It's really the end.

Over the past two weeks, people have been gradually leaving Montpellier to go back to their respective homes. It's a tiring schedule, really - each night is another goodbye party, another small sad feeling, another day ticked off the calendar. When classes ended, I thought I would have plenty of time relaxing around here to feel...complete? Ready to leave?

And I thought was ready, sort of. I love Montpellier but I felt the need for something new again, needed something past the endless perfect days: picking around the marche aux puces with Lia and Julia, laughing at the weird things people have for sale, laying on the esplanade or elsewhere with Chelsea or Nell (hi Nell! now I know you read this, you creep) discussing the absurdity of the night prior, emptying a bottle of Leffe and talking ethics with Alex, dancing to dance music with Matt...I'm going to miss it so much, but I guess there always comes a time to pick up and move on. I know everyone I met here - even the weird strangers (oof, there were a lot) had something to teach me. I haven't yet figured out exactly what yet, but I feel something.

Or at least I did while packing today, finding train tickets from various excursions, movie tickets for the Cinema Diagonal, fun little drink toppers from our favorite weird hippie bar, the box from my cell phone from when I first bought it...and that sad, helpless feeling knowing this great important thing was essentially complete suddenly surrounded me. It's hitting me suddenly, how this great plan to study abroad that I had dreamed about and planned for so, so long just ran its course.

I'm trying to feel vaguely happy about feeling sad, if that makes sense. I know it hurts because it's the end something incredible, some kind of crazy adventure. I know that feeling of watching the things you don't want to lose in the rearview mirror as they grow smaller and smaller behind you.

This is the part of the story when

You know those days where the rest of the world is effortlessly sunny and productive and there you are, in a shadowed corner of your bedroom, wishing it was raining and windy and dark so the outsides could just begin to try and match your insides? This morning it was like that.

I just realized the date on the calendar - May first - and realized that one year ago exactly was a Friday, if I remember correctly. It was a weekend, at the very least, and there was a big loud noisy smelly thrilling party and everything from that semester was just accumulating and it felt significant. I knew who my friends were, who I loved, where and how I wanted to move forward. And this year, this May first...I woke up with a storm cloud over me. Here it's just days, here I know once I get off this computer that both makes and breaks my life and step outside, it will be better. It's Montpellier, and the sun will be out, and beautiful hipster teenagers will be roaming the streets, and old men will be on bicycles, and on and on until I name every typical Montpellieran into oblivion.

Last night, I was eating dinner with my host mom Michèle, her friend Sophie, and the other girl here who is staying for 3 months, Mariko (I shouldn't call Mariko a girl, I guess - she is twenty-eight, lives in Tokyo and has a husband. She works at a clothes store and is always adorably dressed and cheerful) and it was fun. I actually spoke more than a few words, and Michèle commented on how much better I was speaking, and I was happy. And it's true, I feel like I can speak to people without thinking too hard about the translation.

Yesterday I took my last examen final - hooray! - and I saw words I was writing down that I didn't know in January, or even later than that, and it felt good. The french university workload is laughable compared to overachieving American standards, but I like to think I learned a lot regardless. At the very least, I can fake a French-person-speaking-English accent quite well.

sunday, sunday

the rain today further underlines the fact that there is nothing to do on this day of the week in montpellier. stores are closed, and while normally i would take this chance to go for a meandering walk or a laze on the esplanade, the inclement weather renders this impossible.

it is quite nice to listen to, though, and makes the world outside my ceiling-window (i would say sun roof, but I don't know) an impressionist painting.

I've been around.

The address of this blog - the jillsinfrance part specifically - has been a lie for fragments of the past two weeks. I have not been in France. To be more precise, the not-France part of my stay was Prague, Istanbul, and London, and all three were lovely (prague-london was broken up by a lovely stay in Paris with my mom). The point is, though, I was travelling and yes, it was what you'd expect it to be, it was the excited faces people make when you tell them you'll be studying abroad: yes, it was really, really, great. I know this is a travel blog, I know I need to be writing about my travels, but when I try to fit the last fifteen days in one panoramic shot...impossible. There's not enough words, not enough pictures to show you, not enough quirky events to recount to make up for the feeling. And I guess that's the challenge for travel writers: to take that undefinable feeling and describe it, illustrate it, deliver it to an audience of hundreds or thousands. I'll write about the cities soon, promise.

