footprintsinparis

French and Spiders

2008-05-23T14:43:00.000-07:00

There was a spider loose in my house. I woke up this morning with a giant bug bite the size of a half dollar. I learned from a pharmacist how to say spider "l'araignee", although I explained it as "the thing which has the many legs." Lucky for me, after the scabies outbreak I'm stock full of allergy medication and didn't have to buy more. Today while studying for the French exam I have tomorrow (more about that later), I saw a giant spider crawling on my ceiling. My friend said to kill it, I wanted to throw it out the window. She won, I killed it. Now, after googling spider bites with my similarly hypochondriacal friend, I am sitting up in fear of a scenario circa Brokedown Palace where all the spider's little friends are going to come seek revenge on me in the night.

So I am currently studying more for the exam I have tomorrow afternoon which is worth 40% of my grade for my French class to keep a look out for spiders. Probably not the best plan. I need a C for my credits to transfer back to Michigan and worked myself into a panic, certain that I would not pass and would be doomed to an eternal life at the University of Michigan.

Yesterday my teacher told me that I speak French well but I need to work on writing. 40% of the entire grade is writing, 20%, which I have on Wednesday, is speaking. It's a cruel world.

Last night Roomie had a party. When I returned from a group study session, I found her and many a Frenchie smoking and drinking their little hearts out. They invited me to join the party but I said I had to study for my French exam.

"Merde!" Roomie yelled. Merde means shit.

"I mean, I don't think I'm that bad..."I said. And most of the Frenchies (at least the ones who speak some English and understood me), laughed.

Apparently "merde" is what one says to mean good luck in French.

I felt better. I resisted the temptation to practice my spoken French with her friends and instead hid in my room conjugating verbs and perfecting the difference between direct and indirect objects, which, I'm still not really sure I have down. Every half hour or so I would leave my room to ask her and her friends a question.

"One can say: To them the photos I show? or The photos I show to them?" They seemed highly entertained by my questions and I realized I too would find it funny if someone kept asking me questions like, "Do you say "I showed them the photos? or The photos I showed them". Where clearly the answer is obvious to them, not to me.

I've been finding the French language highly irritating these days. They make certain that every noun and adjective has its own gender, yet when it comes to words that involve actual human beings, like "She" and "them" they both go to the masculine, making and woman "him" and any group, even one with a hundred women and one man, the equivalent of "those guys". So I'm supposed to memorize that Michigan is masculine, North Carolina is feminine, and New York is officially referred to as "the state of New York", gender neutral.

Yet, for all my current dislike of French, I find it hard to hate a language in which I have recently discovered the word "se gauffre" which translates literally to "waffle oneself" and refers to the activity of eating waffles, one of my favorites.

I think that's all the updates for now. I hope you'll all wish me merde on my exam and on my mission to defeat the spiders!

Italy, you're so good to me!

2008-05-15T19:11:00.000-07:00

So, I (was when I started writing this, still innocent and scabies free) currently in Barcelona where I have been reunited with my parents and sister which has been tres exciting! But, I'm going to blog about Italy. Because I'm a little behind. First though, it has come to my attention that I need to do a little person identifying. It seems that some of you are under the impression that Little Texas is one person. Oh contraire. Little Texas is three people. They are three girls from the University of Texas who I find ever so lovely if a bit crazy. I guess for the purpose of this story I should name them. I'll call them Pity Party, Make Out Queen, and Happy Girl.

That being said, Little Texas and I went to Italy last weekend! All four of us, not two. And this is how it went.

After many an hour spent with my dear friend Mohamed at the train station, we managed to get ourselves on an overnight train from Paris to Milan last Thursday. Our train left at 7 pm. Given Little Texas's habit of running late, I told them to meet me at the train station at 6:00. At 6:30 they showed up. And decided to go to the grocery store. At 6:50, I was standing in front of the train with just one of them when the other two came running up with wine bottles in hand. I was feeling sick and a little sad about the idea of staying up drinking on a train all night. Lucky for me, that blasted Mohamed had put me in a separate car then they were in. So, I got to sleep peacefully on the train.

At 5 am we got to Milan and with my very limited Italian I managed to get us on a train to Genoa, where it turns out Christopher Columbus lived (only after getting a coffee gelato in the Milan train station). Little Texas was either drunk or hung over or both and unentertained by the expedition I led them around in Genoa seeing all the sights. So I pulled us over for some pizza and learned that having a vocabulary of 27 words in Italian makes one fluent and a star! Where as having a vocabulary of a few hundred words in French makes one useless. What a pleasant change! I went to pay the bill in the restaurant and when asking for change kept saying 5 instead of 15 for some reason unknown to me. "Quindici," the cashier said. "Cinque," I said. "Quindici," She said. "Cinque," I said. "Quindici," the rest of the people chimed in. "Quindici!" I repeated and was congratulated with a round of Bravos. It was quite exciting.

Then we managed to get onto a train to Cinque Terre, which is this amazing place where there are five cities and they are all separated by mountains and sea. We staying in a campground right outside it (who would survive in the wilderness now, Monica?). The people at the campsite were really lovely, a family business we would soon learn. The first night we went into the closest town to go to a wine bar. In God's little joke on me, it was pouring rain and freezing. On the Mediterranean. In April. When it's supposed to be an average of 70. In said wine bar, we met a lovely character name Antonio who seemed to fit the description of charming Italian who sleeps with every tourist he meets and can woo with his Italian charm. He tried to get us to go out but having spent the night on the train and then being in the pouring rain, I put my foot down and made LT (Little Texas) go back to the campground with me.

Then we got back to the train station and called the campsite to come pick us up in their shuttle. But no one answered. And we sat there feeling sad. Until three Italian guys happened upon us. One, named Fabio yet with no resemblance to an Italian model, had just been in the States and wanted to practice his English. Finally he asked us why we were sitting alone in a train station at midnight. We told him the campsite was not answering the phone and we didn't want to walk the three miles in the pouring rain. Lo and behold, dear Fabio turned out to be in the old campsite family and offered to drive us home. Feeling uninterested in taking a ride from strangers but even more uninterested in walking home in the pouring rain (and feeling frankly like I could take him if he tried to kidnap us), we agreed and dear Fabio took us home.

Anyhow, then it was Saturday morning and I used my firm voice with the campsite for not answering the phone. They said the line had gone out in the rain and they had come to try to find us but we were already gone. When I told them a character named Fabio took us home they all clapped in the little office "Ah, Fabio!" They exclaimed, "He save-a the day!"

And then in a grant of mercy it was warm and sunny and beautiful and we hiked between two of the towns and ate gelato and sat on a cliff overlooking all the beauty (it honestly felt like we hadn't seen that much sun in years only though it had only been a couple months). Then we went back to the campground where LT ganged up on me and tricked me into going out. Still having a cold and not really wanting to I made Happy Girl promise to take the last train (a midnight one) with me or take a cab. Having gotten a promise we ventured into town again to the wine bar of Antonio. Two members of Little Texas, Pity Party and Make Out Queen, were competing for the role of the lucky one who got to sleep with Antonio while Happy Girl and I peacefully drank our wine, knowing the drama we were about to encounter. Antonio and his friend, also named Fabio but not the same one, invited us out to the bar. At this time I said it was my bedtime and made moves to take the train only to learn it was later than I thought and I had missed the train. I asked Antonio about getting a cab. His English was, if possible, worse than my Italian, but we soon realized that in fact, there were no cabs in this city and I was trapped until the next train at 5 am. We were all trapped. So we figured, why not get drunk.

So we went to a bar with a bunch of Italians where Happy Girl and I entertained ourselves butchering the Italian language to the great happiness of the Italians, who, I think might have a bit of an inferiority complex with regards to French and were happy to spend the night bashing the French with us.

Then things turned sad. Make Out Queen and Dear Antonio ventured down to the beach and the rest of us followed. They ran off to a rock to make out while the rest of us sat there drinking out beers. Pity Party immediately got really sad and proceeded to spend the evening asking us if she was pretty, which, we told her, she was. Happy Girl and I were entertained by Antonio's friend, who told us in Italian that Antonio sleeps with an American a week. Pity Party, in an attempt to gain attention, ran into the ocean.

I was given the task of retrieving Make Out Queen and Happy Girl went off to fetch Pity Party. We reconvened with Antonio and decided the best plan of attack, given the coldness ensued by those who run into the ocean, would be to sit in his car for an hour until the train came. Which we did. And then we took the train. And then we walked 3 miles from the train back to the campsite. And I was sad, but entertained. And then we slept and finally made it back to Cinque Terre for some hiking and gelato eating. All was lovely and the next day LT and I parted ways, them for Florence, and me for Paris.

We took a lot of fabulous pictures, but my camera broke so I have to wait for LT to put theirs up!

Paris 1, Alice 0

2008-05-14T12:39:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time in Paris it rained for two and a half months. One person thought of building in ark and sailing south. Then one went on vacation and returned and found that the Paris she had left behind was no more. The sun was shining! The weather was warm! Not a cloud in the sky! Picnics galore! One decided the weather in Paris was not so bad after all. Then Paris laughed and returned to its true colors.

Yesterday I was walking with my friend Justine who is visiting from Boston to the Eiffel Tower. I thought I felt a rain drop but thought to myself, oh pish posh, it's summer time, there's only a few clouds, no need to worry. Then I felt more raindrops. Then it started pouring. Literally pouring down rain. And that was 7 hours ago. And it hasn't stopped. And theweatherchannel.com says that it is going to rain until Monday! And I am sad.

But I do have reason to rejoice! Yesterday was my last day of phonetics - and I passed! As a special treat for me and my teacher I decided to pronounce everything like Lumiere from Beauty and the Beast. At one point she came over my microphone to try to correct me but I stayed true to the Lumiereness of it all and she finally gave up. It was thrilling. In other French news, today in class it became apparent that I no longer speak French. Which was...really sad. Prize goes to whoever can explain an antecedent to me in English and the difference between qui and que in French. I'd ask Roomie but I think we'd run into the same woo v. who confusion of the last time she gave me a French lesson.

