So Far, So Good

Not much has been going on lately, we've all been getting used to living in Paris and a few things still need a bit of ironing out, but I think we've got most of it down. School this week was all right, other than the 45-minute commute and the scary administrators. All of the kids I've met (so far) are really nice, and I know that it's going to be pretty hard to leave them all behind in December, as awesome as my friends are back home. Each morning I wake up at 6:30, leave the house at 7:15, wait for a bus that will take me to the La Défense subway station, then take the RER A to Charles de Gaulle-Étoile, then take Metro line 6 to Dupleix, then walk for about 5 minutes, and then I'm at school. It's quite a trek, and I always end up surprising my friends when they ask me which Arrondissement (basically sector) of Paris I live in, and I tell them that I actually live in the suburbs. That said, could you blame us? There's no way we'd cram all 6 of ourselves into a postage-stamp Parisian apartment.
Anyways, since Monday (30 Aug) we've been entertaining our grandparents, who were flying in for a conference in Berlin but decided to stop by while they were on the way. We checked out the Centre Pompidou, ate at some really nice restaurants, and rode the Bateau-Mouche (which taught me that if I am to ever do that again at night I am to bring an extra layer). It was nice to actually go out and explore after having lived there already for 3 weeks. In driving to all of these places we also went through the Étoile exchange a couple of times, which is (and I may have posted this already, excuse my amnesia) a giant roundabout with at least 12 spokes, 6-8 lanes wide, no lane lines, and a speed limit of at least 40 mi/h (that's 65 km/h for the metrically inclined). I'll post both a video of the Centre Pompidou and us going down the Étoile in this post.

Driving on the Étoile from Jack Biggs on Vimeo.

Fontaine Stravinsky in front of the Centre Pompidou from Jack Biggs on Vimeo.

So that's been the majority of what's happened in the past week or so, we got our Navigo passes in the mail and have felt so official waving our wallets over the scanners to get into the metro. Before that, it involved using tickets, and it wasn't the same because it didn't make that awesome dinging sound. Yes, that's right. I'm weird. Those who are now just starting to check out this blog probably haven't noticed yet if they haven't been reading my posts, so this is just me warning you.
Hope everyone's enjoying themselves! Use my QR code to contact me if you're interested.

Sorry, Guys.

I realize that I haven't posted in a while. Yes, that's right. I'm turning into the least interesting person in the world. Actually, what's happened is that I'm becoming progressively more lazy as the school year draws near, something that I'm sure won't play out well for me once I start having classes in French.

We spent all of twelve hours in Geneva (by the way, the couple in the room next to us was having very loud sex... so much for a good impression of Switzerland), and then it was off to Paris. We arrived about two weeks ago, and since then we've been getting to know the neighborhood. We live about 3 minutes away (by bus) from La Défense, which is essentially an enormous square filled with shops and restaurants. It also happens to be the Terminus of Line 1 and a stop on the RER, so it's a straight shot right into the middle of Paris if we ever get bored (we technically don't live in Paris but rather Courbevoie, which is essentially right on the outer border). We've been poking around the city, mostly getting used to our surroundings (we still have a hard time believing that we're actually living in Europe) and figuring out how to get where using the Metro.

Recently we went up the Eiffel Tower, although I forgot to bring my memory card that day so I was only able to take 3 pictures saved to the internal memory, and I can't find the proprietary cable to hook up to my camera to salvage them. Honestly. Why can't they just stick to Mini-USB? I left my house and I still have 2 or 3 of them floating around, for Christ's sake! I did take a video on my Nano, though, and I happen to have that proprietary connector, mostly because it's everywhere. So yeah. Here it is:

Climbing up the Eiffel Tower from Jack Biggs on Vimeo.

I mentioned some pictures in my video and if I'm not mistaken, not everyone on the interblags is friends with me on Facebook so I'll post them for all of you. They don't do it justice at all, it was a really cloudy day and my camera couldn't cover the entire building, so the few shots that I actually have of the entire Arch make it look kind of tiny. The panoramic photo I tried to make didn't turn out well at all, so we'll have to let that one slide. Here's my best photo:

So that's that. I'll embed the Vimeo video when I get the chance, for now I'm waiting in line until my video gets processed.

On the Road to Geneva

Well, this road trip has no doubt been one of the longest I've ever been on. Thanks to the fact that I didn't sleep poorly enough to actually spare myself from part of the ride, as was what had happened the last few times, this ride has been the longest 6 hours of my life, if it's even been 6 hours. It feels more like 7, which wouldn't surprise me considering we had to wait in a really long line to get into the Mount Blanc tunnel, and thanks to things just taking longer than they normally should. So We're all still in the car, I'm about to lose my posterior, and the moods are not warm at all. We did get to drive through the mountains, though, although in Europe they take a more literal approach to the experience, they literally drive through the mountains. No slopes, just bridge-tunnel-bridge-tunnel. The few views you get in between, however, are really stunning. I'm pretty much just posting this because I'm bored out of my mind and want an excuse to publish the awesome photos I took.

Before we left for Geneva, we toured Florence one last time to "run some errands", which in code apparently meant do some last-minute shopping, because the only real errand that was ran involved packing our car. My mom bought a whole bagful of ceramics, my dad bought a cool guitar-handbag for my sister, and we toured the Florentine stationary shop, where I bought a surprise gift for my friend. It's unlikely this certain friend is reading this, if this certain friend can even guess that it's them. Excuse the previous grammatically incorrect sentence, it was a thinly-veiled attempt to hide the gender of this certain friend. I was tempted to buy everything in that shop, because not only did they sell beautiful stationary, but they sold leather-bound books with calligraphy parchment inside, fountain pens, ink, stands, and quills. Sadly, though, I only had 15€ left, so I had to settle with a bit of stationary, and then we took off. Adding to the "fun" was the fact that I had twisted my ankle fairly badly on the curb, so instead of enjoying the views as I walked back I had the priviledge of limping the entire way. Fantabulous. Whatever, here are the last few photos I took of Florence.

Update: As it turns out, we crossed into Switzerland right as I was writing this post, so here's the incredibly unexciting video of us crossing the border. It was our 3rd country in 3 hours. Only in Europe, Baby.

The Longest Recap Ever

Well, I guess I have to pay for putting off my next post. Having not written anything for the past 9 (10? 15?) days, I have a virtual lifetime of experiences to write down, and I doubt I'm going to be able to remember any of them. It's a shame, my guess is that I've been chickening out about the whole translate-into-french thing. It takes up a lot of time and has caused me great amounts of stress while writing the english version; I'm fearful I might not be able to translate certain things! No matter. The point is to write this down so that I can remember it later on, because my grey matter has not served me very well in the past. So here we go.

First, I wanted to talk about my little journey I had in Ugo's SUV. While I was strealing their internet, I heard him get up to go leave, and he asked me if I wanted to go down to the well with him (they fill up water bottles from the well every so often because the tap water tastes really nasty). I said yes, then asked my brother if he wanted to go. Addicted to the internet as he is (he can't stop reading manga), he said no, so I went out with Ugo to the well, or so I thought. Since Charlie had decided not to go with us, Ugo decided to make him regret it, so instead of getting in his little Nissan, we went in his big Nissan: A 22-year-old SUV. Unbeknownst as to why, I got in and we drove down to the well, filled up the bottles, and put them back in. Ugo then proceeded to tie them down as securely as he could in the back of the car. Being the idiot that I am, I didn't take this hint and, once again, blindly climbed into the car. I finally realized that something was somewhat different when, instead of turning around, he continued down the road we were going on and eventulaly veered off of the mountain road and onto a little sheep trail. The bottles, meanwhile, were making the biggest racket I've ever heard; had he not lashed them down, I have no doubt that all of them would have shattered.
So we continued down the road, it getting progressively rockier and rockier, and Ugo explained to me that the road's no longer used; not too long ago everyone walked their cattle down this road to go and graze. As this was no longer the case, the road's slowly deteriorated and is continuing to do so. Thankfully it wasn't that much of a problem for the vehicle we were in, because the view once we got to the top was absolutely stunning: You could see all of Angoli from one side, the bordering village from another (I was told that that was where my great x 2,000 grandmother came from), and the rest of the world if you looked straight ahead: Everything laid out for miles and miles. I think if I had been about 100 feet higher I could have seen my house. Maybe not. But still. It was absolutely stunning.

