C'est pas vrai (It isn't possible)

Je suis au Lycee Soult après une journée assez chargée. J'etais en train de parler avec quelques profs et je me suis rendu compte qu'il ne me reste que quatre semaines de boulot. Ce n'est pas vrai! Le temps est passé trop vite. J'ai commencé à être à l'aise avec la langue, la ville, ma vie ici en France il n'y a que deux semaines. Tout d'un coup comme ça. Dans sept semaines je pars. Wow. Je commence à me poser des questions comme 'Est-ce-que j'ai profité a fond de cette experience?' 'Est-ce que c'est fini avec la France?' 'Est ce que je reviendrai?' Est ce-que je suis prêt à aller travailler aux USA?' 'Est ce que j'ai fait mon boulot le mieux possible?' Je ne sais pas, mais c'est sûre que il y a eu des hauts et des bas, et je suis quand même resté. Je vais partir beaucoup mieux que la derniere fois. Je rentre aux USA avec une envie de revenir en France au lieu d'un coeur bien dur et noir. Mais ce n'est pas encore fini, j'ai encore plein de montagnes à grimper, conversations à partager, bisous à donner, vin et bière à boire, et frommage à manger. Ciao bella.

I am here at the Soult High School after a pretty long day. I was talking with some teachers and I realised that I onlt have four more weeks of work. I can't believe it! The time has flown by. It wasn't until about two weeks ago that I started to feel realy comfortable with the language, the city, the work, my life here in France. All of a sudden. In seven weeks I leave. Wow. I am starting to ask myself questions like, ' Did I take full advantage of this experience?' 'Am I done with France?' 'Will I come back?' 'Am I ready to have a real job in the States?' 'Did I do my job the best that I could?' I don't know, but it is sure that there were good times and bad times, and I stayed all the same. I am going to leave here a lot better than the last time. I am coming back to the States with a desire to come back to France instead of a hard and dark heart. But it is still not finished... there are still mountains to be climbed, conversatins to be had, people to meet, wine and beer to drink, and cheese to eat. Ciao bella.

Envy, proximity, tristess

These are three words i have chosen to describe the weekend with. Art, Dianna, Jon and Kelly have arrived in France. After a less than stellar ride around the airport they made it to Martina and Farid's house. Happy to be there, but even happier to be out of the car.

The envy came the next day when we left the appartment in our rented Opel to head down to Paris to drop off the girls and then bomb down to Fontainebleau for some world class bouldering. After a little detour provided by me we arrived at classic Font bouldering. Boulder after boulder sticking out of perfect landings. It was a little damp, but we weren't going to let it ruin our time. I was just as excited for Jon and Art to climb, but sadly i couldn't climb at all. My arm is still all messed. We climbed and climbed until we decided to go to Cul du Chien. Think of a white sand beach where you take a handful of rocks and dump them on the beach. That was this place only it was God's hand and there was no water in sight. We stayed until the sun started to go down. Realizing at this point that we hadn't eaten that much we shared the apple and two bananas we had brought and headed back to eat and converse with the Lattars. Our last night in Paris we drove down into the city. It was a perfect Paris by night experience. We saw everything and i got to drive around the Arc du Triomphe which is a crazy roundabout in Paris, at the top of the Champs Elyesee.

Proximity was the ride down to Castres, the not so culturally laden city where I live. There were five of us in the car for more than ten hours on the road. The best part of the day, other than arriving, was when we stopped for lunch. Happy just to be out of the car we went in to get some sandwiches and to stretch. After talking to the girl behind the counter for a second i realized that we were not in the French area of the city. She spoke to me in French, but told her probable uncle in the back our order in Arabic. We had happened upon the Arabic section of this city, and we were in luck. She asked where we were from and genuinely smiled when I told her we were Americans. We ate really good kebabs and fries, and sadly got back in the car where Art proceeded to make a nest in the back to sleep.

Tristesse, sadness, came in two days when at the parking lot of the Intermarche here in Castres we hugged and parted. Jon drove the group to Toulouse to put Art and Dianna on a train to Geneva (should have been Genova, but I didn't ask enough questions, imagine their surprise at Switzerland instead of Italy) and Jon and Kelly went by car back up to Paris to head for Prague. It was great to have them here, but more culturally rich cities await them in other parts of Europe.

