Ultimate

Last weekend I went with my Ultimate Frisbee team to a tournament at La Rochelle. It was awesome.

I had to get up at 7 am on Saturday, which felt unfortunately like getting up for school. Then we had the 2 hour drive south to La Rochelle. Once there, we had an hour or so to change and warm up before our first match. Our first match was against the weakest team of the tournament, and we pretty well slaughtered them 13 to 4, if memory serves. That was great for us because especially us inexperienced young'uns were pretty nervous and adrenaline-pumped. The match helped calm our nerves a little and gave us the confidence to do better in the next matches. The second one was also a good match, and we won 13 to 7. The third one was against the top team of the tournament. At the beginning it was a total slaughter, with me and the other young'uns losing confidence and focus a little after a solid first two games. In the end we caught up a little, so it actually ended up being a messy messy game on both sides, where we lost 8 or 9 to 13, or somewhere around there. Our coach was not super happy, but he always knows exactly the right things to say to get us back in the good spirit of the thing and motivating us to do better instead of letting one bad match get us down. He's a great coach, and like all great coaches, simultaneously irritating and inspiring. He holds you accountable for your errors and congratulates you on things well done all in the same breath. He knows what to say to improve you -- whether what you have to fix is your wrist flick or your pivot foot or your mental attitude. (He's told me often that what I need most to improve my game is more confidence, which is completely true.)

Anyway, we had three matches that first day, from around 11 in the morning til 5 pm or so. In between matches, we watched other frisbee games, tossed a disk around, went for warm-up runs around the neighborhood, practiced our "upsides" (hammers) and scoobers and other obscure throws, and played "passe-à-dix" which is what Ultimate players do when there aren't enough players or enough field space for a real game (like Box Frisbee). You score a point with 10 completed passes between your team, and at that point the disk goes to the other team. Very simple, no endzones or anything. It's usually played in a quite small rectangle, so it's tricky because you have to have a good strategy and coherent cuts, otherwise it's just a mass of people on the field and you'll never complete a single throw. Oh, also usually for passe-à-dix we mark until the count of 5, not 10. Speed! So basically it was occasional frisbee matches, with frisbee and more frisbee in between matches. After our third game we showered and changed and headed out to a pizza restaurant where the service was very slow but the food was pretty good.

Then we went back to the sketchy grody hostel, where we all hung out until around midnight, when we all staggered back to our rooms and fell asleep. It must be mentioned that since I only paid 15€ for tournament participation -- that's for the room AND gas money -- the fact that it was a seriously sketchy hostel is forgivable.

We were originally 10 players, so I was going to be in a room with the other teenagers (the coach asked me well in advance if that was okay, which was thoughtful), but we ended up being only 9, so we had enough rooms for me to get one to myself, since I am the only girl on the team. That was nice, getting my own room, even though I was literally only in my room for the 8 hours that I was asleep, plus about 15 minutes on either side.

On Sunday we had breakfast at 9 and checked out of the hostel by 9:30. I was happy we didn't have the first match of the day – that would've been rough. Again we won our first game pretty well, though it wasn't our neatest game. It was 13 to 9 or something like that. Our second game was awful, though we won. We played against the team with a lot of teenagers and a lot of women, both of which are very unusual. Usually there's two or three teens per team and one woman per team. (I don't know why there's always one woman, but I've definitely seen a pattern there.) They were pretty darn good, fast and coordinated and all that. But our game was just MESSY and frustrating. So we won, in the end, 9 to 7 or so I think. It's usually game until 13 unless we run out of time (25 minutes per game) and then it's until the next odd number, or something like that (yeah, I haven't exactly studied the rulebook...). So clearly it was both a very close game and a game with a lot of drops if we ended up with a final score of 9 to 7.

