Nice is Nice.

Yes, Nice is nice. I heart Nice :) it was described to me as 'heady and hot' before I got there, and I think those are really about the two best words to use. The temperature is perfect, the water is awesome, the hostel was good and I was sharing my room with two wonderful German girls named Kejda (Kay-da) and Natalie. I got to walk along the Prominade Anglaise, decided that I didn't want to sunbath on the beach being as it was all little stones but did wander up and down almost every avenue in the vieille-ville.

My favrouite discovery of the trip so far came when I went down to see if the flea market in Nice - supposedly one of the best in France - was still open on Saturday. Unfortunately I didn't get to Nice until 1:30pm, so I didn't get a chance to see the market in action because it shut down at 1:00pm. Lame! Flea market-less, I poked my nose into all sorts of very expensive antique shops and got some good looks from the shop keepers. A lot of them were elderly and well-dressed, and kind of glared at me down their noses as I checked out their 16th century vases, antique boudoirs, crystal and china. Tired of all that - and worrying that if I broke something I would become and indentured slave for the rest of my life - I headed back to the square to catch the tram. Guess what I found? OLD FRENCH MEN PLAYING CHESS AND SMOKING LIKE CHIMMENIES!



Oh man, I was so excited. I went scurrying over to watch the table nearest to me play a game. The Moroccan man started humming 'dangerous, oooh oh oh oh dangerous!' while he soundly thrashed his opponent, and then sang 'dancing queen' as his victory song. He's the one on the left. I'm not even joking! The guy on the right went through two cigarettes in 10min every game, and lost every time. I sense a correlation: cigarettes make you fail at chess. Logical, no? Mind, I didn't need cigarettes to make me fail at chess. Once the singing Moroccan had beat the smokestack, he insisted I sit down and play with him. Ah... I was awesome at chess... 5 or 6 years ago. Needless to say I was also killed. I took his queen right at the beginning though, it extended my life by no more than 7 minutes.

Yesterday morning I woke up early, swallowed my nutella on French bread and headed to the station on my way to Annecy. Unfortunately all the trains were delayed. Interesting, never seen a late train in Europe. Well, as it turns out the rumour is someone tried to commit suicide on the tracks. Right, that'll stop trains. 9 hours later and after several other train adventures I made it to Annecy. Did you know that if you trip (are tripped?) by someone's suitcase you get stuck under your backpack on the station floor? I'm sure I looked hilarious, I was on my side, completely unable to get up until a nice British fellow lifted my bag off me lol! The girl whose luggage was responsible felt terrible, but we had a good laugh. Please observe the offending bags.



The other adventure took place while I went to catch my late train at the station in Nice. A mother was coming down a busy escalator and somehow tripped and fell at the bottom. She knocked over the French lady behind her, who had a stroller. Not going to lie, all I saw was both women fall and the back of a stroller on a moving escalator and I panicked a little. Usually there are babies in strollers. I dropped my bags and started pulling other luggage out of the way, things kept piling up because the escalator was still moving. Wow could the children of that fallen mother ever scream. No one was injured, there was no blood, their mother was standing up trying to help the French lady back to her feet, but there were people falling on each other which understandably scared the kids. I can't claim that I hit the button that stopped the escalator, or the button that called security, but man am I a good luggage thrower lol! That whole adventure was no more than 10 min total. I was also intensely relieved to see that there was no baby in the stroller, just a lot of broken french bread.

No, I don't know why there was bread in the stroller.

Escape to Nice!

So... I have a confession. I didn't like Marseille. It was alright. The old port was very pretty and the food wasn't bad (although I didn't en up trying the bouillabaisse (?) fish stew) but as soon as you were out of the tourist-y port it was very poor. Apparently it's the poorest city in France.

Either way, if I had my choice I would much rather go somewhere else in France than back to Marseille. I DID enjoy my trip out to the Chateau d'If though. I went with another guy from Canada named Nicolas, and we had a grand old time wandering all over the (surprisingly small) Chateau and pretending to be prisoners.



Back in the port there was also a stunning view of the Notre Dame de la Guerre on top of the hill. It was all lit up and gorgeous in the night sky. There is a 12ft Virgin Mary statue on the top that is plated in gold. You can really tell too, even from the port (1km away) this statue is clearly discernable and clearly made of gold. I didn't make it up there to see the crypt, but I think I will make up for it in Paris when I see the catacombs.



