Trenteski

This is my thirtieth post!

I've not much to say for myself besides a good news and a bad news. Good news first? You bet! Well, look at this gem of information right here. So read through that, and be as excited as I am. 2013, here Heather and I come! That's it...

Bad news? Well it starts something like this... you know that bug that's been terrorizing me? Hard to forget, I say! Anyway, one day as I was sitting on the couch reading and my host mom comes into the room with the dog's water dish, prefacing whatever she's about to say or show me with "stay calm, but is this the bug?" There, floating in the dog's dish is the bug. It's terrifying when it's dead too, I assure you. So we rejoiced a bit, laughed that it went for a swim, and she said it's harmless anyways.

The beast

Is resurrection harmless? Jesus thought not, but I beg to differ. Last night I walk past my room on my way to the bathroom and see on the floor of my room the bug. The non-cockroach. The "centipede," as it's called here, but our centipedes are much different. Anyway, I turn a blind eye, go to the bathroom and try to think about what to do with it... my host brother was home, maybe he could kill it? Or I could find a paper towel or even a regular towel to cover and kill it with? It really didn't matter, because when I got out of the bathroom it was gone. Well, almost. It was on the wall that's between the doorway and my closet. I turned my back on it for two seconds to take my shoes off and hang my coat up, but as I turned around to face the closet I looked on the side wall and it was gone. I still have no idea where it went. If I was the kind of person to have nightmares, I'd have had plenty by now. Speaking of "nightmare," the French word for it is cauchemar and is germanic, just like ours! The history of it is quite interesting.

Suck!

Suck?

These are in reference to the graffiti we sometimes see on the stone walls or on old buildings, that give us quite a chuckle. They are probably done by a group of French kids thinking they're being scandalous with the English language. Or it's done by some really dangerous gang and it's a code-word for something. We have no way of knowing. Anyway, I just thought you should know. Do what you will with that information.

While I've been here in France I've stayed connected to linguistic thoughts and ideas. For example, recently I've been thinking about pleonastic subjects (in French they use il which means 'he,' but used pleonastically, means 'it.'). In English, we use they as a pleonastic subject. We're not really referencing anyone in particular, but we all adhere to their advice. I certainly wouldn't be referencing anyone when I say "they apparently don't care that they're having sex loud enough for their exchange student (who is trying to sleep in a room below them) to hear." Or would I? I know you have no idea who the they are in this example. A more conventional example would be "they say that kid is scarred for life." Just saying.

Pont du Gard

So anyway! It's getting colder around these parts, I'll tell you what. Even down south, where I was this weekend with my program. We went to Pont du Gard, Montpellier, and Avignon. Pont du Gard is an old bridge, as you can see, that also served as an aqueduct. We got to walk across it (while trying to wrap our heads around the fact that this huge thing was built so long ago) and some of us had lunch on the other side. It was just the beginning to a beautiful south. Next, we went to Montpellier, where we walked around, saw an old hidden synagogue and it's bath, walked around some more, and felt the chill. Oh! We also saw a protest, even from the top of the town's Arc de Triomphe. Picture to follow. That night six or seven of us stayed in the hotel and split two bottles of wine while playing card games and watching the Simpsons in French. Suspicions confirmed: I like Merlot better than Pinot Noir. If, when I'm of age in the states, somebody buys me a gift bottle of Pinot Noir, I don't know what I'll do. Never drink it, that's for sure. It'd be a decorative bottle. Also, for dinner that night I had a ton of olives. Regrets? None. I love olives.

Montpellier

Me and Stephanie

So the next day we went to Avignon, which was the center of Popedom for a long while before he was moved to Italy. We toured the castle for a while, which was really cool. There wasn't anything substantial in it, but it was enormous and amazing. We walked around town for a bit, and Stephanie N. and I had lunch, where my Plat du Jour was a trout. Future reference - truite means trout. Head, skin, tail and all. Bones. Suffice to say, I ate half and called it good.

We then went to Chateauneuf du Pape for a wine tasting, which was accompanied by olives. There was a white, red, and a red. The third red was the best. The olives were delicious. And we were all tired. After that, we got on the bus and napped all the way back north.

The Devil Come to Bethlehem

Forgot to Tell You

HEY! So I forgot to say something about the night I got home at 3:40am after the partying. So there I am, minding my own business, walking in my room to take my shoes off and get ready for bed, when I turn around to leave my room to go to the bathroom. And there it is. The bug. The bug that sends shivers down my bottle like Mrs. Butterworth on that Geico commercial. It's there on the wall (just now my keys shifted in my pocket and I jumped because I'm thinking so hard about this bug) like it's decided my room's the best place to be. I eye it as I open the door and... really I don't know how to describe the movement. It like... zigzags or makes circles, or whatever, but really it's just incredibly fast and frankly, I don't know where it went because I got the heck out of there. When I came back it was gone. I'd suspected it went behind the pastel rendition of a bird hanging on my wall. So the next day I told my host mom about it and although she was freaked out, there wasn't much to do. She said we could spray it with something. So...

