T-Minus 8 Days & I Have H1N1

Drama and suspense in life is much more exciting than the humdrum normalcy of the expected, right? Only eight days until our plane leaves to go back to the States for Christmas, and I have the H1N1 influenza. On Saturday afternoon, I got a sore throat out of the blue, and then on Sunday evening when Jeff and I were in Aix for a date (we ate at Subway --delicious after a year of rien-- and then went to see the floozy of a movie called "Twilight 2"), I felt like Planet Sick suddenly smushed me. I haven't left my apartment since and spend most of these days sleeping punctuated with internet surfing.

Luckily, France is still old-fashioned enough that doctors make house calls; yesterday, my doctoresse (aka woman doctor. Nice, huh?) came by at lunch and dubbed me sick with la grippe A. Good news is that I have a special certificate announcing to my employers and insurance company that I can't work for a week but I should still be paid. Jeff had stopped by for lunch at the same time that the doctor was there, and she told him that he's been skipping in the danger zone by spending so much time with me. Thus he may be a ticking time bomb, and any day now, he should be getting sick if it's going to happen. With only a week left until we're supposed to leave, the suspense is thick! Cross your fingers that by next Thursday morning, we're healthy and ready to go.

We Made It a Whole Year!

Whitney and me celebrating our 1-year anniversary in France



Jeff giving moral support while I roll the pasta dough



Me, Whitney, Lorriane, Jeff, and Nico eating our homemade pasta

Getting Back on the Blog Horse

Well, I've successfully evaded blog-posting guilt for the past 8 months, but I've resolved to change my ways. Now that Real Life is starting again after 3 months of stupor-filled vacation, I feel a little twinkle of motivation to write again. Wow!

I'll try to do a quick catch-up so as to not waste time:
I eventually returned to France after finishing up a cold week in Prague and another cold (but better) week in Vienna with Jeff. I taught all the way to the end of June, when my contract in the schools ended, although I did make a surprise visit to my family in Minnesota during the spring vacation at the end of April. At the end of July, I moved to a bigger and waaay better apartment a few blocks away from my old one; it happens to be in the same building as Whitney's apartment, so it's been almost like living in the dorms again.

My apartment from the mezzanine (that's right, I have more than 1 room!)

Two days after I signed the lease and dragged all my stuff up the stairs to the new place on the 5th floor (n.b. the definition of "my stuff" has dramatically shifted from a squat pile of clothes and books to a mountain of bags and boxes and suitcases of clothes, books, dishes, a TV, and much, much more...sweaty work, indeed), Jeff and I went to Tuscany for a week with a couple of friends. We rented an apartment in Florence and did the museums, bridges, and gardens there, and every couple days, we took day trips to places like San Gimigiano, Lucca, Sienna, and Pisa. It was beautiful and humid, and I don't believe I've ever eaten so well in my life.

Jeff and I in Lucca, Italy

The summer job that I had counted on as a gardener fell through at the very last moment in June, so I ended up doing odd-jobs for my old landlord, the American woman. I scraped, sanded, painted, and varnished windows, furniture, and doors. I think I could learn to be a real handy man someday if everything else falls through. I barely earned enough money to scrape by, however, and for the first time in my life, I've had serious financial stress. It's been a valuable and painful lesson in budgeting and humility, which isn't lost on me.

Whitney and me in Roussillon in July

The good news is that as of October 1st, I've once again begun earning my keep as an English teaching assistant. Whitney and I found out at the end of August that our contracts were renewed for this school year, but this time only for 7 months rather than 9 due to national budget cuts. We had both already planned on staying since finding out in June that we were accepted to a Masters program at the university in Aix-en-Provence starting this fall. Last week, we began our classes at the Fac (French talk for "university"), the same week we also began our re-orientation as teaching assistants. After such a slow-moving, deathly-hot summer, things have been picking up quickly! It's going to be a really busy year, but I'm ready to be finally productive again.

Vineyard in Pertuis - May '09

Also, I have two new additions to my French family : Eleanor and Harriett, baby Hermann tortoises. I never imagined that I could fall in love with a tortoise, but I'm in deep for them both. I fixed up a nice little place for them in a [new] litterbox, and I sing them songs while I feed them their delicious lettuce. I'm positive that they love me, too. I haven't introduced them to their older brother, Marcello the beta fish, because frankly, he would kill them both in the blink of a fishy eye. Sometimes siblings are best when kept separated.