But after that game we had a good three hours until the 6th and last match of the tournament, so we took advantage to decompress. I spent a good half-hour throwing hammers back and forth with a couple teammates. My hammers, formerly disastrous, are now starting to look like a actual passes! Right next door to the gym where the tournament was, there was a rock-climbing room. This led to all sorts of shenanigans, including practicing dives since there were mats stacked against the walls -- we could run across the concrete part of the gym and lay-out on the nice, squishy mats without undo harm, although that is why I currently have no skin on my elbows and knees. We also we played monkey-in-the-middle with some components of the circle perched on the rocks walls so we had to rely completely on our hands and our good balance to catch disks. Throwing is also pretty hard when you can't twist your body too much or you'll fall off the wall. And we played some passe-à-dix with the team we just defeated -- a nice friendly atmosphere that was good for deflating some of our competitive tension. (Our coach HATES to lose, and I think his attitude affected us a little. We got really into the tournament.) So our last game started off already with a great atmosphere, all of us laughing and in high spirits from all the shenanigans of the past three hours. We played a really nice clean game, well-thought out strategically and with a high completion ratio of throws. Nothing too risky. Well-organized stacks, not too much "brouillon" in the end zone, good communication between players. It was our best match of the six, a good note on which to end our tournament. We were hyper-focused at the beginning but even got a little silly towards the end, since we had a sizable lead, so we didn't end with as much of a lead as we started with -- I think it was 13 to 9 or so. The second to last point was just our coach and the four youths, though we usually never have more than two youths in per point and rotate. The last point was "les vieux," the oldsters. I say oldersters laughingly, because the oldest is 17 years younger than my father and my father still manages to play without complaining about his creaky old bones. So we got a little bit goofy towards the end, but nothing inexcusable.

So, end result of the tournament, we won 5 out of 6 matches and were 2nd place in the tournament, since there was one team that was significantly better than all the others (the one that slaughtered us while we were having a bad match) and won every match. Our team name, by the way, is Les Jets. This has a bit of a story to it because first of all, most Ultimate team names are in English, just because it's such an English-influenced sport. They even say "nice catch" to each other instead of "c'était bien attrapé." The first place team, for example, was the Raging Bananas, and one of the other teams was the Ré Flying Oysters. So the "Jets" partly is a headnod to the English, but also because of the immense amount of Vendéen pride around here. There is a bean called the mogette that is very representative of the Vendée. In any stereotype of the Vendée, or any joke about the region, the mogette will be mentioned. If you look closely at our team logo, you'll notice that the dot above the j in jets is in the shape of a mogette bean. So our battle cry when we put all our hands in the middle before a game works like this: our coach yells "Mo!" and we yell "Jets!" Get it? Mogette = Mo + Jets. Les Jets. Vendéen pride.

Among all the teams there was a good mix of skills just as our team is half inexperienced and half too experienced. There were always some athletic stars and some woman to match up with me, some old and some young, some skilled and some new-ish. Usually I'm not too impressed by the other women I meet in Ultimate, but there were three young ladies who really incredible this weekend. I have a ways to go to catch up with them.

I wrote one of my college essays about this, but there's something just so cool about losing yourself to an activity, whether it's marching band or theater or even APUSH or ultimate frisbee. It's just cool to be with a group of people where you all have that element in common -- where you never ask "well, what do we do now?" because obviously you go outside and play catch. There's a camaraderie that evolves, with French frisbee players even more than with Americans because that's the way they roll. They're so goshdarn polite that you can't get away with being shy and not talking -- the added formality in France means that they say hello specifically to you as they go around and give everyone the bise (same with saying goodbye) and they'll always tell you bon appétit when you start eating lunch and give you high-fives after every point and you are never ever ignored. Sometimes I don't appreciate this, but mostly it just builds a heckuva lot of team spirit. On Saturday especially I was in such good humor that anything could set me off laughing. On Monday I was sore all over after our two days of non-stop Ultimate, but I still went to practice on Tuesday night because I can't get enough of this sport and these people and the confidence it gives me and the fact that I'm finally doing something challenging and improving myself!

And then when I came home the first email I read told me that the University of Minnesota wants to give me a significant fraction of tuition in scholarships, so That was good news too. And THEN I went to school and history was really fun because we did theater exercises in English to build confidence speaking in English, since often the problem with foreign languages is as much one of confidence as of lack of knowledge. I know, it has little to do with history (besides that our last exercise was putting on a skit about the Blitz of London by the Luftwaffe in WWII), but our history teacher is so fantastic and our English teachers so terrible that I don't think it's a bad thing to use some of our history time to make up for the inefficacy of the English teachers. And I got to do it twice and skip math class, because the teacher wanted my help so we could both be walking around the room correcting peoples' accents at the same time. Fun stuff. And then I think I almost aced a physics test except that I ran out of time on the very last bit of the last problem. And then I got my last paper back in French, and I got 15/20, which is pretty darn amazing and you should all be proud of me.

In short, this has been a really good week.

Maybe it's too soon to say so, but I feel like this weekend was a turning point. I have a purpose now. Just as marching band was my heart and soul at home, so too can Ultimate be my passion here. These past few months have been aimless and boring, but now I finally have something to get me out of the house, something to work for, and something that's really my own. I didn't know anyone on my team before I joined, no host siblings to protect me or encourage me; all social interactions that succeed or fail are mine and all Ultimate improvements I make are my own as well. In a life situation where I have to be more dependent than I have been for many years, it's good to have something of my own. The fact that I'll have a weekend tournament every month or so and practices twice a week from here on out just makes me smile – I'll always have something to look forward to not too far in the future. I don't know if this'll turn out to be an unrealistic expectation, but I can picture in seven months looking back and saying, “Yeah, that first Ultimate tournament at La Rochelle – that was when I really started to have fun here. That was when I first found a reason to stay in France.”

