Lesson #438,973 since coming to Paris:
It is nearly impossible and completely inefficient to attempt to read a book in French about Paris between World War I and I while listening to the Backstreet Boys.

At some point in my life I would like to stop eating things that come out of machines, whether it be sodas, candy bars, or coffee. Now is really an inopportune time to commence with that plan, but perhaps on my 30th birthday I can quit cold turkey. In the meantime, file café au laits from vending machines under the list of things that help me make it through the day.

I live with the coolest old lady in the world, and the longer I live here, the more convinced I am of her status as such. She’s amazing. There are always friends here, always the phone ringing, as Jessi once put it, "I think we live with a celebrity..." and I won’t lie, it kind of does feel like shacking up with Coco Chanel, who lived in the penthouse of a hotel in Paris for the last 30 years of her life. Now you can stay in her penthouse for your vacation, if you want. For 8900Euros a night. (Or about $11,000).

I go to a church where the average age is 24. I have never seen any kids there– no one is old enough to have them. The pastor is 30, single, and has hair approximately the same length as mine. The congregation is half white and half not, half French and half expats like me, but everyone speaks at least a decent amount of English and French... and most people something else as well. Pretty much the place is amazing.

I found the most glorious café down the road from my apartment today– it’s a good 15 minute walk, but the place is amazing. It’s next-door to a building designed by Hector Guimard, an uberfamous Art Nouveau architect. The place is all red leather seats and tiny round tables with chalkboards on the walls with the day’s specials, and I was the only one in there that did not get greeted by name by the waitstaff, who apparently caters mainly to local regulars. It’s called Café de la Fontaine, and I ended up there for the better part of three hours, trying to squeeze every centime out of my 4Euro café au lait and reading "Le Pieton de Paris," a book about...well, Paris, that I have to write a paper on by Wednesday. Still though, sitting in there with my book and dictionary, it was impossible to feel stressed in the cozy little place, looking out the window at the blustering wind.

The thing about living in Paris is that it is completely impossible to forget, even for a few minutes, that I am not in the midst of the greatest adventure ever. Even though things here seem "normal" now, it is still impossible to treat any day as "routine" because I never know what is going to happen when I leave my apartment. One could argue that I don’t know that kind of thing when I leave my dorm room in Atlanta, either, but I have never had such a myriad of adventures in such a short time in the US as I have here. Because every day here holds some kind of adventure, some kind of mystery, some kind of thing that I will probably never understand, whether it is some concept my prof tries to explain, the reason the lunch lady at the restaurante universitaire makes me get back in line to get fruit before she will give me chicken, or the reason Jessi and I never seem to pick the line at the supermarket where they give you grocery bags, I generally finish each day with at least one experience that can only be explained by the fact that we are americaines living somewhere we clearly don’t belong...
But I don’t mind.
C'est la vie, je pense,
Miss Murder

On a gingerbread cookie in the window of a bakery on my street: "Le seul vrai langue au monde est un baiser..." (The only true language of the world is a kiss.)
Addendum: the meaning of that language changes drastically when one has mono...

JEREMY SPOKE IN CLASS TODAY...
No, wait, he did not, BUT I DID!!!!
If last week I made a complete and utter dunce of myself in front of my archaeology prof, today I blew everyone else in the class completely out of the water...
Ok, so it wasn’t quite that dramatic, but I am thrilled. I was in archaeology today, thinking that it was going to be a normal class period, lecture, take notes, try to pay attention and not get distracted by this professor, who is hilarious...
He never calls on anyone. He never has. I never thought he would. But then today he is talking about some villa in Pompeii and the three parts that it is divided into, and I somehow made eye contact, completely by accident, but thus prompting what happened next, which was probably completely my fault.
A transcript of the conversation, as translated by yours truly:
Prof: "This, then, is the pars urbana, a large peristyle surrounded with a portico just here..."
[Points to the slide, demonstrating large portico]
"Pars Urbana," Blair writes. "Big peristyle at top of house with portico. Sidenote: look up pars urbana, peristyle."
[Blair looks up. Prof turns back to class. Eye contact is made. Blair remains calm. "After all," she thinks, "he knows who I am, and thinks I can’t speak his language. Plus he never calls on anyone anyway. I am safe."]
Prof, to Blair: "And you, tell me what you know about the peristyle and what is contained therein."
[Blair’s jaw on ground, eyes size of quiches.]
Blair: "Ahh, well, the peristyle? Oh, of course."
[Thinking to herself, "HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? IF I ASK HIM TO REPEAT THE QUESTION IT WILL JUST DRAG THIS OUT MORE. JUST GO WITH WHAT YOU THINK."]
Blair: "Right, the peristyle. Um, the garden is there."
Prof: "Oui..."
Blair: "Oh, and also, um, the eating room. With the benches. For eating on."
Prof: "Oui, the garden, yes, and the dining room, complete with seats, yes."
Ok, so maybe not blew them out of the water. But the point is, the whole class was listening, and I OPENED MY MOUTH. I haven’t done that in ANY class yet, since my French is terrible compared to everyone else’s and the profs don’t really care anyway... And I had gotten along just fine like that and probably would have continued had he not FORCED me out of my shell.

The unleashed lion,
B

The following picture is real, I swear. I promise you, on everything I hold sacred, that yesterday afternoon I was walking home from the market-- not the grocery store, but the market, and came across what you are about to see. Not faked, not posed.

This is precisely why I never leave my room without my camera. Because when you live in the seizieme you never know what you will encounter. I walked past on my way into the boulangerie, went in and bought my baguette and pain au chocolat, came back out and saw the dog was still there and knew then I had to stop for a picture. No owner in sight. AMAZING.

With regard to the past week:
In honor of a holiday I am no longer allowed to celebrate,
Things I am thankful for...

1. HOT COFFEE every morning.
2. My archaeology prof not making me do a presentation in front of the class.
3. My free pass to the Louvre.
4. Hillsong Church Paris. Who knew?
5. Ex-roommates who send amazing care packages.
6. Ice.
7. Warm radiators on cold mornings.
8. Comte cheese. Don’t ask.
9. Scrambled eggs– whoever invented these has saved me an awful lot of work thinking up meals.
10.Being fluent in the English language without having to LEARN it.
11."Yeye" music.
12.The fantastic city I live in presently.
13.Pink champagne.
14.Holidays celebrated here and not in America– Toussaint, anyone?
15.The fontaine des Medicis; Canova’s Cupid and Psyche. My 2 favorite places in Paris.
16.A bed with a down duvet.
17.8-feet tall windows in my room with a view of the Eiffel Tower.
18.Small children in too many layers to move properly, skipping down the Paris street.
19.Being 21. Is there really anything cooler?
20.Orangina.
21.Amazing summer jobs that keep me longing to come back to the States.
22.Street markets.
23.People who speak this language better than me and still deign to help me out with it when I don’t know what is going on.
24.Travelling the continent of Europe with my best friends and on my own...
25.Good jeans.
26.Rockstars.
27.Groseilles.
28.Chocolate.
29.Nutella.
30.You...
I guess there is really nothing like living in another country to show you how much of a citizen of your own country you really are... I never would have considered myself particularly American, but this whole not celebrating Halloween OR Thanksgiving thing is really bothering me. Especially Thanksgiving... I miss the stress of this week before getting to drive home for the long weekend (with Kate, of course, the girl I have randomly driven back and forth between Atlanta and Raleigh with more times than I can count.), the cooking, Christmas just around the corner and all the shopping...
Thus, no leftovers, no cutout pilgrims in the windows, no children running around with construction paper Indian feathers sticking out of their hair, and no Charlie Brown movie.

