So a week later, Christina, Jed, and I headed to Justin's for a dinner party. We got there on the last bus and Justin made us fresh mussels and we had fresh chocolate and strawberries. Then we took a walk and decided to go to the club La Bama. The catch is that La Bama is a 25 minute walk or a 5 minute car ride. So we hitchhiked. This is something that I would never attempt in America, but is apparently done all the time in southern France. So, we got there and danced to crazy techno music, for a while and then got a ride back to Justin's in a tiny car with two guys and a dog.
The next day we had pizza from the African Queen. She is this interesting older French woman who has a tiny place in St. Affrique (St. Aff). She lived in Israel for a while where she learned Hebrew and met her husband. They moved back to France and now they have this little restaurant shop where you can order homemade food to go. We waited about 30 minutes for 2 pizzas, which were delicious, and were offered tea and conversation while we were waiting. The African Queen, as the woman is locally known, told us a little about herself and also about St. Aff. She said that it's a good place because it used to be a larger place and then started to die. About 5 years ago it was only 4000 people, and now it is growing again. She said it isn't like France at all; there are people from all over France and an international population as well. All in all, I think I like St. Aff more than Millau. It helps that Justin lives right in the middle of this small town, so nothing was ever more than 5 minutes away.
Anyway, Christina and Jed left for Millau Sunday night and I stayed with Justin until Wednesday morning. It was at this point when we all realized that my birthday was Monday; I decided to stay anyway because I wanted to attend Justin's classes with him. I love traveling because you always meet the most interesting people and become instant friends because of sharing a language. Justin took me to all of his classes with him on Monday and Tuesday; he does all of his hours in the first two days of the week which keeps the rest of the week open for traveling. We drank tea on our breaks and bobbed in and out of the rooms for times varying from 20 to 45 minutes, depending on the age of the students, which vary from 5-11. I participated in all of the classes and had a great time with the students and the lessons. The last lessons we did on Tuesday consisted of drawing monsters. I would say to the class in enlish, "The monster has 5 feet," then the kids would deconstruct the sentence and Justin would help them in French if they needed it. It was super fun to watch the kids get excited to draw, understand what I was saying, and then get upset because the monster had 5 feet and three legs. They just couldn't figure this out, no matter how many times we explained it to them.
Then, for my birthday we got a bottle of wine, a bottle of champagne and Justin made us omellettes. We got pastries from the bakery for "cake" and they were chocolatey and delicious. On Tuesday, we basically repeated Monday. We had a really fun time hanging out and talking and walking around St. Aff. I can't belive that I am 27, but I had a lovely birthday, and am looking forward to this coming up weekend when Christina and I will celebrate our birthdays (hers in March 23) together in Montpellier.
21.3.07
A weekend in Nimes
I met Christina's friend Justin, who is teaching in St. Affrique, the first weekend we came to Millau. We hung out for about 20 minutes before we had to head back to Millau and he mentioned going to Nimes in few couple of weeks and wanting someone to travel with. I told him I might be interested. He came to Millau a couple of weeks later and stayed the weekend, and we decided to go for sure. I met him at the bus station in Millau at 7:30 am, he coming in from St. Aff and then we took the bus to Montpellier. We ate chocolate crepes and had coffe and then we wandered around the shopping district before we caught our train to Nimes. We walked out of the train station into a beautiful spring day and straight up to the Arena, which looks like a smaller version of the colloseum and where they still have bullfights. Though we had no solid plans of what to see or where to stay, everything just fell into place. We went to the tourism office and on the way came across the Roman ruins that makes Nimes a place to visit. It looked simultaneously huge and too small for the space in it was in. I will attach pictures later when I can use my own computer...
Anyway, we got the directions to the hostel where we could stay for 15 euro a night and a 40 minute walk from the center. Then we found a cafe to eat lunch outside. We sat there for a couple of hours and ate salad and drank wine. We decided to walk around and check out the local hotel scene. We found a one star hotel (they mark everything by stars here on the signs) and it was 35 euro a night for two, so we took it. It was just a couple blocks away from the colliseum, so we came out great on that one. Then we wandered about for a bit and came across the Roman gardens. There were a bunch of white statues and a pond and some stairs built into the hill at the end. We wandered about and took some pictures and then headed back to the center for dinner. We ate pizza and I tried a traditional French apertif, cassis with kir. Then we went to a bar for gin and tonic and found the first of many glow sticks from the night. We found one gay bar where we found more glow sticks, and had champagne; then we hit a club like place which was tightly packed. This place had a monitor in the front room showing the back room where there is supposed to be dancing; all we saw was a bunch of people standing still. We wandered from bar to bar, just to check things out, and noticed how many highschool students and middle aged people were out and about. I guess most of the people our age live in other places, like Montpellier.
