Waiting to get out of Paris

To be stuck waiting to get out of Paris is an experience with a long and storied history.  This should be a comfort to me, but somehow I don't think I am going to make it to Casablanca and Rick, at least not on this voyage...I will, God willing, eventually get out of here and back to California in time for Christmas, but it's taking a lot longer than I thought it would.

All week, while I was making my preparations to leave Cosne and Nevers for the holidays, everybody asked me, "Oh, quand est-ce que tu pars pour les Etats-Unis?" and when I said Sunday the 19th, the uniformly replied with something along the lines of "Euh, la neige aille poser une probleme pour toi, je crains!"  No, I thought, that couldn't possibly happen; there is no way the weather will wreck havoc on my flight plans--all these people are just being naysayers....Famous last words.   I got to to Charles De Gaulle airport on Sunday morning in the middle of a merry blizzard, and promptly joined a swelling crowd of would-be travelers, who were all trying to figure out what the hell they were going to do.  Apparently, while it was snowing in Paris, it was really coming down in London, and Heathrow was completely closed all day, and would be for part of the next.  My flight was, of course, on British Airways, which routes all flights through Heathrow, so I was not going anywhere.  I proceded to wait in line to try to get an alternative flight for the next six hours, all the while dealing with stressed-out fellow passengers and an incredible amount of missing information.  Finally, at 4 pm, after having been on my feet in various unmoving lines since 10 am, I made my disgruntled way back to Paris on a train that was, unsurprisingly, also delayed and overcrowded.

De Gaulle or the Louvre?

On the other hand, at least I had somebody to stay with.  It could have been so much worse.  My friend Hilary from Columbia, who has a charming apartment in the Marais district (i.e. pretty much close to everything) has generously been letting me stay with her for my unexpectedly-longer visit.  We have taken advantage of this opportunity to see some more sights, and yesterday we girded on our armor of cultural appreciation, and went to that bastion of the spoils of culture and empire--the LOUVRE (capitals are essential).

Festival de Lumières, and other excitement in Lyon

I can't even say that the holiday season is fast approaching...it's already here.  It's sort of unbelievable that I am two days away from Christmas break and three days away from flying back to CA, although I am more than ready for it.  The past few weeks--and really the whole fall--have gone by really fast, but I think it will be good for me to go home and fill up the tank a little bit.  Things have been fairly intense lately.

For one thing, there has been a lot of travel.  Coming on the heels of my weekend in Paris and then in Tours, I went back to Lyon last Friday to visit with Clara and see the Festival of Lights, an annual celebration in the city that centers around the 8th of December, the day on which--legend has it--the Virgin Mary saved the city from the plague during the middle ages.  Traditionally, the Lyonnais put candles in the windows of their houses to mark the occasion, but in the last hundred years or so, the festival has morphed into this huge outdoor spectacle featuring electric light shows that lasts a week and draws crowds from all over France (and, indeed, the world).  It was a sight to see.

so all these photos are from Therese.

Once again, I forgot my camera

I was glad to have gone, although I think that if I lived in Lyon, it would not be something that I would go out for every year.  I was somehow under the impression that it would be displays with candles, the way it was traditionally, and the displays of electric lights, while many were impressive (and some were truly bizarre--see below), were not really to my taste.  Having grown up with the luminarias of Albuquerque, I prefer lights that flicker to those that strobe.

Does this look like a giant desk lamp?  That is what it is.

I think that I was also less able to take in the glories of the light displays because it was the end of a long day.  The weekend was so packed with activities that we actually wrote out a schedule for Clara, me, and Therese to follow (I get a neurotic pleasure from checking things off lists).  Everything we did was absolutely worth doing, but the total impact was somewhat more than we had bargained for, especially since some of the individual events proved taxing.  Not everything went according to plan, but we did manage to do everything we meant to.

Case in point: part of the day's activities included cooking a fabulous dinner of new (tajine) and traditional (souffle) French recipes.  The piéce de résistance was to be the desert, crème brûlée.  Although our attempt this time was more successful than our previous efforts, there were still a couple setbacks.  More specifically, the torch Clara had bought for brûlée-ing turned out to be a bad bargain, since it refused, either to light easily or stay on more than a few minutes at a time.  We exerted ourselves, however, and discovered that, even when the sparker was not working, the butane was still coming out, so we were able to jury-rig a technique whereby we used an electric lighter and the torch with a two-man approach that worked, in a Macgyver sort of way.  Despite the unorthodox flaming, the brûlée ended up tasting delicious.

Tours

I totally forgot my camera, again, this weekend

I just got back from another traveling weekend (my feet are really itchy this month--I am going to be going here and there pretty much every weekend until the middle of January, if you count going home to CA).  This time my wanderings took my to the city of Tours.  I like to think of myself as living in the Loire valley here in Cosne--and, indeed, I am right on the river--but Tours is in the valley proper, if you think of it as the place of expensive wine tours, medieval towns, and chateau that inspired Jean Cocteau and those crazy kids at Disney.

Minus the wine tours, which will have to wait until my ship comes in, I think we did a pretty good job of touring Tours.  I say "we" because I went with Therese, one of my fellow English assistants of the Nièvre.  We were only there for less than 48 hours, but in that time we managed to fit in tramping around the old-section of town--which is, as you can see, medieval and very nicely preserved--going shopping at the Christmas market, visiting a proper chateau, going to the local musée de beaux arts, and eating some really fabulous local food...

It had been very wintery for the past week or so (in fact, I had almost no students on Friday because the buses were not running and it was snowing like crazy) but fortunately we were still able to use the tickets we had bought in advance, and our train Friday evening was only slightly delayed.  It is now raining sloppily, and the weather was warm enough over the weekend that everything was sort of drippy, but that did not prevent it from being very picturesque.

Saturday afternoon we took another train outside of town to visit the local Chateau de Chenonceau.  Actually getting there was something of a misadventure, since we were just settling into our seats on the train when I looked at the guidebook and read the fateful words, "The chateau of Chenonceau is not to be confused with the village of Chenonceaux..."  Chenonceaux was of course where our train was heading.  Therese and I hurried off the train and went to ask the station agent which route we should actually take, and he assured us that we should, in fact, take the train to Chenoneaux.  We rushed back, only to have the doors slam in our face and the train pull off without us.  Turns out the chateau of Chenonceau is in the village of Chenonceaux.  Poor wording, Lonely Planet; poor wording.

so all these lovely pictures are courtesy of the internet!