And.
I won’t lie.
This may be the worst.
I can deal with the lack of a special meal, since most things here are delicious anyway. But the worst part is this...
No Black Friday.
Pas du tout.
What am I going to do with myself when the day after Thanksgiving dawns and I have no reason to be already in a parking lot waiting the unlocking of department store doors?
See, with my friends, this is tradition. Because no matter what happens, we all end up in the same city for Thanksgiving. So we spend it with our families, and then meet up before sunrise on Black Friday to battle the crowds and fight for bargains, and take breaks every few hours for hot chocolate or coffee, later on in the day nachos and queso... I can remember every year since before I moved out waking up at 430am to be in my car by 530 and at my best friend’s house by 6, where we would leave my car, get in hers, and ride to the far away mall in Chapel Hill, working our way, mall by mall, progressively closer to home. Last year I did it with a cast, which I used to beat people away when they tried to jump in front of us in line, and this year it makes me terribly sad that I am here... with nothing to do since I have no class on Friday anyway, so I could technically go shopping, and probably will, but it won’t be the same because nothing opens before 9, there are no special sales, and all the "Grands Magasins" (department stores) have had their light displays up since my birthday. Even Madame said at dinner a few nights ago, "Oh, Thanksgiving, I love it. What a lovely party... I wish we had something like that here..." Only she pronounces it "TONKS-geev-ng." Nevertheless, if even the FRENCH wish they had it, the Americans hit something right with that one.
More later, but in the meantime, consider a visit to me in this city where poodles wear sunglasses and ride motorscooters while 21-year-olds who have been driving for 5 years are stuck hoofing it.
~Blair

Mmm, lovely weekend, lovely dinner, lovely life.

Some useless knowledge for your entertainment, because if it's cluttering up my brain, it might as well yours too.

~In French, the word for "lawyer" is the same as the word for "avocado." Discuss.
~I learned, in the last week, the word for the shine that comes off of oil paintings-- glacees. I also learned the word for a person who works at the fabric counter at a store like JoAnn's. I don't even know the word for that in English.
~Today was Beaujolais Day. I don't really know what that MEANS, except that for some reason ALL of this year's beaujolais wine is sent out on the same day and all the bars in France celebrate with some kind of weird beaujolais-drinking fete. LUCKILY I found this out just in time to participate.
~Last week I was walking through my neighborhood and noticed a store I had never been in was having a sale. I thought to myself, "Well, everything in my neighborhood is ridiculously expensive, but if it is on sale, how bad could it be?" so I went in. The first thing I picked up was a long-sleeved shirt. For 356Euros. I dropped it out of shock, picked it back up, acted like everything was normal as I re-folded it, then busted tail out of there.
~There is a Fiore in my neighborhood. This is a hip Parisian store... thus I have always avoided it. (See Above.) But they were going out of business (probably because everyone in my neighborhood is over 65 and doesn't really want the newest 20-something fashion statement), and since I hadn't learned from last week's foray into the world of Trendy Boutiques in the 16eme Arrondissement, I went in. Who am I, an American college student, to resist a 75% off sale? Good choice this time. I am now stocked on shirt-dresses and other things that can be worn with pants under them.
~If anyone knows a way to get a ticket to the Killers spring tour, I would be, basically, your slave for life.
~Other useless facts about me: I know how to say "not allowed" in 5 languages.
Prohibido
Vietato
Verboten
Interdite
Forbidden.
~Today the firefighters of Paris were on strike. When we asked my grammar prof what that meant for the city of Paris, she said, and this is a direct quote, translated carefully into English by me: "It means if you catch anything on fire today, you are SOL, my friend." Or, more definitively, apparently there were no backups who weren't on strike... I really don't know what happens if something starts burning on days like this.
~Madame told me at dinner on Monday-- Jessi wasn't there-- and she told me that I am getting better at speaking and she is "sure that I can understand better now than when I got here." (!!!!) Coming from her, this is big... I mean, granted, she got me at my worst when I first arrived, but for her to think I am getting better makes me think perhaps, just maybe, I AM learning this language... it seems so often that I am not-- that I know all these words like for the cracks in oil paintings, or the French translation of the latin "necropolis" or even "extincteur"-- fire extinguisher (which, really, would be a handy word on days like this if the city goes up in flames), and not USEFUL things like, "pass the flan." Or "Where do you want me to take my final exam?" or "Do you have these shoes in a size 39?"
~Also, I think Madame is the coolest person in the world, and if I could think of a way to tell her such without her thinking I was crazy, I totally would.
Probably, though, she already thinks I am crazy-- who leaves the US to move to a country with another language and dogs who roam restaurants and garbage men who go on strike and no cars and no ice and friendly bartenders and cheap croissants and too much quiche at the age of 20?
Really, though, in theory, how much crazier is that than wading through waist-deep mud in a valley on a mountain, playing tackle football in the middle of a torrential downpour in the southeastern corner of Kentucky?
I'm just saying. My life has never really resembled any sort of normalcy.
~blair, comme Tony.

