Hum de dum de dum

Why is it that the times that I really want to be able to speak French well, such as when I meet someone new and want to make a good impression, are the times that I am least able to get anything above a third-grade level out of my mouth?  It’s frustrating, because I usually am at my most glib in English when I’m meeting someone new; not so with French.  ::shrug::

This weekend should be fun.  Tonight, Hannah, Lauren, Andrea and I are going to go out to dinner to celebrate Hannah’s birthday.  Then tomorrow, I have two friends arriving in town to stay overnight – Lauren and Sarah, the two people with whom I stayed while I was in Edinburgh and England over Christmas.  They’ll leave on Sunday and I will sleep – a lot – and then hop on a train into Paris on Monday to pick up my new, full-strength passport.  Yippee!

It’s snowing!

::blink:: Now it’s not.

Photography Exhibition!!!

Hey there everyone -
 
The photo exhibition in which I have 5 photos of my own starts this weekend!  It’s in the Streff Gallery in the Schoen Library on the campus of Marylhurst University. The gallery is open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday - Friday, and the reception is Friday (i.e. tonight) at 6 p.m.

For more info - maps of the campus, directions to the campus, etc., go to the Marylhurst Uni directions page.  I know that it’s a bit too far out of the center of Portland for those of you who don’t have cars to get to, but if any of you can make it to the exhibition at some point, I’d love for you to.  I know that you’ve probably already seen the photos, but I’m really, really excited and proud to be in an exhibition and having my friends visit would be icing on the cake.

Christmas Hijinks v. 3

The next few days, after arriving back from Edinburgh, were nice and relaxed.  Hung out with Nick a couple of times, went to see “Love Actually” (so much eye candy!) with Sarah, lounged about munching on Christmas leftovers, etc.  I went to a New Year’s Eve party with Nick and a bunch of his friends in Nottingham, since Sarah had all her friends in Newport and her parents had a few friends coming over.  I had a lot of fun, although I did end up feeling slightly – okay, very – homesick around midnight.  It was just so different than any other New Year’s Eve celebration I’ve experienced.  Instead of a quiet evening with my family and maybe some friends like the Elickers, I was surrounded by lots of people with increasingly-incoherent, strangely-accented voices, loud music, long-term couples…  So I ended up missing my normal way of things, but since I will probably be back to the normal way next year, it was a good thing to experience something different this year.  The first and second days of the new year passed much the same as had the last few days of the previous year – quiet, spent hanging out with friends, eating good food, and maybe doing a spot of packing.  I just can’t believe that I didn’t notice the absence while I was packing…

Saturday morning (the 3rd) Sarah and I woke up at 4:30 a.m. so that we could be out of the house by 5 a.m. in order to be in Liverpool in time to catch the plane back to Paris at 7:30 a.m.  (Sarah chose the flights, not me!)  At 4:45 a.m. I realized that I hadn’t seen my passport since Boxing Day.  Enter half an hour of hysterical turning-the-room-inside-out, helped by Trevor and Sarah.  At 5:15, not having found my passport, Sarah and Trevor had to leave so that Sarah, at least, wouldn’t miss her flight.  I continued searching, close to hyperventilation, until about 5:30, at which point Cathy told me, with the sense that comes with motherhood, it seems, that I had already missed the flight and could search more later.  In the meantime, I should try to sleep.  I agreed, and tried to sleep, but my brain was still whirring.  So I called Paul – thankfully, as I had wagered, he was still up.  We didn’t talk for a long time, since once I had calmed down some I was dead tired.  But still, the call had the effect I knew it would; Paul helped me to calm down and comforted me.  (Thank you so much, lad.)  I would have called Mom too, but at that point I still harbored some hope that the passport would show up, and I didn’t want to have Mom panic until absolutely necessary. 

When I woke up at around noon, I spent a horrible few hours turning the rest of the house – and the garbage can – upside down.  No luck.  I think that I must have accidentally thrown the passport (and the large, red plastic folder that it was in?) out with the trash when I came back from Edinburgh on Monday and cleaned my room of the Christmas mess that I’d left it in.  I still don’t know why or how I could have done that – that folder was not inconspicuous (which is why I’d put my passport in it), and I wouldn’t have thrown it out if I had seen it.  ::sigh::  But that must have been what happened. 

So I then bit the bullet and called Mom.  She took it surprisingly well, all things considered, and when I called her back later on, after having searched for a few more hours, she had even come up with help for my solution.  I had already decided that I would have to head into London, to the American Embassy, on Monday and get a temporary passport.  I was supposed to be back teaching in France on Tuesday, but that wasn’t going to happen.  Mom, during the few extra hours that I had searched, had posted a note to her online friends, telling them of my plight, and her wonderful friend Liza, who lives just outside of London, leapt to my aid.  It turned out that she was actually going to be in Nottingham on Sunday (the next day), and so if I could get to Nottingham, I could drive back to London with her and not have to pay train fare,  And then I could stay with her, and she would guide me into London and help me at the embassy.  I thanked the Pococks for everything (for the hundredth time – not nearly enough!), enlisted Nick’s aid (he drove me back to Nottingham – déja vu!) and there met Liza and her daughter Del.  Liza was dropping Del off for another semester of grad school in Nottingham, and she drove with me back to London that evening.

The next day, we caught an early train into London, went to the American Embassy, successfully applied for, waited for and received an emergency passport (oh, they were NOT happy with me), and then wandered around for a few hours before heading back to Liza’s.  By this point, I was feeling pretty rotten – the flu had really set in the night before, and I was queasy, weak and very, very tired.  I slept and lounged around for the rest of the day and for most of Tuesday – Liza convinced me that I should stay where she could take care of me until I was feeling better.  (She is so sweet!)  On Tuesday, Liza, her American friend who is staying with her for several months whose name I keep forgetting

Christmas Hijinks, vols. 1 & 2

Vol. 1 is just below, Vol. 2 is in the “more” section.

I had a wonderful time during my Christmas vacation to England; well, for the most part I had a wonderful time.  That last week, when I was trying to replace the passport I lost and battling the flu, were less fun, although the trouble was mostly made up for by staying with one of my mom’s wonderful friends just outside of London.  But more on all that later.

