Why French Men can Dance.

           Guys! I’ve made this incredible discovery, and I need to share it with you. Everything makes so much sense now! I should really start at the beginning though, instead of jumping in at the middle.

            Part of doing a long-term stay or study abroad (like I’m doing now) is figuring out how to adjust your mentality to the cultural logic of wherever you’re staying. I’ve run into this in many ways here in France, my favourite example being closed-door etiquette. In Canada, if you’re hanging out in your room with the door closed it implies that you’re busy, you’re doing other stuff and you don’t want to be interrupted. As a result, it’s pretty normal to leave the door open a crack, or wide open depending on what you’re doing. If I’m just reading on my bed and the house isn’t too noisy, my door is hardly ever closed. That’s not how it works in France though. Here, houses and apartments are smaller, the walls are quite thin, and space is just more limited. I’m pretty sure that’s what’s helped in creating this closed-door norm that I experience regularly. The door to my room is to be closed, basically always. If I’m in the room, if I’m not in the room, whatever; the door is to be closed. I’m told this is a privacy thing. Space is limited and therefore it’s easier to respect everyone else’s space and privacy if doors are closed.

Grisette is definitely the first cat in this situation, Grisette is a door ninja...

            Awesome, but do you have any idea how hard it is to predict when Catherine is going to call me for dinner if my door is closed? I’m not supposed to peek out of my room at 8:00pm to see what stage things are at, because that’s when the family gets to sit down and chat (just them). Ok, rude to interrupt that. It’s also rude for me to wait quietly in my room until someone knocks though, because then they’re being rude by interrupting whatever I’m doing behind my closed door. (… o.0!) The compromise I’ve arrived at is cracking my door just a bit so I can hear when she yells from the kitchen that dinner is ready. This works so long as Grisette isn’t feeling adventurous, and pushes my door open properly to come and visit. Then the door is open, and that’s not supposed to happen.

            So that’s the door example of a shift in cultural logic. Here’s the logical impasse I’d been trying to figure out; European men tend to be able to dance, and North American men tend not to be able to dance. These are pretty broad stereotypes, so stick with me. It’s not considered negative in Canada if you’re male and can’t dance. In fact, if you show up at a club and all you do is stand around and drink in a corner, or stand in the middle of the dance floor and bob your head a bit, no one bats an eyelash at that. That’s pretty normal. In France, I have encountered very few men who don’t have rhythm. Herein lies my confusion, why is there such a difference between the two? What do we do differently that has led to this dichotomy of dancing men?

            The French men can dance because they’re all in my Body Attack class at the gym on Tuesdays.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfcebRPubY8

            Twice a week I am at the Piscine Olympique doing some of the hardest cardio I have ever done. On Fridays it’s something called Body Combat, which is a class that resembles some sort of cross between kickboxing and Zumba. (Yes, please feel free to giggle, I did too when I realized what I’d signed up for.) That being said, I actually contemplated not finishing the class it was so difficult. Three cheers for blackbelt grit on that one, and one point to Zumba-like exercise. By contrast, Tuesdays I’m in Body Attack, which is by all rights much more girly (and somewhat easier) than Body Combat. Body Attack is very similar to Zumba, only… possibly more like a rave, with fewer drugs, no glow sticks and more arm-waving/running in circles/hip gyration. I was honestly expecting a very female crowd to show up for Body Attack given that the more masculine class by far in the series is Body Combat. Nope, it was actually an even 50/50 split, and only a few were clearly gay.

            This blew my mind.

            That link below the image takes you to a video example of this class. Yes, she does say 'and Superman!' then do a dance move, multiple times, at about 1:50min. 

            I’ve been back twice now to verify my findings, Body Attack is full of French men who dance better than I do, and because of this are really fit. It all makes so much sense now! Gentlemen, are you taking notes on this yet? Not only is Body Attack fun because it’s so ridiculous, but you could be learning to dance, in a studio full of enough men that you’re not emasculated, and women who are outrageously happy because they’re dancing instead of running on treadmills. Why do we not have this in Canada?!

            Ahem… anyway… in other news I’ve been moved up to B1 (yay!) and yesterday it was my turn to take home the class diary and write a bit about my week. Our instructor Elise then corrects it, and passes it on to the next person. The result is actually a really useful learning tool, but the entries are all remarkably similar… There are definitely people who spice up their entries with little sketches, pictures or maps of the places they’ve been on excursions, etc. every once in awhile, it’s all very slice-of-life though. It’s alright to go back and review the other entries, but they’re not exactly exciting. Don’t worry, I have a solution.

Class Diary, complete with tiny cartoon me!

            Next week, when I am the person with the diary, I am going to write an entry about how a dragon appeared as I was walking to the tram station. Not only will there be a dragon to slay, I’m thinking the tram it sits on should be full of innocent nuns. Possibly I will bribe it off of the tram with my newfound vocabulary of fine french food, like truffles, champagne, beaujolais nouveau and macarons. Or pacify it with roquefort cheese. I’ll be sure to keep you posted on exactly how well this is all received. 

More Funny French Sayings

Well, you guys enjoyed my incident at the dinner table with ‘faire du pipe’ so much that I figured this would be a good post to pass on more odd, funny, and plain outrageous French sayings. I know this now because most of the feedback I get on the blog comes through private e-mail. You guys do know that you can leave comments, right? Just so you do know, you don’t need to create an account, or follow, me to leave a comment. You can just make up a name (or use part of your real one) and type what you want to say below. Those of you who are familiar with blogging culture, please feel free to ignore most of the above paragraph. Of course in the end, lurking is acceptable too hahaha!

