Weird Moments in France

Having just passed the one-year mark for this journey, and finding myself in increasingly random situations, I decided to reflect on a few of the strangest moments in France. And here they go, in no particular order . . .

• Sitting in a car with three 19-20 year old french boys, as we listen to LMFAO, and they literally create a rave in the car--with flashing lights and dancing (as much as humanly possible) and beatboxing, going from Lyon to Montpellier (300km). When they weren't raving, they were rapping their own lyrics on the fly, or creating a faux quiz show about a particular type of bread. I haven't laughed that much in a long time, but I still have no idea what was going on. Merci Rudy, Maxime et Clément pour la vraiment bizarre soirée--Vous, les gars, êtes ridicules... mais c'était extrêmement drôle.

• Meeting Georg at the youth hostel in Montpellier, and having him organise my life within 2 hours of knowing him. Thanks for choosing my French city, university course, forcing me to own a phone (to the point where you gave one to me), and letting me stay with you for the first week here in Montpellier :) And not to mention indulging me in figuring out how to cook pizza (both frozen and from scratch) in a frying pan. Tu es le meilleur, Georg!

• Going to a community hall with two french friends for a Karaoke night that ended up being predominantly for retired people, and singing oldies George Brassens songs in French with an accompanying guitar player. There may be video evidence of this one. Je te blâme, Olivier. Et merci à toi, Fanny, pour ne pas faire un demi-tour :) C'était une bonne soirée.

• I've already written about this--but it remains one of the more random situations I've been in. Cycling into Cateau Cambrésis for the day and sitting at an outside table at a restaurant for lunch, I bonded with the people sitting at the table next to me as we ran around trying to collect my maps that were flying everywhere in the blustery winds. In the next ten minutes, in a combination of French and English we got to know each other, and by the end I had a piece of paper in hand with their address, and instructions of how to get to their home. They, having been married just the day before, invited me to stay with them and their family for the night. As they were leaving I had to run after them to find out what their first names were. Talk about hospitality. Merci à tous--Maité, Benjamin, Corinne, et Marcel-André! Il était le meilleur accueil  à la France!
  

• Any and all of the language moments when afterwards I know I've told someone something ridiculous, or understood something ridiculous . . . 
•   "Tu as besoin de souris" instead of "tu as besoin de sourire" . . . or "you need a mouse" instead of "you need to smile." Désolée David! Et c'est vrai, il possède une souris! Et un grand sourire.
  
• "Au début, j'étais trop timide, maintenant, je suis ok avec mes gaufres en français" instead of "Au début, j'étais trop timide, maintenant, je suis ok avec mes gaffes en français" . . . or "At first I was too shy, now I'm ok with my waffles in French" instead of
  "At first I was too shy, now I'm ok with my blunders in French" (this one was particularly ironic). Celui-ci était à la ferme des abeilles dans Tréziers. Stephanie a eu un bon rire hors de cette phrase :) Merci à tous!
  
• Thinking the hiking club was going flamenco dancing, when in fact they were going to eat a type of pizza called Flammekueche. Merci Frøydis pour l'invitation à joindre la groupe, et Pauline, merci pour l'explication.
  
• "Tom, il pleut" . . . instead of "Tom, il pleure" . . . or "Tom, he's raining" instead of "Tom, he's crying" Tom est anglais, par conséquent, il comprend ce type de situation. N'est-ce pas, Tom?
  
• Using google translate on emails I don't understand and coming back with phrases like: "it stands in the juice (sock!)" . . . and having to respond.  "On se tient au jus (de chaussette!)" . . . is a doubly hard phrase . . . se tenir au jus is essentially to keep someone in the loop . . . jus (juice) is doubling for electricity, or current--keep someone current . . . and the "de chaussette" addition at the end is a joke about a weak/bad coffee--yup, this is what I have to deal with. Merci beaucoup, Karine :)
• Spending half an hour trying to pronounce feuille and fouille with several different groups of people. Désolée, Benoît de continuer à blesser tes oreilles avec mon accent. Et merci d'avoir essayé :) Merci également à l'ensemble des équipes de frisbee (l'Université et le Club sur plusieurs occasions), et particulièrement Karine, pour essayer de réparer mon "mignon" accent anglais.

• The Fête des Lumières in Beaux Arts that didn't seem to have any lights (Fête des Lumières means Festival of the Lights). But, what it did have was a 15-20 person band that milled around in the crowd, playing anything from the Cranberries to old French songs, wearing the most bizarre getups I've seen--including a faux leather red jumpsuit, zebra sports jacket, and any number of jacked up christmas decoration lights (these being the only real lights we saw). I have no idea how they started each song, as at any given time there were several musicians drinking wine from the bottle, texting, smoking, dancing, or sitting, all looking in different directions--we even saw the saxophonist smoke while playing. I think the highlight was when one took a bag full of feathers and dumped them all over the crowd, for no clear reason. Merci encore Georg, pour danser avec moi dans la rue!

