Have I mentioned the French are very affectionate? Besides having to personally greet them when you enter a room and then say goodbye to each person when you leave AND that crazy cheek kiss thing you have to do to everyone, they are constantly touching each other, and if they are a couple doing even more! It is nothing to see a couple give a kiss on the tram or the side of the road. And we’re not talking a quick peck here, it’s usually a good full-mouth romantic kiss. Yesterday while waiting at the tram stop a couple across the tracks was making out! I just want to carry a sign around saying “Get a room!”

I took my first French test on Friday. I bombed it madly! Unfortunately, I had left most of my books at the boy’s house on Wednesday and therefore was unable to really study for it. I looked over what notes I had a little, but they were pretty useless. The exam was about 8 pages long. One page I could actually answer fairly well. Meaning I knew what it was asking and thought I knew the answers. On another page, I knew what they were asking, but was unsure of the answers, or rather unsure of the sex of the nouns and thus unsure of the answers. All the other pages I just stared at blankly remembering that we had studied it, but not having a clue as to what to do. Talk about a humbling experience. Ann felt so sorry for me that she came over Saturday for free and went over it with me.

Pamela came over for dinner last night. She was our first real dinner guest in this tiny apartment. Amy cooked quesadillas and guacamole salad. It was quite delicious. Then we had strawberries for dessert! Quite lovely. It was good to see we could actually have a small dinner party in this place as well.

I have been making myself lists each day of things to accomplish. I had become so lazy and complacent that I really need a list of activities to accomplish. This has actually helped out a lot. I’ve managed to write a number of pages on my book. I have made some cds for friends, blogged, and done a lot of reading. Here’s to hoping I keep it up.

I am kind of fibbing on the books I am reading section of the front page. I am also reading a book by Mary Higgins Clark that Tammy gave me. It is so horribly written I was embarrassed by it. Let’s just say it involves kidnapping and multiple personality disorders! How much more cliched could it get?! Why do people buy this kind of trash? Why do I keep reading it?

That one is easy enough. Tammy gave it to me and I’d hate to tell her I didn’t read it. Even though she admitted it was awful. Plus it is super fast and easy to read and gives me something to do while I’m in the bathroom. I understand why people don’t read. They are very busy with maintaining a social life, working, keeping up a romance, taking care of children and there is the almighty TV that keeps us all entertained.

But of the people who read, why would you purchase such dumb books? And obviously, they do because she, and many others like her, are on the best seller’s list all the time. I understand the need to read something light that doesn’t make you think too much. I understand reading as escapism. But there are so many other books out there that aren’t too demanding, that create wonderful, frightening, mysterious, hilarious worlds to escape into. I don’t mean to sound like a book snob. I was that for many years, and have since overcome my ‘you shouldn’t read anything but the classics’ phase. It just makes my head spin that this tv movie of the week kind of book is actually sold by the truckload. For the record, the title of this one is All Around the Town.

And now as I look at that Amazon link, I realize the average reader rating is 4.5 out of 5 stars! Here is one of their reviews.

“Laurie Kenyon was kidnapped at the age of four, and was returned to her family two years later. Now, her parents have died, and she’s suspected of killing her English professor. This book has it all – short chapters, excellent plotting, psychology, and even an Australian character in this American book. Go on – read it! (A+)”

Short chapters! Psychology! An Australian! These are the reasons I should read this book. Sweet lord, I’ll shut up now before I go insane.

I’ve been slowly updating the site. I finally figured out how to get my picture back into the main page. I’ve also added a list of the current books I am reading to the sidebar. I’ve always wanted to write real reviews of the books I read, movies I see, and music I listen to. The writer in me always wants to do it for writing practice, plus those pipe dreams I have of being a writer usually clash with the reality of practicality of 1) I’m not a good writer and 2) the only money I might ever see in writing would be in my reviews. The critic in me is perpetually writing reviews in my head, so I might as well write them for real right? I’d also like to have reviews of mine for future reference. A nice handy guide of the things I liked and panned and the reasons why. So maybe, I’ll use my free time in France (and there is plenty of it) to start writing reviews. I suspect I will place them on a separate blogged.

Potential problems with this idea are that I rarely read a new book, my taste in music tends to live in the 60s and 70s, and it’s a rare thing to see a movie here in France. Does anyone want to read reviews of old things?

