Hello from Paris

So I arrived here without incident or accident, which is fortunate and good. I love the train service here. I don't know why anyone would need first class - second was comfortable and relaxing enough. I found Laura without any problems, and before I was really worried that our hotel would be some fleabag hole in the wall somewhere, but au contraire! It resembles a Best Western or Holiday Inn, kind of. It's really far, but besides that it's great. There's a nice clean bathroom with a shower (which was important), and two comfy beds that feel clean. And a TV! We caught the end of Elf yesterday morning.

The weather leaves a little something to be desired; but I wasn't really expecting too much in the way of meteorological blessings. It was pretty cold the last few days and to my dismay, it was raining steadily when we looked out the window this morning. So we changed up the plans a bit. I think we're going to see the Louvre today (with all the benefits of being inside for three miles worth of museum) and perhaps the Arc de Triomph, but if we don't fit that in we can do that later.

We stumbled upon the Notre Dame cathedral on Thursday night by accident, which was nice. Also, there was a very expensive pastry shop with extraordinary-looking cakes that probably required the sale of a first-born child to buy.


We went to the Eiffel Tower last night because we were close and hey, why not? The lines were staggeringly long, and we accidentally picked the one without elevator access which was kind of a bummer due to Laura's knee. However, we made it up all the way to the second level, which is 700 stairs. Then we smashed into a tiny elevator and ascended all the way to the top, which had both enclosed and open areas. I'm really going to have to add a million pictures later, but I don't have that kind of luxurious time at the moment.


This guy was Joe, who we met randomly in the tourism office line at the Gard du Nord. He was in Paris for two days, spoke no French, and didn't know what to see. We hung out with him all day and have plans to meet him at the Louvre in about an hour. He was very funny and waited with us the entire four hours at the Eiffel Tower (four hours! Indeed!). There are definitely more things to post, but I have to run!

Merry Christmas Indeed!

What a present! Hi Dylan! Wish I could have actually met you. Hi all the aunts! And uncles! Hi Meredith! I miss the living room and the new snazzy door that isn't ugly. I only have three web minutes left; gotta go! Paris in the morning!

After-Christmas Post

I'm clandestinely posting from outside the office since their wireless isn't locked. Thankfully, it's almost 55 degrees here today, but my hands are still really cold. I had an eventful morning - I took tram 2 to the grocery store and picked up crackers, tortilla chips, pasta, and pesto sauce for myself. Then, I went to Monoprix and picked up some wine and chocolate for the girl whose dorm room I hijacked. Oh, and some toilet paper as well, because she was completely out.

So with any luck I'll be out of there tomorrow. Her dorm/efficiency unit is very nice, but the coldness cuts down on the enjoyment factor. I caught the end of Harry Potter last night on basic cable, and I did not agree whatsoever on the voice they used for Harry. In the French version, he sounds about seven years old.

All right, my fingers are freezing off. Peace out.

Quick Post

It's been kind of an uneventful Christmas thus far, which is good because any events that would happen would most likely be negative ones. I didn't leave the dorm room all day since it was so darn cold, and played a lot of solitaire and watched Fight Club, which was better than I remembered. I risked a shower this morning, hoping that it wouldn't make me even colder, but on the contrary it warmed me up considerably.

My present to myself was some dark chocolate that I picked up at Monoprix yesterday. It was quite good, but I'm sure it won't compare to the chocolate covered cherries that Mom is sending up with Laura. I think I may polish off that box in three days or left.

I hate travelling all the way into town to use the web cafe, but sadly the dorm doesn't have free wireless. There's always the same guy working here at the WWW and I think he likes me. He always answers me in English, even though I ask in French. I'm transparently American, I guess. I feel bad that he has to work on Christmas. But not incredibly bad, because I needed to use the internet.

Okay, only two minutes left, over and out.

Holiday Post

It's starting to get really chilly here, but thankfully snow is a strange phenomenon around these parts. Everyone left last night, so I stayed up pretty much the whole night with Tracey, Gretchen, Lauren, and Ashley. We played with this tiny, travel-sized Clue game, with French names for everyone, like Reverend Olive for Mister Green and Colonel Moutarde. Also, in French I found out that 'wrench' is described as an 'English key'. I won the second time around.

We also played Boxed Wine, which I thought was called Box Twine until someone pronounced it slowly. That's a good one as well. I kicked Gretchen's butt a few times in Egyptian Rat.

