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.