Well long time no update! Life has been cray-cray! But I’m updating on this side of the Atlantic so thats coolio! But I am leaving tomorrow, taking the red-eye and arriving in France Thursday morning. I’m going to be really sad to leave, but I’ve established a life there and I’m kind of ready to get back to that which is kind of a strange thought. If anyone knows someone who needs an American girl to work for them in France… let me know! 🙂
Anyways, BARCELONA!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am in LOVE with that city. My new life goal is to learn Spanish and move there for a year. I need direction in my life so that is a good goal in my opinion.
I’m just going to do pictures for this post because I’m just not sure my words can do the beauty and wonder of this city justice. But I’ll outline what we did: Picasso Museum (amazing!), Parc Guell, Sagrada Familia, Beach (Barceloneta), wandering around the city eating paella, tapas, and drinking sangria! YUMMMM! And of course loved all the Gaudi architecture!
carnavale mask! appropriate because today is mardi gras
me by the harbor
Spanish street! gettin' artsy up in here
Gaudi architechture
parc guell, mosaics loved this!
gaudi gift shop in parc guell
mosaics be errywhurr
Front of Sagrada Familia SO AMAZING
Back of the Sagrada Familia
BeAcH!!!!
view from Parc Guell of the city, including Sagrada Familia
HOLA!!! Notice, I’m starting this off in Spanish instead of French! I suppose I should really be doing it in Catalan, but I haven’t quite gotten around to looking that up. Anyways, the adventure has commenced! I am currently on the TGV on my way to Paris so that I can leave tomorrow!!!!
i'm in the right seat ya'll check that out!
I’m very proud because I am in the correct car and seat so WIN! However as usual, I have way too much stuff with me and I’m annoying people all around with my gros sacs. I have a giant suitcase full of goodies and surprises for loved ones in the US, plus my backpack for Barcelona, and then another sac that has breakable items/laptop/books that I’ve already read in it. I’m getting a seriously awesome workout lugging these bad boys around… guns of steel baby guns of steel!
Well to recount, I’ve had a very shall we say… interesting week. Tuesday was a pretty good day because I got to eat galettes and crepes at Odile’s house. Odile is the lady who took us up in the hills picking grapes and stuff earlier this year. I love galettes and crepes and these were wonderfully homemade and so YUM! Plus we spoke in French the whole time and Odile was like “gurl yo French is balla!” except not like that at all, but anyways that’s basically what was said. However on Tuesday sheesh got weird at school because I told the Principal that I would not be there Thursday because of my medical visit. Because Ron Burgundy is who he is, he was like “Meaghan why aren’t you going to be in school on Thursday?” Before I could respond he started throwing out options, like “its your boyfriend isn’t it?” and I was like no not at all. Then clearly since it wasn’t my boyfriend, the next logical conclusion he drew was that I was a lesbian. He goes “oh well if it’s not your boyfriend then it must be your girlfriend… Ah I’ve found your secret!!” And started winking at me. I was like no absolutely not that is not my life haha. He was like “don’t lie, you Americans are so funny!” I was just like you are a nut Ron Burgundy, you are a nut.
I also found out that the Spandex King is as old as my dad, which was weird. He definitely looks like he is 65-70 range and my dad is not anywhere near that. He was talking to me about the movie, “the Incredible Shrinking Man” which came out in 1957 and I was like “oh I’ve never seen it, it came out the year my dad was born so…” and he goes “oh your dad was born then? Me too!” It was weird like so many other things.
Also I was proprosed to by a student, again. This is now the second proposal I’ve received from 5th graders. Sw33t Lyfe.
But really the biggest news all week is about my medical visit. As you know, I had two canceled and then got myself locked inside an apartment all day for the third one, so my one yesterday was my fourth. Thankfully it was not canceled, I made it there on time and everything seemed to be going well. The doctor was really nice and telling me how he thinks its silly Americans have to do it because if you can afford to come to France, you can afford health care, meaning we aren’t bringing infectious diseases into the country, which is a pretty valid argument. When he looked at my X-rays he said, “In all my life, I’ve never seen an American with tuberculosis” and I was like I mean is it really that common anymore? His response, “yes it is I see it all the time and I deny people their visas because of it.” Definitely realized how “first world” this conversation was. Anyways so that was all good, I went in for my interview with the lady who would give me my Stamp-thing that tells customs that “this person is allowed to enter France, their visa is valid” or something like that. I realized something was wrong when she started throwing her hands up in the air pacing going “I know I saw it I know I know” which when I asked what was going on, she replied “ I can’t find your stamp” To say that I was freaked out is an understatement. So the conclusion is, someone lost it. Somehow my folder had a photocopy of it, but not the actual thing… great job OFII of Lyon, thank you so much for doing your job and keeping everything together. So now I have a handwritten letter on the photo-copy saying I can enter but…. I’m SCARED!!!!
This is just a pretty great example of beauracracy here. I love France very much and I love every minute here even the bad ones, but sometimes I just want to strangle someone and say THIS WOULDN’T HAPPEN BACK HOME!!!!!! When the OFII guy was trying to figure out who exactly lost it, every single person blamed the post. He was like no, the post did not open an envelope take out that sticker and throw it in the trash, it was lost before it was sent but no one would claim responsibility. He looked at me and says, “I work with a bunch of idiots.” I laughed it was funny.
I’m realizing that my animals unit with the Spandex King has proven to be super eventful. Amusing things just seem to keep happening! Yesterday, I realized that French makes everything cooler sounding. We are talking about sharks and the SK starts talking about a movie called “Les dents de la mer” or “The Teeth of the Sea” which I just figured to be “Jaws” because hello what other shark movie has such notoriete?
Sharktopus excluded
Turns out I was right, it is “Jaws.” But then I realized that “The Teeth of the Sea” sounds way more bad ass than Jaws… Think about it, we all have jaws and we say things like “my jaw hurts” if you chew too much gum or something. That doesn’t really evoke the image of man eating sharks. On the other hand “The Teeth of the Sea” or even “Sea Teeth” is clearly talking about something large and in charge.
check out those pearly whites
If I saw that poster today, I would say “I NEED TO SEE THIS MOVIE NOW” because sharks are awesome. I would think, “those are some prettttty big sea teeth right there and that shark is totally going to be eating people” which is probably what everyone in France thought 35 years ago when the movie came out. They were all probably like YUP gotta see that! In English “Jaws” is synonomous with sharks now because of this movie but all I’m saying is that I think the French way is much more creatively descriptive and that English can be kind of boring.
I know we have a lot of expressions in English, however the French have like 8,000 more. I’m convinced there is an expression for everything here. It makes life spicy. I’ve also realized that in English sometimes we just don’t have words for things, or at least I don’t know these words. Here there are like 15 different kinds of hats that one can wear on a daily basis. I call all of them hats because they sit on your head. But one teacher was like “what about bonnets? and chapeaux? and berets? and chapeaux de cowboys? and ones for skiiing? and ones when it is warm but not too warm? and ones to sleep? and…” My response was, “well I do say cowboy hat, and I say beret, but everything else is a hat. Simply a hat.” You would have thought that I insulted her mother or something by the way she was looking at me.
Another interesting experience I had was having a conversation about the NBA with some guys here. They were like “you are SO lucky you live in America and can see NBA players all the time” and I was like well not really I don’t live near any teams. Their response was, so? It’s America and they all live there. I was like look guys I can’t just day-trip up to Boston and see Kevin Garnett grocery shopping it doesn’t work that way. All they got out of that was Kevin Garnett and grocery shopping which was not the point. Le sigh…
Mego In France 