There and Back Again: July 16th, 2013

The irony of this post's title is not lost on me; Tolkien truly hated the French.

At the beginning of the year, a version of me that retrospectively seems exaggeratedly younger than I am now left the comfort of her home country for the adventure of a lifetime. I spent an amazing semester based in France and branching out to nearby countries at every given opportunity, but all things ultimately must come to an end.

I haven't added a word to this blog in quite some time, so my catching up starts with my final couple of weeks in Europe, which turned out to be an absurd culmination of the best and the worst of the trip. Let's start with the worst.

As most of you that have spoken to me since my return already know, I got really sick in Europe. That upper respiratory infection from the week in Spain and Portugal was already uncommonly poor health for me, but the end of my semester put that sickness stint to shame. During the finals period, which would already have been unpleasant enough due to excessive amounts of studying for these foreign exams and the hurt of having to say goodbye to all the amazing friends that I had made throughout the semester, injury was added to insult. Not only did I get shingles (a disease that you may be familiar with from your 80-year-old grandfather having recently contracted it), but I also got an ulcer. At the same time. Yup.

Needless to say, this situation was rather unpleasant for me, but looking back at it, there never really was a better semester to get so sick. With the American medical system, we are largely conditioned to try to walk off most any illness we contract unless we think that we legitimately might die from it, because let's face it, our health care is expensive. In France, though, medical care is much more accessible to the public, making it far less daunting of a task for a young foreigner to finally make her way into the doctor's office and get some treatment before her condition gets irreparably bad. Realistically, I probably should have gone to the doctor about a week before I ended up going -- you know, before I lost 10 pounds from being unable to eat anything -- but chances are that I would have put it off even longer if I had been in the States at the time. I'm not sure how differently it might have ended if that had been the case, but I'm just glad that I was someplace where I could get the help that I needed without the fear that it was excessive or a luxury. I'm better now, and I have the socialist health care system to thank for that.

About two hours after getting out the hospital, I completed my last final exam of my undergraduate career (langage et cerveau, or language and the brain, by neurolinguistics class), and I had a couple of days to rest up a bit and pack before greeting my parents once more, saying my goodbyes to my France friends, and starting off on the final legs of my European adventure. The transition was bittersweet, and I still wasn't anywhere near 100% health wise, but this was where the amazing things got started up again.

Seamus and Ryktica, as I like to call my parents, took me on a perfect parisian redemption trip. Just as a review of the first trip to Paris, half of the group got pickpocketed, the other half got sick (strongly recurring theme for me), and I never saw the Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysees, Arc de Triomphe, Louvre, top of Notre Dame, or, ya know, any of the cool and stereotypically standard stuff that you're supposed to see in Paris except for Shakespeare and Company. Paris Take II fixed all of that, and Shakespeare and Co. was still magical, plus I ended up running into somebody I know outside the shop (shout out to Mackenzie McDermit, who solidified my parents' ideas that I actually know everyone on the planet). The highlight of this second attempt at the city, though, came from a magical moment while watching one of the most magical movies ever: Midnight in Paris.

I only have one movie on my laptop, and that is it, so the three of us found it only fitting that we should watch it together while reposing after a full day of parisian adventures. I knew that the movie would go through the midnight hour, but I wasn't wearing a watch, so part way through the movie I turned to good ol' Seamus to ask him what time it was. He showed me his watch, and it was exactly midnight in Paris. It was perfect.

In other news, Ryktica took selfies in front of the Eiffel Tower.

We soon moved on to the land of Harry Potter, Doctor Who, and the Beatles: London. We rode double decker buses. We got rained on. We went on walking tours. We saw Big Ben. We got rained on some more. I turned 21, and on that day I was able to reincorporate tea into my diet, and that night we saw Spamalot and walked along the moonlit banks of the Thames. I felt immensely grateful to be there.

The very last city that we went to visit was a lesser known town in the north of England, but still held great importance to my father and myself. Seamus and I made our pilgrimage to Liverpool, the Beatles' hometown. We only spent a single night in the rainy little city, but we certainly made the most of it. We saw the band members' childhood homes, the famed locations of Penny Lane and the Strawberry Fields orphanage, and the locations where the music started. I ended up having my first beer as a 21-year-old at the Cavern Club, where the Beatles had their first gigs. Yeah, I'm just that cool. You have my permission to be jealous now.

And so it ended for us where it began for them. We flew back to the States, and it was time to face culture shock once more.

Yes, I know that I've spent pretty much the entirety of my life in the US, but after so much time in France, certain things were surprising to adjust back to upon my return. For one thing, American openness had me thrown for a loop. I had forgotten that it was normal to smile at a stranger on the street, so it took me some time to not be creeped out by others doing that, and it still takes conscious effort to reciprocate rather than just naturally scowling at every stranger I see. I'm also adjusting to not being able to blatantly people watch the way we do in France; over there, you can just kind of openly stare at people and it isn't weird. That's not so much the case in this country. The one thing that would never have occurred to me as a culture shock that I would face has nothing to do with personal interactions, though. As it turns out, light switches took some adjustment for me. In Europe, all of the light switches are the flat ones that you can basically just slap with your hand and be done with. Since those exist in the States, too, they didn't take any adjustment when I first went to Europe. Coming back, though, I hadn't run into an american light switch all year, so I may or may not have slightly injured my hand on a number of occasions by just trying to slap my bedroom light on. I'm incredibly smart that way.

At this point, save for the mornings when I wake up and am unsure of what country I'm in, I've gotten past the vast majority of the culture shock, and I'm starting to see how my time in Europe has changed me. There are some obvious things, like the series of shingles scars running down my leg, but other things have taken me some more time to figure out. For one thing, I feel a lot more confident now than I was before I left. Instead of thinking of myself as a young and helpless kid, I now know that I'm capable of navigating foreign countries by myself, both geographically and in terms of leading my life. I also feel a lot less awkward in my own skin now. One of the most striking compliments that I received while overseas was that I seemed so confident, and that helped me realize that I wasn't just weird and annoying when I opened up and acted like myself, but it could actually be a good thing. I also feel more confident in my appearance now, which does feel kind of superficial to put down in text, but not only do I feel capable of putting myself together well now, but for the first time in my life, I don't feel so self-conscious about being unattractive. Maybe this just came along with growing comfortable in other aspects of my life, but it's been a meaningful transformation for me. Finally, as I've started the next stage of my life in graduate school, I've begun to actually feel like an adult. I know that I will always have more growing up to do, even if I make it to 100, but I see myself as more than just a kid.

It's been a wild ride, and I've learned so much more than I could put into words on this blog, but it's time to move on. Thanks for reading.

The Frenchest Fry

NOTE: The following story is entirely fictional and bears only loose connections to reality. Enjoy.

Once upon a time, the quaint town of Aix-en-Provence sat quietly and peacefully in the south of France, filled with old ochre buildings and plane trees smiling over its residents. The sun shined on the town's numerous fountains, and most of the excitement in the area came from the Mistral's winds ripping through the streets.

One January day, a wide-eyed and severely jet-lagged me arrived in the city, not yet knowing what the semester was to bring. I spent the next few months wandering around the city, occasionally branching out to other nearby countries, getting to know the cultures and languages as well as I could. I tried local the local cuisine, attempted to function in a foreign university, and spent a lot of time looking words up in my French-English dictionary, until one spring day when I was faced with a dilemma.

With my days in the country winding to a close, I needed to try to fit in as many missed french experiences as possible, and I realized that I had yet to eat some truly french French Fries.

"This is a disaster," I lamented to Nathan in the kitchen as he mixed the batter for some banana pancakes. "How can I hold my head up if I go back to the States without eating the Frenchest Fry? And where am I even going to find it?"

"Well," he replied, "French fries were actually invented by the Belgians. It's only the style of frying them that's French, so the most authentic fries would actually be in Belgium."

