving: as of tomorrow night, I will have been away from the United States for exactly one month.

It doesn't feel like that long at all, not until I look ahead and realize that I'm not even halfway done with the program. That this so-called "big milestone" is not even the halfway mark. Time does funny things here--the two hours a morning I spend in Civ are two of the longest hours of my life, and yet a month has never seemed to go by faster than April of 2008. Strange the way things work out like that.

I feel like I should be saying something that lives up to the expectations you've come to have of this blog. I'm usually so much more observant than this, but I've caught the scent of weekend in the air, and then all the deep observant thoughts fly straight out of my head.

So I'm just going to start spouting random tidbits, if that's okay.

Food here is an adventure. Danielle is yet to repeat a main course, which I marvel at every time I find something different on my plate. Last night was lentils and sausage, which was medium on the dinner scale. Pasta nights tend to be my favorites. Side dishes are usually good too--lots of garlic and potatoes, although tragically none of them mashed. Other foods that aren't around: peanut butter (I'm not as traumatized as some other group members, but not having it does remind me that...well...I don't have the option of eating it.), cranberries, and decent potato chips. In return, I have discovered the tantalizing world of French pastry--mille feuille, strawberry tarts, and several chocolate-based treats, all of which call out to you from every patisserie window. French desserts are small and photogenic, and absolutely delicious. Maybe that accounts for the extra kilo that Danielle's scale claims has appeared....but enough of that particular observance.

None of my pants fit. This is true in the US too, but I really need to buy a belt. I think Cathy and I are going to end up on Rue de la Republique sometime this afternoon, maybe I'll actually bother buying something I need, instead of griping about it all the time like my need to buy double-A batteries for my camera. And since apparently I own no pants that fit in the waist, a belt would be a wise investment.

Ooh, I think I'm about to go to lunch...yeah, the others are heading out and I'm gonna join them. Hope this post hasn't been too useless. Excursion post coming soon-ish,

-G

If they had a sandwich like this in the US....