I left for England on December 20th, and arrived at Liverpool airport in the evening, in the midst of blowing, pouring rain.  Sarah’s parents picked us up and drove us down to Newport, the little town in which they live.  (Sarah is another English assistant here in France, who I made friends with during our training session in Amiens in September.)  Newport is in Shropshire county, near the towns of Shrewsbury, Ironbridge and Telford.  The town is wonderful – tiny, friendly, with several little pubs, a single bookstore, a couple of nice tearooms, a Boots and some of the friendliest inhabitants that it has ever been my pleasure to meet.  Sarah’s family is wonderful – she has two brothers, Michael and Andrew, and a sister, Karen, all of them nice, and two fantastic parents who treated me like I was just another daughter and took care of me when I got into the trouble of my lost passport.  I had my own room in their house, vacated by one of the brothers, although they both came back for the vacations.

During the first few days, we didn’t really do much, which was wonderful.  We ate good food (Yorkshire pudding, mince pies and parsnips are all very good, btw), dropped by the Phez (short for the Pheasant Inn, the family’s favorite pub) of an evening, went to Shrewsbury, Ironbridge and Stafford and saw “The Return of the King.”  On Christmas Eve the whole family plus Michael’s girlfriend and Karen’s fiancé and another couple of friends (and me) went to a really nice dinner at a place nearby called “The Countess’ Arms.”  Christmas Day started out with breakfast, then presents, then Christmas dinner at about 2 p.m.  I made a pecan pie and Cornwallis yams (a sweet potato casserole of sorts) to contribute to the dinner, and both were hits.  We watched the Queen’s Christmas Address at 3 p.m., I called Mom, Graham, Pop and Aunt Suse at about 4, at 5 we played Outburst and a long game of Trivial Pursuit, interrupted on my part by phone calls with Dad and Paul, and then we had “tea,” the English word for supper/dinner.

Boxing Day started with a walk into town to see the Hunt off – I forgot my camera!  Argh!  It was so… so… English.  It was really neat, seeing all the riders in their smart gear on their extremely varied horses, and then to see all the hounds come yelping up and start winding around the legs of the horses and the spectators, and then to see them all ride off.  I don’t know that they actually chase and kill a fox – I’m a bit confused, because Cathy and Trevor (Sarah’s parents) told me that the actual hunting itself has been outlawed, but I heard elsewhere that there are only motions in government to ban it.  Regardless, it was neat to see the beginning.

Boxing night was interesting.  Sarah and I went over to a friend of hers’ house at about 7 for a little pre-partying party, and although I only drank water, it was clear then and throughout the course of the evening that the main activity of Boxing Day is drinking.  After a couple of hours at her friend’s, we went to the Phez, where it was packed.  It was also karaoke night.  Interesting combination, drinking and karaoke.  :-)  At about midnight, we headed over to the only nightclub in town, which is called “Main Street” by everyone (since that was it’s old name), even though it’s actually named something else.  We didn’t want to wait in the long queue, so Sarah scanned the line until she saw a couple of friends that we could cut in with.  One of them, Nick, lived in the house that Sarah now lives in before she moved there – his parents owned it before hers.  Nick and I started talking and didn’t start until very early in the morning, which was okay since Sarah was having a lot of fun with her friends.

The next day, Sarah and I caught a train to Edinburgh very early in the morning.  Okay, it wasn’t really all that early – 9:30 – but after staying up until 4 a.m., 9:30 seems very early, especially since we had to leave the house at 8 to catch the bus to catch the train.  And Sarah wasn’t in very good shape.  Neither was I, even though I had stayed sober the night before.  She and I slept for most of the trip to Edinburgh.

Edinburgh was marvelous!  I love it, and I can’t wait to go back again!  (Fortunately, Mom and I are going to visit it during our trip around England and Scotland at the end of April.)  The few minutes that I was awake on the train, I was flabbergasted by the beauty of Scotland.  Now I can see why Paul became so taken with it when he went there a couple of summers ago!  :-)

While in Edinburgh, Sarah and I stayed with our friend Lauren’s mom and her partner.  (Lauren is another assistant; she works in the same town as Sarah.)  They were so nice, and treated Sarah and me like another pair of daughters.  I was fine understanding them most of the time, although Bill, Georgie’s (Lauren’s mom) partner, is from further north and had a strong enough accent that I did have a few problems.  Fortunately, we all just laughed at my problems.  The location of their house is amazing – a five minute walk from Arthur’s Seat, and with a panoramic view of the Firth of Forth.  (Such a fun name!)

The afternoon that we arrived in Edinburgh, after dropping our bags off at her mom’s Lauren, Sarah and I headed into the heart of Edinburgh.  We walked along the Royal Mile up to the castle, although we didn’t go into the castle itself, not wanting to pay the rather steep entrance fee.  Then we just wandered around for a little while, got some hot chocolate (in my case) at a nice little place called “Chocolate Soup,” and went back to her mom’s at about 7 p.m. for tea and a quiet evening in the house, capped off by an early bedtime.

The next day we started with breakfast and a climb up Arthur’s Seat, a huge hill that looks over Edinburgh and the Forth.  It wasn’t that tough of a climb, although it was fairly cold and very breezy.  Once we got to the top, we had breathtaking views all around, but we also had a punishingly hard and cold wind.  I didn’t truly understand how wind could “take your breath away” until the top of Arthur’s Seat.  I honestly had to hold my hand perpendicularly to my mouth on its windward side just so that I could break the wind enough to feel like I caught a full breath.  It was incredible – if I had been wearing bigger clothes, I feel sure that I could have stretched my arms out and sailed on the wind the two or so miles to the Forth!

