A Few Minor Disturbances, Some Really Good Food, and a Great View

I have discovered that I do not like at all the feel of jeans that have been washed and laid out to dry. I only just discovered this because my new host family does not have a dryer. This is in no way a bad thing--in fact, they're saving energy out the wazoo--but I usually use the dryer to shrink my jeans. Now, in the time it takes me to put on my pants and walk towards the door every morning, my pants will have grown two sizes, leaving me looking like a Jenny Craig patient, post-weight loss but pre-congratulatory new wardrobe. 

Today we had a field trip! Oh, elementary school memories :) We went to St. Bertrand-de-Comminges where we saw Roman ruins (interesting, but they look eerily identical to the last Roman ruins I saw?), a cathedral, and had a phantasmagoric lunch. As a group, we literally filled the entire restaurant! They fed us traditional mountain stew (made from real mountains!), lamb, pasta, green beans, and chocolate mousse. It was spectacular. 

Afterwards we visited the grottos at Gargas, which was really cool. It's famous for its prehistoric handprints--it was amazing being able to see the prints left by hands that came centuries before us. Pictures were absolutely forbidden, so of course I snuck a couple! My favorite was the one that was giving the finger :) The cave was really cool inside, all drippy and moist, and it reminded me a lot of the caves we snorkled in in Mexico that one time. You know the one. 

The last stop on our day trip was the Château de Mauvezin, which was probably my favorite part of the day. The grottos were ultra cool, but the château had a tower that was accessible to the public, and we were on top of a hill at the base of the Pyrenees mountains while the sun was setting.....I just can't wait to show you all my pictures :) While we were at the top of the tower we threatened to never come down and we played Hey Cow to pass the time. Basically, you say "hey cow" to a cow (luckily we were in the middle of the country, so there were cows everywhere, and the sound of Christopher Walken encouraging their cowbells filled us with joy). If the cow looks at you, you get a point. After ten minutes and no points, we finally decided, yeah, maybe we could go back down after all. Plus, we were kinda hungry.  

Tonight I'm headed to a French friend's house to interview her for my cultural project about French students who study English. She's not even an English major, but she's the only one who's responded to me, so it'll have to work for now....especially since the rough draft is due Monday! Hope you're all having a great weekend--don't forget to check out my picture website to stay up-to-the-minute on all my adventures :) 

Wednesday Night I Got Arrested.

Ok, not really--Grandma, Grandpa, don't worry :) 

I suppose I should say, Wednesday night I got arrêtéed.

Wednesday night I went out with my best friend to eat kebabs. You know all about the tradition; we just can't let it slide. Afterwards we decided to drink a demi-pêche, then another, and at some point we ended up at the discothèque where we danced the night away. We walked back to our houses together, then split at the crossroads. I started walking towards my house when a bright purple car with 5 guys in it pulled up next to me and stopped. 

They said, "Stop walking." I kept walking--there was no way I was stopping for these guys. There were five of them, in a purple car, wearing street clothes. No. They pulled a little further in front of me and said, "Really, stop, we're the police." I gave them a look like, are you kidding me? and kept walking. The guy in the passenger side said, "No, really, see?" and put a siren on top of the car. 

Ok, ok, I believe you! 

They asked me what I was celebrating (ummmmm, I'm just walking to my house? Disregard the fact that it's 3 a.m.) then asked me how old I am. When I said 20, the passenger grabbed the siren off the roof, the driver pulled a U-turn in the middle of the road, and sped away. So bizarre. I told Tall Man that "j'était arrêtée par le flic." Literally, this means "I was stopped by the police," but "arrêter" also means to arrest. I'm sure he slept poorly, tossing and turning, thinking about his helpless, inept American girlfriend attempting to weasel her way out of French jail :P Instead, I was sleeping like a baby, even more so because I didn't have class until 11 the next day. 

I've been running into some very curious pronunciation problems lately. Like, my host family stares at me--absolutely stares--when I talk about the prices of things. For instance, I told them how expensive it was to live in England, how cheap Ryan Air costs in terms of other airlines. They always just kinda half smile and give a shallow nod. At first I thought, perhaps they think I'm just money-obsessed? ...but me being a student is reason enough to be money-conscious! Then I realized: I had been saying "c'est cher" instead of "ça coute cher." The first one actually means "this is very dear to me." No wonder. 