I Went to Barcelona and All I Got Were These Stupid Scabies....Or, The Maybe Overshare Edition of This Blog

2008-05-11T12:19:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time I went to Barcelona. You will all, surely remember that experience. Well, I brought back a little piece of Barcelona with me. I was a little itchy in Barcelona, but it wasn't til I got back to Paris that things turned bad.

On Sunday last I woke up with my eye feeling a little puffy. A few short years ago I had the same feeling of puffiness when I woke up. That time it morphed into me being unable to open my eye, running into my dresser so hard I still have a bruise today, begging for mercy from my boss to go to the doctor, and spending 7 hours in the George Washington University hospital ER only to be handed a bottle of eye drops and told I had Blepharitis, which, frankly, sounds like a made up disease. Anybody who knows me knows that if another person touches their eyes, my eyes start to water. I'm an eyephobe. If I ever have to get glasses I think I'll kill myself. For the next week I had a coworker drop eye drops into my poor little eyes. Usually one out of ten went in and it became a source of office entertainment.

So. You can imagine my panic when I woke up to this puffiness. Do NOT panic! I told myself, I'm sure it's just a little morning puffiness. Totalllly normal for one eye to have to exert a lot of energy to open and the other eye to feel fine. I crawled out of my bed and peered in the mirror, to find what I had feared. One puffy eye, one normal eye. I called the rents and my mother doctor promised to bring eye drops to the flea market we were going to.

So, running a little late amidst the eye panic, I boarded the metro instead of walking to meet them. Rookie mistake. One would think I would know by now that when I try to get on a train, chaos ensues. And so, of course, where I changed stations, the train I needed to get on was stopped, indefinitely, for an accident. So I decided to walk. Until I realized how actually far away it was. So then I decided to take the bus. For the first time ever. It was a treat! Friendly people, direction, no stopping, it has it's own lane and everything to drive in! The bus might be my new best friend! Who'd have thought?!

So, I made it to my parents, 45 minutes late. And my mother proceeded to drop eye drops into my eye while sitting at Starbucks and being looked at rather funnily by some Frenchies. But I figure, if you're French and at Starbucks, you have no right to judge.

As we were walking around the rather unexciting flea market, I decided to show my mother my increasing number of red bumps.

"I think it's scabies," I said. Certain that the disease my sister and I may or may not have contracted in Ecuador was back to rear it's ugly face. Not that I'm making a generalization here, but weird red bumps tend to appear on me in Spanish speaking countries.

"Bug bites," she determined with the same certainty she brushed away the idea of lice as I pulled bugs out of my hair eight years ago. In all fairness to the woman, in addition to being terrified of eyes, I've got a touch of hypochondria and could just as easily have determined the bumps to be a sign of an inevitable diagnosis of skin cancer as scabies.

Later in the day, however, Mama Karen sharpened her diagnosis and determined that, in fact, I did seem to be exhibiting signs of scabies. Such as, having mysterious itchy red bumps in clusters all over my limbs and back. And so she got to play her own fun game of try to communicate with the French at the pharmacy. And my was she successful! She got me some scabies cream, some itchy go away stuff, and a bottle of wine!

So I took the longest shower I have ever taken in my life. Became the cleanest I have possibly ever been. Doused myself in scabies goop. And shoved all my clothes away except for two little previously unworn outfits (scabies can live on clothes for three days! little buggers! no pun intended). I spent the day frolicking with my parents. In my stinky and diseased state they would still hang out with me, which I thought was nice of them. We had lots of fun diagnosing me, wandering Paris, eating falafel, and such.

On Wednesday my parents sadly left me all alone in Paris and I hopped a train to the south of France to see my friend Emily who is living in a town called Avignon teaching English. It was super fun and relaxing and we spent a lot of time laying by a river tanning and life planning! I think I might have even come up with one! Stay tuned for details!

And now I'm back in Paris apparently scabies and weird eye disease free. Here in Paris we have no screens on our windows and spring has finally reached us. I had hopes that maybe bugs didn't fly up as high as the 6th floor but they were proven false hopes when I woke up at 3 o clock this morning to a buzzing in my ear. This morning I had 5 mosquito bites! In a moment of fear I thought they might be Scabies, round 2, but they are decidedly different.

Oooh I have so much more to blog about my spring break! But I am sleepy and have an early wake up to go get my friend Justine from the airport who will have made it to Paris two days after her departure from Boston! Poor weary traveler.

Barthelona, Bane of My Existence

2008-05-02T09:23:00.000-07:00

To be fair, it´s not really Barcelona´s fault. I guess this is a case of don´t shoot the messenger. But lets just say I am in Barcelona alone my giant back , 10 euro and a credit card that nobody seems to want to take and have been killing time for 7 hours and have another 2 to go. My parents I belive have arrive in Paris via plane, my sister is journeying through southern Spain, and I am paying to take an overnight train to Paris tonight. This is how it goes:

Today I went to the train station at 8 am to catch my train back to Paris via a few cities in France, Montpellier being the first one. First, I realized I was at the wrong train station. After yelling ¨Fuck!¨ really loudly in the middle of the station and having lots of people stare, I managed to ask how to get to the other station. I was given directions and told to run to the train. There I met a friendly man, who spoke no English. And a friendly translator, who spoke lots of English. The conversation went as follows:

Me, in Spanish, ¨Excuse me, do you know if this train goes to the other station? And how many minutes it takes for to arrive there?¨

Man, in Spanish, ¨Yes, it does. 10 minutes. Where are you going?¨

Me: ¨Montpellier¨

Man, in Spanish: ¨Ah...si, this train will something because huelga¨ (which I interpret as llega, arrive, which I interpret as him telling me not to worry, I will get there in time.)

Me: ¨Oh good, thank you.¨ (Man looks confused by my response but smiles)

Kind Stranger (KS) who has been watching this struggle to communicate, in English: ¨Do you understand him?¨

Me: "I will make the train?"

Kind stranger gets sad look on his face and says "This train does not go today, because of the strike"

Me "The train does not go? As in, does not go to Montpellier? How does this guy know?" I motion to Nice Man (NM), who, turns out to be a train conductor.

KS and NM man talk in fast Spanish for a really long time and I understand "I dont think she can go, She can go to the border, There are no other trains, The French are crazy." I nod in agreement on the last one.

KS sends me up to the information booth, where the person told me to run to make the train to the other station. That information person sends me back down to the train and tells me to run. I report back to KS and NM. NM is also going to the other station and says he will take me to the other stations information place. KS has to go on another train.

NM and I have an awkward 10 minutes to the other station where I try to make conversation by asking why the French are striking. He shakes his head and launches into a speech I did not understand. I nod my head in agreement and we go back to silence.

By the time we get to the other station, Nice Man has realized he has to speak much slower for me to understand him and leads me to the information booth.

He shows me on the screen that the train is not going, then tells me to ask for a direct train to Paris before sending me on my pathetic way.

Then, oh then, the games really begin. I go to an information booth where the woman claims to speak English but clearly does not. So I struggle to speak to her in Spanish with a creepy old man who keeps talking to me in French and English and Spanish and is also trying to get to Montpellier. The conversation goes as follows:

Me, in Spanish "I have a ticket for to take the train to Montpellier but I think the train does not go. But I need to go to Paris."

Information Lady, in English "The train no go to Montpellier"

Me, in Spanish: "Yes I understand that, so how can I get to Paris?"

Her, in Spanish "You bought your tickets in France so you cannot change them here"

Me, in Spanish "Okay, so if I dont have these tickets, and I want to go to Paris, how do I get there?"

Her, in Spanish "You cannot make a train reservation to go to France from Spain"

Me, to Creepy Man also waiting "Did she just say I cant make a reservation to go to France?"

Creepy Man, "I think so"

Me, in Spanish "So if I want to go any place in France, from Barcelona, I have to make the reservation in France?"

Her in Spanish"No trains go to France today. You can go to a town on the border and maybe from there you can take the train to Toulouse (a town in France)."

Creepy Man, in French, to me "You need to go to Montpellier?"

Me, "Oui, je veux...can we do this in English? I want to go to Paris, but my train is in Montpellier"

Creepy Man, in English, to me "We can rent a car to Montpellier!" To woman, in Spanish "Can go to Montpellier by car?"

Woman, in Spanish, and looking confused, "Yes, but you cannot rent a car in the train station"

Creepy Man, to me " Do you want to rent a car to Montpellier?"

Me, feeling sufficiently creeped out and fed up, to the man, "No, I want to go to Paris". To the woman, "Gracias"

I try another line where tons of people are standing waiting to try to buy tickets. I ask the woman in front of me who I hear speaking English if she knows if there are trains going to France. Why I think this woman has huge knowledge of the train system based on the fact that she seems to fluently speak Spanish and English is beyond me, but in the end it helped me.

She bought her tickets and then asked the man behind the counter what the problem was. Then she told me if I had a direct ticket to Paris I would be fine but if I had to change trains I wouldnt be able to go. I had to change trains twice to get to Paris.

So, I talked to the man myself and learned that the only train I could take was a 9 pm overnight train at a very high price. There were 12 more places on the train and a line of disgruntled Spaniards and Frenchies behind me. It was decision time. I went for the overnight train. And now, 9 hours later, here I am. In an internet cafe above a Subway restaurant. I have sat in the sun, written three term papers, charged iced coffee and a sandwich at Starbucks, the only place I could find that would take my credit card. And have spent a precious 3 euro on the internet. And have two hours before my train, allegedly, leaves for Paris. Im praying, and hope you will too, that I get on the train and that it does, in fact, go to Paris.

Stay tuned for exciting updates of my Spring Break journey to Italy and Spain and, hopefully, back. And pictures. My life will fascinate you, I promise. In the meantime, I'm off to investigate the chances of this Subway taking credit card.