Paris

It was a good week.

I took an early morning train from Nantes to Paris. Once in Paris, I took the metro to my hostel, which was surprisingly uncomplicated and made me rather pleased with myself for being so at-ease in one of the largest cities in the world.

I'd like to go back to that question I was asked I while ago about my favorite experience in France so far. Here it is exactly as I wrote it in my journal:

“At the Chatelet stop, an old French man with an accordion got on right next to me, playing a lilting old waltz. The same thing could've conceivably happened in NYC among other places, but there was something profoundly French about it any way. The song, for one, that was just magical and old-timey and so very appropriate for the moment, like a well-chosen soundtrack in a 1950s film. And then secondly it was the man himself who was so perfect – an old, wrinkled character with all the world in laughter and joy, in suffering and strength and wisdom written on his tanned face and his calloused hands. I gave him a brilliant enraptured smile, and he smiled back. Like he knew exactly what I was thinking, knew me exactly for who I was, and smiled really at ME. It would've been creepy, how I had the impression that he could read my mind, were it not for that he was so benign. That he knew who I was and loved me anyway. Like how liberal Christians (i.e. UCC folks) view God. And his lilting waltz never faltered. I would've given him a coin or something to show my gratitude for the music, but first of all, I think he knew, and second, I didn't want to interrupt, and third, he got on at Chatelet and I got off one stop later at Les Halles. But I'll never forget him, even though I knew him for less than 5 minutes.”

After the metro I was in fine high spirits, buoyed up by the accordion player, having successfully taken the train and the metro, and simply by the magic of being in Paris. Then I proceeded to get lost, frustrated, and hungry. One of them I could fix. I bought a crepe and asked the lady who sold it to me how to find the youth hostel. It turned out she didn't speak French, so that didn't help much. Eventually I realized that there were two different parts of the street the hostel was on, and I'd been looking on the wrong one. So a confused phone call with my host dad later, I found the hostel, dropped off my baggage (not that I brought much, just a backpack with my toothbrush, a towel, and three clean shirts), and continued exploring. The main adventures of the day were 1) getting hit on by an older Indian man – slightly creepy, but I guess that's the risk you take when you talk to strangers and 2) getting accosted by all the charity people next to the Louvre and getting mad at them enough to start spouting off legal rights that exist in the US but I don't know about in France. I walked around a lot which ended up being useful later because I knew my way around (better than our tour guide, André, who is hopeless despite being Parisian).

We were supposed to meet at the hostel at 15:00, so I soon found myself settling into a small six-person room with 2 other Americans, 2 Brazilians, and a Czech. At first I was less than optimistic – they seemed like a bunch of gossipy, girly gigglers who I'd have nothing in common with. But I ended up really enjoying it. I liked almost every single one of the other foreign exchange students, not just my roommates. They're all wonderful individuals with their own great stories and a taste for adventure like my own. Our common languages were French, English, and sometimes Spanish, so everyone spoke in Frenglish with lapses into Spanish between the Mexicans, Ecuadorians, and Brazilians. I thought that was really cool.

Here's me and my roommates, having fun on the roof of the hostel (yes, we got in trouble):

 

After settling in, we went for a cruise on the Seine, which was beautiful although quite chilly. We mingled and got to know each other – as foreign exchange students, we were all pretty eager to get to know each other. A little starved for friendship, eager to hear about other peoples' experiences, and we've all learned by now that being shy doesn't get you anywhere. They were all fascinating and I loved talking with them. Although one of the most interesting people was André, our 50-ish year old guide. I have a habit of making friends with tour guides, because they're usually the most interesting people in the group and then you can ask them for special favors! So André and I discussed politics, his time in the US at UCLA, cultural differences, the history of Paris, and whatever else came to mind.

After the boat, we had dinner, went back to the hostel and fell asleep.

Just kidding. We partied all night long with the Ecuadorians and a German.

The next day, we walked. A lot. I don't even remember what we were supposed to be seeing, but it just involved a lot of walking. Normally that would be totally okay for me, but since I sprained my ankle a couple days before coming to Paris, it wasn't ideal. Oh, and we saw the Cathedrale de Notre Dame, which is impressive.

