Protesting Frogs and Medieval Cities

One thing I have learned about France is that they will happily protest anything and everything. Everything from full on city wide marches to creative hippies hiking mountains. It seems that no matter which French city I venture to on any given day there is always some group wielding their signs and yelling into their loud speakers. Sometimes they are more refined about it and today's protest outside my school featured opera music which was quite enjoyable during class.

Lundi...

Mardi...

Mecredi...

2 weekends ago I went hiking with my French host family. We headed up to a nearby mountain (Mount Pic St. Loup) and did a 3 hour hike (up and down) with beautiful views of the nearby cities, the Mediterranean sea and most importantly the surrounding wineries.

One of the things I love about France. Everywhere you look there are ancient ruins of something. 

Happy hiking family

Wineries, wineries and more wineries :)

And if you thought we had escaped the protesting for the day... Wrong... we found we were in the midst of a well organized but utterly bizarre spectacle. I have no idea what the point was, and neither did my french family so it wasnt the language barrier, but the general gist was a bunch of french hippies (braless...razorless...hippies) dressed all in black and carrying a basket on their back with some part of the face on it (eyes, ears, mouth etc.). Je ne sais pas? but I do know it had to be bloody hot for them and it was an interesting experience scaling the mountain  behind an eye and in front of an ear. At the top they de-basketed and used a microphone to say the different words that were on the front of the their shirts. Just really weird all around.

They're watching you...

But hippies or no hippies the views from the top were spectacular.

There were a couple of gliders circling the top of the mountain

This last Saturday I went on an excursion with my school. We were supposed to go to Avignon to see the Palace of the Popes and the Pont du Gard but surprise, surprise, it rained really hard and Avignon flooded. At the last minute the guide decided to take us to Carcassone instead. This was actually an awesome turn of events as I had really wanted to go to Carcassone ever since a co worker showed me pictures.

We stopped at Narbonne first. Which was a beautiful french city, the cleanest and calmest one I have seen so far *minus the protesting but that is par for the course*

We meandered through their museum and church. The Narbonne church featured whitewashed exterior with lots of intricate design. Inside there was a lot of wood work including all the seats and pews and some very beautiful smaller chapel sections.

 

Then we drove further along to Carcossone which is a massive, ancient medieval city. When you walk through the gates you feel like you are entering into a Knight's tale or some other medieval movie.  There are several of these heavily fortified cities in southern france as they were key strong holds during the Crusades. This one is the largest and has been the best restored and maintained - At least I think that's what the guide said (#frenchtourguideproblems).

After something jumped out at Rhaina from behind the wall...

So. Much. Candy.

 We also went for a traditional Occitane meal, which basically means I try a bunch of food and make faces and end up eating lots of bread. Actually, the Casselot was really good (beans, sausage and duck) and the dessert, an apple tarte, was fantastic. Could have done with out the mystery meat innards on my salad though.

And I finish with my pet peeve of the week. Why do you buy a fancy DSLR camera ( or somethinhg along those lines..  I don't pretend to be a camera expert) that is I'm sure very expensive because it takes really nice photos... and then use it to take selfies. Seriously?

Back to school...again.

After finishing my very last course for my university degree ( ugh Stats) and celebrating being done school (Sorry Mom and Dad law school is still not on the table) I planned a long and extensive trip to Europe so I could go back to school?!?!?  It seemed like a good idea at the time to brush up on all the high school French I've since forgotten. And now that I'm here it seems like an even better idea. As much as it irks me to be back in a class room for half a day with tests and homework classes are pretty much an essential lifeline right now and everything I learn I use about 2 hours later in my daily conversations with my family.

 And yes I do actually mean conversations. I'm happy to report that after about a week of mouth gaping, blank staring WTF are they sayingness I can actually understand about 50-75% of what my host family says now. Plus I can string together a sentence or two of what is I'm sure very linguistically and grammatically challenged French in under an hour. I even managed to make a couple jokes....which probably weren't  actually that funny but even if it was a pity laugh I will take it. I think now they can at least appreciate that I have a personality and they are not housing a stoic robot who stares at them and says "oui" periodically.

I am taking 4 weeks of classes at a French foreign language school in Montpellier called Accent Francais. That's right I have become one of those annoying foreign students that I always wanted to run over with a car in downtown Vancouver. You know the ones I'm talking about? The one who cluster outside the schools with no regard for people attempting to walk down the sidewalk? The ones that hop on the bus and loudly speak in their native tongue or yell at each other across the bus.I apologize to all the Montpellierans? in advance.

