Have a Holly Jolly Christmas

If you are anything like me, the title of this blog is now going to be stuck in your head for 2 days, minimum. You're welcome. 

Every year during the holiday season we go to my aunt and uncle's Feed Store for a brouhaha/hoedown/general gettin' jiggy wid it. This year, Dear Seester and I decided we were going to perform a little ditty that some of you may have heard of entitled "Merry Christmas from the Family." It goes a little something like this:

"Mom got drunk and dad got drunk/At our Christmas party/We were drinking champagne punch and homemade eggnog/My little sister brought her new boyfriend/He was a Mexican/We didn't know what to think of him till he sang "Feliz Navidad"/That means Merry Christmas in Español./That's what it means. Sure does."

Unfortunately, the stars didn't align in our favor and we were forced to cancel. 

For our family Christmas we usually do Secret Santa. I always accidentally type Secrete, so I took to calling it Secretion Santa. Great story, Kali. Tell it again. Anyway, this year we changed pace by playing Dirty Santa. This was taken one of three ways by all involved: 1. Clean out your drawers and slap a bow one something you find therein; 2. Bring a gag gift; or 3. Bring a dirty gift. This was probably the best Christmas we'd ever had, partly because my grandma almost ended up getting a gift card to Victoria's Secret(e), and partly because all us kids are (almost) old enough to drink and be merry. 

Christmas Day itself was quiet and chill at my house, just the way we like it. We all got just a handful of good presents thanks to Ye Olde Economic Crisis, but we had a fantastic day regardless. I got a calendar (a staple every Christmas), a darling pair of earrings from Costa Rica, a wide angle and a zoom lens for my beloved camera, and a nail buffer made of silk that makes your fingernails all shiny. 

Of course, Dear Seestur and I made our Annual Christmas Trip to Goodwill to buy ugly sweaters for our Annual Ugly Sweater Partay. The background music in Goodwill was a techno rendition of Pachelbel's Canon with an overlay of the "Twas the Night Before Christmas" story. Bizarre. A woman stopped me right as I was leaving the dressing room and asked if I had just tried on that sweater (pointing).

"Why, yes."

"I have that same sweater!"

".....Oh.......really?" (incredulous)

She proceeded to tell me that she was a second grade schoolteacher (not just a regular teacher, mind you, a schoolteacher) and that her mom and grandmother bought the sweater for her and she just thought it was the cyoootest thing with the crayon buttons and the children with pigtails made of real dangling yarn strands. 

Wow.

Anyway, just wanted to wish you all a happy holiday season. If you're around these parts tomorrow, put on an ugly sweater and come to our party. It's gonna get ugly. 

I Am Home....but Just Barely.

Friday was my last day in Pau. I met some French friends for lunch, then finished my suitcases and had my host grandfather (?) take me to the train station. I pretty much stared at the countryside for five hours, which was very relaxing, until it got dark and I drank too much water and peed fourteen times in two hours. Oh, biology. 

Getting on the train with ally my luggage was hard enough. My host grandpa helped me out with it while I was in Pau, then took a flying leap off the train like some kind of incredible (-y old superhero, Geriatric Man to the rescue!) But it was the getting off the train that nearly robbed me of my life. Not to mention my luggage. I won't even go into the details, I will just tell you that it was grisly and scarring and I vow, from this day forward, to only ever pack one wheeled suitcase chock-full of air and marshmallows.

My good friend Taz was waiting for us in the train station when we arrived, which made all of us happy, which gave us an ounce more energy to haul our bags down three barred escalators, several flights of stairs, then up several more flights of stairs, into the Métro, off of the Métro, back up stairs, down the street, and up more stairs to his apartment building. Without that, however, we'd have had to haul them with us all night. 

And do you know what we did all night?

We walked. We walked all over Paris. It was magnificent. The Christmas lights, the people out running at 5 a.m., the "open late" couscous restaurants, the shadow of the Eiffel Tower against the orange haze of sodium streetlamps. It really was spectacular. We spent the entire night, until 8 a.m. Friday, in the streets of Paris. Then, we took a cab to the airport, said goodbye to Taz, and checked in to our airlines. 

