Signing off,

George AKA Georges AKA ジョージ

Let’s start with a Tuesday. Like today! Generally, I will profit from not having class until 2 in the afternoon by sleeping in until around 10 or so in the morning. How delightful to be able to do that during the week! Anyway, that’s the way it goes (unless like today I have laundry in which case I chose the 8 o’clock laundry slot so I could get on with what I normally do which is…) after I get up I get ready for the day and then perhaps eat some apples or clementines or whatever assorted breakfast-y things I have in the room (that don’t have to be refrigerated as I don’t have one). Moving one, I gather my effects (ie laptop) and head down the gi-normous hill to the library where it is necessary to walk around the building to the back to find the entrance to the library before climbing up three flights of stairs. Ah, and on a side note in case you don’ t know, there’s no internet in my room, so I make this migration in order to have some for an extended period of time.

Generally vegg-ing out online (meaning trying to watch the week’s episode of How I Met Your Mother — which is difficult because I have to resign in to the server perhaps every 10 or so minutes) and sending important emails trying to get my next semester all set up and communicating with the family, it’s nice to take some time out from the hustle and bustle…or rather general insanity (General Insanity *saluts*) of living in France. Which is fantastic. You should try it. Someday. Seriously. Just make sure you exercise while you’re here.

After my hours of hard work I mosey on to the adjacent building, down in the basement for three hours of general literary talk (General Literary-talk *salutes*).  Which admittedly, I hate. And if you’ve know me before in the throws of my academic career, you know that I cannot stand literature. It is the bane of my existence and continues to be an ever-present chain to which I am anchored, never allowed to roam free! And here I have three classes of it. Surviving, but just barely, it is now 5:10 in the afternoon and I, with an assortment of friends, head down to centre-ville for a café and a pastry.

We often frequent “le petit chou normand,” the patisserie down town that I think makes the best stuff. They certainly have the best baguettes (order “une normande,” you’ll thank me later) and there namesake, “le petit chou” is the best cream puff I’ve ever eaten. Picking from an assortment of delicious tasties, we then proceed to our usual haunt. Les Arcades. It sits along the main road, Rue Saint-Pierre, and started out as the “spy café.” Most of the people there look like they could be spies and it is definitely a good place to people watch. We’ve become spies ourselves. And made friends with the owners/servers of the café. Which is cool. They expect you, and if you don’t come one day they will invariably ask where you’ve been.

Sadly, this is where the routine varies. Dinners are sporadic and I never really know what I’m doing. Sometimes it will be a kabab, others some snacks in my room. There’s also a general trend (General Trend *salutes*) towards the baguette sandwich of deliciousness. My favorite is “jambon crudité,” it’s made with ham and an assortment of veggies. Along with an egg. Don’t knock the egg, it’s delicious. Furthering the evening, it often becomes  a showing of an number of movies or TV on DVD that I or others have brought with them. (We don’t often have homework, so this does not pose any academic problems.) There’s tea, there’s snicky-snacks, and then there’s bed. And on a Tuesday night, bed must come a bit early, as the next morning’s class starts at 8:20. Boo. But hey, c’est la vie.

While there this Peruvian guy want to toss me onto the dance floor at this Cuban bar to see if I have any rhythm. I politely refrain from making a fool of myself. There are many things that I will do, embarrassing things, but this – getting out on the dance floor in a masochistic attempt at salsa dancing in a Cuban bar with a bunch of Peruvians while in northern France – is not one of them. I’d much prefer to relax and sit here sipping on my drink, “El Che,” while admiring the other, more weathered dancer scuffle across the sandy dance floor all the while being supervised by the ever-watchful, delicately crafted mosaic of Che spackled above the bar.

Perhaps the pinnacle of the underground (we had to ring a bell at the seemingly abandoned, albeit fashionable, back door to the same building that houses France’s answer to McDonald’s, Quik) salsa-dancing movement in the Normand city of Caen, I approve off the lively and warm atmosphere contained within. Certainly a change from the otherwise damp and windy city, I now crave a Cuban sandwich with a side fries, à la Loco’s in Savannah. But can I just say that for all my verbiage, I cannot for the life of me figure out why on the dance floor there is a 13” 60’s style TV. The significance, if any, is lost on me. I’m also fairly surprised that no doppich Frenchman has yet to knock it over. That is to say that any TV, however stable, should expect a very short life on the dance floor of “Che,” the pinnacle of the underground salsa-dancing movement in the Normand city of Caen.

P.S.

