Que des instants

I'm back on my home turf, getting ready to go back to my home home turf.

After Verona, my Dad and I took an incredible train ride through the Swiss Alps to Paris, spent a couple days there, and then returned to Montpellier for the final days of his visit. I think it was my fifth time in Paris, and I enjoyed showing my Dad around the city. One thing that we did there that I'd never done before was to hear the organ at St. Eustache. We actually weren't even trying to go to St. Eustache, but I got turned around and as we were looking at the map to get our bearings, we heard the organ start up inside the cathedral. I feel like most people associate church organ-playing with boredom. If those people heard the organ at St. Eustache, they would poop their pants. The prelude to the service was one of the most stirring, captivating, and frightening things I've ever heard. A thunderous noise that I cannot even imagine contained within two staves. We saw some great things in Paris -- the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, even Les Champs Elysées covered with, as we later found out, 800,000 people -- but none was as memorable as that minute and a half of transcendent music.

My father returned safely to the US on Wednesday, and now I'm really down to it. This morning I had the femme de ménage (cleaning lady) check out my room to make sure it was sufficiently clean. We ended up talking politics for a little while, which was essentially the first conversation we've had all semester. It's funny how transitions are never as tidy as we imagine them. Whereas I'd maybe expect to have a nice gradual decrescendo as I left Montpellier, saying my goodbyes and finding closure with the many people I've met here this semester, it still seems to me that I'm continuing to make connections and build relationships. Last night some people went to Le Massai, the African restaurant, again, and for the first time since January I hung out with a couple acquaintances I met very early on. That's not proper departure etiquette; it would probably make more sense to simply avoid meeting people or builing new relationships in the very last paragraphs of a chapter. Generally speaking it's bad form for an author to introduce a new character at the end of a story. Yet people have a tendency to act as if life were no book, or perhaps a book with no conclusion. We don't typically meet someone with the end of that relationship in mind. Rather, we build relationships as if there will be no end at all. You might call that an illusion, but I'd call it our aptitude for, our sense of something eternal. I titled this post "Que des instants" -- "Only Moments" remaining -- and it's true that there is only a matter of moments remaining for me in Montpellier. Heck, there is only a matter of moments remaining for our time on Earth. Yet -- illusion or affinity -- we live them presently, eternally. I'm returning to the US on Monday knowing that I lived Montpellier presently. It's a good feeling.

My Favorite Thing

I'm writing this from Verona, Italy, at the Gregory residence. My Dad's long-time friend, Kyle Gregory, has been a musician in Verona for the past twelve years. He and his family have graciously welcomed us into their home these past few days, giving us a small taste of the city and of what their lives are like. Yesterday we took a day trip to Venice, only about an hour east of here. It's a remarkable city. I had never thought about how quiet a city would be if you replaced all the streets with canals and all the cars with boats. It's a very peaceful yet very active place. My Dad and I were both jazzed to be able to take a day-trip to Venice, but when Kyle asked his 14-year-old daughter, Emily, if she wanted to go with us, she rolled her eyes and said in disgust, "Venice? I've been there like 20 million times." I guess we can get accustomed to even the most special of places.

I was already in Italy once before, about five years ago on an EF Tours trip with my French teacher and ten other high schoolers. One of the most outstanding memories from those two weeks in Europe was the gelato. Yesterday in Venice, I found that my passion for that sweet heavenly substance has not diminished in the slightest. I can hardly ever say something is my favorite, no favorite color, no favorite number, no favorite book. But I'd say my favorite ice cream -- and actually perhaps my favorite thing at the moment -- is Italian pistachio gelato. Oh my goodness. And at one euro twenty for a scoop, I am currently a very happy man.

Happy summer to those who've made it there! And to those in Colorado, I'll be seeing you soon!

In Nice. It's nice.

Salut au monde! from me and my Dad. We got to Nice yesterday and walked about 7,000 km to get to our hotel, which is apparently -- and this without any exaggeration -- farther away from downtown than the airport. On the plus side of things, the whole walk was alongside the Mediterranean. A very pleasant exhausting walk.

We had a great time in Montpellier over the weekend, seeing the city and enjoying many moments at outdoor cafes. Next stop: Verona, Italy, where Dad's friend Kyle lives. I'll try to keep giving brief updates during our trip, but this blog may come to an end pretty soon -- after our two-week excursion, I'll have a few days in Montpellier again and then I'll be back in the States. Crazy.

I hope you're having an adventure of your own. There are plenty to be had. Peace and love

Academic Update/African Food

Salut tout le monde!

Believe it or not (I don't really believe it myself), I have only one more day of classes in Montpellier! I have a Phonetics test tomorrow afternoon for which I sorely need to study, followed by the final session of my literature class. Yesterday I took my Grammar exam, which I'm almost positive I passed. My entire grade for that class came down to literally 20 questions where I had to identify the category and function of certain groupings of a paragraph. This morning I took my philosophy exam, for which I actually felt rather prepared and which, depending on how my professor grades, of course, I think I passed as well. It was a commentaire de texte (commentary) on a part of the preface of the third section of Spinoza's Ethics. Interesting thinker, that Spinoza. I largely disagree with his philosophy, but he was quite bold for someone writing in the 17th century. With some focused studying (and a little Frisbee break this evening) I think I'll pass my Phonetics exam as well.

I just barely got a passing grade in my Poetics class which ended last week. It's my only third-year course I took this semester, and the professor is sharp, well-read, and clearly a discerning critical thinker. I put in a lot of time but not as much as I would have wanted for my paper, and before I got it back all I was really hoping for was a passing grade. After a not altogether encouraging introduction where she said the papers ranged from excellent to failing, she passed back our essays and I guess I got exactly what I asked for -- a 10.5, one-half point above the minimum passing grade. I was somewhat relieved but by no means thrilled. Later, when I flipped through to read her notes, to my great surprise I noticed that there were pages missing. Actually, earlier in the week she had emailed me to tell me that the last page was missing, so I sent it to her and apologized for not having stapled them together. But apparently it was a printing error and not a packaging error, because my paper was also missing the sixth and the ninth pages. For an 11-page paper, that's a significant amount of missing text. That I still received a passing grade proved to me two things and taught me one other. One, I should be perfectly content to receive a 10.5 on an incomplete work, and two, that she must not have read my essay all that carefully. I hate to assume that it's because I'm an exchange student and that she gave less time and attention to my work because she figured it could be mediocre at best, but it's hard to let go of that assumption. It's maybe the first time I have felt treated unfairly in the education system. Oh yes, and what I learned: always check to make sure all the pages printed out right.

And as an aside, I simply have to say something about how I spent my evening last night. My Camerooni (is that what we say?) friend, Bertrand, invited me and others to an African restaurant downtown called the Massai. Since we were meeting at the university at 7, I figured I'd have a couple hours to study afterward, but -- and all the better -- the night unfolded in typical southern France / African tardiness. We got there a little before 8. The upstairs is nothing extraordinary -- a few tables, a small bar -- but the gentleman led us downstairs, where a table awaited all ten of us, chairs on one side and a long cushioned seat with red and gold-embroidered pillows on the other. Then he started up the music, popular African songs that played on speakers more fit for a club than a restaurant. Well, they were perfectly fit for this restaurant; Bertrand and my Senegalese friend, Sylvain, told me that nearly all restaurants in Africa have music playing like that. They eat for a while, then they dance, then they eat, then they dance some more. And Bertrand and Sylvain certainly danced. Bertrand asked the waiter to put on some Camerooni music, and once that got going he became even more animated than he usually is. Dancing and grooving to the music (it's great music -- so rhythmic!) and discussing what we would all order, somehow we ended up getting our main courses at nearly 10:30. Who knows if it was all the waiting or if it was simply the culinary quality, but that food tasted so damn good. The Aloko -- fried plantains -- was amazing. Naturally, we passed several moments in relative silence, our attention suddenly on other things than music and conversation. After more dancing and more eating we ended up leaving after midnight and getting back to the dorms around 1. I'm not accustomed to eating African food, to dining with music booming at my back, or to having dinner out last for six hours, but I tell you what -- I am certainly a fan.

