And so we came to an end...part one

I had this really brilliant plan. I was going to get my packing done early, and then go to bed early enough so that I could spend a good hour writing an entry before it became absolutely necessary to go to bed.  It was a really, really good idea. Unfortunately, life got in the way, it's midnight, I'm exhausted and emotional and shaky, and about ready to go to bed. So unless there's wireless at the hostel or at LaGuardia, the report of the final week is going to have to wait until...Monday-ish. Something like that. But I promise it will come.

If this is my last post from France...it's been more than I can describe, and if the crazy little snippets and anecdotes you get through this wonderful filter known as blogging have given you half as beautiful a picture as the scene I've been living, than I've truly outdone myself as a writer. It's been an incredibly fun and experience even to write the blog; I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. 

So until the next, whenever and wherever that is.

What a week continued again

*Edited for a couple of additions to Tuesday and Wednesday

So there was also some sake and a boat ride on Friday that seem worth mentioning; because of the tomato-bacon-rice thing that was boiling and the sudden entrance of my host family, I didn't really have time to write about it. The sake was quite wonderful; it was the first time I'd ever had it and I still can't decide whether I like it more than red wine or not. And the boat ride along the Seine was lovely, much warmer than when I did it in March with John and Sophie. Most of the time Mat and Julie were trying to convince me to jump in the water, which I refused to do until they showed me how. Since they refused to show me how, I never did. It was a fun evening, if the conversations did get a little tripped out.

But anyway, on to Saturday:

In the morning we drove out with dad and all the baggage to Roissy. John, Sophie, Mat, Julie and Elisabeth all said goodbye in the parking lot and left for the country house; I stayed with Dad and helped out with the baggage up until he went through security. I was surprised at how emotional I got saying goodbye, seeing as it was only two weeks from that point to see him again (and less than that from now). It really hit me again, watching him leave, how much I missed everyone at home, and for a second I wanted nothing more than to be going through security myself and getting on that plane with him.

But then there was Gay Pride Paris, which washed that away temporarily.

I took the RER back to Paris and wasted the morning doing nothing in particular; I went back to Montmartre and photographed some more graffiti and found a few more gifts for people, and then went back to the other side of the river to the American café and took lunch to go, walking around in an elaborate loop to find the parade. I got there about an hour before it started and watched the preparations, and managed to get a spot close to the front of the parade to listen to the speeches by various members of prominent GLBT organizations in France. Liza Minelli and the mayor of Paris were also there, though I didn't recognize them until later.

The parade itself was amazing. I walked for about fifteen minutes and then stopped to take pictures of the rest of the parade; it took nearly three hours for it to pass me by completely. There were all kinds of people there, from little toddlers to octogenarians, straight people, gay people, transgendered people, people in crazy costumes and people in modest dress...but god, how many people! Estimates afterwards put the number anywhere between 200,000-700,000. It was one of the most if not the most enthusiastically joyful public event that I've been to. For a day, everyone was allowed to be themselves, whether considered within the bounds of mainstream cultural acceptability or not. It was empowering to watch. And just about as amusing. I was photographed once for my incredible rainbow awesomeness-- I was wearing a rainbow tanktop, had a rainbow sweatshirt tied around my waist, was carrying a rainbow flag and had rainbow sandals on as well.

But after those three hours, the parade passed by and, covered in various political stickers and with a decent sunburn on my shoulders and back, I headed to the metro to get to Gare de l'Est to catch my train out to the country house.

I remember when I first came out to myself that I had a period where I thought -everyone- knew that I was a lesbian, that I had some kind of gigantic neon L painted on my chest...wearing that much rainbow on the public metro gave me about the same feeling. People (mostly men) definitely stared at me, and it didn't phase me much until this group of four burly guys starting -really- staring at me. I think they were just trying to decipher the stickers on my shoulders (from the way their lips were moving), but they still made me nervous. Luckily my stop was right after when they got on, so I was able to beat a retreat before they could do anything.

However, at Gare de L'Est, there were no trains going in or out because of a power outage. Just because I'm that lucky, my cellphone happened to be on extremely low battery, so I spent about an hour at the station, turning on my cell on the half hour to try to reach Sophie. I sat down against a wall and quickly was surrounded by a group of college-age German tourists (everyone was trying to get to a comfortable place to sit as they waited for the power to come back on so they could catch their trains), who also started staring at me. One took a picture while I was looking the other way. They were definitely talking about me-- I heard a word that suspiciously sounded like homosexual. But they seemed more curious than hostile, so I let it go and after a while they forgot about me. 

