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Deluminated
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Name: Jessie
Country: United States
State: Oklahoma
Metro: Tulsa
Gender: Female
Interests: Poetry. Storms. Nerddom + Academic Team. Photography. Staring at the night sky. Aviation, Airports, Anywhere Far Far Away. "Me and my indie rock." Books. Roar-y.
Expertise: Converting oxygen to carbon dioxide.
Occupation: Student
Industry: Zoology+French, Chemistry
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  Interrowhimper
Member Since:
2/4/2004
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| Since I've been blogging so much on my other blog, I've been neglecting this one. I definitely recommend you read that one, but from time to time I'm going to copy a post from there to here. Here goes:
Everything you can buy in Bordeaux is smaller than almost anything you could buy in Oklahoma.
This is most frustrating where it concerns bottled beverages. It's kind of maddening where it concerns milk, as Alex has adopted it as his comfort food, and virtually every time I go looking for milk, we're out again. The last time I went to the grocery store I bought a pack of 6 cartons of milk (altogether maybe it's a gallon -- I'm not sure why they don't just put it all in one carton/bottle if they're going to package them 6 at a time). The only reason I'd been delaying purchasing milk like this is that it's stored at room temperature in the grocery store. I guess some of the milk in France is pasteurized at an ultra high temperature, which makes it okay to keep out instead of refrigerating, but that's sort of contrary to my (I'm sure) thoroughly American idea of how dairy products should be treated.
Anyway, it's not just buying beverages. It's also cars, streets, you name it. Our glasses and towels in the apartment are all sort of comically tiny. Yesterday I went to buy a laundry bag (I didn't bring one with me and got tired of having nothing to use as a laundry hamper) and found it to be about half the size that I expected it to be. Then I remembered how our washing machine has about half the capacity of the one at my old apartment in Norman, and it made a little more sense. And, I suppose, if I'm going to hang my clothes out to dry, there's only so much available space that can be dedicating to drying clothes.
I'm also beginning to feel too tall to live in this country.
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| I've been frustrated today with all of the French bureaucracy. For a detailed account of my struggles and adventures, see my other blog. For now, here's what I've learned, or marveled at, so far:
- No sales tax (or, sales tax included) - the first time I was trying to buy a power converter at Fnac, I stood in line trying to figure out whether I had enough cash, and what French sales tax would be, since it occurred to me I had no idea. I figured tax for 16%, figuring if it was even twice as much as OK sales tax I'd still have enough cash on me. And then I got to the register and realized the brilliance of things actually costing what they say they cost. Amazing.
- Escalators go up the wrong way. That is to say, if you're trying to go up on the escalator, choose the one on the left, because the one on the right will be going the wrong way. I'm not sure why this is, since people in general walk on the right and drive on the right. But escalators? Backwards.
- Lightswitches. Up means off, and down means on. It doesn't really matter, I guess. I just still walk up to light switches and try to push them the wrong direction.
- PDA. People are much freer with the affection they display in public. I think this is largely a good thing, and I am trying to keep my American awkwardness out of it.
- People aren't homophobic. Or at least in the way many Americans are. I guess maybe that's because kissing is such a social staple, but it's refreshing.
- There's so much life in the city! At all hours, people hanging out at restaurants and bars. And not just young people. There are shops all over the city. Tiny, specialty shops -- owned by people instead of corporations. Today I passed a luthier and a guy who made custom drums. And a spice shop. And any number of really cool small things that just aren't surviving in America. I hope they continue to thrive in France.
That's all.
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| A lot has been going on lately. I guess the short story is that in the last week, I visited my brother and his family in Tustin, CA; got to see Sterling and Christal for a bunch of pre-departure Rock Band in LA; drove to Dallas to hang out with, and bid farewell to, Zack; had the family going away party at my parents' house (the last dinner party I'll ever attend there!); spent a day with Hunter; showed up at home just in time to see Les come in out of the blue; and accomplished my first ever biennial flight review with Yann.
Oh, and I moved to France, where I live in an 18th century flat in downtown Bordeaux.
This is a post I wrote for my Bordeaux blog, which you can find at jctinbdx.blogspot.com. I think I'm going to copy a lot of those posts here, but I think I'll be giving that address to a lot more people than have this one. Just in case you wondered what was up. Oh, and the music? It's rising up to the apartment from the pub down the street. I can't believe this is real.
Here goes:
I woke up this morning at 6 CDT, and sort of dragged my feet to the shower and through the end of packing. We put my stuff in the car and went to Blue Moon, where I ate a delicious granola parfait. Mom and Dad drove me to the airport, where I waited for two hours to get on my plane to Houston.
The flight to Houston was uneventful. When I got there I ate a Chicago-style mini-pizza for lunch and found it to be way, way less than impressive. I waited for three hours, and then got on my plane to Paris.
I had the best flight experience ever -- I had a window seat near the middle of the plane, with no one seated next to me. I got a lot more room than I otherwise would have had to stretch out in, and I could have gotten out of my seat any time I wanted! It was a miracle. I even managed to fall asleep for about ten minutes, until the airplane started beeping relentlessly and I couldn't get there again.
