Gaill-yacking it up

So I finally arrived in Gaillac, and have been getting situated in my new town of work. I have been staying with one of my fellow teachers and her family, and she is AWESOME. I'll call her Paulette Paul for the sake of anonymity. I honestly wish this family had been my host family, because I think it would have been such a good experience. They live in this beautiful house in Gaillac, with tons of flowers and fruit trees. All the walls are painted bright colors, and there is a nice saltwater pool in the backyard. It is super refreshing to swim in. There are grape vines all over their arches and around the garage, and you can literally just eat the grapes off the vine.

I have been having tons of interesting experiences with the family, far too many to count. Here are some of the top ones:

The exchange of swear words.

This whole conversation began when, in a conversation about New York City apartments, I said the phrase, "If you piss off the co-op, you're screwed." This led to a conversation where Paulette and I exchanged various vulgar phrases, including:

T'es nul: You suck

Je me suis jeté: I was pissed off

Je suis baisé: I'm screwed

C'est dingue: That's crazy

Envoyer chier: To piss off.

This conversation is particularly amusing since it was at the tabe with her 21 year-old son. Every once in a while, he would throw in a particularly vulgar phrase. There was one point where I was actually blushing, because I was so shocked by what came out of his mouth.

Paulette's husband teaches me to dance.

So, Paulette's husband doesn't speak english at all. We have been communicating with my French and some hand motions.

Every Tuesday, Paulette and her husband go to Salsa classes. This is only the latest in a series of dance classes, which apparently have included rhumba and another that I couldn't translate. He showed me all of the steps for them, and I in turn showed him the basic grapevine step for every jewish dance. It was an awesome moment.

Me and the family go to Puycelsi.

On Sunday, Paulette, her husband, her son, and I went to this old Bastide town about a half hour away from Gaillac. Puycelsi is a tiny town that has no buses or trains running towards it. It is a town I literally never would have gone there had they not decided to take me there. It is a beautiful little town, situated on top of a hill overlooking all this farmland.

We just mozied around the town, walking along centuries old paths and looking at buildings that were older than anything built in my country. Many of the windows were this beautiful pastel blue, which results from this flower called "Cocagne." A lot of the houses had these open attics where they used to dry out the flowers in order to make the dye.

We walked along the paths, and I stole Paulette's camera to take pictures. I will try to put them up when I can.

I know it took me a long time to post that, but now it is the end of my time in Gaillac (at least until I start my job). I will miss living with the Paul family, since they have been so wonderful to me but I am excited to be moving into our apartment! If all goes according to plan, I will be sleeping there tonight!! It's in a 15th century building a few blocks from the cathedral, and tourists are literally always taking pictures of the street.

I think it's gonna be a good year.

There are Mormons in France?

Today I visited Albi, the place I am going to live, for the second time. It has been quite a busy few days, so I haven't really had time to recount the awesomeness of my time as of yet. Additionally, since my camera finally died today after four years of faithful service, I was sadly unable to record this.

Let me start by saying, I am SO glad I am leaving Toulouse tomorrow. I am so incredibly sick of living out of a suitcase in a hostel. My room faces the street, and there are a few bars at the end of the street. Every night, I hear drunk people making a ruckus in the streets. In the span of me commencing this post, I have heard a recorder being played and a song that basically played with different prononciations of the word chapeau. It has been this way every night for a WEEK. The only way I am able to sleep is by listening to "The Hunger Games" on my ipod. Thankfully, my head teacher offered me a place to stay for the weekend, and, starting monday, I am going to stay in the school lodging until I find an apartment in Albi.

So, back to the sheer awesomeness of my day in Albi. I love this town. Love love love love love it. It is what I dreamed of when I imagined living in a french town. Most of it was built in the 1400's, and everything is super authentic, with paved brick roads and exposed beams everywhere. It used to be a medieval fortress, so everything is extremely fortified. It's on the Tarn River, and there are brick structures that extend all the way to the water, even though most of the village is built high above.

So, today was just a day filled with crazy coincidences. It started when my friend Kat and I went to visit an apartment I was interested in. She is going to live in Albi and was just as excited by it as I was, so she was a good person to explore the town with. As we were waiting to see the apartment, we were sitting on this stoop chatting, and this girl hears us and asks us if we're american. It turns out she is from Cleveland, and is doing a different teaching program in Albi! After that point, she joined our little entourage.

We went to get a beer (in my case, with a shot of grenadine) afterwards, and on our way we see these three guys dressed in garbage bags and covered in paint with their legs tied together coming towards us, begging for something or another. We think its just a prank their friends made them do, until we see another. And another. And another. The whole town is filled with college kids covered in paint and shaving cream and dressed in garbage bags. As we watched from the patio of my new favorite café, they proceeded to have a tug-of-war in the fountain. Apparently it was an orientation for the new university students. The weird part was, in the US if that was going on, everyone would be drunk, but here everyone was completely sober!

