I’m gone from Spain now, but I am happy that I made these two friends. I also was very fortunate with my landlords of my apartment: my last day in Spain I had gotten rid of all of my food and decided to eat lunch out, but my landlady, Maxi, invited me over for lunch with her family. She also insisted on making me a tortilla española to have for the airport, and it was delicious. One of her daughters drove me to the airport, and I am terribly grateful. I know that they were probably better landlords than the majority of the people out there (I’m not sure if they felt a bit of responsibility for me since I was foreign, as well), and I hope that I was a good tenant for them.
Since I’ll be teaching in France I felt that I should touch up my French a little bit. So, what better way is there to do that but to go back to Cannes where I studied in 2006? I can’t think of anything at the moment. The journey was reminiscent of my voyage 4 years ago. I stopped over in Paris, I went in search of the Eiffel tower, and there was a world cup game going on. Only this time, I feel so much more experienced with travel in France and Spain. I’m able to do things more efficiently: I know how to use the metro and how and where to get a cell phone. I have friends in Paris, and it was wonderful to spend time with them. I guess what I’m saying is that in a way I realize that I have changed over the past four years, even if sometimes I feel as though I’m still the same person. Sometimes I don’t think I have changed, but when I compare my trip in 2006 to my trip in 2010, I can tell that there are major differences. I can only hope that they are for the better.
My time in Paris was short, but I felt like I was arriving at a home away from home. I just enjoy France so much more than Spain. I met up with Mandira and we ate crepes and watched the World cup game of the US vs Ghana by the Eiffel Tower. It was a great time.
I left Paris to head on to Cannes, and that trip felt much easier than the previous time I had taken it. For instance, I only had one bag with me instead of two. And, once I got to the train station in Cannes, they now have escalators, so I didn’t have to carry that bag up and down the stairs (or, like what happened 4 years ago, have a random person grab one of my bags and help me). I then got to the college, and instead of moving in immediately, I waited a few hours for my new landlady to arrive and take me to my studio apartment. I have to say that I am much happier living away from campus, even if that means that I am not as socially active there.
For the most part, I have been trying to recuperate from this previous year of teaching. To do that, I have been enjoying the beach. I still can’t believe that I’ll be teaching again in a couple of months, and I am still torn about the decision. But, hopefully, when all is said and done, I’ll be much better at French than I currently am.
As far as my classes here, they’ve been okay. Sometimes, just to relax I use the 15-minute break during class to walk to the sea just to listen to the waves for a few minutes. My first teacher, Giselle, was wonderful at the conversation part of the course, but I didn’t particularly like her style for teaching grammar. For that, it was as if she would just give us grammar exercises without any explanations, and then be surprised when we did poorly on the homework. However, her classes were heaven compared to what came after her. With Véronique, there’s just no easy way to explain her classes. She is a new teacher, and it felt like there was no structure in her class. A group of us were not satisfied with her, and we took our concerns to the school’s administration. We’ve now switched classes to be with our third teacher, Marie-Hélène, and she is much better. I feel like I’m learning something again!
Over a weekend I went to Avignon to take a tour of the lavender fields. I didn’t realize, but there’s a theater festival that goes on in Avignon for the entire month of July. It was as though all of the wayward wanderers of the world had descended upon the city to try to have their 15 minutes of fame, or at least experience someone else’s. It was impossible to walk down the street two steps before someone was advertising his or her play. It got to the point that I just started saying, “Sorry, I don’t speak French,” because that was the only way they would leave me alone. While sitting at lunch, I was given at least 5 flyers for various plays.
I took the day-long lavender tour, and it led to a fairly tiring day. It started around 9, and we got back around 6. We went to lavender fields, lavendine fields, and sunflower fields. We also stopped at a provençal market (sorry, mom, I didn’t see any tablecloths I thought you’d like at this one), a lavender distillery, the lavender capital: Sault, an old city: Gordes, and the lavender museum. On my train trip to Avignon, I had watched in vain for a glimpse of a lavender field. I saw random lavender bushes every once in a while, but never a field. Well, I found out later that what I was seeing was actually lavendine, a lavender hybrid produced to grow at different altitudes. When we were driving away from Avignon, our tour guide explained to us that true lavender grows only at high altitudes, and for various reasons true lavender only grows in Provence. The road she took us along into the fields reached a summit that was marked by a sign, and then we dipped into a valley on the other side where there were lavender fields as far as the eye could see.
I enjoyed my day in the lavender fields, even if it was a bit of overkill. That’s what I signed up for though! One of the older couples on the tour told me around lunchtime that if they saw another lavender field, they would scream, and that once you saw one field you had seen them all. Well, yes, that might be true, but there’s also a sense of majesty in seeing something that beautiful, and I took as much of it in as I could since I knew it was not an experience to be taken lightly. Walking into the fields it felt as though the world had fallen away, and it was just me, the flowers, and the buzz of the bees all around me. That same couple that didn’t seem to realize that what they had signed up for was a lavender tour also refused to walk into the fields even a foot because of their fear of the bees. While I also wouldn’t want to be stung, for me, that constant hum was a bit more like a reminder of the nature that was surrounding me and not something to be feared.
One of my mistakes for the day was that I didn’t put on sunscreen in the morning; I thought I threw it in my bag, but I hadn’t. So, by the end of the day I was red as a lobster. Fortunately, I had purchased myself some lavender oil at the distillery, and one of the reputed medical purposes was that it helped sunburns. So, I tried it out, and while I still hurt for the next day or so, the burn never peeled and has now added a deeper tan than I had before. So, I’m convinced enough to say that it works!
Back in Cannes, I’m trying to enjoy being by the beach as much as possible, but sometimes it’s difficult. For instance, just before I went to Avignon, I was swimming and stopped suddenly because some seaweed floating on the surface of the water scared me. As soon as I started treading water, BOOM! I kicked what I’m certain had to be a jellyfish. Pain shot up from my foot, and I hightailed my way back to shore. I found it a bit ironic that I got scared by nothing, was trying to tell myself that it was unlikely that seaweed or anything else would get me, and then I kick a jellyfish. Now I realize that being in the water might be like the bees: I need to take the chance to reap the rewards.
After that, I went a little over a week without swimming. I still walked along the beach, but the water always looked a bit cloudy, and I prefer it when it’s clear. The last couple of days it’s been perfectly clear, and I’ve been swimming like a guppy fish. Sometimes I wonder what it looks like with me as a grown woman out in the deep water, swimming to the seabed and back up again, and then I think I’m glad that I’ll never know. It’s fun! And the other day, I even found a watch that was still working under the water. Now that I’ve fiddled with it, I realize that the clasp doesn’t work quite right, which is probably why it got lost in the first place. But who knows? Maybe I can get it fixed.
Bryant was in Nice last week, and he and a couple of his friends came to Cannes to see the fireworks for Bastille Day. It was a great show, and afterwards we went in search of ice cream and then just wandered around. Apparently, I took them in the wrong direction for the wandering, because when I walked home I found where there was a Michael Jackson tribute show going on. I just loved that they were playing MJ on the anniversary of France’s revolution.
While I like it here, I’m also really ready to be back home for a while. I miss a lot of things, and sometimes I still can’t believe that I’ve decided to stay on this side of the Atlantic for another year, especially when that reason is teaching! But, I’m trying to look at it as an opportunity to be here, and hopefully get better at French along the way. Only 3 more weeks!
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