So this is like full immersion then?

I met up with my host family yesterday for the language program part of my trip.  Improving my french was really the whole driving force behind this trip. Don’t ask me why but I have a weird desire to be fluent in this language that is not really super prevalent. Something to do with so many wasted hours in school for a language that I can’t do more than ask to go to the bathroom in.  I was a little apprehensive about meeting up with my new family for three months but my day today went pretty smoothly….

Hailed a taxi at 6:30 in the morning- check

Rode the train to from Clermont Ferrand to Montpellier without any delays – check

Manhandled two bags that probably weigh more than I do up numerous flights of stairs – check

Met up with a total stranger in a crowded station based off a crappy picture – check

Managed to pull off the French greeting with ease (note to self – 3 air kisses not 2) – check

And then she started speaking….. oh shit. 

I had been emailing back and forth with the mother of my french host family for a few weeks. Which thanks to google translate had been going fairly well aside from one accidental comment on my horniness. FACEPALM. However it is a whole different ball game when someone is pelting you with full on sentences and expecting some sort of response. Apparently when she said that they didn’t speak English…. She meant it. There really is no lifesaver that someone can throw me when I’m drowning in confusion as they literally don’t know the English words to help. The best reprieve I get is when met with my blank stare or my completely incorrect response to a question they start throwing out a bunch of synonyms until I clue in to what they are trying to ask/ tell me… Le mer, nager, le plage, …. Ohhhhh… the beach!!. Sometimes really embarrassing hand gestures and full on charades have to be played.  I thought I had at least a decent grasp of French vocabulary but this is quite humbling as triumphantly picking out one word in a sentence of 20 REALLY doesn’t help with the overall comprehension of the topic.  I also alternatively want to scream or cry when I spend a 2 minutes formulating a sentence that might be remotely passable French only to find the conversation is now onto a completely different topic. On a good note I am developing a full repertoire of “smile and nod”s as I felt bad giving the same one over and over.  God only knows what I am agreeing to though. 

I was very encouraged to find some constants like 11 year old boys are still obsessed with pokemon in France and that most people here listen to English music and even have it as their ring tone. Never thought I would be so glad to listen to  Taylor swift shake it out. And yet, unless they are punking me and secretly understand English, they have no clue what the songs are about.  Je ne comprends pas. I was also saddened to learn that the French mosquitos like me just as much as the Canadian ones, if not more. 

Not to rub it in or anything but Montpellier is pretty much like a French palm springs. It was 26 degrees out today and there are palm trees and cactuses (cacti?) in the yard.  They keep talking about how it is the rainy season right now for the fall but I get the impression that their rainy season involves a non sunny day with a few little raindrops here and there. I keep telling them I am from Vancouver however that does not seem to mean anything to them in terms of being used to rainfall. Perhaps they like most of the world assume we live in igloos up in Canada. Ah well at least I know how to say rain and umbrella in French. Winning.

Some City in France

I spent the last few days in a french city named Clermont-Ferrand. Never heard of it?… neither had I. It is not exactly one of the better known french cities like Paris, Lyon, or Nice. However it is quite a large city in the middle/southern part of the country and the capital of the Auvergne region. To be quite honest I chose it because I needed a place to hang out for a few days before joining my host family in Montpellier and of all the cities on my way down from paris it had the cheapest hostels. My research looked a lot like this…. cheap hostels ok, where is this place – on the way – DONE.  So I really didn’t have too high expectations.

It was an interesting city but it was definitely a bigger city. You had to really find the city center to find the typical touristy streets and attractions and even then there were lots of blah blocks. I also could not seem to navigate the city for the life of me which usually I am pretty good at. I am going to blame that on jet lag but I definitely walked 20 minutes in the completely wrong direction at one point before realizing it. However the church was really cool. It was the centerpiece of the town as is the case for most European cities I think. What made this church interesting and different than most of the ones I’ve seen in France and other countries was that it was made out of volcanic rock so it was very dark and ominous but beautiful none the less.

What I really enjoyed was hiking the Puy de Dome. It is the largest volcanic mountain (1415 meters) in  a range of impressive volcanoes that surround the nearby cities. I took a shuttle to the base and got my bearings with the map – seemed simple enough as there were only two routes to the top. I decided to play it safe and stalled until I saw two ladies go up the path so i could follow them. It ended up being a good decision as the trail was very poorly marked and the one time I tried to walk ahead when they stopped to “aller au pee pee” as they put it in dumb tourist french, I turned the wrong way and totally would have gotten lost. They had to be at least late 60’s maybe early 70’s but looked like they frequently rocked this hike with their walking poles. I had some serious flash backs to getting passed by little old ladies on the grouse grind. However I hope I was more appropriately dressed than the tourists who try to take on that climb with short jean shorts and flip flops. After about 2 hours we made it to the top and the gorgeous views of the surrounding areas and the volcanoes were well worth the hike. Plus afterwards I stopped and relaxed for a couple hours in some geothermal spas so can’t complain.

      

The top of the Puy de Dome - to the right the Ruins of the Roman Temple for the God Mercury