Le caprice

Most of today was spent at the mercy of the weather and the bus system, neither of which do I have any particular fondness for at the moment. I tried to take a bus that, as it turns out, only runs on Wednesday - something to do with the school system. My bus schedule is gaining asterisks and arrows and circles at an amazing rate. Hopefully I will full comprehend it soon - of course, by that point I may have discovered that there are never any buses to Mignaloux. So anyway, I spent four hours more than planned in centre ville, in a pretty ridiculous rainstorm for the first hour or so. Without my rain jacket, of course, because it was nice this morning (and is currently practically cloudless). I think it's time to invest in an umbrella, à la française. Because raincoats just aren't chic. 

It wasn't all bad, having extra time - I retraced my steps from a few parts of the tours and spent some leisurely time in Notre Dame la Grande and Ste. Radegonde. I adore old churches, in case I hadn't mentioned that before. It also reminded me that I forgot to mention, in my earlier post, that when we were in Ste. Radegonde during the tour, there was a baptism going on - priest, flowers, infant in white, the whole deal - and they were playing Rufus Wainwright's rendition of "Hallelujah." During a solemn Catholic sacrament. It was a little...disorienting.

Anyway, in reverse chronological order:

This morning I met Lauren in town, and we visited le jardin des plantes (literally, the garden of plants - descriptive, if not poetic), which is quite lovely, and the Église St. Hilaire, which is more than lovely. It's more romanesque, whereas a lot of churches we've visited have been gothic. Also, it had a weathervane on top of the spire. Complete with rooster. I'm sure that's of great doctrinal importance. We were going to go see more touristy things, but were prevented by a deluge, which we (mostly) waited out chez Lauren. Then sandwiches from one of the boulangeries with which Poitiers abounds, and onward to aforementioned misadventures with the bus.

Yesterday, Elizabeth and I climbed the very long (217 ± 1 steps) staircase up the cliff that surrounds Poitiers for some pretty amazing views of the city. It was sunny all day for the first time since we arrived, and the rooftops and church spires of the old city make for some excellent panoramas. There's a large statue of the Madonna and child looking out over the city from the top of the cliff, blessing it, and we wanted to climb the spiral stair to the top of the statue, but alas - locked. Still, yesterday was pretty excellent.

Jumping back to the present, Christelle, the daughter of my host mother, arrived back from the U.S. today. I haven't had a chance to talk to her much yet, but she seems nice. I'm looking forward to having someone my age in the house. I think a few friends are coming for dinner tonight, which means I absolutely won't be able to follow the conversation, but it's still fun to watch and (try to) listen.

Still in the future: finding a Nalgene or Sig or some equivalent, which seems to not exist at all here. It's quite a shock, coming from Vermont where they're practically mandatory. Also, I really need a haircut, but I'm worried that I won't be able to communicate what I want to the stylist and something disastrous will happen. Language barriers and scissors do not mix. Although I've generally seen a lot of good short haircuts here, so hopefully it won't be too much of a problem...when I work up the nerve.

Vignettes

I'm very thankful today is Sunday: nothing on the schedule that requires doing battle with the bus system. I went to church with my host mother this morning. It was...different. It's called the Église chrétienne (Christian Church), and is exactly what I expected from the name: not actually in a church, praise and worship music, about as non-liturgical as it gets. Lots of spontaneous praying and hand waving. The pastor is American and speaks French worse than I do. All he did was give a sermon; he didn't even serve or particularly bless the communion; you go up and take it "as the spirit moves you," I guess you could say. Me, I like the ceremony and tradition of liturgical churches. But living in Mignaloux, with no buses on Sunday, I'm not sure what other options I have. We'll see.

Mignaloux does have its plus side, being small and cute. Today there was a big market thing, basically an all-town garage sale (it reminded me strongly of the Kolache Festival, sans kolaches, and with sausage in a baguette rather than on a stick). I saw lots of interesting stuff, including an amazing number of matched sets of beer glasses, piles and piles of the little china figurines that come out of King Cake, Readers Digest condensed classics in French, and tons of vinyls, which Bruno collects (he came home with Johnny Cash and Sting, among others). It was pretty fun. However, it greatly disturbed me that they planned on selling the rabbits at the petting zoo for eating. That's just wrong.

To backtrack a bit, we tried to register at the Scolarité des Sciences on Friday and had all sorts of trouble with our American health insurance not being accepted. The nicest of the ladies told Lauren and me to go to our class anyway and we'd get it worked out later, so we did...and we're not going back. I came to that conclusion more quickly, having understood less of the computer science related material than her, but it's not what either of us was looking for. So I'm ditching math for the semester, which leaves this week pretty much free.

