two hundred and twenty three nights

Night Two-Hundred and Thirty-Seven

2009-05-18T00:10:00.004+02:00

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

2009-05-05T13:54:00.003+02:00

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

2009-04-30T01:15:00.001+02:00

wednesday night still life

Packing for Paris, where I am going tomorrow.

Night Two-Hundred and Sixteen

2009-04-27T17:41:00.003+02:00

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!

2009-03-30T17:23:00.002+02:00

night one-hundred and ninety-six

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

Night One-Hundred and Ninety-Two

2009-03-26T13:25:00.004+01:00

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

2009-02-19T11:23:00.003+01:00

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

2009-02-15T19:33:00.002+01:00

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

2009-02-14T10:44:00.002+01:00

saturday morning still life

espresso, Paris Match, Friday night detritus

Night One-Hundred and Fifty-One

2009-02-13T12:52:00.001+01:00

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

2009-02-11T13:00:00.004+01:00

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

2009-02-08T23:39:00.002+01:00

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

Night One-Hundred and Twenty-Eight

2009-02-03T13:08:00.003+01:00

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

2009-02-02T13:47:00.004+01:00

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

2009-01-21T17:13:00.003+01:00

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.

Nights Ninety through One-Hundred and Ten

2009-01-21T09:34:00.003+01:00

Going back in time a bit to do a little Christmastime recap. There's too much to recount, so I hope this little montage (inspired by my friend Dorothy's 365 days of self-portraits montage) will make you feel like you were there. (The dorm computer and flickr are not cooperating, so I'm going to try posting this facebook video and see how it goes...)

Night One-Hundred and Twenty

2009-01-14T09:47:00.001+01:00

Night One-Hundred and Seventeen

2009-01-11T19:44:00.002+01:00

halfway

I flew back to France on the halfway day – night one-hundred and eleven (and a half), and spent the following week in a semi-conscious, time zone-shift-induced twilight. My body showed up in classrooms and bought itself 40-cent staff room cappuccinos and had conversations with people, but my brain remained hovering somewhere off the eastern seaboard. My heart, predictably, refused to let me jerk it around anymore and decided to stay behind.

But it’s Sunday now, the sun came out today, and my cells seem to have gathered themselves back together. It’s been unusually quiet here in on the quatrième étage this week. We are all trying to absorb, I think, the strange familiarity of this once exotic place, to take stock of the first half and hold it up against our prior expectations, to make a map of the second half that we hope will deliver us satisfactorily where we want to be when it’s all done.

Carmen and I went to Marseille yesterday to see the Van Gogh/Monticelli exhibit. Afterward, we sat at the Vieux Port and ate moules frites and drank too much, stumbled into a huge demonstration against Israel, got lost, got chased down the street by a kindly gas station attendant who had given us the wrong directions, finally made it back to the train station on the metro, fell asleep waiting and almost missed our bus back to Manosque, and dozed as we trundled back home, the city giving way to vineyards and villages. I keep forgetting to take pictures of that bus ride, but sometime in the next hundred and six nights, I promise, I’ll remember.

Nights Sixty-One through Seventy-Four

2008-12-08T17:53:00.004+01:00

on beauty

The first time I tried to write this post, it was nights sixty-one through seventy. The second time it went through seventy-three. Now I have lived another day, and I’m sitting here at the end of it searching for a some theme, some thread, some…connecting fiber, if you will, to coalesce the past two weeks into a coherent post. And, you want to know what’s nice? When you set yourself to that task, and the answer that comes back is beauty.

First of all, I stole my title from Zadie Smith’s gorgeous novel, which has kept me excellent company over most of the time that this post covers, and that I can’t recommend highly enough. So there’s beauty number one.

B of all (hi honey!), I spent an exceptionally lovely Thanksgiving week in Florida with my betrothed and his (soon, happily, to be my) wonderful family. Beauty number two.

Then, at the end of the week, I got to put on a pretty dress and hold on to my handsome man and be showered with love and luck and wishes for our happiness. This is a pretty extraordinary fashion in which to be welcomed into someone’s family, but, from what I’ve observed, a fairly ordinary expression of the enormous grace and generosity of my future parents-in-law. Sara and Mort, thank you.

Marc Dahl took this photo. You can see more of Marc’s work here: modi5.com/matt_and_holly

Then there was some ugliness with an airline and a 4 day-long return trip to France, but I’ll skip over that except to say that the Meilleur Ouestern at the Marseille Airport has an excellent staff and a very serviceable bathtub that may have actually saved my life that night.

If you have to spend four days in airports and on airplanes and in buses and hotel rooms, I recommend coming home to something like this:

It will make you feel a lot better. We’re up to number 4 now.

Number five is being invited over to dinner chez Sandra and Remy, eating delicious pizza (well, the tops of delicious pizza for me) and drinking Beaujolais (c’est le moment), trying (and mostly failing) to play a trivia game based on French pop-culture, but starting to feel like we have some actual, real, live French friends.