In any case, I finally got a hold of Sophie and she told me another way to get at least halfway to the country house and told me John would pick me up there. No one on the metro seemed to give a damn this time around, or at the second station-- or if they did, I didn't notice because I was so frayed from spending so much time in overheated stations with too many people, waiting for something to happen. The train I took was almost empty, though, so I could read the newspaper and relax a little bit. Still, it was a relief to finally get back.

Sunday:

A much, much quieter day, mostly spent on the computer stealing music from John's incredible library. In all, very productive: Bjork, Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, David Bowie, Van Morrison, Pearl Jam, Noir Desir, Nirvana... I think my library has about doubled if not tripled since my arrival in France, with all the music people have given to me. It adds variety, so I'm quite pleased. In the same afternoon I also learned to make jam (a useful life skill, if you ask me) and picked some raspberries (one in the bucket, two in your stomach is the best rule to follow). We left the house around six, which normally would have given us ample time to get back to Paris for my eight-thirty train...

...except for the traffic jam. I changed my train for another one in the morning at the first station we came to with a minute to spare, but still had to pay an extra fifteen euros for it. Better than buying another ticket entirely, but still. It was nice, though, to spend another night with everyone; I achieved my greatest accomplishment by getting Elisabeth addicted to Lost (the virus spreads!). We threw dinner together with a little bit of whatever-was-in-the-fridge plus some takeout from the Chinese place across the street; all in all, not a bad way to end my time in Paris for the year.

Monday:

In the morning John and Sophie woke me up and I said goodbye to everyone. I walked out to Montparnasse and got breakfast from the American patisserie one last time: a banana-walnut-caramel muffin, which was so delicious that I'm plotting how to steal the recipe. The train, which appeared to be empty when I got on, filled with a group of rather noisy high school students; I tuned them out with Lost and everything was fine.

In Tours I took the train out to the station at the center of town when Camille didn't answer my calls, and when I walked out to the bus stop and noticed that the next bus wasn't for another two and a half hours, tried again and found her there. She picked me up without a problem, happily sparing me from a weird drunk guy who was at the stop and kept muttering to himself and inching closer and closer to me.

In the afternoon we went out to a friend's house and spent the afternoon in their pool. Most of the time we spent trying to push each other under the water; I'm very good at getting other people (except Louis) under, but not at resisting being pushed under myself. We stopped briefly for cookies and cake, went back in, and then finally left when we realized that we had to leave to get to dinner in time at the house of a couple that Catherine works for. It turned out that they had a pool as well, but by this time we had less enthusiasm for pushing each other under anymore (when your nose and eyes start smarting badly, it becomes less fun), so we ended up being social and spending most of the time talking with Claude and André (the couple who invited us) instead. It was a very nice evening; they're both excellent cooks and have a beautiful garden, and they also were great conversation. They've been all over the world, from Vietnam to the States to South Africa. We also talked about such fine subjects as food and wine, and after dessert they opened a '97 Vouvray that was absolutely delicious, one of the best wines I've tasted yet. We're having them over next week so that I can introduce them to NM cuisine; I hope I'm up to the task. 

Tuesday:

The heat wave continues-- I think the peak was about 32 degrees (almost 90 Farenheit). Most of the day we spend inside with the shutters closed in order to keep the heat out (air conditioning is somewhat rare in France). At around two in the afternoon we decide to venture out for a bike ride around the little towns in the area; we stayed out for two hours and by the end I felt like I was going to die. Everyone made fun of me, saying I should be used to it from living in New Mexico; I had no witty response, my brain having been fried by the heat. Oh, and a butterfly flew down my shirt while we were riding through traffic; I was so ticklish that I'm surprised I didn't crash the bike. It survived until the next rest stop and flew right back out as if nothing had happened. Strange experience.

Oh, and around lunch, Catherine asked me if I was offended by the fact that Claude and André were both men. A little taken off guard, I just quietly shook my head and said that it made no difference to me at all. Camille burst out laughing and said, "Mom, I don't think you realize..." But both of us let the moment pass, so I never ended up coming out to Catherine. It was just funny, though. 

Wednesday:

35 today (about ninety-five degrees Farenheit), so there were no excursions today whatsoever apart from a run at nine in the morning (when it was much cooler out) and a brief walk at noon to go feed the horses not far from us the leftover bread from lunch. A lot of time spent reading, a lot more time wasted on the internet, doing not much in particular. I've had a more or less continual headache the whole afternoon that I think is from the heat. It's supposed to snap and rain tomorrow; I dearly hope so, because another day like this without air conditioning is going to kill me. The fact that we're being green by not using air conditioning is only a very hollow condolence.