When we actually got to the chateau by the next train, and hour later, it was quite lovely. The village was even smaller than Cosne, so the chateau was pretty much just surrounded by its own fabulous gardens, stretching out into and blending with the forested countryside.  As I said to Therese, I felt as if we should be strolling through the grounds in riding habits with our dogs, or else rattling up the long tree-lined approach in a gilded coach.  It was very "to the manor born."  The chateau itself was pretty impressive, since it is built actually on the river Cher, with a long, black and white paved gallery spanning the waterway.  The alternate name of the place is the "Chateau des Dames," since it is famous for having been the residence, and the design project, of a number of powerful women, including Catherine di Medici, who ruled France as regent during the minority of Henri III, and Madam Dauphin, a great salon hostess and society leader during the revolutionary period.  The whole place was very well-maintained; historically restored, but not to the point where it felt like a theme-park.  It was especially nice to be there when it was decorated for Christmas, since many of the rooms were filled with great aromatic bouquets and buckets of dried orange slices, cloves, and other spices.  The downside of going to such a fabulous and touristy place is, well, the tourists, though.  Therese and I had the misfortune to arrive at the same time as a huge bus-full of Asian tourists, which was a little overwhelming.... Even after years of dealing with crowds in New York, it is still a challenge to fight through them when you are on a spiral staircase!

The one part of the experience that was not crowded was the musée des cires, or wax museum, which was hidden off in a side building, away from most of the tourists, attention.  Therese and I went over to check it out before we left, and the whole thing was, as you might imagine, totally creepy.  There were no human attendants, just an automated turnstyle that let you in after you swiped your ticket, and then motion sensitive lights and music that played as you inspected half a dozen degenerate wax recreations of the various famous residents and visitors of the chateau, including such luminaries as Rousseau and Voltaire.  You could totally imagine them coming to shuffling life and chasing unsuspecting tourists through the woods.  "The return to nature," indeed!

After we finally got back to Tours that evening, we had dinner at a place called "Comme AutreFouée" (since bad puns in restaurant names apparently are not limited to California) which specialized in the local dish, a sort of little flatbread called les fouaces, which is baked in a wood-burning oven and then brought hot to your table, where you cut it open, put in butter, meat, or vegetables, and eat it immediately--yum.

I Open at the Close

I just got back from watching Harry Potter and les Reliques de la Mort, Première Partie (as it is called over here) at the local theater.  The last time I went to the Eden Cinema, to watch the La Princesse de Montpensier, I was the youngest person in the theater by about 25 years.  This time, with the exception of a few indulgent and long-suffering parents, I was one of the oldest.  I even saw a one or two really little kids there--which was a little shocking, since there were moments where I was scared watching it.  My ten-year-old self would definitely not have been able to take it.  Harry Potter the series definitely grew up with its protagonist, and with the readership that waited for each book to come out, and by now it is a far darker story.  The majority of the theater-goers tonight, though, were not children but teenagers.  I think I recognized some of my students, and it was definitely date-night for a lot of them.  I felt a little bit like this.

Anyway, the movie: I have an official position of lack of enthusiasm for the HP movies, since I believe that the books are by far the better experience.  There are things you can get from a book that you just can't from a movie--quality of language, complexity of plot and dialog, the power of your own mental images, etc., etc.  Further, nobody could know this when they cast an 11-year-old for the part ten years ago, but Rupert Grint, I am sorry to say, had not grown up into a well-favored young man.

However, despite my grousing, there are things to enjoy about the movies.  I have nothing but admiration for the cream of the British character acting academy who slum so impressively in all the Harry Potter Movies.  Alan Rickman, Bill Nighy, Timothy Spall, Jim Broadbent, Maggie Smith....I love you all.  Further, I don't just want to be Helena Bonham Carter, I want to be her hair. 

This particular installment of Harry Potter I thought fit better into the movie format than some of the previous ones--because they cut the book in half, they were able to fit in more of the plot, and away from Hogwarts (as cool a spectacle as it was) the movie hewed more closely to a character-driven story, and did not get bogged down in flashy special effects sequences.  Of course, as a fan of the books, I would still have felt a strong connection with some elements of the story, even if the movie had been far from what I imagined it should be.  I cried over Dobby when I read The Deathly Hallows for the first time, and I cried in the movie tonight.

One last note, going back to the idea of the generation that grew up as the Harry Potter books--and later the movies--were coming out.  I realized, as I was waiting for the lights to go down in the theater, that I had not been to see a Harry Potter movie on the big screen since number 2 came out at Christmastime 2002.  At that point I was living in Huston, and I went to see it with a bunch of ballet girls.  I sat next to my roommate Jennie Warnick, and I remember realizing, when I had to cringe and close my eyes in the face of the scene with the basilisk, that she was not a girl that you could grab onto for support.  That seems very long ago and far away, now.  Harry is not the only one who left old worlds behind.

Weekend in Paris

A thousand curses upon the absentmindedness that caused me to leave my camera behind when I went for the weekend to Paris, surely one of the most picture-worthy cities I could possibly have visited....!  I am not used to thinking of myself as a scatterbrained person, but I fear that it is a tendency I am growing into.  It may be a mark of how much I have been traveling around this fall, but I seem to leave a trail of personal belongings everywhere I go.  Not only did I forget the aforementioned camera, but I believe I left my toothbrush and toothpaste at Aurélie's on Friday night--at least I didn't have them when I got to Paris!  If I go on like this, I will have to keep all my affairs attached to my wrist on a string....

But I digress.  The point of this posting is to catch up on my trip to Paris over the last three days, albeit without accompanying illustrations.  It is well and truly winter here, now, and I arrived in the city of lights just ahead of a weekend of snow that was supposed to hit Cosne.  It did not snow in Paris (except for a little dusting of car-hoods on Sunday night) but it was f***ing cold nonetheless.  I had moments when I feared that I would repeat the unfortunate frostbite incident of last winter, which I had no desire to do (believe me, you never want to look down again and discover that your toe is black!)  Fortunately, I did not spend enough time outside for that to happen, although I did wait for almost an hour in the lowering dusk on Saturday afternoon to go up into the towers of Notre Dame.  It was kind of grueling, and there were rather a lot of stairs when I finally got inside, but the view from the top was totally worth it, especially since you got to see the gargoyles up close and personal.  They are by and large refurbishments from the mid-nineteenth century, but they are modeled on statues dating from the cathedral's original construction in 12th through 14th century (these things were not built on an accelerated plan).  It is amazing, looking at these creatures, which were shaped like monstrous dogs and birds, and panthers, and even an elephant, to think about the world-view of medieval Europeans, which included the threats of diabolical presences such as these (as well as miracles, divine interventions, and unknowable supernatural occurrences) as part of the expected experience of everyday life.  It's also interesting to think about the statuary on the great cathedrals as being a teaching tool, instructing visitors who could not read or write about the biblical stories and the structure of the cosmos.  I was particularly struck by this when I was looking at the facades over the cathedral entrance, which was as close as I got to the inside of the church on this trip. After all that waiting to climb the tower, I could not face the idea of waiting in another line when I got down, so I had to put that on my list of things to do when I come back.