I have been trying to write something original of late. I have a number of ideas for short stories and novels, but I find I don’t have the patience to write them. Everything I write I cringe at. I’ve had better luck with telling some of my own stories. I’ve always enjoyed telling stories about my life, and think I have become pretty good at it, so I am trying to get them into a written form. Perhaps I will blog about them sometime…

Five things I hate about Strasbourg.

1. Caca. The French seem to love their dogs, but here they don’t know how to use a pooper scooper. There is crap literally everywhere. No matter how careful you are you’re just bound to step in a pile sooner or later.

2. The language. I like the actual language, it flows quite beautifully from a native tongue. The problem is it just gets stuck on mine. I’m trying to learn to speak French, but mostly I’m just frustrated.

3. Traffic. So many of the drivers here are just nuts! They drive incredibly fast, and pay no attention to traffic laws even though the roads are narrow and windy. Not to mention they park anywhere and everywhere.

4. Weather. It’s nice one day and cold, damp, and drizzly the next six. It can never just rain here, it’s got to drizzle for days on end. I don’t know how many times I have opened the blinds to see some sunshine only to walk down to the street five minutes later and find the sun completely covered by dark clouds.

5. The Euro. This is less about my dislike for the French currency and more about my lack of them. The dollar is worth less than the Euro so all my savings before I came comes out to much less than I hoped. We are living without any income from me so we have to live on a lot less than we are used to.

Five Things I Love About Strasbourg

1. Scenery. Strasbourg is a beautiful city. With the canals, old buildings, and abundance of flowers, every day reveals a marvelous view.

2. Doner Kabaps. I’ve already raved about these lovely sandwiches. They have replaced my hamburger cravings nicely.

3. Boulanger/Patissier. Why we don’t have these bread and pastry shops all over the US is beyond me. There is nothing better than a freshly baked baguette or a chocolate croissant in the morning.

4. Eating the tip off of a baguette. Now that it has turned cold it is a miserable experience walking to the store every day to buy a baguette. The saving grace is biting the tip of the bread off as I am walking home. It is so crisp and soft, and WARM! It’s a little piece of heaven.

5. The people. French stereotypes are so wrong. At least from the people I’ve met here in Strasbourg. Everybody has been incredibly friendly and kind. No, not every single person runs up to you to talk or help, but this isn’t fantasyland, it’s not like that in the States either. Sure, a lot of stores could stand a little more customer service, but I have experienced none of the snottiness or rudeness I had come to expect from the stereotypes.

…My plan was to have a top ten of both categories, but I couldn’t think of any other things I hated. I’m sure I will later. I also wanted to have some pictures to go along with it, but haven’t figured out the html with the blogger yet, and I don’t have all the pictures. Hopefully, I will come back to this post, and improve upon it.

When I first started writing this blog, I really wasn’t sure who I would allow to see it. Slowly I invited only my close friends and family. Now I have pretty much-invited everyone I know and am dying to have more people visit. I have installed a little hit counter and get e-mails with the number of visitors I’ve had. I can’t tell you how invigorating it is to have a high hit count! Still, no one leaves comments but a few. So if you are reading this, please leave a comment. Also, invite your friends. On the blogger home page, they list a few of their favorite bloggers. There is one guy in nearly the same situation as me. He is from the States doing a year abroad, and they have him as a blogger of note. And he’s only written like four things, and it’s been a month since he wrote! Come on people, I write a heck of a lot more than that!

Sorry for the little rant there.

Yesterday I went to a little party at Laura’s. And by the way, there are finally some pictures of our friends from the university on my webshots page. It was quite fun. Like everyone else here she has a little studio apartment and we crammed like 25 people in it. So we were all standing around talking and laughing. And of course half of it is in French with my wandering around joining in any English conversation I can find. As the night wore on everybody started just sitting on the floor. As the night wore on even more, everybody started getting quite drunk. Which was our cue to go on home.

Apparently, the party was for ‘bonfire day’ which is some wacky British holiday celebrating the capture and burning of some Catholics who tried to blow up parliament ages ago!

Today has been pretty lazy. We went to Auschan and got some groceries. Amy and I of course fought during this drudgery as we always do during shopping. This time it was over her being late as usual for our meet-up spot. I have once again sworn to never go shopping with her again.

