Locked in the Bathroom

It's a pity that yesterday was my bathroom post, because today I got locked inside one.

Tonight we went out in a group to Aix-en-Provence.  We stopped at a fancy Asian-ish restaurant for dinner and had sushi for appetizers and then French entrees.  It was all fairly delicious.  I'm really starting to love sushi.

Anyway, afterward, we headed over to a pub.  I don't know why it is that I can never reliably implement the lesson, "Never pass up the opportunity to pee," but once again, I found myself regretting passing up the opportunity to use the fancy restaurant bathroom and instead having to force my way through a sweaty crowd and wait in line for a bathroom with a centimeter of mysterious liquid on the floor.

There were two bathrooms, but one of them was closed for the entire time I was waiting in line.  I assumed the toilet was clogged or something was otherwise unsavory about it, so I patiently waited with all the others in line for the obviously functional toilet.  Just as I reached the head of the line, however, a girl opened the door of the mysterious other bathroom and peered inside.  All appeared to be in order, and she kindly offered me first dibs, as I was, in fact, at the head of the line.

Though lacking a toilet seat and hand soap, the bathroom experience was not altogether unpleasant until I tried to leave.  After unlocking the door, I grasped the handle and pulled.  It didn't budge.  I tried pushing, and that didn't work either.  After fumbling with the door lever, it broke off in my hand.  I threw it in the sink and had a mini panic time.  The music from the pub was incredibly loud, meaning no one could hear me, and my phone ran out of credit the other day, so I couldn't make calls-- I could only receive them.  A couple of minutes were spent trying to figure out how long I'd have to be gone before my group figured something was wrong, and then I pondered the likelihood that they would figure out I was trapped in the bathroom.

Ultimately, I decided it was impractical to just wait there for someone to find me, so I dug into my purse for my cheap pocket knife and used the tip of the blade to start unscrewing the door hinges, since no one had responded to my attempt at ninja kicking the door down earlier.  Unscrewing the hinges was super slow going though, so I decided to just pound and kick the door like a crazy person indefinitely.  After two minutes, someone stuck their finger into the hole in the door and fumbled with the loose metal pieces until the latch clicked open and I was free and face to face with my rescuer.  It was love at first sight.

Just kidding.  It was an awkward moment where I said, "Uh, merci" while he stared at me with a raised eyebrow until I tossed my purse back over my shoulder and walked back to the dance floor, tripping over the uneven floor once before leaving his sight.

Was not a fan of the French bar experience.

French Toilets

A word about toilets.

Really the only thing I want to talk about today is the European bathroom.  It's true that I'm a bit overly germ-cautious sometimes, but I really like the idea of the toilet being separate from the bathtub and whatnot. In France, and in all of Europe, really, the toilet is in one room, and the bathtub and sink are in another.  Paranoid though I may be, I really enjoy not having to visualize a mist of toilet water on the shower curtain, the shampoo bottles, and on my toothbrush.

I do, however, think it's super weird to use the toilet and then go to the kitchen to wash my hands.  Sometimes the room with the bathtub (salle de bain) is too far away from the toilet to be practical.  I also think the flushing mechanisms are strange.  The first day I got to France, I had to spend five minutes trying to figure out how to flush the dang toilet, because there was something on the top that looked like a button, yet it was impossible to push.  Eventually I tried pulling it up, and that did the trick.  Definitely not intuitive for me, though.

But in other news, we rode bikes to the lake and fed the swans baguette pieces.  It was charming and lovely, and afterward we went to a mall and bought clothes.  We were going to go bowling after dinner, but then we all felt lazy, so that's an adventure for next week.

Tomorrow we go to the discotheque!

The Election

I spent the day with Gladys at her beauty school.  For the first two hours, a girl in her aesthetician program used me as a test subject for her first gel nail manicure.  Obviously gel manicures are nothing new, but I'd never gotten one before, so it was interesting for me to see how she crafted each faux nail with a gummy substance and then filed it into a nail-looking shape.  It wasn't the most pleasant experience ever, though, as during the ordeal the student filed through my skin a couple times, and she didn't tell me my fingernails would burn whilst under the tiny heater, and after the first hour of the process, I was like, "Maybe we should just pull them all off and call it a day."  

But the end result isn't bad.  Her teacher had to correct some stuff, but I have a lovely French (true French!) manicure with streaks of gold.  Quite lovely.  The rest of the day was nice; I alternated between writing in the meeting room and helping Gladys organize her little beauty products shop downstairs.  The days pass quickly here, probably because I'm so busy.  The sun seems to set far too soon every day.

