Chez Marlier

(Actually late Wednesday night. August 26, 2009)

I woke up to the news this morning that Senator Kennedy passed away. Boston.com posted the announcement right around the time I was getting up for school. I did find multiple stories about Senator Kennedy on LeMonde.fr, the website of France’s big paper. The stories all said very nice things about le Lion du Sénat and how it may impact healthcare reform. My host mother, Marie Christine, knew about it when I talked to her after school today. Needless to say I was thinking about Massachusetts throughout the day.

I have started my classes at Alliance Française, a school here in Bordeaux for foreigners to study French. I have French class in the morning from 9-12 and then a two and a half hour lunch break. In the afternoons we either have activities in Bordeaux with the group our we have workshops on cinéma, gastronomie, or actualités politiques (current events in politics). The classes have been a little disappointing so far but lunch is my favorite part of the day! We get two and a half hours so we usually end up going to multiple cafes. We’ll eat at one café, wander around a bit and then go to another cafe for coffee (actually espresso) or a little dessert. I feel like I’m in second grade, saying my favorite class at school is lunch, but it’s true! Le déjeuner, c’est génial!

It is now time for me to introduce you to the Marlier’s, my French family. I have been here 5 days, so while of course that is not enough time to completely understand a French family’s daily life, I definitely am getting the hang of it. My host mother, Marie Christine is a social worker and grew up in Algeria. I found out at dinner tonight that there is even more to this story. Marie Christine’s grandfather was a collabo during WWII. He worked with the Germans and the Vichy government, including turning over Jewish neighbors to the Nazis. After the war, he was sentenced to death but was pardoned so he took his family to live abroad in Algeria. Marie Christine told me that she still feels very ashamed that her own grandfather could do such a thing. I just learned all about Algeria and its history as a French colony in three of my classes at Hamilton last year (history, government and french class) and this sort of putting the pieces of history and government together is soooo cool to me but I don’t want to offend her in any way. Her father actually died fighting the Algerian war. I assume they returned to France after he died but I haven’t asked. The Marlier’s have a vacation home in Senegal so they still go to Africa every summer and the house her in Bordeaux is decorated with a lot of beautiful African artwork.

My host father, Patrick, is a médecin, specifically a psychiatrist, at the local hospital. His father also fought in the Algerian war. He is really nice and easy to talk to. I talk about soccer with him and the Girondins de Bordeaux (first place right now!). He has asked me a lot of questions about hockey and sports back home. I don’t see him during the week because he leaves for work very early and doesn’t get home until 10 or 10:30 when I am already in my jammies.

The Marliers have two kids at home right now, Maxime and Fannie. Paul, their other son, is 23 and a student in Paris. Fannie is 18 and I think she just enrolled in the University of Bordeaux. I don’t know Maxime’s age but he looks to be about 20, like me. Neither of the kids are home that much. We eat dinner all together but they usually go out afterwards. From what I understand, the family hosts a lot of exchange students so I’m not too interesting to them but I like talking to them about my life back home and their life here in Bordeaux.

I also want to introduce the neighbors, David and Katie at their very cute 3 month old Charlie. I think they frequently come over in the evenings and on the weekend. They came over last Saturday night for my little welcome dinner and they were so nice and fun to chat with. Towards the end of the evening, David and Patrick even went across the street to get a bottle of Armagnac (like cognac but from a different region) that Katie’s mother made in 1959! And this was after I blew out the electricity! I guess no harm done if they insist I must taste the last bottle of the mother- in-law’s moonshine!

Note about picture: Fannie and Marie Christine are repainting the front gate white. Fannie wrote “Bonjour et Bienvenue” et “Chez Marlier” on the gate but her mother is making her paint over it.

A La Plage

Well today was my first official full day in France and I am wiped. I think I am still catching up on sleep from my travel day. Plus, last night at two o’clock in the morning I actually woke myself up saying “Je ne sais pas le mot!” (I don’t know the word!) No joke. I will probably continue to talk in my sleep for a few days, hopefully no longer than that. My brain is on language overdrive right now so I guess it makes sense…..

Let me clarify why I am in Bordeaux, I just realized that I didn’t make that clear in my first post. I will be living in Paris for the semester but my program has a two week orientation in Bordeaux (see map of France). Like Paris, I am living here in Bordeaux with a family. It is supposed to be an introduction to France and a little less hectic than big city Paris. I am taking language classes in the morning and various organized group activities in the afternoon.

