I've Been in France Longer Than I Thought

Today hasn't gone quite as planned. I left my apartment at 6:15 this morning with high hopes of spending the day exploring Paris: the Christmas market, some of the shops, going ice-skating outside, etc. Unfortunately, it turns out that the snow I was so looking forward to seeing in Paris was going to freeze my plans (pun intended, hehe). The train tracks between St-Omer and Lille were blocked, so the 7:12 train I had intended to take wasn't running. A woman announced that a bus would come to bring all of us stranded passengers to Hazebrouck, and from there we could the train to Lille. Unfortunately, she had no idea when the bus would be coming, and ultimately it didn't arrive until after 9:30.

I was able to kill time by talking with a random guy. He sat down next to me while I was on the phone with Emily, and then laughed at something I said, thus revealing he spoke English. When they were making announcements about the delays, we teamed up to pool our less-than-perfect French to figure out what was happening. Don't get too excited - yes, I'm on the hunt for a French boyfriend, but he won't be it because he was a) much shorter than me; b) Mexican (and therefore not French); and c) returning home to Mexico around the time I get back. It was nice to have someone to pass the time with, though. It turns out that we know a few of the same people because he was studying at the business school in St-Omer, and I went to one of their parties with Estela a couple of weeks ago. I'm convinced that there is a maximum of two degrees of separation between me and everyone else in St-Omer by now. It's such a small place that it has gotten to the point that I run into people I know (especially students) almost everywhere that I go. I've always wanted to live in a small town for just that reason! While waiting at the train station, I saw two of my students. It was cute because one was with his family, which includes two little brothers who look just like him. He awkwardly waved at me, and then pointed me out to his mom.


By the time I finally arrived in Paris and to my hotel, it was 3:00pm. I had intended to be here at 11:00am, so sadly this delay forced me to cancel my plans to explore. My hotel is so far from the center of town and it gets dark so early that it just wouldn't have been worth it. Alas, I still have not seen Paris at Christmas. Hopefully next year. While killing time at the hotel, I looked through all of the pictures I've taken since being here, and one in particular stuck out to me. What is it about this picture that strikes me? It's the fact that my friend Alexandre (the only guy in the photo) is wearing a shirt almost as low-cut as my dress, and it wasn't until now that I noticed it. I think that's a true testament to how long I've been in France. If I saw a guy wearing that in the United States, I'd assume he was gay or had bad taste, but here in France, I've become okay with guys wearing v-neck shirts. Yikes.

I started reflecting, and you can see the French influence on more than just my social network and acceptance of male v-necks. Because I love lists:

1. I enjoy cooking for myself now. While I can still be lazy about it and settle for simple recipes, I've also experimented with a lot of new stuff. This includes touching raw meat for the first time.

2. I'm not such a mangy mess anymore. Granted, this was bound to happen as soon as I got a real job, but instead of going for the typical les cazh (lesbian casual) the I've opted for in jobs past, I've actually started putting effort into looking cute. Earrings, mascara, and scarves have become standard and are seldom left at home. It's all part of being a TILF. Hahaha.

3. People understand me when I speak to them. It's awesome. I still have a long way to go, but my comprehension and communication has improved exponentially.

4. Escargots don't make me want to retch. I still don't like the texture, but when eaten with bread and the right sauce, they can be quite tasty.

5. Drinking wine has become a pleasurable experience. It all started with my beloved vin du pays, which costs 2,60 euros a bottle. Now I like the higher end stuff too. And by higher end, I still mean less than 10 euros.

Yet, how nice it'll be to have two weeks back home! I can't wait!

Desperate Times

Now that my internet situation is finally improved, I am making my triumphant (ha) return to blogging. Don't worry, I won't depress you like I did when I was in Scotland. Life in Saint-Omer is going really well. I'm feeling very settled here - I love my new apartment, we finally have internet at our apartment (hopefully it'll last), and I have made a lot of friends here. Included is a picture to prove that I am only a loner when I travel by myself. It was taken to commemorate our bootleg Thanksgiving dinner, which consisted of a baguette, salad, green bean casserole, stuffing and mashed potatoes.

