No Parlo Italiano, No Pusso Piu Mangiare, Mille Grazie

I don't even know where to begin with this one. That is why I have left it sit for so long; that and that I have actually been busy, which I can't often say about life here...

I suppose it's always best to start at the beginning, so:

Monday morning I woke unusually early (probably around 9) and so I checked my email before class, only to find the worst email I've ever gotten.
"Dear Kate,

I have disapointing news about your Dad and France... he has pneumonia! He is on antibiotics and codine cough syrup and feels terrible. At this point he expects that he won't be able to come."

and so, like any properly selfish child, I was torn between being sad, worried and pissed, because this wasn't fair, and I had been so looking forward to seeing him. Would this mean that Jane wasn't coming either? What sort of terrible thing did I do for karma to come at me like this?

Later, after establishing that Jane WOULD still be coming, I called home and when I heard his voice, which sounded like he was pretty much on his deathbed, and far more disappointed than I can ever imagine, all of this selfishness melted away and I just hoped that he would feel better soon.

So the trip continued, one man short, starting in Paris, early in the morning, in one of the seven portals into hell– The Charles de Gaulle airport. (I have discovered another in Nevada and am searching for the other five, just so I know which places to avoid in life.)
Jane and I started our adventure by hopping onto the Paris train-line and heading toward our hotel, which, a metro hop and a taxi-ride later welcomed us to The City of Lights very cordially and showed us into THE SWISHEST ROOM, nay not room, suite, THAT I HAVE EVER BEEN ALLOWED INTO












I may have gone a bit overboard with the photos, but I just want to impress upon you the swish-ness of this place. Note the (glass) bottle of evian water, the TWO plasma screen television (which we forgot to ever turn on) and the super-bathroom and bourgeois furnishings. It was the most comfortable bed that I have slept on since arriving in europe, possibly ever.

Paris was Paris, very sparkly and pretty, with way too many many people, though the Seine will never lose it's charm for me. We wandered around the first day, did a bit of touristing and then ate dinner on a patio across from the eiffel tower as it's lights sparkled through the darkness. As much as I complain about Paris, it really was kind of magical.



The rest of Paris was gone in a flash, a whirl of museums and parks and animated clocks that were out of order and churches.

The Defender of Time (on his break):



Notre-Dame:



Notre-Dame is and will always be one of my favorite places. I would pay good money to be there without the waves of tourists.



We had banana-nutella crepes every morning for breakfast and then set out for the day's wanderings, stumbling upon tektonic-kids and drum-brigades along the way and watching the sun set from the steps of Sacre Cœur as a culminating finish.




Then, Sunday morning, we got ourselves up (well, Jane got herself up, and dragged me after her) at the wee crack of dawn to head to the Ryanair airport (YES! another wonderful Ryanair experience!) where, after standing in line for several hours, they cancelled our flight due to extreme fog conditions. So we all slumped back to Paris and Jane and I booked the next rain to Pisa, leaving that evening, continuing on through the night with a 5am changeover in Milan. I am going to say only that sleeper cars could stand being just a tad more comfortable, and not go into any of the other details.
Laying in our booths though, we could watch the stars flying by from our upside-down view out the window...it almost made it worth the trouble.

We finally arrived in Pisa around 11:30 and a day late and with a phone# that wasn't working, so after taking a minute to melt into a bench in the piazza in front of the station, we scrounged a phonebook at a near-by hotel and called Elio's home, hoping and praying that he would answer. Lucky for us, he did, and immediately, he and Carla were in the car, on their way to come collect us.

I have never been happier to meet people than I was that morning, and I have never had such an immediate feeling of acceptance. This is family, like only italians can pull it off. Maybe it was because I was exhausted, maybe it was because I was linguistically lost, but, considering how distantly we actually are related, I felt like this was immediate family, come to save me.

Here is how we are related (as I understand it...)

My Grandma had two cousins: Ida and Lida
Ida has two sons: Elio, who lives with her and Mario, who married Carla
together they have: Francesca, who is my age, and who speaks impressively good english
Lida has one son and one daughter (both in their forties +?) I met her daughter, Laura. She was nice. Very loud, very funny.