Other adventures in Marseille include meeting two fairly friendly American boys from California who were very impressed with themselves for having their weed cards on them. One was a chef and the other had just graduated with a degree in Operations Management. They were cooking dinner while I was updating the blog last time and invited me to have some! It did smell delicious. Sausages with fried potatoes and eggs all mixed into a little pie thing for dinner. Not bad at all! It was funny the next morning when we were all eating our French bread and jam for breakfast though, and they began to make themselves eggs and sausages again. The Europeans at the table kept looking at them and saying things like 'such a heavy breakfast!' 'meat, first thing in the morning?'. Oh, America.

Je suis un Réfugiée Climatique

Oui, c'est vrais. At my last dinner cooked by Catherine the Kitchen Goddess, Michel and I were discussing whether or not I would come back to Montpellier and how if I ever did I was welcome to stay with them and their family. I said that if I came back I would love to come in December/January/February, and probably March to escape the cold weather. Michel laughed, his red wine in one hand and his baguette with olives in the other (yes, really) and said "Kenna! Tu es un réfugiée climatique!" Then we got around to discussing how I would claim my refugee status at the border. We figured the border guard might look at me a little strangely until I told them how cold it got during our winters, and then let me get away with my claim. AWESOME!



So this morning I boarded a train, had my last baguette and orange juice breakfast from Catherine, and left Montpellier bound for Marseilles. I promise to write about Marseilles tomorrow, but there are a few things I want to catch the rest of the world up on, ex: further conversations in a French family.

There is: The shower conversation
Catherine and I were talking about when I was going to have my showers at the house, because apparently they set it up so that people have their showers in the afternoon, morning or evening. This made sense, we do that in Canada sometimes to make sure everyone gets hot water, maybe they do that here for a similar reason? So I'm set, I get my showers in the afternoons post-school day. A few days later Catherine and I are talking about it again, I was wondering if I could take my shower the following morning instead of that afternoon.

"Ah, but Kenna you take long showers."

No, I don't. They're like 15 min. I'm a machine at showering when I want to be. However, that's evidently not how Catherine sees it. "Yes, but they aren't hot showers."

"No no, they are long. It doesn't matter if they are hot or cold, the tank only holds so much water." Oh, I get it. Hot/cold doesn't matter but volume of water does. Their tank is... tiny.

"Ah, ok. I understand. I take long showers because I am a girl!" I laughed. We say that in Canada all the time, right?

"No," she cuts in. "It is because you are English!"

Old rivalries die hard, we laughed about that one for a good long time. There was also an epic conversation with the grand-children (9 and 11) about Celine Dion. Unfortunately, I didn't realize their little wailing sounds were supposed to be Celine Dion singing, and I was pretty sure that at the time we were talking about 'les indiens', Indians. I swear if you say 'Celine Dion' and 'les indiens' fast and slur your words a little bit like a kid, they sound the same. I told them that "that sound is not what the Indians make, they sound like this;" ... and then I made an old school Native American war whoop, at the dinner table, and no one knew what on EARTH I was doing.

That one took a while to explain.

Last but not least, the French advertisements. Oh they are amazing. The first two are a McDonalds campaign and the caption reads "Come as you are."



The cartoon on the next one is a recurring character from a comic book called "Asterix and Obelix" (hope I spelled that kinda right), the guy tied up by the tree is the stereotypical villian.



There was another good one of the drive-through with Cinderella and her carriage turning into a pumpkin, mice and all, but I couldn't find it again.



This is a bowling add. It is my favourite French add yet. Really. Bowling. Every non-European at the school knew this add, because it took all of us by surprise. Epic? Yes. French epic.

Je suis fatiguee...

37 C

Every day that it's hot like this I stagger home at about 7 and collapse on my bed for half an hour before dinner. Or sneak some baguette and jam to try and boost my energy and stay awake. The heat just kills you lol!

I'm still having an excellent time though. Since the last post I have written another French skit with Binnert (Crown Prince of Holland, or so is the running joke) that will be posted at a later date; visited a flea market for the first time in my life and bartered for things; chased the neighborhood cats around for pictures because one of them is a beautiful Siamese; been back to the beach on the bus instead of bicycle and discovered macarons!

