So, I don't know if I've ever mentioned that the last tenant of our apartment was an interior decorator. Our landlady has dropped some hints that she'd like us to do a bit more with the place than we have--including selling our washing machine and getting a new one so it fits in the bathroom instead of the kitchen, where it "disrupts the aesthetic." But our landlady is 83, shuffles around the property in slippers, and brought me paper towels once as a gift, so I'm not too worried about her judging my lack of decorating skills.

What I AM worried about is not enjoying our terrace to the absolute maximum potential. The last tenants used it like an outdoor living/dining room:

So, along with a few lawn chairs and a bazillion gorgeous potted plants, we needed a picnic table. I could have gotten a nice teak one like Mr. I-Made-The-Apartment-So-Much-Cooler-Than-You-Do had, and I would have. Well, I would have if I had found one on craigslist (actually the french version, www.leboncoin.fr) for forty bucks. Instead, I found this:

Covered in dirt and rust? No problem! I'll throw a tablecloth over it. It'll just get killed by peacocks anyway, and I couldn't dump disinfectant on wood like I can on plastic. I was super excited when "Sandra" called me back to say I could have the table...not so pumped when she gave me directions to her home...in a campground.

But it's been in the sixties, I want to start eating all meals outside, and I am not paying 200 bucks for a table and chairs at a store when I can get one for 40 from a trailer park. Because I am just that kind of girl.

Josh wasn't home, so I emailed him:

hey, just in case i get murdered by crazy people, after class today i'm going to the camping/trailer park "lou soleil" in carry-le-rouet to buy something off le bon coin from someone called "sandra."

Love ya!

His response:

Umm.... What is worth your life to buy in a trailer park?

Now, to do justice to trailer parks, I would have considered the possibility that this was a trap to lure in unsuspecting young women for some kind of depraved butchery no matter where these people lived. And you'd think the fact that Sandra was a female and clearly my age would have reassured me, but no. I was raised to always consider the possibility that I could be brutally murdered, and I do.

Unfortunately, I was not raised to always consider the possibility that my GPS does not actually work, probably because GPS hadn't been invented yet when I was being raised. Halfway to Carry-le-Rouet, or so I thought, I realized that the GPS screen was frozen and I had driven half an hour too far. This would be a good time to mention that we call our GPS Ms. Fairweather because she only works when the going is good and when we don't actually need GPS. We keep a map on hand. I pulled it out, and yay, the best way to get to Carry-le-Rouet was to drive back along the coast.

Now, since I was driving, I didn't take any pictures. These are shots I took of other times we were driving along similar stretches of coastline around here.

Something about driving through little beach towns with a warm sea breeze blowing in the windows just made my heart feel about three pounds lighter. Bout'Chou and I had some bonding time, since this was one of our first outings together, and I decided I needed to stop and get him an ice cream cone and eat it for him on the beach.

But first: the table. Turned out the "trailer park" was a gated community with italianate sculptures and a fountain in the visitors' parking lot. And it overlooked a beach. And had carefully manicured landscaping. The trailers were pretty much just trailers, though--some people were even just living in tents. And Sandra's family was really nice, and since the table was sitting in their yard all ready to be loaded into my car, they had no chance to lock me in the basement. In fact, they might be some of the friendliest people I've met here. I felt like I'd stepped into Wisconsin or Michigan or somewhere where people smile at strangers and load a picnic table into a girl's car for her. As Fabrice (Sandra's boyfriend) let me out of the community's pillared and cupid-sculptured gate, he even said, "See ya later!" instead of "Goodbye."

Since I'd overshot Carry-le-Rouet, I didn't have time to stop and find parking so I could feed Bout'Chou ice cream and walk on the beach. But then, I passed a grocery store...where I ran in and bought a box of ice cream cones (like drumsticks...but they come in about 10 flavors here. I got coffee). So Bout'Chou and I had an ice cream cone as we drove home, past the cute little beach towns and through the hills.

Now I just have to set up the furniture. But first, I think I'm going to call my old doctor in the US and make sure I've had my tetanus booster.

Yes we Cannes

Our friends David and Jessica were here visiting this week and Jessica wanted to see Cannes during the film festival. So off we went, she and I, to get our fill of glamour.

Cannes is, a la base, a little seaside town-turned-festival city. The old town (including castle) perches on top of a peninsula that juts out into the sea beside a little port.

On the other side of the port is the main festival pavilion—location of the official red carpet.

Then stretching along the beach is the town: a mix of fancy hotels, like the “Hotel Splendid”:

And of course the Ritz-Carlton, where lots of les stars stay, apparently.

Did we bump into any of the famous people who were at the film festival (Woody Allen, Cate Blanchett, Tim Burton. . .)? Nope, not unless you count George and Brad.

