I apologize for having written so little the past several days. This past week a group from Harding University came over and I spend most of my time with them. Each morning I tagged along as they split into group and distributed flyers throughout the neighborhoods. Every evening they held a meeting which Amy and I also attended. So, from about 8 in the morning until 11 or 12 at night I was very busy, excepting maybe a few hours in the afternoon. And even this time was often spent either doing my French homework or attending class.

To have spent the last 8 months doing absolutely nothing, it was quite a shock to the system to suddenly be busy for 12 hours a day.

On Saturday we all did some visiting. We went to the only concentration camp in France. It was not a place of mass execution for the Jews but rather a work camp for German criminals and members of the French resistance. Yet still, thousands of people were malnourished, tortured, experimented upon, and murdered. It was a very harrowing experience. One I’ll not likely forget.

After the camp, we visited a castle. It was used for defensive/military purposes so was not nearly as beautiful or ornate as other castles in France, but it was still quite interesting.

In a day or two I shall post a more extensive entry about these two sites, along with some photographs. For now, I wanted to chime in, since the blog has gone to neglect over the last several days.

On Saturday, my friend Ann, was baptized. She wanted to do it old school style in a lake. So, we jaunted off to the local water hole. It went off, more or less, without a hitch, but it was by far the oddest baptism I have ever attended.

Just as she was being dunked we noticed the posted sign stating that in this section of the lake it is forbidden to swim or be in the water. So her first act as a Christian was to break the local law!

This being a public lake, and in the free thinking land of France, many of the ladies (young and old) were bathing in the sun without a top. It was quite an odd experience to take part of a religious ceremony and then to walk a few yards and see naked breasts!

She wanted to have a picnic afterwards, and so we walked around finding a non naked spot of land in which we could lunch. Many family members were present, and being both French and non Christians they brought plenty of wine. There are no strict rules in the church against partaking in a little wine, but most American versions make a big frown at the big A(lcohol). As the wine and champagne was offered around there were a lot of red faced shakes of the head.

I thought some of the American missionaries-in-training were going to drop dead on the spot, with all of that hedonism afoot. Me, I began to think that France was finally doing something right!

We finally saw Revenge of the Sith on Tuesday. I have decided that I will not be writing any kind of review. I am well behind on my review writing, and there are only about 18 billion reviews of this movie elsewhere.

I will say that I rather liked it. I went in with rather low expectations and was rather delighted that the film was actually pretty good. The dialogue was pretty rotten, of course. The acting was much better than the last two, but this isn’t really saying much. I’d say the talented cast did a fair job of acting and a very decent job of making poor writing tolerable. The action was good, if sometimes poorly filmed. Too many close-ups, too many fights in cramped spaces.

As a long-time fan, it was an often moving experience witnessing scenes that I have dreamed of seeing for many a year.

We went to Kehl again today. I bought some blank CDs (50 for 10 Euros!). We have quite a collection of blank discs to take back with us now. With my obsession for downloading live music, my obsession for taking pictures of every conceivable thing twice, and our tendency to burn the discs we borrow from the library, we’ve managed to fill two spindles full of burned disks.

I was also a very good husband today. I generally loathe shopping, especially with Amy. It has gotten to the point where I generally refuse to go with her because it usually ends up in a fight. Today I let her cut loose and look at every little thing her heart desired. We went from store to store browsing everything and trying on more than I care to remember. I even let her pick out one outfit and make the purchase.

German dressing rooms are a bit less private than their American counterparts. They have individual little booths for everyone to change clothes, but they are right on the floor, as opposed to a side room. Most of the little booths have big curtains that theoretically cover up the entire booth. However, in reality, they are too bulky to shut properly and wind up leaving little cracks in them. The point here is that my wife went into a booth and changed, leaving me standing in the middle of a women’s clothing store all by myself. There I stand trying to look like I’m not looking, while catching all kinds of hateful glances from the other ladies, all thinking ‘what a perv.’ To feel better, and to prove I wasn’t some wandering pervert, but a nice guy taking his gal shopping, I would periodically lean my head into Amy’s booth making observations on her clothing picks.

Amy got her hair cut this evening. It cost a good fortune, but it looks very cute. It’s much shorter than before and is actually just about my length now. Which makes us either really cute or nauseatingly so.

It has been achingly hot here. I knew this would happen when we were all complaining about the general chilly and rainy weather a few weeks ago. It wouldn’t be so miserable if France had learned about the modern technology called an air conditioner. That’s not really true, they know what air conditioning is, I’ve felt it inside the nicer shopping centers. They just don’t equip their apartments with it.