But this evening it was much cooler out, so I took a little walk just to get out of the house, and I found, to my pleasant surprise, that the tar had refrozen on the roads (yes, ladies and gents, it had begun to melt during the day), and that the fields of sunflowers, which were just putting out the first flowers on Tuesday, are now in full bloom. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera, but I'll go back tomorrow with Lea and take pictures.

Right. So now we're caught up. Yay! I think I'll write another entry just before I go to Paris for my plane home weekend after next to recount my last adventures in France, which will include two brief trips to Normandy and Blois, an AFS reunion, shopping, and who knows what else.

Till then! Ciao!

What a week, continued

So on to Tours:

We caught our train at ten, and despite the fact that it was crowded and the seats we were assigned were not technically together, or even in the same car, we managed to get two seats together and keep them up until our stop at St. Pierre des Corps. Camille picked us up at the station and we went back to the house for lunch with the rest of the family. I finally met the infamous Louis and found that his English was quite good-- he has more of a Scandinavian accent than a French one, which I suppose makes sense since he learned English in Finland, but still struck me nonetheless. He and I served as the main translators, though Dad and Catherine managed to talk a little in German and completely confuse the rest of us.

After lunch we went into town and Camille, Louis and I showed Dad some of the essential markers of Tours-- the Studio Cinema, Place Jean Jaures, the Rue Nationale, Place Plumereau, the Loire, etc. At Place Jean Jaures we unexpectedly found some of Louis's friends, so we went out to the Gangette with them for some drinks. The Gangette is a kind of bar on the banks of the Loire which only exists in the summer (literally, not even the stand is there in the winter or spring) and just opened up on the solstice, presumably. It's been coming and going for two years now and seems pretty popular; even on a Wednesday afternoon there were a good few people there. By the time we said goodbye it was about time to go to dinner, so we walked around Place Plume for a while to waste time until Catherine arrived from work. We had dinner at a little creperie just off the square, and it was delicious. I had a crepe with escargot inside, which is among one of the most sublime things I've eaten; everyone else at the table took it as a sign that I've become too French for my own good. For dessert people ordered a number of wonderful crepes that looked (almost) too wonderful to eat; mine was with two scoops of ice cream (one vanilla, two chestnut) with chocolate sauce and almonds. Also among one of the best desserts I've had. I need to find chestnut ice cream and take it home with me. As much as possible.

Thursday:

We went on an all-day expedition with Camille around the area fairly close to Tours. First of all, we stopped at the park center where Camille had her internship a while back, and sought recommendations of where to eat lunch. After that, we went to a little trogolodyte cave/museum for a specialty called 'pommes tapées,' which literally means hit apples. That's fairly descriptive of them: they're skinned apples dried at an extremely high temperature to remove all moisture, and then smashed on two sides with either a hammer or an elaborate machine for this purpose in order to fit better into jars to be preserved for the winter. They're then best served warm with cider or wine serving as a kind of sauce, which is more or less how we tasted them (except that there were cinnamon and cloves added, too). 

After that we drove for a while and found the lunch spot that Camille's old supervisor had recommended. It was absolutely delicious. The entire meal was centered around the regional bread specialty, called fouées: they look kind of like hollow rolls, and are served warm with butter, rillettes, or anything else that strikes your fancy. At the restaurant they had the butter and rillettes as well as a main course of duck with white beans and salad, with crème brûlée for dessert. This is not even mentioning the cheese-stuffed mushrooms as an 'amuse-bouche' (appetizer before an appetizer, which I'm forgetting the name of in English) and the wines (côté de Lyon as an aperitif, and a regional red wine that I can't remember in specific which was also very good). So we left very full, but very, very satisfied. 

After that we headed out for the last excursion of the day to the Château de Brézé, which is unique among the châteaux of the Loire for having been built halfway underground. The tour we took was exclusively through the underground section and it was really interesting. It was completely unlike any other château any of us had visited. Some of the stranger things: for all the defense systems, it had never once been attacked, and the moat, as deep as the ground-level château was high, had never been filled with water. Certainly unique, and worth the visit.

After a brief stop in Chinon for some macarons and a pie made with wine jam and pears, we headed back to the house, where we had some guests over for a little party. All in all a pleasant evening. I didn't have to translate much in the end because Dad spent most of the party talking to some friends of the family who spoke very good English, so I spoke in French with the people at my end of the table. It was a really wonderful evening, to have my two little worlds collide like that...