The next day, we slept in and then found ourselves a good French breakfast of coffee (the only time I've had coffee in large cups in France by the way) baguette and jam and croissants. It was great. Then we went walking to find the tower that was one Justin's photocopied page of the town. We found a little park entrance that we decided to take a detour through. After a rambling park walk of about 20 minutes, it led us straight to the tower. All in the all weekend worked like this the whole time, things just falling into place. Then we had a leisurely lunch of crepes and red wine (a theme of my southern France experience) and finished with a glass of champagne.
The train back to Montpellier left us just enough time to catch our bus. So we go wait for the bus and then try and get on it, and the guy is like, no you can't get on this bus, this is a private bus. So we go back to the train station and the lady is like, it wasn't a bus, it was a train, and you missed it. But you can catch the next bus. So, we wandered around Montpellier a while and got to the bus station just as the bus was pulling away. We flagged it down and just barely made it back to Millau by midnight.
Anyway, we got the directions to the hostel where we could stay for 15 euro a night and a 40 minute walk from the center. Then we found a cafe to eat lunch outside. We sat there for a couple of hours and ate salad and drank wine. We decided to walk around and check out the local hotel scene. We found a one star hotel (they mark everything by stars here on the signs) and it was 35 euro a night for two, so we took it. It was just a couple blocks away from the colliseum, so we came out great on that one. Then we wandered about for a bit and came across the Roman gardens. There were a bunch of white statues and a pond and some stairs built into the hill at the end. We wandered about and took some pictures and then headed back to the center for dinner. We ate pizza and I tried a traditional French apertif, cassis with kir. Then we went to a bar for gin and tonic and found the first of many glow sticks from the night. We found one gay bar where we found more glow sticks, and had champagne; then we hit a club like place which was tightly packed. This place had a monitor in the front room showing the back room where there is supposed to be dancing; all we saw was a bunch of people standing still. We wandered from bar to bar, just to check things out, and noticed how many highschool students and middle aged people were out and about. I guess most of the people our age live in other places, like Montpellier.
The next day, we slept in and then found ourselves a good French breakfast of coffee (the only time I've had coffee in large cups in France by the way) baguette and jam and croissants. It was great. Then we went walking to find the tower that was one Justin's photocopied page of the town. We found a little park entrance that we decided to take a detour through. After a rambling park walk of about 20 minutes, it led us straight to the tower. All in the all weekend worked like this the whole time, things just falling into place. Then we had a leisurely lunch of crepes and red wine (a theme of my southern France experience) and finished with a glass of champagne.
The train back to Montpellier left us just enough time to catch our bus. So we go wait for the bus and then try and get on it, and the guy is like, no you can't get on this bus, this is a private bus. So we go back to the train station and the lady is like, it wasn't a bus, it was a train, and you missed it. But you can catch the next bus. So, we wandered around Montpellier a while and got to the bus station just as the bus was pulling away. We flagged it down and just barely made it back to Millau by midnight.
16.3.07
Mr. Vincent is cleaning the pool
I have easily settled into Millau. Our little chalet porch overlooks the only gym in Millau, which is run by Mr. Vincent, who also owns the chalets. He is an intersting little man with eighties permed and frosted hair, full of gel and somehow still a little frizzy. We can always hear it when he teaches aerobics, because the bad eighties music gets loud enought to drift through our usually open front door. Whenever he sees us sitting outdoors, he comes out and greet us in French, then for my and Jed's benefit adds in English, France is good, no? It is, we agree.
Millau is a compact city and everything radiates out from the Village Centre, which is marked by the giant water fountain that comes on around 9 am. All the red rooved buildings are settled into the valley and up on the fills around it, and the road out heads straight under the Viaduct. In the evening sunset it would make a great ending to a French Western. Do the French have Western movies? I don't know, I gave up on French TV shortly after my dive into French Wheel of Fortune.
All the women here, and most of the men, walk the streets with prams. According to French Glamour all the women who don't already have babies by the time they are 35 will have them afterwards for sure. Crossing the street can be tricky business, because one is so easily disctracted by cute small children that there isn't always time to look for oncoming traffic. This may actually work to my benefit because you need a great deal of confidence to cross the streets. They don't have stop signs and rarely have signals. There are roundabouts instead, and if you want to cross the best thing to do is step out into the street and hope the drivers will stop for you. I haven't made up my mind yet, but the overall consensus as far as I can tell is that the French are good drivers (translation: good brakers) and though they drive fast, they also stop fast so pedestrians aren't usually in danger. Justin says the key is making eye contact; I guess the idea is that if they acknowledge your presence they cannot in good conscience pretend they didn't see you and then run you down.