For dinner we got some takeout sushi, and though I didn't eat the raw salmon kind, the rest was quite good, especially alongside generous dollops of wasabi.  I like to cry a little when I eat my food, I guess.  

By the way, the French really love Obama.  I'm pretty sure that if we hadn't wanted him, they would have been happy to take him.  Today there were montages of Obama looking suave all over the television, to the point where I don't think any actual French news was covered today.  It's amazing to me that the French care so much about our politics when our news broadcasts seem to only address other countries when there's a bombing or a typhoon.  There were actually polls featured on television yesterday which talked about what percentage of the French population was rooting for which American presidential candidate.  I'm bad at keeping up on politics in general, but I didn't even know the French had moved on from Sarkozy, much less who the new guy was running against.  

I would say I should watch the news more when I come home, but honestly most news broadcasts are 60% previews of what stories they're going to cover later in the program.  Maybe I should just get French cable or something.

Aix-en-Provence and Aperatifs

It was a busy day and tomorrow has an early start, so this shall be brief.

Today we went to a street market and bought some delicious chicken and freshly-grown produce, and then we made a lovely lunch of it before heading out to Aix-en-Provence for a few hours.  We enjoyed a brief teatime, which I spent gazing at all the lovely shops on the main road of the town.  Aix seems like a great place to go clothes shopping if you're into that.

Alas, I was not able to peek into the shops, because we had to go help Gui clean out his mother's garage.  It was pretty chilly, but there was pile of burning evergreen branches to keep warm with.  It was very fragrant.

After a long drive home in French rush hour, we went over to the home of the Repettos' friends and had drinks and little finger foods, called aparatifs.  The conversation was quite interesting, which I can finally say with certainty because I'm getting so much better at understanding French, and everyone in the room spoke at least a little English.  My comprehension is actually pretty great when people speak slowly.  My problem now is translating French to English in my head fast enough to keep up with the rapid pace of normal conversation.  I just might get there before I come home, though!

Time for sleep!

Apple Pie, LMFAO Party, and Adventures in Marignane

So.

I've been on hiatus for three days, because between the crazy parties and get-togethers that last til dawn and moving to a different city, I've barely had time to sleep.  So here's what's been happening.

On Friday, I made one last American dinner for Edith and Nico.  It consisted of meatloaf, topped with ketchup of course, mashed potatoes, and apple pie.  Not your usual apple pie, however.  A while back I saw a truly adorable apple pie recipe which involves baking the pie filling inside a hollowed out apple instead of crust.  You top the whole thing with pie pastry woven in a lattice pattern, et voila:

The most adorable thing ever.

After dinner, we went to a wine bar, which was relaxed and lovely.  Five of us squeezed onto a couch and we all ordered our drinks and talked and admired the ambiance.  We got back around 3am, so a blog entry that night was not to be.

Nor was it to be the following day, because it was the day of the LMFAO-themed party that Nico has been planning since before I even got here.  In case you don't know, LMFAO is a band, and they look like this:

For the party, everyone was required to dress accordingly.  All the parties I've been to so far have had really elaborate themes, so I think I've been throwing parties the French way for my entire life.  People really went all out.

However, the most memorable part of the day were the things I spent literally five hours making.  

CAKE POPS.

The cake pop is an art I've tried to learn several times in many different ways, with no success.  Either the cake crumbles, or the balls fall off the sticks, or the melted chocolate destroys everything, or they flat out just don't taste good.  However, I have discovered the secret to amazing, Starbucks style cake pops, and it is Mascarpone.

Are these not the most beautiful cake pops you've ever seen??  Okay, I know they're not the most beautiful, because these exist:

And you just can't compete with that.

But they're still the most impressive baked good I've ever made with my own hands, and they were pretty damned delicious to boot.  

Though I was super happy with the end result, they were a major pain in the ass to make.  Each one requires a solid five minutes of labor, and when you're making enough for a whole party to enjoy, they suck up your day.  So suffice it to say, if I ever make cake pops in the future, I either really love you or you're the president of the United States. 

But when all the pops were eaten, the LMFAO songs had all been played, and the faux afros had been abandoned, I think Nico was pretty at peace with everything.

And by "at peace," I mean drunk and out of his mind.  But there's joy in those deranged eyes.

And why didn't I write yesterday?

