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