Picking up the pieces of my dignity

 

Today the tram doors attacked me.

I’m pretty sure it was actually even more embarrassing than I think it was. I was listening to my ipod on my way to school, waiting at the tram stop. Some woman with a stroller was taking forever and a day to get on the tram, so I had to slip in behind her at the last minute. Unfortunately that didn’t work out as well as I hoped.

As the doors closed on me, I felt myself let out a scream, but I really don’t know how loud it was, because of my ipod. I do know that when I squeezed myself the rest of the way through, the entire car was looking at me, so I imagine I may have yelled louder than was necessary. I've made it unscathed for over 4 months, and of course it happens my last week of being here!

How do you come back from that? I tried really hard, but there’s no way to salvage your dignity. It's kind of like when my cat attempts do do something graceful and fails horribly. You just pretend not to notice as she picks herself up and slinks away into the shadows. Unfortunately, slinking was not an option for me. The best I could do was put on my sunglasses, pretend to read the newspaper, and count the stops til I could finally get off that violent tram car.

I sure hope summer school is an option.

Are you already wondering where this post is going?

 

Alright, I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news…

The Good News:

I got a new bed. This means no more cot-style thin mattress on a plywood plank. Bad news is, I’m leaving in 5 days. At least maybe I’ll be well rested for my next two days of exams.

The Real Bad News:

Today I had my first round, which consisted of three exams. First was written comprehension. We had an article and had to answer a bunch of questions about it. Not too bad, but quite a bit of writing. Somehow I managed to get ink on my cheek and my shirt.

Next up was oral comprehension. We listened to a radio clip and had to answer questions about it. That’s always a bit challenging because the voices are kind of fuzzy and it’s usually tons of statistics and numbers. Not too bad, though. Today it was about radars and automobiles. By this point I had ink all over my hands and smudgy fingerprints all over the exam.

Then came the last and toughest exam- written expression. We get the prompt (topic) and have to write an argumentative essay in a very specific format. We’ve been working on perfecting it all semester, and my crazy teacher has a list about 10 miles long of required and forbidden elements. Basically even if you manage to write a perfectly cohesive essay and you forget to skip 2 lines between the intro and body, but 3 lines between the body and conclusion, you’re screwed. Things like that frustrate me because they don’t really matter at all.

So there I was, ink covered, hot, itchy mosquito bite on my temple (soon to be an ink covered itchy mosquito bite on my temple), racking my brain trying to remember all my formatting rules, hoping that at least I’d get a winning topic.

This is my topic, roughly translated: We place a lot of value on hygiene as a way to improve our quality of life. Why do we make this tough decision? There are alternative methods to also live a long and healthy life. Explain.

…What?

First off, is being hygienic really that tough? Is it such a challenge to brush your teeth, shower, and wash your hands on a semi-normal basis? I don’t understand how this is a difficult decision, especially when you compare it to the alternatives- rotten teeth, body odor, and constant illness. Those things don’t sound like the ticket for a long life. That sounds like Dark Ages-type living where people died at age 20. We place a lot of value on hygiene because we don't all want to die of the plague. Is that what they were looking for?

What are the alternatives? Green tea? I hope so, because that’s what I said…

Countdown

I leave France in less than one week.

Ok, I’m not actually going straight home, but I will be soon enough. I can’t believe it! Where has the time gone? It’s simultaneously taking forever and flying by. In 3 weeks, I’ll be back in Maryland. Here is my agenda in the meantime-

June 4-9: Fly to Amsterdam. Staying with my friend Rabiah, who somehow lucked out and got a research grant or something to work on her PhD there for the summer. Highlight will be seeing a familiar face, and maybe visiting the van Gogh museum. Or maybe Rabiah’s 3 Dutch guy roommates….hmmm…….

June 9-11: Fly to Geneva to meet Justin, Sam, Heather, and Lori. We will all be spending quite a bit of time in close proximity for the duration of the trip. This is going to be really fun, or we may actually kill each other between June 10th and June 17th. We’ll be in Geneva for 2 days. Right now the highlight is a tour of the CERN laboratory. Physics isn’t really my thing, but the boys are geeking out about it. This should be amusing.

June 11-14: Copenhagen. And Rabiah will be flying over from Amsterdam for this leg of the journey. Highlights include vikings, beer, and a trip across the bridge to Sweden.

June 14-17: Barcelona. I am really excited about this part. Everyone that goes there seems to fall in love with it. The only downer is a pickpocketing problem…and the fact that it’s probably going to be about a million degrees. Highlight- paella.

June 17-19: Back in Nice. Say goodbye to host family, pick up luggage, and try to enjoy my last 2 days on the Mediterranean, despite the fact that the Mediterranean hates me. Seriously, I was out for an hour today and fried. One hour!! Need higher SPF sunscreen, which these Frenchies don’t seem to believe in. I’m starting to think the stuff they market as sunscreen around here is actually baby oil or something.

June 20: HOME, where I'm sure that my cat will hate me forever for leaving her with her nemesis (my roommate) for 5 months.

Starved for attention and begrudgingly sitting in
Lori's lap

 

Grandma Partied Hard

 

I’m pleased to announce that Grandma survived the party last night. In fact, it was really crowded and I was there so late that I saw the end, when the police were called for a noise disturbance.

You should all be proud of me. I was out until 3am.