So last week we had dinner with Madame as usual, but this time the first course was some kind of orange soup– we asked what kind it was and she said "citrouille." Jessi and I looked at each other cluelessly and then asked, "Pardon?" and she replied, "Citrouille. Comme... courge." We looked at each other again, trying to see if the other had any idea what she had said. Upon seeing our confusion, Madame interjected, "Oh, comme... Halloween?" "Ohhhh, oui." Only she pronounced it "Al-o-when," the French way, and then we realized we were eating pumpkin soup. Yum.
The main course was what she called "Pain de Poissons," literally, "Fish Bread." Umm, what? I guess it’s like the french version of tuna casserole, only it’s actually good. It’s not bread at all, made with tuna, some kind of lemon sauce over it all, and then you eat it with hard boiled eggs. This one took a little bit of guts to take a bite of– I mean, really, TUNA BREAD? But it was, of course, delicious.
For dessert she had "fromage blanc"– white cheese, literally, and Jessi and I had a gateau chocolat. Because we didn’t understand what fromage blanc was (it’s not cheese...), she let us try some. It looks like yogurt, but tastes... well, according to the French it tastes creamier. To me, it was more bitter. But you put a dollop of it on your plate, and then completely cover the dollop with table sugar. Then you eat it. Ick. But they make it into cakes too, and the cakes are good...
And THEN after all that we were all cleaning up the kitchen and Jessi spotted a glass of neon green liquid. Now, wait. When I say "green" I mean, like, if you shut off the lights this stuff would GLOW. It had the vibrancy of liquid soap, which is what I supposed it was. Knowing better, Jessi asked, "what is that?" And Madame, who probably knew Jessi would not want to try it but that I was a willing victim, turned to me and said, "Go get a glass." I obediently did, and then somehow found myself with a glass of the viscous liquid in MY hand! ME! The one who was content thinking it was soap! Jessi turned to watch me, as I said to Madame, "I can DRINK this?" "Oh, yes, yes, it’s very popular with the young people. France just loves this stuff!" (NOTHING in the natural world, with the exception of some types of coral, is as bright as this stuff that I held in my hand.) But, for the sake of France... I threw it back. "It’s... minty?!" I said in astonishment. "Do you like it?" Madame asked. "I think so... it tastes like... toothpaste." Madame laughed at this, and heartily agreed: "oui, oui, tu as raison. Un peu comme dentifrice." But the french drink it... It’s called Sirop de Menthe– I always thought it was for making peppermint cocktails, but apparently you just add tap water to it and DRINK it, if you can get past the color and the fact that, in general, you are supposed to spit out minty liquids and not swallow them. Every time I took a sip I had an uncontrollable urge to throw my head back and gargle. Luckily I refrained.
Last Saturday here was Armistice Day. Nothing spectacular happened, since it fell on a Saturday, except a big parade from the President’s house (the Elysee, at the end of the Champs) to the Arc de Triomphe (NOT a far way for a parade– half a mile max). Armistice Day, which is the same day as Veterans’ Day in the US, commemorates the ending of World War I, which happened in a train car in a field in Northern France at 11:11am on November 11 in 19... I don’t know, 1919? 21? I forget. Irrelevant, anyway. BUT unlike in the States, instead of stores being open and having sales, most things in France close. In Paris, though, it is becoming less and less that way. Madame told us, disapprovingly, that nearly everything was open in Paris and why they couldn’t commemorate just a little more she didn’t understand, pas du tout. But the stars of the parade, which we missed because we were busy hitchhiking through Northern France, were all the living French veterans of World War I. There are only 4. The youngest is 107. And I think they all fought in BOTH World Wars, but I am not sure. Madame said the US has way more than France, apparently we have 14 living veterans of World War I, which is a rather embarrassing fact to have to be told by a Frenchwoman about your own country.
On another note, my archaeology professor (who, legitimately, can not possibly be over 25) has decided that, because he thinks it would be too difficult for me to write a paper "chez toi"– at home– that I should just do an interrogation instead, which will count as more or less my whole grade for the semester. The French people in the class (ie, everyone but me) have to do interrogations in class, one of them each week gets in front of the class and he just pretty much interrogates them on what we have learned in the course thus far. Luckily he is not making me do that. I think I would probably drop out of college altogether if he did. BUT because the French universities do not have offices or study lounges or anything, I apparently am going to have to set up a time and a place to meet up with this professor outside of class to do my interrogation. Which wouldn’t be so bad, except that last week when he told me this, I asked, "And do you want me to do this at the end of the semester?" and he said, "Yeah, or in two weeks." So what does that mean? What? Further example of the disorganization of French... well, life.
Speaking of classes, I got in trouble last week in my grammar class. I don’t know what it is about this country, I go the better part of 20 years without getting in trouble ONCE in my life in the States... except for that one time I lied to my boss... and I get to Europe and get yelled at in other languages weekly. And there is really nothing like getting in trouble in a different language. Because half the time you don’t even understand what you are in trouble for, or the words that they are saying, and when someone is in the middle of yelling at you, you can’t very well interrupt to say that you don’t understand what such and such a word means, because then they’ll lose their thread and have to start all over.
This time it was because (having mono) I skipped a meeting thing on last Monday for my grammar class. Now, let’s talk this out: I found out I had mono a week before classes started. I have never missed one regularly scheduled class. Classes are on Tuesday and Wednesday, the professor RANDOMLY schedules something for Monday, I miss it, and what?? Basically, I got a speech about how "I know you might be sick but it is EDUCO policy to deduct grades when you miss class..." But what I don’t understand is whether my final grade is deducted a percentage point, or a letter, or what. AND WAIT, it gets better. I got that speech after class, when everyone else had left– she made me stay after to tell me all that. BUT last Tuesday, when I returned to class after having missed this thing on Monday, I explained to her why I was not there, and then the next day during class, she actually used my excuse as an example of how not to speak! She said, "For example, you cannot say, ‘I was sick, but I haven’t gone back to the doctor, that is why I didn’t do my homework.’ You must say..." and then she explained something about the conjunctions I had used wrong. Only as soon as she said it, everyone knew she was talking about me because I had said that in front of the whole class last week, so all of a sudden all heads swivel to me, then back to her. Nothing like getting called out in front of a whole class of Americans in France.

Enough about that. I suppose I have nothing to complain about... I have turned in exactly one assignment since coming to this country. ((Which I bombed, but it was an 8page paper in another language on the Popular Front. I don't even really know what that is in English.))
Bonsoir,
Blair

"Travel is only glamourous in retrospect."
~Paul Theroux said that, and I am beginning to agree.

Spent the weekend in Florence, Italy. Jessi and I took an overnight train there, which in itself is an adventure, mainly because I have spent 24 of the past 60 hours on trains. After doing a round-trip on overnight trains to go to Salzburg a month or so ago, I was fully prepared to never do it again, because it sounds so cool to be like, "oh, I took the train to Italy..." or even "I spent the night in a sleeper train," but the thing is that it IS NOT cool. It just bites. In case you have never done it, let me explain: a couchette is what you sleep in. It is basically like sleeping in the Space Shuttle. There are 6 beds per couchette, stacked three on each side of the space. None of them are high enough to sit up in, so once you get in bed, you are THERE for the duration of the trip. (Which, in this case, was 12 hours. Each way.) So you get in your little sleep pod, and then just hope that no one else in there will be a snorer. It’s really rather awkward, because you don’t KNOW these people, and all of a sudden you just have to go to sleep next to them. But anyway, then you wake up every 30 minutes or so when the train hits a bump or stops, giving a ridiculously bad night’s sleep and terrible bed head in the morning.

We got to Florence early on Friday morning, only to find out that our hostel (which claims to be "2 minutes from the train station") was actually 2 minutes from the OTHER train station, and about a 30 minute walk from ours. So we do the only logical thing and buy a 5-euro map of Florence that leaves out some streets, doesn’t include name changes of other streets, and is otherwise pretty typical of Italian maps (from what I have been told, the country of Italy is like the island of Tortuga: impossible to find your way around except by those who already know how). We get there and find out we can’t check in yet, but it is run by this hilarious Italian family which made up for all the confusion. We went and wandered the city, talked our way into the Galleria dell’Academia for free, where Michelangelo’s original David is housed. From there we found the Duomo– a church designed by Michelangelo in the center of Florence, 3rd largest Cathedral in the world... random fact of the day. THEN... we come out of the Duomo and somehow are in the middle of a Communist rally. Literally. Like, we walk out the doors and are pretty much swept into the crowd as they march and yell something we can’t understand because it is in Italian. Trying to go against the sea of people was NOT going to work, so we walked in their direction for a few minutes, trying to figure out what we were marching for. Pretty soon we noticed the hammer-and-sickle flags and the posters with words like "communistos" or something, and realized we were in the midst of a communist rally. Awkward. We pulled ourselves out of it, somehow, and found the most amazing outdoor market I have seen since coming to this continent. Good quality fake purses, cheap t-shirts, fun jewelry, and all the Italian leather you could ask for. Lots of Christmas shopping got done... : ) For dinner we drank Chianti (the Florentines are known for it– and it comes in bottles with those little wicker things around it) and ate Italian pizza... Yum.

