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Word up, kids. I recently got back from what has been entitled "Winter Vacation," which is a sorrily disguised excuse for a ski vacation for people who had family to visit over Christmas. Sorrily disguised, greatly appreciated.
I spent a week in Paris chez Robert (read: "shay Ro-bear"), which turned out to be an extremely good time. Not that I ever expected otherwise.
It turned out to be an excellent opportunity to hang out and act immature with Ro-bear as well as to see crazy international friends from summer. Fortunately, the groups were able to meet and become friends themselves, which is always a good thing. Also, we got to (briefly) see Meadow, which guarantees fun and amusing conversation. Tourism was sort of an afterthought, but I did manage to go to Fountainebleau, which is a rather interesting castle about 40 minutes outside of Paris. On my final night, we had a party together at my friend Daniele's and Sophia's apartment (sorry, I think I forgot the grammar rules for possessives in the case of multiple persons. Me teach English? That's unpossible!). It was quite the good time, and I had to sprint off to catch my night train to Biarritz/Hendaye.
Early Friday morning, I arrived in Hendaye, France, just at the border with Spain. I slept in the train station and consumed a stupid quantity of bananas before catching a little train to San Sebastian, where Marta and father Javier picked me up. I stayed with them for the weekend and was blown away by the views available in and around San Sebastian. Marta had always talked about how cool the city was, but of course I never took the word of a Fake Spaniard. It turned out she didn't lie, and we had a really good time. It was, as always, awesome to see Marta-quita again. It doesn't matter where we meet up, it's always a joy to hang out with her. I dare say we could have fun in...College Station, Texas. HAHAHA. Me laugh hard.
Also, Marta's mother, as promised, is an awesome cook. Two things I will briefly note: 1)once for dessert we had strawberries floating in this white chocolate pudding type of thing, and 2) we had squid filled with veggies as well as rice covered in a sauce consisting of the ink of the squid. Probably like most Americans, I had no idea you could consume the ink. It's black and rather strange looking, but it tastes delicious! I think I once described cow dung in the same way.

I've been back for a few days since the "vacances" and the "propriétaire" has been turbo nice to me ever since I mentioned that I considered moving. We'll see what happens, and I'll keep you updated on the situation.

Ro-bear is currently on a night train from Paris and is tracking his location with his damn GPS phone as he approaches Toulouse. He'll be here in the morning and will stay here until Tuesday. As is the case when we get together, we will likely have fun doing anything and everything, including (but not limited to) speaking stupid French, watching movies that apparently only we like, and possibly a ghetto camping trip in the Midi-Pyrenees region. If there's no update to this blog in about 10 days, you can either assume that the latter did not end well, or you can consider that winter doesn't truly end until March 20. The French and I may just be on vacation until then.

But not this one

To begin with, lately I've been listening to a Smashing Pumpkins song called "Muzzle" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA8th9vUA48 - also, note how disenchanted with life James Iha looks while playing guitar) that I feel echoes my current sentiments regarding my situation and life in general:

"I fear that I'm ordinary, just like everyone [...]
My life has been extraordinary,
Blessed and cursed and won."

For someone who always considered himself to be somewhat intelligent, I feel like the college and post-university experiences are continually proving the contrary. As a child, it seemed I had a formidable memory, able to recall all sorts of statistics from my collection of baseball and football cards as well as my time spent watching sports. I could picture famous sports plays in my head with an almost photographic-like memory. Furthermore, I was a pretty good speller, capable of reading a word once in a book and later talk about the meaning and provide the spelling. At some point, however, it appears this began to go downhill to the point that I feel I am below average, and I feel it was almost certainly in the post-high school era.

In engineering, we were taught that memorization was (almost) never important. All of the information we would ever need was available in books, and it was simply enough to understand the procedure necessary to solve a problem. As a result, I think I quit caring about memorizing anything, and I sometimes would go into tests feeling like I knew nothing and would rely on the ability to solve a problem correctly when I came across it. Apparently, this worked well, but to the detriment (I feel) of memorization skills. Unfortunately, the latter is rather important in learning a language, in learning history, etc. Thus, I often come across new words in French while reading and have to look them up multiple times in the dictionary, even when I write them down. Being a visual learner, it's often worse when speaking to people. They begin to think I'm stupid with the number of times I need a word repeated, unless of course a particularly memorable context eliminates this need. This has been quite frustrating, but perhaps it would have been just the opposite had I studied something else, and I would still find myself complaining.