Number six is today, when The Fig, The Pineapple, and I went to Marseille with yet another of our new French friends. (Getting French friends is like dominoes. Once you trick one of them into falling over…) We cued an hour and a half to get tickets to Aida (Verdi is like Sting here. Wait! God I’m old. I meant to say Hannah Montana. Hannah Montana!), failed to get tickets, but ended up spending a delightful afternoon walking along the water.

This is me, searching for rocks

Then we went to Vierge de la Garde (or Notre Dame de la Garde – Our Lady of the Watch, the guardian of seafarers) which I believe to be the most beautiful church I have been inside in my lifetime.

And that’s number seven.

I almost forgot one. Last night we watched the Miss France pageant, which claims to concern itself with beauty. It did give us the gift of seeing a bunch of girls dressed like knit toilet-paper cozies dance with a horse in a pool, so there’s that.

Miss Pays de Loire was robbed.

Nights Fifty-Six Through Fifty-Nine

2008-11-20T11:19:00.003+01:00

la vie quotidian

Things that happened this week:

Someone’s boyfriend came to visit.
Someone went to see an action movie in French that turned out to be a historical drama in English.
Someone broke up with her boyfriend.
Someone found a giant green bug in her shoe.
Someone got yelled at for not having a cell phone.
Someone got back together with her boyfriend.
Someone ate pasta at least 11 times.
Someone finally wrote an important letter.

Things I took pictures of this week:

Lycée Regional Polyvalent Les Iscles (where I work)

again

and again

a good dog

a (very very French) movie being filmed in our town square

and light so nice…

…it even made our hallway pretty.

And a sunset…

…

…

…that just kept getting better

and dinner by candlelight (the power went out at the restaurant).

I’m off to Nice and then Florida. See you in December.

xo,

H

Night Fifty-Five

2008-11-16T17:33:00.002+01:00

Nights Forty-Nine and Fifty

2008-11-11T19:55:00.004+01:00

l'habitant

After class last night, I went and sat outside a café for a little while and watched the sky turn wintery.

As I was leaving, I found myself in the middle of a parade of little kids with paper lanterns. I followed them, of course, and it turned out to be a petite spectacle by the German section of the International School (last night was St. Martinstag, a traditional German holiday having something to do with St. Martin and horse – I’m not clear on the details).

I teach at the International School, so I kept running into people I knew and having my students run by me and shout out “Hello Miss Holly!” I hung out for a while and watched, mostly because I was really enjoying the sense, for the first time in Manosque, that I actually live here.

Here is an adorable video of the spectacle, wherein you will find a boy riding a broom around like a horse, and a little bit of the church square.

Then, as I was walking home, I ran into Juliana and Alice (the Brit) on their way to eat dinner, so I tagged along (we went back to the creperie. I had my usual: poulet frites and cold red wine.)

Today we had the day off (it’s Armistice Day), and I was invited for lunch at the home of Yves, one of the English profs who I work with, and his family.

We ate beautifully: sea bass with buerre blanc, tomato salad, cheese (including a camembert which Yves declared to be the essence of France, in cheese form), and fruit salad. After, Yves got out his guitar and we sang Neil Young songs. And I felt at home.

Night Forty-Four

2008-11-08T13:30:00.001+01:00

Oui, nous pouvons

We came home today to a sign posted on every floor of the dorm saying that the water was going to be turned off. As we’re on the 5th floor, I had already read it four times by the time I got to our door, and I almost didn’t notice the extra note on the bottom of ours. It made me so happy, and I wanted to share:

P.S. For those of you who are trying to parse the French – yes, it makes no sense. It says the water will be turned of for 24 hours, then it says from 1:30 Friday to 7:00 Saturday, then Saturday is crossed out. So, we really had no idea how long the water would be off for. Luckily, it came back on last night.

P.P.S. to Dr. Gaster: Hey, somebody finally spelled it right!

Nights Thirty-Three through Forty-Two

2008-11-05T09:16:00.000+01:00

Bella La Vita

Fair warning: this is longest blog post ever. If you just want to look at pictures, go to my flickr page.

10 things I learned in Italy:

1. Italy is really big.
2. Cheap trains are really slow.
3. The wait is exactly one-third as long as the people trying to sell you a tour say it is.
4. When someone offers to feed you, the answer is always (always always) yes.
5. You can learn the best swears at church.
6. Never pay more than 90 cents for an espresso, and stand up while you drink it.
7. When a Napolitan tells you you’re going out for a drink with some friends at 10:30, understand that you will not sit down for said drink until 1:30, but, once you do, it will be really really fun.
8. I am a good woman.
9. When in Rome, look up.
10. When attempting to cross the street in Naples, pray.

We left Manosque on a Saturday morning and took the bus to Marseille, where we caught a train that took us right along the Azur Coast, through Toulon, Nice, and Monaco to Ventimiglia, the first town you come to after crossing the border between France and Italy. I was excited to see Monaco, but it remains mysterious, as the train goes into a tunnel before you get there and only emerges once you’re past. The only visible evidence that you’ve been through Monaco are the massive yachts in the bay. I sort of love that.

