A year away from home

Problématique: What's a year away from home like? In free form, because you can only describe a year away from home in free form...

It's been a long time. Looking back on this year I am tempted to say "Wow, that went really fast!" but I can't say that. I can't say that because I know it hasn't been any faster than a normal year. We always look back on a year or a month or a week and say "Wow, that was quick!" but that's not at all. You just remember less at the end, so it seems shorter... I guess there is an exception to this rule however, because I reme

mber a ton about my year here, but it's also felt long from time to time.

Getting here on September 1st, I was EXHAUSTED. I don't sleep well on planes, so by one o'clock in the morning when I went to sleep after watching people do crazy things with bulls I slept like a log. What a welcome, and between that and driving from the train station through Nîmes and some pretty, small villages on the 

way to my new home a lot of things were going through my mind. Such as:

• "AHHHH! Crazy French drivers!"
• "I barely understand anything."
• "I can't believe I'm actually doing this."

If I had to sum this year up in one word, like some other fake essay question I might ask myself, my answer would be: EXPERIENCE. Tons of people have asked me why I decided to do what I'm doing. I was never dying to get away from my home or my parents - I simply wanted to learn another language and have one hell of an experience. I didn't feel rushed to start college and start the life of searching for what I need to do to live the way I want to live in the future. Or something like that. It never stressed me or anything, I just didn't feel like I needed to start all that so quickly, and that maybe it would be better for me to take a break, relax, and widen my horizons.

So the experience already - what's all that about? For one thing I experience what it is to have a little sibling - I'm sorry Perry for whatever Keith and I did to you. But that's not the only experience I had; this year has been full of big and little things that have blown my mind. For the first couple months I was exhausted. When I got here I could only speak "French to eat and sleep," and feeling myself progress was (and still is, for that matter) incredible. In a week I was translating in my head less, and by the time my parents came to visit in early January I was getting along just fine. It amazes me that someone can learn a language as I have (or better) in nine and a half months. I also learned what it is to be American. Now I've never been a real patriotic person because I'm never felt a need to be. My country has never during my lifetime been menaced by another in war, and for the most part I've been too young to really be able to analyze how I feel about myself and my country. When I've reached the correct age - whenever that was - I was never proud of our political situation or our place in the world, so I'm never been a diehard American. Then you come to Europe and everyone has something to say. You learn quickly that you're more patriotic than you think because you have an instinct to defend your country, even slightly for things you might know they're right about. And then you learn that you can't get to perturbed every time some critiques the U.S., or you're going to spend a hell of a lot of time frustrated. So anyways, you examine yourself and your country, what binds you and what makes you different. The most important thing that I've experienced is living another life. This year has kind of been like a retirement (at 18-19 years old) or a year of vacation, where I've felt like I've paused my real life. Although everything else to do with my real life is going on as normal, I've stepped slightly out of it. I've stepped into someone else's shoes who lives in Boissières, a village of 500 people in the south of France, in his junior year of high school, etc. I now know how someone here can live and the numerous similarities and differences between our ways of life. I understand better that cultures can be special or ugly and that everyone in the world has certain tendencies of how they look at their cultures or foreign cultures. I understand that we're all just human beings even if we like to indirectly say that we belong to a country, and that you really have to EXPERIENCE something before you can completely judge it.

This year has been both a headache and put my head in the clouds. Within a year spent almost anywhere, you experience sublime moments and moments where you really wish you could be somewhere else. I've had my fair share of both, and I'm glad I did. As I said before, now I can fully appreciate a little sister who turns of the TV, plays with my hair, and is always in contact with me. I've ridden my bike in some of the prettiest places I've ever seen and been in and around monuments and houses more than 10 times as old as where I live. I've struggled to communicate, wished I could home from time to time, but also done amazing things like dodging bulls at night in village parties (don't worry Mom, I'll tell you all about it when I get home). At the end of this year, I can't be anything but happy that I did it. What did I do to hurt myself? Put my college and journalism or who-knows-what career on a hold for a year? Big deal, hopefully I'll have plenty of them... I haven't lost much, but I've gained more than I could have imagined. A language, millions and millions of people in the world I can now communicate with, a second set of family and friends, and tons of stories. Not so bad, huh? I don't know quite what else to say at the moment, because I could say so much. If you see me, ask me about it. I'll tell you a story.

BOUM! - not onomatopoeia

It's Sunday morning and it's just started raining here in Boissières, but I won't let that get my spirits down! I've already had a really good weekend, so I don't really mind what happens today. Friday was exciting because it was the last day of school. I was sick of classes and was looking forward to getting done so that I could just hang out with my host family and ride my bike before packing up and leaving in two weeks. Halfway through our last hour of class (history), the kids asked the teacher to stop the video we were watching and they presented me with a card and a pretty quill pen. It was really nice of them, and I said thanks to everyone and told them how good of a year I spent with them.

I came home on the bus and hung out in my room, watching Monfils (translation "my son") play in the Roland Garros tennis tournament. Then I heard a few voices, saw what I thought was my friend Benjamin's hand knock on the window, and stuck my head our of the door, where I saw Benjamin, and part of my host family... then the rest of my class! So yes, they threw me a surprise party Friday night, and it was awesome. We hung out and ate and drank (Ricard pastaga) a little bit, played foosball (baby foot), and eventually sat down to eat a couple salads and burgers French-style without the bun. We were 18 in total, and between hanging out in my large room, the backyard, and jumping in the freezing swimming pool, we had a lot of fun. In addition, they gave me even more gifts, which was incredibly nice of them. I got a little bottle of Ricard liqueur, a Ricard bandana, a photo album, a book on Nîmes, and a couple other things that I can't say because I'm going to wear them on the plane home. We hung out for a while, and the last people who weren't sleeping over left at 1:15. All in all it was an excellent night, and it's a pity we hadn't done something like that before to really bond, but whatever. It was good saying goodbye to everyone, as I might seem them a couple more times but not in the same way.

I have to add in the fact that I can't believe I didn't figure out they were throwing me a party. I know something was going on, but after History I thought that that had been it. Which is why they did what they did in History... I saw a guy Paul collecting money Tuesday; Laurence and Marine went grocery shopping when they didn't really need to; Benjamin didn't take the bus home with me like normal; Philippe had gone and bought some "bottles," which were actually bottles of cider; a few guys in my class had gone and bought some alcohol Friday; etc. Looking back on it I should have suspected more, but being surprised was better! For now, ciao! 

I went and saw a French witch this week

Okay, she isn't really a witch. She's this oldish lady who owns a store where she sells minerals and jewelry made of minerals and stones. I went to see her because a bunch of people I know have gone to see her recently. My host father Philippe started the trend when he went to see her for his knee pain. She gave him a couple small stones that he put in his knee brace, and surprisingly his pain subsided a little bit. Then the father of my host mother went and got some stones or something. Since then, my host mother has gone for her and Marine, and she's been accompanied by two friends who have gotten stuff for their families. Now there's one woman with less shoulder pain and a kid with less acne, among other things.

So anyways her store opens at 9 o'clock. I got there at about 8:55 and I was already the 5th person there, which doesn't sound like that much but can be a ton, as she spends a decent amount of time with everyone. Eventually she took my hand, did some weird stuff with her hand in the air over mine and decided what she wanted to give me. I started to say "I decided to come see you because...." and she finished my sentence with "you have back pain," which was pretty awesome. I don't know what kind of crazy magnetic field I give off, but I though it was kind of cool that she could tell me what my problem is. After talking with her for a while about a couple other people I got things for and about my guardian angel Yaheilah (I think), I left with a small ring of stones that matched my character, and a little pebble to fight my back pain. I haven't sensed a huge difference yet, but I guess I need to put the pebble on my back more. We'll see. I'll let you know if I experience a miracle.

Speaking of miracles, I have to mention something that doesn't happen very often in the south of France. It's been raining for a WEEK. I'm wondering what's up, as I don't live in Seattle, nor London! It was nice today and might be nice tomorrow morning, but other than that it's rained every day for a week. Everyone in the Nîmes was getting depressed, so thankfully it was pretty today. And while I'm in my second to last week of school here and I couldn't care less, I've been ripping my too-long hair out, dying to go out on a bike ride. Hopefully I'll be able to tomorrow morning. Good night.