Eleanor and Harriett

I'm still with Jeff, my teacher Frenchman à moi since January, and if he receives his renewed passport in the mail soon, he may be coming with me for Christmas to the USofA, his first visit. I really want him to come along, but I'm more than a little worried to bring a guy from the sunny South of France to snow-blown, frozen-tundra style Minnesota for his first visit to my country. He'll hate it. Ah well, I guess that's the hard reality of dear ol' Minnesota in December; just have to man-up and get used to it.

J&J at la Fontaine de Vaucluse

In other great news, my family's coming to visit for the first time in a couple weeks. Even though they're only planning to stay for a few days (Oct. 15-19), I'm thrilled to show them around my adopted home and show them what good wine is really about. It's going to be psychologically good for me to finally join these two lives --American and French-- so that there's more wholeness to me. That sounds corny, but it's been a real struggle for me lately to have such different versions of life with different sets of people who don't know each other. I guess that's what I get for moving to France by myself, but it's going to be a treat to finally mix the jennifer pieces up.

Poppy field near Pertuis - June'09

Since I'm doing the Masters program now, I've signed up for another two years in France, assuming everything goes according to plan. I'll have to find a job other than being an assistant next May, but I'll deal with that hurdle when it comes. Sometimes, I really wonder what I'm thinking, making all these grand efforts to stay in this strange, backwards country when I could be back in the States, comfortable with my friends and family and earning real money. There's no one forcing me to stay here, where people look at me like I have glittering horns when I refuse to eat frog legs or tell them no, I've never tried rabbit before and I don't even want to. I'm in over my head now, can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. I love France, but it wasn't until I came here that I realized how much I really love being an American more than anything French. What to do now? My answer for the moment is to stay and see what happens. :)

That wasn't so quick. I promise to write again before next June!

Last Day in Prague

I'm back at the hostel early today, partly because my Achilles tendon is protesting from the extraordinary amount of walking I've been doing this week and partly because I'm tired. And believe it or not, the sun actually decided to show its face today for the first time since I've been here. I'm feeling kind of bitter about that given that it's my last day in Prague, but hopefully the weather will be even better in Vienna (I've pre-ordered 80 degrees and sunshine).

My hostel stay has been pretty nice, mostly due to the free internet access and well-equipped kitchen, but there seem to be a lot of college students staying here during their party vacations. Being the old lady and walk-happy tourist that I am, I like to sleep for solid periods of time during the nighttime hours. Last night was particularly bad. I went to bed a little after midnight, and all throughout the night, drunk guys were coming in to collapse on their beds. This morning at 7:30 am, a new Portuguese guest came in and decided to take a shower, which led the chatty group of Colombian guys to get up, too, even though they had gotten in last night at 3:30 am and loudly talked and laughed for anywhere between 45 minutes and an eternity. After about half of this eternity, I was ready to punch the boy sleeping in the bunk below me; whatever drunken story his friend was telling him incited him to laugh continuously and shrinkingly like a gaspy little girl on helium, making me feel meaner and madder than I ever have (blame it on lack of sleep...?). The good news is that the boy's life was spared when he finally passed out, most likely from lack of oxygen caused by poor laughing habits.

I woke myself up last night as well -- probably soon after I went to sleep the first time -- because I was laughing and talking loudly in French (yes! language inebriation-1 point). The only other girl staying in the dorm room was [luckily] the only witness to this spectacle, and I opened up my eyes a crack to see her come to the doorway of the adjacent room where she sleeps. I remember thinking to myself, "Ah, she wouldn't understand," not in relation to the French or the reason why I was laughing and speaking to no one in the dark, but rather I knew that she wouldn't understand whatever inside joke it was that I found to be sooo funny. Hoo boy. A slight sense of shame hit me only this morning, but it is what it is, I guess.

Random fact #1: I saw a well-dressed man with a handsome face vigorously kick a pigeon today, The poor pigeon had been just minding his own dopey business on the sidewalk with his pigeon buddy when along came the big human foot. I'm sure the bird died after being catapulted toward a bridge, and I've been thinking all day about the bizarre look of mean satisfaction on the man's face. Jerk.

Random fact #2: I'm incompetent at finding the Jewish Cemetery in Prague. I've searched for it multiple times with my map in hand, and each time, I find myself more confused than the last. Does it even exist?? I gave myself one last chance to find it this morning and ended up on the completely wrong side of town, so I bought myself a sandwich instead and called it even.