We stayed overnight in Ventimiglia, where we ate our first and worst Italian meal (we stupidly picked a place right on the water with a menu in 5 languages. It wasn’t entirely our fault though: we tried to ask locals for advice, and everyone just said “Oh, just go walk along the water, there are lots of restaurants.” Clearly, the locals are working hard to keep the local places local. You can’t really blame them.) Anyway, this meal was terrible, but it did give us a gift in the form of the first idiom of the 6eme Langue (The Sixth Language is our name for the language that we speak at home – a mixture of our four mother tongues and French). So, Linda ordered a mixed seafood platter, which turned out to be different kinds of friend fish, including whole anchovies. She was alarmed that they still had their heads, and we spent some time discussing whether or not you are supposed to eat them whole, or decapitate them with your teeth (and which would be worse), and how dumb we would feel if we asked the waiter. Finally, I just said “Mange la tête!” which means, y’know…eat the head. And she did. And for the rest of the trip mange la tête settled into our lexicon as a way of encouraging ourselves to do scary things (like crossing the street in Napoli).

Mange la tête!

Some photos of Ventimiglia:

From Ventimiglia, we caught a 6 am train to Florence (thank god for the man in our hotel who reminded us to change our clocks the night before). Here’s the sunrise from the train:

And surprisingly good train-puccinos:

In Florence I had my first experience with a real, live, backpacker youth hostel, Ostello Archie Rossi. We shared a room with an Aussie couple who had been traveling for 2 ½ months. They were really nice, but the girl had a cough that sounded suspiciously tubercular to me, and, frankly, I’m just happy that we got out alive. The garden was really great, though.

Florence is lovely, but super touristy. Our last morning there, we just sort of wandered away from the city center and across the water, and discovered Santo Spirito and San Frediano, a much quieter area where the menus are all in Italian, and it made us so sad that we had to leave. We randomly stumbled upon an art exhibition in a 14th century church. It was called Cubes, and all of the artists had created installations in 10 by 10 cardboard boxes. It was all pretty bad, but the low-budgetness and the artists’ delight at having any audience at all made me feel so at home that I didn’t want to leave. On the way out the sweet 20 year-old who was working the door (the curator, perhaps?) tried to give me an exhibition pin for free, but I insisted on paying the 50 cents. Best 50 cents I spent in Florence, for sure. We stopped at a grocery store in Santo Spirito and stocked up on fruit for the train ride. The grocer followed us around the store gathering up all of our fruit in his arms and speaking Spanish. We’re not sure why, but it was awesome.

(Linda took this one outside of the grocery store. I love this lady.)

We got into Rome in the early evening and took a harrowing bus ride to the outskirts of the city center in order to find our hotel, Albergo Lodi. Through some magic we managed to get off at the right stop and found that place without too much trouble. We were greeted by a boisterous counter guy, Marius, who asked us if we would rather go straight to our room, or sit down and have a cappuccino. We chose cappuccino, which turned out to be an excellent decision. He showed up with two cappuccinos in huge glass cups and a map of Rome, which he proceeded to write all over with a fat red marker, dividing the city into four quarters called “Histoire” (he was showing off his French) “Mattin” (which was supposed to be matin – morning), “Yill” (I have no idea) and “Nuit” (night). Here, I’ll show you:

We were in our room a little later wondering what to do about dinner when Marius knocked on the door and asked us if we wanted to come downstairs for a little pizza party. We said sure, and when we came down, there were 6 or 7 people sitting around a table in the garden eating pizza and drinking wine. Glasses were filled, names and nationalities exchanged (Czech, Czech, Iranian, American, Australian, Canadian – that’s not counting me and Linda), and we proceeded to get completely wasted (me probably more than Linda, as I couldn’t eat the pizza).

And since I couldn’t eat the pizza, Linda and I and Marlene and John (the Canadian and the Australian who are teaching at the same school in England as well as having an illicit inter-office relationship. Yay!) then went out to a dinner at a restaurant near the hotel with a very tiny smiley waiter. I have no idea what I ate, but I remember that I thought it was really delicious, and also that we ended the night with limoncello, which was also delicious but a bad idea. Later I fell off the bed.

Okay, wow, this is turning into the longest blog post ever. So, for those of you who are still with us: the first day in Rome, we had our morning cappuccinos and consultation with Fabrizio, the formidable and extremely gentlemanly proprieter of Lodi, who also sat down and wrote all over a map (though in black pen and with a bit more style and restraint than Marius). All of the advice was fantastic, but also overwhelming (and contradictory), so we just decided to go to the Colloseum and then decide from there. We did ask Fabrizio for a restaurant recommendation, and he told us (in a satisfyingly conspiratorial fashion) about a little restaurant in the Jewish quarter with the most authentic Roman food. He also told us that it was good that we cared about food, because it’s very important that a woman be a good eater.

