Jacob's Journal

Updates to come

Sat, 19 May 2007 02:29:49 GMT

I actually plan on posting a few times throughout the summer. I have memories I want to put down before they fade away beyond my reach. When will this happen? No idea, but keep your eyes pealed for updates like: "My Frisbee Weekend!" and "I'm the best sister my sister ever had" and "Highlights of the Family Vacation" a.k.a. "Beats the shit out of a pain chocolat!"

Airplane update

Sat, 19 May 2007 02:27:31 GMT

As I write this update I am soaring high above the clouds (but not as high as John or Jimi or Janis ever were) and on my way back to a magical place where rude waiters and waitresses are rare, stores stay open even after the sun goes down, and people smile in the street; a place where the past is forsaken for the glories of tomorrow, television, internet, and cell phones govern the people like a royal family, and time is money. As I stood on the stairs getting onto the airplane I realized that I was really leaving France. I was getting on this plane and it was going to Spain or Germany or England or the Czech Republic or even southern France. This wasn’t a tour bus going around Paris. This was THE plane home. While the adventure of getting my ticket was as eventful as it possibly could have been it never really sunk in that I was leaving France. It wasn’t at all as I had envisioned it.

Before I originally came to France I imagined my departure from France being driven to the train station by my beautiful, Mediterranean-skinned, mysterious, dark-haired, cultured, French (maybe Italian) woman friend who had kept me company for the last month or so with well wishing texts pouring in from my friends (ranging from Austrian and Turkish and everywhere in between) saying things like “Bon Voyage” and “I’m going to miss you!!” or even “I love you! See you soon!” We’d arrive at the train station with my bags, carried by my manservant Walter, and Mathilde would weep bitterly on my shoulder one moment and kiss me passionately the next while the train conductor (a good friend of mine) would say that he really should get this train going and ask if I could please get on pretty soon. I would smile and give him a look that would say “Women in love? What can you do?” and he would understand. The train would pull away from the station with people sitting on the hills on either side of the track waving in, the tears silently streaming down their faces. However, everybody would be smiling a little because they knew that I’d be back and probably for a good long stay this time.

Sometime in the middle of my spring break I had a new vision of departing France that would pop up from time to time. It was me laughing manically as I ran onto the plane shouting something along the lines of “I’M GOING HOME! Back to America where there are showers and takeout pizza! Internet and a car for me to drive! Oh sweet, holy Jesus in the sky, INTERNET PAST 6PM!” I would be pushing aside children and old people alike shouting “Let’s get this freaking plane in the air!!”

I would say my departure was just about smack dab in the middle of those two. I went to the airport with Mom, Dad, and Kelly, but Mom and Dad shortly split off to catch their flight (due to a technical difficulty I couldn’t fly to the states with Mom and Dad) so really I was there at the airport with my sister… I stood on those stairs today and felt a sense of loss, I truly did. While France wasn’t home she had definitely become familiar and even welcome and acceptable. The last three weeks with the family has helped me to, in a way, cope with the loss of losing her. She really showed me that she actually could really have that romantic side that is portrayed in films, books, and other realizations of her. I ate cheese with bread and sat with the setting sun on my face playing cards with my family and felt quite happy in a country that had thwarted happiness more often than it had produced it. I had successful and worthwhile interactions with a people I had, in a sense, grown to mistrust. I met some very genuinely nice people and that made me feel better. I don’t want to give you the impression that everybody in France is mean because that word isn’t fair. The French are something else and people stab at it with ugly words like “rude” and “mean” but those just don’t cut it. The only word to describe the French would have to be “French.” Nothing else will do.

I’ve come to the conclusion however, that I should be going home this day. I feel this way because this has been one of the best plane rides I’ve ever had. As I checked in the woman asked me if I wanted an exit row, so here I sit typing this with my legs bent allowing my laptop on my lap, my seat reclined (nobody’s behind me), and my knees are about TEN inches from the seat in front of me. INCREDIBLE! We had a good lunch (and a slice of pizza for a snack!), I have a kindly Irishman keeping me company, the kindly stewardess has kept my cup filled with water for the whole flight, and they even showed an episode of my favorite TV during the flight. The flight went by pretty quickly but I know I’m pretty emotional(?) from leaving France because some mediocre Disney movie made me tear up a bit. I’m looking forward to being home and I feel very, very confident that one day I will happily set foot on French soil this time ready for Her… ha!

Barcelona and what-not

Mon, 07 May 2007 15:51:17 GMT

I made the decision to teach because when I teach somebody something it brings me (and usually them) great pleasure in doing so. It’s all summed up in that moment when my “student” gets a grasp on what the concept being taught. That moment of Eureka! I made the decision to study language alongside teaching because I enjoy people. I like to communicate with people, ask them questions, get to know them, and learn about that person and a society as a whole. We were took a taxi home tonight and it drove me nuts that I couldn’t ask the driver about his little guiding, direction-giving, toy-mabobber on the dash because I don’t speak any Spanish! I was pushing the baby carriage through the crowd and I couldn’t say excuse me or I’m sorry! Very frustrating. Being in Spain and thus being, in a sense, crippled by my inability to communicate has really made me appreciate my French abilities, as limited as they are, in a whole new way. The Spanish, in general, seem to be a kind and welcoming people; they’re quick to smile or lend a helping hand (a woman on the bus, of her own accord, helped get mom and dad back to the hotel). The servers at all our restaurants have been kind and patient (even with dad’s questionable gesturing [I wish you could have seen him trying to negotiate getting tomato juice in his beer]).

We’ve been in Barcelona since early Wednesday afternoon and have been enjoying ourselves quite nicely. We keep joking about our American vacation in Europe (“The Nuxolls do Europe” we keep saying) because we rented a car and then drove all over Europe! Dad complains from the backseat about the tolls “What are we in New Jersey??” while mom tries to run down Italian women with the car. The car is a blessing, really, because it avoids what dad affectionately calls “the bag drag.” I have 2 heavy suitcases (that mysteriously gain weight as mom stops at markets of the regular and flea variety in each city purchasing ceramic chickens and Spanish cups) and mom, dad, and Kelly each have their own sizeable suitcase as well so when those suitcases can sit in the car instead of being drug up and down busy streets, on and off trains/planes, and in and out of hotels it saves us a lot of trouble. Mom and Kelly take turns driving while I valiantly, successfully, and triumphantly guide us from city to city. Barcelona has been an extra treat because Kelly’s very wonderful Austrian friends (Anna and Hooky [phonetically spelled]) live here and visiting a city is always much more wonderful when you have somebody to show you around and in a way, show you the city from an inhabitant’s point of view. Last night we were all so beat that while Kelly ate dinner and caught up with Anna (after we all visited her and schnootzled her new baby) mom, dad, and I found a little takeout restaurant and retreated back to the hotel where we watched the French presidential debate and ate hamburgers, grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, and potatoes. Along with a good amount of other students from my institute, I’ve been closely watching the French presidential election. The president will be elected this Sunday so I’m pretty excited to see how it’s going to turn out. In fact, a good majority of the civilized world is watching this election because whoever wins is really going to shake France up which will probably have an impact on the EU and thus the world. It amuses me that I’m so interested in the politics here in France but have never really been interested in U.S. politics. I would LOVE to vote here for the French president but Kelly had to call me twice and send me a few nasty emails to make sure I went and voted in 2004. She’ll probably have to go through something similar to get me to vote next year. This morning we woke up and hit the ground running. We found breakfast, ate, and were on our way to downtown Barcelona only an hour after opening our eyes. I was impressed (and also stinky and dirty because Kelly rolled me straight out of bed without a shower. I had to beg her to let me go back to the hotel to brush my teeth after breakfast) that we were moving so quickly. We arrived down town (via the city bus, my fav) and discussed where we wanted to go and ended up choosing the Picasso museum. The museum was pretty neat. It was a sort of biography through his works. They had little blurbs on the walls in between paintings talking about his life and works, but the neatest thing was seeing how he evolved as a painter. Afterwards we met Anna for lunch and more baby schnootzling. A frantic bathroom search later we decided that it was time to split up. Ma and Pa were headed back to the hotel while Kelly and I took mom’s credit card and went shopping. A good time was had by all. The evening ended with all of us (the Nuxoll family with Anna, Hooky, and the little one) eating in a tasty Spanish restaurant. We ate Tapas, which is (so I’m told) a traditional Spanish meal which is made up of a series of tiny little plates with all sorts of different dishes on it. It’s for those who can’t decide what they want when “OH! It all looks so GOOD!” It’s sort of like eating hors d’oeuvres for 2 hours while drinking sangria. It was a really nice evening. The 6 (and a half) of us chatted and ate and that’s when I really started to think about language (as Hooky switched seamlessly from English to Spanish to English to German to English). I also did some really great people watching today to the point that I wanted to approach a few people and ask them questions about who they were and why they were doing what they were doing. Barcelona is a bustling city with all sorts of different nationalities buzzing around doing their thing. I heard Spanish, English, French, Italian, German, and at least one Asian today. All those in the Picasso museum alone. Just incredible. The plan seems to be (as much as the Nuxoll’s can have a plan) is to stay in Barcelona until Saturday when we will either fly or train to Paris. I can never be sure because I don’t particularly care what we do as long as I get fed. It’s just groovy to be in Europe with my family. Alright, it’s 12:40 and I have to sleep til’ 10 tomorrow. I don’t want to be tired for that.

Adios!

Weekend in Provence

Tue, 01 May 2007 21:58:56 GMT

There's another update below :)

It turns out that it wasn’t just our little village that was so beautiful, it was the entire “department” of Luberon (France separates itself into departments which are, for lack of a better comparison, kind of like states). Our house was a home base for a series of day trips (all perfectly navigated) that were each amazing in their own way. We went and saw “little Colorado” which was really just a reddish-orange sandstone. It was neat, but I wouldn’t really describe it as “little Colorado.” I might drive by and say “Isn’t that dirt pretty? Kind of reminds me of Colorado… but not really.” However, we walked around the area and enjoyed each other’s company. Other days we picked small villages on the map (using guide books to help us) and explored them and the surrounding areas. We dedicated a day to Aix-en-Provence which was an enjoyable trip. Well, that’s not completely true. The city seemed pretty neat, and the guide book described it really well, and I was interested in seeing it because I’d heard good things. We jumped in the car and The Captain (me) quickly found the quickest route to Aix and led us straight there without a single problem. However, as soon as we get off the roads my road map becomes rather useless and consequently when I step out of the car my status is reduced from Captain Navigator to Corporal Translator (less prestigious and leading role but unfortunately a necessary one). We knew we needed to find some big fountain in the center of town and Kelly chose a random direction which happened to be the exact opposite direction of the fountain. We were all gathered around the tiny, guide book map when mom spotted a Frenchman walking by. I could see him eyeing us with a look that said “Oh God, please don’t ask me for directions.” Kelly called out to him but surprisingly he gave an “I knew it” smile and helped us out. I think he was glad that he could do it in French and was thus pretty nice. With his directions we walked to the fountain, had some lunch, and people watched. Mom saw that there was a train that went around the city and talked about the sites to see. There’s one of these trains in Avignon. It crawls around town blocking traffic (both pedestrians and cars/buses) filled with lazy tourists gawking out from the windows. I made a feeble attempt to express the hatred everybody had for this train hoping she would realize that it was a bad idea. However she went over and checked the price. God had smiled upon me this day because the train was unreasonably expensive. We weren’t going to use it. Kelly and mom went off to find water while dad and I sat on the bench shooting the breeze and watching the people go by. We noticed that mom was there with Kelly, waving at us to come over. They were standing next to an odd-looking vehicle. It looked like a golf-cart-truck. Turns out, that’s exactly what it was. I realized then that God was indeed smiling on me that day but only because He’d played a funny joke on me. Mother had found something even worse than the train. An electric car that makes a little tour of Aix but there’s no one to point out what’s what. The driver doesn’t say a word, there’s no speaker talking in garbled, electronic French, not even a pamphlet. But, at 2 Euros for all 4 of us, the price was right. We climbed in and waited while our driver (a young woman of about 23) radioed in to say that she had customers. Just as she finished an older man, limping heavily on a crutch-cane came over and had a brief conversation with her. He apparently was asking for directions to get someplace but she just told him to get in because she was going that way anyways. She helped him get in the car (she dropped him off about 10 minutes into the trip) and the 5 of us buzzed off up tiny alleys and side roads going by beautiful old buildings that held no meaning for us because we had no one to tell us what they were. I can’t express to you the shame I felt riding in this THING. I suggested that we ask her if she had a permanent marker so we could all right “asshole” on our foreheads. I have to say that I held our driver in the highest regard for doing this as a job. What a terrible way to spend your day. We saw a few other electronic toursist-carts and it seemed that they were all driven by young French people (approximately 21 years in age) and the lot of them seemed to be making the most of it. Later in the day we briefly split up with the plan to “meet at the museum.” Mom and Kelly wanted to do a bit of shopping and the men, of course, didn’t. This is Kelly’s favorite trick. We walk by shop windows and she slows down and licks the windows as we walk by. After a few licks she decides that it’s time to go in and do some serious browsing at which point she encourages dad and me, with a lot of vague hand waving, to go entertain ourselves while she and mom do what they do. I would like to stop here and briefly defend myself by saying that I have no problem going shopping, but I DO have a problem with stopping every 15 minutes to shop while we have a destination in mind. If we have no destination then there’s no real problem (assuming the shopping isn’t done in excess) but stopping all the time causes problems. Case and point: Aix. Mother showed us where we were headed on the map and gave me the directions “keep going this way until you see [insert complicated French street name here] and turn left. It should be right there.” Seemed simple enough. Now, I’ve lived with my mother long enough that I should KNOW better than to believe anything my mother says is simple. Dad and I did exactly what she said, but after a ways I realized that we had missed it, gone the wrong way, or something else wrong/stupid. I should have known better than to think it was MY fault. Dad and I waited on a corner not far from where we split up thinking that SURELY mother and Kelly would come walking out any time now. Yep… aaaaaaaaaany time now. Fifteen minutes later I went to a bus stop about 50 feet from where we were and realized our (mom’s) error which would later turn out to be a directional error based on false information. We were doomed from the get-go. We realized that we weren’t going to find this museum and so, as the Nuxoll family always does, dad and I returned to the last place we saw them. Fifteen minutes later, mom and Kelly returned to us and then led us to the museum (where they had been waiting) which was a whopping 300 feet from where we were, but up a different street than originally believed. Oh, mom. Fortunately, I was the navigator for the trip home and we drove straight there safe and sound.

On Friday we went to La Ciotat which is a GOREGOUS little city just southeast of Toulon (southeastern corner of France). Kelly had met a French couple two summers ago in Orofino, Idaho (for those of you not from Idaho it’s just another small, Idaho town) and they live in La Ciotat so Kelly called them and they invited us down. Throughout the whole week Kelly and I (mostly Kelly) have been practicing French manners with mom and dad and I think after the evening Kelly and I gave mom and dad about a B+ for the evening. There were a few errors but nothing grave and hopefully some sort of house swapping arrangement can be made. The true test will be when the couple comes out to Orofino this summer (they come every summer because the husband likes to go trout fishing) and they will probably stay a night or two with mom and dad. We’ll all cross our fingers for that. Yves and Fabienne (the French couple) were extremely nice and invited all of us to stay in their house and Yves even mentioned talking to a British friend of his to see if he (the Brit) had an opening in some sort of bilingual work. I’m hopeful that good will come from the meeting.