Senior year? ...Excuse me?

Since I constantly obsess over my future (yeah, even in France), of course I was up at the bright and early hour of 7AM Eastern Standard Time (a cushy 1PM here in Montpellier) to register for classes that I meticulously obsessed over in the hours before I went to sleep for the past two weeks or so.

Thanks to my most excellent senior-status registration time, I just signed up for Readings in French, The French-Speaking World Outside Europe, Early French Literature, Humanities II, and just for kicks, Folk Music in America. It's weird since I'm technically not taking any English classes for the first time in my undergraduate career (career is such an odd word, I feel, to describe the things you do in college, but anyway..). But fear not! I will be TA-ing a 200-level creative writing class, and I'm super excited about that.

Which reminds me, I really haven't been doing as much writing as I've wanted to this semester, which just shows how hard it is to motivate myself without a real deadline in mind. But then again, it's a beautiful day and there are always free benches at the park. And I can put off my homework just a little longer..

Barcelooonaaaa!

Within moments of finding my seat on the Montpellier-Barcelona voyage this weekend, a shabby, brown-toned sort of train, my seat-mate sat down next to me and asked if I spoke English. I nodded, and minutes later found myself typing out a text message to his anglophone girlfriend as he dictated. I made sure to remember it, because it was hilarious and sad at once: "Hello baby love. Yesterday was a good day but today is a bad day. Tonight you will sleep in new york and I sleep in Barcelona alone. I make a big kiss. I miss you. Call me when you arrive."

I don't remember his name, but we talked half-english half-french for most of the (six hour?!?) ride there. He was in his forties, he liked working at farms because he liked smoking cigarettes in the morning on the field, he told me. He had a recent cardiac problem that prompted him to sell his things and make his way, via train, to Morocco. A girl across the way, knitting, had heard I was from New York (I've given up trying to explain that Long Island or upstate is not New York City, but the state of New York, so I just stick with that). She was from New Jersey, had studied sculpture at SVA and was now living in Barcelona and trying to find a job, any job, that would let her stay there. Nearing the end of our trip, another man fell into our little party in a corner of car six - he was from Queens, but had been in Spain for ten years.

Seriously. Jersey? Queens? I can't escape the tri-state area, and I kind of like that.

But anyway, that weird train trip was a good indication of the exciting weekend I was about to have in Barcelona, one of my favorite cities I have visited thus far, I think! The only Catalan I remember is café amb llet - or café au lait on this side of the border. I saw Gaudi's architecture, an epically coreographed fountain show, a spring festival in a park, another Arc de Triomph, Las Ramblas, an amazing market with people and meet and fruit and chocolate and just food spilling out its seams. I loved Barcelona!

And now I only have about five days of rest before I start my next ridiculous eurotour, courtesy of Paul Valéry's two-week long spring break: Prague, Paris, London, Istanbul. Oh, quelle vie.

Wish you were here!

My host mom went out of town for a few days to visit her son, which means I've had the apartment to myself for the past twenty-four hours or so. If I could write here a postcard to wherever she is (she told me it was about a ten-hour car ride, but I forgot to ask in which direction), it would go something like this, I think...

Coucou, Michèle! The house phone still rings even though you aren't here, and I don't think I'm going to pick it up. After you left, I immediately exercised my right in raiding the food you left (Thanks, by the way, though the actual cooking of said foods is still a mystery) and leaving articles of clothing in various rooms at free will. I've made a permanent campsite on the living room couch, with the balcony window open to let in some air and sounds (which have been, today, skateboarding teenagers, cars, and a national strike in progress). I didn't come home for dinner last night. I have not answered the door for strangers. See you in a few days!

