Au Revoir

Goodbyes are hard. You'd think I'd be getting used to them by now but I guess no one ever really does.

The first of this year's goodbyes was sad. How do you really say goodbye to a family you've lived with and kids you've taken care of for 10 months?

It's not like the goodbyes of leaving home to go study abroad for a year. In that case, you know you'll be home soon and most everything will be just as you left it. But this, I have no idea when I'll see again all these people I've come to know and love.

All I can say is, thank goodness for internet and Facebook, and even telephones and letters. In this age of communication, I'm glad France is just a click away.

Mozart l'Opera Rock

Finally, the day I'd been waiting for since February! Camilla and I got to see the French musical Mozart l'Opera Rock on June 13th at the Marseille Dome.

It's the story of Mozart's life with excellent period costumes, exerpts of Mozart's music, and fantastic rock songs (5 of which I have translated into English. The lyrics are just as amazing as the music.)

It was absolutely one of the highlights of my time here in France. I'm attaching a link to the video of my favorite of the songs. It's brilliant!

'Le bien qui fait mal'

A Birthday Party

This day started at 8:00am, two full hours before my alarm was set to go off. It was a text from Camilla. We were planning to go to her house with some friends to celebrate my birthday with a Mexican lunch at 11:30. She was letting me know that one of her kids was sick and she wouldn't be able to do the party, which means we no longer had a location for said party.

So I hauled myself out of bed and started contacting the appropriate people. I texted Hannah and woke her up too. Then I emailed our friend Marinella, who is Italian and doesn't have a French cell phone. Since I couldn't fall back to sleep while waiting for responses to my messages, I went ahead and took a shower and took the laundry off the line.

Finally we decided to have the lunch at my house and I would just pick up the two girls at the train station. I was going to leave at 11:10. By 11 I still hadn't heard back from Marinella, which probably meant she hadn't gotten the email and would end up in Cassis all alone. Then at 11:05 I got a call from Hannah saying she'd missed her bus. So, I raced out of the house to pick up Hannah, hoping to get to the train station quick enough to find Marinella on the train as it came through and get her to get off.

On the way, I got behind every slow, massive truck within a ten mile radius. I was annoyed. Hannah later called my behavior saucy. I called it agitated and pissed off.

Anyway, I got Hannah and got back to the train in time but there was no Marinella. So we walked up and down the platform peering into the windows trying to find her. It felt a little awkward. Then the train pulled away, leaving us alone on the platform.

So we drove to Cassis. And we found Marinella sitting all alone at the train station. And then we drove back to Aubagne. We gave her the grand tour of Aubagne (which lasts about 3 minutes) and went back to the house to make tacos and guacamole.

Finally, we sat down to eat. We were so hungry! I got through one taco. The gate buzzer went off. I set off to find my host dad to tell him some painters were here. He was gone. I met the painters. I tried to figure out if they were actually painters or lunatics out to steal our stuff. They were painters. This made me glad. I left them to do their job. Then host dad got home so I didn't have to worry anymore about unknown painters.

After that everything went just fine. We ate so much it was hard to stand up and since we couldn't stand up, we decided we might as well eat some cookies since we were already at the table. Then we went on a beautiful drive through the countryside, passing terraced gardens, cherry orchards, olive trees, and even two tiny nearby towns.

All in all, after the chaos of the morning, it turned out to be a really nice day. In the end, I dropped Marinella off at the bus, Hannah at her house, and now I am in my room, about to take a nap, which in my opinion, makes any day great.

A Sampling

I generally get annoyed if people wait really long between each post and then apologize each time they enter a new one, but that's what I'm going to do tonight. I haven't been a diligent blogger and I apologize.

I do sort of have an excuse, or two. It is partly due to the fact that I am busy thinking about trying to get everything I've accumulated this year home in a suitcase and a few shipping boxes. It may also have something to do with thinking no one reads this anyway except the Chinese website who keeps leaving inappropriate comments on my posts.