With this nugget of information, I knew who could help me best: RyanAir. Their cheap and jenky flights could get me there pretty easily, so I headed straight to their website to look up flights. The only thing that could tear my eyes from the artificial glow of my laptop screen was the presence of an additional voice in the kitchen.

"Ooh, you should throw some of this in there," Hannah commented to Nathan while rooting through the fridge and spice rack. "And is there any Sriracha around?"

"Wait, when did you get in here?" I inquired.

"Oh, you know," she replied, immediately returning her attention to the food. I really didn't know, though. As I looked through my planner for a decent remaining weekend to head to Belgium, Hannah turned her attention to me once more. "What are you up to?" My answer merited no other response than her swift grimace and review of RyanAir landing quality. "Every time they're about to land, everything is going great, then it's like the pilot just gives up and drops the controls a second before touching ground. I feel like I'm gonna die every time."

My mind was suddenly plagued with flashbacks to every RyanAir landing that I've ever experienced, which invariably aligned with her description. This reminder, along with the fact that I didn't have enough free weekends left in Aix, brought me to the more practical decision to simply find french fries in France while I was still there. For the moment, though, my attentions were better devoted to the pancakes in front of me.

After breakfast, the next stop was the Parc Jourdain, a prime people watching spot and a favorite locale for studying and enjoying the sun. Upon reaching my destination, I greeted Savannah and Victoria, and we pulled out our Langage, Culture, et Société notes in preparation for our sun-soaked study session. After a good half hour of productive studying, we digressed by catching up on what each of us had been up to, and I brought up my culinary conundrum of the day.

"Study abroad problems, amiright?" Victoria began. "Okay, but really... ummm have you tried that one place on the Cours Mirabeau, Les Deux Frères? Is that what it's called? Is that a thing?"

"I'm pretty sure that's a thing," Savannah chimed in.

"Thanks, pal!" Victoria chimed right back.

"Any time, bud!" Savannah continued. "Anyhow, what kind of fries are you looking for? I mean different places have good fries, but just different types."

"French ones," I specified. "The frenchest ones I can get."

Savannah rolled her eyes and moved on to more productive topics, and we continued much in the same fashion until the conversation fell into a lull and we took back to studying, breaking up bouts of productivity with lighthearted conversation each time that our collective attention span waned too much. After a few hours of this, we had taken in more sun than actual studying, so we parted ways and headed in the directions of our respective apartments.

On my way back, I took a stroll along the Cours Mirabeau, considering each overpriced restaurant that I passed for its fry potential, but remained dissatisfied with the cost-benefit analysis as I ran it through my head. Feeling a bit let down by the picturesque street, I adjourned to my apartment.

Moments after I entered the building, my phone began to ring. I looked at the screen before picking up, and it read "Unknown Caller," so of course I knew who it was before I hit the green "accept call" button.

"Hey Maddie" It was none other than the man of three names, Brandon/Victor/Paolo, otherwise known as BVP. "Do you guys have any dinner plans?" We did not. "Then could I come over tonight and make something for dinner?" Indeed he could.

He arrived within minutes with a baguette in hand. It was still a while before the time to start cooking, so we made a quick Monoprix run to spend altogether too much money on the cheapest ingredients available (comme d'hab), and I once more took the opportunity to seek advice about how and where to find fries of the proper level of frenchness. He couldn't think of a solution to the perplexity, but he did sing me a pretty song while charmingly throwing my name into the lyrics, which at least made me feel a bit better for the moment.

Once we returned to the apartment, he took to playing Battle Tetris on Alyssa's laptop while I tried doing some internet research on where to find the best fries in Aix. As we we sitting, we suddenly heard the door opening and felt a cool zephyr blow through the apartment, and we knew. The bros were coming.

Sure enough, our neighbors Sam and Sean, along with Other Sam (a.k.a. Joe) and a marigold clad Toler, appeared in search of Cody.

"Dude, is Cody around?" Sean asked.

"Not that I know of," I said, only to be proven wrong as my aforementioned roommate suddenly emerged from his room that I had previously presumed to be vacant.

"Hey, we're about to head over to Pascal's for dinner," Sam said to Cody. "Come on."

"Hold on, I'm gonna grab some shoes," Cody responded. "What have you guys been up to?"

"Gossip Girl, bro."

They soon filed out the door, and after a moment Cody dashed back in for a moment to grab his lighter, and was gone once more. I returned to furiously looking for really french-sounding restaurants in the area, and heard the door open again. I thought it odd that Cody should forget something twice rather than his standard single return before making it out the door, but then I looked up and saw that instead it was Alyssa returning from the APA office with the remnants of a crepe in hand and the entirety of a Mickey coming in behind her.

"What's up?" my blondest roommate inquired.

"I need to find some really French fries before I go, and there's almost no time left! What do I do?"

"Maddie, breathe. You've had moules frites before. You've also had the fries from Nabab and the falafel place. Point is, you've already got french fries covered."

I paused for a second. "...Oh." I thought it through, and as usual, she was right. I guess that as long as I'm having french fries in France, they're significantly frencher than anywhere else in the world, so I'd already had the frenchest fries on earth. As I took this unnecessarily long moment of reflection, Alyssa and Mickey took to an even more drawn out game of sloth tag. It was a glorious moment in the apartment, made even better once BVP got to work on dinner and the place was filled with the scent of delicious things.

With my renewed peace of mind, I was able to enjoy a delicious meal of BVP's carbonara, because italian food definitely made the most sense to complete my french experiences, and at the end of the night, I was able to go to sleep and peacefully dream of the Frenchest Fry.

Graduation Day: 4 mai, 2013

Today is graduation day. It's a day when people get dressed up in spiffy caps and gowns, surrounded with family and other various loved ones, celebrating everything that they've accomplished in the past few years. It's the day that people either walk up on a stage and shake some hands or snap some pictures of those that they're proud of doing the same. Save for being surrounded by loved ones (because seriously, the people that I know here are pretty awesome), I'm not doing any of that stuff. I'm slightly too in Europe and stuff to do that stuff, so I'm going to blog stuff instead.

My graduating class at Indiana University is celebrating in caps and gowns today, and although I don't get to be there for that, I'm very much okay with missing out on it. My semester doesn't actually end for another two weeks anyway (silly France), so I have yet to complete what my peers have done, making it feel a bit imaginary for me. What I'm really missing out on this weekend is the celebration of someone else that has done so much more than me.

My older brother Cole is graduating from Auburn University tomorrow, and I dearly wish that I could have been there to snap pictures of him in his cap and gown, but now I have to find another way to show how proud I am of my big bro.

Tomorrow, Cole celebrates something real; he has finished his four collegiate years, during which he not only studied and took exams, but also grew into somebody that I'm even prouder to call my brother than before. My friends can attest to how much I brag about my big bros, and now anyone reading this gets a good taste of that.

Cole has always been the funniest Stuart, but as he has grown into who he is and matured during college, his humor has developed in complement. Part of this is due to the amount of knowledge that he's accumulated in these four years, which is to be expected during college, seeing as he was and English major and thus learned more words and how to use them in increasingly clever ways, but due to his unrelenting passion about what interests him, he also researches whatever band or idea piques his interest. He uses some of this researched information to make his famously clever and hilarious quips, but also applies it wherever applicable in his life.

Anybody that has ever attempted to argue with this guy certainly knows that going against him tends to be a losing battle. At first, it can take a while to figure out why he's so hard to beat -- is it because he stops blinking and intimidates you with the glaring intensity of those ambiguously blue/green eyes? Does he have mind control powers that make you suddenly capable of only producing sub-par arguments? Honestly though, he's just so knowledgeable that he can support pretty much any argument with the facts that he can come up with off the top of his head, and when combined with his quick wit, it makes for a lethal combination.

