A List: Things I will never understand.

1. Why hasn't everyone caught on to the "normal" shower in Europe? What is this handheld shower head that sprays water everywhere and never allows you to truly feel clean? It literally takes a hook and you have a modern shower, it's not crazy, expensive, American technology. It's common sense. I will never understand European showers.

2. Deodorant. It's not a new, fancy, modern technology. Use it generously, please, especially if you just took a shower with your stupid handheld shower head.

3. Why, seriously, why do people walk around France with their cell phones or MP3 players playing ON BLAST. No headphones. No, I do not want to listen to your music, please put on headphones. I'm glad I got to follow a group of French teenage punks blasting Snoop Dogg. On a bus? On a train? In the streets? This would not be okay in the United States. If someone did this on a city bus in Boston or New York, they would be shot.

4. French people don't put their milk in the fridge. That is disgusting. I don't even need to elaborate on this.

5. Why is everything closed from 12:00 to 2pm? I know that's when one has lunch, but therefore, that means that's when everyone needs to do their stuff; go to the post office, get phone minutes, etc. A two hour lunch break, though nice, is ridiculous.

6. Man purses.

7. The kisses on the cheeks. Sometimes it's nice, sometimes it's like, please do not invade my personal space. Not to mention it's three kisses in my region and in Montpellier. Do you know how long it takes to greet every person in a group with three kisses??? WHICH CHEEK DO YOU START ON??

8. Why does the ATM dispense 50 euro bills if no one accepts them? Having a 50 euro bill is like having no money at all except wildly more frustrating. I know they have change. Please accept my money.

9. I want coffee to go. A big one please.

10. Washing machines: take two hours.

S.D.F.

What is SDF? This is the much more politically correct term for the homeless that the French use; sans domicile fixe (without a fixed... domicile?). Anyway, this term is important to understand as I can pretty much categorize myself as an SDF. Yes, yes, I live in Marvejols, but really though, I have no fixed residence. This includes my life in the United States; I live in New Hampshire, but really more in Connecticut, I went to school in New York, I lived in Boston for a while, oh and there was that time I lived in France... sans domicile fixe. Why does this relate to me now? On verra...

On Thursday, I was officially going crazy in Marvejols. I couldn't take one more awkward silent meal with the students and/or teachers and I needed straight up human contact. I took the train down to Montpellier that night so I could enjoy the whole Friday in Montpellier. My friend Lisa was nice (and amazing) enough to let me sleep on her floor, HOMELESS. On Friday we at the most delicious kebabs I have ever had and drank amazing mint tea. After we wandered the markets and did all sorts of taste testing: olives, goat cheese, honey and, oh yes, wine. We were able to try a 60 euro bottle for free... then we went to about 4 other tents. I was in heaven. That night a group of us went to Susanna's apartment for an authentic Austrian dinner, again, amazing.

The next morning I woke up early to head off to Aix-en-Provence, where I studied about two years ago. I was so happy to return! I stayed in a hostel just outside of town in what might be considered the "ghetto" area, but the hostel itself was in a park. I then spent the day going to my favorite old cafes, fountains, etc. I met up with a friend from Hobart who is doing a semester in Aix and sat in my favorite Irish pub for a couple hours. Later that night, I had dinner with my host mom and it was SO great to see her. She really was the best host mom! We ate dinner with my friends she had introduced me to from Mauritius and Greece, always so international.

Well, the real excitement happened later, which really explains the title of this entry. After grabbing a drink with my Hobart friend, I headed back to my hostel and arrived there around 1:15 am. Not terribly late, I thought. I walk up to the door of the hostel and it is locked. Curious, I thought. I went to the reception, locked. I went to every single door. Locked. Every window? Locked. Meanwhile it's probably 40 degrees out and at this point 2:30am. I banged on every door to no avail. As I was about to resign myself to either breaking into a car for the night or sleeping under a tree, I found one door open. This door, however, did not lead to the hostel but to an isolated conference room. There, I slept. I put my back again the heater, my scarf around my legs, my purse as my pillow and I "slept" on the tile floor. HOMELESS. I basically was a squatter. At 7am, when reception opened, I met the lady working at the door with a simple question that should have been made very clear when I checked in: "Um excuse me, is there are curfew at this hostel?" She looked at me in shock and said something to the effect of "Putain, did nobody tell you???? How long have you been waiting outside?" Seven hours lady, seven. So I trudged up to my run, crashed on my bunkbed until 10am, when I was forced to check out. Note: never. ever. stay at this hostel.

