Virtually Home

I've been meaning to get this blog up and running again, but wasn't sure what direction it should go. And frankly, I'm still not sure. It's definitely no longer a chronicle of my time abroad, since I'm back in Oklahoma, where things are much the same as they were when I left them. Everything is different and the same. I've been missing my friends in Bordeaux like crazy, which is not alleviated by the photos posted by another OU student currently living in my apartment on Rue du Loup. I miss life in France in a lot of ways, and I feel like I'm living abroad sort of vicariously by meeting a lot of exchange students. I'm participating in a program that matches students studying abroad with students interested in cultural exchange. My student is Japanese, and we've so far had a lot of fun together. I envy the newness of everything she's getting to do, and the linguistic strides she's making. I teach her as much slang as I can work into the conv...

On my last night in Bordeaux, I did some hurried packing and cleaning and I went down to Dick Turpin's for my last open mic night with some friends. I stayed until a little after closing time, and went upstairs to try to catch a bit of sleep before I had to wake up at 4 a.m. to catch a taxi. I had fitful dreams and I woke up every hour, panicked that I'd missed my flight. I didn't miss my flight. I had four hours of layover in Paris and then the transatlantic to New Jersey. From the moment I got off the plane, everything was shiny and efficient. I had a Dr. Pepper, and some cheap Chinese food. Life was grand, if a little strange. People were wearing t-shirts and tennis shoes and there were entirely too many people who had bleached their hair blond. And then I got stuck in Newark because Continental purposefully overbooked their flight to Tulsa. They put me up in a hotel room and I spent the night and entire next day watching the Discovery channel and hanging around in the...

Last night I hung out with Vianney. We made a sort of sautéed beef at his and Benjamin's place, with figs and red bell peppers and lots of garlic. It sounded a little strange at first, and then it turned out to be awesome. And we mashed some potatoes with these weird white sweet potatoes he'd found at the Eurasia market. Which, by coincidence, I had also visited the day before. After dinner we met up with Vianney's friend Halforth at the Charles Dickens. Halforth is from Iceland but went to school in Stillwater starting about 6th grade, and went on to graduate from OSU before he moved to France to learn French. It was weird to meet someone who was Oklahoman in such a random way. I refrained from slandering the Cowboys. That's how novel it was. Xavier met us there, and it was nice to get to see him again, since it was looking doubtful. Benjamin wasn't around, since he'd gotten his driver's license earlier that day and was busy driving around his hometown ...

Friday, the two study abroad advisers from OU were in town to tweak the program, such as it is. All the OU kids were invited for lunch with them at the international relations office on campus, but I was the only one that showed up. I had a moment of panic when I arrived and the staff didn't know what I was talking about and told me the Americans had already been and gone -- it turns out that even though those staffers were invited, they hadn't been informed. Score one for French efficiency. And so we had a very French box lunch, and some red wine. Alcohol plus university officials on campus was odd. One of the French staffers confused me for French and didn't realize I was American until I started speaking with Jack and Kye in rapid English. That made me proud but a little incredulous. Dan and Mary came and picked me up from campus and we drove out into the outskirts of Bordeaux, where everything is much less rich- and idyllic-looking. There's a Nazi submarine base t...

Once again, I've fallen way behind on my updates. I find myself overwhelmed with things I want to do while I'm here, and this has made me largely unable to do any of them. This is a flaw I'm trying to correct as it pertains to school work, too. Anyway, last Thursday I went with two Californians and two French friends out to Benjamin's family's farm in Calonges, France. Normally, it's about 45 minutes by train from Bordeaux, but since they were doing some work on the tracks, we had to take a large tour of the surrounding towns and ended up, two hours later, at the Tonneins train station, where Ben's dad picked us up. After a short and awkward car ride, four people and some luggage in the backseat of a Mercedes, we got to Ben's house in Calonges. The town is not even really large enough to be called a town. On a fifteen minute walk from Ben's front door, you can pass through three "town centers". I only saw one church, though, so they'r...

Yesterday was the Fête du Travail, the "work festival". Or "work party". Or any number of translations that I thought were funny -- here was a truly French holiday: one in which we celebrate not working. Then I realized we do this, too, on Labor Day. And then it made a lot more sense but was a lot less funny. Alas. Anyway, I had a surprisingly good day. I was doubtful. I kind of wanted to go to the grocery store (closed). The trams and buses weren't running. Even the bar downstairs was closed. Things were not looking up, in the way of entertainment. But mid-afternoon, Franck played a show with his blues rock band, FireFrank and the Fire Starters, at the Bourse du Travail. I hadn't seen them play before, though I'd seen Franck do a variety of acoustic covers and originals. It was definitely a good show. The weather was overcast, windy and in the mid-50s, Fahrenheit. I wished for a hair tie. My toes were cold in my sandals. This didn't really b...

The day passed slowly yesterday. I watched some (terrible) movies. I read some Philip K. Dick. I did some yoga and worried about my upcoming final and exposé for the history of France under Louis XV on Wednesday, neither of which I can study for due to my lack of book and notes, the campus being closed, etc. France conspires against my productivity. The evening was much better. The bar by the cathedral was having a party for its owner's birthday, and a local band I'd met at some open mic nights around town was playing. They played an hour set, during which they debuted a new song and played a lot of my favorite covers. We all conspired to meet up at the Black Velvet later on, and parted ways. I went with some people on a guitar-fetching and kebab-buying run to the neighborhood south of Place de la Victoire on Cours de la Marne. We even stopped to buy some Kronenbourg. I taught them the English phrase "beer run". You know. Spreading the American college culture. ...

I can tell you that in the airports and the train stations of western Europe, there is nothing nice being said about Iceland. It is, of course, hardly their fault that a volcano erupted, but it is wreaking havoc with spring break plans all over the place. Our trip started out on Monday. We took the TGV up to Paris and dodged the RER closures to get to Draveil, which is a little town south of the city where our hostel was going to provide a free shuttle to Orly for our 10:30 a.m. flight the next day. We were nervous about the ash, but Orly had re-opened on Monday and was operating most of its flights. The only flights that weren't landing in Athens as scheduled were coming from France and Germany. This didn't bode well. Tuesday morning, and we have received no cancellation e-mail from EasyJet, and the internet tells me that our flight status is still "on time". We walk to the train station, get on a bus to the airport, walk from the bus stop to the terminal. I real...