I was going to write a long treatise on what I have learned while being in France and the differences in races in culture, but something happened and that’s out the door.

We got our books! We got our books! Amy was very excited about it until we actually got the books home and she opened them. Then she realized this means she has no reason not to study for her Ph.D exams! Yuck. But me, I’m thrilled. Now I have lots of good books to keep me busy when I am not reading something from the library 😉

There were three boxes packed inside a giant shipping bag. Initially, we began dragging the bag down the street, but after a few minutes, Amy decided to run and get the cart we used to buy groceries and whatnot. She removed the bag and it made a makeshift hand cart. Instead of just waiting with this giant bag full of boxes on the side of the road, I decided to keep dragging it.

So here I am this very bundled-up American boy dragging a very large bag full of boxes down the streets of Strasbourg. Let’s just say I got more than a few odd looks. As I dragged the bag it began to rip open so I kept turning it over to a nonripped side. The cardboard corners of the boxes made this terribly loud noise as I walked which drew me even more absurd looks from fellow streetwalkers.

Finally, Amy came with the cart and we got it into the building. The elevator, for some reason, didn’t stop at our floor, number 2, but kept going to floor number 4. Oblivious to this fact we went to where our apartment should have been if we were on the right floor and wondered why the keys weren’t working! Red-faced we realized our error and took the elevator back to the second floor and made it home!

As I look at my books I remember my process of selection back in America. I decided that since I would have plenty of time to read I would send myself many of the big fat books I never get around to reading. So I now have Les Miserables, Of Human Bondage, The Fountainhead, and several other mountainous tomes. To offset these behemoths I then filled the rest of the box with sillier novels like Forrest Gump and Bridget Jones’s Diary.

I haven’t finished watching 2001. I just can’t watch that film in one setting. So my review may be a few days later than initially stated. I’m also realizing there isn’t a chance of me giving an in-depth review of what it all means or of all the techniques used to make the film. There are plenty of other places to get that information anyway. I will probably make more personal observations about the movie and what it means to me. Not that anyone really cares anymore.

Apparently, we had an earthquake Saturday night. It wasn’t bad enough to do any real damage but gave enough shaking to wake most of my friends out of bed and give them a good scare. Amy and I slept right through it. I have to say I was a little disappointed with that.

We now have Christmas plans. Our friend from Penn State has a boyfriend, Paco, who lives in Paris. They are both going to visit Paco’s family in Spain for Christmas and have generously offered to lend us his flat in Paris! Christmas in Paris sounds marvelous to me. It couldn’t have come at a better time either. Amy had just spent Sunday morning a little upset about not having Christmas plans and then like an Angel came Elizabeth with her gift.

I’ll be watching 2001 this afternoon so expect a review in a day or so…

This will be short. I was unable to post yesterday due to some problem with blogger. It would let me view my blog, and log into my blog, but I couldn’t access any of the editing menus and was not able to create a new page.

Amy and I have created weekly schedules for ourselves. I have posted mine on my closet door. It’s not particularly full, but hopefully, it will give me some structure and I may actually accomplish some things. I have allocated Monday afternoons as a time for me to critically watch, read, or listen to something. Which is a good term for goofing off with a pencil. Or, rather, to watch a movie, listen to a cd, read a book, and take notes. Hopefully, that will lead to some reviews on this page. We’ve also scheduled some walking so maybe we’ll get into a little better shape.

I got an e-mail yesterday from a girl in one of my e-mail groups. I have created a little signature on my e-mails leading people to my blog and my pictures. It seems this girl saw I was in Strasbourg and e-mailed me because she was thinking of a visit here soon. It was fun because I got to act like an expert on the city and tell her all the places to go. Brewster’s Tour Guide…

“There were days
and there were days
and there were days between
Summer flies and August dies
the world grows dark and mean
Comes the shimmer of the moon
on black infested trees
the singing man is at his song
the holy on their knees
the reckless are out wrecking
the timid plead their pleas
No one knows much more of this
than anyone can see anyone can see”
-Robert Hunter

Sorry, I have been away for a bit my blogger friends. There was Thanksgiving and then our friend Kate came over for the weekend, so I have been rather busy and unable to sit at the computer and blog.

Our second Thanksgiving was quite wonderful. We had Thanksgiving proper with the American missionaries, Daniel and Tammy, and various folks from the Church. We had it at Fabienne’s apartment. It was quite an adventure getting there. Amy and I first took the tram to Ann and Mohamed’s flat. Then we all took another tram to a bus stop. We weren’t sure what bus to take so we just jumped on one we thought might go the right way, then looked at the map to see where it went. We quickly decided that the bus was the wrong one so we took it to another stop and got out. After some confusion which was cleared up by asking a random bus driver, we found the correct bus stop and hopped on that bus. This bus took us to Daniel and Tammy’s house where we awaited Daniel to drive us to Fabienne’s. All of this was with me lugging our big cart around stuffed with food and Mohamed carrying a big heavy box!

