L'Arlesienne

Saturday I took a day trip to Arles, which is about 45 minutes away by bus and is the only place I can go directly from Eyguières. It was so nice to only have to take one bus to get home. Carlos is currently proud of me because I was able to serve as a translator between some Mexican people and the French bus driver on the way home.

Arles is an amazing city. First of all there are all of the Roman ruins in the city, which are pretty well preserved. I saw the amphitheater, the theater, and the thermal baths. There are a bunch of other things to see, which I didn't have time for. Arles also has a unique Provençal history. The women of Arles wanted to distinguish their clothes from those of the women from Paris so they developed a unique style, which I think is really cool. Here is a photo of some Arlesiennes


After all of that, Arles is where Van Gogh was most productive, and I am a huge fan so I wanted to see a lot the places he painted. One thing I went to see was a reconstitution of his bedroom at Arles, which he painted several times. I was worried it was a tourist trap, but I decided to go anyway. It was not what I expected--it wasn't a recreation of the bedroom created on the painting, but actually a recreation of the painting so that my picture of the bedroom looks a lot like the painting. It was weird--like I was actually in the painting.

It was really neat to see the places he painted, like the Rhone where he painted Starry Night. I also went to the mental institution he was sent to after he cut off his ear which is now a sort of park dedicated to him.

I really fell in love with Arles. It now has a spot on my list of favorite cities. On a certain level all provençal towns are charming because the weather is nice and the landscape is beautiful--plus it's full of beautiful houses with window boxes full of flowers. But Arles has so many layers of interestingness. I wish I'd had more time to spend there.

I have stopped taking my random walks in a certain direction during my free time after a hike I took a few weeks ago. I had decided to explore a mountain I hadn't been on before, and I soon saw a castle/fortress thing in the distance and started walking towards it. Turned out it was a lot further than it seemed to be, and I ended up going really far. I almost reached it, but then I saw a mysterious sign that said "abeilles" ("bees.") It wasn't "Watch out for the killer bees!!" or "Just for your information, there are a lot of bees around here so don't sit down on a bed of flowers or anything." Just "bees." I debated for a while and decided to turn around since it was getting late anyway. And on the way back...(let's not be surprised this happened---let's be surprised it took this long for it to happen), I got lost. Wandered around a little, freaked out a lot. After a little wandering, I saw my village in the distance. But now the question of--how to get off the mountain? I mean, you can't just walk straight down...I ended up inventing my own path and walking really carefully down (still having some ankle problems though not as bad). Anyway, I made it home after a great though unintentional work-out and vowed to be more prudent in the future. I haven't had much time for for hiking preparing for the trip home. Thursday afternoon!!!! Trying to focus on my excitement of getting out of here and not on the 6 airplanes it's going to take me to get home!!

Aix marks the spot

This is the Cours Mirabeau, the main street in Aix-en-Provence.  I spent last weekend in Aix, which was only a 30 minute bus ride from Salon. I decided to take my first real couchsurfing experience with an English assistant from Ireland and her roommates. They were real hippies, and they were a lot of fun to stay with. Since they were working most of the weekend, they were not able to show me around or anything, but they gave me a key to the apartment and I was able to come and go as I pleased.

The first night I was there, I was waiting at a bus stop when I made a friend.  We had both missed our buses and because my accent always seems to attract attention (although the other day someone told me that it was only a small accent), we started talking.  I asked him what there was to see in the city, and he offered to give me a tour.  The fear on my face when he said this was obvious...casual chatting with someone at the bus stop is one thing --going somewhere with someone you just met at the bus stop is another.  He saw my reaction and said, "Don't worry! I don't like girls!"  He really did seem trustworthy, and I ended up accepting his offer.  He was the nicest man.  A middle aged Spanish university professor.  He gave me about an hour long tour of the centre ville--by lots of interesting buildings and fountains.  He was able to tell me about which kings and queens visited which buildings and a lot of specifics about architectural details.  A lot of the buildings have little nooks in the corners with saints inside, and he told me that this is because people though they were protected as long as they were within sight of a saint statue.  The whole tour from a native of the city got me thinking about how you can visit a city and leave without actually learning that much about the city or the people.   I am going to make it a goal to immerse myself in cultures more and to mingle with natives more when I visit cities.  

Speaking of staying with natives, I now I have native friends to stay with in Budapest, London, and Istanbul.  I went back to visit Christine at voluntary work camp today in Miramas.  I was not able to stay very long because I had to get a bus back, but I got to see my friends there again, and we exchanged email addresses and will hopefully be able to keep in touch.  

Things at home are bad, but I am leaving in 8 days!  I started packing today!  

Picture this.  It's a game of soccer played between teams of firefighters.  Half of the population of Eyguières has showed up at the arena for it, and it's good clean fun....oh wait.  There's an angry cow with horns strapped to its head chasing the players, who jump over a short inner wall or climb up a rope hanging from a wobbly tree branch to escape it.  I took pictures, but it was hard to get anything because everything was moving so quickly.