Later on that morning, Lauren came and picked Sarah and I up and drove us to see the Forth Bridge and to visit the town where she lives – Musselburgh.  We had ice cream at a shop there (the name escapes me) which is renowned for its ice cream.  And for good reason.  Then we drove back into Edinburgh and walked along Prince’s Street, poking in stores with tantalizing after-Christmas sales on.  That evening, we three got dressed up (me in borrowed finery, since I hadn’t brought anything other than sweaters and jeans) and went out for an evening on the town with Lauren’s friends.  We went to an “American” bar first (it had license plates on the walls, as well as pictures of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean – that sort of thing), and then on to another pub and finally to this fantastic pub/club place called “Espionage.”  This place was really cool.  It had four floors, but you entered, at street level, the top floor.  Each floor had a theme, and while the top two floors were solely bars, the bottom two floors also had dance floors.  We danced until about 2:30 in the morning.  It was so much fun – Lauren’s friends were really nice and we all mocked the music and the dancing when we weren’t actually capable of dancing to it.  (The DJ on the floor that we danced on wasn’t very good – he didn’t really know how to transition from one song to the next, and he kept letting songs with really boring beats last for about five minutes longer than they ought have, but it was still a lot of fun.)

On Monday morning, Sarah and I caught the bus into town and went to all the touristy shops along the Royal Mile.  I felt the need for an Edinburgh sheep (I collect, or rather, have had collected for me, stuffed sheep from all over the world), and I also wanted to get a few other things.  After we had had more than our fill of tartan and bagpipes, we met Lauren for lunch and then at 3 p.m. caught the train back to England.

I really love Scotland and Edinburgh.  I think that Edinburgh is probably my second-favorite non-American city.  (Who out there knows my favorite?)  It’s a lively city, but laid-back in its liveliness.  The architecture is beautiful, but is treated matter-of-factly; I mean that in an endearing way, rather than the annoying way which Parisians seem determined not to notice the beauty of their city.  Everyone I met was so nice, although varyingly comprehensible, and everyone seemed so happy.  I know that I probably got a skewed view, since I visited during the Christmas holidays and right before the joys of Hogamany, but I don’t think things would change much even if it weren’t the holiday season.  :-)  I can’t wait to go back!

::sigh::

I know that terrorism is winning if we allow ourselves to become afraid.  I know that the chances of something happening to me or to someone I know are relatively slim.  But honestly, 2004 has felt very oppressive thus far.  The repeated problems with BA flight 223; the fingerprinting and photographing of non-Americans upon arrival in the US; the crash of the plane from Egypt to Paris; the random, stupid murder of a policeman in Leeds by the man he was trying to arrest for car theft; the re-opening of the investigation of Princess Diana’s death at a time when it seems to me to be best left alone…

I realize that these events are not all on the same scale, nor are they all necessarily ill-advised.  But I am sad to say that I am starting to feel very bad about living when there is so much fear, and even more sad that I am starting to pick up on it.  Truthfully, I am starting to not want to travel - there’s a part of me that just wants to curl up in a snug house and turn my mind away from all of this.

But I can’t do that.  None of us can.  I don’t want to get on a high horse or anything like that - this is simply what I keep reminding myself.  If I give up and despair, then the terrorists have won.  They’ve achieved their terror.  And the best way to combat that terror is to live as strongly as I can, to be happy, and to enjoy everything that I would have enjoyed before.  Not to be heedless of the dangers and not to take unecessary risks, but to refuse to radically alter my life.

Honestly, even though I’m not hugely political, this is one of the big problems that I have with Bush’s policies on terrorism.  I understand that caution and attention are necessary.  But so many of the things going on right now seem to be geared towards bringing out fear, distrust and anger in the American population, which is just what the terrorists want!  By keeping us on the tense level of “orange alert,” or by making it more and more difficult for *any* foreigner to enter the country, the government has succeeded where physical attacks have failed.  After September 11 - yes, there was anger and fear, but the nation also stood together and other countries reached out and demonstrated their friendship; none of this is what a terrorist would want.  But now, we are disliked by many other countries, we are becoming increasingly alarmist and suspicious of anyone who doesn’t fit a certain profile, we are restricting our movements and growing irately isolationist; in short, we are creating the state of mind that terrorist attacks seek to create.

Caution is necessary.  But can’t the government (and individuals) find some way to be cautious without losing the “war against terrorism?”  At some point, don’t you just have to have trust in human nature?  Maybe I’m being hopelessly idealistic.  But can’t you have faith in people in general while mentally allowing for the inevitable few that don’t deserve that faith?  And if you can’t, how can you go about your life?  You become… well, Howard Hughes.  (Perhaps not an exact example, but a related one.)

::pause as she regroups, then a chuckle:: Well, I’ve committed a writing faux pas - I’ve written something that I can’t conclude.  But this entry was more meant to be a jotting-down of my thoughts than anything else.  And, might I add, despite the somber nature of this entry, I mean for it to be hopeful.  I think that we can overcome the fear that seems to be setting in and that 2004 can prove to be a good year despite the tense beginning.  We just have to consciously choose to do so.

Merry new year, and all that…

...from England.  That’s right, folks.  Thanks to her own monumental daftness, Julia managed to misplace her passport - again.  This is the second time that she has done so, and the people at the American Embassy in London today were understandably stern.  She now has her replacement passport and, in an act of contrition, has caught the flu.  ::sigh::

Anyway, all in all, I’ve had a very good break, but you’ll have to wait and hear about it once I get back to France.  It may take a few days - I’m staying with one of my mom’s wonderful friends near London, and she has offered to let me stay here until I’m better.  I may take her up on that - I would be missing work anyway, and staying in a warm house where they speak my language is a whole lot better than staying in my room…all…alone… until I get better.  ::shrug::  We’ll see. 

I hope that everyone had marvelous Christmastimes, and I’ll be posting more frequently soon!

Made it safely, by the way.

I just thought that I should mention that I made it safely to England and am now typing this in the home of my friend Sarah’s family.  Everything has been wonderful thus far.  Amazingly, although I’ve only been in the country for about 24 hours, only about 12 of which have been awake, I have already tried Yorkshire pudding, lamb with mint sauce and mince pies!  All of which were very good.  I went to a nice little pub this evening, got mocked a bit for drinking only fruit juice, and met some very nice people.  Tomorrow we’re going to go see LOTR, Christmas Eve will have a fancy dinner and a long evening at the pub, Christmas day will be the traditional dinner and for a couple of days after Christmas Sarah and I are going to visit a friend in Edinburgh.  Whew!

