Virtually Home

French stereotypes that make a Jessie happy: Men in striped shirts. Ridiculous mustaches. Poodles. Hearing anyone, at any time, say "Ooh là là". Seeing French children rollerblading with baguettes under their arms. Terrifying cheeses. Seeing anyone selling escargot, ever. The omnipresence of wine. French stereotypes that make a Jessie unhappy: Constant smoking of cigarettes. That guy who reeks. And inevitably stands next to you on the tram. Complete lack of efficiency, promptness or competence.

These two are not really related, it's just that I remain sick while all around me, people are falling victim to the plague. Erin and Andria were feeling bad when they moved out on Monday, and Maria and Alex are both sick. I've relapsed. However, Amber arrived on a train yesterday afternoon. She got stuck in the middle of Auvergne due to snow, and they all had to sit tight while people got out and poked at the wheels to dislodge ice from them. She finally did make it on time, since they held her connecting train, and I picked her up at St. Jean. We went out to an Italian restaurant, where I had a pizza with apples and olives and honey and onion jam. It was pretty fantabulous. Afterward we took a kind of epic walk, down to Place de la Bourse and along the river, then across Pont de Pierre and farther than I've ever walked on that side of the river, to a church that turns out to be called Eglise St. Marie. We walked in a circle around it, and found that while the front wa...

Last night we went out with our friends Carley and Danielle to celebrate the end of their finals week. It was still sort of surreal to me, maybe because I really only had about two weeks of actual work during the whole semester, and most of that was me procrastinating my paper rather than just getting it done. Still, it was a good celebratory outing. Vianney and Benjamin ended up meeting up with us. Somewhere near the park at Gambetta at around midnight we encountered the only group of violent people I've yet run across in France, who, after asking us if we had any cigarettes, for some reason I couldn't understand, hit Alex and then pushed Benjamin over twice before disappearing into the night. Everyone was okay, if a little confused. We hurried home. This morning was its own trial. I had alerted our landlady to the possibility that Something Was Very Wrong with our kitchen plumbing. Every couple of hours there's this tremendous gurgling and water sort of shoots out of...