Greetings from Geneva! As y´all might have noticed, I´ve slowed down on the posting front. Things got super busy back in Tours, and then I kinda entered this supremely self-reflective phase, blah, blah, blah. I’ve been traveling around a bit on my own for a bit- I spent a couple of days in Annecy, France, and I´ve been in Geneva for a day or two, traipsing around, seeing what I can see. Tomorrow I head back to the states, and I think it is about time too; last night I was chilling in a bar catching the Euro2008 finals, when this woman walked in and I thought to myself, “Wow, that dress looks really good on her, especially with earrings, but the handbag is just too big- she could do better with a smaller number with a different color.”

Embarrassing to admit, but there you have it.

Time to get back to the good ´ol red-blooded USA. I´ll have to relearn how to type again- I´m now using a Swiss keyboard, which aint French and aint US either, and am having a hard time typing. Plus the access here is expensive! Dinner last night, a small panini with a side salad and an iced tea was $22. Cokes are $4.50, stamps to the USA were 2x what they were in France. But hey, at least the toilet paper comes in rolls, like God intended.

Anyway, I´ll be in DC shortly, and will hopefully upload a slew of pictures and movies then.

Peace out yo,

-c

Yes, I’m sitting here at l’Institut de Touraine having finished my first day in Tours. From the looks of things I should be able to post images from here, so hopefully tomorrow I’ll have a photo or two up here.

Today has been a loooong day, and not just because I got about an hour’s sleep last night (combination of weird sleep schedule, a long afternoon nap, and perhaps a bit of nerves). It all started out like any good vacation, with an exam that kicked my trash something good. This test will determine which class I will be placed in, so the questions ranged from fairly easy to “who am I supposed to be, Moliére?” Honestly, I don’t think it will matter too much which class rank I make, as I’m already getting tons and tons of practice in, more conversation today than in all my classes so far combined, and today was just the test and a tour of the city! But today wasn’t super exciting, at least compared to last night.

Yesterday I flew from Stanstead, London, direct to Tours. I was pretty worried as Ryan Air’s fees for overweight bags are massive (about $11 per pound), and my bag, despite the over-stuffedness of my backpack, was still about 8 pounds overweight. Luckily they didn’t charge me for the extra poundage and I arrived in Tours a bit less poor than anticipated. What wasn’t expected was being met at the airport by mon père français, Bernard. I had sent M. Chaigne (Bernard! he insisted) email before I left the states saying that I would take the bus into town, and I hadn’t heard back from them, but hey, free ride- woo-hoo! Bernard and Colette are wonderful people- they have had students from the Institute for years and have the routine pretty much down pat, including talking slowly, having lots of patience, and having all the rules and needs for cohabitation sussed out in advance. In fact, I am just one of several students they are housing right now; the others being a Kuwaiti named Fahad, an American girl who is out of town right now and whose name I don’t remember, and a fourth student who is apparently arriving this week. I have my own room and shower on the far side of Colette’s painting studio, a bit removed from the rest of the house, which is just perfect (pictures soon!)

I spent the afternoon wandering aimlessly through the Sunday market that crops up on Boulevard Béranger, which is the main thoroughfare 1/2 block from my house (the market also runs on Wednesdays). After a lovely dinner of a sorrel omelet (looking up a French word and finding “sorrel” as the English word didn’t help much), accompanied by local mushrooms and followed by fresh strawberries, Fahad took me out to a cafe. Turns out we went to one of the local Arab cafes where we met up with a bunch of his friends from the Institute. Pretty soon I was surrounded by a wonderful group of guys who were smoking Turkish tobacco from nargilahs, drinking tasty, sweet mint tea, and trying to communicate with me via bi-directionally garbled French. The big joke of the night was that Masoud, who is rooming with three American girls (a circumstance he finds unfortunate, methinks), was going to take us all over to his house so we could fight over who was going to marry them! Ha! Being Moslem, none of them date before getting married, so perhaps a proposal is like a first date. Hmmmm….perhaps that wasn’t so much of a joke after all! Seriously though, what a nice and inviting group of people. And how refreshing it is to leave America and the politics behind, and wind up in the middle of a bar in a foreign country, an American surrounded by Moslems, feeling totally welcome and at ease. Chouette! Afterwards we walked through town, along the Loire, staying up way too late. Farad and I made it back home hozever, where I proceeded to stay up way too later reading and studying. Some things never change, I suppose. (ps- kudos to those of you out there that can translate “way too later” into French)

Tomorrow morning our test results should be posted so we can figure out what classroom to report to when we get to school. Yay. But, before that, I think I’ll head home for a quick run before dinner (I believe it is chicken with tofu for me). Bernard and Colette hosted a vegan student obnce before, and they said it was hard coming up with stuff to make for her. After that experience, they said, un végétarien normal n’est pas de problème! so hopefully the diet thing will work out.

