many (kilo)metres with maxime

after spending a pleasant 5 days with maxime's family in Saintes Maries de la Mer, we moved on to hang out with his friends in St Thibéry near Agde.  The house is owned by the grandparents of Max's friend Chris, and was spacious enough to accommodate 10 of us.  We hung out mostly on the beaches of Cap-d'Agde which were nice, but again, the Mediterranean lacks waves.  It was really windy and sandy Saturday evening while we tried to eat our dinner on the beach, but it was fun to play dodgeball and paddleball with max's friends.  At first I was very timid with them, hardly saying a word, because I couldn't understand a single thing they were saying.  It sucked.  I felt uncomfortable butting in to ask "What does ____ mean?"  But slowly I started asking more and more questions once I got used to their pace of talking together, and by the end, I learned a lot of things with them.  Mostly bad words.  But more seriously, I did learn a lot of quick expressions that comprise the average 20-year old's vocabulary, and I got much much better at trying to guess what people were talking about.  By the last night together, we were really conversing (sounds silly) and I was so stoked.  We talked about hardcore music like A Day to Remember and Underoath, which really made me laugh.  I NEVER thought I would have to search for words in French to describe the aspects of hardcore music that I enjoyed.  Thanks to Brian and Blaine I actually had a lot of bands to throw out when they asked me what I had heard.  I went from being completely uncomfortable with these people to exchanging numbers with them so that we could meet up during the school year in Lyon (where most of them go to school) which was a moment I won't forget.

Max and I left for St Julien en Genevois on Tuesday afternoon after a really cool day at a river gorge.  The river had carved a lot of cliffs from which people were jumping and flipping.  We swam up river to the faster currents and large rocks, and we could see the springs where the water was spewing out of the rock cliffsides. It was absolutely beautiful.  From there we headed towards St Julien, Max's hometown, and along the way I tried to clarify what a lot of words meant that I had heard during our stay with his friends.  I wanted to make sure I wasn't saying something impolite if I used a certain expression, and in general learn more words from Max while we had 5 hours to kill in the car.  It was really cool for me to speak in French with Maxime, because at school he doesn't generally speak with me in French, but here he stuck to his promise to not substitute an explanation of a french word for the direct translation.  It's much better for me to hear an explanation in french for a word than for someone to directly translate it into english.  We arrive at midnight in St Julien, so I didn't get to see any of the Alps until the next day.

Mathéa and Max woke me up around 1030 Wednesday morning and shortly thereafter we left for Maxime’s grandparents’ chalet in Combloux, which was beautiful.  It’s situated just across from the Mont Blanc and a huge valley where you find the city Megève.  The chalet is all wood, with around 7 or 8 rooms.  It’s enormous.  We sat on the porch in huge armchairs eating sandwiches (jambon cru, jambon haute-savoie, camembert) and these chips that are rotisserie chicken flavored.  What?  That’s right, I said rotisserie chicken flavored.  We went for a short 40 minute hike into the hills, very peaceful but somewhat strenuous after my lack of exercise and excessive eating of cheese.  There were raspberry bushes.  After that we drove through the mountains super fast, following the Rhone as it carved the cliffs, until we reached the Lake at Annecy.  Annecy was nice, but almost too quaint, like they thought out what would be the “cutest” setting possible.  After that we returned home to eat dinner with Max’s parents and watched a friendly with France and Norway, which they lost.  Too bad for the new coach.

            Thursday we woke up and drove to Geneva in a lime green, convertible Volkswagon Beetle.  That was too cool.  Driving through the tunnels I felt like I was on a Disneyland ride, and emerging at the end with the voice from the speakers by my head saying "Please watch your step as you exit the car...into Switzerland".  We drove to the UN campus to visit Dean Lissner’s brother who works at WHO.  Talk about a cool job.  He basically uses the research done there to show economic feasibility for answers to sexual reproductive diseases in developing nations. There were 156 countries represented at the WHO building out of the 168 present in the World Health Assembly, so the place was like a microcosm of the rest of the world.  I’d love to work there someday.  We ate lunch in the cafeteria and talked about his work, alternating between French and English.  Afterwards he tried to get us into the central meeting hall, it was locked, but he went to the front desk and asked to have it opened.  It was just like I imagined but cooler, with all the blue comfy-looking chairs and the huge WHO symbol at the head, with the translators desks up top.  We drove to Geneva after saying goodbye and thanks to Craig Lissner, where we walked around the different watch shops.  There’s a huge jet of water on Lake Léman and beautiful churches.  But the churches seemed different to me at first, until I realized that the lack (completely relative in France) of decoration was due to the fact that it was protestant.  Everything costs a lot in Geneva, its crazy.  A normal cup of coffee at Starbucks cost $6 (swiss franc = dollar).  We returned home in the convertible and ate dinner with maxime’s parents at this pretty restaurant in the calm of St Julien centre.  There were houses across the street, which was really relaxing for some reason.  It didn’t feel like we were at a fancy restaurant, but we were, because there were all these crazy entrées and plats on the menu. I tried the bull testicles that Maxime's dad ordered, they were like chicken but softer.  After dinner, Maxime’s friend Thom came and picked us up with Mathéa and we drove out to Quar (car) Rouge, a quarter in Geneva with a cool bars.  We all sat around and drank delicious beers (Chimay and Cérule des Trolls) and for one of the first times since I’ve been here I could follow pretty much everything and feel like I was part of the conversation.  Being with Maxime and his friends was so cool for me, because I got to hear what people my age sound like, what expressions they use, and how they interact.  All of Max’s friends were super mature, very cool people, and I hope to visit them in Lyon during the school year.

