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

Under construction: update for April 22nd

Check back here in a couple hours and I'll have an update posted!!!!!

I'm back in wireless range, and working frantically to get caught up.

Pictures on facebook, if you're one of the ones who can reach it.

Sorry about the delay, I'll update after Resistance!

--G

Je bois ton milk-shake!

Avignon, April 6th, 2008

Stop thinking about it.

How do I do that?

Just stop. There's got to be a way to switch off those thoughts.

But there's not. Thoughts of missing home still creep into the room at night and dance around before I go to sleep. Alone, in the silence, this is the time that I start realizing that being away from home still stings. So I try not to be alone, and I try not to be silent. Missing home so much tells me wonderful things about just what a great life I have at home, but I refuse to live over here with my mind living over there. I can't accept that.

Most of the time it's easier than all that—when I'm trying to find Les Halles on the map, when I'm headed out on a mini-field-trip, when I'm out at O'Neill's with the others, when I'm trying to tune out the chuckles and suggestive whistles of the boys on the corner, directed at me, Nicky, Kristen, and the three French girls whose ignorance of the attention seems instinctual. Even something as simple as reading a book, seeing a movie, can distract me, and that is good. We went to the Utopia this morning and saw There Will Be Blood, mercifully it was subtitled and not dubbed...anybody seen it? Care to explain what on EARTH that ending was about? I quite liked the movie until it totally confused me...

Danielle isn't home yet, and the usual 7:30 dinner time is in 45 minutes. She rode in to Marseilles with a friend of hers, I'm not sure on the details, something about the friend whose husband got sick. Earlier in the week we got home and Danielle hurriedly explained that she had left dinner on the stove for us, that a friend had “grosses problemes, un catastrophe,” and I did manage to catch her use of the word “les avocats,” 'lawyers.' She then disappeared until...well, I was in bed long before she got home, so I don't know when she finally did get back that night. We later met the friend in question, the courteous if somewhat distant Babette, who came for a dinner of fish soup, accepted some wine with the cheese coarse, smoked a cigarette out in the garden, and disappeared as suddenly as she'd come.

Today, Sunday, Danielle explained that she was going to Marseilles, probably for something like five hours but that she wasn't sure because it wasn't her doing the driving. When I went downstairs to refill my water bottle a few minutes ago she still wasn't back. I feel guilty thinking about dinner above Danielle's friend and her problems, but for lunch today I had a clementine and the rest of the grapes that I bought at Les Halles on Friday, because we were too tired to go out looking for lunch. Instead, Cathy's been in her room since getting back from the movie, Kristen and I had some tea and read downstairs, and now she's in her room taking a nap and I'm in my room refusing to use boredom as an excuse to sleep away my France time.
I think I'm allergic to something in my room, but I can't decide what. It is the lavender growing so thickly on the wall outside my window that you can't see the wall underneath? Is it something IN the room? Whatever it is, I've been waking up every morning too congested to breathe through my nose. Then things get better through the day and by dinner I think that I'm finally over it, only to wake up gasping the next morning.

Honestly, I can say that these are currently my only major setbacks: the mysterious room reaction, the current lack of dinner, and my mind's accursed tendency to want to feel sorry for myself whenever I turn off the rock n' roll. I've taken to fallen asleep with my iPod on, usually playing either Rush or something Broadway. In afternoons like this, or in the few silent hours between the end of dinner (generally 9:00) and eleven (which is the earliest time I'll let myself go to sleep, see: refusing to use boredom as an excuse to sleep,) I like to change it up and play something a little louder, but no matter what it is I'm not at liberty to sing along with it, which stinks. Not that I'd belt out with my currently playing AC/DC even at home, but living in a stranger's home (should I still be calling Danielle a stranger?) brings courtesy to the point of being painstaking, something that never leaves your mind. You start worrying about how long your computer's been plugged in, wondering whether you're running the vacuum often enough, and DEFINITELY get really conscious of your music volume. Strange to think that I won't be belting any broadway until June.

Back to my previous parenthetical question about calling Danielle a stranger... Other kids are calling their host families by the roles they act in now: my host mom this, my host mom that...and I just can't bring myself to do that. I referred to Danielle as my host mother once and it felt like betrayal. This woman is not, will never be, my mother. I cannot imagine the others using terms like “mom” in reference to people they've known for only a week. So although I respect Danielle immensely, she's always friendly, very understanding of my so un-French refusal of alcohol including table wine, she does my laundry on Wednesdays and refuses monetary compensation, she knows that I take tea in the morning while Cathy and Kristen drink coffee...all this and still I will never call her my host mom. The word “mom” is sacred...how do the others throw it around like that? Would Danielle be insulted if she knew that I'll never think of her as a mom, would be horrified with myself if I did? Luckily for me, I'll never have to find that out, because she'll never know about it.