We spent the majority of Saturday driving across the southern portion of France headed towards Lourdes. France isn’t that wide; you could easily drive from one side to the other in one day. However, we took advantage of the fact that we were in southern France and we stopped a couple times in quaint little French villages and thus we had to step 2 hours short of our destination in Carcasonne. We were cruising along around 6:45 headed towards a reservation in Lourdes when we kind of realized that we were all kind of tired, hungry, had to pee, we all just sort of had road fatigue in general. We rolled into Carcasonne and it was just starting to get dark (one might even say it was dusk) and at this point, mom was driving. Kelly isn’t crazy about driving and mom isn’t crazy about riding and so mom started driving about halfway through the day. The thing about mom driving is that she drives like a pansy. She calls it defensive driving, but we all know better. I understand why, and usually it isn’t a problem, but a lot of times as the navigator (the Captain!) you need a driver you can count on, somebody that will do exactly as you say without knowing why and without understanding. Mother is not this driver. I would give her directions and sometimes she would listen and sometimes she wouldn’t. Once she felt like she was on the right track she would basically ignore me and my commands and ask me to do things like “open my chocolate” or “turn down that music!” or some other meaningless NON-captain job. We were looking for a hotel in Carcasonne (one in Kelly’s guide book) and I only had the little, crappy map in the book and was just figuring out where the place was when all of a sudden mom whips off the road into a little parking lot. “What the hell did you do that for?!” I shouted as I unclenched my hand from the door handle. “I thought it was a good idea if we collected ourselves for a moment.” I assure you, this is not a driver a navigator puts their confidence in. She and Kelly went to ask for directions while I drank water and rubbed the bridge of my nose trying to nurse the headache that had suddenly sprouted. We finally found the hotel but it was booked. We tried another one but it was booked too. Kelly decided to call a place a bit out of town while dad, mom, and I went to the restaurant. We did that and when Kelly met up with us she had booked us a room. We ate a nice dinner and then realized that we weren’t sure how to get to our hotel. Of course we didn’t. We (I) asked the (cute) waitress how to get to Preixan and she gave us some vague, (cute) French directions and we headed on our way. It took us awhile and a little guesswork (we literally had no map only the name of a city and a compass direction [I was going by a star that I knew usually hangs out in the western sky]) but we found our hotel. It wasn’t even really a hotel; it was much more like a hostel. It was quite acceptable however and I made friends with some Brits that were well into their cups by the time we arrived. One of them kept trying to give me a salmon sandwich… The next morning we drove into the old city (where I stayed in the hostel) and found some breakfast, looked around with the other 5000 tourists there and then headed on our way to Lourdes. I won’t say much about Lourdes. It was pretty incredible in a very special way. The Nuxolls had a good time. We slept in a hotel by the train station/truck route, mom almost hit an older Italian woman with the car, and mom and dad won a rubber for the first time in 4 days. After some debate of whether or not we should go to Barcelona or Biarritz we decided to go to Biarritz, just north of the Spanish border and spent a rainy day there. In fact, we found out that it was supposed to rain in that area all week long. After a bit of debate we decided to skirt around the southern side of the Pyrenees and make our way to Barcelona and nicer weather. Of course, none of us checked the weather report for Barcelona, but we’re all hopeful. When we woke up in Biarritz this morning (waking to the sound of rain) we realized that we hadn’t really seen much of Biarritz so as we drove out of town we randomly followed a sign that said “to old port.” We parked and jumped out but Kelly wanted an umbrella so we popped into a gift store right next to the car where Kelly bought an umbrella and mom and dad bought matching hats. We spied a bridge that connected the mainland to a rocky outcropping and we went that way but just as we got onto the rocks, the sky REALLY opened up and not even mom and dad’s 5 euro, semi-water-resistant hats could stand up to the might of mother nature. We began to scamper back to the car and after we all sat down in the car, wet and tired of Biarritz’ bull, mom said “I’m wet. Can I take my pants off?” I love my family. Tonight we are in Spain enjoying a three star hotel (and all the luxuries it brings such as internet) at the price of a 1.5 star hotel. Dad’s pretty pumped about that. Tomorrow: Barcelona (but mom and dad may be going on a plane to London… but they don’t know that yet).

April 21st

Tue, 01 May 2007 21:57:31 GMT

I’ve been experiencing a state of surrealism since… oh, I would say the 11th. It started when my BEST friend from my time in Colorado came to visit me. He and I were extremely close in 5th and 6th grade but halfway through the year I moved to Idaho and we were separated. He came to visit me the very next summer for a couple weeks and that was the last time I’d seen him. Nine years since I’d seen him. We stayed in touch pretty well for the first year, but as John says “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy makin other plans.” Meaning, we basically lost touch. I called maybe three times in high school, the last time being junior year. Anyways, I tracked him down through some friends and Facebook last spring and we almost saw each other last summer, but due to some complications it didn’t quite happen. I heard from a mutual friend that he was abroad in Austria this semester so I quickly shot him an email and we began making plans to meet up. We had some shady plans and I wasn’t sure it was going to happen until he sent me an email the Tuesday after Easter entitled “I’m coming.” Sure enough, he was headed my way. He got here Wednesday afternoon and we spent the next 36 hours reminiscing, catching up, and trying to figure out if we were still as compatible as we were all those years ago. I think we were both very pleased to find out that we still were and consequently the 36 hours were spent with a lot of laughter and good times in general. I put Steven on the train early Friday morning and then just after lunch I got on a train myself to go to the frisbee tournament up in Fontenay. I know I gave a somewhat mysterious, non-descriptive post about what happened that weekend, and while I can’t remember EXACTLY what I wrote (I don’t have internet access at this moment) I’ll do my best to (briefly?) recount the weekend’s events. But, not at this exact moment. I’m talking about why I’m caught in a state of surrealism. The frisbee weekend was much needed and I had a really good time. Frisbee isn’t the biggest part of my life back home but it’s definitely a big part and it’s something I’ve really been missing here. It was nice to have a taste. Walking onto the fields that very first Saturday morning of the tournament was refreshing and I could feel a sort of content-ness deep in my heart. When I got back, it was finals week. It was the end of the semester here in France. THE END! How did that happen so fast?! On top of all that, the fam was to arrive on Thursday. Lordy, Lord. It was tricky to buckle down and get done that which needed to get done, but I did what I had to do without too much trouble. Thursday afternoon came and without TOO much trouble (just one late train and some kick ass directions from me) Kelly and my folks walked into the top floor of my school. I took them to the hotel, checked them in, and then we went to an outdoor café and drank coffee/tea and played bridge. Perfect. When the sun went down we went to a restaurant and had some dinner. Having my family here is extremely strange for me. Looking across the table and seeing my dad’s face with the ancient walls of Avignon behind him is all but inconceivable. It’s been a few days and I’m still not used to it. It’s kind of neat to be leading my folks around. Kelly’s French is just as good as mine, if not better, and the two of us keep the group along just fine. Mom and dad usually don’t go anywhere without either Kelly or I nearby. In fact, when we drove to Avignon to our little house here it was Kelly who drove and I sat in the front seat, unanimously declared as “Captain Navigator” or just “The Captain” for short. Mom quietly looked out the window while dad amused himself with a running commentary of negativity: “This doesn’t look like the highway.” “We’re not going to get there until 8:30…” “Are you sure you know how to read that map?” “What’s [insert butchered French word here]?” I kept waiting for him to fall asleep but no dice. Granted, Kelly and I had a bit of… I wouldn’t call it trouble per se, but we definitely took advantage of the roundabouts by doing two, three, and sometimes four laps to make sure we were going the correct direction. We also definitely took a few ‘alternative’ routes that gave mom a lot of good scenery to look at. I made friends with an old French man with a pretty thick accent. Kelly made me ask him for directions (even though I knew right where we were and where we were going) and I had to ask him four times if he could help us and finally showed him the map and he put two and two together. Anyways, he made some vague motions with his hands and talked in a language which sounded similar to French (I’ve studied French you know) but I can’t be sure. When he had finished talking I thanked him and shook his hand when he offered it to me. When I got back in the car and Kelly asked me what he said I just said “he confirmed what I thought. Just follow the signs.” She bought it. {What, Kelly? I got us here, didn’t I?} Anyways, when we actually arrived at the house (simultaneously 15 minutes early and almost 1.5 hours late) we stepped out of the car into a world like none I have ever known. When you see a movie where somebody dies, and you see them in heaven wandering around soft, green grass with the sounds of birds singing softly in the background and the sun blazing brightly in the stunningly azure sky… that depiction of heaven is inspired by southern France in spring. It’s breathtakingly beautiful here. I wandered off into the woods and followed a crick along a semi-maintained path just taking everything in. Seeing, listening, smelling (I could smell all the grass and I even put my nose to a tree that looked particularly yummy), and feeling the grass on my flip-flopped feet and the sun on my shoulders and face. I’ve experienced nature’s beauty at the top of giant mountains and under the sea, but there’s nothing quite like this.

frisbee weekend

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 13:17:11 GMT

There's no way I have the time to write a full update, but I may be able to Wednesday if I'm not too busy bashing my head into the wall studying for my Lit exam. The last one was annoyingly/surprisingly difficult (how do you study for a test based on a class that teaches abstract ideas and other non-concrete things?) and I'm going to try to nip this one in the butt. I'll give you some brief phrases that have to do with highlights from the weekend, you make your own story up, and you can see if you're right after I post. Here's a little hint. I have 6 blisters on my feet, 2 of the blood variety, my left shoulder is mysteriously in pain, it hurts to walk and when I breathe deeply, and I had a fantastic weekend.

Thank God my first train was 2 minutes late
French people who already knew my name
Minibus ride
My skills tipping the scales???
Groovy hotel
Pressure, pressure, pressure. 2-0 day 1
Sunburn
Extreme hunger followed by extreme tastiness
Exhausted sleep
Pain. So much pain.
Pressure, pressure, pressure. Break. 1-1 day 2
Minibus ride
Allergic reaction
Squished notebooks
Car ride
Sleeping bag on hard wooden floor
Early, French morning

Wish me luck on my exams...
You know how we say "break a leg" to wish somebody luck? The French wish shit for luck. Only the French would wish shit on somebody and think they were being nice.

oh man!

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 11:53:15 GMT

Sorry for the severe lack of updates. This isn't even really going to be one. I'm about to go catch my train for my long-awaited frisbee weekend. I'm a little mad at myself because I left a couple pseudo-important things at my place and because I live 92388375293857 kilometers from town I can't just run to my place and get it. Very frustrating. Anyways, my best friend from Colorado came to visit me for a couple days and I spent every free moment with him and thus haven't updated. Next week is finals week. I may find a free moment next wednesday(?) to write about the weekend. See you then!

weekend update

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 14:28:26 GMT

The update below is only for Saturday. Not a whole lot happened on Sunday and Monday (Easter Monday was a free day). Easter mass was packed, we sang 2 extra songs at the very beginning, and other than that it was the exact same mass. We were out in 55 minutes. Amazing. I took a monster nap (3.5 hours) and definitely ate the equivalent of a chocolate bunny and a half (out of Enzo's GIANT bowl of chocolate). I figured it was payment because I actually "babysat" him for about 30 minutes. We went outside and played with the neighbor children. It was kind of interesting, actually, because (unsurprisingly) children play the same. I keep "discovering" that people are people. Anyways, Monday I woke up to the usual screaming alarm clock and decided that it would be impossible for me to stay in the house for the day. I walked into town and buzzed up at Jenna's and we basically did the same walk I did on Saturday. This time I sat in the shade of the house with Jenna talking for a couple-few hours. Got a little sunburn, it was nice. Shortly after I got home around 8 (keep in mind the buses were on the Sunday schedule on Monday and so I'd been walking all day) I received a phone call from a recent French lady friend asking if I was coming out with Matt (my faithful wingman) and the French lady friend's room mate. Now, I had a paper due the next day (today), was exhausted from walking 10+ kilometers, and hadn't had dinner... I let her know that I'd be there with bells on. 3 kilometers into town later, I was at the bar enjoying the company of 2 lovely French ladies and Matt. An agreeable end (at 3:00AM) to an otherwise boring weekend. In fact, I could literally say that my weekend was poopy. As Jenna and I were walking through the streets (chatting in English) a surly Frenchman gave us a sly smile and then farted loudly. Obviously out of spite. Very charming.

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 14:12:57 GMT

Saturday, April 07, 2007. Today has been the nicest day of the year 2007. I mean in terms of the weather because I definitely wasn’t playing frisbee on a beach or playing bridge with my family today. I’m looking forward to playing bridge with my family when they get here. The weather woman on the news on Thursday was wearing a cute little summer dress and showing how France was going to be full of warmth and sunshine (definitely not from the French) all weekend long. Anyways, it’s also Easter weekend and consequently the institute is closed on Monday. Therefore, a lot of people are taking advantage of the three day weekend by traveling. However, because I went out and about the last two weekends I was glad for the down time. I imagine this weekend will be the calm before the storm that is the last week of classes/finals week.