It is very hot here today (90+) so my family took me to la plage (the beach)! Cue all the stories I have ever heard about French beaches: naked people! Men in tiny shorts! As it turns out these stereotypes turned out to be largely true but the beach seemed very normal to me. Sure there were lots of topless women and a lot of the men had Speedos or tiny short bathing suits but it wasn’t bad. There were lots of women who did have their tops on and plenty of men had long bathing suits. I didn’t feel uncomfortable at all…then again I do attend a college where they just had to increase the penalty for streaking on campus so maybe I have Hamilton to thank for that.

We went to a town called Le Porge. It took about an hour to get there. We stopped on the way to pick up Fannie (18 year old daughter of host family) at her stable where she is apparently a champion horseback rider (she might own her own horse, but I haven’t quite figured that all out yet). The beach was very crowded but it was great. This area is well known to have very dangerous undercurrents. I was warned to be careful in the water and be sure to stay between the blue flags where the lifegaurds keep an eye on everybody and now I sure see why! I jumped right in the water but only then did I see how big the waves really were. I kept hearing people in the water saying “les grosses vagues” (literally fat waves). I am a fairly strong swimmer and you know me, I’ll jump into anything that requires me to be athletic. Well, thank goodness I didn’t try to be too gung ho about it. I was tossed around like a rag doll on a couple waves that I didn’t dive under quickly enough. It was kind of scary but I knew my limits and made sure to go in when I got a bit tired. I wasn’t by myself either, don’t worry Mom.

The kicker of it all is that once we got home, it was a little glass of beer for everybody! Of course it went right to my head after a hot day in the sun, despite my drinking 5 glasses of water with my beer. I was not drunk of course but yikes, I should have declined! (I couldn’t do that, I must be polie) Good thing I brought my Advil….

By now I am très fatigué and I must go to bed. I have my first day of school in the morning!

Bonsoir!

OMG I blew out the electricity!

Yup, my very first day, as the title of this post indicates, I blew out the electricity on the second floor of my host family’s house. More about this unfortunate event in a minute…..

Besides the current situation, my arrival in France has been a breeze. As one of only two Hamilton students in the program, my Vassar and Wesleyan cohorts have been very welcoming and I am looking forward to taking classes and hanging out with them over the course of the semester. I was reassured when I realized that we all have the same fears and worries about coming to France i.e. speaking French 24-7, adaptors for our computers, buying cell phones in France, and our lack of concrete info regarding our schedule. We were all freaking out a bit just sitting in the terminal at JFK because all the people around us were speaking French and then announcements about the flight starting coming in French (until boarding time when we got both French and English). It all got very real very quickly, before we even left NYC!

The seven and a half hour flight was your standard transatlantic flight. Too little leg room, hard to fall asleep, and the movies I wanted to watch weren’t available. I didn’t get to sleep as much as I had hoped but that’s ok. You should have seen us on take-off though. I think every single one of us had a big smile. I know I couldn’t help it and I saw that the other three kids in my row couldn’t help it either. We are all really freaked out going into this but there’s no turning back now! We might as well just jump right in head first.

So, now the electricity story: I was all settled in my host family’s really cute house in Bordeaux. I was picked up at the airport sans problem, spoke nice French with my host mother Marie Christine, took a shower, got a bite to eat, and was attempting to get my computer stuff all figured out. Massive failure. I couldn’t get my computer nor my alarm clock to work in the outlets in my room. Then I tested the power strip I brought, to see if that would work. Well, the second I plugged in my power strip, boom, the lights go out. I hear my host mother say something downstairs, but then I turned on my light and it worked no problem. Ok, so maybe I caused that little outage but everything seems ok…right? Nope. I think I fried the little decorative lamps in my bedroom. One of them is made out of bottle caps and the other looks like it could have been handmade too. I really should have learned about electricity and currents and stuff way back in freshman physical science class. I didn’t learn it because I brought the power strip to another plug in another room. This time I got a little ‘pop’ when I plugged it in. That’s when I thankfully stopped and my host Dad, Patrick, came home. Well long story short, I blew out the fuse for the second floor and I don’t think it’s back to normal yet. I feel really bad because here comes this stupid American with her power strip and blows the fuse within mere hours of her arrival. I hope they don’t hold it against me for the whole two weeks, things started off so well. Hopefully my gift of maple syrup tonight will make them forget this whole little incident happened….wish me luck.

A bientôt!