Yes, I am a wimp. Yes, people lived without air conditioning for years and years. Yes, millions of people still live perfectly fine lives without air conditioning in much hotter climates. I am weak, I am a wuss. I want my air conditioning! Amy and I lay on opposite sides of the bed not daring to get near enough to touch, for that would bring too much heat. We sweat, we moan, we complain. Eventually, we nod off and dream of icebergs.

Originally written on May 23, 2005

We have spent the last two days finalizing our “last hurrah.” A few weeks ago we booked the packaged Ireland tour, the flights to and fro, and a place to sleep in Barcelona. It was there we stopped because we were unsure as to where we would like to spend a few days in France. In doing so over the last couple of days, one of the great differences between me and my wife came to light in the most unflattering way.

Amy is a researcher. For the last 6 weeks or so, she has been researching the details of this Barcelona to Strasbourg vacation. She got out all her maps and scoured the entire country for interesting cities. She wore out our guidebook and sifted through the internet for information regarding any and all places to visit. If a city exists with something minutely interesting to see, she found it, researched it, and planned out a possible visit.

She took notes. She searched train schedules, cross-referencing other possible stops to ensure the best possible times and routes. She marked, checked, and rated every city, village, and hut throughout the entire country.

She didn’t, however, make any type of decision. Amy is fantastic at research, and terrible at decision-making. She wants to see EVERYTHING. So, after weeks of looking, she was no closer to having a plan than when she began.

I am the opposite. I make decisions quickly, and sometimes, rather hastily. I sat down last night, after Amy had spent several hours reviewing and revising her notes, and started planning our voyage. We bought a Eurorail pass. Basically, we can travel anywhere in Spain and France on five separate days within a two-month period. We can make multiple stops during one travel day, but once that day is over, so is the day’s ticket. Now, I know we want to go to Paris for a couple of days, and we will be returning to Strasbourg. Two tickets are gone, right there. That left us three travel days.

Looking at Amy’s notes I quickly surmised that she wanted to visit the Southern province of Provence. I quickly chose a city that seemed interesting and was far enough away from the highly crowded beach resorts. Montpelier is the name. From there Amy gave me two choices for our next stop. Skimming the pages in the guidebook I again quickly decided on Arles because it contains both some Roman ruins and was where Van Gogh lived for a time. Our next stop was easy because we had already decided we wanted to travel to Tours so that we could do some castle tours.

In a manner of 15 minutes, I had made decisions that Amy had been killing herself over for weeks.

She was not particularly happy with my quick decision-making. Yet, she was not sure in which manner to attack me. Her first approach was to complain that it seemed like we were rushing from place to place too quickly. It is true that we were planning to see a lot of countryside in a very short amount of time. It is the nature of this type of traveling. I explained that with this type of tour, we had to move quickly through each city in order to see more things. On several occasions we will be traveling to a city in the morning, touring in the afternoon, and then traveling to the next city that evening. We simply don’t have the money or the time to spend a long time in each city. Besides, many of these smaller cities can easily be toured in a day, and any extra stay would become dull.

Without pausing for the irony, she then complained that we weren’t seeing enough cities. I reminded her that she just complained that we were moving too quickly and that it certainly wouldn’t slow us down to add more cities onto the itinerary. There is little leeway to add more days to our tour because we simply have to get back in order to pack up and fly back to the States. She then accepted my explanations, though adding in some sulk.

I must admit that Amy did a marvelous job of researching everything, which made my job of decision-making so much easier.

The difference noted here, highlights the general differences in our life outlook. Amy is very thorough, detail-oriented, and great at research. When she goes grocery shopping she looks over every single item of food. She checks the ingredients, net weight, and price and then compares each with similar items in the aisle. After a close inspection of each item, she then picks one out for purchase. It’s the same in clothes shopping. She inspects each rack, checking out styles, sizes, and colors. She runs a mental check for matching items already in her closet, then keeps an eye out for additional matches within the store. She chooses a large selection of potentials and tries them on. The try-ons get sorted into stacks according to their cuteness, price, and how they fit. When items do not fit just right they are taken back and different sizes are sought out. This goes on for eternity. It doesn’t even matter if she actually has money to make the purchase, she will look for hours with no intention of actually walking out of the store with anything.

This wears me out to no end. When I shop, I do a slow walk through my section. If something catches my eye I pull it out checking price, size, and wearability. If I get a match on all three, I will take it in for a one-time tryout. I have never flipped through all the clothes within a rack. If I dig one item on the rack I will give it a good once over and then move on. If it takes me more than half an hour to shop for clothes I am disheartened.

It is like this in nearly everything. Amy is thorough and detailed. Which reads slow to me. I am quick and decisive. Which reads rash to Amy.