Friday afternoon was sunny and about 65 so I decided that I should go for a run. I’m a little concerned about what sort of shape I’m in for the tournament next weekend so I’m hoping I can find the time to run a few times this week. I’d also like to find a throwing partner so I don’t show up as cold as ice this weekend. After all, they invited me to come and play with them. So I had a pleasant run on Friday and spent my evening watching Tomb Raider with the family. Woo! It sucks just as badly in French, in case you were curious. I woke up today and decided that I’d try to meet some friends of mine in Arles because they’d invited me and I heard there were bull fights this weekend! The problem was that they gave me a phone number and said “text or call when you get to Arles and we’ll tell you where we are!” I was confident, however, that I could track them down. I’m a strong, independent, intelligent, confident, young man with the world at my feet! There’s nothing I can’t do! Unfortunately, the (train) ticket machine only takes coins and European credit cards and nobody would break my 10. I was too lazy to stand in line at the ticket booth and too cheap to buy something inexpensive so I just left. Arles sucks anyways! I’m never coming back! Ever! I headed back down main street, away from the train station, when I saw a girl from the institute wandering around a little book vendor. I get along pretty well with this girl and I thought maybe we’d pal around for the day. We chatted briefly and I could tell after about 12 seconds of chatting she was thinking: “There’s no way in hell I’m spending any more than the length of this conversation with you.” I put on deodorant today so it must have been something I said. Anyways, the book vendor was right next to the park and because the day was so nice (it was about 12:45 by now) it was pretty full and I decided to meander around and people watch until a better notion struck me. So for about 15 minutes I looked at the pretty girls and the people that resembled their pets, read about the ancient statues in the park, smelled some flowers, and then finally left the park without a destination in mind. My feet took me to my bus stop and I realized that Jenna lives nearby. I buzzed her apartment and she and I ended up going for a 45 minute walk which ended, sadly, when she caught her ride to sing with her choir. Alone again, I reflected on what I would do with this gorgeous day. I ended up deciding that I would catch a bus somewhere just for the sake of seeing where it went. I reflected for awhile about which bus I wanted to take, and realized that I’ve been hankerin to explore the western half of Villeneuve and so I purchased myself a little lunch (fruit, cheese, baguette, and water for a whopping 3.01) and caught the Villeneuve11. I sat in the back with my lunch in my lap watching people get on and off the bus until I randomly reached up and pushed the “next stop” button. I thanked the drive and got off the bus. It drove off and I looked up the road to my left… and then to my right… The sun was warm on my face and I had a rumbly in tumbly* so I followed my “place to sit down where I can view as much of the landscape as possible” instinct and went to the right. However, as I moved along the busy road, after about 75 feet I grew tired of traffic flying by me and so I ducked onto a side road that looked inviting. Impasse de la somethingorother it was called. I didn’t bother to reflect on the word impasse and how its translation is dead-end and only wanted to follow the charming road and the pretty flowers lining it. Sure enough, the road ended (twice, actually) and I found myself standing (after the 2nd end) in front of a quaint Provencal house. I could never really accurately describe the house to you, but think of any movie you’ve ever seen where somebody stays in a quaint, Provencal house and go with that. The house was completely shut up and it seemed pretty clear that nobody was home to the point that I seriously wondered if it was abandoned. I walked right up to the house and set my lunch down on a table and went to the back where beautiful trees shaded soft, green grass and a rickety swing set. I checked, mom, there was no For Sale sign. I strongly considered sitting at that table and eating my lunch because, after all, nobody was there and it really did seem abandoned. There was one little chair at the one little table and they were both set in the shade of the house, well within view of the neighbors and the doghouse out front. However, I ended up leaving the house and the little table with its one little chair because I didn’t know what I would have said if somebody had pulled up to the house. “Voudriez-vouz manger avec moi? Il n’y a pas beaucoup, mais mangez, si vous voulez. Vous avez une jolie maison” I’d say that I wandered around (after the house) for a good 45 minutes before I spotted somewhere that I figured would meet my criteria. Villeneuve is pretty much 2 hills and by the time I spotted my target, I was walking back down the hill I had mounted (via bus). This was unacceptable. Looking up, I saw a large, white dome. I altered my route towards it and after awhile realized there was a cross on top. It was a church. After another 15 minutes of walking (now up hill, since I had descended a bit) I reached the Church of Saint Theresa [L’église de Saint Thérèse]. It was a lovely, newer-looking church and while I wanted to go inside and see it, I hadn’t eaten yet. I circled around the church and climbed up the little hill behind the church, which was actually the highest point around, climbed the stone wall, and sat down on a rock and ate my lunch overlooking a good portion of southern France. The view would have been perfect if it hadn’t been for a couple of trees blocking my view. I asked God to smite them, but that was a no go. I didn’t have anything to cut my cheese so I had to pick it up in my hand and take a bit of bread and then a bite of cheese. I probably could have stopped at any street vendor and asked for ANY plastic utensil, but figured that holding the cheese wouldn’t really be a problem. In theory, it wouldn’t have been, but now that I’ve been here for a few months and tried manyacheese I know what kinds of cheese I like and those I don’t. A cheese snob, if you will. That being said, I like a nice, soft, creamy cheese. You see right where this is going and you’re right. After about 5 minutes the cheese was all creamy and melty in my hand and worried about wasting the precious, precious cheese I began to big bites of it along with my baguette. French cheese is strong and while I ate half the chunk of cheese I had bought, the “Saint Félicien” got the better of me. I put it back in its plastic case and brought out the banana I had wisely purchased/saved to help lessen the intense taste of cheese that was lingering in my mouth. I sat in the shade a bit longer, looking out at the landscape, and finally got up and went to the church to pay my respects to whatever God they worshipped there. As it turns out, it was my God! Bonus! There was a man and a woman just inside the front door putting together some stuff for mass. I set my bag (with my cheese, my half-baguette, water bottle, and undershirt inside) down in the shade by the front door and entered the church. The man and woman stared at me like I was the devil. Maybe it was my flip flops? I greeted them in their native tongue and only the man replied. I hoped they wouldn’t turn me away. They didn’t, but only stared at me suspiciously (especially the woman). It was small in diameter, but formidable in height. It was easily taller than wide. I couldn’t guess the age of the church, but I’d be surprised if it was older than 30 years old. It was quite lovely and had a nice feel about it. I should say that all of Villeneuve is very lovely. It’s modern Provencal, I’d say. It feels old, but doesn’t look like it. It’s hard to describe, but I like Villeneuve. I wish I could have lived there. Ah well. I looked around for about 10 minutes and when I left both of them gave me some peace of Christ and an au revoir. I figure they were just glad to see me go. I popped back out onto the highway and caught the bus into Centre Ville. I considered knocking on Luisa and Renato’s door but decided that I’d spent the day, more or less, alone and that I could just go home and relax a bit. And that’s exactly what I did. My dad used to read me stories about an elderly, gentleman rabbit by the name of Uncle Wiggly. The premise of his adventures was Uncle Wiggly’s search for his fortune (in the sense of a great sum of money). He meets friends and enemies along the way but never really finds his fortune. All day today (and even since I’ve gotten here to France) I’ve been looking for something. My fortune? No, not really. I guess I don’t really know what I’m looking for and I didn’t find it today, whatever it is. However, I had a nice day, and I’m glad my day was spent exactly how it was. Coincidentally, just before I started writing this entry, I was thumbing through my hand-written journal (thanks, Mishka) when I found this quote written in it. “A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.” As they say in France: “Voilà!”

*I totally forgot! When I was in Carcasonne, Hannah and I definitely played Pooh Sticks. It, was, awesome. I won both times. In your face, Hannah!!

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 11:58:53 GMT

As my time here in France begins to draw to a close my thoughts have transferred from things that ARE happening to things that HAVE happened. When I get on the plane in Paris to return home to the United States to my home, my family, my friends, and my life I believe I will leave things here that I brought with me and take things home with me that I discovered here. Of course, I’m not speaking of souvenirs (although it’s funny I should use the word souvenir because souvenir is the French word for memory) and other physical things, but of the changes within my mind and spirit. I brought with me hopes, dreams, and expectations and while some of them were realized others were drastically altered and even broken. There’s no real reason for me to go too deeply into this thought because it has not even finished developing. I’m still here for another month (although I’m sure it will be gone in the blink of an eye) and I can’t help but think that the potential for change and revelation, although greatly decreased from the first three months, still exists.

Yesterday, I walked into the garden and saw that there was a note closed in the door. I could only assume this note was for me. It read: “I’m next door at the neighbor’s with Enzo. Come and get me if you want to get in.” Well, I have a key and if I don’t have to go next door and get Enzo, then why bother? Instead, I let myself in the other door (I only have a key to one door), put my bag in my room, and settled myself on the couch in front of the TV with my book. Unfortunately, my time of pleasure was cut short by the arrival of Sylvie and Enzo. In particular, the demanding cries of Enzo that I change Roue de la Fortune to Tigi Nu, his cartoon station. “Tigi Nu! Tigi Nu! Tigi Nu!” I ignored him and Sylvie shouted at him to keep quiet. Unable to change the station himself and having his cries ignored, the little bugger found his own book (a riveting Dora the Explorer tale about Pablo’s Magical Flute that makes plants grow and animals dance [LSD?]) and plopped himself down next to me. “Read this to me,” he demanded. I let him know that I was reading but he was insistent. “Read this to me,” he demanded again. Well, alright. I took the book from him and opened it up and the tyke dutifully cuddled up against me while I started to read. We read the whole book together (at a whopping 5 pages) and he colored some stars in the book. I closed the book and he took it from me. “Encore! Encore! Read it to me again!” With a deep sigh I agreed to read it “only one more time, okay?” He was okay with that. We were just getting to my favorite part where Dora and Baboush (her pet monkey) are following the cries of the friendly owl through the Forest of Fear when Philippe got home. He walked over to where Enzo and I were sitting (Enzo had by then, of course, stopped listening to me) and stuck his hand out to me. Understand that about ½ the time our paths cross, for the first time in any given day, he completely ignores me and the other ½ of the time he greets me and then ignores me. The very first time we met (it was 7:15 in the morning and I was eating cereal) he shook my hand when he greeted me. He didn’t even know my name until March! So, there he stood, sticking his dirty, greasy hand out to me. I was a little confused. I put my hand in it and looked him in the eye, just like I’d done 3 months ago, and greeted him. “How are you?” he asked me. Still unbelievably confused, I told him that I was very well and thank you for asking. I mirrored his question and he answered in kind. Then, he picked up his son and kissed him and tickled him like he does every evening when he gets home. I was just baffled. “Where the hell am I??” I thought to myself. Enzo is being quiet and asking me to read him a book and Philippe is shaking my hand and pretending like he gives a shit. At dinner I was consuming my dinner and listening to the family chat away about this and that when I realized that Paul wasn’t there. Of course I instantly knew Paul wasn’t at the table but I realized that Paul, wasn’t, there. I hadn’t seen him in almost a week and I’ve never known him to skip even 2 meals in a row. I was gone for the weekend but, still, he should’ve been there either Monday or Tuesday. As if on cue, Yann looks to Philippe and says: “Paul left and he isn’t coming back?” Philippe responded in the affirmative. Paul left and he wasn’t coming back? Can I have the trailer? No, seriously, Paul’s freaking gone? Nobody told me. He didn’t say goodbye. I was pretty bummed. I asked Sylvie about it later. “Where did Paul go,” I asked. She let me know that he “went home, to Belgium. Back to his family.” Family? “Wife and kids… well, ex-wife.” Time out. Paul has a family in Belgium? What in the hell was he doing in Avignon? Why was he living on the streets? Even at this moment, as I type these words, my mind is unable to completely wrap itself around this thought. Maybe you have some insight. Sylvie added after a bit of silence “Paul is gone, you are leaving, and even Philippe is leaving.” I made an inquiring sound (not trusting my vocal cords to make any intelligible sound) and she clarified that he was leaving on the 2nd or the 4th of May or something like that. I imagine he’s going to go right after pay day and find himself a flat. Figures he’d leave right after me. I imagine he’s waiting out of spite.

Anyways, these new developments in the life of chez-Tsaconas have really altered the mood around the house. Yann and Julia are still doing what they do and I can only assume that they’re more or less oblivious to the subtle changes. I suppose they’ll be in for a sort of shock when they realize how different the house is with three less people. Sylvie caught a pretty nasty cold shortly after I got back from skiing (a day after *I* caught my cold…) and even ended up going to the doctor for some antibiotics. She was sick enough that Philippe cooked a meal last week. Okay, I should clarify. He threw some pasta in boiling water (which Sylvie probably put on the stove) and made some sauce for it. Bravo, Philippe. In his defense, it was pretty good. Anywho, Sylvie’s been pretty down of late and hasn’t even had the energy to yell at Enzo for more than 2 or 3 minutes at a time. And here I thought her yelling ability was indefatigable. She’s also just had an air about her… a look on her face and in her eyes that makes me feel terrible. It’s obviously sadness of some kind, but like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I can’t put my finger on it and I’m afraid that if I tried to poke at it that I would end up biting off more than I could chew. Today, I came home, and she was there with Enzo doing what she’s usually doing. I greeted her, put my bag away, and came back downstairs with my book to chat and relax in the rays of the setting sun. When I walked into the living room she was at the stereo putting some music on. Unfortunately, it was U2. I put my nose in my book and tried to close my ears to the “music.” I could see with my peripheral vision that she was really digging it and when I looked up at her she asked me if I knew the group. I said I did and she asked me if I liked them. I smiled and shrugged. She told me that she loved U2. In fact, said “J’adore U2.” I could only smile. After a song or two, she picked up the case and after briefly looking at it skipped to a specific track: “With or Without You.” Apparently, her favorite song. She knew most of the words and those she didn’t she sang filler words to the tune. The song put a reminiscent smile on her face and she told me that the first time she and Philippe met they put this song on repeat and fell asleep listening to it. Hmmm… maybe she’s more upset by Philippe leaving than it appears? I really have no idea, but I thought it was interesting. I went to look at her CD collection and she invited me to put anything I wanted in, so I chose a little Simon and G-funk. Sylvie and I sang “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “Cecilia” and I put Enzo on my feet and danced around a bit. Fun was had by all.

My life here in Sylvie’s home has become about as normal as it could possibly be. I’ve written before that I’m a faux guest, and while that’s more or less true I realized that a more accurate way to describe it would be that I’m a guest in a hotel. I’m well known, expected at meals, I can come and go as I want, have my own private space in which I may do as I please (so long as I respect those around me), but I’m missing some of the comforts of home and there are things I’m not allowed to do or touch as if they were “for staff [family] only.” Maybe that’s probably why I’ve never truly been miserable here because I’ve always liked staying in hotels. My only qualm really is the screaming child who lives in room 213 across the hall, but other than that I really would give Hotel Sylvie a good rating. Food’s good, guests are generally pleasant and friendly, it’s quiet at night, the laundry’s done regularly, etc, etc. This morning I didn’t have class until 11 and so set my alarm for 9:30. Really, I don’t know why I bother setting my alarm when Enzo is happy to wake me up everyday when he gets up. To be fair, it isn’t just Enzo who wakes me up, it’s damn near everybody. Philippe is up before everybody and creeps out like a ninja after a successful mission and unless Yann talks to Julia about something I don’t hear him leave either. Paul doesn’t count because A) he’s gone and B) when he was here he slept outside in the trailer. Sylvie wakes me up just as much as Enzo because she’s usually chasing him around whispering loudly for him to be quiet. Sometimes, she vacuums in the mornings after she drops Enzo off at school. Julia is like a walking stereo with her two cell phones, each with their distinct ring tones. Not to mention the morning preparations (showering, hair drying, shoes clicking on the tile, etc). This morning Julia, in the bathroom upstairs, and Sylvie, in the kitchen downstairs, had a minute longer conversation which mostly consisted of each one repeating what they had just shouted. I don’t know why they couldn’t hear each other because I was catching every word and I’m not even fluent. The reason I’m talking about this isn’t because I want to complain to you in my journal. Not at all. I want to state that, in fact, while it’s annoying and I wish it wasn’t like this, it’s become ordinary. For me to “sleep in” on days isn’t actually sleeping. I’m allowed to lie there, in the darkness of my room, from 7:30-X (X being the time when I actually descend from the ladder to start my day). My body is so accustomed to this that in between shouting, blow drying, toilet flushing, etc my body randomly grasps at sleep. It has learned to incorporate the going ons of the mornings into my dreams. Dreams of blow dryers scampering and shushing (naked) Enzo who is running along laughing uproariously or some such garbage. Will I miss these mornings? Probably not, but I’ll surely remember them. Something I will miss, that falls into the same love-hate category of living in this house, is the bus system. I was talking with Parker today, as we sat next to a creepy, smelly guy who kept staring at us, about the things we take for granted that we’ll miss. The bus was at the top of my list. Speaking of, I’m gonna shut down my computer and catch a few Z’s so I can get to the bus stop in time. Finals are coming up and I have large written assignments to do and exams to study for. Updates may become sparse. I apologize in advance.
Best wishes from France, Jacob.

Updatey poo

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 06:31:49 GMT

As I sit here on this cool Sunday evening I can feel my legs tingling as my muscles begin to realize that they can relax. The walking-filled weekend is over. It ended with me running to the main bus stop in Centre-Ville only to find it empty of buses and thus walking home. I don’t think I even wrote about where I was going this weekend. In fact, I owe you the end of the weekend before, don’t I? A thousand pardons. This puts me in a bit of a pickle, doesn’t it? Where should I start writing from? Do I put down the memories are still fresh and dancing in my head or finish what I started? It’s silly that I write that because you’d never know. I could write one or the other and put them up in the proper order! However, that’s just not my style. I think I’ll pay what I owe and then write the rest. I only hope I can hear myself think over the rumblings of my empty stomach.