Random fact #3: This morning, I saw a little girl of about 4 years old chatting away animatedly with her mother on a side-road in a historic neighborhood of Prague. This would, of course, be perfectly normal except that the little girl's pants and underwear were around her ankles, bare behind fully exposed and a telltale puddle at her feet on the sidewalk. Her mother was handing her a wetwipe, like this behavior was perfectly normal and expected. Also notable about this sight is that the temperature here is no warmer than freezing. Huh.

Czeching My Reflection

Today is my last day in Prague before heading off tomorrow morning for Vienna. It's been an adventure! I must admit that I spent my first day or two here feeling rather weird and lonely, but I've definitely gotten over that and have enjoyed my time here immensely. There's no better way to fully appreciate your independence than spending time alone in a foreign country where you don't understand the language. The high I get from this part of the trip is comparable to what I experienced in moving to France last fall; when you know that you can only trust yourself, you realize how much you are independently capable of accomplishing.

My understanding of the Czech language remains limited to a vague comprehension of "hello" and "thank you," both sounds of which I would be unable to reproduce with a gun pointed at my head (and luckily, this hasn't happened yet so I may be home-free). After several long hours of eavesdropping at Starbucks, I have a theory about the origins of Czech (and yes, I said Starbucks. Give me a break; I'm used to little old Pertuis). It's rather complicated, but I suspect that after a lifetime of practice, it might not be so difficult. Pay attention, kids: Czech is a trifold language. First, every third word is, in fact, an English word spoken backwards; it has the same accent but is just pronounced in order from the traditional last letter to the traditional first. For example, "transportation" becomes "no-ita-tropsin-art." Second, every third word is borrowed from the Russian language. Since I don't understand Russian, I am unable to provide examples and am thus we come to the crux of my Czech-speaking problem. Third, every third word is the name of a cheese from somewhere in the world. At the church I visited the other day, the priest repeated "cheddar" six or seven times, so I theorize that American cheeses hold some importance for the Catholic sector of the population. I haven't yet discovered if cheese names translate into more profound meanings or if they just especially appreciate cheese here. This may always remain a mystery.

***NB: I believe that I'm so fixated on my inability to understand/speak Czech because I've been working so hard to ameliorate my French language skills these past few months. I don't actually expect myself to speak Czech after 5 days in Prague...

While walking in the streets yesterday afternoon after returning from Kutna Hora (photos to be posted later), I composed a short masterpiece about my time here. And yes, it rhymes.

Czech Me Out Now
>>> an original poem by me <<<

Heavy, grey skies stole my Provençal joy and left me with muddy shoes
Until I remembered my umbrella
And didn't feel so yella'
In my solo fight against the Praha blues.

Fast walkers -- but no stalkers! -- march down the street in rank.
Although I try to keep the beat,
I don't have their Czech fire under my feet,
And end up eating their stank.

But along came an old-glory castle and a bone church in the hills...
While drinking too much coffee in the afternoon,
I felt an appreciation bloom
For this place whose unique charm now gives me the chills.

The "golden city" doesn't acquiesce in its insistence on lovin'.
Somewhere between enchanting me à la golden fleuri
And teaching me its ancient and colorful history,
I wish I weren't leavin' but were comin'.


...trust me, it sounds better in my head and while on a good-exchange-rate/caffeine high. :)

Praha

Yesterday afternoon, I boarded a Eurolines bus in Aix to start my 2-week adventure that begins in Prague and then will continue to Vienna, Bratislava, and Salzburg. I knew I had signed up for a long bus ride, but the 22.5 hours passed rather quickly and without any extraordinary occurrences. We first drove up through France to Lyon, where I transferred from a German Eurolines bus to a Czech bus. I had decided to go to Prague alone with the full realization that I know NOTHING about the Czech language: no greetings, no numbers, no pronunciation guidelines, rien. It hadn't really occurred to me, however, to feel worried about this lack of knowledge until I boarded the Czech bus and heard nothing but an indistinguishable foreign language from every corner. Czech is sadly unpronouncible for my English tongue, which has just recently started to get the hang of French. Even thank you in Czech seems to change every time I hear it. Luckily, I had bought a european phrase book in an English bookstore in Aix a week ago, so I at least have a basic outline of what is necessary to say for the next five days.