Avignon, April 12th 2008

The second week moves so much faster than the first.
This is the lesson I have learned over these past seven days, these past seven days in which I finally found the rhythm I dreamed of in my journal entries. 'I need a routine, then I'll feel stable,' I wrote. Stable is a good word for this week. I have the hang of the class schedule, know which days are the best ones to bring my laptop to campus, know what time I have to leave St. Lazare if I want to get to the Avenue de la Trillade by 7:15. I haven't looked at a map in days...not even sure where mine is... I know where to buy the most incredible strawberry ice cream in all Europe, and which boulangerie's pain au chocolat is served warm and which is only mediocre. This is an important thing to know when one is in France—pain au chocolat is...well, how shall I put this...instant addiction?!
Flaky, like a croissant. Oblong in shape, rounded over the top, with swirls of chocolate peeking out at either end hinting at the heavenly deliciousness inside. If you head to the boulangerie on Louis Pasteur across from Cybermedi@, and you've got good timing, you get it warm and in a white paper sleeve. Generally something like 80 centimes, it's a good way to get rid of those pesky 20 centime coins. You finish this sinfully enjoyable snack already thinking about your next one. Those of the group who haven't yet tried them...well, those of us who have try to convince them not to start. There is no turning back, and we are all setting ourselves up for snacking heartbreak on return to the states. If I could, I'd bring a whole batch back into the country in June...wow...
Umm...let's avoid talking about it, actually...this close to lunch it's not a good plan.
The point is that I think I've found my rhythm, I'm starting to get the hang of living in France, and that makes switching things up way more fun. Instead of O'Neill's, let's change things up and go to Level One. Instead of eating at the first place with a menu, let's hold out and shop at Les Halles. The variables are starting to become moveable, and I really enjoy that.
I think the last time I updated was Monday...?
Well, Monday night we ended up at O'Neill's, the Irish pub—me, Kristin, Cathy, Amanda, Justin, Nicky and Caitlin eventually. Then Justin's correspondent Orly and some friends walked by, asked to join us, and before we knew it we were shoving half the two-seater tables on the sidewalk together to form one big table. Seating was roughly based on nationality: the Americans on one half of the table, the French on the other, with the exception of Orly sitting in the heart of English-speaking country, and Cathy on the French side. Nicky and I were the two with an American sitting on one side and a French student on the other, so we were the most bilingual that night. Orly speaks English when he's with us, so he's never shy about sitting right in the middle of the US group.
On the English speaking half, they had somehow struck up a game of charades. Meanwhile, the French students were discussing driving and drinking ages, how they compared, what they were in the US versus Europe, the logistics of learning to drink before learning to drive. Then they stopped and Alexandre and his buddy arm-wrestled...then they went back to serious discussion...meanwhile, I found myself trying to participate in both groups. After all, this is prime 'voluntary French' time, but honestly, who can resist playing charades with a French guy, even if it is in English?
Tuesday was pretty routine, and I stayed in that night, so there isn't really much to say about it.
Wednesdays here are the OU group's free day. With the exception of the last week of April, we never have classes on Wednesday. So Kristin and I headed out for lunch, then met Amanda, Justin, Nicky and Caitlin and decided to check out the Musee Angladon.
Honestly, I didn't really enjoy Odilon Redon. A little too out there for me, and he does very strange things with light that weren't particularly fun to look at. But that was just the featured artist. The Angladon also boasts a few Picassos, a Van Gogh, a Cezanne, a Manet, and the wall of amazing that is the three Degas sketches it has to its name.
I spent more time with those three sketches than with three rooms of Odilon whats-his-name.
Three euros admission to college students. Not half bad, right?
Here's a strange thing, though, there were an awful lot of children there. Very young children. Apparently on Wednesdays little French schoolkids link hands in pairs and learn to appreciate art. Now I've said before how intimidating we find French children, these little people who are completely ignorant to their command of their own language. If you have ever spoken to a French child, you have definitely repeated, over and over, variants of the phrases, “I don't understand you,” and “please talk slower.” Either that or you just smiled, nodded, and pretended to comprehend them. So an entire class-full of them can be an auditory overload. Especially in an art museum—one moment everyone is quiet and contemplative, the next moment the door clangs open and in walk twenty jabbering little francophones out on the town.
After the museum we wandered the Rue de la Republique for a while, went into several shops without buying anything, and headed back to our houses. Cathy had just met with her correspondent, and narrated that adventure. We hung out in Cathy's room that night, and hammered out our film critiques for Resistance. Kristin invented many a creative insult for me for being the first one finished. Cathy and I took turns DJ-ing from our laptops for a few hours and it probably took us longer to finish our papers than it would've if we'd been working in separate rooms, but honestly, where's the fun in that?