Then last night my host brother had a friend over and my host mom, while getting dinner ready, told the friend to go down and look with me to see if it's there. So we did... I gingerly lifted the picture to look behind it, and there was nothing. Then the friend (also Nicolas) took the picture off the wall entirely but there was no bug. So we went to the next pastel hanging on the wall (a tiny monkey holding onto a finger with red polish) and still no bug. He asked if it was a spider and waited patiently as I looked up the word for cockroach (cafard) to which he replied "bug." Not quite, kid, not quite. There's a vast difference between a bug and a cockroach. I let it slide. I told him it disappeared, is probably in my bed, and we went upstairs. There, in the kitchen, he told my host mom it was a bug, to which I said "Un cafard," at which point she immediately stopped stirring, looked at me with a petrified face, and frankly I don't remember what she said because of the sheer terror running through both of us.

She made sure it wasn't one of those fancy eight-legged insects, and then asked if it had a lot of legs. To which I replied, yes and it's brown with long antennae. She was relieved, said those are harmless, there's nothing to worry about, and that it's probably under the baseboard.

Yes, harmless. Unless you're me tonight, in the bathroom, minding your business, when a tiny version of the original runs past your foot and under the door. Babies. The thing has had babies. But let's just say it has one less baby because as soon as I opened the door I took a step and swear I stepped on it. It could have been something else, debris from the day, but if it were you, and you felt a tiny bump underfoot, you'd do a crazed karate kick too and run in your room.

Annecy

Yesterday our API group went to Annecy which was an hour and a half of a bus ride away from Grenoble. They were having the Fête des Alpages, which is when they bring all the animals down from the mountains and parade them around town. There were so many people, it was nearly impossible to pass through the streets. It was fun though, and there were little tents with people selling cool stuff. Annecy is basically the Venice of France because little canals run through the town and connect to Lac d'Annecy which is the clearest lake I've ever seen.

It's a really beautiful city, especially all the old parts. I also went inside a castle that housed some old furnishings, and contemporary art - oddly enough. Would you like to see pictures of the town? Ok!

Autumn Commencement

It's been a busy weekend, I'll tell you what. I've a feeling this is going to be a long post but I'll include every picture on the planet to keep you satisfied. Everybody loves picture books. So where to start... Thursday. I'll start with Thursday.

So, Thursday morning I walk my fanny on down to the tram station to wait for the B tram that takes me to school. I'm sitting there for maybe two minutes when this announcement comes on saying that the day before there was an incident and that trams A, B, and C aren't running. However, nobody gets up to walk away so I stay sitting. A couple minutes later the same announcement is played. Still, nobody moves. Some girls come and sit next to me, they look at the overhead sign that says that no tram is running, and ask me how long I've been waiting. I tell them, we sit, the announcement comes back on, and by this point everybody decides that the information is probably true and we all leave the station. As I'm walking back up the street to go home, I spot my friends Carrie and Stephanie N. I tell them the news and after a couple minutes of deciding, we start to walk to school. It took us an hour and a half, and we were late so we just skipped the morning class (knowing we wouldn't be the only ones) and hung out in the API office for a while.

At the office, we were told the story of why the trams weren't running that day. Yes, that day. At all. It goes like this: The trams have police that sometimes check peoples' tickets. If you got on the tram without paying, you're fined. So this guy was checked and fined, he called his buddies, and two stops later he and his hired help beat up the six tram officers. So the next day the tram drivers took the day off in protest. The hoodlums were caught.

Also, while waiting for the late afternoon class, my morning teacher comes out of nowhere, and asks where I was that morning. I make a couple feeble mumbles about the tram and being late and she asked if I had my book so she could give me the homework. Ugh! She did it with all smiles too, like "It's ok you weren't in class, nobody was, let me give you this homework though. Later!"

Me, Carlos, Shawn

Shawn, Stephanie S, Adrian, Brady,
Sutton, Rachel, and I

So after class a bunch of us had to walk home, which was actually fun because we just walked on the tram tracks and sang songs and chatted. We were getting ready for a night of fun because we were celebrating Stephanie S's birthday. I ate dinner at home, met Carrie and Shawn at the tram stop, and we walked to Le Tord Boyaux. We danced and sampled from their grand selection of wine. Best wine flavor: peach. Some people had flaming shots. Carrie had two. She felt it later. Side note: Carrie reminds me a lot of Madame Bailey, so it was quite entertaining to see her drunk. That story comes a little later. For now - Le Tord Boyaux pictures!

Enjoy those? Yes, ok, so after that Carlos took me, Shawn, Ashley, Carrie, Allison, and our German friend Lena to this discothèque called Sun 7 (which is a play on words for "Sunset"). But first! A bottle of wine was bought and shared (although I only had a sip or two because it was really cheap and tasted like meat). So we got our grove on there as much as we could... it was super packed and a small place anyway. Three DFMOs took place (dance floor make out) though I shouldn't be spreading around who was a participant. I was not.

So we left around 2am, walked Lena home, and then walked all the way back to La Tronche. I got home at 3:30 and Carrie and Shawn got home at 4 or so. The whole walk was stalled a couple times to let Carrie have a sit down. All in all it was a very good night. Yesterday we went to Annecy but I'll post about that in a separate blog.

Negligence

I've been a tad negligent with my posting, haven't I? And to boot, this isn't even a real entry. I'm attaching some pictures and calling it good for now. Last weekend I went to the Musée Hébert like I said I would, and read Le Petit Prince while sitting in the park. I'll be sure to fill you in on cool stuff later.

This here is a mysterious path I longed to walk down the first time I went to this museum, but decided to stick with my guide/host dad. The second time I obliged myself.

See! This furniture looks nearly the same as my Old Yellow Chair at home!