the rain in spain stays mainly in... Madrid

Clever title I know, you don´t have to tell me...haha. So this was the weekend of Spain to see DANA! I didn´t know I was going for sure until thursday when I got the ticket (i tried to get it earlier but the lady lied and said they don´t sell spain tickets in france....meanie). So friday after class I hopped on a train for my 15 h trip down to miss dana. I let some New Zealand dude have my seat so he could be by his family, and by taking his seat I made an interesting acquaintance. Her name is Marie, I think, and she´s from Brazil. Right now she´s studying medicine in Lyon, and her french is so good I thought she was a native. But her tongue is portugese which is more helpful in spain than french is. She speaks english but preferred we spoke in french so it was again harder to carry on conversation but good for me to practice. I told her I was from the states, north of Chicago (no one knows about Wisconisn, or milwaukee, let alone B´field). She said where, and I said outside Milwaukee. She said she lived around there too for 9 months to learn english. She said she lived in a suburb called Brookfield....hmmm. Coincidence? She attended central, but she was there before my time so I wouldn´t have known any of her friends there. It was so bizarre. I was on a train in france on my way to spain and I meet a girl from Brazil who lived in Brookfield of all places. Needless to say we stuck together during the ride even when we changed trains. The conductors in the second train loved here and so they sat with us in the dining car and talked to her (I know no spanish so i tried to understand but usually didnt...they thought i was funny somehow because of that). Sleeping sucked and I didn´t do much of it, but by now I´m used to traveling like that. Finally at 8 am I arrived in Madrid.

Where I found DANA! Seeing her brought me so much joy I can´t even tell you. We figured out the bus system and found our way to our hostel and talked and talked and talked. Unfortuantly she was sick (but I love her to death for still coming and sight seeing even though she felt yucky). On saturday it rained and rained and rained. But we ran around town none the less. We saw cool gardens, Prada museam (with a cool painting that we saw Picasso´s interpretations of in Barcelona, it was awesome to see the orginal - esp since you can´t tell what the orginal was much from picasso´s renditions), flee market, a protest, a flamenco dance (arguably my favorite thing I´ve seen in spain, they were amazing and sooo talented), some street dance fighters, etc... As for food, I found that I love tortilla espanola which I´ve had quite a bit. Luckily Dana can make it for me when we get home! I also tried Paella. I loved the rice part but there were whole bug looking seafood things that had eyes that just stared at me...not cool. We are now in Valladolid, her home town, which is really cute. I got to see peacocks in her park which are beautiful (I think God smiled a little bigger knowing how beautiful He made them when He gave them their extra flare). We walked around and soaked up the sun. An old man complimented our pretty sunglasses...interesting. I got to tried churros chocolate which are yummy fried things that you dip in a cup of melted chocholate.

Now I have to head back to France, another 15h, but Im excited for my next trip....Tunisia in less than 5 days! I´m sad to leave Dana, but I know I´ll see her in like a week and half to start our last travels. Seeing her makes me so happy and I hate parting even for this short amount of time. God has truely blessed me, in not only being here but being able to share it was such an amazing friend. I´m getting super sad to leave all my new friends here too, they´ve been so good to me. I´ve learned worlds from the people I´ve met, which just adds to this experience. I´m going to miss France, and Europe, and always seeing new old things, but mainly I´ll miss the people I´ve gotten to share it with.

Update on strike

I don´t remember if I officially updated y´all on the strike situation. As of now, its done. Chirac was a wuss and just pulled the law to appease the students, even if in the long run they needed the law desperately. Now people will continue to not have jobs, but they can sleep rest assured that those jobs that they don´t have they can´t be fired from...So with the CPE dead it was time for the students to make a decision. For the first time in two months the general assembly, located in the now gross amp A, voted to start school. At the same time, the prez of the university finally shows up and takes some action. He had the university cleaned, students evacuated, and made a plan to resume business. There was a mini insurgence that fought him about it, shouting things like you´re gonna be fired, and you´re a facist, but thats not unusal here these days. So last week we had class, and after my two week break we have exams. Since we only had like 4 weeks of class, our exams will only cover that much. And now, MN decided that since we will all probably fail our exams, that we can´t get lower than our paper grade. So when we turn in our papers, if we did okay, we don´t have to study for the exam cause it can´t lower our grade (answerd prayer!).

