An American Girl in Avignon

The past two days have been quite a trip. Fascination and Love of this place: growing. Pocketbook and Patience: shrinking.

The other day in-between class, a group of us started talking about how we have all have had the weirdest dreams since coming here. I don’t know if these dreams are subconscious thoughts and worries surfacing themselves while we slumber – or just simply the result of being in a place so different from the one you like to call home. What is more bizarre is that we all seem to be dreaming similar things. I am dreaming about people I haven’t seen in years, being lost, and of course, strange situations happening here and at OU. I find myself waking up some mornings and thinking, “Where the heck am I???!!” Before I realize, oh wait…I am in France. I wish there was some sort of explanation for all the thoughts floating in my head forming some really awkward and unexplainable dreams. Dream analysis has always fascinated me, and it’s always entertaining to try to recall the crazy events your mind pieced together between REM cycles. Traveler’s night traumas, perhaps?

For example, I dreamt about drying my clothes the other night – probably because I am really missing the convenience of dryers. Here, I hang my jeans out to air dry, and they are finally ready to wear…three days later. Perhaps with the aid of the sun, this process will quicken. As one can imagine, it is kind of awkward having to air dry you underwear in someone else’s house, so Kristina and I designated a spot in our room specifically for this.


After class, I went to the post office with Rachel…possibly one of the most confusing places in France. There were blue and yellow machines along the wall and a long line of people. The place was so big and overwhelming, I felt like I was in an airport. The stamps I bought for my postcards (which hopefully I will get around to sending sometime soon) are humongous! I had to white-out and rewrite the addresses, because the stamp was so big. I found out later that all stamps in France aren’t this big. The man behind the counter misunderstood me, and gave me jumbo sized ones. Oh, the joys of a language barrier. At least they didn’t cost any more than the others…

That night at dinner, conversation with Madame went surprisingly well. For some reason, I was able to speak French decently tonight. I have bad days with my attempts to “parler,” and I have good ones. Unfortunately, lately it seems that I keep getting worse and worse, but maybe you have to get worse, before you get better. After all, if you never make a mistake, then how can you learn?? The conversation went from the Mistral (the nasty wind that blows through the South of France) to language. The French language is lot more restricted than ours, perhaps because of its age. There isn’t as much flexibility, or room “to play” with words and such as there is in English. Something I find difficult in French is remembering all of the genders of nouns. To reference David Sedaris’s “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” (so sad that I could not see him speak at OU this quarter) what on earth makes a man’s shirt feminine, and a woman’s masculine? There is absolutely no sense to the system. Why is the sun masculine, but the moon feminine? I don’t see any masculine quality about the sun, or any feminine qualities about the moon. I have no idea who decided these things, but there is a long line of tradition behind the sexuality of nouns in lots of languages. At least French is not as complicated as German, where there are three possibilities: masculine, feminine, and neuter. My explanation is that maybe the Germans thought if they couldn’t find a masculine or feminine quality, the noun would be an “it.” :)

Yes, learning a language is complicated. Especially when one tries to adopt another after their language skills are fully developed in early childhood. (Which is why I would argue that foreign language education needs to begin much earlier for students in the United States. Wrote a paper for English about that last quarter.) In France, it seems like a majority of the population speaks two, if not three, or four languages. You feel incompetent when they asked you what language you speak, and reply English…and in the process of learning French. That’s another funny thing. I still don’t feel comfortable telling people that I speak French. Mainly because I am not very good at it, and I still have a lot to learn. Hopefully, things will get easier, because every day, I feel like I am learning something new.

