The return of the entry

Since Paul so graciously helped me to figure out how to rewrite my CD-RW, here, without further ado, is the entry I wrote on the 12th (I haven’t changed any of the time references):

I’ve had a number of interesting-to-ponder questions come to my mind in the last few days.  A couple of them are too ponderous for me to feel comfortable to put on this weblog, especially since I really don’t know what I think of them myself.  However, I will offer you these two on a somewhat lighter note:

- when talking with one of the other English assistants while I was feeling down a few days ago, she told me, as if to cheer me up, “Well, just think about it this way – it can’t get any worse than this.” I told her that that didn’t cheer me at all, quite the opposite, and I prefer to think of it in this way: “it could be much worse.” (…I started to write an explanation of why that is cheering to me, but then I realized that would somewhat negate the point of asking this question, so I’ll leave it be.) So, here’s the first question: which way do you prefer to cheer yourself, given these two choices?

- I got to see my favorite episode of the fantastic TV show “Stargate: SG-1” last night.  Those of you who know me and who know the show, you get one guess as to which episode this is.  Taken your guess?  That’s right – the episode where everyone gets caught in a time loop and repeats the same day hundreds of times, with only Til’k (spelling?) and O’Neill able to remember the previous go-rounds.  While laughing at what the pair decides to do when they realize that they can basically do whatever they want without fear of any consequences (since the slate will be wiped clean at the end of the day), it occurred to me to wonder what I, or other people, actually would do if given that option.  The cynical part of me immediately said, “for an answer, look to the looting that occurs after a natural disaster or during a riot.” But that doesn’t seem to me to be a complete answer – it’s not something that I would choose to do were I given the option, certainly.  So, for the question: what could you do if you knew that there would be no consequences to your actions?

I know that neither of these questions is exactly novel, but they have been on my mind and I thought that I’d share them.  For some crazy reason, some people out there (you, gentle readers) have decided that it’s interesting to see what’s going on about me and inside my head, so I will not fail them.  ::smile::

On a different note, I saw a gentleman walking down the street the other day whose facial hair combined color and placement to an amusing end.  The gentleman had hair running along the jaw line, close-trimmed, and a little tributary of hair running from below the middle of his bottom lip to join with the hair on his jawbone.  This isn’t that unusual of a shape, but the fact that the hair along the jawline was white and the little bit of hair on the chin was black, combined with a strong jaw to begin with, created an oddly pugnacious look.  Since white naturally tends to stand out and dark tends to create the look of a hollow (thanks for the instruction in stage makeup, Stephie – it’s come in handy!), it looked as if he perpetually had his lower jaw stuck out in an overgrown “I don’t wanna” pout.  As I said, unusual on a man who looked to be near 50. 

Grr, argh.

Well, there was going to be a lovely, long entry here - I typed it up last night on my computer.  However, When I tried to write it to the CD-RW that I bought and used for the first time for my last entry, even though the computer recognized it as a CD-RW, it wouldn’t let me alter it in any way.  So there’s no long entry.  Just this.  Sorry!

A few more photos

Another interior shot of the Reims cathedral

In the Maison des Arts et Loisirs in Laon, shortly before the Berlioz concert I attended.

A neat fire escape in Laon.  Most fire escapes look like this one, in fact, but this was the first that I had seen.

Glass pens in the window of one of the libraries (book stores) here in Laon.

On an altar in the Cimitiere St. Just.

The kitten that I saved.  This was during the weekend that I kept her illicitly in the school (I’m not allowed pets); she now has a safe, warm home.  ::happy sigh of relief::

Travels, tap dances and dreams of teenagerhood

Sorry that I didn’t write on Saturday - I decided at the last minute to go to Reims with Hannah, Lauren and Andrea (the new English assistant from Slovakia).  We passed a very nice, if rather cold and blustery, day there, trying to shop for Christmas presents but also finding it hard not to get things for ourselves.  I did relatively well - I found one Christmas present and spent only 3 euros on myself (not counting the 2 euros spent on pastries...).