We determined pretty quickly that the celebrities only come out at night. I pointed out to Jessica that this was like cockroaches. I had bugs on the brain with the whole termite/scorpion/cockroach/landlord-not-concerned-enough-about-it situation. Anyway, I don’t blame them (the celebrities); there are tourists everywhere and they would get swamped, plus, I think they’re there to promote their films to other industry people and go to official events, not party. Aside from the gawking tourists, the atmosphere of the festival was just like that of a big convention for any industry—people in business clothes coming and going and grabbing business lunches and talking on cell phones. We could tell who was connected to the festival because they all had lanyards with ID cards on them and a “we’re doing important work” look in their eyes. As opposed to the people not connected to the festival, who had a “we’re hoping we run into George Clooney” look in their eyes.

There’s no way for someone unconnected to the festival to get into the films short of begging, which dozens of people were doing in front of the theatre, holding up signs pleading for tickets. As far as I can tell, though, the other movie theatres in town show a different selection that is still loosely affiliated with the festival. We started to walk to one of these other theatres, where a French friend had told us we would be able to see a film for free (!) and people associated with it would probably be there (actors, directors, etc.). On the way to the theatre, we ended up roaming around the old city, and stopped at the castle on a hill, and decided that the town was too interesting to spend half of our remaining 4 hours sitting cooped up in a theatre. So we walked back through town, along the main (shopping) street.

It was a pretty weird mix of shops—the normal “high-street” brands (like Zara and Mango) peppered with pretty high-end retailers. Nothing über-fancy, though. I think that stuff is carefully tucked away from gawking tourists. We DID find a second-hand shop with red-carpet-worthy duds—and oh, how I love this dress.

I would wear it if I were going to make a red-carpet entrance. Although it’s probably out of the budget of a humble English teacher—the frock hanging next to it was Lanvin and I think the shoes were some equally haute marque.

After strolling around town a bit and getting caught in a rain shower (luckily we’d brought umbrellas, thank you MeteoFrance for being right for once in your weather predictions) we went past the festival pavilion again. . .

And saw everyone set up to photograph the stars as they arrived for the evening’s events. I think those are all photographers (or at least very determined and devoted fans) under those umbrellas.

Earlier in the day we’d seen the ranks of ladders set up for strategic picture-taking.

I think the “real” photographers with press passes get to go into a special cordoned-off area. We waited and watched for a while perched on a wall across the street. I think we were just too early for anyone in evening wear, although we saw some people not dressed like celebrities coming in and out.

But we had to catch our bus, and the two hours of sitting were still not enough to erase the fatigue of a full day of walking. So, tired, damp, and chilly, we got home to our unglamorous but warm apartment with a husband waiting for each of us. After pretending that we’d seen Russell Crowe, we fessed up that all we’d seen was the town and lots and lots of people with lanyards. The celebrities only come out at night, I told Josh. “Oh,” he said, “like cockroaches.”

What we love (and what shocks us)

I LOVE hearing French people tell me about their vacations to the US. I spend so much time musing over the quirky things about French culture that I like to get the reverse viewpoint. So, back at school after spring break (two weeks!), one of the third graders came up to me in complete raptures to gush about his trip to New York. His highlights: eating a hotdog from a street vendor, and the Phantom of the Opera marquee. He didn’t see the show, but there was something about the image of the mask he found intriguing. His mom did take him to see Mary Poppins on Broadway (a smarter choice for an eight year old boy), and we had a good time discussing how cool the set was—it was funny to find myself reminiscing about New York with a French third grader. The American cultural quirk he found the most interesting? “Instead of asking for the toilet, we had to say something about a bathroom.” Yeah, just like the British, the French think we’re weird for using euphemisms to talk about...um...restrooms.

On Tuesday, somehow the conversation in the teachers’ lounge turned to visits to the US, and the CP (Kindergarten) teacher had been to the states a few times to visit a cousin. “I liked Virginia,” she told me, “But the people there seemed a bit prude.” I figured she must be talking about that stereotype of wearing skirts to football games and going jogging in pearls. On further questioning, though, this was her culture shock: “Oh, well, you know, I was just eightteen, and my cousin told me we absolutely had to put clothes on in the morning. My sister and I couldn’t stay in our bras and underwear for breakfast. She said, ‘I’m sorry, but we get dressed here.'” I assured my co-worker that we tend to get dressed in the morning in other parts of the US, too, and that she had definitely played her part to contribute to American stereotypes about the French. I wonder what the conversation had been like between her cousin and her cousin’s new American husband before they put a stop to their visitors' morning...Frenchness.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how many people want to tell me all about their favorite US vacations when they find out I’m an americaine. Last Monday the guy sitting beside me in class had some questions about my life as a foreign student, since he wants to do the same thing, but reverse: it’s his dream to study in the US. He wanted to know if I go into Marseille much (it’s our nearest big city) and I said I would, but I don’t know what to do there, and did he have any suggestions? He looked a bit stumped. “Man,” he said, “I’m just a 20-year-old guy. I have no idea what to tell you to go do.” I’m not sure if the fact that he was a 20-year-old-guy meant he thought his experiences limited or just completely unlike anything that could possibly appeal to me. I flatter myself it was the former.