I hope that everyone is having a happy and safe Christmas, and I look forward to speaking with all of you soon!

Thanks, Paul…

Thanks to a coversation that I had with Paul early Tuesday evening, I spent the better part of Tuesday night working on these possible character-theme-song lyrics for LOTR.  They are still a bit rough around the edges, but I think that you’ll find them interesting, nonetheless.  (At least, I hope so.)  Enjoy!

Legolas
(to the tune of “Barbie World”) – “I’m an elven lord, in an elven world.  Life undying, so satisfying.  We’re the fairest race, for proof just see my face.  Our race won’t fail, instead we’ll sail.”

Aragorn
(to the tune of “I Got Rhythm”) – “I got stubble, I got big sword, I got elf babe – who could ask for anything more?”

Frodo
(to the tune of “That Old Black Magic”) – “The Dark Lord Sauron has me in his spell, with that ruling ring that he forged so well.  Mordor language running through my mind, that same compulsion when the Eye meets mine.”
(to the tune of “I’m Into Something Good”) – “Put on the ring and was feeling fine, then a threat grew in my mind, I saw an eye that was wreathed in fire.  Something tells me I’m into something dire…”

Sauron
(to the tune of “What a Wonderful World”) – “I see skies of ash, and mounts of fire, I see orcs running free, and a mill in the Shire.  And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.”

(to the tune of “Whatever Lola Wants”) – “Whatever Sauron wants…Sauron gets… and dear hobbit, Sauron wants the ring.  Make up your mind to have… no mind left… be-ring yourself, resign yourself, you’re through.”

Saruman
(to the tune of “Puttin’ On the Ritz”) – “You’re confused and you don’t know where to turn to? Why don’t you see the guy who’s swank – at the tower of Orthanc.  Saruman will tell you what’s going on and give you advice that’s really rank – like the tower of Orthanc.  Dressed up like a toilet-papered tree-ee.  Trying to conceal his evil glee-ee.  He will let you look into the palantir and then he’ll ask you to be frank – and lock you up atop Orthanc.” 

Gollum
(to the tune of “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me”) – “We don’t likes it, but we loves it – seems that we’re always thinking of it.  Precious treats us badly but we needs it madly – it’s really got a hold on us.”

All the good guys
(to the tune of “Shambala”) – “Burn away our troubles, melt away our bane, in the fires of Mount Doom.  Take the One Ring there, though you may despair, and destroy it in Mount Doom.”

Wonderful weekend

On Saturday, I went to Paris with the three other English assistants that live at my school.  We left – don’t ask me why, it wasn’t my idea – on the 7:59 a.m. train, which means that we had to leave our school at 7:15 in order to make it to the train, which means that I got up at 6:30.  Ugh.  And, as it turned out, both of the automatic ticket machines were down, there was a line (at 7:45 a.m. on a Saturday?) at the single ticket window, and the 7:59 train was actually a 7:53 train, so we only managed to make the train by dint of much begging in broken French to the conductors to hold the train just one more minute…

Anyway, we made it, and upon arriving in Paris and being joined by another English assistant who is stationed in Amiens, we made our way to the youth hostel.  It was very nice – a three-minute walk from the Louvre, and only 23 euros per night.  We dropped our stuff off and headed out, splitting into two groups.  Lauren, Andrea and I went to the Louvre.  I didn’t spend much time in the museum itself, although I made a perfunctory dash through one wing to celebrate being able to get in free.  In my dash, I discovered a number of rooms that I had not seen before, including the room containing Hammurabi’s Code and the Impressionist room.  I spent most of the hour and a half that we had allotted to the museum wandering around the underground shops in the Carousel; there is a perfume (Angel,  by Thierry Muegler) that I’m thinking about dropping a small fortune on, and I wanted to test a little bit of it on myself before breaking the bank.  It is nice.  Very very nice.  And very very spendy.  I shall have to weigh my options.

After we met up again, we decided to go to see the Eiffel Tower, and then Notre Dame.  It would have made a whole lot more sense to see them in the opposite order, especially since the stadium where we were supposed to meet the other two to go to the football match was beyond the Eiffel Tower, but we weren’t thinking straight.  So we saw those two highlights of any tourist trip to Paris in that order, and then Lauren and I bid farewell to Andrea (who didn’t go to the match) and went to catch the metro to the stadium.

When Camus said, in Huis Clos (“Closed Door”), that “Hell is other people,” he must have just gotten off the Paris metro on route to a football match.  It was ghastly.  There were quite a few people when we first got on, about fifteen stops from our goal, and at each stop a further ten or twenty people tried to crowd on.  No one got off, it seems.  Finally, for the last few stops, no one else, save a midget, could physically get on.  We were packed back-to-back-or-front-or-shoulder, there wasn’t enough air, most of the people who were headed to the game had already had a large quantity of alcohol and/or hadn’t showered in a few days… I started crying at one point – I just couldn’t deal.  I had had a migraine before I got on the train in the first place, and that, combined with nausea from the fumes and the motion and dizziness from the lack of air and space.  Never, ever, ever, ever will I ride the metro to a football game less than three hours before a game.  Never.

Finally, after I started to think that I actually had died and gone to hell, to ride forever on this train, we arrived and the train lost hundreds of thousands of pounds weight as everyone disembarked, save a few extremely-relieved-looking people.  Hannah and Maggie, the other English assistant, were waiting at the two exits from the stop, watching for us.  They practically had to catch me – I have rarely felt as awful as I did then – and Lauren wasn’t in much better shape.  Imagine my joy, then, when after we had battled our way through those same crowds to our seats, to discover glaring lights and a soundsystem set about 300 decibels too loud.  Not fun, again, not fun.  And the person smoking pot two rows in front of us didn’t help.

Then the game began… and it was awesome.  I can’t say that my migraine really went away, although the adrenaline rush of being among these spectators did help some.  But I could mostly ignore the pain, lose it in the feeling of the game.  The word “feeling” isn’t really strong enough – it was more like an out-of-body experience.