My face feels warm

I awkwardly asked some people to take our photo, haha.

Surpassed all of my expectations this morning and woke up, got dressed, and met everyone else into to voyage to the beach. One hour's worth of public transportation (tram & bus, easily paid for by my ultra-cool monthly pass) and we were there, in gorgeous Palavas, and the shore stretched out for miles.

Call me low maintenance, but a solid four hours of hanging on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea with some American (& one Spanish!) students and French groceries and I'm set. Every (99.9% to be exact) second guess, every uncomfortable moment...today, it's okay. And now I remember why I picked the south of France.

How is France real.

So for a few weeks the professors of all the university-led courses were on strike (though I take courses at the university, it's through the international student department, so mine went on as usual), then the students blockaded the doors to all the buildings (seriously, I have not seen a single one untouched, and there are a whole lot of doors) with chairs, desks, benches, etc. and plastered the campus with posters that read, "Paul Valéry en grève!" and today, when I thought there wasn't anything more they could do, I tried to get on campus for my politics class and the entryway was closed. The whole campus was just closed off to the outside world.

Supposedly, the night before there was rioting with the students (or homeless people? I head that too, I don't know) and the president of the school ordered the campus closed for the day, and for the blockade to end. So, supposedly on Monday things will resume as usual...not that anything has been usual around here.

So after finding a makeshift classroom in a building down the road, learning about things like the Dreyfus Affair and Emile Zola and the French print media, I celebrated the ridiculous French university system by sitting in a park for a few hours, with some friends, some cheese, and a baguette. Ahh, la vie française.

When writers read my mind

You know those moments when you're reading something, and it feels like it was written exactly for you, for this exact moment in time?
I've been reading some of Aimee Bender's short stories online and they're really, really incredible. I was reading her story "On a Saturday Afternoon" and came across this...

I once thought that if I traveled in France, I would have a different brain, the brain of a girl who travels in France. I saw myself, skipping through meadows in a yellow and blue print dress. But even with the old buildings, with the bright, bready smells, with the painted French sunlight, it was still my same brain in there, chomping as usual, just fed this time by baguettes and brie.

Wow wow wow. This is kind of exactly how I feel. I'll explain later.

Toujours, un grève

This is what most of campus looks like: piles of chairs and desks all over the place. Most of them are blocking doors to all the buildings; this one here is more symbolic, I guess. These are the front gates to the school but these desks here aren't really keeping anyone out. All the main university courses are cancelled for the time being, but since all of my classes are through the International Students department, they're still going on. But there's still small interruptions - my professors had to find a new room for our classes, and I couldn't get back my politics exam because my professor couldn't get to his office. Yikes. Some of my friends haven't had classes for weeks, and are wondering if they'll still get credit if the strike continues. I just couldn't imagine something like this happening at Geneseo, but I guess its pretty normal here.

A class I had last Tuesday was cancelled and a friend's class was on strike. So where do you go when you have a sudden petits vacances thrust upon you?

The Meditteranean Sea, bien sûr. Just a 5 euro train ride away. Sometimes I wonder how this life is possible.

Revelations

I traveled three thousand miles to fall in love with a city. Since I came back to Montpellier from vacation I have felt overwhelmed in the greatest way, and I realize why I chose this strange medium-ish city over Paris, or over any other program I could have snuck my way into. I wanted to know France, and while I won't pretend to be an expert in an entire culture or country after two months of living in it, I feel the start. My thinking and speaking muddle between English and French, leaving meaning somewhere in the middle, suspended like an insect in ancient amber (yeah, like the kind you saw in Jurassic Park).

The apartment buildings, the trains running on time a few blocks from my bedroom, the dog-shit covered streets, always being asked if I have a spare cigarette, taking the afternoon slowly in with a café au lait and making a mustache from the bubbly milk. For once, I have not wondered if there is something greater out there, something more I should be seeing. Right now, I will have to remind myself years down the road, I was a part of it. It exists. I can touch it. The moon shines through the skylight every night and I will be the first to admit that not every day is perfect, not every day is inspirational, but I am here and I am finding the experience very, very formidable.