We ate boxed lunches next to the Louvre, sitting in a big circle and sharing a little bit about ourselves. After lunch we explored the Louvre. I probably would've enjoyed it more if I hadn't been so tired. But actually, it really made me wonder what makes art great or not. I know there's no definition of good or bad art, but all the art in the Louvre is really famous. Why? I'll take the Mona Lisa for an example, just because everyone knows what it is. It's just a woman. It doesn't awe me to look at it. To an untrained eye, it has no apparent value. I have some high school friends who can draw amazingly, either realistically or just in an intrinsically pleasing style. How come their art doesn't get a place in the Louvre? I know that there must be a reason. Just like how there is no good music or bad music, but my host brother listens to terrible electropop and wouldn't know quality classical music if it hit him in the face. And I know, because I've been trained in classical music. Even though music is a matter of opinion, I'm willing to state as a fact that Shostakovich's 8^th is just plain better than Rihanna. So I'm sure there must be some logic behind this art thing, but I am as uneducated as average as far as art goes, and therefore am incapable of appreciating the Shostakovich of art. Long story short, the Louvre was okay, but I just felt incapable of appreciating it for the masterpiece I'm sure it must be.

After the Louvre we went to the Champs Élysée to go shopping. I was hanging with the other two Americans, and we started by getting coffee and pains au chocolat (chocolate pastries) to fortify ourselves. I'm only writing this irrelevant detail because it was absolutely the best coffee I have ever tasted. The pastry wasn't too shabby either. Then we strolled through H&M, Promod, Zara, and a bunch of other nice stores. I didn't buy anything, but it was decently entertaining.

Then we ate dinner, headed back to the hostel, and went to sleep.

Just kidding. We partied all night long with the Ecuadorians, two Germans, and an extra Brazilian.

Day 3. We missed our alarm in the morning and woke up with barely enough time to get dressed and tumble downstairs for breakfast. Then we went to Montmartre and the Sacré Coeur. I spent about half an hour talking with a street musician, an old violinist who was astonishingly expressive when he played. So I asked him how he learned – he started at age 6 and studied at conservatory. That didn't surprise me, given the way he played, but it is surprising and sad that anyone who's studied at conservatory should have to be a street musician.

Montmartre was great, full of little cheap touristy shops where I got all my Christmas shopping done at once. After Montmartre, we went to the Eiffel Tower and ate lunch on the lawn beneath it. At the base of the tower are a couple hundred bear statues, decorated by each country. The US bear was pretty uncreative compared to a lot of the others:

While waiting for our turn to ascend the tower, I ate (half of) the best nutella crepe I have ever eaten. The coffee I had at the Champs Élysée was actually quality stuff, but I suspect the nutella crepe tasted like paradise half just because I was cold and tired. Then we went up, and the view was pretty nice, I guess, but since we couldn't go up to the third floor (the very top) it wasn't overwhelming.

Then we went shopping in another big famous area with really expensive stores. Again I didn't buy anything, and just barely didn't get lost.

For dinner I had a pancake topped with cucumber and yogurt mix topped with lox. It was delicious. It was also a hilarious dinner, because all of us were tired enough to think our own terrible inappropriate jokes were funny. But it's really that that I miss sometimes, being all alone in Bois de Céné: The ability to tell jokes and just laugh about them. I do sometimes succeed in telling or understanding jokes in French, but everyone knows that when you have to explain a joke, it isn't funny. Similarly, when you have to think really hard about it, it isn't as funny either. It's amazingly relieving to hang out with people with a common cultural background so you can just talk and laugh about things without difficulty. I'll never take that for granted again.

Then, since we were all exhausted from two nights of partying, we headed back to the hostel and went right to sleep.

Just kidding. We partied all night long with the Ecuadorians, four Germans, and an extra Brazilian. Or at least, they did. I stayed up an hour or so talking and then went to sleep.

The next morning, we missed our alarm. Again. Stumbled down to breakfast and spent our last morning walking in a daze around some famous parts of Paris. My favorite thing about that last day was a conversation I had with André. I talked with André a lot, actually: like I said, I make a habit of befriending tour guides because it's a great way to get extra information and benefits. André and I had discussed a lot of things, from politics to how much booze French people drink to his youth. On that last day, as everyone was lagging behind disinterestedly, not listening to André explain historical things about Paris, he asked me casually if we partied last night and if it was good. I hesitated, knowing that he wouldn't care, but also knowing that I tend to be way too trusting and might be innocently falling into a trap. He said “I don't care, you know. You're young, you may as well make the most of it.” So I laughed and told him yes, we partied every night. And yes, it was fun. Apparently the hostel staff had told him that everyone was coming to our room at night, so he knew perfectly well what was going on. He's just a really chill guy. That really made my day because he's a pudgy, aging man who, at heart, is still 17, high on love and life, eager to conquer the world and meet all the girls and party in every corner of Paris. And so he gave us his blessing to live it up, and even pretended for us that he was ignorant of it – except to me, because I was smart enough to make friends with the tour guide. :)