Tens of thousands of spectators.  Flags.  Flares.  Confetti.  Rain.  Light.  Rivalries, both friendly and not.  Fights.  Cheers.  Songs and motions performed in unison by thousands of people. 

Incredible.  The game itself was really good.  Paris-St.-Germain against Bordeaux.  They carted three players off the field on stretchers, five yellow cards – two for Paris, three for Bordeaux, two missed penalty shots – one for each side, a handful of offsides, and a final score of 2-1, Paris victory.  Go PSG!

But while the game was good, the most impressive aspect of the game was the feeling.  It was… primal.  When I said that it seemed like an out-of-body experience, I wasn’t stretching the truth.  You get swept up in the emotions of everyone around you.  The chants pealing from thousands of throats is physically palpable and the choreographed motions of their arms and bodies as they pound on the chairs and gesture towards the field is completely hypnotic.  Before you know it, you are cheering the goals, loudly lamenting the misses and injuries of a team whose name you had never heard until a few days before.  You start to feel, if not animosity towards the opposing team’s supporters, then at least a playfully-malicious joy when they are disappointed.  I don’t understand why that blockhead in front of us needed the pot – the experience was intoxicating enough in itself.  I came away feeling slightly drunk.

After the game, Lauren and I stopped in the team shop and picked up a couple of PSG scarves – not that I will ever wear mine, but it is one of the better souvenirs that I’ve ever bought, simply for the memories that it will evoke.  While in the store, I dropped my hat, which I had taken off upon entering the crush inside the store.  A man picked it up and handed it to me, and when I thanked him, said, “Of course, I only did it because you’re a PSG supporter.”  ::chuckle::  Then the four of us walked half an hour in the rain to the next-nearest (supposedly – I wasn’t leading, nor had I consulted a map) metro stop.  We had taken a few steps into the metro stop from which Lauren and I had come a few hours earlier, seen the thousands of people being herded by the gendarmes onto the train in “small” batches, and decided that it would be better to get wet.  We returned to the hostel, changed out of our now-soaked clothes, and went as a quintet to a little pizza/pasta place four steps from the door of the hostel.  Originally we had thought that we would go to a nice dinner in Montmartre, but none of us who had been to the match at all felt like dealing with the metro or people in general again, and the pizza place was charmingly, echoingly empty.  We nearly fell asleep in our food (which was quite good, and very cheap: a three-course menu with a pizza as the main plate was only 9.50), and we went straight back to the hostel afterwards and fell asleep.  It was about 11 o’clock.
Sunday morning we awoke at 8 a.m., went down to the breakfast room and had our included-in-the-price breakfast (quite good as well), then went back to our room and prepared to leave.  We had a bit of trouble at this point – four of us (the four who had gone to the game) wanted to leave on the 12:46 p.m. train, but Andrea was really disappointed not to see more of Paris and wanted to leave on the 4:15 p.m. train.  She would have gone on the earlier train if we had all gone, but this was her first real trip to Paris and she made us (or me, at least) feel really guilty for wanting to leave.  We all remained resolute, and she had accepted semi-graciously the defeat when I suddenly decided to stay.  What decided me was the blue, blue sky shining through the skylight in the lobby and the remembrance that I came to France to explore, stretch my limits, spend time doing things.  So Andrea and I stayed until 4.

We all went to Montmartre and Sacré Coeur together at about 10:30.  Lauren, Andrea and I went inside the basilica briefly – they were just starting mass and the organ was playing.  We went back outside, and there agreed that the others would go wander around Montmartre for half an hour while I went back inside and listened to some of the mass.  Once again, I was swallowed by sound and visuals, but this time the effect was sublime rather than primal.  The organ’s notes reverberated through the space, especially the bass notes, which gave my stomach lining a massage.  The nuns who sat near the altar with the priests frequently sang and led the congregation in Gregorian-style chanting, unlike any sort of music I’ve ever heard in a Protestant ceremony.  The mosaics – which have all the people dressed in Victorian-era garb, since the basilica was completed in 1886 or thereabouts – glinted in the lights from the windows and the candles.  In general, the interior of the basilica was a place of light, unlike the interiors of many of the great Gothic cathedrals, full of shadows and candle-whispers.  At one point, the sun fell through a red portion of the glass onto the auburn hair of a woman in front of me and suddenly it seemed as though her head were alight with flames.  The effect was not as gruesome as it sounds.  Rather, given the holiness of the surroundings, it seemed that she was being chosen to work some great miracle, a halo of fire signifying the selection.  It was only with great reluctance that I left the basilica after a half-hour.

We split up, the others leaving to catch the train and Andrea and I walking down the Montmartre hill to the metro.  We took the metro to the Champs-Elysées, which Andrea had wanted to see, and walked from there across the beautiful Pont Alexandre III to Les Invalides.  The weather was spectacular – blue sky, a few artistically-strewn white clouds that would occasionally hide the sun and instead create the sunfalls so beloved in inspirational pictures, and a warm-cold temperature that was pleasant in a sweater, coat and some gloves, but no hat or scarf.  We walked into Les Invalides, decided not to pay 7 euros to see Napoleon’s tomb or the military museum, and instead availed ourselves of the free bathrooms near the gift shop.  Afterwards, we walked (and walked and walked – it was further than I had remembered) to the Saint-Germain-des-Près district, got some food at a kebab place, then walked back to the hostel via the Pont des Arts and the courtyard of the Louvre.  We gathered our things, which we had left at the hostel while we wandered, took the metro to the Gare du Nord, and after a brief struggle involving our tickets and changing their departure time, went and boarded our train. 

That was the final, crowning joy (for me) of our trip – the train that we took for the first leg of our trip back to Laon was a double-decker, and we got to sit on the top floor of the non-smoking car.  I felt like I was a kid again, going with my preschool classes on train-riding field trips.  We would take the train from San Antonio to New Braunfels (I think), a distance of maybe 30 miles.  I have only a few memories from preschool, but one very distinct memory is of boarding an enormous train with my mom holding my left hand – she often chaperoned these trips.  I think that this might have been in early spring, because it was very sunny, but for some reason I also remember the other kids wearing long sleeves, hats, etc.  The trains were almost always the double-decker, luggage-on-the-bottom-level, humans-on-the-top sort, and it was amazing for me as a short preschooler to be able to see the tops of cars and houses and things like that.  So, since I first discovered that there were double-decker trains here in France, I have been hankering to ride one, to rediscover the old thrill.  And may I say that it hasn’t lessened at all with age and increased stature.  ::grin::

P.S.  Random side note to all you single girls out there – if you ever want to pick up a good-looking guy, go to a Paris football game.  The girl to boy ratio was about 1:100, if that.  We four girls were getting lots of looks!

