degustation

Ce weekend je suis alle avec quelques amies a visiter Chateau de Berne pour un degustation...et vraiment juste pour faire quelque chose je pense.
This weekend i went with some friends to Chateau de Berne for a wine tasting....and really just to do something i think.

Feel free to correct the french errors, je sais que je fait beaucoup (I know that i make a lot).

The weather was horrible - heavy rain and high winds; I was glad someone else was driving (thanks M!). I kept seeing these signs along the highway that said "130", not really realizing (for far too long) that it meant the speed limit was 130 km/h. Which of course means that under normal conditions everyone's going 150. And in crappy conditions everyone's going 120. I don't know if I'm going to be able to handle the Autobahn...

The directions provided on the Chateau's website are somewhat lacking as we had to call the Chateau three times to find out which direction to go...at one point we were on some rural side road that was the width of the car and barely paved. When we got to the end of the pavement and the beginning of the mud track it was time to call for directions again. Turns out we had taken the wrong road (Salernes not being the same thing as Satreine [something like that]). Anyway it was a minor adventure which is always fun. Plus I had been watching Scooby Doo in french that morning so had visions of us ending up at Castle Terror or some such thing. In case you were wondering, Scooby Doo is just as stupid in french as it is in english. I have been enjoying Clifford le grand rouge chien and Kim Possible though.

Nous avons 5 canals ici et chaque nuit on peut faire le choix entre Las Vegas, Friends, Les Experts (CSI), Law & Order, et Charmed. All dubbed into french. Then there are the french programmes which are tres bizarre...well pas vraiment plus bizarre que les 'game shows' en Amerique du Nord. C'est juste que je ne les comprend pas. Il y a quelque chose s'appelle Jour J et I just. don't. understand. what. it. is. about. It's like an entertainment programme which outlines various things...i'm not sure if the point is "today is Jan 30 and on this day 25 years ago so and so recorded their first album" or something like that....that's what i think but I really can't be sure.

Finally, I ate an entire baguette yesterday. Here's how:
11:55 a.m. - purchase baguette at boulangerie because it's sunday and you're paranoid that the store's going to close at noon because you haven't been able to figure out the sunday schedule after three weeks
12:33 p.m. - make mache salad, tear off 1/3 of baguette and smear with butter and dip in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. yum.
4:25 p.m. - make tea, tear off another 1/3 of baguette and smear with nutella. enjoy.
8:23 p.m. - make mache/cheese/tomato sandwich with the remaining 1/3 of baguette.
10:15 p.m. - walk into kitchen to make more tea and notice that all the bread is gone.

il fait neige, goddammit

#$%*^!!!!!

there are rumours of snow here and bad weather till Sunday. it's 3 degrees right now and raining. i'm never going to gloat about the weather ever ever again. and i mean it this time.

the problem is that none of the buildings are really set up to handle truly cold conditions, there are all these charming french door windows (i don't know what to call them) and shutters but nothing really seals you know. Drafts seem to be part of the package. Even in this cafe, the door is open to the patio (which has a plastic enclosure). So I have to wear my jacket and order 3 euro hot chocolates (there's a euro sign on the keyboard but i can't figure out how to make it appear). my hands are cooold.

i went to the Cocteau Chapel today after school, it's very small but i really liked it. the walls are covered in paintings/murals that consist of black lines and subtle daubs of colour. you can read more about it here:
http://www.thevesselofgod.com/pilgrimage.html
you can't really tell from the photo but the face of the angel that's in the bottom left corner of the last photograph is really incredible. i'm going to go back and see if they'll let me photograph it. if not i'll just stare at it until it's burned into my mind.

while i'm really loving the experience of being in school and using my brain again i'm really getting frustrated by my limitations in french. i haven't read anything but Tintin and the newspaper for the past three weeks. the main problem is that i'm really overstimulated right now and at the same time there are all these things that i'm hearing about and thinking about and wanting to learn about in more detail but i don't want to (for lack of a better word) pollute myself with too much english right now (even though i'm writing in english). i can't even understand most television still. i understand more and more each day but not enough to really get into something. although i had an interesting experience yesterday, sitting on the couch watching some program about orphaned elephants (i find that nature documentaries are the easiest to understand) when i sort of stopped thinking about trying to understand and for a few moments just understood what the narrator was saying. of course the moment i realised what was happening i started thinking again and poof! it was gone. i have the same problem when i do yoga.

