audrey tautou and team tandoori

I’m determined to soak up as much sun as possible, but also ashamed about my lack of blogging. So today I compromise: I’m currently sitting in the quiet courtyard outside of my apartment, where the sun’s early-afternoon rays create a speckled show of light and shadow before hiding themselves behind the building for the hottest part of the day. I’m probably straining my eyes to the point of blindness to see the screen and text beyond the sunny glare but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

Many modifications need to be made to the post before this because things have certainly changed. First and foremost (and perhaps saddest of all) is the fact that Paul and I are no longer getting chickens. Please take the time you need to process this news and its implications (no fresh omelets?!) before moving on. Unfortunately, Paul’s dad made him warn the neighbors that we’d be housing two poules in our miniature back yard, and some bitter single woman on the 6th étage (that’s the 7^th floor, folks) rejected the idea. People on the 7^th floor shouldn’t even get a vote. Anyone need a chicken coop?

Anyway, here’s a question for you guys to ponder: who knew volcanoes (and Iceland at that) were things worthy of our attention? After a tedious series of plane cancellations and reschedulings, my mom decided to postpone her visit to the end of May. Which, along with a most conveniently timed SNCF strike, left Tyler stranded in Paris for 5 days. Stranded? In Paris? Life is hard.

Luckily, I spent very little time alone. When I wasn’t visiting museums (a grand total of five), drinking coffee (I am obsessed with Paris’ café culture – they are everywhere!), or seeing plays starring Audrey Tautou from the second row of the Théâtre de la Madeleine, I had Gina, a friend from governor’s school who’s been studying abroad there all year, show me some of the finer aspects of Paris, most of which involved food. I finally fulfilled my 3-month-old craving for blueberry pancakes at Breakfast in America, an experience that made all 129,600 minutes of waiting worth it. [Interjection: a balloon just hit me in the head. No idea where it came from.] Also delicious were Berthillon ice cream and the yummy chicken dinner served by Gina and her friends at her host-family-free apartment on Saturday night. Additionally, I was fortunate enough to meet up with Kimberly, a friend from Davidson studying abroad in Paris, and we added a free play at the Théâtre le Temple to our food list of Pizza Pino and falafel in the Place des Vosges. Liz, a friend from my program in Lyon, made it up to Paris Sunday afternoon with her mom, and in addition to being graciously treated to an Italian risotto dinner, Liz and I wandered up and down the Champs-Elysées before we got ice cream and I returned to my hotel to prepare for my early-morning train back to Lyon (which I reserved only after waiting in line for over an hour and a half at the Gare de Lyon Saturday afternoon).

I was in Lyon for a grand total of 3 hours before JL and I met up for a terrace lunch at Au Petit Café Rose and spontaneously decided to buy train tickets to Nice. (Her trip to Greece was canceled because of the volcano.) After about a day and a half of studying (read: napping) in the sun next to the Rhône, she and I boarded, along with Ned, our train to Nice and rolled into the city’s beautiful gare around 11:30. Franny, a friend from Crozet doing a teaching assistantship in Nice was kind enough to let us crash in her apartment for the two nights we were there, and she showed us such a good time! In hindsight, we did very little that didn’t involve food, the sun, or beer. I think what struck us most about the city was all of its color: the bright oranges/corals/yellows of the buildings in Vieux Nice, the magnificent shades of Mediterranean blue…in Nice you are constantly confronted with a palette of vibrantly beautiful colors.

Activities included: Indian Lounge, the best Indian restaurant I’ve ever been to (I had what was easily among my top 3 favorite meals in France). Watching the OL soccer game at a bar called Thor on Wednesday night. Lounging on the rocky beach all day Thursday followed by a raspberry-lime milkshake at Fenocchio and then pub quiz at Ma Nolan’s. Crêpe lunch with Franny before catching our rainy-day train back to Lyon Friday afternoon.

In short, Spring Break ’10 (part two I suppose) was completely unexpected but entirely satisfying. It was so nice to get away for a while, but at the same time it's always comforting to return to a familar place. Spent the weekend in a happy stupor before returning to earth to study for the two finals I had this week. 2 down, 3 to go, and it’s the weekend. Time to meet up with my favorite Austrians for a picnic on the berges.

pissenlit pause

Spent a much-needed (can’t emphasize this enough) but inevitably short weekend in the country. Words can’t even begin to describe how nice it was to get away from the tangibly heavy gray of Lyon and bask in the colorful French campagne, where sweeping streaks of sky blue intersect with grass green, and splotches of bright yellow and terracotta red cut through the landscape as if smeared on with palette knife.

Due to last week’s SNCF grève (what?! strikes?!), Paul and I had to catch our bus Saturday morning from far-away end-of-the-metro Gare de Vaise. Unintended advantage: the trip only cost 2€! We made our way from city outskirts through industrial banlieues then rural villages before arriving 45 minutes later at the Villefranche-sur-Saône (birthplace of Claudius Crozet!) train station, where we were greeted by friendly-faced Madame Michel and driven to Paul’s house in Frans.

After a delicious home-cooked meal (one of many served to me graciously by Mme and M Michel), Paul and I spent the afternoon planning and constructing a chicken coop. That’s right, come May 1 he and I will welcome two feathered friends into our proud 65 rue Pasteur family, a prospect about which we are both very excited. Updates to come, but do know that omelet-craving visitors are encouraged to come over. Below is an image of the finished product, a fine piece of craftsmanship given our limited resources (this puppy is constructed from scraps lying around the garage and therefore a total of four types of wood) and amateur carpentry skills:

Otherwise, time was spent reading and drinking coffee on the porch, driving along meandering dirt roads straddled on either side by kilometers of sprawling fields, being treated to a dinner of pizza and wine by Marie’s parents at house-turned-restaurant Chez Dany, and visiting Paul’s fowl-owning friend Pierre whose house – built by his father – is probably one of the most charming ones I’ve seen in France. In other words, the weekend was all about taking advantage of the sun and beautiful weather as much as possible before returning begrudgingly to Lyon. The campagne spoils me.

I leave tomorrow for Paris, where I’ll spend two days alone attending plays, visiting museums, and wandering around its many and varied quartiers before Mom meets me there Friday morning! From Paris we’ll head to the Normandy coast where we’ll discover Mont St. Michel, the D-Day beaches, and hopefully eat lots of yummy cheese, and then we’ll end our mini French tour in Lyon. I’m so excited about her visit; it certainly couldn’t come at a better time, and I can’t wait to introduce her to this country. Echoing my conversation with Liz earlier today, time is passing ridiculously quickly, but I’m oddly comfortable with – and even looking forward to – my return to Charlottesville in just a month and a half. And when I get bored of that, I’m reassured by the fact that it’s only a matter of time before I return to France for who knows how long…

"monsieur _____ n'est pas là aujourd'hui. il s'excuse."

Copy and paste the post below this into a tidy mental document and welcome yourselves to the redundancy that is my life.

When I first started this blog, and particularly during the first two weeks of the semester when many of my classes were canceled, I considered sharing with you some of these stories because I thought them something extraordinary.

How wrong I was.

Since then, class cancellations have become a mundane, albeit irritating, part of la vie française, occurring on a weekly (if not twice-weekly) basis and almost always without warning. And when you've already only got six classes a week and therefore more free time than you know what to do with, this is something that gets really old really fast.

But I guess this is all just part of the authentic French experience I was looking for, right?

P.S. This is seriously not helping my already severe lack of motivation. Davidson workload, I never thought I'd say this, but tu me manques. Yes, I am that desperate.