When I went to get crepes with my correspondent yesterday, who conveniently is best friends with Elisse’s, I learned a few new slang French words: one is “vachement”: equivalent to très (very) en français; the other one I remember is “boulet,”- which literally translates means a ball-n-chain. But in casual convo means either a grand task, or refers to that “one person” who always seems to hang around…when no one else wants them there. Funny, huh? Thankfully no “boulets” so far on this trip, but we shall see…

Thinking that we were going to be late for our dreaded oral production class after our Nutella and banana outing, Elisse and I ran down a side street, only to bump into John and Kelby on their way to the Red Sky. Class was cancelled. Apparently, the students at the university were causing “civil unrest” (there was a band playing, people speaking, and students congregating to state their opinions), so class was cancelled. Later that night at Red Sky, one of the leaders on the trip called us to say that there would be no class for us tomorrow, due to the severity of la grève. Although the situation for the university is frightening, I was happy to have the day off. Who would have thought that I would be in France amongst one of the biggest student strikes in history? You never know what’s coming around the bend…

Phone tree time!! It was as if someone had told us exams would be eliminated from the college curriculum! We were so excited =time to go out and celebrate! Our French friends came by to pick us up and take us to a place called the Cadillac Club. The club was outside the walls, and man, were there a lot of students there…after a while. I find it funny/comforting that the college students in France are similar to the ones in the US (in that the party doesn’t really start until after an hour or so when it is supposed to). Ahh…I feel like I am back in Athens, when I am thousands of miles across the Atlantic.

Some observations I made: the French dance differently than Americans. It is more tasteful in some aspects in that touching and grinding (rarely seen) is kept to a minimum, but just plain weird in others. You can dance like a total dork here and feel completely comfortable, because guaranteed there is someone worse than you out there…I noticed most of them just sort of sway their hips and raise their arms. Needless to say, there was no reason to feel awkward after I got a look around me and saw how everyone else was dancing. Having a good time, but dying in need of some fresh air, I stepped outside with Rachel, Kyle, and Nicolaus to cool down…only to be met with the modern apocalypse outside!

The wind (that whipping Mistral again) was swirling, but it wasn’t raining. Just as Kyle and I turned to step outside and meet Rachel and Nicolaus…CRACKKKK!!! The biggest bolt of lightning I have ever seen in my life strikes near the telephone pole on the other side of the street (really close to where we run). I swear I felt the Earth shake beneath my feet! It was crazy! Kyle swore that the hairs on his legs stood up…and I believe him, because I think the hairs on the back of my neck did the same. Suddenly, it began to hail…really hard. Huge balls of ice came crashing down like rain. It was absolutely terrifying. The lights across the street went out, and the lamp in the breezeway we were standing in flickered. Rachel and Nicolaus ran inside, followed by Lance, Melissa, Brad, Elisse, and Meghan…who were wet and scared out of their minds from walking (more like sprinting) in the storm. We all ran upstairs as fast as we could, screaming, “DID YOU HEAR THAT????!!” to everyone around. They had. Thankfully, the scary weather was over for the night, but the wind and subtle sprinkles walking home were still going strong. Let’s hope April showers, bring May flowers in Avignon.

I returned to my house at 2 something, only to find myself fumbling with the keys my family gave me in the dark, cave-like tunnel next to our garden – which happens to be located next to a pitch-black parking garage. I was sweating it. Pulling out my cell, and pushing the buttons over and over to use the dim, blue-ish glare of my screen as my only light source, I finally made my way to the backyard…to find that the shutters had been locked. Great…I panicked for a few minutes, until I remembered that the family had given me the key to the other entrance just last week (after I had to make an early morning phone call to my sleepy roomie to be let in). After some struggle with the lock, I stumbled into the pitch black house. Due to the lack of lighting, I knocked over something on the kitchen table as I made my way to the back staircase that leads upstairs. As I pushed the obnoxious buzzer-triggered light by the stairs and heard the sudden mumbling of voices, I knew Madame and Monsieur’s sleep had been disturbed. They were kind of grumpy this morning…and I don’t blame them. Oh, it is going to be a fun spring indeed. :) I wish they would get rid of that dang buzzer…

For a change of scenery, tomorrow, I am going to Nîmes for the day with some friends. The train leaves early, so I should probably go to bed soon...but I am going to watch a movie instead. XX. More later!