Happy Bastille Day!

It's 2:23 in the morning on France's national holiday, Bastille Day. I don't have much to say, but just wanted to take the chance welcome in the day.
Though I've spent a July 14th in France previously (4 years ago for a language study abroad), I can't say that I remember anything exceptional happening on this day. But this year is already different. Tonight at 11:00, the city of Pontault had the kick-off with a half-hour fire works show at Hotel de Ville. Tomorrow is another day to brag about, as there will be a huge fireworks display at the Eiffel Tower. Pretty exciting.
I'm not going to lie: I'm pleased about these developments, because the July 4th activity was non-existent (not surprising, I guess, since we're in France and not the US). I can't help loving national holidays...

So, as anti-climactic as this post is, that's that.

Vive la France!

A Bird in the Bathroom

So, as always, it's been a while since I last wrote. If only good intentions wrote blogs, huh?
In the last month since I've written, there's been one major occurance in my life: a bird in the bathroom.

The windows here don't have screens, and we don't have much in the way of air conditioning (or maybe it just isn't turned on. Who can say?), so I often leave just my bathroom window open. The bathroom is connected to the bedroom, but while the bedroom window is huge and completely open, the bathroom window is smaller and has iron bars curling over the window. It's always seemed much safer to me to leave the bathroom open.

However, I left it open all of one Sunday afternoon, and I headed out to church. I then spent the afternoon with Stephan, and when I came home at night, I went into the bathroom (which I'd left closed), and I closed the door behind me. I was getting ready to wash my face, when I heard something flapping around over head. I screamed and screamed without really looking at it. I was so afraid it would be a bat. But anyway, after a while, I calmed down, looked up, and saw that it was just a tiny bird--a swallow maybe. By this time, I wasn't so scared anymore--just frustrated. I opened the bathroom windows as wide as they could be opened, and started yelling, "Get out! Get out!" Dominique and Lexi who were both asleep downstairs (did I mention this all happened at midnight?) rushed upstairs to see if there was an intruder attacking me and eliciting these types of screams.

But soon enough, they saw the bird, and Dominique went out in the hallway and said, "Flip me. I can't do a thing. I just can't--birds--I just can't--"

Lexi was standing at the door laughing, but also unable to help.

So, Dominique did the only thing she could think of. She called her dad in London to figure out how we could rectify the situation. He suggested we try and catch it inside a garbage bag and then free it from the window. I didn't think this sounded too easy. His second suggestion was to try and guide it out the window with something else--a bat, a broom, something with a long handle. This sounded more up my alley. So, I found a co-worker's suit coat that she'd left at our office/house, and I tied it under my chin, grabbed the broom, and went running after the bird. I tried guiding it, but it didn't seem to want to be guided, so after a few discouraging attempts, the guiding turned more into batting, and next thing I knew, I'd hit the bird and it fell flat on the ground.

I felt horrible!

I grabbed a garbage bag, scooped the bird up, and tossed both the bird and the bag out the window. I felt so bad all night, thinking about how I'd killed the bird. And his feathers were still sort of stuck to the ceiling and walls where he'd flapped against the room.

So, the next morning, I got up, and went outside the bury the bird.

Guess what?

There was just an empty bag and no bird. So, I conclude that, in fact, the bird lived, and had only been stunned when I'd hit him with the broom. Great news, huh?

Vive la paix

This car was sitting outside the church where we have classes at Asnieres sur Seine. I was 1) amazed at how parked-in it was and 2) in love with the paint job.
Peace. Love. France.

The Professor on the E

Today, I carried my camera around all day, looking at every minute as a possible "picture of the day" opportunity. And, rather than post one single picture, I have a few for your viewing pleasure...
After I got home from work, I was walking through the park, and the sky started rumbling and the air smelled heavy with rain, and I looked up at the sky. It was a beautiful gray, blue and the clouds almost faded right in, except the edges of each cloud were tinged yellow, and quite frankly, glowed. My first thought (as always) was "Christ is coming back right now!" My second thought was, "Picture of the day!" And so, I snapped a few pictures of the sky. The first one wasn't quite to my liking, and neither was the second, so I'm posting both in the hopes that, with this combined effort, you'll feel at least a little amazed at how lovely the sky was.

And now, another unrelated picture...

As I got off the train today, I thought, "Not everyone in Indiana would quite know what this feels like--getting off a train." While we Hoosiers do have the People Mover between our Indianapolis hospitals, we're not quite European in our transportation. So, camera firmly in hand (what a benefit to these Picture of the Days!), I took a picture of getting off the train. A little banal, but what else could Picture of the Day imply?

