I've arrived in the family where I will be an au pair for the month of August. They live in Villers sur mer, a little beach town right next to Deauville and Trouville, where apparently there's an American film festival coming up in September. I've been here less than 24 hours, but I can already tell that things are going to go well. They are relaxed and fun and the little boy, Matyas, is an adventurous handful! They live on a farm in the country, (the grandparents live right next door), and there are horses and chickens! The mom works for a sailing club, so it looks like I'm going to get to go sailing after all (being on Lake Geneva I was sooo tempted to look up sailing lessons; now I'm glad I didn't)! I'm excited to discover this region, which is already completely different from the south (the cute houses, the weather, the accent). France is incredibly diverse (there's more to it than Paris, you know), but there are some universal truths: wine, cheese, baguettes, dressing well and talking softly (I'm always getting shushed, but maybe that would happen no matter what country I'm in).
Everything happens for a reason. At first I was bummed when I was 'let go' from that first family I au pair-ed for, but now I'm so glad. I got to go to Geneva, where I found the grad school I'm going to go to! The Graduate Institute of International Studies...I just have to live some more fabulous life first! I got to re-connect with old friends (Whitney, Steve, Sarah, Xuan), and make new ones. Life is an adventure, I'm learning, and I'm working hard on going with whatever's thrown at me! I've been impressing myself lately: I am a competent traveler! Yesterday I had slightly less than an hour to get through the Paris metro system from the Gare de Lyon to the Gare St. Lazare and I did it, with time to spare to grab a sandwich. I can stay at a hostel by myself and make friends, or spend days alone in unfamiliar cities and have an amazing time! The second to last night I was in Geneva I found live music by the lake, where I drank some delicious caipirinhas, kept creepy guys at bay by approaching Model UN kids and asking them to pretend to be my friend (a Russian, a Lebanese, and an Uzbekistani!), rocked out to the DJ in the rain, and got home safe and sound. I'm amazing! Never cease to be amazed by the world and oneself.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Monday, July 27, 2009
Switzerland!
After my rambling tour of the south of France (I should call it 'There and Back Again,' as I went to Biarritz/Bayonne/Seignosse and promptly came back to Provence), I find myself in Geneva, and I'm in love! Absolutely no night life to speak of, (though my Malaysian-via-London friend and I tried to go out on a Sunday night, granted), but it's gorgeous and soooo international! I went to the UN today and jizzed my pants over the assembly rooms, the art, and the totally cute Uruguayan tour guide/Ph.D student in int'l law (he led the English tour, of all crazy things). I can see myself there, on at least an internship, rocking the international scene and brainsolving the solutions to all the world's problems, or something along those lines. As these things go...
I hiked around a 'hill' (we'll call it that, since the Alps were in the background and 1000-something meters just doesn't quite compare) yesterday with Fwi Mee, the Malaysian woman I met at breakfast. She's amazing! Works 9 months in London and then travels 3 months every year, everywhere, a.k.a. living the dream! The hill was technically in France, so we crossed the border, rode the cable car/funicular thing up the side, and at the top saw parasailers taking off and hiked around. We even saw a 4 and a half year old Heidi!
Last night at the dead Irish pub we went to, we met a Thai girl who married a Swiss man. They both said to go to Thailand, so I think SE Asia is my 'next big thing.' I hope I run into Fwi Mee again someday, somewhere...she was too fun not to!
Today I also went to the Red Cross Museum, which they should seriously warn you about. Shit! Did you know that since it was started in 1850-something, not a year has gone by without at least a couple armed conflicts somewhere in the world that resulted in at least 10,000 deaths?!?!?!? Either wars, civil wars, takeovers, genocides, or my favorite, "internal troubles," as it said in French, and that's not to mention any disease outbreaks or natural disasters...there should have been a sign outside saying: "Expect to cry. This is holocaust museum-level shit here."
In brief...
Biarritz: wandered around this 'Nice-of-the-west' as I've christened it, for 8 hours. Beautiful (but too small and crowded) beaches, nice shopping, &c, &c, &c. Saw a sweet Lipschitz exhibit, (he was a sculptor, friend of Picasso, and if you can find pictures of 'The couple' also known as 'The Cry,' look it up and prepare to be blown away!), the best part of which was that I saved a bunch of money saying I was a student and getting the discounted ticket price. I'm continuing with that theme, as I'm A. young enough to be a student, and B. planning on being a student again, someday, C. poorish at the moment, and D. and most importantly, I am and always will be a 'student of life,' as it were.
Sète: little known on-the-Med French town that was breathtakingly gorgeous and boring. The hostel was full of old people or un-fun youngins, and was miles away from the train station...thanks to a nice French woman on the way there and a Belgian guy on the way back, both with cars, I was spared the worst part of the hill with all of my crap.
Pertuis: small typical French town whose best claim to fame is that my good friends Whitney and Jen live there. It's also cool that it's just a half hour bus ride out of Aix-en-Provence, a shishy wanna-be Paris near Marseille.