Carnaval

Well this Tuesday we finally celebrated Carnaval at my high school, about three months after the real date. Carnaval is really linked to the christian religion and is celebrated around Easter and Mardi Gras. I'm not that sure on the real meaning of any of it, but now it's just an excuse to dress up. It was scheduled at my school over a month ago, but it got postponed because of teaches planning to demonstrate by dressing up and staging a mock olympic-torch struggle, which would really be to defend their cause against the loss of 9,000-10,000 teaching jobs across France next year.

Anyways, I didn't have class until 2 o'clock. There were a couple bands that weren't that great, but it was still nice to sit around in the sunshine and hang out. Plus there was a fashion show for anybody who wanted to show off their costume. Me and seven other guys in my class dressed up as knights of the round table, with swords, shields, and t-shirts with red crosses painted or drawn on. We had some fun blocking flights of stairs telling people they couldn't pass and that they had to go around. The best costumes of the day were:

• A friend Hugo (yes, a guy) who dressed up at Snow white with his seven dwarves
• The French version of the Village People
• A guy who put gloves on his feet, a shirt with a hanging head on his legs, pants on his torso, and shoes on his hands. He was "walking on his hands" the whole day, which was pretty funny to see. REALLY creative! I have to remember this one for Halloween or a dress-up party sometime. The only problem is finding a pair of pants that's thin enough so you can breathe, see, and talk to people during the day.

I also saw a few surprises as well. For one thing the presence of toy weapons in school was new for me. In my high school we definitely wouldn't be able to bring toy hand guns or sawed-off shotguns, in addition to the wooden swords. There was at least one Scarface... The second surprise was guys drinking been in the cafeteria with lunch. It was really for their costumes they said, but nobody really seemed to mind. The last surprise was a little less fun - shaving cream in my face as I was leaving my last class of the day. I had watched out all day as people were getting shaving-creamed or floured, but a guy in my class finally got me! Oh well, it wasn't as bad as when that happened as I was sleeping at cross country camp the summer before my junior year...

Les Crocs de Nîmes

By "crocs," i'm not talking about the rubber shoes that were le mode in the U.S. before I left. I actually went to see the Nîmes Crocodiles soccer team play on Friday night. The air was intense; if Nîmes won against St. La Val they would move up from Ligue Nationale, France's third division of scocer, to Ligue 2, obviously the second. The game was sold out, with 18,000 Nîmes supporters screaming the following chants:

• "Qui ne saute pas n'est pas nîmois! Hé!" - If you don't jump you're not from Nîmes! Hey!
• "Paris - Paris - On arrive!" - Paris, Paris, we're coming! This one I need to explain. Paris won last night to finish 17th out of 20 in Ligue 1. If they had lost they would have dropped down into Ligue 2, which means they would be probably the only soccer team in a European capital city to be in the second division, and would play Nîmes.
• "On est en Ligue 2! On est en Ligue 2! On est, on est, on est en Ligue 2!" - We're in Ligue 2! This cheer only happened at the end.

St. La Val was a team that passed well and had better control of the ball, but Nîmes had a stronger defense and dominated the possession. St. La Val scored first on a rebound off the goalie, and then Nîmes scored twice before halftime - one on a free kick and another on a long pass that beat the defense. The third goal from Nîmes, which was similar to the second, followed halftime and put Nîmes securely into Ligue 2. Anyways, the ambiance was fun, and I finally got to a soccer game in France.

In other news, it's finally nicer weather here after raining nearly all week and Saturday. I got out for a ride this afternoon and barely saw any cars for a decent amount of time, which was awesome. I hope everyone's good, and I'll be sure to blog a few more times before I get home in a month!

Direct from the bullfighting capital of France....

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mesdames et Messieurs, I am writing to today like normal from the Nîmes region, the bullfighting capital of France. Nîmes hosts two ferias every year - one in September and the more popular, everyone-gets-drunk one during the Pentecost weekend, seven weeks after Easter. The feria began Wednesday evening and ends tonight, or rather at four o'clock this morning. I went Friday night and last night, so I will tell you all about my experiences.

Friday I went with my host sister Marine, three of her friends, and my friend Benjamin. We got there around seven o'clock and walked around checking out the sights before sitting down in a bodèga for dinner. The bodègas are little restaurants run by people supporting a charity or regular restaurants that need to defend themselves from five days of absolutely no business. Typically they all have:

• paellas - a huge plate of yummy yellow rice, chicken, shrimp, mussels, calamares, and some vegetables which is cooked in enormous pans,
  
• gardiane - a beef stew cooked with black olive and served with either white or local Camarguaise rice (you'll learn more about this if you keep reading),
• steak de toro - simply a steak of bull meat, served with fries.

I ordered a steak de toro, which wasn't that awesome, but I got to finish one of the girls' plates of paella, which was excellent. We all split a pitcher of sangria, and then hustled over to the Avenue Jean Jaurés to check out the brívado, a style of running of the bulls that I saw the first night I arrived in France. However, this isn't the run-as-fast-as-you-can-so-you-don't-get-gorged-in-the-butt-Spanish-running-of-the-bulls. The brívado is when some Camarguais cowboys riding on horses block the bull behind them and a bunch of young guys chase it, trying to hold onto it's tail, shoulders, and horns, respectively, to slow it down to a standstill. After watching that, we walked around again and then headed to a dancing-oriented bodèga for younger people, where we saw a ton of people from our lycée. At midnight we headed out of there to get picked up my my host mother before it got too crazy.

Sunday night I took the opportunity to go to a real bullfight with the Granier (you don't add an "s" on the end in French for a family name), a family of friends. Sorry PETA members... If I lived here all the time I don't think I would go see a corrida every year, but it was something that I had to see once. I saw three matadors - El Fundi (awesomest name ever, although I have no idea what it means), Juan José Padilla, and Rafaelillo each fight and kill three bulls. I'm not going to recount the whole process of a bullfight, as I don't want to ruin it if you go see one. But I will clear up a few falsehoods about a bullfight. First of all, it's not just one matador who fights a bull. At the beginning there are at least 6. The matador whose name you hear participates throughout the whole process and is the one who kills the taureau. Also, the capes the matadors use are not always red; they are big and pink at the beginning and red just for the final two stages. Finally, some may argue that a bullfight is a cruel waste of an animal. However, the bull, which is of a special breed raised specifically for corridas, is at least given a fighting chance before being made into gardiane.

Afterwards I had some more paella and sangria and walked around. That's all I've really got on the feria. It's a good experience but one also has to be careful about the dangers that exist, most of them after midnight in the busy streets full of drunk, aggressive people. Still, see it in your lifetime if you can. Chao

Exploring the cuisine

Here goes for my fifth and hopefully final blog on Tunisia. Not that I don't love writing or talking about my trip, but I'm not sure how long it will be interesting. I saved the best for last - the fact that you can't go to another country without exploring the cuisine. You definitely have to follow this rule when in Tunisia, where there is plenty of delicious (sometimes overwhelmingly spicy) food.

Of course the best way to eat in a country is to eat in a private home - which I didn't do. I would have loved to, but instead I ate in the hotel buffet-style restaurant most of the time. It wasn't fabulous, but still not bad for food that was cooked to serve 400 people. The chorba - a thick mixture of rice, green bell peppers, red chili peppers, other small vegetables, and of course lamb meat - and couscous with veggies and merguez sausage were my favorite of everything there. The other highlight of the Tunisian food was the harissa, a sauce of chili peppers. Now I love spicy food and all, but the harissa becomes the limit for me. If you eat it with rice it's excellent, but if you eat it straight with a spoon as one of the animaters did the last evening, it makes you stick your head in the pool and eat lots of bread. The other highlight of the Tunisian food was the dates. I didn't eat any apples or strawberries when I was there because I had to take advantage of the amazing, fresh dates.

The final topic has to be beverages, of course. Although Tunisia is a Muslim country, they still make some decent wine and beer. I drank a few Celtia blond beers, which was pretty good, when I went out to the dicotheques. But the best beverage by far that you can find in Tunisia is the mint tea. Hot and very sweet, it's what Tunisians traditionally drink with their meals or any other time of day for that matter.

