Saturday
I’m a master at overpacking. As I was unpacking my two GIANT (aka normal-sized large rollerboard) suitcases, I would pull things out and say to myself, “Won’t need that… Won’t need that… Won’t need that…” You get the gist. Hooray for the first people to visit me who will also be able to take some of my mountains of junk back home.
But all you probably care about right now is that I’M HERE! In Belley! All of my travel plans went smoothly, which many of you who heard of (or who were affected by) my ridiculously long trip from Jersey City to Red Bank will be pleased to hear. Big LUU dropped me off at the airport on Friday morning at 6 a.m. and I got checked in and updated you lot after I was reminded of my overpacking abilities. Slept nearly the entire flight from Los Angeles to Charlotte (except when I read from the books I brought with me—big ups to Gwen and Chelsea!) and then got off to transfer with an hour and a half wait. [Side note: Biggest complaint about this flight is that there were NO movies played. There weren’t even screens on the plane. These cutbacks have gone far enough! Let me see The Next Karate Kid or the next Jennifer Aniston flick if I want to!]
I don’t want to be culturally insensitive but Americans are ridiculous and it’s no wonder we have such a strange reputation in the rest of the world. Listening to a roomful of southerners prepare to go to Paris is kind of a mess. “Bah, deddy. Bah, Taw-mus” translates to “Bye, daddy. Bye, Thomas.” Two mature women in t-shirts, leggings (still not pants), and flip flops talking about going to OktoberFest after hitting up Paris. There is no outfit that says “Hi! I’m American!” any louder. Well, except maybe sweatshirts and Uggs. Sorry I’m so rude. The most ridiculous, though, was this older woman who stuck her face in this French baby—I’m talking barely over newborn status here—and cooing over what a “precious boy—oh, wait. Is it a boy? Oh? A girl. What a precious girl” the baby was. Granted that baby was frickin’ adorable, the manner in which that information was related was plus ou moins obscene.
The flight from Charlotte to Paris was fine. I watched Just Wright (Common had surprisingly little common sense. Pun? And even less confidence for a pro basketball player who’s been the star of his team for 10 years. Uh. Hi. Look at Kobe.) and Date Night (Not Tina Fey or Steve Carrell’s best work. But I love that James Franco and Mila Kunis seem to be showing up basically errywherre. Oh wait! Common was in this movie too. Cray cray.) Question, though. Why is (500) Days of Summer included in the movie classics section? Good soundtrack. Equally good mashup of it. Slept, ate, had my last dosage of Emergen-C’s Costco equivalent: Immuni-C. All in all, a fulfilling flight.
When I got off, I went to the toilet (which had only 2 stalls—at what airport is that ever enough!?), through customs and got my bags, exchanged some dollaz for euraz (not the same effect—will look into alternatives for “euraz”) and started looking for the train station. The signage is a little bit confusing in the airport just because it says the train station is to your right but then there’s no signs and you realize you’ve passed it. Oh well. Good thing my flight got in at 7 a.m. and my train was to depart at 9:25. As I was boarding the shuttle to get to the terminal of the airport with the train station, this girl with short brown hair but with bits of pink and blue in it and also the only other person that I saw schlepping two suitcases asks, in English, where I’m going. I tell her, “I’m teaching trick high schoolers, fool.” And she tells me she’s studying in Angers and says, “Let’s stick together, friend.” (Guess which of those statements is closer to the actual story.) Everything’s going fine. We have to wait in this long line to get tickets even though she hasn’t bought hers and I have. Wouldn’t you think buying them online last month would have saved me from having to wait in this obscene line? Yeah. Foolish. After we finish, girl says she has to use the toilet and so I offer to watch the bags because I already went and I bet it’s not that different down here than upstairs. (There’s a lot of toilet talk in this post. Sorry for my potty mouth. Pun?) Anyway, I’m just looking around while she’s gone minding my own business and all of a sudden there’s this loud voice talking about moist towels being an option in the bathroom. And I’m horrified to see that it’s my new chum (too soon to call her this, I’ll admit. But we haven’t exchanged names at this point.) talking to me. It is so loud and I am so embarrassed because all of the French people are looking at me like, “What are you going to do about your stereotypical American loud-mouthed chum!?” Literally, I think every single pair of eyes goes over to me. I say quietly that I hadn’t seen that in the other bathroom. And she starts talking about it again AT THE SAME DECIBEL. I think I look uncomfortable enough that she knows to stop and so we go outside to sit. I keep my eyes to the front. Haters wanna hate, man. I read my book until it’s time for my train to leave. She kindly offers to walk me to the gare and then I get her name to look for her on Facebook because, like Charlie Brown, I need all the friends I can get. You try looking up Jessica Williams on the Facebook. It doesn’t work. And I love it!