Here is how communication happened:

Elio speaks a few words of english, and a few more words of french, but is very shy, and so, though he spent most of his time occupied with us, was not especially chatty and when he did speak, did so very quietly. I adore him. He is so timid and awkward and wonderfully caring. He also had a wee italian to english dictionary which became my favorite tool.



Mario and Carla do not speak english, but that did not stop them from talking non-stop to us in italian. They gave us tours of Luca and Florence, sharing history and stories and carrying on conversations with us, even though much of it was simply words lost to the wind. Despite gaps in conjugation and and vocabulary, it was obvious that they are eternally happy, and cheerfully funny. They are incredible and made me feel incredibly at ease and at home.



Ida spoke not one single word of english. She is the very image of old italy, very strong, very alive. Amazing



Lida didn't speak english either, but she pinched cheeks.
Laura spoke some english, and is a character in any language.

Francesca, as I said, speaks english really well, but unfortunately, she spent most of her time in classes, and therefore, not translating for us. I don't have a picture of her, but she is incredibly sweet.
we email a lot.
it's nice.

I Do Not Speak Italian. I speak english, and I speak french, I even speak a little spanish, but italian... nope. I found, however, that it was close enough between spanish and french that I could understand it fairly well, the thing is, even if you can understand, there's no way to respond. I learned enough to say a couple of very important things: I am full. I can't eat more. Thank You. Yes. No. Ok... everything else was the most pathetic mash of french and spanish said with a terrible italian accent and the hope that it would be understood.
It worked some of the time...but it was very very lame.

this is the church where my great grandmother was baptized.



Que Fuerte. (that is spanish)


I will let the other pictures of italy speak for themselves.



































So obviously, amazing.


The rest of Janes trip was great too. For me at least, you'll have to get her side of the story. We went to Mont st. Michel, I played in quicksand (sank up to my calves!) We lounged around Rennes, basking in the surprisingly warm sun, in a garden full of blooming flowers. We went to the cinema. We ate gallettes and ice cream every night for dinner.

It really doesn't get much better.

Why... Are My Fingers...So Incredible

So, my dear friends and family (though I would just like to say that my family has been slacking a little bit on their end of the internet life-sharing project. You are paying for internet 24 hours a day, it is important to log on more than once every three weeks. Though I love you despite this lack of technology in your lives! long parentheses over.) As many (all?) of you know, I spent the holidays with my friend Alba and her friends and family in Spain. Warning: brevity is not my strong-point.
What an adventure!

Where to begin? Where to begin? I'll try to go chronologically for a bit, though I'm sure that this will not last long...
The 21st I boarded my cheap flight with Ryanair, Alba and our friend Jaunma at my side. I will just say that Ryanair is cheap for a reason...it has the least happy steward(esse)s that I have ever seen, a color scheme to match its website(bright yellow and royal blue!) and the strangest sort of emergency instructions illustrated on the back of each seat. In essence, the fisher price of airlines. It was also my first experience with people clapping upon the plane landing. I am sorry, but landing should be a given, not something to celebrate. As much as I am not keen on flying...yeah, so we DID make it to the Valencia airport, much to everyone's surprise, that evening and headed straight to the apartment of Alba's old roommate, where a number of her friends had gathered together and where we were greeted with a wonderful dinner and the glory of the valencian language.
I realized two things very quickly. One: I did NOT remember as much spanish as I thought that I would and Two: it didn't really matter, because no one was going to be speaking spanish around me for the next two weeks. So I reverted to the universal language of exchange students – pantomime, eye contact and smiling, with a little (very little) spanish thrown in here and there.
It was a pretty horrible feeling of isolation initially, as I realized that once Juanma left, I would be pretty much reliant on Alba. Though by the end of the two weeks, I could understand about half of the valencian that I heard and was doing a bit better with spanish. We also decided, based on this almost non-communication, that we liked each other, so there was a very concentrated effort among all of her friends to communicate verbally. They would speak spanish for me sometimes, there were a couple of girls who could speak french and a couple of people who could (kinda) speak english, and overall, they made me feel really accepted in a way that I think only the spanish can.

