Fete de la Musique

The first day of summer is a big deal here in France. It is the longest day of the year, so the French celebrate by having a huge music festival. What I mean by huge is that there are bands, groups, people playing music everywhere you look. I was in Grenoble for this event and my music day kicked off with Gloria Estephan blaring from some speakers at a bar across from the train station while I was wainting for my train that got cancelled. After finding out I was going to stay for the night, I went to the garden to watch two guys who where playing guitars intermixed with accordians. They were somewhat folksy and very toe-tapping. When it started to get dark (at 10pm), I decided to head back to my hotel, but on the way I walked by this little bar on a corner with nothing else around it. There was a band set up to play, with a keyboard, guitars, drums, etc... They were warming up as I walked by and sounded like they'd be decent, so I popped a squat on the other side of the street as there were appoximately 8 chairs in front of the place that were already full of people. I watched their first two songs and then decided to head over to the bar and grab a glass of wine while watching the end of the first half of the soccer game. I figured out that Ambre was the name of the band and they were quite entertaining. I stayed for a few more songs and then headed back to my hotel. I fell asleep to the sounds of an African band playing outside somewhere close to my hotel.

Ask and you might receive!

As I mentioned in an earlier post about Grenoble, I was going to stay the night there on my own accord and then decided to change my ticket and leave that evening on the last train out of town. After I boarded the train though, we sat there for 20 minutes not leaving before a lady came on and said our train was cancelled. After asking some questions I realized that I wouldn't be able to get back to Clermont that night, so I was going to have to spend the night somewhere. Well, not being very happy about this, I asked the lady re-issuing my ticket if the train company provided any assistance to people who had to stay over night because of the cancelled train. I really expected the lady to tell me no, but she directed me to the head train conductor. After hesitantly knocking on his door and telling him my story, he took my tickets (the one that showed I took the train into town that morning and the one of the train that was cancelled) and faxed them to his boss. Five minutes later he had the ok to give me a hotel room on the company that night! WOOT! If I was going to pay for a place that night I was going to stay at a hostel that would have been just a bunk bed for about 30 euro. Instead I ended up staying in a 2-star hotel for 67 euro on SNCF. Sure I felt a little guilty that I was debating staying anyway, but really I did want to be home and not have to spend another day mostly on trains, so it worked out. I got to enjoy more of Grenoble and sleep like a rock in a nice, clean room,

Grenoble

On Tuesday I took a little trip to Grenoble for an interview with Schneider Electric. It was a four-hour train ride to the city, with a brief train change in Lyon. Got into the town and the weather just plain wasn't very nice. Thankfully it wasn't raining, but it wasn't sunny or warm. I walked around a bit (in heels, dumb idea) to see if I could find the tourist office and get a map. Also, originally I was planning on staying in the town overnight, just to get the feel of the town, so I looked for a hostel I had found on the internet. I didn't find either, so I walked back to the train station to catch a cab (15euro!) to the company. I had the interview, which was so-so, and then one of the ladies drove me back to the tram station because it was so far from the company (not a plus). I wandered through the Grenoble mall (very nice actually and a lot like malls at home) and found the bathroom (that I had to pay 20 cents for) to change out of my suit into jeans and pumas. Then took the 21-minute tram ride back into center city.

When I arrived back at the train station I decided that I just wanted to go home, so I changed my ticket to the last train out of Grenoble back to Clermont at 6:44pm. Then I set off to explore some sights. I didn't go in anywhere because I didn't have a ton of time, but I did walk through some lovely little places, grabbing a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone on my way. I saw the Rhone that runs through Grenoble and the wonderful sights that would have been spectacular if the sun were shining. As it was, it was a pretty neat town with lots of interesting architecture and young peoople. One very glaring thing that I noticed about Grenoble, and I don't mean this to be un-PC in any way, but there were A LOT of people in wheelchairs. Once I noticed that I realized that there were also a lot of people who are bravely dealing with other challenges to their physical appearances. I wonder why I noticed this and what it means for the town. The only thing I could feasibly come up with was that the town is in the middle of 3 major French ski resorts, as it is at the base of the Alps, so maybe some of these people have been injured during extreme adventure accidents? Not sure because they didn't seem like the extreme sports types, but who knows.