This is when the trouble began. While I was still at my host parents' house, I had packed and weighed all my bags. My tiny suitcase was underweight, but my larger one was tipping the scales at 22 kilos, which is exactly the limit. I was going to attempt to smuggle some cheese through customs in Washington, though, so I needed the suitcase to be lighter. I took out a bunch of stuff--socks, underwear, little bags of toiletries and whatnot--and stuck them in my backpack. At the airport, I went through security and had my backpack x-rayed. When I walked through the sensor, it was fine, but something in my backpack set it off. I took the bag over to a separate table and was asked to rifle through it. I spilled all my underwear out on the table, grabbed some nail polish and stuck it in a separate bag, and then opened another little bag I'd put in there. What falls out of it? A knife. 

It was a gift from a friend of mine for self defense while I'm traveling by myself (very practical, I think.) I had hidden it in my large suitcase for the actual journey so that I wouldn't get stopped in security with a knife. Unfortunately, that's exactly where I found myself. Six armed (and incredibly attractive) French police officers put me in handcuffs and led me to another room, where I spent 45 minutes explaining IN FRENCH that I didn't know the knife was in the backpack, even though I packed it myself. Arduous. 

I finally got into the gate, then onto the plane, where I sat with a French family and slept approximately 15 minutes out of the 8 hours I was en voyage. I got to Washington, where I succeeded in smuggling 3 different types of  unpasteurized cheese into the good ole US of A. I am now watching TV in English, thanking God that I didn't end up a foreign victim of the French prison system and, similarly, thanking God that customs didn't find my cheese. I love cheese. 

This One Goes Out To My HomeGirl Evelyn

There you are, friendo. Your very own shout-out. Happy now? :)

Very recently I went to the beach. You may be thinking, K-dawg, what the hell? Isn't it winter? Why yes, dear readers, it sure is. But that doesn't stop me, you see. Not at all. That and, I bought the tickets in September. When the sun came out almost every day. And I didn't have to wear all the clothes I own, all layered like some kind of ironic and tasteless cake. Funny, Pau. Funny. 

One of my exchange student friends, LilliBelle, and I decided we wanted to meet up while I was in France, so we both took the train to Narbonne, a town near the Mediterranean coast. Shockingly enough, when we got there the sun was out and we could actually take off our winter coats. We recognized each other immediately, which was a good feeling--an even better feeling was the one that came when I realized that she really wanted to see me, and did everything in her power to make this weekend happen--she wrote letters to the Tourism Office, she found the hotel, she even reserved my tickets for me online and I paid for them at the station. I've noticed that a lot of French people treat visits like that--like they're the most important thing in the world. I like that :) 

We took a bus to Gruissan, the beach town, and walked along the absolutely empty beach while the sun was setting. It was absolutely breathtaking. During the summertime the position of the bay shelters it from wind and the tide isn't very strong, so there are literally no waves, but since we went in the winter, there were little ones. 

LilliBelle was shocked at how much my French has improved--I am, too, even though I had a little run-in with my host mum recently when I told her I was going to take a shower (je vais me doucher) and she thought I said "je vais me toucher" (I'm going to go touch myself). Regardless, I'm improving :) 

We saw a fight on our way back to the town! For realsies! The bus driver (who was really cute, I might add) waited three minutes past his pull-away time so that we could catch the last bus back to the town (if not, we would have spent the evening in the coldest, windiest, most deserted beach village I have ever encountered.) The only other man on the bus was having a bitchfest about how late he was going to be (three minutes) and how much of an inconvenience it was (shut up). The bus driver, after several minutes of listening to Incessant Ignorant Man repeating the same phrases over and over, finally slammed on the brakes and sent the guy face-first into the windshield. Not through it (it was thick :P), but down the little bus stairs, and then the yelling began. Cute Bus Driver put his finger in Incessant Ignorant Man's face and said things that were wholly impolite, very true, and really funny. Afterwards, he apologized to us and offered to take us out for a drink. Sweet, cute bus driver man :)

That night we stayed in a hotel that catered to travelers on tight budgets. We were the only young people there, as the rest of the guests were approximately 60 or older and there for a convention. At 3 a.m. we were rudely awakened by a fire alarm, so we put our boots on over our pajamas and went downstairs. We ended up in the middle of a giant room full of grandparents doing the Hand Jive in front of a giant cake topped with sparklers sitting directly beneath the smoke alarm. I wanted some cake, but the alarm stopped and we went back to bed.

The city was really deserted because it's not the season for tourists, but we found some good places to eat and, on Sunday, we found a giant market where we bought jambon de pays (smoke-dried ham, straight off the leg), chèvre de corse (goat cheese in a crust of Provençal herbs, mushrooms, and chili peppers) and fresh baguettes, and we had basically the best lunch I've ever had. Ever. 