Another one I have run into, particularly in the month of November, is the question of wetness. It rains a lot. Therefore, I want to say, "My coat is wet. I will leave it on the radiator." The problem with this is, the word for wet is "mouillé." The word my American tongue forms is something like "moe-eh-yuh." 

The word I am saying actually means bone marrow. 

In case you were wondering, I just left my bone marrow on the radiator. 

Have any of you had ridiculous language follies? Please tell me about them :) 

A Long Weekend, and a Loooooong Trip to the Bathroom

This weekend started off innocently enough. 

I decided to go to Tarbes to visit my Tall Man and, since I didn't have class again till Wednesday (thanks to Armistice Day), I could do a little sumthin sumthin extra afterwards. I bought my ticket online, packed my bag, went to class on Friday, took an exam (after spending all night Thursday celebrating Obama's victory by eating Moroccan food with my friends), then headed to the train station. I got there and it was raining, but I really had to pee, so I broke out my new umbrella (it's silver on the inside! My friends call it my Space Age Parapluie), and braved the cold drizzle to go to the bathrooms on the other side of the station. 

I should have known that the bathrooms were outside, thus they were those hole-in-the-ground, hold-yourself-up-by-these-rails-on-the-sides kinda bathrooms. I've braved these before. What I wasn't expecting was the 30 centimes tax! Outrageous. I decided it was a meager fee to pay to relieve myself, because who knew if the train was going to have a bathroom or not? I'd hate to wait all that time to discover that it was ill-equipped. 

I approached the door and realized it was vacant, but that the person in front of me had already paid. I did a little dance :) I then opened the door, closed it behind me, and turned around to see a middle-aged, red-headed Scottish woman, pants around her ankles, saying, "Ohp, sorry, I don't know how to lock the door do you speak English will you stand guard?" 

Wow. Ok. I stood guard for her, then when she was done apologized profusely and asked her to do the same for me. I got inside, hung my bag on the hook on the back of the door (probably the best move I've ever made), then made my way to The Hole. What happened next scared me unimaginably. The lights turned off, the door locked, and the entire bathroom stall was suddenly soaking wet and roaring with the sound of liquid. Apparently, every person has 15 minutes to get their business done in the little bathroom. After that time, the stall will lock automatically and spray-disinfect itself. With disinfectant. Sprayed. Everywhere.

Let me remind you that I was in the bathroom at the time this happened. I was wet and shaken up, but somehow I was able to pee, gather my belongings (dry, thanks to that trusty hook on the wall), and head for the door.

It was locked. 

Apparently, after the bathroom disinfects itself, it will only unlock when a new customer comes and drops their shiny 30 centimes into the little receptacle. I'm sure you can imaging me, moist and feeling dirty (though in fact I was very, very clean), yelling through the crack in the plastic doorway to a Scottish woman I only just met that I needed her to pay again for the bathroom so that I could escape. 

We became fast friends.

After that, the weekend continued rather normally (even for me!) I got to Tarbes and Tall Man and I went to the park to enjoy the great weather. The mountains were visible and bright, and even closer than they are in Pau--of course I took a bunch of pictures. To celebrate a friend's birthday we ate raclette for dinner, which is a Swiss dish (popular in the French Alps, too) that's similar to fondue. Everyone has their own tiny skillet which they fill with cheese, then heat up under a little heatlamp, then pour over baked potatoes and bacon. So good :) All the guys thought I was disgusting, though, because I ate the potato skin. Nutrients, fellas. Nutrients. 

We had a few drinks and the guys decided they were going to teach me how to play poker. It was a disaster. I don't even understand poker in English! We also played Mikado, a game of pick-up-sticks where all the sticks overlap and you have to pick them up without moving any of the others. So hard. We ended the night by going to the biggest discothèque I've ever seen (they told me it was a supermarket by day and I believed them--that's how big it was) where we danced until 5 am. Fun times, I'm telling you :)

On Monday I woke up and decided I wanted to take a train to Toulouse for the day. I met up with my British friend Charlotte at the train station, we drank tea from a flask on the train, and when we got to Toulouse we spent the entire day just roaming around. Absolutely no agenda. Nothing pressing, nothing mattering, just us, alone in a town we don't know at all. It was grand. We bought dinosaur stickers, leopard-print leggings, and temporary tattoos at the 2 euro store, ate goat cheese and honey pizza, people-watched, then came home, exhausted, but having well-spent our holiday. You can see photos of all my adventures (this sounds like a tagline at the end of a TV show) at www.wanderlust3.shutterfly.com. Until next time :)