By ten we were back at the hostel, bags packed, saying our goodbyes. My train didn't leave until two, so I headed off to the metro, grateful I'd packed light and would only have to lug my backpack around Montparnasse with me instead of the giant suitcases all the other girls brought. Once at Montparnasse, I decided not to go up the tower because it costs money and I'd already seen the view from the Eiffel tower and found it underwhelming. Instead, I took a walk. I found some lovely stores and bought a pair of ballet flats for 15€. And, of course, another nutella crepe. I practically lived on those things while I was in Paris, and I regret nothing. At one point I walked through a farmers' market, which was a bubble of very real Parisian-ness in the middle of tourism-land. I love farmers' markets, especially when there's fruits and vegetables and hunks of meat that I don't even recognize. I didn't buy anything, I just enjoyed walking through it and pretending I was a real Parisienne. (If I'm careful not to have a lost, touristy expression on my face, and no one talks to me, it tends to work. I have enough confidence in big cities to look like I live there. I even got asked for directions by three different people!)

My other favorite moment of my last day in Paris was the “A vous de jouer” piano in the Gare de Montparnasse.

There's a piano, just there for people to play on. I got back to the station with about an hour to spare just to make sure I had time to find the right train, and ended up spending at least half of that time sitting and listening to the pianists come and go. They were all much better than I am, or I might have tried to play something myself. But I just enjoyed listening. And normally I find French people much less appreciative of performance: they clap less and are a more reserved audience. But everyone clapped for the amateur pianists at Montparnasse, and as a circle of mutual music lovers, we just looked around at each other and shared contented smiles whenever there was a particularly well-done piece. I love spontaneous feelings of camaraderie – well, who doesn't?

The train home was uneventful, except for one thing: my phone stopped working. This was quite worrying, because I didn't even know if I had to take another train from Nantes to home or if my host brother was going to be around to pick me up. I didn't run out of battery, no. I made sure to charge my phone before I left. It just wouldn't receive or send calls or texts. So once I got to Nantes, I tried calling some more until I gave up on my phone, and then I went outside and walked around a little in the vain hope that I'd see my brother's car (yeah, right – Nantes is the size of San Francisco, remember). Came back inside. Tried a payphone – it ripped me off 6€ to call my host dad and then host mom, and neither of them picked up. I didn't even leave a message. Frigging pay phone. So then I leaned against the wall, trying to calm my breathing. Don't have a panic attack, Ikwe. That is not useful. Think, dammit. What WOULD be a useful thing to do? But I couldn't think of anything I could do.

Just then, I heard my name, looked up, saw my host brother and his girlfriend standing in front of me looking concerned. “Oh thank God!” I said. Not even “Oh merci Dieu,” even though I always speak French with my family. It just came out of my mouth in English, I was so surprised and relieved. My savior! So that was my little adventure with cellphone problems (can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em), and I'm slightly ashamed that my problem-solving skills had a bug and I had absolutely no idea what to do if my brother hadn't shown up right then. It turned out all I had to do to get my elderly phone to work again was turn it off and back on again, just like one often does with buggy computers. Believe me, I feel stupid for not thinking of that.

So now that I've finished all the boring talking about events stuff, I'm gonna comment on the nature of the universe just like I always do. Introspection from Paris number one:

Americans and Germans are a lot more alike than either of them are like the French. I enjoyed conversing with the Germans I met a lot, and we usually spoke in Frenglish because Germans usually have an easier time with English than with French, but after living here for several months their vocabulary has grown quite a bit more in French. Whatever works. We had a lot of the same complaints. We both think that the French are really unproductive and spend too much time at school, but with a large percentage of that time not being used. We both hate the fact that the French don't have hobbies, and their only form of entertainment is socializing. We think school is too easy, and that French people are bad at math, science, and foreign languages. We agree that the French are reserved, cliquey, and hard to make friends with. Talking with the Germans was almost like talking to Americans, except for the language. I felt like we were from the same culture. Even the things that are different we discussed with interest and were not shocked at each others' customs. For example, when talking about our futures and what we want to do with our lives, I explained how important college is to the Americans; in my French high school all they talk about is what profession you eventually want, which doesn't happen in the US. At Homestead, we primarily talk about applying to and choosing colleges. In Germany it isn't like that either – they have other choices that are important – but our system is quite understandable to them. Long story short, talking with Germans doesn't feel like talking through a wall like talking with French people does.

