Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Adoption and Emergency Services

Unreal.
I have now started two separate blog posts since the 20th, on two separate occasions, and been unable (for one reason or another) to finish and post either of them. Lame! The reason for this is that I’ve been legitimately doing responsible things. You know; eating, doing homework, sleeping, verb revision, working out, going to class… sounds boring, eh? Not boring, actually, but notably less exciting to blog about. Instead, I have ridiculous news for you.
Catherine has invited me to make macaroons and cookies in her kitchen.
I’m going to type that out one more time, just in case anyone didn’t catch it.
I am going to bake with Catherine in her kitchen.

For reference, this is what the Mediterranean Sea normally looks like.
I’m aware that I typed in my little bio box on the side that I was totally wrangling for a chance to learn a thing or two from Catherine (Who wouldn’t? The woman is an instructor at a French culinary school.) but I didn’t actually think that would happen! In fact, it should be noted that now that I’m faced with entering Catherine’s kitchen to do more than pilfer a spoon, or deposit dishes in the dishwasher, I’m not actually sure this is a good idea.
Oh… the irony…
She’s very keen on the whole idea, which is one of the primary reasons I’m convinced I may have just been adopted. At the very least, I promise to keep you up-to-date on that new development.
In other news, I was clearly not a casualty of the sea this past weekend. On Sunday morning, I was invited to go with Michel and Catherine to their favourite stretch of sand bordering the Mediterranean Sea. Accordingly, I packed up my little backpack of beach things and off we went. It was humid and warm, but the wind was easily 30km/h and the normally flat, tranquil water had regular waves rolling in. Basically, it looked like the Atlantic looks normally, and for the Med the water was unusually rough.  As a result, I did a lot of walking-up-and-down-the-beach-with-the-surf-rushing-over-my-toes, and sitting-in-the-sand-reading, and taking-pictures-of-the-gorgeous-waves.
Please note that none of this involves swimming.

This is what the Mediterranean Sea looked like from Thursday of last week until Monday.
Catherine went in just up to her waist and was knocked over by the waves. Unsurprisingly, she decided the water was too rough for swimming and got out. Michel was thrilled with the waves though, and happily stayed inside the area protected by the breakwater to bodysurf.

That's me, standing on a spit of sand that you can normally see at high tide. Sunday, the water was in the process of retreating to a low tide, and the water definitely soaked the bottom half of my dress. It was an interesting walk haha!
As you can see from the pictures, it’s not like the sea was trying to trick anyone. It’s not like it was calm one moment, and then frothing and white the next. That being said, a middle-aged couple nearby still thought it was a good idea to put on scuba masks and swim out past the breakwater. I don’t know what they were doing, exactly, but I know they weren’t wearing flippers, and that they weren’t exactly strong swimmers.
There are two buoys at the beach, a red one (closer to shore) and a yellow one (well away from the shore). I kind of assumed that the couple was going to swim out to the red one and back, that maybe they had set a fitness goal for themselves, or they thought it was normal for the water to be that agitated. Maybe they thought there would be fish to see out that far? Either way, Catherine and I watched from the shore, with the rest of the beach, as the two swimmers went out past the red buoy, and then on towards the yellow one. We commented to each other that the whole thing looked like a bad idea. What is starting to horrify me as I sit and write is that I watched, for an hour, as these two swam out into the water and vanished into the waves on the horizon.
Monday morning, reports started coming in on the news stations here. Three dead, five more missing. Seven dead, three more missing. Nine dead, six more missing. There still isn’t a final count on how many people drowned last weekend, because there are several in hospital under close supervision. 
How are you supposed to respond when you’re abroad to a situation like that?

