Toussaint Vacation Day Two: Arles and Dijon

I had major plans for today, my first back chez moi in 10 days. Most of them included laundry. Since I only have 3€24 in small change to my name and a load costs 6€, and everything's closed today for Toussaint, there's nowhere to get change even if I did free even more cash from my American account. So that gives me license to have spent the ENTIRE day on my computer, right? There was really nothing else to do. I swear. Nothing. (Stop looking at me, sink full of dirty dishes!)

Moving on. We woke up on our second morning in Arles to the sounds of Cécile fighting with her alarm clock. "No way!" she yelled when it first went off. "I do not want! I so do not want!"

Our lovely hostess Cécile chez elle.

A brief aside to tell you how adorable Cécile's English is: whilst hanging out this summer, we were discussing how weird it is that in French the subject and object are reversed when you're talking about someone/thing missing another. Ex: In English you would say, "I miss customer service." In France you would say, "La service à la clientèle me manque (Customer service misses me)." I asked her if it would be funny if I said, "Je manque le frommage" instead of "Le frommage me manque." "Yes," she said. "Because then, is like the cheese need you." She'll also stare at you intently while you're talking and then say, "Sorry, I do not listen to you," when she means she didn't hear or understand what you said. Mignon!


After Cécile got her booty to class that morning, Kelly and I enjoyed a breakfast of leftover baguette, homemade jam we found in the fridge, and swamp tea. We had been introduced to swamp tea the day before. It's when you have loose leaf tea but no bag, so you're forced to fish the sodden tea leaves out with a fork, say, and pile them on an old receipt, say. The level of difficulty is exponentially increased when you're drinking from a dark bowl that camouflages errant leaves. 


We headed out in search of the museum with the really old statue face they found in the river that runs through Arles and may or may not represent Julius César. We got a bit lost getting there, which wasn't so bad when we happened to meander past an olive tree. Now, I've never met an olive I didn't love, so I went ahead and popped one right in my mouth. Holy bitter nasty poison. My sense of taste chose that moment to come rip-roaring back after its vacation, causing me to "Kak! Kak! Kak!" all the way down the street. 

Oh, so many places to go!

We finally arrived at the museum after a few additional wrong turns, and I suddenly lost any and all interest in going inside. I'd already had about as much patrimony as I could take. Cécile called, wondering where we were. We told her we'd gotten really lost (true) and weren't able to find the museum (lie) but now we were hungry for lunch (so, so true). After a couple of false starts we ended up at a place called La Mule Blanche, where they served bull meat. Cécile was really insistent that we try the regional specialty, especially since we weren't able to see the statue face that may or may not have been Julius Cesar personified. 


I ordered the boeuf stew made with bull, and Kelly ordered a glorious salad with quail eggs, duck cutlets, and a hefty portion of foie gras on the top. We ate about half each and then switched. Did you know you're not supposed to spread foie gras? It's not pâté, you animal. In any case, it was really f'ing delicious, topped only by the raspberry millefeuille with English cream and meringue cookies for dessert. This may have been the best meal I ever had in France.

Bull bourguigno

 We then had to bid our hostess adieu and take off for the train station. We were treated to the most sunshiney glorious weather as we rolled through Provence in our Harry Potter-esque train compartment. The only thing not charming about that train ride was that Kelly beat me in Scrabble. By a lot. 

Our next stop was Dijon, where I was required to go for my medical visit that would garner me a very important stamp in my passport that would allow me to keep all my limbs if the government ever found out how often I buy purchases under 2€ for the express purpose of breaking a 20 into more manageable sums. Or something.

After a very blasé dinner in one of the few bistros still open, we happened upon a sight that made Kelly squeal in delight (rhyme!): Workers hanging Christmas lights in the streets. Seeing this was one of her long-cherished dreams since girlhood. And the French government made it happen for her, by forcing me to cut my trip in Arles short so I could get that shiny new stamp. And you said they never granted any wishes...

Christmas lights go up in Dijon, joy explodes in Kelly's heart.

 Next up: medical visit in Dijon, meeting awesome Couch Surfing Grenoblins in Grenoble.

Toussaint Vacation Day One: Arles

Remember how I'm only working here seven months, but I still get two months' worth of vacation in that time? I got my first chunk of vacay last week, which was well-deserved after my first two arduous days of actually teaching the students by myself.

That means I probably shouldn't complain about the fact that I opened my French bank account more than a month ago, and I still can't use my check card because I don't have the PIN code, which has probably arrived at the school but it's a national holiday and I might not be able to get my mail until school reopens on Wednesday, which might not even make a difference because I haven't been paid yet even though I was supposed to be on Oct. 26, and thus I've had to use my American debit card and I imagine it's going to be a nightmare to transfer funds back to that account so I don't overdraft after my next student loan payment. So I won't complain about that one bit.

Ahem. I plan to do a post for each city, and then aggregate them into an overview post on Truth Pirates so you can read only the parts that interest you (although it's bound to be entertaining so you should probably just read all of it). Allez-y!

My travel buddy was Kelly, who is doing the same thing I'm doing but in Paris. She and her husband are kind enough to host me in their love nest whenever I pop up to Paris, which has been alarmingly often. Kelly is really f'ing funny, super good at saying "merci" and sounding French, and teaches me a lot of useful things, like that WTF can mean "Welcome to France." She has also been instrumental in ensuring that I don't die by showing me a number of dishes than can easily be prepared in teeny tiny French kitchens.

Kelly getting blown away by Arles

The strike, as always, made traveling difficult. The French don't like to tell you what platform your train will be on until 5-10 minutes before the train is scheduled to depart. This results in huge masses of people crowded around the departures board, getting cricks in their necks from gazing up. As soon as a platform number appears, a great horde will detach from the larger mass and run there as fast as they can to ensure good luggage storage and a seat. Yes, in these dire times of strike, your ticket purchase does not necessarily guarantee you a seat on the train. Ours was stuffed to the brim, with people packed into the aisles for about an hour before things thinned out enough for them to sit down.