Saturday we got breakfast at a coffee bar set up just like a real bar– the baristas make their own foam in martini shakers and toss chocolate flakes, cinnamon, or one of 6 types of sugar into your drink as they make it. We had planned to visit the Medici palace on the edge of town, so we made our way over there, crossing the Arno River via the Ponte Vecchio– the oldest bridge in the city and the only one not destroyed in World War II. We bought our tickets to the gardens and palace, realized it was a little cloudy, and decided to do the gardens first, just in case. The Boboli Gardens of the Medici palace of Florence, Italy, I now know, are approximately the size of the state of Vermont. But they are beautiful. So we wander, getting farther and farther from the palace, and all the time going downhill. Pretty soon we reach the most beautiful hidden fountain and reflecting pool I have ever seen... and feel our first drop of rain. "It’ll stop soon," we rationalize, "Let’s just sit and enjoy this amazing place." We get out our books and sit on the stone benches covered by squared-off topiaries, perfect. So peaceful, just like being in a fairy tale. And then the rain begins to sprinkle, but the leafy cover above us keeps us pretty dry. "Let’s wait till it blows over." And then the heavens opened. I lived in Florida half of my life, I have made it through numerous tropical storms and even one North Carolina blizzard, and I even spent one day last summer wading through waist-deep water in a valley on a mountain in Kentucky... I know what it looks like when the heavens open. And open they did. I have not seen a storm like this since coming to this continent. Jessi and I are both in light, hoodless, non-waterproof jackets... and my umbrella is still back at the hostel. "Perhaps we ought to try to leave?" We crowd under her umbrella, doing our best to stay dry, avoid puddles, etc. but within seconds of starting out, our jeans have come uncuffed and are drenched, weighing us down and keeping us from moving fast. My lightweight hiking boots are soaked through and sloshing with every step, Jessi’s cotton jacket is absorbing the rain as fast as it can fall. And we are about a mile from the palace, straight uphill. Oh, and the temperature dropped about 15 degrees when the rain started. So we march as fast as we can through the rain, over the mud, trying not to slip and not to knock the other one out from the umbrella, taking nearly half an hour to make it back to the palace courtyard (which, by the way, is beautiful and I am fairly convinced was the sight of a Zales commercial), at which point we realize our only real option (since we are LITERALLY dripping water everywhere) is to sit on the terrazza of the museum café and hope to dry off a little before we make our way into the museum. But everyone else out there is well-dressed and appears to be the kind of people who would never do something as stupid as get stuck in the rain at a reflecting pool. So we leave the terrace (with a large puddle as evidence of our departure) and make a dripping-water Hansel-and-Gretel style trail to the bathroom. I hate fleece jackets. I think they are lovely the first time you wear them but as soon as they are washed they look so ugly. That said, I own one. But I didn’t buy it– it came from lost and found at a place I used to work. Thus far, I have only worn it on long weekend train trips through Europe. I was wearing it when we got stuck in the rain, giving me the valuable lesson of Why People Actually Pay Money For Fleece Jackets. Here is the answer: BECAUSE EVEN WHEN THEY ARE COMPLETELY SOPPING WET, YOU CAN WRING THE WATER OUT OF THEM TO THE POINT THAT THEY ARE ALMOST COMPLETELY DRY. After that, 5 minutes under a bathroom hand-dryer and the thing is good as new. Genius. So we loitered in a castle bathroom for 15 minutes, drying our hair, arms, and clothing until our teeth had stopped chattering. I thank my stars for whoever left that jacket at camp– you have saved me from an awful lot of discomfort, and whoever you are, I thank you.

After wandering the palace for awhile, we made our way toward our hostel, stopping at a cozy-looking trattoria for frizzante bianca– some kind of really ultra-sour white wine drank from huge glasses at a green marble table in a tiny storefront whose walls were covered, floor to ceiling, with bottles of wine. So cozy and warm after The Afternoon Of The Blue Lagoon.
Florence was beautiful, and Italy looked just like it was supposed to... Hills everywhere, those tall skinny trees sticking up from the landscape, old towering buildings claiming residency at one point by Dante, another by Dostoevsky, and amazing flowers every we turned.

Courtyard of the Uffizi Gallery-- Florence's equivalent of the Louvre. Amazing museum, but this guy was the highlight. Oh, he is totally real. And totally the coolest mime I have ever seen. Next to him was a Cupid mime hanging out in a chimney, but this guy was amazing. We stood there for 10 minutes before he even opened his eyes.

This is a really bad view of the fountain/pool where we ended up stranded. Notice the rain already beginning to fall on the water.
In a parking lot in the middle of nowhere in Italy, we found this car. Here is Jessi and I being amazed.
And here is Jessi being confused at a random sign we came across in Alsace last weekend. And to think, all this time I thought we were ALREADY in Europe. Darn it.
Somewhere in the gardens of the Medici Palace, a girl took a bath... Me thinking it would be a good idea to jump in the bathtub of the gardens. "Oh, come on, Jessi, what's the worst that can happen? They come kick us out?" Yeah, orrrr I end up with green algae stains on the backside of my favorite jeans... either one.

Oh, the final proof that I will never be truly French: on Thursday, in the midst of my failed archaeology conversation, I realized that not only did I not know what I was saying but also I had forgotten to cut the tailor tacks out of the back pleat of the new Fiore skirt I was wearing for the first time that day. Ha!

Ciao Bella!
~B

To Do:
*Take pants to dry cleaners
*Stop buying pants that have to go to the dry cleaners
*Buy milk. Demi-baguette. Waffles. Champagne.
*Study for French Grammar midterm.
*Stop opening my mouth.

So today I had my archaeology class-- the one in which I am the only non-French person. After class it occurred to me that I needed to talk to the professor (this is the one who is only about 4 years older than me) about my final grade in this class-- he told me at the beginning of the semester I don't have to do an oral in-class presentation like the rest of the class, but he wanted me to still do a presentation OUT of class-- for only him, instead of the whole class. This is amazing, and I thank him from the bottom of my heart for this. Anyway, I realized I didn't know when he wanted me to do it-- so I stayed after to ask him. I didn't think to formulate what I was going to say before I opened my mouth-- I was in a hurry, and hoping it would just come to me. Oh, how naive. The professor doesn't speak English. I still have trouble articulating things in French. Add to this the fact that I am beyond freaked out about speaking to people in my age bracket in French, and you have a flipping-out Blair biting her lips and trying desperately to think clearly enough to not sound like a complete fool.
Basically, the conversation was a complete failure. First I called him "tu"-- the casual form of "you," suitable for friends, animals, children I babysit, or the bartender at my internet cafe-- a pretty rude thing to do to a professor who, although he is only 5 years older than me, still has the decency to call me "vous"-- the formal you. Then I froze up because of that... and couldn't figure out at all what I was trying to say in ENGLISH, much less French. And as I tried to stutter through it, I recognized immediately The Look on his face. The Look is something which you have probably never seen, but have probably made before when non-native English speakers stop you to ask you to take a picture of them. The Look basically says, "What in the world is this kid trying to say? WHY would they give her a visa if she can't even speak? And why did she just confess her love to me?" Because by that time I had lost all hope of knowing what I was saying, and probably did (quite by accident) tell him I loved him or some such ridiculous thing. And suddenly the language barrier seemed insurmountable again-- and much less romantic than in Love Actually, when the British guy learns a dozen Portuguese words and sweeps the maid off her feet. It was BAD. I haven't been that misunderstood since... oh, I had to call Air France the day after getting here to try to find my bags.
Maybe he'll give me an A just because he feels bad for me...
Oh well. I do know how oil paintings were made during the Renaissance, though. And I now know the name of those little tiny cracks in Old Master paintings. "Frotti."
So take that, University of Paris!
~B

The pictures finally worked! These are from San Sebastian, Spain, a few weeks ago. This is the view of the ocean from through the bridge railing. I had to nearly lay on my stomach to take the picture... but I love it!