I spent most of the day yesterday at the house of one of the English teachers at my school, Emmanuelle.  She and her husband, Luc, invited me over for lunch, which on Sundays in France translates into an hours-long, multi-course meal.  The day was incredibly relaxing and enjoyable.  We ate lunch, during which I discovered that I really like mustard a la ancienne, which is uncreamed mustard - it’s grainy and delicious.  Her adorable 2-year-old son provided running commentary and criticism on every subject from the food to my large shoes.  He was so cute!  And so well-behaved - I honestly couldn’t believe that he was in his “terrible twos.” After lunch, Luc took their little gas molecule outside to bounce around in a less-confined space, and we joined them a bit later.  Then E, L and I played a little football (translation: soccer) and took a walk over to a match that was taking place in their village’s soccer field.  Florent buzzed alongside us on his little tricycle, and showed much greater respect for the roadway than the grownups.  He insisted on riding on the grassy shoulder of the road rather than in the road itself, since he said that he didn’t want to be run over.

That rather journalistic description doesn’t supply the amazing contentment of the day.  It is a very blustery autumn - in fact, the most autumny autumn that I have ever experienced, all changing colors and sudden showers and mistral-like winds - and I’ve discovered that autumn is a marvelous season.  Passing the day in a little French village with an unpronounceable name, having a long, languid lunch and talking in a mixture of French and English, being around the obvious love in this young family, watching Luc rake yellow leaves from the ground around their dormant garden, walking through a drizzle to watch the local soccer team duke it out with another team on a field with old Frenchmen in caps leaning on the wooden railings… I felt welcomed and comfortable.  It was wonderful.  ::contented sigh::

Changing moods entirely: yesterday evening I wanted to watch “The Rock,” which was showing on TV.  Unfortunately, the station that it was on is one that I couldn’t get very well at all - static-y and in black-and-white.  That was fixable - all I had to do was program my TV to look for that particular station on channel 10 rather than on channel 1.  Unfortunately, the decade-old remote control for my TV hadn’t had its batteries replaced since it left the factory, and I didn’t have any AAA batteries.  I borrowed some from Hannah, then proceeded to spend half of the movie trying to figure out which of the hundreds of combinations of buttons-whose-markings-had-been-rubbed-off-by-a-decade-of-use told the TV what it needed to do.  In the end, it turned out to be something like this: press the yellow button four times, press the “up” volume button, press the yellow button several more times, press the “up” volume button again and again, waiting in between each press for about ten seconds while the TV searches for a signal in that band range, then press the sticky blue button, then do a little tap dance for the gods of the television, then press the grey button - or maybe the orange one - and so on.  Apparently my dancing was acceptable and I got to watch the last hour or so of the movie.  I missed the awesome chase sequence through the streets of San Francisco, but I *did* get to see the great shot at the end with the MIGs breaking formation in the sky above a flare-holding Nicholas Cage.  Also got to see many close-ups of Ed Harris’ eyes, which was *so* difficult, let me tell you.

After the movie, I briefly amused myself by seeing how many cuss words my French-English dictionary lists.  I started this search in the spirit of scientific inquiry, of course.  There was one word that kept being repeated in the movie for which I don’t have the exact translation. (I’ve also heard it used extensively by the teenaged gamers who use the computers in the internet “cafe” where I sometimes check my email.) Unfortunately, my best guess as to its spelling didn’t show up in my dictionary, but that led me to see how many other words I could find.  This led to the distressing discovery that I can only think of four words to even try to look up!  (They were all in there.) I mean, don’t you find it a bit odd that a 22-year-old can only think of four really offensive words?  I feel like I should petition to spend a day back in high school, just to brush up on my vocabulary.  Either that, or I should invest in the book that I’ve frequently seen - “Shakespearean Insults for Fun and Profit,” or something like that.  Might be more satisfying in the long run.  I mean, why call someone something banal and everyday when you could call them a “hackneyed, short-staffed cur?”

Dum dee dum…

I don’t have much time to write anything right now - have to go teach the English Club for the 8th graders in just minute - but I’m probably going to go to an internet cafe tomorrow, since otherwise I won’t be able to use the internet until Wednesday.  Tuesday of next week is Armistice Day, so everything will be shut, including the school and the internet cafe.