Roomie's Parents

2008-04-17T01:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Roomie's parents came to town. I was at the apartment waiting to let them in because Roomie had to work and they didn't have a key. Roomie had given me a list of things that her parents were not to know about (i.e. she doesn't smoke, she eats very healthy, and her sister was not in Paris last week). I was feeling a little sick and wondering if I was going to have to talk and remember to lie to them for two hours in French. I had met Roomie's dad when I first got to Paris in January but had never met Roomie's mom (who is insanely stylish and French and made me feel really uncool in my flared jeans and socks).

But they were sooo friendly and talked to me in French really slowly and I totally understood them and then they must have gotten bored with my stalled French and decided to talk to me in English. Roomie's mom was really embarrassed about her English which was of course really good English. Roomie's dad told me all about how much he loves e-mailing with my dad (I think they were destined to be friends) and then he began a campaign to get me to move to France.

He started by telling me my French was good, that I had lost 5-7 lbs since last he had seen me (I imagined him converting kilos to lbs in his head before saying this and found it amusing) and the French life must suit me, and then suggesting different ways for me to sneak around the visa system and get a job. This morning I woke up to a newspaper article taped to my door that discussed how France "is the winner in the longest vacations in the world" and a note suggesting this might help me decide what country to live in.

We also had a small discussion about American and French politics that always makes me a little nervous because while the French feel free to bash on America, I just don't feel as comfortable bashing on France. But Roomie's parents seem capable of separating their dislike for George Bush with their fondness for America. He even said in two years they might buy a house in America since the dollar is so terrible. I asked if I could live in it.

And that's pretty much it. I just found them so highly entertaining. They will be back on Tuesday and I'm looking forward to the continued "move to France" campaign...I think it might be working.

I'm leaving for Italy tonight on an overnight train (ugh) with Little Texas and then will be back on Monday and then Sister dearest and my parents come and we frolic around Spain! I'm sure it will provide lots of good stories.

Ha! A Rooster Would Never Say That...Or, Sometimes in France I Want to Crawl Under a Rock and Die

2008-04-08T12:38:00.000-07:00

My phonetics teacher's favorite activity is asking Americans how to say something in English, and then pronouncing them with a fairly awful accent for someone who teaches people how to speak correctly. I'm just saying, I wouldn't be harping on people for saying imperfect U's if I couldn't say an H. But that's just me.

Today, dressed as normal in something blue with blue eyeshadow I thought went out of style sometime circa 1989, she asked how to say "mairie" in English. "City hall," we said. "Ha," she laughed, "You have a whole city in a hall?!" The Mexican girl, the Japanese girl, and the Saudi Arabian girl laughed along with her. The rest of us hung our heads in shame. Who were we to build cities in halls!?

This was similar to an experience in phonetics a few weeks ago where we were learning to but rrrrs with oooos. In French a rooster says "Cookiroocoo." Or something like that. Then she went to the Mexican, and it was similar, with more rolling of the rrs. In Japanese it says something like "Kookeekoo". In Arabic it's "Kocooko". Then, with a superior smirk on her face, she turned to the rest of us. "En anglais?" "Cockadoodledoo," we said, knowing this would be wrong. "Ha! What rooster says cockadoodledoo?!" I offered that, perhaps, and American one did.

Sometimes I hate the French people. Other times, though, I remember that I am dependent upon their kindness for every aspect of my current life.

Tomorrow I am doing a presentation in French class about the great state of Michigan. I had Roomie and her boyfriend correct all my notes so that grammatically it will be correct. In an effort to upstage my fellow students and make my French teacher forgive me for missing two days last week while I tracked down my eurail pass, I decided to make a traditional Michigan dish -fudge! Translated, loosely, in my French book as "chocolate and sugar" and my Roomie's boyfriend who lived in Canada for awhile as "bonbons americain" said with a dismissive air as he tried to explain it to Roomie.

In order to make said delicious treat, I had to go to the grocery store. I found a new grocery store called Champion which is big and beautiful like Meijer and felt, for a moment, like my day was going to be successful. Then I walked in the store. I managed to find evaporated milk on my own, and marshmallows, and asked someone for chocolate chips, which they do not carry, and instead bought chocolate bars to smash into little pieces, pretending they were my phonetics teacher.

Then I began the hunt for corn syrup. Not in the baking section, not in the weird condiment section, not in the foreign section, not in the candy section. I asked somebody for "Syrope de mais? De may? De mye?" (trying out different phonetic pronunciations of a language that is not spoken in the slightest way phonetically). Syrope?" He looked at me strangely, then sent me downstairs. To maple syrup. I tried my luck on someone else. He too, looked at me strangely, and then said in French, "Come with me" and led me to a cashier, who was checking out a long line of unhappy looking customers. He spoke to her in French very quickly and I did not understand, but the entire line looked at me.

"What do you want?" She asked in English. "Um...corn syrup?" She looked at me. "For cooking?" She kept looking at me. "For making cake?" She shook her head.

A woman in the line said "Quoi? For cooking? Are you making corn?" She turned to the man beside her and spoke in French too fast for me to understand. "You need to find some corn?" He asked. "To make a syrup"

I wanted to crawl under a rock and die. Finally, the guy whose groceries were actually being checked out spoke. "We don't have that in France," he answered in an only slightly flawed pronunciation of English. "What are you trying to make?"

"Fudge," I said. "It's like, a candy." He looked at me confused. "A cake sort of..." He shook his head, "I can maybe just use oil?"

"Oui," the line chorused. "Use oil," he said.

I wanted to crawl under a rock and die.

"Merci beaucoup, merci, merci," I said, and joined the end of the line, letting them get back to their buying of French foods in peace.

Then I made the fudge. Sans corn syrup. And it is now in the fridge, and I am hoping it will harden properly so I can woo my teacher tomorrow.

I Hear Springtime is Beautiful in Paris....

2008-04-06T14:20:00.000-07:00

No really, I do. People tell me all the time.

"There's nothing like Paris in the springtime." "Paris in April is supposed to be beautiful."

And frankly, it's starting to sound a little bit like what people who had never been to Ann Arbor used to tell me. "I hear Ann Arbor is so much fun." Like, yes. I hear that too. But I have yet to experience it.

It has been steadily raining for about two months. On Monday it stopped raining. On Tuesday it started again. On Wednesday and Thursday it was drizzly. On Friday it was 60 degrees and sunny and I wore a dress and felt summery. Then Saturday happened. And it went back to raining all day long. Then, oh then, today happened.

Around 1 pm I left my house to go to the train station to book train tickets for my upcoming travels (more on that later, let's just say for now I made a new friend named Mohamed who works at the international ticket office yet speaks no English and I have to go visit him tomorrow). It was sunny. And 50s ish. Around 3:30 pm, I left the train station to dark cloudy skies and at least a ten degree temperature drop and rain. I went to meet some friends for dinner and discuss the fact that there seemed to be no trains out of Paris the day we planned to leave. By the time we left dinner, around 9 pm (yes we have six hour dinners, it's a hard life), it had turned to the kind of biting cold you expect in late October in Michigan. The kind that comes right after an Indian Summer where the warmth lulls you into a false sense of security. And you are nine and plan to be a princess for Halloween, only to feel, on October 30th, the coldness beginning as you walk home from school, knowing that the sharpness in the air means that by morning it will be snowing and you will be forced to wear a puffy green jacket under your princess costume and turn into a fat green skin colored princess instead of a pretty one. That is the kind of cold that hit me today as I walked out of dinner, dressed in a light, light jacket and a scarf and ran myself the mile home in the misty weird rain that falls here.

And now, at 1 am Paris time as I write this, it is snowing. Literally, snow, heavy snow is falling from the sky, in Paris in April. Part of me wants to run to the Eiffel Tower and take pictures and feel like it is all so magical. The other part of me wants to ask why this global warming thing isn't doing actual warming. And part of me, a very small sad part of me, wants to find a tanning bed.
If you can bring the UV rays to you, bring yourself to the UV rays.

I thought my only consolation would be that it must be snowy and cold in Ann Arbor, but I just looked at the weather and apparently it is 60 and sunny. God sure does play a mean joke sometimes. I guess I'll have to find my solace in the fact that I will never again set foot in Ann Arbor as a student, no matter what the weather. (Knocking on lots of wood)

Sunny Days and Eurail Passes

2008-04-04T10:45:00.000-07:00

On Monday morning I ran into a family I used to babysit for who was bringing me my eurail pass. They were in a jetlagged haze having just arrived in Paris. I gave them my phone number to contact me later about the eurail pass exchange.

Then it was Thursday. And I still hadn't heard from them. And felt sad. And sure that in the jetlagged haze they had lost my number. So, knowing their address but not their apartment number in Paris, I geared myself up for a little stalking. I walked to their building, scotch tape in and left a note with my number. While writing and taping the note, a man at a cafe across the street stared at me funny. Then, a few hours later they called me, and now I have my eurail pass. Success!

Little did I know, the entire day, we had been in almost the same spot. I got to their apartment 10 minutes after they had left. I went to the steps of the Holocaust deportation memorial, they did too! I went and sat in front of the Notre Dame - they were at the top of it! We were so star crossed until finally our stars aligned.

Now I am wallowing in the glory of the things my parents sent, including: calcium pills (gotta keep those nails strong and the milk here makes me want to vomit), carmex, peeps, and blister bandaids. I plan to spend the evening eating peeps and putting soothing items on my feet while moisturizing my lips and popping calcium. Should be fun.

In other news, today it has not rained at all! AT ALL! It has been sunny allllll day. Which is like, the most unusual occurrence in my recent life here in gay Paris. I found an English book exchange store and bought a James Baldwin book which I read today in front of the Notre Dame in the sun. I sat at a cafe for hours drinking rose wine! And soon I am going to eat ice cream fondue! This is the Paris I had in mind.

What's that, I can speak French? But only to strangers who show up at my door?