We went to the Colloseum. It rained. Photos can’t possibly do justice to how overwhelming it is to stand there, but here you go:

We did not go to the Roman Forum, which I regret, but it was raining really really a lot and we decided to walk to the Jewish quarter and eat lunch instead, which I do not regret. We found the Piazza Cinque Scole (the Piazza of the 5 Schools) and, per Fabrizio’s instructions, stood with our backs to the water and looked for a signless door with red strings hanging down. There were two guys standing in front talking, but no one coming in or out, and, though it was clear that this was the place Fabrizio had described, we were a little intimidated. It was a mange la tête moment. We went up and asked (in our feeble Italian and with lots of eating gestures) if this was the place. It was, and we were ushered into a teeny restaurant and seated at a table right in by the kitchen with a large, kind-faced Italian man. The hand-written menu was incomprehensible, but our table-mate Philipo (who, it turned out, is an Archeology professor at the University of Rome and speaks perfect English) came to our rescue. Linda had gorgeous hand-made angoletti (little meat-filled pasta dumplings) with tomato sauce and I had some delicious meat whose name I can't remember. We both had the fried artichoke, a Jewish-Roman specialty that was worth the eleven euros a piece that we paid (artichokes are out of season. Plus, I suspect that this is the tourist tax at this place. Everything else was cheap.) When they served us an enormous ball of buffalo mozzarella, Phillipo informed us that we would have better once we got to Napoli (he’s Napolitan). He told us that he has been going there for 20 years, and that he knew the original owner, Margherita, a tiny old lady who used to greet the college boys who came in to eat by saying (without looking up from the stove she was presiding over) “Enough with your buon giornos. Sit down quick and eat something. I need money!” He said that he had badgered her for years to teach him how to make the artichoke, and one day she had finally sat down over a glass and wine and told him. He said he had tried twice, and that he’s not a novice in the kitchen, but that he had found it impossible and given up. Sora Margherita is the name of this place, by the way, and if you’re ever in Rome, I command you to go (turn your back to the river and look for the red ropes). Margherita is not there anymore, but I suspect there’s a decent chance Philipo will be.

By the time we finished lunch the sun had come out, and we decided to cross the river and take Danny Richter’s personalized walking tour of Rome. Here are some pictures of some of the wonderful things we saw. Thank you Danny!

Basilica di Santa Maria in Trastevere

Ponte Sisto

The Pantheon

The Pantheon again

Then we ate gelato. Then we were happy.

And, insanely, we decided to walk some more. We walked all the way up Via del Corso to the Piazza del Popolo, which marks the entrance to ancient Rome.

It was raining again, and we were wet and tired, so we hopped on the metro and went home. That night we made dinner in the little kitchen at Lodi and then crashed.

Here’s one of Marlene cooking

And here’s John showing off the tomato sauce that spilled all over his shirt

Rome, day two was the Vatican (where we stumbled upon the Pope’s weekly public appearance):

And where the toilet lady has breasts:

Linda’s boyfriend pointed out that this is perhaps because all of the men in Vatican City also wear dresses. Reasonable guess.

Then we wandered through a street market:

Then we were really tired and hungry and we had a fight about something I can’t remember. But eventually we found food and Trevi fountain and everything was good.

We were a little sites-weary (Hey look! It’s another, like, ancient church) so we decided to go the Villa Borghese, the big park. Climbing the big hill to get to the big park pushed both of us over our exhaustion threshold, though we did get some nice shots of the view over Rome:

…as well as evidence of the torrential downpour we had survived the day before:

But by the time we got through the park, we were thoroughly done, so we found the metro and went back to the hotel to collect our bags and catch our train to Naples. Here is the last photo that I took in Rome:

It’s from Piazzale Flaminio, looking at the gate to the city. I kept trying to get one with no buses, but, in the end, I love this photo because of the buses. Roma lives.

We got on a train to Naples. We tried to sneak onto the fast train, but we were shut down, first by two different Trenitalia guys who were busy smoking and talking to their friends and kept pointing us toward other guys in jackets when we tried to ask them questions, and then by a very nonplussed Trenitalia lady. We didn’t have the right ticket. So, we were on the slow train. The most frustrating part is when you think you’re there, and then it takes another half hour to actually get there (the train station in Naples stretches out for miles, and the train just crawls into the station. Linda almost lost her mind at that point, I think.) But, when we finally got there, we were greeted by Carmen’s smiling face, and the smiling face of her cousin Stefania, both of whom insisted on carrying our bags to the car. We were so happy to be in someone’s car going to someone’s house and not on a train going to a hostel.

When she’s not living in Manosque with us, Carmen lives with her parents and brother in Castellemare di Stabia, about 30 minutes south of Naples, also known as right next to Mount Vesuvius. Here, I’ll show you:

And here is a statue commemorating the Castellemarean’s flight from the volcano.

Our first night in Castellemare Carmen said we were going to have dinner with a bunch of her friends. We were both expecting to go to a restaurant or someone’s house, but it ended up being, delightfully, at Carmen’s church (with nuns and everything!) Everybody was so nice, and they had planned ahead and cooked gluten-free pasta for me, and there was local fizzy red wine with no labels, and I was so happy. Also, after Carmen left to drive some people home (and after the nuns had gone to bed) all of her friends decided that Linda and I needed to learn all the worst Italian swears. I shant repeat them on the blog, but I will tell you that it was very funny when they were trying to translate one and they kept saying things like “It means…um…the thing that belongs to your sister” and then laughing like they were completely scandalized. We figured it out eventually, and I’m sure you can too. It’s not a nice thing to say about someone’s sister.