I asked him why he wanted to live aux États-Unis and he was once more unable to express his interest. “Is it the culture?” I asked him, “The people?” “Nooo.....” he answered thoughfully... “It’s that, well...here, in France, we have McDonalds, and we have Quick,” (crappy McDonald’s knock-off) “and in the US, you have McDonalds, and right next to it, you have...what’s it called? Yeah, Wendy’s! And then Jack in the Box, and In and Out... It’s amazing.” I enjoyed basking in his effervescent bliss at the idea of la vie americaine, even if it isn’t the part of being from the US that I’m most proud of or most miss.

I guess I could figure out what that is by looking at what I brag about the most when talking about my patrie. And that would have to be our amazing return policies. The average amount of time you have to return something to a store here? Fifteen days. That is one day over two weeks, and about seventy five days under the three months you get at a place like the GAP... and a bazillion days under the limitless returns at Bed Bath and Beyond, who ALSO TAKE THEIR COMPETITORS COUPONS. Half the time here we can’t even get the in-store specials marked “reduction taken at register.”

But, no, I wanted to talk about French people’s perceptions of the US, not how much I miss American shopping. Actually, two French women I know who are my mom’s age told me about visits to the US made when they were teenagers and how shocked they were by “les grandes surfaces”—basically, our grocery stores, or department stores, or stores like Target. That didn’t exist here 30 years ago—people went from shop to shop to get their groceries, and Josh and I could do that now if we didn’t feel so much more comfortable going to Monoprix where we can get our milk, printer paper and cleaning products in one fell swoop (in fact, I need to finish this and go get milk before they close). One of the women said she was just completely overwhelmed by seeing so many things in one place, with loud music playing, and the other had a much funnier shock (she's the one who wasn’t thrilled with the whole “clothes” thing). She said she didn’t even bother going in while her cousin did her shopping, and instead, she and her sister had plunked themselves down on a bench for two hours and watched everyone coming in and out of the grocery store. Now it was my turn to be shocked...I didn’t think Americans were all that interesting. “We couldn’t get over it,” she said, “Our jaws were just hanging open. In France, if you’re going to go out to the store, you’re careful about what you wear. And there, there were adult women, out in public, wearing shorts...and tank tops.”

Um... I guess when I get back from Monoprix I'm rotating the tank tops to the back of my closet. Or not. Sometimes I just can't let go of my identity as an American, and, you know, people seem to be OK with that--especially when part of that American-ness means bringing in a loaf of Josh's homemade banana bread. As they were passing it around the lunch table in the teachers lounge, someone turned to me and said, "you know, I know an americaine, and once she served a cake made with carrots." My new resolution: make them my mom's zucchini bread. This is gonna BLOW THEIR MINDS.

Revenge of the Euromullet

Sounds like a bad B-movie, doesn’t it? When I studied abroad in Spain, I made the mistake of going to the hippest, trendiest barrio (neighborhood) to get my hair cut (at the uber trendy salon in the basement of Mercado Fuencarral), and telling the girl “just do something stylish.” I walked out with the same mullet that the girl before me had gotten, and I was pretty sure the girl sitting down in the chair as I paid my bill was also going to leave with those same awful layers. . .

Anyway, my euromullet grew out, and in the meantime, more people than ever stopped me to ask for directions, thinking I was a real madrileña. All in all, the euromullet was a good cultural experience.

And now it’s back.

Quick parenthesis: unlike people I know who have a great unique style—like my rockin’ hipster brother Steve, who will wear pretty much anything as long as no one else is wearing it—I just want to blend in. Not that, if given the choice between the ability to fly and the ability to become invisible, I would pass on flight, but I don’t like to stick out too much. So, to go down to the university here, I’ve stopped wearing colors (unless it’s one colored article of clothing and everything else I’m wearing is black or brown), and majorly upped the beige, black and grey content of my wardrobe, because that's what everyone else does. No joke--one day I sat in a class with about 40 people and counted how many of them were wearing a color other than brown, grey, or black. Seven. Seven people were wearing colors.