After that day, we all went to the festival of Saint Joseph. Apparently, as I learned recently, the actual day of the festival was in March, but since around that time of year it's still cold and yucky, they decided to have the celebration in August, when the weather was (a bit too) warm, and all of the inhabitants had moved back to Angoli for the summer (during the other seasons, they're all elsewhere for work). It started with a church service, then turned into a parade: They took his statue out of the church and paraded him around the village, saying their "Hail Mary's" (in Italian) and setting off cannons the entire way. By the way, when I say statue, I mean statue. They're hauling a one-two hundred pound statue up and down a mountain in 90 degree weather. It was absolutely crazy.
One opportunity that came along during the parade was the chance to meet the priest. Apparently, being a South African doesn't give you the best skin color when you're in a southern-Italian village of 300 people. It's not like he had a choice in the matter, though; he was assigned to the village by the Catholic church. So, upon showing up, the villagers stopped showing up to church. And then they all started to accuse him of stealing the offering. Talk about a warm welcome. It's better now, although I'm sure many villagers still aren't very nice towards him. He was a really nice guy, though, and happened to speak French and English along with Italian, not surprising considering those were the two official languages of Togo, where he grew up. Sadly, though, he had a parade to run, so we only got a few minutes with him. Shortly afterwards, we left the parade; not everyone enjoys walking up and down mountains and I have to say I share this sentiment. So we went back to Ugo's house and ate dinner, then went down that night for the fireworks, which were loads better than the ones we saw at Bastille Day. After all of that, we walked to our house and went to bed.
Sadly, that's the best my memory is going to serve me. The rest is a blank, anything after that begins with our leaving Angoli, which was a very sad occasion. As a parting gift, Ugo gave Thomas, my brother, an Italia baseball hat, and he gave my dad a Mussolini watch (some Italians are still big on Mussolini: The only reason we as Americans consider him a bad person was because he was associated with Hitler. Mussolini established a universal language [before there were only dialects], created roads, and completely unified Italy during his time in office, even though he killed a lot of people.). After some good-bye's, kisses, and tears, it was time to head back to Rome. So we all piled in the car (my dad did a great job of putting essentially everything into the roof compartment, so it was nice and roomy) and headed to Rome with one extra: Sara was coming with us! The ride back was a lot faster than the ride there, mostly thanks to the absence of the enormous traffic jam that we had the pleasure of experiencing on the way there.
Once we were there, we all headed straight for the beds and crashed. Well, at least, the majority of us: me and my brother were pretty happy to find that we actually had internet that we could use without feeling guilty, so we took full advantage of it. After dosing ourselves to a satisfactory level, we all headed out to the Vatican to go see St. Peter's Basilica. It really was incredible, sadly I didn't bring my camera so I didn't have a chance to take any pictures. I'll see if I can steal some from my dad's iPhone some time, but it's unlikely that they'll be any good. Oh well, there's always postcards. Plus it gives me the excuse to come back again.

The next day, we all went out for a drive to tour Rome after having dinner at a really great restaurant. We saw the Roman Colloseum, an Arc of Triumph (Evidently there's more than one) and some other... things whose names escape me, because I'm American and they don't seem important to me. That and my memory really stinks. I'll publish the photos we took though, one of the coolest things I saw that I could actually get a good picture of in the dark was the "Face of Truth": A rock with a face carved onto it, with a room behind the face. In the Roman times, you'd stick your hand in the mouth and tell a truth or a lie, and if it was a lie then your hand would be cut off by "the face of truth", who happened to be the person sitting inside probably guessing whether or not the dude was telling the truth. Maybe he just got a kick of cutting off people's hands (Caaarl!).

So, now that I've talked about chopping off hands, I'm not going to bother to put on a transition because I really have no idea how I'm supposed to. The day afterwards it was back on the road to get to Florence. That's right, Florence. On the way back to Paris, we've decided that we're going to go to Florence and then Geneva on the way. Geneva! I've really always wanted to go there, and really the only thing I'm hoping is that I won't be severely disappointed. Apparently we won't be visiting much, which makes me kind of sad, I'm not likely to go back there for quite some time. If there was an LHC museum anywhere I would totally go for it. Anyways, Florence. After making the 3 hour drive to Florence safe and sound, we visited the hotel briefly to drop off our bags, then got right back out to go tour the city. It was absolutely marvelous! We saw the David (I snuck a photo of it even though it wasn't allowed), 2 huge cathedrals (one made completely out of colored marble) and Dante's Inferno. We also went on a bridge, whose name yet again escapes me, where there were actual shops. Above the shops, you could see a corridor that went from the now-gone royal family's offices, all the way across the bridge, down a block, into a tunnel, and back up again, which would lead them straight to the palace's grounds without having to touch the commoner's road. While I think the idea of avoiding the commoners isn't necessarily the best thing for a government to do, I did think the whole concept of an enormous passageway was pretty cool. At least their society contributed perspective. I think that's worth a distancing government or two.
So that's the total recap. I think I just broke my keyboard from all of this typing, we're off to Geneva tomorrow and I'm likely to try (and fail) to translate this post along the way. I think I'll make it halfway. Hopefully I'll have free internet there so I can translate words I don't know, they charge a ridiculous price for the internet here. 5€ for 30 minutes, 8€ for an hour, and 15€ for 24 hours, per computer. Insane. Sorry, Frenchies, this might take a while.

One last thing: I'd just like to make a note of how adorable the trucks here are. That said, it's a miracle how any of them get anything done given the tiny trunk space they must have, but still! Don't you just think they're so cute?

By the way, Blogger Draft is stupid and isn't letting me change the location. This was actually posted in Florence, Italy. Love you Blogger. Not.

Getting Lost in the Mountains

En Français

It's been about 3 days since we arrived, and in those 3 days not much has happened. We've met various locals, we went on a tour of the village, we went down to Pianopoli for an awesome dinner, and just yesterday we went down to the beach to go swimming. And that is the subject upon which I'm going to base my post.

First, we headed down to Lamezia Terme to withdraw some money. Easy, right? Wrong. We went to one bank, waited in line, and had a lot of fun translating: Wanessa (pronounced Vanessa, by the way) talked to the teller, translated the Italian into French for me, and then I translated French to English for my Aunt Kathy. Then, she'd think for a bit, talk to me in English, I translated English to French, Wanessa translated French to Italian... Needless to say, it took a bit longer than it normally would for the line to advance. Not only that, but we had to find 2 places after that where we could change our money. After taking an hour more than we should have, we finally got into the car and headed to the beach, which was another good 30 minutes away. By the time we made it there, the stands were no longer serving lunch, so for lunch we all decided to eat ice cream and chips. At least it helped us stomach the enormous dinner we had later that night.

Anyways, while we were at the beach we decided to go snorkelling because the water was literally the clearest I have ever seen. We saw all kinds of fish, and amused ourselves by lifting up the rocks and watching the fish dart forward to feed on what was under them. We also tried to rent a paddleboat, but the person renting them out didn't recommend it due to the heat, so we took a pass. So we continued for a while, and then after said while we all got back into the car and began our way back.

The way back was where the problems started. John Cleese was leading us home during a traffic jam, and me not being content to stay stuck on the same road for the next hour led me to plot a separate route, one which Wanessa had never heard of. I honestly should have listened to her, because we ended up on a dead-end, a gate separating us between the tiny road we were on and the highway we could be zipping home on. Crestfallen, we all turned around, headed back, then, on the way back, we saw this other street that we thought might take us back. So we took that, which led us into the middle of nowhere (before we were on the outskirts of the middle of nowhere, it was legit nowhereness after that). Long story short, we spend about two and a half hours getting back when, normally, it would take us around one. Don't know what that traffic jam would have done to it, though. While we were all utterly exhausted by the time we got back, we all really liked it thanks to the beautiful views we saw on the way home, panicked as we were.

So, that's the biggest thing that's happened to us so far. Today we went to Domenico's house for lunch, where we ate tons of food, as is what happens when you eat at the house of someone who lives here. The view from his house is absolutely wonderful: You can see every single rooftop of every single house, the cars on the mountain roads going by, the ocean towns and the beaches, and the wind farm slightly to the left. If the Angolese have nothing else, they definitely have their views. I'm starting to wish I could extend my stay a bit or even live here, although I'm sure the novelty might wear off after a couple of months.