Anyway, Angelique – my instructor last week – has warned me that French is a language full of sayings. In fact, it’s not uncommon to have sayings in one city that aren’t common (or even necessarily known) a few cities over. We kind of have something like that in Canada? For example, Calgarians call a specific Chinese food ‘ginger beef’, but apparently it was actually invented in Calgary (… is it really Chinese food then?) so people elsewhere in Canada call it ‘Calgary beef’. Either way, this French saying thing sounds much more extreme. I’m also pretty inclined to believe it is that extreme after my experience explaining the rabbit thing to the other students and Angelique in class. Catherine is Corsican, and poor Angelique had never heard of a saying that involved having a rabbit in the house. The whole family agrees that the rabbit thing is a saying though. My very current (very logical) conclusion is that the saying is Corsican.

With that preface, let’s move on to Funny Sayings Part 2!

The nicest picture I could find of a flea.

First off, terms of endearment in French are definitely different in French than in English. For example, the first time I heard Michel call Catherine ‘ma biche’, I did a double-take, very confused as to why Michel was smiling and Catherine was snuggling him after being cursed at. In English, ‘bitch’ is a curse for women (typically very catty, mean women), although technically it just refers to a female dog. Une biche in French is a doe, as in a female dear. Like the ones with big brown eyes and cute dark noses that are very sweet, dainty and caring. Ok, calling a woman you love a doe is something I understand now, but a flea? ‘Ma puce’ is the alternative to ‘ma biche’, and I’ve definitely heard people using it, I just thought I was mishearing the word, or didn’t know what word they were using because my vocabulary is still only so large. It’s still called a ‘flea market’, or a ‘marche au puces’, but seriously, flea is a term of endearment. Pretty specific to women and sometimes small children. Bugs in general are also though of as cute, and there are plenty of other terms of endearment related to bugs. Where I come from, bugs are gross… and there aren’t even that many of them! Only so many types of bug can deal with Canadian winters. Unfortunately those tiny, vicious black flies are one of them.

Other animals in the fun sayings category include being ‘as jealous as a tiger’, ‘as resourceful as a monkey’ and ‘known like the white wolf’. To be as jealous as a tiger has a pretty clearly negative connotation, just like to be as resourceful as a monkey has a positive connotation. If you’re ‘known like the white wolf’ though, it could go either way. A man could be known like the white wolf because he’s a womanizer (negative), or a baker in town could be known like the white wolf because she has the best tarte au citron in town (positive).

Tarte au Citron Meringue

There are also plenty of animal sayings that are the same in both languages. For example, sly like a fox, red as a lobster, packed as tightly as sardines in a can, loyal as a dog and dirty as a pig are all basically the same. I don’t know the exact saying the French have about sheep, but the sentiment is the same there too. If you’ve got the mind of a sheep, you’re kind of a herd animal… and kind of dumb to boot. The French do say ‘happy as a fish in water’, but the English equivalent I’m familiar with is ‘happy as a pig in shit’. …I have definitely used ‘happy as a pig in poop’ when in front of small children though, hahaha!

If you’re out with friends for a drink or two in the evening, there are definitely some other words and phrases you’d be using. My personal favourite is the expression the French use for someone who is staggering drunk. ‘Tu as un verre dans le nez’ translates to ‘you have a glass up your nose’. Yes, because in France they have found a way to be so drunk that you can fit a drinking glass up your nose. Your nose!

Ok not quite. The insinuation is linked to when someone is very inebriated and they kind of swoon around their glass, try to take a drink, but miss their mouth and get their nose in the glass instead. There is gesture that goes with this saying too! If I can figure out how to get videos uploaded (or linked) to the blog I’ll be sure to do an entire post on French gestures, because they’re hilarious. Anyway, the gesture that goes with this saying is cupping your hand like you’re grasping a bottle of beer, holding that bottle flat towards your face as if you were trying to drink from it, and then rotating your hand as if you not only stuck the bottle up your nose, but were twisting it to make sure it stayed put. (Gotta be able to find it next time, …right?)

"You've got a glass in your nose."

For the first three weeks I was here my nose hurt just watching people make that gesture. Can you imagine how uncomfortable it’d be to have a beer bottle up your nose? That’s the image I have over here.

Beer bottle.

Nose.

… so not cool.

Nimes Photo Bomb!

This week, we had an opportunity to go on an excursion to Nimes, which is the ‘sister town’ to Montpellier. They are the two largest towns in the area, and my understanding is that’s what makes them ‘sister towns’. So… Vancouver/Victoria? Edmonton/Calgary? Ottawa/Toronto? Anyway, Nimes was beautiful, in a very different way from Avingon, but still definitely pretty. Avignon was an old, walled city with a great big castle and many Popes. By contrast, Nimes has a very long Roman heritage, and that meant lots of old Roman ruins. The rest of the public areas have a bit of a more modern feel to them. For example, the plaza and esplanade just in front of the train station have these wonderful wavy structures that provide shade when it’s very sunny out. A nice touch, given that Nimes is farther inland than Montpellier, and so doesn’t get the benefit of the sea breezes when June, July and August hit.

Shade structures in the main plaza.

Old Roman ruins does mean a tiny coliseum, and plenty of other buildings done with the iconic pillars and intricate stone carvings. Some have been well kept and beautifully restored, like the second building, some have been pretty ravaged by time and pollution, like the tiny coliseum. This one isn’t a true coliseum though, it’s an oval instead of round, has only two levels, and it’s more of a theatre than anything else. That being said, it was definitely used for public events like gladiator battles in ancient times, and today is used for the running of the bulls and bullfighting spectacles that still happens in Nimes.

Tiny Coliseum

Better preserved Roman ruins, across from the very modern library.