In total, there are six language assistants in St-Omer. Four of us are American: Rachael, my roommate, Christine, Tara and me. There is also a German assistant, Carina, and a Spanish assistant, Estela. Tara, Estela, and Carina all live together in the school where they work. Rachael and I have an apartment near the center of town, and Christine lives with her boyfriend, Julien, who she met when she was an assistant here last year. We really lucked out with that because it gave us a built-in social life. Julien is studying at a nearby engineering school, so basically all of his friends are guys. Unfortunately, it turns out that all attractive French men have girlfriends.

Shortly after arriving in France, I realized that working only 12 hours a week left me with too much time on my hands. The perfect solution? Having a French boyfriend, of course. Not only would I have an automatic time-filler, I'd improve my French! Ideally he would have either a car or a motorcycle/moped so that I wouldn't have to carry my "milk bricks" home from the grocery store. Unfortunately, finding the perfect French boyfriend has been more difficult than expected. The only guys fawning over me are either a) creepy and overly persistent, or b) still in high school. Out of curiosity, I looked up the age of consent in France - Emily had been making jokes about me dating a student - and I discovered that it's only 15, but I think we can all agree that it would be really freaking weird if I went there. Not to mention unprofessional!

Yet at my school, there are also students who have taken the bac, that is to say finished high school, and are continuing in a program (BTS) that is the rough equivalent of a community college education. Therefore, they are 18+. Apparently teachers have married BTS students in the past. They are technically fair game for me, especially since I'm not a true teacher, but I resolved not to date any of them. After all, they're still students. Yet, I think that my decision was affected by the fact that none of the guys in my two BTS classes are very attractive. My resolve has since weakened, partly because the supply of single guys is limited and partly because I met an absurdly cute BTS student last week.

It all started when my supervising teacher, Marianne, asked me to come to her class and help the students with essays they were writing. One student in particular had a question that she wanted me to answer, and I couldn't help but notice that he was incredibly good-looking. Tall, brown hair, blue eyes...and guys speaking French just makes whatever they say to me sexier. It was cute because at the end of class he asked Marianne if I could come back and help them again. She told him it was up to me, and because I am so nice (and getting desperate) I agreed. And I'll be honest: I wore my tightest jeans to the following class.

Annoyingly, I didn't have a chance to talk to him at the next lesson because a bunch of his classmates had questions for me. How dare they put their academic needs ahead of the cure to my boredom. I was forced to leave that Friday without knowing his name or age, which were two pieces of information I had intended to collect. I did find out that one of his classmates is 22, so that gave me hope that he was my age and heightened my interest. Reaching a new low in terms of desperation, I announced to Marianne at a dinner party the next day - attended by two of her friends from Britain, her 22-year-old daughter, Anne, Christine, Julien, and Rachael - that I thought one of her BTS students was really hot. She knew exactly who I was talking about and said that he had seemed interested, but unfortunately, one of the girls had turned to him at one point and said, "Don't you have a girlfriend?" Of course he does. They all do. What a shame. He even had a motorcycle.

It's a little sad to have gotten to the point that I'm ready to date my students, but I don't even care anymore. Don't worry - I haven't relaxed all of my standards. The following are still in effect:

1) He must be at least 20 (That's not too young, right? I'm only 22...);
2) He must not have a girlfriend;
3) He must not live with his parents (Is it bad that I'm wondering if I should leave any flexibility here?);
4) He must live in or near St-Omer or at least have an easy means of transportation;

and most importantly...

5) I must be genuinely interested in him - no dating purely based on boredom.

As I'm headed home for Christmas in less than a week, I'm not optimistic about my prospects, but I'll resume the hunt after Christmas!

No Prince Here

I'm in St. Andrews, which is probably best known for housing the university that is Prince William's alma mater (random thought: do any of you know if Prince Harry went to college? Or was he too busy dressing up in racist costumes snorting alcohol?). I've spent the last two nights at Chelsea and her boyfriend Matt's apartment and am staying here tonight as well. I was originally planning on leaving for Glasgow today, but I realized that there wasn't actually much that I wanted to see there and would rather spend an extra day here. We've had a pretty low-key visit because there isn't a ton to do in St. Andrews, but it's a nice change from traveling alone. It's nice staying with people I know, especially people who make me cocktails in the evening and hot chocolate in the morning. Chelsea showed me around St. Andrews and we've spent some time with her and Matt's friends. One highlight was watching House of Wax, starring Paris Hilton, on Halloween. Haha, to be perfectly honest, I can't say that my life is any better having seen that movie, but it isn't any worse either.