Of course, in two days I was only able to see the merest fraction of everything there is to visit in Paris.  I made it to the Musée Nationale du Moyen Age yesterday morning, which was a good intro to the museums of Paris--small enough that I could go through it in and hour and a half (although I was a little pressed for time at the end, and I could probably have spent more like 2 or 3 hours there), and I got to see the tapestry of the lady and the unicorn, which is superb.  You understand why it is so famous.  It's beautiful, and mysterious in a way (since the symbolism of the different figures is not totally clear).  It made me think of Peter Beagle's The Last Unicorn.

This morning I made my final museum trip of the weekend to see a special exhibit at the Musée de l'Arte et de l'Histoire du Judaisme.  It had been recommended by a friend of the friend I went with, and I took her advice, although I had never heard of the artist, Felix Nussbaum, before.  I'm really glad I went, as it turns out.  Felix Nussbaum was a young man in the early 20th century, who tragically never had the chance to be more than a young man, since he died in Auschwitz in 1944, but he--amazingly, in the face of all the hardship he suffered--kept painting as long as he possibly could, all through the years of conflict and persecution, recording and transmogrifying the terrible things he witnessed into paintings that are incredibly powerful.  His work reminded me at different times of Picasso, Magritte, and Chagall, and it was definitely a product of the modernist era in which he lived, but it was also very personal (lots of self-portraits, a bit like Frieda Kahlo).  One of my favorites (which I wished I could have found a copy of), was one of his earlier works, one that seemed to be making a rejection of the traditional inheritance of western art, but also expressing an powerful and spooky imagination.  It was an image of the Colusium in Rome, isolated in a sort of a barren space, with nearby the figure of a man embracing a woman with her back to the viewer.  Her head was covered with a scarf and she was sort of see-though, although she threw a dark shadow, and the man's face, looking towards you, was haggard.  It was like he was trying to embrace a ghost.  Not all of Nussbaum's paintings were equally grim; his earlier work had flashes of this very lively dark humor, that got darker and darker and finally disappeared the farther into the '40s his paintings got.  By the end of the exhibit, the artworks were responding to such terrible things that they were difficult to look at.  Many of these things, it is important to see them, but the experience is not an easy one.  I was glad to have gone, though, and I think it's fortunate (and not at all guaranteed) that Nussbaum's paintings, which were only rediscovered in the 1970's, are still here for people to look at.

Likes and Dislikes

I am just shy of two months in France right now, and have advanced through the stages of culture shock--past the romance and novelty of the first weeks (walking down the street: "Oh, the French shops! Oh, the French old men buying baguettes in the shops! Oh, the French mustaches on the old men buying baguettes!), through the frustrations of delayed-onset homesickness and frequent miscommunication, and I find I am gradually approaching that hazy locale known as "getting used to it."  In honor of that progression, I bring you the ten best and the ten worst of my first two month's impressions of life in Cosne-sur-Loire, France.

Caveat:  These things, rated in order of greatest to least, are not life-changing conditions of deep significance, and my reaction to them does not say anything about my feelings about French culture, or even French vie quotidienne as a whole (I do not yet, and may not ever, feel equipped to pass that kind of judgement).  These are just the sorts of trivial things that you notice when you start to settle into a place, and my reactions are along the lines of "La mère d'Amélie Poulin n'aime pas: quand les gens inconnus lui touch par la main"

That said, here goes:

Chloé aime:

1) In France, it is perfectly normal to have dessert after every meal.  For someone with what I have often described as a sweet tooth like a walrus tusk, this is what I have been waiting for my entire life.  I have always felt that a meal is not finished without a little something sweet at the end, and now I have an entire country backing me up.

2) There is no culturally sanctioned anti-intellectualism here the way there is in the states.  I don't ever feel like I have to use fewer big words, or avoid talkiing about concepts and ideas in everyday conversation.

3) Hanging out in cafes, one of my all time favorite activities, is big here.

4) It seems like almost everybody has a cat, and I have yet to visit and apartment building with a no-pets policy.  It is very cozy to go visit someone and end up with their cat on your lap, although it does have the unfortunate side effect of making me very much want to get my own.

5) There's a reason they call it French bread.

6) Cheese.

7) Dining in general is a very social occupation.  People take their time with it, and use it as an opportunity to enjoy each others' company.  When I first moved away from home at 18, I was horrified and saddened when my new roommates admitted to me that they did not expect us to eat nightly dinners together since they had never done that with their families.  That would not happen here.

8) Comic books/graphic novels are not just the province of pimply, black-clad adolescents, and you can find a good BD section in most bookstores.

9)  The onstreet culture, at least in my town, suits my temperament in that it is pleasant but not overly familiar.  Unlike in, say, Jaipur, you don't have to take care not to look people in the eye, but meeting someones' eye does not necessarily mean that you want to stop and have a conversation with them.  You can acknowledge people, without getting into awkward social interactions.

10)  The shower heads.  It took me a while, and a lot of soaked bathmats, to get used to having a free-floating shower head on a cord, but once I realized that there was a way to hold it directly over your head, so that all your features are smothered at once in a rushing stream of falling warm water, there was no going back.

And now, the other side...

Chloé n'aime pas:

10)  There is no peanut butter.  You would think that in a culture where Nutella has such pride of place, peanut butter would not be far behind, but no.

9) The Sarkozy government, and the strikes it inspired.  While I appreciate the importance of a country's population voicing their concerns to their government, the grévès went on long enough during most of the past month, and I spent enough time stuck in various train stations, that I ended up wishing that both the strikers and the source of their dissatisfaction would give up and call it a day.

8) It is very hard to find dental floss here, at least of the kind I am used to.  It seems silly to order such a minor thing from home, but I do like to clean my teeth.

7) If you haven't done your grocery shopping before Sunday, and you don't have a big-box store near you, good luck.  Most small and midsized towns are like nuclear-attack drills from the 50's all day on Sunday.  The day of rest is practiced very assiduously by shopkeepers here.

6) I miss instant oatmeal.

5) The public transit system, specifically the train system, is laid out like a star, with Paris in the center.  This makes it difficult, time-consuming, and expensive to make lateral voyages that do not take huge detours up to the capital city.

4) The culture among teachers at French public schools is very independent and self-directed.  Every prof is the ruler of his or her own classroom, and there is not really much of a unifying curriculum across any given level.  I can see the advantages of this, for the teachers themselves, in that they are not tied to a system that does not work for them, but it can be very frustration for someone like me who is trying to work with several teachers.

3) There are approximately 5 unmarried people between the ages of 18 and 40 living in my town

2) Bureaucracy had a whole new meaning for you once you have dealt with the process of applying for a visa, setting up a bank account, and registering for social security.  I never realized before the true power of a piece of paper with an official stamp on it.

1) Not being able to better speak the language.  I know this is a problem with me, and not with the environment I am in right now, but I do get very impatient with my limited comprehension abilities.  I know I am probably making progress I am not aware of, but still...

