Musical success

Hello again,

I didn't trip or start singing at the wrong moment! The musical actually went really well, and I even had fans in the audience. I don't have pictures, but they're rumors that there's a video floating around somewhere, being saved for use as blackmail.

The past week or so has been very emotionally draining because Betty, my adopted grandma, has been in the hospital. It's difficult to know that someone I love is in pain and I can't be there. This is the hardest part about being so far away from home for so long; not being there to celebrate the good events (marriages, pregnancies, etc.) and console each other about the bad (sickness, death, etc.).

Have a good week,
Liz

7 month anniversary

Hello all,

How time flies! I have been in France for seven months, as of Wednesday. In honor of that I thought I'd do a little summary of my feelings at the moment. Have I had the time of my life? Definitely. Has it always been rainbows and butterflies? Not at all. There have been a lot of times when I've wanted to run to the airport and get on the first plane out of France. This past week, the mass transportation workers striked in Grenoble, meaning that one in four buses passed in town and where I live not a single bus passed until 3:00 in the afternoon, by which time I had missed all my classes. It's little things like this that are a normal part of French life that I have not and will probably never become accustomed to. The language is another obstacle. Although I understand almost everything that is said, there are also a lot of times when I have no idea what's going on. This is often the case at dinner when there are at least seven of us at the table every night (sometimes up to twelve or thirteen people) and everyone is talking quickly and loudly at the same time. This has been one of the hardest adjustments for me because I prefer peace and quiet and large groups of people exhaust me after a while.

Despite all these annoyances, there are also many things that I enjoy. I can tell that I have grown in so many ways from my experiences here. Never again will I mock a non-Anglophone's accent in English. Even friendly teasing really hurts and it's extremely frustrating to know that you stick out like a sore thumb the moment you open your mouth (I can't tell you the number of times that I have been asked if I'm German or Russian). I can also say that I am much more sulf-suficient. Being in difficult situations, dealing with them yourself, and coming out OK is a liberating feeling.

I guess I would sum these seven months as a love-hate relationship with the French and their culture. I dislike the fact that the French are always on strike (they get four weeks of vacation and 35 hr. work week, for God's sake), that almost every single person has or currently smokes, that they NEVER pick up dog crap, they don't talk to their neighbors, and that NOTHING is open on Sundays. On the contrary, I appreciate their waste-not attitude (if mold is growing on the cheese, they just scrape it off), they use the least amount of water and energy possible (10 min. showers, at the most; no drying machines), cities are very pedestrian and bike friendly, and they appreciate a good bottle of wine. It's impossible to say if France is better than the US or vica versa, but I can appreciate the positives and negatives of both cultures.

There are a little over three months remaining before I head back home and I am both looking forward to it and dreading it. While I have improved in French, I now find it difficult to express myself in English. It is difficult to think of words that would have come easily to me before and the fact that I will be taking Spanish next semester will complicate things even further. Another small but significant change is that I have followed French culture for so long that I have no idea what's going on in politics (I heard about the health care bill, don't worry), what songs and movies are popular, what clothes are "in". In other words, returning home will be like entering a foreign country again. My host family asked me the other day why I don't follow American news and my response was that France was my home until July. When I left home, my goal was to emerge myself as much as possible in French culture and I've done that to the best of my ability.

One of the activities that I've engaged in is a musical that is taking place this weekend. This past week we have been rehearsing at least four hours each night and we're all exhausted. It's hard enough to memorize 25 songs in English, but this is in French! However, there is one song in English and I'm providing an excerpt because I think it's hilarious.

"Hey man keep going far your own seat.
You should blow your horn and play music as I have told you tonight. Yeah. Yeah.
But if you drink or take bad sweets please watch your mind.
I will fire you and you won't come back.
Listen to music as you start up your set.
Would you please show me that you give me your best.
Listen to music as you start up your set.
You shouldn't relax up midnight time comes up..."

The Haitian man who wrote this was so proud of it and I didn't have the heart to tell him that it wasn't exactly grammatically correct English. This is the one and only song that I have a micro so I have to do it justice. Here's hoping that I don't fall on my face in front of 300 people!

Pictures!

The view from Eze

Eze

Again

Oranges and lemons! There were at least ten other structures like this.

Monaco

The Monte Carlo casino

Nice is nice

Salut,

Lindsay and I just got back from Nice late last night. We arrived around 6 pm on Friday and searched around for a hostel that I had heard about from some classmates. Once we found it we dumped our stuff and headed for the beach. We thought that we would be basking on the shore of the Mediterranean...if only it were 40 degrees warmer! After freezing from our beach adventure, we found a cute restaurant and then headed to a bar with live music. To give you an idea of the crowd there, the band members all had hair longer than either Lindsay's or mine and the guitarist was wearing a shirt that said "No one's bitch." We left there after a little bit and headed back to our hostel to decompress.