Anyway, the bus ride went okay, mostly because I had two seats to myself and could spread out to sleep. We stopped every five hours for a bathroom/snack break, which was sufficient. It took until about 5:00 am for us to arrive in Germany this morning, where we were stopped by the Polizei at the border so we could all show our passports. By the time the sky started getting lighter, I noticed in between dozes that we weren't in Provence anymore: snow covered everything and gray clouds hung heavy over the hills, almost making me wish I had chosen to use these two weeks to see Greece or Corsica instead. We passed through Mannheim, Frankfurt, Nurnburg before hitting a traffic jam in Eastern Germany, which eventually caused us to arrive over an hour late in Prague. We weren't stopped by border control when we crossed into the Czech Republic, but we stopped for gas at a truck stop just over the border; it was funny to see how truckers in Eastern Europe are so much similar to those in the US or France...kinda scruffy and bandy-legged. They all had decorated the insides of their windshields with their country's flags and colorful trophies plastered with the names of the countries they had visited (I imagine).

We travelled another two hours until we reached Prague in the center of the country. There is nothing much between Germany and Prague besides snowy fields, forested hills, and little villages full of colorful, boxy houses all clumped together. The foggy, snowy gloom felt depressing and my pending arrival to the land of the Czech language scared me, so I started reading and trying to memorize simple phrases in Czech. I picked up the book and put it away in my bag about 7 times before I felt that I had mastered how to ask if someone speaks English (you tell me how you pronounce 'Mluvite anglicky'...turns out it's nothing like mlooveet anglicky, what it looks like to me!). I forgot it all by the time the bus finally arrived in the crappy Florenc bus station during a snow flurry, and I was back to square one. After getting Czech koruna from an ATM and wandering around looking like a stupid pigeon for about 15 minutes, I decided to forego the confusing metro and get a cab. I usually end up having to do this when I arrive in a new city, mostly because long hours of travel makes me slow-witted and numb, and today was no exception. The ride was short and inexpensive, and I arrived at my hostel, where the world became brighter because they all speak English. Yes, what a treat!

I walked around for a couple hours tonight, first to a grocery store and then to see the old part of the city. I saw several old cathedrals, watched the Astronomical Clock chime 7:00 pm, and ate a fried potato pancake that I bought from a vendor. I hadn't heard any English-speakers until I got to the clock tower (not including hostel), and it's clear that this is not the high tourist season.

The Prague around my hostel is not very pretty and more working-class average than anything. The old part of the city, though, is truly beautiful and very charming. From the little I saw tonight, it's modern with a ton of chain clothing stores (and crystal stores...apparently crystal is a big deal here?) and international restaurants all sprinkled in among ancient building facades and towers. I'll upload my photos when I get back to France. There are also loads of Thai massage salons, and one salon even had a front window through which you could see a line of clients getting their feet massaged by little Thai women. Anyway, it was cold and I'm tired, so I decided to return back to the hostel after a couple hours. I'm going to get dinner here, take a shower, and then call it a night very soon!

Nashledanou!

A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That

The last few weeks have been so packed with a short trip to Avignon, visitors in Pertuis, dance soirées in Aix, adventures in the kitchen (really! I'm almost cooking like a big girl now...), making plans for the future, lots of cinematic outings, rainy, rainy days, and oh yes, teaching! that there's no chance that I'll be able to cover it all in one shot. I've become astonishingly bad at this blog as of late, and it's mostly due to a new love interest in my life (which will not be covered here). :) Anyway, this all means that this will be a grab bag of news:

A couple weeks ago, Whitney and I hopped a bus to Avignon and l'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue to visit some assistant friends we had met way back in October. We very much enjoyed a girls' night out complete with thorough wine drinking, pizza eating (ratatouille pizza is my new favorite), and dancing to the point of collapse. The most interesting/surprising part of the trip was that we discovered that most of the assistants are enjoying many of the same random and unusual experiences that Whitney and I are having in Pertuis. The list of similarities runs the whole gamut from frustrating mishaps at the bank to the spicier encounters with European men. Apparently, the assistants who are teaching in and around Avignon spend a lot of time together and have thus had fewer opportunities to make friends with Real French People; although our time in Pertuis has been at times rather difficult and lonely due to the lack of an English-speaking safety net, Whitney and I have decisively concluded that we are very happy to be living more authentically in a small town. It was forced upon us, of course, but at the end of the day, it is so much more rewarding than globbing comfortably about with packs of other English speakers.
P.S. l’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue is beautiful (photo above is in l'Isle as well...it's hard to tell, but the basket on the bike held a few bottles of wine, and it was just so French).