Then, as we are walking to our apartment viewing, we see these two guys dressed in white shirts and blacks pants, with name tags pinned to their shirts. They were two mormons from Iowa and Arizona, and they were in Albi doing their missionary work. Their names were, I kid you not, Heywood and Barney. I have no idea how they will survive in France, since they can't drink coffee.

Next, our group makes it over to a two-person apartment viewing. The guy showing it to us starts off by telling us the apartment was built in the 15th century, making it sound as if it were a bad thing. It was beautiful, with two bedrooms, 2 and a half baths, and a big sunny living room. Sadly, it was not furnished, and it literally had nothing but a sink in the kitchen. It's too bad, since it was so pretty, and it was actually in our price range. However, we would have to put so much money into it furnishing it that it would end up being way too expensive.

After that, we lounged by the river. We left once the banks became too clogged with amorous couples, and made our way over to my new favorite restaurant, Chez Yvette.

Chez Yvette is decorated with things such as old portraits, lit up stars, and animal heads wearing hats. There are daisies strewn all across the ceiling. If that wasn't enough to make it awesome, it serves only tapas and wine, and is actually affordable. For three people, we ordered a bottle of wine and four dishes (a local cheese plate, grilled eggplant, serrano ham, and duck breasts with peaches) all for only 32 euros! I have a feeling this will be a regular haunt of mine.

So I am off to carry my suitcases through the dirty streets of Toulouse. What an adventure that will be.

Bises!

Toulouse dayz

My last 24 hours has been spent absorbing all the awesomeness that Toulouse has to offer. It's a pretty cool town, and, as I've said earlier, it's SUPER easy to walk around.

Last night, I went out to dinner with 3 other assistants. On our way to the restaurant, we walked past Place du Capitole, and there was a crowd of people surrounding these ten-foot tall paper mâché people. There were about 12 of them, two lines of 6 facing each other, and each was dressed differently: there was

a priest, a farmer, etc. Apparently this bizarre display was for la Patrimoine, a festival celebrating Toulouse's heritage. As a result, each person represented a part of that heritage.

So, we walk up to see what is going on, and suddenly they start DANCING. Each "person" had a long skirt, and there were people standing under them, who could lift them up and make them move about. It was cool at first, but quickly became creepy when they started to walk out into the crowd.

After that, we went to a really cute restaurant called "La Mare aux Canards" (see picture above). It had exposed beams, cute things like a plane and a hot air balloon hanging from the ceiling, and an actual

hog's head on the wall. It was here where I had my first experience with the full, three-course french meal. Most restaurants have a fixed price menu, so you can get a full three-course meal for a relatively low price. Last night, I went all out with my first super french meal: Salade chèvre (goat cheese salad) for l'entrée, canard à l'orange for le plat, and, for dessert, a masterpiece called an "Ile Flottante." "Ile Flottante" translates into "floating island," and that's essentially what it is. It's a sort of egg white fluff in a sea of crème anglais. I have to include a picture of it since it is just so funny looking. It's not the actual one I had, but you get the idea. After dinner, I remembered what was so bad about France when you first get there- if you are not used to the richness of the food, you will feel sick after each meal until your body adjusts. It is not a fun feeling.

Today, I went with my friend to this crêpe place called "La Sherpa." It had all these cool pin-up type portraits on the wall, and, instead of lamps, they had bohemian-type scarves over the lightbulbs. After that, we ran into some people we knew from the hostel, and we followed them to this coffeeshop where another hostel resident was playing guitar. The place was the embodiment of French Bohemian culture. There were sculptures hanging from the ceiling, and big blow-up pictures of the buddha on the walls.

We had unknowingly arrived at a mini-concert. As we sat on the floor in odd donut-shaped beanbags, we watched one trio and two single artists play some awesome music in both french and english. The trio had a guitarist, a saxophone player, and something I can only describe as an impromptu drummer. Instead of a real drum set, he used brushes and sticks on a plastic box similar in density to a speak, a foot-peddled tambourine, and a drumset cymbal powered only by his hands. Incredibly awesome and incredibly french.

After the two single artists played, there was an interpretive dance. It was possibly the weirdest thing I have ever seen. She started off in silence, and, with a body posture similar to Gollum, she walked in a robotic motion and moved boxes from one part of the room to another. Suddenly, there was a large alarm, and she opened one of the boxes and put on a pair of shoes. She began to dance with the box, unti she got scared and had to remove the shoes. They were then used to attack the box, leaving it a mangled mess. It just got weirder from there, and all seemed to involve variations of her dancing with shoeboxes.

