.fr

well, we just put the capstone on our apartment. we did it, we got a television. not because we can't live without television, but because we need to learn french. honestly, that's the real reason. our first ten days here that we were forced to live in a tiny hotel room had one benefit we were not anticipating, that is, our french comprehension shot way up from all the tv watching we were forced to do. after that the learning curve dropped sharply. and while we are immersed here in language all around us, beyond overhearing conversations, making out signs, buying groceries, and saying ca va? to our neighbors there is a limit to how much we pick up in our daily life with the amount of french that we know now. we are always upping the bar the most minute amount, and we learn just a little bit more each day. but unfortunately, unlike corey, who by the way is surprisingly well equiped in decent street/conversational french, neither of us are very adept at going-out-there-and-meet-the-french. we want to, and we hope we will by the end of this sojourn, but we are worried, as corey said it -- well, we sound like we're about five years old. that is the language level that we're at. and who would really want to hang out with a five year old? so our language is a slow aquisition.

so in the meantime, we bought a french friend. one who does't listen that well and talks a lot of garbage, but who at least will talk.

by the way, did you know jodi foster speaks french? we didn't, but we just bought the tv and turned it on and there she is, speaking french on a talk show. crazy.

there is a fact about our existence thus far in avignon that i must admit to. neither of us are proud of this, and at times we feel ashamed, irritated, and angry. but other times, i must sheepishly confess, we've felt satisfied. since we've moved into our place at the 1st of the month we've been full throttle shoppers, indulging several times a week at various avignon-area hypermarchés and troc stores. we can say that we have no choice because we've moved into a vacant apartment with nothing but clothes and we had to fill it up with furniture, pots and pans, and mayonnaise, and this is true, and so shopping at french equivalents of walmart is a necessity, and this is also, mostly, true. to our knowledge, the smaller "independent" stores where you would get such goods intramur* are upscale boutiques and we can't afford a 180€ sauté pan.

so we've supported, on several occasions, our local hypermarché so that we could get the stuff we needed to live in some semblance of what we're used to. which, if you know our previous living situation, you know that it's pretty minimal, but there's still the aforementioned basic stuff of modern life. i think it's a shock to accumulate everything in such an accelerated manner, but then to get everything at once from one store borders on surreal: your sheets with your yogurt, your tile cleaner with your spaghetti strainer. opposed to the ordinary accumulation of detritus**, which, if you are not huge consumers (and we don't consider ourselves to be, though i realize that can be argued given our relative placement on the wealth of countries scale), you barely notice the accumulation and then when you move you look at the heaps and heaps of stuff filling your small space and you marvel at how it entered into your world.

considering this makes me think of the idea of "need" and how seth and i, as modern consumers, decide that we need a spaghetti strainer. why don't we just use a pan lid? well, because it's a pain to do that. and if we consider that inconvenience spread out over eight months and then divide it into 2€90, the result is that we decide we need the spaghetti strainer. if we were more ascetic we might decide that we can live without one, but we're not. the consumer equation works on us: the existence of spaghetti strainers creates a need for one.

some of you reading this might be wondering why we don't just head on over to the french goodwill-equivalent. the aforementioned troc stores come close, but they don't have everything. all of our furniture either came from troc stores or was lent to us, but there are no used clothes and very little housewares. also, it is illegal (!) to sell used mattresses here so we had to get that new.

overall, what is most interesting is that the big box consumerism i always though of as an unfortunate american characteristic exists on nearly the same level here. there's so many superstores around here; nearly every bus line terminates at a commercial shopping district with a few of them. on a related note, the other day i was depressed to discover that the bakery in town whose bread we like the most is an enormous chain.

so what do i do with this knowledge? i'm not about to let my french romanticism go, as there are still things to be romantic about, but i will change parts of it along the way.

i'm sure i will, in the course of this blog, talk about getting this thing or that thing and maybe i'll even be exited about it, and it will seem like this examination means nothing. but here i must admit something else and that is that i enjoy shopping. even if to just wander a store for a half hour looking for scotch tape and kleenex, there is something about being lost in a place with all of these unattached objects that is compelling for me, and as long as the place isn't a literal walmart or isn't crowded, as long as my consumerism isn't sonorous, i can block out my inner protests and consider the merits of different brands of tissues for a good long time. i can be lulled into a place where it is safe to buy things, and it momentarily feels good. these aren't big purchases that have this effect; those infrequent purchases have different feelings altogether. but grocery shopping, for example, is something i really enjoy. it's one of those things that as a child seemed very adult to do and i couldn't wait to do it, but then, unlike many things in that category, the thrill has never worn off.

here there's all the new fascination of the differences and similarities between american and french products, and trying to decipher the language and labels, but that topic is for another post, another time.

