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?