That's all I really got. I think that's it on Tunisia, but you can always ask me more if you have questions. Later

Souks and medinas

Or at least what I picked up during my week in Tunisia. I managed to get out of my hotel a few times, as I mentioned before, so I was able to see and learn a few things. I'll start off with my market experiences. Depending on where you go in Tunisia, the markets can be very agreeable or very stressful. For example, the medina (old city that is now converted into a 7/7 market) in Hammamet has a very aggressive feeling because all the merchants bug you to buy their stuff. The medina in Sidi Bou Said, as I said before, is more relaxed because there's less hustling going on. The best experience I had in a medina was when we went to Tunis. There's a square of cafés next to the Tunisian version of the Arc de Triomphe, at the end of the Avenue Habib Bourguiba. You can then either enter on the left alleyway (the side for Tunisians) or the right alleyway (the side for tourists) to the medina. Of course I entered by the left side to see the real market instead of all the touristy crap. Philippe and I separated with the women after a few minutes and went to check out the medina. (There's another thing I've learned: going shopping with French women is just like going shopping with American women - I don't want to do it. Am I abusing the use of parentheses now?)

The medina in Tunis is cool for a few reasons. It's historical for one thing. Although I don't know any of the dates to stick in some more interesting facts, the buildings are definitely old and the road has a stone drainage system that shows it's ancient. The medina, which is owned by the government, is completely covered, which I saw better when a guy took me and Philippe up onto this awesome tiled roof of a building where rugs are made and sold. Of course that was a nice thing he was doing for us before trying to sell us rugs, and I wish I could have returned the kindness by buying one of their beautiful rugs, but unfortunately I don't exactly have enough space in my suitcases. The other highlight of the medina in Tunis is coming across the amazing-smelling Arab date-filled-cookie makers. Amazing, and stupid of me not to buy some on the spot.

My final market experience was in Nabeul, the town bordering Hammamet, Friday morning. There is a weekly souk (more traditional market) in Nabeul, where goods such as spices, vegetables, and pottery used to be brought by camel. Now of course it's more touristy but you can still find some cool stuff. Notice my Arab shirt in the pictures on Flickr, which I will sport for people when I'm cooking couscous back in Maryland. I said the goods used to be brought in by camel because of a couple reasons:

1. Times have changed. Even if everyone dreams of going to North Africa and riding around on a camel, I never saw an actual Tunisia doing that. There are things called cars and scooters now, which go a lot faster than camels and don't spit. The only people who really ride around on camels are the berbere people in the desert.
2. Camels are also a health risk. Having camels shitting next to all the vegetables and meat and such that you might want to buy just isn't that lovely, so if there are camels they're kept outside the market.

There are also some pretty hilarious things that you see/hear at the market. For example: "Normally this costs 35 Dinars for the Germans, but since you're French I'll give it to you for 25 Dinars." At which point you offer 5 Dinars and work your way up to 10 if you think it's worth it. To finish up on my market-talk, I'll offer a hint if any reading every visits the region: don't buy spices at the market. Instead buy them in a grocery store, where they'll be much fresher and possibly cheaper as well. Get some Ras el-Hanout (couscous spices) and some saffron.

Well now it's getting late for me and I need to hit the hay. It might still be early for a Friday night, but tomorrow isn't going to feel like a real Saturday for me, as I have a BAC Blanc test in the morning: four hours of writing. YAY! I guess you can call that payback for an incredibly easy week of 10 hours of class with one day of strikes and one holiday. Oh well, **it happens... I'm writing more than I thought I would for every blog, so I've still got at least one more Tunisia-topic blog coming. Keep reading! Goodnight.

Local trips in Tunisia

Alright, well "maybe later this afternoon" turned into two days later, but at least I'm getting around to posting. I've still got plenty of stuff about my week in Tunisia to write about, so here goes...

On Thusday of my week in Tunisia (got there on Sunday the 20th of April, so that makes Thursday the 24th), Philippe, Laurence, myself, and Laurence's new friend - who was also on vacation at our hotel and drove me crazy - went to check out the sights at Tunis. Normally, if you pay to go with the group of people from the hotel in a bus and all that it costs you around 40 Euros per person. We payed 100 Dinars for four people, which included the private taxi with a friendly guide for the whole day. The Dinar/Euro exchange rate is 1.8/1 at the moment. So it was nice to be able to spend some cheaper currency, even if the Dollar/Euro exchange rate of 1.6/1 isn't a whole ton lower at the moment. So anyways we left at 9 in the morning and first went to Carthage, the ancient Roman/Carthaginian ruins and later sites of early French colonialism, as shown with the statues of King Louis, who also led crusades from Aigues Mortes, a ramparted town half an hour from me.




Carthage was kind of interesting to see, although similar to most of the Roman ruins closer to where I live. You get spoiled by seeing the Pont du Gard and the Maison Carrée and all that stuff that a bunch of old stones can only be looked at for so long, unfortunately. However, what Carthage did have that my normal surroundings doesn't is... mosaics! Tons of them, some of them still in amazingly beautiful form. Plus some other glass and clay pottery and what not that was pretty cool to see. Thinking about some guy two thousand years ago turning a pottery wheel and making something that's still in relatively good shape is amazing, especially with how easily cheap bowls or mugs that we buy these days can break. So Carthage was kind of cool but at noon we were hungry, and headed to a restaurant in Sidi Bou Said - the new town which is mixed in with the ruins at Carthage - for lunch. Which we payed entirely too much for. Lunch was more than our whole day with the taxi, and it definitely wasn't worth it. I've had better lamb kebab in Columbia, and better couscous in France. At least the view was pretty sweet; the nice section of Sidi consists of all white-plaster houses with blue grills and terraces. Very pretty, natural Mediterranean colors (even if it's the only real "Mediterranean" place I've been).

After lunch in Sidi we checked out the medina, which was a lot less aggressive than the medina in Hammamet. I'll talk more about that later, when I post about my market experiences. After that we headed to Tunis, which is right next to it. I should mention that Sidi is the location of the president's palace and where he receives any foreign diplomats that come to visit. Tunisia is a special type of democracy, which became independent somewhere around 1957 with it's first president of Habib Bourguiba, who was the president for 30 or more years. Now the president is Ben Ali, and you see his photo often if you walk around the towns of Tunisia. The Champs d'Elysée of Tunisia is L'Avenue Habib Bourguiba, which we hung out on that afternoon. We saw the medina in Tunis, then Philippe and I drank mint tea in a café while waiting for the women, of course... 6 o'clock and back to Hammamet for dinner and all that good stuff.

That's what I got tonight. I hope I still have somewhat of a reading audience. Tomorrow night I will try to make my final post on Tunisia, so I hope everyone "tunes in" at some point. À la prochaine...

Sun Garden Hammamet

The name of my hotel in Hammamet was Sun Garden. It was kind of funny seeing some of the signs in Hammamet because of obvious typos in English: "Wellcom to British Bar," "Paradis Palace," etc. I can't criticize the Tunisian people on their language errors, however, because many of them at least speak French fluently in addition to their native Arabic. Then there are the individuals who have worked in the tourism industry a long time and also speak English, Italian, German or Russian, or all of those. Impressive!

My hotel wasn't on the beach, but across the street, so I had to walk through another hotel to get to the beach. The beach was really nice - long and flat with good white sand. Not the kind of beach I'm used to, like the steeper beaches in North Carolina with waves or the rockier beaches of France. The only thing that can be irritating about the beach there are the vendors that walk around trying to sell you stuff. They ask you when you arrived, tell you that it's okay if you don't have money, they'll give you a necklace or a bracelet free. In which case the French respond "gratuit jusqu'à la caisse" (free until the cash register). I'll talk a little more about getting hustled in another post. My hotel and the other hotel, Caribbean World, both had beautiful exterior pools that I never went in. It was really nice outside but not hot enough to make me want to jump into that freezing water. Instead I swam a few times in the interior pool of my hotel and in the ocean, which was chilly but nice once you got in.

