Trapped in Thursday

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

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

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

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

I haven't updated since Nice, apparently?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Huge. Stinkin'. Gift shop.

Enormous.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let me sum up:

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

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

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

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