THERE'S POOP EVERYWHERE.
Well, on the sidewalks at least. Which, you know, are just about on every street. Which, as you may know, are just about everywhere. French people like little dogs but not the little presents they leave behind, it appears.
This makes for a fun sidewalk dance, though. Instead of walking, you're half-looking at what's in front of you and half-protecting the bottom of your poopless-so-far shoes, resulting in a sort of poop-hop-walk-dance. When you're walking with someone trying to have a conversation, it's something I wish I could bottle up and save for a rainy day, it's so funny. For example, this morning Clara and I were trying to have a heart-to-heart on the way to the bus stop. We were trying to explain to each other our hopes and challenges for our experience here, but it was awkwardly interrupted as Clara actually pulled me to her side of the sidewalk in a saving-me-from-stepping-in-poo-hug, because I dared to take my eyes off the ground for a moment. She's such a hero (and at least I got some form of a hug).
Life is getting cozy here. The other night, we invited our neighbors Ivan (from Spain) and Matiec (from Poland) to have dinner with us, and you forget after a few minutes that nobody's speaking their native tongue and you're laughing at grammatically-incorrect jokes and all the hand gestures that go along with them to make up for the vocabulary that we all don't know. We're becoming a little multicultural family in our bare-bones salmon-pink/speckled apartment, though Clara and I bought a tablecloth today! I feel so domestic.
French food actually makes sense. Every meal I eat consists of 2 or 3 sides, a main dish, bread and cheese and always a dessert, and the reason you get so much is because everything is small or moderately portioned. I was told by the Spanish professor where I work that I “eat in a very curious manner” because I would eat a little of everything, and in no particular order. Once I started paying attention, it turns out you start with one of the sides, THEN move on to the main dish (and the side it's served with) THEN the cheese and bread, THEN the dessert. For fun I'm trying to mimic this as well, and now I feel like I go on a little food adventure every time I sit down to eat, because I find I get really excited when I get something else to move onto. So I'm practicing patience every time I eat, not jumping to the bread like I always want to, or mixing the sides and main dish. Dessert it about ten times better now because of this simple little process. I'm practically giddy by the time I get my chocolate mousse.
Speaking of chocolate mousse – just about everything in France is a LOT more expensive than in America, EXCEPT chocolate mousse! I found myself standing in front of a WALL of it at the grocery store, and everything was just a dollar or two.
Laundry's done bye!
Love,
Katie
Saturday, October 16th 2010
I broke the law today!
But, I did it in the best way possible: Today I climbed over the French alps into Switzerland, though technically illegally since I do not yet have my visa validation.
I set off with a group of French and foreign exchange students on a chilly morning from a tiny little town, where we spent more time looking at the ground to avoid the cow poo than up at the so-called alps, so-called because they were so swallowed in clouds that we could have been climbing a mountain or the stairs to heaven.
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Turns out, we were climbing to the first snow of the season. Not 10 minutes into our soggy trudging did the flakes start to fall. Far from being a bad thing, I felt like I was in a snowglobe and it was really quite magical. In every direction, everything is softened by the fog and snow and feels utterly unreal.
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| At the summit! |
We spent the next 6 hours hiking over and then back across the Swiss border, but not before I made a friend, Noemie, who also had to pee so badly that we both took the first chance we had to dash in the woods, only to re-emerge in our own little personal world of white, with no idea where the rest of the group went. I didn't panic or anything.
“MARCOOOOOOOOO!” I screamed.
…
K, no big deal. Just lost in the alps where it's snowing and you can't see more than a few dozen yards in any direction...
“Mar....co?” I try again.
…
We decide to hike a ways in the direction we were going, but as there are no trails (we had a guide) we don't have a clue if we're close or not.
So, thinking it better to stop, we yell out a few more times, and while I'm contemplating the nearest cow pie to pass the time, we finally hear some noise, hike toward it, and are sucked back up in the pack like nothing scary at all happened. However, peeing and then getting lost in the woods on a mountain in the snow is kind of like an instant recipe for friendship, so Noemie and I are bonded now and spend the next few hours becoming best friends and set up a day that we're going to meet from now on where I'll help her with English and she'll help me with French. She's awesome.
This place is magical.