On Thursday not much notable happened. Thursday is the longest, and earliest-starting, day of classes for most of us—three of them essentially back-to-back, two hours per class. And any day starting at 8h30 with two hours of history...well, let's just say that Thursdays take a lot of effort to keep the enthusiasm afloat. I had my journal meeting with Katy, which cut into my instant messaging time with Mom. I also tried the dining hall at lunch. For 2€90 a student gets an entree, a side, a crudite, a dessert, and bread (yes, this is France!). Cheapest, yet biggest lunch I've had here, even if it was dining hall food...and yes, dining hall food is dining hall food, no matter what country you're in.
If Thursday is the toughest day, Friday is the easiest. One little class—Oral Production—which last Friday consisted of writing a dialogue in which one person is lost and the other gives directions. James and I got our location assignments—we were at the train station, we were looking for the Palais des Papes, write a dialogue giving directions.
If you're here in Avignon with me, you probably get why that's funny...well, actually you heard the dialogue. If you're not in Avignon, this is funny because the “directions” are basically to walk in one enormous straight line. So my directions consisted of “straight, straight, keep going straight, don't turn, go straight some more, and there you are.” And I got a participation grade for saying so. Yeah, oral production is an adventure like that. Participation grades rock my socks.
After that, the linguistics majors and Kristin (sorry Kristin, that's just how I thought of the group that day) went out to lunch. That was pretty awesome. That's also the day that will go down in history as the day I had my first steack-frites.
Danielle, actually a lot of the French, call it an “American sandwich.” It consists of mayonnaise, strips of hamburger meat, lettuce, french fries, seasoning, and more mayonnaise, all on a warm baguette. If pain au chocolat is the addictive snack, the steak-frites (sometimes with a “c” before the k) is the addictive lunch. I've never had anything like it in the states, despite the “american sandwich” label. As Major put it, “If they had something like this in the US, I never would've left the country.” Another culinary heartbreak to set aside for June. I wonder if you can carry a sandwich on a plane...
Friday night there was a new place opening up right next to the Redsky. There were a bunch of us there, and we went through the familiar routine of having so many people that we had to steal every available chair in the room to seat everyone around a single table. We, and when I say “we” I mean “they” played a round of kings...note to self, at least buy a Coke if the social activity for the evening is going to be a drinking game...and then Cathy and I headed home, because we had an excursion early the next morning and we wanted to get some sleep. Apparently we left just in time to miss an “adventure” that they're still talking about, involving one incredibly drunk correspondent and a game of truth or dare. He's still grounded, and I don't know if the group's ever going to invite him out again. That's as far into that as I'll go, but it was fun until then. Cathy and I congratulated ourselves on our excellent timing.
Saturday's 8h45 report time ended up becoming a 9h15 departure, as two of the boys were MIA. One cell phone call fifteen minutes after report time woke Ian up. I called Major, who'd thought report time was at 9h45. So we got a late start to Baux de Provence. Roughly thirty minutes in a bus cruising through some of the most gorgeous scenery I've ever seen. Of course, isn't it just our luck that the gorgeous scenery never lays itself out in a straight line. There were twists, hairpins and hills enough to make the strongest of stomachs quake with motion sickness.
Les Baux de Provence is a preserved medieval village perched on enormous stone cliffs. Once you've braved the hike to the top, and navigated the uneven, rocky ground out to the edge, the French countryside lays itself at your feet. Completely breathtaking, and I don't just say so because the wind up there was so violent I nearly lost my favorite hat. Christophe emerged from the office carrying a box of audioguides, and started passing them out. I've talked about audio tours before, haven't I? How the tourists wander the big landmarks with these enormous red telephone-looking devices at their ears, gazing up down and around, looking mild-to-moderate bizarre? Well now we had the chance to do the same. Reluctantly, I hit “1” and “play.”
Well wasn't it just my lucky day that the audioguide spoke English!? Of course, most of the English spoken here is British English (more later on how the locals refer to “English” and “American” like two different languages.) So the serene, Bristish-accented electronic tour guide began to narrate about olive groves and the stone quarries from which the castle had been built. I lasted about thirty seconds, shoved the horrid device into my bag, and went to watch the catapult demonstration.
“Watch” quickly became “participate in.”
Well I didn't know what he wanted of us when he asked the crowd for volunteers, but I figured that I was over here in France to do things I wouldn't usually do at home, like volunteer for mystery tasks during a catapult demonstration. Kristin, Erica, Rachel and I came up and took the ropes he handed us. “He” is the worker who was running the catapult demonstration, by the way. So our new friend catapult man begins to explain in somewhat accented French what we're supposed to do. Simple enough. When he says tirez, we pull our ropes gently, then he'll say lancez, and then we run because the ropes are going to recoil and we don't want to get hit in the face. We have to try and beat the distance set down by last demonstration's group, which looked pretty pathetic. Considering that this was an enormous catapult, the last group's throw didn't look that impressive. We could beat it no problem.
