Night Two-Hundred and Thirty-Seven

ça arrive


Arriver is a such a useful French verb. You can arrive at an accomplishment or comprehension of how to do something, people and things arrive, of course, when they come toward you from away, and the expression "ça arrive" means something a little like "shit happens", which we say too, but the French (having invented the idea) say it better.

Arriver is the perfect verb for my life right now. J'arrive, ils arriveront, et, oui, ça arrive.

Night Two-Hundred and Twenty-Four

but wait, there's more

Today was the day that I was supposed to get on an airplane and fly back home. But yesterday, on night two-hundred and twenty-three, I instead found myself back on that familiar TGV from Paris to Aix (and then stranded, briefly, in the Aix train station, but that's another story) and now, as I type this, I am looking out the window at this:



I can't imagine that there is anyone reading my blog who doesn't already know the story behind why I'm still in Manosque. But, if you're out there, lurking, and you want to know, I guess you'd better either declare yourself or learn to live with the mystery. At any rate, I'll be here.

Night Two-Hundred and Nineteen

wednesday night still life


Packing for Paris, where I am going tomorrow.

Night Two-Hundred and Sixteen

les chanceuses

It’s funny when you know something is coming for a long time and then it comes.

We are at the beach. We have been planning this trip for months. It was alternately intended to happen in Sardignia, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, but in the end we just drove a couple of hours south and rented a mobile home in a sprawling campground near a construction zone (so THAT’s why it was so cheap…) It is too windy, and when the wind dies down it’s too buggy, but it doesn’t matter. We’ve had seven months of what feels like the best luck the universe could muster, savoring our small-town dorm life like a group of international princesses on a hotplate vacation. Now we are very close to the end, and we just needed a place to enjoy our girlhood one last time before we all run off to grow up (okay, I’m really speaking for my old self here. The other three have a ways to go, yet.) Anyway, this mobile home (I’m sorry, mo-beel ome) will do.

I remember as a teenager often feeling that I had just missed out on the really good part. Like something wonderful had always seemed to have happened just before I got there, and all that was left were the older kids exaggerated recollections of how amazingly cool it had been (they had been freshman at the time, their perspectives therefore hopelessly skewed by their noses pressed against the glass). Probably things are never quite as good as they seem through the eyes of former high school freshmen. Still, I have caught myself more than once in the last few months feeling as if I was really truly (finally!) in the golden moment, exactly where I was supposed to be exactly when I was supposed to be there. And you know what? It really was as good as they said.

So, this is the beginning of the end. Tomorrow we head back to Manosque, and a few days after that suitcases will be packed and rooms emptied for the last time. We are sentimental, here at the beach, and resistant to the sentimentality, as if we might be able to slow the earth’s rotation through denial. Last night, as we were walking home from dinner, one of us sighed and said “Oh, girls…” and another one blurted out “Horse!” It worked. We were successfully distracted into a discussion about the French words for horse and hair and how easy it is to confound the plural forms (“first week mistakes, girls, first week mistakes”, our linguist chided).

There are new first weeks on the horizon, with new first week mistakes. Will our luck follow each of us home, or will it disperse as our proximity decreases, like wonder-quad powers? There’s no telling. We will pack our bags, we will get on buses and trains and planes, and we will see how far this fortune can stretch.

Happy Birthday Emmett!

night one-hundred and ninety-six



Welcome to the family. We are so glad you're finally here.

Night One-Hundred and Ninety-Two

la vitesse

How can thirty-five days have passed since my last post?

We all seem to be experiencing an inverse relationship between the lengthening spring days and our perceptions of the passage of time. We have started to talk about the end, and after, and we are at once already departed and more here than we have ever been.

Things have happened. A full recap is obviously out of the question, so I’m just going to pick some photos that I like and use them as an outline:

Sunday, February 15th, Café de la Poste, Manosque, France



That’s the post office there in the reflection. Right after I took this, two old men called me over to their table (and I went, as I am wont to do when old men call me over, as they are wont to do) and I somehow managed to incite an argument between them about Sarkozy, the watching of which was an entertaining way to spend an hour.

Thursday, February 19th, my dorm room, Manosque, France


Here’s Matt, taking a well-deserved rest after 20 hours of airplane and bus travel.

Friday, February 20th, Manosque, France


I live here.

Saturday, February 21st, Rocher de Bellevue, Saignon, France


About sixty seconds after I took this picture we decided to get married here.

Saturday, February 21st, St. Remy de Provence, France


Later that same day in St. Remy. I just like this picture.

