Very sadly, this is probably going to be my last blog from Avignon. Hopefully I’ll be able to update at least once during my travels over the next few weeks, but if not (depends on internet access) I’ll add information about all of that once I get back home (May 12th). Places on the agenda: Barcelona, Andorra, Carcassone, back to Provence, then Paris.
This week has been filled with lots of profiter-ing, as we’re all trying to take advantage of Avignon before we have to leave. Also, as I keep reminding everyone, we’re all going to die, so we need to profiter first. This last rather morbid thought is a result of a dinnertime conversation with Mireille. She had to go to Marseille a few times this week with her sister to tie up estate things for her brother, who died last November. She was talking to me about how her brother was a like a father to her, since her father died young, and how her other sister is probably going to die soon. It was a very depressing conversation that lasted the entire dinner, but the conclusion of it took me aback: “Il faut profiter!” Since we’re all going to die, the moral of the story is that we have to profiter while we’re alive. And it is in that spirit that we’re spending our last days in Avignon!
Last Sunday after my picnic I went over to a friend’s house to make crepes and play card games. It did not, as I had hoped, stop raining before I had to leave, and thus I spent about an hour walking in the rain because I didn’t want to take a taxi. And when I say raining, what I mean is pouring. I’ve been too cheap to buy a new umbrella after leaving my last one on a TGV train, so I was soaking wet until I met up with one of my friend’s in town who offered me his baseball cap. We all showed up at Daniel’s house looking more or less like drowned rats. The crepes were delicious (we made a serious dent in the nutella). Jungle speed, the card game, was not my forte. It wasn’t played with a standard deck of cards, which threw me off, and it was quite confusing. After that we played Golf (the card game, not the real game), which I was significantly better at. Won that twice, which was quite exciting. Given that we hadn’t left Daniel’s Sunday night until after midnight and almost all of us had a 9AM class the next day, there were quite a few “petits yeux” (little eyes) in Translation on Monday.
Monday and Tuesday were pretty standard days, though we were all excited that it was progressively getting warmer. Wednesday, however, one of our classes (and my only class that day) was canceled, so we all went on a picnic to Rocher des Doms, a garden above the Palais de Papes that has gorgeous view of the Rhône and Avignon. We enjoyed eating out in the sun and 75 degree weather (I’d broken out flip flops for the first time this semester, even though they’re very un-French), and we eventually got into games of twenty questions, which was fun. Some people had to return for class, but I ended up spending a few hours out there before heading back to IAU.
Thursday an IAU alum (Sylvia) visited the Institute—she’s working as an English assistant in Lorraine now, and she talked a little bit about her experience with that, which was interesting. She gets paid by the French government to teach English 12 hours a week with her housing paid for. We invited her to go out with us that night, when one of my France dreams was realized: salsa dancing! Aside from my ice dance and the Laendler from The Sound of Music, salsa dancing is my favorite type of dancing and one of the only types I can remember from one day to the next. I also got an excuse to finally wear a sundress I bought last winter. One of the IAU girls has been taking salsa lessons over the course of the semester, and not only has she found a French boyfriend through them, but she’s started to frequent the various places that have salsa throughout the week. She let us know about this one, which had an instructor for some of the time, so a bunch of us piled off to that. It was a really good time, and I was glad I got that in!
Friday was another gorgeous day (we got spoiled this week), but unfortunately most people had class Friday afternoon to make up the Wednesday class that had been canceled. If the professors in France has to cancel class, they have to reschedule it, which is not my favorite rule in the world—it completely ruins any delight to be found from a canceled class since you’ll have to face it again at an inevitably more inconvenient time. Even more annoying was that the professor kept us in twenty minutes over the class time—I cannot wait until I get back to American standards of time, that’s for sure. After we were finally liberated, I went over to Rocher des Doms again with some friends to hang out for another few hours in the sun. I went back home briefly for dinner, then went out to Le Chien qui Fume for another theater competition (they hold it the last Friday of every month). It was just as entertaining as it usually is, especially with a group called Anny et les Cow Boys, which sang country music in French. Quite funny. Another group, Les Mutins du Rafiot was really good, and a bunch of us bought their CD for €4. The dance groups weren’t so good, but the last few singing groups were nice to listen to. I was able to talk everyone into walking me home afterwards so that I didn’t have to take a taxi—it was still really nice, and no one besides me wanted to go home, but no one had other ideas of what to do. Thus, they got to see my part of Avignon!