So, à bientôt mes amis, hopefully I’ll get some photos online tomorrow.

Peace out yo,

-c

Yes, I am in the illustrious town of Cambridge, having mostly recovered from the jet lag. The flight over was fairly uneventful and also fairly sleepless, and after arriving in London and traveling by train to Cambridge (I went through Paddington Station! The one Paddington Bear was named after!), I was immediately taken to the Cambridge Beer Festival for copious consumption. Actually, I was very thankful for the inebriation as it helped dull the sting of how expensive this place is. I suppose if I were earning my wages in English pounds that would be one thing, but as an example, the 15-minute train ride from Heathrow to London was 18£ or about $37. Add that on top of the 4£ Underground ride, the 19£ train ride to Cambridge and the 15£ cab ride, and that’s about $115 in the first hour of touching ground. Thankfully the beer and cheese were much cheaper and came in quantity!

Today yielded another trip to the Beer Festival, followed by a lovely walk through St. John’s College to laugh at the punters (a punt is a silly English water craft that is propelled by a long shaft that you push into the bottom of the river, with absolutely no keel or rudder to make it go straight. I swear it is just to make tourists look ridiculous). Then, during a bike ride through town I got to mingle with a small group of cows (they said they knew I was a vegetarian by the way I walked up to them, offering them buttercups to munch). Then, after a dinner of raclette (think reverse fondue), we went for a lovely walk through the countryside, looking at wild orchids and an ancient Roman dike. I also got to hold two slugs, for my second wildlife close-n-personal of the day. They reminded me of the Branston’s Pickle I had eaten earlier at the Beer Festival, a British condiment that goes surprisingly well with the right bread and cheese. Yes, take a spoonful of Branston’s Pickle and bestow it with the gift of self-propulsion and you’ve got yourself and English fen slug.

Tomorrow should be fairly chill, although I am promised the treat of vegetarian bangers and smashers, and a trip to an authentic English Pub. More inebriation! Woo-hoo! But until then, it is off to study more French in preparation for my test on Monday.

Over and out,

-c

ps- French phrase of the day: “Salut frangine!”, which, if I’m not mistaken, is roughly translated as, “‘Zup girlfrenn?”

After all of these years, you would think I would have learned how to pack before I have to leave the house. I firmly avow that I am mentally incapable of packing with less than 3 hours before my departure time. Here it is creeping up on midnight, leaving the house at 3:45am, and I’m still throwing stuff together. No, the lacrosse stick is not going. I feel simultaneously under- and over-packed. I have strict weight limits on some legs of my flight, so I have to be careful. I also don’t know how the border gestapo is going to like the 6 cans of chipotle peppers I have in my suitcase (essential traveling gear, honest). For a guy who likes to think of himself as calm under pressure, I’m a bit nervous, and am alternating between sweating over the packing, and playing Guitar Hero to help break up the tension. Anybody who’s been around me the past two weeks has for sure picked up on the subtle agitation I’ve got going on.

Does it seem sane to spend this much money to travel half-way around the world, just so I can plop down in a foreign country and immediately take a test on their language? Shouldn’t I be climbing instead? That seems so much more, well, peaceful. Less complicated. Safer. Which, I assume, is just why the hell I am doing this.

It is finally starting to hit me that I am actually leaving. That I quit my job, which means I have an entirely new world that I will be returning to. That returning without the ability to laugh at the right spots in Amelie without the subtitles turned on means I just blew a big wad of money for….well, I wouldn’t say nothing. This should be an experience no matter what, no?

Yes. Methinks yes.

Avoir, mes amis! Catch you all on the other side of the pond.

-c

As is fairly obvious from the title, these photos are from a road trip that Ethan and I took in August of 2007 out to Redwoods National Forest, and then up the cost through Eugene, Portland, Seattle, and eventually home. All in all we logged a few thousand miles of driving in just over a week, and few thousand kilo-courics of good times visiting with our friends along the way. To indicate the high degree of enjoyment we had, Ethan has said that he will consider going to college in Eugene, even though the skiing is not world-class there. I myself want to swim with the migrating salmon in Washington before I die; perhaps as my final act I can swim upstream, meet Angelina Jolie, spawn and then pass away in post-coital bliss. More likely I’d just get caught and turned into Canned Chad.

Anyway, enjoy the pics y’all!

-c