The Final Entry

To my dear friends in France & Canada: Though it's been 2 1/2 months since I left, the beautiful memories of my 7 months in France continue to drift around my head like a dream that I never want to forget (and never will). This final entry to my blog is for you. I wrote it on May 3rd, approximately 20 minutes after saying goodbye to the people who would have such a great impact on my life, and who I can't wait to see again soon (only 1 year, 9 1/2 months to go!). I love you all. Now, turn on a bit of Mumford & Sons, and get readin'...

May 3, 2010

May 3rd. Whoever thought this day would actually come? By god, not me. This is the last day of the best year of my life. I'm going home. But really, I'm leaving home. I just said goodbye to my home on the quai: Bertrand, Fabrice, Megan. The three people who mean the most to me at this moment. Without them, this year would've been merely another extended vacation with common friends. But fate had something in store for me. From the first week Meg & I knew each other, we clicked. It just worked, so well. Never have I had such a friend who, as just a friend, has so touched my life and my soul.

Bertrand and Fabrice, my brothers, always there to protect us and make us feel valuable. I never expected to become so close to them, to meet such beautiful people.

The sunrise out my train window is probably the most beautiful I've ever seen--actually. Bright yellow sun and pink clouds over the green rolling hills called a French landscape. Whoever though I'd so fall in love with France? So many parts of the culture I hated, I've come to love. This place has become my home. How lucky am I? What a beautiful existence that I can live, when I take risks.

Yesterday, after we had 9 a.m. oysters and were walking around the Sunday morning markets along the Saone, me in my dress from last night, naked legs (oh la la) and Bertrand's flip-flops since mine broke--I looked around at the four of us, sleep-deprived and hungover but joking and laughing, and I saw how odd we must look to the banal French around us, and I was PROUD. So proud to be a part of such an amazing group of people. And the most assorted group of people, ever--there's Erik, the 35-year-old 9-year-old at heart who's always at the Wallace (with quizmaster Ian) and rolls around on the floor to Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side" at sunrise. This is after Fabrice puts on "Waiting For the Sun" (The Doors). Meanwhile, the girls lean heads on shoulders, tapping their feet with the last bit of energy they have left. The sky gets lighter, somebody's laughing, somebody's passed out, somebody emerges from a room and walks out the front door after waking up four hours later.

Amy takes pictures of her new boyfriend on the floor, who's American. Amy, the British/French 27-year-old English teacher who showed us the ropes, answered all our questions. The one who, at 3 a.m. when things start to quiet down, will pull a chair into the middle of the room and start dancing on it. And makes it look cool. Not overdone. Just fun.

Meanwhile, Meg and I alternate between nearly passing out on our chairs and holding each other up while swaying to the music. Bertrand and Fabrice speak creole to each other and Yanesh is laughing hysterically at something they said. Daryl is quietly watching while a few other people wander in and out of consciousness.

The Doors, Lou Reed, Mumford & Sons -- these guys bring out the truth in us. Make us melancholy, make us laugh, put us in an awed stupor at the bizarity of our existence and how perfect a simple night of staying up dancing and drinking with friends until sunrise (or well after) can be...

July 15th

...Mumford & Sons comes on the radio, and I'm thrown back to a time of simple happiness, when Meg & I would take the metro to Rue Pravaz for a music rehearsal with some Pastis, or our weeks would be defined by Wallace Thursdays and Flannigan's Mondays. I miss it so much. But I'll be back. Thanks for the memories, everyone. I love you.

Things that actually happened in Ireland

Soo...finally back in Lyon for just 5 more days until my return to California. Ridiculous.

Allow me to recap my last two weeks, the best and strangest two weeks since I moved to France: Meg and I went to Dublin and then Cork for a week, and were supposed to go to Amsterdam and Belgium before heading home. But since the volcanic ash cloud decided to linger indefinitely over European airspace (thank you, Eyjafjallajoekull), Meg and I were stuck in Ireland, so I decided to look up my distant relatives living on a farm near Skibbereen. Turned out to be the best phone call of my life. Meg and I ended up staying on their farm for a week; they gave us a house to ourselves and took off work to drive us around every day and see the most beautiful coastline I've ever seen (yes, even better than California).

