Slaves, Take Two

I seriously must like animals more than people. I never take pictures of anyone but as soon as a frog rolls by, my camera is out. This was at the university this morning, in one of their drainage systems next to the arts building.


I finally mustered up the nerve to take a picture in the silent library today. See! Slaves! Read more about it in this post.




Also, notice that I'm beginning to slowly add more photos online, as accessed by the link on the right-hand side.

Additional Pets

I think I really am turning into a crazy cat lady. Here's two videos from this morning; the first of which is just them eating. Yawn, I know. But it's one of the only ones I could get with all five (plus Luna!) at a time.



Since I've been seriously neglecting the other pets, here are some sad pictures of them encaged. Hello, bunny. He's not allowed out anymore since he chewed through all the electrical cable in the backyard.

I don't think this rat even has a name, because they seem to forget about him all the time. He just stays in his house and doesn't cause any trouble.


This one is of nutsy Reggae, who loves to play. She's quite an aerodynamic little cat. Like a panther.

Kitty Pictures

It was a film-heavy day yesterday, since Friday commenced the 28th annual Mediterranean film festival here in Montpellier. I saw one of the official documentaries called Le Brouillard dans les Palmiers, which was very good, as well as Boccaccio 70, but only the second half, which included a buxom Sophia Loren.

I tried to get a shower but obviously a lot of the other members of the household had the same idea because the water was ice cold.

Cats cats cats! I'll start with the newest addition to the family reunion that's rapidly growing in the backyard. This is ?, Berenger's cat. He's a skittish type (the cat), and doesn't seem to play well with the others. He doesn't like gentle caresses, either. This cat is a waste of time. Look how he has to eat his breakfast - in a bowl completely separate from the others.

Aww, Léon is probably my favorite. He looks nothing like Kestava (the mom), but is so sweet and just loves to be petted (I feel like I'm writing those 'adopt me!' notices at Petco). He's got an ouchie on his front paw.

Here's where my vanity starts to become apparent. That's Reggae, who loves chasing things and following people around. I'm not really sure how happy he was being propped up for the photo op.


Here I am again, brooding and hiding behind the cat, who was becoming increasingly eager to get away from me.

Pont du Gard, Encore

I think now is a good time for . . . Nîmes revisited!

Here's a basic Pont du Gard photo, complete with Larry Washington's head hiding in the bush. According to various sources, up until a few years ago you used to be able to walk along the upper tier of the aqueduct. That would have been life-endangering but also a good photo op.

I tried to wade and have fun since it was killer hot that day, but my sensitive princess feet were not up to the task. The ground under the river is not sand or anything gentle, but instead made up of many, many tennis ball-sized rocks. Not only did they hurt, they also provided ample opportunity to slip and fall on your butt in front of friends. I just said no and dried myself off with my pathetic airplane blanket (at this time I still didn't have a towel).

What I noticed more was this poor little girl in the forefront. Not only is she scantily clad without a bathing suit top, it also appears that her bottoms aren't for swimming at all, but regular underwear. Also, she is sporting a rather nasty-looking wedgie.

Here's another look at the Gard river, which is pretty unremarkable except that it flooded quite badly in 1998 and seriously damaged another old aqueduct, which has since, I'm glad to say, been fully restored.

Galactagogue

Oh crap! For some mysterious reason I woke up at 3:00 AM, and had a craving for grapes. Since going downstairs is risking death, I postponed my want until I just couldn't take it anymore. My family is going to hate me now. Not only do my toes click, which is odd, so they could hear me going down the stairs, I had to blindly fumble my way to the refrigerator, open it (with a huge puffy liner-suction noise), OPEN the BAG, which was rustly, shoo away Luna the Spaz since she was jumping all over me and hitting the table, and then, on my way out of the kitchen, I knocked over a chair. It couldn't have landed more loudly. Hopefully it scared the dog. Without even trying to set it aright, I panicked and sprinted up the steps, without even washing the grapes. Oh, and I took about thirty more grapes than I had intended, so now I'm sitting in my room, hoping that I won't be chastised in the morning, eating a bunch of unwashed grapes. At least they're very good. Maybe I can blame the chair thing on Luna.