Once we’d made it past the Roman ruins, our guide brought us to a much tinier plaza with a fountain and a large palm tree. The main decoration in the plaza was the fountain, which happened to be much more modern than most of the fountains typically seen here in that it had an alligator at its center. The alligator and the tree are the twin symbols of Nimes. Unsurprisingly then, the alligator was also present throughout the rest of Nimes on everything from parking signs to library buildings. 

Emblem of Nimes

Alligator Fountain, look at his shiny nose!

Of course, vigilante alligators were also present.

Vigilante Alligator

Our tour ended in a massive garden. It began at the base of the hill, complete with fountains and Roman statues, went all the way up the hill, and spilled back over the top where a tower was perched. I know I’ve griped about the lack of green space in Montpellier to you a little bit before (something about being thrilled that the tram tracks are on grass strips…) but Nimes has no shortage of green, and the green they have is well cared for. I was hard pressed to find litter (uh… assuming we magically forget to count cigarette butts) throughout the park, and that was pretty impressive given its size.

At the gate to the park.

Statues were a pretty normal add-on to the flower beds.

Coming back down after seeing the little tower at the top of the hill.

We wrapped up our free time with highly delicious, wonderfully warm, and exceptionally sweet nutella crepes back at the main plaza, then napped on the bus ride home. There was definitely more walking involved in Nimes than in Avignon. Ok, and tour buses are pretty much my arch-nemesis. There is literally no other vehicle that I have encountered in my life that makes me motion sick like a tour bus. Fortunately if you nap, it’s over quicker. : )

The Nimes Crew! Michelle, Kelly, Me, Maribell, Olivia and Nicole

... and Then a Car Caught Fire

So, I’m going to open this post by apologizing for not posting yesterday. Sorry about the 24 hour delay! I know it’s super annoying for me when I’m looking forwards to an update on a blog I follow, and then the day comes, and midnight passes, and nothing is posted. Now I’m going to tell you that I have a legitimate reason for not posting, and that it legitimately involves things that caught fire.

As I was coming home from the Place de la Comedie on the tram yesterday, all of a sudden the tram stopped in a very random spot. Calm thing that I am, I assumed the conductor had a good reason to stop, and that likely whatever the obstacle was it’d move shortly, and we’d carry on our way. That’s about when I noticed the smoke floating past the window, and the bad smell seeping into the tramcar. ‘Huh,’ I thought to myself ‘that smells like an industrial fire.’ Three cheers for my totally awesome sense of smell. No more than 30 meters or so over my shoulder, there was a car in a parking lot next to the tram line that was on fire. Like on FIRE fire. Like flames coming out the windows and thick smoke all over the place because we’ve had strong winds all week.

"Well... that's new..."

‘Well, that’s new.’

The police had been on scene just long enough to stop tram and pedestrian traffic, they were still working on vehicle traffic out of the parking lot though. The French are very determined drivers when they have somewhere they want to be, after all. So we sat in the tram for about 15 minutes, waiting quietly and watching the firefighters arrive, look at the vehicle from every angle, decide which direction was the best to approach the fire from due to the shifting wind (I think?), etc. etc. Eventually (because everything felt like it was happening very slowly) they did pull out a hose, hook it up, and spray down the car. After they’d done the water thing, they also pulled out chemical extinguishers for the fire under the car. The lady sitting across from me on the tram happily had a conversation with me in which I learned a whole bunch of new vocabulary. Pompier (firefighter), extinctuer (fire extinguisher), mousse (the chemicals in the extinguisher, or foam) and chimique (chemical) are all part of my repertoire now.

… I do have to admit though, I am a lookie-lou. You see, my boyfriend is a paramedic, and they have a special word for people who stand around and just watch when there is an emergency response to something. These people are lookie-lous, and they are annoying, and have nothing better to do with their time then stand around and get in the way of the emergency responders. In my defense, I was stuck in a tram for 15 minutes, and about 4 minutes in I thought to myself, ‘Well I’m here, stuck in the tram, might as well take a video.’ So if you’d like, you too can be a lookie-lou, and see French firefighters put out a car fire! Exciting, I know hahaha!

Hm, ok, that didn't work. I'll see if I can't get it working tomorrow. 

Once the fire was out, and the car was basically just a smoking piece of machinery, the tram conductor let those of us who wanted to leave hop out one of the back doors onto the tracks, and walk to our destinations. Intrepid thing that I am, I decided that I could walk to the Family’s house before they let the trams through, so out I went. I had ulterior motivations as well, I was trying to make it home to a Skype date with my mom, and my only other option was to sit in the tram and keep inhaling nasty car-on-fire smoke for who knew how long.

The walk home was actually fairly nice. It uh… took notably longer than I thought it would, but at least I had a great deal of company. There are many, many people in Montpellier who use the tram everyday, so there were also many who couldn’t wait until the tracks were cleared to get where they needed to be. I made it ¾ of the way home before the tracks were cleared and a tram caught up to me, then rode the tram for the last two stops being as there is a very large hill to climb before the Family’s house. This all took about an hour and a half longer than my normal commute back to the suburbs of Montpellier. Getting home about 2 hours later than I normally would kind of threw my whole evening out of whack. And by ‘kind of’ I mean ‘did’. Luckily, I still got most of my homework done, caught up with my mom, and made it to the kitchen table just in time for dinner. That’s about all I did last night, other than sleep, which is why there wasn’t a post yesterday.

Walking home along the tram line.

I’ve been hunting around in the newspapers here since then, trying to figure out why the car was on fire, and haven’t found anything solid. There is definitely a military and police presence in the town due to increased security, but no one seems to know whether this was something as extreme as a legitimate attack, as benign as some youth thinking it was a good idea to light a car on fire, or some bizarre accident. Cars randomly catch fire in France all the time, right? Politically, things are a little all over the place right now. On the international side the French currently have military forces in Mali, which means there is a higher predicted risk of retaliatory terrorist activity at home because Mali isn’t that far away. I’m told this is why there is a military presence here in Montpellier, given that it’s on the south coast (the border closest to Africa). Domestically, there is a vote on whether or not to allow gay marriage (which I actually think just passed, if I understood the newscast correctly) that has caused big protests in the major cities (so not here) and is a big deal (France is a very Catholic country). There are also many Roma and homeless in the town right now, so those three factors explain the heavier police presence.