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*intramur - inside the literal walls of avignon, as opposed to extramur.
**in an act of tinstac, i checked out steev's blog tonight where he discussed the opposite of accumulation; deaccumulation (?).

we have internet at the apartment. seth awoke this morning and poked his head in, interrupting my bath to tell me. he was ecstatic. i think he was jumping up and down. i didn't think the internet would come, but it came like electric binomial fog. i will let him explain the pains we went through to get to this point, but we definitely felt like we achieved some small victory. and now we don't have to read books all the time, or visit historical treasures or museums, or go for long walks and enjoy life's small pleasures. now we can read email.

for the past two days i have been reading what i could about teaching and culling things for a lesson plan. we don't have apartment internet yet, so this involves quick internet cafe searches that yield a handful of starter lessons involving naming english speaking countries on a map and having the kids pick english names.

my first class is at 1:30. before i go i run to the e.lecleric hypermarche to pick up a 300 or so big index cards that the kids can use for name cards and i get myself a small binder to use as a lesson planner. i look around, grab some groceries, and then head the half mile back to our place. but i lost track of time in the supermarket, an all-too-common occurrence for me, and end up pressed for time and rushing through lunch and throwing stuff in a duffle bag and rushing out the door: flashcards, scissors, pens, binder with lesson notes, map of usa, childrens books, stickers.

first class is with the directrice. she's kind of like a principal but she is a teacher as well. i went over a map of english speaking countries and then had them choose names. after i repeated myself several times in english she'd repeat instructions in french for those who haven't yet gotten it. i was super nervous and my throat was dry but i got through it somehow.

next class i started out the same as i did for the first class, but it didn't work. the kids didn't respond to it and they were super loud and would run around the class and the teacher just sat there, relieved for that for a brief time they weren't his problem. i wasn't quite sure what to do, so i quickly wrote a dialog on the board, "what's your name?" and "how are you?" and had pairs come and act it out. the first pair came up but then the rest in the back kept screaming. when the second pair came up i remembered about the stickers in my bag that i'd brought from the us. they say things like, "rad", "good work dude", "hang ten". i put one on each of the kids chests like a badge. and suddenly a whole room of hands shot up. they were crawling on the desks so that they could be higher, waving their hands back and forth, supporting their elbow with the other hand, saying, "oh! oh! pick me!" or some french equivalent. really ridiculous. am not exagerating their sudden, hilarious excitement. observation one: kids love stickers.

next class was easier. first level cm2. the teacher did a nice intro before giving me the floor and then helped with the first half. the kids have had virtually no english. i sang the abc's to them and then gave them a photocopy i made of the abc's with words that begin with that letter, xylophone and such. i told them we were going to make english dictionaries and the rest of the class was all cut and paste in devoted silence.

first had a doctors appointment in the morning that was scheduled by my school. it's needed for social security/immigration stuff. thought it would be for a standard blood pressure, weight, ear/eye/throat check-up, but all that really happened was i took off my shirt so the doctor could take a picture of my chest. okay, it was more like an x-ray. chest x-rays are required because we americans don't get shots for tuberculosis, and the last thing they want is us giving people consumption. again.

next i went around and introduced myself to all my schools. the teachers were all nice enough, but i was surprised to learn that most of the ones i'm going to be working with don't speak english. huh. i should probably hurry up with that learning of french thing.

some of the teachers wanted me to introduce myself to their classes. i wasn't ready for that part at all. but i said okay, and then stood up there in front of everyone and said hello and and counted to ten with the class, and some of them i asked really simple questions like "what's your name?" and i spoke ver-y dis-tinct-ly. these kids, they are super cute. i'm just not used to being around kids, and i don't realize that they are these little cute humans and here they speak french really fast and excitedly. the only thing cuter then the really cute kids, is the ugly kids. yes, the ugly kids are the cutest kids of them all.

got my schedule today:
monday afternoon,
tuesday afternoon,
friday morning and afternoon.
those are my responsiblities. that's it.

just peeked in our wonderfully large bathroom cabinet. how is it that it's nearly full? all my supplements, herbal concoctions and flower essence and homeopathic remedies brought from the states, then the things that we already bought here: aspirin with codeine (yes), mosquito potion, allergy medicine. i was thinking of odd, family quirks that seem encoded in our dna; a fear of flying, a love of baseball, food dislikes. my mother and grandmother have an attachment to vitamins and minerals.