I was very surprised the first day of lessons  because when I asked what a word meant the teacher explained it.... In FRENCH.  I am accustomed to being given instructions and translations in English in French class but here that doesn't happen.  I guess it wouldn't be fair to the Japanese, Colombian, Swiss and Brazilian people in my class some of whom don't speak English. I was actually quite surprised with the diversity of the people in the school. There are the typical young people doing years abroad but also business people here to learn french, and even a recently married Australian couple here for a couple weeks as a part of their honeymoon. It makes for really interesting group work in class as we struggle to understand each other. We have a lot of different life experiences and cultural differences to try and relate to each other in simplistic French. For example the other day we had to make up and present to the class a story about something being stolen.  I suggested we do it about a stolen pie off a windowsill (Random - I know). But my Colombian partner didn't know pie in English and I didn't know it in French.  So I googled it in French but he didn't know that French word so then I had to google a picture of a pie while he reverse translated the French word to Spanish.... and 3 minutes later we were ready to start.

I struggled to keep up with the teacher's lessons and instructions the first day or two and I used up the battery on my phone by lunchtime translating everything.  But after a day or so I caught on and I actually really like that they teach in French.  When we compare the French word to synonyms or antonyms and learn French definitions it really helps get an ingrained understanding of the word  rather than always doing a direct translation to English in your head. I feel like we would have learnt a lot more if we had we learnt French like this in high school. I've also found that it is much easier if I just consistently speak French because if I take a break and speak English with another student  it takes me a couple steps backwards the next time I try and speak or understand french.  Even with a fellow Canadian comrade we try to speak french to each other as much as possible (until we reach an impasse where neither of us gets it) plus it is only fair to our Colombian friend who doesn't understand English. It makes for some entertaining conversations and impromptu games of charades in class and I think I might just be OK with 3 more weeks of school.

Should have packed my water wings

It rains a lot in Vancouver. Its kind of one of the things we are known for. So when my host family told me that it would be their rainy season while I am here I was fairly certain that their idea of rain in the Mediterranean would not even come close to what I consider a rainy day. Unfortunately it appears that might have been a little presumptuous on my part.

The first couple of days here were absolutely magnificent. Hot and sunny and b-e-a-utiful.

Exhibit A: Pictures of sunny Baillagues and Montpellier. Isn't it pretty and warm looking. and PALM TREES. Enough said :D :D :D

But then one day last week Laurence (the mother of my host family) took me into town to get my student ID and transit pass all set up. God bless her... I just followed her around and handed things to people when prompted, ID, Passport, Money, Pictures etc and voila 2 hours later I had a bus pass, a train pass, a library pass (for all the french books I plan to read ;p) and my student ID for my school. We ended our errands in the central city mall, known as the Polygon, whose parking lot I think is awesome. All Pink!

When we looked outside we saw that the gloomy, dark clouds of a few hours earlier were now a full on downpour. And YES I actually mean a DOWNPOUR. Easily as hard if not harder than I have ever seen in Vancouver, not that I admitted it, we do have a reputation to uphold. Il pleut comme ca I kept saying, aka it rains like this. People were making mad dashes across the 30 feet of uncovered area to get into the mall and in that short distance were getting absolutely soaked!!! We sat down for lunch to wait it out and I learned how to say both wet (mouille) and soaked (trempe) in French and that apparently the area is subject to flooding so they have some sort of alert system to warn people. As if prompted, she got a notification on her phone that it was now an "Alert Orange"aka take care when driving because roads could flood. After awhile we couldn't avoid the rain anymore and so in making the 5 minute walk to our next destination we too got tres trempe. I don't think I have ever gotten so wet in the rain in my life. My jeans were plastered to my legs and my sweater was about 10 pounds heavier and this was with an umbrella. The streets were flooded with about a foot of water and within seconds my feet were absolutely filled with water. All around you could literally see the streets and street level stores filling with water. Small rivers and then entire lakes were beginning to form and rush down the stairs into the tram tracks.