The next day I ended up taking an earlier train than expected because I was so exhausted. Saying goodbye to Aix for now, I dragged myself to the train station and simply walked onto a train to Marseille without a ticket. I had one for later so I planned on playing the dumb American. In Marseille, I found a train to Montpellier and sat on the floor because there were no more seats and I didn't have a real ticket. HOMELESS. Arriving in Montpellier, again, Lisa let me stay at her place. Instead of showering and composing myself, we went out and found an Irish pub that played AMERICAN football. Well, Giants vs the Saints, don't know if that really counts as real football... Also at this pub we met a group of 15 Englishmen who may have been the rowdiest group of guys I have ever met. Very fun and nice; we even did a little rugby scrum in the streets.

Monday, back to Marvejols. I'm beginning to get tired of living in Lozere, there is little to do and practically no one my age. The teachers are all really nice and welcoming, but after a while I don't feel like answer the questions: "How do you like Marvejols? Have you explored the region much?" Like... no... Fortunately, a teacher at the high school down the road came to my school last week to give me contact info for a Spanish guy that was working at the school that was looking for human contact... like me! I met him for coffee today and we talked for about two hours about how sick we are of Lozere. He even almost left last week because he was so bored! But now we have eachother. His English is excellent and he's going to teach me Spanish. Moral of the story: I have a friend!

Starting on Thursday, I have two weeks of vacation. You know, after working less than three weeks, I'm glad the French government realizes we need a break. Where I'm going for vacation... still no idea.

Encore a Montpellier.

Last weekend was another one spent in Montpellier. I had my orientation on Friday with all of the other assistants in secondary schools. It was potentially the most boring day of my life mainly because we had all been teaching already for a week and did not need to be oriented anymore. But, they paid for lunch and my hotel, so I won't complain anymore! I also was able to meet the two other girl assistants in my region, though we are still at least a 30 minute car ride away; better than a 5 hour train I guess!

After orientation, we had a group dinner and ended up hanging out in a park right near the center of Montpellier where a bunch of Spanish students were playing guitars and drums and dancing. It was an amazing night and we met a lot of very interesting characters The next day we had plans to meet at 9am to go to Nimes, we knew not all of us would make it.

So, we went in three groups to Nimes. One left at 9am sharp, the next around 11am, and my Nimes Dream Team left at 12:43 and literally had to hold the train doors open so we wouldn't lose some stragglers. Nimes was beautiful and filled with ancient Roman ruins, most importantly Les Arenes. We picnicked in a beautiful park and made it back to the train in plenty of time. That night, my friend Margot, from Mexico, had us over for Mexican food, it was delicious and definitely the one thing I miss while I'm abroad! After dinner we ventured out to a club, I guess you could call it. The downstairs was AWFUL European techno music but the upstairs was much more relaxed with jazz, blues and oldies!

Finally, Sunday, we spent the day in a park picnicking and enjoying the sun before fall really comes. I had a train at 6pm that got into Marvejols at 10pm, so it was a long day. Not to mention I was, as always, surrounded by the the worst French teenagers in the world. Screaming "ta guelle" and "putain" the entire time. (I will leave you to translate this text.)

This week has been thus far uneventful, I think I'm buying a car... and I had to explain to a bunch of 14 year olds what a WASP was. I also found out there is another assistant in Marvejols, in the high school down the street for Spanish; I may have found a friend at last!! A la prochaine!

Questions.

After spending far too much time trying to figure out the quickest way to Montpellier from Marvejols, I resigned myself to the 4.5hour train ride through the coastal city of Beziers, not a bad view at all. As always, I was surrounded by punk French teenagers who blast music and smoke cigarettes at every stop of the train; c'est ma vie. All in all, it was a relaxing ride. I got into the city around 5 and booked it to our favorite juice bar where these hilarious guys make us fresh juice while doing magic tricks and playing the didgeridoo. Definitely my favorite place in Montpellier.