i digress from france. but it is now two weeks since we've been here and i realize that here is starting, just a bit, to feel like a home. we know most of the kebab shops in the walls of avignon and we have our favorite. kebabs, by the way, are the fast food of france. they are also the tacos of france in that they are a tasty import from the south. and they outnumber the crepe shops 2:1. kebabs, by the french definition, are small, thin slices of lamb (or at least i think it's lamb), shaved off a cone of lamb on vertical rotating spit that's about two feet tall and eight inches wide at the base. the shaved meat is placed in a pita with some sauce. you can also get your kebab with salad, french fries, or both. yeah, french fries in the sandwich. i got used to that one real fast.

ah yes, seth walks in now with a thought. i thought i told him to lay off the wine :

do you think all the foods that are available to us now span the range of tastes? that is, are there foods out there, like on other planets, that have tastes we are capable of tasting and haven't yet?

we get the keys! we return to the etap and pack up our bags and prepare for the arduous 8 bag journey but then the cell phone rings and its corrine, "i told you to call me, what's wrong?" now, she had told me to call her at about ten to help move, but i had told her that we could do it alone and and we'd call her afterwards. but i am learning that she does easily permit refusals of her help. a spotty connection forbade any other refusals and she said she would be right over. such was the day of corrine and us, and i kept feeling guilty for keeping her from her family or free time, but she insisted. she drives us from the hotel to our new apartment, helps us move in, and then takes us several places furniture shopping in the morning. then she feeds us a delicious lunch with her family in the afternoon (she has an absolutely stunning place in villanueve, the former home of a popular avignon architect), and then offers us a bureau, refrigerator, kitchen table and chairs. she takes us furniture shopping in the afternoon and when we have everything picked out, takes us to rent a moving truck. after helping us navigate the difficult french formalities involved in that and waiting for a while for us for the next available van to return, she has to leave to go pick up her son from school, and tells us to call when we get home and moved in all the furniture so that she can take us shopping for other household things.

the wait for the truck is two hours long. seth seems very tense. it was a stressful day and the wait is annoying, but there's something else. "provincial drivers are insane," he says. and they are. people turn mad behind the wheel here and there is no reason. they go through red lights often. we've seen it; they don't care about rules. and avignon roads are made for horses, not moving vans. there are smart cars here; they look like sedans cut in half.

this morning we got into our place, but for only an hour while the electric man came to turn on the power and the realtor did the inspection. i see for the first time, under light, that the bathroom is a pretty beat. years of grime have found their way deep into the grout work of the little pink tiles, in fact, it's seems that under light there is dirt cakes on all the tiles in the house. and in the toilet room (the bathroom and wc are often in separate rooms here; this is a good thing for us), well, there is a rusty patina etched so strongly in the bowl as if someone dropped a bunch of pennies in there decades ago and they decayed in there. this dampened my enthusiasm for the place somewhat, i must admit. were we too hasty? are we paying too much?

tonight we saw a debussy & shostakovitch quartet at the chapelle des pénitents blancs (church of guilty white people?). though everyone but us was decked up and over 60, it was only 6 euros (we claimed the student rate) to get in. seth enjoyed himself immensely, but while i found the musicians to be amazing, and the chapel a perfect venue for the quartet, the music's dichromatic tones gave me anxiety and i left needing therapy.

so the weather starting to turn cool and the wind blows fall, dried leaves are starting to swirl in the street. we bought our first baguette today, still warm and so very delicious.

our bank appointment was at 9am. the monsieur that scheduled the appointment and another mademoiselle help us set up our account. between our limited french and their limited english we manage to finish an hour and a half later with a joint checking account, and a carte bleu/visa/debit cart. there are lots of fees associated with french bank accounts. (as i'm learning, there are a lot of fees associated with everything here.) there were fees for my bank card and a different type of fee for seth's bank card, a fee for opening the account, a fee for automatic payments, a fee for checks, a fee for internet connection. oh, but there are no fees for using other banks atm machines. so to spite them i will never use theirs. ever!

we come back to the etap hotel to take a nap. the etap is where we've been staying for the past few days since our first hotel was booked. it's close and the same price, but the room is barely big enough for the uncomfortable bed. and it has a 1985 mauve and green trimmed decor. it's incredibly ugly. and everything in it is the lowest quality they could find. the shower curtain looks like a trash bag with loops, and how is 9 square feet of plastic supposed to keep water in the tub anyway? i wake up with brush burns from the sandpaper sheets. my face hurts. seth's back hurts. the worst thing is that it's nearly completely automated. you check in with a kiosk outside and slip of paper shoots out with your room number and 6 digit code. there's one guy that works a short shift in the mornings and evenings, but otherwise you're at the mercy of a sleep machine. "open the pod bay doors, HAL."

at least we have bbc on the telly.