Neat (well, I think it’s neat) thing - I went to have my mandatory “you’re a foreigner who wants to live in France so we must make sure that you are up to our standards” medical exam yesterday morning.  That wasn’t the cool part - the cool part was that I had to have an x-ray taken, and they let me keep the “printout” - you know, the black transparent plastic sheet that they hold up to the light and look at appraisingly.  So now I have a full-sized x-ray of my torso - lungs, heart, rib cage, that sort of thing.  I’m thinking about having it framed.  :-)

Have to run!  I’ll try to write more tomorrow. 

A few photos

My room.

View from my room.

The outside of the high school in which I live.

A gargoyle on the cathedral in Laon.

The cathedral during the festival Les Ecrits Lumières.  Cool, huh?

Reflections in one of the many windows in Laon’s Cimitiere St. Just.

A fantastic picture that I took inside the cathedral in Reims.  Should be on a postcard!

Morton, my stalwart traveling companion, enjoying the flight from America to France.

Now that I know that I can write CDs on my laptop and use them to transfer things to the computers at school that have internet access, you can expect to see many more photos.  I just need to go buy a CD-RW.  :-) Woo hoo!

Trip to Madrid, in brief (sorta)

What a nice week I’ve had!  Madrid is a wonderful, beautiful city, and Toledo is charming as well.  I arrived early Tuesday morning, after a long, restless night on the train.  I enjoyed the novelty of riding on a sleeper train, and my trip back to France on Saturday night went more smoothly - I didn’t wake up quite as much - but I think that I much prefer riding on trains while upright.  As strange as this may sound, it’s the motion that is the most distracting for me; the rocking side-to-side motion that is so soothing to me when I’m sitting up on a train is changed into a difficult head-to-feet rocking when lying down.  At least, it was on these two trains, simply because of the way that they were laid out - perhaps there are other sleeper trains that are arranged so that the beds run parallel with the forward motion of the train, not perpendicular to it.

The biggest adjustment that I had to make was that of timing.  Spain simply runs about two hours later than anywhere else I’ve lived.  Shops don’t open until 10(ish - everything is Spain seems to run on the “ish” schedule), lunch is from 2-4 p.m., the “afternoon” doesn’t begin until after 4 p.m., and people regularly meet at 10 p.m. for after-dinner (or with-dinner) coffee with their friends.  I went to a club on Halloween night, or rather, All Saints’ Day morning, and didn’t leave for the club until 2 a.m.  I got back to my room at 5 a.m., and as I walked out of the club and past the entrance to a few other clubs, there were still people waiting in line to *enter*!

I passed my days mostly in doing lots of nothing in particular.  I did visit the Prado on Wednesday morning, and was fairly impressed.  I must admit that I still prefer the Louvre, but that has a great deal to do with my personal taste in art.  I tend to prefer Italian or English painters, and am not really that fond of either Goya or “El Greco,” two painters of which Spain is justifiably proud; hence, the Prado, with its emphasis on Spanish painters, didn’t hold as much for me as it might have.  And I must say, Goya’s Pinturas Negras are highly disturbing.  Why anyone would have wanted to paint those things on the walls of his house, where he would have to look at them every day, is beyond me. 

The Retiro (in full, the Parque del Buen Retiro) is huge and lovely and I could easily have spent longer than the three or so hours in total that I spent there.  It has all the things I’ve come to expect of a good European park - one or two monuments, a slew of sculptures and fountains, one or more ponds, amiable-looking old people sitting on the parks soaking up the sun, a few homeless people sleeping amid their rags and rubble under a tree, children trying to hug pigeons that are distinctly infant-phobic… I went to the Retiro on Wednesday and saw the Crystal Palace and the big-multiply-columned-monument-thingy, and returned on Saturday simply to sit and enjoy the glorious autumn weather before returning to the rain and freezing temperatures of France.

Olga and I went to Toledo on Friday on a rather last minute decision.  It was raining, windy and very cold when we first arrived, and we were not looking forward to a day spent in that weather.  Fortunately, the rain cleared up and although it remained very blustery, it warmed up enough so that it was downright enjoyable.  The old town of Toledo is exactly as an old European town should be, with the added exoticism of the slightly Arabic stylings of most of the buildings.  The interior of the cathedral was incredible - lavish in ways that I had never seen before.  In one place, a fresco stretched from eye level into a window-carrel fifty feet above our heads and incorporated statues into its stories.  The main altar made me stop and stare, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why it was so much more impressive to me than all the other altars in the place.  Then I realized that the bricks that surrounded the altar and its paintings were whiter than the greyish ones that composed the rest of the cathedral, and that the grout in between the bricks had been painted gold!