Glad my non-readers are up to speed. We've been in Angoli for quite a while, although I haven't had much to say about all of it. One thing that I really can't get used to here is the huge hills; I don't think I've ever craved something motorized this much. I also really miss being able to drive. Unfortunately, I'm sure that if I try I'll end up ruining the transmission in our car, due to the fact that I can't drive a stickshift, or at least I definitely can't drive a stickshift that well, especially when I consider the fact that at the moment we're living on a mountainside. Four months left. I still can't believe that it's 1/3 gone already. I might hide in a box when it's time to leave.

Angoli

So after navigating the traffic jam and successfully meeting up with Ugo and Wanessa at the AutoGrill that was about 30 minutes away from them, we began to make our way there. The drive up was incredibly terrifying, seeing as it was one of those mountainside villages and we were driving a tank. This morning I saw a charter bus up here and immediately felt incredibly sorry for the poor driver. At least he didn't have to follow a vespa that was comfortable navigating a mountainside road at not-okay-for-minivan speeds. The views were incredible: from the top of the mountain, you could see both the Mediterranean and Ionian seas, entire mountain ranges, and a huge wind farm that sprawled out for about two miles. Really cool. I wanted to take a picture, but it was a bit too dark. I'll try taking it later. Anyways, once we got up to the top we were greeted by some familiar faces, and my grandmother and aunt got to meet some new people / incredibly distant relatives. One thing that was really good for my French (and Italian, too) was their inability to speak anything but English; I had to translate for them whenever I was having a conversation. While it was helpful for my language skills, it got kind of old after a while.

Speaking of my grandmother and aunt (I'll just call them Mary & Kathy to simplify this, seeing as typing it out every time is getting somewhat irritating), I've decided that I'll go with them around Italy to help them out, seeing as they have never driven around in Europe before and probably need a little guidance. From what I've heard, we're going to re-visit Rome (Roma), go to Florence (Firenze), potentially Naples (Napoli), and some other ones as well. I haven't really asked them, and quite frankly I'm not sure if I want to find out, seeing as each city is likely going to take a fair amount of driving. It's not that I don't mind road trips, it's the fact that European cars just aren't built for such things. In our Honda Odyssey back home, we drove everywhere. It was spacious, comfortable, and had other features that just made sense for long trips. In our Peugeot 807, however, I have to scrunch up my knees, and if I want an extra inch or two of wiggle room by sliding my seat back I end up crushing the person sitting behind me. There isn't any trunk space (we've had to get a roof turtleshell thingy, and we still don't have enough room in the trunk), the seats are built for someone with the height of Napoleon (although it is a French car), and the acceleration, even for a minivan, is abysmal. We can barely make it up a hill. Although I do like the automatically folding mirrors. Those are fun to watch.

I'm done griping about road trips, the only thing it really means for me is that I have to spend an uncomfortable day in exchange for a few days in paradise. That said, I am really not looking forward to driving from Angoli to Paris. 18 hours of clown-car fun. Paris should be nice once we get back, though. I'm kind of apprehensive about school, but then again isn't everyone their junior year. Speaking of school, I'm still putting off my summer reading, which I've heard they actually go over. Yikes. I'll get started on it soon, I still have a good 3 weeks to finish my book. Of course, that 3 weeks will go by like lightning, just like the past 2 months have, thus the reason for this blog. Hopefully I'll write more in the future, because at this rate I won't be remembering much in the future. Yes, you heard me right. If you're even there; I never really expected anyone to read this so this is pretty much just a way of keeping a diary. Even though I'm going to forget a lot of this, I really hope that I'll be able to come back sometime. The people in Angoli are really nice, even though they do stare at you like you came here from Mars on a banana (although it is a town of 300 people, so they probably don't get many foreigners). France is cool too, although they really don't like tourists so if you have even the slightest accent they kind of automatically hate you. Especially if said accent is American, English, or Belgian. They're kind of stuck-up and kind of, well, French. I'm just generalizing, though, a lot of the friends I've made there are really nice. The people that you'll randomly see on the street, though, not so much.

Strangely, the northern Italians are like that, too. The southerners, though, not so much. Just don't mention the mob (seriously, don't), and you should be fine. I've measured the reactions between English and French, and, as I predicted, they look at you weirder if you speak English. So I tend to speak in French. Depending on the situation, though, sometimes I'll have to speak English to my siblings, so they end up giving me away. I get some kind of weird kick out of disguising myself. I'm done ranting now, we're about to go check out the town with Ugo and get stared at some more. We're probably the talk of the town, I hope it doesn't get to my head.

On the way to Angoli

On the way to Angoli from Jack Biggs on Vimeo.

I added a video to this post, just for teh lolz. We're currently stuck in a traffic jam, moving rather slowly, so (looking on the bright side here) we can see the countryside in more detail, and we won't have to worry about speed cameras. The speed cameras in Italy are somewhat interesting because not all of them are single speed-and-shoots, the vast majority time you from one point to another, making it virtually impossible to go over the speed limit and not get a ticket. I don't really know what my obsession is with speed cameras, it could be because they don't exist in the USA and I'm curious to know more, kind of lke the high speed train systems. Speaking of which, while we were at the gas station we saw one go by at at least 120 mph (~200 kph for the metrically inclined), which completed my day about 10 hours early.

The countryside really is quite beautiful here, as I said in my video it's less scrubby like France and and more, well, tree-y. There are a ridiculous amount of mountains, and on each mountain there's almost always a village. I think I'd appreciate it a lot more if we were actually going somewhere. The time it's taken for me to write all of this has gotten us about 200 meters. We might just get out of the car and have a picnic.

Anyways, last night, despite my fatigue, I decided to go out with everyone to see Rome. We saw the Vatican, a fortress thingy (the name escapes me and I plead you all to forgive my American ignorance), and a bridge in front of said fortress thingy (see previous comment). After we toured around town a bit, we went to a pizzeria for dinner. We went home, I collapsed, and actually slept. Today I feel worse, but at least I'm worse and well-rested.

So this was a rather short post. Like last time, I'll post and then write an update once we're actually there. If we ever get there. We've moved another 200 meters. At least we're actually moving.

A not-so-fun way to be in Rome

After writing my post on the car ride, I'd like to say that a lot has happened but I'm not entirely sure. We finished the car ride about 3 hours afterwards, but once we arrived at the bed & breakfast, the woman who managed it wasn't there, so we had to wait for 30 minutes on the pavement until she arrived to unlock the gate. I don't mean to sound unappreciative, but there really isn't anything worse than arriving after an incredibly long journey, absolutely exhausted, only to realize that what you've been telling yourself is really close is actually a bit further away than you expected.
Anyways, we got all of our luggage in the hotel, played a few movies, and slept for about two hours until dinner, upon which we all went to a skype pal of my mom's (she seems to have a lot of those). We talked, haltingly, in French, English and Italian, and they showed us some kittens that they found in a bucket at the side of the road, which absolutely killed us because they were too young to survive without a mother and looked terribly unhealthy. After talking about taking one in, deciding not to for obvious reasons, and setting them back down in their box, we went upstairs and tried to forget. After eating lots of food, we eventually got back home at around 23:40, upon which we all fell asleep. Except for me. Last night I literally did not fall asleep until I somehow magically passed out at 7:00, when everyone was waking up. Thanks to this inexplicable insomnia, I now have a sore throat and a runny nose, in a time where it takes all of my concentration to understand a basic Italian sentence. Seriously?
Seriously. So we're likely to go out into the city today, something that I'd otherwise love to do, but we're currently waiting on our new arrivals to wake up (my grandmother and aunt) from their jet-lagged fog. I'll try to take pictures while I'm in Rome, but, to be honest, I might just stay home while they go out. Woe is me.