Needless to say, I’m exhausted. I got up at noon and decided that today was the day that I was going to have pizza, a craving I’ve been fighting for 2 weeks now. The place beside our apartment has really great pizza. It’s torture walking by every day and not caving to the crispy-crusted cheesy gooey deliciousness. We all have our crosses to bear.

The goal was to get some serious studying done today. But after eating the pizza and skimming pages for 20 minutes, this grandma needed a nap. Two hours later when I woke up, I was pretty productive until dinner, which was about a 1-hour window.

Study goal: ~4 hours

Reality: ~1.5

After dinner Sophie wanted to watch a movie. Somehow Cabaret came up in conversation and I told her I’d never seen it, so that’s what we ended up watching. It’s funny to see Liza Minnelli back when she was young and moderately attractive, but to me she will always be Lucille 2, the crazy old vertigo-suffering cougar from Arrested Development. 

The whole movie, I was cracking up and thinking about how much she looks like my sister. We always joke that Liza Minnelli is her celebrity lookalike…minus the spider lashes and crazy eye shadow. 

Do you know the hot dog man?

I was just downstairs with Chloé and her boyfriend for a neighborhood block party. I’m not gonna lie, I wasn’t looking forward to it. I don’t know any of the neighbors at all, and mingling with complete strangers in France is a little awkward.

Fortunately it went better than expected. This old guy seemed to take a liking to me and kept striking up conversation about the type of meats that can be smoked and also kept bringing me hot dogs. It was a little weird, since I don’t really like hot dogs (or care about what kind of meats can be smoked) but I felt strange refusing. At one point I had one bun (=slice of a baguette) and 3 hotdogs crammed in. Eventually I resorted to stuffing the extra wieners down inside my empty beer bottle.

In other news, I’m going to a party tonight, which was a great excuse to stop being fed hot dogs.

Yes, you heard it right- Grandma’s going OUT! It’s a real college-kid type party that doesn’t even start until 10 or 11..way past my bedtime!

We’ll see how I feel tomorrow….

Double dessert

Tonight was a first for me.

We decided to have a Spring Break reunion in the form of a fancy evening out. Unfortunately, we’re all poor, so we went for dessert and wine instead of a full on dinner.  We ended up at one of those touristy restaurants along the water. The pecan brownie won me over.

After our bottle of wine (split 4 ways!) and tasty desserts, we sat back and enjoyed the cool ocean breeze and the calm of the evening. Before long we noticed that the large group sitting at the table beside us had also ordered desserts. The two girls at the end of the table closest to us both ordered particularly delicious looking strawberry shortcake. Being French, they took one bite out of it and were both finished.

My friend (let’s call her Amie), potentially being even more of a dessert fiend than me, kept eyeing the whipped cream- topped glory that was going to waste before our very eyes. Amie kept threatening to steal the dessert, but I didn’t take her seriously.

Until the girls left…

Then things got really serious. All that needed to happen was for the rest of the people at the table to go away. Then the shortcake was all hers. Unfortunately they seemed in no hurry to leave, and eventually we gave up. We stood up and walked to the door of the restaurant. At that very moment, they also stood up and headed for the door. Instead of continuing on out like normal people, we ran back to our table, Amie swiped the shortcake, and dug in.

And guess what? Stolen shortcake really does taste better :)

Say whaaat?

Irrelevant to my post, but this is one of my favorite pics from
Germany. It's in Heidelberg.

The host family/exchange student dynamic is certainly a strange one. It’s weird being “part of the family” but not “part of the family” and sort of “a guest” but not really “a guest.”

For the most part, those feelings of awkwardness have mellowed out. But tonight my host mom and I had a weird miscommunication, which has resulted in me feeling like a dud of an exchange student.

I’m sure it’s not actually a big deal, but I always wonder what they think of me. Sophie has been hosting students for years, and I often think to myself “I wonder if I’m better or worse than the others…”

Last night at dinner Sophie said that there was going to be a performance at Chloe’s school the next evening (tonight). She asked Chloé if it was possible for me to come, because apparently the seating is pretty limited. I wasn’t particularly enthused about going to a high school performance, especially since last night Chloé still didn’t know what they were actually going to perform. But I figured I should do it if she could get me a ticket.

At lunch today Sophie brought it up again, saying she still hadn’t heard back about whether they had a ticket for me or not. I didn’t press the issue, and this evening after dinner Sophie said “Ok, we’re leaving in 5 minutes.”

I assumed it was the “we” that didn’t include “me.”

Then Sophie said “Ok, just close your window and we’ll be ready to go.”

Me- “Moi?...”

Sophie- “Yes, Chloé got a ticket for you!”

Today I am…shall we say unkempt? It’s sweltering and we’ve got no AC. My hair is plastered to the side of my head from sweat. I’ve got no makeup on and I’m wearing dirty clothes [laundry day tomorrow], so I’m pretty sure I probably smell. 

Me- “I didn’t know you had a ticket for me. I’m not ready.”

Sophie- “Oh, this is really casual. You could go like….that…?”

Me- “Ohhhhh, no I can’t. I’m sorry. I didn’t know…”

Sophie- “Ok…whatever you want to do. Have a good night, then.”

It wasn’t really one of those sulky “have a good nights.” It seemed genuine, but now I feel guilty that they went out of their way to get me a ticket and then I flaked out.

I wonder what the other students were like. Were they more involved with their host families? 

I’ve been here for 4 months and I leave in a week, so I guess this wouldn’t profoundly impact their opinion of me either way.

Germany pics!

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10100367443402328.2740421.5738637&l=d002d28705