Addendum

::just a few moments after finishing the previous entry:: I love the internet.  Three minutes with switchboard.com and, without even knowing the correct city for the people whose address I needed, I found them and have addressed my little package, ready to be sent first thing tomorrow.  So, yeah, the internet is great, both for research and for keeping in touch with people. 

I love football!

Or rather, soccer, to us Americans.  I’m really excited, because I’m going to see a soccer game in Paris this weekend with the other English assistants.  It’s Paris v. Bordeaux, no major teams or players, but it will still be a lot of fun, I think. 

Not much else has been going on, really.  I’ve been working frantically to finish all of my Christmas presents, and I finally got the last one sent off today.  (Oh, no, wait, there’s one that I haven’t sent off because I don’t have the address… shoot.)  Well, I’ve gotten *most* of them sent off, and I feel a great sense of relief.

I’ve also been trying to learn how to knit on four needles.  I want to make a hat, and to do so nicely I have to be able to knit on four needles so that I can decrease at the top and make the hat come to a close.  So, imagine what I said a few weeks ago about the secret code of knitting, then imagine that rather than using two needles (the standard vision of knitting) you are using four - or rather, five.  You have four that always have stitches on them, arranged in a tic-tac-toe board shape, and you use a fifth needle as the “working” needle, that actually does the knitting.  It’s very confusing and, what’s more, far too pointy.  I knit sitting down and I keep poking myself in the stomach with one or more of the needles?  But it will be good for me to know, so I keep at it.  I just hope that I made the hat big enough around - I don’t want to rip everything out!

That’s about it.  I’m starting to get excited about the trip to England, especially since it’s only a week and a bit away.  However, I’m sad too.  I was walking around Reims (another city in the area, where I went to do some shopping), and they were playing Christmas music over the loudspeakers in the streets.  At one point they started playing an instrumental version of an American carol, and I almost started crying.  It just hit me hard right then how far away from home I am and how this will be the first time in my life that I haven’t spent Christmas with my family.  I know that I wouldn’t spend every Christmas with my family for my entire life, but somehow it seems like it would have been easier if the first one away from them weren’t in a foreign country.  Then again, maybe not.  Still, I got a bit homesick then.  I got better, and I’m still looking forward to England, but…

Thanksgiving revelries, part 3 (The End)

On Friday, we pressed on for Strasbourg, and arrived in time for a late lunch at a good pizza/Italian place about five minutes from the hotel.  Then we spent the remainder of daylight wandering around the old part of town, which is easy to find, being a little island cut off from the rest of the city by a ring of canals.  Then we all went back to the hotel and took naps.  We emerged at 6:30ish and headed back into the old town.  (We spent little time elsewhere during the day and a half that we were in Strasbourg – it’s where the Christmas markets and the cathedral and other things like that were.)  After wandering around admiring the Christmas lights for an hour, we ended up eating at a place called Europ’Café.  The food was quite good, and we had fun trying to talk with a guy from the next table who was from the area.  Aunt Suse would have liked to really talk with him, but unfortunately he spoke only French, and very quiet French at that.  It was all I could do to hear them, although when I could hear him his French was relatively accent-free.  After dinner and two hot chocolates on my part, we went back to the hotel, where I watched “The Fellowship of the Ring” dubbed into French.  Oh, I just can’t WAIT for “The Return of the King”!!!!!!!!  Eeep!!! ::grin::

On Saturday, we hit the Christmas markets.  Or, rather, the Christmas markets (and the noise and pressure of thousands of people crammed into small spaces) hit us.  The markets were nice, by and large, although there were a lot of repetitious products.  Lots of hot wine (mostly red, but we found a couple of booths that sold white and burgundy), lots of gaufres (thick waffles spread with any of a number of sweeeeeeeet things), lots of ceramic houses, lots of spice cookies (a regional specialty), lots of… well, lots of lots of things.  Only two booths really stand out in my mind as having really different stuff – one, a booth that sold glass ornaments made by a glass blowing workshop in between Strasbourg and Metz, and the other a booth that had hand-carved wooden Santas with their wooden robes painted in different colors and patterns.  I really liked the Santas, but when the smallest (about five inches tall) cost 65 euros, I decided to pass. 

Aunt Suse did get me a marvelous pair of Christmas presents, though not from one of the booths.  Rather, there was a guy set up on a corner with a rack of engravings that he had made and printed.  I had noticed him but wasn’t going to go over, but Aunt Suse and Jill walked over, so I joined them.  I’m so glad that I did.  The artist – M. Addis – was really talented.  His engravings (and a few oil pastels, I think) were exquisite.  There were two that I was really taken with – one a detail of the door of the cathedral of Strasbourg, the other a detail of the grand organ inside the cathedral – and since I couldn’t decide and they make a nice pair, Aunt Suse bought them both for me.  The artist also did his own matting, and these two happened to be matted in the same way, with an simple embossed pattern on the cream matboard.  One of the first things I did when I got back to Laon was to go to Carrefour and buy two “floating” frames to put them in to protect them, and hang them up on my wall.  They look lovely, and so grown up!

We spent many hours in the various groups of stalls – you had to, since you couldn’t move more than a few feet a minute.  For those of you who have visited San Antonio during Fiesta, think Night in Old San Antonio, all day long.  I enjoyed it for a while, but there were just too many people for me.  So, I’m sorry to say, by the time we had gotten back to the hotel, freshened up and headed back out for dinner, I was in a bad mood.  I eventually grew less snappish, but for a while there I’m sure that I wasn’t any fun to be around.  Thank you, Aunt Suse and Jill, for putting up with me.