On the Road

So at the time of this writing, I'm sitting in the car on the way to Rome. We woke up at about 3am to avoid the traffic, and so far the drive has been somewhat, well, boring, although I guess I should have expected that. Since half of the drive so far has been me sleeping, I can't tell very many stories about what happened on the way, but I did have the very strange experience of falling asleep in France and waking up in Italy: suddenly, upon waking up, all of the signs looked different and the spelling took on the standard "bouncy words" that comprised Italian. It didn't really fully register until we went to the gas station, and we got to actually hear the language. Unfortunately, I came to a realization that I was now in a foreign country where I couldn't understand a word anyone was saying. While this was true, I absolutely loved listening to it. For some reason, the Italians speak very quickly and then emphasize the last two or three syllables of their sentence, which I always found myself anxiously anticipating whenever I heard one of them talk.

The French side of the journey was rather, well, French. For some reason, we came up to a speed camera only 2 km/h over the speed limit (that's slightly over 1 mi/h) and we were greeted by a blinding flash. Keep in mind that this was at 3:45 in the morning, so a flash that bright leaves us somewhat visually impaired for the next 15 seconds or so: I'm amazed that there hasn't been a lawsuit over something like that. Of course, we felt pretty crummy for the next 10 minutes or so, but I honestly think that being stopped by a Gendarme would have been even worse (the French have 3 different police forces: the municipal police, the national police, and the Gendarmerie, which supervises the highways and is militarized so that they'll wake up any time due to the fact that they're sworn to service). Honestly, I wasn't driving, but I'm pretty sure that the adrenaline levels of getting caught by a speed camera is far inferior compared to being pulled over by a policeman. There were literally 5 speed cameras during the next kilometer, which was quite annoying thanks to the built-in speed camera alarm on our GPS that essentially yells at you and prevents any sleep whatsoever.

At the moment, we've knocked 7 hours and 20 minutes off of our journey, and we still have another 2h40 to go. At least the countryside (and the language) is beautiful. I'll post another one of these once we make it to the hotel and collapse from sheer exhaustion. Unless, of course, my crazy mother decides to go somewhere. In that case, I ask you all to pray for me.

Update

So we're leaving for Rome tomorrow, and before I leave I just want to take in this awesome town one last time before I leave. Ah, Hyères. Quite honestly, I didn't really like this place when we first came, but it definitely grew on me. One of the parts that I absolutely love about some of these cities is that they still have their older beginnings, so we can literally walk through the town as one would centuries ago. Being an American doesn't really equal history considering, as of this writing, we're only about 234 years old, so what seems everyday for these people is just so amazing for me. By the way, in my stupid American unable-to-perform-simple-math self, I got the chills when I realized that we really are only 234 years old. I thought we were at least 300. Silly me.

Another cool thing that I really liked about the town was the French camp. While everyone there spoke English and for the most part didn't help out my French, it was fun interacting with the various people from different countries, getting a glimpse into each one as I met new people. The majority of people there were Russian, German and Spanish, which made me pretty distressed because the only language that I've studied in detail at all is French, so I couldn't understand Russian because it's a Slavic language and I couldn't understand German because, well, spoken German sounds somewhat different than how I'd read it, apart from the fact that they all sound chronically angry. Spanish was somewhat easier for me to understand, and when there actually were Italians there I could comprehend a great bit of what they were saying thanks to my previous experiences of hearing Italian followed by French followed by Italian again with the Mazzeis. If any of you are interested, the camp is called "Fondation La Navarre." Just don't visit during the school year because it's a place for trouble children.

One of the kids at the camp, Leo, is going to be in Paris for the following year, so we're planning on meeting up. Unfortunately, I think he'll be the only friend I made there that I'm going to see again. Although that might be a good thing depending on if I now want to learn French or German. Considering my three years of studying French, I think I'll decide to perfect it. German can wait along with Italian, although I might have to learn a few phrases in Italian if I wish to survive in the cold, Mafia-filled world of Calabria.

Speaking of the Mafia, my grandmother and aunt will be going to Italy with us, and when they expressed their desire to go out, all alone, in southern Italy without having learned the slightest bit of a Romance language or the ways of European (especially Italian) driving, my mother went absolutely berserk. Currently I'm supposed to accompany them, but I honestly have no idea how I'm supposed to converse with locals in Italian when I speak French, nor have I any idea how to help them drive when it's illegal for me to do so in Europe because I'm under 18. That, and the stickshift is an entirely new concept to me. I guess I'll have a lot of time to think about it, though: we'll head off for Rome on Saturday (July 31st) at 3am to avoid the omigod-its-really-hot-im-going-to-the-beach traffic, and after 2 weeks I'll have to make a decision whether I want to go with them or not. In the meantime, I'm just trying to look forward to tomorrow, because looking two jam-packed weeks ahead just isn't working for me.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, not falling asleep after a full day is fairly difficult.

Actually Posting Tech Stuff

So I know that you all are probably looking forward to reading a few facts on my visit to France. Well, I kind of intended this blog to be my daily blog as well as my posts for tech, so those who don't want to read this post can either close out of this window or read it clutching their head whilst making tortured noises. It's really up to you.

Recently I came across a few items thanks to my newest obsession: Google Reader. I have to admit, I had tried it out for a while and it never really made sense to me until I actually started following multiple blogs: up until then, the only blog that I checked frequently was Make: Magazine. After needing to consume more internet material thanks to an absence of actual internet, I decided to, in my twenty minutes of daily internet, save all of the content I possibly could from every tech blog I could find. After getting hooked to said tech blogs once we found a wifi network we could access from our house, I needed a way to constantly check them all in one place. So I tried out Google Reader, and from there I discovered a whole array of things that I've been missing out on.

First to come was Gnome-Do, a utility which I absolutely have no idea how I missed. Gnome-Do provides you with an interface to search for files, create calendar events, play music in your Rhythmbox library, manage tasks on your Remember the Milk account, post to Twitter, and (my personal favorite) install new applications with apt-get. But that's just the tip of the iceberg; Gnome-Do comes with a plethora of plugins that enable you to interface with a whole variety of other resources, and it even has a dock mode to let you imitate the famous OS X staple (except said staple does not include a do-it-all search feature). The downside: It's only for Linux, and the plugins, from what I can tell, are not third-party but rather developed by the Gnome-Do team, so development of new plugins is really up to them. Still, it really is quite an amazing feature, and I've never been so happy with my Linux system.

Also, after browsing Google Reader for some time, I began to get a bit tired of the interface. For one, I was tired of skimming everything with my down-arrow-key held down to find some content that I actually wanted to read. Also, there was no way for me to be able to share the links on Twitter or Facebook. So when I stumbled across Feedly, a Google Chrome extension / Firefox add-on, I was instantly hooked. Feedly takes your Google Reader, Twitter, and Flickr accounts and merges them all into a start page, allowing you to see all of your content at a glance. When you click on an item, it expands to show a preview, which you can either open into a new window or preview the actual webpage in the same window. Thanks to Feedly, I can now tell you what is latest in Fail.

Finally, the last thing I wanted to talk about was Springpad. Whilst browsing Lifehacker, I stumbled across a positive post concerning a certain piece of online organization software called Springpad, and I decided to try it out. Springpad is essentially a single place for you to put everything: contacts, calendars, to-do lists, products, books, bookmarks, wines, and all kinds of other stuff. You can use these different data types in different ways: for example, a to-do list for a bunch of wines, a shopping list for various products, etc. The really cool part is that it pulls various information from the web concerning the various items you post: Springpad might add an Amazon purchase link to a product you list, or a review concerning the wine you're currently interested in. It also lets you organize everything into apps: categories with specific layouts to help you get more organized, for instance, a school planner you can fill with various books, or a trip planner complete with events, packing lists, ideas, and even an itinerary created from the various addresses you've linked to the aforementioned items. My only gripe is that while it does integrate with Google Calendar, the synergy ends there: It appears as its own calendar, doesn't pull existing events, contacts, notes, tasks, bookmarks, or anything else from your Google account, and doesn't synchronize with other popular organization services like Remember the Milk. But it's still in beta, so it's likely that such features are down the road.

So that's pretty much it. To those of you that have read this without wanting to, I will now give you an update on France: Not much is going on, but we have managed to buy a car-turtleshell that will let us ride with more space and ever-increasing dorkiness. But we bought a van to begin with, so I guess we should have expected that. We're off to Rome on the 31st, and we're going to meet my grandmother and my aunt there to go family-tree-hunting with the Mazzeis. Also, as you all may have read, I now have internet in my apartment, so message me! Well, that is, if you can stand the 7-hour time difference.