After walking around a bit and enjoying the sights, I made it back to the train station in time for my train, but found out it was cancelled and there was no way to get back to Clermont that night. I got a hotel (with a bit of help...read the next post) and checked in before wandering about town for the Fete de la Musique (later post as well) and then enjoyed a night of the music festival, watching a band at both the garden and on my way home in front of a bar and I watched part of the Spain World Cup game at a outdoor cafe where I swear 13 year-olds were drinking beers. The "legal" age in France is 18. If these kids were 18, I'm 35. Made it back to my hotel and slept blissfully for 9 hours. Woke up to bright sunshine and admired the views on my way out of town.

Protest cont'd...

I'm not sure how many of you are watching the World Cup, but it didn't go well for the French. Not only are they out of the tournament, they thoroughly embarrassed themselves and their nation by being absolute ninnys. Here's what happened. During one of the games a player on the team wasn't happy with the coaching and the way the game was going. When he came off the field at half-time he said something not very nice to the coach. The coach subsequently took the player out of the game and then, when the player didn't apologize for what he said, the French federation kicked the player off the team. The player continued to make snide and demeaning comments to the media and about the state of the team and how they would do, but what did the French team do? They went on strike. Naturally. They literally would not go to practice for one of the days because they wanted to prove a point to the French Federation. In the following days they ended up losing their last match of the World Cup and were officially out of the tournament. (the argument could be made that they never should have been in it to start, given they only got in because of an illegal handball that prevented Ireland from being in instead)
Now. I think what the players forgot is that this wasn't about them, or even about the guy that, in my opinion after what I have read, was rightfully kicked off the team. This wasn't just some professional game where they'd all get paid anyway and no one really cares. This is the World Cup. These men represented their nation and their history and, while I have no official polls to back this up, being in the country and reading the newspaper and hearing from French people in bars, this team was a disgrace to everything the French want to represent. Sure they love to strike here and show their affinity for making a statement, but not here, not in this arena and now when this kind of reputation is at stake. Unfortunately, to the rest of the world, the French just took a step backwards because an over-paid group of soccer players forgot that it isn't about them, it is about the country they represent.
Update: Just read the headline - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704853404575323063067778590.html

And then there were....

This week has been pretty boring, as my roommates started their internships and we had to say goodbye to some of our best friends in Clermont and our best French friends. I took one to the train station on Friday afternoon and it was really weird saying good bye to someone we've hung out with so much and not knowing when I will see him again. Last night we hung out with another of our French friends all day, which was nice and he even made us dinner on his last night! Admittedly to clean out his fridge, but no complaints here. He left today and now we literally know about 5 people who live in this town. It is a little more difficult that at home too to meet people because there aren't exactly clubs and such like home. The gym is fine, but not a lot of younger people work out there, and this being a university town, many of the students are gone for the summer anyway. I'm still searching for what is going to happen in the next 6 months of my life, so I'm not even sure I will be here, but in the meantime I'm going to have a lot of time to myself...

Protest

The other day while I was cozily watching soccer in a local pub and enjoying the fact that I was no out in the rain, some commotion began outside. I turned around when the chanting started and looked out the door of the pub to see a group of people marching for something or other. Living in France this isn't a unheard of occurrence. I have seen plenty of stikes and protests and marches and have been inconvenienced by a few of them, but mostly they are harmless and people just demonstrating. I'm not sure why the French are so hell-bent on expressing their right to strike and protest, but they sure are hard-core sometimes. Take yesterday for example. It was raining allllll day and it wasn't warm outside. These people are out there with umbrellas, to listen to some guy talk about who knows what and the worst part? I really think everyone else is just flat out ignoring them. Thus, what's the point? I don't know what they think will get accomplished by their little 100 person march, but alas, they have the right, so might as well voice their opinions I guess.

Summer?

While the weather has been less than summer-like here, with temperatures hovering in the low 70s and sometimes 60s and we the constant rain that has been infecting our days (I think it has rained every day at least for a little bit for the past 8 days), there are some veritable signs of summer in Clermont. I took a walk through the park that is close to our apartment and realized that there is a fabulous rose garden that is absolutely teeming with roses. They are huge and in many different colors. The gardeners also had some fun with other plants in the park and made some dinosaurs into the hill of part of the park. Kind of a fun diversion to the normal straight lines or just groupings of plants. I spent a little bit of time in the garden before laying out on a blanket in the park to read and take a nap. The storm clouds chased me home earlier than I would have liked, but I did get some Vitamin D and enjoy the view for a while.

Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

In my attempt to be a jack-of-all-trades, I’m going to review the book I just finished: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
The beginning of the book was just atrocious. It took me a long time to get into the book. I think the main problem was that a lot of background was necessary to set up the story. I read the first little bit of the story and put the book down because I was bored. My roommate told me that her mom and friend had a hard time in the beginning as well, but that it got better as the book goes on. So, after finishing Anna Karenina I gave the book another shot.
I finished reading it in about 3 days and while it was engaging, it was somewhat confusing because there were two stories going at one time. It is a mystery so there is definitely some intrigue surrounding what is going on, but I hated the ending. I didn’t realize it was a trilogy initially, but I think the writer was fully aware that it was going to be a trilogy from the beginning so she just left the story hanging at the end, which was really ungratifying. I’d give it a decent review, but I don’t know if I think everyone should read the book. The book is disturbing at some points and very graphic. The subject matter isn’t all that pleasant and while it certainly is an intricate and cleverly devised story with no details left out.
So the ultimate question is “Do I think you should read the book?” The answer would be yes if you intend to read all three of the books, which I don’t because I didn’t like it well enough to put more energy into two more.

In? or On?

A few months ago, (honestly I can't remember if I blogged about this before or not, so if I have, forgive me) one of our Brazilian friends was asking me what the difference is between using "in" and "on" in the English language. He's fluent in English, but these two words always give him a hard time. Now of course I was patient with him and described the difference: in is used when you are physically inside something or feeling someting e.g. "in the house" or "in a bad mood". On is used when you are physically on top of something. e.g. "sitting on the chair". Since my descriptions might not have been technically correct, I pulled some info from a writing website. Here's their take:
In: in mainly denotes “rest at”:

PLACE: He lives in the country. He lives in Chicago. (BUT, He lives at 2300 Wabash Ave.)
TIME: I’ll be there in an hour.
MANNER: The child ran down the steps in tears.
REFERENCE: In my opinion we need a referendum. They are happy in their marriage.

On: on indicates proximity and position above or outside:

PLACE: He sat on the fence.
TIME: He was not thinking well on that occasion.
REFERENCE: He asked my opinion on the matter.
CONDITION: We’ll hire him on your recommendation.

At the time I thought, what a weird thing to have be a major hang-up with the English language. I know we have lots of intricacies, but I never considered that being a big one. Then again...yesterday I was on the train and a woman next to me answered her phone. Obviously the person on the other end asked her where she was and she answered that she was "in the train". Something clicked that struck me as odd. We would never say, in English, that we are "in the train". We'd say we are "on the train". But, we'd say we are "in the car". What's the difference? There isn't one. There is no way to logically explain why we say we are "on the train" versus "in the car". No wonder our friend was having problems with the distinction!

Camaraderie

One of the interesting parts of being a minority in another place is the delight upon meeting someone like you. In this instance I speak of watching the World Cup game between the US and England. We went to a bar that has really big tvs (an odditiy in itself here) and sat down a bit early to get ready for the games. A little while before the game I started to hear sprinklings of English. It is amazing to me that being surrounded by French all the time really makes me cognizant of when people are speaking English because I actually know what is going on around me! For me to understand French I have to pay attention and concentrate, for English obviously it just floats into my head. But I digress...As the bar filled up more and more for the game we realized there were really a lot of people speaking English, both British and American. Turns out there was a table of about 16 people next to us that worked for Michelin and were from various English speaking countries. It was fun watching the game with them because for each exciting play there were different screams and shouts. The tie was a little anti-climactic, but it was fun to watch in a bar that was a little like being in a bar back in the good old US of A.

