Everything I've been meaning to write

Argh we're way too low on time for me to do this properly! Here's the current situation: Today is Friday afternoon. Tomorrow at ridiculous AM I leave Marseille airport (Check in 6:45) and fly to Paris for two days then fly out of Paris at 11am Monday morning and finally come home Tuesday night :) SO between then and now I need to organise everything I need for my two days solo in Paris as well as dump the collection of untold stories on you before it I a) forget them or b) it reaches that slightly awkward length of time ago where it makes no sense to tell the story now. Thus, without further ado, here are some really brief, completely sporadic stories for you!

I am genuinely just going to pull out whatever I think of as I think of it...

1. Crepes.

I am somewhat worried about my addiction to crepes, particularly with nutella on top. It's like someone took drugs, threw them into a batter and then layered it with chocolate drugs. Except better. One night here we made a stack of crepes which resembled the layer of pancakes that always looked so full of cartoony goodness from my childhood Danish cartoon Rasmus Klump.

Don't be fooled by his indeterminate animal type and/or questionable style of walking.
He's a total badass.

The table was laden with every topping in the world. It was an epic night.

The resemblance is uncanny!

Is that Nutella I see? DON'T MIND IF I DO! :D

Somewhat relevant to this is my love of spreading things onto the fresh baked bread over here. My habit of doing this during every meal has earned me the French nickname of "Tartiner" over here thanks to Patrick's constant happy teasing about me doing this. Which is fine :) I call him ecrouer because whenever I sit tartiner-ing it up, he sits and eats these with me.

Dammit, every time I think I'm going to tell really short stories it turns into a mammoth post. But, then again, how boring would it be if I just said "1. I ate crepes. I ate a lot of crepes." when you could be hearing all about my childhood memories about a bear (?) who seemed to like pancakes almost as much as me... Oh and it's not just in the house I ate crepes. One afternoon I went to a shopping center and after I'd been looking through all the Christmas stuff for long enough I found a cafe, ordered three nutella crepes and sat and read there for the rest of the afternoon. It was awesome. Also because everyone here is really quite nice when I smile and have fun speaking French, the waiters there gave me a free drink and spent a while chatting to me. Plus I had crepes! :) Tonight as my farewell meal Celine's organised a dinner at a Crepe restaurant, I was so touched (touched and mainly just really excited to eat more crepes) :D (ha! I just went to scroll up to the top of this post to rename it "crepes" and then I saw I'd already given it that very simple and eloquent title. I am awesome.)

2. People here drive like maniacs.

I may have already touched on this, but I have to rehash how bizarre it is that people here just drive all over the lines. If there's no one else around they'll just drive in the middle of the road or even if there ARE people around they'll just move from lane to lane, drive in the middle of the lanes etc with no indicating. It's a little surreal and worrying. Oh and for no reason I'll seize this topic to note how tired I am of sitting in the back of two door cars hahaha long legs are getting to be a pain and it's really very difficult to make getting out of the back look graceful.

3. We went to the mountains!

This has to be one of the coolest weekends ever, and it actually does sound like a fairytale location. We all piled into two cars, drove through beautiful countryside for a few hours till we hit serious countryside country. Rusty abandoned petrol stations, axemen, cows...stuff like that. After bustling around one of the last shops we'd see for a few km's and collecting up a weekends supply of food, we drove up the mountain and arrived at the most beautiful little mountain log cabin.

This fireplace was our saviour after the walk through the snow.
Plus it made the pine log cabin smell so good and deeply of hot wood.

For one weekend the only company the mountain had was six 20-something-year-olds trekking for hours through the pine forest up up UP till we reached SNOW!

 I was so stupidly excited about this and started running and clapping and then threw snow at my friends when they weren't excited enough for my liking :) that quickly got them caught up in the fun of SNOW. It was only a touch and it was too icy to do much with, but it was crunchy and fun to walk on, and it was enough to get my soul dancing around enjoying the moment.

