Don't Leave Home Without It

It's a little hard to tell in the picture, but circled next to the magazine is undeniably a Torrey hair.  IT HAS BEEN SIX MONTHS SINCE WE DROPPED HER OFF WITH FRIENDS IN COLORADO!!!!

(Torrey, for those of you that don't know, is our very, very hairy dog).  I found this on the floor today while sweeping.  All of our clothes here have been washed multiple times.  We sweep daily.  We are ON A DIFFERENT CONTINENT.  Yet we can't get away.

I guess there are some things that will be rough to come home to.  On a related note, thank you again to Nathan and Lydia, and Sarah and Ryan.  We probably owe you new vacuum cleaners, as well as our gratitude.

Concrete Ping Pong

 

That, my friends, is an outdoor ping-pong table.  It is in the park across the street from us, and it is 100% concrete.  Margaret bought me a set of paddles and balls for my birthday, and we go play a few times a week now.  It's light enough out to play till almost 10 PM.

As you can probably imagine, wind has a huge effect in outdoor ping-pong.  You definitely want to be hitting upwind- you can hit it as hard as you want and it lands in.  Even more fun is having a concrete net.  You can have little games with yourself if you want, and all sorts of sweet bounces 10 feet in the air if you hit the top of the net.

It's a pretty delightful way to make up for being in a tiny apartment.  I'll miss our outdoor table when we go home.

Defeated by the French...

...and their extreme fear of rain!

Margaret and I went to have a picnic in the park on Monday.  We staked out a lovely place underneath some giant trees and were having a grand ol' time, as seen in picture below.

It even began to drizzle a little bit, which was nice because we were dry under the trees and got to sit and watch the rain fall.

Now, all the parks in France are completely fenced and gated, and most have signs on the gates that basically say 'this park will close in case of storm'.  I always assumed that meant, you know, a storm.  Maybe they are worried about people being in open fields during tornadoes or something.  Never mind that we haven't seen any weather more intense than a soaking rain since we've been here.

It turns out that what those signs mean is that the park will close in the instance of any sort of liquid falling from the sky.  After about 20 minutes of rain, a park ranger started driving his scooter around all the paths in the park, honking his big bad scooter horn constantly.  He eventually came up to us and told us that we needed to leave immediately out the main gate!

I have no idea what they are trying to protect by closing parks when it rains.  You aren't allowed to sit on the grass or play sports in most parks anyway.  I would say that it is to save the park rangers from getting wet, but they all have shelters to stand in.  Maybe it is just for job security, to justify having a person staff the gate of a park that is free to enter.

Anyway, we enjoyed the rest of our evening at home.

The park ranger in the distance, off to honk his scooter horn at other innocent picnic-ers

The Words We Used

Telluride Bluegrass Festival starts today.  Most of my favorite bands, a place more beautiful than imaginable, happiest atmosphere I've ever experienced: there are good reasons that this week was the one I was most dejected to miss when we decided to come to France.

Along with the thoughts of Telluride, there have been other reasons that have made the past week or so the most homesick I've had here.  The end is in site, and my heart has definitely moved back to the States.  This semester hasn't been very busy, class-wise, so I feel somewhat like time is being wasted.  And because I haven't had many days of class, it's been hard to keep up regular interactions with people.

Rather than dwell on missing Telluride and accentuate the blue mood, I want to try to catalogue the many ideas, words, and pieces of art that have accompanied me through the past 5 months, alleviating homesickness and culture shock.  For those reasons, I think the proliferation and ease of portability of our entertainment and culture has been one of the things I've been most grateful for this year.

The library to bring to France was a major decision last December.  My all-time favorites, of course: the frozen poetry of The English Patient, Garrison Keillor's Leaving Home, the lonely companionship of Gatsby, the painful beauty of Till We Have Faces.  Also, A Moveable Feast for Paris.  And St. Augustin's Confessions, Mere Christianity, and The Brothers Karamazov to provoke thought.

As much as I keep harping on it, getting The New Yorker over here has been clutch.  At times my language skills have felt like they were covered in felt, because of the simplifications required when most of our speaking is with non-native English speakers.  Each issue of the magazine has been a weekly cleansing, reminding me of good words and well-constructed arguments.

And music has been a constant, with Margaret's iPod stereo dock playing almost non-stop when we are in our apartment.  Rocking out, setting the mood, waking us up- having music at the tip of your fingers might be my favorite modern technology.  And on days like today, it is a solace to be able to call up some DMB to provide the comforts of an old musical friend, or Darrell Scott to sing the beauty of the American spirit.