Toledo also boasts beautiful decorative tiles.  Okay, that’s true of the whole of Spain, but I was particularly taken with the tiles in Toledo and, even though I knew that they were probably tourist rip-offs, I couldn’t help but buy a couple of pieces.

The food in Spain is wonderful (unless you are a vegetarian, in which case Spain and its museo(s) de jamon are hellish) - hearty, extremely flavorful, and fairly inexpensive.  That’s what made the restaurant that Olga and I went to in Toledo doubly disappointing.  We were running out of time before our train, and between our slim purses and dietary restrictions, had to pass up seemingly every restaurant.  We finally found one called “Los Arcos” which met our needs, but it was… underwhelming.  I think the most apt comparison would be to a Denny’s or Jim’s or some other diner like that in the U.S.  The food tasted like it was out of a can, at least in the case of my first course of spaghetti, the bread was basically the equivalent of Saltines - no, of generic salted crackers, I like Saltines - and the choices for dessert were either a slice of melon or an apple (which was mushy).  I had never been to a restaurant in Spain that didn’t at least offer flan or something like that - even the weird vegetarian/vegan restaurant I went to gave me vegan flan for dessert!  Bottom line: if you are ever in Toledo, don’t bother with the restaurant “Los Arcos” - you are much better off going elsewhere.

Miscellanea (is that a word?):
-I love Spanish chocolate caliente (or simply chocolate).  It’s not really meant to be drunk straight - you are supposed to dip churros, a sort of chewy fried dough, into it, since it’s that thick - but since I don’t like churros (and I *did* try them), I just sipped it with a spoon, like soup.  Mmmmm....  ::blissful smile::  Additionally, the pastry called neopolitana crema is amazingly good as well.
-Spanish men are just as forward as they are reputed to be.  I hadn’t been in town but five minutes, while Olga and I were riding the Metro into town, me weighted down with all my stuff, when a fifty-ish-year-old man in the train going the opposite direction (we were at a stop) made a “kissy face” at me.  And the men make the most amazing range of sounds for “approval,” everything from the standard wolf whistle to barking or grunting to assorted words.
-There is a Julia travel company - I saw one of its buses around Madrid. 

My enjoyment of Spain was more tempered than I think it would have been had I traveled straight from America to Spain and were headed straight back.  I’m discovering that I’m something of a homebody.  I like traveling very much, but in small doses - a few weeks at a time.  And Spain also had the misfortune to make me feel like a stranger again.  This is normal for travel, especially in countries where you don’t speak the language, I know.  What I mean is that I was just finally starting to get settled down in France, feel like I might actually be carving a little niche for myself, and then I (voluntarily) disoriented myself again.  On Saturday evening I was really surprised to find out just how happy I was to be back amongst people speaking French again (on the train) - I thought, “ah, *my* language.”

To sum up, I liked Madrid and Toledo very much - indeed, there isn’t anything I can think of that I *disliked* about Madrid.  I intend to visit them again, and more of Spain - I would like to see Seville, which I have heard much about from Stephanie, who lived there for a while.  I probably won’t get back to Spain during this sojourn in Europe, since there’s a whole lot more out there to see, but sometime in this lifetime…

So, what’s been going on, you ask?

Lots of things and nothing, if that makes any sense. My days are filled up with inconsequentials, for the most part.  So this entry will be filled with much the same thing.  Although I don’t have a great deal of time, thanks to a non-inconsequential thing that happened just last night.