So once I had the no-colors thing down, all I needed was a trendy haircut. (And a scarf, but I still haven’t found one that I like.) I realize I sound completely superficial and trend-focused, but I hadn't gotten my hair cut in two years and it was so bad my mom was dropping hints like, "So, how do you like your hair these days?" when we talked on skype. So, when I had last Tuesday off, I meandered around town to choose a salon. I settled on “The New York Salon,” decorated with giant canvases of taxicabs and the Empire State Building (and of course, Marilyn Monroe), since they offer a good student discount. And massage chairs at the hair-washing sinks.

My conversation with the stylist was rather illuminating. Not only did I learn quite a bit about her self esteem as I watched her check herself out in the mirror the entire time she cut my hair, but I discovered one more reason the French have such a reputation for being stylish: it takes FOUR YEARS to get certified to cut hair here. And it showed: I got a gorgeous, trendy haircut. And then I asked her to make the layers an inch shorter. And then, as Marilyn Monroe smirked at me from above, I walked out with another euromullet. But that’s okay. It will grow out. And I really, really liked those massage chairs. . .

Detours

Detours always tempt me on the walk home. The walk home (uphill) seems shorter if I'm passing new things as I go. Plus, now that it's hot, I take as many detours through air-conditioned stores as I can, or I alter my path to stay in the shade as long as possible. I think this drives Josh nuts.

Today's detour turned into an errand, (buying handmade soaps at the market) and then led me past my favorite street musician. Here's a video I took of him playing by town hall and the library (and the dreaming cat store). You'll note at the end of the video he realizes I'm recording him. Today I made up for it and doubled the contents of his coffee can, so I think we're friends again.



By the way, on one of my recent side trips into air conditioning, I came across Marylin Monroe votive candles at this store, which also features her on a coffee table:

Dogs, Babies, and Dreaming Cats

The weather here is BEEEE-yu-tee-ful and the sunlight on the ochre-colored buildings is gorgeous. Everyone is out enjoying the sunshine as usual. Lots of dogs and babies here in Aix. LOTS OF DOGS AND BABIES. On my walk down to town center the other day, I spent most of the time behind a man walking three little dogs. They were all about the same size and wagged their tails and bounced along together like some kind of circus act or cheerleading squad. On our way down toward the post office, we passed at least four or five toddlers in strollers--all of whom turned around to watch the dogs go by.

Here he goes. . .



And here's a better shot.



He's walking past a great little gift shop, Le Chat Rêveur, The Dreaming Cat. Yes, that's a goat in the window.



Le Chat Rêveur sells fun things like post cards and funny placemats and clocks and whiteboards, all with little comics and slogans that seem much funnier in French than they would in English. I always want to buy people presents there, but I can never pick just one thing to get.

Mon Frère, il est venu!

My brother David arrived last night just as I was dropping the rest of the baby asparagus into the sauté pan for dinner and mixing chèvre into the béchamel. I greeted him at the door and shoved a piece of the goat cheese into his mouth: "Welcome to France!" (It was really good goat cheese.)

I had gone to the daily farmer's market during a break in my classes to pick up ingredients for dinner, and it was such a beautiful market day here in Aix. The sky had lots of fluffy clouds rolling around, giving enticing shades and variation to the strong, clear Provençal light. The vegetables and fruits were gorgeous under red and yellow umbrellas. The stand where I bought the asparagus had three kinds: baby asparagus, which was a range between what you'd usually see in the US and skinny little asparagus twigs, regular French asparagus, which had the circumference of a dime, and huge goliath asparagus, the same height, but the diameter of a half dollar! Whoa! Wish I'd had my camera.

The trip to the market was just one more reminder that I love it here: the smells, colors, foods, and weather, the sunlight on the yellow stone buildings, the daily challenge of having no clue what people are saying to me as I try to accomplish the most mundane tasks. I'm excited to share it with a visitor!

The Oriental Express

Once upon a time, about a hundred yards down the street from our apartment, sandwiched between tourist shops and expensive salons, there was a store which sold oriental rugs. The store was fronted by large glass windows on which half a dozen cheap paper signs were taped advertising sale prices, each outbidding the other in obnoxiously colorful, bubble-shaped numerals. Inside, one perceived the majestic carpets draped lazily over humps of unidentifiable furniture, one on top of the other, seemingly in conversation. The showroom extended all the way to the back of the store where, behind the lone supporting column, slightly to the left, a small but tidy desk supported a single flat screen computer monitor and a small lamp.

