le week-end à la plage!

one night at dinner my family very nonchalantly asks me if i have plans for the 25th/26th, for they are going to their beach house and invite me to tag along. i stare, openmouthed, and revel in the thought of going to the beach! the beach!!! oh mon dieu!! while sacha laughs at me and tries to throw green beans in my mouth, much to the dismay of nathalie. the beach! do i have plans?! what plans?! no plans! if i had to go to paris that weekend to fight for my visa at the consulate because my passport stamp is all wrong (more on that later) and the choice was beach and french jail or paris, i would choose beach. obviously. and relive glorious beachy memories while i eat bread in a french jail two days later. but no matter. i brought with me a picture book of the seacoast as a gift to my family, and showed them the cinnamon rainbows surf cam and we google mapped the house to show them that i live at the beach, that i love the beach. they know this. so when i wholeheartedly accept in overexcited grammatically terrible french, everyone laughs. the night before, i pack my things (once again realizing the simultaneously impressive and depressing fact that i can fit my entire life in a backpack for multiple days if needed) and sleep very little, the culprit of my insomnia my ridiculous excitement but also just maybe the chocolate i ate before bed. (side note: there is a french hypermarché called auchon which is so very dangerous. it has three floors and is a food store, home improvement center, department store, clothing store, record shop and bookstore, kind of like a super target but sadly without the starbucks cupcakes. they sell giant bars of chocolate for 48 centimes. oh mon dieu.) 

saturday morning i wake up and everyone in the house is packing packing packing and running and busy and "do you have your toothbrush?" and "did you pack the cooler yet?" and "why is there only one sock in the suitcase?" and it is hilarious because it is exactly the same at my house in the states and probably every other house in the world. except in france, food reigns supreme, which is why amongst the four members of the family, there is only one giant communal red suitcase but three coolers and a terrifyingly jangly bag of bottles of wine. we pile into the renault and we're off! we stop at a suburb to do "just a quick little bit of shopping, we won't be two minutes i swear" (nathalie's famous last words) because sacha needs winter shoes and jeanne needs a coat. we make quite a sight, traipsing around the department stores, nathalie at the front of the line and jean-louis in the back to catch stragglers (usually sacha when he sees a train set, but sometimes me when i see something wonderfully french or bizarrely familiar like american brands). the quick little bit of shopping is clearly an understatement, as finding a winter coat for jeanne is akin to running a marathon in terms of stamina, while buying shoes for sacha becomes a spy training procedure, as he runs off with two different shoes every three seconds and the rest of us are dispatched to find him and reign him back into the shoe department. jean-louis earnestly picks out colorful coats with bold patterns that strongly remind me of the highlighter section in staples (side note: at this very point in time, jean-louis is wearing a shirt with giant rainbow polka dots that everyone in the family hates but he loves and washes himself to hide it from nathalie to keep it from the garbage bin, so his choice of coats is not surprising in the least.) while jeanne pulls faces and i use all my non-sacha-chasing energy not to laugh at how very similar this is to every other family in the universe.