Well, yesterday was my last day with Edith and Nico.  I spent the morning cleaning up the devastation from the previous night's festivities with Edith, then packed my bags.  Since there was still time afterward, I decided to take one last walk to my windmill.  It was raining lightly, and that only made me want to go more.  

The ruins were even more beautiful than ever, and while there, I wrote a tiny message, rolled it up tight and pushed it into a tiny glass vial.  It's now hidden in the ruins.  I don't expect anyone will ever find it, but since I couldn't carve my name into the wall (not all of us are made of time, Cossettini), I like the idea that something of mine will still stay in the ruins even when I have gone.  It was really difficult to leave that place.  Of course I'll find my way back someday, but probably not for a very long time.  Before leaving, I ran my fingertips over Cossettini's name and said goodbye to him, because I feel like he's still there.  There are many names carved into the wall, but I think the windmill belonged to him in the same way it belonged to me.  Many people have popped in for a minute to see the inside of the windmill, but only Cossettini and I have spent hours within the crumbling walls.  When I left the windmill finally, it was like I was saying goodbye to a great friend, not knowing when we would see each other again.  But it's my place, just like it's Cossettini's place.  It will always belong to people like us.

After I got back, Nico and Edith had already loaded my stuff in the car, because Madame Repetto had called to say she was ready to meet us in the city of Salon.  I'd been trying not to think about how difficult it would be to leave Edith and Nico, so the car ride was difficult.  They treated me like family from the very start, and I'll never forget my time with them.

But now my life is in Marignane, a town only two miles from the Mediterranean Sea.  It's not as beautiful as the rural towns you've been seeing pictures from, but it has its own species of charm.  The Repetto family has two children.  Alexie, 15, and Lena, 4.

It's a very different experience, but I have a feeling I'm going to learn a lot.  I've been speaking a lot more French with the Repettos, because only one of them speaks English.  My comprehension is now improving rapidly, and my speaking abilities are coming along too, though slowly.  Today Gladys took me to her hairdressing school.  She is the headmistress of the best hairdressing school in southern France, I'm told.  Her students are always the ones to win all the awards at hair shows and competitions.  She used me as a model for a new hair straightening technique today, which was pretty dang sweet.  Using a steam iron, she made my hair Asian straight.  When she was done, like twenty people came over to pet my hair.  

It was a nice day, and Gui (you remember Gui from the abandoned nightclub intruders story) came over for dinner.  We ate stuffed mushrooms and then watched an American movie with dubbed French dialogue.  Il etait interessant.  

So that is the crazy that was my life for the past three days.  Now I'm going to snuggle up with a delicious caramel cookie and the latest episode of Once Upon a Time.  A bientot!

Wine Bar

How did it get this late already?

We went to a wine bar this evening, which was quirky yet comfortable.  Before this, however, I made dinner for Edith and Nico one last time before I leave for my second host family.  I'm too tired and tipsy to post pictures, but dinner was comprised of meatloaf, balsamic honey carrots, sauteed potatoes, and apple pies baked inside of hollowed-out apples.

Pictures will follow tomorrow.  Right now it is 3am, and my motivation level is at 2%.  Bon soir!

Mini Doughnuts and Other Things

We went to the French equivalent of a Crate and Barrel today, and it was divine. I bought a Christmas ornament shaped like a cupcake and some other things to be distributed as gifts during the holiday season.  I'm probably the most annoying customer ever in places like this.  A collection of mostly impractical things ends up in the basket, among which are items like fragile glass mushrooms and a giant ceramic teapot, neither of which travel well.  Before getting to the checkout, I inevitably have second thoughts, forget where I got the things from, and leave them scattered haphazardly throughout the store.  Oh well.  I figure I've still got karma left over from putting away merchandise abandoned at the Menards checkouts.  

Anyway, I now wish to share with you the French idea of a chocolate chip cookie:

That is not a cookie.  That is a scone.

But whatever.  This evening for dinner, I decided to make dessert.  Mini donuts again! The last ones turned out a little odd-- salty for no discernible reason and rather porous.  The ones tonight turned out delightfully.  Dense, moist, and beautiful.  

For these I made a honey infused sugar glaze.

And these I topped with chocolate and cinnamon, to make them a little more autumn appropriate.  Though there were only five of us at table, all the donuts were devoured during tea time, but for a single sugar glaze one which everyone was too polite to take.  

Tomorrow I will make one last American dinner for Edith and Nico.  I'm thinking meatloaf or deep dish pizza, but it depends on what I can fricking find at the grocery store.