Question of the day: Why can you talk about Germans or a German, but not Frenchs or a French? It has to be the French or French people. It's most inconvenient.

On a somewhat related note, I really enjoyed being in a group with 26 other exchange students of all different nationalities. It was everything that I naively wished moving to a French high school would be: meeting interesting people with all different great life stories, everyone from completely different backgrounds but with recent common experiences as exchange students. We know that language doesn't have to be a barrier – we're living the language barrier. One of the students I spent the most time with was a Czech girl who didn't have very good English or French, but we got along just fine in slow, careful Frenglish. Unfortunately, not everyone you meet on the street will be that patient. And even if they are, you feel guilty or ashamed for making them wait for you, for the extra effort it takes to have a conversation with you. When everyone in the group is an exchange student, there's no guilt – we all know what it feels like to live in our second (or third) language. And then there's all the things in common we have: conversation starters could be anything from “What do you miss the most about home?” to “How do you like your host family?” to “Let's complain about French people!”

The other thing that was great about Paris was the independence. We had André to take care of us, but he wasn't exactly the strictest of chaperones. I wandered around the city by myself (and never even got lost, except if you count not being able to find my youth hostel as lost), found my own food, took the metro by myself, decided who to hang out with and what to do and had no one to tell me to put on a second jacket or I'd catch a cold. The combination of the independence and being in a big city and being with a few other anglophones meant it felt almost like home. And at the same time, it was felt good to come home afterward for a shower with actual hot water, more than a few hours of sleep per night, and seeing my host family, of whom I am quite fond. Being away teaches you to appreciate home. (Even if it's not home home, in Sunnyvale.)

There you have it. My Parisian adventure. If you want more pictures, they are here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.4991943683214.195896.1438307065&type=1&l=b7e0731321

 The first week of vacation I wanted to be back at school because I had nothing to do, but after Paris, the last thing I wanted was to go back. Oh well. Just five and a half more weeks until my next vacation, for Christmas. The good thing is that I switched English classes (and will continue to switch every two months, to share the American with each group). My new teacher's English is not better than the old one's, but she is a better teacher and I have a lot more friends in my new class.

A quick note of clarification on my last post about capitalism and socialism, since a lot of people have talked to me about it:

I didn't really mean to say that capitalism is “better” than socialism. I think it's a really good thing that we have both kinds of societies in the world. Capitalism is better for some people, namely those who are intelligent, ambitious, and lucky. The successful are more successful in a capitalist country, and this creates an attitude of competitivity and innovation that is very good for the US economy and for technology. But those who aren't at the top would probably be happier in a socialist society. And for me personally, the competition and ambition of the Silicon Valley motivated me and helped me flourish, so I'd prefer to live in a capitalist state. But I don't really think one is intrinsically better than the other, just that capitalism fosters extremes (the very successful and innovative AND the very poor who can't pay their medical bills) whereas socialism creates more of an equilibrium, where everyone gets about the same benefits and thus innovation is less pronounced.

Your complimentary French songs of the day I owe to Tanguy (merci Tanguy!).

Brigitte: Battez-Vous

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUgwRLVzOZQ&feature=youtu.be

Emilie Simon: Fleur de Saison

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs00rfVJFKI&feature=youtu.be

Vanessa Paradis: L'Incendie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C72piaGmahs&feature=youtu.be

Nature in my country

For those of you who don't know, I also blog on CIEE's website. CIEE is my exchange program and I am a “blogger intern” which looks nice on college apps and stuff. I'm not going to link to it because the user-interface is terrible and I can't figure out how to make my posts look nice. But sometimes they give us homework, like “best experience so far” or, currently, “nature in your country.” I didn't like the last prompt so I didn't duplicate it here on my Wanderlust blog, but I liked this one better so I'm putting it here:

Rain, Mémé, and the Marais

 

Not such a bad topic for a blog post, in my opinion. Because not only is the nature a little different here, but it's a million times more important than it was at home.

The weather is similar-ish to NorCal weather. Ish. It's significantly colder and wetter, as I've been noticing recently. I even had to go shopping for warm clothes. Because we live next to the sea, it's a little cooler in summer thanks to the sea wind (compared to Sunnyvale, CA), and in winter it gets really cold but almost never snows, for the same reason. It can get down to -5º C (23º F) for a good week in the middle of winter, they tell me.