Avignon: since I was in the neighborhood, I had to make a stop. In less than 24 hours, I saw some of my best friends in France, Sarah and Steve, and another play (festival's still on, you know; this one was Tim Burton-esque). Perfection.
I hiked around a 'hill' (we'll call it that, since the Alps were in the background and 1000-something meters just doesn't quite compare) yesterday with Fwi Mee, the Malaysian woman I met at breakfast. She's amazing! Works 9 months in London and then travels 3 months every year, everywhere, a.k.a. living the dream! The hill was technically in France, so we crossed the border, rode the cable car/funicular thing up the side, and at the top saw parasailers taking off and hiked around. We even saw a 4 and a half year old Heidi!
Last night at the dead Irish pub we went to, we met a Thai girl who married a Swiss man. They both said to go to Thailand, so I think SE Asia is my 'next big thing.' I hope I run into Fwi Mee again someday, somewhere...she was too fun not to!
Today I also went to the Red Cross Museum, which they should seriously warn you about. Shit! Did you know that since it was started in 1850-something, not a year has gone by without at least a couple armed conflicts somewhere in the world that resulted in at least 10,000 deaths?!?!?!? Either wars, civil wars, takeovers, genocides, or my favorite, "internal troubles," as it said in French, and that's not to mention any disease outbreaks or natural disasters...there should have been a sign outside saying: "Expect to cry. This is holocaust museum-level shit here."
In brief...
Biarritz: wandered around this 'Nice-of-the-west' as I've christened it, for 8 hours. Beautiful (but too small and crowded) beaches, nice shopping, &c, &c, &c. Saw a sweet Lipschitz exhibit, (he was a sculptor, friend of Picasso, and if you can find pictures of 'The couple' also known as 'The Cry,' look it up and prepare to be blown away!), the best part of which was that I saved a bunch of money saying I was a student and getting the discounted ticket price. I'm continuing with that theme, as I'm A. young enough to be a student, and B. planning on being a student again, someday, C. poorish at the moment, and D. and most importantly, I am and always will be a 'student of life,' as it were.
Sète: little known on-the-Med French town that was breathtakingly gorgeous and boring. The hostel was full of old people or un-fun youngins, and was miles away from the train station...thanks to a nice French woman on the way there and a Belgian guy on the way back, both with cars, I was spared the worst part of the hill with all of my crap.
Pertuis: small typical French town whose best claim to fame is that my good friends Whitney and Jen live there. It's also cool that it's just a half hour bus ride out of Aix-en-Provence, a shishy wanna-be Paris near Marseille.
Avignon: since I was in the neighborhood, I had to make a stop. In less than 24 hours, I saw some of my best friends in France, Sarah and Steve, and another play (festival's still on, you know; this one was Tim Burton-esque). Perfection.
Friday, July 17, 2009
The Whole Story. The Month of Crazy
I knew this month was going to be exciting, but I didn't quite realize how exciting. It began with moving out of the apartment I had lived in for the past 9 months, throwing stuff, giving some away, and hanging on to more than I should. The family in Seignosse who I would be au pairing for contacted me via email and said they didn't need me until the 11th of July. No problem. I stuck around Avignon until then and caught the beginning of the world-famous Avignon theater festival, of which I'd been hearing since the day I arrived on the scene, late last September.
I saw 6 plays and only paid for one of them (now that's the way to see a theater festival)! Two of them were final dress rehearsals at the Theatre Etincelle, the theater where Sarah has an internship this month. One of them wasn't all that good (a period piece about convincing a beautiful country girl to fall out of love with the foolish nobody who had won her heart and into love with the local prince...uninspired, dreary, and all the actors were too old...one of the love interests was balding!), and one of them was pretty decent (three guys, talking about and doing random shit). In one line, they gushed about what a fate it would be to spend an eternity in a theater seat! In another, they urged one to be the creaky floorboard on the stage. It resonates, it dares, you can dance and sing... The director of the theater asked us to stay afterwards and congratulate the actors, as some audience members had left halfway through the performance (and being that the audience was only a handful of people, it was noticeable).
Zandra, Sarah and I paid to see a play called Ronald, the clown of McDonald's & I bought a shovel at Ikea to dig my grave, or something along those lines. Three actors, kooky commentary on consumer culture. It was dark and delicious and yeah, we've heard it all before. Then Sarah snuck us into two shows at her theater on the opening day (by now Zandra and I were familiar faces around there). We saw an adaptation of Romeo & Juliet that would try to be funny, but never quite got there, and would always pull back to being serious. They stuck too close to the original, in my opinion, and the final scene was them lying there, dead. No wrap-up speeches or nothing. AND, I'm sorry, but practically every man in the play was tolerably cute except Romeo! He was sweaty and goofy and looked about 12 years old. I was careful not to be too critical, though, as the writer of the thing was there in the audience! The best part was when a gel fell from a light onto an audience member...classic!
My favorite show at Sarah's theater was called The Operation of the Holy Spirit. Set in Heaven, Mary full of grace was played by a man in drag, Jesus was SOOO gay, and Gabriel ran around singing and squeaking in a very high-pitched voice. At one point God gives the angels penises to lower their voices, and Gabriel starts chasing Mary, so he takes them back. It was kooky and awesome, in a very good way.