The Good The Bad and the Immigrant Community

One of the side effects of living alone (and having a generous friend with a good collection of DVDs to lend) is that I end up watching a lot of movies in the evenings.  I am slightly ashamed to admit that not many of them have been in French, which is no doubt not the best way for me to immerse myself in the language, but Aurélie's collection is mostly English-language films, and a number of them were titles I had had on my list of things to see.  So it goes...

Most recently (i.e. tonight), I watched Gran Torino, a film which I had been meaning to see for a while, but had somehow not gotten around to it.  I'm glad I finally watched it, although it was sad--not as sad as Million Dollar Baby, but still dark and heartfelt, about people struggling out of bleak and desperate situations and trying to find a way to live their lives as best they can.  The film was not dark like a war-drama is dark; rather the bleakness was that of the ordinary lower working-class life, where the dangers of crime, violence, and loss of family hover just below the surface.  For what it was, I thought the film was a success.  Clint Eastwood is a great actor (and full of virility, even at 80), the character he played was a compelling one, and the relationship between him and the family of Hmong next door was portrayed in an affecting but not saccharine way (assisted by some good work by the supporting teenage actors).

However.  I said Eastwood's character was compelling.  That's not the same as his being likable.  He was more or less an awful, racist old man.  Although he always did the right thing when the situation called for it, I think that the question that I was left with after the movie was, where do you draw the line between the big character flaws and the little ones?  How much prejudice can you get away with when you are moral about the big picture?  And who defines the big picture?  When should we ignore the differences in perspective between ourselves and other people, and when not?

Ultimately, the answer that the movie gave was that the important issues, the questions where your responses really matter, are those about maintaining your family, protecting the innocent, and doing right by your own life.  Those are principles I can go along with, although I am not sure what the movie says about the importance of being armed in your own home.  Parts of it were a little cowboy for me, but I was impressed with the twist at the end.  I thought he was going to go all Death Wish in the final scene, and was pleased that he did not.  It made the ending very poignant.

One last word about big versus little character flaws, and then I'll move on: Although Eastwood's character slung around a lot of racist epithets in the screenplay, during his one interaction with Afro-American teenagers, he did not use the n-word.  I think if he had, it would have changed the way his character appeared, in terms of his ultimate moral make-up, at least to an American viewer.  I am not sure what that says, that that is the prejudice we as a culture cannot look beyond and cannot forgive a person for displaying openly, or that it is still powerful enough, and the shadow of that particular oppression is so long, that that form of hatred cannot come up in movies without the entire movie having to be about it.  Probably both.

Transportation and the Ill Repute of High School Basements

I think it is time for me to talk about my bicycle.  This is one of those things about my living situation here that is generally fortunate and user-friendly, but has some seriously annoying drawbacks.

When I first came to Cosne, I wanted to get, or at least have the use of, a bicycle for the duration of my time here.  Cosne is too small to have or need a bus system, but there are times when I don't want to spend the twenty minutes it takes to walk across town to the train station or to the grocery store, let alone carry all my purchases back by hand.  Besides, isn't it what one is supposed to do in France, bicycle around gaily with a baguette in the basket of one's velo?

I was fortunate, as with many of my amenities here at the school, to profit from the generosity of Mme. and M. Gordet, the school concierge and her husband who have been amazingly good to me, including lending me kitchen supplies, utensils, kitchen supplies, and even doing my laundry for me once a week.  Mme. Gordet has, it turns out, a second bicycle, which she offered to loan me for the year.  I am really fortunate to have such good and generous people hear at the school who are so willing to help me out, and with the bicycle I am now able to cycle precariously back from Carrefour market, my purchases lashed to the back wheel.


Those are the good sides to the situation.  The slightly less good is that the bicycle is of an antediluvian age, and weighs maybe fifty pounds (I call it l'elephant).  Also, there is no good overnight place on school grounds on which to keep it, so I have to lock it in the school basement.  This presents two problems: 1) I have to carry it down stairs, and 2) My recent associations suggest that high school basements tend to be the source of scenes like this.  I don't really think that the Lycée Pierre-Gilles de Gennes is built over what I suppose they would call a bouche d'enfer, but it is a little creepy, as you can see.  I would hate to think that spending time down there would make me end up like this:

Although that would be an unfortunate end to my travels in France, I must admit that it is fairly unlikely, and the greatest risk I face from keeping l'elephant in the basement is that of banging my shin when I haul it out.  In any case, it is nice to have the use of a bike here (baguette in handle basket optional).

Clara's Visit

My friend Clara from Lyon came to visit me this weekend.  Of course, she is not really from Lyon, but from the Bay Area like me, but since Lyon is where I met her, and in terms of experience of and facility with French and French culture she is my sœur aînée, I think of her as "Clara from Lyon."

It was nice to be able to show a guest around my stomping grounds, although it did reinforce for me how small a town Cosne really is.  There was a film festival going on at the lone cinema this weekend, which was pretty big news for Cosne, although a glance at the "red carpet crowds" will show the actual scale of the festivities.  Clara and I did not actually end up attending any screenings at the festival; we were not particularly intrigued by any of the offerings, and since Clara had brought a judicious selection of her own recommended films, we ended up having what amounted to a personal film festival at my place over Friday and Saturday.


We watched two Russian films, both excellent--well made, powerfully acted, entertaining, and moving.  The first, which I had heard of before but knew little about, was "Burnt by the Sun," a film made in the early years of greater openness just after the fall of the USSR, and set in 1930s Russia.  It was primarily about the life of an upper class, military family, on the cusp of the time of the great purges, whose members both experienced bizarre continuities with pre-revolutionary, nineteenth-century Russia, and the devastating instability and brutality of Stalin's regime.  It was a very somber film, as was the second (although Clara did point out that the latter left you with your faith in humanity slightly more intact).  That one was called "Prisoners of the Mountain," and although I had never heard of it at all, it proved to be almost as good as the first.  It was about two Russian soldiers in contemporary times, who were taken prisoner by Chechen rebels, and the expected and unexpected dramas that ensued.  It turned out to be one of those films that was able to make you laugh with a particularly black humor, while never letting you forget dramatic weight of the story.  All in all, it was a good weekend for film.

I would also add, as a side note, that both movies happened to include performances by Oleg Menshikov.  He is an actor I had not heard of before, but I suspect I will be seeking out his performances is other films.  Yum.

Clara lighting the candles

Stuffed peppers!

Besides having our fill of Russian films, Clara and I ate a lot of good food this weekend, both in Cosne, where we cooked on Friday night, and in Nevers, where we spent the second half of the weekend.  We also had some good luck with touristing around Nevers on Sunday afternoon.  Nevers, like many small French cities, is usually pretty dead on Sundays, but we were walking around after lunch with another friend and decided to step into the Cathedral, since it was well past the hours for mass.  The Nevers Cathedral is quite impressive--bigger than the cathedral in the nearest large city, Dijon, it dates back to the thirteenth century--Mostly, that is, since the RAF accidentally knocked the roof in during a raid in June 1944.  Not one of His Majesty's Air Force's finest moments, I have to say.