For now, I'm back in Toulon with Melissa, Alain, and Raphael, where I'm going to get down to grammar studies.  I leave for Bordeaux the 24th.

a man in Arles

Last night I went to see about a man in Arles named Le Condor.  Arles is a city just north of where I'm staying right now with Maxime and his family in Saintes Maries de la Mer, it's in the Provençal region of France.  Maxime has an extensive family here in Stes Maries; his great-grandma, great-aunt and grandma, and some aunts.  So right now there are 4 generations here hanging out for a couple weeks, plus Jake.  They've been very welcoming, we eat pretty much all our meals together and go out to the beach together.  I've had the chance to get to know Max's sisters too, which is very cool.

But back to this guy named Le Condor.  Max's grandmother sings in a tradition Provençal choir, and this group was asked to perform with a musician named Le Condor in an enormous band that plays traditional music from all around the world with a modern "feel".  The concert was held in an ancient roman theatre in Arles, with crumbling pillars and original stone (so cool).  I didn't really know what to expect, so when Le Condor walked on stage after an opening Peruvian flute solo with an enormous black trench coat and blonde ponytail, I knew this was no ordinary "traditional" music concert.  Then came the lasers.  This guy had every laser and light show in the world on his stage, with fog machines and confetti at different points. He played a tiny recorder/flute called a galoubet, traditional to the Provence region, but it was tiny in this huge guy's hand.  I say hand because he always played it with one hand with feet firmly planted spread apart and the other hand swaying gently with his eyes closed.  Remember the black trench coat.  Then his entire band come out, with violins, tamborins (another celtic drum), guitars, more flutes, even more flutes, and lots of bag pipes.  The music was always fast, with lots of little stoccatos, like the Braveheart soundtrack for Peru, Ireland, and Spain.  I was excited to see Scarborough Fair and El Condor Pasa on his playlist for the night, but his rendition of Scarborough Fair was too quick for me.  The bagpipes were cool.  But overall this guy was more funny than anything else.  I'll include a video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYZ2NdeCU3Q

We've been mostly relaxing since we arrived, which has been nice for me after the party in Bayonne.  We went to this secluded beach that was only accessible to local residents, which was a huge sand delta with flamingos and herons and other beautiful birds.  Unfortunately, Maxime's uncle slowed down too much and got stuck in the sand.  We spent another hour trying to get the car out, and actually it was kind of fun. Everyone had a positive attitude while we tried to get the car out, even the dog Tapas helped dig out the tires.  On Tuesday night I went to a toro piscine, which is in a big arena with a square one foot pool in the center.  They let a bull run free in the arena and then allow any man (18 and older) at the event to get down into the arena to try to get the bull to chase him through the pool.  Apparently bulls don't like water.  Maxime and I did a different game where we had two buckets, one for filling the bigger bucket and the other for holding the water.  Then I tried to distract the bull while maxime used the smaller bucket to fill the larger bucket with water from the pool.  There were four teams like us, and we were definitely winning with the most water in our bucket, but then the bull caught a guy by the butt and tossed him around real good.  So the game stopped.  The guy looked really hurt, laying there clutching his leg.  An ambulance arrived and I realized just how dangerously stupid this game was.  It was still fun before somebody got hurt.

