a love-hate relationship

said something this evening that i haven’t said for a long time... at least not out loud.

i love america.

usually one will hear me saying how terrible it is living in america, where they don’t have any real cheese, bread or pastries... where you have to pay so much money for your groceries, and don’t even have the option of buying a decent muesli! not to mention the complete and utter lack of a good, reliable public transportation system.

but today, that was all left behind. today i sung the praise of a country where, even if the politicians won’t, the customer service department of large corporate america will bend over backwards -- while juggling chainsaws! -- to accommodate and assist you, the paying customer.

i called my cell phone carrier’s customer service line tonight (i shall not mention which carrier it was... but i love them. they hear me now... and make me feel like i’m part of a network), to put a billing hold on my account while we’re here... as well as ask some other questions.

the hold thing was done before i had even finished asking the remainder of my other questions. i was promptly transferred to the tech department. you see, i’m supposed to be able to access my contact list on my phone from online. due to the fact that my phone is slightly non-functional at the moment, i can’t get it from the horse’s proverbial mouth.

well... i couldn't -- for some reason that even the techies couldn’t fathom -- access that list. they told me they would not sleep (not so much in word as in sentiment) until they solved the problem! meanwhile, on another technical question regarding my charger, they called the maker of my phone -- in conference call with me! -- to talk to their customer service department... who dutifully walked all around the call center looking for someone who actually knew something, until they got an answer that was, if somewhat lackluster and not completely useful, accurate and complete! it was blissful!

so, while it is true that i am in love with my current surroundings, and just adore this place... i must admit that i DO love america. i greatly appreciate the customer service of large corporations... which often rivals that of small-time works. i like that people look you in the face when walking down the streets and at the very least nod their head in recognition of your existence... instead of walking by as though you were another lamppost.

and, for the sake of my wife... i miss peanut butter.

potential radio silence...

just so that y'all know... we may not be posting for a little while.

i didn't get paid, like i was supposed to... and we won't be able to figure out why for another week at least, because of the Tous Saints holiday. so... we don't have money for the cyber cafe right now (considering we technically don't have enough money to pay rent either...).

we'll keep writing and put up our posts as soon as we can, once we're not impoverished anymore.

cheers... :)

word of the day: obstreperous

over the last few days there have been some recurrent oddities taking place... all of which i find to be rather curious.

first off, i’ve been having this weird rash of dreams involving random and exotic spiders. this, i can only assume, started on sunday when i was kamikazed by a fledgling arachnid on it’s flight into maturity (kind of charlottesque, don’t you think?). i would go into detail, but i think for the welfare of those reading... i will withhold.

secondly... and again, for the last few nights (maybe there’s just an issue with the dark times of the day here...), there has been an outbreak of violent and volatile fireworkings. we were so concerned about these (mind you, they were all rather loud, and very near the ground... in plethoras abounding!) that we decided to ask a local if there was some sort of party going on (why hadn’t the police been called to stop the insanity! surely someone was gonna die... or burn the city down). silly thing: it was the city doing it.

in an effort to get rid of the swarming flocks of birds that are crowding the trees in the city parks (and consequently splaying on the benches, walkways and cars of the residents), the grounds crew go around every year -- for a few evenings, evidently -- recreating scenes from the last world war in an effort to convince the birds that this is not the place to chill out.

i see one problem with this: the birds aren’t THAT stupid. they get fed in those parks. not only from random, bothersome foreigners who find unspeakable joy throwing about bits of bread for the little buggers (names shall not be mentioned here), but by the natives who are just bursting with ecstasy as they waltz around with large bags of bird seed, sowing the grounds with a veritable smorgasbord of avian gastronomical bliss!

what more can i say to this... .

a ribbon and a pickle jar

so i figure i should write something to show the knowledge i have gained in the 1/5th of a century that i have graced this earth...

however...i never professed to have learned much in the past 20 years....(for example...i have this issue with capitalizing things that need to be capitalized. like names and beginnings of sentences and such) so don’t prepare yourself for anything profound.

today i turned 20. it was a very simple day. mark and i awoke and lay in bed as long as possible looking into each others eyes and cuddling (yes we are still disgusting after a year and 2 months of marriage.) mark then made me french toast, eggs, and even peeled my orange for me! :]

we sat about and talked for a bit and then mark had to go to work. i told him that it was a sin to go to work on his wife persons birthday and that i forbade him to go. he had this silly excuse of being a contracted teacher not a student....jibberish i tell you!

while he was at work i went to find a computer with internet so i could send my dear brother a short email saying to watch his mailbox. that took a bout as i sent many other people emails as well. thanks for the “happy birthdays” all those who sent them! they made me happy.