2008-03-26T14:51:00.000-07:00

Today I had potentially one of the oddest experiences of my life here in France thus far. Whilst toying with the idea of going running, I was drinking coffee and reading the paper this morning when someone knocked on the door. I decided to ignore them for fear of having to speak French. Then they rang the doorbell. Twice. Unshowered and dressed rather disgustingly, I answered the door. There dressed looking perfect and French was a woman looking very official and holding a clipboard. Our conversation went as follows, only in France, and some of her lines she may actually not have said and I may have just thought she was saying. But, it felt like a huge turning point in my life that I could even communicate with her.

Woman: Bonjour, is this the home of Roomie's last name?

Me: Oui

Woman: I am from the neighborhood's office of government (this statement is debatable, I'm hoping that's what she said. Otherwise I gave way too much info to a stranger). Are you Roomie?
Me: No

Woman: Are you Roomie's sister? (whose room I am subletting)

Me: No

Woman: Who are you?

Me: I am the roommate of Roomie...her sister is in Denmark (Denmark said with a French accent, meaning a pathetic attempt to throw a rolled R in)

Woman: How long have you lived here for?

Me: I have lived here for 2 months (I just learned the past tense and now don't have to speak only in the present and near future!)

Woman: How long will you live here for?

Me: I have will to live here for 2 months in May (sometimes I confuse my tenses and seem to give all of them)

Woman: How much do you pay?

Me (starting to feel a little sketched out and illegal): Um...I don't know? (i lied)

Woman: Why do you not know?

Me: Um....my dad pays my rent?

Woman: To the landlord?

Me (hoping to god she's not the landlord): Yes, he pays to the landlord the rent.

Woman: How many people live here?

Me (having a flashback to eight of us living illegally in a house in Ann Arbor and having the city come to inspect): Two?

Woman: How many rooms do you have?

Me (having just reviewed rooms in the house and feeling excited about my knowledge): We have two bedrooms, we have a salon, we have a room of bathing, and we have a small kitchen!

Woman: How long have you studied French for?

Me: Two months

Woman: You speak very well

Me (I have learned the proper response to this statement is): Oh no, I want to learn more and my accent is not good.

Woman (nodding about my terrible accent): You will learn. Can I see your apartment?

Me (feeling a little too comfortable with her after her praise of my French): Of course, come on in!

So I gave her a grand tour of the place. She asked me if I knew Roomie's phone number, and then as I checked in on my phone she read her number off of her official looking clipboard. She asked for my name and told me she would call Roomie.

As of this evening Roomie has not heard from her. It was all very bizarre but I just felt so high off of my ability to communicate that I didn't see the strangeness in it at the time.

In other news, my very,very, very pro-war, anti-abortion, fiancee in Iraq friend and I are planning a jovial showdown of who is more patriotic after she claimed she loved America more than me today. Check back soon for exciting updates on this trivia challenge we will have.

Emus, Running, and French Genes

2008-03-18T14:37:00.000-07:00

Last night, for no apparent reason other than perhaps the swiss roll cakes were getting to me, I decided to go for a run. This happens about four times a year where the idea of seeing how far I can run with out passing out sounds like fun. Usually I make it about ten minutes before I pack away the tennis shoes for a few months. Yesterday I lasted twenty minutes, dodging Parisians who looked at me funny for daring to exercise on their streets, before I stopped at the sight of emus.

That's right, let it soak in. Emus. Maybe ostriches. All I know is they looked suspiciously like the giant bird I saw once at an emu farm in South Carolina. There were three of them in a small cage, like the kind they keep owls in at the Potter Park Zoo. At first I thought they were fake, based on the building behind them that said Natural History Museum, and the fact that they were not moving. But, grateful for any reason that allowed me to stop running, I decided to have a stare down with them and find out if they were real. They were! They moved their heads and one even stood up. Apparently there is a zoo in Paris, and nobody bothered to tell me. Sure, I love wandering the city and looking at giant phallic symbol after giant phallic symbol and marveling at the architectural genius of it all as much as the next person, but what I really love is zoos. So you can imagine my happiness at finding this exciting development. I plan to pay the zoo a proper visit later this week when I am not sweaty and disgusting.

Anyway, after the emu excitement I had a burst of energy and ran to meet my friend at her house, lured by the promise of water. After spending an hour watching her facebook, I decided my fun had ended and moved my journey on home. However, I managed to get lost and, mapless, spent the next two hours wandering the streets of Paris. I finally made it home, four hours after I had left my house.

I arrived home and just a few minutes later Roomie, who recently has been making the rarest of appearances in the apartment, bustled through the door carrying a giant bag from McDonalds. She came into the kitchen, where I was downing a bottle of water, red faced and sweating, and she looked me up and down and said: "You go jogging? I go to McDonalds. So, great." (So, great, being her favorite way to end a sentence in which she is trying to suggest that she should be healthier, i.e. "I drink so much, my friends call me AA. So, great." I appreciate the attempt at cross language sarcasm). Bless her heart, she meant well, but as she sat in the salon eating her third (I kid you not, third) quarter pounder it took all my will power not to break her tiny little French self in half and extract the DNA that allows her to eat three quarter pounders a day and still look like she stepped off a page of Vogue.

Sunshine, Diet Coke, and Swiss Roll Cakes

2008-03-12T11:58:00.000-07:00

Okay. It may not be summer time. But...it stopped raining! And it got warm out! And I got a lot, a lot happier about life. So I decided to boycott any prospect of winter that may be trying to weasel its way back into Paris and am no longer wearing jackets and will be wearing sunglasses everyday. Fair, I may look like an idiot. And fair, this strategy, which I have tried before, has never really worked. But I have faith.

In other news. Yesterday I was reunited with the love of my life. Diet Coke. Thanks to the magical work of Justine Simisky and the US Postal Service, I am currently the owner of three full cans of diet coke. And one empty one. It was perhaps the happiest day of my life thus far in Paris. After a distressing day of phonetics where I learned I could not say the most basic word in the French language correctly (that would be Bonjour), I marched my sad little self to the post office to get a package I had missed even though according to the time they wrote I was totally at home when they tried to deliver it. Halfway to the post office it started pouring rain. I had no umbrella and ran. Life was sad. I got to the post office and stood in a long line with a creepy French man behind me who kept saying what I can only assume were inappropriate comments. But because I did not understand them, I was not as bothered. Then, oh but then. The lights of heaven shone down upon me. The woman at the post office loved that I tried to speak her language, and handed me a box. Justine had written the contents of the box on the outside (ya know, to make it clear she wasn't sending bombs or anthrax or anything) and one of these items said soda. Being familiar with east coast talk, I knew this soda word was code for pop and suddenly felt my one duty in life was to protect this box until I could get it to the safety of my apartment. I wrapped my arms around the box, ignoring my usual job of protecting my ipod, camera, and wallet in my purse, and practically ran the 3 blocks back to my apartment and up those dreaded stairs. It was true! This soda was code for diet coke!

At first I wondered it this was going to be a let down. I feared that maybe I had over exaggerated the difference between coca light and diet coke in my head, and having grown accustomed to drinking coca light with revulsion, I may not be able to tell the difference in the diet coke. Oh but how silly that fear turned out to be. The sweet taste of aspartame without disgusting sweeteners came back into my life. I've done some research and it turns out it's not all in my head. There are two different ingredients in coca light that are not in diet coke and they are "sweeteners" and "extracts of vegetables". Leave it to the French to put vegetables in coca light. I'm surprised there's not ham and cheese flavoring and a touch of alcohol in their coca light. I like my aspartame straight up and I'm happy to have three cans of it still waiting for me.

Along with the diet coke were tights tall enough for me, underwear, and to my happiness and frightenedness, swiss roll cakes. I may or may not have once upon a time had a problem with swiss roll cakes that caused me to gain obscene amounts of weight. And I may or may not have not eaten them for eight years for fear that once I started I would not stop, until in a moment of panic and desperate need this summer I may or may not have eaten five packs (of a six pack box) before throwing the box in the trash and making my roommate take the trash out. To my great pleasure, there were only four. And I have managed to eat only two of them.

Moral of the story: You can send me diet coke! And it won't explode! Wooo! But please, for the love of all that is holy, do not put any swiss roll cakes in with them. 4 I can handle, but anymore might do me in and send me back to 7th grade. Which wasn't a pretty time - I've burned most of the pictures but otherwise I would prove it. Anyway, if you feel suddenly urged to send me diet coke, here is my address!

I'm off to do my French homework. And maybe eat a swiss roll cake....or two

The Paris Blues

2008-03-10T13:28:00.000-07:00

Paris is cold. And rainy. And windy. And most of my friends here have friends from home visiting this week during spring break. And all my friends have managed to finish college and therefore no longer have spring break. And I'm feeling disenchanted. So I've decided to make a list of things I do not like about Paris, and a list of things I do like.

I Do Not Like:
Nobody speaks English, at least not that they let on until you've stood butchering their language for 10 minutes. Except in McDonalds, where they find my presence thrilling, and I, theirs.

I don't have a work visa, and therefore don't have a job and therefore, am twindling down my bank account

There is no diet coke

There is no skim milk

Everybody smokes

The dollar is weak, the euro is strong

My friends are not in Paris

Yes, we don't have the best president. But frankly, neither do you. Stop picking on the popular
girl just because she's popular and you're not.

Instant coffee or espresso being the only options.

I DO Like:
It's totally acceptable to have a glass of wine at any time of day

Cheese. Fromage. Queso. I've mastered that language

When I walk into my French building I hear people speaking a million different languages and I really feel part of an international community.

Baguettes

Chocolate macaroon balls of deliciousness

Walking a million flights of stairs a day to cancel out aforementioned balls of deliciousness. And cheese, and baguettes, and wine.

The Sacre Coeur

Seeing the Eiffel Tower from my classroom

Getting really excited every time I understand a word in French

Things I Miss About America:
People

Diet coke

Skim milk

Meijer

Target

The dollar

Eating lunch via the food samples of Whole Foods

New York

DC

East Lansing (Sorry, Ann Arbor, not making the cut. I may be homesick, but not desperate)

Not doing blank x 1.54 every time I buy something.

Being able to communicate.