Yes, yes I've been busy. We'll start with the Flea Market. One of the things I based my trip and my locations in France around was flea markets. If only for the novelty. I'm really quite convinced that you get to know a country by what they throw out and what they recycle. In the case of France? Everything is recycled. Seriously, EVERYTHING. At this Flea Market, hosted in a large, empty, mostly tree-less parking lot at the edge of town I found everything from English China tea sets to cheap new computer parts. Good times, but very hot. The next one I visit is the market in Marseille, I'm plenty curious being as it's supposed to have a very different array of goods from the one here in Montpellier. More antiques, traditionally.



The cats were a minor distraction, but stay posted for the blog on French advertisements. Oh man, they have the strangest adds here. I don't want to say too much and give anything away, but McDonalds is pretty posh here and I'm enjoying their most recent slew of adds. Also... the bowling adds. Yes... not exactly what your average Canadian bowling company would use.

Also, turns out you can get to the beach by bus, in 15 minutes! This is a wonderful discovery that has meant many more trips to the beach. The last one was Monday when the new South African fellow (Wes) spent the afternoon trying to teach Binnert and I to catch a wave and body surf. Wes seems to think he can't get too far because the waves are small here and "he's fat" (lies), whereas I'm pretty sure I do a terrible job of catching them because I'm small and the waves just push me up over them. Good times.



But oh... let me tell you about Macarons! So as previously mentioned my host-mom is a professional cook. Turns out that means she is also pretty good with pastries. Tonight after dinner she was pondering what to feed me for dessert, being as I couldn't have what the rest of the family was having (some sort of very dairy-heavy tart/pudding... thing... very French). She had some little 'macarons' in the fridge, so I was served a little plate with three tiny, light, round sandwich-things on them; pink, brown and yellow. They are little clouds of sugar and egg-white and amazing! Crispy on the outside and soft, pate fillings in the center! Catherine kept laughing. "You are so English!" She said, "Have you really never had a macaron?" No, no I hadn't. I swear I will rectify that though, I intend to eat as many macarons as my future permits, and enjoy them loudly every time.

Chirgurie Esthêtique

Best school day yet. It was Friday, a good school day under most circumstances really, made better by the assignment our instructor gave us: Write a dialogue (and then act it out) between two parents and their child, the child wants something that the parents do not want them to have. Then she gave us three scenarios to choose from.

1) The child wants... a scooter.
2) The child wants... an animal.
3) The child wants... plastic surgery.

Yeah, yeah you read the last one right. Plastic Surgery, a.k.a. chirgurie esthêtique.

I had two other girls in my group, the Irish girls Nicky and Sarah. Nicky is tall and blond with blue eyes, and she likes to party. Sarah is shorter with darker hair, and is quite cynical. Both Nicky and Sarah have very thick Irish accents. Well you can imagine what we decided would be our topic. I was the father, Sarah was the mother, and Nicky was our bonny wee-lass just come home from a night on the town.

NOTE: Whenever Nicky spoke during this skit it was in a monotone, she was very hung over that day, Sarah kept giggling (very stern mother, that one) and I was my usual self, as to say... loud with lots of hand gestures.

http://www.facebook.com/kenna.morris#!/notes/kenna-ann-morris/most-amazing-french-skit-ever/420056897886

Unfortunately, the blog couldn't seem to handle the html for this one, so it's been made as a facebook note.

In other new: It is incredibly hot in Montpellier. It is 35C, in the shade. Don't let the weather forcasters lead you astray with their technology and their significant amount of education in weather phenomena; it's just flippin' hot. You know how at home we hide inside in the winter to get away from the snow and the freezing wind? Yeah... today everyone has hidden inside, with all the lights off, all the windows closed and all the fans on. Even the WIND outside it hot.

... I have seen a strange and odd reversal of my world.

WARNING: Read at Leisure

Oh man, life is epic. Catherine is making pizza for dinner. Like from scratch. Like from SCRATCHSCRATCH! This morning I came into the kitchen to have breakfast (the only time I'm allowed in the kitchen) and I smelled burning. It was coming from two peppers, one red and one green, which were sitting out on the stovetop smoking. I asked Catherine if the peppers were supposed to be on the stove without a pan or anything underneath them and she nodded (she was busy making some sort of sweet tart for the kids' breakfast). I asked why the peppers were on the stove like that. Ah, ma fille! The answer is simple. Apparently uncooked peppers are hard on the digestive system. So you... er... char... the skin of the pepper on an element to cook them, then wrap them in a sheet of newspaper and let them sit for the day on the counter. When you get home from work, you cut the skin of the pepper away from its meat (I imagine with a very sharp knife and epic skill) and that is what you then slice into strips for putting on pizza.