These argumentative tactics could easily make a person intimidating to encounter, but Cole is also generous with what he knows. Especially when he knows that I'm curious about something, he makes the effort to share new information, teaching me things that I never would have known without my brother. How much do you know about the Wu-Tang Clan? Had it not been for Cole, I would know nothing about them, likely never developing an appreciation for rap music, but he broadened my understanding of the world (or at least of the musical world) and taught me some things that I'm honestly pretty proud of knowing. He also taught me everything I know about basketball, so I can understand what I'm seeing when I watch Bulls games on TV. He makes me smarter and feel cooler than I could be without him.

If I hadn't taken an entire class on the Beatles, Cole, you would undoubtedly smoke me at Beatles Trivial Pursuit.

One thing that I personally keep learning more and more, especially since Cole and I started college, is just how supportive and wonderful of a brother he is. He was my first friend. He has always kept and eye out for me, and was definitely not shy about doing so whenever boys are involved in my life, but it took me until college to really start noticing what he does for me. He teaches me things and shows me cool music. When we're in different states or countries, he finds ways to give something as short and simple as a text message the heartfelt warmth of a hug. He makes time to hang out with his little sister even though he has a lot of well-earned friends that he needs to make time for when we're home. He sticks up for me when he notices that I'm being picked on and don't have the presence of mind to defend myself, and I can never put into words how much that means to me.

All in all, Cole has been an amazing brother and person in general, and this man that I look up to so much absolutely deserves to be celebrated today. I love you, I look up to you, and I'm proud of you. Congratulations, big bro.

The Homeland: 2 Mai, 2013

MASSIVELY LONG POST ALERT

Spring break 2013 was the approximate week and a half between the end of classes and the beginning of finals that sent the APA participants scattered throughout Europe, seeking out new adventures, scenic spots, and general fun. For me, this break signified the opportunity to get in touch with some of my roots and visit the place that I've jokingly referred to as "The Homeland" for a number of years now: Ireland.

As my roommates were preparing for their departure to Greece, I packed up my backpack as space efficiently as possible (because suitcases are for wimps) for my tour through Ireland, taking me through Dublin, Cork, Galway, and Limerick. Although traveling to different countries is pretty much business as usual for the group at this point, this trip was going to be a little bit different from the rest for one key reason: I was to travel alone for the first time. Granted, I was to meet up with the man of many names, Brandon Victor Paolo (BVP) and two of his friends the night that we all got to Dublin, but on every flight that I had taken throughout my life I'd had at least one other friend with me to help navigate through the airport and to whatever hostel was our destination. This time, that was not the case.

On Tuesday morning I got up early (at least by a 20-year-old's standards), grabbed some croissants for the road, and made my way to the bus station, where I proceeded to wait in a state of severe paranoia that I had misread the bus schedule and that I was at the wrong stop, I'd already missed my bus, or that this bus wasn't going to take me to the airport at all. Eventually, though, the bus rolled up to take me to the Nice airport.

Things rolled pretty smoothly from there as I went through security, flew to Ireland, and took a bus that delivered me into the heart of Dublin city. Having eaten only a couple of croissants throughout the day, at this point in the evening I was definitely ready to try some Irish food. I walked around for a good minute or two until I found a promising pub, where I ordered myself some fish and chips with a Dublin staple, a Guinness. There was only one unforeseen problem.

I had been excited to go to an English speaking country for the first time since New Year's, expecting that the common language would make it easier to get by than in the other countries that I've been to where they speak various other languages. As I discovered at this pub, though, I don't understand thick brogues. As opposed to when I was in Italy, where I could understand at least part of whatever I heard in Italian, I didn't catch a single word of what this pub worker dude was saying to me.

Since I had already conversed with Irish people in the US and France, I figured that I understood the accent pretty well, but I had neglected to take varied accents from different parts of the country into account. I'm not sure what city this chap was from, but I didn't catch anywhere near as much of what he was saying as when I spoke to pretty much anybody else in the country. I looked like an idiot for a moment while somebody with a gentler accent had to translate his English into Also English for me.

Observations from during that meal: fish and chips are nummy, there is a condiment called "brown sauce" in existence, and pints are ENORMOUS.

After my first Irish meal, I made my way through what had turned into a significantly rainier Dublin to my hostel. While waiting for BVP and his friends whose names I had not yet committed to memory to show up, I killed some time by partaking in the hostel's wine and cheese portion of the night, making the acquaintance of a Canadian chick who had been spending the past several months with family in Sweden (Canadian count: 1), which turned into a conversation about American and Canadian sports, attracting the attention of the remaining American and Canadians in the room (Canadian count: 3). I kind of knew what I was talking about for most of the conversation. I eventually gave up and turned in for the night, retiring to the hostel room where my travel buddies were still MIA.

At approximately 1:30am, their arrival was glorious. It consisted mostly of them shuffling around to get settled in for the night, and me mumbling with my eyes closed.

In the morning, more thorough introductions of Nathan and Liz were issued, and so our Irish adventures together began. With only one full day in Dublin, we made the most of our time by getting around on the hop-on hop-off bus tour of the city, hearing witty quips from different guides and taking in as much scenery and information as we could. Our time on these buses turned out to be preferable to off, because, as it turns out, it rains a lot in the British Isles. Who knew, right?

We quickly discovered that Ireland has two weather modes:
1) Sunny, warm, and beautiful
2) Freezing cold rain and wind

It alternates between these two modes numerous times throughout the day. This is not pleasant for somebody that's been spoiled by the consistently warm and sunny weather of southern France. It's not pleasant at all.

After our daytime sightseeing, the group quickly established an evening ritual of stopping by a local pub for a pint and some euchre. Prior to this trip, I was about as knowledgeable as the average irishman of the game of euchre -- that's to say not at all. Regardless, my comrades were patient with me as they showed me the ropes of the card game, and I was soon addicted. In fact, I'm currently experiencing a case of the shakes from withdrawal. I'll be checking into the rehab clinic tomorrow.

Most of our transportation throughout the week-long trip, aside from walking, was by bus, whether taking us on a tour through a city or taking us on a three-hour ride to our next destination city. In contrast to car and bus rides in the midwest of the US, I did not see a single ear of corn. Instead, I got great views of green fields of grass, rolling hills, short stone walls reminiscent of The Quiet Man, and tons of sheep. My first major dose of this came as we headed over to Cork city.

Cork has a much smaller town feel to it than Dublin, which I really liked, and houses the greatest pub to ever exist, the Welcome Inn. As we went on a desperate search for food one night, looking for someplace that was still serving food by 7pm (a rarity that shows a stark contrast to France, where most restaurants start serving dinner at 7:30 or 8pm instead of finishing well before then), we stopped by this little pub asking whether or not they still had food. Alas, they didn't, but the bartender standing outside made the friendly gesture of pointing us in the right direction to the best of his ability. We ended up having a humble meal at Subway because it was the only place that was still open, then decided that this little pub had earned the honor of being our pint destination for the evening. As we returned to the Welcome Inn, we saw two doors right next to each other, both supposedly leading in, so Liz took the role of our fearless leader by walking into the door on the left.

As it turns out, the door on the left leads behind the pub counter. Much to the bartender's amusement, we panicked, rushed back out, and made our way in the proper door. At this point, though, the bartender invited our fearless leader back behind the counter, instructing her to pour our pints.

"Look here, we've got a new bar maid!"

The bar full of old irishmen was wildly amused by the scene, and the bartender seemed to get quite a kick out of it as well. As we were all paying, Liz was getting ready to pull out a €5 note, but the bartender stopped her, telling her that her pint was on the house.