Saturday I went for a run in the morning, then met up with a bunch of people at Les Halles to do a repeat of the cooking demonstration that we did the first weekend in Avignon. They made some sort of rhubarb jello-like thing topped with whipped cream flavored with white wine, as well as strawberries. De-licious. One of the guys at the Institute works at a bread place there, so we all also got free brioche. I love brioche. I have a very serious brioche problem, which is compounded by the fact that my host leaves out brioche for me every morning at breakfast. After consuming about as much free food as was available, we decided to have a picnic at the Ile for lunch, and then hang around outside there to ‘study’. I personally make a habit of never cramming, which I can get away with as long as I work all semester. Then during finals week when everyone else is cramming, I leisurely re-read my notes. This is why finals week is my favorite week of the semester (this is also why everyone else thinks I’m insane. I was told about ten minutes ago to jump off the Pont d'Avignon). We split up, as various people had to get various study materials/food/information before regrouping over at the Ile with Muscat, the delicious wine we’d tried the weekend before. We spent the entire afternoon there, and then around 5:30 I finally headed home. Most other people were making plans to go out that night—having been out the two nights prior, I proclaimed stubbornly that I would be spending the evening alone and enjoying it. I did so. Re-read Betsy and the Great World, ate some chocolate, and enjoyed my peace and quiet.
This morning I woke up at 5:30, which I was less than pleased about. This is the reason I have to make sure I have nights when I don’t go out: I have an inability to sleep in. And unlike at home, where I can always go to my ice rink when insomnia strikes, there is nothing to do in Avignon before 9AM. Once it was finally a normal hour when normal people are awake, I started to walk over to Daniel’s house (his hosts are some of the few hosts who are okay having guests over, so we tend to use his house as home base) where several of us would be meeting up to prepare an American style breakfast. Let me start by saying that everything one eats at an American style breakfast besides pancakes can be found in France. However, not one of them will be found at a breakfast table. Eggs, meat, and potatoes are strictly lunch or dinner food, and when I got back from London my host made fun of me for having eaten eggs for breakfast while there. French eat bread for breakfast. I always laugh when I see the signs on the street for breakfast deals because they usually involved at least three beverages, with the only food being a croissant. So this morning we prepared hash browns, pancakes, omelettes, and some croissants, since we were in France, after all. I was in charge of the hash browns, which I made from scratch for the first time—this means boiling the potatoes, letting them cool, chopping them VERY thinly, then finally cooking them. CJ did pancakes, Hannah did omelettes, Imanta brought strawberries and fruit juice, and everyone else was in charge of clean-up. It was a delicious and huge breakfast, but it was wonderful to actually get some protein in the morning. We hung out on the patio for a while, since it was (once again) gorgeous outside.
After I left, Hannah and I went to the ballet! Giselle was in Avignon for the weekend, and you could get decent seats for only €11. I can’t remember the last time I went to the ballet, and I’ve loved the music from Giselle ever since the Steiglers skated to it at 1999 Nationals. Since the theater is essentially the only thing in Avignon open on Sunday, we decided that we might as well go then. I really enjoyed it, though I think the second act was much stronger than the first. Hannah and I felt like none of the dancers were really strong enough in the character dancing that was necessary for the first act, while they were all much more at ease in the second act. However, there were definitely a few girls who we wanted to give sandwiches to. They clearly hadn’t been eating enough brioche lately.
Unfortunately the next few days will be filled with the dismal act of sitting in class rooms and taking finals. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow, which has me incredibly mad—I demand sun for my last few days here! Some people leave as early as Wednesday evening, a good chunk of us are leaving Thursday, and almost everyone will be gone by Friday.
No comments:
Post a Comment