I had a dream that I forgot the Galleria Carmike's phone number. Like that would ever happen.

I started reading House of Leaves the other day, and it is a seriously daunting task. It's the size of a phone book and looks like it should be used to prop small children up to the kitchen table. It's not a hard book, and seems interesting enough, but for one thing, I don't know if I could finish it in two weeks, and also it's large enough to be cumbersome, which is not an attractive attribute for Public Transportation Literature.

There's this Iraqi boy named Saif in my class, and during our discussions today I learned that his parents just abandoned their house in Baghdad, which is sad, but even sadder is that they had to leave their three dogs. In more positive news, we also learned that he lost over forty kilos since he's joined a gym. At first I did the inverse conversion and thought, "sixteen pounds, that's not super-impressive" and then I realized that it was more like a hundred pounds. He must have been like the Hulk, since he's still a pretty big boy.

I had an English date with this girl named Elodie today. We talked at one of the small cafes near the Comedie, and I ordered this really great tea that was called a verveine menthe. I learned upon coming home that a verveine isn't really tea at all, but instead a savory blend of tealike herbs.

So of course, being awake at five fourteen, I wikipedia'd verveine, which gave me nothing, so I found the Latin name off of French wiki, which is verbena. According to the article, verbena is a galactagogue. Quoi? So now I guess I should be expecting some above-average lactation. Wikipedia is a dangerous labyrinth.

Raffle

Petra, the Norweigan girl in my language class, shared some interesting news the other day - there exists a restaurant downtown named Aux Deux Fondues. Their specialty is (surprise) a lot of fondue, including a chocolate dessert fondue. To up their weird factor, they serve beverages in baby bottles and if you order a pitcher of water for a group, it comes with many straws so everyone can drink from the same carafe (ew). I can't say that I've really fondued in the past, so this should be an exciting experience.

There are now five cats in the backyard, and they're all related. Two are the original cats, Kestava and Angel. Then the addition of Reggae and Leon. Now, somehow, another cat whose owner is on vacation is cowering behind the swing by the pool. He can take over the name of '?'. It's like a cat menagerie out there.

In public transportation news, the tram shuddered to a stop while at Boutonnet, and the doors wouldn't open. We chilled there for awhile, not moving, and then all the lights went out. Traditionally, this is not a very good sign. Luckily I was sitting down and not next to some weird guy who was talking to himself. Sadly, there was no drama - the lights came back on in about ten minutes and we were cheerfully on our way.

Director Francoise at the American library is using me to pimp out these raffle tickets for Thanksgiving, with prizes that run the gamut from DVDs to gift certificates to a bona fide turkey. I didn't really want to buy any but I feel obligated since she saved me twenty bucks by giving me a free membership. Who knows, maybe I'll have turkey this year.

Home Movies

I trickily maneuvered my videos here, with a rather boring one to start. The black tiny kitty's name is ?, and the Siamese one is named Reggae, which they pronounce 'raggah'. Note how Reggae's paw is injured so he must limp - French cats are maimed here. I honestly apologize for how shadowy and dull it is. It was getting into evening, and the cats weren't performing.

Let's try our hand at another cinematic delight, shall we? This was taken last Saturday at the big hullaballoo down at the Comedie. This little girl was so adorable I had to take a movie but it was a short one lest people think I'm the creepy weird lady who takes movies of people's kids.

Samless Briefs

The girls' dad is here for dinner and for some reason he brought two of the cats, which is fine by me. Strangely enough, they're all related - Kastava is the mom and Angel along with the two foreign cats are the litter.

Here's Angel, warily eyeing (pun!) the newcomers. I'm sad to note that his eye seems to be worse as of late.







Katy pulled me into this lingerie that was ridiculously cheap ( I bought two bras for five euro, combined) and they also sold 'samless' boxer-briefs, hee hee.