Realistically, the car-on-fire could be related to any of those things, or not related to any of them and just a coincidence. Either way, I don't feel at unsafe in Montpellier, and I’ll be sure to keep you posted. 

On that note, there will still be a regular post tomorrow, and barring anymore things catching fire I’ll be back on track with a normal schedule. See you then!

Kenna-Postes

As you can imagine, once I'd started to get used to living in France I began to investigate my host family. These people have invited me into their home for 4 months, been incredibly hospitable, and there has got to be some quintessentially Canadian thing I can find to give them that they would love and use as a thank you gift. The loving and using are important goals, because we're all about useful gifts in Canada.

Just for the record, if you're ever in Canada THIS is the stuff you want. It comes in a can. 

Maple syrup was a no-brainer, given that Catherine declared often and loudly that she loves it. I asked about the ‘real maple syrup’ they have here in the specialty store, but I was quickly told that what they have in France is sugar water. Now that I've tasted it, I have to agree. So lots of maple syrup for Catherine. I do have to note here that she was shocked when I told that honestly, we do put maple syrup on salmon. Smoked AND fresh. She looked at me like I had a bit of drool dribbling down my chin, so kind of disgusted but also a little alarmed. ‘Kenna, why would you waste good syrup like that?’ I can’t wait to tell her that we also put it in baked beans with bacon.

Anyway, Alexandre likes his whiskey, he’s very partial to settling down in the evening with a whiskey and coke. Rye is the Canadian equivalent of whiskey so I figured a bottle of rye for him would be good. Maple candies and maple butter have also been suggested (typical Canadian thank you gifts), so those will also be considered.

          Michel was more difficult, he wants a single snowflake; and not just any snowflake, he wants a snowflake from my hometown. … Right, because getting something like that to France is totally realistic and easily do-able. I told him I'd catch one in a babyfood jar and send it to him in the mail. He could have water from Canada? When I mentioned this to a close friend of mine back home, he laughed and said ‘Well if he wants a snowflake so badly, he’s welcome to come get his own. We just had another spring storm and we have loads to go around!’

            Back to the matter at hand though, his mailing thing has started a long-standing joke between the family and I, based on ‘outrageous things Kenna can send us in the mail’. Also known as ‘Kenna-Postes’, which is like Canada Post, but with more Kenna… duh.

Kenna Postes

            The topic of 'outrageous things Kenna can send to us in the mail' is always accompanied by 'funny things Canadians eat'. It’s apparently it's a very common joke in France that we eat bear pate in Canada. I have to admit, I was expecting some sort of joke about seal blubber, or beavers, but I guess bears are just more iconic. Just so that everyone is on the same page; we definitely don’t eat bear pate in Canada. First off, we don’t really eat much pate to begin with, that’s a very French thing. Second, bears are endangered. I can only imagine the look on the RCMP officer’s face if I tried to explain to him that the poached bear in the back of my Subaru was for bear pate. I have this distinct feeling that jail wouldn’t be my worry so much as psychiatric treatment. Despite my attempts to explain this, the joke has definitely persisted. Now I just roll over and play dead.

           

            “Yes Michel, the bear pate is very good. You should really be worried about the beaver stew though, now that is something to be try!”

            Or…

            “Yes Michel, we've covered the bear pate, but have you heard of squirrel kebabs?” (It should be noted that this one actually came back to haunt me later. Turns out Catherine loves squirrels…)

Anyway, during these conversations Catherine occasionally jumps in with things like caribou and elk, which are tasty, I have to admit. Michel, being the difficult creature that he is though, started in on moose. Of course, moose. How could I forget those? Uh... to my knowledge we don't often eat moose? You'd have to go out and actually hunt one, and I’m pretty sure you need a special permit given that moose are big game. From here we moved onto the names of other Canadian animals, Alexandre had a great time trying (very, very hard) to pronounce 'squirrel' in any recognizable way. He did get something more understandable by the end of the evening, it was very fun. I had an equivalently difficult time figuring out what animal they were trying to give me a name for when squirrel came up though.

Canadian Brown Squirrel

          I may or may not have thought they were talking about a bird, that chittered at you in the trees, and ate nuts.

            I know, I know, now that I read it I have no idea how I missed it.

Alexandre then made great fun of me (as I deserved) for not being able to pronounce or remember the word for skunk. Just for the record, it’s ‘sconse’, a skunk in French is ‘sconse’. Although Google has also informed me that ‘mouffette’ is acceptable.

Catherine thinks skunks are disgusting. So the fluffy squirrels are ok, but not the fluffy skunks? (As you can see, my criteria for cute animals is largely based on their level of fluff) I disagree on the skunk thing though; I think skunks are useful and hilarious creatures, with the best self defense mechanism ever! The whole forest fears the skunk. (You can probably see where this is going now.) After all the noise the family made about how bad skunks smell, I asked them if they knew how to get rid of the stench after a skunk has sprayed you. They answered 'lots of soap', which is in all fairness not a bad answer given that the soap from nearby Marseilles is pretty famous. But no, nono, my wonderful French friends, I will give you massively useful Canadian wisdom! Your soap won't work. What you need is...

            Tomato juice.

You need to have a bath in tomato juice. It’s the only way to get rid of the smell.