To those who may be wondering, I have been sitting here in this Cuban bar now for nearly an hour and a half and for some reason I just now asked myself the question, “How am I at a Cuban bar in northern France with a bunch of Peruvians?” If I find an answer, I’ll let you know, but I think it’s just one of those things I’m gonna just have to accept.

But to give you a brief story of my first day in Caen, when I arrived at the train station, I went out to the tram stop to buy my ticket to get to campus. But fortunately I didn’t have to buy anything because my friend Valérie was there to pick me up. We had been emailing back and forth to coordinate, but she wasn’t sure she was going to be able to be there, but it was a pleasant surprise to see her and to have a lovely drive through the city to get to campus. Once there I checked in and then we took my bags up to my room and inspected it. It is nothing special. At all. Just let me tell you that I am glad that my room faces west, towards the city, otherwise it would not be worth it. My view, however, makes me glad I’m in this building. It’s fantastic.

The rest of the day was spent walking around centre-ville while Valérie pointed out all the, well, points of interest. I was a bit turned around, but I think that can be expected your first time in a new city. We did dine, however, on a delicious tuna sandwich constructed in baguette with a Fanta citron, and for dessert, a grillé aux pommes, while is like this lattice-work mille-feuille pastry with a delicate layer of apple sauce. Delicious. Anyways, after a few hours of touring, we made plans for dinner, and I went back to my room and slept for about 4 hours before Valérie came to pick me up so I could dine with her and her family. They were so nice, and I was hesitant to speak French or reach for food in fear of insulting. But this was not the case. It is there I also got the chance to call home so my family could know that I made it safely to the European continent.

The next day brought about 13 hours of sleep or so, before I managed to wake up and use the bathroom (our toilet, by the way, doesn’t have a seat…) and shower. I then went into the city myself for a bit so I could go exploring and develop my own cognitive map of this city soon to be my own. Later in the day, while munching on my lunch at round three or so in the afternoon, I encounter my first English-speakers! One was American, the others Norwegian and Finnish. They led to an introduction to other English-speakers hailing from both Spain and Germany. It was quite an international grouping.

 After this delightful encounter, Valérie came to pick me up and we went to the “Lux,” one of the theaters around here, as we were going to see “Inglorious Basterds.” That was fun because the English and German parts were subtitled in French, and the French parts were not subtitled at all. So I definitely got to brush up on my French while watching. Afterward, a light supper chez Valérie, and then to bed again. I had to get some sleep because tomorrow was to be exciting.

–George(s)

I sat in the very last row possible on the plane (as the plane was very full, and I wanted an aisle seat). Well, as some of you may know, I was particularly sleep-deprived before my flight even left the U.S. because I had the intention of sleeping on the plane. Well, I was unaware that my flight would come with your own personal TV in the back of the seat in front of you. So I searched for what movies they had and sure enough, the newest Star Trek movie was among them. I could not help myself, and seeing as it was a 7 hour flight, I thought I’d have plenty of time to sleep…or not. After the first perhaps 10 minutes of the movie, the video system decided it did not care to pamper the flight and fritzed-out. Yes, fritzed-out. So they had to reboot. Which was supposed to take half an hour. Or rather 2 hours. Mine worked comparatively slower to the rest of the plane, but at least I was not in the middle seat in my row…that one didn’t work at all.

So two hours later I recommenced the watch of Star Trek. Perhaps not the best idea because at most I would have then been able to sleep for about 4 hours. But I wanted to watch it again (‘cause that movie rocks) and so I did. That over with, I decided to keep my headphones in so as to prevent too much backnoise from interrupting my attempt at sleep. The best laid plans, I say, gang aft a’glea (or however Burns spelled that). The one woman sitting at the wing decided she didn’t like it when turbulence shook the aeolian device, and decided to have a panic attack, however silent. Her husband (I assume) sitting next to her quietly informed the stewardess (which, incidentally is the longest word you can type using only your left hand on an American keyboard) of the incident currently occurring and not really knowing what was going on, everyone assumed she was having a heard attack or something (by the way, the woman was like 70 or so years old) and there was an announcement over the speakers, “If there is a doctor or paramedic on the plane, please come to the back of the plane, we have a medical emergency.”