These elements were worth noting since they were often the store’s only occupants. In five months of passing the rug shop, which bore no name, posted no business hours, and had no phone number, I saw one customer. One customer, one time, who seemed determined not to lean too closely toward any of the wares lest he look interested in an actual purchase. There was, of course, the owner, whose face was most often turned intently downward as he concentrated on some invisible puzzle between the lamp and the computer screen. Occasionally he would be on the phone, but most of the time he simply sat motionless at his desk, a quiet sentry over the sleeping rugs. I don’t know why, but I imagined that he was Turkish, as I imagined the rugs were, and that one might even be expected to speak Turkish upon entering the store. Most of all though, I sensed through the glass that these rugs missed their mother country, and were spoiling in a foreign land where no one knew their worth, where their only spokesperson was a pack of sale signs from the two-Euro store.

The store was a sorry spectacle, one was forced to conclude. But after a few months of sharing Aix-en-Provence with Oriental Rugs Anonymous, I was anything but sympathetic.

It all started with a sign. TAPIS ORIENTALES: GRANDE VENTE AUJOURD’HUI ET DIMANCHE– PLUS DE 60 a 70 % DE REDUCTION. (Oriental rugs: Grand Sale Today and Sunday...) Three feet by four, perhaps, with a blue background and loud white lettering—taped somewhat audaciously to the pole of a “One Way” sign near the Hotel de Ville. Continuing up the street toward our apartment, I soon glanced another identical sign,just outside the rug shop. Normal, it was their sale, after all. One hundred yards later, a third sign appeared, this one at eye-level, frantically tied to the old lamppost in our square. Bright orange. The kind of orange one needs to avoid a hunting accident. This was becoming somewhat insistent, I thought, but figured that the weekend must have been an important turning point for the store to move stock.

That Monday the sign in our square still hung securely to the lamppost, its tidings of the weekend’s bargains defiant in the face of the new week. I soon learned that the rug shop only considered time an ally, and never an adversary. By Wednesday afternoon I was passing dozens of cars whose windshield wipers were dutifully holding onto flyers for the previous weekend’s sale. These flyers would disappear and reappear over the next few months, and nary a street in Aix-en-Provence was spared as far as I could tell. The orange placards took up more and more offensive positions in town, as well. The road leading from the bus terminals to centreville had been completely overrun; one could not help being reminded of the rug shop’s outrageous sales no matter if one was trying to enter the city or to flee.

Soon, the store had revamped for another major push, and so at least half of the posters and flyers were advertising deals yet to come at the same time as their predecessors continued their campaigns for the glorious prices that had been. My customer count still stood at one person despite multiple daily observations, however, and I was growing more and more impatient with each daring attempt the rug shop made at increased visibility. I had started to see signs 30 kilometers away in Marseille.

For the second sale, flyer production seemed to hit a peak. Aix’s municipal parking officers could have easily lost their jobs if their superiors had seen the efficiency that was actually possible by a determined force of windshield apostles. At one point I spotted a min-van on the highway with a TAPIS ORIENTALES flyer clinging furiously to its rear-wiper blade like a hyena that had locked onto a frantic wildebeest. That that particular bite was not the fatal one did not so much matter: there would be others that would pick up the trail. They came at night, anyway.

One of the most maddening aspects of this experience was the utter openness with which the rug shop had perpetrated its campaign. A simple calculation would have quickly led one to the conclusion that if every store in Aix employed a similar poster-flyer campaign, we would quickly have become the most ridiculous looking city in the world. France even spends money to maintain public bulletin boards for just these types of reasons. Furthermore, sales are strictly regulated in France. A store cannot simply slash its prices, claim to sell, or actually sell at a loss whenever it wants to. There are rules and seasons for sales, imposed by the government... Hadn’t the police seen these posters? Or the mayor? Or the trash men!?

This past Sunday new posters went up around the Hotel de Ville once more. DESTOCKAGE TOTAL...AUJOURD’HUI SEULEMENT (Today only!)...and more mind-blowing numbers and percentages-off their already mystical prices. At one point the rug shop had actually just gone ahead and put one their carpets outside the store with a sign on it showing the calculation of what 70% off actually came to. I think the rug, about the size of an average bath towel, still cost two hundred forty Euros—which, after it had been outside decorating the sidewalk for weeks, seemed a little steep to me. In any event, I had a minor flip-out when I saw the new signs going up this past weekend. I am not proud, but I actually did kick the first sign I saw. I should say, and Julia can attest to this, that it was a light kick—my equivalent of throwing a shoe at someone instead of, say, shooting them—but it was not altogether without disgust.

And then it happened.

I was walking home from class on Monday and I reached the place where I normally made my “observation” of the rug shop’s business. With each passing view of the store’s empty showroom over the past few months, I had at least experienced a modest shot of schadenfreude—which just goes to show how deep and mature this whole experience had been making me—but Monday, oh Monday was very different.