So far all I've been experiencing is the rainy season. In autumn it rains for about two months straight, before settling into a colder and drier winter. This is the biggest difference between lush, green Vendée and brown, desertish California. I love it. Here they hate the rain, because they grew up with it. But I love it because first of all, I come from a place where rain is pretty special, where everyone gets excited when it rains and posts statuses on facebook “OMG guysss look outside!!!” And secondly, I just plain like the rain. On the rare occasions when we get a full week of rain in Sunnyvale, I'm one of the few kids still posting happy statuses about the rain instead “OMG guysss when will it stop being all cold and wet?!?!”

The similar-ish weather means that the flora is pretty similar. I recognize almost all of the plants that grow here, with the exception of a few staple Vendéen foods like mogette beans:

The fauna, however, is quite different. The first week I was here I went for a run, trying to figure out the tangle of back-country roads behind my house. I saw what looked like a giant rat, or a beaver with a rat-tail, dive into a pond and swim away as I approached it. I had never seen anything like it. They are a common pest here, and their digging habits destroy buildings and farmland. I have since seen several more, but only in the form of roadkill. They are called Rogondin, and wikipedia informs me that it is coypu, river rat, or nupia in English, though I have never heard any of these terms:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coypu

Other than that, the fauna is just different because there's so much more of it. I'm not used to seeing cows and goats and sheep and poultry just wandering all over. I guess it's kind of like that in the Central Valley, but certainly not in urban Silicon Valley. The only animals we have are squirrels, raccoons, and (usually domesticated) cats and dogs. There are also plenty of cats and dogs here, but in a more utilitarian fashion. My cat, Nuts, who likes to sleep exactly in the middle of my bed,

eats mice and bugs and other pesky things. Unlike my pampered Californian kitty, Shadow,

Nuts knows how to fend for himself. Similarly, dogs are usually kept outside, a custom I wholeheartedly agree with. (I hate dogs.)

Now that we've presented Vendéen nature a little bit, I'd like to talk about how it's important. Living in a department that is so rural, a very large portion of the population works in agriculture or ostréiculture. I don't know if there's a word for ostréiculture in English, but the etymology is clear: ostréi- → oyster, -culture → culturing (of), aka farming. Oyster farming. My host uncle is an ostréiculteur, my host brother works with him sometimes on the weekends, and my entire host family sometimes works selling oysters at the market. My first week in France, my host uncle, brother, and brother's best friend took me out oystering with them. (http://envikwedevoyager.blogspot.fr/2012/09/food.html) It's an incredibly important part of the economy here.

My host mom's normal job is as a gardener. She takes care of the flowers for our little village of Bois de Céné. She loves to work with her hands, and is proud of her work. She understands quite well that she already has much less education than her kids, and that her kids will never do the same kind of work that she does. This doesn't bother her at all – she just likes her work and feels very much a part of this land and of this community. She is a true maraîchère, born to the marais of Bouin (marais means marsh or swamp, but somehow all the English words have negative, ugly connotations and the French one doesn't, so I'm gonna keep using “marais”). Her parents were maraîchers, swamp farmers, and she grew up selling oysters and bringing the cows in and out to pasture. She knows everyone in Bouin and everyone in Bois de Céné. Like a true Vendéen, she has never moved more than 10 km away from her father's farm in the marais. The marais is a part of her and she is a part of it, and I can't imagine them ever being separated.

Now I have to describe Mémé a little bit. Mémé is a nickname for great-grandmother, just like how I say “Gramma” and not “Grandmother.” She is my host mom's mother's mother, and she is now a glorious 98 years old.

The first time I met Mémé was also during the first week I was here. We try to go visit her pretty often so she doesn't feel lonely and doesn't forget who her family is. We walked into the “maison de vie” – old folks' home – and there she was, not in her room, but perched on a chair next to the kitchen, chopping onions. More specifically, she was trimming onions – it was a box of old onions that were starting to rot, and she couldn't bear the thought that the kitchen would throw them away, so she was cutting out the rotten parts. I was already enraptured. This was so reminiscent of my Grandma Carol, my mom's mom who had Great Depression habits up until the day she died even when she no longer needed them. So we said hello, and I was introduced (in a very loud, clear voice that repeated all the information twice so she would understand it) as the young American. Mémé was pleased as punch. “It's not every day I get a visitor,” she said, “and especially not an American! What an adventure.”

The second time we met was yesterday. November 1^st, the day of the dead, is one of the most important holidays in France. Never mind Halloween, which, I might remind you, is a contraction of All Hallow's Eve. It's All Hallows Day that's important in a Catholic culture, even if very few people are still religious. We had a big family dinner with all my host mom's sisters and their kids, the parents, and Mémé. Lunch is the most important meal in France, not dinner. So imagine Thanksgiving, but at lunchtime and with French foods instead of American foods.