The next day we said goodbye to Juanma, and took the train to Gandia, where Alba grew up. Her house was amazing. Alba told me that it was the same place where her mother's family had lived and that eventually, the walls were pretty much falling in on themselves, so her mother built this new house in the same spot. It was beautiful, and pretty huge; I had my own room and for about half the time, even my own bathroom.
Here is the view from my room:



That was on a sunny day. Funny story. As we were leaving Rennes, the Seattle of France, Alba says to me "I can't wait to see the sun. You are going to flip, because Spain is so much warmer and sunnier than Britanny." A day later, I get off the train in Gandia to see more rain than I have ever seen before in my life. At one point as we were driving home, the car turned the corner onto a street that had a solid 8+ inches of water rushing down.
The weather in Valencia and Gandia was very touch-and-go for the first week, which was okay, because that time was spent more or less jumping from one relative's house to another to say Merry Christmas (Bon Nadal,) or to have meals. We had the strangest meal at her Grandparents home with her father. Her grandparents are well into their nineties and a bit(lot) senile, so the addition of a fourth girl (Alba has two sisters, one eighteen, one twenty-four) who said almost nothing was a bit much for them. The grandfather sat in a huge wing-back chair and kept throwing a blanket over his head while the grandmother carried her walker, yes carried, back and forth, keeping an eye on all of the goings-on and the great-aunt sat in a room and rang a bell whenever she wanted something.
When we left, Clara, the younger sister said that if I was Alba's friend after this trip, that I would be her friend for life.
I found all of it amusing/bemusing and as I told Alba, I have stopped being surprised this year and am in very much a roll-with-punches sort of attitude. There could have been a person wearing tinsel-lined wings swinging from the ceiling and shouting platitudes in español and I would have been like, "huh, so this is how they celebrate in Spain...? ok."

The one time that I WAS a bit shocked was christmas dinner at the Mansion of the parents of Alba's new "step-mother" in quotes because I seriously doubt that Alba would give her this title. She grew up in Canada with her parents, who lived there for a while, but are very valencian, speaks perfect english, bad spanish (which I find funny, since she now lives in spain, with spanish parents) and apparently, all of them speak french, which was something I found out while having a conversation with her mother half-way through the meal. This was bad news, since Alba and I had been conversing/complaining for quite a while in our only common language - french. Luckily I think that if anyone understood, it was the wife, but she was so unpleasant that no change of disposition could be used as an indicator. There was just that really awkward moment where I had to lean over and say, "Alba, they all speak french...what have we been saying?"
It was ok though, because the meal was crazy-impressive. These people were loaded (I hear in a very mafioso sort of way) their house/mansion was enormous! Complete with several bars, a giant patio/ pool combo, an elevator (because you know, three flights of stairs is simply too much sometimes) and really huge, tacky paintings. There were mountains of caviar (which was "a little rancid") that we were informed cost umpteen hundred (thousand?) euro and loads of really really amazingly good cheese, and bottles upon bottles of really swish, expensive wine. The father even had a vintage named after him(holy crap is really the only way to describe my reaction.) This place was surreal, I'm telling you. And not in a good way, but in an I-kept-looking-around-and-laughing-because-I-didn't-have-the-words-to-express-my-disgust kind of way. Lucky for me, they were reeeeeaally excited that they were hosting dinner for an American(!!!YIPEE!!) and kept telling me about their trips to Vegas and Florida and how much they love america and americans and on and on and on, to which I politely nodded, smiled and said "oh really? wow. that's interesting" because I am charming, dangit, and that is what I do.
Upon leaving, the mother said to me, "Well, perhaps I'll see you again. I leave in ten days for our house in Florida."
"Yes, perhaps" you crazy "have a really great trip" smile.

I was assured that this would be the low-point, and indeed it was
Everything else was a dream!
We went to Valencia and I was given the city tour by my new friends, and then taken out for a taste of the spanish bar-scene, and the fun that is walking through the streets of Valencia after dark, which is when Spain starts waking up. (I don't get how these people live. They stay up until five in the morning, wake up around ten or eleven and then repeat.)
Here is Valencia:

this is a plaza



This is...valencia



Then We went to Denia, where Alba's older sister, Marina, lives with her long-term boyfriend/ they would be married if they believed in marriage, Santi. I adore Santi, he is a painter, a fisherman and an all-around good guy, who pretty much forced me to speak spanish with him, and then afterwards revealed that he speaks english pretty darn well. Denia was incredible, warm and sunny; the epitome of a small-ish spanish town. We made dinner in the neighbor's house because he had more space and their friends all came over to help out and share stories.
That is Santi staring into the camera, the back of Alba's head and Paki, Alba's mom



