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