World Cup Opener

As the World Cup has begun I have further realized that one thing I miss about being home is having a tv that I can plant myself in front of to watch major sporting events. This was, of course, evident to me during the Super Bowl, Olympics, March Madness and French Open, just to name a few. The World Cup is on that same platform. There are so many games and so many fabulous stories it would be cool to get to watch it all without having to sit in a bar and feel bad because all I really want to drink is water. It would be neat to turn it on during the day while I'm around the apartment just meandering around. It would be really cool to still have friends from all different countries here to watch games with. Sadly, almost everyone except the Mexican students has gone home. Don't you worry your twinkle toes though, we did watch the opening match of this year's tournament with the one and only Mexicans. As you I'm sure know, the first match of the tournament was between them and the host nation South Africa. We went over to an apartment where 4 Mexican ladies live and had some traditional Mexican food and crammed approximately 10 people in a living room surrounding a 13-inch tv. It was a grand time. Especially when there was an offsides call that everyone went bonkers about because they swore that the guy wasn't offsides due to there being a defender on the line. I calmly explained that there has to be two defenders between the ball and the goal line. My explanation was met with uproars from the Mexicans and one American. It is only one defender they demanded. I reaffirmed, actually it is two, but usually the goalie ends up being back there so most of the time it really is just one defender. Stopping a second to ponder this explanation again, I was congratulated for my thorough knowledge of the rules of soccer. This coming from a room full of soccer-bred Mexicans. Thank you very much :-)

Big 12 Shakeup

One of the things about being abroad is that the news, whether sports related or not, is harder to come by over here. The sports stuff is particularly more difficult. The big world stories are of course on the tv so they diffuse much more quickly. But seeing as we don't have a tv, and the French don't particularly give 2 carrots about what happens in college athletics in the US, we have to rely on ESPN and our lovely friends to give us the dirty details of what is happening.
This whole thing with the Big 12 has been really just plain annoying for me. It has sparked many a conversation between the Americans over here and most of us are just confused as to what is going on, beyond the point that it is just all about the money. Talked to my dad and he says it is funny that the ADs are trying to say it is about other things, but let's be serious: no one cares about rivalires, school traditions, school pride or how far the fan base and student athletes have to travel if there is a large chunk of money involved: money I'm that I'm sure will be used for better academic facilites and to help the students become better educated...right.
Sadly I'm becoming quite disillusioned with college sports in general. I know this is hard to believe as I used to be so die-hard. I mean I got up in the middle of the night to watch basketball games,but being over here really has made it evident that just because I can't watch every game, there will always be highlights and box scores and ways to find out what happened.
This whole thing with the Big 12 makes me mad and sad and really bummed out. I'm sure some of that is resistance to change, and some stems from the fact that the Jayhawks aren't going to a power conference, but mostly I think because it is an affirmation that for so many people, everything sure is all about the money.

Serbia cont'd...

Last thought on Serbia that I forgot to include that involves me significantly.
- Did you know that is really really rude and impolite to burp out-loud in Serbia? Like my friend warned us when we got there not to do it. It is just flat-out not accepted. Those of you that know and love my better sides know that I tend to be pretty gaseous, and not capable of being discrete sometimes, ESPECIALLY when drinking beer. I was really worried a few times when I was out, but I just made sure to really hide behind the music.

Anyway, that was a late addition I forgot that I found particularly interesting.

2 random thoughts

These are too short for a whole blog post, so here are two random thoughts:

1. A tube of 4oz toothpaste takes approximately 4 months to use up.

2. I saw a snail crossing the sidewalk yesterday. He was a big dude. I almost walked right by him, but then I stopped and had a look. The first thought that crossed my mind? I hope nobody else notices him because they're going to want to eat him. I am 87.4% positive I would have not had that thought if I had crossed this same snail while living in the States. Escargot just isn't as popular at home.

Long days...

Kansas City, MO: 39 degrees line of latitude.
Clermont-Ferrand, France: 46 degrees line of latitude.
distance between each line of latitude = approx 69 miles
total distance between KC & CF lines of latitude = 483 miles

Why all these statistics? Intersting fact that I never really thought of before living here. France is significantly farther north than Kansas City. Apparently we are on the same line of latitude as Nova Scotia. Why is this relevant? What comes with being farther north is that the days are much longer than I am used to. The sun comes up earlier and it goes down much later. The other night I was walking home from a bar at 9:15pm and it was still light outside with blue skies. The sun doesn't even set until 9:36 tonight and then there is the time it takes until the sky is void of all light. I could literally be out until 10pm and have it be perfectly light. I think it is screwing with my sleeping schedule though.