We were going to Arles to stay with my friend Cécile, who I had met in Portland last summer while she interned at a dance studio and worked on a paper about American cultural institutions. She was coming back from Paris the same night we were due to arrive, but had arranged for one of her friends to meet us and give us the keys. I got a flurry of texts from said friend, some of which didn't make a whole lot of sense in English ("Ok so marjo waiting you to the place du forum. She gives you the keys. You can eat to the restaurant and wait Cécile."), and some of which made absolutely no sense in French ("Marjo va o ciné moi je sortiré du sport dc jvé pa lé amené juska ché toi et veul alé o resto els oront lé clé dc el tatendron envil.").  In the end, our train from Lyon was more than an hour late, so we just waited for Cécile herself at the train station.

Roman ruins in Arles

The wind was just HOWLING when we got in, and did nothing to warm up my Frenchy friend's frigid studio apartment. She made us some bowls of ramen and then Kelly and I huddled together for warmth in Cécile's bed as we tried to get enough feeling in our toes to go to sleep. I had been feeling poorly since a rain-soaked tour of the Versailles grounds a few days earlier, and awoke completely encrusted in sick. My head was pounding and I couldn't breathe out of my nose, which was probably for the better for it prevented my two favorite allergens-- cat and cigarette-- from gaining access to my face.

We scooted out the door by 9 so Cécile could go to class and went to a café for a typical French breakfast: crossaint, baguette with butter and jam, and a hot drink of your choice. Then we mosied around the Roman ruins while trying not to get blown over by the wind. We made a stop at an antique shop, where Kelly happened upon this gem in a newspaper from 1916:

Who better to relieve constipation? Mini WWI-era soldiers!

Next stop was the Musée Réattu, home to some fine art by Réattu himself, a few Picasso drawings, a few carpets and dresses from hometown hero Christian Lacroix, and a whole lot of contemporary art I was not too fond of.  Not represented at the museum was Van Gogh, whose scenes of Arles are some of his most famous. My favorites were the photos of museum workers unpacking the Louvre's masterpieces once the war was over. I also really like this guy, who managed to embody exactly how I felt that day:

Ay wad do suff'd up

After all our forced marching in the wind, it was time for a pause that refreshes. We settled at a tapas restaurant and ask if we could see the menus. As it was 3:00, it was clearly no time for food, stupid Americans! We could have drinks, crepes, or waffles, and that was IT.  I ordered a crepe with speculoos, a gingersnap cookie cream I'd read about on one of my favorite blogs. I think I liked it... I'm pretty sure I liked it... I know I definitely enjoyed the texture... but I was incapable of tasting anything that day. Now that my sinuses have cleared I've become obsessed with finding speculoos so I can properly give it a whirl, and it has of course chosen to elude me. Welcome to France.

We made dinner for Cécile that night (which both she and Kelly assured me tasted good since I wouldn't have known a truffle from dog poo at that point), and then she took us out to a bar to meet some of her friends. Understanding French is hard. Understanding French over loud music when the speaker is turned away from you is harder. Understanding French over loud music when the speaker is turned away from you and you can't hear anyway because your head feels like it's wrapped in styrofoam is impossible. And that was my evening, in a nutshell.

This café was supposedly inspiration for one of Van Gogh's famous paintings. Cécile says it's a fake, but I'll always believe, Vinny!

The one part of the conversation I was privy to was about Kelly's and my future destination: Grenoble. One of Cécile's friends insisted we wouldn't like it because it didn't have any patrimony. Patrimony was clearly a big deal to the Arlesians, who had not only Roman ruins gracing their fair city, but they had the head of a statue that may or may not have been a likeness of Julius Cesar sitting in one of their museums.

We went to sleep prepared this time with long underwear and all the Minnesota heritage we could muster. Next up: Day Two: Arles and Dijon.

Lycée Camille Claudel, Home to the Purple and Blue Cows

I finally started teaching yesterday after several weeks of introducing myself and observing. My first class was with the "Euro" seniors-- a designation for advanced students like AP or IB-- and I prepared a lesson for them about the use of attack ads in American elections. I showed them McCain's "celebrity" ad on Obama, and used an Obama ad where he compared McCain to Bush. I asked them to think about how they used images and music to manipulate the viewers. I did the same with Tarryl Clark/Michele Bachmann ads, and asked them which they found most convincing and why.

It was pretty successful, forcing the students to think critically. I was brimming with confidence going into my next class, with seniors who have specialized in English. I brought them a video the Duluth tourist office made about the city, thinking the kids would be excited to see where I come from. I'm in a really tiny room with nowhere to put my laptop, so I had to awkwardly hold it aloft so they could see. If you've never seen "Fresh Duluth," it's about 30 minutes worth of Lake Superior porn, cut with interviews with locals. Many of them zoned out, so I kept pausing it to say, "Pauline, what just happened?" "Euh... eye don' kno'." "Is that because you weren't paying attention?" "....yis." It was somewhat of a disaster.

Today I had two groups of sophomores, and I prepared a lesson for them about school spirit. The kids here go to school from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and they don't have any extra-curriculars. No sports teams. No music ensembles. No assemblies. No mascot. No school colors. I brought in my Duluth East High School yearbook and tried to explain these foreign concepts.

Next I taught them some cheers from my high school. They really got into the clapping and stomping as they chanted:

"Oo rocks zuh 'ouse?
Zuh grey'ounds rock zuh 'ouse
And when zuh grey'ounds rock zuh 'ouse
Zey rock eet all zuh way down."

Another favorite:

"One! We ar' zuh grey'ounds!
Two! A leetle beet loudahr!
Sree! Ay steel can't 'ear yoo!
Foh! Moh! Moh! Moh!"