I spend a lot of my life on these train platforms. When I first came here, I was really intrigued to see what particular trash littered the tracks at each station. In fact, one day, I took a list. Here's what I wrore:

Pontault-Combault--bottle caps, cigarette butts, Coke can presumably filled with urine.

Noisy le Grand- glass bottles, candy wrappers

Noisy le Sec- boxer shorts

Val de Fontenay- Evian bottles, Orangina, deflated lotion bottles, Starbucks stir (richer area?)

After taking these notes, I got it in my head that I'd write a story about a girl who moved to France and chose her home based on the type of garbage on the train tracks at each station. I talked to my roommate, my coworkers, and friends about the story line, and overtalked the story line so much that I never got around to writing the piece. Not really a shocker.

So, above is the station at Villiers.

But anyway, speaking of trains, I think I saw my French professor from Olivet Nazarene University on the E today. I boarded the train at Val de Fontenay, and immediately sat down and pulled out a book. My eyes were focused down, and I saw her feet, which seemed oddly familiar for feet. At Rosny Bois Perrier, I looked out the window, and got a better look of her...or rather, her neon pink spandex leggings. At Noisy Le Sec, I was very curious, and as I stood to get off the train, I looked at all of her--the faded mumu-type shirt, her leggings, her orthapaedic shoes. I was way too surprised to say anthing, and I was still in the process of deciding whether this really was my professor from French 101. But after thinking about it, I feel pretty sure it was her. I'm sure that was the woman who told my class about her summers in France and watching old men play something akin to cornhold and most definitely, i remember her tirades on the dangers of dieting.

"You don't ever want to look like this!" she'd say, wagging her belly at us. "If you diet in your youth, you'll look like this when you're old."

That's when I decided never to diet.

So, an Illinois professor on the E. What are the odds?

Our weekend at the retirement home

So, Chuck had a really great idea. He suggested that rather than try and write a complete entry everyday, I should take a photo and post that photo every day. I'm not sure if the "every day" part of this will work out so well (see last post for more details) but I'll definitely do my best.

So, to begin with, I thought I'd post a picture of my bedroom. Nothing like hanging your dirty laundry out on the internet, huh?
And next, the lovely city of Pontault Combault. I took this picture from the upstairs bathroom window, so it's mostly just rooftops, but still, it gives you an idea of what my city looks like.

This past weekend, we had to go on a team-building weekend, and we stayed at this retreat center (I'll have to add a story about that later.) But here's the room I shared with two other ladies.

Another view of the retreat center, from my bedroom window.

And now for the good part: the retreat.

This past weekend was a holiday weekend in France. If you've ever taken any metro, any tramway, really any transportation in France, you start getting the idea that May 8th is an important day here. Seriously, everywhere you turn, there's a stop called 8 mai 1945. It's Victory in Europe day, or according to the very reliable Wikipedia, "the date when the World War II Allies formally accepted the unconditional surrender of the armed forces of Germany and the end of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich." Anyway, all this to say, it was a long weekend in France.

So, we had a mandatory "Get to Know your Coworkers" weekend. I wasn't really very excited about the weekend, because I had about a million things I wanted to do, and spending a weekend with people I see everyday wasn't at the top of my list. But before you think this will be a complaining post, let me just say that the weekend went really well, and I had a lot of fun. But that isn't what I want to talk either...

Friday morning, we were supposed to meet at the offce (not hard for me since I live here) at 9 in the morning, and we'd drive to Le Mans directly. So, four of us--Carolyn, Jennifer, Dominique, and I--were all in the car together, counting how many McDonald's we passed, singing along with the radio, and altogether trying to pass the long three hours.

We were a few miles within Le Mans when Carolyn asked Jennifer where exactly we'd be staying in Le Mans. Jennifer seemed hesitant at first to share any sort of information, and after a very awkward silence said, "Well, it's a place where some...aged people stay and there are...interesting things to do...and food and beds and..."

Carolyn interupted after this, and said, "I KNOW we're not staying at a retirement home." Jennifer started blushing (she'd been involved in the planning of this whole event) and said, "You know, it isn't JUST a retirment home. I think there'll be plenty of fun things to do there."

Carolyn groaned, and Jennifer quickly added, "There are ponies and walking trails and..." she continued to describe the place, and Dominique, Carolyn, and I looked at each other a little helplessly--a required "fun" weekend at a retirement home.

We arrived at noon and entered Les Terebines, a retreat center/retirment home. Conference rooms on one side, physical therapy rooms on the other. Very interesting combination.

One day, we were sitting in the dining room, eating lunch, and the servers had left the kitchen door open, and after a few minutes, a heavy, white headed woman in a walker meandered through the kitchen into the dining room. One of the servers quickly ran over to her, grabbed her elbow, and said, "Madame, your dining room is just down this hall." The woman looked at us all, certainly confused, and turned to head in the other direction.