The French resort clubs are organized, as I pointed out in the last post, to keep everyone entertained. There are animateurs who organize activities for the kids, or play other games with the older people to make them happy. Axel, Marine, and Caroline (my host siblings) joined the club, so I was left to make friends of my own and find things to do. I played volleyball and soccer with some kids and adults during the week, and led my petanque team to victory on Saturday! While playing ping pong with Philippe (host father) one of the first days, we were challenged by a guy around my age and his younger sister. We beat them 2 games to 1, but it was good because I was able to hang out with the guy, Guillaume, for some of the week. The following night, Tuesday, I ate dinner with Philippe, Laurence (host mother), Guillaume and his mother. Afterwards we went to get some mint tea from the café in our hotel and Guillaume saw a couple girls he had eaten lunch with in the café, so we sat down with them and smoked hookah and talked. Although hookah isn't the healthiest thing for you, drinking mint tea and smoking hookah is something purely North African that I had to try... But the point of the story is that I had a couple French gazelles - as the Tunisians call girls - who I could hang out with when I wasn't going on adventures, which was cool. Tunisia was my first real clubbing experience as well. I had a lot of fun, thinking about how amazing it was that I was clubbing with French girls and the Italian guys they made friends with on the beach, speaking English with the Italians who didn't speak French and drinking Celtia (Arab) beer while dancing to a mix of American, European, and Arabic club music. Hilarious, and something I never thought I would do. Check out the pictures of my new friends!





I will post again later in another sitting, possibly this afternoon. I still need to explain the food and the markets and all, so I hope nobody's getting tired with the blog, but I need to take a little break at least. Chao!

One week and I was missing the cheese!

There's some OK sheep's milk cheese in Tunisia, but it's not like the cheese in France. I actually kind of missed the cheese for the week that I was gone. Imagine what will happen when I get back to the U.S.! No, but really... my trip to Tunisia was awesome! It was really cool to go to another country and set foot on my third continent. Now I'm back with quite possibly the best tan of my life and getting used to my normal life once again. I'm at least lucky to get eased back into the school routine. Today I only had 4 hours of class, tomorrow I'm not going to school because of a student/teacher strike, Wednesday is the normal half day, Thursday is a holiday, and Friday I only have three hours of class.

Anyways, I should start with the last week before I move onto what I'm up to now. I'll give some of the major details now and then make a few supplementary posts so that this one is bearable for you and I. Just make sure you check out the pictures that I put up tonight and tomorrow. Here goes...

I left France on a flight from Marseille at 2:30 on Sunday afternoon, April 20th. The plane passed over Corsica and Italy before landing in Tunis, Tunisia's capital which touches the water. I didn't get to see much of Tunis leaving the airport, as our representative from Lookéa Voyages was there at the airport to receive us and the other passengers coming on the same plane. We were put on a bus and drove about an hour down to our hotel in Hammamet, which was an interesting ride. Setting my foot in Africa for the first time was an amazing experience. Driving from the airport to our hotel was kind of eye-opening for me to see the real social conditions of the country. Even for a country which is well-off for Africa, it is easy to see how much more poor it is than the United States or France. Of course I've been in certain small places in both of those countries where the social conditions might not be too terrific, but realizing that most or all of many other countries are like that is.... I don't know quite how to describe it... difficult? A couple quick things along the same lines that surprised my immediate sight of Tunisia:

• The amount of people I saw just sitting around. One person, two people, etc. just sitting around in no particularly important places doing nothing or just talking. At first I thought this might because I was arriving on a Sunday and they may not be working but then I learned that the weekly holiday is Friday rather than Sunday in Muslim countries for religious reasons. Tunisia's listed unemployment rate in travel guides is about 12%, while it's probably something more like 20-25%.
• Sheep. It's not quite the fact that I saw sheep as the fact that I saw sheep everywhere. No real herding boundaries or anything; they could have been grazing on a soccer field in between two housing complexes or on a field more in the country.
• Other small things you notice about the state of wealth of another country: the conditions of buildings, the trash easily overflowing the single dumpster, and the bottom halves of trees painted white as warning poles.

When I got to my hotel I realized that people came to the country and went to resort hotels like this so they wouldn't have to see those exact things. I've never been to a real "resorty" place like this, so it was quite a different experience. For one things, I had already paid for the plane tickets, bus from and to the airport, the hotel, and all my meals I took at the hotel. All I had to pay for was when I wanted to really leave the hotel or buy a souvenir. The hotel has a crew of young people working for it whose job is just to take care of the guests, including things like coordinating soccer, volleyball, petanque and other sports, putting on a show every night, and leading "clubs" for kids from 3-11 years and 12-17 years old. So it was immediately a little different for me in the area of family time. For one thing my French family spends much more time together than my family does, which is mainly because of the differences in the places we live and the ease of getting around in Columbia. So my vacations have always been family vacations, not vacations where people tend to get away from each other a little more than normal.

So that's a basic rundown on my first impression of the hotel and the country. I want to go to sleep now, but I'll try to post again tomorrow a little more in depth. I hope everyone is good, and keep reading!

Shalom!

I hope everyone is passing an excellent Passover! Or my Jewish readers at least.... Pretty soon you're all going to sit down to your seders, which I will definitely miss.

Tomorrow morning I leave for Tunisia, which I am PUMPED about! I think it will be amazing to experience a country with a completely different culture, religion, and basic environment. I am going to chill out on the beach and get rid of my cycling-cause mid-bicep tan lines, meet French tourists, visit the cities and the souks, and eat as much couscous and other Mahgreb specialties as I can.

I also wanted to post a little more about food. I know I write about food and cooking too often and I probably sound like a fatty, but I guess it's just France affecting me. I'm now reading a book with a self-explanatory title, called A Cook's Tour, by Anthony Bourdain. That book and the fact that I've now become addicted to a French TV-show called "Un Dîner Presque Parfait," where five people take turns during the week cooking dinner for (and getting judged by) the other four. There's a prize of a thousand bucks for the winner as well. So the moral of the story is that I'm looking forward to cooking more, even if I'm no Iron Chef. I'll cook for you sometime. You don't have to pay me a thousand bucks, either.

Anyways, I just wanted to get in a quick blog before I scramble tomorrow. Caio

A milennium of architecture in two days....

The last couple days were a lot of fun. Saturday I helped two friends of my host family, Natalie and Christophe, move from our small village (Boissières) to the slightly bigger town of Clarensac. They weren't changing for the village itself, but rather the size and style of the houses. Their house in Boissières, which was built in 1535, is in the center of the village and therefore lacks a garden, a driveway, and generally just more space. The stairs and the floors, which are incredible when you think about how many people have walked on them, are sometimes rather tilted. The only heating is the fireplace, and it's impossible to hang anything on the walls. Fast forward four and a half centuries and you find their new house, which was built in 1976. It has a gate, plenty of lawn and garden space, an awesome view of the Vaunage (our valley) from the upstairs office, and an enormous terrace behind the house. Anyways it's a big change for them and interesting for me to see two completely different houses in a day. So we loaded and unloaded two trucks two times each, and at the end sat around drinking wine and beer and eating paté, summer sausage, bread, and cheese. I think the next youngest after me was 40 years old, but whatever....

Yesterday was another change of scenery. I finally got around to riding to the Pont St. Nicolas, which I've been saying I'd do for a couple months now. The roads on the way there were beautiful and I was riding a little too quickly probably, because at the end of my ride I was dead. I was wondering why a bunch of people were watching the road in a small village, and yelling for me as I rode by, until I got passed by a few French rallye racing cars. So I rode on to the old bridge and stopped and took some pictures. The bridge was built in the beginning of the Romanesque period (end of the 10th century to the 12th century) by the Frères Pontifes, a religious brotherhood of bridge builders. Obviously the architecture of the bridge is completely different than the Pont du Gard, and so is the condition of the bridge... Not to criticize the brotherhood, but their the Roman aqueduct from 2000 years ago is in better condition! The road from the bridge back to Nîmes was very different as well. Many more cars, and I passed an army training ground, with lots of "tank crossing" signs. I rolled through Nîmes, which was busy with people out in the pretty weather, and rode slowly back, tired.