Me in l'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue...it rained, of course

l'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, "the Venice of Provence"

Next up to bat: summer 2009 plans. I've been asked by my landlord to work for her in exchange for free rent and health insurance for three months this summer. I'm going to be a gardener in Provence! For the sake of a good, old-fashioned recap, here's the story: my landlord is a 60-year-old American translator from Detroit who is married to her second Frenchman and has been living in France for over 30 years. I've mentioned Vivian before as the couple has often invited me upstairs to enjoy a meal or an aperitif with them. A few weeks ago, she and I went out for dinner at Pertuis's couscous restaurant where we finally had the chance for her to share her "Coming to France" story and also to talk business. It was then that she offered me a job. Every summer, she returns to Detroit to visit family and friends as well as to check up on her childhood home that she now rents out all year. Every year, she hires someone to take care of her Pertuisian garden when she is gone so that the whole thing isn't scorched to a crispy desert upon her return in the fall. I told her that I was interested in her offer but would need to know more details. We met again last week to visit the garden, which is located a bikable distance outside of Pertuis and is fed by the long, snaking canal that runs through the region. Vivian has three large plots that she rents on a farm, and she grows everything imaginable, including sunflowers, asparagus, Jerusalem artichokes, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, artichokes, fig trees, nectarine trees, plum trees, and squash. Also on her land are several resplendent magnolia trees clustered together to shade a circular picnic table and a minute cabin that is well-equipped with a tiny kitchenette and all the garden tools one could dream of having. As aforementioned, the gardens are watered by an irrigation system, so it'll be necessary to make sure that the mini canals are regularly cleaned and functional (I know nothing about irrigation systems...or really about gardening on a grand scale, soooo...!). In exchange for sorting her mail and visiting the garden several times a week to fight the dry, hot summer weather, I can stay in my studio rent-free, I can eat all of what I grow in the garden, and I will be have health insurance. More importantly, I get to stay a little longer in this situation that continues to feel more and more like a new beginning every day.

With our friend Pascale's help, Whitney and I have completed and sent in our papers to renew our teaching contracts for next year. We've been told we won't hear the decision till June, and unfortunately, it's tricky to know if we even have a fighting chance of being renewed thanks to the complete randomness and utter disorganization of the academy. Nowadays, I walk around the streets of Pertuis with my fingers, toes, eyeballs, and hair strands all crossed for good luck, and I plan to do so until I hear the official decision this summer.

I took this picture while walking around (all crossed-up for luck)
in Pertuis on Saturday

On a completely unrelated note, we have another school vacation coming up in two weeks. I've decided to travel solo to Prague, Vienna, and Salzburg for the two-week long trip, and since the extent of my knowledge in either language stops at the words "kindergarten" and "sauerkraut," I'll have many opportunities to whip out my mad charade survival skills. I'm looking forward to everything about the trip except for the inexpensive, 21-hour bus ride I've signed up for aboard Eurolines. I've never tried this bus company before, but thanks to a couple horrifying Greyhound trips in the USA (*twitch*shudder*gag*), I can only expect the worst. However, I'm sure Prague and Austria---and maybe Bratislava, too---will be well worth the travel accommodations on the first leg of the trip. I haven't yet made plans for the trip other than to arrive in Prague, so I have a lot of work to do in the next couple of weeks!

In other important news, the sun finally decided to show its face yesterday after what feels like 4 years of rain and cold. I swear, the Pertuisiens have been telling me every day for the past month that they've not seen weather this cold and wet for 14, 25, 30 years; such luck I have, eh? Happily, though, spring is already starting to arrive here with the brave forsythia blooming and fields turning green. I'll take that over the Minnesota "heat wave" of 30 degrees any day!

Woooo, that's all for now.

Catch-up

I've been bad and haven't blogged in a very.long.time. Sorry. After being sick last week, I finally started back at work on Thursday to finish off my one-day workweek with a bang (and yes, thank you for asking...it was an exhausting workweek/day!). On Friday, I paid a visit to the doctor since I still wasn't feeling 110% after almost a week. Playing true to the rumors of an over-medicated French population, she prescribed me 5 different prescriptions for stomach cramps and a low appetite! I only filled 2 of them, however, as I didn't feel it was necessary to spend the following week doing nothing but popping pills. It was another adventure in French paperwork, of course, because I have not yet received my carte vitale, my health insurance card. Because I sent my page-long receipts from both the doctor and the pharmacy to the insurance people after my appointments, I will supposedly be reimbursed for most of the costs, which I desperately need to happen soon (it's either the reimbursement or pawning my [undoubtedly valuable] body organs...which would most likely necessitate an obscene amount of paperwork, so I'd prefer not to go there).