An Eclectic Update -- Jared Kelly, Frisbee, School

First of all, if you know Jared Kelly, you need to call him, email him, or make mention of him on your blog, because yesterday was his birthday!!! Twenty-two years old. What an oldie (but goodie).

So life in Montpellier marches on. In eight days I'll be done with all my classes and exams, and in nine my Dad is coming to visit me. Our rough plan is to spend some time in Montpellier, Nice, Verona, and Venice. He's been studying French this semester using one of those teach-yourself-French CD series. Apparently he's good at least for asking how to find Boulevard de St. Michel. I guess I'll take care of the rest.

I am really looking forward to his visit, though it will definitely mark the final moments of my time in France. He'll be here until the 26, and then I'll have a few days to pack up, say my goodbyes, and soak up the Montpellier sun before leaving from Paris on the 31. For those who don't know (which could be a lot -- I'm not always good at communicating this sort of thing), I will be staying in Colorado this summer as usual. I haven't yet decided what I'll be doing for work, though window washing is ever a possibility. I do, however, have specific plans in mind: I want to hike with my Dad, perhaps do a backpacking trip with Robbie Chalmers and his brother, and train for and run a half-marathon with my sister Nicole. Oh yeah, and play lots of Frisbee.

Speaking of which, I love Frisbee. The weekend before last we brought a Montpellier team to a nearby beach tournament. We were a young team that hadn't even practiced together, so we got 13th out of 15, but it was still loads of fun. It was also loads of hard work, playing 5 on 5 on a 100-meter playing field on sand. And at that point I was still recovering from museum legs -- that gradual atrophy that results from hours and hours and hours of walking at reading pace from one painting to the next -- so it was even more tiring. After the games the first day there was a wine race, a relay race involving running, drinking, spinning around a lot, and running again that inspired lots of laughter and memorable photos. Later that night all the teams gathered for paella and music. I feel like French ultimate players respect the spirit of the game much more than American players. They all love the game, but they love meeting other players and spending time together -- yes, even with opponents -- just as much. It's really something to see. Like the university tournament in Lyon, each match was followed by la ronde, where both teams got in a circle, the captains gave brief speeches on what they appreciated about the game, and everyone played a game together afterward. I'd like to impart that spirit to players in the US.

Last week, right after the beach tournament, I had three major assignments due: a take-home test Monday, a presentation Tuesday, and an essay Wednesday. I had worked on the various tasks for approximately eight minutes over my two-week break, but, miraculously, I finished all of them in time. With how few assignments there are in this academic system, in three days I turned in what accounts for 40% of all my grades for the semester. In the US, I've never had an assignment count for 40% of one single class, not to mention 40% of all my classes for the semester! Needless to say, it was quite a relief to get all that done.

There now remain three exams for me: Grammar, Phonetics, and Spinoza's Ethics. I believe, in fact, that I will go study right now. Peace!

Le denouement

I feel I may have left off on a sour note at my last post. For those of you who couldn't decipher my poetic abstraction, perhaps you heard on the news about the volcano in Iceland that erupted some days ago and whose cloud of ash cancelled nearly all Western European flights for most the week. To be honest, it didn't affect my travel plans all that much. It prevented me from going to Dublin and gave me three extra days in London. Can't complain too much about that. Especially when you consider all the people who were really inconvenienced by the flight cancellations -- Britons stranded around the world trying to return to their families and their jobs, for instance. For me, it was just another part of the adventure.

Come to think of it, disrupted travel plans played a major part in my two-week break. My initial train from Montpellier to Paris was cancelled because of a rail strike; one night in London I waited for a bus until 3 am before giving up and going to a different stop; and when I returned to Montpellier yesterday the tramway was down because of a strike. I got back to Montpellier by taking a bus from London to Paris and then the TGV from Paris. Instead of going through the chunnel -- which I was pretty excited about -- the bus took a ferry. It was a surreal experience. My bus left London at 10:30 Wednesday night, and I woke up around midnight to the angry yelling of our bus driver telling us to get off. There were dozens of coach buses and cars in this long chamber, and we took a passenger lift to the lounge area. I was with this French student named Thibault who I met on the bus and who, remarkably, is a good friend of Marine, a French girl doing a year abroad at Whitworth! I followed him in a half-daze to floor 5 of the ferry, which, but for the people sleeping awkwardly in chairs and on the ground, may as well have been a shopping mall. For some reason I've never considered how large a ferry must be. Quite large, I discovered. There were cafes and shops, huge seating areas and carpeted walkways. We went up another floor and found a quiet place to sleep for the hour and a half before reboarding our bus. We arrived at Gare de Lyon in Paris around 8:00 am, and as we looked at the metro map to figure out our route, my friend Rachel came walking up. What the hell? She's from Montpellier and was on break, too, but what are the chances we'd see each other in the Paris metro? What's even weirder is that I saw her in London, too, in the British Museum. Too bizarre!

After that journey down the rabbit hole, it's very nice to be back in Montpellier. It's warm and humid here, even when cloudy, and you can feel summer creeping on. Next week I have three major assignments due -- my last assignments of the semester, in fact -- which will be hard to finish with my playing in a Frisbee tournament this weekend. It also didn't much help that I made dirt cake with my friends Sarah and Eddy this afternoon. It sure was tasty, though, and fun!

It astounds me that I have only a few more weeks left in France. Two weeks of class, a few days of finals, then my dad will visit me for a couple weeks, and I'll leave soon after that. Just before break I spent my last time with the Tapperts (my pastor and his family) at the CFU (my church). They leave this weekend for the states, as they do every summer, to visit their base of support and ask for continued support for their mission in France. It was a sad and significant goodbye. By and large they have represented the most important aspect of my time abroad, that is, the development of my trust in the Lord. They were very nearly the first people I met in Montpellier, literally the first morning I was here. They took me into their church and their home like a son, and I have benefited greatly from the fellowship that's taken place in their home.

Well before break the idea of "denouement" came to mind. We use the word in English when discussing literature to mean the resolution of a plot, the events that follow the climax. In French it derives from the verb "denouer," which means "to undo," literally to undo a knot ("knot" = "noeud"). With my last time at the CFU with the Tapperts, with my vacation having finished, with only a few weeks of class ahead of me, I feel very clearly in the denouement of my chapter in France. It seems that I experience a somewhat significant denouement in my life every few months in recent years. Last year I started getting sad about leaving for France sometime in August! On the other hand, I'm already really excited about next semester starting and being an RA again. Transitions come at me so fast, they tend to blend together, these beginnings and endings, the process of making and untying all this yarn, all these knots. I go back and forth between Colorado and Whitworth, and now between the US and Montpellier and other places in Europe, and no matter how present-minded I am in each place, threads are constantly being done and undone. I am becoming more and more convince of two absolute truths. Human life is inherently transient, and all that remains and remains constant is God. What I wrote in my second post on this blog -- which I didn't understand as well as I do now, and which I still can't completely understand -- still holds true: God, the one Constant, is with us, ever with us. Two weeks of travel only served to convince me further of this. In allowing me to meet with good friends in Paris, in blessing my travels, in giving me a gracious host in Chester, in keeping me safe in London, in intersecting my path with those of Rachel and Thibault, in granting me a thankful heart, I know the Lord is in my life, solid and active and good.