Tonight might feature a return to the crêpe place, since I need to save money and crêpes are relatively cheap (average 5 euros)

Anyway, I'm going to leave you guys on a cute note- here is an article about a ginger-haired, blue-eyed seal. Enjoy!

I have arrived in the Franceland!

So, I arrived safely in Toulouse! My flight to London was fine, although I didn't sleep as much as I'd like, despite the Benedryl.

I had about four hours to chill in Heathrow, which was fine, if a bit boring. For some reason there were Japanese schoolgirls running around EVERYWHERE. It was quite bizarre, especially since at that point I was really sleep deprived and somewhat out of it. I was just wandering around all the stores with my big rollie bag.

Then I popped on another flight, and arrived in TOULOUSE!

The hostel I'm staying in is completely awesome. There are people from all over the world, and since all of them seem to be looking for apartments in France, there's a sense of solidarity among all of us. Our hostel has a garden, and last night we had a barbecue (aka cheese and chips) in it. At one point, there were people there from Canada, England (Wales too), Turkey, Georgia (the country), Sweden, Mexico, Italy, Austria, Germany, Spain, and, of course, the US of A. There were some very intense debates, which mainly consisted of me yelling at the Brits and telling them our pronunciation/spelling of words was better. There were three rather spirited debates along this them:

1. The pronunciation of urinal: In England, they pronounce it Ur-RI-nal (like rhino). However, they say urine the same way we do. I proposed that since our pronunciation of urinal was closer to that of urine, it was better than theirs. Winner (in my mind): me.

2. Aluminum/Aluminium: British people say and spell it like "Aluminium." When they heard me say "Aluminum," they immediately pounced on us, telling us that we were saying it wrong. Eventually, they figured out that since we spelled it differently, it was okay that we also said it differently.

3. Eggplants and Courgettes: In England, they say "Aubergine" for Eggplant and "Courgette" for Zucchini. For this one, we reached a compromise. We decided that Eggplant was a strange word, and should be replaced by Aubergine, but that zucchini was far superior to courgette.

Today my friend (another girl from the program) and I wandered about Toulouse. I did not realize how small this city would be. After living in Paris, I think I expected Toulouse to be the same size. However, it was way smaller, so much that we were able to walk across it in a relatively short time.

Toulouse is a really pretty city. It is definitely a walkable city, and it seemed like there were people everywhere! Cars actually stop for pedestrians, while in Paris, they are more likely to run you over.

Since I know some people (aka my father) are interested in what I've been eating here, I'll list what I've been eating. So far today I've had a croque-monsieur, a café noisette, a café crème and three mini pastries: une chausson aux pommes, une chausson aux framboises, and something called une jésuite.

My Swedish roommate is skyping a Swedish friend, and every once in a while I hear her use an english phrase. Let me tell you, it's quite bizarre to hear 5 minutes of Swedish and then "Being Spontaneous" (the way she said it requires capitalization), followed by more Swedish.

I am meeting more people from my program tonight! Four of us are going to dinner together. It will be nice to finally put names to faces!

Bises!

Ode to my Sperrys

My last few days here have been full of goodbyes, both expected and unexpected. Under the unexpected was definitely my beloved bright pink Sperry Topsiders.

As you can see from the picture, they have definitely been well used. They are caked with clay from a thousand visits to the ceramic studio,

and mud from my latest adventu

re in La Jolla (more on that later). These are the shoes I have worn across Europe, to every physical therapy session, and during many a la

zy day. Sure, many have made fun of me for them, and really, I don't blame them. They are (or were, since they are extremely faded now)

BRIGHT PINK. You don't often see people with bright pink boat shoes, and I have gotten a lot of grief for them. But that doesn't mean I love them any less. In fact, I love them more, because, I mean, who else has has bright pink boat shoes?

I

tried to find more phot

os of me wearing my shoes in interesting places, since I wore them to Prague and all over France. The only picture I could find was me in front of a medieval catapult in Provence. I think that says it all.

The last adventures of my shoes took place on a secluded beach in La Jolla Cove. My friend Jessica and I were walking on this path to some tide pools one day, and we see these guys in wetsuits climbing down this steep hill next to this path. Turns out there was a little rocky beach below that locals used. Many people use it as a launch pad for snorkeling and swimming, since there are tons of fish and sharks in the water.

Yesterday we decided it was time to explore the beach. We arrive at the top of the hill, me in my Sperrys and my friend in her flip-flops (later removed for easier climbing). The first part was pretty easy-it was steep, but there was generally enough footholds that we didn't have to worry. We got to a ledge, and from that point on it's a muddy hill. The only way to get down is two muddy ropes, put there probably years before by some enterprising young surfer.