We arrived at Fabienne’s with me realizing that the turkey breast I had been carrying in Daniel’s van had dripped juices all over me. It soaked my coat and my sweater, so I spend the rest of the evening smelling like turkey! The food was lovely and the company pleasant. We did another round of hand turkeys. Jill even brought feathers in various bright colors which added to the festive turkeys.

Kate is our friend from Indiana who is doing an exchange in a little town south of France. We had a lovely weekend with her visiting. Friday and Saturday we spend wandering around the city taking in all of the Marche Noel. Strasbourg has many Christmas markets throughout the city. They have lots of ornaments and your basic assortment of Christmas stuff on sale. Plus they have a very nice variety of foods and drinks as well. They sell a malt wine that is wine heated on a stove (so that the alcohol is pretty much burned out) and mixed with lemon, orange, and various spices. It is quite tasty. We also had a waffle covered in Nutella and a hot orange drink.

Sunday we had our third Thanksgiving dinner. Amy and Kate cooked a full chicken and made yummy dressing with sweet potatoes, and gravy. I tell you I have eaten so much delicious food the last few days I’ll have to diet for months to get back into shape!

Well, that’s my story of not writing for a bit. I’m still working on my list of favorite movie actors and some other things to blog. So, I should be back tomorrow with more blogging.

Turkey Day is here tomorrow. It doesn’t seem possible because a) it just can’t be the end of November, can it? and b) it’s France and they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, so there aren’t any markings of the holiday anywhere. And of course no day after sales.

I wish the half dozen who read this a very Happy Thanksgiving though.

We went to the library today and I got some more books. I updated my little homepage with this (Editors Note: I used to keep a list of the books I was reading in the sidebar). I never did finish the Kesey book. It was very large and difficult to get into and my check-out time was running out so I just gave up. This is something I often do with books. Usually, it is a mood thing. Where I just can’t get in the mood for that particular book and put it aside, hoping I’ll come back to it.

I’ve once again picked up a Chandler. I’m quickly going through all the classic detective books. I looked for some Agathe Christie, but I could not find anything. The Shipping News is a book I picked up a few years ago, read 50 pages or so, and then had to turn it back in to the library. I liked what I read and I can’t remember now why I didn’t finish it. I’m often a very slow reader and I suspect I just didn’t have time to get through it with library deadlines. I know I know you get three weeks on the first check out and then you can recheck, but still…I often get distracted by other books, tv, movies, and life.

I’ve read good things about The Corrections, and frankly, my choices of books that both interest me and seem like something I would actually sit down and read is getting much smaller at the language library I’ve been going to. Luckily I have another big library at the university and a big public library to still go to.

I’m working on another list like the Cover Songs list just posted. This time it is the greatest film actors. Start making your own lists now.

We had our first party last night. We invited all the AIMers over for snacks and fun. Amy has been wanting to hold a party for ages but we have neglected to actually do one until now. Mainly because Amy gets the idea in her head and wants to make it absolutely perfect which means a lot of preparation. We’re both slackers so the preparation never actually materializes into reality so we never have the party. Finally, I said let’s just do the inviting and then we’ll prepare whatever we can and still have fun. So it was pretty tame. We had snacks and drinks and sat around chatting until Balderdash was brought. Unfortunately, the tram line to our place was down this week and the last bus left at 10:30 so everyone had to split pretty early. All in all it was fun, and nice to actually have people over to our cave.

Tonight we go to Elizabeth’s for her turkey party. Well, I should say chicken party since you can’t really find turkey here until December. Being in France they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving so the turkeys don’t come out until Christmas time. But the chicken should be grand. Next week on Thanksgiving proper we are having a turkey party at Fabiennes. And then on Friday Kate is coming over for the weekend so we’ll have to do a little meal for her. That’s a lot of good Thanksgiving eating!

We went to Kehl, Germany last Thursday with Elizabeth.  This time the bus actually made it the whole way. No crazy German protesters in the way. Elizabeth needed a few odds and ends for her Thanksgiving party, and we just went to kill some time (but of course left with loads of goods). Both of us broke down and finally bought a caddy (they are kind of like carpet bags, except everyone uses them to carry groceries…I’ll try to get a picture up shortly). It is amazing how annoying and difficult it is to go shopping when you don’t have a car. Until now we have been bringing our backpacks and I always had to go with Amy. Even then we could only carry a few items and never get everything we needed. This caddy allows us to carry more goods and even heavier things that normally we would not be able to manage. Yea!