I spent the weekend with friends, going to movies (Home - weird French psychological drama (*) and La Guerre des Miss - dumb/funny French film about a fictional beauty pageant in rural France (***)) and eating lots of good food. And the great news in the PACA region is that the snow is ALMOST all melted! Finally, we can keep our balance in the streets without needing ski poles or spiky boots - such a treat.

In the schools this week, I embraced the momentous events in the homeland and taught the kids about Martin Luther King Jr. and President Obama, which ended up being an excellent topic of discussion for all ages. Even some of the 7-year-olds had learned a bit about MLK, and EVERYONE knew about Obama. We briefly discussed racism, the civil rights movement, and the new American president, and they were full of questions - I'd really never seen the kids as well-behaved or attentive. They asked me many questions about what segregation entailed for the African Americans in the 20th-century, what racism means (hoooboy - tricky to explain to kids and in French!), and even about Obama's quest for a new dog. Despite their youth and relative isolation in small-town Provence, they really seemed to appreciate that the Obama era could mean changes for the whole world.

This weekend, Whitney and I will be going to Avignon to visit some language assistants from that area of the Vaulcuse department, people we haven't seen since our October orientation. It should be fun! Hopefully, I'll have some good photos to post next time...

Of Snow and Sickness

What a week! On Tuesday evening, a giant snowstorm struck the Provence region and succeeded in creating a stir much bigger than its 19 cm were worth (this is coming from a MN girl who failed to get snow days for all but a handful of snowfalls in during a lifetime spent as a student - I'm clearly biased). I opened the shutters on Wednesday morning expecting to see the usual early-morning grey everywhere, but the white blinded me as it covered everything in sight and fat snowflakes continued to fall from the sky. A brave few people were trudging through the drifts, carrying umbrellas against the cold precipitation (sooo funny). Hannah and I stayed inside for many hours until we decided that it was absolutely necessary to pick up some food and do some shopping in the boutiques - it was the first day of the big sales, after all!

We soon learned that everything in Provence had been shut down for several days, from the main autoroute connecting Marseille to Aix-en-Provence and all regional schools and universities to bakeries that weren't able to receive new bread supplies and the movie theatre that wasn't able to receive the week's new movies. Newspapers said that it was the biggest snowfall in over 20 years. It was very beautiful, but I gotta say, I didn't come to the South of France for the purpose of building a rockin' snowman!














Hannah had to leave on Thursday to catch her train to Paris so that she could make her flight to Chicago on Friday. After dragging her suitcase over a million kilometers of ice and slush to the train station, we learned that the trains wouldn't be running until that evening and the buses wouldn't be running till the next day. Stranded! She ended up having to take a very expensive taxi to get to Aix but ended up getting to Paris that same night in the end. It was a bummer to have her week-long visit end on such a sour note, because we had such a nice time together.

A teacher friend invited me to go with him to an apartment-warming party (called pendre la crémaillère) in Marseille on Saturday. I met lots of other teachers at the party and got to spend almost the whole day speaking in French, which was a nice treat after having spent so much of the past few weeks speaking English. On the way back to Pertuis, we stopped in a tiny, pretty fishing town on the coast called Carry le Rouet, and then we drove to Aix for dinner. We ate a squid/olive pizza that was actually pretty good (which reminds me: I tried shark for the first time this past week at a Chinese restaurant -- it honestly tasted a lot like chicken). When we were driving out of Carry, we saw a motorcyclist lose control and skid onto his side in the middle of the slippery street. A pair of teenage girls called an ambulance, and we waited till they came until leaving the site. The man seemed to be okay except for a hurt shoulder and an almost-positive state of inebriation. When he heard my accent, he started speaking English with a heavy French accent, saying, "No problem! Zank you, zank you," and then when he saw that the ambulance was there, "F*ck! F*ck!" Nice. He was going to be fine, but it was an interesting experience, to say the least.

I went to bed late last night and realized that I wasn't feeling 100%, which I justified as being due to the time (3:00 am). However, I woke up this morning to a bout of le gastro, the stomach flu. I have thus spent an uneventful day in my bed and in the bathroom, mostly miserable. For those you that know me at all, you know that the stomach flu is hell on earth for me, so I was very appreciative when Whitney stopped by and brought me a 7Up and my landlord/friend offered sympathy and to help me with anything. I called the director of my Monday school to tell him that I won't be able to make it in tomorrow; I plan to stay in bed for at least the next 24 hours. No matter where you find yourself in the world, being sick still is the worst.

