Watch where you step

I haven't really updated this in a while. But inquiring minds apparently want to know if I am still alive... so yes. I am. I just haven't been super inspired to write something new lately. Nothing has really seemed to stick out as "blog worthy".On some days my day is a rather normal french day with french class, English lessons for my host family,  and a little bit of  attempted conversation or a french movie in the evenings. Sometimes the most interesting part of my day is walking to school and watching the fifty or so snails who seem to feel the need to make a daily pilgrimage across a certain extremely busy sidewalk.







***Spoiler Alert***** they don't all make it :(

 


Snail watching (and unfortunately sometimes snail crunching) may seem kind of like a lame activity for what is supposed to be an exciting and life changing gap year, but, let me assure you I am absolutely content and reveling in the fact that I have found a little piece French normalcy for this leg of the journey. I love that it is starting to feel a bit more comfortable and it is exactly what I was looking for in this first couple months of my adventure.

My riveting essay on the death penalty

The last few weeks have been filled with many little successes in my attempts to parle en francais. Most of which are followed by a little internal (and sometimes external) happy dance. For example I did a major victory celebration the first time someone asked me a question at the train station and I not only understood the question but knew the answer. Go me! Of course that is still not always the case as yesterday 2 teenage girls rattled something off at me faster than the speed of light and I was reduced to the classic open mouthed gaping and "je ne parle pas francais" response. I guess you win some you loose some.  I have also moved up a level in school and we now are attempting to learn about and actually discuss real world topics and issues (key word = attempting). I had to actually write a paper and give a presentation on the death penalty - wasn't I lucky to get that nice light topic to research during my vacation? And finally when asked where my partner was at crossfit I was able to find the words to explain that "il vomis". I guess some things never change at crossfit no matter where you are.

On the door of the teacher's lounge at school - mocking our lack of ability to use the past tense correctly lol

I also feel like I am adapting well to other aspects of french culture as I can handle the inherent dangers of french sidewalks now with ease.  It is absolutely essential to watch where you are going at all times as in France the sidewalk = le troittoir, but also equals the place they can park their car however the F*@& they want. You could very easily walk into a parked car just as you could very easily step in a very large pile of doggy doo doo if you are walking and texting. It is seemingly impossible for even one dog owner here to pick up after their dog despite there being hundreds of stations with bags for dog owners.
 

I also am starting to develop a french palatte thanks to my strategy of don't ask questions just eat what ever is in front of you. This is mostly because I don't have a very expansive vocabulary of food names in french so even if I ask I then have to google anyways. Sometimes the eat it and see approach is just simpler and a bit more of an adventure. It has led to many surprises (ie eating creamed fish- ugh) and many firsts (rabbit, duck, turnips, radish soup etc). Some of which I have enjoyed and others that I have choked down out of politeness. We did have a yummy raclette party last friday and that was fantastic. Raclette is kind of like a cousin to fondue and it was followed up by possibly the best cake I have ever eaten, a rasberry and coconut cream Charlotte cake. Also stinky french cheese is apparently just another acquired taste that you can learn to appreciate it if you can keep forcing yourself to eat it regularly enough. Perhaps you remember me complaining on facebook about the brick of stinky cheese that I bought in Clermont Ferrand in September and then refused to eat and threw out,thereby stinking up my hostel room for two days. Well, we eat that type of cheese quite regularly... for dessert! lol ...and I tolerate/almost like it now.

I have gotten up to some fun stuff in the last couple weeks. For example:

Sushi!!!! - I have been craving it as I am used to eating it probably once a week. Sadly it is ridiculously expensive here. I'm talking 10 dollars or more for california rolls kind of expensive. But we found a place that wasn't too bad today. Still way more than at home but I got my avocado rolls so I am a happy camper. Also chicken and fried egg rolls with fried onion in the rice. And because its France and everything must come with nutella ... Kinder surprise and nutella dessert rolls. A bit of an adventure but they were surprisingly good.

 


More bike trips with the host family - Last Sunday it was nice and sunny and we did a 20km ride to a nearby fishing town, Mauguio, that is surrounded by canals and massive lagoons. It is a great place to go bird watching as there are plenty of flamingos to be seen.

Une Cigone Blanche (Stork)

Des Flamant Rose (Flamingos)

L'etang  (lagoon/pond)

Smart cats hanging out by the fisherman

Go Lingo - this is an awesome language exchange program modeled off speed dating. They pair you with a native french speaker who wants to practice English. You both speak English for 8 minutes and then you both speak french for 8 minutes. Then you move to the next table and repeat. Its great practice and makes for a nice night out where you get to meet some local people.