The second day we wandered Castellemare a bit, and then went to Sorrento, where we saw views like this:

and also like this:

It rained a lot on our trip. The second night was Carmen’s mother’s birthday, so we had a lovely birthday dinner with her family (where I was forced to do this little impressions of American accents schtick that Carmen loves. I don’t think it’s quite as funny when you don’t speak the language, but my Italian-American, Theresa, had them rolling in the aisles.)

The third day Carmen and her friend Giovanna took us to Napoli. Giovanna said at one point (as we were mentally preparing to cross a street, I’m sure) that Napolitans leave the house in morning and just pray that they’ll come home alive. I said that I now understand why Italians are all Catholic. I’m talking about the cars, in case that’s not clear, and the way that they try to kill you everywhere you go. Also the scooters.

Here are a few photos of Napoli:

I loved the Piazza Plebiscito, where they have (to me, for reasons I can’t explain, hilarious) statues of all of the kings of Napoli. Giovanna said the story is that someone asks “Who peed?” and they all say “Not me!” until the last one goes “Twas I!”

On some of the lamp posts near the water there are tons and tons of locks with little messages on them. Carmen and Giovanna explained that there was an Italian movie a couple of years ago where the lovers put a lock on a post and then tossed the key into the water, and it became a huge trend with Italian teenagers. They said in some cities, kids had put so many locks on the posts that they had fallen over. That’s amore.

That night we went out to a bar. We did this every night. Here’s how it works: you decide to go out by spending the whole day on your cell phone deciding to go out. Some people come over to your house around 10:30. At 10:45, you leave (if you are the American or German visitor, you think that you are going to the bar now. You are wrong.) You drive to some street corner where you meet up with a bunch of other people who have driven to the same street corner, and you stand around in the street for a while kissing everybody hello and looking good and kind of, but not really, talking about where you’re going to go. You might be waiting for someone else to show up…or maybe not. If you are the American or German visitor, it’s not really clear. At some point, everybody decides to get into their cars and leave, but it takes a while to decide who’s going in which car (and you usually don’t go in the same car that you came in). Okay, you drive to the bar. But, maybe because there are, like, 16 of you, or maybe because it’s just the way it is, you have to wait for a while. Maybe half an hour. You wait. No one is impatient, no one is tired of waiting. You could wait forever. Sometimes you wait outside the bar just because not everyone is there yet, ‘cause maybe somebody forgot the way or turned down the wrong street or something. But you wait, because it seems to be very important that everyone goes in together. So now it’s been, like, 2 hours since you left the house, and, if you are the American or German visitor, you are thirsty. If you are the American, you are thinking that you are too old to be beginning your evening at 12:45 at night. But you go in, and things are looking good. It takes a while to figure out where everyone is going to sit (there’s some complex social math involved) but, finally, everyone sits. But this is not a good table, so then you have to move to a different one. More social math. Okay, you’re at a good table. Now it’s time to order, but you’ve got to wait for the server. You wait for a long time. No one is impatient. You could wait forever. Once you order, happily, things show up quickly, but never all at once, and, if you’re the American or German guest, you’re not sure if you’re supposed to start eating, but your food has been sitting in front of you for 10 minutes, and the person next to you doesn’t have theirs yet, so you drink, and wait. In the end you eat, you drink, and everyone is happy and funny and kind and it’s all delicious and magical and great. Nobody drinks too much because the server never comes back to take a second order. In the end you say ciao and spill out onto the freshly rained-on street, and it’s three o’clock in morning and quiet for your first time in Napoli. You all walk back to the car singing. Dolce vita.

One night we went out a bar, and Linda and I decamped to a little table for a bit to watch drunk Italians commandeer the piano man’s microphone. So we’re sitting there drinking wine, and these two men, one old, one young, come up to us and say something in Italian that we don’t understand. Oh, you don’t speak Italian! They switch to English. The younger one explains, with much gesturing, that it’s good that we are drinking wine. We look nice with our wine. He likes the way we hold our glasses. We have excellent bearing. You understand? You have good bearing! It’s good when woman drinks wine. It’s not good when woman drinks beer. You have good bearing! You understand? Okay, good. Ciao! And they walk off. I have concluded that Italian men love it when women do things that they (the men) consider womanly. They love it so much that they have to come over and tell you. But really, if the most important qualifications for being a good woman are eating well (as Fabrizio told us in Rome) and drinking wine, then I’m covered. That’s a load off my mind.

We went to Pompei (well, Scavi, which is the name for the archeological site that we think of as Pompei). Pompei is huge. Everybody says you could spend three days there and not see everything. We spent an hour and a half. But it was a really incredible hour and a half.

Afterwards, Carmen picked us up and drove us to her cousin’s restaurant, President, which is the most famous and schmaltzy restaurant in Pompei. There we were treated to an extraordinarily classy lunch, with courses that just kept coming and prosecco that never stopped flowing.

Still, we were outdone by the two guys at the table next to us, who went through no less than 8 courses of food and 4 bottles of wine in the time that we were there (and were still going when we finally left). There was also a group of men in suits in the corner who were engaged in very serious conversation over bottle after bottle of wine and course after course of pasta. We thought that they hadn’t really noticed us, engrossed as they were in their food and negotiations, but when we got up to leave, one of them called out “Bon soir!” and when I turned, he gave me a wink and a little coquettish finger wave, which is just odd behavior for a man in an Armani suit.