• Performing Molière in French, using a postmodern polyphonic technique (as in no defined character roles) and abstract acting, all performed by people from different foreign countries . . . resulting in absolutely no-one in the audience understanding what was going on.  Merci Tianna, Vanessa, Amanda, Shuko, et Yasmin. J'ai effectivement eu un temps merveilleux dans cette classe. Surtout merci à Tianna qui m'a aidé à mémoriser mes lignes!

• And who could forget my first job in France--sitting drawing with Sarah Connell on the seaside when a father and daughter came up and offered us a bottle of wine for me to draw their house. Or carrying my bicycle up (Sarah) and down (me) five flights of a circular staircase in a tiny apartment building on l'Ile de la Cité in Paris.  Tu me manques, Sarah! 

• My brother (this isn't really in France, but was during my time here) trying to coerce me into singing a duet with him of the Potato/Potahto song at Deutche Opera House in Berlin for a concert for my parent's 40th wedding anniversary. All of the other performers were professional musicians. And to top it off, having him call excitedly to tell me that he was going to try track down Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (the famous German baritone) to attend, as he is one of my dad's favourite singers. Thank you Andrew for not making me do it! Maybe we can do this sometime in the future in a less entirely terrifying situation for me.

But all in all, the random, lovely, bizarre, terrifying situations have made this year what it is. I have three months left in France (at least on this visa--maybe they'll take me back someday) and I'm trying not to squander any of it.

Bisous à tous,

Mary

Bienvenue à la ferme... pour la deuxième fois

 My second wwoofing experience, now back in France, I went to live and work on a small fruit and vegetable farm. Situated 25 kilometers south of Toulouse, Renée and Nigel's farm is a small organic (obviously) farm that supports a CSA with 25 boxes of produce, weekly. During the summer months they have between 1-3 wwoofers at any given time, and they (we wwoofers) live off in a cabin to the side of the main house. Today's post will be a quick tour of the location, just to set the scene.

Here's la cabane. . . a strawbale building, with a comfortable rustic feel. Somewhat uncompleted, it still managed to be a lovely home for a month.

Off to the side of the cabane was a lovely veranda with grapevines, where many a night of food, laughter, drinks, charades and shenanigans were to be had. You can just see the table peeking through the grapevines below.

We were also lucky enough to have a partially constructed ecologically friendly swimming pool. Not yet a fully functioning plant-filtered swimming pool, Nigel had to empty and re-fill it every few weeks in order to not get overrun with algae. Check out the working cinderblock/plank diving board! There were a few encounters with creatures--frogs, tadpoles, these incredible tiny spinning creatures, and a possible nighttime encounter with a mouse, but lovely after a hot day's work on the farm (minus the possible mouse). Luckily no encounters were had with the wild boars that got into the rows of carrots and leeks, invading from the nearby reserve.

The farm grew spinach, lettuce, carrots, leeks, white and red onions, broccoli, cabbage, Chinese cabbage, green and yellow courgettes (zucchini), white, purple and globe aubergines (eggplant), squash/pumpkins of many kinds (we never did try cooking those pomme d'or), potatoes, turnips, beetroot, grape vines (mostly not yet bearing fruit), a whole variety of heirloom tomatoes and cherry tomatoes (favourite being Mexican Honey cherries, and least being the noires), green peppers and hot peppers, apples, peaches, plums of several varieties, rhubarb, fennel, basil, and various other things. Did I forget any obvious ones, fellow wwoofers?

For our part on the farm, we cleared new ground, formed new beds, composted, sowed seeds, planted plants, weeded rows, picked produce, boxed/bagged and weighed items for the CSA, cleaned greenhouses, sorted farming supplies, etc. One evening we got to go to where the folk from the CSA pick up their produce. It was a really nice addition, in that each person came to select their produce, so you physically got to see people enjoying the fruit of your labour. Not only that, but each week two people were designated to bring wine and snacks, so people hung around chatting, drinking, and eating. This made it a much more human experience than that of the CSA I participated in the States, where I never saw another person, and just picked up my box of produce from the loading bay at National Geographic.

Farming things I learned:
* Sometimes you have to be very careful, other times, not so much
* Efficiency is key . . . I can't make everything perfect and beautiful
* Some seeds have clay covers for protection, and they look like sprinkles for cakes, but probably don't taste like them
* All those straight lines I drew in graphics class and all that measuring I do for illustrations is very important and helpful for having a good "eye" when creating new beds for plantings and when actually planting plants
* Some lightweight tools are amazing, and I will never have a large garden without them (what is the French word, sarcleur?)
* I don't like weeding fennel, but most other things are fine.
* It's all about the compost.