La Rentrée

I'm back in France and it's 2009! I feel like a slacker/bad person for not having blogged for the past couple weeks, but it hasn't been for lack of thinking about it...just for lack of time & energy. Here's a brief and incomplete rundown of the last two-and-a-half weeks:

I finished up my Christmas lessons at my schools, and the kids had so much fun making Christmas cards and singing carols. Some of them were sweet & made me Christmas cards, too:

On the 20th, I took the TGV from Aix to Paris, where I spent a couple days walking around the city and nursing my bad cold before flying out of Charles de Gaulle airport on Monday, the 22nd to go home to Minneapolis for Christmas. Paris was so beautiful! I’ve never loved the city more than this past trip when it was all decked-out for Christmas. The boutique and gallery windows were loaded with lights and glitter, and people laden with bulging shopping bags crammed the sidewalks and metros. All of my hatred for Paris’s crowds, dirt, and stress disappeared completely. I stayed at Hotel Marclau again, where I had stayed last September before moving south. This time, I had the awkward privilege of hearing an adolescent couple make loud love in the room next door. The walls were so thin that I heard every whisper and moan, oh yes I did. Thanks to my powerful and overwhelming cold/flu medicine, however, I was knocked out for 70% of it and didn’t care during the remaining 30% of their exciting night.

Galeries Lafayette

A bistro near Notre Dame

Crowds on the Champs-Elysées

Père Noël at a Christmas market set up in the shadow of La Grande Arche at La Defense

My flights home went well with only short delays of a couple hours, and I arrived in Minneapolis 2 hours later than scheduled. I saw Greenland (mountainous and snowy) from the plane, in addition to northern Canada (flat and snowy). On my flight to Detroit, I sat next to an Airbus engineer from Michigan, who is living in Toulouse for 6 months although he doesn’t speak any French (he said he just speaks English to everyone and most people understand…*groan*). He takes a suitcase full of wine (=12 bottles) with him every time he returns to the USA, and he never is stopped by customs (note to self: follow his lead in matters of alcohol importation). About an hour before our plane flew over Greenland, record-breaking turbulence took over the plane and set many people into a panic (*cough* no comment). The nice engineer next to me royally freaked out, his arms flying around to first grip both armrests with violent earnestness and then to reach his hand up to begin praying. Needless to say, he did not make me feel calmer, so I chose to focus on watching License to Wed (terrible movie, and it would have been a crying shame to die this way) as if my very life depended on it. We actually survived in the end. After a long delay at the airport in Detroit, I finally made it to Mpls-St. Paul, where my family, some friends, and my dog were waiting for me. So nice!

My brother, my sister, and me (making a face like my mom sometimes does...huh!)

Me and my mom waiting for a table at P.F. Chang's

Lucy!

When I got to my parents' house, they had a big surprise waiting: they had completely re-done the flooring, paint, carpet, and ceilings. Apparently, they had spent months sledge-hammering the floor, installing a new sliding door, getting everything re-painted, and more, and they had not said a word the whole time! It smelled like New House, echoed like the Grand Canyon, and was just beautiful.

I was only in Minneapolis for 6.5 days, so I packed everything in. I went to a happy hour with friends from my previous life at Target, visited my grandparents, did the whole Christmas jig with the family, spent time with some of my best friends, and otherwise enjoyed my time in the USA. Aside from spending time with some of my best people, I also enjoyed the other delicacies of American Life: squishy carpet, bathrooms full of products, spicy food, hand lotion up the wazoo (I'm just cheap), central heating, my heated blanket, my DOG, large & square license plates on cars, poop-free sidewalks, driving a car rather than walking everywhere, and the bright & shiny stores that are open oh-so-late at night (=after 7:00 pm). It was amazing.

On Monday, December 29th, I flew out of Minneapolis to go back to Europe via Chicago. During my flight to Chicago, I sat next to a nice Catholic priest from Eritrea. He currently lives in Berkeley and travels around the US counseling immigrants from Ethiopia as they adjust to the country and on family matters. On the flight from Chicago to Frankfurt, I saw Ireland, England, and the Netherlands right after dawn, which was really lovely. Flying into Germany, we zoomed right over tiny little mountain towns into a very foggy Frankfurt.

After landing in Frankfurt, I sat at the airport for a couple hours with my suitcase and a pair of very heavy eyelids. Even after a big cup of coffee and a half-meal (I’m not a good eater when I travel), I was practically a heap of clothes on the floor. I took a train directly from the airport to Brussels (4 hours), where I connected to another train going to Lille. While I was in Brussels for 20 minutes, I had to go through UK Customs screening because my train was continuing from Lille to London! I wish I had been able to stay on that train, but I'm saving that city for another day.