On our last day in Italy (you never thought we would get here, did you?) we took a bus to Positano. We were supposed to go to Amalfi, but we decided it was too far, and also I saw a postcard of Positano once, like, 8 years ago that has staying in my head ever since, and I wanted to see if the reality would confirm my vision. It did. The sun finally came out, and it was warm and stunningly beautiful and just everything you want your last day in Italy to be. We sat in a café right on the beach and ate for a couple of hours, and, in the end, the waiter gifted us with ice cream bars, which we sat in the sun and ate with bliss. It’s good to be a girl in Italy sometimes.

Then we climbed 500 steps to our bus stop, realized that the bus we needed didn’t run on Sundays, got totally stressed out trying to call Carmen from a non-working payphone, were given bad directions by an old man, and generally just completely harshed our mellow.

This is us after the 500 step climb.

However, when we finally made it back to Carmen’s house, we were greeted by her completely adorable grandmother, and all was well.

I feel so grateful to Carmen and her family for their incredible warmth and hospitality (and for working so hard to communicate with us. We hope it was as fun for you as it was for us.) Oh! I have completely forgotten to mention that, upon arrival in Napoli, I was handed an enormous plastic grocery bag chock full of awesome Italian gluten free stuff, including the hands-down best gluten-pasta I have ever tried, and many delicious things dipped in chocolate. For this, and countless other graces, I want to say thank you to Carmen and the Iovinos, Carmen’s cousins at President, Fabrizio and Marius and Philipo in Rome, the guy who helped us get onto the train in Ventimiglia, the grocery guy in Florence, the Cube artists, Giovanna, Stephania, Helena, Marco, Atilio, Valeria, and all of the other friends of Carmen, and every single other nice person who we met along the way. I would like to say no thank you to the sniffing and snorting guy who sat next to me on the night train from Napoli who wouldn’t move his legs to let me by with my bags. You are the only Italian I didn’t like. To the rest of you, molto piacere, grazie mille, e (con fortuna) a presto!

Before I get to Italy

2008-11-05T08:34:00.000+01:00

Here's this:

It's just an ordinary, quiet morning here in Manosque. And I'm sitting in the cafe weeping over photos of people parading in the street in Seattle. I wish I were there.

In case you need another reason to love Barack

2008-11-01T18:49:00.000+01:00

This is not Italy related at all, but I keep forgetting to post it. I showed my students a video of Barack Obama speaking (in New Hampshire in January) and they had to see how much of it they understood. After it was over, they were all happy, saying "Oh, we love him! We LOVE him!" I was like "Hey, that's great! Why do you love him so much?" They said "Well, for an American, he speaks very slowly."

Home (to France, that is) in two days...

Night, um...who the hell cares? I'm in Italy!

2008-10-26T18:26:00.000+01:00

Italy so far equals lots of train riding, glorious sunshine, gelato, risotto, and too many Americans. Linda and I are in Florence tonight, headed to Rome tomorrow for two nights, then on to Napoli chez Carmen for a few days. Photos whenever I get around to it.

Arrivederci!

Night Twenty-Five

2008-10-18T21:51:00.000+02:00

Vamos a la Playa

As a reward for successfully surviving our first full week of classes, we went to the beach. It was totally bitchin’.

We started off in Cassis. Here, I’ll show you:

You can see Manosque at the top of the photo. It was about an hour and a half drive on the autoroute. Toll roads are genius, by the way.

So, Cassis is a lovely little tourist town by the sea, and there seems to be some sort of chateau there.

I really have no historical background or culturally relevant information to offer. We drank some coffee and moved on to Ste-Cyr-Sur-Mer, and there we passed a most delightful afternoon. The sun showed up for work and everything. We were happy. Now we’re home, all sunned-out and salty. Enjoy some photographs, won’t you?

Nights Nineteen through Twenty-Four

2008-10-17T21:17:00.000+02:00

Laundry, Life

I went to the laverie last Sunday, did my (very expensive) laundry, and read an article in French Marie Claire that profiled a bunch of different women’s sexual histories. Learned the phrases le pire (the worst), elle a roulé sa bosse (something like “she gets around”) and un fétiche, which should be self explanatory.

I feel like I worked a lot this week. Twelve hours of teaching is way more than twelve hours of work (she realizes, far too late). I believe I have now met all of my students at least once. They range in English ability from abysmal to fluent (I have one student who is a native English speaker and speaks the language better than I do. I am tempted to tell him that the system is failing him and he should demand to be placed in a different class, but I need his help with idioms.)

Abilities and enthusiasm for the language aside, I can honestly say that I have enjoyed every one of my classes. Even the students about whose misbehavior and bad attitudes I am forewarned (I crossed paths with a teacher at one of my schools as I was on my way to my first class with a new group. She looked at my class list and her eyes got all wide and she made the you’re-in-trouble face and kind of shook her head in dismay. And then she said, brightly, “Bon chance! Let me know how it goes!” and took off. Thanks. It went just fine, by the way) are not so bad. At least not so far. Timid, defensive, and reluctant to speak English, yes, but evil and out of control, no.