As an activity I had them choose a mascot and school colors for their own high school, Lycée Camille Claudel. The mascot had to share an attribute with the students. I told them we were the greyhounds because greyhounds are fast and always win the race, just like East High School athletes. I used escargots as an example, since it's a specialty of the region. But it's not a particularly fierce or fast animal, so they probably wouldn't want to choose it, I said.

"Les gazelles!" someone suggested. That was eventually shot down because they didn't think their classmates were elegant enough to qualify. "Les grenouilles (frogs)!" said another. Not too much enthusiasm for that one either.

"Les vaches!" said a girl who had been really into the cheers. "Cows?" I asked. "Why would you want to be the cows?" "Becooz, euh, zuh coos, zey talk a lot. And zuh studahnts, zey talk mooch az well. So we are zuh coos." Everyone nodded in agreement. And your colors? I asked. Blue and violet was the consensus. Why? "Becooz zey ah' well wiz each ozzer."

I asked the students to use their 10-day Toussaint vacation to create their own cheer for Camille Claudel. I can't wait to see what zey cohm oop wiz.

The Honeymoon is Over

Two Fridays ago I was moseying around Digoin, enjoying the sunshine before I headed off to Paris to meet up with my friends Ted and Danielle for the weekend. I took the route by the sun-dappled Loire River, and smiled to myself at the sight of six old French dames squished together on a bench, laughing like school girls. Everyone I passed said "Bonjour!" to me, and José, the friendly bartender at the Café de Paris, stuck his head out to wish me a good trip.

"I love the f out of this place," I thought to myself. "It's going to be so impossible to leave in but a few months."

I had a lovely time in Paris, and made it back just in time for the entire country to go on strike to protest the proposed change of retirement age from 60 to 62. The olds are upset that the government is merde-ing on their sacred benefits, which generations have fought for and for which they pay dearly  with their taxes. The youngs are none-too-pleased that the olds will be stationed in their jobs for two additional years, making it that much harder for them to find jobs in a country plagued with chronic unemployment.

I'm all for the Frenchies being involved in their governmental proceedings and fearlessly yelling, "Aw, hell no!" when they feel those supposedly representing them are no longer doing their jobs. But effectively bringing train travel to a standstill and thus forcing me to cancel all sorts of touristing? Not cool.

I took the bus to Lyon on Friday and was planning to spend the entire weekend there with my bridesbitch Lo. Instead of taking our 5:30 p.m. Sunday train back to Digoin, however, we were forced to cut our trip a day short to take an 8:20 a.m. bus to Paray le Monial, the town next to Digoin. Once we got there, there was supposed to be another bus to take us back to my palatial abode. But it was one big lie, France! Instead we inquired of a kindly looking gentleman if he knew of a taxi number, and he offered to take us to Digoin himself.

Lo and I popped into the Café de Paris to say hi to José, and then headed to a pizza place, one of a handful establishments in the entire metropolis open on Sundays. It was there, upon receiving a personal pizza as large as a car wheel (and you're not allowed to share pizzas there; it's well-marked on the menu... didn't you see?) and feeling the burning desire to take a snap of it, that I realized my camera was no longer in my purse. When we got home I tore through all my possessions and found it neither hither nor thither. The last place I know I had it was on the bus, and I have since both called and emailed the bus line and they insist it is nowhere.

I know a camera is just a thing, and things are replaceable, and I should really stop mourning this loss so hard. But I had some wicked awesome shots from Lyon of Lo and me playing Be the Statue and Be the Painting, as well as some excellent new candidates for Facebook profile pictures. So it felt like a beloved pet had just died.

After I had somewhat reconciled myself to this monumental loss, I came to the realization that I had absolutely nothing to do to amuse my dear friend for the remainder of her stay. We tried going to the grocery store at the edge of town, but we got there after it was closed and thus our 40-minute forced march in the biting wind was in vain. In the end we watched Jersey Shore with my frustratingly faltering internet connection, and then the one DVD I brought out here.

Everything in town remained closed on Monday, so we trudged back to the supermarket for amusement and the makings of dinner. Next we went to Digoin's one museum: la Musée de la Céramique. It was room upon room upon room of pottery. Old pottery. New pottery. Pitchers. Plates. Bowls. Bed warmers. Bed pans. I tried to translate our guide's impassioned speeches about the benefits of different types of glazes for Lo's benefit, but eventually my translations consisted of: "I don't know how to translate that," "I have no idea what she just said," "Glaze," "Chamberpot."

I had somewhat of an emotional breakdown last night because apparently my camera contained part of my soul I can never get back and Digoin is so cold and gray now and the strike is really making my life miserable and how am I going to go to Paris and Arles and Grenoble and Lyon next week during my vacation and nobody said Bonjour to me outside and this is a ghost town on Sundays and Mondays and OMD is this beyond-boring ceramic museum seriously the only thing I can take my visitors to?

There's an emotional cycle of culture shock you experience when you go abroad. First you're in the Honeymoon Period: everything's great and nothing could possibly be better than what you're doing. Then the reality that you're a billion miles away from your loved ones and everything familiar starts to sink in, and everything sucks. Then you stabilize and get used to things. Then, right before you leave, you love everything so much that you get depressed about going back home, where you will inevitably go through reverse culture shock.

I felt better this morning, when we encountered the high school students' protest on our way to get some pain au chocolat for breakfast. Among the protesters were several of the students I've had in class, and they said, "C'est l'assistante d'anglais! 'Ello Nina!" as they marched by. (They like me! They really really like me!) And I came home this afternoon to find a box from my parents that contained my Association sweatpants and my oversized North Branch Cinema sweatshirt, which have contributed to the immeasurable increase in comfort I'm currently experiencing. Then I was able to find a bus to go to my orientation in Montceau-les-Mines tomorrow, which I've been fretting about having to skip since the trains aren't running. And then a teeny tiny sun ray lit up a corner of my room for about three whole minutes!