finally we leave the store, coat in one hand, shoes in another, and also a train set that sacha promised he would set the table for two full weeks to get, and i am starving, because i didn't eat breakfast amongst the shuffling. thankfully, everyone else is too, and we stop at a restaurant on our way to the beach which is entirely wood-paneled, even the inside, like a log cabin. i learn that this is because the region we're in is called "les landes" and the primary trade there during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was woodworking, for it was entirely forested but also marshy, so the men had to use stilts to carve long slivers of wood from the trees but also not fall into the marsh. we get the menus and the special of the day is this three course behemoth with six different options for each course that i promptly turned away for fear of spontaneous combustion later. nathalie senses my hesitation and suggests a regional specialty: confit de canard, or duck confit. when i ask what confit means, i get four different, simultaneous explanations, all with questionable hand gestures so by the end everyone is looking quite pleased with him/herself for properly explaining french haute cuisine to a clueless american, while i know even less than i did previously. i order it anyway, and it arrives with entrance music in my head that is a cross between schubert and the theme from jaws, because it is a giant stuffed bird, thanksgiving turkey's little sister, with the glaring difference that on thanksgiving, a confident male head of household with reasonable holiday experience and an electric knife cuts it for me, while i am armed against the confit with only a dull knife and a glass of wine. now. let me preface this by saying that since my arrival in france, i have wisely adopted a practice of drinking water/folding my napkin/busying myself at the beginning of meals while subtely (or not) watching everyone else to see how to properly eat things. unfortunately for me, in my time of indecision over the menu, i completely miss that neither nathalie nor jean-louis ordered confit de canard, and i am very much fighting this battle alone. nathalie laughs as i gamely (ha! how's that for a food pun?! julia child is rolling around in her grave right now) poke my knife in the general direction of the duck, and just as she took nine-year-old sacha's plate a minute before to cut his sausage into bite-sized bits, she takes my plate and violently stabs the duck, slicing it down the middle, and hands it back, as if to say now that it's in two pieces, the divide and conquer strategy, i can eat it. it is, however, more of a multiply and terrorize tactic for the duck, as i now have two pieces of regional specialty with no instruction manual for either. jean-louis helps out and puts the little bowls of salad and mushroom sauce and potatoes off my plate for a clean workspace in which to attack. first, you have to remove the fat of the duck (who knew ducks were fat? maybe ducks are like icebergs, and look little on the surface of the water but ninety percent of them is underneath) which comes off clean on the first half, leading me to believe that five minutes in, i have conquered all small game dinner entrées and can now take over the world/put confit-eating on my resumé. this gratifying sense of confidence is torn away as i try EXACTLY the same thing on the second half and am left with little balls of duck fat soldered all over the tasty parts that i can eat. (i am adding duckfat removal to the list of things that don't work at all the second time even if you do it precisely the same as the first time and it was a raging success; see hitting golf balls at the driving range or drawing ears in art class portraits.) after much consternation on my part and blatant amusement on my family's part (this will turn into a fun ha-ha-americans-doing-french-things story later tonight at dinner), i finish the duck which was very very tasty and most definitely worth the effort and humiliation. the meal is finished with little cups of chocolate mousse which i eat, not because i'm hungry because i just ate an entire flying thing but because it is something that i actually know how to eat, and we pile back into the car for another hour to the beach.

i am now in a severe food coma and am fighting valiantly to look alive while i watch tim burton's alice in wonderland (alice et le pays de merveilles) with jeanne, and the only reason i have a vague idea of what's going on is because it is in english with french subtitles. we arrive at the beach house and i am absolutely in awe at the size of it, easily equivalent to one of the beach mansions along route 1a, while everyone else spent all of august here and is not sitting in the backseat gaping like an idiot. the bedrooms are furnished with floral wallpaper that belongs in the 70s, even the bathroom, but for some reason entirely opposed to every interior design rule ever invented, it works. there are ten people in the house, as another family came with us, and everyone gets their own bedroom! i find my towel and bathing suit and diligently follow jeanne and sacha through the little surfing town of contis to the beach to discover the MOST MAGNIFICENT SIGHT THAT I'VE SEEN TWENTY MILLION TIMES BEFORE: the atlantic ocean! it is beautiful. it is almost, almost, almost like sitting on the wall at north beach, eating burritos and staring out at the isles of shoals. the waves are huge and menacing, pouding into the sand and making wonderfully familiar rumbling noises as stones tumble in and out at the mercy of the tides. it is absolutely glorious. i don't want to leave, and i keep staring at it, almost falling into the giant hole that the kids have been digging all afternoon in the sand. it is 830, almost 9pm, and it is time to start thinking about dinner. there are many appetizers (pretzels, pistachios and tomatoes seem to be the standard in france) but the main course is goat! what!? goat!? when everyone talked about dinner, they said "chèvre," which is most definitely goat but is used more commonly to mean goat cheese, which i think is delicious, especially with honey and bread (don't knock it till you've tried it, especially at this panini place on rue sainte-catherine...) so i thought we were having cheese. not goat. but anyway, the meat was wonderful, and thankfully for my bruised ego, much easier to eat than confit de canard. the next morning i am introduced to the wonderful world of sugary french breakfast cereals, a universe i have been introduced to with sacha but fully explore with the other four kids in the house. there is a cereal that looks terrifyingly similar to vanille's cat food that i dared not touch in the apartment, but is actually chocolate and caramel bits and very delicious, now that i know it's edible for human beings. powered by sugar and newly-won breakfast knowledge, i bask in the glory of the beach, not knowing when i'll see the atlantic again before my return to the states. after a full day of napping, swimming, reading, napping and napping, we return home, nathalie and jean-louis grilling sacha on his math times tables in the car while jeanne holds up fingers to show him the answer in the backseat, expertly hidden from the rearview mirror. the beach weekend now comes to a close save one tiny detail: the next morning i am up before the sun for an 830am lecture class at the university, a dark and clumsy (how is it i always manage to trip on the corner of the bed, then on the leg of the desk chair, with only the handle to the bathroom door saving my nose from imminent collision with the floor EVERY morning?) endeavour made twenty times better, thanks to the cuffs of my jeans and hood of my sweater, by the grains of sand on my pillow and in between my toes.