Report from le Populaire
http://www.lepopulaire.fr/limousin/actualite/departement/correze/2013/07/29/parmi-les-victimes-de-noyades-dans-l-herault-un-usselois-de-73-ans-a-peri-a-palavas-1642966.html
Guys, I’m still not entirely sure. In Canada, I’d have used my smartphone to figure out how to contact the Coast Guard and report it. There were certainly enough SNSM* helicopters flying overhead that morning to say it would have been reasonable to do the same in France. In Canada though, I’m pretty comfortable in feeling that I have the right to report something like that. That I’m able to judge when it’s a good idea to report something verses not report it. I’m also comfortable dealing with the fallout of messing up a report, or in knowing my surroundings well enough to accurately describe where I am to someone on the other end of a phone.

Canadian Search and Rescue (SAR) Coast Guard vessel. Check it out... it's bilingual!
http://www.ccg-gcc.gc.ca/eng/CCG/SAR_Main
That being said, I don’t have a smartphone in France. I’m also not a totally fluid speaker, and I’ve discovered on more than one occasion that a reaction involving emergency services is often seen as an overreaction. (Case example 1: drunken brawls in the streets and plazas with broken bottles apparently don’t merit calling the police. Basically ever. The only one I observed where the police were called involved a knife, and four people beating each other with chairs from a nearby restaurant.)
Further, France (and Europe in general) don’t use 9-11 as their emergency call number. They use an assortment of different numbers depending on the service you want. Which I didn't have memorized at the time. (I would have ended up calling SAMU, which wasn't what was needed...) The organization of the emergency services system is different too. Most are actually associated with the military, and I’m starting to think that it’s the fire department in France that handles everything the Coast Guard normally does in Canada. The result of the weekend is that I now know the three main emergency numbers used in France, but that I’m still very hesitant to use them.
… ah… I’m not entirely sure where the number 16 went, but I’m sure it’ll come back soon. It’s probably doing something important.

SAMU (the equivalent of calling an ambulance) – 15
Police – 17
Pompiers – 18

*SNSM - La Société Nationale des Sauveteurs en Mer, who are under the fire department, which is under the military. Website link below.

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Occult Rituals and the DELF

Hello,

I know it’s been a while, but I have to tell you honestly that I’m glad to see you again. The best explanation I have for you is that the homesickness hit me at the same time I figured out how to articulate what I’d discovered in relation to nationality and ethnicity. Wallowing apparently takes an inordinate amount of energy; so much energy in fact that posting blogs is wildly unappetizing. It’s terrible, I don’t suggest it. Turns out there is an idiot-proof way to deal with homesickness and general disappointment with the world: be busy.
And I don’t mean putter around the house cleaning, I mean like… be busy! Last Monday (July 8th, my birthday) was the first day of my DELF language preparation course. I went from having a very large amount of time to mope, to having nearly none. I should back up and explain a few things though. First, the DELF is the French language equivalent of the TOEFL, which are standardized language exams with standardized levels. Once you write this exam and pass a grade, you’ve got an international certificate stating that you are a beginner, independent user or expert in that language. Being as I’ll have spent four months here by the time I finish, I should definitely have something on my resume, right? Well, once I started the DELF prep I got busy. I went from 20 minutes of homework each night (as a maximum) to like… nearly 2 hours. I’m not even exaggerating that.
… Surprise?
 On the bright side after  two weeks of being forced to concentrate on things that had nothing to do with being homesick, and exercising, and eating food that makes me happy, and going to the beach, I feel much better.

Jump pictures are the best.
Better enough, in fact, that I even remembered to take a picture of Poisson (ligne 3, the fish tram), which is the tram that takes you to the beach.

Ligne 3, Poisson. The prettiest of the four tram lines in Montpellier.
Better enough that I started to smile when I saw silly things in the street, like the SDF helping their dogs into the fountains on hot days so that they could cool off.