At the time I didn’t know what was going on, but I could see the woman an the two doctors that happened to be onboard, just a few rows in front of me, and I could only assume, based on my numerous encounters with Sci-Fi related horrors on planes, that she was carrying some strange virus that killed within minutes. More specifically, my mind went to on of the first episodes of “Fringe” on Fox, where the werewolf dudeman transformed on the plane and went rampant. “Oh great, I’m going to be mauled by a werewolf thousands of feet in the air.” Aside from making a cool epitaph on my gravestone, I don’t think there’s anything really desirable about dying in such a manner. Nevertheless, they took the lady into the back of the plane to try and treat here and after realizing it was anything too serious, things calmed down. And then the captain turned on the lights. Woo. I got about an hour of being jostled with my eyes closed. No sleep. Woo.

But we landed and I wasn’t too far gone, in fact I was pretty decent. I waited about 40 minutes in line for one of perhaps two people working customs for a FULL PLANE OF PEOPLE to politely and quickly stamp my passport. And then went outside to find a taxi. Now, this stamp is the only thing that I got in my passport; I don’t know if I mentioned this to many of you, dear readers, but when I went to Japan they took our fingerprints, photos, and stapled a paper into our passports so that went we left the country, they would have proof that we actually entered the country legally. In France, a stamp. I was worried about that, but it was not important at the time, so I could move on to my next adventure.

The taxi was okay. Nothing too outrageous, and I honestly didn’t find the driver more daring than any you’d find in America. Though I will say that I love that motorcycles can weave in and out of traffic. Apparently, it actually decreases traffic and allows for more free flowing streets. That, and a lot more people have motorcycles/other motorized bi-wheeled vehicles. So yes. I actually spoke a bit with my driver as the first true test of my French-speaking skills, and I think I did quite well. I understood everything he said, and he didn’t call me out as an American either. That was a plus. We also had a brief discussion about former president “Boosh” and he had some rather radical ideas about how we should send “Boosh” into retirement. But that is neither here nor there, and if you really want to know what he said, continue reading. He dropped me off at the Saint Lazare station and I went in. (A boring sentence, I know, but this is where there’s some overlap with what I wrote while I was on the train to Caen…trust me, that is much more entertaining.)

Should you ever happen to find yourself in a French train station, you will notice certain things. One of which being the military patrols that walk around armed. Not being used to such measures, it was a bit alarming at first, but meh, it’s no big deal. What was more bothersome was the guys that would walk around with “un journal.” They’d hand you the paper and pace around you some as you’re trying to buy your ticket from the kiosk, and then continue to speak some mumbled French at you and try and get you to pay for their “un café” for the morning. (On a sidenote, un café in France is not a coffee as Americans would have it, but espresso. In fact, I’m not quite sure how to not order espresso. Hmm. Oh well.) Well, I after he pestered me a bit, I politely gave back the journal and refused to buy him un café.

Now, I didn’t have much problem with him, and he went away without much cajoling, but if you ever find yourself in that situation in France, never, NEVER let them know that you speak English. If you do, they will fervently insist that you pay for their café and won’t let you go until you get on your train (which could be well over an hour, so speak French!). Also, when purchasing a train ticket in France, it is also necessary to realize if you have a reserved seat or not. If you do not, then do not sit in a seat that has a little piece of paper above it with somebody’s name on it…that means it’s reserved. Should you find yourself in a situation where somebody is claiming you are sitting in their seat, you should politely excuse yourself and go find someplace that does not have somebody’s name on it. There are plenty, so you shouldn’t have a problem.

Now, what follows is the play-by-play account of my time on the train. Some of what I have already said in this entry will be repeated, albeit with more comedic tones as when I wrote the following I was quite sleep deprived. Also, to no be alarmed when I suddenly change the subject or insert seemingly random interjections. Which I inserted into the text. Okay, so, enjoy:

Standing here it doesn’t even phase me that I am in France…aside from that for some reason I’ve lost all of my money handling skills, I am not feeling any different. Perhaps it is due largely to that I’ve had no sleep for the past day or so. Also, by the time I get to Caen (2 hrs) I will be starving, not having eaten in about 10 hours so far – and that was the spotty airline dinner.

Gare Saint Lazare: a lovely mixture of the finest French perfume and cologne and, of course, the always popular BO. Yes, the nose hardly gets a rest amid the flurry of scents wafting, ever so pungently, on the rustic Parisian air. Oh, P.S. there’s a terrier sitting adjacent to me on the train as I write this – very well behaved, I might add. I want to pet him. I would love to see someone try that with Amtrak.

