recap of days past

right oh... today not much interesting at all. slept in too long for that!

however, i do have things from days past to recount. lucky you.

when we came on saturday to finish signing the contract and get into the apartment, it was in the early evening (4-4:30). our concierge, bernard, was showing the new landfolk (as of that morning...) the building, and said he’d be up in a bit. he never came, so since we had to do things in town (like shopping), we went down to the main level and ran into the chap in the office. he was ever so slightly sloshed, despite the fact that he still had 45 minutes on the clock... that didn’t stop him from dutifully assisting us write up the last bits of paper work... in which he managed to spell my name two different ways (marck and marckc) after i spelled it out for him. to give him a few props, he did manage to get 90% of the words on the lines provided... and only forgot to fill in 2 or 3 fields that i had to point out, or fill in myself. not bad. granted, it did take him 15 minutes to do 3 minutes worth of paperwork...

in other news... they have a great little paper store here in town. with pens. :) we like pens. nice ones, too. they even have one for 905€. not shabby for such a small place.

phones and more!

wow, am i tired! i suppose it could be leftovers of jet lag, or just stressing from finding an apartment and everything else that i need to do. like getting a bank account... which i’m still waiting to hear back on.

we went and looked at phone things today. it was about 105€ to get an 8 megamax internet connection (i have not the foggiest what that means...) with integrated landline that includes unlimited calls to other landlines in france (you pay per call here... and it costs more to call a cell phone than to call a fixed connection), and two cell phones with an hour of minutes each for the month -- but whitney and i would have unlimited calls to each others’ phones, so that wouldn’t be too bad... i mean, who else are we gonna be calling around here, sarkozy? oh... i also saw the smallest laptop ever today! 10” screen. it’s called the medion. check it out. (it's a youtube... watch the first minute to see the size of the thing...)

well, our apartment is nice. 31 m2 (or about 335 square feet...), two rooms, kitchenette, small bathroom (toilet, sink, shower). a few pieces of decent furniture. and only 330€ ($495-ish) a month, utilities included. not bad at all. a little pricey by american standards, but hey. and it’s central to everything, in the old part of town. gorgeous!

we did a little shopping spree to get it all set up and ready... to finish off what they already gave us. we went at the end of the day, when we were both really tired, hungry and all around grouchy. bad move. what’s more, they started to close the store, and we were only like 1/2 done with our stuff. bah! not the best experience of all... and a little spendier than i would have liked... but that life, eh?

church is amazing. me likey much. the branch is so friendly and receptive. great folks. the new branch president (for like 2 weeks now...) used to live in a city i served in on my mission. he’s super chill and funny. comes from a good family. we went to the start of the year institute meeting (something we’re pretty sure we’re gonna keep doing), which was a lot of fun. met some really swell folks there. i like this area... even if the elders do call it “the end of the earth” and “middle of nowhere france.” silly missionaries.

yeah... so major frustration. we went to the bank today to drop off one last little paper for the account. we pulled out 80€, 30 to keep on us, and 50 to put in the account (which, silly me, i didn’t realize we couldn’t do yet because we haven’t actually been approved yet). we then went about our business for other things, and decided to stop off at the pharmacy to pick up some cold medicine (we’ve both been hit with something nasty). my card was refused... twice. so, we paid cash and went on our way. i was a little apprehensive about this, since i noticed like 8 transactions were still pending online, from several days. we go to the store to do some food shopping (because we only grabbed enough for the weekend when we went saturday), and again my card was refused twice. what the frick! i told the bank i was leaving the country for a year... and i’ve been making random purchases for the last week. what’s up? it’s not like there’s a lack of funds... so, we’re gonna try sending my mom an email, and see if she can’t get this regulated with the bank. if not, we’ll have to use the money we have to buy an int’l phone card, and fight it out with the bank sometime. talk about stinking annoying! grrr...

ok... way too much fumage for one day. i’m done.

mac do

today we went store hunting. there’s a really good grocery store called ED here -- cheap, decent quality products. it also, unfortunately, is clear the buckets up north of town. so basically, we’re probably not going there very often from now on. we did at least get our giant ED shopping bag... cuz i don’t know what we’d’ve done without that.

but i digress.

while we where there, we also went for a little snackage chez macdo... yes, micky d’s. don’t worry, it’s not the hole in the ground restaurant it is in the states, where you’re afraid of catching communicable diseases by merely glancing toward the playground equipment. it’s a semi-classy place in france.

we got one of the specialty burgers (france does this thing where every so often they have special burgers, like variations on regional cuisine and stuff... a bit odd, but good) -- the british touch -- in a combo with a little lemon sundae for dessert. i think it’s the first time i’ve been asked if i wanted a coffee with my meal, as opposed to “would you like fries with that?”

there were three things that i thought were super cool at this macdo that i’ve never seen before at any other fast food restaurant, which i will now disclose in small detail.