I saved a kitten.  She wasn’t in a fight or anything like that.  No, rather, I saved her from freezing to death.  She is tiny, probably not more than two or three months old, and she had been crying in a tiny, locked courtyard of a church just across the street from where I live.  She had been there for at least three nights, and although I had slid some food/milk under the four-inch slot at the bottom of the door to the courtyard, I knew that if she didn’t get inside soon, she would freeze. (It has been 0°C/32°F for the last few nights.) So I spent an hour yesterday evening being drizzled on and freezing myself, crouched at the door to the courtyard, trying to persuade her to come within nabbing distance. I finally succeeded, took her back to my room (where she promptly started going to the bathroom all over the place - woo ha), and spent the rest of the evening trying to sort things out.  I’m going to call the local humane society on Monday morning, but until then, I had to find her a litter box of sorts and get some litter (kindly donated by a woman who lives nearby and has a cat of her own).  Then it turns out that she yowls, so I had to move her into the shower/washing machine room down the hall.  As I type this, she’s in there, with my laptop’s music program playing to keep her company - she doesn’t yowl if she hears sounds and human voices.  I thought that Enya would be nice and soothing. ::grin::

So, yeah, I have to get back to my temporary kitten.  But first let me regale you with a bit of advice about walking around Laon, should you ever come to visit.  Half of Laon, the old, interesting, historic part, is on a plateau about 200 m about the plain (I think that’s the right height).  There are a number of ways to get from top to bottom and back again - the cable car (the POMA), driving, or walking along one of the many chemins, sentes or escaliers. These last are very useful, usually get you where you’re going with a minimum of fuss, and are almost always more direct than the POMA-to-bus route. However... (My, I seem to be on an italics-kick, don’t I?)… There are two of these routes that I will avoid at almost all costs, and that I would advise you to treat with the same degree of plague-outbreak-esque caution.  These are the Sente de Morlot and the Ruelle de l’Arbalete.  The second one is, for me, relatively easy to avoid, as it doesn’t lead anywhere that I usually need to go.  It goes straight down an incline that one of the most historic streets in the city - the Rampe d’Ardon - takes four or five meandering switchbacks to climb.  Pretty steep.  The first, however, has the unfortunate (for me) position of being the most direct path to the Walmart-like behemoth here in town, Carrefour.  I frequently need to go to Carrefour for things like, oh, food, clothes… things like that. 

Unfortunately, I detest the Sente de Morlot passionately.  Not only is it as steep as the other, but it is not paved, so it turns into a mudpit when it rains (which is frequently).  Imagine, if you will: you are standing at the top of this particular path, knowing that the food that you so desperately need is at the bottom.  You can’t actually SEE the bottom from here, because this path twists back and forth while it plummets.  You step onto the first “stair” - a wooden block that shores up a patch of dirt/muck.  As you walk down the stairs, you relax some, thinking that this, while admittedly precipitous, isn’t so bad.  (Ignoring that nagging voice in the back of your head that reminds you that you have to climb back UP this later, and that you’ve grown awfully fond of those pains au chocolat as of late...) Then you reach a point where the stairs stop, and gaze in dismay at the rutted, muddy path ahead of you, which is sprinkled liberally with dead, slimy leaves, which in turn almost hide the large rocks that are also strewn around. You take one step, then another, and then you lose control.  You race down the slope at a speed that would make Michael Johnson shudder, fighting to at least LIFT your feet and not just slide along on leaf-boats.  There is the occasional flat spot, but unfortunately, at the speed at which you are unwillingly flung, these patches more threaten to send you head-over-heels entirely than to slow your speed any.  Finally, you shoot out of the bottom of the “walkway,” directly into the path of the car which is backing out of the driveway which crosses the foot of the path.

And don’t get me started about going back up again…

::grin:: So my advice is to avoid those two pathways entirely.  I usually do.  I will go a further quarter of the way around the circumference of the Ville Haute rather than use them.  Other than these two, however, the various pathways between the upper and lower towns are very nice, and provide a brief illusion that you are walking through the middle of nowhere. Birds sing from the trees, the air has that richness that comes from a mixture of living and rotting foliage, and you can *almost* ignore the sounds of the cars that are just ahead.  They are wonderful.

So, I’m headed off to Madrid the day after tomorrow.  I hope that the trip will go well, and I will write up the details when I return. Have a good week, everyone!

No time, no time…

I wanted to write an entry about how it was confirmed for me today that I never, ever want to be a teacher, but I don’t have time right now, since a class needs to use the classroom that I’m writing this in.  Vacation starts tomorrow, so I won’t have free access to the internet, but I’ll try to make one more entry before I leave for Madrid on Monday.  If I don’t manage to, though, there won’t be an entry until the first week of November. 