This blog has been an aid, too.  Even when the posts have been blatantly self-serving (i.e., this one), it has helped me express myself and also feel in contact with friends.  And really, I think all of the words and music we have used to keep us going over here can only maintain for so long.  It's the deep conversations and brief joyful moments with good friends that you really miss in a new place.

Still you don't expect to be bright and bon vivant
So far away from home, so far away from home
Paul Simon's "American Tune", via the Darrell Scott version

Breakdown

This is a little delayed in posting, but whoever guessed 5 months in the 'When will they break down and prepare themselves cheeseburgers, fries, and beer for dinner to satisfy patriotic longings?' poll, you win.

Right around the end of May I hit the wall with French food, so we went to the grocery for beef, hamburger buns, ketchup, and potatoes.

It was delicious. AMERICA!

Pay For What You Get

This Saturday, Margaret and I went to a free concert in Parc St. Cloud, south of us on the outskirts of Paris.  It was actually a really beautiful park with formal gardens stretching on forever.  And it was nearly empty!  Beautiful things abound around here, I guess, and it's too far out of central Paris for tourists to get there.

So that was nice.  The concert was another story.  It was actually a series of concerts, but we didn't get there till the last one.  It was an Ethiopian folk singer and a Parisian jazz bassist playing together.  Intriguing, right?

Well, all I can say is that they have unentertaining jazz fusion music in France too.  It turned out to be dark un-melodic chanting over a thrumming, distorted bass line.  Perfect for those contemplative evenings at home in a thunderstorm, or if the end of the world has come and you want to ponder the sins of your civilization.  Not so much for a Saturday afternoon in the park when most of your audience is families with small children.  People fled in droves.

But the park was beautiful, and we had a great picnic.  And it was free.

Beer biking in Belgium

162 miles, 25 beers, 5 days, 2 bikes and 1 happy couple....we took our long-awaited beer cycling trip last weekend and had a blast.  For this beer geek and cycling enthusiast duo, it felt like we were returning to the Mother Ship.

Hiking the Côte d'Azur

This entry is WAY overdue...
While Tom had to return to Paris for class, I was fortunate enough to spend the second of my two week spring break hiking the southern coast of France with Beth!  (Yes, French primary schools not only get two weeks of spring break, they get two weeks of vacation for every six weeks of school.  AND, every Wednesday off.  I guess they're just trying to prepare for French adult life.)

We met in Nice (at a at a hostel which served 12 kinds of cereal for breakfast!), with no real plan other than to catch a train in Toulon- 120 miles away- 5 days later.  And we were going to walk.  And we were going to camp in whatever open beach or forest we found along the way.  It was an ambitious itinerary, as we soon realized.  But figuring it out is half the fun, right?   

Starting off in Nice, with our new street-bought sunglasses

Cannes

A view of the coast

Hiking in the Massif L'Esterel

Sun setting over the Mediterranean

Unable to find the right gas for our stove, meals consisted of canned veggies/meats, pudding and baguettes

Sunrise

We've come so far!

Coastal trail around the peninsula of St. Tropez

What are those girls doing in hiking boots on the beach?!

Coastal trail from Port Lucia to Saint-Raphaël

The trip turned out amazing: we hiked along two beautiful coastal trails, through the mountains and into small seaside villages.  We walked through vineyard valleys and successfully hitchhiked twice- once with a hippie Swiss couple and once with a local girl on her way to work.  The Cote d'Azur is definitely made more for stylish Parisian vacationers than budget backpackers, but one of the amazing features of the region was that every bus ride between towns cost only 1 Euro!  Never mind that they always ended up taking twice as long as scheduled because of some accident or traffic jam, to which the bus drivers and riders contentedly just stopped and got out for a smoke break on the side of the road.  It provided a convenient, legal way to hitch hike what we couldn't walk. :)  

We found some amazing beach side campsites, that felt especially like heaven after hours of tromping through sand and rocks.  Apparently the Germans love cheap camping too, because we were constantly surrounded by them.  "Campeole" was the name of the camping chain, and they even made pain au chocolates to order for breakfast if you'd like!  One night we tried camping in the forest (actually not allowed) and spent the entire night listening to hoof tromping and snorting-grunting sounds all around our tent.  Wild boars, horses, mountain lions?!...we will never know, except that we were sure we'd get eaten alive.  

We ended in Toulon on Good Friday, and made it just in time for a Stations of the Cross service at noon.  We joined a congregation of hundreds and walked through the streets of the city singing, kneeling and reading the story of Christ's death.  It was an experience we'll never forget- to be united with believers from all walks and stages of life, proclaiming the sorrow of that day.

The trip was a wonderful time of renewal, rest and adventure.  I am eternally grateful for friends who will share in these crazy adventures and remind me what it means to love unconditionally.