I'm hoping my Stage 2 (Everything is Difficult) is swift and Stage 3 (Hey! I'm Figuring This Out) is right around the corner.

Running makes me sick

Before I came to Digoin I had this idea that I was going to take up running while here. There's not a whole lot to do, and as the town is situated at the crossroads of a river and canal, I figured I would have nothing better to do than kill myself running.

I have this memory problem where entire conversations and experiences go into a black hole, so in the weeks leading up to my departure I must have said to Matt, "Do you think I'm going to start running when I'm in France?" or "I think I'm going to start running when I'm in France." about a billion times. I was obsessed. I had dreams about it. I even bought an iPod armband.

Yesterday was the perfect first day for my new fit life. The entire country--including the teachers I had classes with-- was on strike to protest the change in retirement age from 60 to 62. Thus I had nothing to do (all the shops were closed) and nowhere to go (trains weren't running), so I decided to lace up my trainers and go for a leisurely jog in the lovely weather.

It. Was. Hell. It would appear I have a mild form of asthma, as evidenced by my burning lungs and the wheezing, oh the wheezing, after I'd gone about a mile. I walked about another mile down a lovely riverside road as I contemplated my craptastic performance. How in the f can I be so out of shape? I walk EVERYWHERE, sometimes hours every day, and I had just spent much of the weekend lugging suitcases (and my body) up and down several million flights of stairs in Paris. People like Brady can run entire marathons, but I can barely run a mile?

Plus, I woke up this morning with a terrible sore throat, which can only be an anti-gift my body protesting the torture I put it through yesterday.

So now I'm torn between being determined to improve by going at it several times a week, and prematurely throwing in the towel because running is just not good for the health.

Paris in 25 Hours

When I first found out I was headed to France, I had a large number of folks promise me a visit. I figured most of them were just saying that and never intended to hop the pond, but this weekend I got to play tour guide to my first round of promise-keepers! Ted and Danielle are on their first European excursion, and had about a week in Jolly Old England before they took the Eurostar over to Paris on Saturday morning. Their train got in at 11:30 a.m. after a slight delay, and they were due to leave Sunday afternoon at 1:00 p.m. That means I had only 25 hours and change to show them the most magnificent city in the world. Ready? Allez-y!

12:30-13:00: After heaving our luggage up and down multiple sets of stairs in the metro, finding our hotel, and checking into our hotel, we took a a stroll down the Boulevard St. Germain des Pres. We stopped for some savory crepes on the way, and then poked around in the quarter's eponymous church for a look-see.

13:00-13:30: Our next stop was obvious: macarons at Ladurée, with an éclair for Ted. We brought our treats down to the banks of the Seine, where we nibbled them as we waited for our riverboat cruise.

13:30-14:30: We paddled in our Batobus toward the Ile de la Cité and the Ile Saint Louis, made a loop around them, and continued west until we stopped at the Eiffel Tower.

14:30-16:00: I had heard warnings for days that Paris, and especially the Eiffel Tower, were due to get terroristed. Thus I was beyond relieved that Ted and Danielle were content to just wander along the base of the tower rather than mounting it. Plus, the lines to get up stretched all the way to Digoin. So we artfully dodged the crap vendors, took a peek up the tower's innards, gazed upon the Champs de Mars, snapped some pics, and then got back in line to take the riverboat up to the Musée D'Orsay.

16:00-17:30: This is apparently the perfect time to go to the Musée D'Orsay, home to works by Van Gogh, Dégas, Seurat, Manet, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Rodin, Renoir, and others. There was no line! Plus, I got in for free when I showed them my visa! Double huzzah. We gazed upon masterpiece after masterpiece until the museum shut its doors for the night.

17:30-19:00: Since we weren't going to mount the Eiffel Tower or the Arc De Triomphe, I wanted to take my buds up to Montmartre to give them a lovely, peaceful panoramic view of the city. We got off at the Abesses métro stop (tip: take the elevator to avoid the billion stairs to the top) and encountered a giant, noisy parade. I at first assumed it was yet another protest against the change of retirement age from 60 to 62, but we soon figured out it was to celebrate the grape harvest. We headed up to Sacré Coeur and encountered a mob of Parisians getting their wine-tasting on. After touring the church we spent a frustrating 20 minutes trying to make our way down one of the side streets so we could get outta there.

19:00-20:30: My Digoin friend Suzanne had recommended a restaurant for us to go to, but we were bone tired after all the stairs and the squishing and the walking uphill and the stairs and the walking downhill, so we just plopped down at the first good-looking restaurant we happened upon. Ted got escargots as a starter, we both had duck with honey sauce as a main course, and he had creme brulée for dessert. Danielle had a greek salad, boeuf bourguignon, and mousse au chocolat. My dessert was a very boozy mojito sorbet. We shared a bottle of Bordeaux.

20:30-21:00: I hatched a plan to take mes amies on a forced march through nighttime Paris so they could see some of the important things we wouldn't have time for on Sunday. Our first stop was the Moulin Rouge, which is on a very lewd streets with sex shops as far as the eye can see. We then took the metro to Opéra, so they could see the magnificent rococo building in real life after seeing the model in the Musée D'Orsay.

21:00-22:00: We walked down the Avenue de l'Opéra to the Louvre, the magnificent, gigantic palace that is now one of the world's most important art museums. We arrived just as the Eiffel Tower began its sparkle motion. Alas, my camera was unable to capture it properly, so instead you can feast your eyes on the glass pyramid entrance to the Louvre.