We woke up fairly early Saturday because we wanted to do a lot of things while the weather was nice. Lindsay went into the bathroom and a few minutes later I could hear her urgently whispering my name from the stall. I went to see what was wrong and found out that we was trapped inside. We spent twenty minutes trying to open the door without avail. She tried climbing over, but based on my catching skills, we decided it was a bad idea. All of the sudden, when I was about to leave her to her doom, the door popped open. I have never seen anyone so relieved to be out of a bathroom!

After that wonderful start to the day we headed to the local market where we bought some honey, bread, and fruit and sat on the beach (all rocks, no sand) to eat breakfast and watch the waves roll in for a while. The next stop was the bus station to go to Monaco. It was a beautiful half hour drive along the sea, but a waste of time. One can see fabulously rich people, the casino, and very expensive cars...and that's about it. Disappointed, we went to Menton, an Italian border town. There wasn't much to see there either, except for the enormous floats of oranges and lemons (pictures to come). It really was amazing to see the things that they can make out of fruit.

The next stop during our whirlwind day was Eze, a cute little town with an amazing view. We happened to be in the village during their canivale. There were a couple of floats filled with kids throwing confetti. I turned around to say something to Lindsay and at the same time a man on the float pointed a leafblower filled with confetti directly at us. I was still finding pieces of paper in my hair and clothes a day afterward. While we brushed ourselves off, we climbed up a huge hill and could see miles and miles in every direction.

We took the bus back to Nice and found a sushi place that was amazing. Although sushi is not exactly French cuisine, it just looks too good to resist. After our delicious dinner, we walked along la Promenade des Anglais and bought a bottle of wine to take back to our hostel. When we came back, we joined some English, Irish, and Philipino guys drinking beers and watching soccer. It was hilarious trying to figure out what they were saying (the Irish accent is incomprehensible) and we ended up talking with them for a couple of hours before heading to bed.

Because of our Irish (came in really late) and Chinese (left really early) roommates, we slept badly and caught up by sleeping in til 11:30. It was a miserable day and we needed something to do indoors so we went to some kind of exposition with well over 500 booths. Neither of us bought anything, but it was fun looking at everything. By the time we were done, it was time to go back to the train station. Within a three hour span we went from fairly warm temperatures to two inches of snow!

Provence is purely addictive. Next weekend I'm going south again to escape the cold, but for now I have to hit the books for my midterms this week :(

Ciao Italia

Hello,

I apologize for taking so long to post this. The Internet has not been cooperating with me lately and it has taken all my willpower not to bash my laptop with a hammer. Anyway, on to the details. Our trip was awesome, except for the off-and-on rain and snow. Our hostel in Florence, as a mentioned earlier, was absolutely wonderful. What kind of hostel encourages you to graffiti the walls?! This one does! We thought we'd take advantage and etch our names in.

No joke, the entire hostel was like this :)When I come back in 60 years, I can be reminded of the good ol' days.

Rome at night. Since we arrived in Rome the first time, the river had risen at least 4 feet.

We decided that we might as well see Vatican City since we were in the area and all. All the religious fanatics were out in force and it wasn't even prime tourist season. St. Peter's Basilica was enormous and it took us 20 minutes just to walk the inside. I have no idea why, but I have always invisaged the Sistine Chapel as it's own building. We kept looking for a sign that was pointing to it, but there was nothing. So after looking at the very creepy corpse of John Paul II and the Pieta, we went in search of the illusive chapel. We saw a long line of people and decided to get in it. Where there are toursits, there's usually something important to see, right? We waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, we got to the front of the line. There was a little sign saying that the entrance fee was 7 euros with the use of an elevator and 5 euros to go on foot. There was no way that we were going to pay extra just to use an elevator, so we took a deep breath and started climbing. After the first few turns on the spiral staircase, my head was spinning. About 15 minutes into our climb, we came to a landing. I looked at Lindsay and said, "That wasn't bad at all." I had spoken to soon because we walked a few feet more and then we saw more. Ten minutes more of climbing and then we came to a balcony inside St. Peter's which looked up at none other than the Sistine Chapel. It turns out that we had been searching for a non-existent building, when we had been walking right underneath it the whole time. The angle that we were at on the balcony did not give a very good view of the painting so we decided to go back done and look up from the ground level.

