surfing on the côte basque

After 9 hours of driving on thursday, we arrived in Bayonne.  It was pouring rain for some parts of the drive, but along the way we saw a couple castles and some beautiful stretches of forest.  We also passed through the town from where the 17th stage of the Tour de France started. The apartment that we're staying in is right on the Adour River, with a beautiful view of the Pont St Esprit and the two churches in old town Bayonne.  Sylvain told me it's situated in a great spot for the festival de bayonne, just on the other side of the river from most of the bars and festival activities.

yesterday I had my first taste of the atlantic ocean surf.  it was very windy, too windy, for any consistent surf to hold up, but it was great to get into the water and exercise my arms again.  The Michels had two surfboards stored in the garage, one longboard around 8.5 feet and another around 6 ft, but I was just glad to not have to rent one here.  The Biarritz/Anglet area is renowned in France as a surf town, so there are a lot of people out in the water who have rented boards at high prices.  Today the surf was much better, with the shape and form both holding up nicely.  I talked a little bit with some younger guys who asked me if it was hard to leave the California waves for these waves.  The waves are very comparable to huntington or newport, but there are definitely more people in the water, which was annoying sometimes.  I was able to see Spain from where I was surfing.

Last night Aunt Melissa, Uncle Alain and I went out with some old friends of Alain's from grade school.  They live in a nice apartment in Biarritz, so we went walking around the downtown area of Biarritz and walked to a bar situated on the hill above the main surfing beach in the area.  We walked along the coastline on the cliffs, where you can see a lot of huge rocks that have all fallen from the same land mass.  You can see the lines of the sedimentary rock that match up perfectly with each other in the way they slowly eroded from the wind and sea.  The city was built up during the period of Napoleon III and during the early 1900's when a lot of American's came to visit.  As a result, there's a really cool mix of stone walls and Art Deco buildings along the coast line.

As for the language learning, its getting much easier to understand people and understand whether they've asked me a question or not, which sounds silly, but it's really hard sometimes to tell whether people are directing something at you or not.  Last night, the wife of Alain's friend, Mailiss, was explaining a lot of the history of the region to me which was interesting, but she was talking so slowly with me that I couldn't follow her.  I finally had to ask her to speak a little faster with me because I found it difficult to understand what she was saying.  It was also getting kind of annoying to have someone talking to me like I was a child, but I left that out.  We had some good sangria and tapas at the top of the bar and then a great dessert at their house afterwards.  It was called La belle athene, which was vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce, roasted almonds and pears.  it was a delicious way to end the walk around biarritz.

Sylvain arrived today from london, so I'll have someone around my age to hang out with now.  It wasn't too bad to be with the older folks though, because I got to drink and eat for free, and we didn't eat "Macdo" as the french call mcdonalds.  But it's definitely nice to have someone to hang out with again.

mediterranean sea

today and yesterday I experienced the Toulon seaside.  Two of the Michel's church friends took me to the beach yesterday to a "grotto" called Sainte Marguerite.  To get down there we walked this long path that opened up on a little cove with 6 or 7 houses packed in around it.  The houses were exactly what I imagined of Mediterranean architecture with a light blue finish on the doors and a beige stucco covering the walls.  The beach isn't really a beach here in Toulon, it's more like a rock that has enough room for people to hang out.  One of the girls I went with, Claire, took me swimming around this huge rock structure, mentioning off-handedly before we jumped in that it was a little swim.  I didn't realize how out of shape I was in the water, but I managed well enough.  The water was a beautiful aqua blue, and relatively warm.  We climbed and jumped off some of the cliffs here and there.  It was great to go swimming and be active again, and I slept well last night.

Charles heard us talking about the spot we went to yesterday and told me, "I'll take you somewhere cool tomorrow."  So today we went with fins/masks/snorkels and hit the water again in a different spot.  Again, it was a beautiful, warm day so the water felt great.  Charles took me to some different jump spots on the cliffs, but also took me into this tunnel where the water surged in and out, and I couldn't see a thing.  At a certain point it completely blacked out, so we felt around using the walls and eventually saw a faint green light at the other side.  I was reassured to see the light because it was really getting creepy in there.  When I swam out the other side,  I wouldn't have guessed that there was a huge cave under the rock...pretty cool.  Unfortunately there weren't too many fish to look at, but the occasional small fish floated by us.  The sea is much more salty than I imagined, and I even found salt crystals deposited on the rocks that we climbed on.  I think tomorrow we leave for Bayonne, but I'm not positive.  chow time

toulon

I arrived in Toulon last night by the TGV, my favorite form of transport thus far.  But I wanted to recap a little bit about the rest of my time in Paris so I'm going to back up a bit.