So I saw a century of architecture in a couple days, which was interesting. The weather has been pretty nice, except for a big storm last night and the first thunder I've heard here. I think that's all I have to write for the moment. I'm going to Tunisia on Sunday, so if I don't blog again before then I'll have plenty to write about and plenty of pictures afterwards. Hope everyone's well!

I'm legal!

Let me start off by saying that I am undergoing a recently discovered illness called blog envy. With this idea I think I will be the next Freud... But anyways I'm saying this because I've been reading Michael Charamella's blog and it's so interesting! Of course he's traveling all over the world and seeing so much awesome stuff, so I'll just have to step up the game...

What I just wrote about has nothing to do with the title of this blog. I've been 18 now for a year, 3 months, and 24 days. So I've been legally an adult for a little while, but what I mean by the title is my alien status. For the past seven months I've been living in France, as you all should know if you're reading this blog. However, technically you're supposed to have a residency card here after your first three months, and I didn't have one. Today I finally have my card, and I am no longer an American illegal alien living in France!

Speaking of changes, the time finally changed here last weekend. I'm now really liking seeing the sun in the sky until 8:30, which is something you might all have been used to for a few weeks. It's awesome being able to walk to the bus with plenty of sunlight and still having sun after dinner. The winter is miserable when you have to go to school and come back from school in the dark.

It is now also officially spring here, although it was already ridiculously nice weather here before. I took advantage of the sun Saturday morning and went out riding for almost three and a half hours. The weather was absolutely gorgeous, as was the French countryside, and I shoveled down plenty of pasta afterwards.

I guess the last thing I have to write about is my BAC Blanc French exam that I took the other day. At the end of the junior year, every student takes an exam in French literature called the BAC. The other subjects are taken in the senior year for the most part. Anyways, I went into a room at 4:30 Tuesday afternoon to get tested on some literature that my class had covered since the beginning of the year, and luckily had to cover Figaro's monologue in Act V, Scene 3 of The Marriage of Figaro, which I knew well. So for half an hour I read the monologue and planned my oral essay, delivered it in 10 minutes, and then discussed liberty and equality with the teacher who was questioning with me for a good half an hour. That wasn't on the schedule at all... But it went well, especially since it was my first oral presentation in French, and I got a pretty good grade.

That's all I have for the moment. I hope everyone is good, and I'll try to blog again with something amazingly interesting, unless I suffer from too much blog envy...

Assimilating into a new society

I haven't been up to a ton, so I don't have anything really new and interesting to write about. It's kind of hard keeping a blog like this going for a year because the fact is I have more of a routine now and my day-to-day life isn't necessarily very interesting. Although it may be very different to most of the people reading this blog, I don't find it interesting to write about. So I figured I would write a story about assimilating into French culture. It didn't happen to me, but Mianke (a friend of my host family who has been staying with us for the last few days).

Mianke (I hope I'm spelling his name right) is from Zaire, which is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. He came to France about 30 years ago as a political refugee. When he came to France with other refugees they went to a French restaurant in Paris and decided to eat a traditionally French dish. So they all got artichokes, and when he told me that I knew exactly how the story was going to end... They ate everything, instead of just eating the tender part of the leaves. They ate everything, and thought the French were weird for eating such a terrible thing but still reassured the waiter that it was excellent when he returned to pick up their dishes. So there's a little story about trying to assimilate into another culture... you have to educate yourself about it a little bit first.

So I'm exhausted after a long day and I need to "hit the hay," even though there's absolutely no hay involved. Good night, and I hope everybody is doing amazing. Thank you if you're still reading!

More old Roman stuff

I've talked about the Romans a decent amount as I've been learning new things about where I'm living this year, but that's because they had such an amazing effect on it. I'm writing about more Roman stuff because Saturday I visited the local "Oppidum," and today I went and took a tour of Les Arènes, the amphitheater of Nîmes. So I'll try to throw in a little history about what I saw...

Rome was a Republic under Julius Caesar, which meant that it would only expand territory for reasons of defense. This all changed after Julius Caesar was killed, Caesar Augustus took his place, and Rome was invaded by Hannibal's Carthaginian armies with their terrifying elephants! As Hannibal had crossed the Pyrenées and the Alps to get into Rome, Augustus decided it would be a good idea to conquer the Gaul territory, thereby closing the dangerous route into the Empire (which Rome became under Augustus). He also decided to conquer Egypt, which he did with two of his royal legions. These legions were to inhabit Nîmes after their military service was over, and were given land in the surrounding area to cultivate. The legions' experience in conquering the Nile region is the reason for Nîmes's symbol of a crocodile chained to a palm tree.

Anyways now I'll finally get to the infrastructure of Nîmes. As Augustus didn't want a bunch of violent old soldiers hanging out in Rome all the time, he gave each of his legions a city in the Empire. However, these legions would note really like to live in their new cities without the infrastructure (baths, theaters, arena, etc.) that a life in Rome offered. So Augustus made sure all of his cities were equipped with things that could keep the soldiers entertained. An interesting fact I recently learned is that Nîmes had a sufficient amount of drinking water before Augustus constructed the Pont du Gard. (I know what you're probably thinking, as well - how could Augustus have conquered France, the Nile, and build the Pont du Gard in the same lifetime? I don't know, but he was a busy guy!) He build the Pont du Gard to supply Nîmes with enough water for the Roman baths that were in the ancient Jardin de la Fontaine and surrounding the Maison Carrée.

Finally for a little something about the amphitheater. The word amphitheater comes from Latin, and means a theater that is built up on both sides instead of the traditional Greek theater, which was only built on one side, usually sitting on a hill. People also call amphitheaters "arenas," which apparently comes from Egyptian or something and referred to the sand that coated the bottom of the ring and soaked up the blood of animals and gladiators. So the amphitheater in Nîmes was built in the somewhere around the year 0. (I believe, and I also believe I'm beginning to use too many parentheses) and of course wasn't initially used for the modern-day ferias. Instead there were many more wild spectacles, including fights between two gladiators, two beasts, one man and a beast such as a lion, a bear, or a bull, and even mock sea battles where the ring would be filled with water and men in small versions of Egyptian boats would fight each other. Oh, and I forgot the public executions, which usually involved a lion or some sort of wild beast and served as intermissions. After the gladiator fights went down in popularity as a result of the Catholic church's opposition, the amphitheater fell into a cultural slump. However, during the Visigoth invasion of France and much other of the violent Middle Ages, it was turned into a fortified castle and was under siege a number of times, with thousands of people taking shelter within. Now it serves as the bull-fighting center of France, and lets musicians like Radiohead (June 14,15 2008) play cool concerts within.

Okay, this has been a little long so I'll try to make it a little shorter now. Or I will just make it shorter naturally because I don't really know anything about the Oppidum, except that it is an old Roman settlement set on the hillside of the neighboring town of Nages. You can go there and see many foundations of houses and small walls that are still standing, which is pretty cool. Check out my pictures link for the Oppidum and Les Arènes! I hope you're more enlightened now, and have a good rest of your week!

Little town, big day

Sunday was the date of municipal elections in France. That means every town, village, and city elected a mayor and a counsel. I got to experience it a little because my host father Philippe was on one of the "lists," or the election cards. Every town in France has these election lists to determine the new counsel, and the length (number of running members) on the lists depend on the size of the list. Boissières, as it is so small with less than 400 eligible voters, has only 11 counsel members including the mayor.

So I went to check out the reading of the election results on Sunday night, which was kind of interesting. It was kind of amusing to me, even though I've never voted in the enormous area that I come from, to see the two curtained voting booths and the small glass box of enveloped ballots. Voters would come in, take both the lists and circle who they wanted, or write another name or two if they wanted someone else in office. So I stuck around for about an hour listening to votes being read off and watching how they marked them down, and how the two people marking who were candidates from the opposite parties would say out loud every time another candidate got to a multiple of 10 votes. But after seeing how it worked for a while I got bored, and didn't really feel like sticking around to see my host father lose, so I left. He jokes now about how demoralizing it is, but it was still good that he got 123 votes out of 319 for being a relatively unknown man in the village (if you can believe being unknown in such a small place). But anyways my dad and I told him to make him feel better that he was like Al Gore in the fact that the better candidate doesn't always win!