The weekend was the full of meeting new assistants, exploring the city and getting to know each othe rbetter. Everyone is finally getting apartments, so we had house warming parties each night. As always, we were quite the multinational group, or as my Maltese friends say "maltinational." At my friend Lisa's apartment we had Americans, French, Algerians, Greeks, Mexicans, Maltese, Germans, Austrians, Colombians and British party goers. Our only common language amongst us was French and occasionally English or Spanish. It was a great time!

Sunday was anther beautiful day spent at the beach. It is gettin a little colder, or so I'm told, but it's still in the high 70s! It was quite windy at the beach so I didn't fully go swimming, but we stayed until sunset and had a great time. After that I had to stay in the youth hostel in Montpellier because my train was at 7am and i didn't want to burden anyone with my presence on their couch. The hostel was an absolute animal house as were the roads that surrounded the building. It was perfectly safe, but definitely not perfectly clean. I showered at a friends place so I wouldn't be subject to hostel showers and I went right to bed as to avoid the rowdy crowd. In my room, which was made up of two bunk beds there was a woman... a 60 year old woman. In a youth hostel. It was odd, but she was, of course, very nice. I guess I just figured there was an age limit!

So this morning, I took the 7am bus and train to Marvejols to arrive at 10am. I saw the same kids from last week, who recognized me immediately and smiled and waved. Upon arrival, I nearly ran to my school to make it to class at 10:30. The teachers here are so flexible, it's incredible! But I got there on timem thankfully. I made it to class to answer more of the same questions, my name, age, etc. It wasn't until my second class that things got more interesting. The following ensued:

Student (Hossni): Do you like pizza?
Me: Yes, of course!
Hossni: Do you like rugby?
Me: Yes, I used to play rugby
Hossni: Do you like to cook?
Me: Yes, I love to cook.
Hossni: Ah bonne, bonne femme. (translation: oh good. good woman.)

Thank god I'm marriage material for this young man of 12 years. But, the day got even better. My next class had the oldest kids in the school, so their English was much more advanced. They had a list of questions for me, but one boy, Guillaume, was much more curious:

Guillaume: Have you ever been on, what do they call it, spring break?
Me: Yes, I went to Florida one year and North Carolina last year.
Guillaume looks absolutely and utterly shocked and horrified. We move on to another question.
Guillaume: Wait. You've been on spring break? It's like, a huge party in the south, non?
Me: Well, I mean, it is vacation for students, so we like to go to the beach, it really depends where you go. Where I went, it was about relaxing and being in a warmer climate.
Guillaume: But, isn't it a huge rave? Don't people die?
Me: What? No... how do you know about spring break?
Guillaume: Well, I know on spring break that what you do is wake up, go to the beach, drink all day, go to raves and finish your day with sex.
Me: Silence. Laughter. WHAT??? No, Guillaume, that's not what it's like... I mean, that's not what it was like where I was... where did you hear about this?!
Guillaume: I've seen a documentary. It's what you all do, non?
Me: Alright, well, spring break isn't like that. I don't do that. Oh my god.

The rest of the day went on without any other hugely ridiculous question. Though in my class, with the youngest students of the school, a couple of students brought me presents. One brought me a picture of an airplane, another brought me brochures about Marvejols and another pictures of her farm with captions in the old language of the region, Occitan. The best gift was definitely the bit of tin foil filled with dried mushrooms. Apparently mushrooms are really expensive in France, but they grow naturally around here. JACKPOT.

Other than that, my day ended with a bunch of boarding students inhaling flan in the cafeteria at dinner, which promptly came out of their noses. Pretty average night. It's their bedtime now, so they're starting to calm down as they run by my door yelling "goooood nighhhhhht."

Maladroit!