1. a little kiosk where you can order and pay for your food, to have it available at a special little counter in short order. wow! talk about taking convenience to the next step. now if there’s a cashier i really don’t wanna smell or try to understand through their thick accent: BAM!
   


2. the urinal (really, only half cool...) was a) flush-less, saving 150,000 liters of water a year -- the equivalent of 4 persons usage -- (this part not so impressive, they have them at craters of the moon), and b) the little panel that informed you of the spiffiness of you urinating facilities LITES UP as soon as the stream hits porcelain. HOW FLIPPIN’ COOL IS THAT!
   


3. and no doubt the coolest thing of all... just for going in and selling a small portion of your soul to the mcdonald’s world enterprise -- i mean, we’re talking a small fry or drink -- unlimited, FREE wifi. whoa! it doesn’t get much better than that.
   

shopping

mark and i were supposed to go to ED’s today....instead we went to most every store i the surrounding area...and then ED’s....thats what happens when a store closes for 2 hours for lunch...any-who on our grand adventures we went to many cool stores that are dangerous for me to be in.... i like to shop. it’s not a good thing to like doing. there was a craft store that had tons of fabric and cool wall stickers and all that. some really cool buttons as well...really big ones. in there they had those little balls of yarn that are really fun and crazy. normally in the states those are at least 3 dollars if not more. they had a whole gob of them for only a 1, 50 each! so basically i get to make a pretty cool brown scarf only costing me 4, 50....I'm happy. the sad thing about this store was that they didn’t have a very large selection of crochet hooks....i guess knitting is the thing here in France the largest size they had was a 7 which isn’t small but it definitely is not big! but it was made of bamboo so that was pretty cool. it was 5 euros...a little more than i wanted to pay for it but the lady said that that is all the bigger they are.
also in that store were some really cool wall stickers. big ones! we are thinking about maybe getting some just so our walls aren’t so bare...they had some really cool ones of flowers and trees and then some kinda weird monster ones but it was cool all the same we didn’t buy any yet because we aren’t sure what will match with our very vibrant floors.... in fact, I'm not sure the floors even match each other very well but i suppose thats what doors between rooms are for. :]
Anywho, so we went to another store to look at shoes because i have decided that my reflections shoes, that i have had for nearly 4 years now, may have finally given up the ghost. they aren’t totally dead, but they are definitely not pretty anymore. we saw some very pretty brown shoes at a store called Gémo. i found that my shoe size is 37 or 38. Allthough the brown shoe was adorable....it was not adorable on me.....it had way too much toe cleavage, and toe cleavage is not attractive! At least not mine anyway. So the cute shoes remained at the store however, at another store called Kiabi I got 2 shirts for 2 euros! That was pretty exciting.
we then headed home because it was getting late. at the bus stop we met a very nice old lady who lives in an old folks home not far from our house. i understood most of what i heard her say. when she first talked to me i didn’t hear her soi looked to mark to see if he heard her. he took that as “HELP! i have no idea what she is saying!” she said it again and i heard her that time mentioning that it was going to rain. i understood her right before mark to ld what she said and then proceeded to tell the lady that i only know a little french. she then said (in french) “well you should know french cause i don’t know any english!” she was a very kind lady and wanted to talk and seemed a little sad that i didn’t understand her. but mark did very well in taking to her and curbing her need to kick the breeze with the younger folk. :] mark is so good with helping me. he is sweet. i am excited that i am starting to understand more. i’ll probably have to tell him to stop when i understand alot more because i’m usually so quiet he doesn’t realize i’m starting to understand...for the moment however it is fine. :] i still need him very badly! lol
anywho, things are going well and i am very excited to move into our new place on saturday. it is incapable of coming as fast as i would like it to...or so it seems. but its alright. we are in a good place right now. i am just excited about the future as always. :]

oh, balls!

okay, so after some reflection and minor amounts of sleep, i’ve managed to recall of few of the things that happened over the first couple days of our little excursion here.

first, and perhaps most interesting in many respects, we were walking about town trying to find the office of tourism. i believe this was our first official visit to vichy (coming in on the train aside). we were just strolling about, taking it in and asking the occasional merchant the whereabouts of the places we were hunting for. along the way i saw a game of pétanque, more commonly known as boules. i have a mild fascination with the game, and wanted to show whitney how it was played, having explained it a little before. as we stood and watched, a nice elderly gentleman approached and started conversing with us (me). wonderful guy. we (i) talked with him for probably an hour or so, and then decided we needed to hurry off and continue our errands. well, we’ve run into the chap about every other time we’re in town since then -- in one part of town or another. one of these times i’ll have to ask his name.