There are bakeries and butcher shops everywhere, though the idea of the "super store" is becoming more common. More and more western style stores with everything available are around, like Super U and Spar. Yesterday, we ventured out to Geant which is a sad little mini-mall like place with two cheap shoe stores, only one of which was opened, a cheap clothing store, closed for renovation, and two giant and cheap supermarkets. I guess I prefer the Super U at first, and the market second.
Jed and I went to the market the other day and it was lovely. Besides being a beautiful sunny day, we wandered through the closed streets and watched all the people buying meat, fruit and bread for the next few day's of meals. Market it three days a week. The sidewalk we came down to walk into it went past a long row of interesting and delicious looking breads, but not before we passed a trailer full of raw meat. I looked over just in time to see the proprietor swinging two dead and skinned rabbits up onto the scale. I don't want to say that they were bloody, but they were certainly freshly dead and quite red. I think it may have scarred me; I can't fully explain how, because fresh meat is better than frozen, but I don't want to eat rabbit and besides that it was just gross.
The days here alternate between slightly cloudy but warm and super warm with endless blue, unbroken by so much as a wisp of clouds. There are hanggliders over the cliff daily, and to top it all off, Mr. Vincent is cleaning the pool. Spring is afoot.
Millau is a compact city and everything radiates out from the Village Centre, which is marked by the giant water fountain that comes on around 9 am. All the red rooved buildings are settled into the valley and up on the fills around it, and the road out heads straight under the Viaduct. In the evening sunset it would make a great ending to a French Western. Do the French have Western movies? I don't know, I gave up on French TV shortly after my dive into French Wheel of Fortune.
All the women here, and most of the men, walk the streets with prams. According to French Glamour all the women who don't already have babies by the time they are 35 will have them afterwards for sure. Crossing the street can be tricky business, because one is so easily disctracted by cute small children that there isn't always time to look for oncoming traffic. This may actually work to my benefit because you need a great deal of confidence to cross the streets. They don't have stop signs and rarely have signals. There are roundabouts instead, and if you want to cross the best thing to do is step out into the street and hope the drivers will stop for you. I haven't made up my mind yet, but the overall consensus as far as I can tell is that the French are good drivers (translation: good brakers) and though they drive fast, they also stop fast so pedestrians aren't usually in danger. Justin says the key is making eye contact; I guess the idea is that if they acknowledge your presence they cannot in good conscience pretend they didn't see you and then run you down.
There are bakeries and butcher shops everywhere, though the idea of the "super store" is becoming more common. More and more western style stores with everything available are around, like Super U and Spar. Yesterday, we ventured out to Geant which is a sad little mini-mall like place with two cheap shoe stores, only one of which was opened, a cheap clothing store, closed for renovation, and two giant and cheap supermarkets. I guess I prefer the Super U at first, and the market second.
Jed and I went to the market the other day and it was lovely. Besides being a beautiful sunny day, we wandered through the closed streets and watched all the people buying meat, fruit and bread for the next few day's of meals. Market it three days a week. The sidewalk we came down to walk into it went past a long row of interesting and delicious looking breads, but not before we passed a trailer full of raw meat. I looked over just in time to see the proprietor swinging two dead and skinned rabbits up onto the scale. I don't want to say that they were bloody, but they were certainly freshly dead and quite red. I think it may have scarred me; I can't fully explain how, because fresh meat is better than frozen, but I don't want to eat rabbit and besides that it was just gross.
The days here alternate between slightly cloudy but warm and super warm with endless blue, unbroken by so much as a wisp of clouds. There are hanggliders over the cliff daily, and to top it all off, Mr. Vincent is cleaning the pool. Spring is afoot.
7.3.07
La Roue de la Fortune
Does watching tv still count as bad for you if you can't understand any of it? Last week I put the tv on for some background noise and to give my computer speakers a break. I watched about 15 minutes of the Tom Hanks movie Cast Away, dubbed in French. Then I was watching a French game show, thinking that with sentences outside of dialogue I may have a better idea of getting some words out of it. Of course, only knowing the French words for hello, goodbye, and the check please, it has turned out be quite unlikely that I will learn any words from watching TV. After giving up on the game show, I was channel surfing the 5 French channels that we get here in the chalet and I came across Will and Grace dubbed in French. Never being a huge fan of the show, it is possible I have seen this episode before, but I still had no idea what was happening. I am wondering if the laugh track is also re-dubbed in to better match the french version of the dialogue. I didn't watch any TV in Russia, but Dana said that the dubbing is really bad, often over top of the English which can still be heard. The French obviously have more time or money, because everything I have seen thus far has been dubbed very well. I guess this episode is pretty funny too, because there is much laughter; it's lost on me though.