friday (vendredi le 3):

i wake up around 11, sweating, because it is still deathly hot. i see mirages of giant cats until i realize that the giant cat sleeping in my face is very much real. her name is vanille and she is very, very fat and very, very orange. i am obsessed with her. she sleeps in my bathtub. we are best friends. i steel myself to go exploring in an unknown place with toast and espresso from the rather expensive, very much italian machine that jean-louis showed me how to use when i was a zombie. armed with my giant folding tourist shield/map, i step out into the cobblestones, careful to avoid the dog merde and explore! place de la victoire is full of students because it is the central hub of one of bordeaux's universities, and also restaurants (apparently on fridays all the bars are half price a la victoire to celebrate the end of the school week) and it is my tram stop to go home to the apartment or to leave for le fac (university). i walk up rue sainte catherine, the largest pedestrian shopping avenue in europe (still half the size of the king of prussia mall i swear) which is full of clothing stores, music shops, and restaurants. i stop in a huge fnac, a french chain that sells school supplies/books/magazines/cds, and listen to french music until the guy working in the variété française section started getting suspicious of me. rue sainte catherine pretty much has everything you would ever need in life, and it is my go-to avenue when i'm lost. the cobblestones on sainte catherine are different from other streets a la the yellow brick road (n.b. why are all my references trippy childrens movies? alice in wonderland, wizard of oz...), so it's easy to tell when i've found it, even when i'm convinced i've stepped into another dimension of the city and will never find my way home. 

friday night is my first weekend night in the city, and sacha asks me if i'm going out "pour le week-end." i consider this, then realize i know approximately four people in the city of bordeaux. (five if you count the cat, but vanille can't go out with me, since she does not leave the house, too proud (embarrassed?) of her size to share it with others. i seriously think that if she leaves the apartment on the fourth floor, she wouldn't be able to get back up the stairs. i share this insight with vanille, as we have chats by the bathtub, and she merely glares at me and bites my finger.) (side note: every family i know in bordeaux has at least one cat. they are all fat.) before i have the chance to realize that i need to make friends so as to not continue these chats with the cat, sacha comes bounding into my room, followed swiftly by jean-louis, for sacha has upended his bag, prefering to wear it as a hat, and is leaving a trail of pencils and notebooks around the house to find his way back to the living room in case he forgets. "we're going swimming! we're going to the pool! do you know how to swim? did you bring a bathing suit?" he says all in one breath, very excitedly, entirely in french. sacha's english is limited to 'hello,' because you say 'allô?' when you answer the phone in france, so that's everything he knows. i shoot a questioning look at jean-louis, assume we're going to one of the public pools in the city, and grab my suit. the next thing i know, jean-louis opens a tiny door on the other side of the street that i never knew was there and a giant parking garage appears. i didn't even know the rullauds had a car. nathalie and jeanne are already in the minivan (french minivans are nothing like their american counterparts. the rullaud's renault - say that three times fast while drinking a glass of wine - is probably the size of my mom's toyota sedan, but it holds seven people. fancy that.) and we clamber inside and get on the autoroute, far far away from all the public pools. i wonder what i've got myself into. is this some sort of initiation into france or tourist hazing scheme? i would have jumped out of the car if a. they weren't so nice and so french b. i wasn't in love with vanille or c. if i knew how to deal with french policemen, so i stay put. we park at a farmhouse in the suburbs/countryside, and jeanne gives me the rundown of everyone that will be there - 8 adults, including me, and many kids. i am relieved... surely they won't burn me at the stake with so many witnesses? 