They thought I was crazy. Which is actually pretty understandable. I’d probably have a similar reaction if someone told me that having a bath in fruit juice was a good idea. Catherine in particular was in utter disbelief, she verified that my statement was truly what I had intended to say with some excellent shower charades. Catherine quickly ended the conversation with:

“If you send us a skunk from Canada, I am disowning you.”

... now I really, really want to find a skunk stuffy. I’ll be sure to tie a ribbon around him nicely, because all gifts in France are wrapped (seriously, we covered this in class today, it’s not a gift if it’s not wrapped), and give him some very typical pioneer name, like Jean-Jacques or McKenzie.

            In fact, we’ll just call him ‘Jean-Jacques McKenzie’. He’ll get along well with Grisette, right?

The future Jean-Jacques McKensie

          If you have votes on what a particularly awesome 'thank you' gift from Canada would be, let me know! Leave a comment : )

Change to Update Schedule and Settling In

TUESDAY          THURSDAY          SATURDAY

Like the title of this post suggests, I’m changing the schedule of updates on the blog. Not to worry, the number of updates weekly will remain the same; I’m just changing when they happen. As you might have noticed I’m having a bit of a hard time with the Friday updates. This is because now that week three has (finally) ended, I have settled into a more-or-less regular routine. Fridays, of course, are the night that everyone goes out.

In all fairness I suspect that the kind of going-out will vary depending on what the average class age is and who is in it week to week. However, for the last three Fridays in a row the consensus was that seeing a film and occasionally having drinks are the things to do in Montpellier. I have to say, given how awesome this summer’s movie line-up seems to be, I can’t say I disagree. We went to see Gatsby le Magnifique last night, and it was excellent. Seeing films and going out for drinks means I get home pretty late Friday nights though, and this is less than conducive to writing a decent blog post. Being as this post is arriving on a Saturday, I guess the change-over has already happened. All the same, I thought it most polite to actually state that I was changing the days I update instead of just doing it and seeing who figured it out on their own. Can I count that as Canadian blog etiquette?

Or 'Gatsby le Magnifique', when seen with French subtitles.

On to other stories though.

I am discovering what it really is to settle into a new culture. The first week I was here, for example, I did a lot of blundering around trying to figure out how to accomplish basic tasks that at home, I don’t even have to think about. Things like what time is appropriate to wake up and begin to look for breakfast, where to buy lunch containers, how to navigate a new city, and most of all; how to get through daily life in a country where I don’t speak the dominant language, and my Canadian logic doesn’t really help me when language fails. This last point is big, it involves line-ups at cashiers.

When you grow up in a place, you learn through watching those around you, and mimicking them. This means that by the time you’ve reached adulthood (even by the time you’re a teenager) you know (without thinking about it) how to line up to pay for something, where to find public bathrooms, when it is and is not ok to ask someone behind a food counter if there’s a spot to fill up your water bottle, and whether or not it’s even normal to carry a water bottle. You also just sort of know where it is and is not acceptable to exercise, and how to be polite to people when you walk into a new place.

All those things that you don’t have to think about at home, you have to think about a great deal in a new country.

In Canada, it’s normal to carry a water bottle. In fact, it’s becoming more and more normal not just to have public water fountains to drink from, but to find fountains with an attachment specifically for filling up water bottles. In France, people don’t carry water bottles. In part I think this is linked to what I suspect is a public distaste for water that has any sort of flavour or texture to it. Tap water is safe in Canada, and unless your tap water comes from a well, I haven’t noticed any significant taste to it. In France though, it seems like everyone buys bottled mineral water. Catherine was shocked the first time she saw me filling up my water bottle at the kitchen sink. I was shocked that I wasn’t getting grief for being in the kitchen, and instead for drinking ‘bad tasting’ tap water. The water that comes out of the tap is totally safe, she explained that people just don't like the taste. Michel drinks tap water all the time at home. Everywhere else I’ve been though, I am expected to purchase water from a vending machine, or to fill up the bottle in a bathroom. Food vendors are 100% not interested in filling up my bottle from their sink. In fact, some of them are offended by it when I ask.

I also get myself into trouble lining up to pay for things. Ok, less trouble, and more just driving the people behind me insane. At home when we line-up, it’s considered rude to stand right behind someone who is paying for something. It’s an invasion of their space, and an invasion of their privacy to be practically in their back pocket, listening to what they’ve purchased and how much it is. Basically, it’s rude. This means that I’m used to leaving a space between me and the person who is at the till.

In Canada, there would be a gap between the Lady in Green and  the customer at the till.

In France, this is an invitation to have someone else jump in front of you in line, because they don’t think you’re in line. I didn’t figure this out until just this past week, when I asked a little elderly man at the stationary store what was going on. He laughed at me! In the kindest way possible, but he truly thought it was funny. He was the one who explained to me that unless you are right behind someone in line, no one is going to think you’re part of the line; they’re going to think you’re standing there foolishly doing nothing.

… That explains how long it’s taken every time I’ve tried to pay for something for the last three weeks. Also, why people keep cutting in front of me.

The last example is pretty special as well, and it is why I finally gave up on both finding a Tae Kwon Do dojang and running outside. Throughout North America, no one is going to bother you about exercising outside. Especially in Canada, where our summers are so short, you are basically expected to exercise outside at least a little once the temperature rises above 0 C. There are people who cycle and run outside year round, but during the summer our bike and pedestrian paths are crowded. You could even go so far as to say everyone and their dog is out on the bike paths at lunch time. You’d even be right about the dogs.

