Daily Happenings

So, I realized that I haven’t really caught you up on the happenings around here lately. Not that they’re ground-breaking or anything; I thought you might find some of them amusing.

After I got home from London a few weeks ago, Joselyne left for a week in Toulouse with some friends and family. Wei Wei was still gone on vacation, too, which left me in charge of the house for the week. No big deal, right? Just go on with life as usual, and close the shutters at night. It really wouldn’t have been a big deal -- had it not been for the strange man at the door. Yes, the very same day that Joselyne left, a young-ish looking man passed in front of the kitchen window (that faces the street) and rang the doorbell. He’d already seen me in the window, so I obviously couldn’t pretend no one was home. I opened the door, thinking it was the person who brings her newspapers every now and then. He asked for Mme. Leau, I told him she wasn’t there at the moment; he paused and wondered aloud if she was on vacation. Suspicious, I said no, but he followed up by asking if she would perhaps be home in the evening. I played the “I’m an exchange student and she has a different schedule and I’m clueless” card, and asked him if he needed something in particular. He said no and left, just like that. I closed the door, and the freak-out commenced. Was he a burglar scouting out the territory? A rapist? A murderer? I talked to my mom and a few friends for advice and decided to assume the worst. I spent the afternoon doing my best to think like an unsavory character on Criminal Minds, finding all of the possible ways into the house and accounting for all of the possible scenarios. I probably looked a little odd walking around the outside of the house, taking note of all of the windows and doors. At least no one could see me moving the living room armchairs in front of the doors after I bolted the shutters, putting the big iron frying pan at my bedside, and bundling up all of the kitchen knives to hide them in my room. (Hey, you’d be paranoid too if you were home alone in a foreign country in house that wasn’t yours after a strange man stopped by with no motive other than to find out if the owner was home and when she was coming back. Trust me. It makes sense.)

Fortunately, nothing happened, so all of the precautions were largely unnecessary, apart from the fact that they gave me a bit more peace of mind. I had thought about spending the night with Kendra, but then I realized that I wouldn’t know if something happened at my house. I also considered calling Kendra and having her spend the night, but I decided against it, because really: who wants to get a call that essentially says, “Hey, I think someone’s going to break into my house tonight, you wanna come over and be my human shield?” 0_o

So...that was my week at home alone. I was incredibly lonely, probably the loneliest I’ve been to date in France. I had just enough homework to do that I couldn’t justify occupying myself outside of the house. You can’t imagine how slow the hours go by when you’re by yourself, in a quiet house, with no one to talk to and not enough work to hold your attention. You can't imagine how glad I was just to have someone to eat dinner with when they came home!

After that week, I was down to the last week or two of classes, which were kind of like the last week or two of classes at home: long. At least I was able to finish up two of my classes for good, because the final exams took place during the last week of class instead of during the weeks of finals. In addition to that, my 20 page dossier and my 3-text translation project kept me pretty busy. Call me crazy, but I actually liked working on them. Maybe it was because the work didn’t seem useless or pointless; it had a purpose. I was actually learning and growing by doing the projects.


Not last weekend but the weekend before, I spent a couple of days with Azilys, Clémence, Kendra, and Andrew at Azilys’ house in St. Pazanne, a lovely little village west of Angers, close to the Atlantic. We spent Saturday afternoon enjoying the sunshine and the breeze on the beach, marvelling at the tide at the Passage du Gois, and laughing at Andrew’s fascination with cows. Saturday night we ate homemade crêpes, thanks to Azilys’ dad, and watched our favorite youtube videos, and Sunday we enjoyed a wonderful traditional family lunch on the patio. I don’t know if I’ve ever eaten that much in my life: marsala from Italy, fresh oysters, salad, bread (of course), homemade ratatouille, grilled sausages, white wine from Azilys’ grandfather’s vineyard, an assortment of French cheeses, fruit cocktail, coffee, and Italian hazelnut and Croatian fig cookies. (Her mom had just gotten back from a trip to Italy and the surrounding region, so that’s why the meal had such an international flair.) Azilys’ mom is American, and her father is French, so we had some interesting discussions about cultural practices and the challenges of growing up multilingual. I learned that it’s not just my perception; the French really do value their “joie de vivre,” and they are very protective of their “living” time: whether that’s playing, eating, enjoying personal relationships. Even in the world of business, taking time to be interested in your business partner’s life outside of the workplace is considered to be as important as the work itself. Taking time to have a glass of wine or a coffee together is just as much a part of the deal and the business relationship as hammering out the details. Americans are much more to the point, and it’s very difficult for the French to understand and adapt to that mentality. That’s one reason why diplomacy and international relations issues involving France and the U.S. can be so complicated. Americans have a mentality of directness, of a solution-based process; the French do not. They focus on the process, the exploration, the relationships, and the openness of the end-result (and even the lack of a definite solution). If you can understand that, you can begin to understand why we misinterpret each other so much. Diplomacy is complicated. What’s funny is that the only reason we Americans wonder why it’s complicated is because we have a typically American mindset of, “There’s the problem. We can do this. Let’s fix it. Now.” Not every culture has that.....but of course, we wouldn’t pay attention to a little detail like that...

Well, it’s time that I got ready for my exam this afternoon. I’ve been reviewing the history of France during the 19th century off and on for the past few days, and I’m honestly not sure how much more I can remember. I’ll read everything again over lunch and then wing it from there. :P I’m all for doing my best, and striving for excellence, but honestly, there’s not much reason to know what date a certain number of miners in some tiny French village went on strike (for the fourth time). Anyway, I’ll write more when I don’t have more studying to do. Which will be...later this week. My last two exams until the 28th are next Monday, and I don’t have to study for them. (translation exams) Later!