we walk into this absolutely GORGEOUS house, giant kitchen, big wooden spiral staircase, with what i assume is a very very expensive recording studio in the next room, with enough instruments for my musically-inept self to realize that this is serious business. outside, there is a patio with all sorts of lights and, aha! the pool! i walk in behind jeanne and sacha, as they are my cover; clearly no one will notice the bewildered blonde american cowering behind an 8 (nine tomorrow!) year old. but they desert me and run off, not realizing they are my safety net into this adult french world that i know nothing about. approximately two milliseconds later, i am surrounded by the other five people who are talking over each other in very rapid-fire, heavily accented french, all asking me questions at the same time. how do i like it here? why did i pick bordeaux? what's america like? is new york really like they show it in movies? do you live near milwaukee? (the rullaud's last exchange student was from milwaukee - to this day i have absolutely no idea where that is.) jean-louis, thank god, fends them off for five minutes so i can sit down and maybe, just maybe, answer all their questions.  

french dinner parties are an experience. there are approximately seven courses that all run into each other, lots of spirited discussion, and most imortantly, large amounts of wine. first order of business: there were three bottles on the table, one red, one white, and one pink. pierre, the host, gives me the option, and of course, my knowledge of wine consists of reading the labels when i had to arrange the bottles at market basket. when i tell him that i don't know very much about wine, he looks offended for two seconds, then laughs loudly, and says "oh, but you are an american, you are not supposed to know anything about wine." he then tips the bottle near my face - i don't know what i'm supposed to do. drink it from the bottle? smell it? look at it? - and lets me try a sip of each. i pick the pink because it was the first one, and apparently that is the right choice, for everyone cheers and tells me i picked bordeaux's best. i smile sagely and nod my head, acting like i knew this all along, while in my head i congratulate myself for passing initiation numéro un. first course is nuts, followed by salad, followed by cheese, followed by some sort of tomato pizza. now, it is completely dark, around 10pm. we have been here for two hours, and silly me, i think that it is almost time to go. but wait! time for the main course, le plat principal: le poulet. unbeknownst to me, pierre has been grilling the entire time, and offers me a giant plate of chicken. it tastes absolutely wonderful, and i tell him so, as he pours me more wine. i have white, others have red, apparently the french are not picky about what colors go with which foods. he smiles and gestures towards the shed. "you hear that?" he asks me. i listen to discover vague animal noises. "this morning, there were five chickens in that shed. now there is four. this is antoine," he says, poking at the plate with his knife. "i name them, it is more humane that way." MON DIEU I JUST ATE ANTOINE. but my shock is quickly subduded because the others seem to not care, and because antoine, le pauvre, was delicious. 