That's. Just. The peppers.

This afternoon I found her kneading the dough when I got back from classes. Clearly Catherine loves to cook.



Yesterday was also an adventure! Contrary to Googlemaps, Montpellier is not actually a beach town, its about 15km inland. So I rounded up Kate and informed her that we were going to rent bikes from the TAM (Transit Assoc. of Mont.) and bike to the beach for the afternoon. It took two tries over as many days for this to work, but at last... success! What a gong show though. I've cycled in traffic in a few places, the most wild being Cuba, the most insane being Africa (never again, oh god) but nothing was quite like cycling in France.

The TAM and rent-a-velos are in the middle of the vieille-ville (old town center). From there you have to navigate your way through crowded, narrow lanes until you get far enough out that you are on roads wide enough for auto traffic. MISTAKE! There are bike lanes on the edges, but those are really only guidelines and they aren't terrible large. Without helmets on strange, very non-agile bikes with poor brakes this whole process is hilarious. Initially we thought we'd go through the pedestrian plazas to avoid all the auto-craziness, only this meant a lot of going down stairs and up escalators in pedestrian malls. Bad plan, but you get awesome looks from the locals going up an escalator with a rent-a-velo.

Resigned to the streets, we left the pedestrian plaza and I played navigator with my map... until we rode off the map. It was a small map. Fail! Fortunately I now have enough french that asking people for directions isn't so bad. I think I scared Kate a little, being as she didn't have much experience on a bike and I kept to larger, main roads to avoid getting lost, but we made it to the river unscathed. Once we were at the river the riding became significantly nicer, and our progress significantly smoother.

We did unfortunately spend so much time getting out of the city that we were riding on an un-shaded path to the beach in the heat of the day. We ended up deciding that we couldn't face another morning of walking into class and hearing Binnert (from Holland) asking us how the beach was and having to answer 'Well, we didn't make it.' again. Regardless of the actual result of this final foray we agreed; we made it to the beach, and it was brilliant.



Really though, we did make it. We got lost a few more times but it was fun. When we arrived and locked up the bikes Kate asked me how warm I thought the water was. "Brilliant." I said. "No no." She laughed, "Like what temperature, give me a number." I laughed. "A brilliant number!"

The water was actually pretty cold, I'd guess 17 C, maybe 18 C max. We swam in it anyway and it was - you guessed it - brilliant.

T'aime le Ketchup?

I am guilty as charged. Oui j'aime le ketchup, je suis du Amerique du Nord. Apparently when Catherine puts her love and good lamb into little balls with herbs and bread crumbs, then bakes them until they're all crispy and delicious, it's not impressive when people ask to put ketchup on them. In all fairness, I thought it was a great idea. It was also delicious, both with and without ketchup. Changing my meal plan to half-board was totally the best decision I have made thus far. Unfortunately, being as Catherine is a professional and the kitchen is small, she claims it as her domain and I have yet to step more than 1m into the kitchen before I am chased out. No cooking lessons in fine French cuisine for me :(

The afternoons and early evening are definitely the best time of day though! I attend classes before noon, spend the early afternoon with the other students (you know, wallball, pogs, trading cards, all those awesome pastimes) in the old town centre. This particular afternoon involved a mission for bicycles. It's 15km from the school to the beach. Not epically far, but far enough that you'd much rather do it on a bicycle than on foot. Well, Montpellier's transit service happens to rent bicycles very cheaply. Kate and I probably invested an hour trying to figure out where you could rent a bicycle from and what kind of ID they would accept as collateral. (For the record, it's passports and drivers licenses as standards, but they accepted my YMCA card as a student ID when I had nothing else on me.) We had a blast riding around on these incredibly difficult to steer bicycles and we're all set to pick up two to ride through the old town and the huge plaza to the beach tomorrow. I'm definitely excited to finally swim in the Mediterranean.


Post-bicycle adventures I come home, have a snack/read/do homework until 8:00pm when dinner is served. Best part of the day. It's an excuse to listen and speak with Michel, who I have to admit is totally becoming my favourite host-family member. Eat epic food and learn all sorts of random new words (gitan, feuille, pépin). For example, the family has what I thought were two gigantic palm trees in their front garden. Nono, they are just huge herbs. I thought Michel was making things up again - and it took a good amount of cajoling from the rest of the family for me to believe them - but it's true, herbs can be that big.

... I googled it...