This week I discovered a lovely, bright, deco-ish café with free wifi, and The Fig and I (oh, quickly: I have a roommate who prefers for her exploits not be – how would you say? – blogged about willy nilly – can I use blogged like flung? Welcome to my linguistically-consumed brain. Anyway, she doesn’t want to show up on the blog. But here is the blog, and here she is in my life, so I must find a way. Coincidentally, one wine-fueled night a couple of weeks ago we assigned each other fruit nicknames. I am the Peach. My roommates are The Fig, The Grapes, and The Pineapple, but I’ll leave it to you to guess whom is whom. So, you can heretofore expect to see my roommates referred to by their fruit names on this blog.) Okay, so the Fig and I have become instant regulars (and complete spectacles. Apparently, no one has ever thought to bring a computer to this café before. The wifi was previously decorative. Why is this whole blog parenthetical tonight?)

Les Fruites

Other happenings this week: I experienced the good French graces of one of my professors, who let me come over to his perfectly arty, funktified, Berkeley-lands-in-Provence house and use his computer, I spent a sleepless night hiding from a GIGANTIC bug that kept dive-bombing my bed, and I made a plan to go to Italy for the first break, now a mere week away. Yay!

Last Sunday we took a little road trip to the Gorges du Verdon. Actually, we didn’t quite make it all the way there, but we had a good time anyway. It’s a story best told in photos, I think:

Last but not least, a new feature: Idiom of the Week.

This week’s idiom, courtesy of the Colombian: Vete a freir asparagus. Juliana claims that this is a Colombian version of “Go to hell.” Go fry some asparagus? More research is required.

Night Eighteen

2008-10-11T13:57:00.000+02:00

Nights Fourteen Through Seventeen

2008-10-10T19:01:00.000+02:00

Gangster vs. Gangsta

This week I started work. I am working at three different high schools here in Manosque: Les Iscles, the posh new “traditional” high school (except su-hu-per mod – photos in a later post, I’m sure, but picture an architectural expression of Matt’s furniture – it’s very lovely, actually), International, the scrappy new international school, and Martin Bret, the technical high school.

Sorting out where I’m supposed to be when has been quite the project. Everyone seems to think that someone else is in charge of my schedule, but I figured out pretty quickly that no one was, so I decided that it would have to be me. So, armed with a vague idea of how many hours I was supposed to give each school, I went about the process of figuring out who needed me when, but went to bed several nights this weeks with no clear idea of where I needed to be the following day. I showed up at one of my schools yesterday thinking that I was going to do two hours of classes, only to be told “Oh no no. Not today. Maybe next week.” Mais, bon.

Scheduling aside, everything has been peachy. I’ve found all my students completely charming in different ways. The kids at International are appropriately worldly and diverse, and very enthusiastic and warm. I’ve only been with one of my classes at Les Iscles thus far, but I found them quite motivated. I spent today with all my boys at Martin Bret. They are all learning to be car mechanics and electricians, and I passed four delightful hours with four different classes chatting about our favorite American movies, cars, Bill Gates, the significance of baggy jeans, and the difference between gangsters and gangstas. At the end of the last class (the most timid of the four) I busted out my broken French and tried to explain that I am learning too, that I understand that it’s intimidating to speak in another language, and that I promise not to judge them. I hope I got through.

I’m definitely in a crash course on being a language teacher. I’m learning to slow myself down and use what one of my profs calls “transparent words” – words that are the same in English and French (like saying choose, which is closer to the French choisir, instead of pick or select).

The International School has decided to take advantage of my actual, y’know, earned skills and put me in their theatre class. Yesterday they did improvs, and I was quite impressed with what they came up with, considering that improv is tricky even in one’s own language. Choice quotes include “Shut up you stupid…drunk…RUSSIAN!” and “Be quiet! I can’t hear my baby!” Also of note was the moment when the teacher put everyone into pairs and told them that they had to be couples – husband and wife, brother and sister, gay couples, whatever. There were some titters, but really not much of a reaction. The same thing happened in another class when the teacher handed out a dialogue and mentioned that some of the boys would have to play girls. One of them raised his hand enthusiastically and said “I want to be a girl! I want to be a girl!” Dorothy, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.

It’s a glorious Friday evening here, and I’m sitting in the sun on the balcony sipping a glass of rosé as I write this. It was a stressful week, but satisfying, and I’m looking forward to weekend of tranquillité (and laundry – are the two mutually exclusive? Stay tuned.)

Bon soirée,

H

Grabbed this shot of students and petanque players in the park by the school as I left work this evening.

This is a few days old, actually, but it looks like how it felt tonight as I was walking home.

Night Thirteen

2008-10-05T19:41:00.001+02:00

Nights Eleven and Twelve

2008-10-05T12:35:00.000+02:00

The Nightlife

I am the oldest person on earth…okay, maybe not on earth, but certainly on this planet. Everybody – EVERYBODY – I’ve met so far in the assistantship program is fresh out of college, which, really, is the sensible way to do something like run off to France for 7 months, when you’re in transition anyway and you have no clue what to do with your life.