Alright. That was good to get out of my system. It's a bit sad how much of those lists revolve around cheese and chocolate and diet coke and coffee. If I have a stroke or heart attack at age 25, I'm pretty sure we'll be able to say why.

The Weather, The Water, The Woo

2008-03-04T15:29:00.000-08:00

In a really tragic turn of events, Paris has turned cold. Freezing cold. It's like, in the thirties. Yes. I'm from Michigan. Yes, I'm used to the cold. But this is absurd. Don't give me a January and February full of 50s and 60s and picnics and lovely sunny walks around Paris, and then hit me with freezing rain and freezing temperatures as Spring approaches. That is just wrong. I might, however, be less bitter about it had I bothered to look on the window today before I left for school and not worn no coat, no umbrella, and no boots. C'est la vie.

* * * *

Yesterday, Roomie came home from work and as I was filling my water bottle at the sink started yelling in French. Finally, it switched to English, and I could understand.

"You don't drink ze water." She said. "My friend, she has told me zat zere is a probleme wiz zhe terroriste, you know, bin Laden"

Yes, I thought, I'm familiar with this bin Laden character you speak of.

"She says zere is problem wiz zhe water, how you say javel?"

I pause the conversation to look up javel in my new trendy dictionary - it means
basically water from the sink. Roomie continues.

"Zhe terroristes, zey want to put gnldsak (she says a word in French, I stare blankly, she tries again) ze bad stuff zat eet makes you sick and it kills you (I nod, now understanding) zey want to put it into ze water in Paris and so ze government, zey put a lot of chemicals in ze water to make it get rid of the aslgksngd (she says French word again) and so it is not good to drink zis week."

Now, Roomie often talks about how because of the war we started the terrorists are mad and that since the US, Spain, and England have been attacked, it is now France's turn. I often try to make the case that since France is not a part of the war, they should have a free pass on bombing, but she seems pretty convinced of it. Which made me question the validity of this claim. But, to be on the safe side, or rather, because I have a tendency to be a bit of a hypochondriac/believe anything I'm told, and because I remembered thinking on Friday that the water tasted funny but maybe I was just hung over, I walked myself down to the Franprix and bought some bottled water (Mon Dieu! I hate paying for water!).

Today I went to French class and asked my teacher (who, I recently decided and found someone who agrees, looks like the teacher in the children's book where their regular teacher gets sick and they have a new substitute teacher who looks like a witch and has frizzy black hair. We can't remember the name of the book, if anyone can name it, I will pay them in a postcard) about said water crisis in Paris. With a huffy look on her face she said something in French. She could tell by the blank look on my face that I had gotten approximately three words and launched into her seldom heard flawless English to explain to me that the water in Paris is perfect and two years ago they tried to put biological destruction in it but now it is fine.

I have returned to drinking good old fashioned tap water.

* * * *

Roomie has been spending more time than usual in the apartment. I hope this does not mean she is breaking up with her boyfriend because I enjoy the benefits of a roommate whose boyfriend owns a bar. However, this has given me the opportunity to use her Frenchness to my advantage. I often have her correct my homework so I can appear to be a star student in class. Sometimes though, she teaches me more casual French and when I read it in class I get a funny look from my teacher - I think she might be on to me.

The other day, we were learning the difference between the following phrases:

Qu'est-ce que Qu'est-ce qui

Qui est-ce que Qui est-ce qui

I know, it seems like a game of "Which of these thing is not like the other" only the options aren't Orange, Banana, Potato. Or something. But it's not. And frankly, I still don't know the difference. But it all led to a very humorous scenario. This is the French background you need to know to appreciate the story: Que = what, qui =who.

"Roomie," I asked, pointing to the page where the mess of quis and ques was, "can you explain to me the difference between these?"

She studied it for a long time. Like, a really long time.

"Okay, zis is it," she said, looking confident but not sounding all that confident. "Que is what, qui is woooo"

"What?" I asked.

"Que," She said. "Qui, is woo"

"Qui is what?" I asked.

"Wooo," she said. "Qui is wooo"

"Wooo?" I said. To be fair, I should have gotten it by this point but sometimes when you speak French all day you no longer understand broken English.

"Oui, qui is woo. Que is what," She answered, clearly not understanding my apparent loss of intelligence.

"Oh!! Who! Qui is who? I mean, wooo?" I asked.

"Yes," Clearly, she was happy she was making progress with me. "Qui is woo, que is what. You understand?"

I didn't understand. It was all still beyond me. But it gave me a glimpse into the fact that the English language also makes very little sense. Roomie still says woo. Sometimes I repeat who back to her, but bless her heart it must be like when I say a word with an R in it to her. I butcher her language, she can take a couple swipes at mine.

* * * *

It is almost 2 am in Paris and I am obsessive compulsively checking the election results. It's bizarre but every step of this election feels so important. Like the whole world is watching to make sure we don't fuck it up again. I'm hoping a winner will be chosen tonight so the Frenchies will go back to their favorite past time - making fun of Bush - instead of trying to understand (through asking me) the idea of a caucus.

My Feet, My French, My Folitics

2008-02-27T15:20:00.000-08:00

I have never been one for shoes. Due, perhaps, to the aforementioned large size of mine. I used to be happiest barefoot but in a traumatic experience circa 1992 where I stepped on a bee and it stung me, I began to appreciate the glory of flip flops. Apart from the months of November, December, January, February, and March, when the snowy Michigan weather sends me to my Uggs I tend to wear flip flops throughout the year. Sure on my biannual run I'll thrown on a pair of tennis shoes, or on the rare night where I feel like dressing up I'll rock a pair of heels. But generally, my Old Navy flip flops and I get along superbly.

But alas, in my realization that my beloved flip flops might make playing spot the American a touch too easy for the Frenchies, I left the flip flops. Which left me with only 4 pairs of shoes. Two heels, one boots, one tennis shoes. In an act of generosity, my parents and grandma sent me boots and two pairs of ballet flats. I put on my ballet flats and trotted off to class. By the time I got to class, the back of my ankles were bleeding and I had no idea why. Then someone told me about a little thing called breaking in shoes. Who knew that buying new shoes meant walking around with bleeding feet for three days? I tried the boots today and they were tres more comfortable. In the mean time, I will work on this so called breaking in of the ballet flats, as I'm promised once you break them in they are the most comfortable. I have also, in my switching of French classes, landed in the building which is requires a seven flight climb. But pas de probleme, I love a good hike up the stairs. Makes me feel like I am making up for years of not working out.

Which brings us to French, and phonetics. Back in the day, three days ago, I found phonetics highly entertaining. With a sing songy voice we learned to say nouzallon instead of nou allon. Now I find it irritating. My class is mostly made up of Americans, but also some Mexicans, Koreans, and Japanese. I used to think the Mexicans spoke really good French. Then I realized they were speaking Spanish with a French accent, my original approach, but they're better at it than I am and aren't as easily caught, those little stinkers. The Koreans and Japanese can't, for the life of them, recognize the difference between a P and an F. For 10 minutes, my professor tried to get them to say "Je paye" but they kept saying, "Je faye". She finally gave up. This leads us to the Americans. We can say a P and an F. We can get the basics of the pronunciation. Apparently, this is not good enough. When we are generally harassed until, half an hour later, our errs and oos and iiis are exhausted. I understand the insistence on speaking the language correctly, and understand that coming from English we have a better grasp than those coming from non-Roman alphabet languages. But, you would think a little acceptance could be allowed. I have also heard, though, that most Parisians don't think the French spoken in the south is correct and scoff at the idea that anyone from Quebec could possibly speak French anywhere near the accuracy they desire.

Which leads us to my politics, or, if you have a hard time with Ps, my folitics. Paris is obsessed with the election. Newspapers advertise "La Guerre Hillary et Obama". Most Parisians seem into Hillary, but generally because they think she was a good first lady. So, while it's becoming increasingly, painfully obvious that Obama is probably going to win, I'm still in Team Hillary. And I hope if you are in Ohio or in Texas and considering voting, you will vote for Hillary. Regardless, I hope one of them bows out to spare me the constant insistence of the Frenchies to ask me who I'm voting for, and why and why are Americans so stupid. Luckily, I usually confuse them by telling them Michigan got their votes taken away. They really like that one. Keeps them going for hours.

In the meantime, I'm off to brave my apartment, where Roomie is having a party full of Frenchies.

ERRRRRRR

2008-02-26T12:18:00.000-08:00

Let's talk pronunciation. You know how people who come to American who don't speak English as their first language sometimes mispronounce things? Well, sometimes people who come to France who don't speak French as their first language sometimes mispronounce things. Here is the difference, in America, we still understand them. In France, they act like we are speaking Chinese.

For example. If a Frenchie came to America they would say "What is zis cheddaire fromage? " instead of "What is this cheddar cheese" and we would respond "This is a cheese we make in America." No problem. Now let's try a different scenario. An American walks into her neighborhood Franprix to buy some groceries. She says to someone, "Excusez-moi, je cherce la lait ecreme" which means, I am looking for skim milk. However, that American has not yet perfected her errrrrr and so says ecreme instead of ecrrrrreme. The person stares at her blankly. The person calls another person over. American tries her question again. "Quoi?!?" The Frenchies demand. Finally, I try another technique. "Sans gras?" I ask, meaning without fat. "Quoi?!!" Again, they stare blankly as my errr is lacking. I try another technique, English. "Milk. Milk with out fat? Skim milk? Pas de fat!?" Ahhhh....suddenly they understand me. "Lait ecrrreme," they repeat, "sans grrras. No, we don't have that."

I smile appreciatively and try not to shoot myself.

I switched into a new class yesterday. I am in a lower level of French which is fabulous and I now take phonetics every other week where, for one hour, I sit and listen to a woman say phrases in French. Then I repeat along with 30 other hopeless American accents. I hear the difference, I cannot create the difference. Today she drew a diagram on the board of a mouth and throat to show us where the sounds are supposed to be coming from. It was not helpful.

I'm still working on creating noises which, the rest of the world seems to create flawlessly. In the meantime, whenever I'm around a Frenchy from now on I will try to use the "TH" sound, which they are incapable of reproducing, as much as possible.