[but there is home, too, the united states. geneseo. and this summer, an empty vessel which needs to be filled by this better self, The Self That Went to France. there are people I need to still wrap my arms around. it's not just the city - i need them, too.]

The university campus is barricaded by its own students as of today. I'm not entirely sure what the strike is about to explain it well, but it seems French students are very vocal and very ready to make their opinions known to the President, to protect their educational system. I can't imagine what would happen if Geneseo students mobilized and boycotted class for a day, but here it hardly makes news: France has a culture of grèves, after all. I guess we'll have to wait and see if this makes a difference or not. My classes are proceeding as usual, since I chose to take all of mine through the International Relations department (e.g. French professors but all American students. I was really nervous about my level of French two months ago), and those are still proceeding as normal, so I'm not personally affected. But it's really interesting to witness, in any case.

I don't have classes on Wednesdays anyway (seriously, my schedule here is way, way, laughably less jam-packed than at Geneseo) so today I wrote some cover letters for summer internships and went to see Milk, with Sean Penn. It was amazing, seriously breathtaking. It's interesting to watch films with the English soundtrack and French subtitles, because you can see how they chose to use certain words and phrases. And I learned things! Thanks to Milk, when you want to say "Don't hang up," on the phone to someone, it's "Ne quittez pas." Now you know.

But wait!

Write after I wrote that last post, I stepped outside, I walked down la grande rue, got wished a bonne soirée by the woman who sold me flowers, yellow and wrapped tightly in cellophane. The Comédie was packed as always, full of excitement, full of people who want to do more exciting things than watch television in their living room each night. And my heart jumped up into my mouth and said, Don't leave. My plane ticket home may be a one shot deal, nonrefundable for May 19, but maybe, just maybe, I'll find a way back in Europe, permanently or otherwise.

Have you ever peeled the skin right off a boiled tomato? I just did, in preparation of the birthday festivities for Michéle, my host mom. It came right off with a quick slice of a knife.

Sentimentality towards [a definition of] home

When I was growing up in Oyster Bay, I considered home the place you loved just enough to say goodbye. I considered sunny front porches, small high schools, Memorial Day parades and pajamas-inside-out snow day rituals fine, for a small life, for a life where high school was easy and everything felt right already. Leaving was never a question (even though it was more leaving, with a lowercase l, because you always come back to find out you're not a part of this place anymore but you haven't missed much), an college gave me an open road and some grand image of what I could become: like so many other freshmen awkwardly forming friendships and throwing around their ideas of the future that fall, I envisioned important careers, incredible eye-opening people, and the endless late-night spontaneous happy moments that would dot the next four years of my life. And even though I did choose a college with even tinier, almost less expansive demographics than my sleepy hometown, I found those important people, unearthed those magical quiet moments you find in a library or a newspaper office or a walk in the dead of winter and strung them like pearls. Geneseo was the first place where I had rooms to decorate all by myself, a schedule and social circle and a calendar of events tailored to my liking, and through sophomore and junior year I realized home wasn't a place to escape from, it wasn't a place separate from real life - it was here under my feet, waiting patiently for me to notice.

And has it followed me to France, I wonder? After a whirlwind February break (Paris, Amsterdam, London, and a 48-hour intestinal bug all in a week) it felt really, really nice to throw myself down on a chair in Montpellier's airport to wait for the bus to the tram station and be someplace both familliar and still exciting. I won't be tearing up my return plane ticket and asking my parents to ship my things to my 34000 address (The french consulate, my family, my wallet, etc. probably wouldn't support this decision anyway - but that crepe-maker in Paris who suggested I live with him would be totally pumped) but there is no way I will ever, ever forget this place.

