An American Girl in Avignon

May 26, 2009
Things are slowly coming to a close here. Although I know all good things must come to an end eventually, I’m not ready… and I don’t want them to. Here’s what is/has been going on:
Well, I am sitting in my room, procrastinating mes devoirs, as the whipping Mistral keeps opening and shutting my window. Our water heater is broken, so I took an Olympian-worthy quick shower last night under the Titanic-like conditions. The day before, I took a hot shower at Martine’s neighbor’s house though, so I can’t really complain. The mechanic came for the second time today to try to fix the problem, without any success. Someone is coming to replace the whole thing tomorrow after 6:00, but we all have an appointment upstairs with a hot shower tonight just in case. Looking forward to it :)

For the past few days there has been a random cat coming in and out of my room and Martine’s apartment. Sakinah and I were sitting on my bed talking the other night and in walks this random cat. “Qu’est-ce que f***?! moment.” Martine really should close her windows. Her cat is nice, and I guess the random cougar-like one that frequents the apartment is too. Normally I like surprises, but I didn’t enjoy waking up to the random visitor on my bed the other day. It was strange. Of well…one of those quirky things I will remember about France. Sakinah, Katie, and I are still working on a name for our new “friend,” because he is currently christened, “Random cat.” I think he/she/it (?) deserves a better title.

Oh! Monday night around midnight, something really scary happened. I was getting ready to go to bed when I heard screaming downstairs in the lobby. Since our building doesn’t have air-conditioning (most houses in France don’t), my window was open so I could hear better. It sounded like two guys were downstairs whipping on each other, and in the meantime, a young woman was screaming bloody murder. I heard crashing glass, more screaming, fighting, yelling, and looked out my window to see a third guy banging on the apartment building and yelling to get let in. He buzzed everyone in the apartment for entry. Martine’s response: lock the door and call the police. Sakinah and Katie came running into my room to peer out my window and watch the whole thing. We had front row seats. Everyone in the street stopped to watch and ask, “Ça va?” Granted, we don’t live in the ghetto or anything. We live in a really good area of town: right next to the Palais des Papes, and St. Pierre’s Eglise is two steps outside our door. We’re in prime tourist corner.
It was really frightening, and the screaming continued. We watched in s stupefied state, wondering what on earth was going to happen. I started getting really nervous when somebody let the guy in the baseball cap banging at the door inside. I thought he was trying to get involved, but in all reality, he was trying to stop the fight. If I would have known that, I would have told Martine to let him in, but it’s better to be safe than sorry, and how would somebody really know that? When the door flung open (all of this is happening directly below us…remember…we are on the 4th floor), two yelling guys COVERED in blood came rushing out, with a screaming young woman flailing her arms trailing behind. One guy had a belt in his hands as his pants were sagged to the ground. Thankfully, it didn’t look like the woman had been hurt. The police came and shooed them all away. It was so scary. I’d never seen anything like it before. There was no way I was sleeping that night…
When we walked downstairs the next day, our hallway looked like a crime scene: blood on the walls and broken glass everywhere. All I can do is hope and pray that nothing else happens