There was one good thing that came of the cathedral being partially destroyed, however, which we--by dint of a bit of serendipity--were able to find out about during our visit.  When we arrived, the church was practically deserted, a great, empty, chilly stone structure with medieval buttresses and unappealing twentieth-century stained glass windows.  As we were wandering among the different icons, though, we were approached by a little old Frenchwoman, very pleasant, who explained that she was the guide to the cathedral, and who told us that she had the key to the baptistère and would show it to us, if we liked.  Unsure of what that meant, we said, "Why not?"  She then proceeded to tell us the story.


Apparently, when victors of the Battle of Britain shelled the cathedral, they blew a rather deep hole in the floor on one side of the nave, and when the workmen were repairing it after the war, they found pieces of marble in the crater.  This was odd, since the cathedral is made of a different stone, and they brought in archeologists to investigate.  The archeological team dug deeper, and discovered the remains of an extremely old baptismal font, the center of a building that once stood on the site and that was constructed in the fifth century.  The old lady took us down a set of stairs in one corner, and through a little door to show us the archeological site that has been uncovered--the base of an octagonal baptismal pool, which was once covered in gilded mosaics and surrounded by marble columns of different colors, and was visited by Christians who were still living under Roman rule.  Our guide described to us what people surmise about the religious practices of the builders and the uses of the font, based on records of similar sites in other places, but we have no written records of the people who built or used this one.  Nobody even knew it was there until friendly fire exposed the remains.  It was amazing, looking at those ruins to think about how distant those early people were, how far removed from us by intervening time and loss of knowledge.  It really was another world.  At the same time, though, that world has not disappeared completely.  There are ruins, and continuities of knowledge and of ritual, a fact which is equally astounding to think about.

War and Memory

Today is the 11th day of the 11th month.  A holiday that I grew up with as Veteran's Day, which if I had any time off school at all, was lumped onto the nearest weekend to make it a three-dayer, and which, since I it is meant to honor the veterans of all foreign wars, was easily confused in my mind with Memorial Day.  Not so here.  This is very specifically Armistice Day, the anniversary of the end of what was supposed to be the war to end all wars. 

I spent the night in Nevers last night, and when I finally made my way outdoors, into a very cold and rainy morning, it was just past 11.  As I headed into the Place Carnot, the large square at the edge of the city center, I came upon a crowd of mostly older people, standing grouped around a statue that I had never really looked at before, but which I now realized was a memorial, with a female anthropomorphic personification (probably France, or possibly Liberty)  standing by the side of a soldier.  Today it was hung about with flags, and there was some kind of a ceremony going on at its foot, with speakers, a brass band, and military personnel--both army and navy--in uniform.  I did not stay to watch the proceedings, mostly because I couldn't see more than the top of people's heads through the crowd, but after I had circled through the city center (to get a pain au chocolat, I admit) I came back to the Place Carnot to sit in the Cafe l'Agricole and watch the end of the ceremony through the window.  It finished with all the the official participants forming up behind the band (which included a souzaphone and buglers whose horns were hung with blue, white, and red) and marching off down the street.

Watching that kind of an event I was struck by several things.  One is that the dress uniforms for the French Navy are completely awesome.  They include white berets with red pompoms and white spats.  Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me, and when you google "French sailor uniform" the most appalling things come up, so I am not able to illustrate this point.  You will have to take my word for it.

On a less frivolous note, witnessing the ceremony also made me think a little bit about how the world wars (both One and Two) are remembered very differently here.  The event I saw was a very somber one, and that was not just, I think, because it was a cold gray day and the members of the citizenry who were interested enough to show up were older people.  It really was a memorial, and not a vaunting of military glory.  It made me think about the fact that the last war that took place on American soil passed out of living memory a long time ago.  That is a big difference about being here.  Of course, there aren't many people left who fought in World War II, let alone in World War I, but the memory still feels very close, especially of the second.  There is another monument, not half a block from where I live in Cosne, that commemorates the site where a handful of members of the French Resistance were tortured, killed, and buried by the Nazis.  That is not the sort of memory of a twentieth century conflict that you would see at home.  All our wars are far away, in time or in space, and perhaps that helps us keep the awareness of their brutality at more of a distance.  I am not saying that French culture does not have its own myths and blind spots about national conflicts (as I spent most of last fall having drummed into my head by the inestimable Carol Gluck, everybody has myths about the second world war and their part in it), but it is a different set of myths.  Perhaps, as an outsider, I see them more acutely than somebody who has grown up with this memory of wars fought with battles and casualties practically on ones doorstep within the lives of our parents and grandparents.

Avec mes souvenirs, j'ai allumé la feu...

 ...Mes chagrins, mes plaisirs, je n'ai plus besoins d'eux...

On the one side, La Môme herself, on the other, Marion Cotillard in the 2007 film.

I just finished watching "La Vie En Rose," or "La Môme," as it is called in its French distribution.  It was not the easiest film to watch, mostly because the bare framework of events of the artist's life were so bitterly painful.  Not only did the misfortunes of Edith Piaf's life use her up, but she used herself harshly as well--living experience to the hilt, yes, but also destroying her body in the process, so that by the time she died at 48 she was so wasted and frail she could have been 85.  Aside from the dolorous subject, the film itself was difficult to follow (and not just because I am still struggling to understand all the French vocabulary).  The narration jumped backwards and forwards in time so much that it was almost impossible to get a sense of the causes and effects of events.  People came into and fell out of Piaf's life, and it was very hard to understand the whys and the wherefores of it all, let alone her responses to specific events outside of a general passionate imperiousness and brutal suffering.  Perhaps the crazy-quilt sensibility was the intention, though--it certainly suggested the chaotic and unstable nature of Piaf's existence, and the way that good fortune and calamity both seemed to fall out of the sky onto her head.

I have a lot of impatience with the profusion of celebrity biopics in recent years, and with the assumption that an actor is accomplishing a great feat when they take on what could be argued is merely an impersonation or caricature.  Isn't it a greater feat as an actor to make the audience believe in the vitality and the verisimilitude of an imaginary person?  I could go on a length, but the NY Times review of the movie expresses my criticisms on that front a lot better here.  

Although I agree with that critic's point about biopics, I am not sure about his assertion that American's cannot appreciate how great a star Piaf was.  This American certainly does, and--although I definitely had my reservations about the film--I thought that the amount of her actual music that it included made in an experience well worth its limitations.  Marion Cotiallard is a fiery actress, and she channeled a lot of brimstone for the role, but I though the real star of the film was the actual recording of Piaf's voice.  Her songs lifted up the film, and brought it together.  Milord, L'hymne à l'amour, L'accordioniste ....  As I watched, I waited for the great songs to come on, one by one, and finally, at the end, when I knew it was coming, she sang the greatest: Non, je ne regrette rien.