Lost Boys' Island. I don't know what it was called for real, but it's in the bay of San Sebastian, and it looks straight out of Peter Pan. This is the view from on top of a mountain nearby, where the castle was located.
WHY, pray tell, do stop signs in countries where the predominant language is Spanish, French, or Basque, still say STOP??? I have witnessed this phenomenon in several continental European countries, and don't get it at all.
Jessi took this picture of me and Mike walking back down the mountain from the castle... Mike calls it the ultimate Best Friend's Picture. It is pretty lovely... and the best part is that I had no idea she took it!
So the sign says "Jacques Cousteau Plaza" and Jessi and I thought we would be just SOOOO funny and pretend to be swimming. What you can't see is that we are standing on a rather narrow ledge being yelled at by Spanish tourists for being in the way. More to come if the picture function keeps working!

Love love,

B

Little town, it’s a quiet village...
I spent the weekend in Alsace, which is a prefect in France on the German border (the annexation by Germany of Alsace was a major cause of pretty much every war fought by France and Germany). It’s a gorgeous area, super-remote, in a mountain range that I think is the Alps, and because it has gone back and forth between Germany and France for pretty much all time, the area is very bilingual. Unfortunately, they are ONLY bilingual. Signs, menus, etc. were all written in French and German, almost never English– which was fine, but interesting nonetheless.
Waking up to say...
Ok, enough background. The weekend was ridiculous... It started on Saturday morning, before the crack of dawn, when I had to leave my apartment with my roommate at 6am to catch our train. Yeesh. I fell asleep on the train for a few minutes, but jerked awake when the conductor came through yelling "CAFÉ CHAUDE! GAUFRES! JUS D’ORANGE!" with the breakfast cart. I awoke to see a river below us, a cluster of cows in the river bottoms, and a mountain with leaves still falling out my window... and for a moment I had no idea where I was, it looked just like the view over the river in Beattyville and I thought I was in someone’s car driving around there. I guess small towns are kind of the same everywhere. We got to the city of Strasbourg (pronounced Stroz-Booooo) around 10am, just in time to make it to Centre Ville (the center of town) before it started raining. We found a cute unbelievably girly café with pink walls and a red chandelier and lots of heart-shaped things on the walls that served us onion-lardon pie with chestnut custard cake for dessert, complete with a bag of meringues to take with us. Hitting the streets of Strozboo after lunch, we wandered the misty old town, visiting the cathedral, cute shops, criss-crossing the river, stopping in another café to warm up when it got too cold, and eventually catching a train from Strasbourg to Colmar, where we were planning on spending the night.
I want adventure in the great wide somewhere...
Now is where it gets sticky. We arrive in Colmar (where my roommate had booked us a hostel) at 630pm, but it has already been dark for, oh, probably 2 and a half hours because of the awful weather. So it feels like the middle of the night, the station is pretty much deserted except for one guy at the ticket counter. We asked him for a map of the city, and he gives us one on which we can’t find the street that our hostel is supposed to be on. So we go ask him about Rue Mariafeld, he doesn’t know it, goes into the back to ask someone else, and comes back, looks through the window at us with our soggy hair, shivering in the train station with all our earthly possessions on our shoulders, and says, "Vous etes a pied? Ca ne marche pas du tout!" ("You’re walking? That won’t work at all.") Apparently our hostel is several kilometers outside of town. And it’s already pitch dark. And we are hungry. And it is raining. He tells us we will have to take a cab... but in this one-horse town we decided that was an expensive proposition, so we leave the train station, sit outside on the sidewalk, and deliberate. Since we don’t even have the PHONE NUMBER of our hostel (it wasn’t listed on the website we booked through), we don’t really have many options. But we see a hotel sign in the distance and make our way there. We walk in, bedraggled, hungry, and wet, and ask if they have any rooms for the night (though I think we would have slept in the stable if they told us that was all they had)– "Nous avons une chambre grande lit pour ce soir." ONE King-size room for tonight?! What luck! Quelle chance! How perfect! We’ll take it! How much?
110 Euros.
Wait a minute.
Umm...
Our hostel was supposed to be 18. We can’t afford this price hike. We pick our bags back up and in an effort not to lose potential customers, the concierge blurts (in English) "But I’ll give it to you for 69!" Now, I have never paid this much to stay somewhere... but by the time cab fare each way was added to the hostel price, it would have been nearly this much... and we are splitting it... and we really, at this point, have no other option. "We’ll take it." So he gives us our key, we head up to our room, and when the elevator doors open, I realize we’ve just stepped into a 30 Seconds to Mars video...
What’s in the West Wing...?
Our key has some sort of weird contraption on the end of it, the hallway is deserted, dark, and mauve, and the I can’t help but expect Jared Leto to walk around the corner any minute. The ancient-looking pen-and-ink drawings of the hotel and surrounding buildings in Colmar posted in the hallway don’t help to lighten the atmosphere... but whatever. It’s warm, and dry... for now... and we have a place to stay, so that’s the important thing, right? Jessi and I leave soon after discovering that our bathroom has a bidet (what?? Who are these people??) And find a restaurant of "traditional alsatien cuisine" for dinner. The restaurant we settled on, we would realize the next morning, was in the heart of the canal district of Colmar, also known as "Petite Venise."
Glass of water, crust of bread...
So we sit down at tiny cramped tables in a tiny restaurant with menus in only French and German, and order Vin Chaud as an aperitif... Vin Chaud (hot mulled wine) is what Alsace is known for, apparently, and ours came in huge coffee mugs with star-shaped bits of anise, whole cinnamon sticks, and generous curls of orange peel floating in it. Delicious. We ate flammenkuechen for dinner– some kind of flamed tart thing with shredded onions, fried lardons, and chunks of munster on top of a thin crust, but again we were stuck pointing at the menu, not really sure what we were going to end up with (the French translation of the German word "flammenkuechen" was "tartes flambees"– flaming tarts. Who knows what that is??) We lingered over dinner, as did everyone else in the place, until late in the evening, when we left the restaurant with the intention of wandering Little Venise to see the canals lit up at night and of course all the Christmas decorations. Full of hot wine and armed with a useless map of Colmar, we began to walk... but we quickly discovered that streets in Colmar either don’t have signs up (because most of them are pedestrian streets anyway) or else the signs are still the German ones, and thus completely useless because they don’t match the names on our map. Oh well, we think, it’s a small town, we won’t get lost.
Come on, Philippe, it’s a short cut!
Promptly we end up lost in an Alsacien NEIGHBORHOOD at 10pm, somehow we make it back to the main road of the town (this place is legitimately no bigger than Irvine, Kentucky) and we begin to make our way back to the hotel, since by this time the Christmas lights had already been put out. We passed a building with iron gates, lit only by strange blue lights coming through the dormer windows at the top that strongly resembled Disney’s Haunted Mansion, then learned that, apparently, in the North of France, they don’t use streetlights. Maybe they have higher evolved vision than us city-dwellers, I don’t know. We make it back to the hotel, eventually, cold again, and discover that it is even more deserted (how is that possible?) than when we left it. Falling asleep that night I was sure we were going to be awoken by Jack Nicholson axing through our door with a cry of "Here’s Johnny!" The hotel was nice... just scary. In the morning, Jessi showered in the huge pink bathtub first. I walked in after her to find an inch of water covering the bathroom floor. "Uhh, Jessi?" "Yeah, I know, but I don’t know what to do about it now... It leaked out of a crack in the tiles." So I shower quickly to avoid flooding the WHOLE room, then we throw our towels on the floor– there’s a good idea. Write this down: when dealing with a flooded bathroom, wait to get rid of water till you have a wetvac or something– NOT towels that are just going to get drippy and heavy. So after flooding the bathroom of the Bates Motel, we stored our bags at the front desk and left to wander Colmar. Supercute tiny French town, mostly closed since it was Sunday morning, but we wandered the park and the areas where we had been lost the night before (much less scary in daylight) and eventually made our way to the train station to hop on a quick ride to Ribeauville. Now. Up to this point, I thought we had had an adventure. Random hotel, flooded bathroom, haunted town... how little did I know what was in store for us.
I don’t mean to intrude, but I’ve lost my horse...