One of the best parts of the festival is walking around the streets during the day. You see all sorts of troupes of actors singing and demonstrating and handing out fliers to come see their show. One of the fliers I got was actually a free invitation for two people. So Jeff and I went and saw Rockstar, an amazing one man show about...everything and nothing, as these things go. For part of the time the dude was in his own brain, meeting different people on the different levels. It was awesome, and totally worth the price!
On Monday, July 6th Jeff convinced Zandra and I to ride our bikes to Les Beaux de Provence to catch Stage 3 of the Tour de France! He estimates we rode about 60-75 km round trip, all told. Which is really nothing compared to the almost 200km Lance et al rode that day, when you think that it's still going on and they're still riding up mountains and crazy shit! We met some American army dudes who are stationed in Germany right now, and I got lured into being interviewed by some dudes with a camera and microphone who asked leading questions about whether I thought Lance dopes or not. I ended up comparing him to Batman, training himself to physical perfection and all that. We got some free shit in the parade that comes around before the racers (sausages, crackers, candy, beer opener, stupid hats, glasses wipe) and we looked ridiculously awesome with Jeff's 6-foot American flag. I know I saw Lance, (he was in the peleton), but I couldn't pick him out as I tried to take a picture and it was all over in a matter of seconds. Overall, a pretty good day (even though my butt was really sore afterwards).
Continuing my typical French experiences, on July 10th I headed to Carcassonne, one of the coolest castle/fortresses in Europe. Very touristy, very awesome. I was going to take myself out to a nice dinner to celebrate my getting paid finally by the commie French government to help out with my rent for the past 6 months, but instead I ended up staying at the hostel and drinking my dinner with a rag-tag bunch of 'Europeans' late into the night. There was John from England, the hostel barkeep, Mathias from Germany, Cairan from Ireland, (pronounced Kir-on), Vincente from Spain (who was going to do part of the Santiago de Compostollo pilgrimage and was trying to convince me to join him...in hindsight I should have said yes), two Belgians who were also pilgrims (although they were more serious about it), two other Belgians who looked like twins, matching blue shirts and shiny bald heads, and later on a Danish guy and Nick from Canada joined us for awhile. It was one of the best hostel times I've ever had, and made me fall in love with 'the Europe' even more (they made fun of me, referring to Europe as we Americans tend to do, as one entity). I need to get one of them to marry me, if only for the treasured EU citizenship!
The next day I headed to Seignosse, outside of Bayonne, which is outside of Biarritz, to be an au pair. Marnie is 2 and adorable, Stephanie (the mom) is gorgeous and pregnant, and Stu (the dad) is English/South African and owns a hip little surfer joint called the Cream Cafe, right off the beach. Well, there was a miscommunication about September (I changed my departure from the 14th to the 4th without telling them until I got here), which was apparently a deal breaker for Stephanie, so she found another au pair and told me two days ago that the new au pair was coming yesterday. Yeah, she gave me 24 hours notice that I was jobless and homeless for the next two months. I freaked out and started desperately looking around (I even called John from Carcassonne about any leads in the hostel biz, and called the hostel in Sete and said my friend John told me they might need someone...unfortunately the dude wasn't looking for anymore foreigners...damn I need that EU citizenship)! Within hours I had many welcoming friends with many couches and one au pair gig for the month of August. I've decided to take it, so I'm going to be an au pair in Normandy for a 20 month old boy...ah! A little young, but I (hopefully!) can handle it. I was hurt and mad at first, but actually I think it's for the best. Stephanie was kind of a bitch and very particular (I had to iron Stu's t-shirts so he 'wouldn't look like a gypsy' according to her), and I think I'm going to be happier with my new plans. Which are?
I'm in a hotel in Bayonne for two more nights (the weather is gray and gross and windy and rainy right now...I think I'm going to go to a movie by myself tonight...sad!), then off to Sete for two nights, and that hostel I tried to get a job at (hopefully they forgot that an 'Annette' called them a few days ago...). I've heard Sete is nice, and it looks pretty...then to see Whitney in Pertuis, (which is good...it would have been sad to go back to the states without seeing her again), back to Avignon for probably half a day (where my deposit check for my apartment will hopefully be waiting for me with Sarah), then to Geneva to visit my old roommate Xuan from China, who's currently doing an internship with the World Health Organization! I've never been to Switzerland, and it's about darn time! As the saying goes...when life gives you lemons, find someone whose life gave them vodka. I'm making martinis out of these lemons! July 2009 will forever be known as 'The Month of Crazy' by me and my close associates.
Then I'll head to Normandy (I don't even know exactly where yet...I'll talk to the woman on the phone later today) for a month of hanging with a baby. Somewhere in there Aunt Robin and my cousin Reid will swing through. After that, around my mom's birthday (the 25th of August), I'm planning on heading up to the UK, to hang with my pals Ruth and Simon and party our asses off until my flight on September 4th to Cambodia to visit my dad! So you see, as my godmother Irene always says: it all works out when you let it!
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