Friday:

In the morning we took a long walk around Mettray to see its infamous "Stonehenge," which is actually called the Dolmen or the Fairy Cave. We had lunch with the family, ratatouille à la mexicaine (which is to say, with green chile added), which was very good. Dad said goodbye to Catherine and Lea, and then we headed into town with Louis and Camille to do a little gift shopping. Louis bailed fairly early (he'd already made plans to meet up with his friends), but Camille stuck with us to the end, which is a good thing since she was our ride to the train station. We found more or less everything we were looking for and all of it more or less fit, which was good. We made it to the station with time to spare, although our goodbyes were rushed since we were trying to look for two seats together and Camille was so busy trying to help us that she nearly stayed with us to go to Paris; she made it out just before the doors shut. The rest of the ride was quiet, though; I watched Lost and Dad wrote some postcards.

Back in Paris, we picked up some cheese at the cheeseshop by John and Sophie's apartment, and then had a sushi party. Even if it wasn't as good as the restaurant back in Albuquerque that I love so much, it was definitely very fun to make.

And that was it for the stay.

I'll catch up the weekend and the past two days later; I'm halfway cooking dinner as I write and now everyone's come back, so I figure I should get off the computer and be social, as well as attend to the pot of rice-tomato-stuff that's currently boiling. And it's not a bad stopping point anyway.

Bye for now!  

What a week, what a week...

Or past thirteen days, really. And such a past thirteen days that I scarcely know where to start. I guess where I left off? Well, actually, I'm going to skip to Friday two weeks ago, because that was more interesting.

Friday:

I went out to Cheverny with Camille and some of her friends. Cheverny is the chateau that the chateau in the Tintin comics is based off of, which is one of its claims to fame in the modern age. It's a beautiful chateau, and the grounds are outstanding (as well as huge). The inside was stuffed with artifacts spanning half a millenium; there was even a document signed by George Washington (which I tried to take a picture of, but there's a glare right over his signature). After we visited the chateau we stayed out on the grounds for a while stealing cherries and playing JungleSpeed (which is like Uno only weird). At around four thirty we left so that I could get to my train in time and drop off Camille's friends at another friend's house.

It turned out that we got to the station an hour and a half before my train left, so I wasted time in the cafe by reading and getting myself a coffee. I happened to notice, however, that my train did not seem to be on the charts, so I checked my ticket and found that it was actually a ticket for the day before. Originally I had bought a ticket for Saturday, but it worked better for my family in Paris that I come on Friday night. I had a ticket for a train that got into Montparnasse at 9:30, but again it worked better that I come earlier, so I changed the ticket on the Thursday to get in at 8:30 instead. However, the woman at the counter had changed it to the same day that I was changing the ticket and not the day after...hence the problem. Luckily they gave me a ticket to the next train without paying any more for it, but I still had to waste another couple of hours in the station, including the twenty minutes the train was late by. By the time I got into Paris, I was thoroughly sick of the TGV and any and all train stations. But all was well that ended well; we got out to the country house without a problem, and I fell asleep sometime around two in the morning because Mat and his friends were listening to music and talking downstairs directly above my room. In response I turned up the quiet, calming music on my Ipod, which I've since found is not the best solution.

Saturday:

I spent most of the morning pacing and asking people what time it was until John and Sophie got so fed up with it that they decided to just take me to the airport already (well, that and it was about time to go, anyway). And then it turned out that Dad's flight was in about twenty minutes late, and his bag was one of the last to come off the carousel...but finally, he came out of the terminal, and I think I nearly took him down with my tackle-hug (ok, I'm exaggerating a bit, but I was really really happy to see him). After that, I just sort of stared for a second, unable to compute, and finally said, "wow. You're in France!" 

You all know I'm that perceptive.

But in any case, the rest of the day was fairly quiet-- Dad delivered his packages of Poptarts and jerky and bacon bits to my cousins, I received some essential NM items (green chile, biscochitos, a cd of my uncle's band), and we took a long walk on the "ditch" by John's house, which is really a canal but it's still a ditch to me. They're just lucky I don't call it an arroyo.

In the evening we went to the village party, where we watched a bonfire and that was more or less it. There was some dancing and some more drinking but overall it was pretty tame. We went to bed around midnight, which I'm sure was good for Dad's jetlag, and that was day one of his stay.

Sunday:

We spent another quiet day out at the country house and headed back into Paris around six for the Fete de la musique. John and Sophie led us on a tour that lasted nearly three hours, and we heard everything from techno to bluegrass to metal to god-knows-what. Sometimes there were elaborate setups by huge bands, other times it was just a lady and a guitar standing on the street corner. It was absolutely amazing; I've never seen anything quite like it and I don't think I ever will outside of it. I think this is my favorite French holiday.