He actually had to pick up the third dog (who was smaller) and lift him into the fountain. It was adorable.
Better enough that I went to Estivales with Frank (from Saskatoon) and Laura, and actually enjoyed myself. You see, every Friday in Montpellier there’s an event called ‘les Estivales’, which is a summer wine festival. Every Friday 35 different local wine producers come into town, set up a booth, and showcase a red, rose, and white wine each. For 5 Euros you get a wine glass, and tickets for tasting 3 different wines of your choice. It’s really the most inexpensive way to wine taste I’ve ever encountered. However… there is a dark side to these Estivales… and I don’t mean that the youth turn into wild things and brawl/shout/be drunk, but that should be considered too. No no, I mean that for the amazing price of 5 Euros for three half-glasses of wine, you run the very real risk of tasting some seriously terrible wine.

The only picture I have of Frank. We were all at the American bagel shop, eating pecan pie after lunch.
Herein begins the story of the most terrible wine I have ever attempted to drink.
The first two wines the three of us tasted were actually pretty good. I enjoyed the red wine we tried first, and the white that we had second I really liked. I should have cut my losses at that white and just bought a bottle. Past-Kenna… you foolish, foolish creature. Unfortunately for Past-Kenna, she didn’t stop at the second glass, and tasted a third. We went to the Pic-St.-Loup booth and lined up, I believe it was Laura and I who tried the white, and Frank who tried the rose. Mon dieu, the white was terrible. It hit your tongue as fresh, dry, and a little fruity… but then this aftertaste came at you. It started at the back of your mouth and crept up along your gums like something alive. I sat in the center of your tongue and beat your taste buds into cruel submission. It got stronger!

http://www.montpellier.fr/2317-les-estivales.htm
Ok, I’m exaggerating slightly for dramatic effect, but honestly! The aftertaste did get stronger in your mouth the longer you left it, and it was seriously bad. Think: stale pile of leaves on a moist fall day. Wine should be a delight to drink! Wine should make you happy. Some are heady, some are zesty, some are crisp, some are smooth… this one came out to Estivales because Pic-St.-Loup realized that the best way to get rid of it was by practically giving it away. Laura - trooper that she is – stated that there was no such thing as bad wine and finished it. I – who believe that life is too short to drink bad wine – dumped it.
Turns out that was the best choice I made all evening.
Estivales is crowded, so we found ourselves one of the big trees along the Esplanade Charles deGaulle (where it’s held) and figured that would be the most polite place to dispose of the rank wine. It felt wrong to just dump or throw the wine at the base of the tree though, for some reason my tipsy mind decided that was much too crass a treatment, even for this particular wine. You’ll have to just roll with me on this one… I thought it would be best to distribute the wine equally around the trunk, and that that would be somehow less crass than just splashing it all messily in one spot. So with (what I’m told was) a look of great concentration, I poured a neat little trail of wine around the tree in a perfect circle. Once I’d finished, I looked up at Frank and Laura (who were staring at me like I was insane) and smiled, all proud of myself. Then the two of them caught sight of something behind me and started to laugh so hard they nearly spilled their wine.

This was the Sacrificial Tree. Now it's where we pour bad wine all the time. Potentially this tree will be dead by the end of the summer, and I will feel terribly guilty for killing it with bad wine.
I checked behind me. Next to the tree was a random French man, about my age, dressed in a grey zip-up sweater and sweatpants, with his ballcap on backwards, giving me the most incredulous look I’ve encountered in this country to date. He was understandably a little shocked and confused about what he’d just witnessed, mostly (Frank tells me) because it looked kind of like I was doing some sort of occult ritual. (If anyone knows anything about occult rituals it’s Frank, who studies that sort of thing for a living, so I’m going to have to trust him on this one) The look on the random French man’s face also conveyed his intense curiosity as to what I was drinking, and if maybe he should be doing what I was doing too, because he’d missed something somewhere.
Once we’d explained our encounter with the bad wine he laughed too, nodded, and then kind of slid away; because sometimes the crazy is contagious, clearly.
I laughed so hard I cried.  
That’s my solution for you, when homesickness hits. Sign up for something that forces you to do something (ex: lots of homework), exercise, and drink bad wine until you laugh so hard you cry. It probably won’t work every time, but it’s a solid start.

… go easy on the occult rituals though. I have a feeling those are outlawed in most countries.