We were in Marseille for two days last week for orientation, and I noticed that there was a lot of talk amongst the assistants about nightlife, proximity to which seems to be the chief factor in determining a town’s value, as in “Where are you placed?” “Manosque” “What is there to do there?” They don’t mean hiking in the French countryside or sitting on your balcony reading. They mean drinking—drinking and dancing. I’m exaggerating a little bit of course. I know that there are other assistants who, like me, are more than happy to spend their evenings quietly. Plus, I like to drink and dance as much as the next Alabama sorority girl. It’s just not really what I came to France for, so I’m less disappointed than some that Manosque has the nightlife equivalent of Thanksgiving dinner: it’s centered around food, and everyone falls asleep early. There are a few nice-looking restaurants in town, though we won’t be able to afford to eat in any of them until our first paycheques come at the end of October. So, we ate last night in one of the not-so-nice looking ones, a crêperie near our house that specializes in extremely salty chicken and cold red wine. But it’s cheap, and charming in a generic ketchup and faux wood-beam roof sort of way.

Before dinner we went to see Mamma Mia!, the film version of the stage version of ABBA’s Greatest Hits album, with Meryl Streep. We thought that it would be in English with French subtitles, but it was dubbed (except for the songs). We were a little disappointed, as we were both looking forward to giving our brains a break from French (Carmen’s English is very good), but the movie is so broad and campy that it was pretty easy to follow. Also, it cracked me up that every time a song started, Colin Firth went from sounding like Gerard Depardieu to Donovan.

The movie theatre, Le Lido, is adorable, with big cushy red seats that look like they were transported out of a 60s Hollywood producer’s screening room.

When I tried to order a medium Coke, the concessions guy looked at me like I was an alien and said (incredulously and in English) “What language are you speaking?” This is the only problem with living with a bunch of foreigners—we have quickly developed our own language that makes perfect sense to us—a mixture of French, English, Italian, German and Spanish—but none to anyone else. The other night one of us said something like “Puedo dire ça please?”

But we love our little polyglot boarding house, and I think that we all feel like we hit the roommate jackpot. Hopefully we’ll still feel that way in seven months.

Here’s Carmen last night. We are equally addicted to our cameras.

And here are a couple of one of the two main doors into the old village—this is about a block from La Dortoir (our dorm).

The students return tomorrow so our internet access is going to become limited and I might not be able to blog again until next weekend. Have a lovely week.

Nights One Through Ten

2008-10-04T22:14:00.000+02:00

Le Début

I have, actually, been blogging. The problem is, there’s no internet in the internat (the internat is the high school dorm in which I am living. It’s not as bad as it sounds). And, upon rereading my earlier writings, I find that they already feel dated and irrelevant. “Do the French not know that they’re staring, or do they just not care?” Duh. It’s clearly the latter.

Also, I’m losing my English (I was helping another American assistant fill out a form and I said “Here goes your name, here goes your phone number.” What?) So, I’m going to scrap the writing for today and just put some up some pictures. Please enjoy.

This is the lovely, warm home of my father’s cousin Philippe and his wife Sylvie, who were kind enough to take me in on my second night in France and check in on me to make sure that I made it safely to Manosque, my new home. The most harrowing moment of the journey was when Sylvie dropped me off at the bus station (and, when I say “bus station,” I mean the side of the road in the middle of nowhere) in Meyrargues to catch the bus to Manosque. There I was, with my 70-pound suitcase, absolutely certain that the bus was never going to come and I was going to have to go to work in an olive orchard (which, y’know…worse fates). As Sylvie drove away, she leaned out the window and said “You may have to wave to get the bus to stop!” Uh huh. But, I needn’t have worried. I waved, it stopped, and I made it here:

Don’t worry. This is the before picture. Here’s the after picture:

Okay, let’s call this the in-progress picture. It’s a little spare, but it’s a roof and a bed, and the view from the balcony…

…is decent:

Here is the view looking down into the courtyard of the Lycée (high school) where we’re living:

And here, of course, are the teenagers. I can’t escape:

Okay, so I arrived. This is Friday. Linda, the German, was the first of my roommates to show up. She brought her parents, who stayed with us in la dortoir for nights, bless their souls. On Sunday we were joined by sweet Julianna, the Columbian. On Tuesday we got Carmen, the Italian, and we were complete. (There is, apparently, a British assistant who will be staying with us from time to time but living in Aix, about 40 minutes from here, and commuting).

This past Thursday and Friday we were required in Marseille for orientation. We spent most of our time running from appointment to appointment (we non-EU people had to get chest x-rays to prove that we aren’t tubercular), but I did manage to take a few pictures.

The American assistants were invited over for dinner at the home of the U.S. Consulate General in Marseille.

I didn’t get a good shot of her house, but here’s one from her balcony that shows the house next to her’s:

So, y’know. Nice neighborhood.

And here’s me in Marseille:

I look very serious, but I was just concentrating on the camera.

I realize that I haven’t posted many pictures of Manosque, my home town. I’ve been trying to avoid running around town with my camera out looking like a tourist, but here are a couple of pictures I’ve managed to take, with many more to come, I’m sure:

Okay, that's a start, right? More to come...