The End of Vacation

I am finally back in Cosne-Sur-Loire, after what seems like a very long time, even though it was only a week and a half.  I am certainly not complaining about having vacation, but I was getting tired of living out of a suitcase (Omar, however, does not seem to have a problem with it)

I took that picture when I was in the final throes of repacking my suitcase, yet again, at Aurélie's place in Nevers.  Every stop I made on the trip, this task became harder, because I kept adding to the things I had to fit inside my suitcase--a bottle of wine from Kellen's vineyard, a new skirt from Promod, a comic book....  Graphic novels, or bandes dessinés are HUGE here, which warms the cockles of my geeky heart.  I certainly picked up enough souvenirs of les vacances de Toussaint, enough that now I have to practice a little more frugality, at least until the end of November.  Being a tourist is certainly not the best way to save money!

Tourism can certainly be fun, though, although I always have to force down my fear of appearing to be the ugly American with a camera in order to get the pictures I know I will appreciate afterward.  The past Monday was an especially good day for photos.  It was my last full day in Lyon, and I was staying once again with Clara.  I had come into the city the night before to attend her Halloween party (a cultural ambassadorship of sorts, with delicious home-cooked food), and because November 1st was a school holiday for her we were able to spend the day together.  Unfortunately, everybody else was on holiday too, so there was a distinct lack of open shops, museums, and restaurants.  We were, by good fortune and after much searching, able to find a good lunch at a delightful little place that Clara remembered and recommended.  It was pleasant for it's decor as much as for it's food--eating there was like sitting inside of a vintage hatbox; it was all pink and cream and little wicker chairs, and it reminded me a bit of Kitchenette in NYC.

After lunch, tried to go to the park, an effort which included rides on several buses and a tram, and an embarrassing amount of walking around with no idea where we were.  We finally did get there, though, and it was well worth our perseverance.  The time of year was just right for the leaves to be breaking into golds and oranges, although they had not yet begun to fall from the trees, and so we had many gorgeous views of autumn foliage.  The place was also full of people; partly, I imagine, because everything else was closed and everybody's children were out of school, but also because it seemed to be a very community-friendly site.  There were lots of things that would have made me clamor to go to the park and have adventures, if I was under ten: a zoo, a little paddle boat pool, a pond with ducks to feed...Of course, you didn't have to be under ten to enjoy it: Clara and I paid two euros each to ride a little train that went at the thrilling speed of a middle-aged jogger and took us all the way around a little island in the middle of the park's lake.  Very nostalgic and satisfying.

Mice and the Middle Ages

It is a rainy morning here, the sort of weather that makes you glad you can sit inside and drink tea without having to worry about going anywhere.  It's good for a lazy vacation Saturday, although I'm glad it held off yesterday.  Aurelie took me to see a nearby village called Pérouges in the afternoon, which had preserved almost in its entirety its midieval architecture.  Walking through the little slanting streets over stones that I would hate to think of trying to pull a cart over, it was as if we had slipped beneath the layers of development of the last 500 years and were catching glimpses of the way the village might have looked in the days when towns of burgers were first beginning to form, creating environments where commercial relations took on nez power and the old feudal ties of landed lord and hereditary vassel began to decay.  Townships like this, which look like the antithesis of modernity to us today, were actually the cutting edge of developments that would lead to secularism, captitalism, revolution, and a host of other big concepts--at least if my stuffy, Intro to the Later Middle Ages professor of last year is to be believed.

Not everything in Pérouges was a relic, though, and I came upon this personal vehicle that would have fit right in in my home town:

Because it was the off season, and a cold and windy day the town was relatively empty, with the tourist museums shut, and the only visitors the few families who had brought their children to wander the streets. (I imagine that, as a six-year-old, this would be an even more awesome place to visit).  The quiet was actually quite nice, though, and it felt appropriate to the setting.  Aurélie and I did some exploring >>

...Then we went to taste the town specialty (Aurélie said, "Of course every little town in France has their own food that is a particular product of the locale").  In this case it was the galette de Pérouges, a sort of a flat cake baked with sugar on top, something like a sweet pizza.  We tried it, along with tea and coffee, at a little restaurant that had been serving the same cake since it opened in 1912.  The interior definitely suggested that little had changed there in the last 98 years.  The walls were decorated with old-fashioned china and brass cookware and the waitresses with lacy aprons and little caps, and we were able to warm ourselves in the heat of a large open hearth while we ate.

Unfortunately, we were not the only ones to treat ourselves yesterday.  The other adventure of the day was an escapade of Aurélie's cats.  She has two, brother and sister, who she brought with her from Nevers for the holidays, and who are enjoying the country life a little too much.  While we were sitting watching a movie after dinner that evening, Omar, came trotting in from the garden to show us what he had found--a mouse, and one that had not yet succombed to his attentions!  We proceeded to have very girly responses (squealing, and staying out of the way), while Omar began to enjoy himself with the poor mouse, letting it run here and there, and then catching it again, while it sqeaked pitifully.  After a while we convinced him to take it outside to finish it off, and we were just breathing a sigh of relief, when he brought it back again, still alive.  This time I, after much dithering, tried to rescue the mouse, using a dustpan and a rolled-up magazine, which prompted Omar to take it outside again.  This happened about three more times--mouse came in, made brief and increasingly failing runs for freedom, I approached with the dustpan, and Omar retreated, carrying his prize.  At last he came in and, having decided that the game was over, finally killed the mouse and proudly ate it in front of us.  There was a lot of crunching. 

Relieved that it was finally over, we were settling back to watch the movie, when Biscotte, who had been watching Omar jealously the whole time, trotted in with her own mouse!!  Mercifully, this one had already given up the ghost, bu Biscotte was determined that this would not spoil her fun, and she commenced to play with it, flinging the corpse the air and leaping about while we groaned and tried to avert our eyes.  After far too long (for us) she finally gave up and polished off her own as well, but it was rather too much like being a spectator at the Roman games for my taste.  I know they're cats and they can't help their nature, but still...!

Biscotte, looking innocent--don't be fooled!

From Dijon to Lyon, and What Happened There

So I wrote yesterday that I was going to try to sync up my blog life with my actual life, a manipulation of time and space akin to the machinations of a mad scientist... but I forget myself.  Suffice it to say that this posting may be a little long, but bear with me; it will not end up like this.  Away we go...