But despite it all, I am back to keep you in the know. The first thing you should know is that it's summertime. I know it's been hot back home for months now but summer just sprang upon us here and it is hot. It's not just muggy, swimming through air kind of hot. No, this hot has to do with the sun. The hot, Mediterranean sun. The sun that scalds your eyeballs and makes you see twinkly stars in the middle of the day. The sun that has turned my practically translucent skin to a toasty, probably unhealthy, brown.

But with scalded eyes and toasty skin comes lounging by the pool and taking refreshing dips in the sea. That makes it all worthwhile. All the flowers around are jealous. They wish they could take dips in the sea. They are unfortunately all dying of heat stroke. At least they didn't have to brave jellyfish infested waters last weekend like I did. Scary!

The other piece of info, which most of you probably know, is that I just had a birthday! Twenty-three years of being alive. I think that's kind of an accomplishment. I celebrated the day before with an aperitif at our neighbor's house and then dinner with my host family. It was lovely! I then celebrated the actual day by going to school (which did make me happy) and then spending the rest of the day by myself, moping about being alone.

But tomorrow, I'm getting a mini party at Camilla's house in Cassis with some buddies and I'm really excited about it. Tacos and guacamole!! Somehow I moved to France and fell in love with Mexican food. Hm. Maybe that's because it's so ridiculously hard to find in a restaurant here.

I've also gotten some encouragement on my French speaking abilities this past week so that makes me really happy. I'm always a novelty in the local McDonalds, which can sometimes be incredibly annoying or sometimes it's great, and this time I had a nice conversation with the man taking my order and he told me I speak good French. That made my day.

Then later my host family told me I was finally mastering the R sound. In my opinion, that is the hardest sound in the realm of human communicative sounds. Well, that is until I heard Camilla's family speak Polish and changed my mind. But still, R is hard.

Finally, today I was able to have a typing conversation with my French teacher from college. We were able to have the whole conversation in French and I was so excited about how much I've learned since I've been here. I definitely have a long way to go but I haven't given up hope.

So, I guess that gets you pretty much up to date. Hopefully it won't take me as long next time to write and hopefully I won't get any more inappropriate comments. (But I doubt it. It's been happening a lot. I should probably reflect a little before posting blog titles with the word "nudity" in them, even if it was completely innocent.)

I'll be stateside in less than a month. So, see you soon!!

Birthdays

We got to celebrate two birthdays this week. Paul turned 7 on Monday and Marie turned 4 on Wednesday. Wow, 7 and 4! It's hard to believe how much they've grown in just the time I've been here.

I wasn't there for Paul's treasure hunt birthday party since I was busy getting lost in Cassis with Valerie, but on Monday night we got to be there for his birthday dinner and presents. That night, we all, including Valerie, gathered on the floor of his bedroom to play his new game "Qui-est?" That's our "Guess Who." I adored that game when I was a kid. It's a bit trickier in French, especially when one of your team members speaks no French, another (me) speaks enough but can't for the life of them figure out if the other team is saying 'blond' or 'white' (those are startlingly similar in French), and the other making the other two play because it is more humorous. Obviously, Paul's team won.

Next was Marie's day. There was a party and for the first half, I was the child wrangler. My job was to keep them upstairs in Marie's room while downstairs was being set up for her treasure hunt. Keeping 6 fidgety 3 and 4 year olds in one room is not as easy as I had anticipated, especially if one is strong-willed and already possesses strong leadership qualities. I had to run down the stairs on a few retrieval missions.

But it was fun and entertaining. I ate way too much sugar and regretted it later on but it was yummy. And what a great opportunity it was to practice out my French. I think I was mostly successful but judging by some of the blank or confused looks, I think some of the kids just thought I was stupid. Hm.

Valerie

Valerie came to see me!

Yep, she flew all the way over here. Amidst volcanic ash, flight delays, and rescheduling, she managed to arrive only 5 hours late. Not too shabby.