I really don't have much to say since nothing has happened yet. I've got to get used to spending a lot of time in internet cafes. I feel kind of boring.

It'll get more interesting after I actually go places and see real things rather than just taking pictures of signs around the city. I'll also be incommunicado for about two weeks, so over and out.

Christmas Shopping

In keeping with the trend of meat origin, McDonalds kindly lets me know that their beef is from both France and Ireland. Phew. Notice that a salad plus drink is almost seven euros. Yikes. And a McFish is three euros? I say nay.

I started this day right - I took out the cookie mix and made some lovin'. Originally, the plan was to make half for Madame Villon at the library and the other half for the directors at the program office, but upon arriving at the library, I realized that several of her cookies were way squished so I sacrified office cookies to make her bag look nicer. I then proceed to eat the rest of the office cookies. So, they don't get any at all.

There's a giant Christmas shopping setup in the middle of the Comedie right now, and though I didn't buy anything, Tracey was a gifting fool. She bought a little glazed porcelain thing for her dad, a teddy bear for someone named Matt, and several other geegaws. Here she is looking pensively at the impressive array of bearware.

These were what I would have bought had I any money. I have an incurable affinity for dishes.





I also have a weakness for candy that looks like actual fruit. It's not real!





Neither is this! For even more marzipan wowness, go here.






In looking up pretty candies, I found out that marzipan fruit is a tradition in Palermo, Sicily. It all began when nuns painted up some fake fruit to attach to trees and impress the archbishop.

Here's a Santa tarted up like Che Guevera. At least he is still offering his best wishes. . . for the revolution.







I always get a little bit leery when things are in quotation marks. It just makes them seem a little less real.

L'Ecureuil

As I've said before, again and again, there are literally no squirrels here. None. I can't seem to figure out where they have gone. I could accept that it's winter now so they're hibernating, but even in the carefree days of autumn I saw hide nor hair. They have to live around these areas, for three reasons: the trees are really great for nut-gathering and climbing, there's a wildlife park that's named Something Something of the Grey Squirrel, and for pete's sake, I saw a dead one all squished on the road. Perhaps there's a disease going around. Or, more likely, the French people eat squirrel as well and just don't talk about it.

Afterthought: maybe the nature park of the Grey Squirrel was so named as a sort of tribute or memorial to all of those squirrels who have disappeared from the area. Of course I can't refrain from Wiki. The Latin name for the squirrel branch translates into "the tail that casts a shadow". Apparently, however, that branch also encompasses groundhogs, prarie dogs, and chipmunks, whose tails I wouldn't really consider to cast much of any shadow.

Some other names for groundhogs include: woodchuck, land beaver, and whistlepig. Awesome.

I want to see this bad boy on a walk someday.

It turns out that squirrels have been responsible for many more electrical problems than just at sub-station MRL buildings at Penn State. The University of Alabama was plagued by power outages and apparently NASDAQ was brought down not once but twice. Wow.

"Squirrelled" is the longest one-syllable word in the English language.

The coat of arms for Froland, a municipality of Norway, features a pretty cool squirrel.

Oh, my world is breaking! I just found out that the same guy did all three Chipmunks voices! I could barely accept that it wasn't really high-pitched people, and now they tell me it was just one guy.

Sushi Eve

Hooray for it being Tuesday night and having no more examinations! This morning's was a somewhat rigorous series of questions dealing with a news feature that we were allowed to watch three times. It dealt with old castles that had been renovated and needed to attract more tourists. Most of the questions were pretty easy, but one of them asked what this guy's job had been before he advised the castle-owners on how to drum up business. I swear, each time the clip played I knew the exact spot where he answered that question, but all I heard was some mumbled French gobbledygook. I put down that he was an engineer because I honestly couldn't understand a word.

I figured that I deserved a nap this afternoon, but it was the most ill-taken nap ever. Not only is my room the farthest from the wood stove (which is their only means of heating this entire house), I always close my door so that the family can't stare at me while I'm asleep (a weird, irrational fear that I can't seem to shake). I finally broke down and grabbed yet another blanket from the closet to enclose my poor, shivering form. Do you know how many layers I have on my bed now? Five. I kid you not. I may as well be living in one of the aforementioned castles. At least then I'd have a fireplace in my room.