This guy at the bus stop was kind of weird today. He was probably a little older than me, and he asked for a pen. I was so pleased that I understood what he was saying that I cheerfully handed one over. Then the bus came, and he just stayed on the bench, while I was like, "dude, come on, I need my pen back". Finally he got on the bus and gave me the pen. Then, a minute later, he asked for it again. So I regave it. He got off at my stop, creepy guy alert number one, and asked me if I knew how to get to (insert foreign French-sounding street name here) which, of course, I did not. Then I thought he said something about going to a party together, but really he just said soirée, as in "bon soirée", a.k.a good evening.

Slave Section

Aunt Sissy - the candy was awesome. It was funny to watch my host family's faces when they tasted the Butterfingers (peanut butter and chocolate has yet to break through to the French culinary market).

Aunt Melanie - cutest Halloween card ever. I am up to my whiskers in fun!

I giggled aloud today in the library. I was staring off into the distance at one of the study tables, consciously avoiding any real work, when I noticed that they had an entire section devoted to "Slaves". What the heck is it doing in the language library, I pondered to myself. Is it slave gospel? Ebonics? Slave slang? Then I felt incredibly dumb since it was actually just French for the Slavic languages.

Professor Monier returned La Honte de Ma Vie today, with a "tres bien!" and a "13/15", which is rather impressive, given that I really don't have any nut allergies nor swooning crushes on any thirteen year old neighbors.

Pano II

Oh, this program is fun! I'm not really good at getting all of the image yet, but it's a neat way to show horizontality. This is what I see every morning right in front of the bus stop.

Pan-Photo

I know this looks incredibly crappy right now, but how cool! I found this program that lets you take a whole bunch of pictures and then automatically stitches them together in a panoramic shot for you. This here consists of around fifty-one individual shots. I took this in a hurry yesterday right before crossing the Lez Canal. I'll certainly have to play around with it some more later.

Rain Days

Pretty, huh? It's been messy and rainy here for the last week or so (Montpellier seems to be getting close to their limit of sixty-five non-sunny days per year) but the good thing is that the flowers are staying in bloom.

I had completely forgotten about Halloween, and asked my host family what they do here. Oddly, it's pretty much exactly the same as at home: kids get dressed up, trick or treat, take candy, go home. Even more like home is the fact that they never get very many. Maybe I'll get trick or treat duty, whee! Anyone who wants candy at this house has got to make it past the stairs of death, a lot of crap in the driveway, and Luna the Jumpy Attack Dog.

I had such a horrible moment yesterday - in one glance, I realized with terror that not only were my tights not black but navy blue, and they also had a huge run in the back. I had no time to run back to the house so I had to endure it all day.

Bidet!

I managed to wake up at 8:45 this morning to make a trip to the flea market at Mosson. Besides walking around staring at the weirdies and eating a kabob, I also bought two scarves and a lovely, lovely jacket that snaps. It's wonderful. I also snagged a datebook for fifty centimes since it's a 2006 and this year is rapidly fading. I needed a datebook, anyway (for all my dates).

To start, this is a Montpellier-commissioned art piece that was evidently designed to scare the willies out of children, since it's a gigantic metal beast with a pair of legs between its teeth.




Since it's Sunday, that means it's 'let's close all the shops' day here. Amandeou's is a chocolaterie, as shown by the menacing bonbons on their storefront (France has a thing about scaring small children). It also has an armless Chinese girl, with the saying "No arms . . . no chocolate". What does that even mean?


I got a better look inside Tracey's apartment, and it rocks. Check out the wallpaper in the kitchen. It's awesome.




But! The bathroom was even MORE awesome! Do you know why? They had a bidet! This was, officially, my first bidet sighting in France. I took several pictures. Tracey even showed me how it works. You turn the handles and water comes out, like a very low sink. I suppose you just sit in it and chill for awhile, then you stand up (using the towel?) and drain it. I'm sorry to say that I did not, repeat did not, use this bidet.


So this evening Madame tells me that each time I've been saying "je suis replete", which I thought was a fancy way of saying "I'm full", really means "I am plump". Good lord, who else have I used that phrase with? Probably someone really important. At least I found it out now.