Monday:

We started the morning with one of my favorite walks, from the Champs-Elysees all the way to the Louvre, where we stopped for a visit. After seeing the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo at the Louvre, we spent most of the time in the quieter galleries (Oceania/Africa/the Americas, Egypt, and Mesopotamia), which also happen to be some of my favorites in any case. I will say, though, that I never appreciated how empty the Louvre was in February until I came again in June. The statement is true of Paris in general, to be honest.

We had lunch in Tuilieries, where the sparrows attacked our plates more ore less as soon as we put down our forks, and then continued on to the Picasso museum, walking all the way. For some reason or another the Picasso museum was free that day (there was just a sign saying "the museum is free for all visitors. Good day."), which was lucky, and we spent a good hour or so there. Dad described it as being like a Van Gogh museum he went to in Amsterdam, except for less Van Gogh and more Picasso, and I found this to be a very apt statement (despite the fact that I've never been to Amsterdam, much less the Van Gogh museum there).

We walked from there to Centre Pompidou, where we had banana and Nutella crepes in a little cafe, and then took the metro back to John and Sophie's apartment. We ate dinner together (and if I remember correctly, there were crepes for dessert, too), and that was it.

Tuesday:

Breakfast was at an American patisserie that I've been curious about ever since I saw it back in April. Evidently it's a Parisian chain, since I saw one at the train station when we left for Tours the next day, but in any case the cafe was without a doubt the most Americanized French-owned cafe that I've seen thus far in France. They pulled off the American pastries really well, and the coffee was excellent. I went back there another couple of times before I left Paris for the last time on Monday.

We headed out to the Musee d'Orsay, but it was fairly crowded, so we went up to Montmartre instead. After meandering up the hill and looking at the shops, we finally ended up at the Espace Dali, which I was happy to go back to. We had lunch at a lovely little cafe next to the museum and spent a little more time walking around Montmartre before heading back down the hill. We took the metro out to Orsay again, and finding that it was still crowded, walked along the Seine for a while and then took the Boulevard St. Michel down to the Sorbonne, where we looked around for a while and stopped for drinks. After that, we headed back to the apartment and went out to dinner with John, Sophie, Elisabeth and Julie to the restaurant we went to with Mom last summer. All in all, a nice ending to the Paris stay.

I'll pick up with Tours and the rest later; it seems we're going out biking soon, and I should probably get off the computer anyway. 

'Cause baby, I've got-- MOTIVATION

Well, it's been a week, right? This blog thing does happen, sooner or later...and evidently, it seems to usually be later.

The highlights:

Thursday:

For our final PE class, only 13 of our class of 31 showed up; we ended up playing rugby in the mud (it had rained the night before). I even have pictures-- one girl who lived close by but was "sick" showed up for solidarity and took pictures of everyone. It was my first time playing rugby, and I'm more or less as terrible at it as I am at all sports, but it was fun nonetheless.

In the early afternoon we had a little party to celebrate the end of the year, with much sugar in the form of beverages and cakes of various sorts. The teachers were all incredibly kind and gave me some books as going away presents-- two more new, recent ones (Antoine de Saint-Exupery and Marguerite Yourcenar) and a copy of de la Fontaine's Fables that is, as they put it, "almost older than your country." I was amazingly touched (I nearly started crying), and began to appreciate just how kind of a community I managed to stumble upon here in France, and how much I'm going to miss them when I'm gone.

Oh, and the potato chip cookies were a hit-- they disappeared within the first ten minutes. Thanks, Leedara!

Then there was the last math class, where we played Scattergories, and that...was it.

Friday:

The last day. There were no real classes (I don't think that anything after the last science class on Wednesday counted as an actual class)-- just several parties, one after the other. To start with, in Spanish we watched the first half of a movie that I'll now evidently have to rent in order to see the resolution. Half the class was playing Scattergories in the back and paid no attention at all and thus are spared the curiosity (it was a good movie, too, which is why I'm so anxious to see the end).

After that was Drama, where we had a picnic of sorts out on the lawn, where we all ate entirely too much sugar, in the best way. The drama teacher, who hadn't been able to make it to the party yesterday, gave me a present as well-- a copy of Celine's Voyage au bout de la nuit. I still can't believe how incredibly wonderful all these people are. In English we had a party with the Italian class (since, by five in the afternoon, most everyone had left, and only two of us showed up to English at all), where there was slightly less sugar but was no less fun for all of that. And that...was it.