Recap

This is a recap starting from the 14th of July, which happens to be the French Independence day. I apologize for not posting at all during this rather long period of time, we've been rather distracted what with things being more French than we expected. Plus, finding internet when you have none is fairly difficult. All right. Here goes.

The 13th was our first day at French school, a place called "Fondation La Navarre", which, or so I've heard, is a place where all of the trouble children go during the school year. Which makes sense, considering there's a huge gate up front, all of the glass has cracks in it, and every single window has bars to prevent the children from escaping. A veritable prison. I'm in the highest level class with about seven other people, and it's hilarious because all of the teachers just love making announcements to our section because they don't have to speak slowly and use hand gestures. Just another ego boost to make me all the more hated once I get back. Or maybe before. After we went to school, we began preparing to meet the Mazzeis, a family that my mother has been following considering that we share some ancestry with them: If we can prove that we share ancestry with an Italian family, and that that family emigrated to the United States and had a child before they renounced their Italian citizenship, then we ourselves can become Italian citizens and therefore European Union citizens, which means that we can actually work in Europe. It's a rather long story.
Anyways, after we left, our GPS ended up taking us to the wrong place (oops!) and we ended up being 20 minutes late getting there. Great first impression, but I've heard that the Italians can be up to 1 hour late and not notice at all, which makes me feel somewhat better. We met them in Bandol, which is really a wonderful little town right on a huge harbor. After meeting them out in front of the town casino, we went to a little cafe and talked a bit. After that, we went to Lenou (the mother)'s brother's shoe shop, which was, funnily enough, called "Scalise", which is another Italian family name of ours. After that, we headed back to our minivan, which they found absolutely enormous, and went up to their house, where they literally stuffed us to the gills with a 3-course lunch: Paté, ham, sausage, and bread followed by a pasta dish and some salad (with olive oil as dressing) followed by pastries, followed by fruit. My mother explained to us that the more food they offered us, the more they liked us, and that we should try not to offend them, but I literally have never eaten so much in my life. And that was only lunch. After walking down to the harbor, they bought us ice cream, and after returning to the house they decided to serve us dinner, only it was the very same food that we had said we weren't able to eat 3 hours ago. So we stuffed ourselves again. With the same food. Later on, my mom admitted that at the time the only thing she was thinking about was how much she'd have to work out to lose all of the weight that she had likely gained from that day.
So, after nearly exploding, we went back down to the harbor to watch the fireworks (it was Bastille Day, and I was anticipating making up for what I had missed the 4th, considering the fact that all we really did was sat and stared at each other while a huge party was going on back home. And I was somewhat disappointed, but only because I was expecting American-size fireworks from a tiny beach town. They had anchored a battleship in the middle of the bay, and I was amazed at how many bottle rockets they could fit on the thing (although it is a battleship, I suppose). The show lasted about 20 minutes, and then everyone and their mother began running to the car to beat the end-of-fireworks rush. So we all returned to the house for a glass of water, and then we managed to find a clever way of avoiding the traffic that knocked at least 45 minutes off of our journey back, which was already a good half-hour. Plus, it was about 12:30 AM, meaning that we were going to be zombies when we went to French school the next day.
The next day was fairly uneventful: we pretty much went to school, got back, took a little nap, and then the Mazzeis arrived. We talked, ate (less) food, and skyped with my father, who was in Germany at the time. The funny thing was, my dad hasn't seen us in at least 1-2 weeks, and after speaking Spanish and German to everyone for that amount of time, he was absolutely craving an English conversation. Only thing was, the Mazzeis were over. So he was greeted with "Ciao Henry! On va parler en Français maintenant, ou si vous voulez on peut discuter en Italien!" For those of you non-French speakers, that was basically the Mazzeis telling my dad to speak in French to them, or Italian if he wanted. It was all he could do to not explode. Lucky for him, though, that he was arriving in Marseilles the following evening and would stay at our apartment for the next two days. The only two problems were that Marseilles was about 90 minutes away from our apartment and about 50 minutes away from the Mazzeis, and that their prioritization was more oriented to finishing the meal that they had made for us. So he ended up waiting for about 15 minutes, just about ready to start looking for hotels (the shuttles stopped running at midnight). Once we picked him up, the back of the car immediately went to sleep while my dad told me and my mom about his adventures in Spain, Holland, and Germany.
Today we went into town and watched Toy Story 3, and even though it was in French I found it absolutely wonderful; I really love sequels that don't make me cry. After that, we went and saw the old town, which forced me to imagine my mother trying to navigate the 2-meter wide streets in her minivan (we came very very near to that particular situation, she had to pull back her mirrors just so she could fit in the street). Once we got up to the top, though, it really was amazing: you could literally see the entire village (old and new) sprawled out in front of you, with the structures terminating where the sea began. I love views, but unfortunately my camera's been acting up lately, so I'm afraid I can't share it with you. I hope my readers (if I have any) are actually appreciating the fact that I added pictures to this post, though.

Southern France is Rather Boring

Hello blog! Nothing much has gone on since we've arrived in Montpellier. The drive here was pretty hectic, though. Between my mom's re-learning stickshift, my difficulty understanding how to operate the French GPS, and the frequent speed-cameras situated on the highway, we didn't have much time to relax. Plus, the night before, we all slept horribly. Once we got there, we pretty much chilled (or tried to chill) in our new apartment, where there are only 3 beds and 2 bedrooms. Plus, there's no AC: the only way to keep the place cool is to open up the windows, which means waking up to these really, really weird noises that I think are some birds fighting outside. I think they could be seagulls, but I'm not entirely sure. I guess the pluses are that we have a space that's bigger than our closet of a hotel room in Paris, and that the beach is just a five-to-ten minute walk away. I've spoken to a few people here, and they're all really surprised that I'm American, because apparently, Americans are too lazy to actually learn to speak the language here: the stereotype does exist after all! So yeah, that's pretty much all that's happened since my last post. Then again, I have no idea where my last post left off: there's no WiFi here, and I'm composing this post in OpenOffice until we go park in front of the visitor's center and hijack theirs, because my mom has no shame whatsoever. Next post should come by whenever my mom feels the need for internet again. Until then!

Recap Part 2

So after Nice got boring, we pretty much just hung out a lot. The last day with my family was interesting to say the least, it was the France vs. Mexico game and everyone was really interested. Or so I thought.

The football game was simply a façade to allow the kids to drink to their hearts content, something that left me rather (._.), for lack of a better word. I was watching them as they finished their first glass of beer, upon which they moved onto a bottle of rosé, and then another beer after that. Looking through their photo album of that night, it's fairly clear when they started to get drunk because they all began taking pictures of random road signs, climbing up these respective road signs, and singing/screaming at the top of their lungs. This was all while going through several cartons of cigarettes, of course. Needless to say, it was a little surprising, but once again, it's a different country, and they were really having a good time. That said, I didn't join in for fear of expulsion, so I was branded the evening party pooper. Once weighing this against being expelled, however, I thought my integrity was fairly intact.

So after that crazy night, we all slept over at the same house, and waking up a bunch of hungover teenagers was, not surprisingly, fairly difficult, especially at 8h00. We drove to the train station, said our fairwells, and I got back on the TGV to go to Paris. Which was, ironically, the longest train ride I have ever taken: While we were out having fun, a storm had rolled in over Marseilles, which is directly between Paris and Cannes. A flood destroyed a great portion of the region, and while they were able to clear off one of the train tracks in time for our departure, there were terrific electrical problems during our voyage. We started off at a decent clip, but once we hit the flooded region, we inched along at what seemed like 5-10 mph. We eventually came to a halt, upon which the conductor told us that there was a problem with the electricity that would necessitate disconnecting power from the railways. For the next hour, the lights in the train were limited to the aisles and one ceiling light out of 5, and no air conditioning of any kind. By the time the grid was fixed, we were all very eager to get underway, and cheered when we saw the countryside begin to pass before our eyes again.