Serbia

Last weekend my roommate and I, along with two classmates that are studying in Italy for the summer, went to Serbia to the hometown of one of our fellow KU classmates. She showed us a fabulous weekend full of too much dinking, not enough sleep and wonderful Serbian people. I'm not sure what I was expecting from Serbia. In an unofficial airport poll of the 4 of us traveling to Serbia, the only thing we knew about the country was that our friend was from there. I couldn't tell you much else. I knew roughly where it was on the map, and knew that soon it will be going into the EU, but other than that I had no clue. Here's what I discovered:

-The food is dynamic and amazing. Our first lunch in Serbia we had a great soup followed by lots and lots of meat. To finish it off, we had crepes with a yummy delight inside that was a mix between something chocolatey and fruity. Don't know. Don't care, it was scrumptious. Lunch is the big meal of the day in Serbia, so the dinners were more just cold cuts with pickles and this great bread that I could literally eat all day. We also tried a breakfast pastry that was layers of thin dough with feta cheese in the middle. We had that with drinkable plain yogurt. Sarma which is cabbage rolls back home was another meal. Quite yummy. We also had some amazing ham that had slow-cooked for 5 hours. Serbians know how to eat.

- Drinking is big in Serbia. I don't think it is so much the alcohol though. My impression was that it was more about the social gatherings and being with friends than it was actually about getting drunk. Sure that is a side effect of staying out for hours upon hours and until 4am, but no one was angry drunk or just slamming drink after drink. Everyone seemed like they were enjoying themselves mightily. We saw a cover band on Friday night that played everything from Metallica and Rage Against the Machine to Katy Perry. Saturday night we rocked out to 80s rock music and had a great time singing along to songs everyone knows.

- We did get to try a pear flavored home-made liquor. We heard stories of other strong alcohols, but didn't have the opportunity to try much of that, so we didn't. We did learn though that the best stuff comes in un-marked bottles and from people who you have never met. I don't know this from first-hand experience. Just stories passed along.

- It is evident that Serbia is not a wealthy country, but you wouldn't know it by the people. Everyone was extremely nice and welcoming and made us feel like we were part of their lives from the minute we got there. All the younger people speak English, so thankfully we could communicate with them. We tried to learn some Serbian, but really only ended up with "Hello", "Thank you", "Yes", and "good". Other than that we had our friend translate for us.

- Compared to France and the US, everything in Serbia is super cheap. We changed money when we got there, I gave 30 euro to get turned into dinar. I spent 22 for the whole weekend. Now this is obviously due to people making me food, but also because beers cost 100 dinars=1 euro. Nice.

- We went into a Serbian Orthodox church and it was really cool. Very ornately decorated. The most striking thing to me was that there were no pews or chairs. I asked our friend and she said that everyone stands the whole time! That is 40 minutes of standing. Whew.

- Serbian men are big. Granted I have lived in France for 6 months were the guys aren't exactly big, but I saw some really big dudes in Serbia. Tall, muscular and don't look like people I would want to meet in a dark alley if they were unhappy. Maybe these shoes that were on the side of the street belonged to one of them?

- Best purchase of the trip was a pair of shoelaces from a vendor on the street. I broke a shoelace on my Pumas a few weeks ago and have been searching for new ones. My laces needed to be khaki color though and I could only find white, black and brown easily at stores. I walked around the corner while we were wandering the city and saw a whole bunch of colors and sizes of shoelaces. Bingo!

- The Serbian country really is beautiful. I can't pronounce the names of where we were. The hometown of our friend is called Zrenjanin and the other place we went to visit was called Novi Sad. Novi Sad is a little bigger with more restaurants and such. They also have an old fort and the Danube runs through it. As we crossed the river, our friend pointed out the old supports of the bridge that had been bombed in 1999. It isn't like I don't realize that wars really exist and that people get bombed, I have just never known someone who lived through it. Our friend did. It is amazing to hear her and her mom speak about it. Her childhood was so far removed from mine. In this picture is a clock that was up by the fort. The time was 3:30. The clock is backward. Get it?

I loved our trip to Serbia. Staying with a Serbian family was the real-deal, not some tourist glamorized view of the place. Our hosts were amazing and I think everyone should go visit if you get the chance.