Actually, no.

At home I made a cake for Camille's birthday, a real American cake from a box (I asked my parents to send me the mix). Shortly thereafter, I went back to Vaucanson for the Bal de Promo, which was not anything like an American prom but, I think, all the better for it. I only stayed for the first two hours since my ride home, my English teacher, left early since she had her six-year-old daughter with her and so couldn't stay too long. At the beginning I thought that the French students did a lot better job of pretending to dance than Americans do, but once the party really got started it was more or less indistinguishable from any other party with loud music and teenagers that I've been to, except that there was French pop as well. Oh, and they played 'Voulez-vous coucher avec moi'. Because I guess they had to. It made me smile. I've always wondered whether that song would be popular here or if they'd hate it. I get the feeling it's a bit of both, depending on who you talk to... In any case, it was alright. A better way to spend Friday evening that I could have come up with on my own, and it was nice to see the English teacher one extra time before leaving.

And then that really was it.

Saturday:

I spent the afternoon in town looking for presents for everyone back home (and I'm not telling what I bought or where I went). I took myself out to lunch at the same restaurant that I went to with Fanny back in March and had a nice risotto with a glass of Chinon-- the image was so lovely that I went so far as to photograph my little table before I started eating. It was an afternoon quite pleasantly spent except for the sunburn I got on my neck and shoulders (and even that disappeared pretty fast).

The evening was much more...interesting. Camille had her 24th birthday party with all of her friends, and I was sort of halfway invited (I wasn't ordered out of the house like Lea and Catherine), so I stayed just out of curiosity. It was definitely a party-- I think it was summed up very well by one of the neighbors the next day, after being asked by Catherine if everyone had behaved themselves: "Well, they are...young." Everybody drank far too much, but in general the atmosphere was pretty lighthearted, way too much smiling and laughing more than utter incoherence... The only mishap was when one of the guests almost spilled a bottle of...something, some fruit liqueur, I think, all over my backpack full of books and important papers. Luckily, he missed, so there was no harm done. We all got to bed around five in the morning, and everyone was pretty justly exhausted. I didn't really realize how tired I was until I actually went to bed, when I could barely keep my eyes open two minutes after the lights were off and people were quiet.

Sunday:

Sunday was very quiet. I slept until ten in the morning and only got up because it was too light out for me to sleep anymore, and then spent the day puttering around, listening to an audiobook, and taking walks in order to stay awake. Camille slept for most of the afternoon on the couch, Lea was over at a friend's, and Catherine was working, so it was very quiet and peaceful. Olivier came over later in the day and gave me over 600 songs in three different languages, increasing my music library by around 30%. All in all a good recovery day.

In the evening, however, when I was Skyping my parents, they informed me that Powder died a little over a week ago. I wasn't and still am not sure how to react. None of it seems real, as if it's happened on some other planet, not here, not anywhere I know. I know I'm going to miss him badly, though, and I feel guilty that I wasn't there to say goodbye, that I didn't see him one last time before he died. But he died like we want all of our pets to die-- old, in his sleep, and without pain-- so that's a definite consolation. If he'd gotten sick like Sibylle did, I would be having a much harder time coping. 

Rest in peace, puffball.

Monday:

In the late afternoon Camille took me out with some of her friends to do a "tour of Tours" to see all the decidedly non-touristic places in and around the city (for example, the sketchy suburbs and the newly-built American-ish mall complex). It was fun, and afterwards we stayed over at the friends' apartment for dinner, which meant I could finally escape the party leftovers (we had sausage nearly four meals in a row-- I think it'll be another year before I'll want to have it anywhere near me). We also made plans to go visit a chateau together on Friday, which, if it's anything like today, should be fun in the sense of interesting. 

Tuesday:

In the early afternoon Camille and I went out to Amboise to visit the chateau there. My accent was evidently good enough that the woman at the front desk thought that I was French when she sold me the tickets-- we only went back and corrected her because they take statistics on where visitors come from and use them for...some obscure purpose. 

In any case, the chateau itself was beautiful, and we had a personal guided tour of about three rooms since we happened to run into one of Camille's friends who works there. On the way back home we stopped by a bakery in Tours that makes pastries double their normal size, and I found it humorous that nothing in the shop would have been considered outsized by American standards (though I saw clearly that it was outsized for the French). Despite being huge, the quality of the pastries is about the same if not better than other bakeries, and you get about twice the pastry for the same price, so I think I might be going back there at least once before I go. 