Juan Ignacio gave me his number today so that we may get together for a pre-Christmas dinner. He's having sushi for Christmas Eve. Uh, no. That's just not going to happen. I'll bring my own roasted chicken and perhaps some potatoes to mash. I found out that the library at school is open until Friday so I hurriedly checked out three books today and finished one. I'll try Moby Dick again; I started reading it before and didn't think it was bad at all but then, you know, life got in the way and my reading plans were shelved. Hah.

This reminded me of that crappy polluted stream behind the Dairi Delite in Bridgeville that always had tires and refrigerators and shopping carts all through it.

Monoprix Street Fighting

Yesterday's final went decently. We received an article in French about the Paris metro and how so many people are starting to actually read things besides newspapers and free gazettes, and the underlying reasons. We then had to answer free-response to about ten questions, and complete an essay. There were two options; one was a standard essay about whether or not reading has become less appreciated due to the progressing forms of technology, and the other was a friendly letter about the ubiquity of advertisements in French life. Frankly, the idea would have been the reading question in a friendly letter, but I really didn't want to write about the numerous ads around here (it would get boring if I kept saying how nude they were).

Montpellier weather is just crazy. In the last three days it's gone from crazy tempest to nice fall breezes to freaky cold.

Oh! I saw the best fight yesterday! I apologize in advance for not getting a video but a) I had no time to rummage around and didn't want to miss a second of the action and b) I didn't want to get hit by an irate member of the rowdiness.

It started when Tracey and I were walking into the Monoprix. There was this group of guys standing outside and I thought they were just having a spirited discussion when Tracey said something like, "ooh, fight!" That sent me right back outside to blatently watch them from the entrance. It was even better than I had thought at first, because two of the gang were Monoprix security guys shouting at an apparent ruffian. The normal (well, he wasn't really, but the not-rentacop guy) was getting all up in Security's grill about something (sorry for not giving dialogue, but it's hard to understand garbled street French that was probably peppered with many profanities). He was waving his hand near Security's face, and all of a sudden Security smacked that guy's hand back into his own face! It was totally on! BAM! Why you hitting yourself, hooligan?

And, as a witness, the Security guys totally hit first. Too bad I didn't have my camera on, really.

So that regular guy FREAKS out and starts whaling on Security, who in turn gets a few nasty punches in himself. By this point I had dragged Tracey back out of the store because I knew she would only regret missing it later. So Security 2 is dragging the first guy back to store (probably to avoid a lawsuit), while the regular guy is being held back by this strange woman who I think was homeless. It was still SO on, because they kept shouting things at each other.

Then Tracey and I went to get our Diet Cokes and bread.

I continued packing last night, and became utterly dishearted at the amount of stuff I have to lug all the way downtown. I think I'm just going to take it in shifts over the next three days. Hopefully I can find times where the family isn't home since it's kind of awkward to move out while they're still around.

Friday's Final

I just uploaded my essay from the final yesterday. We all received a comic strip with the last few panels missing, and it was our job to describe the events in the past tense using indirect discourse. Here's what I wrote. The second part of the final was to finish the story using seven temporal markers. Enjoy.

Last Week

Thankfully, I only have finals tomorrow and Tuesday, so I'll have the rest of the week to mosey around the city taking more pictures and posting more entries. I can hear the collective sigh of relief.

Katy and I made a trip to the Casino Cafeteria today since I was really in the mood for three scoops of ice cream with whipped cream for 2 euros 60. While Katy was in the lavatory (no pictures, sorry), I found a guestbook-looking thing on a podium that informed the concerned patrons each day exactly where their beef had originated. Today's menu featured choice meats from both France and Germany.

Crane games are rip-offs enough in the United States, but I would boycott indefinitely any that cost 2 euros for one play. I like the animated character on the backboard who is wielding what looks like a machete. Actually, it was a parachute, but I like it this way better.



In boring, ordinary news, I cooked up a fantastic omelette this afternoon. It was really perfect. I think the secret is to use enough oil to coat the entire pan, otherwise the eggs don't cook right and they always stick.


At the risk of missing my bus the other day, I managed to get conclusive proof that nerdy safety-conscious parents exist here as well. Note the baby buggy attached to the main bike, the reflector panels on the tires, and the Ikea neon green vests just in case they weren't visible enough already.

Contact Info

I finally got my address for next semester, so here it is.

My expose went fine, don't worry.

Almost Done

I've been a lazy hag lately in not posting, but finals are coming up like whoa. Tomorrow I have to give a five-minute oral expose (Blogger's not helping me out on the accents) and I chose the American Library not due to any burning interest but because I also have to turn in a report on it for the World of Work class and two birds, one stone, you know how it is.