I took several hundred pictures in Paris, Chester, and London, but since I'm still borrowing a computer, I unfortunately can't put them up here. Not too long from now, though, I'll be back in the US and can post them or, better yet, print them off and show them to you myself! With much love and gratitude, your Montpellier man.

My vacation plans are like a volcano...

My vacation plans are like a volcano
that unexpectedly blew up,
sending massive mushrooming
clouds over the UK,
grounding all the planes
until who knows when.
Oh wait --
a volcano actually did blow up,
and the planes are actually grounded.




(composed in an internet cafe in London)

In London

So I'm still in an Anglophone country -- the same one as before, in fact -- but it's starting to feel a bit more normal. The southern accent is, of course, quite a bit easier to understand than the midlands or northern accents. One interesting discovery is that I'm still functioning on a sort of bilingual level. Naturally (well, not always so naturally -- I do have to remind myself that strangers here speak English), I speak English to people, but I still think a good deal in French, or sometimes in a fluid combination of French and English. That's encouraging. It makes me think that perhaps I'll still be able to speak French when I return to Montpellier next Friday. A few months after being in the states, though, that could be a different story...

London is enormous. It's much larger than Paris. I realized last weekend that you can walk most of central and historical Paris in a single day. Not so with London. I arrived yesterday in the afternoon and started my tourist excursion at kind of an odd time -- around 4:30, not long before many museums close and well before the night life begins. So I saw a lot of things from the outside: the Royal Observatory, the Queen's House, the Eye, Big Ben, the Tower and Tower Bridge, Parliament Square, Westminster Abbey, and lots and lots and lots of buses. Today I plan on actually entering a building or two, probably the British Museum, the National Gallery, and perhaps Pollock's Toy Museum and/or the Charles Dickens Museum.

I can tell already it's a great city, but a city can only be so great if you don't know anyone there. After spending a wonderful time in Paris and Chester with lots of friends, London can't compare. I'm hoping to meet up with Shawna McNally and Katie Goodell tomorrow, and perhaps my friend Parham on Sunday, and I think that will brigthen up my time in this incredible city. Today is already bright, though; it's sunny and clear, an unusual blessing in England. It's been great weather my whole trip, in fact. Paris was beautiful, and Sarah said that Chester was clearer and warmer when I was visiting than it has been all semester. Sarah and I went to the Lake District on Wednesday, which was not only beautiful but markedly peaceful. "The fairest place on earth," Wordsworth called it. Well I may not be in the fairest place on earth right now, but there are a lot of great things to see, so I best be going. Peace and blessings!

-Your chap in London

Cheers from Chester

I am in an Anglophone country. Whoa.

Yesterday I flew from Paris to Liverpool and then took a train to Chester to meet my friend Sarah Glady. Right now I'm in the kitchen of her student apartment (whose bathroom is bigger than my dorm room, I'm pretty sure) while she's in class. Sarah is about the best host I could ask for. She gave me a walking tour of the city yesterday, and we were stopping every ten steps so she could explain the historical significance of this or that tower or church or field. Considering the fact that before yesterday I knew maybe three things about Chester, it seems like it holds quite a bit of historical significance, from Roman times all the way through World War II. It's a beautiful little town, too, with an interesting combination of Roman, Medieval, Elizabethan, and Victorian architecture.

It really is something to be somewhere where everyone speaks English and almost no one speaks French. An airport employeee wanted to tell me something yesterday and I replied, "Oui?" Just as silly, I found myself saying "pardon" (French "pardon," that is) as Sarah and I passed people on our walk around town. What makes my confusion especially confusing is that I don't know the English that English people use. I'd sound silly saying "pardon" in French, but I think I'd sound just as silly saying "excuse me," as we Americans tend to say, instead of "sorry," as the British tend to say. With language as well as little cultural details, I find myself here in Chester in a bizarre state of familiarity and displacement. Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, in many ways I'd feel much more at home in France right now than I feel in England.

To back-track a bit, I should add that the rest of my time in Paris was fantastic. This third time in Paris was my best ever, largely because I didn't have much of an agenda and because I knew a bunch of people who were there at least for the weekend. I ended up seeing Ashley Warner, a friend from high school; Aleksandra and Aneta, my Polish friends from Montpellier who I traveled to Barcelona with; Maoyu, my friend from church in Montpellier; and Katrina Wheeler and the Whitworth study group traveling through France this whole semester. I went up the towers of Notre Dame, visited much of the Louvre (my second time there), attended a birthday party in a rented-out bar, drank wine with masses of people on a bridge next to Pont Neuf, saw several cathedrals I hadn't previously visited, and spent lots of time in great convsersation with my friends. Oh yeah, and the Korean food at my hostel was incredible.

In every way my trip is off to a great start. God has blessed me immensely every day, from being able to see friends to catching buses or trains at the very last minute to simply being kept safe. However excited I am to travel through Europe, I am just as thankful to be able to do so.

-Your man in Chester

Worst Blogger Ever

The votes are in -- I am the worst blogger ever. To be fair, my computer is broken at the moment. Still.

It took me getting to Paris to put up another post. Right now I am in a hostel on the south end of the city. I guess it's a hostel, since I found it on hostelworld.com, but it's really more like a house. This Korean woman runs it, and she makes breakfast and dinner for whoever wants it -- for free -- every day. I will probably eat more Korean food this weekend in Paris than I have in my whole life.

My school has two weeks of break (the one week-break in February wasn't nearly enough vacation, they decided), so from Paris I'm going to Chester, England to see my friend Sarah from Whitworth; then to London, where I'll probably meet up with Shawna and Katie from Whitworth; and then to Dublin. And I'm actually seeing another Whitworth person today -- Katrina Wheeler, who's TA-ing for the school's French study program. Whitworth connections abound! I need to go shower and get going to meet Katrina, but I wanted to finally get up a post. I remember one of my first posts on this blog was written from a different hostel in Paris. I feel so much more comfortable here this time. It helps that I don't have 80 pounds of luggage to haul around. It also helps that I have more confidence in my language abilities, as well as my ability to navigate unfamiliar situations. Well I'm off, but I'll try to post somewhat regularly during break, according to internet availability, of course.

-Your man in France

written from a computer lab...

Hey there, everyone. The sole point of this message is to relay the information that my computer has effectively died. Specifically, it's the hard drive that's jacked up. Whatever the problem is exactly, my computer is entirely unoperable. I don't know if I'm going to buy a new hard drive or buy a new computer, or maybe just go without a computer until sometime after I get back to the states. Having gone even a couple days now without a computer has shown me how terribly dependent I am (or was, more like) on my computer. To that end, thank God it broke!

The downside is that I'll have less access to this blog and to all my friends and family in the states (or abroad). Skype will be especially difficult; I can maybe borrow a friend's computer from time to time, but I don't want to abuse my friends' generosity.

I'll keep you updated on the situation, but for now I'll just have to learn how to type on these funky French keyboards. I'm getting better already, but it certainly slows me down. So try to understand if I put a "q" instead of an "a," or a comma instead of an "m," or a "ç" instead of a "9." (Those are just a few differences between the keyboards.)