After a bit, we hit a stretch of TGV track that let us cruise along at the usual 200 mph; TGV track is different from normal track because it's smoother, allowing the train to travel at a faster clip. So there we were, moving right along, until we discovered that the train in front of us had hit a goat, and that the SNCF crew had to clean up the resulting mess. So the train stopped once again, and we sat, waiting, for several hours more. At last, the train advanced!... for 50 yards, then stopped again. The conductor went on the loudspeaker to tell us all that, in hitting the goat, the train in front of us had thrown a bolt and would need to be repaired on the tracks. More waiting. Thoughts of walking back. After all, we were only an hour away from Paris. It'd have to be faster than repairing a 300-yard-long high-speed train, right? We never found out, because we eventually got moving again and arrived in Paris 4 hours late. We had sat on that train for 10 hours, which is 3 hours longer than the time it took for me to fly from New York to Paris. We almost missed our reservation for the restaurant on the Eiffel Tower, but thankfully we were able to get there only 10 minutes late. We would have gone to the Musée d'Orsay, but the 3 hours it would have taken were consumed by the obnoxious train delay. So we settled with dinner on the Eiffel Tower, poor us, and got back to our hotel at about 1am.

The next day, I got myself ready by about 7:30, which was, apparently, 30 minutes before a receptionist would show up at my parent's hotel. While I was a bit irritated for waking up earlier than I had to, Mr. Barrs was absolutely panicked, because this meant that he'd have to find a way to get me to my parent's hotel before he got to the airport, which would have had to have been at 8h45. Thankfully, we figured out that my dad was on his way from the hotel, and that he'd be arriving at around 9h00. So I went back to the hotel with my dad, and I spent my first day in Paris without a friend, which really wasn't fun at all, because all my family wanted to do was sleep, and I kept having fleeting thoughts of re-finding Mr. Barrs and my school group at the hotel, only to realize that they were on a plane headed for Chicago. So I've pretty much been relaxing since then. Pretty much. One of my Saint Louis friends is on a tour through Europe, so the 20th and 21st we've been hanging out. After she left, we checked out the Fête de la Musique (Music Festival) of Paris, in which anyone gets out on any street corner and plays an instrument, no matter how good or bad they are. I've found that this can be both good and bad. We went with some friends of friends, the Bottes, and they were really friendly. I hope that we'll be able to meet up again when we return to Paris, although it'll probably be a bit busier considering it's the school year and all. We'll see.

So that's my entire recap! Well, I've abridged it a bit, but for brevity's sake I figured it'd be better that way. We're headed off to Montpellier tomorrow, we're getting a taxi to take us out to the dealership where we'll be picking up the car that our mom bought for our stay. I still really wish that we could live here. I just love the subtle (and not-so-subtle) differences between American and French culture. Maybe I'll get to live here when I'm older. Who knows.

Recap

So I realize that it's been a fair while since I last posted, and I just wanted to apologize profusely, both to whoever's reading this and myself, because I realize that I really need something to remember this experience and I'm not doing anyone any favors by putting this off. A lot of stuff has gone on since, and I really hope that I can remember enough, although I'm sure that I've forgotten plenty. I'll start off at the beginning and work my way back.

So last time I posted, it had been the first few days that I had gotten back. Now, my homestay is over and I'm in a one-star hotel that happens to be a block away from Notre-Dame. Which isn't all that bad, it's just ridiculously cramped. We'll be leaving the hotel for Montpellier on Wednesday, but I really wish that we could stay in Paris permanently. I like the beach and all, but I really love this city, and I can't wait for the school year to start so we can make our way back. But I digress. The day after I put up my last post, I went to my neighbor's school, because Nicolas had to study, so I didn't see much of his friends after that, except for Marion who was at his house once after that. So we went to her school, and we were about 30 minutes early. Everyone had stationed themselves facing the school across an intersection, smoking enough to replace at least three bonfires. It was charming. And also rather smelly. Noticing my extreme discomfort/asphyxiation (ironic that I'm typing this while listening to a song that's repeating "I can breathe again", it's French so I don't know the title. Whatever.), everyone proceeded to ask me if people smoked in America. I told them that young kids never smoked in public like this, and that it's very rare for people to smoke, and when they offered me a cigarette and I told them that I didn't smoke, they didn't believe me at all. One thing that I always have to tell myself here is that it's a different country. Just keep telling myself that, up until the point where they all tell me that ritual sacrificing of Americans is quite common, and that they'd need me to lay down on this bier for a brief moment.

So after the first day, which was somewhat uneventful and incredibly boring, we basically just toured around town, mainly to Nice. One day we went down to the Nice air show, celebrating the 150th anniversary of Nice's joining France, and it was really amazing. The only problem that I had was the fact that the announcer liked the sound of his voice a bit too much, and kept talking for at least an hour and a half after the show had actually finished. People were getting pretty angry at him, but he didn't seem to get the point. Anyways, Nice is absolutely beautiful. Old Nice is incredibly colorful, filled with lots of fruit, olive oil, and gelato stands, has a few beautiful cathedrals scattered here and there, and has an amazing view of a turquoise beach. A perfect place to live if you have a ridiculous amount of money, which I happen to not have. After going to Nice a lot, the weather got kind of crappy, so we stayed away from there given that it was pointless to enjoy the beach in stormy weather.

I have to wrap it up now, but I'll be adding more stuff tomorrow! It's almost midnight, so I need to get myself into bed. I'll add a part two later on. I realize that I can edit my posts, but for some reason I just prefer adding it in parts. Adds to the suspense, no? Because I'm sure the entire internet is reading my blog right now, anxious to hear what happens next. See you all tomorrow!

Homestay

So after a really long train ride with a bunch of screaming Americans, I got off the train. The train ride itself was pretty cool, it was like being in an airplane that was continuously taking off. Me and Gowri went to the bar upstairs and ate lunch, watching the entire French countryside pass before us. It was absolutely stunning. As if that weren't good enough, after we got off the train, I met my family, who lived in front of an amazing view of the "countryside"; apparently, it's not the countryside here. If this isn't the countryside, then I really want to see the countryside.

So after I met them, Nicolas decided to take me back home with his dad. He still has a learner's permit; in France you get it at 17. I felt kind of bad for him, they were all talking about how everyone wanted to be in the US so that they could get their licenses early. I told them that the food, fashion, and pretty much everything else was crap compared to here, and that if they went to the US, they'd have to wait until they were 21 to drink or 18 to smoke. Speaking of which, when I went to his school, everyone was smoking out front, and when I arrived at his house his sister was drinking a rather large glass of wine. Definitely different, but I'm keeping an open mind. I'm amazed that they let people make decisions such as whether they should be addicted to certain things before they do something as simple as driving, but I guess it's better to be addicted than dead. Whatever. I'm just being observant.

So I got to their house, pretty much just in time to unpack and eat dinner, I met his parents, who were very nice. There isn't much to do here when there isn't internet, though, although they have a gorgeous view outside their back windows. We talked with his neighbors, apparently one of the people from our group lives right next door, so we're pretty much all we have right now. Or at least, she's all I have, considering that I don't have a cell phone out here and my internet is restricted as per Nicolas' discretion. That being said, they're very nice people and I doubt that I'll have any problems, other than the obvious language barrier.

So, after I went to sleep, woke up, and got dressed the next day, we went to his high school to study for his BAC. It was fairly boring, but his friends were incredibly nice. I had no idea that cards were so popular here, but they really are, and I spent a fair amount of time playing cards with his friends. After about an hour of "President" (card game) at his high school, we played pictionary (in French) for about an hour, then went to his physics class, where I proceeded to be bored out of my mind until the teacher inadvertently spelled out "Fap" in a mathematical equation and I tried my hardest to keep myself from laughing. As soon as I told Nicolas what was wrong, he became extremely interested and wrote it down in his notebook with a star next to it. Look at me, teaching the French the intricacies of the English language. I ought to be ashamed, but it was pretty funny.

Then, after that, we ate lunch, which, for a public school cafeteria, was pretty good; I'd say it was better than some of the restaurants I've dined at. At that time, I learned that the letter I wrote to my family was filled with double-entedres, and that he thought it was so funny that he showed it to all of his neighbors. That was a little embarassing, but I was glad to have made him laugh so much with my terrible French. After all of that, we went to his friends house, a girl whose name I have completely forgotten. I think it's Marion, I'm just trying not to name her after some marinade or something. If I get it wrong, she'll have to sue me. It's my first week speaking legitimate French. So we went to her house, went swimming, where her and her boyfriend decided to start making out in the middle of the pool while me and Nicolas just sort of stared awkwardly at each other, which was great, and then we went back inside to play more "President."

