Nothing Quite Like the Blinding Light.

After about 3 days of serious thinking, emailing, and looking far too closely at course lists for the spring term at the University of Edinburgh, I've decided that I'm not going anywhere. Tonight I had a 4 hour dinner conversation in french with my pseudo-director and talked about Austin and Athens, and I'm not going anywhere. I am, however, awake at 3:17 am looking at flights from Paris to Moscow and St. Petersburg in January.

I leave for Italy on Friday morning. I've never seen Italy. And I really need some good pizza. I at least need to go a week without eating a baguette. I have found two really nice cafes and an amazing thai restaurant. It's getting really cold and hot peanut soup and cappuccinos make it a lot nicer. This city's better in the cold.

I went to the beach this weekend, to climb the biggest sand dune in Europe, la Dune du Pyla, on the Atlantic coast, and to eat waffles on the boardwalk. It was freezing, but kind of incredible. Malika drove us there and back and I spent 2 hours in the back of a car on a French highway listening to Jimmy Eat World and Pedro the Lion.

I had a very intense, perhaps slightly fever-induced dream last night and woke up completely terrified because I'd been in Athens, in Syntagma, and I couldn't get home. I kept seeing familiar street signs, but the city was completely unfamiliar. I kept zooming out, almost, to try to see myself on the map and get myself home and it wouldn't work at all. I had no idea. I woke up and spent 10 seconds trying to frantically envision a map of Athens and get myself from Syntagma back home. To Neoptolemou. I guess there's not much I can do now.

A bientot.

weird.

it's one in the morning and i'm updating this thing mostly to say that it's one in the morning. and that i'm updating this thing. i have something due for my lit class tomorrow, or i might have something due for my lit class tomorrow, but i'm not going to do it. she didn't tell us what it is. plus, i don't actually go to school. i'm starting my fourth week of classes and, because i'm not french, i can't access my work at all. my professors don't call on me or look me in the eye because i'm american and i don't copy down every word they say.

it was unbelievably nice to have jenn here. it's nice to get a perspective on this city from someone that's not attempting to live in it. i still have no idea what to do. am i getting anything out of this? i want nothing more than fluency in this language and i don't think i can leave france. is anybody reading this? would you stay in a boring city with a million people that have no interest in you, in 5 classes you don't remotely care about? or would you go to paris with the 40 middkids terribles et flagrants, and run into english behind every corner?

i'm spending 10 days at the end of october and the beginning of november in italy. i've never been to italy. it should go rome, assisi, florence, ferrara, venice, bologna. then barcelona and salamanca in november. athens when i feel emotionally prepared. i'll let you know, you insatiable reader. you saturn, you. you can all come meet me and freeze in the middle of pangrati.

mark rothko and abstract expressionism. i'd deny it too. i can count 9 wine bottles.

anyone know how to get a russian tourist visa?

deux

i fell down my stairs onto my back onto a vase.

emily haines - detective daughter.

spir!t

i don't know how optimistic i am right now about this blog thing. it seems a little ridiculous to start a new one after the athens catastrophe, where i updated 8 times in the first two weeks and then decided it wasn't really worth walking the 2 long blocks to the center. bring the white nikes, we'll supply the... i guess i'll try, then. at least for really mind-numbing weekly updates. i'll even try list format, to take every excitement out of my second study abroad experience. maybe if it's terribly boring, it'll be worth updating. that makes sense, right?

1. i live in bordeaux, france. it is about an hour from the atlantic ocean and two hours north of spain. there are about 300.000 people in the city itself, and about 200.000 of them are under the age of 24 and were probably born in skinny jeans.

2. i am taking classes. if we're using the word class really loosely. they include 17th century french literature, linguistics and analysis of discourse, french-english translation, european political institutions, and didactic, a course to teach french students how to teach french as a foreign language. the last one is an interesting choice, as i'm not french (or not quite yet) and i don't plan on teaching french. my lit class is 3 hours straight on tuesday afternoons. translation actually makes me feel like i don't speak french or english. political science in french is going to kick my ass.

3. there are 6 of us here and we all live relatively far away from each other. it's a little far from 50, crammed into apartments in one neighborhood. it'd be nice if meeting french kids was actually a possibility. hopefully it'll become easier. i might take an art class at some point also.

4. the wine is good. and the cheese and the baguettes. yes, i often see young women, smoking thin cigarettes, walking down the street carrying all three. it's actually not a stereotype. it's real life.

5. i went to paris last weekend. we bummed around the luxembourg gardens and the latin quarter. emily sketched notre dame while i listened to belle and sebastian. i went to the pompidou all alone and remembered the posters all over vienna. i walked in and yves klein basically just smacked me in the face. i laughed out loud, but he reminded me that his hands weren't enough, and that he did indeed need the models' bodies to become the instruments with which to spread the color.

6. feist is coming this weekend. so is jenn.

7. i think i'm actually too comfortable. it doesn't actually feel like europe. or it does, too much. they have ben and jerry's at the domino's and i speak the language well enough to translate whole conversations. it doesn't feel like athens. sometimes i forget where i am, for days at a time. i might go to paris in the spring. i might also change my major, from french to international studies with a european focus and a french lit and culture discipline. yes, it's almost the same thing. maybe i like the name better. or i at least feel like my interests stretch a little bit further than paris in the north and marseille in the south.

8. i hope no one's actually reading this. i'm so sorry. and sad, because i'm doing this all over again, but without any of the oh-god-this-isn't-america-and-i'm-so-shocked moments. i probably won't even make it to 8 this time. at least give me some post ideas.

cal