Let's see, what else is noteable? Oh, I meant to start sending out the first wave of postcards this week, but Danielle says that every rumor we've heard about French post offices being chaos is very very true, and frankly I've no clue where the nearest post office is anyway. In Italy you can buy stamps in tobacco stores, or so the Italian 111 textbooks say. Maybe I'll luck out and they'll have stamps in the tabacs here, too? How much will they cost? Can I drop a postcard in a plain old mailbox? Why didn't I write peoples' addresses down? And how long will they take to get to their destinations?

We decided to stay in this weekend, figuring that we shouldn't be dashing right out looking for adventure on the first weekend. We have some sort of excursion this Saturday, I have no idea where, I didn't bother looking. I guess we'll start using Saturdays to take buses out to little places in the area—Aix, maybe, Nimes or something. There are two four-day weekends in May, and we're currently debating whether to go back to Paris, if we want to brave Italy (I refuse to go alone, so I guess it'll depend on the others whether I get to see Italy on this trip,) and I've gotten invited to Barcelona. Yikes, I speak NO Spanish aside from such glowing gems of tourist useful phrases as “blue,” “small,” the numbers up to ten, names of TV shows like “Los 5 magnifico” and “Bill el scientifico,” and “pork rinds.” Even then, train tickets are so darn expensive, and it's already hard just to part with the euros it takes to buy lunch. You're in Europe! Reminds a little cheery voice in my head, And you have no idea when you'll get this chance again! Still, that doesn't stop the worries, missing my family, wondering how I'm going to get home (does Charles de Gaulle have an American Airlines counter? Will it have those machines? What if my bags weigh too much? How can I meet Aunt J in Boston if she can't get past security? What if AA changes my flight time—how would they tell me if my American cell phone doesn't get service here?

This is what listening to AC/DC in the afternoons alleviates. I said in my Kirby Scholarship essay that I knew this trip would be constantly teaching me things about myself. First thing I've learned is that I really am an irrationally, severely anxious person at times.

Still, at the same time I'm having the time of my life. Shopping's fun, going to classes is fun, dinner conversation with Danielle is easier and more pleasant with every passing night, and by the powers that be was I ever lucky to get Cathy and Kristen as roomies.

For instance, on Friday was our meeting with our correspondents, the French teenagers we were pen-pal-ing with before coming here, so that we could “start a social life in France.” I hadn't...haven't...heard from Margauld since February. Anyway, the meeting took place at the Redsky, a pub that used to be called the Red Lion, which is a source of much confusion for all. Throw in the fact that there's a bar down the block called the Redzone, and another I think called the Redline, and nobody's sure where to go anymore. Especially since the Redsky's tables and coasters still say Red Lion. Your head spinning yet?

Anyway, the meeting was at eight, but that was the night that Babette was over for dinner and we didn't want to be rude and skip out early on dinner, so we were late. They'd already pushed all the tables together outside and we had to pull up chairs and squish between people to get room. I sat at the end of the table with Amanda and Kristen, Justin and Justin's correspondent, whose command of the English language was enough to really discourage me about my own French level. We asked what his impression was of the US and got such a complex, well-informed, lengthy answer that it almost felt like an insult to us that he then finished this speech with disclaimers and apologies about his English—that he really wasn't that good, that he didn't speak English that well...ill-placed modesty can really get a person's hackles up. I kept my mouth shut about it, of course, and listened to the others immediately set about reassuring him that he spoke English far better than we speak French.

I just realized the point of telling this story doesn't happen until a few hours later. Let's fast forward.

Margauld wasn't there, or if she had been she'd left already by the time I arrived. Instead I hung out with Nicky, Kristen, Nicky's correspondent Fara, and two of Fara's friends. Well, the others of the OU group said that they were heading over to O'Neill's, the Irish place where Melting Pot night is. The atmosphere over there is better, there's more space, and apparently the booze is cheaper but I wouldn't know. So the girls finished their red beers and we headed over to the pub. Only to stay for about ten seconds, then Fara and the others suggested some other place that Nicky Kristen and I, of course, had never heard of. But they were good enough company, friendly, if not immensely hard to understand for as rapid as they spoke French, so we followed without much question.

Fast forward—we're suddenly outside the walls, in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, knocking at the back door of some club that hasn't even opened yet. I have no clue where we are aside from outside the walls, and far from Danielle's. I wasn't in it to drink and dance, not like they were, I was really only there for the sake of doing something. But this was just too much. I'd never been here, it was dark, there was nobody around, the door was locked, I was in a strange city, with people I'd known for an hour, and panic started to set in. Literal panic, although I kept it together enough not to look like it. My stomach felt solid, my lungs had to be commanded to pull in air at a normal rate.