I landed in Paris and-- you guessed it -- did another few hours of waiting. I wandered around looking for my gate, with the sinking feeling that my bags would never make it to Bordeaux -- after all, how could it possibly be true that I didn't need to pick them up in Paris, take them through customs, and then re-check them? That was the case, however. Customs was about the easiest thing ever. No forms and no questions at all -- not even "how are you". He didn't look at my visa, just gave me an entry stamp. I hope that's not a bad thing.
So then I had three hours to wait. Charles de Gaulle is fascinating on a couple of levels. I find it bizarre architecturally, but probably more interesting is that it has very little semblance of organization. I mean, for an airport of that size, it has completely inadequate seating, staff, and routine. The employees that, in the US, are waiting at each gate for as long as you are, seem just to flit between gates at CDG, only appearing five minutes before boarding time, with an angry line of customers on cell phones trying to upgrade their seats or catch a later flight or any number of other things. And while the staff is busy trying to handle those people, the rest of the passengers are at least thirty minutes late boarding. Which is exactly what happened to me today. So, exhausted and more irritated by the second, I stood in front of gate D54, with so many people packed so closely that when she finally DID call rows 15-36, I couldn't even GET to the gate. Boarding took 45 minutes after it started 30 minutes late.
As you can imagine, as is probably everyone's reaction when they don't have the phone number of the person picking them up, and have no idea what she looks like, and no way to communicate how very, very late they're going to be to your first meeting, I was getting pretty anxious.
I got on the plane next to a French woman with a very young son who wouldn't stop hitting or kicking me all during the flight, especially when I was trying to sleep. His mother didn't seem to care. She made sort of vague admonitions about how he shouldn't, but it wasn't very effective. Miraculously, I fell asleep seconds after takeoff. Wheels-up was the absolute last thing I remember, before I was kicked awake to see the flight attendants picking up trash and preparing the cabin for landing. And that's when the anxiety kicked back in again.
I got my bags, was was both surprising and a relief, since I really didn't want to have left them in Paris. Bernadette was waiting right at the exit from the baggage carousel, and when she saw me she instantly asked if I was me. We loaded my stuff into her Peugeot and drove straight to her hours, to have lunch with her kids. We spoke French on the way, and she was complimentary of both my speaking and my writing, and told me I shouldn't even worry about taking the DEFLE test and just take classes.
Anyway, there are three kids, probably the youngest is 15 or 16 and the oldest is somewhere around 20. We had lunch out in the garden, which is pretty much the exact image you would conjure in your head if I told you to picture the scene. The house was two stories with red shutters and grape vines growing up the walls -- complete with grapes, some of which we ate with our meal. We also had homegrown tomatoes with olive oil, slices of cantaloupe, some zucchini and eggplant, and while all of that was going on, Bernadette's son was grilling mackerel on a table next to us. Like, whole mackerel.
Those of you who know me might recognize the problem with this, since I typically draw the line at eating anythign that still has recognizable body parts -- in particular, eyes. However, I figured it was my first five minutes in France, and sort of adopted a "do as the Romans do" idea. I'm not sure the Romans eat whole mackerel, but there it is. It wasn't bad, either.
After lunch we ate some grapes from the garden and drank some coffee (they offered to make me "weak American coffee" and I declined rather adamantly -- because French coffee is delicious) and talked about the apartment and various other things. We switched back and forth between French and English a lot. Mostly they spoke among themselves in French and about half the time to me in English. Sometimes the kids would ask for clarification on what an English word meant, or which to use, and I would do the same with a French one. It was a really pleasant afternoon.
Afther that, Pauline, Augustin, Bernadette and I drove to the apartment, pointing out landmarks and resources along the way, and Bernadette walked me around explaining about things. I have a rommate until tomorrow. She's a French woman who was part of the round of tenants before me. She's not home yet, so I haven't met her, but hopefully things will go smoothly. We need to talk about changing the electricity and internet to my name, and hopefully other things.
I called my mom after Bernadette left, to assure them that I wasn't dead or anything. The apartment is 18th century construction, with a stone staircase worn dangerously smooth over generations. It has these 10 foot glass doors that open onto a wrought iron railing over the street, looking straight at the Hotel des Archives, which is a 17th century building with wisteria blooming on the second story across from my window.
I hung up with my mother and went on a search for euros and groceries, in case when the weekend happens tomorrow, I can't find anything. I succeeded in finding an ATM several times, as well as a post office near my flat and my tram stops and the cathedral and any number of interesting things. The grocery store was pretty elusive, for all that Bernadette had pointed me in its direction. I walked to where I thought it would be and didn't find it, so I sort of made a circle back to the cathedral near my place. I expanded the circle and found nothing. By this time I was getting pretty discouraged. I'd been up, by this time, for 27 hours, and not really in the mood for walking long distances, or failure. Still, I kept on.
The third time I expanded the circle, I found a supermarket called "MarchéPlus!". I started laughing. Hard. It's really funny if you consider that "Marché" can either mean "market" or be the past participle of walked. It seemed to me that the store's very name was applauding me for having walked so very much more than necessary to find it.