After breakfast on Sunday, we loaded up the car and headed out of town.  On the way out we stopped by the Orangerie, which had both been recommended to us by a friend and supposedly had a market of its own.  L’Orangerie is a large park with several little ponds and a small zoo and lots of pretty paths wandering through the trees and up and down hills.  There wasn’t a market that we could find, but it was still a nice, calm way to say goodbye to Strasbourg, and helped to balance my opinion of the city.

There is one opinion that I have of the city that I doubt will change, and that is that the cathedral is uuuuuuuuuugllllllllllyyyyyyyyyyy!  There is a local stone (I assume it’s local, because there’s a lot of it scattered across the city in roads and buildings) that looks like desert pattern camouflage.  You know, the pink and tan and black one.  I’ve never thought that desert pattern camouflage is particularly pretty, and I have to say that I think it gets downright hideous when spread over a mammoth, six-story-tall cathedral.  I just wanted to power-blast the stones clean, down to some nice grey or tan color.  (That’s why it looks so good in my two engravings – they’re in greyscale.)  Plus, the inside of the cathedral just seemed dark and claustophobic, especially after the airiness and space of the Metz cathedral.  So, yeah, I don’t like the Strasbourg cathedral.

We got to Paris on Sunday evening, checked into a hotel by Charles de Gaulle airport, and took the expensive (7.75 euros one-way) RER into the city center.  From there we went into the St-Germain district, which is probably my favorite area in all of Paris.  The weather was cold and drippy, but once we got to St-Germain, it all seemed better.  The narrow, winding streets were brightly lit and filled – but not unpleasantly – with people reading the menus in front of restaurants and generally enjoying an evening’s stroll.  We did likewise, and found ourselves at a homey restaurant that served raclettes, which is what I had decided I wanted for dinner.  I don’t know if I’ve described raclettes before, but they are roasted potatoes served with ham and a cheese that you melt and pour over them.  Yum.  The restaurant we chose had a bargain prix fix menu – choice of entrée, main course and dessert for 15 euros.  And these were big portions.  We all had a salad with a yummy mustard vinaigrette dressing for the entrée, and I had the raclette and a crème brulée. 

I went to the bathroom before we left the restaurant, which turned out to be a very good thing, since, thanks to a mistake of mine, we didn’t get back to the hotel for about two hours.  (Normally it should have taken about 45 minutes.)  You see, Julia couldn’t sort out the myriad directions for the RER, and so we ended up getting on the correct line – just headed in the wrong direction.  By the time Aunt Suse said, “Um, are we going in the right way?,” we’d already been riding for about fifteen minutes.  We got off at the next stop, only to find that there was no way of getting across to the platform for the trains going in the other direction, short of hopping down the four feet down onto the tracks and back up again.  (I was sorely tempted, let me tell you.)  Rather, looking at the map, I took a gamble that if we rode two stops further on, we would be able to catch the train going the other way, since that stop had correspondences with other trains.  It turned out, however, that the map only mentioned two out of about six stops between where we had gotten off and where we thought that we could turn around.  Lovely. 

We got to the correspondence-stop, and for a couple of minutes it looked like I had been wrong yet again and that we wouldn’t be able to catch the train going the other way, and would have to take a taxi from one end of Paris to the other – an expensive proposition.  But we explained to some very nice policemen our predicament, and they showed us how to reach the opposing platform.  We rode as far north as the train went – to the Gare du Nord – but when we got there, we still had about half an hour left by train, and the last shuttle from the RER station at the airport back to the hotel was to leave in fifteen minutes.  So, after all that, we STILL had to take a taxi.  GRRRRRRR!!!!!  I was/am so frustrated – I should have been able to sort out the maps!

Aunt Suse and Jill left early Monday morning – I woke up long enough to say goodbye and give Aunt Suse a big hug, then went back to sleep for another couple of hours.  I turned in the keys at about 10:15 a.m., then went outside to catch the shuttle to the RER station.  I was supposed to meet a friend in front of Notre Dame at 11:30 a.m., but my luck from the night before was still holding.  First the shuttle was late, then I couldn’t get change for the automatic ticket machines at the RER station and they wouldn’t take my bank card and the line at the windows was about fifteen people deep, then the train that I caught made a couple of long stops, then the metal detectors at the locker rental room in the Gare du Nord (I rented a locker for the day) were set at “tooth filling,” then all the automatic Metro ticket dispensers at the Gare du Nord were broken and the line at the single ticket window open was about twenty people deep… Just not my 24 hours for trains.  I got to Notre Dame at 12:15, and not surprisingly my friend had given up and left.  I spent a couple of hours wandering around Paris, mostly to get my money’s worth out of my locker rental, and then went back to the Gare du Nord, got my stuff out of the locker, and caught a train back to Laon.

Whew!  A lot happened during the four and a half days that Aunt Suse and Jill were here.  It was so, so good to see Aunt Suse – she’s a really cool and nice aunt, and having her come visit me seemed to validate, somehow, my living in France.  Rather than being the lost sheep, for that weekend at least I was the guide.  I was the one who spoke the language and knew my way around some of the customs of the country.  It did feel strange, however, to have them depart on Monday without me.  I’ve traveled before with Aunt Suse in France, and so after a few hours it almost seemed like this was another such trip.  So to say goodbye and realize that I technically am living here was a bit…hmmm, surreal, I guess.  All in all, though, the weekend was wonderful and comforting and a lot of fun.  ::happy smile::

Intermission

A brief break in the “Tales of Strasbourg,” mostly because I want to watch Johnny Carson tonight (yay Johnny Carson DVDs!; by the way, I’ve taken to writing my entries the night before I post them), and hence don’t want to write a big, long entry about Strasbourg.  But I do have one or two things that I want to say.