22:00-23:30: We strolled along the Seine, encountering several groups of youngsters guzzling wine and beer en plein air. It's been awhile since I've been out in Paris on a Saturday night, so I don't know if that was just the usual Bacchanalia or if it was in honor of the harvest festival. We reached Notre Dame, and paused to watch a group of buff French rollerbladers make magic with their limbs along a course of overturned cups. We got a bit lost on our last leg of the trip, but we made it back to the hotel safe and sound, and promptly passed out.

9:00-10:30: After breakfast at the hotel, we set out for Notre Dame. Danielle and Ted toured the cathedral while I waited in line to go up the towers. This was a perfect plan, because by the time they were done exploring the line had stretched all the way to Digoin again. I got in for free by flashing my visa, and we climbed to the very tippy top. The cloudless day afforded magnificent views of the city.

10:30-11:00: We trucked over to Saint Chapelle, home to beautiful stained glass windows. We were properly awestruck, and glad we went.

11:00-12:00: I took a slight detour so I should show the bibliophiles Shakespeare & Co., an English-language bookstore where Hemmingway used to hang out. We got some panini sandwiches at a nearby street stand for lunch, and then hightailed it back to the hotel so we could catch the metro in time for our respective trains.

I'm proud of what we were able to see in such a short amount of time, but holy Jacques is it exhausting. 25 hours in Paris: c'est possible!

Chez moi

Some of you wanted to see my domicile. Well, voila my cell in all its glory. The door to the bathroom is on the left, my kitchen implements are on the right, and my bed is straight on till morning. Please note the omnipresent blue hue to the walls, which somehow manages to be as depressing as it is bright.

This would be my bathroom, home to the 2-ft-by-2-ft shower where I successfully contorted myself in order to shave my legs using four minutes' worth of hot water. I have since crowned myself the Leg Shaving Queen of France and celebrated with baguette and Nutella.

Welcome to my gigantic kitchen, where I can be often be found spreading goat cheese within a baguette or heating up water for pasta. I'm open to suggestions of what else I can create in this space. That white appliance is a large toaster oven with two hot places on top, and next to it is my dorm-sized mini-fridge.

This is my desk, where all the magique happens. It's also the most decorated corner of my cell. I would love it if you sent me things that I could tack on the walls to make them a bit less blue.

This picture gives you a better idea of the real wall color. That long gray drink of water is my wardrobe. I've yet to make the acquaintance of a French closet, but that just means there are way more Narnia possibilities here.

Everyone at my school keeps asking if I'm "bien-installé" (settled in), and after the purchase of a last few provisions today I feel like I finally am. I was kibbitzing with one of the secretaries this morning, who I told about my upcoming visitor, Loral. She said she would talk to the proviseur (headmaster) to see if I can move to another apartment that has two beds to better facilitate guests. She said she couldn't make any promises, but since there's just such an apartment that's currently empty she would try. So this may not be chez moi for long.

The creepiest (and best) museum in the world

Tomorrow all the language assistants in the Burgundy region will be gathering in Dijon for our orientation. Since I had nothing better to do, I decided to come a day early and check out Burgundy's largest city.

My No. 1 priority for tourist-ing was to visit the Mustard Museum, because, well, how cool is it that a mustard museum exists? Except it doesn't exist. At least not anymore. Quelling the desire to get right back on the train back to Digoin, I soldiered on and visited the huge (and free!) Musée des Beaux Arts in the Ducal Palace. After wandering around there for a few hours, I moseyed the streets of Dijon until I happened upon the Musée de la Vie Bourguignonne.

Quick aside: can I just say how awesome it is to go to museums by yourself? You can go at exactly your own speed and you don't have to pretend to be interested in things you aren't interested just so your companion thinks you're brainy. I highly recommend it.

So. Back to the Museum of Burgundian Life. I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't this:

"Bonjour! We are two bare-breasted mannequins with ratty bits of hair stuck to our heads. We like to fight over this one arm between us and use it to slap each other when no one else is around. This is very Burgundian."

What followed was a series of vignettes from Burgundian life-- marriages, trapping babies in odd wooden contraptions...

I went through three such rooms all by my lonesome, giggling to myself and imagining I saw them move. Then I really did see one move! I jumped and yelped, "Oh my God!" Turns out it was a museum docent. I tried to explain to her as I clutched my racing heart, "Oh mon dieu! J'ai pensé que vous étiez un mannequin! C'est tellement affreux! (OMD! I thought you were a mannequin! That's really scary!)"

She descended into giggles. I gave a start when I saw another humanoid docent lurking around the kitchen scene. "Il y a trop de mannequins ici pour avoir des vraies personnes aussi (There are too many mannequins here to have real people as well), " I scolded him.

Next was a series of recreated storefronts. There was a candy shop, a butcher shop, a milliner's, a fur shop, a dry goods shop... and this. A shop of horrors.

Turns out it was supposed to be a hair salon. The lady on the left is getting her hair permed and the lady on the right is getting hers dyed. I think. Either that or they used hair salons as fronts for psychological experiments and/or lobotomies.  

She looks awfully serene for having such a contraption attached to her noggin, no?

A Real Frenchy Dinner!

When I first learned I was coming to Digoin, I researched the crap out of it. Given that there are only a handful of Digoinais Internet sites, most of which are a time warp to 1995, that didn't take me very long. In desperation, I then turned to Facebook, and carefully looked over everyone who had "liked" Digoin. I chose a woman who looked nice and asked her for advice on how to best travel from Paris to her fair city. We commenced a correspondence, and when I told her I had arrived she suggested meeting up last night.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect, since Polly Platt told me in her book "French or Foe" that it would take months, years even, for a French person to feel comfortable enough with a stranger to invite them into their sanctum. Maybe we'd go out for some pastis, I hypothesized. Perhaps she just intended on taking me on a tour of the charming countryside.

But non! She took me to her sanctum! She lives up in the hills just outside of Digoin, in a charming stone house with an ancient bread oven outside. She introduced me to her rotund dog, Desi, who looked distinctly human and who, after pleasantries were exchanged, held court in the armchair, sitting on her hind legs with one paw proffered as if she were queen and I was supposed to kiss her ring.