We did two walking tours of the downtown area, one Friday afternoon and another Saturday morning, with M. Fabrice Vigier, a history professor at the university. We saw a lot of churches, including some that have been repurposed. It was all quite interesting, and also damp - it's rained every day so far, and the forecast predicts rain for the foreseeable future. Charming. Tomorrow I'm planning to go into town in the afternoon, when there's at least a chance at sun and I am nearly certain the buses are running to/from Mignaloux, to explore inside a few of the churches at my leisure. I love old churches, and devoutly wish people still habitually built in stone. Though it's awful to see the graffiti and ugly paint and electric lights and other indignities people inflict on beautiful old churches. Progress is all well and good, but it should stay away from certain arenas.

I finally bought a cell phone, which is pretty cute and weighs almost nothing, being as basic as it gets (which is exactly my cup of tea). I had to go with the cards to add minutes, because you can't sign up for a month plan without a French bank account - a credit card doesn't cut it. Minutes are kind of ridiculously expensive, as previously noted, but all received calls are free and work even if you don't have any credit to make calls, and emergency numbers are free as well, so it's good for being reachable and in case of emergency.

In general, I'm getting a bit more settled in, though everything is inordinately tiring, including talking to people. I can understand French if one person is speaking in a relatively quite environment, but start adding people to the conversation and I completely lose it. Hopefully that will get better quickly.

L'épuisement

Today was exhausting. Don't ask me what I'm doing blogging about it instead of sleeping; I wouldn't have a good answer. It's a relief to write in English again - we signed the Language Pledge today, so no more cheating by speaking English with my host mother, but communication with friends and family is sort of exempt, so I'm filing blogging in that category. As the day wore on, my French got worse, not better - when I'm tired, I lose all grasp of syntax, grammar, vocabulary (I forgot the word for "dog" this afternoon), pretty much everything you need to communicate effectively. Oh well.

This morning we met with Viviana and M. Paoli for introductions, lectures about French university life, classes, professors, all the logistics. We had lunch at a RestoU, but I haven't really been hungry since I got here (between the walking, the worrying, and the lack of appetite, I'm going to lose weight instead of gain it), so I can't really report on the quality of the food. The afternoon was more lectures and then, for three of us, meetings with professors in the math and science departments. It seems that math professors are the same everywhere - quiet, awkward, hard to engage in conversation - and I felt that he underestimated Lauren's and my level of proficiency. We're both taking Combinatoire (combinatorics) this semester, which is a third-semester course, and for next semester I had to talk him out of wanting me to take courses I've already covered. As it is he barely agreed to let me into a fourth-semester course in Euclidian/Hermitian spaces that I think I'm quite well-prepared to take. Oh well. Lauren and I present ourselves at the Université at 8h30 tomorrow morning to register for our math class, and the class itself starts at 10h30 and goes till 12h30. We'll grab something to eat and take the bus to centre ville to meet M. Fabrice Vigier, a history professor, who's taking our group on a walking tour of Poitiers. Then I'm going to take the bus home and go to sleep.

Speaking of buses, so far I haven't gotten too lost. I almost took the wrong bus this morning, but la conductrice fortunately asked me where I was going (I guess I do look like a foreigner) so it all ended up all right. Living in Mignaloux (a suburb of Poitiers) puts me closer to the campus that most people, but it's a bit of a hassle with the bus system. The routes end early in the evening (we ate dinner in centre ville tonight, so my host mother kindly came and picked me up from the closest bus stop to Mignaloux that I could get to) and you have to call ahead of time to get a bus on Saturday. They don't appear to exist on Sunday at all. I'm thinking of buying a bike, as it's not too far to the Parcobus Champlain stop (though a bit far for walking) where buses run much later and more frequently. We'll see.

I'm pretty nervous about my first class tomorrow, but at least Lauren and I will be together. I'm looking forward to settling into a schedule, at least; hopefully one that permits more sleep than I'm currently getting. I still need to buy a cell phone. I feel slightly naked without one, but they're so expensive here! If you use the pay-as-you-go variety, it's about €40 for the phone, and then €30 for two hours of call time (which comes out to about $0.75 a minute). I'm trying to decide if a one-year plan is worth it. Hopefully I'll have some time to figure that out on Saturday. And now I'm going to bed.

Je suis arrivée

I arrived in Paris yesterday morning after a surprisingly hassle-free flying experience - Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth were both practically empty, no lines in security, no delays, pleasant seat-mates. I found Lauren in the airport with no trouble, and our train was on time (unlike all the trains going to Lille-France, wherever that is). I had a brief moment of panic when I got off the train in Poitiers and didn't know where to go exactly, not being used to train stations, but I mustered up my rusty French to talk to someone official-looking who pointed me in the right direction, where I found my host mother. 