1.)  My friend Dustin ROCKS!!!!!  I received a little package from him a couple of days ago, which contained two burned-at-home DVDs and a letter.  I read the letter, and he mentioned something in the postscript about how he had read a few of my entries in this blog and thought that I could “use some bob.  It’s the best medicine for the weary soul that [he] can think of.”  I didn’t quite understand what he meant until I looked at the contents of the DVDs yesterday afternoon.  On one, he had included a bunch of “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” a show that I have never seen (nor 2000, for that matter), but about which I have heard a lot of good.  On the other – and this is what really makes me say that he rocks – he included three episodes of Bob Ross, the fantastically soothing host of a long-running series on PBS titled “The Joy of Painting.”  Watching this guy is like taking a sedative.  I fondly remember one day on sub-free (the wonderful dorm that I lived in for all of my four years at Reed) when a group of us watched three or four episodes of Bob back to back.  Looking at us, you would have thought that we were all drugged up, but it’s just the effect of Bob and his “happy trees.”  ::grin::  So yeah, Dustin is marvelous!

2.)  The combination of Dustin’s gift and a conversation I had tonight with one of the other English assistants here in Laon just makes me realize how much I miss my friends in America.  As soon as I figured out what was on Dustin’s DVDs, I wanted to run over and tell my friends here about it, but then I realized that they would just think me strange and not understand why I get so worked up about a painting show and some fireworks.  (Dustin is a firework fanatic, and he has videotaped and meticulously cleaned up and transferred quite a few hours of live fireworks shows onto DVD, a bit of which he included on the DVD with “The Joy of Painting.”)  And then tonight, I was talking about which of my many new movies we should watch with two of the other English assistants, and one of them said that it couldn’t be any of the old ones, because she is just bored by old movies.  I tried to suggest that perhaps she wouldn’t be bored by all old movies, but she didn’t even allow the possibility.

This is all a way of explaining just why I miss my Reedie/American friends so much.  Even though my friends think I’m weird and don’t necessarily understand all of my eccentric tastes, they accept them and perhaps like me even more *because* they don’t understand them.  One of the things I find most wonderful about my experience at Reed is the fact that I made all these friends with myriad and unusual interests – Dustin with his fireworks and his theater organs, Debbie with her martial arts and her scrub jays, Jon with his beliefs and his percussion, David with his poetry and his puns – and that we all like the fact that we’re all “weird.”  I miss that here.  I miss feeling like I can be wholly myself and not be judged for it.  If I want to spend several hours watching reruns of a show featuring a holdover hippie painting happy trees, I would be joined in my endeavor by several other people, were I in America.  Here, I can’t even really watch my favorite movies in company, because everyone else is bored by them.  ::sigh and shrug::  Oh well – I’ll just be that much more happy to get back.  And I’m not unhappy here – I had just forgotten how much freedom and joy my friendships at home gave me. 

So thanks, to everyone – Debbie, Mom, Stephie, Paul, Dustin, April, Jamieson, Jonathan, David, Dan, Erik, Michelle, Nancy, Graham, Dad, Pop, Aunt Suse, the Elickers, Uncle Joey, Aunt Lokken, Natalie, Leah, Ron, Emma, Charlotte, Amy, Grandma Jo, Granddaddy Richard, Aunt Marguerite, Uncle Denis, Aunt Faith, Lucia… thank you all so much for loving and/or liking me freely and for who I am.  I love you all in return, and you are in my thoughts frequently.  ::big hug for everyone::

Thanksgiving revelries, part 2

Mid-afternoon on Thursday, the three of us headed off towards Strasbourg.  Jill was wonderful and let me sit up front so that I wouldn’t get carsick.  Originally we had thought that we would only go as far as just past Reims that day, but I had found out that the entire distance from Laon to Strasbourg could be covered in something like four hours, so we decided to go as far as Metz that night (about two-thirds of the distance).

The French A-roads are very good, by and large.  They are fast, relatively direct, and generally in good repair.  The only problem that I have with them is that they are expensive.  They are toll roads, but there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the placement of the toll plazas, nor how much one has to pay.  If I remember correctly, you can go from Laon almost all the way to Reims (about an hour) without running into any tollbooths, but between Metz and Strasbourg (about an hour and a half) you go through four.  (The distances and numbers may be a bit off in that reckoning, but they are close enough to give the general idea.)  It seems as if the French government just gave a Gallic shrug when asked where to put the toll plazas and how much to charge and said, “Zis does not mattayr, put zem where you will, life is zuffering anyway…”

We arrived in Metz when it was fully dark, which is to say at about 5:30 p.m.  I was very glad that Aunt Suse was driving, since if I had been driving I would have crashed the car, so busy was I being astounded by the beauty of the cathedral which looms above the city.  I don’t know if any of you have heard of Metz or its cathedral, but the one is a charming town and the other is one of the most beautiful cathedrals that I have ever had the pleasure to view.  It’s in the Gothic style (I think – I might have my architectures confused) – flying buttresses, lots of arches-within-arches – and its roof is blue!  I will try to post soon some of the dozens of pictures that I took of the cathedral during the total of three hours that I was out and about in the city.  It is truly lovely, in my opinion.

We found a random hotel – one of the Hotel Ibis chain – and checked in for the night, then walked to the old portion of town (a five-minute walk) and found ourselves a restaurant.  The place we chose was really good, and the portions were enormous.  For 9 euros, I got a side salad, a small baked potato with crème fraiche, a three-egg omlette, a drink of my choice (I got pineapple juice) AND a dessert.  We sat and enjoyed a leisurely meal; or rather, we enjoyed all of it, save the parts where the people at the next table lit up some brand of cigarette that managed to be even more noxious than most cigarettes are.  Fortunately, they only smoked when they weren’t eating, and given the pre-described portions at this place, eating took up most of their time.

After dinner, we wandered around the magical streets of Metz, enjoying our first experiences of the season’s Christmas lights.  Quite a few people were out and about, enjoying the relatively nice weather.  The town just seemed comfortable to me, an impression which was reinforced the next morning, as we rambled around for an hour or two, enjoying the marvelously sunny weather and exploring the little Old Town.  We went inside the cathedral, which was just as graceful inside as it was outside, and wandered around a little church that had some strinkingly Middle Eastern aspects to it, as well as the added charm of purple doors.

After getting as much of our fill of Metz as we could given our time constraints, we left for Strasbourg at about 11:30, hoping to get there by lunch.  (To be continued…)