That was Friday.  Saturday I went to go visit Christine, my German friend who is working at a voluntary work camp in Miramas, which is about 20 kilometers away.  Our plans were amazingly vague. I arrived there only knowing the bus stop in front of where was, but we eventually found each other, and she brought me to the place where she was staying.   It was in a sort of state park, which had been at one point where gun powder was manufactured and was where the military had done some experimental explosions.   Now it's full of goats and electric fences...and a few wild pigs wandering around which we had to look out for.  So the voluntary work group was comprised of about 10 people from all over Europe, who work on repairing a chapel all morning and then in the afternoon they travel around Provence.  I met some really awesome people.  It felt so good to be with people my own age, and everyone was so welcoming and fun.  I spent the night there with them and was so sad to come back today.  When I was leaving, the girl in charge of the program said, "I hope you can come back, and if you need we can even come pick you up.  Don't forget that you have friends close."  I will definitely be going back to visit all of them...if not only because I left my toiletry bag there.

Relations with the family are bordering on hostile.  At dinner, the mom will serve everyone food from the entree and not leave any for me.  Everyone gets ice cream afterwards except for me.  I made a few mistakes like I put Sophie in a diaper even though we have officially moved on from diapers (No one told me this!), and this was apparently a grave mistake.  I didn't get yelled at because the mom isn't speaking to me again.  She just yelled at the kids over and over when I was in earshot.  It's really strange how our personalities just bring out the worst in each other.   

But I only have 19 days left, and I will be moving around some like to Aix this weekend...and back to Miramas ASAP.  

I can feel my French getting better, which is the good news about me being this summer.  I'm playing the Glad Game.  

It's pretty lucky that I got my lectrice position because I haven't heard anything about getting renewed as an assistant, while other people in my region have. So whew....

I've taken to just choosing a direction and just walking and walking to see what I find. Sometimes I end up on a mountain, sometimes a field full of horses, who knows. So the other day I went into town to look for a gift for my friends and couldn't really find anything I liked for the right price in town so I just went for a walk. Eventually I found a fork in the road with all sorts of signs. Each sign designated a farm, or an orchard or something like that where you could go buy homemade olive oil, cherries, goat cheese, whatever. I chose the direction of some gardens because it said something about touring them. Partially because of a miscalculation of kilometers to miles, I ended up going a lot further than I meant to. I got to the gardens, and it was a kind plant nursery. "You came here on foot?!" the woman asked surprised when I came in with my ankle brace. She was even more bewildered when I opened my mouth, and it became apparent that I was English (or something). But she was sweet and helped me find a beautiful plant for my friends, which I had to carry all of the long way back into town. And I'm feeling pretty smug because back in town I saw the same plant at a florist half the size and thrice the price. It was an interesting afternoon.

There are trees full of fruit everywhere, which is awesome. We have neighbors with a cherry tree, and the cherries are just rotting in the tree, and it's a real tragedy. We have a blackberry tree outside my window, and every Sunday we collect the blackberries and make jelly with them.

I was worried about getting all of my stuff home, but then the father said that they can hold on to a box of my stuff while I'm home and then mail it to me back in France. I am basically planning to mail ALL of my winter clothes because the mail within France isn't that expensive, and it will make both my trip home and my trip back SO much easier.

I was bummed out because I didn't get to celebrate the fourth at all. Bastille Day is the 14th, but I don't know how much celebrating I can do. I'll watch the parade in Paris because the father will be there helping with the helicopters there (he is a helicopter engineer). I think they will be releasing bulls in town, which I think is a weird and (dangerous?) celebration.

Home in 25 days!

This summer marks my first summer without air conditioning, and there's not an ice cube or a fan in sight. I'm melting, but I'm not feeling too sorry for myself...just realizing how much I'll appreciate A/C when I have it again, using the swimming pool as much as possible, and going through the nightly dilemma of whether to open my unscreened window to risk our cat, other stray cats, mosquitoes and flies entering or just suffocating.

In Salon, there was a big Medieval historical reconstruction last weekend, which was funny because there were people herding goats down the streets, but I didn't see much of it because I had to catch a bus back home pretty early.

After several people-less months, my social life is finally well...starting to exist. My German friend Christine (the first person I met in Metz--the one who helped me carry my luggage both times I moved) is going to be spending a few weeks working in a nearby village so we have plan sto meet up, and it will be really really nice to see a familiar face. In a few weeks, I am going to spend a weekend in Aix-en-Provence with an assistant from Ireland, which will be fun because I hear it's an awesome city. The friends I made through couchsurfing invited me to a lovely party on Saturday night, and I met some new people from different parts of France, and a guy from Lebanon. Hopefully we'll be going to Arles this weekend.

I could have sworn I had more to say...well, in between all the paperwork done for my new job and visa stuff and everything to get settled in at Nancy, I'm busy. I got an email from a former lectrice, and I think that I am going to need to teach myself the English phonetic alphabet because I will need to teach it. I already know how to use it for French, but I'm looking at it, and realizing how many horrible strange diphthong-y vowel sounds we have.

I was reading a forum the other day of the things Americans in France miss the most, and customer services came up a lot. Someone stated it will saying that the lack of customer service here is a form of "self-preservation." That's it. Hitting the nail on the head. People there aren't going to make a complete fool of themselves like I did last summer in order to sell member cards or do anything else that compromises the way that they want to act. This made worse by the fact that, waiters and waitresses do not make their money from tips so there's really just no motivation to please the customer. I miss customer service when I'm in businesses and need something, but then I think about the zillions of restaurant/store jobs I've had and what hell it was, and I'm jealous...