Let’s see… I believe I had finished the story of Thursday night and was telling you about my weekend skiing in the Alps! I believe this is review but… Xavier is the son of a French family that hosts students every semester and he’s currently in a very serious relationship with a girl that was a student at IAU and stayed at Xavier’s place. Xavier’s family has a cabin in the Alps and they’re nice enough to let IAU students use it every semester. There were 11 of us total who went. Eight students from IAU (9 girls, Roman, and myself), Xavier and Sarah (Sarah being the girlfriend), and finally Alison who is an American friend of Sarah’s (and who is an alumni from St. Catherine’s! so we hit it off very well right away) piled into two cars and made the four hour trek to the cabin. It was a relatively painless car ride. I was in the front seat the whole ride (there and back) and most people in the back just slept while Xavier and I chatted and talked about what the various stuff was along the way (Xavier is a history major). We pulled up to the cabin as the sun was setting and put everything inside and a few of us went back into town to get supplies for the weekend: Breakfast cereals, coffee and tea, eggs, bread (a few baguettes and a couple loaves), a case of beer, bottle of wine, bottles of hard cider, meat and cheese (for roclette!!!), and toilet paper. That night was a delicious dinner (made by Xavier’s mom and deposited in the oven, ready to be cooked) and watching The Princess Bride on my laptop with everybody crammed onto my bed. The plan was to be headed out the door to ski somewhere between 9 and 9:30. A group of college students… led by a Frenchman… we were on the hill at about noon. Well, I woke up at 8:30 because Xavier had gotten up and was cleaning up the cabin a bit and setting out breakfast stuff (bowls, cereals, mugs for coffee, etc), and I was sitting there wiggling my toes, waking myself up at a leisurely pace, and I realized that I was hungry for something in particular. I had a craving. I had a fever and the only cure was French toast. One of my favorite things in the whole world is the realization and fulfillment of a craving. We had bought eggs and bread… I presented the idea of French toast to Xavier and he said it was alright if I wanted to whip some up. Friends, I used every egg and slice of bread in that cabin. I could hear groans of delight from the kitchen as people consumed French toast. The problem with cooking for a host of people is the possibility of there not being enough for the cook. Luckily, there were 5 pieces leftover and I consumed each piece as if there were no other pieces of French toast in my life. Each bite was a sunrise, a first kiss, a moonlit walk, a bedtime story from dad, that first present Christmas morning… They had this amazing honey at the cabin. Some sort of caramelized, extra-sweet, stuff… I don’t know exactly what it was but I can assure you, it was like eating happiness. I mixed it with Nutella for a couple pieces… I just ate dinner and I’m salivating thinking about it. Anyways, people ate very well and I received several pats on the back for my brilliant thinking. We put our gear on (Xavier had no snow pants that fit me so I skied in jeans) packed ourselves into the car and cruised up the mountain. The mountains were surprisingly bear of snow and the whole ride to the ski course I couldn’t help but wonder if there would all of a sudden be snow around the next bend… maybe this one… but, no. We walked to the rental place and I could see the hill and while there was snow on it I couldn’t help but be skeptical. Xavier seemed confident, however, so I put my faith in him. We rented skis and poles, bought a lift ticket, and trudged our way to the snow. Literally, the only place there was snow was on the runs. It was nuts! We did a couple runs on the bunny hill (more like ferocious, rabid badger hill) with the 3-4 girls that had never skied before the rest of us headed over to the chair lift for some real skiing. I must confess that I was scared. I’m a social skier. I don’t wake up and think about going skiing, but if a friend calls me to let me know the gang is going skiing, then you can count me in. That being said, nobody has called me to go skiing since my junior year of high school. Consequently, I haven’t had waxed, wooden boards buckled to my feet in four years. And now, I’m going skiing in the Alps? I learned how to ski in junior high and went a good number of times every winter until my junior year. I can get down the hill just fine. But… the Alps?! The runs on the badger hill didn’t do a whole lot for my confidence, but I realized that I could still ski just fine. We dropped off at a quaint little section and we all zipped down to another t-bar that took us up a little higher. Roman and I were waiting for everybody to get off the t-bar and he looked up at the gondola’s going to the very top of the hill. “I can’t wait to hit that up.” “Beg your pardon? We’re going up there? Maybe we should, you know, take a couple more warm-up runs…” “No way, man! That’s where the good stuff is.” Sure enough, we climbed into the gondola (my first time in a gondola) and took off to the top. It was like riding on a rollercoaster and going up the first hill except for two major differences. First of all, there wasn’t that ticking noise as the track pulls the cars up to the top of the hill. Second of all, when you’re going up on a rollercoaster, you know you’re going to get the shit scared out of you, you may get a little queasy, but all in all you’re getting off that roller coaster in one piece. I couldn’t guarantee that I was getting off this ride. We popped out of the gondola and put our skis back on, admiring the view of the Alps and looking at the little ants at the bottom of the hill. “I could stay up here all day,” I said. We took off down the hill and I did just fine. It was tough and definitely took all my concentration to make it down. It also took all my will power to get back into that damn gondola and go back up again. There were no incidents skiing, and everybody had a good time. I didn’t even fall down once! I was pleased (and also dry). That night was Roclette and I ate slowly until everybody else had eaten their fill and then I let loose my appetite upon that dinner… nobody was spared. Xavier and I ate half the cheese by ourselves, no problem. It must have been 30 slices of roclette cheese. Roman kept putting fresh slices in the melter and on my plate. It was an almost constant flow of cheese on my plate. Meat, potatoes, bread, cheese, and cider were all cascading down my throat into my grateful stomach. After dinner, we sat around the table laughing and drinking enjoying the good tired that was a long, eventful day. The next day was pretty quiet. There was a nature walk (which I skipped to do homework) and a lot of lying around. A couple hardcore ladies went skiing again but for the most part people just relaxed. We drove home and called it a weekend. I had a very nice weekend and it was really great to become better acquainted with people from the institute. It’s always a weird/neat experience to get to really get to know somebody you already know. Alison and I bonded really well. It was one of those meetings where you can almost feel the click when you meet. Don’t worry, she’s got a boyfriend.

Okay, this weekend!

Earlier last week, a girl at the institute, Carly, came up to me and asked me if I’d be interested in going on a little trip this weekend with she and Hannah. I asked her what the occasion was and she told me that the Art History class (a very solid majority of the students) was going to Paris for the weekend and that they were leaving Friday morning. The institute was to be closed Friday. Well, I thought that sounded like a good idea. Visiting two new cities and not being home for the weekend. She made all the arrangements and all I had to do was show up at the train station at 9:40 to catch out 10:00 train. Nooooo problem. I show up promptly at 9:40 (seriously, I did) and I’m standing there, eyeing the bakery, waiting for Carly and Hannah when Carly taps me on the shoulder. We share brief pleasantries and she says “Our train has been cancelled.” “Beg your pardon?” Turns out, there was a strike! I wrote down exactly what the electronic board said, but I must have dropped the piece of paper because I can’t find it tonight. If I remember correctly, the electronic board said that because of “socio-political reasons” almost all trains to/from Montpellier (EXACTLY where we were going) were cancelled. We were to catch a bus to a nearby city and then a train from there to Montpellier. I felt like starting off the trip with a cancelled train was a pretty poor omen, but Carly is very optimistic and bubbly and my feelings of doubt didn’t last too long. We made it to Montpellier around 11:30 and when we popped out of the train station took a quick gander at the map. After briefly studying the map I decided that I would be in charge of navigation. 10 minutes later we were a teensy bit lost. We were in a park, but damned if we could find it on the map. In my defense, it was one of those bullshit maps with a kooky scale. The train station looked to be about a 10 minute walk to the city when, in fact, it was basically IN the city. It was ¾ of an inch away from the city! ¾ of an inch on a map is a long ways. We figured it out, but not before I was badly humbled. The map screwed us up a couple times but in the end we figured it out. In fact, it was kind of nice because we came into the city from a different angle and stumbled across a really groovy park and entered into the city through a giant, beautiful gate. Montpellier is a pretty cool city. It’s somehow managed to balance the old with the new. I think a good chunk of that is the lack of city walls and a small (unnecessary) monorail system. The three of us talked to the woman at the tourism office who gave us, no kidding, 8 different pieces of papers ranging from maps to bus plans to bicycle rental prices. With out prizes, we went searching for lunch. I suggested bread, fruit, and cheese and the girls liked that idea. We found a grocery story, a bakery, and a fromagerie (cheese store) all right next to each other. I don’t believe in fate, but I do enjoy a serendipitous coincidence. We bought a big baguette, a few chunks of cheese, a piece of fruit each, and a giant water bottle. The price for lunch was less than $2.50. As we ate, we looked at our different pieces of papers, trying to decide what to do, when we realized that whatever we did, we’d like to ditch our backpacks at the hotel. It was about 2.5 inches (on the crappy map) from our current location which ended up being a whopping 8 minute walk. We had booked a double because the difference between a double and a triple was pretty ridiculous and we just weren’t going to stand for that. The girls checked in and let me in the side door, through the garage. It worked pretty well, actually. We pushed the two beds together and made a giant bed. Being the gentleman I am, I slept in the crack. We set our bags down, took off our shoes, used the bathroom, and in the true spirit of adventure, lied down and took a two hour nap. When we woke, feeling very refreshed thank you very much, we realized that we were hungry. Specifically, hungry for Chinese. We went back into town and ate a tasty little Chinese dinner and decided that we would go to a movie and afterwards to a bar to mingle with the locals. Montpellier is sort of a college town and so as we walked to the theater (we had already selected a movie earlier) Carly asked a group of smoking youths (you know, young people who set themselves on fire) if they had a recommendation for a bar. They gave us some complicated directions and a few bar names and, in general, were very pleasant. We went to the movie (La Môme) which was a biography about Edith Piaf (very famous French singer) which was quite good. We popped out of the theater at about 9:30 and decided we wanted chocolate (I’ve discovered that when I’m around women, my desire for chocolate raises dramatically). We went to a café and enjoyed hot chocolate and discussed whether or not we wanted to go into a bar, have a mediocre time trying to mingle, and leave smelling like smoke. We opted to go back to the hotel and play cards. We got there and instinctively, the three of us put on our pajama’s, brushed our teeth, and climbed into bed. We laid there chatting for about an hour, watched some television, and ended up passing out before midnight.

The next morning we caught the train to Carcasonne. I redeemed myself for getting us lost yesterday because the girls had no idea which way the train station was and I definitely walked us perfectly to the front doors. We got there and our train was delayed 15 minutes. Not a big deal, no connecting vehicles, but still kind of annoying. When we bought tickets, the train was almost full so we couldn’t get seats next to each other. Usually when I ride the train with friends, we all jump in a compartment together, or sit in seats close to each other. However, as the train pulled up, we could see it was pretty full. We decided it would be better to go to our separate seats. I don’t know why, but I assumed that the French ignored the car/seat number much like I usually do, and took seats where they wanted (only really paying attention to which class they’re in). With this assumption, I figured some uppity Frenchman would be sitting in my seat and so I opted to stand for a good portion of the voyage (they have an area after the door onto the train and before the door onto the compartment where people can stand, put their luggage, etc). However, after one stop, a lot of people got off the train and I decided that I would scavenge myself a seat. As I walked into the compartment itself, I first checked to see if my seat was open. Not only was it open, but it was right next to a cute French woman. What luck! She had put her bag in my seat and I asked her to move it with a smile that said “Your bag is in my seat but that’s okay because you’re very cute” and she removed it with a smile that said “You’re not French, but that’s okay because I think you’re cute.” I sat down and we did the awkward thing where each person is trying to get comfortable without being inconsiderate to their neighbor. We shifted bags and negotiated the armrest; the whole while sharing a little grin between us. Then, a man came and told her that she was in his seat. I then had to get up, let the cute girl out, let the fat man sit down and watch as she walked away to find her real seat. I gave the fat man a glare and then realized that the woman sitting kitty corner from me had a cat! No pun intended there, seriously, she was kitty corner to me. I’m allergic to cats! This situation had deteriorated rapidly from what I had hoped to be an enjoyable train ride. I was on the verge of despair when I realized the pretty, young woman sitting across the aisle from me was reading a book in English. An Anglophone! I decided to interrupt her reading and strike up a conversation. I took the standard route of finding out whether she was American, British, Australian, etc and found out that the woman I had struck up a conversation with was Julie from Georgia. We exchanged brief pleasantries of our respective states (she’d never been to Idaho, but I had nice things to say about Georgia) and then I moved seamlessly into the topic of her book and she not-so-casually dropped the fact that the book was sent to her from the States by her boyfriend. I should’ve stuck with the cat. Julie was pleasant company, but after about 15 minutes of chit-chat I really was tired of talking to her and started desperately hoping that the cat would attack me so that I could have a reason to excuse myself. No such luck. I had trapped myself in a conversation. The painful chit-chat continued for another 10 minutes until Carcasonne mercifully pulled up into view. I stood up (I could see a little further down the cute French girl with her ipod in), shook her hand, picked up my backpack, and went to the door. Thank goodness, all of us got off successfully, and started our journey into Carcasonne around 11:00. Carcasonne is split into two different cities. New city and Old city. Old city is the touristy place and New city is where people live. We walked through new city, bought a little breakfast from a bakery (we were a little late getting up and didn’t have time for breakfast in Montpellier) and made our way to Old City. Carcasonne is quite lovely (both new and old city) and it was kind of neat how they had split the two. The view of the old city, while walking up to it, was pretty groovy (Carly and Hannah stopped and took pictures). Carly had this guide book by Rick Somethingorother she kept looking at that was just full of information. We would discuss where to eat or what to see and she’d say: “Well, Rick says…” Granted, the book was useful, but I prefer to enjoy my own, personal experience. We wandered around Old City a bit, and found out from the tourism office when the tours were. It’s funny how being a tour guide has put me off tours. Carly really wanted to go, I really didn’t want to go, and Hannah wasn’t interested in going. However, Carly felt bad about going off by herself and it took Hannah and me awhile to convince her that it was okay. Her tour was at 2 and since it was noon, we decided it was about time for lunch. Carly let us know what Rick recommended, and we headed off looking for lunch. We were strolling along and we were stopped by a woman in a cloak who was standing in front of the Torture Museum. I was intrigued. Sidenote! Whenever you’re (you being me or any IAU student or presumably anybody bilingual) in a touristy place they immediately assume that you’re an ignorant asshole who only speaks English. I’ve worked pretty hard to bring my French up to the level it’s at and I’d like to use it, damnit. Also, when they speak to you in English, they condescend to you like you’re an ignorant asshole who only speaks English. Sometimes, it’s quite funny/annoying because my French is better than their English. For example, the woman at the tourist office in Old City didn’t even ask if we spoke French, only told us when tours in English were, and was basically infuriatingly condescending. HOWEVER, as a transition from this sidenote back into the day’s events, the woman in the cloak asked us if we spoke French! We were proud to say that we did. She let us know about the torture museum, the haunted house down the way, and finally of a nice little restaurant just around the corner. She had a flyer for each and the menu looked good to us (as did the price). We went around the corner and I was looking at the menu, trying to make the right decision, when Hannah and Carly said “is that it? I think it is” and pointed to the restaurant. Granted, we hadn’t 100% decided on it and wanted to look at it, make sure it wasn’t grungy and nasty, and receive other, general visual stimuli so we looked like a bunch of average tourists. In front of the restaurant is a woman, wearing a stupid hat, who has been hired to catch hungry, stupid-looking tourists and encourage them to come in and eat, or check out the torture museum around the corner (apparently the restaurant and the museum are in cahoots). The woman spoke French, Spanish, and English and when she saw us she was quick to condescend. She walked up to us and gave a little schpiel about the restaurant, the whole time giving us that smile. However, the place looked good so we went in. We ate a true French lunch with 4 courses spanned over an hour and a half and then realized that we had to scamper if Carly was going to catch her tour. Both girls had to make wee and so I stepped outside to wait for them. There I was standing next to the woman in the stupid hat. Awkward silence. She asked me if I liked the meal and I said I did. Awkward silence. She spoke some quick Spanish to some people walking by (it was impressive that she could pick out instantly who was what nationality) and handed them a flyer. She looked at me and asked me something in Spanish. Awkward silence. Then we both laughed because I’m sure I had a very confused look on my face and she realized she had done a very normal thing people do when they’re thinking in multiple languages. She asked me the question again (“Do you like the city so far?”) in English and I replied in French that I thought it was very nice. She started a bit. “Parlez-vous Français?” she asked. “Mais, oui.” We spoke a bit about the city and what I was doing in France and when the girls came out she greeted them in French and the four of us talked for another minute until we excused ourselves on account of the time. As much as I hate being condescended to in my own language by foreigners, I equally love surprising them by speaking to them in their own language. We quickly checked into our hostel (situated in Old City) and while Carly went on her tour, Hannah and I walked into New City and bought groceries for dinner that night. The hostel had a kitchen! I had suggested soup and sandwiches (a tasty, cheap dinner) and that sounded dynamite to the girls. Hannah and I spent a whopping 12 dollars at the grocery story which would later feed all of us to maximum capacity with leftovers for the next day. Being at the hostel was pretty neat, it was my first one. There were people from all over and it was neat to see how different/the same people are. I won’t go into too much detail, but I’ll give an example. At breakfast, I sat down at a table and there was German, Spanish, Portuguese, and French being spoken in the little cafeteria in the hostel. If I hadn’t been by myself, English would have been heard as well. There were the young and the old, men and women, dark folk and light folk all living together and sharing basic supplies. It was pretty neat. After dinner, I taught Carly and Hannah how to swing dance a bit and then the three of us went for a walk to look at Old City at night (as suggested by Rick). It was pretty cool, actually, because it was lit up by giant floodlights around the outer perimeter. Kudos to Rick. We got back to the walls and wandered around, and re-entered the city through a creepy, dark, “secret” passage through the wall. Then we climbed up on the walls and chatted a bit, played with our giant shadows on the wall, and just generally acted like kids. By the time we got back to the hostel I was exhausted from doing so much walking, dancing, and cheese consumption. I slept like a log. I woke up and looked out the window and saw a castle. Kind of a cool experience. The day, however, was pretty miserable. Cold, windy, and occasional ice-cold rain awaited any who wanted to sight see. I decided I would stay inside and do my homework. Carly was optimistic and kept trying to go outside only to return shortly after cold and bummed. We did homework, played some hearts, and ended up going to the train station a bit early (which was good because we took a wrong turn that tacked an additional 15 minutes to the walk to the train station). The three of us snoozed soundly on the train and it pulled into Avignon at 6:13 (exactly 2 minutes before my bus is scheduled to leave). I jumped off, ran to Place Pie, and discovered there weren’t any buses. However, Alison was at a café in Place Pie having some beers with her boyfriend’s parents and she called me over, introduced me, and after a bit of chatting I took off for my long walk home. So that was my weekend(s). They were both pretty groovy and I’m glad I did both trips. I hope I can make it through the week. It’s always hard to get back to work after such fun times. Wish me luck! Enjoy your week! xo Jacob