La de da… not much going on…

At least, not right now.  Next week will be a different matter, but for now, things are very quiet.  I spent all day yesterday (and I’m not exaggerating that much - it took me about five or six hours) downloading the 300 digital photos I’ve taken in the past three weeks onto my laptop and erasing them from my camera.  That’s good - now they are all labelled and sorted on my computer’s hard drive, and the wonderful card that I have for my camera is clean.  By the way, here’s a little product placement: I have a Canon Powershot G3, and I love it.  I splurged and bought a 500 MB card (oooh, ahhh) before I left for France, and it is wonderful.  As I’ve told anyone who will listen, this card will hold 440 of the largest-size jpegs (which is pretty large, considering the camera has a 4.0 MP resolution), and even 200 RAW-format images!  It’s mahvelous, dahling, simply mahvelous.  The camera is well laid-out, and I’m sure that I would be able to use it even more easily if I had bothered to read the manual.  As it is, I’ve fiddled around with it some, but I mostly just learned to use the aperture- and shutter-speed-priority settings as well as my personal favorite, the manual setting.  The one problem with the camera is that it has difficulties with color-rendition in the purple range.  Purples shift to blue, which is annoying.  But other than that, I have had no problems with it - the pictures are clear, most of the colors are true, and the white-balance options are wonderful.  No more indoor pictures where the people end up looking jaundiced!

In other news, I’m headed to Madrid next week!  School holidays here in France start this Wednesday, and I have a friend who is studying in Madrid this semester.  I have never been to Spain, so I decided to go visit her.  The decision was easy; getting the tickets turned out to be one of the worst experiences that I’ve had in recent memory.  I went to the train station, knowing that it would be difficult to find a seat, since I had waited so long to buy my tickets.  However, I ended up being “helped” by a man who typified all the negative stereotypes held of French people (or, actually, people in general).  He treated me as if I was an imbecile who had decided to make his life hell.  He kept pinching the bridge of his nose, rolling his eyes, rubbing his forehead… He misunderstood what I had said and then acted like I had deliberately said the incorrect thing, just to make trouble.  When I said, several times, that my French isn’t very good and asked him, very politely, to repeat himself, he would say, in the most exasperated tone, “I........said...... blahblahblahblahblahblahblah.” (Yes, sir, I realize that you said something - what I had problems with is what you said.) Finally, after about forty-five minutes, about thirty of which were spent with me in tears, I told him to help the other in line, went outside, collected myself, wrote down my request, and went and stood in line for the other agent.  That wonderful gentleman had everything sorted out in ten minutes and was kind, solicitous and understanding.

The bottom line is that I now have my tickets, and will be gone from Monday to Saturday of next week.  I’m very excited about the trip, even if I don’t speak a lick of Spanish.  I’ve heard wonderful things about Madrid and the people there, and I will let you know how it all turns out!

Frustration

Grrr.  I arrive at school at 9 a.m., since no one has bothered to tell me what time my classes begin today.  I have no class at 9, so I spend an hour fiddling around on the computer, answering emails, that sort of thing.  Then at 10 I go to the teachers’ lounge to ask with whom I am supposed to go.  Three different teachers say, “Well, you’re not with me, you must be with...” I finally follow the person with whom all of the previous three eventually decided that I was supposed to be with, only to have her be surprised when she discovers that I think I’m supposed to be with her and say no, no, you’re not with me.  So I’m left with two hours to kill.  And I’ve found out that my classes this afternoon have been cancelled as well, so I’m basically only here to teach the English Club at lunch, and I don’t even know what I’m going to do for that.  So I guess that I’ll write up an entry, then maybe go visit a marché that is going on right now and looked interesting, then come back, figure out something to teach the kids at lunch, teach the club, and go home.  Grrr.  This is frustrating.  I don’t have a schedule yet, and the person who is supposed to be setting up my schedule gets upset every time I try to insist that she do it.  I mean, one of the other assistants is at three different schools and she already has a schedule - why can’t I get one for *one* school?