That's all for now. I just wanted you all to know that I'm not sulking anymore. I plan to enjoy my last two days here and will upload some pictures once I get back to France. Ugh, fingers crossed that our internet will finally be working.

All By Myself (sung loudly, mournfully)

It's 9:00pm, and I'm back at the internet cafe for the evening. I didn't manage to make any friends today either. In my defense, everyone had already left my room or was still alseep when I was getting ready to head out this morning at 10:00am. Since there were no prospective friends, I went back to the internet cafe to look up some information for the rest of my travels. Unfortunately becoming a regular at this place hasn't led to me finding friends. Instead I spent the day alone.

I started off at Edinburgh Castle. It was £12 to enter, so I thought seriously about whether or not it was worth it to me. Ultimately I decided that I would probably regret it if I didn't enter and, as my dad's daughter, I made sure that I saw all of the parts that were open just to get my money's worth. I definitely didn't spend as long as he would have though. Surprisingly, it was roasting - I thought it would be drafty - and I ended up having to rush through one of the exhibits. As much as I wanted to know the history behind the Honours of Scotland, I didn't want to smack my head against a stone wall if I fainted from the heat.

Once I wrapped up there, I headed out to explore the Princes Street Gardens. There was a winding path leading down from the castle into the gardens and crossing over the train tracks. It was a bit secluded back there and I couldn't help but be slightly worried that a psycho would attack me while I was strolling along. I know I was just being paranoid though - the most dangerous person I saw was a girl posing for pictures wearing a tee-shirt that said "Daddy's Girl" just before I crossed over to the more populated part of the park. Feeling safer, I sat on a bench and wrote in my journal to kill some time. Since I haven't had anyone to talk to all day, I had to write to myself.

From the gardens, I headed back to the High Street and walked into the other direction until I reached the Scottish Parliament and Holyrood Palace, the Scottish residence of the Royal Family. The Parliament building was really interesting looking because it was partially made of stone in the old castle-like style, but then it had a newer design over it that looked sort of like a cross between the Sydney Opera House and a bird cage. On the other side of the street, there was the palace, but having just seen the Edinburgh Castle, I wasn't that excited by it. Instead, I wandered into the park, and then decided to hike up a bit into the Salisbury Crags. You should google them. At the edge of the city, there are gorgeous cliffs that have a phenomenal view of the city and surrounding areas. I got as far up them as I could and took some pictures before heading back down.

At the bottom, I meant to sit and rest on the benches outside Parliament to take a minute to look over my trip budget, but there was a man walking around with a hawk-like bird that he was letting fly away and then calling back to him. I had this image of the bird attacking me, so I decided to find somewhere else to sit. There was a bench a little ways up the road, so I settled down there, and then I continued on to buy postcards. There was a Starbucks on the way back to the main part of High Street, so I wrote the postcards there while drinking another yummy hot chocolate.

By the time I was done, I didn't really know what to do with myself. I had seen everything that I planned on seeing in Edinburgh and it was getting dark. I decided to go to the movies again, but when I got there, I still had over an hour and a half until the movie started. I wandered around a nearby shopping center during that time and wrote in my journal again, and finally it was 6:00. I went to go see Up, expecting to be the oldest person there without kids, but there were actually a bunch of young adults there. I was the only one by myself though. I have to say, it's a little depressing going to the movies alone, but I didn't have anything better to do - my hostel only leads a pub crawl on Thursdays.

I'm not sorry that I came here by myself, but I am very excited about meeting up with Chelsea tomorrow in St. Andrew's. To be honest, I don't really know what's in the town other than the university, but I hear it's beautiful and I can't wait to be around someone that I know.

Livin' La Vida Loner

Okay, the title of this post is possibly the cheesiest thing ever, but since I'm not convinced that anyone actually reads my blog, I'm going with it.