This continued as we drove home and we had to take several detours to avoid streets that were submerged in water. We luckily made it home just before the Alert Orange became an Alert Rouge and all the streets were closed. Herve, the father of my host family ended up stuck at work and Chloe was stuck at school as the streets were no longer driveable. All transportation was shut down and over 1800 people were stranded at the train station.  But at least they had a sense of humor about the flooding on social media

The rain stopped around 7:00 p.m in the evening after raining for a solid 6 hours. It took another 2 hours before the Alert Rouge was called off and people could begin driving again.Even so some places were too dangerous too drive and some kids had to actually sleep over at the school. Due to liability concerns schools in France will not release kids when the roads are not safe. The next day school was cancelled for kids until the roads completely dried up. The day after that the only evidence of the whole affair was a couple overflowing ditches and a whole lot more mosquitos floating around looking for Candian meat. I was able to ask if this was the norm en francais (go me) and apparently while they do have frequent orange alerts during this season. they rarely get to Red alerts. This was the worst flooding they have had in 11 years since a similar occurrence in 2003. It rained over 200mm in 2 hours (and no I didnt actually understand this fact through conversation - yay for pictures on the news). I of course steadfastly maintained that Vancouver is comme ca, comme ca, and I do think on some days it rains almost as hard..We definitely have waaaaaayyyyyy better drainage though. I guess their propensity for floods and city wide shut downs evens out the fact that they don't ever get snow days. I am just thankful that the rest of the days have been beautiful and sunny. Although as I write this at 10:00 at night I hear something on the window that sounds suspiciously like raindrops but I am sure that is just my imagination. Maybe I better pack a personal flotation device for tomorrow just in case.

Danger! Taurine Manifestation

My host family took me to the beach the other day. We piled in the car and drove, and drove... right past the beach that is closest to us.  I was officially confused - which is nothing new these days. My smile and nod approach often means I am going along with the flow and figuring out what they said later on. In this case they kept rambling on about about horses and torros in a tone that suggested they were giving me a treat and I should be excited. Ooooookkk???  I had told them I liked horses but I couldn't really figure out why we were heading to the beach to see horses when their are numerous farms in walking distance from their house.  But hey I was just along for the ride camera in hand. We drove past a cute little inlet that was teeming with flamingos and we pulled into a beach in the next town over. It was packed. I'm talking Deep Cove on Penguin Plunge day or English bay during the Festival of Lights kind of packed.  Took us forever to find parking and there was a stream of people heading down to the beach.

At the entrances to the beach were big barred fences and nobody was actually on the beaches. Everyone was clustered around the bars and watching for something. Laurence, the mother of the family I am staying with, told me to get my camera ready and to hurry to the bars. Which I did, clueless as to what I was supposed to be filming. Then again I am just happy when I can actually understand an instruction.  Finally I saw what we and hundreds of other people had come to see.  There were a bunch of horses being ridden down the beach, about 10 or so,  ridden in  a mighty ducks flying V formation by men and women of all ages.

They passed, and then another group passed and I still didn't think I was getting the whole picture. Why would people be hiding behind the fences to watch the pretty ponies parade by. Finally the third group of horses passed us and I could see that inside the ring of horses were a couple of big, black, long horned bulls.

 DING. lightbulb moment.

From what I could gather from her french explanation the "gaurdiens" aka the people on horse back in funky coloured shirts are transporting the "taureaus" (french for bull) from their ranches down the beach to a festival. I'm not sure why the beach is the preferable transport route. Perhaps there is less chance of a loose in the city?  Maybe because bulls don't like to swim so the water is a natural barricade? Or perhaps it is just tradition?. These questions are too difficult to get accurate answers across the great english-french divide. However,  English or French there are still idiot teenagers with death wishes who were added entertainment  sprinting in behind the bulls, grabbing their tails and riding behind the convoy in the sand.

 I forget how close Montpellier is to Spain. It is only a couple hours drive to the border. So it does make sense that they would have a lot of overlap in culture.  In some parts of the southern region of France there is what we think of as traditional spanish bull fighting (aka to the death). But here at this festival they apparently do a much milder version where they tie decorations onto the horns and let the bulls loose in a ring. People then go in and try to grab the decorations to win monetary rewards.

Anyways it was a very impressive thing to watch.  It seemed to go on with out end. We watched at least 10 different groups go by and they just kept coming. There were elements of tradition, pageantry and horsemanship all at work and they were just fearless bull moving machines.

Mathis and I  with the horses in between convoys

It was a very interesting morning, especially since I just thought we were going to the beach. Not understanding the main points of a conversation kind of sucks sometimes. Like when you go to the store to buy lotion for mosquito bites and the pharmacist gives you bee sting relief (the french really should put pictures on their boxes).  But other times, like on this excursion it just adds a fun element of surprise :) 

Seeing this sign on the way IN instead of the way OUT might have helped clear things up a bit quicker