My train arrived in Lille after just a 30-minute ride, and after searching for the Etap Hotel-Lille Centre for 30 minutes without any luck--exhaustedly clunking my 49-pound suitcase over a million kilometers of cobblestone sidewalks, I found it. I met up with my friend from Paris, and we went out for dinner at a crêperie, where I ordered a chicken and lardon salad. The crêperie was decorated very modernly and our food was delivered to the sole waiter through a little dumbwaiter in the wall next to where I was sitting. Due to my sleep-deprived and travel-overloaded brain, I was awed by this magical occurrence that was part of the quotidien for the sleek-haired Lilliputian waiter (do they call inhabitants if Lille Lilliputians? If not, they should). We spent the next day--New Year’s Eve--sightseeing around Lille. We walked around for hours looking at the city and also doing a little shopping as a hobby. Lille is a very pretty and very cold city, and it's architecture is quite different from that of Provence -- more like England's or the Netherlands's. Most of the time in Lille, I was colder than a frosty snowgirl and sleepier than Rip van Winkle, but coffee and a long nap helped matters tremendously.

In the evening, we walked to the grand place in vieux Lille, where the heavily decorated and brightly-shining Ferris wheel was spinning full speed and a crowd had gathered to welcome in 2009 together. There were many groups of single young men in addition to families with small children, some elderly people, the obligatory smooching couples, and many drunks of all sizes, genders, and ages. A group of people in one of the Ferris wheel cars was tossing out small stuffed animals every time their car passed overhead the crowd, and you would not believe the commotion this caused! Stampedes of drunken men trampled my feet and shoved small children in their desperate quest to be the proud owners of tiny pink elephants and funny purple ducks (I have one that I named Violette, although I can’t claim that I caught it myself…my friend did, and he also snatched a little lion that he named Jack.). After too long standing in the cold waiting for the peluche gods to shower us with baby toy animals, my frozen toes were all too pleased when we finally called it quits around 1:30 am.

Classically pretty in Lille

Lille's architecture is curly and colorful

In front of the Ferris wheel just after midnight on New Year's

On the the first of January, I boarded the noon train from Lille to Aix. Even though it took almost 5 hours in the TGV, it wasn't a big deal because I slept and looked out the window as the landscape changed. One of my favorite parts about traveling is coming back home, and returning to Provence is always an overwhelming experience that I imagine to be par with winning $1000 or finding a long-lost love. I just love this region; it's almost always sunny, and there are blue mountains and long stretches of rocky & scrubby fields, acres of vineyards, little villages dotting the horizon, and beat-up chateaux scattered on the sides of cliffs. There's nothing like it, and I was so relieved to return home after so much travel.

I got to my place about 7:15 pm, and less than two minutes later, I had a lovely surprise: one of my best friends--who I had met while studying in Avignon and have kept in touch with since--knocked on my door! I knew she was coming, of course, but I had expected her the following day. Our other friend from Avignon had been planning to join her for the trip to visit Provence but had needed to stay home at the last minute. My friend is staying with me for a week here in Pertuis before train-ing up to Paris and then flying back to Chicago, and it's been such a treat to catch up and show her my life here. I'm sorry to say, though, that I think I've been a rather boring hostess due to the lasting effects of travel inebriation, but we've had a fun and relaxing few days.

Hannah during our visit to Aix-en-Provence

Other than that, nothing much is new. School re-started on Monday, and although I was thoroughly dreading getting back in the saddle, it's been very rewarding to be teaching again. Also, the weather is SO cold right now that it's supposed to snow for real tonight. The kids are overjoyed, but apparently everything shuts down here if they get more than ~2 inches of snow at a time. This presents a big, big problem, because tomorrow is the first day of Les Soldes, the biannual 4-6 week period of time set aside by the Economic Minister of France during which department and clothing stores across the country have heart-shatteringly good SALES! We have solid plans to go to Aix tomorrow *for the sole purpose of boosting France's economy*, so if there are any problems with buses or trains, I will sob frozen tears into my empty hands. You shall be kept updated on this potential disaster.

Thanks for reading all that, if you did, and thanks for humoring me, even if you didn't make it all the way through. This was an overwhelming long post, I know, but I had to get caught up and ease my conscious all at the same time. ;)