We arrived in Ribeauville (pronounced REE-bo-vee-AY) around 130pm Sunday afternoon. We trip merrily off the train, ecstatic about the calm afternoon we are sure awaits us... until we look around, and realize that the train is pulling away, and we are in the middle of nowhere. Now, I have spent extensive amounts of time in Eastern Kentucky. I know what Nowhere looks like, and we were bulls-eye, dead in the center of it. I don’t know what even caused the train to stop– there was not even a platform, just a sign proclaiming "Ribeauville," and we were the only two to get off. We cross the tracks and see a tiny building about the size of a large shed, completely locked, with a map on the window of where we are. Apparently this is the train station of Ribeauville, though I use the term loosely, because I don’t see how it could possibly be useful. Now, usually in a situation like this, we could hop on the next train that comes through and go back to Strasbourg for the afternoon. But there is only one other train coming through today, the one that is supposed to take us home... at 640pm. This we know not from the train station, which is useless, but from the schedule we had taken from the Strasbourg station the day before. Consulting the map, we see that we are 5 kilometers from Ribeauville, and this, apparently, is as close as we can get with public transportation. We hitch our stuff back onto our aching shoulders, and decide to start walking. I mean, really, who knows how long a kilometer is anyway, it couldn’t be more than a couple football fields, right? We’ll be there in no time, and it’s better than spending the day sitting on the gravel of this train station. Now, wait, let’s talk about the view from this train station. To the left, I can see train tracks, all the way to the horizon. To the right, train tracks till they disappear around a corner. Behind me, one abandoned-looking farmhouse that we can’t get to even if we wanted to because there is a large ditch and a small stream between it and us. Straight ahead, a paved road... and the alps. We see from the map that it is a straight shot to Ribeauville, so we should have no problem walking there. Then we notice a tattered taxi flier. Jessi thinks this would be better than walking, so she calls, only to be told that they don’t work on Sundays. Ok. We march. So we begin. We have probably made it... well, I won’t lie. Not very far. Maybe 200 yards from the train station when we hear a car behind us. I don’t know where it came from, since the road pretty much ends at the station. But the car pulls up next to us, a guy about my age leans out the driver’s side window and asks, "Are you going to Ribeauville?" in French. We say yes, and he asks if we want a ride.
There’s something sweet, and almost kind...
I think before I learned to not take candy from strangers, before I learned to look both ways, before I learned to eat solid food, I learned to never hitchhike. But there were extenuating circumstances... Jessi and I were together, we were in the Alps of Northern France, the guy had his girlfriend with him, he drove a Peugeot, we had all our luggage with us, and perhaps most importantly, it was definitely not above freezing outside. We hesitate for a second, and the guy says, "Il est tres loin a Ribeauville..." "It’s very far..." And with that we realize the insanity of the situation. We have no idea where we are or where we are going, the map at the so-called station was all but useless, it’s probably -5 Celsius out here, and the town is 5 kilometers away. Which could be the same as 100 yards or it could be 20 miles. I don’t really know. But this town is about the size of Beattyville, nestled in the mountains just the same as Beattyville, the guy is clean-shaven and free of tattoos... even his girlfriend is smiling at us. So Jessi and I gratefully accept, and hop in the backseat together. This is the first time I have been in a car since arriving in Europe, but I still remembered to buckle up, though the thought occurred to me that if you are doing something as stupid as hitch-hiking, does it really matter if you are buckled up? We climb in, immediately aware that we have made the right decision– his car has obviously been going for awhile and the heat is blasting full-force. The radio is playing some kind of French ballad in the background, and the guy tells us it is about 6 kilometers to the town, much too far to walk on a day like this. "What if it had started raining?" he asks. Our brilliant plan had not covered that possibility.
An old beggar woman came to the door...
"Where are you from?" Here from Paris for the weekend, we tell him. "You are from Paris?" the girlfriend chimes in. "Then WHY are you in Ribeauville?" They are both incredulous at this, and interrupt our halted explanation with, "Oh, and there’s the castle..." pointing up the mountain we are passing. Eventually a Bob Marley song comes on the radio and the guy laments, in French, "Oh, you have to understand English to understand Bob Marley," plunging he and I into a discussion of the merits of being a native English-speaker when it comes to music. We make it to the town– it’s about a ten-minute drive, and he drops us off on the main street, amid our plethora of thanks. We have passed vineyards on mountainsides, and "the castle" which is apparently the only reason people come to Ribeauville on purpose. Clambering out of his car, I realized it must not have been a Peugeot but probably a Fiat judging by the trouble we had clown-carring our way out of it.
There goes the baker with his tray like always...
So we hopped out onto the street that must be a pedestrian street since it is too narrow to hold a car, standing in the middle of the cobbled road, looking at each other astounded at what we had just done until a car came and honked at us for being in the middle of the street. Apparently it was a car street. We got hold of our senses, moved out of the street, and contemplated our plan of action.
Try the gray stuff, it’s delicious...
Knowing that in small European towns, every restaurant closes between 2pm and 6pm, we quickly found a place to get lunch, and Jessi and I ordered the specialties of the house– trout with butter and white wine sauce for me; veal croustade for her. But have I learned nothing from living in Europe for 2 and a half months? My fish came whole. Like, LOOKING AT ME CUT HIM OPEN. I was never that strict of a vegetarian... But I couldn’t handle that. I covered the head with my napkin and did my best not to think about it. (I have found myself, at some point during every outside-Paris voyage, muttering in my head "don’t think about it, you’ll be fine, just don’t think about it, it’s not there.") Apparently I didn’t do a good enough job because when the waiter (who was also the cook) came out to take our plates away, he took one look at mine and asked, "oh, was it not good?" Oh well. At one point during lunch I was convinced I had found a lung because there was some sort of air pocket thing... Jessi gasped, as shocked as me, though slightly less grossed out, until she remembered that, oh, wait, fish don’t have lungs. We left lunch, not quite sure what to do next, the burning unspoken question on both of our minds "HOW ARE WE GOING TO GET BACK TO THE TRAIN STATION?" We wandered the town, which was truly about the size of Tallega, Kentucky, and about half of it was closed because the day before was Armistice Day, and it was Sunday. A café marked each end of the town, "The Black Horse" at the north end and "The White Horse" at the south end. Eventually we ended up in a bar full of locals, more to get warm than anything else, because it was simply too cold to keep walking with our bags.
It’s my favorite part, because, you see...
More vin chaud, and an attempt to figure out our next move. I thought it was too pretty not to walk, but Jessi voted for calling the cab company again. After a lot of questions, explanations, grovelling, and genuflecting, they finally agreed to pick us up (in front of "Le Cheval Noir"– the Black Horse café.) We asked them to come at 615pm, thinking that was plenty of time to make it for a 640pm train.
605pm: Jessi and Blair step onto the street corner, not wanting to miss the cab.
610pm: Blair: "Maybe we could go into that store over there to wait so it’s not so cold...?"
615pm: Blair: "I’m betting it’s not a normal cab. My money is on it being some guy’s own car."
620pm: Blair: "Maybe it’s that car coming from over there?"
Jessi: "That’s a motorscooter."
Blair: "I’d settle for a rickshaw at this point."
625pm: Jessi calls the company back. The cab driver answers, shouts that he’ll be there in a minute, and hangs up.
630pm: a sedan pulls up in front of us. The window rolls down and a middle-aged man leans out and says in German-accented French, "You need a ride to the train station?" I stand there, skeptical of whether we should get in his car (there is no meter, no cab sign, the car is not even yellow), Jessi pushes me in, and we’re off, at about the speed of the newspaper delivery boy in "Rock My World." Which, looking back, was good, because if we had missed the train, we’d have been in huge trouble. The alleged cabbie drives away with our 12 Euros, we step out near the tracks, and begin the wait.
640pm: Blair: "Wouldn’t it be a hilarious end to this weekend if the train was cancelled? Because we would have no idea. We’d just have to start schlepping back to town and hope the Golden Grape [a B&B in town] has room for us."
Jessi: "I wouldn’t say ‘hilarious,’ since it is already pitch dark and freezing out here..."
645pm: Blair: "Good point. I’m shivering. And I think this is the train station from Napoleon Dynamite."
Jessi: "Yeah, maybe. It’s hard to tell in the dark."
650pm: Jessi: "We should have rented a car."
Blair: "Neither of us know how to drive on this continent."
655pm: We see lights in the distance. Blowing on our hands, we contemplate what to do if that is not the train.
Blair: "I have that gingerbread cake we bought in my bag. We could eat that."
Jessi: "Ooh, yeah, and I have a meringue left from yesterday and half a bretzel."
Oh, a stowaway!
At this point we hear a sound, whirl around, and see a figure looming at us from 100 feet down the tracks. I was terrified. Jessi reasoned that it was probably another passenger. At that moment the train came into view for real, saving us from imminent danger.
Kill the Beast!
Our car, though, was closed. What? So we boarded, found the conductor, and he told us nonchalantly and in perfect French, "Oh, yeah, car 5 is closed. You can go sit in 12, it’s first class." First class train home from the weekend of all things insane, ridiculous.
Oh, and then the conductor knocked a day off my rail pass because I didn’t write the date in neatly enough. I hate SNCF.
Ok, that was a really long explanation. If you’ve made it through all of that, I applaud you.
Je t’embrasse,
Blair