after that i went home and cleaned and rearranged the apartment. ( i might go crazy here)

mark came home late....he was finding a flower shop. :) he came home and i kissed him and all that good married stuff and stuck the dear flower into the best vase i have! (an old pickle jar)

and thus we see that love can come in many shapes, sizes, colors, and yes, even flavors!

funny... bone

today (that’s a lie... it was several days ago, but i’m writing about it today, so it was today), whitney was on the computer playing solitaire, mahjong or something of the like. i came up, rather innocently, beside her and commenced tickling -- as i am wont to do. it is a loving and affectionate action, as all know.

well... as per usual, she flailed about as though i was killing her. in the process, she smacked her elbow on a nearby thingamajig. this normally stops the flailing (often accompanied by vociferous squealing)... however, she kept wailing randomly, and after a moment shouted out, “it burns! is it supposed to burn?!”

uh... ?

sure. why not. ? what the devil is burning?

apparently she’d whacked her humerus, and it was... well, burning.

yeeaaaidunno. it must be a girl thing.

and a beer, please

we went shopping today. we decided to go to a store that was a bit on the other side of town... but as i recall a lot cheaper that e.leclerc (where we are presently shopping). lidl.

having received some subpar instructions from our mildly inebriated concierge several days before... our chances of success where slim. so, naturally, i decided we should ask for directions from someone else!

now, this may seem like the logical, normal thing to do. but, you’re never really sure who you’re gonna run into on the streets here... their blood alcohol level... or the reliability of their instruction giving techniques. such can be quite different from what one would encounter in the states.

we fell upon a nice man with wild, frizzy hair and a dog. and he seemed sober. very kind fellow. we asked where lidl was, and he indicated, “oh, it’s a good 900 meters that way.” i was ready to head off, but he said, “it’s hard to get to... i’ll show you the way.” he was out walking his dog anywho...

very kind of him. and they say the french are rude. pah!

we come around a couple corners, and i see where he’s leading us: aldi. not lidl. granted, there’s not much difference between the two... but still not lidl. i was somewhat disappointed: no princess cookies for me.

as we approach the store, i thank him for his kindness in bringing us all the way. meanwhile, he’s reaching in his pocket, grabbing a 2€ coin. “could you grab me a can of beer? i can’t go in with the dog.” i protest, saying i know nothing about beer... i don’t drink! “oh... it doesn’t matter. get the one that’s 0,47€...”

what can i say to the guy? “heck no, you overly nice man with frizzy hair! fie! fie!” i’m too nice... so, i get the guy his beer. on the way back to him, another fellow asks us if we have any cigarette paper to spare. “uh... no, sorry.” “oh, you don’t smoke?” “no.” “good on ya... keep it up.” we give thierry his beer (and, coincidentally, ask him his name...) and go back in to get our own supplies. while there, we see a man stumbling down the isle... 0,47€ can of beer in hand. he can barely stand up... he’s so drunk I’M having trouble walking... and he’s off to buy more liquor. and it’s at this moment i remember, among other things, why i always preferred doing my shopping at e.leclerc.

all that... and i didn’t even get my princess cookies.

what’s my motivation here?

we had a training meeting in clermont-ferrand yesterday and today.

no... let me rephrase.

“we” had a training meeting in clermont-ferrand yesterday and today. “we” being not me. don’t misunderstand... i was there. but it wasn’t a training meeting for me.

remember the training meeting that i went to at the start of the month in moulins? that was for me. apparently, i was supposed to get an email saying that i wasn’t supposed to attend the training in clermont. i never got that email. in fact, i never got a confirmation email for the clermont training, like i was supposed to (even though i wasn’t going, technically). no emails. anywhere.

i wasn’t the only elementary level assistant that was misinformed. kirsten -- the other elementary assistant in vichy -- also came. actually... we’d been told that we were supposed to be there. we were the only elementary assistants that were informed of the obligatory nature of the ordeal. all others were told not to go.

it was interesting. the first night (we had to come in on the 14th, because the training started the morning of the 15th...) we were all greeted by a nice chap from... well, no one was really sure where he was from. he had an english accent when he spoke french, and a french accent when he spoke english. come to find out he’s irish... living in france for the last 12 years. odd fellow. anywho... he greeted us, assigned us to our rooms, and told us how meals and so forth would work. “meet back down here at 9,” he said as we headed to our rooms. “we’ll be going to the place where the meetings are tomorrow.”