Faire du ski

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 16:15:42 GMT

I don't like it when work piles up like that! Staying up late and getting up early to do homework. Boo! I can't complain too much about it because I definitely decided to go skiing with the knowledge that I should've dedicated the weekend to my literature paper. In my defense, I did do a bit of work at the cabin instead of going for a nature walk. You know how I feel about nature! I was glad I did because when I got home that night I wasn't in the mood to do homework and so by having done a little I was able to make a compromise with myself. Anyways, that's boring information. I'll start with some good stuff.

Thursday was pretty amusing. It was some sort of dinner here at the institute for all the students and their families. I was very hopeful that Sylvie would come and bring along the little one, but the day before she told me that she was going to a political rally. She also, more or less, told me not to tell anybody. The French are very private and that goes double for politics and religion. I expected the dinner to be awkward because none of the students are truly fluent and we're supposed to mingle and... I don't know, I was expecting awkwardness. However, the call of time away from the house was too much (not to mention an extra hour of internet!) Some of you may remember the French Potluck that was Lili's birthday. The dish of the day was quiche. Luisa told me it was the potluck dish of the French. Now, I know that she was right. Lots and lots and lots of quiches. Some good, most were mediocre. Dinner conversation was alright. I met my speaking teacher's husband who was from MN (my speaking teacher lived in the twin cities for 15 years) but he couldn't get over the mental block that he was fifteen years my senior. Word passed through the students that there was to be a rendezvous at the Red Lion (Bar). And, APPARENTLY, the translation professor was going to be there. I don't have his class, but I hear it's very hard, people learn a lot, and Jay himself is supposed to be pretty cool/incredible. Intrigued, I decided that because I'd already missed the bus on account of dinner, that I would go out too. The students left in little waves in relation to how close their host(s) were to the institute. I had no host, so I was in the first wave. The Red Lion was a pretty good time. Jay was pretty cool. He knew the Tsaconas family and had a different insight into their lifestyle. He's been living here for almost 10 years and even has a French wife. It was also good that he was there because I was flirting with Laura's exchange partner and kept asking Jay for certain words. Clumsy was one... *sigh* It was a little disconcerting because she kept laughing at my sentences. I could only hope she thought I was cute and not an idiot. Parker and I walked her home (the three of us were the last to leave the Red Lion at about 1AM... me having to catch the 7:30 bus to get to highschool by 8). To be continued tomorrow! And the weekend too! SORRY!

sorry!

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:41:21 GMT

I'm SWAMPED today so I can't put up my weekend post. It's gonna be a decent one. I forgot my key one night and I definitely just spent the weekend with some friends skiing in the ALPS!! I expect to write about it Tuesday afternoon!

Frisbee tournament

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 12:29:07 GMT

I’m writing this entry from my room at Sylvie’s house with my headphones plugged in (listening to a new, very chill band I like quite a bit), in my sweats and a comfy t-shirt, and a little bit of a sunburn on my face. That is to say, at this moment, I am surfing on the top of the crest. Forget Friday and Saturday, they were mediocre and nothing is really worth mentioning for either one. Well, I take that back. Saturday night we ate croque monsieurs. Hot damn they were good. If you don’t know what they are, go ahead and Google it. I woke up Saturday, showered, got dressed, etc, etc with the intent of going into Centre-Ville to do a bit of grocery shopping for the frisbee tournament today. However, I saw those croque monsieurs on the stove, all ready to be made and I stopped dead in my tracks. I mentioned them to Yann (Sylvie had gone somewhere for a few hours and left the men [sans Philippe] at the house) who informed me that they were for lunch. Well that changed everything. How can I eat croque monsieurs if I’m in Centre-Ville? You’re right, I can’t. So, I put my feet up and turned on MTV and waited for Sylvie to return to whip those puppies up. Long afternoon short, they were for dinner and so I waited all afternoon for lunch to happen and ended up not eating all day except for a bowl of cereal and dinner. But, in retrospect, I survived and those monsieurs were TASTY. I would’ve hated to miss them. Okay, so Leigh and I had planned for me to be waiting at 6:30 at a corner halfway between her house and mine that was also in the general direction of Centre-Ville so that her host mom could pick me up and drop Leigh and me off at the train station in order to catch the 6:55 train. I packed my bags Saturday night and set my alarm for 6:05. Wake up, bathroom, teeth brushing, gone… should leave me just enough time to get to that corner. Why do I never, ever learn? I ended up running to the corner (and was still a little late) but Leigh’s host mom was so nice it didn’t matter at all. Leigh and I had already purchased tickets and so all we had to do was wait for Erin and her friend Courtney to show up. Don’t worry, they did, and we all jumped on the train to Arles (I spoke of Arles in an earlier entry) and from there we would catch a bus to Saintes-Mairies sur la mer where the tournament was. Alright, first step done. We got to Arles without a hitch. Found a bus schedule… taped in the window of the tourism office… 8:55 from the Gare. Okay, we’re supposed to be there at 9 but, really, no problem. Erin calls the captain of the team putting on the tourney and lets him know we’re coming but a little late. Let’s see, it’s 7:30 let’s go to a boulangerie and snag a little breakfast. For fear of missing the bus we decided to head back around 8:20 or so. We’re sitting at the stop, enjoying the cool, morning air of an early spring when we realize that there’s a bus behind us pulling away. I run to the bus (who, surprisingly, stopped) and ask the conductor if he’s going to Saintes-Mairies. In fact, he isn’t. And, not only is HE not going to Saintes-Mairies, the only bus he knows of that is departs at 12:30. Small mouthed oh. This is distressing news. An hour late… could be worse… but arriving a couple hours before the tournament ends… Okay, problem solving skills are being put to the test. Erin calls the captain again and asks if there’s anybody that could pick them up. He says he’ll make some phone calls. A few minutes later he calls back about a guy, Olivier, that’s close-ish to Arles and can pick us up. A half hour later he gets to the train station. Olivier steps out of the car and unfolds himself. The man is huge! He’s at least 2 inches taller than me. I’m impressed. I feel that the height of the average French man is about 5’8” and, oddly, the height of the average woman may be about the same. Could be the boots though. Anyways, Olivier is very nice and hands us the ipod for song selection. Mom, I don’t want you to read the next paragraph. More specifically, YOU don’t want to read the next paragraph. I’m serious, don’t.
We climbed into his car and he made sure that we all buckled up. Erin had a bit of trouble with her seatbelt in the backseat but he didn’t leave until she was securely fastened in her seat. Olivier navigated his way through the tiny, walled city of Arles chatting amiably about this and that, lots of get-to-know you stuff. “What part of the states are you from?” “What are you studying in Avignon” yadda yadda yadda. Then we got on the two lane highway (just like home!), jamming along to the music Courtney’s choosing, and making good time because Olivier is going pretty fast. The man was an awful driver. I would’ve felt safer in a driver’s ed car. He tailgated every car he caught up to, but he was never there for long because he passed everybody. On one straightaway, he passed about 10 cars. Another time he was popping out to pass when a car came around the corner and he had to pop back into the right lane but not without being less than 6 inches from the car in front of us. You could hear the air in the car being sucked away by the four foreigners. To credit Olivier, he never passed on a blind corner and he had enough opportunities to do so, and he got us there quickly… and I guess safely…
As we pulled into Saint-Mairies I immediately began looking for the sea. I wanted that first look, and I wanted it badly. However, every time I try to do this I can never see the ocean/sea. There’s always a building, or a line of trees, or a wall or some crap that blocks my view. Has this happened to you? We pulled in next to the tourism office to ask directions to the beach and the moment he turned the car off I was out of the car and up on the seawall looking out at the Mediterranean. It was just like I wanted it to be. Big. Blue. Beautiful. All that we’d done was instantly worth that moment. The waves splashing onto the beach and rocks, the boats in the water, and even the horizon all filled me with unspeakable joy. In French, when you want to say you miss something or somebody, you do it a little backwards. When you structure the sentence, the subject is the thing you’re missing. Say, for example, your dog. Then, you use the verb “manquer” which means ‘to be absent from’ or ‘to be lacking’ along with the proper pronoun. Thus, “mon chien me manque.” My dog is absent from me, directly translated. It’s a bit confusing, but I think it’s sometimes quite accurate about how I feel. Thus, at that moment, I realized that the ocean had been absent from me. L’océan me manquait. Anyways, that’s enough of that garbage. The beach we wanted was down the road so we jumped back into the car and drove about a half mile to our beach. Again, we popped out of the car like sardines and I climbed up onto the wall again and in addition to the beauty of the sea, I saw frisbees. Oh, God, I saw frisbees. I ran to them. I threw my belongings down onto some sort of open wooden structure, kicked off my shoes, and changed into my sporty clothes faster than Superman changes into his costume. I was playing catch on the beach in France. The sun was beating down on me and I could hear the waves crashing over one another behind me. Erin threw one over my head and into the ocean and I ran after it like a puppy. I would’ve indulged in a little dip but the water was fuh-reezing, and I didn’t want to be wet (and salty) right before I started running (not if I wanted to walk like a regular human being the rest of the week).
The tournament was starting and La Mistral (that was our team name) was playing in one of the opening games! There was Erin, Leigh (girl from the institute who plays soccer and thus naturally picked up Ultimate), a couple guys who Erin had talked to before and agreed to play with us, and me (Erin’s friend Courtney was official photographer… I think she took a couple photos during the first game). Four on the field and a substitute. Not perfect, but very agreeable. In fact, I think every team had 5 players… maybe one with 6. Not important. The first team beat us pretty readily, but I didn’t even care. I was playing FRISBEE! There’s really no need for me to go into too much detail about each game but I’ll try to give you a brief overview. We ended up winning two games and losing three. Because it was on the beach there was tons of diving from everybody. I would guess an average of 30 dives (total from both teams) per game. That’s a lot. I met a girl from MN, Missy is her name, that goes to school at Duluth, plays ultimate there, and she knew a good number of the girls on our team. We exchanged contact info and she invited me to crash at her place in Montpelier (she also invited me to hitchhike with her and a friend to Barcelona but I don’t know if I’m too keen on that) anytime I wanted and I plan on hitting that up for sure. Free place to stay? Sold! I had a lot of fun playing frisbee in general, and met some neat people. Frisbee in France could be described as Frisbee lite. It looks the same, has the same name, buuuuut doesn’t quite taste the same. The team that ended up winning the tournament is apparently one of the best teams in France, but I assure you that our team back home would cut them to ribbons. However! They definitely asked me to play with them at the end of April and I definitely plan on hitting that up. I was hoping other teams would ask me to play, but that didn’t happen. Not to toot my horn (but I’m totally going to) but I definitely turned some heads. A guy from the team who took second at the tournament played catch with me for awhile and afterwards convinced his buddy to get up and throw us discs so we could jump for them. I kicked his ass. He later suggested that I get on the France Ultimate forum and put my name and contact info out there. Erin said that whenever teams see an American looking for a team to play with, they jump all over him/her. Something else that amused me was that the French stopped for an unnecessarily long lunch (another reason it’s Frisbee lite). At a regular frisbee tournament, you play about 5 games and have a bye in there somewhere that you can go and get some bananas, PB&J’s, and water from the tournament tent. Stop for lunch? Psh. After lunch, La Mistral we had left behind caught up with us and the last 3 games were pretty miserable. By the time we left, the wind had blown sand all over/into our stuff.
I was already in a VERY good mood and feeling very good about myself and decided that I wasn’t going to buy a ticket from Arles to Avignon. In the three times I’d been on the Arles/Avignon train, I’d never had anybody ask me for my ticket. Granted, it’s less than 5 Euros, but that’s 2-3 pastries from the boulangerie! Leigh wasn’t going to either, but I could just see her conscience eating her up while we waited for the train. A few minutes before the train got there she popped up and bought a ticket. The four of us got on the train (by the way, we caught a ride from somebody else back to Arles and that trip was uneventful) and sat down. A cute, young woman sat down across from us with her little leashed dog. That was one cute dog, and he definitely came over to our side of the car and all four of us took a good turn petting him. The French have dogs all over, as I think I’ve mentioned, but it’s not really okay to pet a stranger’s dog. I don’t know why, but it just isn’t. However, this cutie seemed okay with us going to town and even loosened the leash so he could get to all of us. And, you’re darn right nobody checked my ticket. Take that, France! Jacob: 3. Leigh’s host mom came to pick us up, and I came back home and took about a 15 minute douche (it took me that long to remove the majority of the sand from my body [although I’m sure I’m going to be finding it on me for the rest of the week]). Dinner was tasty and I’m tired, but that wonderful tired after a good day. I daresay this is the best day I’ve had since I’ve been here. That being said, I’m going to bed before my computer explodes or something.

Why, hello there

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 14:10:22 GMT

Just wanted to drop you all a line, let you know that I'm still doing well here in France. I found out today that this GORGEOUS weather we're having (70 and sunny) is going to end on Monday. However, I'm making the most of it with my frisbee beach tournament on Sunday. That being said, I'm off to play frisbee now with my friends. I hope you all have a wonderful Friday.

Had a nice day

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 16:33:02 GMT

-Slept in a bit.
-Had to pick up stuff before going to the institute and actually didn't forget A) to do it or B) the items I needed to pick up
-History class was interesting
-left early! (to get to my conversation class)
-My conversation class went SO well. I was very pleased
-Lunch was very, very delicious
-My Pol class was cancelled and I had no idea
-Thus, played cards with Corrine
-Which means I bought French cards! Very cool things
-Watched a very funny movie in Oralité (le Placard)
-And, to top it off, a gorgeous day

All that being said, and with the way I'm feeling, I'm going to go ahead and award myself a point. I can't even remember how many points France has, but now I know I'm at 2. Take that, France! ... please don't kick my ass...

