Goodbye Toulouse

For my last trick I'm going to present the classic blog fallback (gotta save time for packing!): top 5 lists.

My Top 5 Things I will miss about Toulouse/France in general (a prediction):
1. Easily accessible and cheap public transportation
2. The constant challenge of learning a second language
3. Delicious pastries beautifully presented on every street corner
4. Their attitude regarding vacation (out of my seven month contract I got eight weeks of it)
5. The ATMs, which distribute a variety of bills and sometimes ask you which combination of ten-, twenty-, and fifty-euro bills you would like
6. Meeting new people from all over the world on a regular basis
7. The four public parks with flowerbeds and fountains and statues I walk through to get to work
8. Cheese, Gromit!
9. People who understand the French words I no longer remember how to say in English

My Top 5 Things I WILL NOT miss about Toulouse/France (also a prediction):
1. People don't talk to you unless they have a reason to know you
2. Five signed and dated documents with photocopies of your passport, work contract, and birth certificate are required to do anything as much as pick your nose
3. Stores are closed frequently and at unpredictable hours
4. Reliable wifi is hard to come by
5. The << crotte de chien >> that pollutes the sidewalks
6. The fifteen-minute walk to the nearest Laundromat, and the seven euros it costs to do one load
7. My freezing cold apartment

My Top 5 Things I can't wait to return to in the US! (an actuality)
1. My People!
2. My Family
3. My Friends
4. Other people I kind of know through said friends and family
5. Speaking my native language without being self-conscious about it
6. Root beer
7. People I've known for longer than six months
8. The beautiful San Francisco Bay
9. The similarly beautiful Sierra Nevada mountains
10. Cheddar cheese, bagels, milkshakes, cinnamon rolls, smoothies, brown sugar, and Adam's peanut butter
11. Reliable Internet
12. A familiar house
13. Real showers (the kind that have fixed heads and are fully enclosed)

France, adieu! Hello, California.

Exploring the French Riviera

From Pisa in Italy, the train runs along the coast all the way to Narbonne, France (with only a short jog inland from Saint-Raphael to (some other place), which I traveled by boat and bus). Taking this train, I got to see many, many miles of Mediterranean coast, from small villages clinging to the hills of Tuscany to the wild red rocky outcroppings near Fréjus to the proud white halls and abundant graffiti of Marseille. Along the way I stopped in Nice, Eze-sur-Mer, Monaco, Antibes, Fréjus, Saint-Rafaël, Saint-Tropez, Toulon, and Marseille before heading inland to Aix-en-Provence and finally back to Toulouse (all pictured in the slideshow except Saint-Raphaël).

Live from Florence

I find myself once again taken away from any context I understand. This time I've journeyed to the Mecca of Renaissance art: Florence ("Firenze" in Italian). I've been here for less than a day, and already I've admired Michelangelo's David, read the inscription on Dante's tomb, and eaten bona fide Italian gelato. I've seen so many early Renaissance paintings my eyes hurt.

As most of the few hours I've spent here have been nighttime hours, however, I've spent the most time in the hostel. The hostel is clearly a converted apartment near the center of downtown, and the conversion hasn't been all that extensive. It appears that most of the converting effort went into taking out the dining tables, sofas, and pianos that might have filled the four rooms before and replacing them with many single beds. The bathroom, shared by eight people, is divided into two adjacent rooms: one with a shower, toilet, and lavabo, and the other with bathtub, sink, mirror, and second lavabo. In spite of its quirks, the place is clean and there are kitchen and Internet facilities, so as a place to base my exploration of Florence out of I'm satisfied with it. It also has the obligatory Australian traveler, who in this case seems never to leave the hostel and who is friendly as can be.

Staying at such an establishment makes me feel like I'm truly living the life of the young adult wanderer. Part of the fun of traveling is meeting unexpected challenges. And there is a kind of harmony or rightness in staying in the company of literal travelers, all trying to understand what human life means by seeing much of it geographically and culturally. I am, after all, exploring a city positively brimming with art trying to encompass and portray something essential about the human journey. Human life is complicated, and there is MUCH to see and many challenges, but there is some comfort in knowing being alive is challenging to everyone.

Improvising to Learn

Last week I was getting a drink in a bar with a friend (like you do on Wednesday evening when you're in Europe) when an improvisation group popped out of the ether. They asked for donations of theme ideas from every patron in the bar before introducing themselves as the improv class from a local university and informing us that they would be in charge of entertainment for the next hour or so. They were very funny; they succeeded even in entertaining me, a non-native French speaker. This is partially because they were relying heavily on facial expressions and gestures to communicate, but also because they would announce the theme -- usually a combination of an event or situation and an adjective not usually associated with that situation -- before the action commenced, so that I went into the scene expecting a certain set of vocabulary. The theme for one scene, for example, was a college party at an ice-skating rink that was also a zoo. Once they said that (in relatively simple phrases) I had context for interpreting their conversations. I could recognize the social insecurities they made funny by exaggerating them into the characteristics of animals.

In real life, it's not so easy. People rarely announce in a loud voice the next subject they wish to discuss. There is sometimes that one person ready to state the obvious -- and for that I am grateful -- as in, "My, it looks like the fountain has flooded. Look at the water running all over the place!" Then I've got the word for "fountain" and which verb is used to express water in the act of spreading over a flat surface. (These statements are even more helpful when they have to do with people or social states. I can see when I'm in danger of getting my shoes wet, but I have a harder time knowing why a friend is upset to see that a party is going on until she tells me later that no one invited her.) Oftentimes I can only find out the correct verb for "to spread" in the fountain situation by playing the confused American and asking, "Is all that water being propagated from the fountain?" Usually some kind soul will patiently explain that I've used the wrong word. That situation has come up so many times at this point that it's stopped bothering me; if I jump in without being afraid of making a mistake I get to learn the correct word, and most people understand it's hard to learn a second language anyway. Plus, if they can give me the right word that means they knew what I meant, which is, after all, the primary use of language. My misuse may even cause them to smile.