Honestly, though, things are going well, if quietly.  I “went for a walk” yesterday - a 10 km (6.2 mi) stroll to a little pair of towns outside Laon, called Persles-et-Thierry.  It was a wonderful, wonderful walk.  The countryside was beautiful, the weather was fantastic, I petted a horse… Actually, it’s funny - I even got to give the horse a treat.  I was standing on the side of the road, petting the horse, when a car pulled off onto the shoulder and a guy got out.  I thought, “Uh-oh, it’s the owner and he’s going to tell me to leave his horse alone!” But when I asked the guy if there was a problem, he said, “No, no, pas de tout(not at all),” and asked me if I’d like to give the horse a bon-bon.  Without waiting for an answer, he opened up his trunk and got out a bag of horse treats, fed a handful to the horse and gave me a handful to do the same with.  (The horse was very happy.) He asked if I lived around here, and when I said yes, that I lived in Laon, he amazedly asked if I came on foot.  When I said yes again, he asked me if I need a ride back to Laon, as that was where he was headed.  I said, “No, thank you though.  The weather is beautiful.” He agreed, got into his car and started to drive off - without his little dog (a terrier of some sort that had slipped out of the car when he first opened the door).  I waved at him, he paused the car, and I picked up his dog and showed it to him.  He was very surprised and glad that I had noticed!  ::grin::

Yesterday afternoon went well, then, and I had that wonderful feeling of absolute contentment that I’ve gotten other times, usually when I’m by myself doing nothing in particular - wandering around a foreign country, for example.  I’m starting to get excited about all the traveling I might be able to do in the next few months - Madrid in a couple of weeks, England for Christmas, Germany at the end of February… It’s amazing to be in a place where a few hours drive takes you to a totally different culture and country.  I know that the cultures of the different parts of the US are fairly different, but they are at least all in one country and speak (mostly) the same language.

I’m sure that there were other things that I was going to say in my entry, but I honestly can’t think of them right now.  Maybe they’ll come to me while I’m walking around the marché, and I can update again later today.  It’s funny - I’m also feeling like I’m not doing exactly what I meant to do with this weblog.  Part of me had this grand(iose) idea that I would be able to make insightful remarks about life in Europe, how it pertains to the world, things like that.  Instead, I find myself using it mostly to record my emotions and actions.  I know that this isn’t a bad thing, and that one can infer a lot about the culture and life around me by what emotions they engender, but it’s yet another example of idealistic notions running headlong into reality.  I’ve had quite a few of those run-ins these past few days. 

I have lots of things to say…

... but not enough time in which to tell all of them.  I had a great weekend, went to a fantastic concert, talked to the principal cellist for a long time afterwards, went to a nice little museum of art and archeology here in town, the weather has been great, the kids in my classes have been good, my French is improving, and in general things are going well!

Whew!  I have to run, because a class needs to use this classroom in just a few minutes, but I’ll try to write more later.  I’m thinking about spending a bit of money on some CDRWs and writing my entries in advance on my computer, burning them to disk, and then just copying them from the disk onto the internet through one of the computers in this classroom.  ::shrug:: We’ll see.

A short entry…

...because I don’t have much time before my next class.

Things I don’t understand about France/French:

1.) pigeons that sound like crows (they caw)
2.) parking lots that you have to drive over a curb to get into - isn’t that awfully rough on your car?
3.) students that leap to their feet any time a teacher or other adult walks into the room
4.) milk that can be stored at room temperature until it’s opened (it tastes disgusting)
5.) gendered nouns that don’t agree with the gender of the subject of the sentence.  For instance : “il entre dans sa chambre” (he goes into his feminine room)

More information as time allows.  I have a meeting/audition for the viola teacher at the music conservatory tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll let everyone know as soon as I can thereafter if I am allowed into the orchestra.  It will actually kinda suck if I can, though, because rehearsals are on Saturday afternoons from 2-4 p.m.  This means that if anyone comes to visit (like Aunt Suse), I’ll either have to skip a rehearsal or miss out on time with them.  I guess that I’ll worry about it when I get to that point.