La Vie en Rose

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 16:16:42 GMT

…Saturday was pretty uneventful. I woke up at 2:30 when Enzo started his post-nap screamfest. I don’t know about the average person, but when I wake up in the afternoon, it’s hard for me to find motivation to actually DO anything. That being said, I pretty much did nothing. I read a bit of my book for literature, but mostly relaxed. Unsurprisingly, the day went by pretty fast. And, thank goodness, I was tired at about 11. I felt a little bad about crashing at 11 because I told Erin I’d probably see her at her birthday thing, but I couldn’t bring myself for another night on the town. Julia, François, and I had dinner together Sunday night (not out, just at the house) because Philippe, Paul, Sylvie, and her friend (also named Sylvie) all went out and Julia was babysitting and François was there because that’s what boyfriends do. I’m not sure they went out together, but I know they were all gone. Just before I started getting ready for bed I had to walk to the bus stop to check the Sunday morning departure time. As I was walking away, I noticed a lovely, new-looking, black car parked outside. I assumed it was Sylvie’s friend’s car. I found out that the only bus I could catch in order to… catch my bus… was at 8:25. I had to be up before 8 in order to catch the bus to get into Centre-Ville so I could catch the bus for my excursion. When I left for the bus stop (at 8:00, believe me, I was NOT missing this bus) the black car was still there. Apparently, Sylvie’s friend had been unable to drive home last night and was presumably sleeping in Yann’s bed (Yann was in England from Thursday evening to Monday evening).

The excursion was pretty neat. We didn’t do anything particularly amazing. I mean, we saw some neat stuff (a hospital where Van Gogh painted and the Cathedral of Images [see web site at the end of entry]), but it’s barely worth writing home about. However, the wind finally stopped blowing while we were out and about and it ended up being the kind of day where people start taking off their jackets in the afternoon sun. And, best of all, this time I didn’t forget my frisbee. Charlie and I enjoyed a few games of catch and that was nice. In fact, after our last stop, we were about an hour and a half ahead of schedule and so a few of us found a bit of grass and ended up throwing for almost 30 minutes! Wonderful! And, because we were back early enough, I even caught the bus back home. I got off the bus and realized that the entire western sky was a beautiful shade of pink. It was very beautiful and I walked backwards a good portion of the way home just admiring the sky and letting the smells of spring fill my nose. I was in a fantastic mood on account of the relaxing day away from home and with friends and frisbee that it seemed only fitting that the sky be pink. The moment was a little surreal, actually, and it made me think of a phrase my mother had said only 2 nights previous. She said "la vie en rose" and I thought that was only fitting. The dog didn't even bark at me when I walked by, I couldn't believe it. When I got home, there wasn’t a whole lot going on, so I popped in the James Bond movie Matt let me borrow (A View to a Kill, 1985) and waited for Sylvie to call me for dinner. When I came downstairs for dinner about an hour later, it was just she and I dining at the kitchen table. Odd for a Sunday night, but I didn’t give it a second thought. Sylvie and I chatted about the excursion, had a little gossip sesh, and at one point in the conversation she lets me know that Philippe and François had a little quarrel that morning. François had slept over and Philippe was not happy about that. However, Sylvie had given permission for the impromptu sleepover and so it caused Sylvie and Philippe to have a bit of a row as well. Sylvie tells me that Philippe left afterwards and that it’s quite possible he isn’t coming back. I’ve seen adults show more emotion for a flushed goldfish. Of course, I’m crossing my fingers that he isn’t coming back, but when I came down in the middle of the night for some water he was passed out drunk on the couch. Apparently they worked things out. We’ll see.

Monday was very lovely. A relaxed day at the institute and we played frisbee too. I’m going to play a free, beach tournament this weekend and I can’t WAIT for that. No other real news to report other than my long weekend. I hope you’re all happy and well. Best wishes always. -Jake

http://www.cathedrale-images.com/

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 14:17:50 GMT

It’s strange saving this file as “weekend 8” because that means that I’ve been here for 2 months. It feels like a year, but I know that it’s going to be done right away. The phenomenon of time flying by at a crawl is still happening. Anyways, I had a somewhat eventful weekend. I guess the best place to start is with the movie I watched with Jenna on Friday. She and I went to the matinee showing of “The Last King of Scotland.” I don’t know if you’re familiar with it but it’s based on a true story involving one of the leaders of Uganda during the 70’s. I can’t remember his name (I can barely remember names in English much less in another language) but he was kind of a bad dude. The story actually follows a young Scottish doctor (a one Dr. Nicholas Garrigan) who leaves his home trying to escape following in his father’s footsteps. He goes to Uganda and complicated series of events short, he’s asked by this guy to be his personal doctor. It’s really a story about how this guy gets in over his head and then ties weights to his ankles and then breaks his legs making it impossible for him to get himself back to the surface. Metaphorically speaking of course. As my dear mother would say, he didn’t have a safety net. Very good film, Jenna and I liked it quite a bit. Afterwards she and I ate kebabs in the afternoon sun, talking about life, the universe, and everything. She had an AIM rendezvous at 3 and I had a frisbee one at 3:30 so we split ways just before 3. One of the girls at the institute, Leigh, has a friend visiting her and he’s an ultimate player so he was quick to come along with me to the rendezvous (an un-important side note: she had stuff to do but showed up later). I don’t really have to go into detail about how much I love frisbee, I think you all know, so needless to say (why do people always say ‘needless to say’ right before they say what doesn’t need to be said?) it was a very great time and fun was had by all. I funny little side story about going to frisbee… Charlie (the friend) and I were walking along the bridge to the soccer pitch where we play, doing the ‘get to know you’ talk when a man on the bridge stopped us with a surprise question in French. Charlie doesn’t speak a lick of French and, surprisingly, I didn’t even bat an eye at the French. He asked if we were going to the rendezvous with Erin for frisbee (kind of a dumb question, I was holding a frisbee in my hand). I told him we were and then he asked if we were American. I told him we were and then, in perfect English, he said “Oh. Cool. Me too.” Bastard was from California.

All day Friday Matt and Parker were trying to convince me to go out that night. Assuming they don’t leave the country, every weekend (Friday and Saturday night to be specific) Matt and Parker do the same thing. They go to Matt’s place (he lives in Centre-Ville while Parker lives across the street from my church) and get rip-roaring drunk before going out to their usual bar. They do this because a drink is 4 Euro and it’s cheaper to get drunk beforehand and just maintain the buzz, or at least slow its descent, by purchasing fewer drinks at the bar. At about 12:30 or 1, about when their bar closes, they go to Blues (Club). There, they continue to maintain their drunkenness and while Matt sits and ogles girls, Parker goes out on the dance floor and dances with the French. Same thing, every weekend, both nights. I’ve never gone, but every weekend I hear about how drunk they were and about what happened. I like Matt and Parker, I really do, but there’s no way I could ever, EVER do that even two nights in a row, much less every weekend. However, I agreed to do it with them one night. The plan was for everybody to meet at the Palais des Papes at 10 to “pre-game.” I should specify that we weren’t actually going to ENTRE the palace. Of course not, don’t be silly. In front of the palace is a big sort of… courtyard, I guess. We were going to sit outside and mingle in front of the Palace. So, after frisbee I came home and put on my loungin’ clothes (shorts, sweats, comfy t-shirt, etc) which was a mistake. I ate dinner and went back to my room, put on my music, and began my usual wind-down routine. So when I realized it was 9:45 and I still had a 30 minute walk ahead of me I wasn’t exactly tearing off my clothes to jump in the douche. However, I told Matt I’d go out on his birthday and I didn’t and I used this thought to guilt myself into getting into the douche. I should add that on Friday, something broke with the hot water heater. That’s right, no hot water until MONDAY. Nonetheless I knew I wanted to bathe before I went out (I bought some lemon soap that I really like). I think I shivered more dirt off me than I washed. Well, at just after 10 I was walking into town at a vicious pace, worried that I would get there after everybody had left. I walked the 3 kilometers (Sylvie says it’s 3k) in 30 minutes. I thought that was pretty decent. I walked into the courtyard and saw a small group of people sitting on some steps on one part of the courtyard. Now, it’s dark out and I’m about 30 minutes late of the agreed upon time (assuming my friends actually showed up at 10) and there’s a group of people sitting in a group laughing and talking. One could safely assume that they were my friends. In fact, one could even feel confident about shouting a greeting across the courtyard and reinforce the greeting with a non-verbal salutation like waving one’s arm above the head, for example. HOWEVER! I can proudly say that I did no such thing. I was very careful to set my course in their general direction without actually going directly at them. I aimed, approximately, 30 feet to their left (my right). I’m just going to go ahead and pat myself on the back right now because they were actually a small group of French hellions. I was pretty smug about not walking directly to them but then quickly realized that it was actually a bad thing that these were not my friends because if these aren’t my friends then where ARE my friends? Shit. I decided to make a lazy turn to the right, towards the palace, starting to hate myself for coming into town when a voice called from above. “Jake!” I stopped and looked straight up into the face of Jesus. There’s a giant crucifix (complete with Jesus’ corpse) that stands about 30 feet tall and up a few flights of stairs. Matt and Parker had chosen to get plastered at the feet of the Savior. …When in Rome? Turns out that it was only Matt and Parker who were there. Nobody else had really shown up. I later discovered that a group of people had been there promptly at 10 and had left at 10:30. Matt and Parker hadn’t gotten there until 10:30. They went by each other like 2 ships in the night. Anyways, the three of us stayed up there talking and drinking until Matt, who had neglected to bring a coat, could no longer feel the majority of his body. The wind was howling that night (in fact, the wind blew from Thursday night until Sunday afternoon) and even I was chilly with the hood pulled up on my hoodie. Not wanting to deprive me of the weekend ritual, Matt and Parker lead me from the Palais des Papes to Koala’s Bar. There, we ran into the group of people who were at the Palace earlier. This is where the story gets complicated because I have to use names. Usually, I wouldn’t do this, but it’ll be confusing if I don’t. Matt, Parker, and Jacob entered Koala’s where Kristin, Danielle, Mumo (her dad is a big wig [senator or something, I guess] in an African country), and Roman (his mom is full-blooded Ukrainian and apparently Roman is a Ukrainian name). OKAY, moving on. We get to Koala’s and Parker orders drinks for he and Matt while Matt and I hang up our coats and claim one of those standing tables near the bar. Parker is having a conversation with the bartender, they’re apparently on a first-name basis, and Matt’s upset because he's not drunk enough. He orders another drink. I walk over towards the table of our classmates leaving him alone with her. Basically, Danielle and I switched places. Mumo and Roman are having one of those conversations between two people where if you’re not one of those two people you have absolutely no chance at being a meaningful part of the conversation. Undaunted, I gently steer Mumo and Roman’s conversation into something we can all discuss. Shortly into the conversation, I realize that Roman is about as drunk as Matt and know that Mumo is too because she’s declared it a couple times. About an hour after our arrival the last call bell is rung which means it’s almost time for Blues. Mumo decides she needs to use the bathroom and asks Roman to help her get there. I understand that she’d ask her friend to help her get to the bathroom, but I don’t really understand why she wouldn’t ask the sober man to help her (alcohol: 1, judgment: 0). In the end, I was glad Roman was helping her because it was definitely a case of the blind leading the blind. It was very funny watching them stumble up and down the stairs to the bathrooms. We exit Koala’s as a collective group. Parker LOVES Blues and has said a few times that he “can’t wait to dance” and consequently he sets a brisk pace through the streets. Kristin is 30 feet behind him, laughing uproariously with Danielle and Matt (who is sporting a terrible scowl due to being a little embarrassed at the noise level) while Mumo and Roman, arms linked, bring up the rear at about 50 feet behind Kristin. Unsure about where my place was, I drifted in between Kristin and Mumo/Roman. However, about halfway there, we took a right down a narrow alley and when we got to the end Mumo and Roman were not behind us. Not wanting them to get stabbed by a homeless person, I walked back down the alley and retrieved them. Roman was on a rant about something so important that he thought it necessary to stop in the middle of the street. “Come along, Roman.” As I hustled them (as fast as you can hustle two drunken people) through the alleys towards Blues I realized we couldn’t see anybody else from our group. I knew the way, but I wanted to enter together. Stupid Parker. We walked passed a group of French youths (I’d guess averaging 18 years in age) who stopped talking to stare at the three Anglophones, one of whom was speaking at an unnecessary volume. I heard them say something in English and then Roman said something obscene about the French (in English) but apparently they recognized his tone of voice and knew enough English to pull out a couple choice words that they did not like. And, in fact, one of them knew a bit of English profanity as well and used it quite efficiently. After we were well away I asked “Did that guy say [insert vulgar phrase here]?” “What?! Did they say that?! Those [insert colorful language here]! I’ll kick their asses!” “Shhh, Roman. They don’t even know what it means.” I should say now that Roman is a very nice guy. I like him quite a bit, actually. The first person at the institute I read as sincere. I’d never seen him drunk before, and apparently he has a bit of aggression under those baby blues. Unsurprisingly, the rest of our group didn’t wait for us. They had gone inside of Blues. We rang the doorbell and the bouncer (a giant, black man with a white soul patch) opened the door (I saw Matt and Parker checking their coats) only to take one look at Roman and say that he wouldn’t let him in. Let me assure you, Roman was MOST unhappy about this. In slurred, broken French, Roman let the bouncer know that he wasn’t happy. Believe it or not, the bouncer wasn’t moved and bid as adieu and closed the large iron door. I had made a plan earlier with Leigh to taxi or walk home together (she lives somewhat close to me) and she was going to text Parker (because I told her I would be with him) when she was ready to go, and now I had lost access to Parker. I’m trying to structure the best sentence to ask this bouncer to let me in to talk to Parker when a group of people comes up to the door only to be let in by the bouncer. If Roman was only upset before, he was definitely angry now. He stood next to the bouncer and started saying (in French) “Come on in! If you’re girls, you’re in! Please, welcome! Come on in!” Mumo and I, sitting 6 feet away on a planter-majigger, could only hang our heads in embarrassment. I think she and I were both whispering something like “please don’t kill him, please don’t kill him.” After the bouncer closed the door behind the people Mumo jumped up and tried to talk to Roman, calm him down and what-not, but he wouldn’t have it. He was most upset. In fact, he decided it was time again to talk to the giant man who gets paid to eat people. Roman skipped the doorbell and POUNDED on the iron door (alcohol: 2, judgment: 0). This time BOTH bouncers came out. I couldn’t help but wonder if it would be prudent to wait until after the funeral to eat the peanut butter his folks sent him or if I could dig in right away. Roman had another belligerent discussion with the bouncers but after awhile they realized that he didn’t really want to negotiate, only to be angry, and so they closed the door. Another group came, more sarcasm from Roman, and more head-hanging from Mumo and me. Mumo understood that I needed to get in, even if just for a minute, and after a few minutes, she convinced Roman to stand away from the door while she got me in. Beautiful, charming girl that she is, she gave one look to the bouncer and I was inside.