the chicken is followed by cheese, followed by a fruit tart, as the conversation veers towards french politics. apparently, no one likes sarkozy, he is too bourgeois and caters only towards his rich friends rather than the general public, things i vaguely knew from my french polisci class last semester that was much like this dinner - loud and confusing but wonderfully french. but at least the dinner has wine. i eat my tarte aux poires in openmouthed fascination as nathalie and pierre argue about immigration, and i find that i am automatically loyal to nathalie, even though i have known her for less than 48 hours and am still unsure what her viewpoint is. every once in awhile she stops (i learn that her viewpoint is very rational and educated, whereas pierre's is a bit extreme, though i'm undoubtedly biased) and concentrates solely on me, asking if i'm okay, if i understand all the concepts, if i want more wine, which makes me all the more loyal to her. at this point, nathalie and pierre are clearly annoyed with each other, so jean-louis saves the day and starts pouring coffee. i am dead tired and i look at my watch under the table to realize that it is ALMOST 2AM. we have been here almost six hours, eating, drinking, laughing, being french. this is how you're supposed to have dinner. not any of the fast food american eat on the run business. one of the other guests made a joke earlier about me having my american driver's license so i can drive her home, a thought i laughed off at the time but that reappears in my head like one of those dreams where you wake up and feel like you're falling, even though you're still in bed. i am busy formulating blatant lies in my head in case she asks again - i cannot drive in birkenstocks, i cannot drive cars that are blue, i cannot drive after i eat chicken - while simultaneously listening to the immigration debate (still) when i realize that it is 2am and all the children, jeanne the oldest at 12, are still up and no one seems to care. sacha comes wandering out onto the patio and yawns impressively, our cue to leave. i find it absolutely fascinating that even though nathalie and pierre disagree and jean-louis is disgruntled (pierre accuses him of being a pétaniste - a follower of maréchal pétain who was loyal to hitler when france was occupied by germany during the second world war, possibly the highest insult in the french language, but i think pierre was a bit drunk) everyone kisses everyone else like nothing ever happened and wishes them a warm goodnight. i learn the kissing ritual the hard way when i first arrive, and stick my hand out as a typical gesture of meeting new people, and everyone stares at it as if it were blue, or an extra limb, before laughing, "oh, but she is an american!" and ignores it completely as they kiss me on both cheeks, a ritual called faire les bisous, or literally, to make kisses. we drive home, sacha leaning precariously on the window and jeanne on my shoulder, both fast asleep, and i marvel that i feel completely and utterly welcomed here, even among complete strangers, in a foreign language, eating food named antoine.

disclaimer: sometimes, i think i'm david sedaris, and try to write like him. this is why it's so long for only three days. you can skim it and i promise, i'll get to the exciting parts soon. love to everyone who's reading this!!

tuesday (mardi):

stuck in the airport. too much luggage. read an entire book. boston to rek-kef.

wednesday (mercredi):

going through customs at 1230am. everyone is blond and/or bearded, females included. thirty minutes till the plane to paris leaves, and i am standing in my socks behind a very pissed off parisian man who cannot believe we have to go through customs again. apparently when you go from a non-eu country to an eu country, customs changes. why can't it be the same everywhere? at least i didn't get the full body grope this time like in logan. i decided to take off my money belt this time instead of trying to explain myself to sven in icelandic. 

side note: everything in icelandair is said first in icelandic, then in english, then in french. i die laughing every single time i hear a word of icelandic. it sounds exactly what beans sounds like when she yells in her sleep. but when i hear my name, very strongly accented, amidst the icelandic, i do not die laughing; i simply die. every passenger making the connection to paris was called because we were delayed in logan, and now we have approx 10 min to get on the plane. i'm pushing my way through customs, almost forgetting my shoes, getting my passport stamped, and i book it to gate 4 where i am again behind the pissed parisian. at this point, i am sweating profusely, exhausted, and filled with adrenaline because i do NOT WANT to be stuck in iceland. there is literally nothing there besides the airport. nothing. but they are playing bjork in the terminal. iceland's one claim to fame. 

there is a french family behind me with 42524 kids, and every one of them is more awake than i am. two of the little girls try to escape the tyranny of their parents in line, but alas, they are on leashes. i find this absolutely hilarious. they stop short, look at each other and pull faces, then turn to their parents and begin whining in rapidfire french. this rapidfire french should indeed by comprehensible to me, but i am having trouble remembering my own name at this point if it wasn't plastered all over my visa papers. finally, we board for paris, a three hour journey that seems like thirty because it is approx. 1am in iceland, but will be 6am by the time we arrive in paris. i remember vaguely that i am supposed to sleep, but the closest i get is turning on quiet music and closing my eyes. a little blond boy and his aunt? grandmother? are in the next seats, and the boy promptly lifts the armrests, puts his head in his grandmother's lap, feet in my lap, and passes out cold. the grandmother smiles apologetically at me, and i decide to be a good citizen and let the kid sleep. i figure this is better than him wailing for three hours, or me trying to explain to the grandmother in icelandic sign language that i need to get up to go to the bathroom. he kicks strategically, exactly when i'm about to fall asleep for a precious five minutes, and repeatedly. maybe he is replaying iceland's chance at the world cup in his dreams. 