secondly, it seems that we arrived at a most opportune time in the country. it was patrimony days -- basically free entrance to all museums and points of interest. the nice gentleman heretofore mentioned told us about it, and suggested a few places to visit. in particular we visited the opera house (which is only open freely to the public for some few short hours a year), which was amazing. we also headed to a few museums in town. there was an art gallery showing some works in glass, complete with the artist on hand to do some signing. there was an opera house museum (i guess the opera in vichy at one time rivaled the paris opera!) to visit, where i snuck some photos i ought not to have taken (though is didn’t get the one i really wanted... a show poster for cyrano de bergerac).

lastly, and most recently, we were walking about the park again, and whitney decided she NEEDED some ice cream... so we stopped of at one of the many shops around that sells it buy the cone, and picked up some raspberry and grapefruit flavored ice cream. oh... nice stuff. painfully expensive (2€ for a ball about the size of a billiard’s ball...), but very good.

and that does it for our recap session. this post is already altogether way too long, so i shall end for the moment. tune in again, same bat time, same bat blog.

yaaaaaaaaaay!!!

We found an apartment today...its small, But, I think it is bigger than our place in Provo. :] it is newly painted and on the top floor of a very old building. our building is in the old part of town as well so all the homes and buildings around us are from the 1800’s i’m guessing. it is a very quiet part of town and is very beautiful. it is a short walk from many good places to see and some very good and cheap shops that we plan to go to often. i am not worried about neighbors being terrible either because everyone that lives their is either elderly or they are students at the Cavalam, so they are working hard all day. i sort of wish that the Cavalam wasn’t so expensive so i could take classes there. all well Chantal is going to talk to some people to see if i can do a kind of language exchange where i would help some people with their english conversation and they would help me with french. it could be fun and very helpful to all parties involved. i think we might get cable in our place so i can watch some french t.v. as well which will help a lot i think. and i want to read the bom in french. hopefully soon i can get a joseph smith manual in french so i can read it next to my english one. i would really like to understand at least what is happening at church. however things really aren’t as bad as they seem to be with the way i am talking. really i understand a little more each day i think and i am getting a bit braver. hopefully soon i will get out of my rut and start speaking a bit more. i have realized that its not that i don’t know how to say things correctly so i get timid. no, it isn’t that. it’s that the moment i want to say something the entire sentence just disappears from my brain. and sometimes i simply just don’t know the words. it’s frustrating. but it will get better i’m sure! i truly love it here. it is beautiful and i get so much time with mark we don’t know what to do with ourselves....it is wonderful to spend so much time with him. he is such a great man. so excited about life...about france....about me in france....:] he is adorable and the love of my life. never will i find one to match me so again. good job Heavenly Father.

speaking of cheese...

i learned a very crucial lesson today: not all cheeses are equal. i’ve known for a long time that french cheese is in most all regards superior to american cheese. what i did NOT know is that there are french cheeses that have a vendetta against humankind. this i discovered today.

i was happily perusing the cheese shop (which i have on good authority is the best in all of vichy... though quite possibly the only in all of vichy...) and saw a quaint little grey mass that i thought needed to make acquaintance with my stomach acids. it was all of 1€10, and the size of a small pillbox. harmless, surely.

HA! the cretin! (uh... please no comments as to unto whom that statement refers.) i take it out of the shop (and no doubt earshot of the snickering from the shop owner), and open up my little wax paper package. the thing is nearly rock solid, thwarting my attempts to break it in half. i must resort to brute force of teeth to crack into it. so i take a manly chunk, and begin chewing. decent-ish taste... for about 4 1/2 seconds. then it...

well, let’s put it this way: if you allow the stuff to sit on your tongue for 4 1/2 seconds, you’ll notice it makes you all tingly. come the 5th second, it starts to burn... like acid. in fact, at second 5 that is precisely how i would describe the taste of the cheese -- battery acid. foul stuff, it was. to add to the horror, when i look down at it again, i notice wee bonny bestials crawling about as if they own the thing... nesting in it no less!

i thought, “well, this isn’t unheard of... maybe it’s supposed to be like that.” i mean, it is the first time i’ve made the purchase of such a cheese. so, i decided to stow it in my pocket, and ask the host family on our arrival back for dinner.

reaction: wow... i wouldn’t eat it.

enough said. cheese to the can.

only, this is me we’re dealing with.