 

The Piscine Olympique, Conveniently Next to the Emile Zola

In France, that’s not what happens. I brought my runners with me expecting to be able to run outside while I was here. In particular, I was expecting it to be pretty awesome in the spring (so… now) when the sun isn’t at its hottest and the paths wouldn’t be too crowded. Hahaha… colossal fail of Canadian logic. The assumptions I had based this set of conclusions on would have worked very well anywhere in North America, those being

1.      That there are running paths in France

2.      That people ran outside in France

3.      That people exercise outside in France

          … uh, none of those are truly accurate. There are at least two men who regularly jog in Montpellier, because I have seen them with some consistency. They may very well be the only people who jog in Montpellier. Last week I tried to hop on the tram so that I could run beside the river that cuts through the south end of town. This is very normal in Canada. SO normal. People like to run by the river because it becomes very easy to measure your distance by doing things like counting the number of bridges you pass. First; people looked at me like I was the strangest thing with two legs on the tram. No one bats an eyelash when someone gets on a tram with their dog, or staggeringly drunk, but for me to stand there in running shorts and a T-shirt was apparently like looking at an alien. Second; once I’d made it to the river, people in civilian clothes, ranging in age from teenagers to a fellow who can’t have been younger than 30, started to run beside me and mock me. Truly. Some would start conversations with ‘So, where are you from? Because it’s clearly not France.’ or ‘My you’re clearly athletic, do you often run outside?’

            I was so shocked and confused I didn’t really know what to do. Why were these people talking to me? Couldn’t they see that I was exercising? Well, yes actually, and that’s exactly why they noticed me. Then I tried running stairs. That garnered a similar set of reactions. After asking some of the other students at the school about it (namely, an Australian and another Canadian), I realized that I was not the only one to experience this. I gave up, and joined the Piscine Olympique. Dear France, you win. I will exercise inside like everyone else. 

           The conclusion I've come to is that settling in is going to take a while, but that at least now I'm at the point where it is not so painfully obvious that I'm foreign I receive social stigma for it. I have begun to develop a whole new set of logic, and it is definitely French.

Funny French Sayings

I know, I know. You’re all thinking that I should have titled this post ‘Funny French Phrases’ to get the alliteration. I thought about it. I really, really did. Only… If I’d called them phrases that wouldn’t have had the same connotation, you see. ‘Sayings’ imply that they are used with some sort of generality, and that if you have a French sense of humour (or Canadian, or Russian, or Ugandan, etc.) that you’ll get the implication of the sentence in whatever language it is said. Phrases are just… phrases. No joke necessarily implied.

Anyway, that’s not what I’ve got for you today. What I have for you today is a feast of funny French sayings that I’ve been collecting over the last three weeks. Once I learned of the ‘rabbit in the house’ saying that Catherine explained to me, I wondered what other sayings I could find, and if any of them were similar enough that they had a match in English. Well, this is what I’ve found.  

1. C’est un equipe avec de bras casses.

This translates as ‘it’s a team with broken arms’ or ‘the players have broken arms’, and it’s used when (in something like a football match) one team is just destroying the other. For example, Team A shows up and plays hard, they score many, many points and run circles around Team B. Team B, despite how hard they try, just can’t keep up. They have ‘broken arms’ and are kind of useless.

            The best translation I have for this in English is ‘The other team wasn’t on the field.’ or ‘They (Team A) ran circles around them (Team B).’ I’ve also used ‘That wasn’t a game, that was a massacre.’ The last one is typically used when Team A beats Team B with a shut-out, or a really outrageous score. For example, the Canadian Women’s Olympic Hockey team when it played Turkey in Italy. The score was something like 16-1 for Canada. For all you non-hockey-watchers out there, a typical hockey score is something like 2-3, or 2-1. I have nothing against Turkey, and they played hard, but that wasn’t a game... that was a massacre.

2. Il n’y a pas un chat.

Apparently this one is quite common in the French speaking world. It translates as ‘There wasn’t a cat.’, meaning a place is so abandoned that there aren’t even alley cats to prowl around. 

That never happens at the Forquins house. There's always at least a cat around. In fact, her new favourite place to hang out is my bed. We hang out and do homework together, it's pretty exciting, I have to tell you.

            Anyway, I couldn’t think of an English saying to match this really. The closest thing I came to was actually a saying that implies the exact opposite; which is that a place is very, very busy. ‘They’re packed in there like sardines in a can!’ or ‘Everyone and their dog was at…’ are both English sayings I’ve heard to make a statement about how busy a place is. The first implying that people are stacked one on top of the other, shoulder to shoulder; the other implying that it wasn't good enough to just bring the whole family, the dog had to come too. It's kind of like saying 'They brought the kitchen sink.' 

Grissette, Asleep on my Bed

3. C’est bien, c’est mort!

            I laughed so hard when I heard this one; it translates to ‘It’s good, it’s dead.’ This saying is in reference to tourists when they eat at all of the big chain restaurants in a place like the Place de la Comedie. Like most tourist destinations, there are places in Montpellier where the locals eat, and places where the tourists eat. In all fairness, some of the food at these places is probably good. For example, my favourite little sorbet shop from 3 years ago is now one of those big chain restaurants, and their sorbet is still excellent; notably more expensive, but excellent. Other places… not so much.

            So, this saying is referencing the tourists who arrive in France, expecting to eat amazing French cuisine, but then frequent the tourist restaurants with their comparatively bad food and exclaim about how delicious it is. The joke then being that for a tourist, so long as the food served to them is dead, it’s considered delicious. How very French, no? They’re serious about their cuisine here.

            In English, we call those restaurants and places that price their commodities for tourists instead of locals (which is to say, very expensively) ‘tourist traps’. The idea being that tourists are kind of like herd animals, so they're easy for hunters (or shop owners) to trap. 