And so the excitement in the pub settled down for the most part as we sat down with our pints and began to play some euchre. This strange and foreign game caught the intrigue of one particularly drunk irishman, who eventually had us take a break from the game as he taught us some card tricks. It's lucky that these tricks by "Drunk Irish Grandpa," as I like to call him, were explained most thoroughly in a visual manner, because I couldn't understand a darned word he said in that slurred brogue of his. When continuing conversation with the man became too difficult and awkward, we put an effective end to the convo by switching to French for a little while, then called it a night. And so concluded our experience at the greatest pub ever.

Fast forward to the morning, and it was time to head to the Blarney Castle! The castle itself was relatively small, but the grounds were enormous, beautiful, and parts of it were just straight-up cool.

Of course, we made the obligatory stop to kiss the Blarney Stone at the top of the castle, which I informed the group as we entered the grounds was the #1 thing from the entire trip that I needed a picture with. We made our way up the narrowest possible spiral staircase, clinging for dear life to the rope in the middle due to the lack of any handrail, and found ourselves in the presence of a wholly underwhelming and unspecial-looking stone, but that was it. I took pictures for the group as Liz, BVP, and Nathan took their turns kissing the stone, and my turn finally came, so I handed my camera to BVP so he could get a photo of the event, sat down, grabbed the rails, and literally bent over backwards to reach and kiss the stone.

As I got back up, feeling victorious, I went to retrieve my camera from BVP, who had a slightly guilty and vaguely bewildered look on his face.

"I just got so distracted that I forgot to take the picture," he said.

Ha ha, very funny. I took my camera back to look through the pictures to prove that he was just lying to screw with me.

Nope. He really didn't take a picture. And neither did anybody else in the group. All that was left was the overpriced souvenir photo taken by the Blarney Castle employees, which BVP offered to pay for. He didn't pay for it, though (What's up with that, BVP? I say you owe me a pint, at least).

After that, we made our way around the grounds, starting with the gardens. At this castle, there were two different kinds of gardens: Irish and poison. Yes, poison. They grow various toxic and mind-altering plants, including poison ivy, yew, and marijuana. That was the first time I've seen a pot plant in person. The Irish garden was significantly less interesting, filled with flowering plants that are out of season at the moment, so we didn't get to see a single one of the flowers.

Our next stop was Galway city, the last city that we would visit together. With a rather condensed city center, we were able to make our way around on foot, getting to the city museum, cathedral, river walk, and a local street market. My favorite part of the city, though, was probably the street performers. Especially along the main shop street in the city, there were musical performers abound, doing anything from electric guitar and vocals to traditional harp and accordion.

After our relatively brief time in Galway, the time had come to part ways, and so I was on my own for the remainder of the trip.

I started my solo trip by taking yet another bus your, this time taking me through Connemara and Cong villages, one containing a famous abbey, and the other housing the cottage from the movie The Quiet Man. I was super pumped about the latter. The bus driver was a pleasant old irishman who made witty and lighthearted quips along the journey, also teaching us a lot of interesting tidbits about the sites that we went by on the 7½ hour tour.

The Quiet Man house was the highlight of the journey for me; it still had those iconic green doors from the film (pronounced "fillum" by many Irish) and faced a quiet stream that, perfectly enough, carried a swan along its waters, being the first swan I can recall ever having seen. Ireland must have planned that out for me. They knew I was coming, so they were like, "Hey, let's just place a perfectly white swan in this pleasant stream. Then let's hide a whole bunch more in Limerick for her."

And yeah, I ended up seeing two more families of swans when I was in Limerick, my destination immediately after the Cong and Connemara tour.

During my full day in Limerick, I had planned on walking through the medieval quarter and spending most of the day at King John's castle and the city museum. As it turned out, though, those main two attractions were closed for remodeling until June, so I found myself with a lot more time to kill than I had originally anticipated. I wandered around the quarter for a bit, feeling a little let down by the city, then noticed the swans. There had to have been a good 30 swans there, split between two separate groups that were about 15 meters apart from one another, and it was certainly the most swans that I had seen in my life. I picnicked with the swans, enjoying the sun and their company, and wrote a limerick about Limerick for one of my brothers that requested one once upon a time.

I passed my afternoon at the thoroughly creepy Hunt Museum, got some dinner, and then realized that there's not much to do in Ireland outside of pubs after 7pm unless you're with friends. It didn't make for a very interesting evening, but at least I got some reading in.

Next day: back to Cork to fly back to France! But I have bad aim, so I wound up in Nice for the night instead of Aix. I was too tired of traveling to really do any more sightseeing, so I immediately retired to my hostel, where I socialized a bit with some of the others that were there for the night (Canadian count: somewhere around 15), and headed to bed. The next morning, I had breakfast with some Americans from the hostel, then headed to the train station to finally get back home, hoping to avoid any more human interaction than absolutely necessary, and consequently got asked out multiple times by a creepy middle-aged frenchman, asked for a meal by a random woman, and asked if I was Italian or Irish by another frenchman. Eventually, though, I made it to the train, where nobody else bothered me, and got home in time to take a long relaxing shower and a good nap. I had survived my senior year's spring break.

Things We Say: 21 Avril, 2013

Throughout the semester, there have been a lot of things that we've said over and over again. Most of them are really awful jokes.

We make a lot of Aix puns, including the name of this blog (Aix marks the spot), our facebook group (S-Aix-y Betches), our nickname for the semester (Aix-en-Vacances), and a lot of our photo album titles (Aix-pat).

We also make Marseille puns. Well, "Mar-say-what" is really all we've got. Basically, we make as many puns off of city names as possible.

"What the FAC?"

We congratulate ourselves on what we think are good jokes with one of the following:
"Nailed it!"
"Killing it!"
"Point!" *draws tally mark in the air*

"I don't speak French."
"I don't speak English."

We throw French words and phrases into English sentences because we don't really speak either of the two languages fluently anymore, and sometimes we just think of the word in another language first. We also sometimes think it's funny. Then we found out in a linguistics class that this phenomenon is called "code mixing."

We say "miel" instead of "honey."

"Anybody want to go to Crepe a Go Go?" The answer is invariably yes. This applies pretty well to Nabab and Boca Loca as well.

We say a lot of things about how much we hate and/or want to kick the pigeons.

"I drink coffee and red wine all the time. I don't understand why I'm so dehydrated!" Oh. That's why.

Sides are decisively taken on how we feel about chèvre. You either love it or hate it. There is absolutely no middle ground.

"It's near the fountain." Aix-en-Provence is often referred to as the city of a thousand fountains. You need to specify which one.

"I'm heading to (insert country name here) this weekend." RyanAir flights make the world go round... except for during the landings.

"I though I was going to die when the plane landed." RyanAir has never once had a smooth landing.

"Ça va?"

"A little bit of this..."

"You, me... bailar?"

"En épie!" In our Anthropologie de la Provence class, we learned about various styles of stone construction, including en épie. We made a little dance move to go along with it.

"Oh-bri-GOD-a!" The Portuguese word for "thank you" is "obrigada" (or obrigado when said by a man). We've also turned it into an exclamation.

"Monoprix? More like multiprix! Or n'importe quel prix!" The biggest store here, Monoprix, is functionally similar to a Super Target, except way more expensive. In fact, the one here just so happens to be the most expensive one in the country, suggesting that the prices aren't as fixed as the store name seems to claim.

Any time a beach is mentioned, at least one person breaks out into "Starships" by Nicki Minaj.

We repeatedly quote certain professors and friends.
"Qui est disponible?"
"Oh, la!"
"Vous risquez rien!"
"Je m'appelle Brandon, mais je préfère Victor"
"Ohh!"
"Plus two? What do I do with this?"
"UNO!?"

We make fun of each other's Wisconsin and Chicago accents.

We whine about the things that we miss from back home.

We whine about how much we're going to miss each other when we're back home.