What a strange life this is

Minutes ago, I was downstairs in the apartment at the kitchen table, eating some quiche Lorraine that Michèle had left Sakura and I for dinner. I was half-reading, half-digesting, and half-listening to Sakura and her friend speak in rapid Japanese on the couch nearby and it just occurred to me how nice and strange the moment was, to have just returned home from a week travelling to other countries, to be tired and eating good food in a French apartment listening to my Japanese flatmate speak. It just felt like little points on some map of my life came together, like it was something I would think about when I have long gray hair to put up in clips and lots of time to stare out windows and think about my life.

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I feel like in between trying to translate everything in my thoughts and words from English to french and back again, I'm forgetting what I'm actually trying to say. I feel like I can't remember the right way certain tenses of English verbs go, and I stare at words I've written, wondering if it makes sense. Twenty years of one language and I feel like a beginner again.
And french can come and go just as easily. If I wake up and check my e-mail and the myriad of English-language, time-sucking Web sites at my disposal, I can hardly walk outside and respond to a simple question in French, or ask my host mom how she's doing.

But in any case, there's no longer time to think about things like this (see? I feel like my sentences are awkwardly over-formal or something) because the sun is shining, and I've got two hours before my translation class to lay outside.

Oh, and I went to the Dali museum in Figueres on Sunday, it was really cool. Dali designed certain works for the museum especially and the whole place is just a surreal haven of his ridiculousness. Seriously, one of the coolest artists ever. And the famous picture of the melted clocks, "The Persistance of Memory," was there on loan from the MoMA, another one of my favorite museums. I'll put up pictures soon!

Chai Tea and Talkin' French

Yesterday I went to Book in Bar, an English-language bookstore in Montpellier where they have English-French conversation exchange nights every two weeks. I was a little nervous to go, and incredibly tired from a three-hour politics class in the morning and celebrating two friends' birthdays the night before, but I'm so glad I did!

The bookstore is adorable, a worn chair of a building: it's hidden on an older, pedestrian-only street and the inside smells like tea and used books. There are a few tables scattered about; books in titles of every category spill out of shelves, begging to be leafed through. The French-English conversation was loose and casual - mostly adults and a few American students I knew from class, switching (mostly) seamlessly between the two languages. I chatted with a French 27-year-old woman named Natalie for a while, she was nice! I was just excited to actually be talking with a French person outside of my apartment; all my legitimate conversations up until now had been with my host mom and my American friends (who I try to speak French with - somtimes! But it's difficult to always do that). When the store closed and the group separated, everyone was smiling, content, happily wishing everyone else une bonne soiree.

On top of chatting with really lovely people for two hours, I drank chai tea served in a really adorable teapot. Needless to say, I'll be coming back.

Smelled like spring again

1. I saw these firemen (pompiers) on strike today at the Place de la Comedie, which is Montpellier's main pedestrian square. France has strikes a lot, so I guess these guys were feeling relaxed about it: I guess they figured their truck (grève means strike) spoke for itself, so they took a couple of cafe tables & chairs to just soak up the day.

2. I felt put-together-ish today, so I took a picture to commemmorate. Also, it was sunny for the first time in four days, thank god, which meant I could ditch my yellow coat (not going to lie, it was starting to get to a permanently-damp, wet-dog-smelling status) and stroll the streets exactly as pictured. I didn't have class today, so I went to the train station to book some travel for my break in two weeks, and then to take advantage of the very last of the soldes (think Black Friday stretched out for a month) to build up my chic French wardrobe. So yeah, not really the most intellectually stimulating day, but I did read some of The Adventures of TinTin to take in a little french. The only thing that has stuck so far is the phrase "Mille sabords!" which I think is an old-fashioned, nicer way of saying "Merde!"

3. This is a photo from the Mare Nostrum aquarium of Montpellier. I went this Saturday with two friends and it was really good! There were penguins, and jellyfish, and fish, and coral, and I just love aquariums, and how dark and calm they feel.

Rain, rain...