In other news, I got home from phonetics and my traumatic trip to the grocery store to find a note saying I had missed a package. With my actually semi decent reading French skills I found my way to the post office and with little trouble picked up a package from my parents and grandparents filled with shoes that fit me, orbit gum, and how to fix your slowly dying computer software. All very thrilling! How France managed to get a package from the US to Paris in 4 days yet still has many a store which refuses to take credit cards is beyond me, but I'll take what they can give me.

Normandy - War, Huitres, and David Sedaris (note to reader, this is not that funny in the beginning)

2008-02-26T11:36:00.000-08:00

I had my trip to Normandy all planned out. Leave Paris at the crack of dawn, see some war sites and feel patriotic, eat some delicious oysters, and stalk David Sedaris.

Things did not go exactly as planned. I did leave Paris at the crack of dawn. I did see lots of war sites and feel way, way more than patriotic. I did eat some oysters and they made me want to vomit. I did stalk David Sedaris but he was nowhere to be found.

Here's how it all went down:

I left Paris before the crack of dawn. After sprinting, literally, sprinting to the metro and sprinting up the stairs I arrive at the metro to watch the doors close in my face and about 10 Frenchies stare at me with no attempts to help. Thrilling. And so, I was of course late for the bus. And of course, our activities director gave me a look of frustration for always being late. I think he's going to start telling me to be places half an hour before everyone else.

Anyway, I got to the bus and we left Paris. After a few hours of driving we made it to our first stop, the World War II museum. I've been to quite a few Holocaust museums in my day, I've been to the WWII monument in DC, I've watched Pearl Harbor for goodness sakes. However, nothing prepared me for the intensity of that museum and the intensity of the movie they showed us. We saw live footage of the attack on Normandy and watched as man after man of Americans, Canadians, and British fell down from German fire. Then we read letters written the day before the invasion from soldiers who died in the invasion. Then we saw a million other really, really sad things.

Then we got back on the bus. As we drove, I tried to sleep until I heard someone yelling "Alice! Michigan!" I rousted myself up kind of grumpily at my disturbed slumber and looked out the window to where they were pointing. There, in all its glory, was a giant store with MICHIGAN written in big letters. I have no idea what said store was. It looked like a jiffy lube. But we kept passing them everywhere we went. Tres bizarre.

Next we went to one of the British landing beaches called Mulberry Harbour on Juno Beach. The British came in the middle of the night and set up wave breakers and temporary docks for boats to come in to and then in the morning dropped off hundreds of soldiers. Intense.

Then we went to the American cemetery where grave after grave after grave overlooked, I think, the Utah and Omaha beaches where American battalions landed on D-Day. I really have no words to describe how intense of a place it was. I can tell you I was twenty minutes late getting back to the bus because I got so lost in taking it all in. There was also a quote on the chapel there that read: "These endured all and gave all that justice among nations might prevail and that mankind might enjoy freedom and inherit peace." That phrase still has not left my mind. I felt so patriotic standing there it almost made me want to throw up a little in my mouth because now being that patriotic in America means something I can't relate to at all. The idea of inheriting peace was so deeply saddening because people really believed WWII would be the war to end all wars and look at us now. I wonder if it will ever be possible for a generation to inherit peace.

And then, we went to the German bunkers at Point-du-Hoc. Frankly, it really gave me the creeps and I wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. This is where I think both Americans and British landed only due to a navigational error landed three miles away thus losing the element of surprise, quite the navigational error I would say. Soldiers there had to scale cliffs as the Germans cut ropes and shot at the Allied soldiers. Allegedly there are unexploded bombs still on the cliffs and it was all fenced off with barbed wire. Tres intense.

Finally we drove another two hours to a town called Saint Malo which was really beautiful. There I ate huitres, oysters, which are supposed to be this delectable treat in Normandy. It tasted like eating rubbery ocean water. I am used to eating canned oysters on triscuits on the beach in North Carolina. Some people think that is disgusting. I say the fresh oysters are disgusting.

The next day we wandered Saint Malo which is an old city surrounded by ramparts. It was lovely but that's pretty much all it entails. Then we went to a place called Mont Saint Michel. Now, I went to a place called Mount Saint Michael's in England and this is supposed to be the equivalent. Not the same. Mt St. Michael's you can walk out to during low tide. Mt. St. Michel is surrounded by quicksand during low tide so you have to drive. Part of me wanted to test out the quicksand theory but the smarter part of me decided against it. We went on a lovely tour of the monastery and climbed a bazillion stairs (luckily, stair climbing is my specialty). During part of the tour the guide told us that the monastery used to have thousands of books but they were destroyed by Allied forces in the war. She said this with such bitterness at the Allied forces that in all my patriotic glory I wanted to yell, "At least you're not giving us this tour in German!" But I resisted.

After this we got back on the bus for a 5 hour journey back to Paris. We were told there would be no bathroom stops but after lots of water and coca light drinking, the better half of the bus had to pee. In fear, no one wanted to request the stop. Knowing, though, that the activities coordinator already though low of me for my constant tardiness, I braved his wrath and requested the stop. We landed in the most amazing convenience gas stop I have ever seen. If you are at all familiar with the rest stops on the Ohio turnpike, imagine those, times 10. It was glorious.

And then we arrived back in Paris, I metroed my pretty little self home and got ready for a week of classes in a new and improved, lower French class. Read more about this in the thrilling next edition of my blog. Which, I promise, will have no sadness, unless you count my inability to communicate above the level of a two year old.

Oh, and despite my many attempts to see David Sedaris from the bus, I had no luck. :(

French Women Don't Get Fat

2008-02-17T15:11:00.000-08:00

Today I showed Roomie the website of the book French Women Don't Get Fat (See here for entertainment).

She laughed hysterically, agreed with all the premises of it, extolled the virtues of fine French dining, and marched her skinny little self off to get her daily dose of Mcdonalds.

I ate my brie cheese, sipped my red wine, and thought about the injustice in the world.

Americans Abroad, Or, Yes, We're Very Sorry About That War.

2008-02-17T12:21:00.000-08:00

Today roomie was studying for her exam in American politics. It gave me the opportunity to flashback to 11th grade government and also feel very wise. Up to a point.

I tried to explain why Wyoming and New York both have two senators. All I could come up with was something about a compromise, which may or may not have been great.

I tried to explain why, in Iowa, the caucus involves either raising your hand or moving to one corner for your candidate. "Don't you have more electronics than that now?" Roomie asked.

Then came the clinker. "Why do you not vote to the president direct? Why with the electors? This his how Bush, he became the president, yes? In France we do everything direct." To be fair, I thought, nothing I've experienced about France has been direct. In fact, everything seems to be set up to play a game of how long can it take. But okay, you can elect your president directly, we'll go with that. Why, then do we not do the same? Now, she did recall the 2004 French election in which a crazy conservative nearly got elected based on their popular vote, multi-party system. But all in all, it seems much better than this silly electoral nonsense.

Anyway, I started out feeling very wise when telling Roomie all about the US political system, then I felt very silly and stupid not being able to explain the rationale behind anything because, surprise, there is no rationale!

And then I remembered my Valentine's day, and the people I spent it with, and I suddenly felt like in the category of Americans abroad, I was doing significantly better than a lot of the rest of them.

This is how my Valentine's, here in the city of love, began to rank high on the list of most depressing Valentine's. One of my little Texans has a friend studying in Paris as well, at one of the best European business schools. We went to meet him and some of his friends for dinner. Having gotten into a few unpleasant Barack Obama vs. Hillary Clinton debates lately, I promised not to bring up politics at dinner with the conservatives.

In fact, through the following seven comments, I said nothing until the final one, when I could no longer hold in the urge to scream at the stupidity of my fellow Americans. The conversation, stated with complete intense I shit you not seriousness, went as follows:

Boy#1: I just prefer Obama to Hillary. I mean, it's not a I don't think a woman should be president thing, I just think a man would be better.

Girl #1: Yeah. I just don't think women should be presidents. Like, when I'm on my period, I get really emotional and make bad decisions sometimes. What if she was on her period and having a bad day and like, started a war?

(I drank a glass of wine to keep from mentioning a current war that started for no apparent reason other than someone was having a bad day, and that someone wasn't a woman).

Boy #1: Yeah, I mean, it's not that women aren't smart. It's just a biological difference thing. That's why Obama should get the nomination.

Girl #1: But, did y'all know that if Obama gets elected he's going to be sworn in on the Koran?

(I choked on the wine which I had been guzzling to stop from talking)

Boy #1: Really? That's crazy. We definitely don't want an Islamist running our country.

Girl #1: Yeah, he's not even American. He went to a school run by terrorists in like, India or something.

Girl #2, Voice of All Reason: Are you guys kidding? Barack Obama's a Christian from Chicago.
Well, whatever. At least people would respect him.

(I thought the misery had ended without me commenting, but oh no)

Boy #1: Well, whatever. At least the rest of the world would respect him. It's just, no other country has ever had a chick president before. Like, people won't respect us, ya know?

(I poured another glass of wine)

Girl #2: What about England? Margaret Thatcher?

Boy #1: Oh yeah. Well, okay. So one.

(I lost all self-control)

Me: Um, Israel? Pakistan? Argentina? India? Rwanda? Chile? The Phillipines? Germany? Liberia? Should I keep going?

Boy #1, looked slightly stunned as Little Texas laughed hysterically at my outburst, which they had been waiting for. He paused before coming up with what I can only imagine he believed to be a great come back: Whatever. Y'all are gay.

As soon as dinner was over I bolted from the restaurant and made my journey home. I was told, later, that the guy told the rest of Little Texas who stayed out for the night that he was kidding, and he totally knew about all those chick presidents.

So yes, I am now understanding the bad reputations Americans get abroad and where they come from. And yes, we're very sorry about the war. And the confusing electoral system. Our bad.

Learning French, Or , How I Get Scammed By Small Children

2008-02-13T13:13:00.000-08:00

Okay, I know I said I wouldn't multi-post but I felt this deserved its own.