Thew views were breathtakingly amazing. I took some video of it but even that will be hard pressed to do the experience justice. This was definitely one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to and I could have breathed in the views for years. Alas! Night was swiftly swooping in to freeze our bursting lungs and sniffling noses so we began to hours long walk home. By the end we could all feel the burn in our legs and butt even though we couldn't feel our fingers and I think we basically inhaled three pots of hot chocolate.

Hallo Christmas Card :)

Dinner was delicious as always over here (I've been so spoilt with deliciousness) but there was something especially beautiful about sharing it with just these other young people for one weekend in the mountains. Everyone cooking together, the food tasting so much better when you've been cold and hungry, lots of laughter and good cheer. Oh and Christmas beer. Yeah. You heard me!

The night wore on with dessert, coffees, dancing in the hallway whenever you walked past the tv while cleaning up (it's a rule!) and then an attempt at playing Star Wars Risk in French. After a very lengthy highly strategic set up and ages of reading rules out loud, debating, translating and arguing we decided this game made absolutely NO sense, even to the people who could speak French and we just randomly attacked each other for a few turns then couldn't keep our eyes open for long enough to continue and had to sleepily lumber upstairs and tumble into the warm squashy beds in the warm loft. The weekend continues in this amazing cosy awesome fashion. Also I want to include this because I find it funny.

The next day at lunch we found our coke had frozen. Inside. Yeah, I know!
Natural ice cubes! :)

It was a really wonderful weekend devoid of technology (and English) with nature and snow :) I'll never forget that for a little while I was allowed to fall into a fairy tale and play around in the snow.

4. Pubs at night in Aix

One of my favourite night time activities over here has been going out in Aix with Manue to the pubs. This is for a mix of reasons. One, Aix is drop dead gorgeous, this place has history that Australia is just to young appreciate (like a highschooler trying to appreciate a good scotch, Ninja turtles, ghostbusters or the real value of never needing to buy toilet paper), two, there's a huge range of really awesome pubs here, three, everyone here is really friendly and it genuinely feels safe to chat to people without worrying about them being seedy and/or dangerous but four, and mainly, Manue is a hilarious badass when it comes to busting down social boundaries. She will always just rope us straight into a conversation with a group of people and that seems completely normal over here! There is zero hesitation with walking into a bar, straight over to a group of men and sitting down and saying HEY can we sit with you? :) What's up, this is Lisa, can you speak English? No? No problem! She speaks French now anyway. What are you guys doing tonight?

I utterly love this confidence and the approach since we've met so many interesting people and had so much more fun than we would have if we'd just sat and had a drink chatting alone. Be aware timid Australian female (and male I guess) friends, I fully intend to bring this behavior back to Aus with me.

This also segways into the story of our Dice game last night which was one hell of a funny weird night. I won't go into too much detail but suffice to say it started with me asking the bartender to make up six options for my drink and rolling the die to chose from these choices and, from a list of simple things like a beer, a martini etc I instead landed on number 3; 10 shots.

This might have hit me pretty hard if I hadn't JUST eaten my body weight in pasta.
I'm actually a little shocked I didn't get drunk from this.

The game continued as we met a range of strangers that we had to bait into playing the game with us and included a lot of hilarious activities, clothes swapping, singing, dancing, questions and spontaneous conversations ending with a completely bizarre straightforward yet complex situation which I will always marvel at the amazingness of. Yeah, I know I'm being very vague, :P so? It was a bizarre hilarious fun night that I'll never forget.

5. Other random walk

I'm running low on time now, we're going out to dinner pretty soon so prepare for my eloquence to plummet. I WENT ON A WALK. IT WAS LOVELY. Hehe. This was a few days ago and I had fun walking somewhere completely new, hoping a fence and scrambling through an abandoned house, suddenly hearing a person and getting shit-scared that some homeless person was about to find me and kill me, running...running hard until I ended up in a really beautiful river, sneaking through bushes like a ninja till I reached the road again and then walking off down a different path. 