Life is pulling together…

So, it looks like I’m finally going to start incorporating myself into the life here in Laon.  Classes will be happening more regularly starting next week, and that means that I will start making friends among the students at the school.  In addition, I’ve a meeting tomorrow with the director of the Music Conservatory here in town, to discuss having me play the viola in the orchestra at the school.  Yay!  And I am going to a concert this Saturday evening!  Double yay!  There has been a Berlioz festival going on here in Laon for the past few months (a concert here, another there, spaced out over the weeks), and the final concert of the festival is this Saturday.  They are playing Berlioz’s “Harold in Italy” - a hugely important piece in the viola repertoire, since the part of “Harold” is acted out through a viola solo - and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 - one of my favorite pieces.  It’s actually only through the extreme niceness of a lady at the Tourist Office that I’m going.  I was under the impression that there were three different ticket prices, and I was going to splurge a bit and buy the cheapest one, at 18 euros.  However, it turned out that all tickets cost 24 euros - too expensive for me.  I turned to walk away, disappointed, but the woman called me back and told me that she would pretend that I was a student at the Music Conservatory, and I could therefore have a ticket for 10 euros.  Triple yay!  She said that there are too many people who attend these concerts only to get dressed up and show themselves off, and that she wanted to encourage those people who actually want to hear the music as much as possible.  I’m so excited!

I’m also excited because Fall Break is coming up in two weeks, and I’m trying to figure out what I want to do.  I might visit a friend in Madrid, if I am allowed to leave the country, or, more specifically, if I would be allowed to return once I had left.  (Technicalities of my visa.) Or, failing that, I’m considering bicycling along the Loire for a few days, visiting Fontainbleu (spelling?) and staying in youth hostels.  Or I might just take a train into Paris, maybe stay overnight, and visit the Louvre - I get in FREE!  That’s right - since I have this thing called a carte professionelle, I can get into any of the national museums completely for free!  Quadruple yay!  Decisions, decisions… better have a look at my finances, I think.

Oh, by the way, I’ve had it pointed out to me that I left something rather crucial out of my mass emailing.  I’m sure that you’ve all figured this out, but if you want to send something to me, it’s important that you put FRANCE in big letters at the bottom of the address.  Woudn’t want to confuse the USPS!

So, this afternoon I will probably stay in my room for the most part, relax, watch strange French commercials (and they are bizarre, let me tell you).  I also might visit the library that’s located right across the street in what used to be a monastery.  It’s great - not only do I have a gorgeous, hundreds-of-years-old building greeting me every time I walk out of the front door of the school that I live in, but it houses a library!  Life is good....  ::grin::

Ah, the weekend…

Well, I finally gathered up the fifteen or so (you think I’m joking?) documents that I needed to apply for my carte de sejour, and went into the prefecture first thing this morning, handed them all over to the woùman behind the desk, and after waiting for an hour, received the little card that officially states that I have applied for the carte.  Yee ha.

Otherwise, the last few days have been pretty uneventful - I’ve sat in on a few more classes, gotten the same sorts of questions asked… Oh yeah, I almost forgot that I got to go on a French field trip.  We went to visit the Chemin des Dames, which is a 15-ish mile stretch of countryside a bit south of Laon that saw some of the most horrific slaughter of WWI in France.  Very cheering, let me tell you.  It was actually quite fascinating - we visted a museum at the Caverne du Dragon, an extremely long cave/quarry that was used by the Germans, the French and sometimes both at once as bunkers.  I didn’t understand most of the tour, surrounded as I was by chattering French middle schoolers, but there were a number of signs translated into English.  Besides, the most important impression - that I never, ever, ever want to have anything to do with war and especially do not want to live underground - transcended the language barrier.  The countryside was absolutely beautiful, which made it all the more strange and sobering to realize that not all that long ago the ground was strewn with dead bodies, mines and the other accoutrements of war.  Strange.

This weekend is going to be nice and relaxed for me.  While there is a good chance that I will decide to go visit Reims tomorrow with Lauren, the English-as-in-from-England assistant, it’s going to be a laid-back trip for fun, rather than a business trip.  She wants to go champagne tasting - might not be bad, if only for the rather silly-snobbish feeling of joy that I get when I think about doing somthing like champagne tasting.  It sounds so grown-up and… un-Julia-esque.  ::grin::  What do you think?  Regardless of what I do tomorrow, I am sleeping in and doing n-o-t-h-i-n-g on Sunday.  And what a wonderful day that will be.  (Okay, so I might explore Laon and the surrounding area on foot, but that’s not really doing anything difficult, which is what I meant by doing nothing.)