So after all my confusion and finally acceptance that the weather of Paris is just innately warmer than in both North Carolina and Georgia, it has finally gotten cold. October 31, 70 degrees and sunny. November 1, 43 degrees. And then today I had to walk to class (well, on Thursdays my classes are at University 7 Pierre Mendes-France and the nearest Metro stop is a good 15 minute walk through Chinatown) and it was bitterly cold. I think in cities it is just worse anyway because all those buildings are just like wind tunnels (YOU go to wind tunnels...) And the wind hits the concrete and just bounces off and keeps going.
Last Thursday I wrestled myself out of bed for my art plastiques class, which begins at 9 am, and as I got on the Metro at 815, I realized the sun was just rising and I got to see it coming up over the Seine and Paris. Beautiful. Then this week because of daylight savings time (WHO KNEW THAT EUROPEANS DO THAT?) I got out of class today in the dark, which would generally have been highly disconcerting since I went in the morning before sunrise and came back in the dark, except that I love Paris at night... I came home on the Metro, walked down to the grocery store and on my way home with a grocery bag of single girl’s food in each hand, I couldn’t help grinning like a fool at the sight of my neighborhood in the early evening. Businessmen rushing past me with their scooter helmets under their arm, a scarf balled up inside and a baguette sticking out the top; au pairs listening tirelessly to their charge’s account of l’ecole maternelle; middle-schoolers in uniform hopping homeward, and the thought that I would never have been allowed to take the Metro alone at that age.
Parisian buildings are beautiful; they are usually storefronts at street level with either an apartment for the store owner or a hotel in the upper floors. But the buildings never look real to me, it’s like walking on a movie set, where I can see my breath and here the soundtrack playing on my MP3 player, with cut outs of buildings on each side of the street... probably they only look like that to me because of all the ambient light, or smog or something, but it’s lovely. And there is my favorite café that I pass, Le Franklin, named for Benjamin Franklin, who lived here during his time in Paris. I’ve never actually had coffee there, but it’s this warm-looking little place painted so cozily; the kind of place where probably had I started going when I first arrived here the waiters would by now know my usual. (One would think places like that do not exist in a city this size, but at my wireless café, I always get coffee because it is the cheapest thing on the menu and I am in there three times a week-ish... and by now they know. This could also be because the memory of me sticks out as being "that American girl with the bad accent who comes in and buys a euro-fifty’s worth of coffee and then hangs out for an hour and a half working on her computer...")
Furthermore, I have realized that I truly do shop like a European single girl, buying typical European things, but in terribly girly quantities... for example, it is quite possible to go into a boulangerie and buy just a "demi-baguette"– half of a regular baguette, because who can really eat a whole one before it gets tooth-breakingly crunchy? Milk comes in litres, which is perfect. So does juice. And things bought from the market– like, the STREET market– can be bought in whatever quantity you want ("un petit peu plus, s’il vous plait"), BUT as I have learned, things from the market do not have preservatives in them... which makes them delicious and I can pretend they are thus healthier, but it also means that dates from the market, unlike dates from Monoprix, have to be eaten toute de suite because they do not last.
One last thing about Disney: on Main Street, all the buildings have American flags flying from them. If the situation were reversed, Americans would never stand for the tricolor waving from anything, even fake buildings at a theme park. But from now on, I feel like EuroDisney is my new embassy... forget McDonald’s, if I do something bad, I am heading straight for Disney. French cops can’t function there, it’s like a... a... protectorate of the US or something.
It’s much better to face these kinds of things with a sense of poise and rationality.
~B

"After all, miss, this is France..."

Today is Toussaint (All Saint’s Day) which is like, HUGE here. As in, nobody cares about Halloween– no decorations, no candy, no trick-or-treat, no costumes. BUT today the entirety of Ile-de-France (our prefecture in France– Paris and the suburbs, basically) was closed. No classes for Blair and Jessi, what are you girls doing next? EURODISNEYLAND! So we took the RER about 40 minutes out of the city to Chessy-sur-Marne and the park.

First of all, let’s discuss the fact that I am 20 years old (and will be 21 in 4 days) and I realized today that I learned everything I knew about geography from the "It’s a Small World" ride at Disney World. This remained all the basis of my knowledge of all foreign countries until probably the age of 15, when I took geography as a required course my sophomore year. And what’s worse: I am ok with that. Growing up, I assumed that people in Europe (the ambiguous continent where the old Disney movies all seem to be set) lived in cottages with thatched roofs and thick plaster walls and ate things like gooseberry pie. It didn’t occur to me that this is probably not a normal course of development until today.

The park was amazing, superfun, so cute, like being back in the States... sort of. But then I would open my eyes a little wider and realize that all the signs were in French; the announcements and parades were in French; and instead of selling those smelly turkey legs, they had, I kid you not, CREPE venders. (Venders? Vendors? Learning French has ruined my spelling) Oh, Europe. We tried (again, when will we learn our lesson?) to get lunch at a "Mexican Cantina" in Frontierland... I am not saying that North Carolina/Georgia/Florida/Kentucky Mexican food is straight out of Mexico City. But what I am saying is that it is much closer than whatever they serve in Europe.