And by the way, other than that, things are going great. I finished and turned in that text explication that I talked about in my last post, and I feel pretty good but not great about it. Next week I have a real doozie (doozy? doozee? Is what I'm trying to say even a word?), a 12-pager on the poet's journey inward as represented in Philippe Jaccottet's A la lumière d'hiver. Good stuff. It's refreshing to finally do some work :)

A bientôt, mes amis!

Text Explication Explication

[started writing this post at] 12:22 am, Saturday night. Here's what I did today:

-woke up --10:30
-worked on a text explication -- 11:00-2:00
-made and ate lunch with my friend Anthony -- 2:30-5:00
-worked on my text explication -- pretty much until I started writing this post

As you can see, it really is a crazy night life here!

But let me give a few reasons why I'm not a total lamo:

1) This is the first Saturday night since I've been in France that I've worked on homework.

2) It was rainy today, not very attractive weather for going out and about. Plus, a strike on the tram has made the times rather irregular. Yesterday there was no tram at all, in fact, resulting in more people on foot, on bike, and in their cars than I've ever seen in Montpellier.

3) This text explication is due on Tuesday. I started writing at 11:00 today (see bullet item 2).

4) Apparently I have to write this thing in French. Go figure. It requires a lot of time because first of all, I have to look words up, and secondly, when I look words up I start getting curious about other words and expressions and start looking things up that have nothing to do with my paper.

Despite those four very good reasons I'm not a lamo, there still remains the fact that I worked on this paper for over ten hours today, and still haven't finished. This reminds me a little bit of the time I wrote a paper for my metaphysics class about how time might not exist. I pretty much locked myself in my room in the Duvall basement, just reading, thinking, writing. Naturally, treating the nonexistence of time and all, I lost track of time as I worked, and even started to forget about meals. And since I have the habit of running my hand through my hair when I'm reading or thinking deeply -- which poofs up my fro wall-socket style -- I emerged from my lair looking and feeling much like a mad scientist.

Today wasn't quite so drastic. The subject matter, after all, is a fairy tale by Charles Perrault.

Sadly I hadn't known the name Perrault before I started taking this class. He wrote versions of many famous fairy tales -- Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Blue Beard, and others. And if any of you ever have a question concerning the 30 or so lines of "Le Petit Poucet" beginning at "La nuit vint" and ending at "si vous voulez bien l'en prier," I am the man to ask. Text explications don't really exist in the US. In fact, I don't think they really exist anywhere besides France. It's a literary analysis paper, but one that has to follow a passage (of no more than 30 lines) in a linear manner and focus with extreme precision on its composition. Sometimes I feel ridiculous taking notes in my literature classes, because a professor can spend a one-and-a-half hour lecture on a two-page passage. Of course, there's probably no better way to learn the intricacies of the French language than to do such a close reading, whether for native or non-native speakers.

I hope I didn't convey up there that I was complaining about writing the explication. I've really enjoyed doing it so far. Believe it or not, this essay will be the very first assignment I will have turned in this semester. There's been other homework (admittedly not very much), but we never have to turn it in. (It's the strangest thing, too: the professor will ask who has done the homework, and sometimes less than half the class raises their hands. The students don't try to fool anybody; they just sit there unassumingly, listening to their headphones or talking to their neighbors. And the teachers don't seem to care all that much, either. It's mind-boggling! And, sadly, rather contagious. It's hard not to assume that je m'en fous attitude when over half the class isn't doing the work.) So go ahead and congratulate me: after two months of classes, I'm finally turning in my first assignment!

I actually have several assignment due in the next few weeks. I need to complete or at least get a start on a commentary paper on a work by Rilke, an essay on the poetry of mourning of Philippe Jaccottet, a document analysis for my Geography of France class, and an oral presentation on a topic of my choice related to Spinoza's Ethic.

Well, I just wanted to put up a post on here before going to bed, and I also wanted to write in a language where expressions come easily to me. Recently I've decided to step up my language acquisition a bit: I'm journaling only in French, reading only in French (except for those emails and letters my friends and family keep sending me. Agh! Enough's enough already!), and trying to think and pray only in French. So this blog is a bit of a haven.

Before I couche myself, as some of my Anglophone friends are fond of saying, I should say that I found out last night that I was rehired as an RA for next year. I will be in East Hall, the newest (and easternmost) dorm on campus, having opened just last year. It'll be somewhat of a shift going from French dorms, which have no RA and where people often have wine or beer or vodka or anything else they please with their dinner, to Whitworth dorms. But don't get me wrong -- I am so excited to be RAing it up next year. (And if you're an incoming freshman to Whitworth and you're going to be living on my hall next year: No, I don't drink wine or beer or vodka or anything else that I please, and I never will. Good.)

Well if you've learned anything in reading my post, I hope it's a basic concept of a French text explication. And if I've learned anything, it's that I probably shouldn't write blog posts after midnight, especially if I've been in my room for over ten hours. Wow. I think this post is proof that I'm closer to mad-scientist status than I thought. I'm off to bed now -- church in the morning and early afternoon, and then back to my friend Charles.

Little Update: guests, Frisbee, and weather

Hey everyone, I'm keeping this update brief because, strangely enough, I have guests! Shawna McNally, Bill Thurston, and Katie Goodell from Whitworth arrived in Montpellier on Saturday and are staying here until tomorrow. They're making a nine-week tour through western Europe, an incredible and exhausting trip. Believe it or not, all four of us are managing to sleep in my one room -- my one, typically tiny, 9 square meter room. It's quite the lesson in conservation and efficiency.

Anyway, the main reason I wanted to post something was that last week I played in France's inter-regional university ultimate (Frisbee) tournament. If I have more time later this week maybe I'll include some of the more interesting details, but I wanted to let you know that there are pictures from the tournament on facebook. I was tagged in several of them, and you can click on the link to the photo album to see more pictures. It was a great time, and Montpellier, in only its second appearance in the tournament, took 7th out of 14 teams. Not bad at all!

After a freak snow storm over a week ago, spring is coming to Montpellier full force; the past three days have been sunny, slightly breezy, and warm. Life is good.

If you think of it, pray for Shawna, Bill, and Katie as they continue to travel. They're going to Italy next, and then Malta, and then who knows.

Greetings from France!

Barcelona (1 week after the fact)

So there you have it, everyone -- Barcelona, Spain. Well, tune in soon for my next post. See ya!

On second thought, maybe I should post a few more pictures than just that one. It is a nice picture, though. It shows the weather that we had all our days in Barcelona except for one -- sunny and warm with clear skies. This photograph was taken from a castle (pictured to the right) on the west end of the city. To the east was the city, and to the south and west I could see the huge ports and the Mediterranean.

But I'm getting ahead of myself; it wasn't until the third or fourth day that I went to the castle. Let's start from the beginning of my trip. And since I've done such a poor job of posting pictures on this blog, I'll try to rest my voice this week and give you lots of images of my vacation in Barcelona.

We took a bus the morning of Tuesday, February 23 from Montpellier to Barcelona. There are some great views of the Pyrenees on that ride. I'm not sure my friend, Parham, took full advantage of the scenery...

We got to the city and went out in search of our hostel. To anyone going to Barcelona, I would definitely recommend staying at the hostel we were at, the Sant Jordi Sagrada Familia, but I will say that it is extremely difficult to find. Other than a Sant Jordi sticker we saw on a newspaper kiosk about a block away, this little sign was the only indication of where the hostel was:

Parham's expression adequately captures how we felt after finally finding the place.