There are a gazillion parks in Paris, so on Monday I made a park tour of all the parks I could in one day.  I walked all day in the 9th, 10th and 11th arrondisements to see the Pere Lachaise Cemetery, Parc de Belleville, Buttes Chaumont and finally the Jardin de Luxembourg.  Pere Lachaise is one of the oldest cemeteries in France, and its absolutely packed in there.  there are graves upon graves, jam packed along little cobble stone paths.  To be honest it was kind of creepy, because it was all cloudy and it had just rained, and the occasional crow cawed at me as I walked alone through this huge city of ancient graves.  I saw Jim Morrison's grave, which is the one everyone asks about when you say "I went to Pere Lachaise," but whatever.  It wasn't large or impressive, in fact it wasn't even in a spot where you could see his name very clearly.  I still don't know why he's there in fact...  Parc de Belleville: not much to look at.  Buttes Chaumont though was pretty cool, it's got this central park feel to it with all the trees and big lake that Napoleon I had constructed around a huge central rock that you can walk up to.  There's a great view of La Defense, the business sector, from up there.  Jardin de Luxembourg was absolutely beautiful.  By that time I was really tired of walking around, but the sun had come out and there were so many beautiful statues of all the queens of France, beginning somewhere around 500 AD.  I sat and watched some old guys play pétanque, a game in which two or four players try to get the closest to a marker ball thrown at the beginning of a round.  I'm sure some of you have played something like it, sometimes its called boule.  But these guys were pros.  They knew it too, because they would make all these sarcastic comments to each other about a certain throw or placement, and I only caught a little bit of their banter.  I think they enjoyed the fact that so many tourists stop by to watch, because one guy was a real clown, and I could tell the other guys were getting annoyed with his antics.  Charles (my cousin) told me afterwards that the Jardin de Luxembourg used to be a place for art exhibits in the past, and they still had a small one there with all these cool Chopin posters from Poland.  There was this really cute girl wandering through the exhibit, and I tried to think of some French to say to her for small talk.  The best I came up with was, "This one is my favorite" when she walked by.  She stopped and smiled at me and said she was from Poland, so she had seen a lot of posters like these ones.  "Oh, really, you're from Poland?  That's cool..."  And then I said goodbye.  Fail.  Apparently I'm not very good at talking to girls in another language yet.

Originally when I was planning out my flight to France I wanted to make sure I was here for their Fourth of July, Bastille Day, which was the 14th of July.  I'm so glad I didn't miss it.  The 13th I went out with Charles and some of his engineering school friends to a bar that was like an American saloon, with Bud Light on tap.  yeehaw.  After that I rushed off to join this new Parisien friend Tibaul (Maxime's cousin) at the Champs de Mars which is right beneath the Eiffel Tower.  There were a bunch of kids around our age sitting around drinking and eating; very cool.  He told me, "Ok, now we're going to use your accent to meet some people," so I asked some girls for a bottle opener for our wine bottle.  They just handed it to us, and asked very dryly where I was from in English, implying that they spoke english very well, thank you, and expressed no interest in talking.  But there were some drunk dudes singing so we stopped and talked with them for a little bit.  Afterwards we went to another party where Tibaul's sister was and I talked with some people about American sports.  Success of a night.

The 14 Juillet is somewhat different than the 4th of July.  There's a big parade with all the different armed forces, all marching very properly, and it's much more focused on the military than your average fourth of july.  It poured down rain during the parade, so I was glad I decided to watch it from Charles' living room.  No barbecues, but that evening we had a picnic with Charles' friends on some grass by the Seine near the Eiffel Tower to watch some really cool fireworks.  We ate all this fantastic french food and drank good beer and wine; I tried pâte for the first time.  Its really salty.  That night was the perfect way to finish my Paris trip.  By the way, the French know how to have a firework show.  Having seen my fair share of fireworks at Angel Stadium and Disneyland, I was still impressed by the display.  I don't think I'll forget this moment, watching the fireworks with my two french cousins on a bridge over the Seine, with all the cars behind us, stopped by people staring up at the sky.