Despite these differences, we manage to get along quite nicely. I let her go shopping with the girls, and she lets me make the final decision on where we’re going to vacation.

—

On top of the two-day long process of reserving our vacation the rest of the day was rather lousy. I had a horrible French class due mainly to my bad attitude stemming from the vacation planning. I have also moved up a level, so to speak, in my language learning. I suddenly feel like I am back on day one. The last several weeks have been mainly reviewing lessons on what I have already studied. These lessons make me feel good about my language acquisition. I actually seem to know the answers. Now that I’ve been upgraded, everything is new again. The vocabulary has expanded, and the grammar has become more difficult. My head is sullenly resting in my hands again, and my answers become disenchanted mumbles.

After class, I did the unfortunate thing of checking my credit card balance. Not good! I hate debt. I hate being in debt. Europe has slowly depleted our savings and put us in a great deal of debt. We’re certainly not broke. We will manage quite nicely. Bills will be paid and payments will be made on the card. It just feels miserable to feel like you owe a huge amount.

To top things off I missed seeing Star Wars. I intentionally put off seeing the film this weekend because I was going to see it with Daniel tonight. He did not want to see it with 8 million other folks this weekend, and I agreed to hold off until Monday night. Unfortunately, something came up and he was unable to go anyway. We got to the theatre only to find that our scheduled showing was in French. The next English language showing wasn’t until much later. By the time much later rolled around, Amy decided she was too pooped to view.

There is always tomorrow, I suppose.

Amy’s department at the university had a picnic yesterday evening. Well, first they had a game of football (that’s soccer to us Yanks) which Amy and I were conveniently very late to, causing us to have to sit out and not play. The picnic was a very casual affair with everyone bringing their favorite dishes and sitting right smack on the grass. We had lots of quiches, pastas and vegetables. There was plenty of wine and beer to go around. The French mindset on the consumption of alcohol is very much different than the American concept. The only people drinking water or juice was the smallest of children. When Amy got up and poured a glass of orange juice she was heralded with a barrage of questions and jokes.

“You put vodka in that right?”

“What are you doing? Oh no, we’re out of wine!?!”

And so forth.

They literally could not understand an adult woman not guzzling down wine or beer with her meal.

We packed our first bag today. Our American friend, Pamela, is flying back to the States to be at her brother’s wedding. She kindly offered to take one of our suitcases along with her. She can ship it to Amy’s folks at a cost much less than we could do the same from France. We’re working on a few other folks who will be making similar trips in the next few months. It’s not that we’ve accumulated that much additional stuff while here. But, the French airline is stricter with luggage limitations than the American airlines were when we came here.

It feels weird to be packing things up in preparation for our return.

Once upon a time, Amy and I both purchased monthly tram passes. The idea was that we were both riding the tram enough to justify buying a pass. It was cheaper that way, instead of buying a ticket for each ride. The monthly pass is a driver’s license kind of deal; with pictures, electronic devices for to validate the pass for each ride, and a nice little plastic casing. Anyways, due to the sunshine and warmth of the season, I have opted to not renew my pass. I walk pretty much everywhere now. Amy has kept hers though, because she gets a student discount which makes it still worth the cash.

To renew the pass you simply have to find one of the ticket machines, insert your card and pay for a new month. The other day while she was doing this, we noticed an option in which you could buy 30 tickets for 30 Euros. This is a rather good deal since normally the tickets cost 1.20 Euro per ticket. We decided to go ahead and make this deal a reality figuring I’d use up the 30 tickets by the time we need to leave France. We were quite surprised when, after paying for the 30 tickets, no tickets came forth. It turns out the 30 tickets are actually not tickets at all. They loaded Amy’s card with 30 passes. This does me absolutely no good because the card is in her name. We are not sure yet whether or not the 30 passes will forward themselves into next month since she has already paid for the month of May. My suspicions are that they will not and that even though she is paid up for May, each time she validates the pass it will take another ticket off of her stockpile.

That’s 30 Euros out the window.

In better news, spring is back. After a week of rather cool, rainy weather, the sun came back out and the temperature rose. My tan is getting darker.

I went to a screening of The Wild Bunch last night. The local art house is doing a month of classic westerns. Amy was unable to go due to some poor planning with cooking a chicken. Instead, I went with my friend Flore. I had never seen it before, and it was great to catch it on the big screen. A review, will no doubt, be forthcoming.