I continue to be the awkward, random American in this school and in the town. Last night I finally decided to have dinner in the cafeteria with the kids. After getting the courage to go down to the cantine, I luckily saw two young people that work at the school who have been extremely nice to me. They introduced me to all the boarding students and we went in for dinner. One little boy wanted to sit with me so he could practice his English because his girlfriend is from Moldova and that's the language they have in common. Mind you, this boy is maybe 14. So dinner was succesful, but again, awkward, as my French is still a bit rusty!

Today was my first day as an actual teaching assistant. I had four classes with two professors. All the students had to prepare questions for me. I had the usual question "how old are you," "where are you from," "why are you here." But I had some other, more interesting questions:
-Do you have a boyfriend?
-Do you like muscle-y men?
-Do you like diamonds?
-Do you have a dragon or gorilla?
-How old is your mother?
-Do you live with your husband?
These kids were clearly reading off of a vocabulary list, too funny. In each class there was also a Don Juan who would ask repeatedly if I have a boyfriend and why not. One asked, or rather stated, "you are beautiful, you need a boyfriend." Thank you, 11 year old boy. A+.

After my classes, I trekked off to the train station to buy my ticket for Montpellier this weekend. During my walk, I discover the Hotel de Ville (town hall) and the library, both in beautiful, old buildings, pictures to come soon. After walking up a hill for what seemed like an eternity, I reached the tiny train station to find one person working the entire station. I purchased my ticket and timed my walk back to the school for future reference. Mind you this is from absolutely one end of the town to the other: 20 minute walk. I stopped in a cafe, because, well, I have hours of free time... and finally someone talked to me! This nice couple said something to me about mushrooms and the only thing I could respond was "pardon??" and eventually, "je suis americaine..." After that, they spoke slowly to me in French so I would understand. It was nice to have contact outside of the school and with people at least in their 20s... oh, and the same drunk man on his third beer was there again. Nice little afternoon.

My first week in Marvejols has been good, pretty uneventful, but good and relaxing. I leave for Montpellier tomorrow to meet up with some assistants and to enjoy the (still) beautiful 80 degree weather. I return Monday morning to meet 4 more classes of kids... how I will ever keep them straight, I'm not sure.

Wolves.

I arrived in Marvejols on Monday morning, after a hectic bus and train ride, to find pretty much what I expected: an extremely small village. One of the English teachers that I will be working with picked me up from the station and drove me to the college (middle school), an approximately three minute drive across town. I was then shuffled around by secretaries, teachers and the principal himself. I signed what seemed to be endless documents and introduced to who knows how many people. I tried to put my best accent on each "bonjour," but to no avail. I got my keys to my room, that is located on the 5th floor of the school, and I lugged my bags onto the tiny elevator. I live in the dormitory part of the school among around 20 students who board there; I am, of course, on the girls’ side. I was warned that the boys have been sneaking into girls’ room, so I have to really make sure to keep my door locked.

After throwing my stuff into my room, I went to lunch in the cantine with all the teachers. As soon as I walked down the hall, I could hear whispers of "c'est elle? c'est l'assistante americaine? ooooo." Then walking into the cantine I was welcomed with stares from droves of 11 to 15 year olds, all looking at my flip flops like I was crazy. Walking through the tables, a few students shouted "hello!" to me as I passed; I pretty certain everyone knows who I am. After lunch, I started unpacking my room, which is quite spacious but I can only describe it as my Van Gogh room.My windows look out onto the courtyard where the kids play and beyond that the mountains that surround the town; it is a fantastic view.

Since I don't start working until Thursday, I decided to stick around the school and unpack a few things instead of exploring. The exploring started today. My day started with a knock on my door from another English teacher, Lionel, at 10 am, wondering if I wanted to open my bank account. Half asleep and still in my nightgown, I said yes, but give me a few minutes. I got my bank account open fairly easily and headed back to the school for lunch, where I was greeted with hundreds of "hellllooooos." After lunch, I decided to venture out into the town.

Walking through the streets, I realized that Marvejols is definitely bigger than my hometown, Durham, NH. There are far fewer people, but many more restaurants, shops and cafes. I walked through the walled part of the city and was immediately reminded of Venice. All the roads are tiny and definitely not made for cars, though they do manage to squeeze themselves through somehow. I took a few pictures, but I felt absolutely absurd taking pictures of these people's every day lives. I walked down the Esplanade de l'Europe, which follows the tiny river that flows through Marvejols.