but finally, finally, FINALLY we arrive in PARIS!! i watch the sun rise over the city and have a fleeting sensation of self-satisfaction (or is it self-pity?) that i have now been up for more hours than i can count in spanish. we disembark, and i haul my 432423 pound handbag and even heavier backpack to the baggage claim, which is harder to locate than wonderland without the anxious rabbit. question: why is every single piece of luggage owned by every person on the globe black? i am painting mine neon plaid for the trip home. lesson learned: cdg airport does not believe in elevators. it does, however, believe in escalators. i believe that escalators belong only in hell. after many failed attempts and many disgruntled parisians behind me, i finagle my two giant suitcases onto the escalator, only to discover that i take approximately 8 more to reach the train station. a few minor altercations later (read: always one, sometimes two, suitcases managed to fall down and down and down only to be hit sadly and repeatedly by the stairs at the bottom until i got there) and i have reached the train station!! success!! 

i get in line in front of two australian tourists who belong on the crocodile hunter if they weren't so pompous (they complain loudly and in my direction about how people should learn to pack and not take everything with them; meanwhile they are both visions in khaki canvas onesies, no wonder they have no luggage) and i pick up my ticket for the tgv (train à grand vitesse - france's fastest train! used to be the world's fastest until japan built one faster... then it got destroyed by an earthquake... karma?) where the guy laughs at my american bank card, asks me why there is a tree on it, tries to sell me the student tgv pass for only 45 euro more, and sets me free. the train station smells strongly of pee (exactly like the stairwells in the parking garage in portsmouth) and i don't want to know why, i just want to sleep. THEN, the station becomes heaven on earth, angels descend from the rafters and morgan freeman begins announcing departures... there are vending machines everywhere that sell only kinderbuenos!!! i buy 5euro worth of kinderbuenos (i still have some left) and eat them until i feel like a human again. 

it is now approximately 8am, and my train doesn't leave until 130pm. bummer. i finish another book (in english, shhhh) and leave them on the bench for someone else to read. i then watch the absolutely entirety of the 2002 john mayer dvd with the extended commentary until i know all the lyrics (but let's be real, i knew them already) and catch a few glorious minutes of sleep until my train is announced. there are four access points for each platform, so i ask a girl who looks like she knows what she's doing where i'm going. turns out, she speaks no french, her plane arrived half an hour ago from munich, and also has no idea where she's going. good news: her name is kim! and she speaks english! we brave the escalator together, and shove everything we own onto the train right as they are blowing the whistle and shutting all the doors. my seat is in a quad with three very large people speaking rapidfire portuguese. i pick up a few conversations, decide they are not portuguese secret agents posing as tourists to sneak into spain and attack, and pass out. i wake up as kim is leaving for angouleme, give her my contact info, and pass out again until bordeaux. 

my host family greets me, and the kids and i haul everything i own up to the fourth floor. my wonderful host mom, nathalie, shows me my purple room and huge bathroom! then lets me shower while she makes dinner. we eat outside on the terrace (because the apartment has THREE FLOORS! AND AN OUTDOOR TERRACE!) where i am offered some weird european beer in a fat little can that tasted kind of like how the train station smelled. nathalie is a glorious cook, and the two kids, jeanne (girl age 12) and sacha (boy age 8 almost 9 don't forget) are hilarious and pushing each other out of their chairs and making me eat everything. my host dad, jean-louis, smokes and picks grapes from a vine to have for dessert. we eat, i am given the grand tour de l'appartement, and then i pass out, spreadeagle, on my giant bed next to my suitcase and toothbrush.

thursday (jeudi):

not much happened thursday, given that i woke up at 4pm. it is deathly hot in the city thursday.