...go away, please. It's supposed to rain for a few days in Montpellier, and it's seriously bringing me down. I've been awake for a few hours already because I thought I had a history class on the holocaust at 10h15...not so. It was cancelled, so I sat in bed and lingered, and thought.

I want to be really good at French by the time I leave, and I think I can do this. At the same time, though, I don't want my English to change (if that makes sense?)...I like writing, I like the way I write, and what if adjusting to French syntax and style for the semester ruins my (writing) life forever? I need to keep writing. Like I did this summer, where words were just spilling out, where thoughts and phrases and plot outlines felt effortless. I've spent a fair amount of time in my bedroom this weekend, and maybe I shouldn't be doing that. I need to be surrounding myself with friends, not vestiges of online interaction. All it does is make me think of Geneseo, of the friends and parties I have had there...and what if it's all different when I get back?

I knew I had to study abroad. For so long, I felt like there was something bigger out there for me. But what if this is...too big? Too different? What if I didn't need to change that much, after all?

Marseille, and my first lesson in dealing with travelling mishaps

My time in Marseille, a city in the Provence region of France, would have been remembered as nothing more than a fun (albeit windy) weekend getaway if it weren't for the single word flashing down from the Departures board at Gare St. Charles on Saturday evening: supprimé.

"What does that word mean?" asked my friend and travel companion Amy. I tried to ignore the fact that I had only seen that word once before here, on my cell phone - when it asked if I would like to delete my old text messages.

Yes, delete - or cancel, when you're referring to French trains, apparently. And yes, the last word my tired, wet-footed, tourist-attraction-weary self wanted to hear, especially after we realized that cancelled train was our last exit out of the city until six in the morning, the next day. After stomping around in defeat (and my purchasing of the proper antidote for distress: Vogue Paris, a huge bottle of water, and a McDonalds cappuccinno), and after briefly considering sleeping in the station before I pouted (yeah, it was the wet feet that sent me over the edge), we set out to find a hostel.

The hostel we stayed in the night before was clean and high-quality, but a little over our emergency-expenses fund. Amy had remembered seeing a sign the night before boasting beds as low as 18€ a few doors down. We approached the door, even though it was dimly lit inside. Much to our surprise, it opened, and we stood dumbfounded in the foyer, peeking in a common area where a few older people sat, watching a sort of reality show on a TV bolted to the wall. It seemed as though there had been a restaurant there beforehand, and vestiges of its past prosperity - a dusty bar, a doorway to a kitchen, a board of mismatched room keys and (my favorite) a chalk sign with a single word: REVEILS and a blank numbered list - the old school method for wake-up calls, I imagined. A woman watching tv shouted out "Viens!" along with some other indistinguishable words and a boy around our age came out, explaining that a room for us both would be 30 euro - a steal at 15 each, and we could even scope out the room before laying down the cash.

We did, and figured anything was better than a hard, cold, train-station chair at this point, so we happily agreed to spend the night in our room, which was outfitted with zero plugs and a single flourescent light in the ceiling. We had no ensuite bathroom (that was in the hall, with a lock that didn't work and no toilet - just two rectangles to stand on and a hole in the floor. Aah, cultural immersion) but our room was outfitted with a sink, bidet, and an ashtray advertising U.S. War Bonds. Yeah, like from WWII. The room smelled like that was probably the last time it had been cleaned, but I appreciated its quirky character and went to bed...with my coat on, because the window kept slipping open throughout the night.

On improving my accent

Yesterday afternoon before class, I was waiting for a friend at the tram stop and a French lady with a chienchien (I learned this word the other day in Translation class, it apparently means "doggy" as opposed to "dog" and is just a doubling of the original word chien but in my mind it rolls of the tongue so fluidly that I find myself calling every dog that passes - and there are a lot - a little chienchien. But I digress) sat down next to me to ask for a light.