We were heading back to look for the exit when I saw some people going up a staircase. Feeling adventurous, we followed them into what was the scariest staircase I have ever been on. It was a spiral staircase that was no wider than two and half feet wide (I'm being generous here). We were climbing into the rotunda so we had to lean our bodies to the right while we walked up steps that were extremely steep and had a "handrail" that was a rope hanging down from the ceiling. I admit that I am slightly clausterphobic, but Lindsay agreed that it was not a fun experience. People were dropping like flies while climbing up and everyone else had to squeeze their way by. By the time we finally got to the top, we were gasping for breath and holding our sides. Luckily, the view was worth it. We came out at the very top of the rotunda and the entire city of Rome was laid out beneath us. So beautiful, but my ears were popping! After 15 minutes of gawking, we headed back down, which was as, if not more scary, than the way down. Side Note: When the workmen were building the chapel and Michaelangelo was painting it, they lived at the top and had food and water delivered to them. Can you imagine having to climb the stairs everyday to deliver things to the workers?! I think I'd rather be unemployed.

We went back to the ground level again and checked out the Sistine Chapel from 500 feet below. Sadly, you can't see much.

This was taking from the bottom with my zoom all the way out.

The Pieta. It was behind glass because some crazy person tried to sabotage it. The Vatican guards are no joke. We were sitting on a ledge in the basilica looking at our guide book and a guard almost escorted us out.

The Vatican. See those columns at the very top? We were above that.

This is out of chronological order--apologies. While we were staying in Florence, we took a daytrip to Pisa. Not much to see there other than the tower, but that was fun. We spent a good hour sitting just below it, making fun of the all the tourists doing the infamous leaning tower pose.

Doesn't look that crooked from here.

From here it does. Supposedly it is completely safe because they have stabilizers under the building, but I'm still not so sure.

Went back to Florence for one last night, but under mitigating circumstances, we took a very late train back to Rome. We arrived at 1:30 in the morning and got to our hostel around 2. The kid who was in charge of the hostel was not there (found out later that he was at the bar)and we didn't know what room we were in, so we sat in the kitchen waiting. A Mexican couple came in, took pity on us, and gave us some "water" they had brought from Mexico. It was 2:30 at this point and we were tired of waiting around so we left our stuff in the hostel and walking around looking for some place to sit and wait for morning. Where else could we go, but the Coliseum? We sat on some rocks, which I'm sure used to be columns, sang, talked, and slept for about 5 minutes. I can officially say it: I slept outside the Coliseum. In retrospect, I'm pretty sure that it's illegal to sleep on Roman ruins, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

Our last day in Rome we walked around (our favorite activity) and window shopped. We decided to come back to our hostel early to get ready for our 4 am wake-up call. As we were contemplating going into a divy-looking restaurant, a furry black creature scurried away in front of us. Lindsay turned to me and asked, "Was that what I think it was?" We just kept walking and found a restaurant...far away.

Going through airport security was interesting as well. Poor Lindsay got her water bottle, face wash, and treasured basil sauce confiscated, while I got my sauce, 2 lighters, fingernail clippers, and way too many liquids through without a problem. Airport security fails on so many levels.

This weekend is our trip to Nice. Here's hoping that it will be nice. Thanks Lindsay :)

More Rome pics

Cesaer and some Roman guards I have no idea what these building are, but the contrast was beautiful

A palace

A protest that we stumbled upon. The Anarchists, Communists, goths, and LBGTQ were all there in force

We were wondering this car was reserved for protests or if the guy drove it around for everyday use

An outdoor theater that we came across in our wandering

Carnivale brings out all the street performers

An skating rink that was steadily melting in front of our eyes

The Vatican. We're planning on going next weekend when we rent a scooter

Ancient ruins

Italy 2,3,4

Hello again from Italy,

So far we have been having a great time here. Our trip of Rome was very simple; we walked miles and miles, saw more cathedrals and old buildings than I can count, passed by the Colliseum at least 10 times, drank very good wine, and ate enormous amounts of pizza and gelato...yum! Saturday night we went barhopping with the owner of the youth hostel and his friend, both of whom were ex-pat Romanians. We ended up getting to bed at about 4:30 in the morning and then sleeping until noon on Valentine's.

Monday we decided to go to Florence because we were a little tired of Rome. The train station was very confusing so we asked some Italian women for help. They saved us not once, but two times because we almost got on the wrong train and then we forgot to validate our tickets once we got on the right train. Because they were extremely patient and nice to us, we gave them a jar of basilic sauce that we bought in a market.

For economic reasons we took the slow train which ended up stopping in every village en route. Very beautiful scenery, but we ended up sleeping for most of the four hours. By the time we got to Florence it was 7 at night and we didn't have reservations anywhere. Thank God I bought a travel guide in Grenoble because we found a great hostel 5 minutes from the train station. It was 20 euros a night with breakfast, dinner, and a city tour included!

Today we have walked all over Florence and chatted. I have the best travel partner ever! We both have a hatred of tourist traps and we like to make plans on the fly. Because today is Mardi Gras, I'm sure there will be some hilarious pictures coming on the next post.

How they created this out of a chunk of rock is beyond meLook at the piles of gelato--words cannot express how good this is :)Chocolate and mint!We bought and bottle of wine at the hostel and they gave us these classy plastic cups!