Except for a few American children who I love dearly and think are the absolute greatest, French children are some of the most adorable children I have ever seen. Sure, it can be a bit depressing when you see a 4-year-old dressed more stylishly than you, and know that you'll never have the ability to live up to her already impeccable fashion taste, but all that can be forgiven when you realize you can actually have a conversation with a 4 year old and understand at least half of what she says.

And that makes those 4-year-olds hard to pass up when, while leaving your picnic in peace, you are accosted by them. In a heard they rushed up to us asking, politely and at a low enough level of French that I could understand them, if we would like to buy some metro tickets. We already have metro tickets, we explained. But, we were told, these weren't just metro tickets. In fact, they were used and would get you nowhere on the metro. These, were creations of art. And, folded into bizarre creatures we were told were a cat and a dog, my friend and I caved and for ten cents each bought little metro ticket animals. All because I was happy I could understand them. I'm thinking about introducing these children to the idea of a lemonade stand.

In other news, I've started French class. And have found that I am placed, once again, in far too high a level. But I'm going to try to tough it out, because I hear in the lower classes people are learning to count, which I mastered while wandering the streets of Cannes.

Yet I'm struggling, big time. Yesterday we learned which countries are masculine and feminine. I understand that English has many things about it that make no sense. But honestly, can't Japan just be Japan? Must it be He Japan? And so it goes, Russia, in all it's glory, is feminine. While Brazil is masculine. The United States is plural, and therefore seems to have no gender. And Taiwan, interestingly enough, has no gender, and therefore automatically makes it masculine. So, you must be asking, isn't it just masculine? And back in the day was the USSR a genderless plural? Or has it always had feminine qualities?

My struggle has been somewhat calmed after listening excerpts from David Sedaris's "Me Talk Pretty One Day". Which you should listen to, he's much funnier than I am. http://www.npr.org/programs/specials/lists/sedaris/. He also lives in Normandy and I have every intention of stalking him when I go there in a couple weeks.

I hope this has been somewhat entertaining for you all.

A bien tot!

Oh I've Got More!!

2008-02-13T12:28:00.000-08:00

I'll categorize. Rather than make numerous blog posts. So this is going to be long. But y'all asked for it.

1) Old People in Paris: Or, Why I'm Terribly Out of Shape.

Yesterday, my friend Amani and I were huffing and puffing our way up the stairs, carrying bottles of laundry detergent, coca light (it hurts to say that, but it's the only option I have an I've succumbed. I just hope diet coke will forgive me when I get back), and alcohol. Having a heavier load than normal, half way between the 4th and 5th floors (remember, read 5th and 6th floors), we both slowed down to take a breather. Then, much to our dismay, an elderly couple, we're talking 80s elderly, walked out of an apartment on the 5th (read 6th) floor. And the man had a cane! And they live there! They live on the 6th floor of a building I dread coming back to when I'm tired. I have a new technique I'm using now where I don't look at what floor I'm on and I don't slow down. It's a sprint, not a marathon. If they can do it, I can do it. Hopefully, this will pay off already and I'll have super toned legs. We'll see.

2) I Have No Money, Or, How The French Taught Me To Steal American Television.

The other day I looked at my bank account and thought to myself, hmm...that's odd, there used to be money in here. Perhaps, I've been robbed, I thought. Then I thought about the dress I bought, and that cocktail with the egg in it, and the cheese I keep eating (I mean, it's really terrifying, I can't stop eating cheese. Cheese is like the new swiss roll cakes, and I think we all know where those got me. Nowhere good.), and those delicious baguettes, and those sales which thankfully are over. And then I figured out where all my money went. Wasn't a robber at all. It was me. And, to some degree, I'd like to blame George Bush for ruining the economy and making the dollar worth just about nothing. If not for him, I'd still have plenty more to spend after those drinks and clothes and cheese.

But fear not. I've found ways to entertain myself without spending any money! Aside from looking at the old historic buildings of Paris, I've found an even greater treasure. That roomie, she keeps popping up with great ideas like, go to this website and watch free movies and tv! So far I've watched Juno (really good), 27 Dresses (really bad!), Charlie Wilson's War (Pretty good but maybe a bit over my head), and P.S. I Love You (Which I had to turn off because it got too sad but which I might give another go tonight).

3) Excursions, Field Trips, or AIFS's way of making us feel better about giving them all our money.

We've gone on a few trips so far. The first was Chartres, a cathedral famous for its stained glass. Our British tour guide smacked his lips every five seconds and made us stand in the cold and rain and look at a statue while he mocked our president. Now, we all know one of my favorite activities is mocking our president, but I at least have the decency to do it in the warmth of my home. And to be fair, he's our bad president. Not yours. Deal with it. The stained glass was, quite a bit like the stain glass in EVERY OTHER ANCIENT CHURCH. Not all that exciting. The highlight of the trip was my first visit to a French Mcdonalds!

We also went to Versailles. Somehow, I wrote down the wrong meeting place and directed my friend to go there as well. When we showed up, no one was there, and a few phone calls told us we had missed the train. Fortunately, the train to Versailles was only 2 euro and we splurged to get the free tour. The tour, it turns out, was overrated. We saw lots of old things. That are old. And have historical significance. But when there are 50 other tours going on at the same time, it's a bit difficult to hear the history.

Artists. I like to think of myself as someone who likes art. Unfortunately, I also know that I am not someone who likes art. I like Degas' dancers because I want to be a ballerina. I like Van Gogh's sunflowers because I think sunflowers are pretty. Today I went to my first impressionism class at the Musee D'Orsay. A very famous museum in Paris. For two hours, I followed my teacher and 10 classmates from painting to painting. They commented on the light, the shadows, the brush strokes. When asked what I liked about , I stuttered for a bit and while I wanted to say "I think her boobs look funny and her legs are short, who looks like that?" but settled on saying "I think the colors are pretty?" Which, apparently, was incorrect. Which leads me to think I might be dropping impressionism and taking up architecture, where in Paris I believe the correct answer will always be "It's a phallic symbol."

The next field trip is a fondue party, and I expect it will be highly successful.

Je suis desolee

2008-02-13T11:59:00.000-08:00

Let me start off by apologizing. Je suis desolee. I am of sorrow. I've been highly neglectful of this blog and my raging popularity has led to high demands for more. So fear not, I'm back. However, the reason I've been so neglectful is the lack of anything truly exciting happening to me. But, I'll try to make the mundane fabulous. Get ready.

Where to begin? Oh, here's a great starting place. Harry Potter. I realize I'm getting a big old for being as obsessed as I am, but c'est la vie. The other day I was walking with Little Texas down to the Marais (that's the Jew area - more on that later) to get my weekly stock of wheat bread and bagels, and what should I stumble across but a street sign which read "Rue Nicolas Flamel". Immediately, I knew this was no ordinary "Rue de Holy Saint" or "Rue de World War 2 we Hate the Germans Still Landmark". This, my friends, smack in the middle of Paris, was a reference to Nicholas Flamel, Dumbledore's co-worker of alchemy and discoverer of the Philosopher's stone. I stopped Little Texas (they looked at me oddly - who is this old lady who likes to talk about a children's book so much?), took a picture, and because we were running late went off to get my bagels.

But something was plaguing me. Yes, London can put a Platform 9 3/4 sign at their train station and not feel lame at all. They can have a cart halfway through the wall and not appear to be sell outs at all. But the French? They are far too superior to taint their city with the likes of a children's book - a children's book written by the British no less! They wouldn't dare do such a thing. So what was the deal, I wondered out loud to Little Texas as we stood in line for delicious falafel. That 1% of me that wanted to run through the wall at Kings Cross though, why, there must be a Hogwarts. This must all be real! I should head for London right now and see if I can't catch the Hogwarts Express! Then, sadly, reality set in.

Turns out Nicolas Flamel was a real person (Scoff all you want, father, the internet tells me it's true!). There was something to do with a book about Abraham the Jew (you may know him from the bible) and some think he's still alive. Frankly, I lost interest when I found out it was unrelated to HP...although I may go check out the grave of Nicolas Flamel and see if it doesn't lead to some further mystery. It will at the very least entertain me. Feel free to do your own research on old Nick by reading here: http://www.alchemylab.com/flamel.htm#The%20Death%20of%20Flamel.

Also, in the accompanying picture you'll find some graffiti reading "sarkoverdose." If nothing else, those French are witty and dissatisfied with their government.

Public Transportation, the Bane of my Existence

2008-02-05T04:53:00.001-08:00

Special note: This blog may not be appropriate for those who worry about my late at night decision making, but don't worry, I promise I was totally responsible.

The metro. I'm not a huge fan of New York's dirty subway. I don't particularly love the grumpy faces and the "Excuse me, is that your bag" announcements on the DC metro. I found London's tube hugely expensive and the bombing of it the day after I arrived three years ago to be a bit of a repellent. So I didn't expect to love Paris's metro system. I was right.

I understand that there are rats in cities, especially in underground railroad systems. I have only seen a rat twice in DC and never in New York, but never in the metro, ten feet away from me.

There I was, innocently sitting on a bench, waiting for the metro to arrive after leaving a very cool jazz bar. All of a sudden the woman next to gasped and said something that sounded alarmingly close to rat. I turned to where her outstretched arm was pointing, and lo and behold, there was a rat, scurrying it's little way across the floor. I leapt up, screamed bloody murder, and the rat went right back into his little wall hole. I then realized the entire metro station had gone quiet and was staring at me. Rule One of being in Paris according to my AIFS program: Don't make a scene and exaggerate the already obvious fact that you are an American. Oops.

Anyway, that was metro scenario number one. Here is metro scenario number two.