Happily, it's going well and I already have around five pages done. I'll see if I can post it when I'm completely finished. I even included a pictoral slideshow to accompany my speech, which mainly consists of pictures of the tram or the bridge and me saying, "and this is how I get to work".

Tests are rapidly approaching; Saturday afternoon I have a final from 12:30 - 3:00ish, then two more Monday and Tuesday morning. But luckily I'm completely done afterwards and have a nice week or so to relax.

Madame Villon, my director at the library, gave me a pot of citrus conserves in addition to four bran muffins which I quickly devoured. How lovely. I think I'm going to buy her a pastry or something tomorrow so I don't seem stingy.



Check this mad action out - a car was BURNED last weekend right next door! Apparently the fire trucks came and everything. It figures that the one night that I go out, exciting things happen. Seriously, look at it! Crazy.

Festivity. I know it's pretty tall and everything, but frankly I was underwhelmed. The lights that they have everywhere are very nice and twinkly, however.





I spotted this poster in the window of the Monoprix this afternoon. I assume that these are lollipops, but I cannot imagine what the candy people were thinking. All right, I can understand a hunk of brownie, a raspberry, and what look to be pomegranate seeds. I'll even give it the benefit of the doubt and say that weird yellow chunk is pineapple. But there is absolutely no reason that there should be an entire shrimp in a lollipop. Oh, the French are so strange.

Bowling

I've been kind of lazy as of late; a combination of finals looming ahead and also just feeling fatigued a lot. But I selflessly pulled myself together and resolved to make the world a little better by uploading bowling pictures. I'm just a humanitarian, I guess.

You think the United States is big on safety? Pah! Try metal detectors at a bowling alley! What fun! Given that this was the first metal detector I've seen in France (apart from the airport, natch) I had to wonder if something happened at this alley that inspired the extra measures. Here's Katy striking several pins. Yeah!

Maybe someone tried to steal this work of art. It's a timeless classic.








They match up pool and bowling here as well; albeit with a little bit less emphasis on the pool part. It was some kid's birthday when we got there and I was sorely tempted to steal the cake they left out in the open.

Welcome to Montpellier, man.

About halfway through the frame they turned everything into "cosmic mode". Here's an incredibly short video of Sam almost getting a strike before the lights went out, and another afterwards where he gets a spare. He honestly wasn't that good the rest of the turns; I think it was the added pressure of being filmed. So he has me to thank.

The bathrooms were galactic, man. I didn't actually go in (I'm cursing myself now) but I didn't hear about anything out of the ordinary from the people who did. They had to add "WC" to the painting to make sure people realized that it was a bathroom and not a space portal.



This was right across the street. Words can't do justice. Who is this person???






Right before the bus stop, there was this nice looking restaurant named Chicken Charly's. I know the picture doesn't really show it, but Chicken Charly is holding a fork. A fork that will later be used to consume him. Yet he looks so happy. Oh, and you see how it advertises itself as being open non-stop? This is a vicious lie. All that means is that they don't close up shop for two hours while they take a lunch break.

Last Night

Last night was much fun; I was able to get out of the house for once and stay over at Tracey's apartment. Here's a picture of Marianna (Columbian) with the boyfriend (French) of Erica (Swedish). I have quite the international connections.

Arlene (California) kept trying to get Owen (Kentucky) to smile, which he did only reluctantly. He's here with an entirely different program, since Louisville is the twin city of Montpellier, and they have some kind of exchange set up.



There's been a Telethon going on recently that's a huge deal here. It's like their one annual charity event. In every major city they have stages set up and televised things like crazy basketball, moto-cross racing, rappers, horses, you name it. They collect a lot of money and donate it to research.
I had no idea who this guy was, but people were going crazy trying to get pictures so I figured I might as well join the bandwagon. I asked someone who it was afterwards, and she babbled off some name as well as "on the television with a program called mumblemumble Witches". I managed to find what she was talking about (warning, in French). Apparently, he's the host of a show called "It's Not Witchcraft!", kind of a Bill Nye approach to simplifying science for teenagers. It's been going on since 1994 and still quite popular.

We went bowling today; more on that later.

L'Arlequin

To culminate the end of the semester, the professors suggested a dinner for everyone in III-5 (which sounds like a prison ward). I found my way there at 8:15, which I found to be a little tardy but was actually kind of early for dinner at a restaurant. The tardiness had just begun, however - we didn't order until 9:15 and didn't start eating until at least 10:00. Happily, the food was great and it was a fun time. To the left is Yanna (Russia) and my professor, Madame Monier. Next to Yanna is her husband, whose name I promptly forgot. He's French and works for some company that harnasses wind energy.