On the Boston Marathon: 15 Avril, 2013

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/us/explosions-reported-at-site-of-boston-marathon.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/16/us/boston-marathon-explosions/index.html

In my generation, a decent chunk of our lives has been dedicated to mourning terrorism and other tragedies in the United States. My childhood was marked by the attacks on September 11th, 2001, and although I was too young to fully grasp the gravity of the situation, I understood even as a nine-year-old that something terrible had come to pass. After all these years, I've heard and read about the other tragedies befalling the country, such as last year's Newtown, Connecticut shooting, and I've felt more and more of the meanings of these situations. Tonight, I gained the news from afar of the explosions at the Boston Marathon.

After a dinner of chicken and pasta, some friends and I were lounging around the table, digesting our meals and enjoying each other's company, as Alyssa walked in and asked us if we had heard about what happened at the Boston Marathon. Living under a rock as we do, with no TV or newspaper, we didn't know any details yet, but our Facebook and Twitter feeds were suddenly alight with vague reports of the explosions. We turned to news websites as soon as possible in an effort to learn as much as we could about the situation.

Never in my life had the Internet seemed to work so woefully slow, but we pulled up every article that we could, and eventually gathered around Alyssa's iTouch to watch the latest CNN report. Even in that moment of being so far away from everything that was happening, only seeing it on that tiny screen, I felt so deeply struck by the event. This marathon included parents from Newtown, who had already seen too much tragedy in the past year, and now they've been faced with even further devastation. Today was supposed to mark hope for them, and now it's a day of further loss, having already taken two lives according to what I've read thus far. The number of lives feeling this loss is so much greater than the number of people present at the marathon.

The song "The News" by Jack Johnson keeps playing in my head. If you've heard it, you'll understand.

I feel so deeply for what happened today. In the american microcosm of my apartment, I know that I'm surrounded by similar sentiments, but I don't know what I'll find when I go out into the streets of France tomorrow. Maybe some of them have family in the States. Maybe some of them know. Maybe some of them care, and that would be more than most Americans I know could give if the tables were turned. I don't know what to expect of this situation and its aftermath in the context of this country. I can't help but to wonder if it would affect me any differently if I were back in the States right now.

I don't remember much about September 11th, that vague concept of a day from my childhood, but I know that I'll remember today. I will continue to pray for those affected by today's explosions.

Day Tripper: 9 avril, 2013

Just so you know, repeatedly listening to the song "Day Tripper" by the Beatles is obligatory while reading this blog post.

Throughout the semester, the program provides us with a few day trips around various cities and sites throughout Provence, and this past Saturday's trip took us to Bonnieux, Roussillon, and L'Abbaye de Sénanque.

Provence is a notably sunny region, typically having around 300 days of sun per year. As I woke up on Saturday morning, I rubbed my eyes to find that it was one of the region's few rainy days, so I grabbed an umbrella, picked up some warm pain au chocolat from the closest boulangerie, and wandered my way over to the 50 seat bus that would be taking the 15 of us around for the day. I was not the only one to stretch out along the excess of seats to catch some naps during our day's drives.

Our first stop was a graveyard in Luberon, which at first seemed to me like an odd idea, but seeing the place took away all questions of why we were there. For one thing, this was the graveyard where Albert Camus, author of L'Etranger (or The Stranger, in English), was buried. He was a literary great, meriting mention in my past English and French classes alike, so I would have expected a grand grave to house the man. However, his grave was by no means anywhere near the largest in the cemetery. I still wouldn't call the grave underwhelming by any means; instead, there was an overarching beauty of the entire cemetery, which Camus's grave certainly contributed to. I always expect to simply get used to the beauty of southern France. I expect to see it as commonplace rather than exceptional, but everything here, from the simple houses and streets to the graveyards, never ceases to blow me away.

After we had looked through the graveyard, we moved on to Bonnieux, a perched provençal city. This is where the stairs started to become the theme of the day. Although the word "perched" tends to suggest beautiful views and all that lovely stuff, it's also a slight euphemism for "so hilly that your legs are going to give out." And so we headed off to a little old church whose name was Eglise Vieille, or "old church." I have a sneaking suspicion that this was not its name when it was first built. This church, as chance would have it, it situated at the top of an obnoxiously tall hill, so we climbed up a gentle-ish slope to reach some stairs, which led to another set of steeper stairs. It was great.

When we finally huffed and puffed our way to the top of all of these stairs, we got a wonderful view from our perch, and my primary thought was, "How does anybody ever make it here for weekly church services?" Seriously, most of the people there looked pretty well aged, and while it would be no small feat to make it to the top at any age, I can't imagine how people would do it week after week as they progress through the years. I hold a great respect for this pilgrimage that they must make so often. My fellow program members and I, however, celebrated making it to the top by climbing the really awesome tree that we found there. I'm amazed that we never got yelled at, but I get the feeling that it must happen fairly often there; that tree just looks particularly climbable, and somebody that looked like a groundskeeper or something drove through in a truck, just going on with his day comme d'hab.

After those antics, we found some quiche and café, then piled back into the bus to head on over to Roussillon, specifically heading there to see the ochre quarry. I hadn't really put much of any thought or research into what this would be like before I got there, so this was another one of those views that blew me away.

We were surrounded by vibrant orange and yellow rock that felt almost like clay to the touch -- and stained like paint. It was absolutely gorgeous, with the colors brought out even further by the rain, but there was no shortage of stairs and hills. It was there that my friends developed the motto that we like to complain (especially about stairs) in really pretty places.

Once we had finished hiking through the ochre, we still had another two hours to kill in the city, but the rain provided us with few options other than finding food and drinking coffee, so we passed the time by drinking our second and third coffees of the day. That being said, we were good to go for our third and final leg of the journey, L'Abbaye de Sénanque.

As we pulled up to the abbey, the weather was dreary, rainy, foggy, and perfect. The 12th century building houses a lavender field as its front yard, and is backed by green hills. Since the lavender won't be in bloom until June, the delicate pastel color that is normally associated with the area was lacking during our visit, and the dark and heavy fog made for the perfect complement to the scene, showing an entirely different flavor of the beauty of Provence.

We had a relatively short visit within the abbey, taking a guided tour through its quiet corridors. We passed through the rooms where monks still live in almost complete silence, wasting no words during their days. As we emerged into the gift shop, in contrast, we spent a lot of time repeating phrases along the lines of "Look at this! This smells so good! Ooh, I want to get this!" I feel a bit of guilt in admitting that this little shop was the most exciting aspect of the interior of the building. It was filled with products of the lavender grown right outside, along with other scented soaps, perfumes, foods, and oils. Seriously, though, it just smelled so good!

We came back outside into the rain and soon noticed that all of our coffees had worn off, so we packed back into the bus and headed back home through the rain and fog. I popped in my headphones and let Carla Bruni lull me to sleep, adding a French cherry to the top of my provençal day.

Soundtrack to the Semester: 2 avril, 2013

In a semester filled with new experiences and memories, one thing that I know is going to be a powerful link back to these times when they're long gone and I'm back in the US is music. There are certain songs that have been played FAR too many times here to not associate with these people and places, and sometimes parts of them are oddly fitting for the memories that they're linked to. Others lyrically have nothing to do with anything.

One Day / Reckoning Song

by Asif Adan

"One day, baby, we'll be old, oh baby we'll be old

And think of all the stories that we could have told"

This is one of the songs that has been pretty much inescapable this semester, especially if you go to any bars or clubs. While the entire group is in our early twenties (save for Savannah, our sole teenager), we're certainly young and trying to experience life to its fullest, checking out foreign countries, learning about new languages and cultures, and quite simply having adventures wherever we can find them. We're creating the stories that we'll be able to tell for years to come, and who knows, maybe years from now this song will be playing in our heads as we tell them.