Speaking of President, I forgot to spell out the rules. It's sort of like crazy eights mixed with BS; you put down cards in ascending order (you follow the standard order, except 2 is the best), whoever wins the hand serves next and can put down however many of a certain card they want (but they have to start out with small ones, so, for example, I would put down 3 3's, and everyone else would have to put down 3 of something as well. If not, then I win the hand, and I get to serve next.) Whoever finishes first is the President, second is the Vice-President, and then the last and second to last are Asshole and Vice-Asshole, respectively. I like how I understood that word. I felt a little guilty, but it actually turned out to be useful.

Anyways, after that, we went back to Nicolas' house, where we hung out with his neighbor, her respective buddy (from my group), and Nicolas, playing soccer, ping-pong, and billiards. Which was pretty cool. Then we ate dinner, which was also really good, and I'm going to go to the neighbor's school tomorrow because Nicolas has to study for the BAC, and I really don't want to. So right now he's sitting behind me on his bed, playing Guitar Hero, and I'm trying to use complicated words to keep him from understanding. But I'm probably being kind of mean, and he's a senior, so he can probably understand a great deal of what I'm saying. Nicolas, if you read this, bravo! You're ready to take your English exam, and I have to pack up and run away before you kill me. Bye!

The Champs-Elysees

Today was so much fun, and so incredibly exhausting. We went to the catacombs (this computer won't let me upload photos because I can't connect my camera, I'll post them later) where there were literally walls made of bones. In the 19th century, there was a huge epidemic, and after the mass graves filled up, the people decided to fill up one of the excavated quarries below the city with the bodies. So there were layers upon layers of bone, and sign after sign that said things that translated to stuff like "at death, one allows everything". Really cool. Also, to add to the effect, there's a sign above the entrance to the ossuary that translated to "Stop! This is the house of the dead!" (It wasn't added for effect by the museum, either, the entrance was carved into the wall and had been there since its construction). After that, we went to a pizzeria for lunch, where the waiter nearly gave up because of the twenty loud Americans all shouting at him at once. But I digress. And insult myself. Moving on.

After all of this, we went on a scavenger hunt around the city to look for various things and take various pictures. The first one to came back won, and we made it back in time. Unfortunately, it also meant sprinting the entire way, and when we arrived, we realized that no one else had done the same, and that we could have relaxed and actually enjoyed ourselves. But at least we get a prize. Plus, we got to walk the Champs-Elysees all alone, which made me feel pretty damn cool. You know, just walking down to the Champs-Elysees with my friends. We also spotted out several bike rental stations (something totally foreign to me) and checked out the tiny cars. Anyways, I really felt proud because, when I wasn't with my friends, I could totally pass as a frenchman, and when I spoke French to them, they spoke it right back. When I was with my friends, though, they just spoke straight English, mostly because their cameras and obnoxious handbags screamed tourist. All in all, it was a great day, and even though this makes for a really short post, I'm too exhausted to write right now. I'll see if I can follow up tomorrow.

Blogging in Secret

So right now I'm at the ground floor of the hotel, it's about 6 in the morning over here, and I have some blogging to do before everyone else comes down for breakfast. Thanks to my handy-dandy voice recorder, I was able to record everything that went down between when I last posted and right now. Which is a fairly hefty amount, considering it was 3 days and I was awake about 75% of the time.

After waking up at 5:30 am, getting dressed, and getting to my gate, I noticed that the entire Saint Louis youth orchestra was on my flight to NYC, because apparently they had a performance in Carnegie Hall during the summer. So I took a deep breath and dealt with them all, and it wasn't so bad if you don't count the fact that they didn't listen to a word the flight attendant said, brought carry-ons that didn't fit, and brought a lot of carry-ons that did fit, so there wasn't any more room on the plane for anyone else's bags after the orchestra had boarded... I was probably just irritated because I was so tired. Which still hasn't got much better.

Upon arriving at the baggage claim in La Guardia, my aunt was there to meet me, and we went out to Coney Island where apparently there's a really cool carnival. And there was a really cool carnival, along with some AMAZING pizza. After chowing down, we checked out the ferris wheel, won a prize at one of those water-shootey-clowney thingies, and went to the beach, where, swim-suitless, we sat on a bench and ate funnel cake. Then, we fought our way throught the New York traffic to the JFK airport, where we literally waited for about 45 minutes to get my bags checked, and I was off to my gate.

Once I had gotten on the airplane, it didn't really get much better. There was a baby in the aisle next to me, and I only got about 2 hours of sleep, which took me through an entire day in Paris. Speaking of which, PARIS!! It was really nice to be in the place I had been preparing for so long to go to, but on the flip side, I was totally exhausted and it was 7:30 in the morning, so the entire day I was the most lethargic I had ever been. That said, we really enjoyed our dinner. The food was amazing, and there was an accordeonist who played for us!

So then we got to the hotel, I got in bed, absolutely collapsed, and woke up 5 hours later for some reason. And I'm still awake. Today should be better than yesterday, but it's likely that I'll still be really tired. I'm not entirely sure where we're going today, but I'll publish it whenever I can! I have my voice recorder handy, so hopefully I'll remember everything. Au revoir!

Continued from Last Post, and some other cool stuff too

So, thanks to my mom's scary ability to read text over my shoulder very quickly, I won't be bringing my computer. Owned. Instead, I'll just bring a voice recorder and type it down once I get my laptop back.

But that's boring compared to the news I'm about to disclose right now. There was a huge riot that went on in the Loop tonight that I was right in the middle of! At this time of night, gangs are usually out, and they were absolutely everywhere. It was a total flash crowd. They weren't buying anything, they were just looking around to see who they should pick a fight with. Suddenly, two groups on opposite sides of the street descend upon one another and start a huge brawl -- in the middle of the road! At first, it was just yelling, but it soon turned into fist fights, then chair throwing, then, before it could get to matters involving guns and knives, the police showed up. I had never been so happy -- or terrified -- in my life.

We had decided to go get ice cream, seeing as it was the last night I had in America before I left for 7 months, so we left our house and began walking down. Thankfully, we made the last minute decision of taking the dogs out for exercise. If it weren't for them, we would have been in significantly more trouble; for some reason the people there are absolutely terrified of dogs. Anyways, after the police showed up, they began yelling at everyone involved in the fight: "GET THE FUCK AGAINST THE WALL!" and "IF YOU TAKE ONE MORE STEP OVER HERE, YOU'RE GOING TO JAIL!!" I totally felt bad for them; last year, some guy randomly shot a police officer in the Loop for no reason whatsoever. Thankfully, though, he was caught in Kansas City for a moving violation, of all things, and I haven't heard of him since. They named the street in front of the police station after him, and every time I walk down to the Loop I'm reminded of how careful one needs to be in a city with this high a crime rate. But no longer! Because we'll be in Paris, where the crime manifests itself differently: pickpocketers and expensive wines. Still, what a great way to remember America.

That was my side of the story, it you were there, I'd really like to hear yours. Comment on this post!

One Last Day

So I totally shouldn't be blogging right now, it's likely that my mom's going to come down, see me doing this, and slice my head off. But there are a few things that need to be said before I leave. First off, the network controller in my Eee died, in a sick twist of fate, so I won't be able to post anything until after the first week and a half of my time in France. I'm going to keep a series of blog posts on my computer, then upload a zip file to the blog once I get the internet part squared away. In another sick twist of fate, they decided to remove all of the CoinStars in all of the Schnuck's (supermarkets) in my area, so I don't have the money to buy another wifi card. It's almost as if God Himself were ordering me to not proceed with this. Being human, however, I'm going to test fate and ignore Him.

Second, I've gotten an email telling me who my family is. My "brother" is a guy named Nicolas Malpertuy (of course, they give me a guy whose name must be as difficult as possible to pronounce), and my mom is now behind me and I have to stop blogging. I'll follow up soon.

The Final Stretch

So there are only three more days until I depart for France. In the three days that I have until then, I'm going to be doing a lot to prepare for my whole journey. From what I hear, the flight won't be so bad, because there will be in-flight movies, food, and I'll have my iPod and a bottle of sleep medication to help combat the jetlag that will no doubt ensue. It's the entire process of getting on and off these flights that really worries me.