I went for a walk that afternoon and came across the St. Pau Hospital just a few blocks north of the hostel. I guess it's a hospital and research facility, and perhaps a school as well, because it's an entire campus of buildings, beautiful, ornate buildings.

That night we met at Catalunya, a metro stop and public square at the top of La Rambla, a famous street and shopping area. From left to right on the bench are Parham, Alexandra, and Aneta. Alexandra and Aneta are good friends from Poland studying in Montpellier for the semester. They are quite the pair. Over the course of our trip, Parham and I managed to pick up a number of Polish phrases, none of which I know how to spell. However it's spelled, though, travelling in Barcelona with Alexandra and Aneta was ziabista -- awesome.

The next day we went to La Sagrada Familia, one of the most impressive cathedrals I've ever seen. It's designed by Gaudi, an architect responsible for many of the fascinating designs in the city. Unfortunately the cathedral is still under construction. It is nonetheless awe-inspiring. In the picture on the right are Parham, the Polish girls, Sarah in purple, and behind her Patrick, a German guy Sarah met in her hostel. He ended up spending the rest of the day with us.

We then went to Parc Guell, where lots of Gaudi artwork and architecture is featured. His work really is one-of-a-kind.

The next day we went to one of the more novel museums I've ever been to -- the Museum of Chocolate. The ticket was a chocolate bar, and the displays were sculptures made entirely of chocolate. It's hard to say if it was more impressive or more appetizing!

Because Sarah had to leave later that afternoon, we hauled over to the beach and then to a tapas bar. Tapas is sort of like an appetizer or a snack, and from what I understand, a lot of people go to a bar after work to get a beer and tapas. One of the better known tapas plates is patatas bravas, which is potatoes with mayonnaise and a spicy sauce. It is really quite good, as is all the tapas we tried.

That night we returned to the beach for a picnic. Apparently there are these guys who make sand sculptures during the day and then leave them out overnight with a box asking for money. I doubt it's a very lucrative endeavor, but the artwork was almost as impressive as the chocolate museum.

The next day, Friday, was when I went to the castle shown at the beginning of this post. That morning and early afternoon we all split up and did different things. The girls went shopping, Parham went to the Museum of Catalonian History, and I went to explore that area of the city to the west of La Rambla. The National Museum of Catalonian Art is incredible even on the outside. I only had time to go into one of the temporary exhibits, but I was glad just to see the building and estate.

Between the art museum and the castle, I saw some big tower and the Olympic Stadium which was built for the '92 Summer Games. I was surprised to see how small the stadium was, and in what poor condition as well.

We met back up again and ate some more tapas. That night some people from the hostel organized an outing. They gathered up 20 or 30 people from a couple of sister hostels and went to the biggest bar I've ever seen. It was more like a dining hall, really, with long tables and lots of noise and masses of people squished together. It reminded me of an Anglo-Saxon meadhall, and it reminded Parham of Hogwarts -- both fair comparisons, I think. It's too bad I didn't bring my camera to capture it, but I think it would have ended up getting broken or dropped in a pitcher of sangria or something.

After that we went to the biggest club I've ever been to. It was crazy. There were five separate rooms with five separate DJ's or live bands, and each room had a bare minumum of 300 people. They're pulling in some dough at 15 euros a head. We stayed there until it closed at 6 in the morning, then waited for the metro to start at 7, took a nap at our hostel, packed up, and checked out by 10. Our grand plan was to spend the day at the beach and sleep under a blanket of sunlight. You may recall, however, my previous mention of one single day of bad weather during our trip. Yes, it was Saturday, our day to sleep at the beach. We were tired enough that we slept in the cold, anyway; luckily it didn't rain very much. I was too tired and we were all too haggard to make photographs worthwhile, but I did take a few. Here's the cloudy sky -- nonetheless pretty -- and our sleeping arrangements.

We kind of wondered around the city the rest of the day after we became too cold to stay at the beach. Every time we stopped somewhere, at least one of us fell asleep. Somehow we survived until our bus ride back, which left at 1:35 am Saturday night/Sunday morning. That seemed like a good time to come back when we first booked it. It turned out to be really stupid. Of course we made it back, though -- at about 8 in the morning on Sunday. Needless to say, we were pretty tired.

It's amazing that even with a good amount of pictures and text, I still have to leave out so many details about our trip. I imagine that I'll eventually have the opportunity to sit down with some of you readers and show you my pictures in person. I look forward to that day. Until then, I'll try to keep taking pictures and posting on this blog. Love,

Your man (once again) in France

In Barcelona

Hello all, I just wanted to put up a short post saying that I made it safely to Barcelona. We had a beautiful five-hour bus ride from Montpellier to Barcelona this morning, during which I was too excited to sleep more than a couple minutes. This afternoon we checked into our hostel, which, other than its name, blows the Peace and Love out of the water on all fronts -- friendliness, facilities, space, price, character. If you plan on visiting Barcelona anytime soon, I´d love to pass on the name and address.

You might be wondering who I´m referring to with this first person plural pronoun business. My American friend, Parham, and I are staying in this hostel; my two Polish friends, Aneta and Alexandra, will be staying in this hostel starting tomorrow night; and my friend Sarah is staying in another hostel in town. We´re going to hit the sight-seeing scene hard tomorrow, so I better go get some sleep -- perhaps after one more stroll around the neighborhood.

-your man in Spain

Alive and Well and Active

Okay, calm down everyone. There's no need to send me hundreds and hundreds of urgent emails at 3 in the morning (your time, not mine) pleading for me to put up another blog post. I know it's been a little while since I've posted on here, but come on, be reasonable!


Well, it's not exactly true that I've received hundreds of emails asking for more blog posts. Come to think of it, I haven't received one such email. Still, I'd like to think that there are at least a few frequent readers out there, and to those members of my audience, I apologize for the two weeks that have gone by since my last post. One of the conundrums not only of blog-writing but of writing in general is that it's an act done in solitude which concerns the world at large. The man who stays in his room writing all day won't have much to say, and the man who constantly experiences the vastness of life will never settle down and write. For someone in a foreign country for five short months that are already flying by, I am face to face with this conundrum perhaps for the first time. My blog posts have become less frequent, and so have my journal entries. I've integrated to one degree or another into a new culture, a new society, with new people to meet and new places to visit and new sights to see. If some time passes between my blog posts, then, don't worry. You can pretty safely bet that it's because I'm experiencing life in Europe, life in Montpellier -- and how much richer my blog posts will be because of that!


So what have I been experiencing? Here's my Top 5 experiences of the past several weeks, not really in any particular order:

5. Sports. I've been playing basketball a couple times a week with some people that live in Vert Bois, my dorm community. The founding fathers of these pick-up games were Parham, an American who's become one of my better friends here, and Bertrand and Sylvain, two guys from Cameroon. Parham played for a year at his college, and he's an absolute powerhouse, often driving to the hoop against three defenders. Bertrand is also good and plays quite physically. It seems like every time we play something bad happens to Bertrand. The first time, his watch broke; the second time, his shoes started coming apart. There was one day he got elbowed three times in the face, got a finger in his eye, got hit in the stomach, and to top it off, after we were done playing an errant ball landed square on his head. We all felt bad for him yet couldn't help but laugh at his unlikely misfortune.