Forrest Gump

by Frank Ocean

"My fingertips and my lips,

they burn from the cigarettes"

People smoke in France. Granted, I myself am not a smoker, but basically everybody else in the country does. I used to hate the smell of cigarettes, but through the combination of past roommates and my time in this country, I have developed a bit of a nostalgia for the smell that tends to accompany a lot of the people with whom I've listened to "Forrest Gump." 

I Follow Rivers

by Lykke Li

"I I follow, I follow you

Deep sea baby"

I couldn't really tie the lyrics of this song into anything meaningful and relevant to this semester, but this is another one that is played absolutely everywhere. The first time I heard this song was the first time I went to a bar, socializing with these new acquaintances that have since grown to be important friends of mine, and getting to know the city that I now call home.

Scream and Shout

by Will.I.Am and Britney Spears

"We are now now rockin' with

Will.I.Am and Britney bitch"

Once again, these lyrics are completely devoid of meaning. I also personally find this song to be pretty abrasive for the most part, but this song is also EVERYWHERE. For the longest time, I legitimately had no idea what this song's title was; its name was "Will.I.Am and Britney bitch," and it was the center of numerous jokes. Despite being annoyed by the way it sounds, this one is still liked to fond memories for me, and I at least somewhat like it for that.

So Fresh, So Clean

by Outkast

"I'm dressed so fresh so clean"

Honestly, if I heard any part of this song other than the chorus, I wouldn't necessarily recognize it. The reason why this one is here is that on my first trip to Marseille, my friends and I made up an imaginary band called Cody Rhône and the So Fresh and So Cleanlies. Our lead man, Cody Roehl, is known by the name of Rhône because of the wine called Côtes du Rhône. It is probably the cheapest wine at Monoprix, and sounds way too much like his name, so it was fate. We drink it a lot. The backup band, the So Fresh and So Cleanlies, was obviously named after this song that I had not yet heard before, but I guess we were particularly fresh and clean that day? That's a lie. We were staying in a hostel in a gray and rain-soaked Marseille. The song still makes me think of that group and that day, though.

Pretty much any song from Glee

or Pitch Perfect

I have watched altogether too much of each with my roommate/cousin Alyssa (did I mention that I found a long-lost cousin in my apartment?) and our friend Brandon/Victor/Paolo (who clearly has dissociative identity disorder since he can't just pick a name). When we're not watching the show Glee or the movie Pitch Perfect, we're often singing along to their soundtracks in the kitchen.

No actual French songs.

At all.

The just don't like their own music here, I guess.

What's In Store: 29 mars, 2013

One cultural element that is effectively unavoidable and shows a significant difference between the US and France is the the shop setup of each country. The stores in a city not only provide for its citizens' needs, but they can also be rather telling of the city's culture and values.

There are certain stores that can be found all over Aix, but are far and few in between back in the States, such as fromageries (cheese stores), crepe stands, and bakeries on every corner, but I find myself equally interested in that which one cannot find in France.

For one thing, I have no idea how french people watch movies. There are enough theatres in the city to provide the opportunity to watch a new release occasionally, but paying €10 per person every time you see a movie would add up way too fast, plus that only accounts for the newest movies. I'm sure that DVDs exist here, but I don't know how people find them. There are no video rental stores. There is no redbox. There is no DVD section of Monoprix (basically the french equivalent of Target). I have yet to spot any electronic stores that would have CDs or DVDs. Netflix and Hulu don't work in this country. I simply have no idea how they do it. Black market? That must be it.

Another category of items in France that must be traded entirely through the black market is pets. Everybody walks through the streets of Aix with their tiny little dogs, matching the size of their cars, but there are no pet stores to be found. All of the pet supplies that I've seen in France thus far populate the second smelliest aisle of Monoprix (the gold, of course, going to the cheese aisle), but I'm like 92% certain that you can't buy puppies at the grocery store -- not even in Europe. Logic might suggest that everybody goes to breeders here, valuing the pedigree of their canines enough to go to a specialist for the breed that they want, but then what about fish? Are french college student deprived of the love and affection that cuddly little betta fish are famed for bestowing upon their owners? Who will they play fetch with while putting off their lack of homework to not have to do in the morning?

Come to think of it, I have seen some fish for sale in Aix, although I don't think they would make for premium pets; they were a slight bit too dead for that. Ah, yes, the morning market. Every morning in Aix, one can find the outdoor market open until 13h (1:00pm in America speak), filled with offerings of fresh fruits and vegetables, local honey, fresh fish and other equally stinky seafoods, handmade pastas, scarves, hats, and various other goodies for the best prices to be found in the second most expensive city in France. One of my personal favorite aspects of the marché is the conversation that you get to have with the merchants.

Already being in southern France, I myself have picked up a bit of a southern accent on top of my american mispronunciations, but my accent is nothing compared to the thick southernness of their accents. Just hearing them say a price that contains either 20 (vingt) or 5 (cinq) provides a fair amount of entertainment for the visit, but there are certain characters that naturally bring a smile to your face any time that you speak to them.

For example, a woman that my friends and I refer to as "the Lavender Lady" holds a special place in our hearts. I'm sure that you will be surprised to learn that the Lavender Lady earns her living by selling lavender. Yes, I know. You did not see that one coming at all, and now you need some time to recover from that shocking revelation. I'm sorry that I didn't prepare you for that one. It's okay. Take your time. You good now? Good. Anyhow, the Lavender Lady is approximately 200 years old and has worn the exact same outfit every day the entire time. She wears a dress with a blanket wrapped around her stomach. This blanket does not reach above or below her stomach. She doesn't need to warm her legs. Just her stomach. This warm-stomached woman is, quite simply, just a sweet little old lady, telling visitors to her little stand how good lavender is for you. Evidently she bathes in lavender every day, so she never gets sick.

Provence is known for its lavender production, so lavender products can be found all over the marché and various stores. I strongly recommend lavender syrup, especially added to limonade (the French improvement of lemonade). The one thing that this city clearly loves far more than lavender, though, is shoes. The downtown area of Aix-en-Provence is mostly comprised of restaurants and shoe stores, because the two things that they will never limit to the black market are food and footwear. By american standards, both may seem grossly overpriced the vast majority of the time, and that just goes to show another cultural difference between the two nations; America takes pride in providing things affordably enough for the common man to be able to get anything, working along the lines of the American Dream, and France prides itself in making everything of the best quality possible, working to hold an elite role. Despite these differences, though, it all just comes down to providing for the people of each nation in a way that not only fulfills their physical needs, but expresses what they value as a culture.

Where The Heart Is: 29 mars, 2013

Upon leaving the States, I knew that homesickness, at least to some extent, would be pretty much inevitable. I knew that I would have moments of missing my friends and family back home, especially on their birthdays, or even at random moments when I just feel like a late-night Dr. Who marathon with my brother would be awesome. There are certain comforting smells and sounds that are missing from this temporary home of mine, such as the coffee pot brewing its distinctly american interpretation of the beverage in the kitchen on a Sunday morning. Apart from all of this, though, I've discovered a completely new brand of homesickness that I never saw coming.

When in a completely foreign country, you may lack the comforts of being around people and places that you know, hearing a language that you can actually speak, and simply feeling at home. This is the homesickness that I felt during my week in Spain and Portugal (see "Breaking the Language Barrier"), missing the city in France that I now call home. Although I'm clearly a foreigner here, easily identified as such within the first three seconds of conversation with any french person, I now feel more at home here than I would if I were to venture a few cities over back in Illinois. I know which streets to take, where my favorite bakeries are, and how to (at least borderline successfully) communicate with people.

Spain and Portugal were some of the most beautiful places that I've ever been, but after even while walking down the ornate mosaic sidewalks, among colorful buildings covered in gorgeous tiles, I found myself longing for a good baguette, some chèvre to spread on it, and a nice spot in the Parc Jourdan to sit and enjoy it all near the shade of a platane. This brought to mind the distinction between a place where you love to be and a place that you love.