And that's more or less it for the week, because absolutely nothing happened today. Well, I almost burned down the kitchen making lunch for Lea and one of her friends (I was cooking meat, and the paper package it was wrapped in got too close to the stove and caught fire. Lea and her friend helped me put it out but then they left me with the mess without another word). But other than that, nothing. 

I'm not sure when I'll have time for the next update, since my dad is coming to visit next week and I'll thus be fairly occupied until next Sunday, so expect something around next Monday or Tuesday or perhaps Wednesday, if the pattern continues more or less like this. Until then!

The weekend

This update thing is going to happen, I swear. Even if I have to do it writing and making potato chip cookies at the same time. Ok, quick explanation-- when Leedara read that I was introducing the French to Rice Krispies and all the terrible things in American cuisine, she sent me a recipe for potato chip cookies, which is exactly what I'm going to introduce them to next. They're actually not bad; the way I messed them up made them more scone-like in texture, and it's not bad, the mix of salty and sweet...in any case, on to the weekend:

Saturday:

I got in at one in the morning from Normandy and slept until nine, which almost never happens. (Usually, even if I'm up until one, (which isn't unusual) I still get up at seven. You could set Swiss trains by my internal clock). I spent most of the morning working on my part of a presentation about Tours, ran to the butcher's to get something for Lea's lunch, and then set out for the house of one of the AFS volunteers in the area, who took me up to the reunion. 

Like most of the other AFS weekends, we did several activities about cultural tolerance and how small the world is, etc, etc, stuff that I've seen before presented not half as well. Mostly the weekend was nice because we all had the time to see each other in one place and talk about how the exchanges are going (or, in the other direction, to offer advice and answer questions from the French students preparing to leave). I spent most of the time hanging out with one of the "partants" (the French students getting ready to leave) named Benedicte. We honestly don't have that much in common but she's really sweet and fun to be around. I'm planning to go up and visit her in Blois the weekend before I leave, after she's finished up with the Bacs (she's in Terminale, so she really doesn't have the time beforehand).

Sunday was more or less similar, but with a barbecue for the parents. I had a long conversation with Benedicte's parents about the exchange process, life in France versus the States, and even the differences in the mentality towards war (I was really enjoying myself), and they said afterwards that they found it fun to talk to an American in French, since most of the time when Americans come to France, you have to speak to them in English. 

At around four in the afternoon we had some tearful goodbyes, and then coming back home was sort of an anticlimax. But then again, it almost always is.

Monday:

Drama was fun-- the Friday I was in Normandy, everyone split into groups and prepared the last two scenes from Dom Juan, with varying interpretations. In the best one, the girl playing Dom Juan (we only have two boys in our class, so there was one group that was entirely girls) spoke a modern, "cité" French, and the rest still used the language of Molière in the script (which is sort of like Skakespearean English as opposed to modern English)-- a brilliant effect, and really funny. It also made me appreciate how much my French has improved-- to get the comedy achieved by the different accents/styles of speaking requires a certain comprehension of the language. I finally feel like I'm speaking real French...which is a shame, since I'm leaving just as I'm getting good.

Apart from that, not much.

Tuesday:

Since so many people decided to skip drama (8/11), class was cancelled and I got out four hours early. I went into town for lunch and then spent the afternoon doing nothing while it rained, which is why I have no excuse for not doing the blog yesterday (or the cookies, for that matter. Which, by the way, I've had approved by Camille and Lea). Oh, and I had my last French class of the year. There's a lot less emphasis placed on the last class of the year than in the US...it was just like any other class, and then, "Okay, dismissed, have a good summer and good luck on the Bac." And that's it; no one makes anything of it. We're a lot more sentimental in the US. Or, at least, we are at Bosque.

Wednesday:

I had my last History and Science classes of the year, which were more or less the same. The science class was like any other, and then we had two hours free because French was cancelled (the teacher is helping out with giving the oral exam for the Terminales, I think). I played Uno with my friends and then we went to History, where we found that half the class had ditched because they didn't want to wait around for two hours. We ended up playing a cool logic game that I adored but seemed to drive everybody else crazy. After that, I had lunch in town again and came home to mess around on the internet some more and make my cookies for the class tomorrow.

And that's...it. I think it should be more interesting next week? I hope.

So there were crazy French people. And...stuff?

You'll see in a second.