Sunday, February 22nd, Manosque, France


We took advantage of having access to a real kitchen and threw a dinner party. Unfortunately, I forgot that everything is closed on Sunday, and ended up having to improvise dinner for 9 people with whatever I could scrounge from our dorm cupboard. We ended up having gluten-free taglietelli with baby artichokes, jambon, and chevre, an herbed pork loin (fortuitously purchased Saturday) cooked in (slightly aged) apples, roasted potatoes, salad, and a beautiful apple tart made my Linda. It was decidedly not my most successful culinary effort ever, but we didn’t starve (for food or good company).

Monday, February 23rd, somewhere in Provence, France


Goats!

Tuesday, February 24th, Amsterdam, Netherlands

I loved Amsterdam and took a gazillion pictures. Here are three:






These swans have a strong sense of irony.

Saturday, February 28th, Clessé, France


We spent two lovely days at the home of our friends Xavier and Regan in the wine country in Eastern France.

And then we all piled in le camping car and made our way, via Annecy…



to Switzerland.

Sunday, March 1st, somewhere in the Valais region of Switzerland


The Swiss wine makers have squeezed grape vines into every available square inch of their steep steep fields. It’s kind of amazing.

It was fun hanging out with Regan and Xavier and camping out by the side of Lake Geneva, but Switzerland was cold and expensive, and we were happy to get back to sunny Provence.

Saturday, March 7th, Roussillon, France

]

And eat one last time at our favorite place in Eygalières, where we managed to become regulars in the space of two weeks.



Monday, March 9th, Manosque, France



On Matt’s last day in Manosque, we all went up to the top of Mont d’Or…



…and had a chilly picnic.

Sunday, March 15th, Reillanne, France

The following Sunday, I was invited over by one of the professors who I work with for the most gorgeous Sunday lunch with her most gorgeous family.



March 15th was (supposedly) the last day for burning in our department (I have noticed that not everyone got the memo). Here’s Cris’ husband Alfie taking advantage.



Wednesday, March 18th, Saignon, France



Last Wednesday me and my posse rolled into Saignon to do some wedding business. We sat and had drinks at the Auberge next to this fountain, and, when the girls ordered sirops, the incredibly kind woman who was serving us brought out a pitcher, held it under the running stream of the fountain, and plunked it down on our table. It tasted extra good.

Friday, March 20th, the dorm hallway, Manosque, France

Which brings us to this past Friday, when we invited some friends over for another whatever-was-left-in-the-fridge dinner. We had potatoes baked in crème fraiche with gruyere, a zucchini fritatta, salad, pasta Bolognese (by Carmen, of course), and Mars ice-cream bars and champagne for dessert. Afterward, we did the only thing you can do when you find yourself forced to confront the inexorable march of time and (as Carmen beautifully put it as we were walking home late from the cinema a few days later) “le futur inconnu”: we danced.

Night One-Hundred and Fifty-Seven

on attende



Me and this dog, we're both waiting for something (though me with significantly more enthusiasm). Matt gets here in 4 hours...

Night One-Hundred and Fifty-Three

my favorite house in Manosque



Photographed today on the walk to Yves and Anne's for lunch, which was, yes, very delicious.

Night One-Hundred and Fifty-Two

saturday morning still life


espresso, Paris Match, Friday night detritus

Night One-Hundred and Fifty-One

au LEP, vendredi, 8h56



Took this on my way into work this morning at the LEP, where I spend my Fridays.

Nights One-Hundred Thirty-Six through One-Hundred Forty-Seven

les weekends

My students crack me up all the time by asking me how to say words in English that are already (and, to me, transparently) English words. They say “Madame, comment dire camping en anglais? Madame, comment dire sandwich? Comment dire weekend?” Really? Weekend? Does that sound like a French word to you? If you don’t get why this is funny, imagine an American kid asking their French teacher what the word is for “rendezvous” in French.

Anyway, this post is about weekends (in French: weekends) and how we’ve been spending them lately. We have less than three months to go and, as they say, il faut profiter. And we have been profiting pretty well for ourselves. Over the past two weeks, we’ve been to Avignon:


Chapel at the Palais des papes. Avignon was the Papal seat from 1305 - 1378.

Aix-en-Provence (twice):


a couple of cute buttons


La Rotonde (also in Aix), 1860

Sisteron:


Rocher de la baume (this one's for Dave)

and the annual truffle market in Forcalquier:


No, these are not truffles. They are delicious, locally-made aperitifs. I bought a thyme one. Mmmm...

And here's one of our little local posse (minus the pineapple) on Sunday at the lake here in Manosque:


Me, Paola, Carmen, Linda, Dunia, Sébastien and Patrice

Night One-Hundred and Forty-Six

The sky is getting pretty again. I hope this means that Spring is coming.