I was mildly impressed with myself for looking cool enough to a) pass for a French person and b) pass for a French smoker, which obviously puts me in the uppermost echelon of cool. However, not being either of these, I did not have a lighter. She went up to find someone who did and sat back down, proceeding to casually discuss why there were no people in Montpellier in the winter (personally, I think there's lots of people here now...I imagine in the summer it must be exploding, beautiful tan sunglassed people spilling out onto sidewalks, chienchiens' tongues lolling about in the heat). I'm not very good at small talk in either language, so I just nodded and she's like, "Oh, are you American?" and proceeded to ask in broken english how long I was staying for, and I proceeded to respond in broken French. I remember her saying, "In America...they only speak American!" as I responded with. "Oui, c'est dommage," before saying that I had to go find my friend.

Une grasse matinée

'Bathing Girls Galveston' Galveston, TX 1922
A picture I saw today in Montpellier at a free photo exhibit!

In french, une grasse matinée is literally translated into "a fatty morning" - the kind where you linger under the covers longer, eat breakfast slower, rushing nothing, meandering through thoughts and actions until you find the motivation necessary to continue the day. My school schedule - Wednesdays free, three out of the four other days I don't have to leave the apartment until 11:00 at the earliest - affords me many fatty mornings spent sipping coffee and reading my host mom's collection of TinTin comics (so I feel authentically French, natch). And I kind of feel bad for not being such a go-getter all the time, but its nice like this.

Today I loafed around for a little in bed, on the computer, trying to figure out potential travel plans for the nine days I have off in February. I started with a couple inexpensive travel websites (Ryanair.com, Voyages-sncf.com, EasyJet.com) and a myriad of different itinerary options and red tape to figure out. I came out an hour later with a general idea of my trajectory and a reassuring feeling that I could do whatever needed to be done.

Because it's overwhelming at first. When I curled up in bed in this strange apartment with people I didn't know, tired from my day of air and train travel, a small brief wish flashed into my head to find the next return flight to New York, run back to my own familiar bed, and admit defeat: I was not ready for this. And on the first day of classes, when nothing made sense and it felt like nothing would get done, I wished I was part of the group whose home school took care of everything for them - flight times, housing arrangements, weekend excursions, classes, etc.

Looking back with the loads of wisdom and experience two weeks here has brought me, I am now strangely grateful I had to sit through those several uncomfortable hours where a song to the tune of "What the hell am I doing here?" played over and over in my head, because I know I did it by myself. I was originally going for some big motivational lesson to be learned here, but I'll just leave it at that.

While I was out walking today, avoiding my homework for tomorrow (which I still haven't done yet, some things never change), I walked past a free panoramic photograph exhibit and went in. It was really nice and pretty extensive; a nice cultural surprise for a sunday.

Toulouse sure likes them bricks

Here are some photos from my first out-of-Montpellier visit: to Toulouse! It was a pretty short train ride away and I only stayed for a day with some friends. It felt kind of similar to Montpellier: semi-old, semi-new, busy busy busy.

The Camera Eye

Oh man, so much has happened since my last post. It's strange how each day passes so quickly but feels so long at the same time. I know this is somewhat cliche, but I've lived here just over a week, and it feels like I've been here forever. Like France carved out a space for me years ago, knowing I would come, and I just slipped in once I got the chance. Classes at university feel less confusing now, the French language is just slightly less foreign, and I know people that I hope I can call my friends for the next five months here. I went to Toulouse, a city full of energy and brick buildings about 2 1/2 hours by train from here, and returning felt like coming home.

Well, maybe not home home like Geneseo feels, but it felt familiar and reassuring.

I think on Wednesday last week, I was rushing to get to school (through a combination of walking and public transport, it takes about 40 minutes from my front door to the university entry, I'd approximate, no falling-out-of-bed-into-Welles like at Geneseo) standing outside the doors of the just-arrived tram and pushing close to a group of people so it wouldn't leave us behind. Everyone had an air of urgency, of necessity, to get on that train and go to work or school. But we were held up by an elderly lady exiting the door we were trying to get over. A black shawl covered her entire head and face, her back was hunched almost in a perfect U, a posture of complete sadness, or age, or wear.