Suzanne went upstairs to grab her laptop so I could show her pictures of my family, and meanwhile her son Fabian came home. Fab just received his Master's in geography (juste comme mon frere!) and was in the process of moving to Macon to study dams. After I went through Facebook and showed her the important peeps in my life, she went through her own files and showed me all the family trips she's taken in the last year.

While we waited for her husband she served me vin de noix, a wine she had made with chestnuts. It was about a 3 on the sweetness scale from one to Manischewitz. Her husband Christian then arrived home from a rousing game of boules (the French version of Bocce) with his friends, and we sat down to eat. The first course was avocado halves filled with mayonnaise and an olive and sprinkled with pepper. The mayonnaise here is different from at home-- it's tangier and has more of a yellowish tint. What I ate last night was probably homemade. They then poured me a glass of AOC* Beaujolais, and Suzanne served me chicken, mushrooms and potatoes as a main course.

I attempted to explain to them what my job was in Portland, but it was difficult to do since nothing similar exists in France. Here, the state takes care of most of what nonprofits do in the US. I had a heckuva time trying to explain workplace giving. Plus, I mispronounced culture (cool-TUYR) as couture (coo-TUYR), so they thought I raised money for art and sewing. Bof.

Christian encouraged me to use baguette to sop up all the juices on my plate before the next course. "En Frace, c'est la sauce qui est la plus importante," he explained.

Next Suzanne presented us with a cheese plate. Christian went through each one and explained its origin, what kind of milk it is made with and how strong it was. He told me one was from Gier, and I thought he said giraffe, as if the cheese had been made from giraffe milk. Bof encore. There was a camembert, a roquefort, and five other cheeses whose names I forget. He encouraged me to start with the most mild and end with the strongest. "Mais tout est fort!" Suzanne countered. The last one I tried was so strong it made my eyes water. "Du vin! Du vin!" they exclaimed when they saw my expression.

Finally, dessert. Suzanne had marinated figs in a sauce of cinnamon and ginger, and offered a selection of petits fours to go along with them.

After dinner we retired in front of the fireplace and first watched a scintillating program about windmills, and then the soccer match between Lyon and Tel Aviv. Lyon won. It was about 11:00--or, excuse me--23:00 when I arrived back to my cell, stomach gurgling from all that lactose but heart happy that I had triumphed over Polly Platt.

*AOC= Appellation d'origine controllée, a designation given by the French government to wine, cheese, butter, etc. that comes from a specific geographical region and has met certain standards. Nothing but the mustard created in Dijon that meets the AOC standards may have AOC on its label.

Digoin Digest

I arrived yesterday in Digoin, the city of 8,500 souls where I will live and work for the next seven months. One of train conductors struck up a conversation with me on my way here from Paris, and when I told him where I was headed he wrinkled his nose and said, "Mais... pourqoui?!? C'est tout petit!" He seemed genuinely concerned that I was going to have a terrible time and hate France, so he gave me his number and said to call him if I was ever in Chalon.

My contact from the school was waiting for me at the station when I departed the train-- it wasn't hard for her to find me since I was the only person who got off. My new conductor friend had inflated my confidence by telling me that I spoke very good French, but all of that evaporated when I started talking with the teacher. I kept answering questions incorrectly (Ex: Her: Was it a long journey? Me: I arrived in France on Saturday.) and stuttering my French conjugations, so she must have thought I was a prize idiot.

She took me to a grocery store so I could buy some provisions: baguette, chevre, Nutella (bien sur) and then took me back to my new home. She opened the door with a flourish and said, "Bienvenue a ton grand appartement!" Gulp. My first thought was: jail cell. It seems much smaller than the single dorm room I had in college, though maybe with the bathroom included it's the same size. The walls are painted a depressing shade of blue, and they seemed to have crammed as much depressing gray furniture in it as possible. A bed, desk, wardrobe and shelves are all squeezed in alongside a mini fridge, cabinet, hot plate and toaster oven. I'm going to wait to take a picture of it until it looks less cell-like.

Rather than wallowing, I took off to try to explore the village in the waning sunlight. I spied a library and a gym filled with beefy French dudes, as well as a lot of closed storefronts. I got a bit lost on the way back and ended up having a very creepy experience by a fog-filled cemetery. An ancient episode of Gossip Girl I happened to have on my computer lulled me to sleep in my Internet-free lodging.

This morning I went out to explore the city and get some much-needed items, such as a towel and a knife with more cutting power than the butter knives in my room. I plastered a huge smile on my face and forced myself to say a cheerful, "Bonjour!" to everyone I passed. Most responded likewise. Some detoured to the other side of the street. I made a detour at the river, which looks like this:

After my stop at a supermarché, I returned home for a shower. I waited for ages for the water to heat up to no avail, so I went to my school's office for help. While I waited in the head secretary's office for a janitor, I made the acquaintance of several teachers coming in and out. One asked me how in the heck I had ended up in Digoin. "Did you fall out of the plane?" he asked me in French.

My plumbing fixed, I met up my contact teacher. She invited me to sit in on her English classes. I thought I was just there to observe, but instead she had me stand at the front of the class and field questions about myself. I made an apparently fatal error when answering the question about what music I like with "Carla Bruni." They all laughed. I redeemed myself by saying I also liked Louise Attaque. Their other questions included, "'Ave you been to Las Vay-gass?" "What ahr your 'obbies?" "Do you love Barack Obama?" "What you think about zee snails?" "What words of French do you know?" "What age do you 'ave?" "Pleeze speak mooch more slowly."

I was told my job would consist of helping small groups of these students prepare for their oral examination at the end of the year, where they must discuss "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and another surprise text.