“Kristen, where are we?”

She didn't know, but it's okay, she could find our way home when we were done here.

“No...no, I want to go home.”

What was wrong, wondered Farah with a sympathetic look, was I sick? Was I feeling okay? Suddenly the tears were coming and my stomach was a stone and every single word of French deserted me. It was the most terrifying moment of the trip—I couldn't remember one word. Not one word. I was scared and it was dark and I didn't know where I was and in response, the French area of my brain just shut down. All the activity moved to the instinct—I don't like it here, get out. Tears welling in my eyes I turned to Kristen. “Help me,” I implored in English, not even knowing how to tell Farah that I was tired and wanted to go to bed. Some excuse. Any excuse. She doesn't have to know you don't trust her.

I don't know what Kristen told them, I wasn't listening, I was just gazing off into the darkness and praying to whatever was listening that I would get home, get home NOW.

Immediately Kristen said that if I wanted to go home, that she'd walk me home. They would not ALLOW me to go home alone. I said every word that came to mind, all in English, to Kristen—that it would be a half-hour walk, that I was sure my parents wouldn't mind if I called them on my cell and talked to them until I got home, that it was out of their way, that I was so sorry, but still she walked alongside me all the way into the house. Then Farah and her two friends planted three bizous on my cheeks apiece, assured me that “ce n'est pas grave,” 'it's no big deal,' and were wishing me a good night. They stayed out dancing with the group until two in the morning. I was safe in bed, realizing how good it was of them and coming to harsh terms with just how out of my league I had been in being so stupid as to think that I could “go out” on weekends and roll with the punches.

So there's my Friday France adventure. In moments like that it's easy to think that things here aren't as good as I'd always imagined they'd be. Honestly, some part of me knew from the beginning that I should expect minor disasters around every bend. When has life ever been what you see in the tourist brochures? What you see in the movies? When has life ever been this flawless portrait that our imaginations paint for us to admire? Honestly, having some obstacles to overcome makes this trip less of a vacation and more of a journey—a triumph, an evolution. And for that I'm proud of myself. I'm proud that I put my foot down and said 'I'm going home.' I'm proud to be discovering things about myself like that, knowing that Mom and Dad are, in a way, over here with me saying, “It's dark and you don't know these girls or where you are—time to leave.”

And still, even with the Friday incident fresh in my memory, I can honestly say that I'm still having the time of my life, that the good immensely outweighs the difficult. I am happy here. I'm learning, I'm changing, and most importantly I'm happy. If I know how many days left until I get home, it just means that I know how many days I have left to take advantage of being in Europe, in the south of France in the spring, with not much to worry about except getting home, reading for classes, and learning never to wear a hat to dinner again...
...that's not done here.

My first dinner home I'll wear a dozen hats.

But until then, I am in France. It couldn't matter less what little blunders I make, so long as I keep moving down this road.

Thinking of you always,
G

PS (April 7th, 2008): How can I thank you enough for the praise about my humble little blog? I am thrilled beyond mention to hear your reactions. The general consensus seems to be that I'm so quiet in person that you had no idea how I think, how I see the world around me. I'm more than happy to be sharing my observations with you, and even happier to hear that they are so well-received. It means a great deal to me. Expect another entry before too long—my internet time is best at the beginning of the week because there are big gaps between classes.

Samedi, le 5 avril

Avignon—barely a few minutes into April 2^nd, 2008

First let me start by thanking you all for the support and for reading my blog and responding so positively. I was a little nervous that six pages of Word document worth of blogging would be far too much for anyone but me to enjoy, but Mom and Dad have assured me that you are all out there keeping up with it, awaiting more, and it's so refreshing to be able to write and know that someone is out there reading it and enjoying it. It isn't a luxury I'm used to, and I'd like to thank you personally if you are reading this now.

On to business.

Can it honestly already be April? Have I been here less than a week? It feels like ages, it still feels like ages to me. Then again, time has a way of simultaneously speeding by and dragging on, depending on everything from your outlook to how busy you are, so perhaps it feels like ages now but tomorrow morning it will feel like I just stepped off the plane.

That is the lesson I'm starting to learn, this tiny lesson of taking things day by day. Wake up in the morning, take my shower, drink my tea, and see where things go. See how things are. Let me try to recount the past few days to you so that I'm caught up for tomorrow. It's a little late, after midnight, but I went out tonight and I'm not really that tired yet, plus I get to sleep in until almost nine tomorrow, go me, so I figure I will give myself half an hour. Fair enough, yes?