And the wolves. Let's not forget about the wolves. So, as I found out before arriving in Marvejols, the region (Lozere) is famous for its wolves. I thought, okay, maybe for the tourists there will be some wolf memorabilia; the wolves became a joke to me. But oh no. Yes, the wolves are contained to their little reservation, but on almost every storefront, there is a picture of a wolf. There is a cafe "Le Petit Loup," the little wolf. I found a fountain of wolf heads. Even the supermarket: a man in the school told me it was just behind the wolf statue. Wolves are everywhere.

All in all, I saw very few people my age and just very few people in general but it is a beautiful village with very friendly people. All the teachers here are very welcoming and extremely helpful. I start work on Thursday when I will be answering the questions "where are you from" and "how old are you" about a million times. Until then, I will entertain myself somehow.

The first few days.

First off, I arrived safely and in one piece.

I am currently sitting in my no-star hotel in the center of Montpellier, France. The city is gorgeous, busy and HOT. I spent my first day wandering around la Place de la Comedie and the surrounding areas. I found the markets and beautiful cafes everywhere I went. After five hours of wanderings and two cafe-cremes in different cafes, I headed back to my hotel, where I had apparently booked a triple. That night I realized how dumb it was to spend my days in Montpellier alone, so I sent a message to one of the other assistants in Montpellier to meet up. The second day, I met a bunch of the other assistants who are placed all over the region, though most of them are living in the city itself. We went to a juice bar run by two crazy Frenchmen who are obsessed with Australia and walked around the streets looking for cooler clothes to wear in the 80 degree heat! I adopted another assistant into my hotel room and we went out that night to meet up with other assistants as well as some other international students from Dubai, Thailand, Malta and Mexico... we were quite the eclectic group. Everyone has been really friendly and welcoming!



Today, I did not do much but get my train pass and ticket to Marvejols. It seems like I am one of the only assistants who is not living in Montpellier, but I have been offered couches to sleep on and promised that others will visit me, especially once I have snow! We'll see how it all goes.

Tomorrow we are all heading to the beach as we are promised another 80 degree, sunny day! After that, I need to gather my things and prepare myself for the transition from a bustling urban life to the rural life. The headmaster at my school is picking me up from the train station on Monday and taking me to my housing, a room located in the middle school with a bathroom and no kitchen. If nothing else, this year is definately going to be an adventure.

What I'm Doing.

In just a few days I will be jetting off to France for the next seven months. As glamorous as this may seem, let me explain a little more. I am participating in a program organized by the French government that brings young Americans to France to be teaching assistants in elementary, middle and high schools. There are around 1600 of us in total dispersed throughout France and its territories. I have been placed in the Montpellier region, which mainly encompasses the western side of the Mediterranean coast, bordering Spain. Now, the part of this region that isn't on the coast? That's where I am. I am a two hour train ride north of Montpellier in a tiny town called Marvejols.

Marvejols. Population 5,000. A medieval, walled town, best known for its wolf attacks of the 19th century, or at least that's what wikipedia says. As a recent college graduate, I have learned never to trust wikipedia so I did a little more research. Marvejols is a beautiful little town that is as quaint as one can get! The town is actually situated near two national forests and the area is well known for its outdoor activities (rock climbing, hiking, kayaking, etc). Now I know the thought of me rock climbing might be slightly absurd, but I have to at least try to fit in with the locals.

As for fitting in? We'll see. I just finished packing my two suitcases tonight. I figured I didn't want to be lugging around two huge bags so I stuffed everything into one carry-on sized bag and one medium sized bag, needless to say my dad was impressed. In these bags are some clothes for outdoor recreation, of course, but more importantly are filled with 30 or 40 black, brown or navy shirts and at least 15 pairs of black tights. With bright blond hair, there's no way I will blend in Southern France, so might as well at least attempt to look the part in all black like the Frenchies. We'll see.

So, on September 22nd, I leave the states, stop in Montpellier for a few days before I enter the world of rural France and I will be back in May. Any ideas for travel destinations? Let me know!