First off, I have to wake up at about 6 in the morning to get on a flight to NYC that takes off at about 7:15. Okay, maybe I'll have to wake up a bit earlier, but you catch my drift. After that, I'll have a 6 hour layover, where I'll be free to do whatever for about 4 hours before I check in for the flight to Paris. We would have had a direct flight, but since the darn terrorists knocked down the World Trade Center, the Saint-Louis-based TWA went out of business in 2001, and it's been connecting flights ever since. I realize that I'm definitely not qualified to gripe and moan about the 9/11 atrocity, but it is a real hassle.

Anyways, after I've checked in 2 hours early as per some weird international law, I wait. A lot. And then I get on a plane for 15 hours and wait a lot some more. Once I'm in France, I'll have to go through customs, all alone, and wait for about an hour, when all of my classmates arrive for the official school French trip. The reason why I can't go on the same flight with them is because they all needed round-trip tickets, and, because I definitely wasn't leaving with them, I got a one-way ticket. So basically I'll be all by myself waiting while they're on the plane actually having some entertainment with one another. All I can do is pray that I won't be stuck between two fat or flatulent people. That'll be the kicker.

While the flight definitely won't be fun, I hope my family will be pretty cool. Apparently my "brother" is a kid named Nicolas, and it will take all of my willpower to keep myself from calling him Petit Nicolas. Because he may kick me out of his house. And that won't be fun.

If anyone's reading this, ask me for a few pictures! I'll be there during the Tour de France, so I can take cycling pictures as well, in case anyone's interested. All photos will be published to my Flickr page, which, if I remember correctly, has a widget feature that'll let me post a slideshow. I just hope I'll be able to blog while I'm with my family...

The Dawning of a New Era

So yesterday was the last day of school for me, or at least, the last day of school for me as a sophomore (Despite fleeting thoughts, I've resolved to not be a truant), and its closing really didn't make me feel any different. There was this odd thing that happened to me starting freshman year, where when school ends, the end of the year just doesn't have a tangible feeling of finality, unlike my experiences in middle school. I'm not saying it feels different because I'm an old fart, but it does kind of bug me, because at the end of the year, after studying my brains out, I feel like I have no other purpose in life but to study, and they dump me out to do nothing at all!

While I certainly don't want to go back to school because of that, I'm definitely going to start studying things that I actually want to know, like Perl. Perl has been really cool for me, I've only learned bits and pieces of it, but so far it's looking fantastic. Before Perl, the only language that I could really mess around with was PHP, and PHP for me was somewhat limited in that I could only really use it to develop web pages, although I've heard of people using it for other purposes. So Perl's my current obsession in the computer world, along with getting my bloody Eee PC to work again. I need to get it to work if I'm going to blog about my time in France; that thing is so tiny it's the perfect computer to sneak into a suitcase.

Last night, me and my friend went to see the Repo Genetic Opera, which I must say was pretty darn cool. It was showing at the Tivoli theatre at midnight, and the only reason I went was because my friend had been invited by someone else and she needed an escort. I felt special. Anyways, we went up to the box office, got our tickets, and walked in. The film didn't start for an agonizing amount of time, I'm pretty sure the film operator was either high or half-asleep, because it took forever to start and the last 10 minutes of the film couldn't be watched because he broke the projector. Despite this setback, we enjoyed it thoroughly. The film was shadowed by a bunch of actors, who performed onstage while the movie went on behind them.

The actors had encouraged us to shout at them, shout at the film, and pretty much do whatever the hell we wanted save burn down the place. So we did. Or at least, most of us did. One time, when a scene opened up with one of the characters, Shilo, lying in a pool of blood, this random guy in the audience shouted "NEED A TAMPON?" So yeah. That was pretty much my night. Speaking of blood, the whole thing involved gallons of it, in addition to gore, violence, copious cursing, nudity, sex... It was only afterwards that we discovered that the film was rated R, which led us to wonder how the hell we got in. We got out at about 2 am, and I drove home as discreetly as I possibly could, because I realized about halfway through the movie that there's a 12am-5am curfew for young drivers such as myself. So I dropped my friend off, walked back to my car, and I notice that a police car was cruising down the street, high-beams on, patrolling the neighborhood. Thankfully, he didn't stop me, and while I have no idea why, I was incredibly thankful. My mother probably wouldn't have been too happy getting woken up and dragged out of bed to talk to a policeman about me, especially when she had been suspicious about the whole outing from the beginning.

That movie was so amazing, though, that I bought the soundtrack. I rarely buy soundtracks for movies; the only soundtrack I think I've ever bought was James Bond, which was necessary because I was bored and running around the house pretending I had a gun necessitated some theme music. So that was my night, and it sure was a great reward after sitting around taping pieces of cardboard together for 5 days. And now, it'll be back to packing for France. I still have an entire room to clear out.

Awesome Mobile Lab Concept

So I was hanging ten on the waves of the interwebs, when I stumbled across this article, which talked about building a mobile lab from an old cargo trailer:
After sitting in a puddle of drool for several minutes, I began to think of the lab that I'd design for myself. Sure, it's a massive undertaking, and it'd be extremely expensive, but it'd be pretty darn cool. Since I'm going off to France in 10 days, this is probably going to be one of those backburner thoughts that probably won't ever be realized. But since I love thinking about stuff like this, I'm probably going to be designing this for the next few months.

This guy equipped this cargo trailer with a CNC Router, a circular saw, sander, soldering iron, and so much more! He also included a battery bank, which is charged by a solar panel on the top, and by a Honda generator which he fires up when there isn't enough power. It's also got locking drawers, bolted-down furniture, a dedicated Mac, and Ham Radio equipment. I think I've found a new home. But before I decide to live in a trailer down by the river, I think it'd be best to actually know how to use these tools. No sense in getting a trailer filled with a bunch of stuff that I don't know what to do with.

On a different note, mini-term's proven to really not be fun at all. I think I'm going to try to change groups: I'll try to convince them to switch me to "Bike St. Louis," on the excuse that I want to see St. Louis in all its grandeur before I go off to France for several months. Besides, I'm on the cycling team, so it'll probably be a walk in the park. Hope I didn't just jinx it. *Knock on wood!*

Modding my Eee PC

So I know this is kind of an old topic, but I got an Eee PC 900A for a steal ($180) and I decided that I might try modifying it like everyone else had done to theirs. Little did I know, however, that the 900A was one of the worst models I could possibly buy (I was eyeing the 901, but I just didn't have enough money, so I bought whatever I could), at least for modification purposes, because there is practically no space on the inside of that computer. But I've still gone ahead with it. This is my story.

Despite having broken my touchscreen controller in a boneheaded mistake that involved an absence of electrical tape, having found out that the bluetooth-wifi-combo PCI-express card that I had bought didn't work with Linux, and having broken my touchpad cable, I still became ever-more determined to keep chugging on. Actually, that's not what happened. It sat under a pile of crap half-taken apart for about 4 months while I went to try other things that weren't such a big waste of money if they were done wrong. Then, after having migrated back to expensive hobbies and realizing that my power supply had arrived DOA with an expired warranty (I didn't try it out until 2 weeks after it arrived), I went back to the Eee.

I took apart an old USB hub, stripped open a Bluetooth dongle, and found an old flash drive with its connector fallen off. I soldered them all together, popped them all in, rearranged it several times, and then bam! It... sort of worked. And by sort of, I meant it worked, but it brought several other things down with it.

Apparently, when you're using the camera USB connection and the computer realizes that what's connected is not a camera but instead a USB hub, it decides that it will make your life as miserable as it possibly can. I now cannot connect any USB drive to the computer and I can't boot from a USB drive, rendering the installation of an 8GB flash drive to allow more space for an installation useless, considering I can't boot and install Linux in the first place. So I'm sitting here, typing on my Lenovo X61 Tablet, with the Eee sitting beside me, and I'm contemplating throwing the cute little thing out the window. Either that, or turn a fan on, because the heat of the thing is melting the electrical tape that I installed inside and making a really noxious smell.

What should I do now? Fly a kite? I'm much too digital for everyday life. And it's 95 degrees outside, with 50% humidity. Blech.