Oh, my taxi driver, Michel, like all/most French people, he was quite adamant about his dislike for former president “Boosh,” even going so far as to suggest that he should get the death penalty. His preferred means were by firing squad or by the good, old-fashioned hanging. Quickly announcing my similar distaste for “Boosh,” however less drastic, we got along well until he got a phone call from what I can only guess was his girlfriend or perhaps wife and we lost all contact. Oh, and should you ever find yourself in a French taxi, know that anything below a 5 centime coin is frowned upon – just give him your money and let him give you change and walk away.

Also, can I tell you how annoying it is when someone is giving you advice in French and all you can think to respond with is “hai.” That just plain rude – apparently my brain has not quite yet made the transition from Japan. Thanks, brain, I really appreciate you working at your best for early morning culture shock. Linguistically freaking out is not how I wished to greet the city of Paris. Also, if the dudeman next to me falls asleep on my shoulder, I shall once more freak out. That brings me to an interesting point: I’m not so – OMG! This is one of those fun tilty trains!!!!! You know, when you go around a corner, the whole car tilts so it can take the turn at a much greater speeds – much fatigued as I am generally mellow with heavy eyes (exception: linguistic incidents of panic).

By the way, just so you know, I cannot believe I am studying aroad again. It just hit me that I am doing it again and in doing so I shall have to meet new people and make new friends, get used to new professors, new administration, new city, arrive thinking everything is strange and leave thinking you’re about to leave home again. These thoughts weary me, but I continue to look forward to new adventures, new people, cities, and cultures. More excuses to tell mildly to exceedingly embarrassing anecdotes. I shall continue to seek out these things and shall continue to be, most likely, your favorite ginger abroad. More from me when I reach Caen, in, say, about 50 minutes.

There you have it folks, more from me later. But know that I absolutely love it here, and after about a week have adapted fairly well and continue to love it here. I look forward to discovering the intricacies that Caen has to offer and I look forward to my fluency in the French language. I’ll keep you posted, but for now, I bid thee adieu. Bonne soirée!

–George(s)

Also, I just this very moment received my address here in Caen to which you may send me things:

Résidence U des Tilleuls

Bâtiment E Chambre 219

23 av. de Bruxelles – BP 5153

14070 Caen Cedex 5 France

I am looking forward to more adventures, new people, and foreign settings. And I am desperately looking forward to the amazing fattening and delicious cuisine of France. (Please check up on me from time to time to make sure I am getting some exercise in…I don’t want to come home with 20 extra pastry and cheese pounds.)

Ah, and where are my manners? For those who do not know, or for those whom I have told and have forgotten already, I will be spending the next four months of my life in the city of Caen (not to be confused with Cannes, you know, the city with the film festival in the south of France) in the region of lower Normandy (Caen, Basse-Normandie), and I will be attending the Université de Caen. As soon as I have it, I shall let you know my more specific contact info.

I received my French Visa today in the mail, so now all that I have left to do is convert my dollars into euros (as of 19 Aug: 1 dollar = .7 euros), and, or course, pack. But packing can be left for a week or so in the future. And this time I shall be sure to pack as light as possible…I don’t want to spend another 7,100 yen (about $71) to ship a 10kg box back to the States. Bleh. That was not happy.

Can you believe I’ll be in France in two weeks?! That realization keeps hitter me harder as the days wear on. I feel like I just left for Japan! I also feel sometimes that my trip to Japan was a dream, having now adjusted back to life at home. The banalaties of life are weighing heavy; time to stir things up a bit. And with a price $1200 less than my ticket to Japan, and with a flight duration 12 hours less, I think my journey to France will be much more enjoyable. Though when I arrive in Paris, I’ll have to take the metro from the airport to the train station, and then a train from Paris to Caen, and then the tram from the Caen train station to my residence. All while carrying luggage and a carry-on. Should be fun.

But, wish me luck, I will let you know when I arrive and am established, and I will soon afterward have photos from FRANCE!!!

Later Days

Our Okaasan here has been accosting people with face masks telling them to wear them. I have not yet had such an assault, but it may happen soon. I wash my hands often as we are oft told to do, and I try to remember not to touch my eyes too much. Or the handles on the trains. But the university has essentially given us a free week. So we are going to try and make the most of it while we still can with our friends here. Zach and I and a few other people now have two free weeks instead of the one free week we would have had after finals week. Which was canceled. I cannot stress how odd it is to prepare for these finals and stress yourself out and then realize it was all for nothing. Not that I’m much complaining, but it is just so weird. It totally adds to the surreal feeling of living in Japan for a semester. It is a strange ending, but an ending nonetheless.