Of course, let me mention here that I failed to hear a step. Remember how I said “he'll say lancez, and then we run?” Well, what I failed to hear was that there was another step in between those two. He says lancez, we pull with all our weight, and then we run. So for the first two tries, he would say lancez and two of us were pulling, two of us running away without pulling first. Result, the ball literally did not leave the catapult. The arm just tipped over lazily and dropped the ball straight down, making for a throw of about two feet. Realizing that we hadn't understood his French as well as we pretended to, he covered the microphone with his hand and explained in broken English that we were only supposed to run after we'd launched the catapult. In hindsight, this makes perfect sense...
The third time was the charm, and our medicine-ball projectile outdistanced the old group's throw pretty well, and redeemed our reputations a little. Plus, the audience stopped “boo”ing. “Boo”ing is not particularly helpful for the self esteem...There end the adventures of Grace and the Medieval French Weaponry.
Avignon, April 20th, 2008
Did I mention that the second week's faster than the first? The third week puts them both to shame.
I caved in and did some day counting today. I have been away from home for 25 days. Twenty-five days since I've embarked on this incredible journey into second-language-land. And a week since I've gotten my act together and written up a blog entry.
Luckily for me, Sundays are pretty good catch-up days here. All the stores are closed, so there's really nowhere much to go except market in the morning, and then kill time until dinner. Sunday from noon to seven-thirty is free for everything from homework, to blogging, to folding clothes so that my closet no longer looks like I've been throwing things into it from across the room.
In today's case, Danielle's son, daughter-in-law, and grandsons are over for the afternoon. Absolutely none of my business, so I smiled my way through the obligatory round of bonjours and headed upstairs to listen to rock music at unsatisfyingly low volumes.
The rest of the Baux leg of the excursion was as follows:
The shops and cafes are scattered all down the hillside, and we wandered in and out of a few as we made our way back to the meeting place. Just as with drinking nights, I was content to trail along and watch other people spend money. I just bought a couple of postcards, resisted the call of the fifty flavors of caramel in the sweets shop, mooched a cookie off of Rachel...
Okay, so in retrospect, it probably wouldn't have killed me to buy some caramel, but I've still got my postcards!
Nicky, Justin, Caitlin, Kristin, Amanda and I ended up hiding from the wind in a cafe until meet time, and then we walked over to the Cathedral des Images.
...which is going to be quite a task to try and describe...
If I want to use the broadest word possible, I'm going to go ahead and call it a cave. In every definition, the Cathedrale des Images is a cave, but the walls are tall, and flat, and laid out over a dozen different planes. On each of the planes and on most of the floor are projected images, which are set to music. The program changes—for us, it was Van Gogh paintings. So as we turned the first corner into the Cathedrale proper, we found self-portraits staring down at us from every direction.
You know, I'll try to post some pictures, because not even I can begin to describe this place well enough to do it justice.
The walls are immense, of different heights, and it was so dark that we weren't recognizing our own classmates until we were a few steps away. All of the guests were nearly-identical shadowy figures pacing from wall to wall, turning stunned circles and watching our own shadows. I would approach a friend to see that we had stepped into the projector's path, that the brushstrokes of Van Gogh were projected over us. Watching the colors dance across my own hands, I would step back into the shadows and wait for the painting to change, moving from one end of the cave to the other and back more times in that short hour than I could've counted. The downsides to this amazing place were minimal: first of all, being a cave, it was on the chilly side. Second, I was mildly motion sick when over a dozen identical galaxies panned over the walls, turning a solemn circle in unison around me. Motion sickness: standing still, but your mind tricks your body into thinking it's moving. Felt like I was spinning, so I hid under the brim of my hat until the space scene went away and the paintings returned. But that was a small price to pay for what a good half of the group left calling “the best part of the trip so far.”
We were there marveling, trying to piece it all together, all the way through the show from start to finish, and halfway into the second time around. Squinting as we retreated back into warm sunlight, we waited for the final stragglers to come back, and then it was more walking.
We headed up the road (minus Cathy,) for a fantastic view of the place we'd just left at home. Very rarely have I had the opportunity to look at the real-life version of those bright colored photos you see on postcards. But looking up at Les Baux on its cliffside perch, I could've just as easily made a postcard by making a frame of my fingers. Even now the memory seems a little surreal, although that could have something to do with the thick cloud cover and rain hammering down outside as I type this. Couldn't be further from the perfect sunshine, the vibrant color of last Saturday afternoon. Well, let's not speak too soon—it could be further, there could be a blizzard or something, but Danielle assures us that this is about as lousy weather as Avignon in springtime can get. She even jokingly accused us of “bringing the weather with us in our suitcases from Athens.” Apparently this is more rain than the region is used to seeing at this time of year.
After we were done at Baux we went to St. Remy, which is...I need more specific descriptions than “a small town in the south of France,” since this phrase applies to half our excursions, but it's a small town in the south of France, maybe twenty minutes' drive outside Avignon. Also overgeneralized descriptions—pretty and full of small shops. Those two descriptors cover half of the country...
