Il y a des Trucs

So. After just six weeks, I’ve managed to remember to say “four-twenty” instead of eighty, I’ve just about mastered the French pout, and I’ve become acquainted with the winding alleys of Aix-en-Provence.

But as I start to think about gathering my belongings from the corners of Isabelle’s apartment and tossing them haphazardly into a pile on my suitcase, I’m realizing that six weeks quite simply isn’t enough. Don’t get me wrong, I’m ecstatic about going to the beach to hang out with Uncle Delvinho for a week (oh, and I guess I’m pretty happy about seeing friends and family again), but I feel like I haven’t accomplished it all. I don’t even know what “it all” is, and I don’t know if six months – or six years – would be enough time to do it. It just feels like I haven’t done so much…I never got to title a blog entry “merde,” for one. Although on second thought, this is probably a good thing. I never watched a live soccer match or the Tour de France (which is pretty much like watching the highway on steroids, so I’m not that upset). And I just realized with horror that I never really went to a boîte.

I didn’t even travel extensively, and I can’t tell if this was a good idea or not. Is it better to know one place really well, to go native, or to try and discover as many places as possible? My method was less expensive, and probably less dangerous – I hate the injustice of being a lone traveling woman (I also hate calling myself a woman.) – but I’m just not convinced…

Staying in Aix and not acting the American tourist gave me a lot of time for experiencing the little things, things I haven’t managed to squeeze into these entries. I never wrote about spending the day under the eaves of an old and dusty library, flipping through books from the 60s on philosophy and politics, or about foiling Malicious in her cat-food-or-your-shins ultimatum with (appropriately) a ball of tin foil torn from a chocolate bar. There were several afternoons spent culling the seeds from near-perfect tomatoes and drying them on the windowsill (in preparation for smuggling back to the States) while the smell of freshly hung laundry filtered down through my open window. I never counted the number of times I was mistaken for a Brit – or the number of times I didn’t correct that assumption. I haven’t talked about the losing battle with my white shoes, or about the dubious pleasures of spending the evening in an Irish pub with some Scottish jocks. I never followed up on my toilet journalism with a confession of the gradual and grudging respect I’ve gained for the whole detached showerhead ploy…I still regret the lack of any place to secure the thing while shampooing, but I appreciate the ability to powerwash teeth to toes from inches away. And I haven’t really updated on my home life: about Isabelle’s Provencal cooking, Veronique’s departure for the city, or about watching “absolument nul” films with Romain.

I’ve picked up on some various cultural scraps that I haven’t been able to fit anywhere either, but which I’ll include here to shed some more light on how I spend my days (for that, and for this obsessive need I have to organize, arrange, and pigeonhole). It goes without saying that everyone in France is going to die of lung cancer, just like everyone in America is going to die either from stress or overeating or both, but it does go deeper than that. (Slightly.) For one, the French apparently never ever name pets after people. (“Not even famous people?” I asked. “Like, no one would name their goldfish Sarkozy, or their pet turtle Ziggy Stardust?” “Well…maybe Ziggy…”) I discovered true French national pastimes – no, not romance, or cooking, or even pétanque – it’s ironing and conserving/consuming leftovers. I also learned a little about the French schooling system (firsthand – I got a frownie face on the board one day next to my name for an incorrectly placed pronoun). I’ve figured out some onomatopoeic phrases, like “miam miam” for when something tastes good. I’ve just started to get a handle on colloquial Argot or Verlan – most likely just in time for it to all change as soon as I’ve left. I’ve got some fantastic ideas for real linguistic research papers, like one on the difference between racism in France and America (the French apparently don’t have many racial slurs, just inappropriate contexts?), or something concerning the effect of the masculine/feminine binary system on the perception of gender and sexuality, or a history of how certain grammatical, lexical, and semantic structures vary so widely from French to English in some areas, yet are identical in others. …Ugh, I’m so nerdy.

Okay…so what’s left? I know, I still have to take a photo of Isabelle...don’t worry, there’s a large picnic on Wednesday where I can do that. Oh, I guess I have finals still. I’ve got a concert to go to tonight – I got free tickets for Karita Mattila. I have no idea what to expect. I’m planning on eating a last supper (or okay penultimate supper) with Romain at my favorite restaurant…and then it’ll be time to get on a plane and return to my real life. Merde.

I think I’ve got maybe one more post in me before then.