Other than that I haven't been up to a ton. I've had some work to do with a group research project being done this week. So unfortunately I didn't get to ride my bike today, but I am going to try to ride this weekend and take some pictures of some pretty things around me - the old Roman settlement on a hillside in the nearby town of Nages and the Pont de St. Nicolas, a Romanesque bridge. I can't promise but I'll try! Goodnight

Becoming a Franco-American

So the weather has been really nice here, which has actually made we lazier. Not like I've been sitting around doing absolutely nothing, but I haven't been going out on bike rides nearly enough. Instead I've been enjoying sitting in the sun reading, playing badminton, and other things to enjoy my 70-degree February and March days. Philippe joked that it was the south of France affecting me, and a family friend said now I was really becoming French!

To go along with the becoming French thing, I've realized lately that I've progressed a ton in the language. I've noticed this because every once in a while as I'm talking to a family member or friend on Skype I start saying something in French, and I've been able to quickly respond whenever another student asks me a for a translation into English. I also realized a month or so ago that, although I never remember my dreams very well, I was dreaming a little in French, which is kind of an interesting feeling. Finally, what's proved it to me more than anything is that I forget words in English occasionally... which isn't good, but when I had to think five minutes to remember the word "rainbow" I realized how much more French I speak than English at the moment and hoped my vocab wouldn't suffer too much for college.

Sitting in the sun reading has also gotten me more motivated to read. Last year I was really busy with school and work and hanging out with friends and all, and I didn't have a ton of reading time. This year is completely different in the fact that I don't have a ton of stuff I have to do, so I've been reading a lot more. In the past month I've read two French plays, a French novel, and I just read Roland Smith's climbing novel Peak in three days. It's made me realize how much I've missed reading. I'm sure I'll have plenty of it to do in school next year though...

I went back to school Monday after our nice long vacation. The weather was gorgeous Monday and alright yesterday, but today isn't quite as nice. It is sunny and beautiful out, but the wind has been blowing about 60 miles per hour since last night! I guess it's getting into Mistral season?

Oh yeah, check out the Spanish ham someone gave us! Intimidating kind of.... That's all I got for now, check in again soon!

OOPS!

Apparently I made a mistake and posted the same video twice, so don't bother watching both. That's what I get for trying to be a real, up-to-date blogger!

La fierté de Marseille

So I went to Marseille on Sunday. I actually went to the suburb Marseille, which technically isn't in the city of 800,000 - 900,000 people, but the surrounding area of 1,4 million-ish people. While in La Gavotte at my host father Philippe's uncle's house and touring a little bit of Marseille afterwards, I learned a few things about the city.

First of, as I actually already knew, Marseille (and La Gavotte itself) is famous for bringing the amazing retired and the young prodigy soccer players Zinedine Zidane and Samir Nasri, respectively. Marseille is a city that really lives soccer. There are sand lots all over the city where kids and adults play, or they'll just play in the street. Olympique Marseille soccer fans are some of the crazier ones you'll ever meet, and as is said in Marseille "There are 900,000 people that live here, and 900,000 coaches as well." And I have to add that their bitter rivals are Paris Saint-Germain, who are not good at all this season. That might be a result of Marseille being the old capital/port and the idealogical capital of the south of France, whereas Paris is that of the north (and all, technically).

To go along with the fact of Marseille being a sort of capital, I have to add in that it has a very long history. It has been a major trading port for quite some time, even before the setting of Le Comte de Monte Cristo with Gerard Depardieu. It also has quite a long history of being against the government. Throughout all the governments in the history of France, such as the Orléans and Bourbon monarchies, Marseille has often been where lots of trouble was stirred up.


There's Gerard Depardieu emerging from the sea in front of the supposed Chateua d'If, which was the island prison of the future Count of Monte Cristo.

And any true "Marseilleais" can tell you that and more about the history of their city, which goes along with the title of this blog: the pride of Marseille. Philippe's uncle, who has lived in Marseille for 42 years now after fleeing Algeria during the war in 1965, can tell you plenty about the buildings, the history, the next soccer game, etc. I also wanted to add in that Marseille has a very diverse community, as most large cities. There are thousands among thousands of Arabs living there who have moved from Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco, among other places, and their culture has affected Marseille amazingly. The important thing to note here is that there aren't nearly as many racial problems between whites and Arabs in Marseille as in Paris. It might be the sea, it might be the soccer, or it might be Marseille's famous licorice-flavored pastis liquor that does it, but everyone is a lot more chill in Marseille and the south of France in general. So chill that traffic rules apply even less in Marseille than the rest of France. There was a guy stopped in front of a bakery in the only lane of a fairly busy road at 7:30 as we were leaving La Gavotte!

"Jonah, you know it's still winter?"

That's what my host father Philippe told me after lunch today when he came home from playing golf and found me in shorts, a t-shirt, and flip-flops. On a side note, flip-flops are called klackettes in French because of the noise them make when you walk. I was clothed like that because it was 70-75 degrees Fahrenheit for a while. So after sitting in the sun reading Le Gloire de Mon Pere by Marcel Pagnol and then eating leftover raclette, I played tennis in the back yard with Caroline.

The weather was also magnificent yesterday so my friend and I Benjamin rode down to Le Grau du Roi on the Mediterranean. We hung out on the beach for a bit, ate mussels and fries and rode back. With that and riding Thursday I'm more motivated to ride now, and my knee hasn't been hurting me like it was before. Maybe I can still get in good enough shape to climb Mont Ventoux before I leave!

Other than that I haven't been up to a ton this vacation. Reading, cooking a little bit, and doing a little bit of housework. I've been spackling, sanding, and painting a little bit in my room as well as putting up some plumbing stuff for the future bathroom. Today I made some donuts which turned out pretty good. Just trying to keep myself occupied. I'm going to Marseille tomorrow and skiing another day later in the week, so I'll post again soon, and hopefully with pictures! Now I'm exhausted, so goodnight.

Happy Belated Valentine's Day!

I celebrated my Valentine's Day by wearing red... I didn't actually wear red clothes, but I fell into a really prickly bush when I went mountain biking with Benjamin on Thursday afternoon, and I have long scrapes all over my legs. My left thigh looks like I got attacked by a lion. Excuse the gory picture.

After getting "home" from mountain biking and taking my shower to wash off my wounds, Marine and her friend Benedicte came home from school with a rose for me. An English class at our school sold roses to raise money for their trip to the U.S. in the spring, and apparently somebody sent me one. So I got interrogated during dinner on Thursday about who it might be, and now my police officer host father Philippe is threatening to launch an investigation... I honestly don't know who sent it to me though, je le jure!

I also should announce the end of the strike at my school. Well it's not really over, but at least the teachers are agreeing to give us our grades now. After struggling to convince other teacher's unions to join their cause and looking ridiculous as the only school in France withholding grades, they've turned to other methods. Hilariously, they tried to take hostage of the school principal's office on Valentine's day, but found they had been locked out in anticipation. So instead they ate lunch in front of the school administration building! Now that's what I call striking!

That's about all I got right now, except for cooking news. I made corn fritters today, which went alright. I might try to move on to some New Orleans cuisine soon and try to make some jambalaya or po' boy sandwiches. I should have plenty of time, because I'm on a two week vacation after my really easy "entrée" week of school. So maybe I'll have a lot to write about too, we'll see. Chao!

Hot Weather and Hot Food

Well, the weather is pretty nice now here. It's cold in the mornings, then heats up to the point where I can wear just a t-shirt in the afternoon. Well, pants too but you know what I mean.... I've been taking care of the good weather by working on my badminton skills with my host siblings. The other part of the title refers to Saturday night, when I made chili for my host family and another family of friends. I made two batches - a normal batch and a spicy batch - because I knew that the other family (and myself) likes eating a little spicier than my host family here. So of course they all chose to eat the spicy chili, but it didn't turn out exactly as they thought. The mother changed to the regular chili after a few spoonfuls, the father and one of the kids were sweating, and the other kid was drinking milk and looked like he wanted to jump in the pool. Apparently we have different ideas of spicy, because I considered it only an alarm-2 or alarm-3 chili. So it made for an amusing meal, anyways, and not a bad one with the chili, cornbread, and blondies. And a hint for anyone who might want to make cornbread in a foreign country (not that this will apply to many people or anyone at all, so I don't know why I'm writing it) is that fine-grained polenta is the same thing as corn meal if you can find that in a grocery store.