I was actually ready to walk right by the rug shop without glancing inside when somehow my peripheral vision picked up some subtle incongruity in the fuzzy background off to my left side. My eyes were riveted to the street, as usual, which is, by the way, why I have gone five months and three weeks without stepping in a single piece of dog poop. However, at that moment my subconscious needed only a split second to assemble some very alarming data into a full-fledged reflex that wrenched my head to the left:

Empty. The store was empty. Not the usual empty, either. There were no carpets. There were no signs. There was no desk, no computer, no lamp, no Turk. The space looked as if construction had just finished that morning and it would be ready to accommodate its first lessee in the coming week. I managed a small and ungraceful hop of delight. I took my bearings, and tried to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. The chic visagiste to the right, the postcards stands to the left—yes—this was it—the rug shop—no—the not-rug shop—the rug shop was no more!

I will not assume full credit for the store’s demise, of course. I did kick the sign, I know, but certainly other forces—market ones, for example—probably played some role. The important thing is that the rugs have left the city, and left it for good from what I can tell. They have perhaps migrated again, quietly alighting on some unsuspecting showroom floor behind an normal looking storefront in some far away city. They will try, for a while maybe, to find homes willing to pay retail. But it won’t be long. I tell you, it won’t be long before the signs. It won’t be long before the flyers.

Stocking our fridge

The stink of the stench!
The stench of the stink!
The things in your fridge
Smell worse than you think!

Emptying out the two little forgotten tupperware containers in the back of the fridge moved Josh to poetry. We think their former contents were mozzarella cheese and condensed milk.

Yesterday we did a “major shop” at Carrefour, our local super grocery store. It’s big even by American standards and is basically the equivalent of a really large American grocery store plus a Walmart. We had planned to borrow a friend’s car but she ended up using it. No matter, it’s an easy bus ride. The only problem was, we ended up with two backpacks, five giant re-usable shopping bags, and a new trash can full of things like orange juice, milk, and canned stuff. We kindof forgot we were going to have to carry it. . . but we managed, and our new shopping motto is, “Carrefour? What do you need a car for?!?!” Here’s a picture of Josh with the cart, but the photo is flattering to the extremely overweight contents of our grocery bags and they don’t look as big and heavy as they were in real life. By the way, notice the French shopping cart. Slightly larger than an American cart (if I remember right) and eight times more difficult to steer. Apparently there’s some kind of rule in France that says shopping carts have to veer to the right at all times.

Winter Sports

Surprisingly, we’ve found January the perfect time of the year here to practice our favorite sports. Josh finally got in touch with the city’s ultimate frisbee team, and today he’s wearing a t-shirt and shorts and playing in an ultimate frisbee tournament on the beach in St. Tropez. He called about an hour ago to say that he could see the Alps from the beach. His comment about the tournament: What else is the French Riviera for?

I’ve had similar luck with my favorite sport: shopping. January is one of two “soldes,” sale months, here. Basically stores save up all their clearance merchandise, and put it back out starting January 7th. January 7th was also the first day of “The Big Chill,” as the newspapers were calling it. We were hit with six inches of snow, which closed the highways for at least a day and cancelled school for three. It snows so infrequently here that there are no snow plows. There were, however, some very happy children (and children at heart) who built snowmen in the squares, had snowball fights in the streets, and skied to the grocery store.

Six inches of snow is nothing for a girl from Central PA, so on Wednesday afternoon, I ate a good lunch, strapped on my boots and headed out to rock the soldes. Now I’m lounging in my amazing new yoga pants that gather in bows at the ankles and would make Princess Jasmine jealous, just starting to study for the exam I was supposed to have on Thursday. La vie est belle!

On another note: we finally understand why everyone in Central PA runs out to buy bread and milk when the forecasters call for snow. Delivery trucks couldn’t make it into town, and on Friday our supermarket was almost empty of all the everyday staples. Paté, anyone?

Looking French

Today's ideas for looking more French:
1. get a pair of knee high leather boots. (This will not make me look young and hip, since even grandmothers sport them.)
2. Wear a woven scarf.
3. Put on more eyeliner.

Settling In

If the goal of the first part of our week was finding an apartment, the goal of the second part was making it livable. I’m not sure how close we’ve gotten.

Our apartment is in the “Centre-ville,” the medieval (or maybe even Roman) center of Aix. We’re a block from the cathedral, Saint-Sauveur. It’s not very big, but it’s very gothic—gargoyles, pointed arches, sculpted saints—the works. There’s even an older section dating from the 600s. We can hear the bells echoing in our little alleyway throughout the day.