this is important, because he would not be there. i don’t think that was conveyed until we were halfway to the building. being that kirsten and i were up talking to him (trying to figure out where in the devil he was from...), he assigned us as the people in charge of remembering how to get there in the morning. i somehow knew something like that was going to happen. things always go that way. never fraternize with the knowledgeable... it’s dangerous. kirsten promptly decided that meant i was in charge of getting everyone there in the morning. these things always happen to me. always.

to complicate matters (it being already complicated because a] nobody really knew they were supposed to be paying attention to the way to get there and b] because nobody was if they did), we went to an irish pub on the way home. oy! very nice establishment... and i was surprised to find i wasn’t the only one in the group of 50 or so people not taking an alcoholic beverage. but for those that did... and a lot of them did (and a lot)... there was no way they’d recall the way come 9 am when we were heading out. i wasn’t sure there would be that many able to make it at 9 am when we were heading out. they managed alright, however.

the meetings were focused entirely on upper level education. no mention of elementary level. so all two of us there that were teaching elementary focused on the “collège” or jr. high aged kids. technically, that was our goal. get the kids to that level. so, maybe we’d learn something useful.

not really. a couple of websites, not much more. nice websites mind you... handy. but still, not as nice as it could have been. we’d hoped for something, since what we’d done in moulins was -ish at best.

we actually skipped out on one of the classes... because it was completely useless... and skipped out on the whole second day as well, for that matter. so, i guess you could say that i just went for the food. french cafeteria food... the US has got a long way to go.

it's not a lie

so the other day we were bored. i have been dying to watch a movie because i have gotten a bit sick of playing mahjong. so we bought some snacks including: carambar (yummy fruity tootsie roll type things... but not quite), gummy smurfs and a 6 pack of chips so we can try some of the weird euro flavors. the 6 pack had 3 flavours. 2 bags of each.

we then proceeded to go to the cyber cafe just down the street from our apartment to watch the music man off of you tube. it was the version with matthiew broderick and kirsten chenoweth. it was pretty good but probably not nearly as good as the original. it's okay though.

so as were were watching the movie we had some of the chips. the first flavour we tried was the kebab bqq chips. they were pretty good...the next flavour was chorizo..which is a really spicy, greasy sausage. i didn't like that one so much.

later that night when we got home we weren't terribly hungry, and moreso we were tired and too lazy to make something so we pulled out the last flavour. Rotisserie Chicken. Now...there are many times when abroad that the statement "it tastes like chicken" is used. however this usually isn't really the case. in fact i have rarely found anthing, aside from chicken, that actually TASTES like chicken. well look no further! boy oh boy! they tasted EXACTLY LIKE CHICKEN! the only thing i had to convince me otherwise was the crunch of the chip in my mouth and the absence of greasy bones! it was quite literally one of the most blissful moments of my life. :]


they also have a rather divine cream and onion chip here...it does not, however, taste like chicken.

can we have your milky minutes?

so we were at orange very recently (uh... a cell carrier). we were there with the intention of getting a livebox. basically, this gives you like 18 megs of internet, digital cable and a landline with unlimited calls to other fixed numbers for around 45€ a month. not bad. we also wanted to get 2 cell phones, with unlimited calls to 3 numbers (orange cells or landlines). all told about 110€ a month with a 12 month contract.

do you know of any company in the states that would turn down a customer that wants to give them $150 a month? i can’t think of one off top of my head.

however... we were told we could not have our super spiffy phones (they were really nice phones... 2 and 3.2 megapixel cameras, mp3 players, bluetooth, internet, tv, fm radio -- i think... and video calls --- all for 1€ and 9€, respectively) or our little central hub box thing that would give us our wifi internet and landline connections. why? i don’t have my carte de séjour (sort of like a green card). i told them i have my récipicée (a piece of paper they give you when you’ve started applying for you carte de séjour). not good enough.

i probably won’t get my carte for another few months. and there’s a chance that i may not get until march... or ever, for that matter. yeah... so we had to get prepay phones instead. the phones we wanted to get were like 159€ and 189€ with the prepay option.

not cool.

but they did both come with sudoku on them! i guess that a bonus. and now, if we don’t want to pay a phone bill for the month... we don’t have to. yea for not having to pay bills. :)

no espeake english!

i’m not sure what it is... but for the young francophone in english apprenticeship, there is a phrase they simply cannot keep themselves from yelling out at the least prompting: “hello, what is you[r] name?!”

it’s amazing how you’ll hear that being yelled out across the neighborhood once a group of kids recognizes you from a distance.

close friends are “hello, my name is!” and “do you speak english?”

you think they’d pick up something less mundane. you know, like “dondé está el baño?” or “tengo un gato en los pantalones de mi madre.” but then, what do i know?

