Virtually Home

This morning I had a 9:30 appointment with a long-awaited plumber. We've had sort of ridiculous amounts of water dripping from our sink for upwards of four months now. Our landlady has variously claimed that the linoleum peels up because we spill water when we do dishes, that the wooden baseboard under the bar rotted completely because we spilled a bottle of water under it, and that the brown puddle that oozed out from under said bar with said rotting wood was simply spilled alcohol. Her solution to our problem is to have the counters and sink replaced, and I'm not sure if that will help, but at least it's something. So I'm awaiting the plumber at 9:30. Imagine my surprise when the door bell went off at 8 a.m., and my brain struggled out of its dream bliss to make my body get out of bed and answer the door. The fixit dude (who, as far as I can tell, is either in no way qualified to be a plumber or entirely trained to tell our landlady exactly what she wants to hear, i...

On Saturday we woke up earlier than any of our bodies would have liked, and the extra-France residents had their first experience with a curtainless shower. Meredith was still feeling pretty exhausted and opted to stay home for the first part of the day, and save her energy for the Eiffel Tower that night. Mel and I took a few metro lines to the RER C and rode it all the way out to Versailles, which was a trip I hadn't taken before. Since we'd seen the Louvre just the day before, the whole trip felt like a big tour of Louis XIV's ego. The palace was, of course, beautiful and incredibly grandiose. It was also choked with people, and Mel and I were pretty constantly exclaiming over various photographic opportunities we might have had, were we given a shot that wasn't full of other tourists. There was a photographic exhibition on display, celebrating the palace and its significance over the years. They had photos from pretty much the inception of the camera, to the sig...

Last Wednesday night, Noah and the Whale came to Bordeaux. This was exciting because I like the band and had recently heard the album they were touring for, but also exciting because it's the "major" show I've seen in Bordeaux. I finally got to see the venue called Rock School Barbey, which is advertised all over town pretty much constantly. It's over in the dubious district by the train station where all the night clubs and peep shows live, and the venue itself was strangely tiny. It claimed a capacity of 600, which it might have had if you reckon such things with the French concept of how much space one needs. Which I guess they do, since it's France, and since in general-admission crowds you never end up with personal space anyway. The stage was inset in the middle so that the crowd rose up on tiny stairs around it. They alternated tracks from their first and second albums, to balance the mood, and the entire set was a lot more electric and rocky than the a...

I spent most of today reading my history textbook, trying to study for an exam that probably has very little to do with anything that the book has to say. We'll be given a text and asked to make a detailed outline of it, making a few points on no particular theme. This doesn't strike me as a very useful learning tool, and I'm kind of wondering what I'm going to say in the couple of hours we'll be given. Then I realized that studying won't really do much, since I'll be given a work to analyze, and Amy and I went looking for piercing jewelry on Rue Ste. Catherine. We got dinner at a Thai restaurant, whose tom kha gai was lacking a certain amount of flavorfulness but which was, at least, better than the utter void of Thai food I've been living in. We headed over to the fair so Amy could experience pineapple-flavored cotton candy. I had a crepe with Grand Marnier, because it sounded good and because I was incredulous at the idea. It turned out to be a pret...

Grace decided to come visit me on her spring break. And so she arrived, after having missed her international connection in Atlanta due to weather and about five hours late, for a pretty calm evening. We walked around the city a little. We ate delicious crêpes (galettes, really) at a place very near my house. We drank cider. And then we slept until she no longer felt tired. Her resiliency to jetlag, on a first time abroad, was to be commended. That afternoon, we had a lunch of thoroughly French cheeses (some of which were growing Penicillium) and bread, and Vianney met us, complete with rollerblades, at my place. He brought a milk bottle full of canelé dough, which was delicious and which inspired us to get some canelés while we were in Bordeaux. We climbed the 231 stairs of the Tour de Pey-Berland, which is associated with the cathedral right next to my apartment. The view was spectacular, though there was some considerable haze obscuring the horizon line. We walked to Place des Q...

My friend Bethan is leaving town in a few hours. We met for coffee today at a shockingly American coffee shop called, inappropriately (and in English) "the French coffee shop". They had all kinds of fancy, sugar-filled coffee drinks in addition to the espresso that is normally available. We started talking about the things we miss about home, and what we'll miss about France. I think the thing that drives me crazy about being here is the utter lack of pressure or stress that exists. There is no emphasis placed on efficiency or customer service, as far as I've seen in my several months here. All of the concentration of those people I've directly observed goes to aesthetics. Leisure. Personal relationships. Which is great for the worker or the citizen, and pretty terrible for the consumer (or, maybe, my type of consumer). Maybe my problems stem from my deep hatred for shopping and desire for blitzkrieg execution of all plans that involve buying things or services....

Last night I dreamed that my parents were looking for kittens, but could never find one suitable. So they decided to clone our old cat, Tatertot, which, for some reason, made me really angry. I kept insisting that it wasn't fair to get the same cat as before, but then he was too cute to stand against and I went with it. There hasn't been a lot going on lately, in the way of school, and then suddenly I have tests and presentations and a lot of Italian to study this week. My history test will be one question on "a character" from any time in the reign of Louis XV, which I think is a kind of ridiculous topic, considering we're talking about a 60ish year time period, with multiple wars on two continents and a constant stream of changing financial ministers and foreign allies, not to mention mistresses, legitimate and illegitimate children, etc. We'll see how it goes. Apparently the French kids are also being tested over five random dates from the time period, bu...

Apparently that tempest, which barely inconvenienced us in downtown Bordeaux, destroyed a lot of homes and lives and knocked out a lot of electricity elsewhere. Always important to look at things from other perspectives. Or maybe just read the news, which I am notoriously bad at. I just tend to really hate the news, though I occasionally do like to know what's going on. This is a really silly contradiction, but I live with it. Last night, one of our roommates moved out, and we spent the rest of the night cleaning up the apartment. I got my room organized and we bought a new shower curtain. I wish I had more interesting things to report on that front, but I really don't. Tonight, I must read The Illuminations in its entirety. I was supposed to have done this before, but it's daunting with all of its vocabulary I've never seen. I think I'm reading more of my translation dictionary than Rimbaud, at this point. I tell myself I'm learning things, but in reality i...