Our apartment has one room and one window, but the window is tall, and has old-fashioned, paint peeling shutters that you have to lean out to open and close. The building was built before the advent of electricity, but after the late middle ages. We know the building predates electricity because of the wires tied to the outside of the building and running along the baseboards. We’ve fixed the earlier parameter based on the building across from us. It looks just like ours, but part of its first story wall incorporates a section from a medieval stone mansion. The man who lives on the third floor of our building started a conversation with us today as we were running out the door to try to get our cell phone plan before the store closed. We somehow got around to asking him what the old door across the street was. He told us that it was part of a mansion built by one of the Italian nobles in the retinue of the king of Naples, who was also king of Provence in the 1400s. They all lived here in Aix, a center of power and culture. Our neighbor then proceeded to tell us the entire history of the region, starting with the Greeks settling Marseille. We didn’t make it to the cell phone store. But, the medieval* link between Naples and Provence explains why our neighborhood looks so much like Italian cities I’ve seen. Those strong square blocks forming bases for stately rows of windows say, “Vasari wuz here.” It makes me miss my traveling buddies from my trip to Italy.**

*I use the word “medieval” loosely. Technically this building is from smack in the middle of the Italian Renaissance, but I’m not sure what date we use to signal the start of the Renaissance in France. You’ll know about it once I do.
**Vasari was an Italian Renaissance architect.

So, we’re trying to make our apartment feel like home, and the place to get things at good prices is the grocery store. We can take a bus to a big supermarket called Carrefour, which we have done twice this week. We will also be going again tomorrow. “Why?” you may ask. “For the yogurt?” Ay, there’s the rub. Carrefour’s yogurt in no way compares to that of our first grocery store, Auchan. Carrefour store brand multipack has added fiber, tastes a little chemical-y, and comes in four flavors: pineapple, strawberry, mango, and PRUNE. Yes, prune. I did not come to France to eat anything prune flavored (although even the prunes are good here). So, why have we made so many trips to Carrefour?

Well, we noticed very quickly that our matelas (mattress) was not going to do the job. It was about three inches lower in the middle, which meant that we kept rolling into each other and waking each other up all night long. In our eagerness to settle on the apartment, we failed to realize that the bed was not a full, but something only just enough larger than a twin to make us think that it was intended for two people. We were obviously mistaken. The rolling effect made it impossible to sleep. We made our second trip to Carrefour to purchase a new matress. We will be making our third to return it. It turns out that French matresses are sold in sizes varying by ten centimeters. We purchased a 140 x 190 cm matress, while our tiny lofted sleeping space is only big enough to fit one that is 120 x 190. There is no way the new mattress can be smushed into the frame of the “mezzanine” (loft area) without us knocking out some vital support or wall. So, after paying 30 euro for this sucker to be delivered by truck, we are hoping that we can A) take it back on the bus, B) find a suitable replacement and C) manage not to buy more storebrand yogurt while we are there. We’ve gotten four eight packs so far because the price is too good to ignore.

Already expecting to have difficulty with the French beaurocracy system (extremely strict return policies at stores, miles of paperwork and red tape), I have not been disappointed. To get a telephone you need an electric bill. To get an electric bill you have to call the company. To get an apartment you need a French bank statement. To get a French bank statement you need a local address. The high point of this all was finding that our apartment did not exist. We rented number nine. The street has only even numbers, and everyone else in our building gets their mail at number ten. The post office had never heard our address. We have to go back to all the places we set up accounts and re-order things (phone service, checks, etc.). The only organization that had no problem with our address was the store that delivered the matress.

Now, I know it sounds like I’m doing a lot of complaining, and that’s because I am. Moving to another country is not like taking an extended vacation, at least not yet. But there are a few bright spots, and their names are Kim, Emilie, and Swann. Kim is an American woman we met at church. She’s a student in the program I’m going to be starting next week, and she’s been over a few nights for Josh to help with her homework. She’s also bummed around with us on some of our grocery excursions (and she made me buy a rug which does WONDERS for our linoleum floor). It’s great to know someone else in such a similar situation, to share discoveries and cold remedies. Swann and Emilie are our upstairs neighbors. We’ve just come from dinner in their apartment (multi-rooms. So jealous). And they’re so funny, and fun, and nice. As we let ourselves back into our apartment tonight, we were like, “Yeah! We’ve got friends!”

Setting Up

We all know that a picture is worth a thousand words, but we’ve been too busy to stop and take pictures so far. Hopefully by next blog post we’ll be able to show you what our new town looks like, but in the mean time, here are about a thousand words. :)

We left Harrisburg on Tuesday afternoon and flew Air India out of Newark. We weren’t sure what to expect from our flight, since we’d heard mixed reviews from friends who had flown with Air India back in the day. But the experience was a good one. The plane had the feeling of a sari, with red and yellow patterned seats, stewardesses swathed in gorgeous fabrics, and yummy food. We took a break from watching The Darjeeling Limited (a movie about a trip to India) to eat our curried lamb and felt like something had gone right.