4. A Taille-Humaine

            This one is usually tagged on as part of a sentence, ex: Montpellier est une ville a taille-humaine. The literal translation is that Montpellier is a ‘human sized’ city. Well… initially I just kind of looked at this one funny. Aren’t most cities human-sized? It’s not like we build entire cities on the scale of elephants, or mice. Of course they’re human-sized, humans occupy cities! No no, what this expression means is that the city is small enough that you aren’t lost in the crush of humanity seen in metropolitan centers, but that the city isn’t so small you know everyone’s business. The city is ‘human-sized’ mentally and socially.

            We have a saying with a similar sentiment in English, which is ‘At …, you’re a person, not a number.’ So for example at many major Canadian universities, there are so many undergrads that students are reduced to being identified by just their student ID number, and whether or not they’ve paid tuition. It’s very impersonal. In contrast, at a smaller university where students have an opportunity to get to know their professors and the other students more intimately, students are perceived as people.

This last one is slightly less than PG. So be warned.

5. Faire le Pipe.

            Tonight at dinner, the Forquins and I were having fun naming different instruments, and talking about them. We covered the stringed instruments, and then it came out that Alexandre (my host brother) played the flute in the French equivalent of jr. and sr. high school band. You have to understand, Alexandre is a bit of a bigger fellow, with a friendly, round face and a bit of a friendly, round body. That being said, he’s also very tall. He has to duck to get through the doors in the house here. So he’s a big man, playing a little instrument. It was a very comic image.

The action Michel matched with the word ‘flute’ though was more reminiscent of a clarinet. I double-checked. Nope, it wasn’t a clarinet, they reassured me it was a flute. Ok, now I needed to establish whether or not I’d missed anything, because my limited vocabulary and the actual word in French weren’t matching. I brought my hands up beside my face and asked about a silver flute. Ah, they understood the disconnect. What they meant was that Alexandre played a pipe in band. Like a piccolo or a penny-whistle. Ah! That made sense. I very logically then tried to say ‘oh, he played the penny-whistle’, which came out as ‘Ah, tu fais le pipe.’ with my meager French. I want it noted that this made perfect sense in my head.

The whole family burst out laughing. Alexandre actually nearly fell out of his chair, and Michel choked on his olives. Catherine was initially very giggly, but then became very serious. “Kendra,” she started, “do not ever tell someone that you ‘fais le pipe’.”

… what? Oh no. What did I say this time? It turns out that ‘playing the pipe’ in French translates to ‘giving a blow-job’ in English. Just for the record, that’s nothing like playing a piccolo, which is what I was aiming for. On the bright side, I’m really glad that was sorted out at the dinner table instead of in the street, or on the tram with some random bystander. That could have been… notably more awkward.

Sorbet Sabotage in Avignon

You know that moment when you think ‘Oh, I wonder if this is actually a good idea?’ I had one of those recently. You see, on Friday the school had an excursion to Avignon. The structure of how the tours are done is kind of interesting really; you all hop on a tour bus (the only vehicle I have ever been motion sick on, they’re like my arch rival, tour busses) and drive to wherever you’re going, and then you spend about three hours there walking around before you leave again. It’s quite short. The beginning of the walkabout is a short history of wherever you’re going, but after that the instructor-turned-guide reminds you where and when the meeting point is, and assumes you’ll find something interesting to see in the meantime. Or shop. She made it explicitly clear several times before we arrived that shopping was likely a priority, and we’d have time to do that.

Not to rag on shopping, it’s fun and all, but there have got to be better things to do than shop when you’re off discovering new places. At least, that was the conclusion I came to.

Anyway, we arrived in Avignon to gale force winds and plenty of sun. The first thing we did was follow our very petite and very happy instructor up to the top of the wall. Avignon is an old walled city, which means that around the vielle-ville there is a gigantic castle wall. Complete with turrets, murder-holes, winding staircases and rooftop gardens.

Outside the Wall

 My favourite part of the excursion was seeing the sections of wall that they had restored, and the sections they had specifically chosen not to restore in order to capitalize on space. For example, this (coffee?) shop on top by the first staircase has a wall entirely of glass, and the view is spectacular. I also love the juxtaposition of the slick, new, modern glass and the older, worn stone. It’s wonderful.

Old Stone and New Glass

Avignon is also known for being a very religious city, because it was inhabited by many, many Popes. There is a dedicated palace for the various Popes who lived there in the 1300’s and 1400’s. This means that there is a great deal of very beautiful stone and metal sculptures inspired by Christianity there. The Palace grounds are amazing. There are huge sections of manicured grass and shrubbery, with little fountains scattered throughout. The ponds in the rooftop gardens come complete with koi fish. Although I don’t know that the koi fish are historically accurate. The current ones are very fat, because the tourists keep feeding them.

Rooftop Garden in Avignon

Just outside the wall, stretching out into the Rhone, is Point d’Avignon. This is not a bridge that has been destroyed by time or war, this is a point, purposely built halfway out into the river. The story regarding the famous Point d’Avignon is that one morning one of the Popes woke up and declared that he had been visited with a vision, God had told him that he was to begin building a point, and that He would tell him when to stop. The stonemasons and the builders of Avignon were then hired to begin the project. Well into building the point, the workers came across a boulder in the center of the river that they would have had to move in order to continue the project. Try as they might though, the stone could not be moved. When the Pope was told of the stone he decided that this must have been the sign God promised, and declared the Point d’Avignon would end on top of the stone.

Point d'Avignon

            At the very least, the project created paid work for the citizens of Avignon, and that’s not ever really a bad thing in my mind.

            Once we’d been turned loose following the rest of the historic tour, three of us split off in search of an afternoon sorbet. It’s awfully important to have afternoon sorbet, you see. In France they take three things very seriously; their relaxation, their food, and their right to protest. The longer I stay here, the more I’m convinced that the first two are excellent priorities. (I haven’t run into the third yet) The first two mean that I spend a great deal of time studying with pastries, and taking naps. Man, life is rough over here hahaha! This is where I had that moment though, the ‘Oh, I wonder if this is actually a good idea?’ moment.