So tonight, after losing Jed (leaving Jed, depending on who you ask), Christina and I came back to the chalet after a short stop at the Super U for groceries and wanting to watch a movie, had to settle for French television. I found Veronica Mars, which is kind of a guilty pleasure for me because it comes on after the Gilmore Girls on the WB, and so I started watching it, but soon got bored because I couldn't follow in French. So, I turned the channel and found French Wheel of Fortune. I was kind of excited, because for some reason I think that if the words are up on a board that I will be able to read and then understand them, even in French. Plus, I am a Wheel of Fortune fan from way back. So we are watching the 'French Vanna White' and decide that is like a California tan Pamela Anderson version of Vanna White, and then while talking in French to 'Pat' we hear say something in English; it was a quick phrase but I didn't detect an accent, so now I am intrigued. I google French Wheel of Fortune and after following a line from Google to Wikipedia I find out that she has her own website. She is a Swedish super-model who was once on the Swedish Olympic ski team and then was Miss Sweden in the the Miss World pageant in South Africa in the mid-nineties. She was picked up as a high fashion model in Paris, and while trying to break into acting, she has extended herself into the world of game shows. What you can't learn on the internet...
Also, Wheel of Fortune is just one example of how French tv is one big dance party. After one round, they began playing this famous french pop song that was the subject of one of the rounds and pretty soon 'Vanna' and the contestants are all dancing on the stage. It was madness, especially since, as Christina points out, though the French love to dance, they suck at it. Last week we watched this crazy music special on Friday night with all the really present famous French singers. It was on for like three hours, and each song had it's own theme complete with sets and costumes. It was supremely weird, but also supremely entertaining, and the highlight of the night was when the French sang, in English, the Bryan Adams song Everything I Do and a rockin' version of The Arrow's I Love Rock and Roll, complete with goth makeup and Victorian dresses. The rain makes want to hate this country, but the crazy music makes me love it. (By the way, in case you were worried, Jed turned up and is in tact and just fine; he even had a kebab.)
So tonight, after losing Jed (leaving Jed, depending on who you ask), Christina and I came back to the chalet after a short stop at the Super U for groceries and wanting to watch a movie, had to settle for French television. I found Veronica Mars, which is kind of a guilty pleasure for me because it comes on after the Gilmore Girls on the WB, and so I started watching it, but soon got bored because I couldn't follow in French. So, I turned the channel and found French Wheel of Fortune. I was kind of excited, because for some reason I think that if the words are up on a board that I will be able to read and then understand them, even in French. Plus, I am a Wheel of Fortune fan from way back. So we are watching the 'French Vanna White' and decide that is like a California tan Pamela Anderson version of Vanna White, and then while talking in French to 'Pat' we hear say something in English; it was a quick phrase but I didn't detect an accent, so now I am intrigued. I google French Wheel of Fortune and after following a line from Google to Wikipedia I find out that she has her own website. She is a Swedish super-model who was once on the Swedish Olympic ski team and then was Miss Sweden in the the Miss World pageant in South Africa in the mid-nineties. She was picked up as a high fashion model in Paris, and while trying to break into acting, she has extended herself into the world of game shows. What you can't learn on the internet...
Also, Wheel of Fortune is just one example of how French tv is one big dance party. After one round, they began playing this famous french pop song that was the subject of one of the rounds and pretty soon 'Vanna' and the contestants are all dancing on the stage. It was madness, especially since, as Christina points out, though the French love to dance, they suck at it. Last week we watched this crazy music special on Friday night with all the really present famous French singers. It was on for like three hours, and each song had it's own theme complete with sets and costumes. It was supremely weird, but also supremely entertaining, and the highlight of the night was when the French sang, in English, the Bryan Adams song Everything I Do and a rockin' version of The Arrow's I Love Rock and Roll, complete with goth makeup and Victorian dresses. The rain makes want to hate this country, but the crazy music makes me love it. (By the way, in case you were worried, Jed turned up and is in tact and just fine; he even had a kebab.)
Where I live...
This is the front porch of the chalet; and notice the French bike. Below is the view of the Viaduct from just behind the Super U.