On the other hand, however, all things considered, my life to this point has been somewhat extraordinary. I've been blessed to have some awesome people around me, and also to experience some incredible things. With my family, friends, and the amount of traveling and things I've seen, I certainly cannot complain. It's been a sweet ride, and hopefully the excitement continues on down the line, although I do fear that getting old and boring is at some point inevitable.

Yes, I wore these underpants yesterday

All this time to make amends. What do you do when all your enemies are....French?

This week, you will be generously provided with a direct translation, courtesy of Babelfish, of my French blog entry. The purpose is to give you an idea of the type of English I hear on a regular basis while also providing a demonstration of the deterioration of my own speaking abilities as I begin to speak more and more in direct translations. I have made some minor changes to render the text legible, as we know online translations are not of the highest quality (and neither is my French). In doing this, we all get an experience of a different type of English, and I keep up the normal blog. Thus, we all benefit magnificently from this experiment, with the only downside being that reading the blog becomes an irritating, borderline painful experience for you, the reader. Good idea, right? Original text available at http://espritailleurs.blogspot.com/

Even if I did not work but 7 hours this week, I stays occupied. My courses had passed rather well, and I made a small observation: I cannot to prevent myself from laughing each time a pupil uses the words " Big Boss" to describe someone very able to do an activity. Where did they learn that? Apparently the Big Boss of humour learned them how in order to make me laugh.

Soon I will have 3 hours of course private per week. Being given the lack of work as assistant to the high school and middle school, I think that this one is a good opportunity. Moreover, I prefer to work with small groups.

I am on holiday now, and Wednesday evening (feb 11) I leave to Paris for one week at Robert's. For Maria, the assistant of Spanish, that will be her first time. For me, it is rather a week to spend time with Robert and other pals at Paris. Then, I will go to Marta's in San Sebastian. Sweet. I impatiently wait to be able to see them.

There are 5 or 6 days ago, I entered the kitchen towards 18:00 to nibble a little bit. There, I find my owner, who has an astonished air to see me. Good evening, Madam. I live here since 3 months, and I call myself Greg. Yes, it goes well, and no, the weather is not too cold for me.
In any event, she asks to me whether I eat already. " No," I say, and in a funny manner I add, "I just to buy gouda (cheese), and now I often want to taste it!"

Oy… She says to me that is not a problem, and I can take my snack, but the gouda is not the best cheese. Hmm, of agreement, but I did not ask you for your opinion, Madam. I try to defuse the situation with a joke and one is in a cheese debate. How this is French! Nevertheless, I think that she do not like my gouda because of the fact that this comes from the Netherlands, and not La Belle France (called LBF hereafter). Pff, I have nothing of that to make.

Since this meeting, I finished my gouda....and there is a reason that this cheese is called gouda. It is more " good" than all others! In short, I was at Lidl (a grocery store) there are 3 days, and I decided to test a new cheese which calls itself "Edam." As you can guess well, it is a cheese of the Netherlands. To make a small revolt against my owner and LBF, I have a half kilo (about a pound) of Dutch cheese in the refrigerator...and each evening, I eat very small little, so that can remain there for a long time.

Today, I stays washing my clothing by hand in the bathroom when I heard a sound in the room just next to my bathroom. Considering that I had used much water, I lowered the volume of my music (Foo Fighters, of course), and moved back towards my room in order to pretend to not have been doing anything. However, there, I heard the voice of my owner in the room right beside mine. Similar to the battle of Dunkirk, I was there, encircled there by the forces of the enemy. I could not what make. Rather than to leap by the window, I remained quiet. After a few moments (in which the heart beat quickly), the attack was inexplicably stopped. Fortunately, I had dodged a confrontation.

I recently wrote an email to the director of this program of housing, and it seems that I will move at the end of February. However, I am supposed to write a letter to the family almost a month in advance by saying that I will not any more live here. I do not know if I must describe my reasons, but they know well that I remain in France until May. Perhaps I can say that my dog died, and it is necessary me to attend the burial, even if this last takes place one month after the event? Fortunately, I am on holiday now, and I will be soon in Paris at Mr. Robert's. On the other hand, it nonetheless means that I must spend one week in this apartment after the holidays. That could be a delicate stay, not? Nevertheless, I do not worry. When I am of return, I will ask cordially "Thank you well for addressing me as vous" (the more formal "you" in French), all the while filling the refrigerator with kilos and kilos of cheeses of Netherlands origins.

**I do not mean to slander my host family in any way. They are nice people, but the fact is that I do not enjoy the circumstances in which we have to coexist. When writing about this, I am merely expressing my discomfort with my living situation. Our relations are in no way hostile, just humorously uncomfortable.**