I have a dairy allergy. Not lactose intolerance, a straight up dairy allergy. If there’s milk in food my stomach will let me know in no uncertain terms that it’s very unimpressed with me. Sorbet, being composed entirely of fruit and crushed ice, is safe though J Feeling likr myself and my companions deserved a treat for enduring time on a tour bus, we ordered our sorbet and sat down. 

Unaware of the Impending Sorbet Sabotage

Sorbet in hand, it crossed my mind as I was waiting for the others that this was the first sorbet I'd had in on my trip thus far. My mind jumped back to an unfortunate evening at home wherein I'd confused sherbert with sorbet, and had a terrible reaction. That's when I thought 'Oh, I wonder if this is actually a good idea?’ given that I was an hour or so away from my home base of Montpellier. What if I'd gotten sherbert by accident? I double checked the menu, they definitely did not do sherbert, and the manu was neatly divided into sorbets and ice creams. No no, surely I'd be fine. The little shop we chose did stunning sorbet, I have to hand it to them for their strawberry and lemon sorbets in particular. My third flavour was what I thought was chocolate sorbet. It was so soft, and thick, and there was so much flavour! It was so… creamy. Oh no. I was ¾ of the way through my chocolate ‘sorbet’ before I realized I was reacting to it. No! Why? Why?! When I ordered the sorbet they had offered me their shop specialty whipped cream on top, and I refused, including in the statement that I had a dairy allergy and couldn’t eat it, but that I was sorry. I must have mucked that statement up, or they didn’t listen, or I did something to tempt Murphy. It was chocolate ice cream, and not chocolate sorbet.

Fail.

I am ok now, back to normal. I did spend all day Saturday wallowing in my allergic reaction in bed though, much to Catherine’s great alarm.

Anyway, I will now always remember Avignon as the very pretty city that it is, but also the city where I was sabotaged by the sorbet shop. It was destructively delicious?

Bienvenue a Montpellier

Ah, at last. In true Kenna style (which, let’s admit it, is a little tardy) I have a post for you on what things and places look like in Montpellier. Once I leave the house in the morning, the first thing I do is catch the tram down into the centre-ville. The tram I take hasn’t changed since last time, and is still the brightly coloured Ligne 2, which is affectionately referred to as ‘Fleurs’. When people are giving you directions somewhere, it’s not unusual for them to say something like “Oh yeah, just get on Flowers and hop off at Gare St Roch to connect…” etc. etc. It’s also not unusual for the trams to run on rails with grass under them once they’re out of the centre-ville area. I was pretty excited about the grass last time I was here, and I still think it is just the most ingenious urban design. I know we have a lot of green space at home, but over here, especially in the cities, there is very little green space. It’s incredible how much I have missed the big open grass fields that we have for parks at home. So grass under the tram is actually a relief for your eyes from all of the stone and pavement.

Ligne 2 Fleurs, on the Grass

Anyway, once I’m on the tram I stay on the tram until Gare St. Roch, which is the station right at the center of Montpellier where all the national rail lines (TGV, SNCF, etc.) arrive to drop people off. It’s where I arrived, and where I’ll leave from. It’s also where all the trams connect. 

Gare St. Roch

There are three other tram lines here, two of which I regularly use. One with birds (Ligne 1, Oiseaux) that is blue.

Ligne 1, Oiseaux

One with fish (Ligne 3, Poisson) and one that’s… well…

Ligne 4, or 'That Other Tram'

Yes, Ligne 4 is kind of the black sheep of the tram family here in Montpellier. The other lines all have cute names like ‘Oiseaux’, ‘Poisson’ and ‘Fleurs’; ligne 4 is referred to as ‘ligne 4’ or ‘that other line’. The pattern on it is kind of reminiscent of paisley, and I can’t help but think ‘oh yes, the ugly tram’ every time I see it in the street. That being said, it’s the one that I use to get to the bagel shop when I’m feeling homesick, so its utility far outweighs any pity I feel for the tram itself. I have been trying unsuccessfully to have my camera out and ready when Poisson rolls by. It’s the only line I don’t use.

Place de la Comedie

From Gare St. Roch I have a short, 5 minute walk through the Place de la Comedie to the school. The Place de la Comedie is referred to as the ‘couer de la ville’ because it is the liveliest, most active place in town. It’s where the tourists spend most of their time, and the promenade next to it is where I go to eat lunch most often.

Esplanade Charles de Gaulle

The theatre is also there, and that’s pretty exciting. Montpellier is a university town, meaning that there is actually a strong market here for English films with French subtitles. Between the students and the summer tourists, the Gaumont actually has two versions of just about every major film it runs; the original English with French subtitles, and a dubbed French version. Guys, I can watch Iron Man 3 and The Great Gatsby without struggling to keep up with the dialogue! Whoo! That being said, by the time July rolls around I’m planning on going to see whatever is out in the dubbed French, just to see if I can follow it without a problem.

Le Gaumont

The other place I’ve been spending a great deal of time thus far is the Mediatheque d’Emile Zola, which is the biggest library in Montpellier. It’s this wonderful, air conditioned and rain-proof building with big tables, plenty of French books and a coffee shop. My first week here it did a lot of raining, and I hadn’t figured out how to deal with the burglar alarm at the house without setting it off, so going straight home in the afternoon was less of an option. I mean, who actually wants to deal with the police, even when they’re sure they can communicate that they really weren’t breaking into a house? So I found the Emile Zola J Which is pretty much my new favourite building.

Mediatheque Emile Zola

Bienvenue a Montpellier, petite Canadienne J