Mémé is getting quite deaf and a little forgetful and follows the conversations around her somewhat less successfully than I do. She's so old that she often can't control her motions, but she always has a smile on her face. So she'll be bobbing away, up and down, her head turning this way and that, but I often looked up to find her staring right back at me, a benevolent misty expression on her face as if she was thinking, Ah, the wonders of youth! So nice that she is having an adventure, coming to France. Young curiosity, young love, high spirits... those were the days... Lost happily somewhere between the present and her own youth. About the third time I looked up and made eye-contact with her, she smiled even wider, leaned over to her granddaughter my host mom, and said “Look how cute she is! She has dimples when she smiles.” The conversation that had been turning around us stopped, considerate as always for Mémé. They laughed and agreed politely with her. Yes, I am cute when I smile, and aren't dimples nice. I winced. I've always argued with my mom about whether or not I have dimples. I guess I lose this one. The conversation wandered back to whatever the adults were talking about, and Mémé and I continued looking at each other and smiling, each incapable of communication for different reasons, but equally pleased with ourselves for being around such wonderful company. I don't have any Mémés, although I have a dim memory of my mother's mother's mother from when I was really small – I want to say around 4 or 5, but I don't really know how old I was. But anyway, I felt an instant affection for little old Mémé as soon as I met her, and wouldn't hesitate to say that she's my Mémé. I need a family here, and this one is working out quite well. I'm sure Mémé doesn't mind the addition of another great-grandchild.

I swear, all of this was actually relevant to today's prompt. I'm getting to the point, just give me a few hundred more words. (Man, I wish I could say that in college app essays...) You can see Mémé's life written all over her face. Her nose was broken once and healed crooked. She's bent and wrinkled, well and truly battered by life, but far healthier than any other 98 year old I've ever met. (I've never met any other 98 year olds, but she's healthier than you could reasonably expect a 98 year old to be.) I feel like I can read the tale of her life on her face. The marais, the young adventures she must've had, meeting her husband, the marais, the affair her kids suspect her of having to produce a third, non-blue-eyed child with very different coloring, the marais, raising her kids, the marais.

Here you aren't a true Vendéen unless your family has lived here since the beginning of time. I'm a true Californian because I was born there, but by Vendée standards, I wouldn't be. My host family are true Vendéens and true maraîchers. Mémé lived and worked in the marais just as Mamy and Papy did, just as Maman did. And here the cycle is broken because my host sibs are going to move up from the primary sector to the tertiary, but at least they'll still probably live in the Vendée.

The point I was trying to get to is that nature has a huge influence on the everyday lives of these people. Looking around the dinner table yesterday, I saw the sun-darkened faces of the husbands, my uncle's scarred ostréiculteur hands, my host mother's dark callouses, Mémé's well-lived-in face. It's written all over their bodies, every summer under the sun, every rainy season that ground the mud of the marais into their skin, every long, cold winter, and every spring planting. A world so foreign to me, because my parents and my parents' parents worked inside. My grandfather's father was a vegetable seller in New York, and that's as “real work” as we get, not counting the military. So I love the rain, and that's part of what makes it obvious that I'm not a maraîchère. I've never had to harvest oysters in the rain, never had to bring the cows in in the rain, never had to stay out in the rain all day to make sure the flowers aren't damaged by the coming storms. True, I've done French camp, and we canoe in the rain, cook dinner in the rain, empty our tents out with bowls after the storm broke all our zippers

and sometimes don't even have dry clothes to change into. But that's only four weeks a year. It's not a lifetime of the marais.

I'm so in love with the countryside here. I'm in love with the fact that my family's everyday life is so tied to the weather and the marais, even if it's much less important than it was a generation ago. I'm in love with the fact that there's goats in the yard across the street from us, and that we have a pond in our backyard with ducks and chickens, and that we eat the ducks and chickens. I love the fact that people so tied to the earth are so much more practical, so much more real than indoor, germaphobic Silicon Valley-ers. When you buy a baguette, they just hand you a baguette. No bag, no paper wrapping to assure you it hasn't been touched by unclean hands. Just a frigging baguette. And if by accident you dropped the baguette on the floor, I'm certain they would pick it up, brush it off, and put it back on the table to eat.

Tl;dr: That was a really long post to explain two things: 1) The nature is really pretty here, and I like living in a rural place instead of the sprawling suburbs of San Francisco, and 2) Nature is a lot more important to everyday life here, and I think it's cool.