On the train on the way back I was sitting in a bank of four seats by myself. I had my ipod in, I was listening to my playlist aptly dubbed "TrainMusique," and I was generally aware of the countryside, the train, my car, and everyone around me. Suddenly, I saw a little black boy who looked uncannily like this one. He popped his head up over the back of the seat and looked at me so quizzically. I smiled a little. He proceeded to move his eyebrows up and down to the beat of the song I was listening to, which he clearly couldn't hear (or could he?!), then disappeared back behind the seat. I never saw him again. I wonder, did I imagine this little black boy? Or perhaps he was real and just very, very sly. Or maybe magic. That must be it. The magic little black boy I saw on the train on my way back from the beach after Thanksgiving. Oh, you.

"That Girl is Taking Yet Another Picture of You"

Let's all just bask in the glow of how long it's been since I last posted. I know, you say, I'm busy, I'm winding down one of the best semesters of my life (second only, I believe, to Harlaxton), I'm taking exams, packing, traveling....I should spend my time enjoying these last 13 days (ack!) and wait for the blog. 

In all this, you would be correct. Except the whole "waiting on the blog" thing. That just won't fly.

The weekend after the last post I made I spent in a mountain chalet with 17 French teenagers. We cooked a pig and watched Walker, Texas Ranger in French. It was a grand time. Photos are both ensuing and incriminating. 

This past Wednesday my BFFF and I redeemed our 10th-is-free Free Kebabs from our fidelity cards at the revered Pacha Kebab eatery. I've never tasted a better kebab (but I've tasted 9 that were equally good). Afterwards we drank a couple demi-pêches, then decided to spend an Epic Night Outdoors by visiting several bars with a gaggle of British students. We played darts, walked down some stairs (at the time it seemed a much more noteworthy action), and veritably belted out the theme song to the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Represent, dear readers. Word. 

Today I went snowboarding in the Pyrenees mountains for the first time!!! I can honestly say that it was one of the best snowboarding trips I've ever been on. We left the university at the ass-crack of dawn, which allowed for an incredible sunrise-over-the-mountains view as we wound past tiny towns and other ski stations. We finally stopped at Cauterets, one of the most famous (and most popular) ski stations in the French Pyrenees. It was absolutely breathtaking. When I upload photos I'll let you know (I know! It's cruel to string it out like that, but how else am I going to get people to read this blog?!)

Several strange things happened. A Chinese girl got carsick 9 times. I only fell one time and did not fracture my tailbone. At the end of the day, I was completely dry (unlike most ski trips where I alone could create a small reservoir with the water collecting in my ears, pants hems, and cleavage). A French girl thought I was French, developed a crush on me, then discovered I was American and spent the rest of the day taking candid pictures of me. I found the house I want to live in. Unfortunately it's in Lourdes, the fanatically religious town devoted to the "apparitions" of the virgin that appears 150 years ago. Okaaaaayyyyy. 

However, despite the strange happenings (am I not used to it by now?), the weather was perfect. It started sunny while the sun was still behind mountains, gave us ample picture-taking time, then the sun disappeared behind white clouds so it wouldn't blind us. It was only 3˚C  outside, and towards lunchtime it actually started snowing! 

Tonight is the night I was supposed to go to the Gala with Tall Man. Unfortunately, it was my friend who told me about it and not him, so I already knew about it when he told me he wasn't inviting me and, instead, was inviting his two guy friends he hasn't seen in years thanks to them having been studying abroad or doing internships elsewhere. I wasn't too crushed--I would rather go snowboarding than wear a fancy dress :) Although the ticket price included a bottle of champagne, so who knows, perhaps I really am missing out. 

I'm starting to get really excited about coming home. I miss English music and rhubarb crisp, fireplaces and hot cider (it's nowhere!), free nights and weekends (I am a teenage-ish girl, allow me this one vice), my car, the Simpsons, eggnog, my bedroom, the puppies....oh, and my entire family :) My parents are in Costa Rica right now with my sister and I am hella jealous. There are 2 excuses for my saying "hella": 1. It is the only word that can describe my jealousy, and 2. My California friend is rubbing off on me. Regardless, I cannot wait to see them in the airport in Nashvegas when I finally set foot on American soil :) 

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 :)