Due to the abundance of spare time, I was able to get some pictures of people in my class that I usually am not inclined to photograph. Here, I seem to be conspiring to get a really bad shot of Max, the fake English boy whose accent I love, faux as it may be. That's Marianna (Columbia) in the foreground .

Here's a better shot. Also included is Petra (Sweden). Max read to me the other day from my gigantesque Sherlock Holmes volume II anthology. He jumped around with Sherlock's accent from upper-class barrister to Cockney to Jamaican until he finally settled on a bizarre feathery-eunuch concoction that he really liked. I think he was disappointed that I didn't lug the book to dinner with me so he would have a chance to practice it more.

Here's Jia (China) and Iyman (Syria) (I have no idea how to spell his name) before dinner. Eye-man has big plans to be a dentist. He told me that he wants to move to Canada since it's a lot easier to get a license. He had very nice teeth.


This wasn't my appetizer, but it looked good. That's half of my professor holding the plate, which was a warm-chevre salad. If I didn't have such a profound aversion to goat tastes I would have been tempted.

Instead, I went for fried goodness. I was halfway through the rings before I thought to take a picture. The orange sauce was kind of like a thicker, tangier French dressing (appropriate), and instead of having onions in the middle, it was long rings of calamari. Mm. Squidrings. They were actually really good, with the caveat of being hard to bite through all the way.

This is my lovely main plate. I went bold and ordered the salmon, and didn't even think about bones being a problem until the first crunchy bite. Ugh. But after that it went well. It was really tasty.

Here's the main course of Saif (Iraq), which is some kind of poultry in some kind of sauce. I forgot ot ask how it was. This wins the award for least memorable plate of the night.


Ah yes, the grand finale. True to form, I ordered the creme brulee (blogger isn't very accent-friendly) and it was quite good, even if not brulee'd enough for my palate. Any kind of dessert is good dessert, though.


Here's Tanya (Norway) with her own creme brulee. It was a popular dessert. She just got engaged a few weeks ago to her boyfriend, who is also Norweigan. He took her out on a weekend vacation to the coast and proposed to her on the beach.



We finally were all finished at around midnight, after getting coffee (except for pesky me, who requested a hot chocolate) and I managed to grab one of the candies from the basket on the way out, feeling like it would be like in Monty Python with the after-dinner mint. Luckily I stayed in one piece and had to straggle home and get up for class today.

Variety

I have a strange mishmash of pictures that I've been meaning to put up, so I'll make this a sort of medley post.

I tried to hurry this picture so the owner wouldn't come out and inveigle me into buying a muffin that cost $1.50. They came so close to spelling 'muffin' right, and then panicked at the end.


This joyfully exuberant statue is what I pass twice a week (or more) getting to the American Library. Oh yes! I get to work more hours!






At the zoo, they had several different stones set up around the park to show the paw prints and skull of the larger animals. On the bears, however, they saw fit to include a full-scale replica of its feces. Nice.




This is our neighbor's statue,
and it was kind of a weird choice. Most people have lions crouching or a flowerpot - this seems like an egghead chick sitting on a snail.





I'm sure that everyone remembers the WC en panne! from the last zoo trip. Not only was the porta-potty functional this time, Sam was brave enough to actually open it. What's more, I managed to get a video. Warning: this kind of drama is not for the weak of heart.

Zoo Signage

One thing that's always nice about the zoo is their abundance of signs.
We've already seen their concern for fire safety. But there's much more. . .






This is not the kind of sign I would want to encounter in an emergency situation. Do I run left? Do I run right? Can I go both ways? Is there a preferred emergency exit? Does it depend on the direction that the flames are going?



We would like to remind you that it is forbidden to run. Au contraire, you fogies. I saw a ton of joggers on the botanical path.


I found this near the lemurarium, and it mostly makes sense, being that they frown on chucking loaves of bread at the animals. And I can see how lemurs would be permitted in their own lemurarium. But why is the deer involved? It has nothing to do whatsoever with the exhibit.
Maybe it makes a guest appearance.

The theme here is that no fun is allowed. No smoking, no food (except for the ubiquitous deer and lemur), no biking, no dogs, and no . . . holding flowers. Yes, that means you.