I’ve never really been to a club. I wasn’t very impressed with Blues. The air was filled with smoke, talking, and mediocre music and Matt and Parker had given me the impression that beautiful women were a dime a dozen but I can assure you that a dime wouldn’t have gotten me much that night. I imagine with the quantity of alcohol they had each consumed they could have mistaken some men for beautiful women (alcohol: 3, judgment: 0) Matt and Parker were there at the bar and they lit up and called out to me as if I was a long lost friend. They had NO idea that I had almost had to scrape Roman off the curb with my driver’s license and I figured they were better off not knowing. When they asked where Roman was I told them he wasn’t feeling well and went home. We hadn’t been there 20 minutes when somehow we were talking to a British man, Miles. Miles was quite a character. He had joined the French military because he hates Tony Blair and George Bush. He was quick with a joke about frogs (“We have to speak frog while we’re here!” he’d say) and quicker with an unnecessarily hard left jab to the arm, chest, stomach, etc. He’d hug Matt, who’s a pretty beefy guy, and wind up and sock scrawny, little me in the arm. Lordy, he was annoying. Matt really liked him, especially when Miles bought a round for Matt and Parker. By the end of the night he bought a few drinks for both Matt and Parker. An amusing side-note about Matt and me is that Matt has this impression that I attract random women to me. A few times now, I would say 4, he and I (usually with Parker as well) have been walking or sitting when out of nowhere a woman comes up and talks to either me, or the entire group. It infuriates him to no end, and before we went to Blues he said that with me there, we were sure to meet some women. That being said, as Matt and Parker were chatting with Miles, I was standing a bit to the side taking in the scenery when a woman came up and talked to me. She was quite short (I’d guess 5’1”) and didn’t actually come up to me with the intent of talking to me. She was walking past when she stopped, looked me up and down, and said “Tu fais de quoi?” [What do you do?”]. I told her I was a student and she said “I work in a prison.” She gave me a wink and a smile, one more up and down, and then walked away. Matt looked at me “Who was that??” I shrugged. “I don’t know.” “You son of a bitch!” I laughed heartily. The night went on and at about 3:00 or so; Matt decided he was going to go. He and I were sitting on a couch just off of the dance floor watching Parker awkwardly dance with the French. (I have to say that I’d like to add to my theory of the French and how they dance. I’d like to retract my statement about dancing better than the average white guy. The people on the dance floor were making Parker look like Michael Jackson. The French do what I call the “French shuffle.” It’s sort of an awkward arm-swinging, shuffle-step, off-beat move that they all do. It’s exactly how I dance, actually. *sigh*) I understood why Matt wanted to leave, he had consumed a large quantity of alcohol and it had definitely taken affect. He looked pretty terrible, and I don’t think it was the lighting. So, he and I briefly discussed the possibility of hanging out tomorrow and then he left (alcohol: 4, judgment: 1. I figured leaving on account of the effects of alcohol counts as a tie). Mumo had returned about an hour ago after walking Roman a bit towards his house and she was trying to take care of an ill Kristin. They were sitting near Parker and me on the couch. Parker and I were sitting, watching people dance, when I noticed an attractive woman near us on the dance floor who was definitely eyeing Parker and me. I was pretty sure Parker noticed her noticing (he would later confirm that he did notice) and I wondered if I really wanted to try to flirt in French while in this noisy club. Before I could make the decision, she made it for me. She came up and asked me if I wanted to dance. I agreed and I let her lead me onto the dance floor where I awkwardly shuffled a bit. She was not impressed with my moves. She pulled my ear down to her mouth and began to tell me about her job, her week, and what she did for a living. I think it must be some sort of French custom that when you flirt with somebody that you immediately tell them what you do for a living. When she asked me what I did, I put my mouth to her ear and started speaking what I thought was French. I may as well have been speaking Chinese. She didn’t understand a blessed word. We tried to keep the relationship non-vocal but I just, can’t, dance. She sat down with me on the couch and offered me a cigarette. I declined the cigarette but if she’d offered me a strong drink I may have knocked it back. Maybe that would have helped my French. Matt, Parker, and Jenna all agree that intoxication improves French (Alcohol: 5, Judgment: 1). I finally told her that I needed to find my friends. She didn’t seem too broken up about seeing me go. I found Parker on the dance floor and asked him if we could please leave. He asked for 10 more minutes and I obliged. I didn’t get in bed until 5 in the morning. Not sure I’ll be going to Blues again anytime soon.

Saturday... to be continued...

IOU

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 07:41:42 GMT

One update for the weekend. Lots happened, but I didn't write about it because I wanted to watch "A View to a Kill" instead. I'll write later should I have the time. If not, expect an update tomorrow morning. Smooches!

Lordy!

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 15:58:57 GMT

Kind of a funny bus event this morning. Like Greg Newmark, I've really come to appreciate public transportation. That's not to say that I like it or dislike it, but I definitely appreciate it. It was all sorts of foggy this morning and I think this slowed the bus down because I was very early getting to my stop (Enzo was in particularly horrendous form this morning and thus I left as soon as possible) and when I arrived there must have been close to 10 people waiting for the bus so I think the previous bus hadn't come yet and so it was a mix between people who wanted the last bus and the next bus. Anyways, I climbed on the bus and it was pretty full but I probably could have sniped a seat but I'm a young buck and there's no need. I can stand for 20 minutes. Anyways, out of the 15 stops (approximately) we loaded that bus to capacity. It was so full I had to give my hand holds to old people because they had given up their seats to handicapped people who actually had mentally handicapped people sitting on their laps. It was that full. When the driver opened the bus we just exploded out like a giant, public transportation zit.

Actually, another shorter bus story! We were 3 stops from my stop, JUST outside Centre-Ville when a man with a small dog got on the bus. Apparently, this is not allowed. Understandbly to non-French but remember that the French bring their dogs with them everywhere. The hair salons, the restaurants, grocery stores, etc. The driver and the man argued a bit and the man with the dog sat down next to me. The driver called his bosses and we sat at the stop waiting for some big wigs from the bus company to come and straighten this mess out. We sat for damn near 10 minutes. People got out and walked, climbed onto other buses but I was trapped next to Dogman. I wasn't in a hurry and was interested to see what was going to happen (if they arrested the man, what would they do with the dog??) but only because I didn't really have the option to leave was I annoyed. Anyways, a couple guys came and talked to Dogman about why he couldn't have the dog on the bus. Since he was getting off at Place Pie (the main stop in Centre-Ville, just 3 stops from where we were) the men told the bus driver to go on and talked to Dogman about why it wasn't allowed and it seemed like no real action was taken. At one point, the men were agreeing with what Dogman was saying! The French!

Weekend update

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 15:30:22 GMT

I know I haven’t written much lately except for one very short, very angry post and I apologize for that. I also know that I usually put up a weekend post first thing Monday morning but obviously there wasn’t one! I apologize for that too. I usually write my weekend post Sunday evening so that it’s ripe and ready to go Monday morning, but I didn’t write Sunday night and consequently there was no Monday update. I ended up crashing right after dinner on Sunday and to be honest I haven’t done anything that really merits a post.

Let’s see… the last post I was talking about my victory and the possibility of going to the coast... I think karma works in funny ways. I mean, I enjoyed a victory here in France (although Smatches said he was disappointed that it wasn’t more exciting. “What, did you want a ninja fight or something?”) but not even half a week later I don’t get the RA position and I’m lower than I was high! … Does that make sense? In a way it’s kind just a big, fat whatever but only because I strongly feel that I’m a great candidate for the position and thus my school is missing out. Thinking that helps me sleep better anyways. The point is the anger of losing a major battle on my home turf basically robbed me of my minor victory here on foreign soil. Isn’t it interesting how downs almost always trump the ups like that? Oh well, life goes on. I’m sure I’ll have a great year anyways.

Poor Renato and Luisa! Renato badly injured his wrist/chest/head (severity in that order) over break and then, Luisa thought she had a craving for McDonalds but it turns out she was wrong. Oh, yes, they ate at McDonalds but afterwards she was calling Europe on the big white telephone. The food seemed to have triggered the gastro virus she was carrying around in her stomach. Consequently, we did not go to the coast last weekend. We’re hoping everybody lives through the week so we can go THIS weekend. We were laughing (Luisa, Renato, and I) about how they’re supposed to be on break when in fact it’s more like they’re on sick leave!

Today, Monday, people came back with all sorts of energy and excitement about the trips they had taken and the things they had seen. Jenna saw Stonehenge. I went on a nice walk yesterday. Saw one of Sylvie’s friends in the bakery.

I have to say, I’m kind of glad I’ve taken to running. I brought my things today to run and didn’t end up doing it. Went on a really nice walk and watched the sunset. The tricky thing about running from the institute is that there isn’t a shower at the institute. If I make the institute my home base for running then all I can really do is freshen up with deodorant and Goldbond. I wash my face with soap and hot water but… yeah, you get the picture. However, the scenery is so much better if I run from Centre-Ville. I really like going to Villeneuve. I think I may just have to time it so that my run ends with a bus ride home to la douche. But then I need a place to leave my belongings! I don’t want to run too early because then I leave the internet… man! In a pickle. I’m sure I’ll figure something out. Anyways, I like running because it makes me feel good. I really can feel the difference between this week and last week. My body craves the energy used (and thus created) by running. I like to pretend that I look better now that I’ve been exercising pretty consistently over the last week and people are impressed when I tell them about my running. I make sure to only tell non-runners about my routes because real runners aren’t impressed by my distance. All that being said, I can’t wait to get back home and pick up frisbee and racquetball again and leave all this silly running without a destination garbage behind me.

Hmmm… is there any other garbage I can fill this entry with? Not that I can think of. I missed the bus again this morning, regardless of the fact that I was 6 minutes early. If you’re on the bus, you want it to get to your stop as soon as possible. If you’re waiting for the bus you just want it to come to your stop. Stupid bus. Right, you’ve heard that before. Okay, that’s enough then. I’m going to climb the ladder into my bed and crash. Bonne nuit, I’ll post again when something happens.

A little angry

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 11:38:40 GMT

Didn't get the job. A little angry about it. Don't really want to get started on it. Going for a run now. I'll update when the haze fades away.

Jacob wins his first point!

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 10:49:17 GMT

My, my, my France, how the tables have turned. For you see, it is I, Jacob Henry Nuxoll, who has won this battle today. It is I who enjoyed a series of victories today that merit one, hard-earned, well-deserved point pour moi. The first of, I hope, at least three!

I awoke this morning to the sounds of Enzo screaming (this is neither good nor bad, it’s just my life) and went downstairs, enjoyed some breakfast, had a chat with Alma (the neighbor) and came upstairs to start my day. Kelly was (so I hoped) going to call me today and I wanted to get to the Institute to take care of my internet early. However, I was in no hurry, and so instead of heading straight to the douche I decided that I would do some push ups and sit ups. My calves are still a wee bit tender (I ran again on Monday) and the compromise was extra of both push ups and sit ups to compensate for the lack of running. I did my exercises and enjoyed a nice, hot douche and felt pretty good about myself as I was toweling off what with the “successful” exercising and what-not. I chose some of my favorite clothes and packed up my bag ready to go. I checked to see what time the bus was leaving and it was leaving in 2 minutes. But, oh no, I was not going to let this bus run my life. I casually walked down the stairs, confidently locked the door, strolled past the furiously barking dog, rounded the corner, and arrived with the bus at the stop. I never broke stride. I just stepped right up on the bus and sat down in the good seat (the good seat is the single right next to the front door). I chatted with Dr. Rockemore, retrieved a Tupperware bin (of Sylvie’s) I thought I had lost, and enjoyed my internet time. I then went to Luisa’s and Renato’s to say hello, retrieve my water bottle, and see what kind of plans we were going to make for the coast [Renato fell off his bike and hurt his wrist! He’s taking some pretty formidable medication for the pain & swelling so we’re gauging his recovery to decide what day(s) are “coast days”]. Always wonderful being there, as you know, and while there I decided I was going to make grilled cheese sandwiches for my lunch when I returned to chez-moi. I popped into the store, purchased my goods, and went to Place Pie (where my bus leaves from Centre-Ville) only to discover that my bus had left 5 minutes prior to my arrival. But the Avignon bus system hadn’t gotten the better of me. Oooooh no. I had an ace up my sleeve and I was going to use it. While on my run on Monday, I noticed that there was a bus stop, for bus 4 (Amandier), decently close to my house and today at Place Pie, Amandier was just pulling up. Le Pontet le lac (my bus) wasn’t arriving anytime soon so I hopped onto Amandier and whistled a jolly tune as the bus cruised through the streets. Sure enough, I exited the bus and walked to my place and was quite pleased to see that the bus I would have caught in the distance as I walked down my street. Still smug from my public transportation victory (I wonder if there is a victory sweeter than one against public transportation) I cooked my sandwiches and enjoyed them thoroughly. A little taste of home. I need to deviate from my victory for a moment to mention one little thing. I was eating the third of my four sandwiches when Sylvie, cigarette in hand, informs me that my sandwiches aren’t very good for my health. I love this woman, I think you all know that I do, but I think she’s under the impression that I’m not very smart. A part of it, I’m sure, is due to the language barrier, and I’m assuming the other part is my age. Every night at dinner Paul, Sylvie, and Philippe remind me that vegetables are good for me and I should start eating them. Tonight Sylvie was covering her vegetables in butter. I’m sorry, that’s ridiculous. *ahem* I believe I was talking about my victory. The afternoon was very lovely. 70 degrees, sunny, cloudless… very nice. I sat in a chair with my book but I never opened it. I just closed my eyes and sat there for about 30 minutes absorbing the heat. I would have slept there but there was lots of noisy activity next door so I slipped upstairs and was just lying down to nap when Kelly called. Very wonderful. She and I chatted for about 45 minutes until the battery on the phone died. There’s another phone in Sylvie’s room so when Kelly called back I couldn’t bring myself to go in there to answer it. Sorry, sis! The final victory for the day was my breaching of $2000 playing solitaire on the lappy. It was kind of an unnecessary addition to the day, but a welcome one nonetheless. Tomorrow, I see if I get the RA position. Well, technically it’s tomorrow, but I probably won’t see it unless my school sends it in the morning. If not, I’ll find out Friday morning. I’ll be sure to let you all know. Groovy, groovy. I don’t imagine I’ll journal again (sans the job update) until after the weekend is through. That being said, enjoy your weekends!

Jacob: 1 France: 11

A bit of weekend stuff

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 13:29:19 GMT

As it turns out, the Institute is open a bit this week so I’ll be able to check my email, put up journal entries, etc, etc. In fact, in direct contrast to what I said before, instead of me not updating until after break I may update almost daily! Just like old times, eh? I don’t want to make any promises (you know how I feel about promises [Butthead*]) or anything, but I’m going to try to keep busy during the week which means I’ll have things to write about. Of course I’m not actually going to write daily, but hopefully 2-3 times this week. This is sort of like a weekend update, but it’s pretty early on Saturday evening but my agenda for Sunday includes church and frisbee so I may include it in an entry but I doubt it will merit an entry itself.