Since I was surviving on the pain au chocolat and few gulps of orange juice I'd had that morning, by 18:00 I decided to come into town for a proper meal. I'm sitting at Entre Mer et Montagne, which thankfully has wifi, and waiting for it to be 20:00 so I can get dinner. The building I'm in is on the left side of the street in the picture below.

Thus begins the most awkward (and hopefully most rewarding) period of my life...

Pastry Porn

My No. 1 goal for my weekend in Paris was to hit up Ladurée, an amazing pastry shop introduced to me by my good friend Sarumph on my last trip here. This is where I fell irrevocably in love with French macarons, a fancy meringue cookie sandwich with ganache in between. If you're coming to The Wedding, you have Ladurée to thank for the fact that we will have macarons in lieu of a cake.

They have the prettiest pastel window displays.

After considering the Saint-Honoré Rose-Framboise so I could see what "raspberry stew" was like, I instead went with the Divin.

Almost too pretty to eat. Almost.

St. Nick and Mrs. Clause each got the macarons. The flavors represented above are chocolate, pistachio, coconut, lemon and coffee.

OMD this was good.

If you come to Paris I will take you here toute de suite.

Three of my meals thus far have had a Nutella course

I'm trying to stay up as late as I can to limit my jet lag to one day, so I thought I'd update my favorite ninnymuggins on my adventures thus far.

After my travails trying to make my flight in San Francisco this summer, I was determined to make it to the airport with plenty of time to spare yesterday (my goodness; was it only yesterday? feels like many moons ago). Thankfully The Dude was able to wrangle a gate pass, so I didn't have to spend that extra 2.5 hours staring moodily into the distance and missing him. Instead, my fellow passengers were treated to a gross display of human emotion as I boarded the plane and we were forced to part. What can I say. Four months is a long time without your beloved.

I wedged my way into my window seat next to a fleshy Englishman intent on invading my personal space. He promptly dozed off, leaning ever-closer to my shoulder, when he would awake with a snort and correct his posture. This continued for all six hours of our flight into Reykjavik, as I made several failed attempts to find a comfortable position that would allow me to doze. We made it into Keflavik Airport at 6:30 a.m. Icelandic time, 1:30 a.m. Minneapolis time.

(At this point jet lag claimed me. It is now Sunday morning for moi, the middle of the night for toi.)

I stumbled around the airport bleary of eye and definitely not bushy of tail. I got a croissant that was 250 krona. I thought it was kind of a lot of money for a croissant but I handed over my card anyway.

My next flight was much more comfortable and pleasant. I enjoyed looking at the quaint English hamlets from above and imagining that they populated by Middle Ages peasants as illustrated in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

The plan was to meet my high school buddy Nick (henceforth known as St. Nick) at the RER station at Terminal One of Charles de Gaulle Airport. Which was great, except it doesn't exist. I took the airport shuttle to the next terminal, where I approached an official-looking man in a red vest to ask, with a huge smile plastered on my face, "Euh... excusez-moi, monsieur, mais ou est la station RER?" (I worked really hard on pronouncing that AIR-euh-AIR in my sleep-deprived state.) His response was something like, "Garble garble nonsense ferme garble garble bus nonsense. Tu comprends?"

I tried again. "La station AIR-euh-AIR. C'est ou?" Big, big smile. That tipped him off that I was a dumb American, and he told me, "The train ees close. You mus' take zee bus to next station. Go by there. OK?" No, I told him. Not OK. I was supposed to meet my friend by the train station and now I don't know where to go and I think I need to call him and I need a phone is there a phone I can use? At this point a Helpful European decided to take me on as his cause and he led me to a pay phone. He told me I could use my credit card to make a call. I thanked him profusely for all his help. Which was great, except my credit card wouldn't work. I awkwardly wielded my two suitcases into a shop with bizarrely small doors and bought a phone card. I awkwardly wielded my two suitcases out, went back to the phones and, as I called St. Nick's wife Mrs. Clause, I saw a tall lanky dude loping toward me. St. Nick! Merry Christmas!

Thank Rudolph for St. Nick, for I have no idea how I would have lugged my two gigantic suitcases up and down the dozens of flights of stairs on the way back to his abode. Elevators, Paris! Get on it! Mrs. Clause was waiting for us in their adorable French apartment with the yellow cupboards and blue and yellow dishes and view of Parisian rooftops. She made us delicious baguette sandwiches and, more importantly, proffered a giant vat of Nutella for dessert.

Once I could make my legs move again, we headed out for the Centre Pompidou, home to the world's best modern art. I'd gone there maybe five times before but never made it inside. The first gallery we went into had a gigantic painting of two faces. That's odd, I thought. That one's mouth looks like... and that one's eyes look like... oh. And there was a fiber sculpture in the room that looked like a weird canoe, except... oh. And there was a video of blood coming out of... oh.

Moving on...

I saw more nakedness in that museum than I have in my whole life. There were videos of butts clenching and unclenching. There were videos of naked ladies hula hooping with barbed wire on the beach. There was a massive sculpture of bloody gloves.

Once I get my teacher's card that gets me into national museums for free I'm totally going back.

The rest of the evening was a blur of skinny, booty, scarfy, chic, skinny, OMD eat a crepe Frenchies; me trying to make OMD (oh mon dieu) happen; Nutella; and crashing.

A Decade's Dream Down the Drain

Seven years, eight months, and 27 days. That's how far I got in my goal for a Puke-Free Decade. So tantalizingly close.

It all started on Boxing Day 2002: my 17 and 1/2 birthday. I was working my high school job selling tickets at the Duluth Omnimax Theatre when I started feeling odd. I was desperate to go home, but I had promised my big brother that I would comp tickets for him and his friends to see Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure at our 8:00 show. Shortly before he arrived, I upchucked. They came walking through the door joking and demanding a behind-the-scenes tour. "I can't," I groaned. "Jake, please take me home. I might die soon."