In the house we helped to prepare foods, wash dishes, set tables, cook, and generally help out. It was pretty fabulous (although mildly terrifying) as Renée is a retired chef, and suddenly I found myself reduced to something like a 16-year old with no culinary knowledge whatsoever, and perfectly able to fail in all sorts of menial tasks. For some reason, the pressure also caused me to drop just about anything I was holding when in Renée's presence . . . suffice to say I was a mess. Despite this, I learned some fabulous new recipes, and am interested to expand into all sorts of new ground once I stop cooking on a camp gas stove and actually have something to work with.

And last, but not least whatsoever, we emptied and cleaned dry toilets. My least favourite job on the farm--as I can bet a few of my friends would guess. Fortunately for you, I took no pictures of that particular task. But, task completed, I realized that I can actually accomplish that, despite squeamishness . . . which leads me to believe that I can actually do anything if I put my mind to it. 

Day two in Cappadocia: Exploring the underground

Day two, my compatriots had decided to go dawn air ballooning. I, in a fit of romanticism, decided to save air ballooning for another day . . . thinking that it might be nice to have a few things up my sleeve to look forward to. But, nobody said I couldn't get up and watch, so at 5:15am my alarm went off, and I was off trekking up the hill to find a good location to hopefully watch my friends come over the horizon, bringing the morning sun with them. Three large stray dogs decided to accompany me, and I warily enjoyed their presence, so long as they kept their distance.  Not only did my friends arrive (I presume--it was hard to see more than large patterns on the balloons) . . . but dozens of balloons filled the sky, lit pink with early morning rays. Mount Erciyes also looked beautiful, pale purple in the distance.

After sitting on the hilltop, enjoying the dawn, I decided to go back to the fancy hotel, have a bubble bath and a nap before my friends arrived back for breakfast. This is definitely the most swanky place I've stayed in so far, and probably will stay in for many years. Cut into the hillside, it was partially cave dwelling and partially beautiful new hotel designed to match the stone of the original portions. With a massive bed, and dark wood furniture, all to myself, I felt like a princess. I even wore those ridiculous slippers you get.

After my friends returned, and we had a lovely breakfast on the terrace, we had more sightseeing to do. With only two days to pack all of this into, there was very little time to just sit, so breakfast was pretty special. And we were off, exploring a valley that had been used for raising pigeons. The pigeon houses are cut into the rock faces in massive numbers, and were raised as a source of food and fertilizer. Some roosts are still maintained, but with the rise of mass production of chemical fertilizers, many have since been abandoned. The hike was lovely, although a little hot, and with the sky an incredible blue, there were beautiful contrasts against the rock outcrops. As usual, we stopped for tea, sitting under the shade of a rock wall, on beautifully coloured cushions.

After exploring the outside, it was on to my favourite experience in Cappadocia. The underground cities. While talked about as cities, they were actually most likely used as short-term (a month?) shelters during moments of invasion, warfare, and strife. Passageways twisted and turned, and the only link to above ground were these narrow vertical shafts, aerating the vast network of tunnels. The "city" that we went to was called Kaymakli, and our guide informed us that it is probable that the Hittites first dug out caves here at about 1200BC. However, our lovely guide tended to talk in couched terms, using "in my opinion" far more often than made me comfortable. Perhaps something to read up on. There was some consensus on the main use and time period of these caves, however, being used by Christians to escape the Arab invasions in the 7th and 8th centuries.

On our tour we went down four levels of chambers and tunnels before re-emerging. There are 8 floors dug into the ground, but tourists only have access to the top four. We got to see living quarters, cooking areas, storage rooms, an air shaft, and many many passageways. Katie, Michelle, and I enjoyed being the young'uns on this tour (unusual for us these days), and may or may not have gotten into "trouble" for being slow, wandering off, giggling, and taking too many pictures. The tour was a mite frustrating at this stage, because I would have enjoyed spending much more time at this location, and felt quite rushed and constrained by the group. Recommendation: do this tour on your own, or with a private tour guide who can give you the personalized experience you wish for.

As usual, on the way out of a tour, they lead you past the shops. One last opportunity to buy scarfs or jewellery or carvings or those ever-present Turkish Evil Eyes (they call them this, but they're really to ward off evil spirits, however they kind of creep me out). There was even an Evil Eye tree.

One last look out over the city, and we were finished with our tour and off to the airport.

And then we were on the plane, whirlwind over. Back to France for me, and on to the States for my friends. What a great trip. Thanks, Katie and Michelle (and Steve!).

ps. Skaar, have you emailed that hot air balloon guide yet? :)