Chambord

The first impression of Chambord was that it was absolutely massive. The lady that took tickets was also the rudest of our encounters during the day. We went into the castle and it is literally so huge that most of the space is just walls and floors. There are also significant parts that are decorated as they would have been back in the day. There are Fs and salamanders on the walls and in lots of the decoration for Francois I who lived there. He sure liked to leave his mark. One of the neatest parts of the castle was a staircase designed by Leonardo Da Vinci and is one staircase with two passage ways. A person can take one set of stairs and see the other person through the posts, but never actually meet them. The King used it to go up and down the stairs without meeting his servants. Clever dude. The top terrace of the castle was pretty amazing also because we could see all the towers and turrets. A very cool place and an easy way to spend 2 hours of a day. There are lots of rooms and we did quite a bit of walking all over the massive castle.

Cheverny

This castle looked more like an English estate than a French chateau. The inside was immaculately decorated, but we only saw part of it because people still live in the other part of the castle. It is open for 365 days a year. How much would that suck to live in a castle where you couldn’t have Christmas because there were tourists touring your house. It would be neat to live there, but they aren’t able to fully enjoy it because there are always tourists. There were pictures of the family that lived there throughout the rooms that were open to the public, so we could actually see the family’s faces. I wondered out loud whether they work or just live on the income of the castle. It has gotta be an interesting life.
The most unique part of this castle was that they have a kennel of hounds. Each hound has a V shaved onto its side to signify the last name of their owners. They were all relaxed when we got there and must be really good friends because they were laying all over each other. Pretty fricken cute though. We stopped at a little wine shop outside the castle and tested a few wines. They had quite the selection and quite the method for letting people taste the different kinds. All you did was put your glass on the little ledge and it poured the perfect amount of wine for you. Neat. We bought a bottle to enjoy with our friends once we arrived in Paris and made our way to our final castle destination: Chambord.

Chaumont-Sur-Loire

My roommate and I did a Loire Valley Chateaux drive last Thursday. We went to three castles and had a beautiful day for sight-seeing. The first castle we saw is called Chaumont-Sur-Loire. It definitely takes the cake for most random castle ever. I really liked it from the outside, but inside wasn’t that great. There was artwork everywhere. It seemed like instead of restoring the castle, they just decided to use it as an art museum. There were random displays everywhere. At one point we found a room that was lit with neon lighting and had a model city. Completely and utterly random. It must have been there from the previous owners because it definitely wasn’t really old. The phrase on the wall says “A world that is blowing itself up does not allow its portrait to be painted.” The castle also had all kinds of plants that were decorated with buttons, feathers, lace and jewels.
The castle is known for its garden festival that it has every year. There are lots of different gardens that get designed by different artists. When I first read about it, I thought oh fun, I love gardens. They weren’t at all what I expected. The gardens were each really artsy, not so much with flowers, but with other random objects. It was pretty neat, but there were kids everywhere and it was kind of hot. Plus we only had 6 hours for our 3 chateaux adventure. We left Chaumont and headed on to Cheverny.

Tarot

A few weeks ago a French friend of mine taught us a new card game that is popular in France. It is called tarot and it isn’t like reading our signs or anything. At least I think it has nothing to do with that. It is more like spades, but the deck of cards are different. There are Knights, Cavaliers, Dames and Kings, then the rest of the deck is Ace through 10 like normal. All the cards are dealt and someone decides whether they want to take or not. If a person takes, that person calls a King. They do not know who is on their team until the King of the suit they called is played. Then the teams are the person who took and the person who has the king and the other three people. The game is best played with 5. The objective is then to get as many points as possible. All the cards have different point values and a little card helps figure out how many are necessary. There are tons of other rules obviously, but I’m learning the strategy and rules of the game. We have played a few other times and it is quite fun. It is cool because you can literally play just one had, or many, since each game is its individual game. Ah the education obtained in France. Here are the rules if you are interested: http://www.pagat.com/tarot/frtarot.html

Max

We had a sad occurrence last week. One of the dogs that our landlord owns died. His name was Max. He was 15 years old and had epilepsy, so was having seizures. We saw him on a Thursday night and then didn’t see him for the rest of the weekend. He was deaf also, so sometimes he didn’t hear when we called him. The weather wasn’t nice, so we thought maybe he was hiding under the stairs. Sadly we found out on Monday that he had been inside all weekend and wasn’t doing well, and had passed away. There is another dog named Poucette and she is completely lost. She doesn’t know what to do without her little buddy. She keeps walking around all mopey. Every time a door opens she runs to look for him. Such a bummer.