In other news, school is going pretty easy this week. I didn't go to school at all today because none of my teachers were there for whatever reasons. My math teacher isn't there the rest of the week either, so tomorrow I finish classes at one o'clock, and i only have three hours on Friday. I might try to go to the movie theater one of the days and see the film "Into the Wild" that a number of people here have told me is really good. All in all it should be a really nice end of the week and a sort of appetizer to the two week vacation I have starting Saturday.

This past weekend I went with Philippe to hit a bucket of balls at the practice range of his golf club. He tried to give me some tips about relaxing and not trying to force too much strength and all, but I really just wanted to hit the ball. I did my best to stick in a few Caddyshack and Happy Gilmore impressions as well. That's about it for now, I need to go and watch Marseille vs. Moscow. A la prochaine!

Obama for President!

Okay, that's my only plug. I'm done now. But the title does still go along with the subject of this blog: the difference in presidential elections between the United States and France and the perception of those elections. So now some of you might want to stop reading, but don't! I'll try to make it interesting.

I decided I wanted to write about this after the last week or so as the U.S. presidential race has been gaining momentum. In the past I was asked by a few kids who I preferred ( *cough* Obama *cough*), but in the last couple days, as a result of "Super Mardi," I've gotten a lot more questions. Today I was actually asked to explain the United States presidential election process in my class ECJS - Civic, Judicial, and Social Education. Which was kind of difficult for me to do, and although I explained the process pretty well, it still confused the kids in my class. I don't blame them, and here's why:

France hasn't had nearly as stable of a government as the United States. Since 1789 and the first French revolution, there have been five republics, two empires, and one return to monarchy. That means that there have been five different democratic constitutions among the other authoritarian periods, and with all this, lot of change in the election process. And because of all these changes there have never been amazingly powerful political parties, like the Democrat and Republican parties. Instead of being obliged to run under a large party like this with an incredibly long primary election process, presidential hopefuls can run and try to get enough votes in the first election. In the first election, the two candidates with the most votes move onto a second election a month later, which gives voters enough time to decide who they would like to vote for finally. Another large difference in the election processes is the presence of delegates. When the constitution was created and for a long time after, with the enormous size of the United States it of course made sense to have delegates to bring votes to be counted. Electronic voting hasn't existed for a little while....

So hopefully I made some sense of that, but the main point I wanted to make was the perception of these processes. After being asked by numerous kids and plenty of adults as well, I've realized that the U.S. elections are watched much more carefully than the French elections. The only reason I knew who the new French president before I came here was because I knew I was coming here. I've determined that it's both of a result of the very long process and the fact that it's the United States that gathers so much attention. The United States is the most powerful country on the world scale (even if the economy is suffering at the moment), and of course the next president will be a relief to the world no matter who it is...

Alright, that's it. I'm making chili Saturday night, and I'll say it's in honor of the last year, and the best year, of Bush's presidency. I'm celebrating with some Tex-Mex. I'll try to post again before a week is up. Hope everyone is good, and of course go out and vote if you haven't already and have the chance. Chao

Apparently I'm like her...

I gave blood today for the first time. This morning I saw the Etablissement Francais du Sang (French Blood Establishment) setting up, so after an hour of English class I went back and donated. I've always wanted to give blood, but was never able to in the United States because the only time the American Red Cross came to my high school I had a cross country race in the afternoon. I think if I did that if would be called "anti-doping."

This weekend was also the first time for a few other things for me - riding a motorcycle being the first. My host father drove us to my host sister Marine's basketball game for some of the first half and the whole second half. Then I had another first experience - fixing a motorcycle. Unfortunately Philippe forgot to remove the lock on his disc brake and started driving, which stopped us within a couple feet. In stopping us it bent the disc brake, so Philippe rode the motorcycle back slowly while I rode back in the car. Luckily motorcycles are just like heavy bikes, so I was able to remove the disc and "cold press" it back into place. Cold pressing is a more discreet way of saying "pounding with a heavy hammer," or "squeezing in a vice." So the disc brake is temporarily fixed, but a new one needs to be bought soon...

There's more news about the teacher's strike, also. They are still striking, but not in the traditional not-working and walking-in-a-circle-holding-signs way. Instead, they're not giving grades. That means that any assignments I get back with have comments like "Good," "Exactly," or "Completely Wrong" on them, but will not be graded. Nor will I have my average at the end of the trimester. I understand the teachers position and their strike, but it is pissing a lot of students off because it affects really only them. However, by affecting the students the strike also gets to their parents, who are also obviously the voters. In conclusion, I'm not real sure about what I think of all this, but we'll see how it turns out.

Est-ce que tu t'ennuies?

Benjamin asked me that Tuesday afternoon on the bus, which in English translates "Do you get bored?" He was asking me because I had been talking about school and work. That stuff, plus the fact that he knows I live in a suburb that is much less isolated than our relatively small towns, and that American kids can get their driving licenses when they're 16 years old. He was wondering if I'm ever really bored here, as my life back in Maryland seems so much more exciting.

For one thing, I have to say I never found my Columbia life extraordinarily exciting, but that might just be because I was so used to it. It's true that there's a lot more hustle and bustle than my tiny town, but it's also nothing like a city. But before I draw this out too long talking about the D.C.-Baltimore 'burbs, the answer to Benjamin's question is "No." True, compared to all the things I was doing last year I do a lot more sitting around here. But besides the fact of learning another language, this year is an experience. I observe another culture, learn new customs, traditions, and outlooks, and see a lot of new things. As of yet I haven't been especially bored. And anyways, a year of relaxation is nice before I go to College Park next year and work really hard and do much more balancing of my life than I'm doing this year.

What else is going on? Today there was a teacher's strike, so I only had two hours of class from eight to 10 in the morning. Tomorrow is my easy Friday where I only have three hours of class, so I'm getting a nice start to my weekend. During the weekend I'm probably going to finish Water For Elephants, a book by Sara Gruen that my mom left me and I'm sprinting through cause I think it's really good. Anywho, that's all I have to write for now and I'm going to go read some more and get to bed. I also forgot to mention that I'm reading some Asterix comic books, which is a French comic about a French Gaul in the year 50 BC. They're really amusing stories, so if you can get your hands on them give them a little read. Bonne nuit!

A beautiful spring weekend - for Maryland...

I think the weather is pretty good in general in my real hometown of Columbia, Maryland. Of course my brother and sister think differently when they come up from North Carolina during winter, but I've always preferred the North myself. Even though Maryland is south of the Mason Dixon line, but whatever. Anyways, the weather here this weekend was gorgeous. I remember last winter in Maryland we had a couple nice days thanks ironically to global warming. Today and yesterday were in the 60's-70's here and sunny all day. I think, but I'm not real sure because I think in Celsius now and I'm too lazy to convert it. Really beautiful and excellent for bike riding!

So yesterday I woke up and decided to ride. I did a relatively short ride, but made it a little harder with a few of the "climbs" that are around me, with the main purpose of checking out the views. It was amazingly clear out, and awesome to see all the way around me: the flat plains to the south of me, the snow-capped Cevennes mountains to the north-west, etc.

Today I went out for a ride after lunch, but unfortunately had to turn around early because my knee was killing me. It was actually hurting a bit the night before, but I didn't really think anything about it then. I think my ilio-tibial band is inflamed, and it'll just go away if I stretch more. I have a bad habit of not stretching nearly enough, but now I guess I need to change that!

Other than the bad knee things are going pretty good. There is supposed to be a teacher's strike on Thursday, so hopefully I'll get most of my day off from school. It's happening because of the Pecresse Law that I spoke of before. The French President Nicolas Sarkozy is changing the education system a lot, and it means there will be nine less jobs for teachers at my school next year, including two in the French department. For the French department alone that means 35 hours or so of teaching will have to be made up and split around through the other teachers.