We went to a lecture at the university last night about science and the Bible. It was presented by a science professor at a university in Australia. Luckily he did not speak French and so I got a lecture in English (of an Australian variety!). I went in expecting to have my intellect stimulated and my morals offended. Instead, I found it morally sound and intellectually offensive! It was presented by some Bible study group on campus and not the actual university. My belief is that the lecturer was afraid of offending what must have been a wide variety of religious backgrounds, that he kept his talk very tame doctrinally speaking, and rather simply intellectually speaking. The only highlight was when an obviously American girl started a tirade against the speaker because he actually did mention his personal belief that Creation was not over a literal 7-day time span. The lecturer would not spar in public though and simply stated they could talk about it after.

We went to Elizabeths last night to have an election party. It was fabulous. She cooked this huge two course meal with an appetizer and dessert! Damian and Laura were there plus Flor, a very sweet French lady who speaks very good English.

We had our time zones wrong though because we suspected to start getting election results at around midnight, but it turns out they weren’t really coming in until about 3 am! We did turn the television on and watched some French commentators talk about the election.

It was funny because they had converted their set into a mock up of the oval office. So you had these French reporters discussing the American election in a white house set! You could tell all the American news networks had all the cool people to talk to because the French kept getting these lame American people I’ve never heard of to talk with in Washington.

We took their commentary until about 1 am and hit the sack. I set my alarm to 6 am this morning to catch what I thought would be final results. Of course at 6 the results weren’t all in so I went back to bed and got up again at 7 am. Again no results, crash! Back up at 8. Urgh, still no results, that danged Ohio! It’s now 2 pm and we still don’t have a true final result. It looks like a Bush win though.

We went to Kehl, Germany yesterday. Most items are significantly less expensive in Germany than in France. And since Amy got paid we decided to go shopping. The bus only got as far as the France side of the Rhine and then stopped telling us it couldn’t go any farther due to some demonstration. So we walked. As we were walking across the river we noticed several International and German police milling about. Just over the river at what must have been an old border checkpoint there were all kinds of police standing around and blocking traffic. There were also several demonstrators of some kind holding colorful signs and a few men with gigantic cameras who must have been the press. We never did find out what the heck it was all about.

In Kehl we took a wrong turn and wound up following one of the main highways instead of turning down a side street and into the shopping areas of downtown. We got hungry so we stopped at a McDonalds for lunch. It was about as awful as the American version. Humorously though, an outside window of Mcdonald’s advertised that it had a bar and had the silhouette of naked ladies usually seen on trucker mud flaps! Fascinating!

Last night we went to the pub with Laura, her parents, and Damien. Damien and Laura are fellow teachers of English with Amy. They were talking about the lessons they did using the letters written by the British to undecided Ohio voters and the subsequent flack from those letters. If you haven’t heard about it click here (sorry that link no longer works). Anyway, Laura and Damien both had their students write similar letters as writing practice. To their horror, some of the students actually mailed the letters! If the Ohioans got that mad over Brits writing them can you imagine what they’ll do when they get similar letters from the French!?! And these are English students so their vocabulary is limited and their grammar even worse!

We were unable to get the absentee ballot for the US elections. I talked to someone at our local registration board and she didn’t have a clue as to how absentee ballots work. She transferred us to the specialist but all we ever got was voicemail. We could have downloaded the application online, but we would have to go to an internet cafe to print it, and then find somewhere to print it. Timewise we would have had to overnight the application and ultimately the ballot. In the end, we just got busy/lazy and didn’t get things done.

This morning Amy was supposed to be at her class by 8 am. She set the alarm for around 7. It went off and I remember hitting the snooze button and rolling back over. Either it went off again and I simply turned it off instead of snoozing or when I snoozed I accidentally hit the button to turn it off. Either way, it did not go off again and I awoke at about 7:40 to realize Amy was still in bed. Poor girl had to rush around and fly out the door to make it. Luckily we live about 5 minutes away from school so she wasn’t too bad off.

It is another rainy, dreary day out there today. All in all the fall has not been as bad as I suspected. We’ve had several spouts of sunshine and warm weather. This is always followed by several days of drizzling rain, but hey at least we’ve had some sun. The winter, I am afraid, will be miserable.

We are tentatively planning a ski trip in the Alps. Prices are quite expensive but if I can get the AIMers to come then individually the price won’t be too bad. We cannot actually go to the Swiss part of the Alps because our Croatian friend does not have a proper Visa. Croatia is not part of the European Union and getting a Visa for a country that is part of the Union is quite difficult. Now that he is in France (part of the Union) as a visitor it is not wise for him to leave the Union (Switzerland) and try to come back in. So we are looking at maybe hitting the mountains in Germany. Amy has never gone skiing before, and I am psyched about her learning in the Alps, even if she is not.