I'm currently in Edinburgh and it's nearing 11:00pm. Since leaving my friend Lucy's earlier this afternoon I have checked into my hostel in Edinburgh, wandered around town, had two hot chocolates by myself at Starbucks (on separate occasions), and seen a movie by myself. Basically, I've been trying to kill time until it's what I consider to be an appropriate time to go back to my hostel and go to sleep. I know that Melissa and Jillian may both be scandalized, but I'm not a big fan of hostelling by myself. Although I always find myself in conversations with strangers on buses, trains, airplanes, etc., I'm not good at finding friends in hostels. I don't know why, but I find it intimidating when I don't have other friends with me - I guess I feel like I'm imposing my company on them. To be honest, I probably should have joined the hostel's pub crawl this evening, but being a hermit, I avoided it. Tomorrow I may try to do better, but if not, this internet cafe is open until 11:00pm and I can just come here again. I'd better lay off the Starbucks, though. There's no way that those giant mugs of chocolatey goodness topped off with whipped cream aren't clogging my arteries.

Grah, I've just been given a 10-minute warning, so I need to sign off. I guess I'll have to write more tomorrow. Yay, I'm just glad that I've managed to find things to do till 11:0pm. Fingers crossed that there are no bed bugs at this place tonight...

Je suis vraiment charmante

The internet in our apartment still isn't working and my school block's this website, so my opportunities to update my blog have been limited. Since I have such a big following, I'm sure this has been tragic. Luckily, I can now fill you in on the highlights of the last couple of weeks.

The Friday before last, I hit up a French club for the first time. It was my roommate's birthday, so we had the other language assistants of St-Omer over for dinner, and then we decided to go to Lille with one of their boyfriends and his French friends. It wasn't quite as exciting as I hoped it would be, but the good news is that we actually made it to the club. A bit of history for you: the last time I attempted to go clubbing in France, I ended up napping and peeing under the Eiffel Tower (not simultaneously, mind you).

We tried to get into this club that is supposed to be really good, but one of the guys we were with was deemed to be underdressed by the bouncer, so we all left and went to a salsa bar around the corner. I had an awesome sangria, but spent most of my time trying to avoid this obscenely drunk guy who kept weaving through our group and trying to get one of us to dance with him. So awkward - it was like watching a wolf try to pick off the weakest in the pack. Luckily, none of us fell prey to him.

Right at the end of the evening, I noticed a guy out of the corner of my eye who seemed to be staring at me. I glanced over, only to see him doing what looked way too much like the fishline. I swear, I think he was attempting to reel me in. Quickly, I looked away and tried not to send over any positive vibes. Yet a bit later he was still at it, and my friend Estela noticed and said, "C'est pour toi" (that's for you). I looked over again, and the guy was STILL staring at me, but instead of hand gestures, he had progressed to gyrating his hips in my direction in what I guess he must have thought was an irrisitable fashion. It was violating. I'm not kidding. This guy was a good six feet away from me, but he still managed to make me feel completely sketched out. I glared at him, turned back to my friends, and kept dancing. After a few minutes, Estela and I decided to take a break, so we went and sat down in a place that was out of the creeper's eyeline. Yet, he remained undeterred. He pelvic thrusted his way around the corner and continued trying to eyef*ck me. Not okay.

When we got up to leave the club, we had to walk right past him, so I decided to just not look at him and pass by as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, I wasn't quick enough: he managed to snag my arm and murmur, "Tu es vraiment charmante." I pulled my arm out of his grasp, shook my head at him, and kept going. Only slightly miffed, he continued to watch me as I grabbed my coat and left with our group. Seriously, what the hell? Someone needs to teach him how to read body language.

I'm in the UK right now staying with my friend Lucy in Penrith. It's not the most exciting little town, but it's cute. After our lunch yesterday, I decided that I want to live in a small Irish or British town and work at a pub. More updates later.