                         
The Montpellier Wine Festival - let me explain how this glorious thing works. You pay 2 euros for a wine glass with three tickets and then you take that wine glass to any of the hundred or so stalls of local vinyards and you can taste their wine. In theory you are limited to just three tastings and in theory it is just a small taste and you dump it out after..... but the vendors don't bother to take the tickets and they also are generous pourers SO in effect we have a 3 day festival of FREE WINE. Amazingness. I can't even imagine if this existed in Canada. Utter Chaos. But here with the exception of us few idiotic tourists with unrefined palates, most people actually want to taste the wine and discuss the dryness/sweetness/fruitiness etc. so it doesn't get too crazy and sadly it was only for a weekend. Although I did manage to go all three days :)

 

First Macaroon for me :)

Much Wine + Interview in French = Merde!!!

 










I also have some upcoming trips planned for my last month in Montpellier. Thanks to ridiculously cheap european airfare I will be jetting off to Morroco for 4 days soon for about a quarter of what it would cost me to fly from Vancouver to Calgary. Kind of ridiculous but I will take it.  Also going to try to get a couple day trips in to nearby places like Avignon and Nimes. So if this blog post about my fantastically normal life the last few weeks has bored you, you can stay tuned (or not) for more exciting posts to follow. But in a meantime I will be here soaking up the french normalcy and watching where I step in the mornings.

Aux Aix Ex Ux Aex.... Something en Provence

My host family took me along with them for a weekend get away to their grandmothers house a couple hours away by car in Aix-en-Provence. Actually it was really only an hour away but we left during rush hour, on a friday, during what is apparently one of the busies it was a busy weekend for french traffic. And while round-a-bouts work really well most of the time here after a certain threshold... disaster.

 For the life of me I cannot say the name Aix properly.I tried. A lot. It is actually supposed to be pronounced as some sort of blend of "ex" and "axe."but I seem to have trouble getting that out and the french teacher mocked me... a lot. We have a new one this week and she is slightly mean and seems to enjoy laughing (not always in good humour) about our French failings. But I think because it is one of those french names that you see/read about occasionally I have been saying it wrong for years and now it is just stuck. Kind of like when I read the Harry Potter books and mis-pronounced Hermione (Hermy-own)  and Seamus (See-mus) for years only to be shocked when the movies came out and corrected me (Her-my- oh-nee/ Shame-us). Clearly I was deeply impacted by these events as a child (:P) Anyways I digress...

The Provence region of france is a very beautiful region of France filled with pretty landscapes and scenery. Ok so that description could probably apply to more than half of France. Especially down in the south where you drive in any direction and will find a vineyard or something else that makes for a nice view. The Provence region more specifically has lots of open landscapes,  with lots of rock outcropping juxtaposed with greenery. They also have LOTS of lavender fields and LOTS of olive trees that produce gourmet olive oil. Apparently it takes something like 7-8kgs of  olives to make one litre of olive oil so it makes sense why there are so many vast fields of olive trees. 

We stayed at the my host family's grandmothers house. More specifically the mother of  Laurence, the mother of my host family. She had a cute little house in apparently the smallest village in the entire Provence region. In the village there is one tiny one-room store the size of maybe a large bedroom which sells groceries and all sorts of odds and ends. Sadly what there is not... cell phone service. And the Grandmother lives in a beautifully old fashioned house where she paints, makes photo albums,gardens and DOESN'T HAVE INTERNET.

 Needless to say we were all going a little crazy detoxing from our phones for the weekend. Which yes is a sad commentary on our lives I am sure. But to entertain ourselves we carved Mathis' first pumpkin. Actually it was the first pumpkin for the family as a whole. It was my first time carving a mini pumpkin. bloody difficult. I think it had been decorating the Grandmother's table for months and was rock hard. But I was pretty impressed with the end result.

On Saturday Laurence took me to a nearby historical city called Les Baux de-Provence. It is high up on a plateau and much of the ancient city is in ruins but on the backside they have turned the remaining buildings into a little tourist mecca with the actual new city down below.

 

Also not far from Les Baux-de Provence is the Carrieres de Lumieres. Aka caves of light. These are massive, and I mean massive caverns made by miners that have now been transformed into a theatre where they project shows onto the smooth white rock. They have different types of smaller shows whch are animated designs with music projected onto the walls and each year they also have one feature artist/art theme that they create a longer show of. This year the featured artist was Gustav Klimt as well as other renowned Viennese artists. The shows are fascinating, colourful, musical and unique. As you walk through the massive caverns the images and videos are projected in 360 degrees all around you. iI don't think the pictures can  really even do it justice  but hopefully with the videos you can get a sense of it. If you are ever in the south of France I think this should be a must see. 