Sorry that these have been ending rather abruptly, well the last two did at least...I adore writing creatively in English for these blog entries but now I have to slip them in between classes. So I tend to write at night, and when my eyelids start to droop it's time to call it a night whether I've finished the paragraph or not. That'll probably be the case tonight, as well. Once the hour hand hits one, I've officially got to allot myself eight hours. I figure if I have the opportunity for eight hours a night, that'll be a fair figure, considering I'm used to sleeping less in the states.

Then again, we are all discovering the sheer exhaustion of constant immersion. Our only reprieve is with each other, little conversations in English thrown cautiously in when Christophe or Katy aren't around, some English on the way to school or out in the pubs at night. It feels more like treating a headache than speaking our native tongue. At least for me it does. At night, you fall into bed and feel like you've run the linguistic marathon. Each conversation feels like a little victory when they aren't special anymore. Back in the states saying anything in French is like “woo, I'm speaking French.” Here, French is nothing special and you can just hear that bar racheting up a few notches for us to jump higher and higher.

I think when I left off, I had just been swept into the triple-bizou of Danielle for the first time (les bizous are the kisses the French plant on your cheeks rather than shake your hand or hug like Americans do. It is rather startling the first time, and you have to follow the lead of whoever initiated the gesture in order to know which direction to start, and how many times to alternate cheeks. For Danielle it's three, starting on the right. She says that “one makes three bizous in Provence.”

This was Saturday afternoon, when we sat down in her sitting room and ate the cherry cake she'd make just for us. With whole cherries in it. I hoped this would not be an omen of some sort because I don't eat cherries on their own like that. But what was I supposed to do, say no I don't like that thank you for making it for me but I refuse? So I ate the cherries (no, I didn't combust or keel over or anything...). Honestly food for me has been the biggest obstacle, it really has, but to be fair I have tried absolutely everything I've been given, except alcohol. I told most of the group tonight that I'm not drinking any alcohol while I'm here. A few of them definitely looked at me like I was insane, and there was one “what's the point of being here if you aren't going to drink?” I cannot explain, in English or in French, a simple reason why I am not even going to drink table wine while I'm here. I don't need excuses. I told Danielle “I do not drink alcohol” and she said “d'accord” (“okay”) and that's the end of that. Anyway, what was the point? Ah yes—any food that has been handed to me or put on a plate, I have tried and eaten at least half of. Some things went over better than others. Danielle seems very understanding that I eat small portions, and now gives me less than she gives Cathy or Kristen without asking, calling me “the girl with the stomach of a bird.”

Saturday night it was quiche for dinner, fruit-veggie salad (there were oranges and potatoes...in the same salad...) and chocolate mousse for dessert. Danielle doesn't eat chocolate, she got sick as a kid from chocolate, but is happy enough to give it to us. We are happy enough to accept, too...

Sunday...I know for sure I won't be able to write about Sunday in seven minutes, but let's start and see where we end up.

After a breakfast of bread, grape juice, and tea, we piled into Danielle's small white sensible very French car and drove out to Sorgues to go to the market. Danielle wanted lettuce plants for her garden. This was an experience the likes of which I had never imagined.

It looks small from any single angle, but the market sprawls over several streets, with separate rows of stalls for vegetables and meet, for clothing and antiques, shoes and toys and jewelry, housewares, practically everything. An old woman in a headscarf bent over and counted out coins, her face as wrinkled as the dried fruit she was selling. Fish vendors shouted prices across the jostling crowd, parents expertly steered baby strollers through the chaos, it was hectic and crowded and even as my “ten strangers are bumping against me, get me out of here,” instincts kicked in, I distracted myself by trying to commit every tiny detail to memory. Even two days later too much has faded, and it's tragic that I cannot sit down and write my every thought as soon as I see things, because the sheer volume of inspiration is too much. All I can do is remember the significant details, the grinning ostrich-egg seller, the oysters in their wooden crates still smelling of the sea, the tray of strawberries gladly offered up as samples, sugared and speared on toothpicks.

And that was only the morning. Just wait until I get to the three other places we went on Sunday...

Tomorrow. It's 1:02. Time for my eight hours.

Thanks again for the support, keep reminding me you're out there, it thrills me past mention to have readers back at home. Miss each and every one of you (okay, except for those of you in the program with me...). Thinking of you in healthy-sized amounts.

-G

Avignon--April 2^nd, 2008

The most observant among you will notice that this entry has the same date as the one before it—here I am another night, trying desperately to catch up with events. I love being descriptive, I love going into all these fun details, but I want to at least catch up and I'm still stuck on Sunday. So I've decided to devote another night to bringing my blog up to date.