Wednesday:

After school I went over to Lucas's (another AFS student from Brazil) house to work on a presentation for AFS about Tours. Three other students, Peyo, Kazuto and Nuria (from Chile, Japan, and Paraguay) were there as well. We ended up mostly listening to music and playing GuitarHero (which I think is the only video game I can say that I enjoy) for hours on end, and mostly improvising for the presentation. It was quite fun-- I completely lost track of time, which is rare for me (I'm hopelessly neurotic about knowing what time it is). At six thirty I suddenly noticed that I had about five minutes to catch the bus that would get me back downtown, where the last bus to Mettray was leaving in forty-five minutes. I ended up walking the wrong way from the house, so I missed the bus that would have gotten me there with enough time to walk the several blocks between the two stops, but luckily I found the stop just as the bus was arriving. I made it to town with five minutes to get to a stop that's normally ten minutes away walking, so I sprinted the entire way and looked ridiculous because I was trying to hold down my skirt at the same time-- the only time in my life that I voluntarily wear a skirt and of course it's the one day I shouldn't have. But, sweating and panting and coughing (because I still had the tail end of the laryngitis from London), I made it to the stop one minute before the bus was supposed to leave, and then it turned out that it left five minutes later, anyway. 

So that was Wednesday.

Thursday:

I got up half an hour early and Lea's father Paul swung by to pick me up at quarter to seven. I slept on and off during the drive up to Normandy (for some reason, since being sick a couple of weeks ago I've been having less trouble sleeping during the day, even now that I'm better). We arrived around twelve and had lunch with the friends of Paul's that we were staying with-- Gaston and his wife, Beatrice. They were...interesting. Beatrice was notable to me because she was the first French person I've met that's expressed doubts about Obama's leadership capabilities (it seems like everyone I've met here adores Obama, pretty much without question), but she was quite nice and an excellent cook (even if she was very much red-meat-and-potatoes kind of style-- we had mutton twice in a row for lunch and dinner, and then sausage and steak the day after. I was in pain afterwards). It was her husband that was...um...I'll say he was a character? 

He tried to tell me the second day that the US has never had a good army and that the only reason we're a world power at all is because we have strength in numbers...I politely disagreed, because I was too shocked to come up with a better comment. Oh, and he wanted to know why I'd learned French instead of Spanish, because with French "You get France, Quebec, and then nigger Africa. What's the point?" (First thought: wow. Second thought: wow. Third thought: what happened to Belgium and Switzerland? Fourth thought: wow). Even if it was a joke... what else... Ah, so the reason I was able to go to Normandy at all: for a living, Gaston buys and sells old military objects, mostly from WWII, and for the anniversary of D-Day there was a huge informal market in St. Mere-l'Eglise (the first town to be liberated by the Americans). In French, the word for this kind of market is "brocante," and I was asking how long the market lasted on Friday (since no one really gave me many details about what we were doing-- I wasn't even sure that I was going to Normandy at all until Wednesday night). But when I asked, he went on this long rant: "Brocante? Brocante? This is not a brocante! This has nothing to do with the damn things! Brocantes are for old clothes and sets of broken china-- no, this is not a brocante!"...and so on for several minutes. So at the end I asked, "what do you call it, then?" And he was quiet for a minute and finally said, "Marché militaire." For a while I thought that I had legitimately made an error, but when I called it that to my host family, they just sort of looked at me funny and said, "You mean the brocante, right?" So...I believe I've made my point on the guy-- he was weird. (Oh! And he cut his nails with a pocketknife. Now I'm done). But in the end he was actually quite nice-- I helped out a little at the stand as a gesture to thank him for letting me stay at his house and come to the market, etc-- I translated for a couple of English tourists and watched the merchandise when he needed to leave, helped loading and unloading-- and in the end he actually paid me for it (I tried to refuse, several times, but ended up taking it-- his arguments were: "I have relatives that I specifically ask to come up and help me out, and you did more today than they ever do," and "you should never refuse money at your age.").

So, the market and the town itself:

St. Mere-l'Eglise is a charming little town, I'm sure, when there aren't so many tourists that you can barely cross the streets. Once you visit the church and the Airborne Museum there isn't much to do, so I spent a lot of time sitting in a little square away from the main plaza, listening to an audiobook and watching WWII-era planes go by overhead (some sort of cargo plane, I've deduced from describing them to my dad, but once I put the pictures up I'll get confirmation on what they actually were). All in all, very pleasant, and the Norman landscape is simply gorgeous (even though Gaston and Paul don't agree. They think the wind turbines ruin it). I'm hoping to go back before I leave to see Coleville and the beaches and perhaps Cherbourg, this time with Camille and Lea as reinforcements.

And that...actually covers Friday, to be honest, so I'll skip to Saturday tomorrow. But it's late and I have class (last week of school!), but I'm getting out early tomorrow and should have time to catch up. So until then!