one interesting thing is that i'm usually completely exhausted at the end of each day. at first i thought it was jetlag but after talking to other people here i think it's something we're all experiencing. you'd think that sitting in a classroom for approx 6 hours a day (plus that massive petit dejuner and dejuner and breaks) would not be physically exhausting. and you'd be wrong.
you will be shocked to learn that most school nights i'm in bed by 10:30 or 11 (and sometimes as early as 9, which just seems obscene), and getting up around 7:30 (school starts at 9 and it's a 5 minute walk from our apartment...do the math...in toronto i would have been getting up at 8:45). of course the difference is that now i'm excited about where i'm going each morning (sorry Andrew ;) ).

peaches!

have you ever encountered peach scented toilet paper before? because i have become intimately familiar with it over the last week or so. wow.

that's probably the most exciting thing....no okay, um what have i been doing.

trying to speak french exclusively and failing miserably. i'm at the point where i've can't speak either language properly (a few days ago at dinner i generously offered to cut the cheese without thinking - and i just watched the entire run of Freaks and Geeks so this should be fresh in my mind).

went to Antibes on Sunday to check out the Musee Picasso, it was nice. there were some really great drawings and a couple paintings i liked.

went to St. Paul de Vence yesterday on an Institut excursion (we had a day off from school because legally the staff can only work something like 37 hours a week, and since our school day is typically 8.5 hours there's a free day each session). we also went to some tiny village way way way up in the hills (i forget the name) which involved a large bus on a tiny road with a tiny guardrail. at one point i was looking out the window (tempting vertigo) and saw a little car all crumpled up below us. reassuring.

i've been trying to read the paper in french lately, it's sort of working (i can get the gist of what's happening in the world at least).

pffffft!

well, good luck with that new government. and c'est tout I'm gonna say about that.

i won't gain weight i won't gain weight

do you think if i chant that like a mantra over and over and over again each night it will counter the extreme quantities of cheese and creme brulee and wine and bread and yogourt i have been consuming?

probably not but i'll let you know. oh hell it doesn't matter, as long as the pants still fit i'll keep stuffing my face. and the great thing about wearing the same pair of pants every single day is that they just keep getting looser and looser.

we had a lesson on cheese today after lunch (there are 7 families of cheese - now you know) and then ate cheese and drank wine. happily this took place immediately before the laboratoire or the 'torture chambre' as it's more commonly known. The laboratoire involves a tape and a headset and a series of exercises where the professeur asks questions and we have to respond in a grammatically correct fashion. The sentences are getting longer and more complicated all the time - for example for the question "Did Paul like the film?" we have to respond "No, he didn't like it, but me, I liked it. And you? Did you like it?" which honestly I think I might have some trouble with in english; the french response is (and i'm testing myself now): "Non, il ne l'a pas aime, mais moi, je l'ai aime. Et vous? Est-ce que vous l'avez aime?" (i know i'm missing some accents, don't know where they are on the keyboard).
Aaaand that was correct I think...so maybe something really is sticking. We talk about pronous and articles for hours. Like this morning we talked about en for a really long time. Is english grammar this complicated and I just don't notice?

After I gloated about the weather I think here and in various emails it rained for a couple days. So now all I'm going to say is "meh, the weather's okay...i don't know about this not having to wear a jacket in January thing though. I don't know if it's working out for me." Hopefully that works.

Finally, I think I might finally be over Desperados. The ingredient list is as follows: "Biere, sucre....etc etc". I get a headache now just thinking about it. Although there is a can in the fridge that i really have to polish off.

oh...and if you want a postcard or something please send me your address, i have hardly anyone's postal code.

election news

okay, i seriously need someone to email me with some information about what the eff is going on over there with the election. last i heard (and i have very little access to media during the week and not really enough time online to search out the news) the conservatives were 10 points ahead. ?!?!?!?!?!?!
so one of you smart people please send me a little digest of what's going on.