In addition to basketball, I've also been playing Frisbee. As strange as it may sound, there's actually an Ultimate class here at the university. Apparently students have something called an "Option," kind of like an elective. A French student told me that for l'Option, they can choose between a foreign language class and a sports class. That's quite the option. Anyway, I go to the class to play, but I'm not taking it for credit. Ultimate is worlds more popular in the US than it is in France. When I tell people I play Ultimate, they usually have no idea what I'm saying, and it's not because of my accent. However, there are some decent players here, and in fact, we are going to play in France's national university tournament in Lyon in a few weeks. The university is paying for our lodging and food for two days; all we have to pay for is gas money. So I guess I'm a sponsored Ultimate player in France. Not bad.

4. People of the world. I believe I've already mentioned on my blog that Montpellier is a diverse city. While I realized this the first week I moved here, I still marvel at how many different responses I get when I ask people where they're from. The other night we had a potluck sort of dinner in my dorm, a very frequent event. We probably packed over twenty people into a kitchen with no opening windows, a social and sweaty arrangement. As usual, there were people from all sorts of countries there. In this picture are (from left to right) Bertrand the Baller from Cameroon, Rachel from Manhattan, Kansas, a French girl with a weird name I can't remember, Karien from Louisiana, and Constanza (Sp?) from Italy.








Here we have Parham making a goofy face (as he often does). I won't name everyone in the background, but there is another American, some British folks, my friend Katarina from Slovakia, a French girl, some Italians, an Iranian, and maybe my friend Anna from Mexico hiding behind Parham.

As I'm typing this, I hope it doesn't seem that I'm trying to flaunt this diversity, like the ethnic equivalent of name-dropping. It's simply delightful to know people from such diverse backgrounds, and equally delightful to be unified with all of them through the French language. And another plus is that the Italians usually do the cooking for everyone. That night Lucas made some delicious rice dish with slices of fried zucchini. Delicious!



3. Conversation. I actually feel like a decent conversationalist in French now. The typical conversation with a new acquaintance covers name, country or city of origin, if he or she is a student, year in school, mutual friends, what he or she is doing later that night, and an exchange of phone numbers. Other than exchanging phone numbers -- which is really quite common here for some reason, even with people you might not intend to call -- these are generally the same components of basic English conversation in the US. I encounter and re-encounter these same topics almost daily, yet I continue to delight in them for the mere fact that they're in French. I'm actually speaking to people in French! Sometimes I realize mid-conversation how cool that is, that years of mostly theoretical learning has become entirely practical. And I do have more significant conversations than mere chit-chat. Last weekend, for instance, I went to a house party with my friend Anthony, and I talked to the same two girls until four in the morning. By that point I was about ready to die of exhaustion, but it was certainly worth the effort and lack of sleep.


2. Funky Musak. A few nights ago we went to l'Antirouille, a bar/music venue mostly known for reggae. The first night we got there really late and missed the main act, but we stuck around and danced to the DJ's music. The next night, though, we made it for most of the show. It was a fundraiser concert for Haiti, and it featured hip-hop, reggae, folk, funk, and rock. The band in these pictures was from Senegal, and the guy on bongos was out of his mind.

Last night we went to a bar called La Pleine Lune (Full Moon) where there is a gypsy jazz night every Sunday. Gypsy jazz sounds to me like a mix between swing and Spanish or latin music. The instrumentation was bass, electric guitar (with a rather acoustic sound, though), an acoustic guitar, and a violin. Apparently some of the musicians actually are gypsies, and you can see them playing in the downtown center square sometimes. It's been fun discovering the musical side of Montpellier. I found out last night that The Cranberries are coming to town, and I know that there is an upcoming performance of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana at the opera house.



1. God. If it's not obvious, I feel much more comfortable and settled now than I did the first few weeks in France. As I alluded to earlier in this post, the turbulence of the first leg of my trip prompted a rather prolific amount of writing on my part. What's more, it prompted me to lean on God more than perhaps ever in my life. Every moment of those first weeks felt like a lesson in humility and trust, as if I was walking in utter darkness and yet could be totally sure of my steps because I knew who was with me. I have the impression now that that darkness has lifted. I do wonder, though, if it is anything more than an impression, an illusion, this restored self-confidence. I think we are wholly dependent on the Lord every single second of our lives, even if we feel in control most of the time. I believed that -- at least theoretically -- before I came to Montpellier, and I believe it more strongly now.


Yet the illusion of control is often quite convincing. Now that I know the city better, now that my French is improving, now that I know where to go to church, where to get my groceries, how to access the school intranet, now that I have contacts in my cell phone and euros in my French bank account; it seems as if I can loosen my grip on the Lord's cloak, that I can stop clinging. On the one hand I am thankful for some stability; on the other hand I am wary of trusting myself. And even as my life here has settled a bit, the Lord has continued to bless me on a daily basis. Basketball with Bertrand, friends from all over the world, legitimate French conversations, great live music -- these highlights didn't start with me or my will. Even if I don't feel the need for God as strongly as I did several weeks ago, I am no less sure of His presence and His goodness.


In just over five hours I'll be leaving to catch a bus to Barcelona. I've never been to Spain, and I hardly speak a word of Spanish; maybe I will feel once again how small and desperately dependent I am. Whatever happens there, though, count on one thing -- our Constant -- and expect some more stories on this blog once I get back. My love to all of you.

Ski Trip (no joke)

I had a rather eventful few days here in southern France this past weekend. Now that I'm sitting down to write about it, I realize that I need to get better at taking my camera with me when I do cool things. Darn. Luckily I do have a few pictures, and for those moments that went uncaptured, I guess it's a good thing I'm a writing major. Descriptive abilities, fire at will!

[first unphotographed event] Friday night a group of six or so made dinner together in my dorm. The kitchen on my floor is right across the hall from my room, which makes cooking quite convenient. It also means that I am the go-to guy for cooking supplies, a responsibility I enjoy; it's really my only way to express hospitality here. We had quite the mélange of food: some left-over soup/casserole thing I made the other night with lentils and white beans and angel-hair pasta which we affectionately dubbed "angel guts;" some spaghetti with ham, onion, and sauce; baguettes with roquefort and brie; scrambled eggs; really cheap German beer (39 cents for a half-pint; I don't know how that compares in the US, but here that is ludicrous); and hot chocolate made with actual chocolate. A savory evening by all accounts.

[second unphotographed event] We ate and talked and lounged until after 11. It's common here for a meal shared with others to take a long time. It never feels like it takes a long time, though. It doesn't feel like it takes any time at all, in fact; it feels like it gives you time, time to enjoy food, enjoy friends, enjoy life. I've heard a lot of people talk about the difference in conception of time between the US and other countries, notably those of Latin America. For the first time in my life I'm able to actually experience that difference, and it really is a special thing to enjoy the presence of others without worrying about or even considering how much time passes. And what a great word that is, "enjoy." In my opinion (or perhaps just my limited body of knowledge) there isn't a great translation of "enjoy" in French. You can say "have pleasure," "take pleasure," "profit from," "amuse yourself," "be entertained," "like," and "love," but not exactly "enjoy." The word seems incarnational to me: let joy be born into whatever you're doing.

[third unphotographed event] After all the food and conversation, my friends Rachel, David, and Romain and I decided to go out and try this place called La Couleur de Bière (The Color of Beer). It almost instantly became one of my favorite spots in the city. It's not downtown like most hangouts are, so it seemed more "local" than other bars or breweries I've been to. La Couleur features beers from all over the world -- yes, even selling Michelob, Miller, and Budweiser (yet, sorry to say, Colorado, no Coors). There were easily two hundred options. The beer expert I am, I chose a 10.5% Belgian beer on the merit that it's name translated to "Golden Dragon." Between the four of us we tasted beers from Belgium, Poland, Brazil, Australia, and -- in my opinon the best -- Quebec. The place was packed, so we drank outside among a diverse array of beer bottles and beer drinkers, including a group with a tambourine and a love for French drinking songs.