As I have mentioned before on Mondays we often go to the local Irish pub to sit around with the English students and Amy’s coworkers. Last Monday was the best time I’ve ever had there. I’m usually not a big fan of the event. I don’t really know most of the students, and though it is an event meant for everyone to practice their English, it usually happens that everyone speaks French. So, I sit, sipping my Coke, feigning some kind of interest. This past occasion was different. Oh, there was still quite a bit of French spoken, but it didn’t bother me so much. Now that I am but weeks away from leaving France, I have gotten to know a number of French students fairly well. Or at least well enough to converse with them without much awkwardness. In moving from state to state over the last several years, I have found this to be the way of life. You spend the first several months living in a new place feeling kind of bummed out that you don’t know anyone, only to really enjoy yourself amongst friends right before you leave.

My wife is currently out seeing Million Dollar Baby without me. The louse! She had class all day today, and my memory said that she isn’t usually home until around 5 or so. So, a little after lunch I took off to the park, once again. I seem to be quite addicted to park strolling. I hate to rub it in again, but I really love not working and living in France. Anyways, I returned home to find a note from the wife explaining that she had gone to see the film. It’s a movie she didn’t really want to see anyway! Why couldn’t she wait for me? I guess that’s what I get for not being home. Actually, I think it is payback for yesterday.

Yesterday, I woke up feeling rather nauseated and dizzy. I laid in bed awhile, and by lunch time the nausea had turned into just an upset stomach, and the dizziness was a pounding headache. A little later, I felt rather fine. We were going to church at 2 in the pm, but I decided to skip it. You see Sunday was another French holiday, and the trams were not running. Daniel had agreed to pick us up and drop us home afterward, but I didn’t want to get there, only to feel ill again and have to make someone take me home early. So, Amy took off to the supposed meeting spot without me.

Twenty minutes or so later and I was feeling rather good, and rather bored. I decided some fresh air would do me good. As always, my feet led me straight to the park, where I spent a good two and a half hours sitting in the shade. I came home to find a very upset Amy asking me where I had been. Apparently, she never met up with Daniel because I got the meeting place wrong. After 45 minutes of waiting she came home expecting a sick husband, and finding an empty apartment. She called Daniel, who sent Tammy because Amy broke down on the phone. Tammy sat with Amy calming her down and then left her here at home. Needless to say, she was not pleased.

I felt like a boy with his hand in the cookie jar. I tried to explain that I had felt better and decided to take a walk. I hadn’t meant for it to be such a long absence, but there it was. The doghouse is where I stayed for a good while. And now she’s seeing the movie without me.

I have so many pictures of flowers, it is ridiculous. As stated I travel to the park often. I always take my camera with me and I always take a ton of pictures. Even though I’ve pretty much covered the entire park in pictures several times over, I can’t help but take more. I’ve always been a flower fan, and the ones at the park are so gorgeous I get swept up in their beauty and take more and more pictures. Maybe I’ll post another one here.

It has been quite sunny here the last couple of days. Having a couple(!) of days off from work, I went to the park and relaxed with a book. Today I even managed three parks!

I’ll explain. I was stuck in the house all morning, washing dishes, cleaning up a little, and basically piddling around. Amy was gone for several hours at school working. When she got back we washed clothes and had lunch. By this time I was really jonesin’ to go outside and enjoy the day. Amy, being Amy, she thought she might like to go with me, but just wasn’t sure at the moment. How anyone can not be sure whether or not they want to take a walk is beyond me, but Amy moves at a pace that is not my own.

After some heated discussion, we finally decided that I would go out then, and maybe later we’d check out a little park on the other side of town. So, I grabbed my camera and headed out the door. I let my feet do the walking, which generally leads me to the Orangerie Park. I go there so often that I’ve pretty much-photographed everything possible, so I just took a quick walk around. I next decided to walk to what I have dubbed “Laura’s Park,” dubbed so because it is close to our friend Laura’s home, and she’s admitted to visiting it often. There isn’t much to photograph there, so I again just walked around it, enjoying life. I took the long walk home, returning after about 2 and a half hours of sun baking.

Shortly thereafter, Amy and I did indeed check out another park. It is on the other side of town, just behind Auchan. It has a little lake and there were lots of kiddies swimming, old men in Speedos, and contrary to popular opinion, no topless women. We sat on the bench for a good while enjoying the surf and sun.

All of this is to say, that I am one toasted fellow. I now joke that I am going to come home thin, sporting long hair (I haven’t cut my hair since being in France) and with a deep, dark tan. No one will recognize me!

We’ve just about figured out our travel plans for the summer. It looks as though we are going to head to Barcelona for a few days and slowly meander through France making out way home after a week or so. I will really miss not being able to tour Ireland, or see Prague, but we just can’t afford to see everything, so cuts had to be made. Oh well, this gives us a good excuse to come back.