Night One-Hundred and Twenty-Eight

mountain of gold

January 21st marked two special occasions: the first day we all got to say “President Obama”, and the first anniversary of my first date with the man who will be my husband by this time next year. It seemed like a good moment to climb something and take a look around, so Carmen and I found the highest point in the immediate vicinity – Mont d’or – and we went up it.

We didn’t really know the route, but we knew where to start and we figured if we just kept going up, eventually we’d get there.

And we did. It was a perfect, sunny day. The path up the mountain goes through olive orchards…







…and when you get to the top, there are two sides of a tower – the remnants of the dungeon of the palace of Count William I of Provence…





…and an unbelievable view of the countryside and the Luberon mountain range.



We took the wrong path to get back down and found ourselves on the backside of the mountain in the middle of a bunch of farms.



This, for some reason, made me feel completely giddy, but Carmen was less amused, having twisted her ankle, so I wandered way out into a field to ask a farmer which was the way back to Manosque. He gave me the most French directions ever (which is to say that he took about 15 minutes to say “take this road here and walk that way”) and I thanked him and walked away thinking about how scared I would have been to have had that same conversation a few months ago when I first arrived here.

Mais oui, comme tout, ça change.

Night One-Hundred and Thirty-Nine

lundi, 14h36

I came to Le Caffé to post a blog post that I wrote last night about climbing Mont d'or, but I forgot that it's Monday and the café is closed. So, I'm crouched on a stoop outside stealing their wifi, and I realized that this - this constant search for internet, dashed hopes and disabled wifi connections - has been such a huge part of my experience here that I should record it. So, here's the picture that I just took with PhotoBooth, of where I am, right now, this moment:

Nights One-Hundred and Twenty-Three through One Hundred and Twenty-Five

en el centro

I’m having a little trouble finding a unifying theme to describe our weekend in Madrid. It wasn’t particularly life-altering or revelatory, I guess. It was just a perfect perfect weekend away. Here, I’ll show you:

Madrid is the exact geographic center of Spain – all distances in Spain are measured from this point in Puerta del Sol.


Here is Juliana standing on it.


The first thing we did when we got there was, of course, eat. Now, either we had the best luck ever or Madrid is one of the best places in the world to eat, because we didn’t seek out specific restaurants or consult locals, we just stopped wherever we were when we were hungry, and we did not eat one meal that wasn’t excellent.



Our first meal was definitely the highlight, though. We found ourselves, in our very first hour in the city, in a raucous, packed, upscale joint surrounded by high-powered business people midway through lunches that had clearly started hours before and for which there was no end in sight. Did I mention this was at four o’clock in the afternoon? We asked the guys at the table next to us if they were going back to work after and they kind of all looked around sheepishly and started laughing, which either meant we’re supposed to but we’re not going to, or that question is so dumb. Then they ordered another bottle of wine and passed us over a huge pile of meat (this was after we had already finished our lunches – the waitresses had to bring us new forks, which they seemed to think was hilarious). So, y’know. Awesome.



That night, after siesta and sangria…



we went salsa dancing, which was tons of fun. Someone outside told us it cost 15 euro to get in, but the doorman apparently appraised us as being cute enough for 10 euro entry (though, apparently not as cute as the girl in front of us who got in for 6). Except for Juliana, none of us knew how to salsa, but, as luck would have it, the place was chock full of South American military guys who were giving out free lessons. But we said “no” and hung out by the bar talking about how much we missed our boyfriends. Or something. Hi honey!



The next day we went to the Reina Sofia museum, where I stood in front of Guernica for half an hour and had my mind blown.

One thing that I found funny about Madrid was that there is no major body of water – no sea or river – by which to orient. Another thing that was funny was when Carmen dropped her camera in the one body of water we did find: the turtle pond inside the tropical forest at the Madrid train station.



Okay, it wasn’t funny ha ha (but it sort of was).


Here’s Carmen finding the funny.

That night we ate paella…



at the most delightfully kitschy restaurant that had a very Lautrec-y looking painting on the wall.



The waiter saw us looking at it and said, very earnestly, that it was a Picasso. Then later he said it was a copy of a Picasso from the period where Picasso was copying Lautrec. Then later he brought us champagne sorbet for dessert and we stopped caring about the painting.



I had being going on and on the whole weekend about how great it is that Madrileños sleep late and eat late and stay out late, but I got my comeuppance Sunday morning when we couldn’t find a single. open. café. And I almost lost my mind.

Eventually we found coffee, completely confounded the people sitting at the table next to us by switching from Spanish to Italian to French to English every couple of words (oh, we’re such scamps!) and then took a lovely walk through Parque de El Retiro...



to the Palacio de Cristal.



And is this post has no unifying theme, I will also dispense with an attempt to find a satisfying conclusion.



Gracias Madrid. Me gustas tu.