When I last left you, hours ago for me but a few paragraphs for you, I had brought my visit to the Sorgues market to an unsatisfyingly vague close. After we had finished at the market (Danielle bought some lettuce plants, Cathy found a hair straightener, Kristen and I were emptyhanded but happy,) we drove to a racetrack in Pontet.

Danielle's friend Michelle, who was somehow involved in the event, said that they had predicted attendance of 1000 people, and the tables stretched out in white parallel lines halfway to the grandstand. Here's something you'll enjoy, Olivia, I saw a crane game machine, six to be more precise but they were all together! There was also cotton candy (the name of the stand translates to 'Papa's Beard'), and that old familiar State Fair game in which the neon colored plastic ducks patiently swim in endless circles around a tin trough, as delighted children fish them out.

I had never had paella before that day, and I found it to be...well, I can't really decide. The fact that my shrimp had a face was a little disconcerting, but overall it was good, and...get this..I even tried and sort of liked the squid that was in it! I'll give you a moment here to be shocked and awed that I did actually try and almost enjoy squid.

Moment over. I mentioned Michelle already, I see. She chose to pronounce my name in the true French way (GrAWHss), which I liked, because Danielle pronounces my name the same way I do at home, albeit with a little more of a z on the end—GrAYzz. She didn't hesitate for a moment to make a discussion topic of my shyness, writing it off to the “typical way of a Cancer, the little crab, always so thoughtful.” But she flitted so enthusiastically from one topic to the next that my astrological sign was quickly forgotten in lieu of explaining just what this afternoon held in store.

With the ten euros we paid for admission to the event, there was a free two-euro voucher to place a bet on the horse race. Kristen picked the winner, and Cathy's horse placed, so the high rollers won something like six euros apiece. I sat on the concrete bleachers and didn't know which to pay more attention to—the five horses running the steeplechase, or the people watching the horses. I did a little of both, but I found the people more interesting, from those that lined up against the fence to root on their favorite from close range, to those who were sitting around me in the bleachers, hands cupped around their eyes to shield out the sun, a few of them shooting to their feet as the horses neared the finish line, cheering in wild French as though this would make the horse run faster.

Another thing we quickly learned about Michelle is that she too frequently plays host mother to international students, although her internationals are German. This explained her glowing descriptions of everything we saw as “vrai Provencale, vraiment traditionel!” Somehow this racetrack afternoon turned into a road trip to find a performance by a group clad in traditional Provencale garb, singing Provencale songs in the language of...yeah, I needn't finish. I wish now that I hadn't fallen asleep in the car on the way there, I'm told I missed quite some beautiful countryside, but looking on that day I think I would have enjoyed the whole thing even more if I had gotten some sleep the night before...

The women cradled baby dolls, their hair was stuffed into white bonnets, and the men shifted thoughtfully from foot to foot as they sang happily to the merry jangle of a single keyboard. Michelle, who is part of a similar group herself and speaks the language, was acting as impromptu translator, but I couldn't hear her over the music and across Kristen, who sat between us. Things took a strange turn when a man in a leather vest rode in on a bicycle and appeared to elope with one of the floor-length-skirt-clad women, and the entire room dissolved into helpless laughter when their getaway bicycle lost control and fell over in the middle of the performance area, sending them both sprawling. Leather-vest-man limped his bike out of the room amid wild applause, both from the audience and the other performers. We didn't stay long—they were raffling bottles of wine before dinner and we had already eaten, besides which there wasn't even enough room for us at the dining tables. I thought that perhaps the blessed moment of return to the house and naptime had come at last.

But Michelle's house was next on the list, and we watched a tourism DVD of Provence, along with Michelle's husband and excitable grey-black toy breed, Sara. All the while Michelle paraded more of her “vraiment Provencale” collection—pictures of her in her costume, dolls in Provencale costumes, even the candy and dried bread chips she offered were “quelquechose tres traditionel.” I stuck with the Coca-Cola (quelquechose tres CLASSIC!). They're just called Coca's here, though, with the accent on the latter syllable. Even when the DVD ended, we watched a nature documentary on kangaroos and kept right on talking.

When I fell asleep sitting up with my chin in my hands, that became the signal that it was time to call it a day. I allowed myself only a half hour nap before dinner, then sidled downstairs. I forget now what we had that night...I think that was the night we had ham wrapped around something called chickory that I still have never heard of except for having tried it. I'm not a fan. Maybe I'll google it sometime and see what it is that I ate that night...some sort of plant matter, is all I can be sure of.

There, at least that gets Sunday overwith, because I went to bed straight after dinner. I was exhausted, and whether because I have a cold, allergies, or both, that was the first night that my sinuses really began to bother me.

