Virtually Home

Sometime after regaining consciousness and before opening my eyes this morning, I remembered (sort of gleefully) that I'd fallen asleep reading the Wheel of Time, and thought of sleepily carrying the book and a blanket downstairs to sit by the fireplace and read all morning. I thought probably if I sat there, someone would come build a fire on the hearth. Then I opened my eyes and realized I was both in France, and no longer 14 years old. Also, that the house is gone, and that particular morning will probably not happen again. It was really disorienting, but not altogether unpleasant. Friday afternoon. I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do with my Friday. The photo is of a cotton-candy setup at the fair from a few days ago. Here they call it "Barbe à Papa" -- "Papa's Beard". Those bins of different colored things are your flavor options. There are a lot more decisions to make than just "pink" or "blue", here. I think it...

I think the latest washing machine atrocity witnessed the bottom of my I-miss-everything-and-have-no-friends spiral. I think I realized that my life, while not wholly unpleasant, is not complete without people I can socialize with. Additionally, I realized it's hard to socialize if you don't speak to anyone, and that it's hard to speak to anyone if you're constantly afraid of their judging you for something or other. I've had a pretty promising, seeming-upswing the last several days. First, I went to the birthday party of a guy I met a few weeks ago, and had a lot of fun talking to and hanging out with him and his friends. I met him for a Coke the next day and had a good conversation, and when I wandered leisurely back to my house I came across a fair, which is where the ferris wheel photo comes from. I like it because I took it with my cell phone. Despite my lens having been repaired, I didn't think I'd come across such cool things when I left the hous...

Today, I am frustrated beyond belief. Already. Last week I called the company that came to give me an estimate about the washing machine to ask them why the hell they still had not come to fix my washing machine. They told me I had to wait for the formal estimate in the mail and then MAIL IT BACK TO THEM when I made my decision. And so I waited with as much patience as I could muster, for over a week, for a piece of mail they claimed they mailed to me from not even a mile from where I am sitting right now. No luck. I just called back to beg for someone to come fix it, and their response was that they HAVE to have the request in writing and I MUST wait for it in the mail. They agreed to send me a new one. I asked them if we could just forget I ever "asked for" the estimate and start a new work order. She said no. And furthermore, there are parts to order. I asked her (rather hopelessly) if she could order them in advance. She said no, she has to receive a request i...

Yesterday after class I was waiting to ask our professor a question and listening to the conversation he was having with another student. The question he'd asked had to do with the difference between a linguistic sign and a symbol, and as the professor started talking about symbolism, he suddenly says: "Like America. Everyone in the whole world knows the value of America. When you seen an American flag, you don't just think that it symbolizes the U.S. -- it symbolizes a lot more than that." At which point the student says "ok, I understand now" and they both turn and look at me. I'd sort of worked out my whole question in advance so I could minimize stuttering, but I was so surprised that it didn't work out quite like I'd planned. Last night, Alex had heard about a rock show near our place, and we went. It turned out to be a juice bar called Soup&Juice. A juice bar that also sold beer? Or, kind of. They explained to us that they would onl...

This morning I was walking to the tram past a couple of ladies with clipboards. I learned after the first week that once the ladies with the clipboards conducting the survey or trying to get signatures for the petition figure out that you're not French, they absolutely refuse to talk to you further even if you display interest. So I was walking by with my headphones and they made eye contact and I just told them sorry, I'm not French (except I said it in French) - and they're like "wait! Are you English?" (in English) and the confused, resulting conversation that took place in mixed French (on my part) and English (on theirs) was apparently intended to lure me into the church of scientology. I was confused at first -- aside from passing some Jehova's Witnesses at a tram stop once, I have not been proselytized to once since arriving here -- not even in all the churches and cathedrals I've visited. When I looked confused they said "Scientology...you h...

Well, our washing machine still doesn't work. Also, we lost to Texas. I hate that a lot, but I can't say I didn't see it coming. It got cold in Bordeaux all of a sudden. It's already affecting my life, and it's not even below 50 yet. I just have very little desire to walk around aimlessly (which was one of my chief employments until this week) when it's cold out. All the shops and restaurants are starting to keep their doors closed and move their furniture inside. I hate it when it gets cold. I lose motivation to go anywhere, and when it gets dark earlier I'm much more likely to stay inside than to get anything done. It's not ideal. On the upside, the guy I left my lens with tells me he can fix it for around 30 euros, and to call back sometime next week. Hopefully this is true, because that's not a bad price at all. I was expecting worse. I'm copying the notes I took during the first week of class into some new notebooks. They don't r...

...and I wish I could see the game.

And after a title like that, I have to start off with some more connerie. I called Auchan the other day, and after the lady on the line looked up my work order, was simply told to "be patient" and hung up on. Aside from being offended by that awkward departure from my expectations about customer service, I didn't have any idea what I was being told to be patient for, so I made Maria call again. Maria was told that, when I told the technician to tell me how much it would cost before beginning work, he took that as a request for a formal estimate. Which means that he went back to Auchan, filled out some paperwork, and had them mail me an estimate. By the mail. As in, the kind with a postman. And then, when I receive the estimate, I have to decide whether the cost is acceptable (phone-lady said 107 euros, but refused to take the order over the phone) and then mail it back to them. And then they'll call me to schedule an appointment. Which, judging by the last time I made...