Our plane landed at Charles de Gaulle airport outside of Paris (we could see le Tour Eiffel from the air), and then we took a train to the south. Josh managed to get us first class tickets on the upper deck of a double-decker car, and we made the most of this wonderful sightseeing opportunity by sleeping through the majority of the three hour trip to Aix. We did wake up in time to get our ridiculously heavy and bulky suitcases down to the exit of the car before we reached the gare (station), and in time to see the craggy mountains of Provence sweep into view. The countryside here is great. It has the feeling of a dryer, rockier Pennsylvania, with welcoming, homey mountains that don’t look too big to climb in an afternoon, and lots of rolling hills of scrubby green trees. My idea of France was of snug little black-and-white timbered houses, but I think that must be the north. The hills of Provence are filled with square buildings made of stone or blocks, mostly a peachy-yellow color, with tiled roofs. It feels a little bit like Italy and a little bit like Mexico. We got to form most of our ideas of the countryside today driving around with our landlady, but that part of the story comes later.

After we got to Aix and dragged our suitcases to our hotel, we set out to set up. We combed the apartment classifieds, visited the bank (multiple times), started setting up cell phones, and tried to find a long-term hotel in case it took more than a few days to find an apartment. I’ve never traveled like this before: this is going to be home, which means we don’t feel like we have a limited amount of time to enjoy it here, and we can take it in and experience it a little more slowly and deliberately. On the other hand, it’s not home, so we kindof resent the things we do enjoy, because they don’t make up for the comforts we’ve just left. Anyway, hopefully we’ll feel settled in and less conflicted soon.

Aix, the town we’re staying in, is beautiful—I think. Mostly I’ve been looking at it with appraising eyes, trying to find the best grocery stores, the best places to live, and the best places to buy shoes and tablecloths. It’s a lot dirtier than I expected—a little bit like a slightly rough-around-the-edges version of the Williams and Sonoma catalogue. We repeatedly stopped in our tracks to just smell the air—rich, buttery smells (I’ve figured out which one is croissants), seasoned meats, the foods from cafes, and in between, the smell of France. In three days, I’ve forgotten what it smells like, but when we first got here, I kept smelling “France.” Weird how noses work. Anyway, our first morning walking around was Thursday, which is market day in the Cours Mirabeau, the sort of central plaza area of town. We mostly rushed by stalls swathed in bright fabrics with olive, floral and cigale (cicada) patterns, but I’m looking forward to indulging my passion for quality textiles.

After a lot more running around trying to set up various things you take for granted once you’ve lived in a place for more than a week, we headed up to the north of city center to look at the only apartment that wasn’t rented yet when we called the lessor. It wasn’t quite what we were used to in our “luxurious” suburb of Philly, but we took a walk after seeing it, sat in the little square across the street and saw the green-shuttered houses, the medieval cathedral, and the gourmet Swiss ice cream stand, and turned around and put down a deposit. We can live in one room for a year. :) I’ll blog more about our aparment once it’s something other than a depressing mish mosh of suitcases and grocery bags, but in the meantime, our landlady. She was completely aghast at the idea of me showing up in a foreign country, knowing no one, and not knowing where to buy a set of bedding. She kept referring to me as la pauvre (the poor thing). As we were signing all the paperwork, she volunteered to drive me to an Ikea knock-off and the super amazing mega grocery store near her town, 40 minutes away. She said she couldn’t bear to see me carrying heavy grocery bags and looking bewildered. (At least I think she did. The majority of our conversation with her was in French.) So, we spent today power shopping for our new little (LITTLE) place. Afterward, we packed into Madame Walker’s tiny Peugeot convertible and zipped around hills and villages as she brought us back to Aix on the back roads.

One more thing, and then I will be just past my thousand word mark. Puddings. I said multiple times that I was excited about the pudding aisle in French grocery stores. I’m adding yogurt to that. We got a big multipack of store brand yogurts for two euro, and the flavors are lemon, mango, coconut, and litchi. They taste like they’ve come right out of the cow. How can I be so homesick when I have such dairy products?

PS: a funny story: We were buying that gourmet Swiss ice cream (creme brulee flavor), and a guy about our age heard Josh say that I was an American and didn’t speak French. He came over to us and started up a conversation. It turns out that he works at the “American Institute,” a place for Americans studying abroad. After he and Josh chatted a little bit, he gave Josh a knowing look, and told him that if the two of us stay together, Josh could end up getting a US visa. I knew there was a reason he’s put up with me for so long. . .