so, i take the offending mold outside, give it a good toss on the ground to knock the little bug-gers off, and brush all but one or two diehards off with my fingers. back to the table, where my wife wishes me a fond farewell, and the hosts reiterate that i will be the sole to eat of the concoction. alas... surrounded by cowards!

nasty stuff. i had perhaps 5% of it before it was off to a long, happy and complete life in the dump. it’s still got a good century under the belt before it turns.

into the land of cheese

ok... so i wasn’t able to post for a couple of days... we had IT issues. namely, our voltage converter is a wanny, and dies every 10 minutes because it thinks it can’t handle the european current. pshah!

well, after much deliberation, reading and consulting experts in the field... we decided we could just plug the thing straight into the wall. it worked out quite nicely, so now there’s computerage for all to rejoice in.

ok... let’s see. interesting things that happened over the last few days: we landed in france without dying. it was after we landed that we weren’t totally sure if or not we’d live. we found out there was a much better way to get to vichy, other than what we’d found online. catch -- we had to take 15000 other trains, metros and buses to get there. all-in-all, it wasn’t so bad. and no one raped us (always a bonus when traveling abroad). taking this cheaper, alternate route meant we arrived in vichy 2 hours before we were expected. after buying a horrendously expensive phone card (pay phone = buy a card to stick in the phone...), we successfully didn’t get in touch with our host family... twice. we left a message, and waited for them at the spot we thought they said to wait for them. luckily, we only had to wait for an hour, and then there they were!

really nice family we’re staying with. a couple of mid-lifers, their youngest son just out of the nest and off to england on some sort of internship. the oldest is, somewhere.

meanwhile, back at the ranch... things have gone more or less swell. there were a few things that i wanted to make particular mention of, but over the course of the last 4 days i’ve completely forgotten all of it. sad, i know, but we must move on.

pppphhhhhttttttt......

....done.

land ho!

so here it is...10:08 Friday morning. sept 19th 2008 AND I AM POOPED! my period started last night. which i should have expected. it was my first night living in France...it, being the vicious holiday attacker it is, couldn’t pass up my first night in France. i hate it....so basically i hurt I'm hungry and i have low supplies. also i am dead sore and exhausted because of jet-lag...i don’t like flying....i think i dislike it more than the train..i mean it wasn’t a terrible experience or anything....take off was awesome! i liked it a lot...and i loved it when the plane would turn or go up and down...:] turbulence was fun...we didn’t have much of it though...basically it was terrible because the only thing that showed how fast we were going was the little t.v. in the back of the headrest of the chair in front of me (that was altogether way to close to my face!) that had a map of the airplanes’ progress toward the destination. it honestly felt like the plane was hovering in the same place the whole time....how are you supposed to be excited about going over 600 miles per hour if it feels like you are sitting still in the same chair for 7 and a half hours....(buckled up the entire time....)

anywho! we landed and Paris was awesome in a terribly ugly modern sort of way...it wasn’t at all like the good ol’ USA....but yeah we found the long line for the train tickets and bought the one that would get us to Vichy (pronounced Vee She) the fastest...we were sick of traveling...:] so we took the metro from the airport to Paris north and then from Paris north to the Gare de Lyon probably the weirdest thing i experienced so far was see all the sign and everything in French...then English....then German or Italian or something.....but not actually reading the English....the first sign i read the English but after that i was too lazy to read the whole sign so i stopped at the French....besides in the airport all the signs keep saying the same thing telling you where to go so it wasn’t anything new...

the metro was cool...i think this was the first time i’ve seen graffiti (IN) a train....like inside it...not on the cement wall outside it...it was kinda cool...and at the same time it made me really glad to have my husband with me...:] so we got to the Gare and caught our train to Vichy. that train was really nice...it had really big windows so you could see all the pretty countryside....none of which i saw though....i slept....oh well....i’ll see it sometime in the next year im sure.

we got to Vichy and it finally hit me that this was the place that i was gonna be living for a year....in that moment i decided that i hated France and that it was ugly. haha...boy can your period make you emotional and delusional....we finally got picked up by the people that we are staying with at about 6:15-6:30ish....i say finally because it felt like forever but it was not that they were late or anything...we came early...we were not expecting to get to Vichy until 7:30 and we got in at 4.. we called them on a pay phone and left a message as to where we would be and to come pick us up when they were able to. were figured they actually wouldn't be able to until 7:30 so i was overjoyed to see Patrick when he arrived..:]

Patrick and Chantal are very interesting people. i like them. he does not speak very good English and i don’t speak very good French so it’s kinda fun...he has better English than my French though that is for sure. :] she is very nice and an English teacher. so she speaks very well. her accent is cute :] they speak French that i mostly know so i can understand what they say if i listen and think really hard about it..i still don’t feel comfortable speaking French though. it makes me wish that i had studied more French. but hey thats life...i will learn the hard way...(though it is probably the easy way...:]) they are very hospitable and kind...it’s hard for me to let them be French and not let me help out as much as i am used to. i’ll have to find some way to show how grateful i am to them. they are great people.