So, the reason that I had to be in Dijon on Tuesday, October 26, is because, in order to verify my visa de longue séjour and ensure that I would not be summarily deported in a surprise attack by immigration services, I (and all the other assistants) had to submit to a medical examination.  This is to ensure that we are not vectors of swine flu, AIDS, TB, ebola, scabies, etc., etc., and that our presence will not result in any population-threatening pandemics.  Fortunately, I was deemed perfectly healthy, and I made it through the process with only a minimal loss of time and dignity.

France is a fairly bureaucratic state (as I think one or two people have pointed out before) and the process of getting verified took, what with the line of 20-odd assistants scheduled to be seen in one afternoon, about three hours.  I am seemingly-incapable of showing up prepared for these appointments (when I got my visa at the SF consulate, I had to go through the line three separate times, since I kept leaving out vital copies of things) so I had to leave at one point to go get a headshot taken at a local mall, and I covered myself with idiocy at one point when the nurse, in the course of asking rote questions, demanded, "Et vous êtes enciente?" (Are you pregnant?) I thought she said, "Et vous êtes en bonne santé?" (Are you healthy?), and so I responded with an emphatic "Oui!"  ....Oh well.  I tell my students that you have to submit to a certain amount of humiliation when you want to learn a foriegn language, and I suppose the best teachers lead by example.

Really, though, in the hall of fame of surreal official experiences (in which for me, the pride of place is still held by my visit to the Post Office of Jaipur: Kafkaesque in the extreme), it was not that bad.  I got to stand in a miniature elevator while they hoisted me up to take an x-ray of my lungs, which was a sort of a bizarre fun-house experience, and at the end of the appointment I emerged with an officially-stamped visa (stamps are very powerful here) and an image of my lungs, somewhat like this <<.  Apparently, I am in no danger of ending up like a consumptive heroine of the 19th century.

After my afternoon of inspections, I took a train to Lyon, arriving only an hour and a half after I had intended.  Parliment has finally voted on the issue of the age of retirement, and the strikes are gradually dying down, although the government's actions were ultimately unswayed by the activity.

I stayed my first two nights in the city of Lyon, which really is a city--my first in France.  It is really beautiful here, and very accessible.  I think Lyon is a similar size to San Francisco, in that there is plenty of cosmopolitan presence and things to do here, but it is not overwhelmingly huge, and you can walk most places.  Otherwise, you can take the metro, a very modern-looking and new affaire, with automated trains, which prevents them from going on strike.  (I am confident though, that if machines evolve to the point of independent intelligence, that while the machines of other countries may make war against humainity or consign us all to a virtual reality and harvest our life-forces for energy, the machines of France will form syndicates and strike regularly.) ...Anyway, back to my tourtist-ing around Lyon:

Clara, my hostess with whom I had the rare (for me) and pleasant experience of going from new acquaintence to friend in a manner of hours, took me out to see the sights of the city on the first morning I was there.

Lyon is centered around two rivers, the Rhône and the Saône, and two hills, something I appreciate a lot, as it always gives me some reference points to orient myself by.  The two hills are referred to as "the hill that prays" and "the hill that works," because the latter was the traditional site of the Lyon silk industry, while the former was the site of the Cathédrale de Fourvière.  Clara and I went up to it (which is where this picture was taken) and it really was up!  There is a cable car, à la San Francisco, that takes you at an incredibly steep angle up through a tunnel inside the hill, and you emerge at the top to see the arching buttresses--gothic in evocation, but 19-century actual date of construction and in level of fru-fru decoration.  Cracks about the bishop's bird stump aside, though, it was really quite beautiful, both up close and from the foot of the hill, which we walked down afterwards, along a switchbacked track through a woodsy park.  I love the way that parks inside cities can make you feel as if you have been transported to a separte peace, outside the urban sphere--I think it comes from having gotten to know Central Park in NYC.

At the foot of the hill, we emerged from the park in the old part of the city.  This is the space between the two rivers, the "presque-îsle" (almost island) as it's called.  It makes much more sense to me the way that old cities always cluster around natural waterways or in other logical habitats, unlike their younger, post-industrial cousins, which get built on swamps (Huston) or in the middle of deserts (LA).  The quarter we were in was a neighborhood of Italian merchants during the Renaissance, so it was full of narrow streets with tall, balconied buildings and "secret" courtyards and passageways--very Romeo and Juliet.

I would like to add photos of all these things, but after my last upload, the computer I am currently using refuses to add any other files, just to spite me, so I will once again have to wait to update images until the technological stars are in better alignment.  I will just finish by adding that, my second day in Lyon, Clara took me to meet Aurélie, whose parents home just outside the city is my current port of call, at the Place Bellecour, the largest square in western europe, which turned out, at that particular moment, to be occupied by what might be the last hurrah of the strikes.  There were riot police in full outfits, marchers carrying flares, syndicate affiliations, and even communist flags (!!), and people yelling over the PA about the spirit of the worker and the rights of society.  Even in protest, French rhetoric is expressed in ideal and theoretical rather than personal terms--something I find very different from the US.

This post is becoming epic, and although Hugo might approve, I am realizing that it might profit me to go out and enjoy the nice weather while it lasts, since I am once again in the countryside.  I almost achieved my goal of bringing my blog up to the present moment, but sadly, this incongruity in the writing space-time continuum has yet to be corrected.  I suppose the reality is that I will always have more to say...

Until next time, though, I think this is it!

....and, pictures!

I have finally gotten to a place where I can upload photos, courtesy of another kind hostess, this time in Lyon, so I can add some pictures to illustrate my long weekend in the Dijon countryside.

I realize that this picture is not hugely demonstrative of my location, but I can assure you that the landscape behind me is full of vineyards (see below).

Another friend of Kellen's who was also staying with her in the upper dormitory-like room of home (it's not quite a chateau, but still a big country house) said to me, "It's too bad you weren't here a few weeks ago during the harvest."  I'm not sure I agree--the harvest time is, as one might only imagine, very tourist-y, with lots of visitors descending on the little villages and hamlets of the region to exercise their noses in various caveau de dégustation.  I liked the emptiness of the tiny towns (although I certainly wouldn't want to spend more than a weekend or two away there, as I am a city girl at heart), and the vine fields, even stripped of their fruit and beginning to lose their leaves, were a beautiful burnished amber.  Even in fall, the land is surprisingly verdant-looking to me, since I grew up with the surrounding the Bay Area and ringing the Sacramento Valley, which stay a the nice golden brown of a tray of muffins for approximately nine-tenths of the year.  I ran along the road from Kellen's place to a nearby chateau on a truffle farm (really!) Tuesday morning before leaving, and I was able to take in a lot of the scenery, although after a few days of some reprieve from the damp cold of Cosne it had become frigid, and I felt as if I was battling a a sharp-toothed and unreasonably-agressive wind both ways.

Looking back, it seems amazing that wine-tasting at Kellen's (which is what is going on in this picture) was only three days ago.  Since then, I have gone back into Dijon, spend almost three hours having a very French bureaucratic experience getting medically certified to remain in the country, taken the train to Lyon, and had a day of tourism and excellent food with a new friend, but that will have to wait for the next posting--I don't think my blog is ever going to catch up with my life!