Getting down is hard. After a while, I gave up on using the rope gracefully, and I slid down on my ass. I made it down using a combination of sliding, climbing down the rope, and, to be quite honest, sheer luck.

The bottom was absolutely gorgeous. The beach was covered with huge rocks, and as we walked farther down the beach, I saw a small trickle of water that formed a mini waterfall in the cliffs. It was beautiful, although it did cause everything to become slimy and muddy.

The view of the ocean was equally beautiful. We could see the kayakers off the cove, and La Jolla Shores off in the distance. It was extremely peaceful, and, except for two guys going snorkeling, we were the only ones there.

Then came the climbing up part.

I am not the most athletic person, but luckily 3 sessions a week of physical therapy on my calf gave me enough strength to climb, or else I would never have been able to do the climb. The first part was the hardest. It was muddy from people walking up there after swimming, and I had to hold onto the (equally muddy) rope just to make sure I didn't fall. It began to dry up about halfway up the rope, so I made it up to the ledge without too much trouble. However, the rest of the way back I had to essentially climb. I gave up on walking upright, and I used whatever I could to latch on.

It was hard. I have always been afraid of heights and extreme things, so I was terrified out of my mind. However, I just kept climbing up, and just kept going. Finally, I made it to the top, and I was greeted with the most beautiful view of the Pacific Ocean, made all the more beautiful by the fact that I had just completed one of the scariest experiences of my life.

I can literally say I have never been as dirty as I was when I completed that climb. My jeans were completely covered in dirt and mud, and my hands were so dust-coated they no longer looked the same skin tone. The look was completed by my Sperrys, which were so completely coated with mud that I couldn't even bring them into the house

Later, when we asked Jessica's brother if he had been there, he informed us that that hill goes by the name "Devil's Slide". Apparently people go down there, and sometimes have trouble coming back up since it is so steep. Very appropriately named.

So those were the last days of my Sperrys. They ended their life well-loved, well-used, and covered in mud. Rest in Peace, old friends.

I now have a new pair of Sperrys. They are grey suede, with leopard spots on the sides. Hopefully this will be the start of a beautiful new relationship, filled with adventure and new places.

Photos will (hopefully) be up soon.

4 days and counting!

It's only 4 days until I leave, and I still can't believe it!

I have been waiting essentially since January (when I first turned in my application), and now that it's finally here, I am sick. Of course. My throat hurts, I'm achy and generally not happy with my physical state.

I always seem to get sick at the worst times. When I was 14, I went to Antibes for the summer to study and stay in a host family. The day I was going to get on the plane, I get an ear infection. My mom and I had to find a drop-in clinic in LA about an hour before I had to be at the airport. I spent my first few days popping advil and antibiotics.

Let's just hope this isn't a repeat of that first trip. I'll be laying low till then, staying in bed watching Doctor Who and drinking copious amounts of Orange Juice.

Bises

So, I'm moving to France next week....

6 days, to be exact.

Speaking french has always made me happy. There is something about the throaty sounds, the liaisons, the overall beauty of the language that appeals to me. French is, quite frankly, fun.

The name of this blog comes from a nickname my french teacher gave me back in sophomore year of high school. For those who know me, they can attest I like to talk. A lot. This is true regardless of what language I may be speaking. As a result, my teacher gave me the nickname "la bavarde": the chatterbox

. This nickname has remained apt, even 6 years after it was originally given to me.

So, next year I am going to be an English teaching assistant in a collège (middle school) and a lycée (high school) in a tiny little town called Gaillac, about 65 km from Toulouse. That's a picture of it to the right. So far, the only thing I can find about this town related to wine. Gaillac produces every sort of wine possible, from red to rosé to sparkling. Hopefully, I'm going to come out of this a wine connoisseur. If I don't, then I obviously will not have drunk nearly enough wine.

Since Gaillac has only 12,000 people (none of whom seem to be people my age), I am going to be living in a town 20 km away called Albi. Albi is the perfect example of the type of little

french town I want to live in. It has 50,000 people and a university, so I would definitely be able to have a social life.

More importantly, Albi is chock-full of awesome french history. It is home to two 13th century buildings, le Palais de la Berbie and the Saint Cécile Cathedral. It is because of these buildings that Albi has been labeled a UNESCO world heritage site, which basically means that it has something worth preserving.

It is also the birthplace of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, a french artist famous for his posters of the Moulin Rouge. Since Toulouse-Lautrec is one of my favorite artists, I am looking forward to exploring the museum devoted to him in more detail.

Anyway, I need to get on with preparing for my trip: packing, getting insurance straightened out, copious amounts of netflix, etc. Everything you need to have a successful foreign voyage.

À bientôt!