not really much to add, sorry to say - we had a petit soireè last night and were allowed to speak english for once (not that we haven't been cheating like crazy anyway) but again today trying to speak only french. it's difficult to have a complex conversation about politics for example with such a limited vocabulary. we can get so far and then it's just frustrating and we'll lapse back into english. after trying to speak only french for a couple of hours it always amazes me how quickly we can make a point or tell a story in english.

i would prefer to speak french only, all the time, but i don't think that's possible - my roommates are pretty much total beginners and we always seem to lapse back into english at the end of the evening.
still, i feel like i'm already making progress and i think that after 3 more weeks i'll be pretty comfortable and hopefully able to understand television and radio and continue studying on my own.

i have always relied on the kindness of strangers

wow. Villefranche is crazy. I got off to a great start when I took the train into town Monday morning at 7:30 am and thought...well, it's small, I shouldn't have any trouble finding the place, I can just check with the tourist office at the train station, I won't bother trying to get a map in advance. And then got off the train, discovered that the train station is really a platform and one dude and no maps anywhere. So, with my huge backpack I started wandering aimlessly looking for someone I could ask for directions. Eventually (after i started to seriously consider freaking out) i found a man who couldn't really understand my broken french, and he flagged down a car full of cops who very kindly drove me to the school. French police rule!

Apparently I am the only student who has ever arrived with a police escort.

Anyway, the first week has been great although it's been difficult to speak only french all of the time, everyone here is really interesting and it's hard not to just launch into English conversation outside of school. After the first day, which was in English, we're not allowed to speak anything but french on school property. I've been placed a little higher than I expected to be, right in the middle in the Intermediaire 2 class, happily and surprisingly i understand most of what the instructor is saying.

What else...I'm living in an incredibly cute apartment (with a view of the mediterranean) with two other women, one from the US and the other from Japan. We have a kitchen but they feed us so well at the school it's not really necessary to eat much for dinner at night. Every morning we get breakfast (baguette, marmalade, tea, yogurt, etc) and then lunch...oh my god the LUNCH! Today for example (there is a chef on the premises) we had an onion tart with anchovies to start and then salmon and rice and vegetables, and THEN chocolate mousse with creme anglaise AND THEN cake because it was someone's birthday. I'm eating fish but not meat so much. AND i won't get fat because there are a million stairs and hills to climb to get anywhere.

I have more to report but have to go, I'm in Nice right now and we need to catch the bus;

bananas!

First, I would like to apologize to everyone who received that completely insane email with the ALL CAPS and the wrong blog address and the general insanity. I had literally 10 seconds left on the internet before I lost the connection. I have located an english keyboard so everything should be a little better tonight.

So. Day 2 in Paris...let's see, what are the highlights:
1. much less dog crap on the sidewalk than I remember
2. it seems to be colder than Toronto, but nobody here seems to realize that it's cold because they don't wear hats.
3. sometimes, when you walk around for long enough, someone will randomly pull bananas out of his pocket, wave them in your face and say something you don't understand
4. smoking in restaurants! remember? it's actually cool because these smokers are wicked tough girls who roll their own cigarettes right at the table in the cafe before they smoke them. fresh.
5. jet lag is embarrassing. like when you're sitting in a really nice teahouse (Mariage Freres which I was looking for all day and sort of stumbled across at one point, rose and neena you know what I'm talking about) and you take a sip of tea and then you fall asleep BEFORE SWALLOWING and you wake up due to the sensation of liquid spilling out of your slack mouth over your chin and onto your shirt. then you know it's time to eat that one last chocolate covered coffee bean you've been saving.
6. Desperados! And they sell it in cans in late night grocery stores for about $3.75. And these stores have clerks that just sit there all night and listen to techno music that goes like this: "work that pussy work that pussy work that pussy work that pussy". Yeah, that's a song.

so. I walked for hours and hours, Paris is still beautiful, but it's effing cold and I'm ready to head south. Catching the train tomorrow so I'll be in Nice tomorrow night.

Now it's time for me to drink beer.

where is the @ sign?

or the question mark or exclamation point for that matter? ah..found it. it took approx 10 minutes to find the @ sign, and then only after actually going and asking at the desk.

so i've made it to Paris and am killing time waiting to get in my room, will probably go get something to eat now; running out of time on the internet card...more soon.