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.