Library Bathroom

I'd almost forgotten to upload yet another fascinating French bathroom picture. This was from the 'Employees Only' lavatory at the American Library. I was sensorily overloaded the second I opened the door. What is all that stuff? I pushed the button on the contraption next to the toilet paper and this crap sprayed all over my hand. Apparently it's to spray on a section of paper towel to wipe off the seat before you use it. Oh, too late.


I have only seen several of these continual-towel-dispensers throughout my life, and my germ phobia sets on high alert. You're using the same towel as many, many other bathroom goers! Ew!




My curiosity was piqued during Inventory today and against my better judgment I took out The Stepford Wives. It was just as fuzzy and lame as I found the 2005 remake to be. I read the whole thing in about a half hour. It could have been really, really cool but . . . nope. I can't imagine how it managed a remake.

However, perhaps due to my threats, Robinson was very excellent.

It's Great!

This box of baby wipes made me chuckle. It's one big contraction, really - "Fess Nett" is short for "fesses nettoyantes", a.k.a. "cleaned buttcheeks". A very straightforward brand name.

Did Tony the Tiger renounce his identity? Now they have him saying "a toi de jouer avec Asterix voir dos", meaning "now you can play with Asterix, see back of box", which isn't quite as catchy.




Anyway, at dinner today Madame (she wants me to call her Katrina, uh no) was talking about her sister whose children are all grown up and who treats her Shih Tzu better than her kids and pampers it to death. I asked "what's his name?" and she said, "you mean, what was his name". Apparently, her sister had accidentally ran it over with her car last night and it died. How traumatic!

Carrefour, Take Two

I'm feeling pretty posty today, so here's some more Carrefour love.

Bwah! I'm a shark!
Howdy howdy howdy!
Hold onto your limbs!





I couldn't believe my eyes. At first I thought it was just a fish department prop. But it was a real shark indeed, as the nice poissonerie man indicated. He also bragged to me about how he set up the entire fish display himself, complete with . . .



A GIGANTIC FISH! I wonder if it's possible to buy the whole thing at a go, or if you can request a certain filet, or if it's just a show fish and it's been there for months.


Besides marine life, Carrefour was chock full of other goodness. Like Nutella. This is like the holy grail of supermarket stands. I want to swim in a pool of Nutella. Or slowly wade, I suppose.




Ariel, look! You're so famous that your name is a household occurance. They just can't get enough of you. They're enticing you to visit them. Each bottle of househould cleanser pleads "Ariel . . . Ariel. . . "




According the the packaging, Ariel is also active when cold and can do 25 loads of laundry. Congratulations!

Carrefour

I just had a wonderful, wonderful journey to the grocery store! Oh, it was so fun. I finally found my dental floss, but it was practically hidden in the toothbrush section, and there was only one option, so Oral B is definitely monopolizing the market right now. It could have cost eight euro and I probably still would have bought it. Besides the floss, I also picked up some mint green tea and grapes.

The cereal here seems to be geared more towards children, as shown by this hyperactive blob of a mascot. Is it a ghost? Look at his eyes! Is he wearing a hat?





I took the liberty of enlarging Mr. Shaky, and he's kind of scary looking. What's that peak on his head? Ghost hair? God, he's terrifying.




I probably looked so ridiculous taking photos in a grocery store, but at this point in my tourism state I'm becoming oblivious to people staring at me.


That was taken in their floral section, where the flowers were arranged by color! That's exactly what I would have done.

Are these toilet tissues any good? Well I don't know. They're probably. . . okay. Talk about low standards.




Poor rabbit. It seems like he's trying to escape from his plastic prison.

Books

I think the secret to getting along in the French world is just to be persistantly dumb. And patient. I used that to my advantage twice today. The first was at the Paul-Valery library. . .

Two days ago I tried to take some books out, but the check-out man wouldn't let me since I'd had Emma for more than a week and if anything's overdue, they block your account completely. So I said okay, and today I brought back my book. I walked two feet to my left to get to the check-out desk, and told the same guy as before that I had just returned my book and I would like to try again with the whole check-out thing. He scans my card and shakes his head vigorously, saying that I had a fifty cent fine for the two days that Emma was overdue. Can I give him the fifty cents? NO! Of course not! We're in France! I had to go down the hall to the secretary's office and give her the money so she could clear my account. Good lord. Okay.