Exhausted and not really sure how much stuff I wanted to carry home, my grocery buying came to this: milk, cereal, butter, pasta, three bananas, some yogurt, a corkscrew, a three-euro bottle of Bordeaux, and a baguette.
Now I'm home, with the windows open and the sounds drifting up from the street. I am content, and exhausted. Trying to stay awake until bedtime, to avoid awakward jet lag...wish me luck.
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| The last few weeks have been pretty busy, but in general okay.
I moved home on August 1st. My parents came up to help me. I was feeling pretty bad so after we ate lunch at Sweet Basil they sent me to the doctor and kept packing my place for me, which was really nice of them. I got some drugs at the pharmacy and came back to help clean and check out. We drove home, ordered pizza, and watched a movie. I went to bed really early.
The next few days were pretty quiet. I took my car to the mechanic to get it fixed because it was dying at slow speeds (in parking lots). Joe came over one night and we just kind of played and talked about guitar and then he convinced me to go out with him and Paige and Rachel to Majestic. I'd never been before, and it was pretty fun even though they all said it was a really slow night.
In general I've been making arrangements to leave the country. Made appointments to see the dentist and the optometrist, bought new shoes, new suitcase, etc. Seeing as many of my friends as possible is at the top of the list. All of my Tulsa friends are either getting ready to go back to college, or leaving for the first time. It'll be very strange to be the only one back in Tulsa when I know all of my friends are starting back at OU, or wherever.
There are a lot of things and people I'm going to miss. Including this house that my parents have sold. I can't imagine how weird it's going to be to come home to somewhere else. I'm not going to like it.
Last weekend was ASK convention, and if you want an account of that I'll be glad to tell you in person sometime. Parts of it were awful, and parts of it were really fun.
Sunday night I took a nap and had a strange dream about a sorceress who had turned Zack into a lizard and then cut off his tail. My mission was to find him and restore his tail (the sorceress allowed me to choose from a pile of lizard tails and I took the one that looked most Zack-like -- knowing that only his correct tail could restore him). He was apparently a sentient lizard though and was sneaking messages to me in various ways, but nothing I had managed to decode. The sorceress had also apparently decapitated Joe, because he was just a disembodied head that I was carrying with me. When no one else was around he could talk to me though and help me plan out how I was going to get his body back and return Zack's tail to him. Through all of this we were on a TGV -- a high-speed train in France. Very strange.
Last night I dreamed ASK was an organization that kept us all imprisoned like damane in the Wheel of Time. We couldn't channel the One Power though. The whole point of the dream was trying to escape -- again, Zack was around in various guises giving me hints. I guess it makes sense in light of convention. Why Zack should have special insight about how to get me and Grace out of there, though...
Last night I watched Jaws for the first time with my parents. Since I missed Shark Week with my Dad I think I'm gonna try to netflix some shark documentaries...for old times' sake.
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| DFest was a blast. The first night I went with Shorrosh and we met my friend Jordan and her dad at the show. We saw Delta Spirit, Golgol Bordello, and the Black Crowes, and then I went home and collapsed exhausted into bed.
Saturday I read most of the day until Joe came over to hang out, and we cooked some chicken with mango pico and some couscous and then ran out to meet Shorrosh to buy his wristband off of him. We taped it on Joe and he and I went to see RaRaRiot (awesome, and about to start work on another album at last), Rooney (pretty lame -- their lead singer needs rock star lessons pretty badly), Blue October and Cake.
Blue October surprised me by being my favorite act of the evening. I hadn't really listened to them since the summer I turned 17, and in retrospect I figured their music would probably not be something that still interested me. It was still fun to hear songs I used to live, and they definitely put on an entertaining show. The highlight was when, during the chorus of "Into the Ocean" which mostly consists of the repetition of "let the rain come down", it started raining. Better than that was that it stopped raining immediately after the song and didn't start again all night.
We stood around and waited for Cake, with people smoking pot and pushing and shouting on all sides. There were two very obnoxious men behind us that I wish we'd been further from. It was like 20 degrees hotter in the crowd that it was a foot above our heads -- you could feel a really obvious difference by putting an arm in the air. In the end, I was pretty cranky by the time Cake came on and, unlike my expectation of Blue October, I found that I like Cake a lot less than I used to. It all sounded the same, and the lead singer's crowd antics were beginning to get on my nerves. He was the only one who said anything or seemed interested -- the members of the band were all at least 15 feet from one another on stage. It didn't even seem like a band. It seemed like the singer, who played guitar on like three tracks but otherwise just stood there looking silly, had hired a few random guys for the night.
One of the best things about DFest this year was that my car DIDN'T get towed this time.
Today, I got news that my visa came in -- which is awesome, as it means I can stop worrying about that particular issue.
Tomorrow is my last day working at the museum. I guess I'll elaborate on that another time -- there is studying to be done.
This album makes me think of autumn. Every time I hear it, it feels like time to walk to yoga with Zack.
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