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.

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!

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 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.

French Expedition

So, since I stupidly left my computer at home, I've decided to come in and type on a computer in a physics lab, because I have nothing better to do. Having just finished my French exam, I can safely say that that was the easiest final exam I have ever taken. Foreign language exams are allotted 1.5 hours as opposed to the normal 2, and even though that's less time than the core classes, it still took me about 30 minutes. 30 minutes! Which is a perfect transition into talking about my trip to France.

Just this morning, my dad got on a flight to Madrid, Spain, in his quest for knowledge: Since having 5 degrees somehow isn't enough for him, he's decided to get his law degree. One of the things he wants to learn most is international law, naturally, he used this as an excuse to take us all to Europe. He's going to be in Madrid for about two weeks, then he's going to Germany, and by then we'll all be in France, waiting for him. He'll meet us there, and we'll live in Paris from June to some time in January. I'm pretty excited; I've wanted to go to France for some time, and this is the perfect opportunity to get to speaking French fluently.

So it's off to an entirely different country, to an entirely different language, to an entirely different school: I'm going to a school called EABJM, located in Paris, and about a 15 minute's walk from the Eiffel Tower. Of course, the Eiffel Tower will probably get a little old, but it'll definitely be pretty cool to check out for the first month or so. In the meantime, however, I have to think about school. I still have a week left, and I'm not exactly enthralled. Exams are done, so I'm really starting to think about skipping. We'll see how exciting mini-term is, though. Who knows, reading 1000-year-old books might just be entertaining.

End of the Road

No, I'm not ending my blog already. Although I might forget about it some day along the line. I'm talking about the end of the school year. Unfortunately, I can't really talk about the end of the school year, because it hasn't officially ended yet. I can't say that the end of the school year is amazing, or that I've never felt so free in my entire life, because I haven't yet. And that's what's really starting to bug me.

This week is the week of final examinations, the week where every teacher performs the simultaneously sadistic and masochistic act of giving their students 10-page exams that they must later grade 40 times. And everyone buckles down and plows through, hoping to either bring up their grade or not bring it down. Although, for all I know, there's a kid out there who's always wanted to have an F for his birthday, however non-habit-forming that desire may be.

So I'm buckling down with everyone else, and I'm just trying to get through this week. But guess what's after this week? Well, my friends, my school does a little thing they like to call mini-term. Mini term is a weird idea in which everyone makes 8 choices of what they want to do for a week. Options range from backpacking the Ozarks, to biking around St. Louis and visiting various restaurants, to witnessing an open-heart surgery. Only thing is, it's a first-come-first-serve. Me being new at this school, I have no idea how or where to sign up for these things. So guess what I got? I get to make a book.

Yes, that's right. I get to write a page for a book, and everyone else in my class gets to write a page for a book, and we're going to compile these pages and customize the book that we want. Because I'd totally enjoy doing that. Totally. Me, the computer-math-science guy, would want nothing more than to read a book that was made by a bunch of... well, let's not bring them into this. You get the picture.

I wish I had signed up sooner, but I guess that's what I get. I'm just trying to stay on until June 5th, when my family and I move to France! But more on that in the next post. I have to study for History now.