Next time I find time to type, I will bring you up to speed on what's happened since Monday, including classes, Melting Pot night, the Redline, the Redsky, the enigma that is a French keyboard, and our morning at the Palais des Papes. There are the teasers.

Thinking of you, and please keep reading,
-G

Avignon—April 3^rd, 2008

I have been living in France for one week.

A few hours more than a week, to be specific, but still. I cannot decide which feeling is stronger—the feeling that I've only been here a few hours, or the feelings telling me that I've been here for months already. Have I mentioned the way time simultaneously speeds and crawls, or alternates rapidly between the two? This is most certainly the case with milestones like this one.

But I will try not to get too ahead of myself, as I understand I left you all the way back at Sunday night. It's barely after nine now—dinner here begins at seven thirty, but is eaten slowly, in phases, with much talking throughout. And since the three of us decided we would rather stay in tonight, I now find myself in my room with nothing else to do tonight but enlighten you folks back home, which really is fun, and I need to catch up anyway. Since I have to keep my French language journal for my classes, I have seen this blog as my English language journal: I might even like to print a copy of my blog entries when I get home and call it a journal.

By the way, Granddad and Gramma Dawn, I am using the blue journal you gave me for Christmas as my French language journal. My advisor thought the fleurs de lys very fitting, and I have received many compliments on it even just in a few days!

Sunday night, as far as I am concerned, was the most well-earned night of sleep that I have ever experienced. When I was in high school my teachers would always say “wait until you try immersion: when you go to France, the first few nights, you will fall into bed at night with your head spinning, every muscle exhausted from being immersed in a language all day.” I thought they were exaggerating, but I can vouch for those feelings and more. Unconsciousness was well-earned, sweet, and restorative—I woke up the next morning feeling much better and ready to head to class.

The University of Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse (UAPV) was once a hospital. It is a fenced-in campus, on one side, the stone ramparts surrounding the entire city serve as part of the courtyard border. On the other end (called the 'student entrance' and the closer of the two doors if you live inside the walls) is an iron-bar fence. I hope to take a decent picture of what the grounds look like as you walk through the archway, but let me attempt to describe. Calling it a courtyard is an understatement—it is an immense open area of decorative stone fences, small trees bearing cream-colored sprigs of berries that I have yet to identify, stone benches, long stretches of grass, and paved and gravel pathways (well, pathways wider than city streets, but I suppose I can say pathways...) stretching the entire length. The classrooms and computer labs are found in the older stone building, and rooms are labeled first by what floor they are on (either 0, 1, or 2) and then if they are on the east (E for est) or west (O for ouest) side of the main staircase. A system that sounds simple enough, but that we have yet to master since the room numbers themselves are not always laid out in a logical order.

The classrooms themselves are relatively plain—square desks and uncomfortable chairs, all peppered literally with the souvenirs of bored students with wandering pencils. Desk graffiti is international, whether the doodler in question simply signed their name, or if they scrawled down something profound. (I have the right to vote, I have the obligation to obey.)

If you don't mind, I am going to skip over the details of classes just now, and save that topic for another time when I have less to write about. Let it suffice to name them: French Civilization and Culture (in other words, history,) French Literature, Oral and Written Production, and a course taught by the program director on the French Resistance. This last one is an example of the age-old enigma—the class that has co-morbid reputations for being immensely difficult, immensely interesting, and immensely informative.

Monday it was History and then Resistance, after which we headed over to the little internet cafe “Cybermedi@” where we simply give our names and Christophe's name to the smiling woman at the counter. She then evicts her teenage son from one of the dozen or so computers, all occupied, so that there is a place for you. I talked to Mom and Dad on AOL that day, checked my email, put up pictures, and left with a pretty high sense of accomplishment.

I still don't know which of the Ohio group got word first, but word was spreading like wildfire through the group about Melting Pot night at the Irish Pub in town. All the international students studying at UAPV were welcome to attend, to meet each other and exchange stories and spend a few hours socializing, since our class schedules have us so strictly segregated from each other. Thrilled at the thought of meeting fellow expatriates immersed in a foreign language, we were among the first to arrive. The group's leader Laurent grinned his greetings and introduced the few friends who sat with him around the table, waiting for everyone else. He is an English professor, whose French can be a little too clipped to be comprehensible unless one really pays attention. Like any good student with a base in linguistic study, he uses his second language as humor. So as he jabbers enthusiastically in French about the Black Eyes Peas' “Pump It” that is currently throbbing over the sound system, he then breaks into English to remark to us in the unmistakable accent of someone who learned British English, “Well over 'ere, it's a brand new single!” From there the conversation wandered to old songs, to childhood guilty pleasures of music. One by one we began to confess songs we still knew the words to, who listened to what boy band as a kid, and I made the mistake of mentioning the Spice Girls.