We had a blast. The first day in Marseille we checked out Chateau d'If for my third time, climbed the mountains of Iles de Frioul in the middle of the mistral (exceptionally strong wind), watched an old man get attacked by an angry boyfriend for taking inappropriate pictures of the girlfriend, and got attacked ourselves by a giant seagull.

The next day, we spent an entire day sneezing as we strolled down the shady boulevards of Aix-en-Provence, the pollen floating off the trees around us like a sparkling, golden fairy dust. It felt horrible. But the shopping was great. We checked out American Apparel and had a serious 80s flashback. I don't know how many times we caught ourselves saying, "Hey, my mom had that!" We also found toy stores, gelato shops, cafes for hot chocolate, and of course, crepes. I have discovered that having company is not beneficial to my waistline.

Sunday, we had a nice lunch with Camilla and two of her Polish friends in Cassis. Then we walked to the port and had a lovely time sleeping on the rocky beach, listening to two British brothers singing 60s songs, and eating more gelato. When it was time to go home, we went in search of our friends who were going to drop us at the train station. I don't know what it is about Cassis but I always get lost there. It is one of the smallest towns I have ever been to and all roads lead down to the sea and somehow, I still get lost, every single time. Long story short, we didn't find our ride and we walked an hour to the train station arriving exaclty 10 minutes after our train had left. Oh well.

Monday and Tuesday I had school so Valerie was left to fend for herself in Marseille for the morning. The first day seemed to go just fine. She hung out at Vieux Port and did some shopping and still managed to walk all the way to school to meet me for lunch. The next day she went to the park and had some less than pleasant experiences. But she was fine and after it all, we had a crepe picnik in the grass in the middle of the city beside the carousel and it was fun.

And in between all of that, she got to meet my host family, play with the kids, and get very familiar with Aubagne's two good restaurants. It was a relaxed week and I had a lot of fun getting to show her how I've been living this year.

I am now feeling bittersweet about coming home in a little over a month. I will desperately miss things about my life here and I'm sure I will get homesick for this life, but I can hardly wait to come home to a place where I am surrounded by familiar: the language, the sounds, the smells, the food, the faces. I'm ready to be back somewhere that I feel like I fit in. Haha, this is exactly opposite what I was feeling when I left for this crazy adventure. We'll see how long it lasts once I'm stateside.

The Rest

I'm not going to lie. As much fun as I had on vacation with my family, and as much as I love all the pictures (12,600!) and all the memories we've taken from it, I'm ready to move on. I'm doing other things now and have other stories to tell, but I feel like I can't because I'm a bit OCD about order and I can't post about now before I've posted about then. So, once again, I'm going to let pictures mostly speak for themselves and leave it at that.

Cassis: Cap Canaille. We also met up with my friend Camilla and did a boat tour of the calanques (inlets).

Marseille: Chateau d'If (think Count of Monte Cristo). I also took them around to places I go often, like school and my favorite cafes.

Aix-en-Provence: Great shopping and beautiful boulevards and fountains.

Arles: Ancient Roman ruins, like this colosseum.

Les Baux: Medieval walled village on a hill, complete with castle. Here we're watching a trebuchet demonstration.

Bandol: On this day we drove along the coast discovering towns like Le Castellet (another old walled town) and Bandol, a coastal resort area.

Bouillabaise: Special fish soup of Marseille and the surrounding area. We got ours in Cassis.

Pont du Gard: Ancient Roman aqueduct.

Roussillon: Cliffs of ochre.

Gordes: Perfect Provencial town. Featured in movies like A Good Year.

Carmargue: A marsh area where much of the rice and salt of France comes from. There is also a ton of interesting wildlife like pink flamingos, white horses, and black bulls.

So, that was our vacation in a really teeny nutshell. It was fantastic to spend so much time with my family and also to discover that all of these awesome places are so close to me right now.