In any case, I found this combination funny, and that's really what I wanted to write about.

As far as the weekend, it was packed with name games, human pyramids, talents shows and song competitions.

We were all ready to be home again by Sunday afternoon. As a side note, when we first arrived, Dominique, a distinct London city girl, opened her car door, propped her sunglasses on the edge of her nose and demanded, "What is that smell?"

Jennifer said, "I think it's the countryside."

Sure enough, we were surrounded by farm life.

When we packed up at the end of the weekend, one of our French collegues walked us to the car, helped us pack up, and as we were shutting the car doors, said to Dominique, "Now, you can get back to the wonderful smells of the Paris banlieue."

Dominique smiled and said, "Thank goodness."

Now, we're back in Pontault for the week, and this weekend, home will be coming to me. A team of girls from the US are coming to work with the alphabetization classes this week. I'm excited to take my tour guide skills out for a test drive, and on a selfish level, I've asked for Cookie Dough Pop Tarts, Cherry Cheese Danish Pop Tarts, and Shopaholic Books. Let's cross our fingers and hope for the best.

So...
Not the best I've ever done after having made a resolution.

As of late...

So, I've been reading this book lately about this aspiring writer who's spent her whole life saying she'll get to England one day and follow in the steps of Jane Austen. Her dad one day asks (in reference to another dream of hers), "What are you doing to accomplish that goal?", and she realizes she's been doing nothing to accomplish any of her life dreams. So, she saves up her money and spends a year in England, visiting all the Jane Austen "sights." Anyway, this book originated as a blog, was apparently well-received by its readers, and eventually turned into a book format. All this made me think, "When I finish these two years with France, what will I have to look back on?" Certainly not my blogs, since I've turned into a "once a month" type of blogger.
But honestly, I've become the world's most inconsistent blogger, my journal has fallen by the wayside, and my self-discipline in general is nothing to brag about. The good news is that tonight I've decided to be a new me. I've decided to really start consistently DOING all those things I intend to do and never do--practice my flute daily, write, update my blog, write, learn how to cook something other than couscous and chicken, and WRITE! Of course, I make this resolution all the time, so there's nothing to say that tonight's new-found resolve is anything different.
However, rather than getting flustered by this, I've decided to start small and just record what happened today.
So today...

The building at La Courneuve has become really unliveable, and quite honestly, needs to be quarantined. I opened the closet to turn on the lights yesterday morning, and a mouse sprang out at me. Now, I say it "sprang", when in reality, it just stood still for a moment and then scurried back into the shadows. I'm aware that this isn't precisely "springing" in the technical sense of the word, and yet, my story is much more popular when I say "sprung." So, the mouse sprung at me, and I stood there and screamed and screamed. I finally realized that it would do no good screaming, so I locked the mouse in the closet. I should have shooed it out or done something that responsible people do, but I didn't. As far as I know, the mouse is still in the closet.
I didn't see it there this morning when I turned on the lights, but none-the-less, I was very careful as I put my finger inside the door.
In other news, I went home with one of the women today for lunch. I'd gone with her a few weeks ago, and we'd spent the afternoon watching Tunisian soap operas and drinking Arabic coffee out of these ridiculously small mugs. Today was almost the same, although, in place of the Tunisian soap operas, she wanted to watch Patrick Swayze's Ghost together. But there were still the ridiculously small mugs filled with little, tiny portions of heavily sugared coffee. So, you know, about the same...
As I was leaving this evening, I had my travel pass in one hand and a book in the other. I swiped my pass across the card reader, but as I was stepping into the tramway, I dropped my pass in the space between the tramway and the wall. Now, this pass isn't that easily replaceable. I'd just reloaded the pass for the month of May, and had spent about 100 euros for the month. I couldn't just let the thing go. Behind me, I heard a man say, "Oh la la. That's not good." And he was right: it wasn't good at all. So, I dropped to my hands and knees, and tried to jamb my arm down inside the crack. I twisted and turned and started getting very nervous as the tram filled with people and prepared to leave. Just before the final bell rang, I fished the card out, jumped up and started waving it triumphantly in the air. A few people were grinning at me from inside the tram, so I yelled, "I have it! I have it!" And just as the doors started to slide closed, I hopped inside.
Certainly, the day ended on a high note.

I'm off to bed now. Along with attempting to be a more consistent blogger, I'd also like to be a "before-midnight" kind of sleeper. I'm really reaching for the stars here. So, I hope I'll be updating again tomorrow, but we'll see how life-changing this resolution really is.
A demain!