Saturday night I went out with Little Texas. Around 2 the bar we were at was closing and my friend and I decided to go home rather than wander the streets trying to find another bar. On Friday and Saturday nights, the metro closes between 1:45 and 2:30. In my desire not to take a cab, I convinced my friend to risk taking the metro with me. We made it onto the first train and felt victorious. However, when we got off at another stop to change trains, the sad truth settled in. We had missed the last train to my metro stop. I overheard some people speaking English and asked them if they knew where to get a cab. They (an Indian guy, and Australian guy, and a French girl) said they were going to the same metro stop as we were and we agreed to all walk together.

So we began our journey out of the metro station. We went through the turnstiles to find the stairs gated off. I jumped back over the turnstile but my poor short little friend just couldn't make it over. So the large Australian man had to lift her up over the turnstile. We finally found an exit that was still open and made it out of the metro. A twenty minute walk later we left the Indian, Australian, and Frenchy behind and made it up to my apartment, all in tact.

In summary: I will be avoiding the metro as much as possible.

Apartment and Roomie

2008-02-05T04:33:00.000-08:00

Last week I moved into my apartment which is amazingly fabulous. It is on the sixth floor of a walk up which is (surprise!) actually the seventh floor because the French consider the 1st floor to be the 0 floor. So, three bags later and with a moment on the 4th (read 5th) floor where I thought I might just tumble back down the stairs with the hikers backpack on, I made it to the top. And, let me tell you, it's worth the hike. This is the absolute best apartment I have ever lived in. Everything about it is old and precious, except for the Ikea furniture which it is decked out in. Really though, it's super amazing and I'm hoping the stairs will give me fabulously toned legs.

The apartment has some definite quirks. Including the heating system which is gas and which every 15 minutes makes a sound like lighting a gas stove, which panicked me for awhile until roomie explained to me what was happening.

Roomie, whose real name is Celine but who I like calling Roomie, is hysterical and fabulous. Everything about her is classy and beyond French. She weighs approximately 7 lbs, has fabulous style, and sniffs wine before she drinks it and actually turns bottles away based on the smell. Her one American flaw is the fact that all I have seen her eat is Mcdonald's quarter pounders and cookies and alcohol, yet she remains tiny. Je ne comprend pas.

Roomie speaks pretty good English, but we still have breakdowns in communication. There is something in our kitchen that I believe is a microwave and which she explained as something that makes your food go from cold to warm, but does not cook it. I asked if you could make popcorn in it, to which she wrinkled her nose and said, "We do not eat popcorn in France". I have yet to use this mysterious microwave-like appliance.

I think Roomie also finds me pretty entertaining. From my severely broken French - I told her we were going to Chartres, and due to my inability to make the correct R sound, it took me explaining that it was a big church with stained glass windows and was very famous before she said "Ah! Chartres" - to the fact that the other night Little Texas and I made drinks before we went out and decided to mix champagne with fruity vodka. She tasted it and I believe it took all her will power not to vomit.

Roomie's boyfriend, who is actually named Pierre-Charles, as if he weren't French enough, owns a bar in the 2nd arrondissement which is called "Experimental Cocktail Club". Experimental being key. We went there the other night and they convinced me to order a drink which had raw egg white in it. Under the motto of "when in Rome", I caved and ordered it. It turned out to be beyond fabulously delicious.

All in all, Roomie and the apartment are great. Hopefully at the end of this journey my French will be better, her English will be better, I will be a little classier, and she will be a little less classy.

Shoes, shoes, shoes and Diet Coke

2008-02-05T03:53:00.000-08:00

Here's the news you've all been waiting for. In Paris, "where zey are bigger zan zey are in Cannes", have I managed to find size 42 shoes? That's a negative. A no go. Non.

My roommate's sister works in a shoe store and, when I told her of my abnormally sized feet, she got a sad little look on her face and said "I think that in Paris it will be very difficult for you. Maybe you should visit Germany." To which Roomie followed with: "My friend flies to the United States to buy shoes."

Given my love of walking in cities and my aversion to public transportation (more on that later), my current black boots are quickly wearing out and I fear for their ability to make it to March, let alone May.

In another sad, fruitless hunt, I believe I may be giving up on my quest for Diet Coke. I have visited two "American" grocery stores with hopes of finding Diet Coke instead of the dreadful Coca Cola Light which they sell here. Roomie has been calling places for me asking if they have Diet Coke, to which these places say yes, only for me to show up and find Coca Light. Yesterday I tried as nicely as possible to explain that there was in fact a difference between Diet Coke and Coca Light to which the man at the grocery store said "Sorry we are not America." To which I bit my tongue not to yell "Then don't advertise yourself as America and only sell oreos!" Roomie has one more store she thinks might sell it and we are going on a mission on Saturday, but my hopes are low.

Cannes, Part Deux

2008-02-05T03:50:00.000-08:00

Bonjour!

Translation of that subject, you ask? I don't speak French. In the slightest. At all. Hardly a word. My approach of speaking in Spanish with a French accent has failed miserably. However, I have been named most willing to make a total ass out of herself in order to try to speak French by the bulk of the people on my program. Which I have chosen to take as a compliment.

Cannes has been fairly entertaining, but I am tres excited to get to Paris. We are living in dorms here and I think we may all recall my slight distaste for the dorm life in beautiful Ann Arbor. It's not much better in a foreign country. Cliques have formed rapidly, alcohol is hidden in all the rooms, and gossip is the way to bond during breakfast. I seem to have a habit of becoming the one who hangs out with all the different cliques and the one in whom people confide, so I often shrug my shoulders knowingly during the gossip talks as people surmise about who is hooking up with who and pretend to be older and wiser. There is one girl on my program who is 26 and we like to sit and talk about how old we are, and how we never thought we would live in dorms again, and is it possible that 19 is so drastically different from 23 or are do we just think it is? Deep thoughts, I know. We have a cafeteria which yesterday served, I kid you not, a slice of turkey lunchmeat for dinner. With fried balls of mashed potatoes. I mean, we are in France, at the very least give us a baguette with that turkey, ya know? The ladies in the cafeteria yell at you if you sit at the wrong table or use a glass instead of a bowl (that's right, a bowl) to drink your coffee in the morning. In short, I feel great about no longer living in a French version of Markley Hall.

France is in the midst of the biannual sales which I have really been enjoying because apparently, people here are tall and believe in rational prices for jeans. It's been thrilling. I bought, and I believe the Ogle side of the fam will be proud at the size of this bargain, two pairs of really nice pants that are really long for the low cost of 10 euro. That is two pairs of pants, for 10 euro. Let's take a moment to breathe in the glory of it all. Here in the land of the tall however, they have small feet. I have learned one other phrase in French which is "Do you have women's shoes in size 42". I also have learned to understand the answer, which is "Non" barely able to be spoken as the sales person laughs at the thought of someone wearing a size 42 shoe, which is an 11 in the glorious United States. You may recall that I had similar problems in Italy, so I was emotionally prepared when one sales person told me (via my friend who speaks French) that I had no chance of finding size 42 shoes in Cannes, but I might in Paris where they have abnormally large feet. So there's hope for me yet.

Anyway, I believe that is the highlight of my little life in France thus far. I just made a blog http://jaimlefromage.blogspot.com/ so that if you felt really passionate about the goings on of my life, you could keep really up to date (although I haven't actually written anything on it). I'm also trying to upload photos to it but I seem to be completely technologically inept so it may be awhile.

I miss you all and would love to hear how life in the States (or Korea, or Japan, or Chile) is going.

Love,
Alice

Arrival in Cannes

2008-02-05T03:37:00.000-08:00

Bonjour Everyone!

I have finally made it to France! I am currently in Cannes (home of the film festival but currently home of a bunch of Americans). I just finished a placement exam for our two week long French orientation. During this exam I learned that I speak no French. A fact I was pretty sure of but one that was made crystal clear to me during the oral section of the exam in which I sat and smiled as the girl next to me spoke rapid French to the instructor.

With a lot of xanax and a nice girl from my program beside me, I made it through the plane ride from Chicago to London despite a five minute period in which I felt fairly confident we were going down over Lake Michigan. On the flight I attempted to sleep and maybe would have had the sixty year old Indian woman next to me not woken me up to spend the duration of the seven hour flight telling me how her husband, who was sitting on the other side of her, didn't love her and she cried herself to sleep about it and did American boys smooch. She was coming back from visiting her daughter in Seattle and I suggested that maybe she divorce her husband and move to Seattle and look for American men to smooch. I felt really sad for her but also really sad for myself.

When we got to the airport at 5 am London time we had the pleasure of waiting three hours for students on other planes to arrive. When we finally got to our hotel (which was really very nice), we were sent out into the cold, pouring rain until our rooms would be ready at 4 pm. Exhausted and cold we made our way to a pub where we ate fish and chips, drank beer, and took naps. The next day, when we had slept and it was sunny, we went on a lovely tour of London and then were sent off on our own. We went to the Portobello Road Market which was full of amazing clothes and little knick knacks all of which I didn't buy (proud, mother?). I managed to find some other Harry Potter fans and we journeyed to Kings Cross to take pictures at Platform 9 3/4 (an adventure long in the making since last time I was in London the tube was bombed and it seemed in poor taste to go take pictures). It took all my self-control to not actually try to run through the wall and make it to Hogwarts, mostly I didn't want the people on my program to think I was a complete lunatic. I also went to see Wicked in the West End which was really, really amazing - and the British sell ice cream at the theater!

We woke up really early yesterday to fly to Cannes and again, all xanaxed up, I made it here alive. I'm really happy to be in a country where the dollar is slightly better than in London (where it cost $8 to ride the tube!), but sad to realize my total inability to communicate. We are staying at a college right on the Mediterranean Sea. It is cold and rainy today but is supposed to be 60 on Friday and I plan on attempting to go swimming.

That's pretty much it for now but I'm sure there will be adventures a plenty up ahead as I struggle to communicate above the level of a two year old (if even that). My current technique is to pronounce words I know in Spanish or Italian with a French accent, but it's quickly proving useless.

I hope you are all well and that things are great in the States. We are supposed to have internet all the time from today on, so if anyone has Skype, holler at me. My Skype name is a-mish.

Love,
Alice

j'ai un blog!

2008-02-03T16:18:00.001-08:00

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