Maybe it's that I don't speak an even remotely acceptable amount of Spanish or Portuguese. Maybe it's the uncomfortably high level of poverty in combination with the evidently low level of health care (I had never previously expected to have to warn a friend that a creepy man with a jenk leg was crawling toward us, but then again I had never previously seen anybody so greatly affected by and untreated for polio). Maybe it's my genetic predisposition to avoid places with so much sunshine. Regardless, I've vacationed to countries that I absolutely loved being in, but I could never see myself calling them home. For me, Aix-en-Provence has been the best home away from home that Europe could offer me, and although I can't wait to see my friends and family again back in the States, I know that I will once more be feeling a nostalgic malady for this city of fountains and the people that I've met here when that time comes.

What the FAC: 19 mars, 2013

Within Aix-Marseille Université, I study at the Faculté de Lettres, which we usually refer to as the FAC. Rather than the classes or professors, my favorite aspect of the school is the obvious and fitting pun permitted by its nickname: What the FAC.

Before getting to France, I had always pictured french schools to look as polished as the country's inhabitants, complete with a beret on top of the building and a giant cigarette hanging out of the front door. Instead, this school looks surprisingly akin to a post-apocolyptic version of a 1980's after school special TV show.

As you walk down the hallowed halls of the FAC, you may notice the graffiti covering every wall, door, and bathroom stall. You may observe some flickering lights in chained off stairwells. You may be pleased to notice a little splash of color on a red poster, until you realize that it's advertising communism. Yup, that's still a thing here. Not socialism. Actual communism. And a surprising amount of these posters were posted pretty recently.

One of the best parts of the FAC would have to be the state of its bathrooms. Certain aspects aren't too surprising when you're already accustomed to life in France -- they have no toilet seats and seldom have hand soap, toilet paper, or working hand dryers -- but other aspects are uniquely FAC-y. Certain stall doors are a bit of a challenge to close, don't lock, and require the aid of a comrade outside the stall in order to open back up. Yes, I've been temporarily stuck and panicked in one of those before. It was a glorious moment for me. It's still the graffiti that gets to me the most, although some of it can be kind of cool. One particular fourth floor bathroom has a perfect rendition of Saïd's "baise la police" graffiti from the movie La Haine. Evidently I was not the only person geeking out over that one, because another student made a little note of the reference immediately next to the image.

Honestly, the FAC isn't all bad. They have coffee vending machines. How could a place with coffee vending machines be all bad? And the professors are considerate enough to give a cig break (or coffee break for the American students) in the middle of the three-hour lectures so that students don't get the shakes. Granted, that might not be the real reason why those breaks exist, but that's just the way I prefer to look at it. And I look at the coffee. Oh, that sweet nectar of life that gets me through three hour blocks of hearing about the trees of Provence.

I think the best description of the FAC that I've ever read appeared in a certain facebook status written by one of the members of my program, Toler.

"a summation of the quality of the fac des lettres in one act:

Professor (standing at a graffitied lectern): could someone please close the door?
Student (after a moment of confused staring): The door is missing.

fin"

(30 janvier, 2013)

Yup, that's our fine french education. Be madly jealous.

Breaking the Language Barrier: 5 mars, 2013

Winter break abroad has landed me in Spain and Portugal. As I have traveled to each new country, I have ventured progressively further out of my comfort zone, which likely has something to do with the fact that I have also been venturing into countries whose languages I speak less and less of.

When you're in a country that speaks your native language, you can feel pretty well at home. When in country that speaks a language that you've been speaking for eight years, you can feel like a bit of an outsider at times, but you adjust to feel pretty comfortable. Spending time in a country of your third language makes you rather conscious of the fact that you're foreign, but you can get by with just a few communicative innovations. In a country where you don't speak the language at all, such as Spain and Portugal for me and the group that I'm traveling with, things get weird.

Upon our arrival at the hostel in Madrid, we discovered that not only was it the receptionist's first night working there, but she could only say a few things in English and didn't speak any French. This was where we had to start getting creative. Clearly, nobody in our group can understand Spanish at all, so the receptionist and I made an attempt to communicate in Italian, which mainly consisted of her saying things fluently for me to poorly translate into English for the group, and me responding in mostly misconjugated Italian until I realized that I didn't even know the infinitive for the verb that I needed. Our most effective communication in that country consisted mostly of pointing at stuff and hoping to find somebody that spoke some English or French.

Over the course of the past several months, I've grown pretty well accustomed to hearing French spoken with various foreign accents, but hearing various accents with Spanish was entirely new to me. There was a little convenience store called Food and Fruits (later dubbed Fruit n' Shit by our group when we couldn't remember its name properly), owned by a little Chinese couple. The american accent on Spanish must sound absurd to Europeans, but for us to hear a chinese accent on the language sounded crazy to us, even in a conversation limited to "hola," whatever the price was, and "gracias." Hearing our two accents combined in a single conversation would probably be hilarious to a native speaker.

We ran into the most linguistic problems due to the fact that we all had the plague. Trying to obtain cold medicine in a Farmacia proved to be an adventure in Spain and even more of a challenge in Portugal. In Madrid, we ended up learning that the spanish word for "to cough" is "tosar," which was easy enough to remember since it's so similar to the french "tousser," but it proved harder to communicate in Portugal. First off, Portuguese sounds an awful lot like a combination of Spanish and Russian, neither of which I can speak, so I was disoriented beyond the static fuzz that illness was placing upon my mental faculties. Beyond that, despite trying out the "international" farmacia, the employee there clearly didn't speak English a whole lot better than I spoke Portuguese. Then it got weird.

I told him that I had nasal congestion and a sore throat, possibly also a fever, and asked him if he had anything to help with those symptoms. He stared at me for a second, walked off, and returned with a box of cough drops. Due to my desire to one day breathe out of my nose, I asked if there was something that also helped with congestion, to which he responded by once again staring for a moment, giving a terse "No," and walking off to put back the cough drops and retrieve some pills that help with congestion but not sore throats. I took a moment to look at the box and pretend that I knew enough Portuguese to tell which symptoms it helped with, and then asked if there was anything that could help with both symptoms. Once again, he gave a quick no and disappeared with that medicine, this time returning with a Vitamin C supplement. I asked if it treated any symptoms at all. It didn't. It was just a vitamin. I went with the cold pills. I had clearly taken up a lot more of his time than he would have liked.

Working at Target back in the States, I had been in that farmacia employee's shoes numerous times, trying to help someone that clearly didn't speak English at all, wondering why they were even in the country when they were so wildly unprepared to be there, but prior to my week in Spain and Portugal, I had never been someplace where I was the one that couldn't speak the language at all. I had never previously felt firsthand the panic of trying to find some word in some language that can get you by because you didn't anticipate needing medicine when you only intended to be in that country for such a short amount of time. I had never before been in the position of trying so hard to avoid pissing locals off while simply trying to pick up some of the culture, language, and scenery, proving to everyone around me how little I knew as I tried to learn everything that I could about where I was. As it turns out, being a dirty foreigner is really hard!

Everybody in Spain and Portugal that exhibited any level of patience with us seriously deserves a gold star, and I must say that the vast majority of the people that I encountered in the latter of those countries should be plastered in shiny actinoid accolades. The Portuguese, in contrast with the French, tend to sport a friendly look upon their faces most of the time, which was surprising when compared with the relative economies of the two countries. The unemployment rate in Portugal has been crazy high with the current state of the economy, but when we spoke to Joana, the owner of our hostel in Porto, she said that the smile is the most important thing for them to keep. So often, Americans will give in to negativity when they lack some material possession or another, whether they didn't get the newest iPhone or their dream car, but in Portugal, I found people who clearly couldn't get the health care that they needed, continuing to suffer from deformities due to polio, but they still greeted everyone with a smile. These were people that seemed to have the least to be happy about, but their happiness is the one thing that can never be taken away from them, even as they share it with others. Portugal is beautiful for much more than its scenery.