On the "It’s a Small World" ride (here called "Que le monde est trop petit"– and sung that way to the same tune), which we rode solely because it had no line, the US was represented with a cowboy, some teepees, a covered wagon, and a Fred & Ginger type couple twirling in front of the Hollywood sign. I feel like that is quite skewed. France was represented with dancers in front of the Eiffel Tower, a parachuting purple poodle, someone wearing a striped shirt and a beret, and a lot of baguettes. Cliche though those both may be, having spent time in both places I can tell you that although in Paris there are still dancers in front of the Eiffel Tower and people in berets, in the US we have no more covered wagons, no more teepees (except at Mammoth Cave, KY) and no more Fred. Which made me laugh. And Frontierland? Good Heavens. The announcements in Thunder Mountain (when the crazy miner is supposed to be talking to you) are in French. Somehow it doesn’t sound nearly so podunk in another language). Also, as we went through Thunder Mountain, there was a room that the roller coaster went through that was completely dark except for glowing bats near the ceiling, and inserted sound effects. Having worked in such conditions, we went flying through the room and all I could think was "if these people would stop screaming the bats would quit bothering them..."

Rides were longer than in the States, lines slightly shorter, but that was probably because Europeans hate this place– and also because the temperature today was 43 (Fahrenheit) with a wind chill of 38. Jessi and I were hardcore, standing in line for Peter Pan in the freezing rain and not caring, but Europeans are just not that barbaric.

The Haunted Mansion ride, which I dragged Jessi to first because it has been my favorite since... oh, you know, forever, was nearly twice as long as the one in the States, and WAY scarier. The same grumpy-looking attendants, but the sound effects and disembodied voice were, obviously, in French. The cars lurched more, and as we got on, the "cast member" helping us onto the cart pushed the rail down over our laps and said, in the most terrifying voice, "Adieu, mesdemoiselles"– in France you never say adieu; it’s like, goodbye for the final time, like if you are leaving the country and know you will never visit. Or if you expect the other person to die before the next time you see them. Hence the creepiness of the guy saying it to us.

All day long the weather got progressively colder and colder, till it started raining on us. We thought it would be warmish, since it was yesterday, and has been since we GOT to this country, so we dressed as such– I had a long-sleeved shirt on and a light fleece pullover... I probably could have gone and bought a plastic poncho thing once it started raining, but nobody was wearing them and I firmly believe it is because people in Europe are too civilized for that kind of thing, so they just don’t sell them. Even if they did, though, I would probably have chosen to wander in the rain instead... as much because of the fashion statement as because they probably cost 10 Euros. But in the midst of shivering in line for Pirates of the Caribbean and cursing the weather for deciding to become cold on the same day that I decided to spend outside, I realized that I HAVE NEVER HAD THAT ISSUE AT DISNEY... EVER. Growing up in Florida, I remember it being miserably, unbearably, unbelievably heat-stroke-worthy hot many times. I remember employees and crazy Spanish tourists with makeup melting off, humidity so thick you could swim in it, and lines for ice cream venders longer than for Space Mountain, I even remember the acronym created, I assume, by embittered employees: Experimental Polyester Clothing Of Torture... and I have no idea what EPCOT really stands for. So being there today as the weather dropped from a comfortable 55 to a chilly 50, and then finally a bitter 43... was completely novel to me. Kids, I have learned, stay in better spirits in cold than heat... And the cast members all have (at least at EuroDisney, probably not in Orlando) winterizing accouterments for their outfits: hooded cloaks and matching gloves in Fantasyland; stocking caps and flannel jackets in Frontierland; and tux jackets with tails (purple, no less!) and top hats at the haunted mansion. ROCK ON.

I still want to work at Disney... I would draw the line (probably) at being one of the people with the stand-up dustpan thing, but I would do pretty much anything else that Disney would pay me to. I wonder how much they pay...? Our tickets, because we live on the Ile-de-France, and are French students, were only 34Euros... so like $43 ish. Which I think is perhaps cheaper than Orlando now, but I am not sure.

So fun... though I hate to even think that because the very thought probably undermines all credibility I have gained as a European ex-patriate... but it was awesome. Though truly, it remains something that is better in the US, and were the real Orlando version transplanted to Europe, I think they would like it much better. Our characters are not as squeaky, rides not as lurchy, and the place is just bigger in the States. But probably, I realize now, the real reason it goes over so much better in the States is that people there UNDERSTAND IT. In Europe, a pink fake castle in the middle of the Parisian suburbs is lame– they could go to the other side of Paris and see the castle that Louis XIII lived in, and you can forget about them even remotely comprehending the concept of "Main Street USA" at the entrance to the park. Oh, how I wish I was still an American Studies major and could write papers on this instead of in French about the German Resistance during WWII.
Mmm, Bedtime!
Your Belle au Bois Dormant,
Blair

Sunday night: rocking out in the most hip district of Paris to a crazy emo band.
Monday night: dressed to the nines and chilling in a BOX SEAT at the Paris Opera Garnier for a Mozart opera.

Oh, life. The Emory program paid for opera tickets for us to the Opera Garnier, which is the place where the Phantom of the Opera is set, and where he is still said to live in the river/sewer (I don't know which it is) that flows under the building. So the whole time I was hoping that the lights would cut out and the chandelier would fall, or a dead body would come swinging down from behind the truss at the top of the stage... but no dice. In retrospect, that was probably good, since the chandelier in there has to weigh 4 tons... But the opera was still amazing. My seat was amazing...

Sidenote: That is what I love about this country. The most famous thing living in US sewers is the Ninja Turtles... here they have a man in a tux and a mask who wreaks havoc on the lives of would-be young opera stars.

The opera was one of Mozart's comedies-- Cosi Fan Tutte, which loosely translated from Italian means "Really ridiculous story that slightly relates to the story of Blair's life." The opera was in Italian, but apparently at the Opera they always project the French (or whatever) language version onto the back wall of the stage. I kind of feel like this is cheating, since for hundreds of years they were watched without knowing what they meant, but it was good because it meant I had to practice my rapid-fire comprehension of the French language. Anyway, the show was awesome, and it was so fun being dressed up and at the Opera... I felt like a real person instead of a college student, and I kind of think that when I get too old to go to concerts anymore I am going to start attending the Opera instead. Or the ballet, that would work too...

Speaking of being dressed up, the main lesson from the Opera last night is this: girls who are 5'9" tall do not need to wear 3.5" heels to an opera that they have to walk to. Really these kinds of girls have no business OWNING 3.5" heels. Seriously. I happened to see my reflection in the door of the Metro car on the way to the opera-- the car was packed, and I stood not just head, but HEAD AND SHOULDERS above the whole rest of the car. To be fair, most of the people in my area were either older or women and so had no business being over 6' tall, but still. The shoes are amazing, and I CAN walk in them, they looked great, but I could barely walk the last few steps into my apartment. BECAUSE MY ANKLE WAS ALREADY BENT SO MUCH THAT I WAS COMPLETELY ON TIPTOE THE WHOLE TIME, like it wouldn't bend anymore. I bought the shoes over the summer, and I think at the time I thought that I had just temporarily forgotten how to walk in heels, an occupational hazard to spending all your time in hiking boots. But the point is, the night was amazing, and I realized I am a total nerd because I was as excited about seeing the building as the opera... amazing though.Tonight is Halloween... but no candy at the grocery store; no kids at the door, and it is weird to me that no one here cares. I don't think I ever really cared that much until there are no pumpkins, no ghosts, nothing. ((Except for before the concert on Sunday there was a guy dressed as a skeleton handing out stickers for the new My Chemical Romance album... but I just thought that was because he was emo.))

Quote of the week:
"To be a lady, it is necessary that one learns how to lie without blushing."
~Mozart, Cosi Fan Tutte.

Soprano love,
Blair