Laurent freezes. He leans forward on his elbows across the table, to press his face near mine so that I can hear him over Outkast, who are instructing us all to 'shake it like a polaroid picture.' There are several people sitting between us and we are practically lying flat on the table to be within earshot of each other.

“DID I JUST HEAR WHAT I THINK I 'EARD?” he demands with a grin, playing up the English accent, “Does someone here like the Spice Girls?!”

“I knew all the words, we all did!” is my defense, and I shoot desperate looks around the table to my fellow Ohioans, praying that at least ONE of them would agree with me. After all, we all had our favorite Spice Girl, right? It's a generation thing...Sure enough, they offered their favorites, we giggled out a few lines, and Laurent and his buddies found it all quite amusing.

That's just about when I first saw him, this as-yet nameless figure who may very well become a legend.

My Irish boy.

His dark hair is short and curly, his glasses on the thick side, and he has dimples that I could have stared at all night. I could have stared, but I opted instead for the series of inconspicuous ogles...he had me from there, and then he mentioned that he speaks Gaelic.

Let me repeat. He. Speaks. Gaelic.

The girls around him immediately squealed that he must speak some, and shyly he obliges. I am melting in my chair, suddenly very aware that he has no clue I exist...meanwhile I lean back in my chair to overhear that he teaches English at a high school, that he comes from Ireland...but a name? What's his name? I never did find out, although Catherine immediately offered to be “my wing man” and help me with my predicament but like the typical shy nerd with a frivolous crush on a European boy, I declined, happy to just watch him out of the corners of my eyes for the rest of Melting Pot night.

Half of the Ohio University group was there that night, and we stuck largely together. With the exceptions of the ever-mingling Laurent, the Irish boy a few seats away (and yet so far!), and a Nashville student doing a project on students abroad. There were other groups there too, but sitting beside someone you know seemed to be too much to ask of them that night. Melting Pot nights are going to be a weekly occurrence though—every Monday night, and my roommates and I plan to return. Cathy seems to know that Ireland boy has something to do with my sudden enthusiasm for spending Monday nights in a loud pub playing last year's top 40, but even without that particular variable in the equation I had a good time. By then I had practically forgotten yesterday's exhaustion. This wasn't immersion, this was jumping in feet-first and grinning. This wasn't being held under a flood of French, this was plugging my nose and ducking under the water myself.

And what a distinction...there are different kinds of French here—the kind I'm obliged to speak, the way my friends and I reluctantly switch an English conversation to French when the program directors walk in, the kind that I have to speak or Danielle won't understand what I'm saying, the French that you must speak in order for the waiter to bring you lunch, the kind the professors lecture in because they have no other language to fall back on. That is all mandatory French.

I have also discovered the enthralling world of voluntary French. The kind that is spoken between group members for the sheer joy of knowing how, the kind that we seek out after dark in the laughing crowds in the pubs, the French that we speak not because we must, but because we can and want to. That has been the true beauty of this first week: I'm not in French class, I'm in France, and suddenly seven long years of hard work turn a tourist attraction into something with more depth and complexity than a postcard could ever say. Who knew that back in eighth grade as I drudgingly copied and re-copied conjugations, memorized worlds like 'timbre' ('stamp') and 'l'addition, s'il vous plait' ('check, please.') and repeated the days of the week for a grade, that I would be in France a short seven years later, using all my work in this language to open up a new world...?

Tuesday we were introduced to the Creative Writing half of the production class, as well as Literature. As I said, I'm going to go into depth on my classes and profs later when I don't have so much material to cover. I've already reached seven pages of word document and while I have been assured that it's not too much, I am not looking to make these entries into novels...

I wrestled with the campus wireless internet, found the computer lab, and generally killed time until it was time to get back to Danielle's for dinner. I can't explain what made me want to stay out that afternoon but I didn't feel like heading back to the house just yet. And after dinner, we decided to head out again. We'd heard something about salsa dancing at the Redzone, and thought we'd investigate. We met up with a bunch of the others at the Hotel Magnan port (any time I refer to a port I mean a break in the walls where those of us who live outside can get inside.) At least fifteen of the group walked into the Redzone that night, only to find that by “salsa dancing” they'd meant a group of a dozen or so adults who already KNEW how to salsa dance. We watched a few numbers, marveling that any human being could remember how to do that and make it look so natural, then headed somewhere a little more accommodating of fifteen odd Americans.