We also wandered through the nearest actual city St. Remy which was filled with cute boutiques and funky art shops.

Rubber boot dogs

At around 1:00 we headed to Laurence's brother's beautiful house to have a "lunch" with his family. I use the term lunch with some qualifications because we proceeded to eat for the next 7 hours straight. It just kept coming. When Laurence and I arrived they had already been at it for an hour or so as well so we had some catching up to do. Aperitifs (aka wine and appetizers) were a large tray of pizza squares and a large tray of quiches, plus an assortment of chips, sauces, nuts, olives, etc.  Then after that we moved on to lunch which started with smoked sausages and salad. Followed by steaks and a french version of scalloped potatoes. Finally we got to dessert where we sampled a plate of  different cheeses with fresh baguettes. And just when I thought we were done the host disappeared into the kitchen and returned with large goblets for everyone that she proceeded to fill to the brim with fruit salad. I was absolutely stuffed and could barely manage to eat just a little of everything which seemed to worry them as if I was sick or something. But my host mother just kept explaining that "C'est normal. Elle manage tres peu, comme une oiseau. That was news to me. Apparently they don't think I eat enough?  I honestly don't know how french people can A) keep eating that much over a sustained period of time and B) are not 300 pounds.

We finished "Lunch" at around 5:00 pm and sat around for awhile talking (or for me listening) and at around 7:00 the host proclaimed it time for some more food. And out came the leftover pizza/quiche and a whole new set of appetizers. I was still stuffed from lunch. We finally left "lunch" at around 8:30 and headed back to the grandmothers house for "dinner." I have had to really adjust my expectations for meal times since being here as my host family and seemingly everyone in the south of France eats on "spanish time" meaning lunch is around 1pm and dinner is around 8-9pm. They were appalled with the notion of eating at 6ish when I told them that was when we normally eat lol

Someone was enjoying the pool at least

 I have also been in animal withdrawal for the last month missing my puppy and have been trying to get little fixes of animals in where I can as sadly my host family has no pets. It was nice to have a beautiful and energetic miniature Australian shepherd to play with at their cousins house. Plus they also had a water loving lab/pitbull cross of some sort who loved to fetch. The neighbors around the house in Montpellier probably think I am weird because I will corner their cats and pet them. Or play fetch with half a tennis ball and the next door neighbors dog through the fence.

 I have so far managed to restrain myself from petting the numerous cute puppies and dogs that belong to the large SDF population in Montpellier. SDFs are an interesting group and there is a large network of them in Montpellier. For example on any given day there are usually 10-15 chilling outside the store by my school. SDF stands for "sans domicile fixe". But really they are not the same kind of homeless people you might encounter in Downtown Vancouver (aka people with addictions, mental health issues etc.) I don't pretend to be an expert on French Societal problems or to know what adversity these people may have faced in their lives. But from what I can tell in the papers and in talking to my host family, SDFism seems to be more of a lifestyle choice than a result of poverty or mental health issues. Ie. they are a small society of young people who have chosen to buck the normal expectations like go to university (ITS FREE!!!- can you believe that) or get a job. Apparently they all have dogs because it makes it less likely for police to arrest them and face having to deal with a now homeless dog.

Pupies!!! also if you look at his folded jeans you can see that cute newborn puppies make for a profitable begging day

Between the abundance of SDFs and the organized band of gypsies who also beg for money, sometimes in agressive and  nefarious ways (aka one person distracts you while another pickpockets you....) Montpellier can have an interesting feel to it at times and you have to really keep your head up. It unfortunately makes me very distrustful with people as there are many different schemes you can fall victim to if you are not careful. For example, a mother will pretend to lose her child and if you turn to help look... bye bye bag. Or there are even some mothers who use their actual children to distract you while someone is helping themselves to something of yours. Sadly I know of these schemes because many of the new arrivals at my school have learnt their lesson the hard way and lost their phones/bags/wallets etc. 

 On a sad note for me, but probably satisfying for all those who have been victims of my sun filled snaps/pictures/texts/etc,  Montpellier seems to lack a fall season and has instead decided to go straight to winter. Its actually happened ridiculously fast. Just over a week ago in the last few days of October I coulddoing this....

 

and yesterday morning it was 3 degrees and raining. brrrrr. But I am Canadian so I will suck it up and stop whining now.