My first full day as a Frenchman… or rather an American trying not to look too much like a tourist. I spent the day walking around some of the main drags of the city. From my lodgings on Rue Giraudeau, it’s a short walk to Boulevard Beranger. The French take these street types very seriously: a “rue” ranges from tiny sidestreets to moderate avenues, a “place” is a little square or otherwise-shaped territory that often contains a little park or monument, and a “boulevard” is huge. You’ll know when you’ve reached a boulevard by the fact that it’s easily twice as big as any other street in the area. Traffic on Boulevard Beranger goes in both directions but the two are separated by a large sidewalk in the middle, limiting the actual road space to one lane in either direction. On this big island of sidewalk, there’s a market for fresh fruits, vegetables, fish, and other food items. Beranger is lined by old houses and hotels, and comes to a flourish with the ornately carved and elegant “Hotel de Ville,” which is no longer a hotel, but a sort of public hall for exhibitions and the like. Across from the Hotel are two large fountains and the immense Gare de Tours [gare = train station], It’s really a beautiful area for a walk, though there aren’t many cafés on Beranger itself.

Just before coming to the Hotel de Ville, one passes the Rue National. This isn’t as large as Beranger, but it is lined with shops of all types as it extends from Beranger to the Loire river bridge. Besides the shopping, Rue National takes one into an area called “Vieux Tours” [Old Tours] where we find what we’ve been looking for all along: the bars. Rows of them, one theme/ethnicity after another, you can tell easily that this is the place to be when it’s time to sortir.

After a group photo and the Vin D’Honneur (which turned out to be a toast), I went with a few friends to Rue National so they could get cell phones and then home for dinner. This dinner went much more smoothly than the last and was much more enjoyable. It was only myself, Patrick (my housemate), Pierre, Marie, and Lauren. Conversation came much more easily to me and I cleared things up with them, regarding what I could and couldn’t understand, and they were sympathetic, though I told them to continue to speak at normal speed so I’d eventually reach that level. We discussed musical tastes: Pierre likes American rap music, while Lauren digs Manu Chao and Serge Gainsbourg in addition. Lauren is also into American comics, but I couldn’t really contribute much to that conversation, though he does like Akira and seemed open to my suggestion to watch FLCL. I think I did a pretty good job explaining the evolution/intelligen t design shenanigans going on in the US, which amazed our hosts and granted us their sympathy for living in such a society in which science is shunned.

Luckily, my suitcase had arrived that afternoon and I was fully equipped to go out that night. After cursing the fact that I’d set my computer and cellphone clocks an hour early and missed the rendez-vous some of us had planned during the Vin D’Honneur, I walked into Vieux Tours and managed to find them in the plaza in the center of the neighborhood without losing too much time. They were in a group of SweetBriar people just finishing up a second bottle of wine and starting to break up into smaller groups. I left my original rendez-vous crew when they went to check out “Le Queer Eye” to go get Sangria with a girl named Alise and her friend, Camille. I must admit, I’m attracted to Alise (both looks and personality) and I think she digs me too… we’ll see how it goes.

I’d better sign off now, though… I have French placement tests to take.

-Vic

I awoke with the sunrise and the realization that I don’t know the word for “sunrise” in French. A little sleep can make a man feel 100% better. I’m awake much before anyone else in the house and I’m glad of it for the beautiful scene coming to life outside my windows: The sun is still fairly low and casts an orange-tinged light upon the old buildings and the greenery of the nieghborhood. The air is cool, but comfortably so, hinting at a beautiful but likely rather hot day to come. I have my first encounter with the Institut de Touraine at 2:00pm, but it’s just for an introduction to the program, a group photo, and something called “Vin d’honneur” which I can only guess is some sort of idiomatic expression… literally, it’s “Wine of honor.” If they should command it, I will drink of the wine of honor and slay the mighty dragon of the hillside, but truth be told I think they want us to graduate before we put on the knight’s mantle and shoulder the burden of France.

With nothing to do for a while, i’ll give a quick tour of my room. It’s about 2/3 as large as my room at home, in a sort of trapezoidal shape, with walls facing diagonally inward. It’s sort of disconcerting at first, but I’m starting to get used to it. It’s furnished nicely with a wooden desk, filled with Alice’s stuff from when she was little, a small couch and table with little trinkets of Moroccan and Asian origin, a wooden dresser, and a bed which is about the length of a twin bed, but somewhat wider, which I find liberating. On the walls, I find posters, fasion ads, and family pictures from years ago, from the girls’ infancy to their early teens. On the wall opposite the door is a large mirror made of 1′ x 1′ tiles and what is probably a wooden ballet bar. A dominating presence in the room is a tall, thin giraffe, made of some sort of plant fiber. It is an off-white with yellow spots and stands on the floor, its head inches from the ceiling. It seems a bit african, as are certain other decorative touches around the room, but most of all it seems like another person living here, in whose room I’ve been granted permission to dwell, so long as I don’t cause trouble under his watchful eye.

Note: There is no way for me to submit blog entries on time. I’ll be uploading nearly a week’s worth of material today.

-Vic

Four months is a long time. I’ve never been out of the country for anywhere near that amount of time and it’s a bit scary.

The flight was fine, unremarkable really. The busride fro, Paris to Tours was only 3hrs but it seemed interminable… I was much too tired to really appreciate the countryside, but we came to the conclusion that it looked exactly like the American midwest.

Tours is a beautiful city. Rather small, but it seems as if every single building, bar, restaurant, and café has a history. It’s a city made for walking; there are roads, of course, but the little streets rarely accommodate more than one lane of traffic. The attitude is pretty laid back, compared to my memory of Paris, it seems as though Tours hasn’t gained any of the nervous energy that conveniences like cars and cellphones can bring. The people of Tours aren’t particularly impressed by Americans, having a long history of exchange students, but they’re usually very sympathetic to stuttering or unsure French speakers.

I’m relieved to find that my host family is really cool. It’s a mother, either divorced or separated, and her 16 year old son, Pierre. Her daughters, Alice (19), and Marie (23), live elsewhere: Alice at her godparent’s and Alice has her own apartment, though she will soon be moving in with her boyfriend, Lauren.

Dinner would have been really great if I wasn’t so jetlagged; I definitely wasn’t ready to jump headfirst into a full speed French dinner with all those people. French conversation is similar to the way we fuck around with Marc when he wants to tell us something: someone begins speaking and then there is an interruption for a question or exclamation which can be answered by a third, etc etc until everyone is talking at once. With all this French flying around my poor, sleep-deprived head, I could barely keep up, so it’s no wonder I got a lot of “oh are you tired?” and the like. ’cause if you’re not in a French conversation, baby you’re out. Finally, I escaped to my room and collapsed, after cursing my luck at finding out that I don’t have internet access.

Footnote: We drank a liquor called Pastis with dinner, a nice anise-flavored aperitif in the same category as Ouzo or Arak, served with water.

Miss y’all,

-Vic