So all in all i love france it is Beautiful and different and i am very excited to explore and learn and to be in this great place!

i am excited to go to church and meet all the members and to feel of their spirits since that is about all i understand :] it will be amazing i am sure!

I LOVE FRANCE!

:]

leaving on a jet plane

so... we’re somewhere over the middle of the atlantic ocean... nearish to england. according to the little flight window, we’ve got 1h35 to paris, a distance of about 750 miles left to go. not bad, considering that we’ve been going for 3400.

i can officially say that my butt is killing me. this is a terrible, horrible, no good, bad day. :) it’s actually not too awful. it’s nothing to the 12 hour flight back from my mission, paris-la direct. that is a vague and somewhat painful memory that i’ve managed to almost completely block from my mind, thankfully.

i was hoping i’d get a little sleep done while on this flight. sadly, i’ve done just that -- gotten little sleep. i dozed for a touch, but nothing worthwhile. whitney, who was convinced she’d not be sleeping a wink on the evil, uncomfortable airplane, has been out for 2 or 3 hours now. i’m happy. it’ll make waking up in paris at 9 a lot easier.

i think i’ve finally realized that i’m going to be back in france. it’s taken me a few months and 6000 miles... but i believe i’ve come to terms with the fact. and i’m pretty sure i’m happy about it.

i was thinking just a few minutes ago, and i think the thing i’m most excited for is showing france to whitney. it’s something that has been such a major part of my life for the past 4 years -- i mean, i’m majoring in the study of the language! it’s exciting to be able share at least a small portion, but what i hope is much, much more than that, with my beautiful wife. it’s already been rather thrilling just to watch her experiencing her first airline experience. it’s really quite fun. i’m looking forward to the next year and what it will bring.

well, with the exception of the next 2 weeks. i’m sure that’s gonna be painful. i wish the school had an apartment all lined up for us. oh well... what can you do?

homeless, homeless...

so... we’ve been homeless now for about 3 weeks. it’s a little different. you know, not having a bed, or necessarily knowing what you’re gonna have for the next meal... if you even have one.

granted, we’re not purely homeless. we have our families to house us and take care of us, and yes, even feed us. families are great. they give way too much to their respective members.

for the last few days, we’ve been in rupert with whitney’s parents. this has been the final stage in getting ready to leave. we technically started that last night. yeah... eight hours isn’t near enough time to finalize your life for a year. i’m pretty sure we’re forgetting lots of things.

for one, we just remembered that in the rush and chaos of getting things ready we forgot to address and mail our thank you cards. we’re not sure what we’re gonna do with them at this point. probably take them with us, and mail them home to one of our parents’ places to have the whole lot deposited into a mailbox. seems kinda redundant.

on the plus side, i’m fairly sure we should have all the documentation we need for over there. i think. i’ll no doubt check and re-check a half dozen times between now and when we leave in an hour. paranoia is so totally overrated.

i’m not really sure what i’m feeling right now. i’m anxious, i suppose. a little sad to be leaving the little bit of a life i’ve started building over the last year. and, i guess i’m also feeling a little worried about going back to france. what if i don’t love it as much as i did when i was a missionary? what if some of my experiences from my mission and since have jaded my francophilia and left me barren toward the fecund land i grew to adore?

i suppose i’m just overreacting. i do that a lot. probably too much. i guess i’ll find out soon enough.

the beginnings

once upon a time, man lived in caves. he was happy in the caves.

twice upon a time, woman lived in caves. needless to say, she did not find the same joy in this that man did.

a few years later, they started living in houses. many would say, "ehn... big deal. they're nicer places to live, deal with it."

this is where most people would be wrong. a cave can be rendered amazingly comfortable with a few small amenities, for those who would site a lack of comfort. the biggest bonus of cave though is this: they don't move. not only do they not move... but there aren't loads of them around, so you don't have lots of options of different ones to move to. besides... they really don't differ all that much one from another, unless you have a thing for limestone wall hangings.

this being the case, it was very infrequent that man, or woman, would move from cave to cave. it was just well beyond the point since they were far too far away from each other, and a hole in a rock's a hole in a rock, right?

sadly, a very short time after the advent of houses came automobiles. not only was there a living structure that could be put anywhere, but there was not a means of moving it around.

which leads us to the topic at hand:




this cannot be good.