I had seen her before, I think, sitting against a building, cup of change in outstretched hand, that same shawl making her face unknown to passersby. I had remembered her because of that unseen face, that scowling posture that looked like devastation. I also remembered her because she was also wearing a pair of hiking boots, such a disparate thing. And now, exiting the tram, her slow movements rejected the fast current of everyone else, created a notable distinction between this woman and her surroundings. The rest of the commuters stopped and slowed, watched as they let her pass, and then continued on their day. Myself included.

Cours compliquees

I rode this tram for the first time yesterday! The first of many, many times. I have to take this lovely light-rail each time I go to school, which is a couple miles away from where I live. I bought the abonnement pour jeunes, basically a monthly pass for students, yesterday with a girl I met at the university and I feel super official now, like I'm really here, really part of the city.

Speaking of school...oof. Yesterday, our orientation, was kinda super confusing. The system to enroll in classes really makes zero sense to me, but now that I've mulled it over for 24 hours it seems to make a little more sense. Basically, to find your courses, you have to walk around to the different departments and stare intensely at this list of courses offered, making sure that they're actually offered this semester and they're for your year. You write a bunch of stuff down and eventually figure out a schedule and start going to said classes, and eventually - like a month later, I think - you register for the final exams so the school knows what you're doing. That could actually all be incorrect, but hopefully I finally kinda know what I'm talking about.

Thus, I couldn't find any classes I wanted for Tuesday (and I'll happily admit it - most of the courses I plan to take are les cours R.I., or courses through international relations adapted for American students) so today I walked around some streets in Montpellier, bought a panini and some fabulous boots (everyone here has fabulous boots! and scarves! and leather jackets).

Aimez-vous la norriture?

I'm in France for all of two days and what I want to talk about right now is food.

I figure that's a good theme, because everything else is really exciting and slightly overwhelming, and I just have been thinking about food for the past forty-eight hours, I guess. The food on the flight was notable enough. I flew British Airways first to London, then to Paris, and on the first, much longer flight, they served dinner. More importantly, they served miniature bottles of wine with dinner! Thus, I happily had my first legal consummation of alcohol 35,000 feet in the air.

Breakfast, which I ate on the flight from London to Paris, was less enjoyable. The ice-cold, plastic-wrapped sandwich that only had the appetizing words "Bacon egg mushroom use before Jan 2" printed on it was not the best way to start the day, but my grumbling stomach said otherwise.

When I finally made it to Paris, both my caffeine addiction and the paltry amount of sleep I got during my travels begged me to spend a couple euros on un grand cafe. Sadly, unlike America, that means coffee in a very small cup. I was too scared to ask where the milk or sugar was, so I drank it black, all while freezing for four hours in the train station to wait for the TGV to Montpellier.

When I arrived in Montpellier, my host mom and her daughter picked me up and we drove back to her apartment. Soon, I had my first real meal in France - Ratatouille and rice! And it was delicious. The daughter and mother were surprised when I told them that the drinking age in the US is 21, because French people begin drinking - mostly wine, I think - much earlier, with their families, etc. Afterwards, I thought we were finished, but then they brought out a plate of different cheeses and we ate them with a baguette. They said that they do this after every dinner, which was interesting, because I knew cheese was big here, but not that big. Still, it's a good thing - the cheese was quite good.

And tonight, for dinner, the other members of my host mom's family - the father, brother, and his friend - came over for Le Reveillon (I think? or l'Epiphenie?) and to eat la galette des Rois, which is a round, sweet pastry with a plastic figurine hidden inside. Since I was the youngest at the table, I got to turn around and decide who got each slice. My host mom found the figurine, or la feve, and got to wear a paper crown that came with the cake. "La Reine, La Reine!" her son said as he put the crown on her head: "The Queen!"

C'est tout. I am sleepy after visiting a Cuban bar, and I'm sure there will be much to write soon.