Little orange book

Learning a new language means that you are constantly hearing words that you are unfamiliar with. To help with this i carry around a 3x4 Rhodia notebook in my back pocket. By now it is seeing quite a bit of wear, but it has everything in there from journal entries to groceries to email addresses. On my way to go see Art, Dianna, Jon and Kelly in Paris I had to take the metro for a little while, I pulled out my trusty friend to document a small girl with her grandmother who got on the train. For those of you who have ridden public transportation in a big city, you will know what this is like.

She brought immense joy to everyone around her. Unchecked smiles and regards, she was hungry for every eye around her, she was given only a few. She was responsible for the attitude change of half of a Paris metro train, that is power. Usually stressed women asked her about her day, and when the woman next to her left, an oncoming woman pulled down the seat so that her plastic baby could 'sleep'.

This five minute scene got me thinking. The power of innocence, a look and smile purely out of joy. Just a small glimpse of a day.

Tired of being the representative

I was in Caen one night at David’s house when I had had enough. One of David’s friends had come to the house to play some music with David, and the conversation that ensued was typical of first meetings, but I didn’t want to deal with it this time.
Steryotypes. They present a problem. Usually when the conversation turns to the USA there is not a whole lot of positive things said. I try to correct things where I can , but for the most part, I agree with their statements. Still, after an hour of hearing someone dog your country, and multiply that by a few times a month, I don’t care who you are, it gets old. This particular guy proceeded to talk about how he saw on TV one time a girl in the US who didn’t know where Budapest was, she thought it was the capitol of Europe. Fine, like I say here, there are unintelligent people everywhere, but he was telling this story as if I wasn’t there, and then looks at me and asks, “So is it true, Americans don’t know where Budapest is on a map?”

I wanted to say ‘Yes, it is true, we are all complete morons.’…and then punch him in his face. I told him I didn’t know, and I then proceeded to tell him how sick I was of being the mouthpiece for 260 million Americans. I don’t know all of them. But I told him that all of my family, and most of my friends know where it is. And when I told Laura about this, she made the point that if you are going to judge an entire country by the response of one girl to a geography question there is seriously something wrong. Of course for those of us who have traveled it is a no-brainer. And sure some americans don't know this one small detail, but ask Bob or Josh about brewing, Jon, BJ or Garrett about climbing, Eli about anything sportsman, Glen about nutrition, Kevin, Mark or Laura about literature, and they’ll blow your mind.

This is a microcosm of what I am facing here, what the world is facing. But what is even more shocking, and what I realized was that we believe what we see on TV. Almost every commentary I hear here about the US starts out with “one time I saw a report on the US and they said…” The funny thing is that we do the same thing. When we talk about other countries we play off what we see in films and on TV. Some less than others, but for the most part we go off what we 'know'. I would love for someone to approach me and ask me if what they saw was true, or better yet to ask me what my life looks like where I live. They are amazed when I tell them that I am super conscious about what I consume, that I bike more than drive and that I don’t eat McDonald’s or drink Coke.

I wonder about the first conversations that westerners had with people from India, from Thailand, from China. Well of course they weren’t always easy, language difficulties, but I pose the question because I wonder what it was like to have no idea what you were going to find in a place before you got there. It is almost as if there is no room to be curious or to make a cultural, social error. We shy away from asking questions that might not be intelligent not “culturally sensitive” and instead make statements as if we know how ‘it’ all works. I shied away from being myself many times since I have been here because I didn’t want to be ‘that’ American in France. Turns out I am American.

Just a quick example of how trying to be overly culturally sensitive can make you a jerk. I have a girlfriend who is American. I like her. She is funny, she is smart, and sometimes she is loud; especially when she is excited about something. Normal right? Few people are super loud, and especially when you are in the market, it is difficult to hear people’s conversations. So first day Laura is excited to see me and I have the impression that she is yelling in my ear. I let her know and she gives me a look. No less than twice more within the next few days I correct her, until she looks at me and I know I have gone to far.