Here's why (with an apology in advance for any of my previous high school teachers who are reading this blog and may be offended by association, though I don't think that's likely to happen): NO ONE brought a computer to class. Almost as if they weren't allowed to. I'm glad I didn't, I would have looked like that silly American. People talked over what the professor was saying. Students tried to leave, repeatedly, five minutes before the lecture ended and had to be reminded that there was still time left. The desks were covered in graffiti -- "your mom" jokes and anarchy symbols mostly -- and all of this graffiti was in English. My favorite so far was a drawing of a smurf in blue ballpoint pen. I had five solid hours of class (not even any breaks -- a class would end at the same moment a new one was supposed to start, so I was always late but no one cared) with a lunch break that was too short to buy any food from the cafeteria. I went to my lin...

I didn't very well succeed at making my sleeping/waking schedule school-compatible in advance. As I was trying to go to sleep 7 hours "early" last night, I was struck by the memory of standing in my parents' kitchen, trying in vane to argue with my mother about my new school-year bed time. I was short enough I couldn't see into the microwave mounted over the stove, but I'm not really sure what that means. What I do know is that the night before last I went to bed at 7 a.m., and this morning I woke up at 8. Yes, this morning's wake-up time was last night's going to sleep time, give or take "snooze" a few times. It wasn't very fun, but all things considered I think I got more sleep last night than I really expected to. I woke up so early to go to campus because I thought "hey, I have no idea when my classes meet -- what if they meet in the morning? then I'd miss them!" My flaw with this thinking was in the belief that by g...

Match facial piercings of the passengers. For some reason there are a lot more people with facial piercings who ride the B line than there seem to be in the general Bordeaux population. Even-numbered sets earn a point. Watch people's eyes dart back and forth when they look out the window. This is also good for cars. Count kebab stands and laundromats as we go by. Watch bikers who are riding parallel with the train, and if applicable, count how many times the tram passes or is passed. Listen to children tell elaborate and enthusiastic stories to their bored guardians. Children are easiest to understand because they speak very directly, with limited vocabulary, and with plenty of expressive facial expressions, vocal intonations, and gestures.

Rollerblading. Both as a means of transportation and for recreation. There are definitely more rollerbladers at the skate park at any given time than BMXers or skateboarders. Wearing one's sweater tied over one's shoulders. And while this is a super preppy thing to do in the States, it seems that people from all different social...I don't want to say castes...circles? Do it with impunity. Céline Dion.

Today, I went to the university to try and figure out when my classes are actually going to be held, since school starts on Monday. I thought that by waiting until Friday I had behaved in a remarkably laid-back and French-compatible manner, and that surely, by now, everything was sorted out and communicated to, at the very least, the International Relations office, which would help me in my quest. What I found was a room with a table of schedules, unlabeled, sent from different departments, containing only that department's schedule. They were not even in a stack. They were scattered in no discernible order. This system is, evidently, not a problem at all for real French kids, because when they pick a major they take all the classes (and not really any others) on the agenda, at the same time as everyone else with their major, and that's that. For one such as me? Not going to work so well. Luckily for me, none of the four departments I have preliminarily aligned myself with ...

I will start by saying that this is the only photo I have from Amsterdam. It was a delicious pizza, and the photo illustrates an interesting quality of European pizzas, which is that not every slice is guaranteed to have all the ingredients you might have ordered on a single pizza. I particularly enjoyed the artistry of the ascending triangles of sliced ham on the left side overlayed by the more organic shapes of the onions. However, as "only" photos go? I probably should have tried to get some shots of the actual city with my phone. Every time I was outside it was cold and raining and I had other concerns, like not being run over by bicycles. So I will backtrack and start from the beginning. Alex and I left for Amsterdam on Saturday morning. The train left at 8:30 a.m., which meant leaving around 7:40 to take the two tram lines to Gare St. Jean. It should be noted that this was about 4 hours earlier than I've been waking up lately, and only two and a half hours after ...

People do not appear to fix their dogs in this country. And yes, I am the sort of person who notices these things. Amsterdam in the morning.

This post is going to be kind of schizophrenic, as I have a lot of very short things to say. Every day I am increasingly embarrassed by the American reputation abroad inspired by the Bush era and the Iraq war -- and also about our culture's relative disregard for other cultures. Every exchange student I meet speaks at least three languages -- one of their native country and two others. Some of them speak more. A lot of the exchange students who are studying here will go on to spend another year or another semester in another country to practice their third language. By contrast, our two "mandatory" years of language in high school seem to pale, and a lot majors don't even require college-level language courses if the high school requirement has been completed (Engineers, mainly). It's silly. When I was in the exchange students meeting today, the auditorium was empty of Americans -- mostly because they're all in French as a second language classes already. ...