So I fish fifty cents out of my backpack (by some random, bizarre stroke of luck I had exactly fifty centimes + one American penny) and wait in the secretary's room as she is talking on the phone. I explain my plight (it became a plight at this point) and she scans my card. Then she started talking nonsense about me taking out four books for three weeks, which was grossly untrue. Then, she hands back my fifty cents and calls it a gift. Then she says my card is blocked until October 25th. Need I remind you that I have absolutely no idea what is going on at this point? So I get shuffled back to the main library in a daze and re-hand my card to the first, original, mean library man. He makes some joke that I didn't get at all but pleased him immensely and then finally I left with Robinson by Muriel Spark and The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy. They had better be page-turners.

After that interesting incident, I got to be pretty blasé (hee) about having various things demanded of me. I made a point to stop at the Fredrico Fellini Mediathèque to get a membership and gain access to their collections (only around 7 euros for a full-year, sweet). But before I could touch their stash, I had to prove a million different things. Proof of identity, with passport. Proof of student status, with university card. Proof of residency, with a piece of mail addressed to me. Proof of They're Cheap, as shown by me having to bring in my own picture to tape onto the card. After I get all of these various documents out of my backpack, I'm sitting in front of a grumpy man (who looked eerily similar to Other Grumpy Library Man) who then tells me that he won't accept my photocopied passport information page. Why?, I charmingly ask. He says it's not an original document. I ramble off some story about how I don't feel secure carrying around my passport so instead have photocopies made. He won't take them. I won't move. We have a stare-off. Finally he grumbles something incomprehensible and angrily snips out my picture and smacks it onto a card. Excellent.

I was very pleased to see that the French have such exquisite taste in automobiles. This lovely car is an Audi TT roadster. If I had a spare, oh I don't know, forty thousand dollars, this would be my ride of choice.

Fishies

Lately I've been boring, yo. These are the two most exciting pictures I've taken for days. And they're of fish! In a tank! I need to start planning some social events.


I was pretty pleased with myself today, though. I've made it up to H! It was the day of Authors With Too Many Books. Such as W.E.B Griffin. John Grisham. Or Sue "F is for Free Time" Grafton.

Here's the fish that I've named Skeletor, as he's pretty much nothing but bones. Check it out! Transparency! It was hard to take a good picture since he was so darty, so this is the best I could do.

More Class

Update: another hour and a half of class has gone by. The professor must be really tired because she keeps giving us breaks. She also must be in a spitfire mood because she keeps insulting people. We're doing conditional now, as in 'if this class were any more slow it'd be going backwards'.

She totally slammed on the Asians in my class. The first phrase she used was "If I were Asian, I would have slanty eyes," accompanied with facial gestures. Next, she picked on Kenzo Suzuki, and said "If Kenzo had been born in France, he wouldn't speak like a drunk."

After this, Israeli girl kept pestering her with irritating questions on stuff that we weren't even discussing, and pushed her to the point of saying, "you're becoming the hair in the soup." BURN!

What an Idiom

It's Tuesday, and that means four and a half hours of class day. They give us this pathetic half hour break in the middle and I almost wish they'd just cut that and let us go a half hour early. We've been working on French idioms, some of which translate exactly into English and some of which are really bizarre. Here are some of my favorites:

He arrives like a hair in your soup.

She speaks like a Spanish cow.

You're as pale as a napkin.

He's as dumb as a broom without a handle or bristles.

(my personal favorite): She laughs like a hunchback.

Subway is playing tonight one floor above me but it starts at 5:00 and my class doesn't get out until 5:30, and I hate being the awkward person who comes into movies late. I rented Match Point yesterday so I may just watch that instead so I can pick another one tomorrow.

Transformers

Erin is kindly supplying me with tidbits of information about the general passings at Penn State, and here's some news that I meant to put up awhile ago and forgot. I'm still giggling as I read it. Very characteristic of Penn State, as there are currently more squirrels than students. The squirrelcount here is still at 1, whereas the live squirrelcount remains at 0. Maybe they get eaten like the rabbits.