That's about all my news for now. My dad sent me a link to the pictures he took when he and my mom were visiting. If you'd like to check them out, go here. Hope everything's going well, thanks for reading, and I'll write again soon!

Another birthday and I still can't buy alcohol in the United States...

I'm not an alcoholic or anything, I swear! I just think it's kind of ridiculous...

Where was I? I think I left off before my parents' last full day here, which was Wednesday the 9th. On Wednesday it was kind of crappy weather again. It was pretty unfortunate that the week they came it was such bad weather, as it's almost always beautiful and sunny here. Almost two weeks of rain and clouds in Barcelona, France, and London can be a little depressing I think... But it could be worse if I lived in Washington state I guess.

Anyways, Wednesday we hung out around Nimes to see some of the monuments there. We walked around the Jardin de la Fontaine that I've previously mentioned, and then down to the Maison Carree, which we didn't go into because we weren't sure if we had enough time before we were supposed to have lunch with my host family, plus my host mother's uncle, aunt, and cousin. Instead we went to another popular building in Nimes - La Coupole - the mall, where my parents got me a Laguiole knife for my birthday. Thanks Mom and Dad! After a long lunch we went back to Nimes and tried to tour Les Arenes, the amphitheater, but unfortunately couldn't. In the winter it closes at 4:30 in the afternoon and they stop selling tickets at 4:00. We arrived at 4:08, so, BUMMER, we didn't get to see more than the outside. Instead we walked around the Centre Ville/shopping area and then went back to the house to hang out for the last evening.

Thursday was a mixed day for me. I had to say goodbye to my parents in the morning because I finally had to go to school on the day they were leaving. So that was a bummer, and kinda hard to say goodbye to them again as I won't see anyone again until June. So I went to school and got birthday wishes from a bunch of people, and had a long day with eight hours of class. Nothing special happened, as we had celebrated my birthday the night before with chocolate pistachio cake and dessert wine, and I realized that 19 feels exactly the same as 18.

Yesterday Benjamin invited me to go riding with his mountain biking club, which normally would be pretty difficult as I don't have a mountain bike. However, since the weather has been so crappy lately and the trails were muddy, they were going on a road ride, so I could come along. There were seven of us and we rode for a while and joked around.

That's about all I had to say. I wanted to catch up to where I was and what my parents and I did, and I finished that so for now I'm going to get off, read some more of This House of Sky by Ivan Doig and then go to sleep. I'll write again soon with some more thoughts and hopefully something interesting that happened. Chao

Enfin!

Alright everyone, I'm back! I'm sure there haven't been that many people anxiously waiting, but I'm finally making my next blog post! Sorry it's been a little while, I've been away or busy the last week or so. And warning - THIS POST MIGHT BE A LITTLE BIT LONGGGGG.

New Year's Eve at 11 AM I left on the train from Nîmes to Port Bou, Spain, where I had a little time to wait before going to Barcelona. On a side note, I've just learned that AM means "ante-meridian," which in Latin simply means the sun hasn't crossed the Prime Meridian yet, and PM is of course after the sun has crossed the Prime Meridian. Which means that neither AM nor PM hold any relevance unless you're exactly on the Prime Meridian, in Greenwich, England. So from now on I'll just say "in the morning," "in the afternoon," "in the evening," "at night," or "long after I should have been asleep." Anyways, as I didn't pay very much for my train tickets (32 Euros), the trains were slow and stopped just about everywhere between Nîmes and Barcelona. I had almost two hours in Port Bou, which is entirely too long to be there with nothing to do, as there's just about nothing to see. The train to Barcelona was packed with people going to party in Figeres or Barcelona.

On getting there (at the Estacio Sants) I noticed immediately how nice the metro system was, which I took to the Placa Catalunya. I found the Hosteria Grau, our room number and entered the room to see my parents for the first time in four months, which was awesome. New Years Eve we spent walking around checking out the city and looking for some place to eat, which was hard as most places either has a specially expensive New Years Eve menu or were packed. Eventually we found a tapas bar farther from the popular part of the city, and sat down to eat tapas and drink cerveza. Now I have to take the time to mention how it is to be able to order alcohol in restaurants with my parents. I'm actually not going to take that long to talk about it, it was just weird at the beginning. And now I appreciate Europe even more for giving me a right I think I should have along with the right to die in a war if I were drafted, which is obligatory. Enough said. So we finished eating at around 11:45 in the night, long after my tired parents who had traveled a long way should have been asleep. But no, because we stayed out for a little bit to see people lighting fireworks off all over the place in the streets and spraying cava (Spanish champagne) once midnight hit. But soon after we hit the sheets, and although that was relatively early for New Years Eve, didn't get up until 11:30 in the morning on New Years day.

That day a lot of monuments were closed, so it was spent doing a lot of walking and looking around. We went to the Park Guell, a park commissioned by a man named Eusebi Guell and designed mainly by Antoni Guadi, like many other things in Barcelona. Really cool mosaic benches and other things, which you can see if you check out my picture page. Afterwards, we walked around the waterfront and then returned to the hotel before dinner to open the bottle of wine that I brought for my parents, which was given to me by my friend Benjamin's grandfather.

January 2nd we started the morning by going out to breakfast in a cafe near the hotel. The highlight of that was when my dad ordered hot chocolate and it turned out to be exactly that; it was as if they took a bar of dark chocolate and heated it up on the stove, adding maybe a spoonful of water. After that we took the metro up to the Montjuic area and looked around the Poble Espanyol, which is a walled artisan village built for the 1929 World's Fair to show the various styles of houses in the different regions of Spain and to show/sell art. Then a quick look at the old Olympic stadium and an exhibit of paintings and sculptures by Joan Miro. We returned to the hotel a little earlier, then went out to a longer and very conversational dinner.

January 3rd was our last day in Barcelona and a rainy one, so we did some more stuff inside. We toured the Palau de la Musica Catalana, a music house that was built in 1908 and is really beautiful. Then we passed by the Sagrada Familia, a gigantic church that I believe was started by Gaudi and is still being built today. Then, something that no real soccer fan can miss in Barcelona - Camp Nou, the stadium of FC Barcelona. My dad and I went and took the tour of the stadium and the museum there. It's kind of ironic I took a picture of the chapel inside the Barcelona stadium but not the famous Sagrada Familia. Oh well... We finally got out of the rain and had our last dinner in Spain of struggling with the language barrier, although many people in Barcelona did speak English.

The 4th of January we woke up a little earlier and caught a cab (two cabs actually, as the first ripped us off and dropped us off at the wrong place on purpose) to the train station. A train up to Perpignan, where I was relieved to be, because I can communicate a million times better in French than Spanish. We rented a car there and attempted to drive to Carcassonne via the Port de Pailheres, which is a major Tour de France climb, and was unfortunately closed due to too much snow. But we eventually got to Carcassonne and our small bed and breakfast (Le Grand Puits) inside the old, beautiful fortified city. Because it is not exactly heavy tourist season now, we were some of the few people there and it was really nice to walk around the city at night when it was lit up and there was almost nobody else. My dad has the nicer pictures of the city at night, which I'll post when I get a hold of.

We drove back to Boissieres on the 5th, and my American family met my French family. We went out to dinner that night, which took about three hours with all the eating and conversation. Sunday was another rainy day, and we hung out close to my home here, touring my small village and the towns of Calvisson, Sommieres, and Villevielle. Yesterday was slightly nicer, so we went south to the town of Aigues Mortes that I've already written about, then through the Camargue marshes to Saints Marie de la Mer, which is a town with an annual gypsy migration festival of about 50,000, and the city of Arles, where Van Gogh lived and painted for many years. Arles also has a Roman amphitheater, which is bigger but less well-maintained than the one in Nîmes that we will see tomorrow. Today I showed my parents the Pont du Gard, after which we went to Avignon. Avignon is special because it was once the home of Christianity in Europe for cause of political turmoil. The popes moved there around the early 14th century and built an enormous palace, which is a cool thing to tour. Then to the neighboring town of Villeneuve les Avignons to see a view of the Palais de Papes and have a coffee before the drive back.

So now here I am, tired after writing all this and ready to go to sleep. Long enough for ya?