[fourth unphotographed event] My friend Sarah had arranged for a Frisbee game the next day. The five of us that went were disappointed at our low numbers, but after a while a group of about ten guys wanting to play soccer showed up and we played with them almost the entire afternoon. When I got back to my dorm I was happy and sore, and as I unlocked my door, my neighbor David asked if I wanted to go skiing with him, Romain, and Rachel (my beer buddies) the next day. And thus the fifth unphotographed event.

Actually, I did take a few pictures. That night we stayed at Romain's house in a little town called Sauve, located northeast of Montpellier. It was fantastic to stay at a French home. French television, French kitchen appliances, French art -- you can't really duplicate it in the US. You especially can't duplicate French Simpsons. The voice they use for Marge is horrendously coarse, and a good number of the jokes simply don't make sense to a French audience. Even if it was a bit strange to watch The Simpsons with French dubbing, I delighted in every little detail of that house. We could've sat around watching the weather channel all night and I would have been happy. All the commercials for perfume and cologne, the 26 old volumes on each of France's regions, the nude photographs displayed in the bathroom, the automatic yet delicate manner by which Romain rolled his cigarettes, the kitchen table next to the window looking onto the rolling hills and mountains of Les Cevennes -- I loved every bit!

Here is the kitchen. The photo doesn't capture how wonderfully quaint it is, but let me put it this way: the kitchen was wonderfully quaint. Notice the Nutella on the table. I sure did.

To the right is a picture of the house. His parents built it about 30 years ago. Their town, their street, and their property all bespeak peacefulness.

And to the left is the view from their back yard.

[fifth unphotographed event] We left on Sunday morning for the slopes. I should explain that the mountains of Les Cevennes are certainly no Alps. They're mountains, and there's snow, but in terms of grandeur they can't compare to Colorado. One big plus of its small size, however, is the effect on the price. To rent all the equipment I needed and to ski for the day cost 18 euros. That's ridiculous. On the slopes I rediscovered something that I had learned as a kid: skiing is freaking fun! When I tell people I'm from Colorado, they often ask me if I ski, and I say no, and they say, "No way!", and I say, "Well...", and they say, "Get out of town!", and I explain that I skied as a kid when my family paid for me, but that I stopped when I got to an age where I'd have to pay for myself. I'm not even sure that's true, but it's just what I've always told people. On my first run on Sunday, though, I seriously questioned why the heck I'd stopped skiing. It's beautiful, active, liberating, and thrilling. Of course, when I tried the first blue, I remembered part of the reason I might have stopped skiing: it's also freaking scary! I only fell a couple times the whole day, though, and I was so glad I'd said yes to the invitation.

[Okay, so it wasn't an entirely unphotographed event. This was where we rented our equipment. As you can see, it was a really nice day.]

[sixth and final unphotographed event] And what better way to top of a weekend with friends than to watch the Super Bowl at midnight with French commentators and no commercials? Well, that's not exactly what happened, because we were too tired at halftime to stay up for the rest of the game. The next morning, Romain and I got up before David and Rachel. We'd stayed at Romain's house one more night than we'd planned because David was too tired to drive back, but I didn't really mind missing my Grammar and Geography classes. I heard plenty of correct grammatical usage on the TV, and I had my own personal geography lesson in Les Cevennes. Romain -- who had never watched American football before this year's Super Bowl -- got out his computer to see who won the game. "Oh," he said as he read the article. "And which team was New Orleans again?"

Enfin, un étudiant étranger

Between this post and last week's post, I became a French student. I've been looking forward to my studies in a French university since I was a junior in high school, and given all that anticipation, French classes are turning out to be just okay. After all, school is school. A student has to go to class, listen, read, absorb, work hard; for the most part it's neither exciting nor novel, two words that aptly describe all the other aspects of my trip so far.

I think part of the let-down stems from the general indifference of French students and even professors. Most (or perhaps all?) French students go to university with significant financial support from the government. While this may help university enrollment numbers, it also means that a lot of French students don't care all that much about their studies. (I suppose the same phenomenon of indifference happens in the US, but it seems to occur even when the students' or the students' families are paying for college from their own pockets. I've never been able to understand how someone could pay 15, 20, or 30 grand a year just to slack off, party, and drop out.) People show up late pretty regularly, and only the students near the front of the class listen attentively to the professor; the ones in the back feel free to talk to one another, occasionally even picking up a cell phone call as if class were taking place at a bus stop. The weirdest thing is that most professors don't do anything about it. They simply keep on talking, apparently unperturbed by the many conversations going on among the audience members. Of course I take the students' talking as a sign of disrespect, but based on the professors' reactions, it's completely normal.


All that to say, I have not entered into the most serious or competitive of academic environments. And that's fine with me. I've decided to take only integrated courses, that is, courses that French students take. There were some other options: a set of classes taught in French but designed for exchange students; some basic French grammar classes also created with non-native speakers in mind; and, as some exchange students have opted to do, I could have enrolled in an English class here. Always in pursuit of cultural and language immersion, though, I knew the best experience would be in the integrated courses. Since these will be fundamentally challenging because of language difficulties, I'm perfectly okay with a somewhat less rigorous university setting.

Due to an odd registration system that allows students to try out courses for the first two weeks, I actually don't know for sure which classes I'll be taking this semester. A few that I'm pretty sure of are a comparative literature class focusing (separately) on the fairy tales of Charles Perrault and the story of the return of the prodigal son; a poetry class about contemporary French poets, namely Philippe Jacottet; a grammar and phonetics class; and a philosophy class on Spinoza's Ethics (l'Ethique). The last slot could be Geography of France, History of Music: The Modern Period, or maybe something else entirely.

One convenient feature of French classes is that there is a small amount of reading and an even smaller amount of homework. Besides my grammar class, I will probably only have one or perhaps two assignments for the whole semester, in addition to a test. On the one hand, this will allow me to take the time to understand what I'm reading. On the other hand, it will require a good deal of discipline on my part to continue studying in the face of so little accountability. I think it could be quite easy to let my classes go by the wayside in exchange for a leisurely semester in Montpellier, or in exchange for more communication with friends back home, or in exchange for all sorts of things. I recently wrote in my journal (in which I've been writing almost every day -- my thanks to Hanna Griffing for making it for me. Of course, that journal is one reason I don't write more on this blog; it harbors the majority of my reflective and creative impulses.) about what sort of experience I want in the next four months: "Do I want the European experience, traveling as much as possible, seeking out adventure? Do I want the French academic experience, excelling in my classes? The international student experience, bonding with other foreigners and making all sorts of transnational ties? The Montpellier experience, becoming an expert of the city and a friend of French folk? Sometimes I feel torn."

If my life -- or just life in general -- were as simple as one of Perrault's fairy tales, I would either make a bad decision or a good one as to what kind of experience I wanted, and after all was said and done there would be a neat little moral in verse. I'll be sure to post that moral once I figure it out.