Friday was absolutely GORGEOUS. It was weather to celebrate the start of spring break but I still couldn’t convince anybody to go out and play frisbee with me. The frisbee gods answered this iniquity with rain and wind today. I imagine I’ll have to sacrifice a lamb or something tomorrow before we play. Anyways, Friday was actually sort of sad because I watched as my classmates left to start their amazing trips. Granted, I’m still in France, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want to go somewhere else. A bank account with American dollars empties rapidly when one withdraws Euros from it and thus affects one’s ability to travel. Hurry up and get here, mom! Jen surprised me by asking if I wanted to go Arles (I wrote about it earlier in the year, if you recall) on Saturday and I was very happy to accept. We made a rendezvous plan and she departed for the day, I would never see her again. Just kidding! Friday continued without a hitch and I left in high spirits due to the nice weather and the spring break and what-not and the feeling was so overwhelming that when I got home I decided that I’d go for a run. I’m a strapping, healthy, athletic, young man. Why not? So I put on my sneaks, my ankle brace (I rolled my ankle in August and about 5 times in high school, so I can’t help but be nervous about it), stretched my legs out, and stepped outside with the late afternoon sun beaming down on my face. I decided that I was such a bad ass that I would run to Centre-Ville (via my bus route), touch the walls, and return. That sounded like a healthy little run. I mean, I play frisbee and racquetball like it’s my job back home, and I’m not one to shy away from exercise of any kind. There’s no reason why I couldn’t do this. I took off at a brisk jog (maybe the j is soft?) and when I popped out of the little housing area where Sylvie lives the bus was just pulling into my stop. “Perfect!” I thought enthusiastically to myself “I’ll follow this bus into town.” I’m not an absolute idiot, don’t worry. I wasn’t sprinting trying to keep up with the bus traveling at thirty miles per hour, but it’s a city bus and is bound to be making semi-frequent stops. Lord knows it stops every 30 seconds when I ride it. It takes the city bus approximately 20 minutes to get into town. That was my goal, more or less. I jogged past the people getting on the bus and a few seconds later the bus roared passed but sure enough I caught up to it at the stop light around the corner. As you can imagine, this little catch up, get passed game went on for a good while. When the bus stopped at a busy intersection at the light, I rested and stretched my calves (which were beginning to get a little tender) because I couldn’t cross due to the heavy traffic (it was rush hour at this time). [A random addition to the story that I want to put in but am not sure where: As I was running along, an older man sitting on a wall shouted at me as I ran past: “A Marseille tu t’arrêtes!” [indirect translation: Don’t stop until you get to Marseilles] I was amused by this and pumped that I understood what the hell he said!] The light changed and the bus and I took off down the next street. Three stops on this stretch of street and it didn’t stop at any of them. Then, it made the green light at the end of the street. I had an ace up my sleeve because I knew that there’s a very popular stop just around the corner AND I can cut said corner through a large parking lot. I made it to the parking lot and watched as the bus blew past the stop. When I got to the stop just past the parking lot, I realized that I was already very tired and there was no way in hell I was going to catch that bus. So I stopped for another rest and stretched my legs (which were definitely tender now) and let myself walk for a ways rather than get right back into running. This story isn’t going to get much more exciting, so I’ll summarize the rest. I ended up touching the wall and coming back, but I was very tired by the time I started back. I stopped and stretched 4-5 times on the way back and definitely walked for about 1/4 of the return trip. I kept setting goals like: “I’ll just run to the end of the street and rest for a moment.” When I got back to the house (I made a point of running into view of the house so as to create the illusion that I was BAMF) my face was beat red, and I was (of course) pretty sweaty. It’s odd though, because I definitely get sweatier faster when I play racquetball than when I run or play frisbee (which is basically non-stop running). I suppose it’s because I’m using more of my body when I play racquetball? Anyways, I wasn’t only tired and sweaty, but I was unbelievably sore. My calves were sore and each stair going up to my room was a miniature explosion of pain in my calf. That didn’t stop me from doing some sit ups (what was I going to do, hurt myself?) and of course I stretched some more. I scooped up my water bottle and went downstairs to stretch, drink my water, chat with Julia’s cute friend, and see if there was a banana to help my aching muscles. I have to say that I had a few thoughts run through my head while I was running. I was thinking about why people run. I’ve heard of the Runner’s High and I completely understand wanting to stay fit, but I was unbelievably bored the entire time. I wished the whole time I had music or something to entertain me, but there was nothing. It may have been different if I had been running somewhere with something interesting to see, but because I ran along the bus route I wasn’t about to see something different. I would have run elsewhere, but I wasn’t too keen on getting lost. Not only was I bored, but I was almost hit by 3 cars and a motorcycle (not at the same time, mind you). The final thing I was/am grumpy about was about the weakened state of my legs. I thought I was young and strong!? My legs are acting like that’s the first time I’ve ever used them. I don’t know why I brought some icy-hot with me, but I’m really glad I did. My family isn’t very happy about the smell (Philippe thought it was cologne) but the stuff sure does wonders. I plan on running again while I’m on break so we’ll see if my legs suffer similar effects. I hope not, climbing my ladder into bed is particularly awful with my calves in this condition.

I set my alarm for Saturday morning at about 8:30, making sure I had plenty of time to catch the 9:03 bus. I say 9:03 bus, but I knew that it was more like an 8:55 bus because the buses are a lot less busy on Saturdays. I woke up at 8:30 and I just laid there enjoying the feeling of not using my legs for a few minutes and finally rolled out at about 8:35. I did the usual wake-up routine, and made sure I was going to be ready to walk out the door at 8:50. In fact, I was ready to go at 8:46 or so, but sat down and had a brief chat with Sylvie before heading out the door. But, at 8:50 I was walking out the door. I stopped halfway through the garden because I meant to ask her if she could do my laundry today, but realized that if I went back and asked her I’d have to pack up my laundry and bring it down, and would surely miss my bus. I figured it could happen tomorrow and continued towards the bus stop, walking delicately on my aching calves. I came around the corner at 8:52 (by my watch) and watched in disgust as my bus pulled away from my stop. I made a feeble attempt to jog and wave at it, but I was unsurprised to watch it accelerate without a backward glance. Eleven, minutes, early. What the hell do I have to do to catch a bus?!? Camp out at the damn bus stop?! The next bus, however, was right on time! 9:21, just as scheduled. However, it zipped right into town and I got to the train station only a little late for the rendezvous time. Jen was there and come to discover she was sick. She had the gastro (just like me!) and so we weren’t going to Arles today. I was bummed but my calves were absolutely pumped that I was going to wander around the Arles market all morning. Jen gave me the tickets and I thought that maybe Luisa and Renato might like to go. They’re two people, and I have two tickets. Coincidence? I buzzed their apartment and offered my tickets but they were going to Paris. 10 Euro, down the tube. Oh well. It was nice, though, because I stayed at Luisa’s and Renato’s for a good hour and a half. We dipped bread in Columbian hot chocolate (I hadn’t eaten anything yet so that was a tasty treat) and chatted the rest of the morning away. Talking to Renato and Luisa is just so easy. I can’t get over it sometimes. I left their place around 12:30 and decided that I wanted to check out the Avignon Public Library. Maybe they had some internet I could use (I’m so addicted to the internet). I walked over there and ended up wandering around the ancient building and even read 30 pages or so in my book (The Hero With a Thousand Faces). I left the library and decided to enjoy a little Baguettes d’Or (Chopsticks of Gold). Dad, you’d love this place. It’s an Asian restaurant just outside the Institute and it’s delicious and cheap! You love cheap! I had some poulet au curry for three Euros (my usual) and decided to eat it from the Palais de Papes. Sitting in the garden at the top of the hill, I was looking across the Rhone (the Palais de Papes is on the north side of the city) at the two islands that are created by splits in the Rhone, and realized that I STILL hadn’t been to the neat little fort over there. Well, I had nothing to do today… I wanted to go… why not? I set off back down the hill and walked across the river to the first island. I should clarify that there’s a fort, and there’s also this nifty little tower that was built by the French “to keep an eye on the pope.” I had decided to see both. I was under the impression that the tower was on the first island, and the fort on the other. That thought in mind, I set off eastward on the first island only to reach the end of it and realize that both the tower AND the fort are on the second island. Alright, France, you win this round. Jacob: 0, France: 11 (I’m counting missed buses as points for France). I finished my tour of the first island (at one point I was a frisbee’s throw away from that damn tower and would have surely swam across were it not for the book I was carrying around with me) and walked across the second bridge to the second island. I found the tower quick enough, but was so pissed off at the tower that I didn’t even see if I could go in. I just spat on it as I walked by. I could see the fort from the tower (which was on a small hill on the island) and descended into the city in the general direction of the fort, confident that surely I could find the giant, stone structure situated at the top of the tallest hill on the island. As I walked, I realized that I was walking past bus stops! There was a bus that went to the island and it could take me to Centre-Ville. Nice! I tucked away that information and continued on my trek. I really loved this island (I keep calling it that because I’ve forgotten the name) because the city on it was very lovely. The quaint, squished-together houses, with their narrow streets were definitely there but without the dirtiness of Avignon. People were saying hello to me (bonjour, to be specific) and when I went in to the store to get a bottle of water the clerk was very nice. I guess I liked it because it had a very French feel about it, without being overwhelmingly influenced by the modern world. When I stepped out of the grocery store, drinking deeply from my bottle of water, I looked to my left to see a narrow, windy-street going up a hill. Now, I knew the fort was on a hill, but I was under the impression that the fort was a little further east. That little hill was definitely headed southeast and I wasn’t about to go up any extra hills with my calves in their current condition. I gave it one last look and departed, keeping true to my eastward course. I couldn’t see the fort anymore, lost sight of it shortly after I descended from the tower’s hill. I wanted to find it again and adjust my course accordingly. Conveniently, I walked past a graveyard and waked through the beautiful gate and let myself wander among the tombstones and sarcophagi reading the old French names and soaking in the spooky calm. After 10 minutes or so in the graveyard, I did a 360 circle and realized that the fort was southeast of my current location. Did I make the connection that I had walked away from the road that would lead me straight to the gate? Of course not. I decided the best course of action would be to continue east and loop around and arrive at the north side of the fort. I trudged onward and stumbled upon a fantastic discovery. Erin and I are hoping to encourage attendance at frisbee by making a regular meeting time (2-3 times a week), but we’re nervous about getting kicked off of the pitch we currently use. We hop a gate to use it, and we’ve already shared it once with younger children playing rugby (it seemed like a school-sponsored activity). The pitch isn’t even in that great of condition either. All that being said, you can guess that my discovery was field space! There was an obviously public pitch and literally right next to it was a much nicer pitch which seemed to belong to a school of some kind. The first pitch was obviously public because it wasn’t kept very well, but was definitely useable. The problem with this space is that it’s pretty far away, and I’d probably want to take the bus to get there, which is great for me because I have my bus pass, but not so great for others who may not have one. However, space is space, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we started using it. ANYWAYS, I was very close to the fort and after I checked the condition of both pitches I walked up the hill to the front gate and rested on the bench outside before entering, admiring the view of Avignon from the other side. I’ve looked at Fort Andre about a dozen times before from the Palais de Papes, but this was my first time looking at Palais de Papes from Fort Andre. I couldn’t help but think to myself: “If I lived in the fort when the pope lived in the Palais de Papes, I would wonder what he was up to too.” After a bit of rest, I popped into the fort to discover that it was free to walk through the gate, look at a small piece of the garden within the walls, and walk halfway down the main street inside the fort. For me to see the entire fort it would’ve been about 12 Euros. Oh well. I still count it as a visit to Fort Andre. I walked back outside and realized that the trees just outside were blooming with beautiful, white, richly-scented flowers. I snapped off a twig bearing a cluster of flowers and walked off down the road away from the fort. I sighed when I popped out next to my grocery store, but counted my luck that I knew where I was and that I had found those pitches. I came back by the same route and as I descended down the other side of the tower’s hill, four or five cars whipped into the parking lot and out of them poured men in tuxedos and women in beautiful dresses. I noticed that one car seemed to have its back seat stuffed with toilet paper or something. Oh, no, wait. That’s the bride. Her dress’ diameter must have been 8 feet at its widest. If I’m exaggerating, it isn’t by much. Luckily, a bus stop was very close to the action, and I watched as the women fussed over her dress while the men stood there casually. Weddings seem to be the same in France. I should mention that it looked like they had already been hitched and this was the chosen spot for pictures. I thought about telling them about the beautiful, blossoming trees by the fort but didn’t want to miss my bus (no good deed goes unpunished). One of the brides’ maids had on this unbelievable very bright green dress. It had the frilly base like on the traditional Spanish dresses (maybe somebody knows the correct term for this “frilly base”) and it definitely was drawing more attention than the bride (even with her extravagant base). Isn’t that some sort of wedding sin, to draw more attention to yourself than the bride? Oh well. To finish up this little adventure, I caught the bus into Centre-Ville and then my bus back to LePontet. I watched some Fawlty Towers, took a little nap (anybody familiar with this show?), and woke up just in time for dinner. Nice day, that’s for sure. Well, this entry turned out to be much longer than I thought it was going to be. Not that it’s a bad thing. Quite the opposite, really. I can now go to bed feeling that I spent almost every minute of my day doing something worthwhile. The only negative part of my day was dinner (truly a rare event) because dinner wasn’t that tasty and Philippe was in a SOUR mood. He barely ate anything, went and sat down on the couch while everybody else was still eating (he never does that and yells at anybody who does it [did you know hypocrite is the same word in French?]), and this seemed to spur everybody else to eat faster and clean up sooner. Starving, I was eating a lot and not exactly rushing through the meal. I scampered upstairs after dinner but later the sounds of Sylvie and Philippe arguing reached my ears. Excuse my French but I don’t have to be fluent in any language to know that he’s a piece of shit. Alright, I’ll probably write later in the week. Tuesday and Wednesday are without a plan, but I think Renato, Luisa, and I may go to the coast for some fun in the sun on Thursday. That’ll surely merit an entry.

Best wishes,
Jacob

P.S. if you didn't catch it, there's an additional update below

Thursday fun!

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 13:28:06 GMT

Thursday night was amazing! Tuesday, Luisa called me to see if I wanted to come over Thursday night for dinner and a little sleep over. I accepted and when Thursday came I was pretty excited about it. I can’t really write a whole lot about exactly what happened because it was a “had to be there” sort of thing, but I’ll try to hit the highlights. I invited Jenna (the girl who was looking for boots) along because she had mentioned to me that she was interested in making friends with people that weren’t from the institute. Luisa and Renato are pretty amazing (I have to be careful because they read the journal) because first of all, they’re unbelievably kind. I’ve no doubt either one would give me the shirt off their back if I asked. They’re kindness is more dynamic than just that and each one is kind in a different way that’s very complementary. Second, they’re very smart and easy to talk to. Even if I think we’re just going to chat for a minute it becomes thirty minutes without me even realizing it. And one thing that makes them fantastic (especially while I’m here) is that they’re both very worldly (Renato speaks 5 languages to Luisa’s 3) but comfortably American at the same time. Which, actually, is very funny because Renato has never set foot in America and Luisa is Columbian-American! I guess I should say they’re not so much American as they are NOT French. It’s not that I don’t like the French now (of course not!); it’s just that the French are everywhere here! Crazy, I know. Anywho, I gave Jenna a little explanation about Renato & Luisa (who they are, where they’re from, how amazing they are, how they are when they’re together, etc) as we walked over and in no time we were being buzzed in. We walked in the door and Renato was playing his instrument… its name I have never properly caught, nor could I remember it even if I had properly heard it… it’s like an accordion because one must pump it in and out while playing, but it’s different because there are no piano keys. There are sets of buttons on each side of the instrument and each one plays a different note/chord and what I thought was really neat was that the notes are different depending on whether one is pushing in or pulling out! That means Renato has to learn not just two sets of notes (one for each hand) but FOUR! Crazy! Anyways, he was playing his instrument (he’s actually in a band [more than one?] here in France) and he started to put it away when Jenna and I walked in but I couldn’t help but ask him to play. It was really incredible and Jenna and I just sat in awe as he played as a jaunty little tune. Very awesome! Afterwards, we were asking him questions about how it worked and what-not when Renato found out that Jenna is musically inclined (she plays the piano, French horn, and she sings) and they began to talk avidly about music. Fortunately at that time, Luisa popped out of the bathroom and she and I began to chat. Once we started chatting, we never really stopped. The conversation moved seamlessly from topic to topic as we went through Renato’s delicious courses. To name only a few topics, we talked about education, life in France, America, language, and a bit about our respective histories. I was really pleased about how well Jenna, Renato, and Luisa got along. I think everybody was a little nervous about her coming. Granted, I have excellent taste when it comes to my choice of company, but Renato and Luisa don’t really know that about me yet. They’re probably beginning to understand now. I was quite confident about Jenna’s charisma and had absolutely zero doubt that Jenna would like Luisa and Renato. Seriously, if somebody doesn’t like R & L, they’re probably dead. I ended up walking Jenna home around midnight (she had to pack for her spring break and study a bit) but I just remember thinking that it was the fastest 5 hours I’ve ever spent. When I got back the three of us talked about how nice Jenna was and ended up relaxing and watching a stand up comic Renato had on his computer. Thursday night was a home body’s dream. I had a fantastic time. The kind of night where everybody says “We should REALLY do this again sometime” and people actually mean it. Renato said he’d make goulash next time. Score!