So here´s a little tidbit about my alma matter here. They are crazy. I thought it was just a dirty hippy thing, but its worse. We were the first to go on strike in france, and the last to end it, and while we strike we drink and juggle and smoke pot and become winos in the middle of the comedie, but that´s not all. Apparently we make homeless people do the dirty work of our strike. Here´s what I found out. When class started back you had to present an ID card to get into campus (which of course I didn´t have with me so I pulled a whole stupid american act that works everytime). Now I didn´t know why this was, but Ali found out from her professor. During the strike the students had the campus occupied for 2 months, day and night. They had to have someone there 24-7. But did they want to all sleep there themselves? No, so instead they get their homeless gipsie friends off the street (with whom they bare a striking resemblance) to come in and sleep at the school. Since they would be on the street anways, it was a win win situation, cause at least now they´d be inside. Now you may sense that I´m being unfair in my ripping on of my fellow students, but when I found this out I was really upset. If you feel so strongly about your protest, then you have no right to be all talk during the day and take advantage of homeless people by night so you can go off and do what you please. That´s not cool. So right now me and Paul Valery are not on good terms...

Sorry!

So it´s been awhile, like I warned, so my apologies. I´m alive and well, with many many stories to tell, although I´m already starting to forget a lot of what I wanted to tell you all. So I´ll start with my trip to Paris! A couple weeks ago (that far away already? wierd), I went to Paris to meet up with my mom and grandma and mom´s friend Denise. We litterally did Paris is 2 days, and it was awesome. My mom and Denise were jet-lagged, which is bound to happen after an oversees flight, but I didn´t let them get much sleep. We walked around the Louvre and the tuleries right outside (one of the prettiest areas of Paris- in my opinion). Then we checked out the Champs-elysee (sp?) area (but every city has an Arc de Triomph so once you´ve seen one you´ve seen em all). Our museam for the day was Orsay, which has some Degas, Van Gogh, Monet and Manet and more that im forgetting. Degas, according to my mom, has a wierd foot fetish because all of his paintings and sculptures have women in some way or another touching there feet. It was a weird observation, but once she said it we all kept noticing! Later that night we ate by the Notre Dame (not as impressive as the Sagrada familia in barcelona, but still cool) in the Latin quarter (cheap food, lots of ppl, its bumpin). Then to top off our day we hauled over to the Eiffel tour so we got to see it during daylight and we stayed till it got dark and saw it all lit up and even at one point in the night sparkling. That was my favorite part, i think. I always pictured the Eiffle tour being this ugly metal structure that just didn´t fit with the city (can you tell I´ve been hanging around the french too long, they´re opinons are rubbing off on me), but it was the opposite. Even up close it was gorgeous, for one, and the height was breathtaking. So all in all, a fun filled day.

Saturday we saw the biggies in the Louvre (which was a fun run around cause we didn´t feel like poking around the overcrowed museam all day). Mona was okay, and so was Venus, but I liked the crown jewels and Egyptian stuff we stumbled upon the best. We found this big pair of feet in the egyptian section that momma thought Degas would love! We also saw more of the Latin quarter and Notre Dame, and I can´t even remember what else. Sunday we went to the Rodin museam, another of my fav spots, and it had his famous thinker statue. The dude really makes you wondering what´s on his mind. The place there was cool cause all the statues were outside so it was like a walk in the park slash museam.

Overall I do know that momma is obiviously at home with the french because she can cafe sit with the best of them. I think we litterally spent half our time sitting out at cafes just eatin or drinking, rain or shine, watching the people go by, frenchies and tourists alike. This tradition continued when we went to Nice and then to my hometown Montpellier.

Nice was pretty, and we got to check out the mediterranian and the famous rock beaches. For the most part though, there wasn´t much to do and there were just too many people (its not even tourist season yet). We enjoyed our day trip to Monaco much better. We skipped on seeing the famous Monte Carlo and instead went up to the Prince´s palace. The whole city-state was absolutely beautiful. I could never live there tough because you can just feel the money in the air. Everyone there is super wealthy and the atmosphere lets you know that. It´s beautiful, but unless I win one heck of a lottery then one day trip is about all I can do there.