My relatives live in the same farmhouse that's been in the family for five generations and probably longer. It's a dairy farm, and their cows produce some of the milk for Dubliner cheese (best cheese in the world). Across the field, you can see the quaint little stone church where my great-great-grandmother was baptized. From the top of the hill, you can see the westernmost point of Ireland (and nearest point of Europe to America), Fastnet, which is a lighthouse on a rock 8 miles from the mainland into the Atlantic. Alan, one of the sons, used his friendly connections to get us on a boat out to that rock, which is probably the coolest thing I've ever done in my life (though the choppy boat ride back was terrifying). The day before, his older brother Kevin took us on a 6-hour driving tour around the area, pointing out memorials and giving us history/Irish language lessons along the way, like. Good stuff.

Later, we ran with the cows in the field and took 800,000 pictures of them. Approximately.

Other accomplishments:

1. Drinking fresh cow's milk out of a newly washed Irish whisky bottle.
2. Watching grown Irish men play indoor soccer "in town."
3. Eating delicious Irish stew, every day (and undelicious black pudding, once).
4. Watching Pat, the father, drink Budweiser out of a coffee mug. Later, learning Alan's name from the coffee mug he was holding, which had "Alan" painted on it.
5. Irish folk dancing with Pat and Mary, the parents.
6. Listening to an entire U2 album. Once. (Then switching to Coldplay on repeat).
7. Meeting people named Patrick, Mary, and Seamus.

Dublin was great, too. We tried to do a pub crawl but bailed and ended up going to 7 pubs on our own that night. It was fun, but nothing compared to our farm life. I felt like Paris Hilton on The Simple Life, only younger and slightly less blonde.

All in all, it was a brilliant vacation; by far the best accidental one I've ever had. From now on, I'm only going to travel places that lie in the direct path of active volcanos.

Iceland Volcano-1, Maggie-0

Icelandic volcanic eruptions have caused the cancellation of our flight to Amsterdam and we're now stuck in Cork, Ireland, indefinitely....good thing we love Ireland :)

Annecy

Check out pictures of the beautiful city of Annecy, here!

Sophie & I did a day trip to Annecy. That's all I'm going to say for now, because I have to pack for Ireland! Coming up: two weeks in Dublin, Cork, Amsterdam, Brussels and Bruges. See you all back in California in one month!

The Final Weeks

What am I doing here?

Why am I still asking myself this question? I've been living in Lyon, France, for 6 months and one week, and I still don't quite comprehend my own role here. My students think my class is a joke; the teachers don't know what to do with me; I spend my time reading books in the salle de profs and sitting on trains.

This is all besides the two-week-long vacations every six weeks, of course. I know, I know: I have nothing to complain about. But, still.

This whole living in another country thing makes for one irreconcilable identity crisis, that's for sure. I teach you an expression you'll never remember: "to hold one's breath"; you see me as the girl with the funny accent you want to show your friends; I am your American friend who fits in only because we are a group of British and Mauritians and half-this and half-that. I am inbetween student and adult status, in an indecisive expatriate limbo, waiting for my life to decide itself. But in another country, it only gets more complicated. So, who am I?

Who knows. Maybe we'll figure that one out when I get back to California. Or when I come back to France for the third time, for another month or seven. Or never. All I know is that I need to experience, and I need to write.

What am I doing here? I am holding my breath. And in the meantime, I write.

6 weeks

(March 19, 2010)

"I bathed in the water at Lourdes today..

This place gives me the unusual desire to embrace the world...

I'm not sure if it was necessarily a life-changing experience, but it reminded me I have a spiritual side and need to cultivate it."

I spent two days in Lourdes & Toulouse with Meg and her dad this weekend. Lourdes, as you can see in the photo, has a cathedral that looks a little too much like the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland. Toulouse, the "rose-colored city," has a lot of old-school brick buildings but cannot compare to the picturesque beauty and charm of Lyon.

The trip made me realize just how much I'm in love with Lyon, and how little time I have left. 6 weeks to the day, in fact. It's a strange, strange existence that we live here. We play quiz night every Monday at Flannigan's, the new Irish pub, and every Thursday at The Wallace (our usual); we try a random bouchon Lyonnais every month with a French friend (and nearly gag every time); we're never in the same place for more than 3 weeks at a time (at most).

Going back to Santa Clara, CA? It's going to be insanely exciting to see everyone for the first few weeks. And then I'm going to cry for Lyon.