When we last left our fair hero…

…he was injured, but doing well. But was in desperate need of a break from school. Well a few weeks later that break came. I was so happy to have a few weeks off just to relax and go to see some friends in the north of France. Just to keep you up to date on a few happenings that have gone on. Because of my injury I had to find a new way to keep in some shape, and since my soon-to-be sweet fixie isn’t ready, I decided to start running. A group of us from the CAF (Club Alpine Francais) got together to do a relay run. I did my first 20km (12 miles) race ever, and liked it well enough. I wasn’t so stoked however on the training part. I got real bored real quick.

Just got back from visiting up in the north of the country. I was at Martina and Farid’s house which is just north of Paris, and then for five days I was in Caen, the city where I studied in 2006. The weather was much colder, but as soon as I stepped into the house of Martina and Farid, I was home. I told them that their house is the one place outside of the US that feels like home. They are a part of a ministry here in france called Mimestry. Farid is from Algeria and Martina is from Germany. They went to the US to be trained by a guy named Todd Farley. After their one year training they came back to France to start up their own ministry.

I went up to Caen after a weekend with them, where I wanted to visit some friends who I had met when I was there earlier. The family Robidou was one I didn’t want to miss. As well as David, now having his doctorate in Psycology, and being a great cook, we had a good time just reading, relaxing, eating everything ‘à la crème freche’.

The Saga Continues

The weekend was spectacular. We went to an area called Fauson not but an hour away from Mazamet for some beautiful craging. Line after line of beautiful limestone routes. We all banned together on two 5c’s (5.10a) to start with, and then à chaqu’un son gout (to each his own). I climbed this beautiful 6b (5.10d) to start on and then up my first 7b (5.12a/b) with two big rests. I was so inspired by the movement there and excited that I didn’t have any pain in my arm that I got on a 6c (5.11b) that was super delicate and technical. You had to stay in balance the whole time, all the holds were positive, but just enough that you couldn’t rest all the way through. I was having one of my best climbing days. I could feel my technique changing, using my feet and body much better than normal. More flowing up the rock than climbing 'comme un caillou qui tombe' (like a falling rock).

Then, the morning after…disaster. The same pain, the same place, and rest for another month.
Injured once again. This elbow just continues to be giving me problems. Tendinitis that just won't go away. I haven’t lost heart just yet, I am still high off the climb, but I hope I don’t. There isn’t a lot of asking why, because I know that this isn’t a punishment, but at the same time there is still some ‘slowness’ that I am learning.

Weekend in Ariege

Ariege is in the Pyrenees mountains about two and a half hours from where I live. It was my first outing since I found out I had some tendonitis in my elbow and I was super excited to get going. A group of seven of us went down for a climbing weekend and a bouldering comp. Saturday when we got there the beautiful weather that they had announced was less than, so the multi-pitch we were going to do changed into some steep routes in half rain and the cold. We had a great time none the less, but at four in the afternoon we left to go to the indoor climbing area not but twenty minutes away.

The comp was in an old converted mechanic shop. Sixty routes were set for about as many competitors. We had a little meeting to tell us how it was going to go, and then we had two hours to do climb what we wanted. IT WAS GREAT! For two and a half hours we climbed, I did about nineteen routes, among some conversation and just the general excitement of the room. It was all on an honor system, and it was more like a bouldering session than a comp. Every once in a while a group of about five or more would get super psyched about a problem and a group would form to cheer them on and talk.

That evening we were going to camp, but a friend of a friend asked us to come back and sleep at their apartment. On a fait la fete. We had a party. It might that I am over the party scene, and this is probably the thing, but they could go all night. At about two I was out. It was fun, dancing to Buena Vista Social Club, talking, getting complements on my hat that Laura made for me, and taking pictures with one of our group who was asleep at about 1.

The next day we had blue skies and great temperatures in Calames, one of the sectors there in Ariege. We climbed for hours and hours in the sun, until we decided that we had our fill and our light jackets were not doing the job. Two and a half hours later I was in my apartment feeling much better than my last post.