They recommend limiting your travel to avoid the risk, but I dunno how much that will make us stay cooped up in our seminar house. I will try to post more on previous adventures while I have time during the day. But we may get one or two places more this week before everyone leaves.

In conclusion, everything it fine here in Hirakata, there are no cases of buta influenza here. If there is any other information you should know I will post it here. Wishing you all the best, and as my laptop battery is about to die, I shall end here.

ジョージ

Class has essentially taken over my life for the past month and it will continue to do so until our “graduation” here.  I’m not actually graduating, but the Japanese do so like their ceremonies and this is the one that happens at the end of the year. Just so you know about how my stay here has been going, it looks something like this during the week: test, quiz, test, test, quiz, quiz, quiz, test, test. Test, quiz. The faculty here sure likes to test people on their knowledge; so much so that by the time you memorize all the vocab for one test, it’s time to start on the next 40 words for the next day and you forget all of your previous lists.

To ease this pain, the year includes three days off for “Golden Week,” three national holidays in a row that is there for all of the kaishain (salarymen) to take off. It’s pretty much the only day(s) off that they take during the year. But it’s just enough days for all of the faculty to complain that we have too many days off. Being that we’ve only ever had spring break and that one day for Foundation Day, I really don’t think it’s too much to ask. I would enjoy Japan so much more if I didn’t have to go to class.

I’m trying hard to write, I promise, but I think a video is more likely because I wouldn’t have to type it. However, I make few promises as even though the last month has been tests and quizzes, these next two weeks are oral exams and interviews, and written exams and finals. It is going to be so much more awful. Bright side: I’m in Japan. I just keep telling myself that and everything suddenly becomes much better. Until my next class….

The day proceeded as usual, though I was excited at the prospect of heading toward Kyoto to meet again with Yuka and Yuki and to see Fushimi Inari. From the photos you can pretty much determine that Fushimi Inari is the awesome place with the orange torii. But yes, I headed back to the CIE after lunch and checked my mailbox and ran into Brian and Zach on their way out of class. I mentioned that I was leaving for Kyoto, and Brian hadn’t anything better to do, so now my party became two people! We did the usual Hirakatashi eki to Kyoto by train and, well, some time later we got to Kyoto eki where we met up with Yuki and Yuka. We then navigated the subway system of Kyoto to try and get to Fushimi Inari. But since neither Brian nor I had ever been there, and since Yuki and Yuka are natives of Sendai in the Tohoku region, not of Kyoto in the Kansai region, they were a little lost too. But lengthy walks in multiple underground train stations later, we made it to the subway platform and then to the actual Fushimi Inari station.

The main gigantic torii of Fushimi is about 200 feet from the station, so it was easy to spot. We walked in and then we did another fortune reading. As you may recall, last time I did a fortune reading, I got the worst one possible. The. Worst. But this time, I got a mediocre one, such that Yuki recommended that I keep it instead of tie it to the bars so the bad spirits will wait for me there. So I kept it, and then we proceeded to the torii paths. You cannot imagine how many torii there actuall are. I know I have photos, but they do can not adequately portray how massive and how many torii there were on the paths. Needless to say, we spent some time, perhaps an hour, wandering the paths, but we had to turn back, as we were hungry and we didn’t have the time that day to wander the approx. 4 kilometers or so of torii covered walkways.

Making our way out again, we looked around for a restaurant and found a cool little place where everything was in kanji and we needed both Yuki and Yuka to read the menu for us. Now, Brian and I are both decent at kanji, but when it comes to food, it becomes a little more difficult. Brian ordered the eel, which looked delicious, and I ordered weird vegetable udon. (The plate itself was not called “weird vegetable udon,” but I can tell you I didn’t recognize anything that I ate…but it was tasty.) I also this time got to impress even more of Japan with my “eco” lifestyle by using “my hashi.” Or my own collapsable chopsticks. I love them so much! They are quite handy.

We finished up our meal and then headed home…after much deliberation about how Brian and I wanted to walk to get to the Keihan train line to get home. Which we eventually did, and missed out on the Seminar House meeting. At which everyone else apparently did not discuss anything new, they pretty much just complained about how people don’t clean up the kitchen. Which they still don’t. Oh well. I think I attempted homework that night, but didn’t really do much at all. It was a lazy day after so much traveling.

You’ll be pleased to know that I’ve only yet to write about Nara, and then I can write about my visit with my kids in Sendai! Woo! And then the hanami that we did in Kyoto this evening. It was awesome…but more on that later. Oyasumi!

ジョージ