He refused, dedicated to learning about Shackleton's frigid plight. Then I upchucked again about 10 minutes into the show. I dragged myself up the stairs to find him at the top of the theater so I could stage whisper, "Jake. I'm begging you. I really need to go home. Please, for the love of Shackleton, take me home." Finally, he acquiesced.

I celebrated a much happier half-birthday the next year, and realized that it had been a whole year since I had puked. Then it was two, and then three years, despite my introduction to college drinking in general and UV Blue in particular. In '06 I had a Four More Years party, wherein my brother's friends tried to make me take shots and ruin my streak.

But nothing could ruin my streak. I apparently had a stomach of steel. Sure, there were times when I went one past my three-drink-per-night quota when I felt awfully dizzy and nauseated, but I refused to give in. Once I hit the five-year mark I set myself on a new goal: The Puke-Free Decade.

It seemed so easy, so attainable... until I jolted awake at 1:26 last night with terrible pains in my tummy. I rolled over, trying to find a more comfortable position. This wasn't just a normal stomachache, though. I felt an urge my body hadn't experienced in the entire life of the average second grader. "Am I really going to vom?!?" I thought to myself as I raced to the porcelain telephone. "I'm really going to vom! Noooooooooooo!"

I won't describe what happened next, other than to say it wasn't pretty. I trudged back to bed and wept salty tears of disgust and defeat. I mentally cursed everything I'd eaten that day, especially the sausage rolls appetizer I'd wolfed down at Brit's Pub last evening. I won't say they're full of poison, but I'm pretty sure they're full of poison.

Now I feel worthless. My Puke-Free Decade was the one thing I had going for me, the one thing that made me special and interesting. I have no reason to celebrate my half-birthday anymore. The streak was the perfect reason to throw myself a party. Celebrating your half-birthday for its own sake is just weird.

Sigh. I guess I'm seven hours in to my new streak...

Weeks of 10,000 Checklists

It's been nearly three weeks since we landed back in The Land of 10,000,000,000 Mosquitoes and so much has happened. We've reunited with family. We've reconnected with beloved friends. We've eaten alligator at the MN State Fair. We've welcomed the Jewish New Year. We've planned the crap out of our wedding. And we've started readying ourselves for the four-month separation when we'll be on different sides of the Atlantic.

I can't help but feel so grateful and full of love for everyone we have in our lives.

OK. Enough mush. Let me break it down for you so you can get caught up:

FRANCE UPDATE

• I never told you about my visa experience, did I? After the agony of waiting until the very last minute for my paperwork to arrive so I could go on my planned trip to San Fran, it arrived the very next week and I was thus able to keep the 6 a.m. flight to Oakland I had booked. To make a long story short, I had set my alarm for 4:40 p.m. instead of a.m., and made it to the airport mere minutes too late to get on my flight. Woe! But then I sweet-talked an airline agent into getting me on the very next flight to San Francisco and all was well in the world again. Weeee! The next morning my cousins and I arrived in the city with an hour to spare before my appt. We spent that time browsing the racks at Zara, where time apparently stands still. Oh wait. No. My watch stopped. Woe! But I made it on time and all my paperwork was in order and they sent my passport to my rents' house the next week with a beautiful visa in its pages. Weeee! Emotional roller coaster: over.
• I received an email from my school saying they would provide me with free housing in the school itself! Aside from the fact that I've always wanted to sleep in a school (nerd alert!), this is awesome for several reasons, namely: I don't have to bring a gazillion dollars to cover my deposit and first two month's rent before I get paid. My contact said they even provide all my linens and dishes and EVERYTHING! 
• I get in to France on a Saturday and I won't be able to get into the school till Monday. Which means: weekend in Paris! And my fabulous friends Nick and Kelly are willing to house me in their apartment! Double score! 
• Exclamation point!

WEDDING UPDATE

• My FMIL (future mother-in-law) and I went shopping for the materials to assemble the brooch bouquets. My ma is hosting a fete des bouquets next Sunday chez PP in Duluth. Let me know if you'd like to join in on the fun.
• I went bridesmaid dress shopping with my 'maids at Flutter in Uptown on Saturday. Each one has a completely different dress-- silhouette, designer, and color. They're going to look so hot that if I was a bridezilla I'd make them wear bags over their heads. But I'm not so it never even entered my mind... er... yeah. They were kind enough to join me afterward for my hair consultation, some OMG SHOEZ shopping, and my makeup consultation thereafter. They are champs of the highest order.
• Not only did the ladies find dresses, but the FMIL did too! Actually, she found four, and I don't envy her having to choose between them because they're all hot to trot.
• So now all I have left to do is the save the dates and the invitations and the wedding website and the menu selection and the music and the I need to go vom now.

These girls are pretty hot, but they're all butterfaces*

My favorite part of the Minnesota State Fair always has been and will be the Princess Kay of the Milky Way revolving, refrigerated chamber of butter heads. It's some sort of beauty pageant for women related to dairy farmers. Though there can be only one Princess Kay, everyone's a winner because all the finalists get their heads carved out of a giant block of butter.

I like imagining this year's Thanksgiving dinner at these ladies' homes, where the turkey is not the piece de resistance. No, the most joyous moment of the meal is when Princess Kay's parents march in, holding their daughter's head immortalized in delicious Minnesota butter. They triumphantly plant her upon a pedestal in the middle of the table as Great Aunt Myrtle weeps and Grandpa Gilbert's chest puffs out with pride. At first people are hesitant to mar this masterpiece, but they soon get over their squeamishness as they smear a bit of her ear on their roll, the bridge of her nose on their corn. Cousin Jimmy will use a lock of her tresses to smother on his mashed potatoes, and make the inevitable joke about there being hair in his butter as everyone rolls their eyes. 

*Joke courtesy of Chris Lund.