Finally on Wed we were back in my town. I think everyone liked my city the best of all. Its beautifull, which I often forget since I see it everyday, and its not too big and not touristy. There are outside cafes galore, and of course shopping. So while I unfortunately headed off to class, the other gals spent the day at cafes and shopping till theirs hearts content. Later that night we took my roomies and Elodie out to dinner, which was a ton of fun. There was a little bit of a language barrier between Elodie and my fam but that just meant I got to try my hand at a little translating. After dinner Elodie went with me momma and denise to a cafe to chill for a bit, and thats when I completely lost my ability to speak. I would talk to Elodie in english and my mom in french and not even realise till they couldn´t hide it any longer in their faces. Momma thought it was hilarious. She also decided that I tell stories funnier in french than in english, even if she doesnt understand what I´m saying. I think this is because with Elodie its easier for her to understand me if I act out motions and make appropriate voices for different parts of the story. So what I use for helping her understand my still not so great french, makes me funnier, I guess. I think by that it means I just look funnier. But overall it was a very enjoyable week, and I was sad to see my family leave. It was cool being able to show them around and esp to have them meet Elodie (who by the way has a cool new badger sweatshrit from mi madre which she loves! along with some pb and mac and cheese and ranch to keep her on track to becoming american at heart....). When worlds collide like that you never know how itll work out, but as I´m sure God had in mind, we had a wonderful time.

He’s got the whole world in His hands…

This morning I went to a special “Raumeux” (sp?), Palm Sunday, service at the cool pretty protestant church by the train station. It was all the local protestant churches in the area gathered together. It was really cool because it included churches of all different ethnicities. There was an African, Korean, M-something (North Africa) churches and even some people from Tahiti. The different churches had choirs sing and the pastors from all the churches switched off (some had French that was really hard to understand with their accents, but I got the gist of it). We sang lots of hymns with Hosanna in it. I was shocked to even hear one of the choirs sing what sounded like the French version of the Battle Hymn of the Republic (I recognized glory, glory, hallelu-jah!).

For the first time since I’ve been here the church has been packed. That brought me joy. It was cooler though, not because it was full, but because it was full of all sorts of people. I even caught them saying the verse about every knee shall bow, every tongue confess... It reminds you that middle class white Americans aren’t the only Christians out there (which I know you know but honestly how often do you really remember that??). In fact, we could use the spirit I saw in the Korean choir. They seemed so joyful as they sang about the love of their savior. I wish I understood more of the sermon, but I did follow fairly well. I just want to say that it felt really cool to be a part of that. I would love to go all over the world and worship with all types of people. To be so different yet still bonded into one body with one purpose just testifies to the majesty of our Lord. And once again my heart is bursting at the seams to go more countries, see more cultures. France isn’t enough, I want to see more…

Beach Bonfire!!

This weekend has been amazing! On Thursday night we went to O’Carolans for quiz night, as usual, and this time Elodie joined us. We lost, as usual, but oh well. Afterwards I had Elodie taste some more American delicacies. Kate had given us a bottle of ranch and peanut butter, so I wanted Elodie to try it out. We bought some fries for her to try in the ranch, which she loved! Then we had her try the peanut butter (which she’s already tasted once or twice) with an apple, and she loved that too. I always knew she was American at heart… The ranch made me the proudest though, not gonna lie.

Then Friday night rolls around and Bhav, Christina and I hop on a train to Frontignan ( a little beach town next to Sete). That’s where Jean, Elodie’s boyfriend, and his family have a beach condo. It’s a cute little apartment that sits directly on the beach. Elodie made us a French dish that they eat up in the mountains. I don’t remember what it’s called, but it was really good, nice and hardy soul food, if you will. It was made with a bunch of potatoes, onions (I’m going to insert here that it took me like 10 tries to spell onion right, with the spell check on…don’t ask), lardons (bacon chunks), and some weird French cheese that’s all melted together into goodness. After which she melted up some chocolate for some fondue action, always a favorite. And to top off our eating for the night, the girls and I brought smore stuff as a surprise for them to try.

Jean and his brother built us a fire on the beach, 10 feet from the water!, and we started making the American camping favorite. Needless to say they weren’t exactly the same, because France doesn’t sell graham crackers and their marshmallows are kinda off. But we did the best we could with sweet cracker substitutes, and the chocolate was of course excellent. Jean and his brother loved the smores. I think they’re going to spread it to all of France. Elodie wasn’t as keen on them, but I think it was because the marshmallows here taste kinda funny. They’re definitely made out of something different because you can hold them directly in the flames and they don’t catch on fire. So yeah…that was sooo much fun. I of course had to speak French way more than usual, which was rough, but it was a blast. We finished off the night by watching Hitch, dubbed in French, which isn’t quite the same without Will Smith’s real voice.