black beans

When our Brazilian friends left to go home, they left us with some black beans that they had gotten from Brazil during their stay over here. They actually left us a bunch of other stuff too, like leftover spices, garlic, etc... Anyhow, I tried to fix the black beans last night for dinner. I found a recipe online and followed it, but....they didn't exactly turn out as I had hoped. They were done enough I suppose, but had to cook for much longer than expected. We ate them, and they were fine, just not as exciting as I had hoped. Thankfully there are some left that we can experiement with again in the future.

We are the Champions!

And by WE, I mean Clermont of course. This past weekend Clermont played in the French Championship of Rugby. The game was at 8:45pm on Saturday night and in the huge place in the middle of town they set up a big screen tv. For the past 11 years Clermont has been in the championship, but hasn't won, but I guess the place just gets crazy with people camping out to watch the game. To ensure we landed a good spot, we got to the place at 3:30. Yes, after some careful math, one realizes that I was at this place a good FIVE hours before game time.

Now, being American, we were prepared for this tailgaiting madness. We had blankets, a cooler with beers, snacks, books, cards, etc... What we did not have? ice. Stores don't sell it, we only have 4 ice trays at home, so the beers were relied on to keep themselves cold in the cooler. After a few it doesn't matter anyway.

Thankfully the weather was perfect for such a day. No sun, but clouds that weren't very threatening, so we were able to make it through the whole 7 hours total with only a few sprinkles.

While I would say that being there was fun, I can't, in all honesty, say that I enjoyed it all that much.

1. There were incessant horns. When I woke up Saturday morning I thought people were just tooting their car horns. at 8 am. Upon further realization, someone was selling these horrible, god-forsaken horns that people blow into. My god they were loud. and annoying. and constant. At the place they were even worse.

2. I felt like I was at a high school state championship game. Everyone around me was about 5-10 years younger than me and all drinking beer. Most of them were being well-behaved, before and during the game anyway, but still only as normal as late teenagers get. (am I sounding old or what?!?!)

Finally once the game started I was happy to be there to enjoy the fanfare of it all. The game was kind of exciting, but really there was only one actual "goal" scored, the rest of the points were on penalty kicks. I did, however, learn how to conjugate the verb for "sit down!" because people kept standing up, making it hard for other people to see in the back. The game ended with a Clermont victory and that's when things went bananas. To clarify, I have been on Mass Street minutes after a national championship by the Jayhawks and it was nothing like that. On Mass St. everyone was happy drunk and high-fiving and yelling with joy. Here? People were spraying the crowd with beer (not as pleasant smelling as champagne) and throwing beer bottles and breaking them on the ground. Slight problem with having no cans in Europe really, all the beer comes in bottles, which is fun to break apparently. I grabbed some of our stuff and high-tailed it out of there, but was greeted on the way home with the sight of men peeing around every corner. I made sure to walk in the middle of the street. I won't try and describe the senses at work there.

We refrained from going out to celebrate, as I felt our 7 hours of Clermont devotion that day was enough. I didn't leave the house Sunday either because the horns were blaring and people were everywhere to welcome the victors home. Toot toot.

Quitting the Gym

As I had hopes of having an internship by June, or at least the first of July, I knew that I would possibly be leaving Clermont. There aren't very many things that I have connected to here that would be hard to stop, but boy oh boy the gym cancellation policy is quite a doozy. I knew when I first signed up that to cancel the membership, one had to turn in a letter stating one's intentions two months before the date of termination. So, at the beginning of April, I wrote out a letter and had my French teacher make sure it said what I wanted it to, and then I took it to the gym. Nope. Can't turn it in, by hand, in person. Instead, I had to send it registered mail (4.50 euro to send a letter 3 blocks). I'm sure it is so they can have verification that you actually sent the letter. Ok step one complete.
Today I went to complete my disconnection with the gym. It is necessary that I return my gym card so that I can get my 10 euro back that I put down as a holding fee in case I lost my card. I ran myself over to the gym and expected the lady to just give me 10 euro and be done with it. Nope. She asked me to come back in a week because she has to get a check from the bank to give me my 10 euro back. Sheesh.