Reply-To: "Daniel E. Lehman"
To: L-MRLBLDG@LISTS.PSU.EDU
Subject: Power Outage - 10/1
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2006 11:22:19 -0400

A squirrel in a transformer at the east campus
sub-station caused a power outage at the MRL and
RUA buildings from 9:20 to 10:10 on 10/1.

-Dan

===================================
Daniel E. Lehman
IT Manager and Facilities Coordinator
Penn State Materials Research Institute
185 MRI Building
University Park PA 16802

Not only that, but I also am going to miss The Wiggles in concert at University Park. That is the very definition of tragedy.

Gimli

I was out in the American Library vicinity today around 1:00, and I thought to myself, "it's too bad that the library doesn't open until two. Retarded, actually. What kind of library doesn't open until two?" I must have been channeling some sort of impulse because I went to the building anyway and to my dismay, people were entering! And exiting! It was like a twilight zone experience. They must be like every other business in France and not want customers because the brochures clearly state Monday: 2 PM to 6:30 PM. I spent a leisurely hour reading back issues of Esquire and enjoying American pop culture and expensive Versace suits.

I did an extreme double take looking at one of the advertisements with a lanky, young, pale fellow credited at the bottom as Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Quoi?! This is Gimli! I was about to suggest an extra Oscar for the make-up crew for Lord of the Rings for transforming this gazellelike youth into the wizened, squat dwarf when I remembered that Gimli was played by Jonathan Rhys Davies. They're too similar for me.

Who doesn't love a bathroom shot? I shivered with trepidation thinking about how horrible the convention center's facilites would be, but I was pleasantly surprised. I had to hurry up and take this while there was no one waiting for a stall since cameras in the loo are frowned upon here. It was really quite nice.


Fisticuffs almost broke out on the bus today, and I really wish I would have had more than a passing understanding as to what was going on. These three annoying adolescent boys were sitting in the way back of the bus playing some loud MIDI-esque tunes from their cell phone and being generally boisterous. Eventually, this middle aged man standing in front me accosts them, and if my French was anywhere near correct, yells, "Are you talking to me? Who are you talking to? Are you talking to me?" He then tried to push them off the bus (we were at a stop at this point) and the driver had to leave his comfy chair and kick the guy out. This other older guy then started talking to the boys but I couldn't tell what he was saying. French life is like watching a movie with mute on, without the benefit of English closed captioning. I guess, more accurately, it's like watching a French movie without any subtitles at all.

I ran out of dental floss about a week ago and every night I'm like, crap! Why didn't I pick up floss today? I had all those opportunities! So today I went to the Monoprix, and found the bath and body aisle. They had toothpaste, toothbrushes, denture tablets, mouthwash, whitening gel, extra toothbrush heads . . . and no dental floss. Darn unhygienic French! I asked this guy farther down the aisle, "pardonnez-moi, monsieur, mais est-ce que vous pouvez m'aider-" and got immediately cut off with a "Sorry, but I don't speak French". Whee! English! I then asked him, in English, if he knew if Monoprix sold dental floss. He didn't, but said that he had seen it before in some other various stores. Great, English dude. That helps. So I'm still without floss.

Fun at the Place

After the gustatory excitement of the morning, Joe and I went to the Place de la Comedie just to check out the happening scene. It was lucky that we did so, because not one but two amazing spectacles were going on.

This was but a short, lame video of what we watched intently for over an hour. It does not do justice to the full hilarity of the situation. You take an ordinary street grate, add some upward draft plus skirt action, and watch what happens. We saw many, many desperate grasps as women would walk right into it. I almost did. It could have been a disaster. My favorite was one before we left where this woman in a big floofy skirt was talking on her cell phone and WHEE! Up it went! God, I could have watched for days. No one ever expected it. I think that woman noticed that I was taking the video. I'm surprised I didn't get a beatdown from some irate boyfriend.