I'm supposed to be an adult

My first week in France is almost over, and so far here are the highlights:

1. I was mistaken for a student...by a 15-year-old boy who thought I was his classmate.
2. A few students have awkwardly hit on me. One boy asked me if I had a facebook and another got excited when I said I was 22. Apparently, that's not too old for him, but I disagree. I definitely don't plan on dipping into the French teenaged-boy dating pool. I might find a lot of success there, but I'm guessing I'd also find jail time. My mom's caution about that before I left was NOT necessary. I would not go there.
3. I've been experimenting with cooking. It took me two hours to cook my first chicken breast, but it tasted great once I was done and had sliced off the burnt bit on the bottom. I'm fairly certain that means I didn't give myself salmonella, so I'm excited about that. Even so, I think vegetariansm may be the way to go. I don't have the patience for meat.
4. My roommate and I have become serious about moving out. We have an appointment to look at an apartment on Thursday afternoon. It is a two-bedroom and the bathroom actually has a toilet! I practically had to wipe saliva off the ad when I read it, I was that excited. However, now I'm trying not to get my hopes up in case it doesn't work out. But man, the idea of all that space is amazing!

That's all for now. I'll write an update when something exciting happens. Fingers crossed that I be announcing that I've moved soon.

I don't speak the French

I am in France now, and the interesting/scary thing about that is that most of people here speak French. I know, who would have thought? Yet apparently, I was in denial because instead of spending the last three weeks of my summer practicing my French, I sat around on my ass, occasionally leaving the house to buy a smoothie.

When I arrived in Paris, I had no problem traveling to Saint-Omer despite the two trains and three train stations I had to deal with to get here. In fact, I gave myself a mental pat on the back (Aluma-style) for doing so without any problems. It wasn't until Marianne, a teacher from my school, met me at the train station that I realized the sad truth: I don't actually speak that much French. My grammar is pretty good after all the Spanish I have taken, but along the way, I managed to miss out on a lot of vital vocabularly words.

A perfect example of this occurred earlier this morning. My roommate had to leave for work at 7:45 this morning, so the noise of her getting ready in our tiny apartment woke me. Sometime after she left, our doorbell rang, and I opened it to find a repair man who was there to fix our leaky sink. Seeing as I had a good two hours before I needed to start getting ready for work, I figured he'd have plenty of time to finish before I needed to shower. I went ahead and ate my cereal while he got to work, and then took out a book to read. Meanwhile, he discovered that he had forgotten various tools and wandered off at least three times to go get them. I continued to read while keeping an eye on the clock.

The repair man seemed to notice that I was waiting around and he asked if I needed to take a shower. Since I don't speak French, I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure that he told me I could go ahead and do it. Seriously?? No way was I going to shower with some random guy holding a wrench just on the other side of the shower curtain. Maybe I haven't seen the movie Psycho myself, but I have heard of the infamous shower scene!

An hour later, he was still there. Finally, I got up the courage to ask him if he was almost done, and thankfully, he was. I was worried that I was going to have to explain to him that I wasn't comfortable with him being in the apartment while I showered. Fingers crossed that the sink continues to work, or that it at least holds together until I can learn how to handle awkward situations like that.

Why do I do this to myself?

I haven't left for France yet, but I felt compelled to start a blog today. I have chosen to name it "J'ai fait quoi?" which is supposed to mean "I did what?". This isn't an expression that they use much in French, but Melissa's former host sister says that it's fine. I think the name is fitting because I'm going to be trying a lot of new things over the coming months, like living in France and learning how to be a real adult. It also works because I often do silly, embarrassing, and/or somewhat stupid things. Today is no exception.

I'm currently still in Bellingham, even though I was meant to have left for Seattle almost four hours ago. As usual, my attempts to get my room ready and packed in advance were unsuccessful, making my departure as stressful as possible. I hate to say it, but my mom is right to nag me (Sisters, you may not quote me on that). Luckily, she has shown remarkable self-restraint and I've yet to receive much of a lecture. We'll see if that's still the case when she gets back from the store - she's currently buying me a larger suitcase so that I can actually fit in the stuff that I need to bring. I'm disappointed that I won't have time to see Mel, Auntie Cayan, Lola, and Averi in Seattle before I leave, but I desperately needed the extra time to get ready. I'll even get a real night's sleep tonight, unlike last night when I stayed up till 4:00am trying to make my room presentable. I need to stop procrastinating.