Wine Tasting

This morning I had had an experience that--improbably as it seems, given my northern-CA background--was totally new to me.  I went wine tasting.

Sadly, pictures again will have to follow, but I will try to do my best with words.  Kellen took me in the morning to her vineyard, Domaine Lucie et August Lignier, to sample some wines with a couple visiting tourists.  I'm afraid I displayed my ignorance rather forcefully in front of these pleasant New Yorkers, since I have the bare minimum of sommelier knowledge.  Listening to Kellen describe the process of winemaking and the evolution of taste over the life of a wine bottle, I felt as if I was getting a fleeting glimpse of an entire self-sustaining world's worth of knowledge, with its own sciences, cultures, and lore, and I asked many elementary questions, such as "What are tannins?" and "Why are white wines white and red wines red?"  Although Kellen was happy to answer everything I asked, no matter how simplistic, and I learned a lot, I don't think I am even now in any way prepared to give a discourse on winemaking.  One thing that did strike me powerfully, though, with my historian tendencies, is the way that wine, with its long maturation period, and immense range of variation between terroir (the earth it is grown in), vineyard, wine-maker, and vintage year, is like a historical document, in that it records the specificity of a particular time and place.  Like a historical document as well, its story changes over time.  A particular vintage can develop in taste over time, it can "go to sleep," and "wake up" again, it can have bottle shock and become unpleasant until it resettles--like a bit of historical evidence that becomes more and less important as fashions in history-writing change.  Maybe I am pushing the history-metaphor a little far here, but I found the idea of a product that can last for years, and that can grow and change, but always retain certain characteristics evocative of its origins, a very powerful one.

On a less philosophical (pretentious?) note, it was really cool to go down into an actual vaulted wine cellar, like one Montresor might have felt at home in, watch Kellen uncork a giant barrel, and suck some wine out using a tool reminiscent of a giant eye-dropper, and give us each a sample, which we then slurped and spat like pros.

A votre santé!

Amis

I just wanted to add a quick note to promote a blog of one of my fellow assistants in neighboring Nevers: http://lifeinfrogsville.tumblr.com/.  Maisie is a Londoner teaching in ecole primaire, and it was her birthday that we celebrated last weekend.  Her "10 Commandments of Being French" is pretty funny, although I would quibble with the one about beef--pork seems to me to be far more omnipresent.

La guerre des etoiles

I am currently in the wine country south of Dijon, staying with a friend of a friend who has the added distinction of being a vineyard owner.  Since the countryside is very beautiful here, and I am blogging from my hostess's computer and so cannot upload my photos, I will hold off on exclaiming about rustic location until I have the wherewithall to show some of the views as evidence.

For the moment, things are very quiet here.  It is a rainy sunday afternoon and Kellen, my vinter-hostess, is preparing to roast a chicken with vegetables from her garden.  This morning, her two children (10 and 7-ish) were watching Star Wars: Episode II, and I joined them for some of the fight scenes.  Kellen is an american expat, so they are more-or-less bilingual, but they were watching it dubbed into French, which improved the whole thing immensely.  In good geek-girl form, I consider George Lucas's later additions to be an almost unforgivable blot on his oevre, but the execrable dialog is much better en francais.  Lines such as "Bien fait, mon jeune paduan" and "Tu vas payer, Duku, pour tous les jedis qui sont morts aujourd'hui" go from being painfully embarrassing to pretty amusing.  I had to hide my smiles from the kids, who were fully emotionally invested in the story, and informed me  in their melange of English and French, that "Maitre Yoda" was going to save the day.

Winter is coming (already)

One aspect of living in a the Loire valley that I had not anticipated is, well, that it is a river valley.  The fog rises off the river in the mornings like it wishes it was in an Edgar Allen Poe story.  Sometimes, I get up an look out my window and this (exhibit A >>)  is all I can see out my window.  It is beautiful, but quite spooky, and I am glad I am not out driving in it.

Other mornings, like this one, the sun is shining brightly high in the sky, but the fog lies low in the pockets of the rolling countryside, covering the fields and spinnies in a bluish muffler.  I spent the night in Nevers last night with Aurelie, and as we were driving the thirty-five minutes it takes to get to Cosne on the highway, we kept going over miniature rises and coming upon unexpected reservoirs of fog lingering before the sun's rays became too bright.

The downside of a sunny day, though--and it has become a very sunny one, post 10am--is that it is freezing.  Aurelie had to scrape the ice of her car before we could leave this morning.  After a week or so of summery weather when I first got here, the last two weeks have skipped fall and taken us directly to winter, complete with cold, damp, and wind.  The heat was not on in the school last week, which meant that the conversation in the staff room consisted of a lot of people sitting in their coats saying, "Merde, il fait froid!" to each other in various stages of outrage.  Fortunately, they turned on the heat in the personal apartments over the weekend, and as of today, it is finally on all over the building, so it is much more comfortable inside at least.

The Epic Voyage of a Clic-Clac

Listen my children and you shall hear....a tale of valiant struggle, heroism, feats of daring, and triumph over daunting odds.  Noteworthy, even during a weekend of high adventure in the streets of Nevers (speeches, strikes, anniversaries, proposals of marriage...but more on that to come), the journey of Therese's futon is an epic unto itself.  Read on...

First: the setting--Carrefour, the Target of France; the time--a gray and prematurely cold Saturday afternoon in October; the cast of characters--four daring English teaching assistants devoid of automated transportation but stout of heart.  Pictured above are Therese, the mission's leader, new tenant of a beautiful but unfurnished apartment and new owner of a bargain futon or, in the French, "clic-clac" (for real!!),  Maxine, and Kali (yours truly was holding the camera).  Our mission: to carry the futon from its place of origin to its new home.

The prospect of this task astonished the unassuming Frenchwoman who sold us the futon and brought it out for us on an industrial-sized hand truck.  Undaunted, though, we boldly set off, traversing the five-block distance with only a handful of stops along the way.

Ignoring passing motorists, ambulances, curious passersby, and our own trembling arms, we finally attained the sanctuary of Therese's apartment.  It was only once inside, however that our troubles really began.

The first set of stairs was a challenge in itself, but worse awaited us around the corner of the next landing:

Faced with this herculean challenge however, we did not blanch, but put our shoulders to the wheel (or rather, the futon), and bravely soldiered on, scaling the heights with minimal damage to our backs and our dignities.  Lest any reader, amazed by the narrow and alpine nature of this last staircase, doubt the veracity of our accomplishment, I offer proof in the form of the view of us at the summit, resting after our labors.

From there it was but the matter of a few more feet of pushing, and the futon was in Therese's apartment, where its arrival was welcomed with appropriate expressions of glee and victory.