And then, when the fun could not have gotten any better, there was a crazy lady! Not just some homeless person yelling, that's boring. This was some older woman with no bra dancing like she just don't care in the middle of the Place. It was amazing. The band was called Lemongrove, and apparently they were from England and made their way from place to place in France off of their earnings. They played "Smoke on the Water", and I wished that I had Guitar Hero with me at the time because I totally rock that song. That guy with a blue shirt in the background is her husband/significant other, who did not dance but encouraged Crazy Lady every step of the way.

Convention Center

Joe and I had plans today to catch the Photo and Film exhibition at Palavas-les-Flots this morning, but circumstances were not in our favor. At Port Marianne, we couldn't figure out where to take Bus 131, so abandoning that, we looked for Bus 28, which wasn't coming for another two hours. No good. We decided to return to the Gare St. Roch in hopes of catching a different bus, which lead to an excursion throughout the train station and a parking lot. The bus that we wanted wasn't there, but there was a shuttle that went to the Foire, which is this gigantic convention that showcases many, many different products. Joe wanted to go there, but I balked at paying 13 euro just to get sold some crap. Being the persuasive little devil that he is, I finally went along. We found that the admission fee was only 6 euro, yay. Even better was when I actually got to the counter and showed my ISIC card and had to sign some paper, then received a ticket for free. Why? I wasn't going to ask. I enjoyed the downward spiral of admission cost.

Just so you know, don't say that something is an 'exhibition' in France. It's most likely an exposition. An exhibition is a creepy nude guy with a trenchcoat.

I took a lot of foodie pictures. This was at a very, very tasty looking candy store. The nice vendor let me take tons of pictures of his wares, including a video of their chocolate fountain (I may add it later).

The pastries looked delicious and I wanted all of them.

Here's Joe next to the fake ice cream cone. We did see some awesome Italian ice cream but it was something like 3.50 euro for two scoops, so we were prepared to wait until McDonalds later, which delightfully serves milkshakes and cones for a sole euro. He got a Croque Monsieur and at this point it is about half devoured.


They sold everything here. Everything. It looked like the Home Shopping Network, minus Ron Popeil. Pool tables. Jukeboxes. Fireplaces. Depillatories. Create-a-belts. Nesting dolls. Leather jackets. Bling. Crotchless tights. No thanks.



I bought three euro worth of candy (it was just meh) just for a chance to take a picture of those bloated candy strawberries. I really wanted to try them but I was a little scared.

Here's what I did buy and enjoy - matching salt and pepper 'huggers'. Cute! Their faces are two eyeholes and a nose where you dump out the salt. They were five euro and I had a grand inner struggle but the spendy side ultimately won.

Flags

This is one of the giant signs welcoming everyone to Montpellier. Well, everyone apparently except for Spain, who got shafted. With my not-great knowledge of flags, I can distinguish France, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and, with help, Austria and Belgium. Nor is there a mention of their closest neighbor, Andorra.


I had a catlike curiosity to find the national flag of Andorra, and I am somewhat underwhelmed. Several program participants took a weekend trip there to go camping, and they reported it to be getting quite cold. According to my French professor, in a month or so there's going to be snow four feet high, and it's a good place to ski.

During this fun-filled search, I learned that the study of flags is vexillology. That should come in handy someday.

Snakes! On a flag! These were sailed by French merchant ships dating back to 1766, way before Samuel L. Jackson. The site said that the snake Hiss!


This is probably my favorite, and that's saying something since there were some pretty trippy flags out there. I said to myself, "this seems like a character from a Beatles movie", and as luck would have it, it's for the Isle of Man, which is indeed a British dependancy.


Their national food is the tasty-sounding 'Spuds and Herrin', and while the language of Manx is dying out, their motto is "Traa Dy Liooar", which means, "time enough". Their leader is the Lord of Mann, which would be a pretty solid ego booster. Although they aren't technically part of Great Britain, they take advantage of the military (even though I really doubt anyone's trying to get a stronghold on Man), but they did have a falling-out with Parliament in the 1970's. Apparently, they wanted to hold onto the honoured tradition of birching delinquent youth with a cane.

The Bee Gees were born on this island! Maybe that's reason enough to include this on my list of possible future vacation spots.