a cold day in hell

so i came to a realization today...a very painful one. i miss Utah. yeah i know! crazy right?! but then we always knew there was something a bit off with me...like the time i rode my bike directly off the 18,000 foot cement platform (5 ft building foundation) behind my house. or maybe the fact that i would stow books under my pillow and between my mattresses so i could stay up reading the berenstain bears until 3 am.
I knew i would miss my friends and my job. that was expected. however, the thought of missing the state itself...i had actually always wanted nothing more than to get out of it. and now...i am in france and i want nothing more than to be back in ugly Utah. (yes i know the mountains are pretty and they have lots of pretty temples...but Utah just isn’t my type when it comes to looks)
it took conference weekend of all things to make me see why. I MISS THE CHURCH! okay so i go to church here...i’m not going apostate or anything...there is a great spirit here and all that but the church isn’t as present here. in Utah (and Idaho) there are many members. it is hard to find someone who isn’t a member. much more difficult is finding someone who doesn't know anything about us. Here, if they have heard of us, they think we are a cult. (bear in mind i’m not angry at any french people and i love france. it’s a great place.:]) that just seems to be how it is. Those who are members and would have many deep things to talk about...speak french. those who speak english well enough to talk deeply are amazing and far between...i know of one...maybe 2 and i love them dearly for those spiritual times i have shared with them. I’m sure i wouldn’t miss Utah nearly as much if i spoke french better.
anyway the point is, in Utah there is an LDS church right across from your house and you could be in a completely different stake. you have many things like enrichment and walk and talks and things that go on all week. you have visiting teaching that all too often doesn't happen but they try. and you have church with people that have been LDS all their lives so they are thinking on deeper levels of the gospel. (not saying that you have to be born in the church to think on the deeper topics) anyway...i miss church and the temples and everything that is so terribly churchy in provo and i miss all my dear friends that i had so many discussions with. it’s hard not being able to understand what is being talked about in church. and it is hard for me to retain anything even when i do understand because i’m working so hard on simply, understanding what is being said.
sigh...i will get better and i will survive! i do really miss you all though. i send my love and hugs! i hope all is well.

a most curious thing...

good morning. at least for most of you. it's early evening our time. on saturday.

we're watching conference.

technology, i've decided, is a curious thing. not only can one live in another country and be watching a live broadcast from the other side of the world... but one can do it from a chill little internet café, and blog about it all at the same time -- all for only the cost of 2 hot chocolates (4€).

tick tock tick tock tick

Mark went to training today in Moulin.

So, today was the first day that I was home alone all day. Can’t say I’m a fan....there isn’t much to do in our little place. I got really bored. Now don’t go and say I didn’t try! I did, I really did! I did dishes, I put clothes away, I made the bed and picked up our bathroom stuff. hung our wet towels up, had a good long leisurely lunch, played mahjong and even read the first chapter of Nephi in English AND French!! A few times even..(those last two activities took a few hours each.) But still, time ticked away ever so slowly...
As i awaited my dear love’s return it started to rain. We had discussed earlier that if i would keep our kitchen window open he would call up to me (or whistle) so I would know to come down and let him in to our apartment building (we only have 2 keys. One for the outside door of our apartment and one to the room. Technically we have 3 but the other is to the door between the hall and our bedroom and we don’t use it. We just have it.) Well it started raining and I didn’t want all the rain to get into the apartment so I decided to close the window and simply go down and wait on the step for him. As I sat on the stoop i was looking at the old church across the way and I decided to go take a gander inside. However it looked kind of closed up so I walked back a bit and then looked back at it again taking in its old renaissancey glory. sigh...another day. Then a nice looking older lady asked me if I wanted to go inside. I said yes but it was alright. and I would see it another day. Well we got to talking about many things such as religion and schooling and it just was kind of messy. She thought I was trying to initiate her into my cult. Or at least that is how it seemed. She was very kind and willing to talk in English...until she discovered i was Mormon. Then she started talking more in French and expecting me to understand her. Then she talked about how France doesn’t need Mormons because France has different problems than the U.S. All in all it didn’t go so hot and I was not allowed to go in. She said I could come back on Sunday at 11. I think she may be trying to convert me to catholicism. All well. I can’t go cause I will be in church in clermont-ferrand. It would be fun to go to mass sometime though. Anywho, Life’s a bum so kick it.

On an ending note. I love France. But, they are not nice. They have no peanut butter.

for info's sake

i'll be updating some of the earlier post with pictures and what have you... when i get a moment. so far, we've been rather busy, and i haven't had the time nor patience.

i'll do better. promise