Train ride was fine. Got off at Lyon where I waited for an hour and a half to transfer to the next train that would take me to Culoz, where Marc and I had decided we would meet. I got a sandwich with lettuce and Camembert on a sesame baguette. It’s from Paul, a chain that’s also in London, so I knew it was legit. Maybe even too legit to quit since it was founded in 1889. (Napkin trivia. Get on it.) Anyway, I was kind of embarrassed because I wanted to order the sandwich as it was labeled “sandwiche avec sesame et Camembert” but I realized that I don’t know how to say “sesame” en français. Everyone reading this knows how WE say it, but in French, the way that it’s spelled would suggest that it’s pronounced “sez-ahm,” which is perfectly fine, but seems strange because you don’t pronounce the “ee.” I don’t know why this made me so nervous, but I ended up just asking for the sandwiche avec Camembert.
I went to eat the sandwich and read until my train was to depart. I was interrupted by a brownish girl with a gold tooth next to each of her two front ones who stuck a clipboard in my face and asked if I wanted to donate money. Because I’m counting my precious euraz, I said a polite “non merci.” She looked confused and said “Pourquoi pas?” I just said that I didn’t want to. “Pourquoi pas?” I looked at the paper on her intrusive clipboard and said that I didn’t know my zone postale and she said that it didn’t matter. Then she said something about it being for the orphans and it just broke my heart. Jokes. She kept sticking that clipboard in my face and I said fine to get her out of my hair! So I put down Jessica Williams Los Angeles (even this Facebook search will not yield me as the first result) and gave her 5€. She took it and was about to walk away when she put it back in my face and said that people usually give 10€. Mind you, I saw that of the whopping three names on her list, two had given 10 and the other had given 15, but who gives a care? I said I was sorry. [This is similar to, but not exactly like, the time my gma gave a tip to a waiter and dude was like, “Oh! Usually people tip 15%,” gave her the check back and deuced hoping to get more of that cash money. You get more flies with honey. (RHYME.) So Nora, on her usual pimp game, peaced without adding more. That’s straight up Mrs. Blankenship status right there.] Besides, I don’t think she was supposed to be there because later this other girl came up asking for money and I said no this time (learning!) and later I saw her escorted out by the popos.
Looking out the window,
Juice
Sunday
The reason for both of these posts being put up together is quite obvious. No interwebs. So when I awoke this morning, I had some cereal and read until I thought it was an appropriate time to go for a run. I figured I’d use this time to see if shops were open (duh. They’re not. Which I had already expected.) and to get my bearings a bit. In my run around Belley, I saw some houses, several boulangeries (which are open), and a few people sitting at the tables of cafés that were closed. The streets were nearly empty, which makes sense since there’s not many errands to be run. The houses around here are lovely. The school seems to be in a good location—just up the road from city centre.
People gave me some strange looks while out running. I surmised it to be due to the simple fact that I was out running. I don’t think it’s very French, but I didn’t really have anything else to do today. (I expected it to be seen as normal, though, since in London people were jogging at nearly every hour of the day.) I suppose it could also be because I’m a stranger to them, but I’d like to think that Belley is large enough that they don’t know everyone. I tried to run as much as possible but since mountains surround Belley, I quickly realized that the hills were going to make that impossible. When I was walking, I didn’t really know how to react to people I saw on the street. I didn’t know if it was customary to say “bonjour” to everyone that I met or to keep my eyes on my own business. I didn’t want to be the boisterous American, which Passport to Paris (2:06-2:36) shows me how to be. So maybe I just offended a ton of Belleyans. Whoops.
I ran around the city a bit before deciding to head in the direction of the Carrefour from yesterday. It was much further than I recalled. Before it, though, there is an Aldi, which I learned from St. Louis/JKL’s residential fellow is a supermarket chain in Germany. So if I’m too lazy to get all the way to Carrefour, at least I won’t starve. I was hoping Carrefour would be open since that’s also where the cell phone store is located and I’d like to get myself a sim card and (fingers crossed) get a thing/card I can put in my computer so that I can have the internet always, but even this major chain was closed. Better luck tomorrow.
Walking to the market,
Jess
P.S. Things that are highlighted are links that I can't get to because of the school's internet blocker. I'll try to remedy as soon as possible!
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