Dinner was fun because you can "soy una vegetariana" and they will all go "ok, you don't eat meat. try this fish" It just doesn't make sense in their world that someone who is not deathly allergic would choose not to eat it, which is why I had just about every form of sea-food pushed upon me and sea-urchin forced upon me.
I finally gave in and tasted it, and all I have to say is that it is the single worst thing that I have ever put in my mouth. Paki said "it doesn't taste like fish, it tastes like the rocks" like maybe that was a good thing. It was however, an accurate discription. If you dug up a rock, covered in ocean crusties from the nastiest mud that you could find, and with the same texture...that pretty much describes urchin. Marina, just kept saying "Poor Kate. Poor Kate. I don't like it either. Santi, why did you make her eat it?"
"Because it is good"

No Santi, no it is not.

After dinner, we went for a walk through the old Moroccan fortress. It was beautiful.



Did I mention that we were on the beach!? WE WERE ON THE BEACH!
I could not have been happier.

This was the view from Marina and Santi's front stoop:



So, I was obviously excited to find out that we would be spending New Years in Denia as well. Alba's friend, Isa was allowed to use the restaurant that her parents had just bought to host our New Year's Eve party and we arrived that afternoon to clean up, set up the sleeping space and start cooking. A while later, everyone started showing up, all bringing something else to add to the feast. I'm not gonna lie, this was like my thanksgiving dinner.



And right after dinner was midnight! The spanish tradition is to eat a grape for each chime of the last twelve seconds of the year. It's for good luck, I guess, though no one could really explain it to me there, I had to ask my dad, who explained that it is one grape for each month of the year, and if you choke on a grape, you'll have bad luck in that month. Very fun little tradition, which results in everyone having way too many grapes in their mouths all at once.
Very cute.
Then Marina and Santi and friends showed up and we celebrated the new year, spanish style. Dancing and clapping in synchronization...



Yeah, I have no clue what she said to me. It sounded like "eres como la fuente fria" which means "you are like a cold fountain" which makes NO sense, whatsoever. I even asked her about it; she has no clue, which isn't too serious, because I also have no clue what I said, and am not actually sure what language it was in...I was told at one point that I was speaking almost perfect valencian, which just goes to show what drinks and no sleep are capable of.

So, finally, we went to sleep, and the next day, after we'd all woken up and had our coffee, we walked to the beach! The BEACH!
I spent the first day of the new year on the beach!
Can you tell how excited I still am about that?



One better: On the beach, in a climby-thing



I was a VERY happy camper.

After we got our fill of the sun and salty air, we went back to the restaurant to eat left overs and this is where the title comes in. One of the girls, Maria, really likes doing impressions/small performances, and so our after-meal entertainment was first – an elvis impression (which was not half-bad, actually) followed by "Mein Heir" from Cabaret, complete with dance and topped off with Janis Joplin, to which the "lyrics" were "Why...are my fingers...so incredible?" Best words to a song, in the history of trying to improvise in a language that is not your own. I think that I may have enjoyed that moment more than any of the others...

Soooo, we eventually went back to Gandia and started seriously trying to work on our dossiers aka really long papers that had to be mailed before the last day of vacation, and there is not much left to tell about Spain.
I had another really lovely flight with Ryanair, but luckily made it back to France alive, and met up with Madison. We tried to get a coffee, but the bar/cafe was about to close and so they weren't serving anything hot, so we each ordered a glass of champagne and toasted the new year a few days late, before heading back to his apartment.
I never thought that I would say this, but it was so great to be surrounded by people speaking french! And even better to spend a sort of adjustment period with Madison and our friend Randa, who just moved to Paris. For the first time in two weeks, my dreams were in english! and not catalan/valencian, spanish, and french!

Now, I am back in Rennes, and I have one test next week, but apart from that, am pretty much still on break, so life is good. I also finally bought a new pair of shoes.
Here is what is left of my AllStars:



I am still refusing to believe that they are gone.
I may be in mourning for a while...
Though the return of my friends, and the first night that we were all together (tonight! woohoo!) is helping to ease my pain.