We woke up the next morning, or afternoon I guess I should say, and ate breakfast outside overlooking the sea. It was a beautiful morning. Jean spent the afternoon fishing (he only caught one), and the rest of us laid out and relaxed and looked for shells. Elodie was kind enough to correct my Art history paper (which definitely needed work on grammar) so I’m not too worried about turning it in now. It was such a relaxing day. I don’t think I’ve been that relaxed all semester (and this semester hasn’t really been stressful). I’m also glad I got to see Elodie again. It’s been so long now that we don’t have classes (speaking of classes, rumor has it school will start back on Monday which is bad news, because now we have to take exams without first learning what’s on them…yikes). I miss her already, and I haven’t even left yet…

Here comes the sun!

Friday night Jacques Chirac gave a State of the Union type speech to the nation which the roomies and I watched anxiously. He announced officially that he’s signing the CPE law, despite the protests. He was very well spoken; even I understood everything he said. Pretty much the law is reformed (one year period and not two that you can be fired without cause), but they still need it to reduce unemployment. I agree with him and think he made the right decision. If he didn’t, then Villipan, the Prime Minister, threatened to resign. They interviewed the head of the student group afterwards, and they are not happy. They said Chirac didn’t listen to them at all and mobilization is still in effect until the law is repealed permanently…so no school still… (Pray it lasts till exams!)

The weather has finally started to get nice! On Saturday I went to the beach, and let’s just say I got burned, but only on my face…It was cold that day so I was all bundled up, and because it was so cloudy I didn’t think I’d get any sun. But I did, even my landlady noticed and warned me that it’s those cloudy days that will burn you! She’s so cute. That night Christina slept over and we watched How to Lose a Guy in 10 days, which was funnier than I remembered. We got up early and went to church where a new dude was speaking. He was pretty good, better than the other lady. I’m pumped because next week there’s a big get together for all the churches and choirs in the big church by the train station. Christina, Bhav and I are definitely going to check that out. Afterwards, Christina and I once again trekked out to the beach, this time with better weather. We got to lay out and tan in our suits (no more sweatshirts!) and we even went in the water for a swim. Well we sort of swam. I only went in because Christina told me I wasn’t a true Wisconsinite if I was “too cold” to swim…so what could I do? The water was so cold, my legs went completely numb. It was brisk. But we got to relax, read, listen to music, and soak up the sun. It was awesome.

Monday I did more scholarly work in one day than I’ve done all semester. For some reason it seemed plausible to start and finish my 10 page French paper about Flemmish art in one night (ambitious I know). I am rushed because I have to finish it before Momma and Nana come (next week, I’m sooo pumped). So I put on some country music and started to write (I did all the research the night before). It wasn’t bad. I was cruisin. French doesn’t usually flow that fast, esp about art, but I just wrote away and 8 pages later I had everything but the intro and conclusion done by 11pm. That’s 7 hours straight. One of my study breaks consisted of fries, ranch (from Kate!) and a cherry coke. That plus actually doing something academic just felt like home. It also felt good to finally do something intellectual, because with this strike I feel like I’m loosing intelligence by having a semester break (MN classes excluded because they're super easy).

Today Bhavana and I tried to go to Aix-en-Provence…however it again is National Strike Day…so we couldn’t get a train there. Instead, we went to Marseilles, a port city 2 hours east of Montpellier. We got there and had to walk through some trashy parts before we found the Old Port area (by trashy I mean a bunch of people having a “yard sale” type thing all along the sidewalk of old junk like skates, used shoes, computer moniters…). The water there is soo blue, and we of course watched yet another parade of strikers (same in every city). We hiked up to their Notre Dame Basilica which had an amazing view of the whole city. From up top, I could see what to me looked like Chateau d’If. For those that have seen the movie or read the book, the Count of Monte Cristo, Edmund is from Marseilles and was sent to Chateau d’If prison. I saw what was a little island with a small fortress that looked just like the one in the movie. Then I saw a map on the hill of all the sites you can see from ontop, and I was right, that’s what it was! I guess I never thought that’d it was a real prison that you could go see and that the movie would have used it. That was pretty cool. I have pics, but it only looks like a little spot, and definitely doesn’t do it justice.

When I got back I finished my paper, so now I only have to do history before everyone comes next week. Time is going by so fast, and I’m afraid I’ll have to go home soon (I want to see you all but I’m going to miss it here). Next week Momma and Nana come and we go to Paris/Nice. Then that weekend I might go to Spain to see Dana, then the week after I’ll be in Africa for spring break, then exams, then traveling with Dana, then home! It’s all coming up so fast, and I have so much I still want to do here….