So that brings me to Toulon, where I was greeted by my French family members Sylvain, Alain and of course Melissa.  Alain and Sylvain showed me a quick tour of Toulon at sunset, which is a beautiful mediterranean city situated in a harbor.  No waves, but still absolutely beautiful.  Aunt Melissa has been feeding me since I arrived, and I'm realizing how great it is to have family here.  I couldn't have done this trip without them.  I'm not sure what I'll do for the next few days, but I'm kind of glad to be out of Paris.  The city was a bit overwhelming with all its hustle-and-bustle on the metro and in the streets, I don't know if I could live there for very long.  It's so nice to have some open space finally.  The cigales have been croaking (? I asked sylvain what the word was for the sound they make but he didn't have one, it's like a cicada)  all morning.  Melissa is already calling me to lunch, I guess I'm going to eat a lot here.  I'm fine with that.

blogging and all that jazz

salut tous

So I've decided to share a bit of my trip to France through this medium. After enjoying my cousin Annette's blog so much I realized that it's a great way to involve people with your life while abroad. so that aside...

I arrived a week ago in Paris and since then I've been having a blast. My Uncle Alain graciously asked his brother if I could come rest at his house for a bit before my cousin Raphael could meet me. This saved me. I had no idea how tired I would be and how confusing this city could be at first. The metro is a great system, however very confusing at first... I have the hang of it now, but let's just say that morning I repeatedly tried to exit through the enter. My backpack was much more heavy than I remembered it being when I weighed it at home.

As for my cousins, it's been really cool to get to know them more, and to have them help me with my everyday french. Raphael is working on his nursing degree, and for the past few weeks he's been working at a psychiatric hospital. He had to get up at 5 a.m. each morning, but we were able to get dinner in the evenings and watch the game between spain and germany together. I'm trying to speak only in French with people, and I'll usually ask someone who can speak both english and french to speak in French with me. It's what I'm here for. Occasionally with Raph I'd speak english and he would speak French, because we could understand each other well enough, but I'm sure it was funny to listen to. On Friday night, Raph took me to a birthday party which was right off the Seine in a beautiful old apartment building. It was really cool to chat with his friends and just have people my age to talk to after the long days of walking around Paris by myself. They're showing me just how much I have to learn; it's very different to speak the language with 20 year olds. After a couple hours we walked down to the Seine and hung out down there for a while where I saw (for the first time) the sparkling Eiffel Tower. I didn't know about it until I saw all the lights going off and on like flashes on thousands of cameras all concentrated on the tower. Wowoweewow.

Charles is an engineering project manager from my understanding, and he works in a region of Paris called La Défense. You can see it from a lot of places in Paris because it's the region where all of sudden, you have all these buildings shooting into the sky. I really like that about Paris actually, they keep most of the huge office buildings to this one area, which is completely different than most of the big cities I've been to in my life. He has a nice place in an area close to La Bastille. He took me out to the Centre Pompidou Saturday afternoon, which was interesting to say the least. The modern art there is very... modern. It definitely made me think about how little I know about the art world, and how someone can be called an artist today. Afterwards we took bikes to a bar to watch the Germany Uruguay game, which was super exciting for those of you who missed it. Paris has a public bike system called velib with stations all over the city. You can take a bike and then return it to a different station for free if you do it within 30 minutes, and if you don't it's around 1 euro for the day. I was seriously impressed with this idea for a public bike system. My roommate Danny proposed something like this for city planning class project, so it was really cool to see it in action after hearing about something like it from him.

I've done most of the big touristy stuff so far: walking on the Champs Elysées, the Eiffel tower, visiting the Latin quarter, touring some gardens. My friend Maxime Chevée told me his cousin could show me around Paris a bit, so we went to the Louvre, which was AWESOME. It was the first day I had someone to walk around with, but more importantly he was full of information on art history and Paris (in general). If I understood correctly (he spoke very quickly in French, but I needed some mental exercise), his mom teaches art history privately, so he kind of grew up with the artists and painting in the Grand Salon. It was a fantastic way to experience the Louvre.

ok enough for now. I really have to study some grammar so I can know where I'm making mistakes instead of feeling around blindly like a child. Although that hasn't been such a bad strategy so far...