Paradise in Palermo: 23 février, 2013

I am seriously dropping the ball on timeliness in this little chronicle here. As I write these sentences, I'm currently sitting in a hostel in Madrid, and there's a solid chance that I will be in Portugal by the time this entry is finished, but we'll get to that later. For the moment, our attentions need to be focused on another country: Italy.

After Paris, everyone needed a redemption trip, and Italy seemed promising. Our destination was Palermo, Sicily, and although I was unfamiliar with the name of the city, I definitely knew that anywhere in Sicily would be an adventure, plus I was pumped to practice my Italian.

Well it turns out that I really don't speak much Italian, so it was a very good thing that we had the man of many named, Brandon Victor Paolo (BVP), with us as primary translator. As I've discovered, I can understand most of what I hear in the language, so I didn't need a translator as badly in that direction, but when the time comes for me to speak, I suddenly find myself incapable of language production. "Je... euh... io... uh, voglio... oh shoot, mi dispiace" is about as eloquent as I got in the first day. Thanks to listening to BVP, I could get by in a restaurant by the end of the weekend, but were all more than content to let him take the reigns in most all Italian speaking endeavors.

Although the group as a whole left quite a bit to be desired with Italian skills, we were still more than capable of confusing sicilians by switching between French and English while talking amongst ourselves. On our first night in Palermo, we went to a little restaurant for dinner, and although we spoke almost exclusively in English amongst ourselves, the waiter translated several food items into French for us. The next morning, BVP and I had to stop at a grocery store at which we needed the help of an employee standing behind a counter. As we stood there waiting for her acknowledgement, we had been speaking to each other in English but a few seconds after switching to French, the employee was too confused to keep from looking up and finally helping us.

Evidently Italians like the French better than they like Americans. On our final night, we all went to a pizza parlor at which BVP and I teamed up to speak Italian to the cashier (my rendition of the language being much more broken than his, of course), and we spoke a combination of French and English to each other, causing the cashier to proceed to refer to me as madame for the remainder of the time that we were there, although she referred to BVP with an italian title.

Pizza was not the only stereotypical italian dish that we consumed there, but it was probably the one that we had the most of. Fun fact: all food in Sicily, or at least in Palermo, is incredible. Like a team of professional eaters, we worked our way through several types of pizza, pasta, cannoli, cappuccino, and aperitivo.

Italians know how to do food right. So does much of Europe in my experience thus far, but Italy just does it really exceptionally well. Italian food is as delicious as Derek Zoolander is good looking: really really ridiculously so.

Another thing that Italy does exceptionally well is everything. Maybe it was just the comparison with the prior weekend's parisian disasters, but everything in Italy seemed really idyllic. The rain was gorgeous, all of the architecture was beautiful, and the nature of the place was breathtaking. We were able to pick fresh oranges from a public garden, and although they were tart upon tasting them, they were thoroughly satisfying to have obtained.

The people there were also really friendly. When it was clear that the group didn't know where we were going, people would come up to us and ask us if we were looking for a given destination which they always hit on the mark, then told us where it was. Palermo was great.

An American in Paris: 12 février, 2013

Whereas Marseille is the Chicago of France, Paris is its New York City. In the NYC of France, at least in my experience, Murphy's Law governs all.

I had dreamt of Paris for years, fantasizing about the first time that I would go there, seeing the famed Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysées, Arch de Triomph, Louvre, and Musée d'Orsay. I imagined seeing countless mustachioed men walking the streets in striped shirts and berets. Through my experiences in France thus far, I figured that the stereotypical imagine of a parisian man would be pretty far off, but I ended up being even more wrong about my experiences and sights to be seen than any amount of time in Aix could have adequately prepared me for.

Upon arrival in Paris by way of TGV, I was in pretty good spirits. I had just made the acquaintance of a pleasant frenchman named Stephane, and I managed to carry on a 2hr conversation with him entirely in French, which is still rather out of the ordinary for me at this point. It helped that he didn't actually know enough English to converse, because most french people that I've encountered up to this point will respond in English to me when they know I'm anglophone, even when I speak to them in French. This good practice put me in a good mood as I emerged into the streets of this city that I had been dreaming of for so long.

My excitement for the city continued as the group with whom I was traveling arrived at our parisian apartment that we were renting for the weekend; it was beautiful, posh, and still surprisingly cheap for its location. We explored the apartment for a few minutes, until the strike of midnight rendered me too giddy with excitement to stay in one place.

Floating on dreams of the movie Midnight in Paris, I departed with the group in search of the Tour Eiffel. After a while of walking, I caught my first glimpse  of the monument sparkling in the parisian sky. At this point, I figured that it would be no problem to find it up close as long as we made sure it was visible at least every once in a while along the route.

Not so. We lost the Eiffel Tower.

And then we found out that we were still a good two miles away. And later on, we found out that the tower's lights turn off around 1am, which retrospectively explained how we lost the enormous thing. Upon accepting defeat for the night, we got some kebabs and returned to the apartment and slept until the arrival of our next friend to join the apartment, and subsequently the real disasters began to occur.

This was about the closest that we ever got to the Eiffel Tower

I awoke the next morning to see Shannon arriving in tears. Evidently she had been pickpocketed on the train on her way there, losing her wallet with her bank cards and €250 in it. We were able to cancel her cards before anybody could use them, but she was still down a good $320 worth of cash, plus she was understandably jarred by the violation.

Although we didn't meet our goal of seeing the catacombs, our day went pretty well uphill from there as we visited some beautiful landmarks and ate some incredibly french food. That day, we consumed some staple moules frites (mussels and fries), and I tried escargots for the first time. The latter is delicious for the first few seconds of chewing, then grows to taste rather earthy, so I would not necessarily want to try that again, but I am nevertheless glad to have tried it.

The landmarks proved to be the highlight of my day, particularly when we visited Shakespeare & Company, which is the most wonderful bookstore to ever exist. My entrance into the store was a bit disorienting, because although it's located in Paris, France, the most stereotypically french city in the world, Shakespeare & Co. is an english bookstore, filled with English language books and a cashier from Baltimore, Maryland. Despite being in such a stark cultural contrast with the surrounding city, these books were beautiful. The walls are stacked high with books, and there's a certain quaint and homey feel to the overall decorum throughout the store, but you don't feel the true extent of it all until you climb to the upper level.

The inside of Shakespeare & Co. -- I was pretty excited

This floor is dedicated to antique books and typewriters, either of which guests are free to break out for a spin while curled up comfortably on their couches, and a little look that looks insignificant at first glance, but was the most magical spot that I've been to in France thus far. Inside this nook are little handwritten notes on whatever scrap or post-it people could find, expressed in countless languages, saying things ranging from "Sonya was here" to the most deeply poetic reflections. Sitting in there and reading those notes overwhelms you with all of the lives that have been touched by that city and store, and all of the amazing ways in which people can say so much on a simple little scrap of paper. Nothing in Paris could top that little nook for me, so essentially it was all downhill from there.

The rest of the weekend followed a general pattern of people being pickpocketed and the group attempting to make up for it with food and sightseeing, and then more people getting sick. Hanna got her wallet stolen on her birthday. We saw the Sacré Coeur. Trent's iPhone was stolen. We went to the most famed falafel place in Paris (on our second try, because evidently there are two different streets named Rosiers in Paris, located altogether too far apart from one another). Sara missed her train and her Carte Jeune went missing. We got quiche. I got sick and was too ill on our last day to go sight seeing or eat delicious food. I read a really good book from my new favorite bookstore.

A lot of things went wrong that weekend, so a lot of people lost a lot of money and items, and I missed out on the city's most famous landmarks. Living the dream. It certainly could have been more nightmarish for me, though.