Boring Stuff

Don't worry -- there's a reason for the smiley cookies. Those little guys, as seen on the package, are called BN. I have no idea what BN stands for ("Biscuit National?" -- National Cookie?), but I am certain of one thing: they are quite tasty. Not only are their strawberry jelly insides delicious and nutritious, but they also represent my welcome to Montpellier. The first night I got here I was starving, so I got a quiche (another food I've found I really enjoy) and a box of these from a store down the street. They provided the sustenance and comfort that I needed so badly after a tough day of travel. Furthermore, I appreciated their weird little smiles. Some of them even wink at you.

BN cookies are rather plain -- not the flavor of BN cookies, mind you, but the subject matter of BN cookies. It is, however, largely in the plain things of life that life takes on meaning. In my displacement the last two weeks I have found this to be true over and over again. The way people drive is different here, the hats they wear, their mannerisms on the tram, their method of grocery shopping. It's all boring stuff to them, I'm sure, but to me every detail of normal French life warrants the closest of examination. Their culture consists almost entirely of boring stuff! (So, too, does ours. I think I will have a much greater appreciation for the little idiosyncrasies of our culture when I return to the states.) In light of this newfound appreciation for the great value of normal things, I want to dedicate this post mainly to explaining what my normal, day-to-day life is like in Montpellier.

First of all, you should know where Montpellier is. It's almost directly south of Paris, all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. It's located in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of France. I believe Montpellier is the 8th-largest city in France, with somewhere between 500,000 and 600,000 people in the metropolitan area. It doesn't feel like a big, bustling city, but it does sprawl a good deal. There are two tram lines and many bus routes, and I bought a pass to use either mode of transportation as much as I want. The city is home to the three branches of Montpellier University -- the law and business school, the school of science, and the school of arts, letters, and humanities -- which have a total of about 50,000 students. Because of this high number of students, demographically speaking it's a very young city. Taking the tram at night, people 40 and over are typically a minority.

As you can imagine, then, this is a lively place. The night life especially is very active. I've gone out a number of times, and I've had fun on every occasion. "Going out" is not something I'm accustomed to doing. At Whitworth, especially having been on leadership the past two years, most activities seem to take place on campus. And in Denver, my friends usually prefer hanging out at someone's house rather than going out. The drinking age makes a big difference, too. Up until this year, the adult night life has been mostly off-limits to me and my peers. Here, however, bars are the place to be at night. I'd guess there are 50 bars downtown, in addition to cafes and clubs or discotheques where people would drink.

And people sure do drink. Every time I've gone out at night I've seen at least a couple people totally drunk, stumbling down the streets or falling face-first onto them. Two nights ago I went out with some Americans, my neighbor David and his French friend, and some other French people. This guy, Thomas -- who was already drunk before we left -- kept telling me how much he loved alcohol. As we got off the tram at La Comedie, the downtown tram stop, he smiled stupidly and pronounced proudly in very French-sounding English, "I am an alcoholic." Thomas was quite funny, actually, and I didn't mind at all hanging out with him. On the other hand, I am completely unattracted to the lifestyle he leads. I asked my American friend, Anthony, how often he and his friends went out last semester. "Pretty much every night," he told me in all seriousness. My immediate reaction to such a notion is a financial concern. The cheapest beer usually costs at least 3 euros, and any other drink will be more like 6 or 7 euros; that's 10 euros a night (if you drink conservatively), times 7 nights a week, times twenty-some weeks in Montpellier; then you think of the dollar-euro exchange right nowadays, and you have yourself quite the investment. But even if it was all free, I know that I don't want to go out to the bars every night. It makes me wonder, though: What will I do instead? A difference between the dorms here and the dorms at Whitworth is that people really don't hang out in the dorms in France. Indeed, people in the dorms don't talk to each other much at all. That's quite the shift for me as a recently retired RA at a community-focused university. All that to say, I predict that I'll have many a social decision to make during the semester, trying to balance my social life with my moral convictions and general introversion.

At the same time, I should reiterate that I've had lots of fun when I've gone out. I went to a club where the dance floor was raised a good two or three feet off the regular floor, and there were ledges and barrels to dance on that were raised another two or three feet above that. I got up on one of the ledges and danced in full view of everyone. It felt like I was in a movie or something ("Order 'Chris Gone Wild' while you can!!!"). Another time we went to a bar that was so packed with people that my friend had to take off his glasses because they fogged up. It was kind of gross, but wonderfully novel as well. I also heard of this pirate bar called Redbeard (well, Barberousse, actually) that is shaped like a pirate ship and only serves rum. In honor of Whitworth, I'd say it's a must for me to check it out.

During the day I lead a rather simple life. I eat most of my meals in my room or in the dorm kitchen. For breakfast I have croissants and Nutella, a combination to which I am utterly addicted. Actually, I think it's just the Nutella I'm addicted to, because every morning I finish a croissant or two and then get impatient and just start spooning Nutella into my mouth. That stuff is simply too good. For lunch I either make something simple on my own like a ham sandwich, or I go to the dorm cafeteria. The food isn't bad, and it costs less than four euros. I almost always make my dinners, usually either pasta or rice. I've come up with some pretty tasty dishes (last night was rice with onion, yellow pepper, ground beef, and salami in a mushroom marinara sauce), but I've also had some far less successful culinary experiences (such as forgetting to remove the sticker from the bottom of the pan I bought. Yep. I actually did that).

Of course, now anyone reading this blog thinks that all I do is eat and party, which isn't the entire truth. It's remarkable how a whole day can go by while tending to everyday business. I go shopping for food, I walk around and explore, I play soccer on Saturdays with some Africans, I research classes I can take. It's all pretty normal stuff (perhaps with the exception of playing soccer with the African guys; that's a bit out of the ordinary). But, like I said at the beginning of this post, it's the normal stuff, the boring stuff, that makes up the majority of life. And perhaps the most important difference between my life in the states and my life in France is that I appreciate the normal and the boring much more here.

For some more normal and boring stuff, here are a few pictures from around campus:

Here's my dorm, the back side of it, anyway. There are several dorm communities ("Cites Universitaires" or "Cites U" here) which all contain many buildings. I live in Vert Bois (that's my Cite U, pronounced kind of like "vair bwa," which means "Greenwood"), and the building pictures above is one of seven in Vert Bois.

This is my room. It really is about as narrow as it looks in the picture. It's simple, but sufficient. The door on the right goes to the bathroom (also small, simple, and sufficient), and behind the main door is a closet. In front of the chair with the jackets on it is my desk, where I'm typing this post and where I do much typing, reading, and even eating.

To the right is la laverie, or the laundry room/shack. I'm including this picture mainly because I think it's a funny little building, just how dumpy it looks. I haven't even used it yet. In order to save money and to up my resourcefulness, I recently started washing my clothes by hand in the shower. The first batch is still drying; I'll have to give another update as to how it turns out.

What you're looking at here is indeed a ping pong table, and it is indeed outside. This indicates two things. One, the weather must be pretty nice in Montpellier all year round. Two, these people must take ping pong pretty seriously. This second conclusion was further validated when I saw a couple playing outside my dorm last week. They were table tennis maniacs! I think I have some training in order...

And finally, pictured to the right is, perhaps surprisingly, a soccer field. It's called a terrain stabilise (stabilized field), and it's basically made of sand. I don't particularly enjoy playing on it, largely because I fell on it and scraped my leg playing rugby, and both times I've played soccer I've fallen again and reopened the wound. I've yet to see a grass soccer field, though, so I hope one of these weeks I can manage not to fall on my knees.

Well, it takes about thirteen years to upload each of these pictures, so I'm ending here for now. Thanks for making it all the way to the end of this post, and I'll be sure to put up some more boring stuff sometime soon!