Oh, the point of the German story was to tell about our Lidl experience. Lidl is very similar to Aldis if anyone has ever been to one of those. They sell typically generic goods very, very cheap. While standing in line Amy accidentally dropped a spice jar and broke it on the floor. No one seemed to notice or at least care.

We didn’t know how to tell anyone what had happened so we just kind of swept it under the table and went on our merry way. After the clerk had run our items Amy tried to pay with her French bank card. Apparently, they don’t take French cards at this German store, from what we gathered anyway. At first, we thought it was a minimum price problem and tried to get the cashier to ring up Elizabeth’s items. Both Elizabeth and Amy are taking German classes, but are not far enough along to get out more than a few words. So the cashier is talking in fast German while Amy and Elizabeth stumble over their limited vocabulary.

Eventually, we figured out there was an ATM outside and Amy ran to it as I sat in the corner with our goods. Many minutes passed and there was no Amy, so I went looking. The cashier pointed like the ATM was just outside, but I couldn’t see it or Amy. I start wandering around the streets of Germany at night looking for either a cash machine or my wife. I looked for probably ten minutes until panic started overcoming me. Dear God, please let her be ok kind of panicking. Holy crap there is no ATM anywhere, and WHERE IS MY WIFE!

Luckily I peeked back inside and saw the wife standing in line. She had to ask a hotel clerk where the ATM was in broken German. What a mess. A lot of Germans actually do speak English, but apparently not at Lidl.

Sorry, I seem to be using a lot of Paul Simon for my titles of late.

Amy and I went to the Archeological Museum today. It had all kinds of cool artifacts dating all the way back to like 50 BC! That’s absolutely astounding to me. I don’t think I have ever seen something that old that was built by man. Some of the oldest people to have lived in this area and left behind something were buried in little coffins inside larger structures that housed various other items.

The men would be buried in full armor and then in a side chamber would be other weapons, jewelry, and food. I couldn’t quite understand the French explanation but it would seem that they thought they would rise up again and would need food and weapons then. The coolest stuff to me was dated several hundred years later during the Roman Empire. They had these great old statues of Mercury and Venus and other gods. Plus big tablets of stone with letters written in what everybody knows as the old Roman style. Very interesting to see real. A lot of this section of the museum was very dark.

The museum itself is in the basement of the Palais Rohan, which is itself a beautiful and amazing structure. (and I now have to add an apology for the odd linking I do on my blog. I always mean to link a lot of things, but in the end, I forget half of it). There isn’t a lot of natural light, and for whatever reason the museum has decided to paint the walls in this section black and to only have small spotlights on each artifact. The effect is quite creepy. As I was crossing past some monument, or skeleton I stepped on some type of trap door on the floor which caused this loud bang. Scared the bejesus out of me! A little later Amy did the exact same thing!

One thing I noticed there and the fine art museum just above it was that the security guards were visibly bored. Security guards must be bored everywhere, but at least in America, they have to act like they are scrutinizing everyone and are alert. Here they sat slumped over, reading a book, staring out the window, or had their head in their hands looking stupified.

I have very little news to report. I’ve mainly been reading for the last several days. I finished my Chandler and am nearly done with Foxfire. I hope to have some reviews of them soon. I actually did sit down a write a review of a CD the other day. I spend a nice chunk of time writing it and I think it was quite good, but the internet screwed up and I lost everything. Argh!

I’ve been thinking about the term culture shock lately. Before I left for France I had expected to experience a lot of it. I somehow thought I would wind up sitting in my apartment for weeks staring out the window wishing I was somewhere else. That is a far cry from reality.

I’ve really had a great time here from the start. Sure there have been a few moments that were a little unnerving, times that I felt a little sad. But these were no more than I might feel if I was still in Indiana. Technically, culture shock is defined as the emotional response a person has to being in a different culture. So, yeah, I’ve had emotional responses.

Maybe I expected more because of the term. I mean it says “shock” so I suspected a real shock or jolt. I’m sure it would be a different experience if we had not lived with Daniel and Tammy for two weeks to start out. Or if there weren’t other Americans/English speakers with which we could spend time. They make all the difference I suspect.

I have spent several hours trying to get my DVD player to work with French-coded DVDs. That’s not exactly right. My DVD player will play French DVDs but only so often. Like many players, there is only a certain number of times it will switch from Region 1 to Region 2 or whatever before it gets stuck on whatever the last region was forever. There is software out there that will either override the system or simply reset the counter. However, I’ve failed to find the proper stuff for my particular brand. Does anybody have any experience with this stuff? Use the commenter or e-mail me with suggestions, please.

My pictures were finally viewed by the French class in Alabama. I’m told they were a great big hit. I don’t know why, but that gives me great joy. Even though I’ve had no direct contact with them it’s like there is a little connection between us now. All these kids have had a direct link to my life, and been taught, and learned from my little experiences. How cool is that?