I spent most of my St. Remy time with Cathy, Ian, Jenna, and a couple others (sorry guys, I forget who was there...!) on the steps of some municipal building. We watched the carousel (what is it with all these little French towns having a carousel?) and not much else—free time is usually equal to shopping time, and that involves the spending of money and copious walking. Sometimes we just need an alternative, and that's when you find yourself sitting on the stairs watching French kids tow on their mothers' arms and beg for a ride on the carousel. (Best carousel ever, by the way, featuring a hot air balloon, an elephant that required stairs to ride, and a UFO with a closing dome.) We did hang out in a bookstore for a while, and gazed longingly into a few boulangerie-patisserie windows at the fruit tarts and our familiar friend pain au chocolat.
April 21st, 2008
It's comical to me to see myself leaving off mid-thought like that, when I know that only something like Danielle calling me downstairs for dinner could pull me away from a nice writing session. Apologies again for the delay between entries, while I'm thinking of it. Two hundred and nine pages to read for Resistance this week, and the University was closed for the week, meaning no wireless. Not a fun combination.
Where was I, all the way back at a week ago Satuday?
We didn't do much in St. Remy, that much I remember writing. We headed back to the bus and I dozed off on the way back to Avignon. Then it was dinner with Danielle (dinners are always served at seven thirty, and we are all expected to attend unless we call saying otherwise,) and homework, and sleep. Sometimes you just need a night like that, you know? No matter how fun going out and being social is.
Sunday was pretty much the exact opposite of Saturday.
On Sunday, nobody expected anything of me except Danielle, who expected me to be home for dinner. So after Kristin had headed out to Nimes, after Cathy was at her correspondent's house to help him with his English homework, I got together my book, a notebook, and my French language journal and headed off in search of adventure. But I forgot one thing: I was in southern France, on a Sunday afternoon in April. Meaning that everything was closed, except for the public park.
The weather that day was truly fantastic. The local gang of pigeons certainly seemed to be enjoying itself, as they wandered the cobblestones foraging for abandoned foodstuffs, their necks wobbling with every step. I found a bench that I could stretch out on and spent a few hours being a good student. But as I mentioned in my French journal the other day, even the smallest of things can efficiently distract me. A group of tourists swerving into the park to marvel at the flowers and take pictures of each other grinning in front of the fountain: distracting. The French mother insisting to her children that picking the flowers was forbidden; the children smiling those daring smiles and plucking flowers anyway, setting them adrift in the fountain: distraction. Even just lying on my back looking at the sky was a distraction. I started to watch the tiny airplanes swim lazily by in the sea of cloudless blue above me. I got to thinking about the people in those airplanes, those airplanes that to me seemed so distant as to be practically insubstantial. They must have stories, they must have names, and destinations, these people in the airplanes. After all, it wasn't so long ago that I was a person in an airplane. I realize now that it is a state below common anonymity—folks don't even think “oh look, there's a vehicle carrying dozens of people to a new destination,” they think “look, an airplane.” Even I am guilty as charged. We look at the plane, we don't think about what it carries.
Did anyone look up at my airplane? Did anybody watch it sail by and wonder about the people on board? Did anyone notice it at all? It's funny, this dance of anonymity we humans do, this dance that has a whole world blind to the significance of the 767 that brought me over here to another world. And why should they care? Why should we look up at airplanes and imagine the people inside?
Avignon—April 22nd, 2008
Finally, some contact with home has been established. The University has been closed for over a week, and yesterday was the first time I got a chance to think about getting caught up again. According to Mom, I've been spoiling you folks back home with the previous frequency of my updates. A million apologies, I'd like to be updating every single day but it doesn't work out that way over here, so we'll have to get by on what I can handle during my internet afternoons—Monday, Tuesday, Thursday.
Unfortunately, if I want to keep my head above water with day-to-day events, I'm going to have to hit the fast forward button a little. Hope you don't mind.
A week ago Sunday was my alone day in the park, being contemplative and worldly. I finally got through the hundred-plus pages of reading for Monday, went back to Danielle's for dinner, and since it was Sunday I probably stayed in after dinner and did more homework.
Monday was O'Neill's night, although since the University is on vacation there were no international students around except the Ohio group. We played poker with no money involved, which is basically being dealt a hand of cards, trading in, and then comparing hands for bragging rights. Classes were in one of the university residences that day, in some mystery communal room with a buzzing VCR and florescent light fixtures. History was dull as usual, and Resistance was book discussions for two hours. Then wandering around town for a while, home for dinner, and...wait, I already talked about O'Neill's...
Tuesday, classes. Tuesdays are never particularly remarkable.
Wednesday, the linguistics majors and Kristin went to a cafe, where I had a legitimate lunch, meaning it did not come on a bun, as 95% of my lunches here do.
Thursday was long and uneventful, aside from me doing a TON of walking. Went from Danielle's to class, walked Cathy back to Danielle's, went back to class. Half an hour each way means lots of walking for Grace.
Sorry for the abrupt ending I”ll explain later but hope that'll hold you over until Thursday.
-G