Morocco

The Hamman. I heard it was a scrub down and massage for 150 dirham (13.4 euros). Not bad, I thought, I'll take it.

I had one more day in Marrakech, on my own, as Mike had left in the morning. What else was I going to do? So I walked around the souks one last time, stopped at Earth Cafe for a fruit juice and some think time, and headed to the spa for "hamman," the unknown word which spoke of mysterious healing and tranquil relaxation, to me.

But I didn't realize it would be so...traditional.

"Take all your clothes off, except your underwear," the hostess told me in a lounge area filled with half-naked women. Oh, this is so not what I expected (and yet, what did I expect? Everything else in Morocco had been unexpected and exciting, why not this?).

I knew at that point that this was going to be an experience unlike any other, and I could either quit right then and there or just throw up my hands and go with it.

So I threw up my hands in prayer to Allah.
And I took off my clothes.

***
Earlier that week, I had my fair share of disorienting experiences, including a visit to a Berber village in the Atlas Mountains on market day, where I was not only the only white woman around, but also the only woman for miles, as all the men from the surrounding mountain towns had come via donkey to do the weekly "grocery shopping" in this dusty center of Amizmiz. I was stared down by at least four hundred pairs of Berber eyes, but they were not threatening--only curious. Nonetheless, like so many other encounters in Morocco, it was by far a humbling experience.
***

The hostess came back and led me through the lounge to a doorway that in my memory of Moroccan films, led to exactly what I dreaded: a marble tile room filled with buckets of steaming water and naked women. The dense steam from the room wrung my lungs out like a towel; I felt as though I were breathing through a straw.

My "masseuse," Fatiha, led me to one side of the room (apparently the "white foreigner" side, as one other plump whitish woman occupied this space, opposite of a group of beautifully tanned Moroccan women on the other side of the room). She sat me down on a yellow mat against the wall and left me there. What was I supposed to do?

Trying my best not to look like it was my first time in the Hamman (although my blonde hair and deer-in-the-headlights look had already given me away), I imitated the other women and poured hot water on myself, then picked up the washcloth-loofah-sandpaper thing and tried it out on my feet first. Ouch.

***
It's not easy to imitate someone of an entirely different religion, lifestyle, continent. Walking through the markets of Marrakech, I attempted to dress modestly, but my attire of long sleeves and pants did not match the traditional dress and headscarf of Moroccan women. I heard the call to prayer ringing from the mosques five times a day like clockwork, but didn't know how to respond. In the souks, my efforts of bargaining were successful, but I could come nowhere near the market price that a Moroccan could get for a common tajine. My foreigner status stuck, unalterable like the stamp on my passport.
***

An eternity later, Fatiha came back, looked at me and snickered (showing her white, if not complete, set of teeth), and took a handful of caramel-like muck and started washing me with it. Not strange at all, a foreign woman soaping up every part of my exposed body--and then some. Whatever, I thought, I can handle this.

But then Fatiha put the sandpaper washcloth around her hand and got to work sanding off my skin, nerves, and finally my bones, leaving me with what felt like an osteoporosic skeleton. When I realized (after opening my eyes) that the gray particles on my skin were not in fact clay but skin itself, I nearly gagged. Exfoliation at its best.

Strangely enough, the longer the scrubbing lasted, the better it felt. Fatiha wasn't just buffing off my dead skin. She was cleansing my body of the dust and ache of my two weeks of travel from Berlin to Marrakech. It was a complete over-stimulation of the senses, but I did not yet want to leave this beautiful country that was simultaneously so alien yet so familiar.

***
The spices lure,
The cats prowl,
Mosaic-laden palaces remind,
Friendly local banter.
Tajines smoke in the corners of crusty cafes,
Filled with tumeric and saffron,
Creating the finest of foods that no character-less spotless restaurant could provide.
Jovial bargaining with your "friends" of the souks
Your eyes a blur with color.
This is Morocco.
***

The clay massage that followed was a relief; I lay there for 20 minutes letting it soak in and realizing that nobody else in the place gave a damn that I was nearly-naked. How freeing is that? The final rinse off and hair wash made me hard-pressed to keep from laughing, as Fatiha time and again dumped a large bucket of steaming water over my bowed frame (and into my underwear). Afterward, I sat in the lounge drinking tea, enveloped in a giant white bathrobe and breathing in the fresh air.
This was Morocco.