I basically broke the language pledge from minute one, as she started speaking English to me and I was too tired to want to argue, though everybody else at home speaks French - at dinner last night I understood maybe one word in five, and not usually strung together, so I just enjoyed the food and looked politely confused. French classes at Midd have given me the mistaken impression that I understand spoken French to a high degree - actually, our professors just talk slowly and clearly, and I can't follow a real conversation with people all talking at the same time and at normal speeds. However, everyone was very friendly and slowed things down when they asked me questions.

My host parents are Brenda and Bruno, the former a divorcée and the latter a widow, so they have quite a few children between them. Brenda's son is going to college in the U.S. and her daughter, Christelle, who is my age, will be living at home and going to the university here (she's away for the week, so I haven't met her yet). Bruno's youngest son, Tom, who's 14 and just started high school, lives at home; his two unspecified older children have apartments. The son of a friend of Brenda's is also living here: Nico, who's 15 and speaks French, English and Chinese fluently. It's a bit intimidating. In addition, a couple who are friends of theirs (both teachers, I think) have been staying here for the past week, so dinner last night was quite boisterous. I haven't quite mastered the cheek-kissing thing yet.

My room is nice and quite bright and cheerful, which is good since I didn't bring much stuff of my own. My favorite part is definitely the heavy wooden shutters that open outside the window; they're the sort you can throw open dramatically in the morning, take a deep breath, and quite possibly break into song. The neighborhood seemed pretty when we drove through it yesterday, but it's raining today (and most of this week, if the forecast is to be believed) so I haven't gone out exploring yet. There's a little staircase that opens to the outside and leads right up to the hall with my room on it, so I don't have to go traipsing all through the house if I develop a habit of coming home late (ha, ha). And I have internet (obviously), which is excellent. My phone didn't work as promised when I got over here (Verizon, you lie), and I was feeling horribly cut off. I don't know how people traveled like this before the advent of wireless communication. The internet feels like a big safety net, letting me keep track of/in touch with people. Don't get me wrong, I love letters (and had one waiting for me when I got here!), but I don't want to wait a week to hear from someone out of necessity.

In about 10 minutes Brenda is taking me to the bank to cash my traveler's checks and to wherever one gets a bus pass to do that. Then I will start religiously memorizing bus routes. Orientation starts tomorrow with general meetings and such. Lauren and I have a meeting all to ourselves with someone in the math department. I'm thinking of taking the same class she wants to do (something along the lines of probability), since I've never done something like that, I don't really need the credit, and I'd feel more secure in a class with somebody I already know. That's probably cheating, but not really caring...

A few pictures of my room are on my Flickr page, and more interesting things will come soon, weather and/or fatigue permitting. I don't feel awful, I just have no sense of what time of day it is. It's weird and disorienting, so I hope it passes quickly. And now I'm off for some errands. À bientôt!

Bon Voyage

Tonight is my last night in my own room for the next nine months. It's amazingly messy; I'm almost completely packed, and there is still a large amount of stuff strewn about. My suitcases (two, weighing up to 50 pounds each - efficient packing should be a competitive sport) are mostly full of clothing and medications; my carry-on bag contains my laptop, a folder full of important papers (if anyone wanted to steal my identity, it's all right there, conveniently packaged), and sundry travel paraphernalia (e.g. iPod, gummy snacks). The Euros/travelers checks/passport/train ticket are all traveling on my body. And that's pretty much all I'm taking. One of my beds is still covered in clothes (the "no" pile and remnants of the "maybe;" the "yes" pile went into my suitcase); my desk is still full of stationery; my bookshelf is untouched; my dresser displays all but my favorite jewelry. It doesn't really look like I'm leaving. If you ignore the large suitcases on my floor, that is.

After all the preparations for traveling abroad I've been making for the past months, it will be a relief to finally get there, although I'm by no means finished with paperwork. The French are entirely too fond of it. Although I have my long-stay visa, I'll need to apply for a residency permit once I get there, which requires a medical exam and a €55 stamp (which I'm quite curious about). According to the Poitiers transportation website, I need an identity photo in order to get a bus pass for the academic year. I'll need to obtain a French cell phone as soon as possible (in the meantime, I'll be incurring international roaming charges of $1.49 a minute - very short conversations), though I haven't decided between a year-long contract and the pay-as-you-go plans. The normal logistics of college life all seem much more intimidating when conducted in a foreign language.

However, I'm looking forward to meeting my host family and beginning orientation. From the research I've done on Poitiers, it seems like it will be a nice city to live in. The next 18 hours or so, and the leave-taking they entail, seem like the most frightening part of the whole experience. Hopefully that's a good sign, and when next you hear from me, I will be well on the way to immersing myself in la vie poitevine.