The Redsky was once called the Red Lion, but is an entirely separate establishment from the Redzone and the Redline. Complicated, non? The Redsky is in the Place Pie, right across from “that weird building with the plants on the walls.” I'll have to take a picture to explain, remind me of that later...

There was soccer playing on every screen, and closer to the bar the techno music was a rhythmic assault on the eardrums. We split into smaller groups—Rachel, Major, Nicky, Caitlin, Cathy and I all headed outside for a while and we were just sitting down when Cathy leaned in.

“Did you see him?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Huh?”

“Ireland. Ireland was in there.”

Well, Avignon is a small town, and there aren't THAT many places for students to socialize at night. Why should I be so surprised that I should see my frivolous European crush again less than twenty-four hours after he became my first frivolous European crush? He was watching the soccer match with his friends and I only got a glance, but it was enough to confirm that he still exists, and in the same town as me...I told Catherine about my US friends demanding pictures of said boy. Project inconspicuously take picture of cute boy is underway! Haha, I apologize to my male readers for the tales of Ireland boy. I'll put a disclaimer up next time.

We didn't stay out too long on Tuesday, and were in bed by eleven-thirty, but certainly glad that we'd spent another night in each others' company discovering the city together. Tuesday night is also the night most of the group found out that I don't drink alcohol—responses ranged from “how strong of you to stick to that” to “that's cool, you'll save money” to “what's the point of being in Europe if you aren't drinking?”

We don't have classes on Wednesdays here—the Ohio group doesn't, at least. Instead, we had our first quote-unquote “excursion.” The quotes are because we didn't leave the city. Instead, we toured the inside of the Palais des Papes. And really, most of what happened there you could find in a tourist guide—the gorgeous but crumbled frescoes on the walls, the immense wooden ceilings, the sheer size of the building, not one palace but two.) The 'no photography inside, not even without a flash' rule had us looking longingly at our cameras, but it was still a hugely impressive structure. Our tour guide spoke in English until she overheard one of us say something in French. “Oh, do you all speak French? Would you prefer French?”

The other tourists had chosen the electronic tour guide over a real one, and wandered the halls with audio-tour sets held to their ears like telephones, staring silently at random corners of the room as they did. At one point an entire group of over a dozen people walked by, walking close to each other and unmistakably traveling together, but completely silent and no two of them looking in the same direction. A true “what would aliens think of this bizarre human behavior?” moment.

And then, yes, we danced on the bridge. I've told already that it isn't a literal bridge anymore, yes? The cobblestones were immense and the soles of our feet were painfully aware of each one. The Mistral was howling down the river from the north, sending our hair flying in every direction, but we were so thrilled to be there that we were all grins as we linked hands and began to dance. Sometimes for cameras, sometimes just for the sake of dancing, we alternated between gasping at the scenery and breaking into song and dance. We mocked Elaine from Seinfeld, which Major recognized immediately with a grin and an exclamation of “the full-body dry heave!” We pogoed up and down to the beat of our own singing, we threw our arms around each others' shoulders and swayed in a circle, we were more than classmates at that moment—we were friends brought together by a life-changing experience, who were thrilled just to be standing on the Pont D'Avignon and dancing like every shameless tourist who's ever stood in our place.

We ended at the carousel on the Place de l'Horloge, and broke into our own groups, shopped for a while, ate lunch (an omelette and French fries which, contrary to what I'd heard, do exist here.), spent some time at the internet cafe and then I found myself alone in the city again. See, I was one of five OU students who signed up for the voluntary theatre workshops on Wednesday evenings.

Here's another great opportunity to meet other internationals, I figured, and that evening didn't disappoint. Another American, a few Korean girls, a girl from the Dominican Republic, another from Sweden, and my Japanese scene partner Yoshi, were all very welcoming—they had been meeting for several weeks already and the three OU students who did show up were brand new. The first hour was spent with the entire group, the second was devoted to catching the Americans up to the rest of the group. I think I'll leave theatre for another entry, too. That and the classes will be ongoing—there's certainly no rush to describe those and I've just crossed onto the ninth page of this word document. I shouldn't put you through much more than that at one time, haha...

Today we had classes again, tried out the cafeteria in the library building (I found Snickers bars in France! VICTORY!), took some internet time...I had my meeting with Katy to discuss my first week of journaling, then Kristen and I snuck some pre-dinner sweets (okay, so pain au chocolat is heavenly, I'll describe that later too...) and walked around the city for a while. We had dinner, and here I am finally blogging about what I'm doing right now. This catches me up. This entry was finished on April 3^rd at 10:45 PM, hopefully posted pretty soon after that. More will follow, for as long as I'm here.

Keep reading, thinking of you all, and having the time of my life,

-G