les fêtes de bayonne

If you ever have the chance to go to Bayonne for this festival, go.  For the past five nights, I've been walking around the town of Bayonne with 250,000 other people visiting concerts, eating french junk food (crepes and the like), dancing through the streets, and laughing at/with lots and lots of drunk people.  The Fetes open with an event where a choir sings a bunch of traditional Basque songs and they present the town's key to famous people.  I didn't know any of the people, but it was still cool to think there were (relatively) famous people there.  Then they unveil this big puppet called Le Roi de Lyon, who is kind of like the mascot for the Fetes, and launch fireworks that were really really loud.  Alain told me on the way to Bayonne about the fireworks, and he said they were more loud than pretty, and I definitely understood what he meant.  After the overture we started walking and found our first passed out dudes.  At first I was kind of shocked that these guys had friends who left them passed out on the sidewalk like that, but then I kind of got used to seeing people like that.  That aside, the first guy we saw was passed out standing up with his elbow resting casually on the ledge.  It was hilarious.

Most people bring their alcohol in large 2-litre coke bottles mixed with some type of juice, so the ground is littered with empty soda bottles.  I met a couple guys and told them it was my first Fetes de Bayonne, and they told me to step on a couple bottles to crush them flat.  Then they grabbed my hands dragged me skiing on these bottles down the street. Super fun, much more dangerous on the cobble stone streets than I imagined.  We stopped a lot to dance in front of the bars where they set up speakers to play music, and conveniently, served alcohol to the parched peoples.  Wednesday night we hung out on top of this hill for a while to get away from the craziness below us and I got the chance to meet some random people here and there.  There was a guy who went to Brown University, a girl from spain, and a french girl who had a boyfriend who did graffiti (I found out after I started talking to his girlfriend).  In general, everyone was pretty friendly with few to no angry drunks.  The first night we met a girl who was going to be late for her train, and she didn't know where the station was at, so we ran to catch her train at 4:30 in the am.  My feet were killing me afterwards, but I found a two-euro coin on the street and felt like a gentleman when she thanked me with bisous on both cheeks.  Speaking of finding things, I found another two euro coin and a nice (man-ly) bracelet, so I was pretty stoked.  That was Wednesday, a very cool way to start the fetes.

Thursday morning we woke up around 10 to go play a game of Pala, which is a typical Basque country game very similar to raquetball but with a much harder ball.  Raphael's other friend, Ambre showed up on the train that morning and we all went to San Sebastian, Spain for dinner later that night.  The city is situated just across the border from France, 45 min by car from where we are in Bayonne.  It was wild to drive just under an hour to a place with another language.  We tried out the local "tapas" in a bar, which are little hors-d'oeuvres with tasty dried hams and cheese.  Mailiss was there again, the wife of Charlie (uncle Alain's old friend), and she was full of information on the city.  Really full of information.  She would talk your ear off every time she stopped to look at something with you.  We drove back to Bayonne around 930 and made it in time to start the party at 11. Again another night of dancing and concerts.  Thursday we saw this pole climbing game where guys try to make it to the top of a light post while everyone around them throws empty (plastic) bottles at them.  It was really funny to watch, and for a second I wanted to try, but then I thought twice.  There was a rock concert at one of the stages so Raphael and I jumped in the dusty mosh pit for a bit.  Also very fun.

Friday afternoon we went to the beach and Sylvain and I surfed a little bit, and ate lunch after.  I took a huge nap and woke up at 1030pm but everyone was still just sitting around.  It kind of surprised me that we started our nights so late, but we came back home around 4am most nights, so I guess it balanced out.  Friday night was really fun, there were even more people out and about.  We ran into a drumline that was marching through the streets right in front of the cathedral, so we danced behind, following them for half an hour or so.  Saturday was more of the same, but with even more more people, so the streets were extra-crowded by this point.  There was a défilé, which is basically like a float parade with 4 or 5 cars outfitted with decorations of sorts.  I forgot to mention that everyone wears the same outfit at the Fetes:  white shorts/pants/skirt, white shirt, red scarf belt, and a red bandana around the neck.  It was so cool to see both old and young in the same clothes, day and night.  Saturday night, Raphael and I slid down a hill on our butts and so my shorts were pretty dirtied up by the end, but it was part of the experience to have dirty white clothes on every night.

sunday: the day of rest.  I needed it.

Tomorrow Sylvain and I leave for Montpelier/Toulon, and he will drop me off at the former so that I can meet up with Maxime Chevée, a friend from Berkeley.  Maxime lives in a town near Geneva on the French side of the border, but his grandparents live in a city close to Montpelier called Agde.  We're going to drive back to his house after a day or two in Agde, so I'll see the French Alps for the first time.  Life is so good.