I found the other side of the creek/river and a quiet place under a tree overlooking the lake and spent an hour just lying looking at the branches and the sky listening to music and thinking.

I could just sink into the Earth here and die... mmmmm dying... wait, that's probably morbid. Eh, oh well, I'm comfy.
Note these were not my real thoughts. Get real, as if you want to know what really goes on in there...

6. Super Frog

I ate superfrog legs tonight (If you don't know what superfrog legs are, they're just normal frog legs except with a reference to yet another old childhood memory of mine that I get to bask in and force you to bask in. BASK IN IT. BASK IN THE GLORY! *throws bucket of memory all over crying reader*). They were actually really pretty delicious, really frustrating to eat since they're so small and the proportion of bones:meat made it very slow to obtain nutrition, but pretty tasty.

I aslo mentioned the eating of Escargo one night...right? No? WHAT? How have I been so remise! Consider yourself hereby informed of the fact that I have eaten snails as well. They were freaking delicious with garlic butter. I'm not joking, we need this to become part of Australia's culture too...

I have no childhood cartoon character to reference for this sorry.
I can invent one though. Let's call him Trillo the snail. He liked well priced stamps and picnics with his friends. Fin.

7. A rule I would like to instigate

If you are NOT single and attractive, you should not be allowed out at night. I think all people in couples should be given a curfew and should be expressly forbidden from going to bars. In fact if you're in a couple just stay inside all the time, and you definitely should NOT be allowed in France. :) Okay? Awesome, let's start working with this rule from now on, because Scottish guy you aren't allowed to rock up well dressed with a gorgeous accent and chat to me for ages and be all charming and attractive and then have a girlfriend but allude to the fact that if you had been single you would have liked to have dated me. It is completely uncool and unfair. It was still awesome to meet you. But seriously, I think this rule is a good one because I have a theory going that everyone in France is in a couple and screw this, I'm staying single. Ergo, Aus, implement this rule before I return home. :) sanku

8. Songs

Random final observation is how crucial songs have been over here. Seriously, 90% of our communication seems to be through the mutual knowledge of English lyrics to songs. If we can't understand each other at all, I've connected to plenty of Celine's friends simply by singing along to top 40 tracks with them in the car. Furthermore, I can't count the number of times a translation has linked back to a song lyric where they suddenly understand because they can go ohhhh! Like "I've become so numb! I can't feet my pelf and it felm...la...um...blah!" ...yep! Um, just like that! :D Seriously though, hearing English songs in the car has kept me sane when I'm feeling totally out of the loop. Although nowdays I can keep up in French and I really feel pangs of disappointment that I have to leave this beautiful place where everyone is kind of (sorry Au) more attractive (it's mainly the well dressed vibe) and speaks French and everything is pretty. I'm going to have to come back here again. That much is clear. :)

9. Nearly forgot

All the tidbits I nearly forgot:

-We went go-karting! It was real life mario kart and it was epic :D I came second, yay! So so much fun, we need to do this again at some point...

-I have to remember to go write down all those recipes I learnt over here RIGHT NOW before I forget

-There was this other mindblowing walk we went on scrambling over cliffs in a fishermen villiage that I have to remember to post the photos of because it was amazing

Okay, that's going to have to do for now! I know I'm missing a stack of info, but it's just going to have to wait. For now I can't imagine trying to explain why I look so drab for my goodbye dinner with this as a legit excuse. "Lisa, why aren't you dressed? Why does your face look...wrong?" "Oh sorry, I was busy writing a blog about various childhood cartoon characters I now feels as though I've eaten in some form..." hmmm...yeah, probably won't translate too well, it doesn't even sound good in English. So, thus, I leave you once more, and I think this is going to be the last time till I get home since tonight I'm crepe-in' it up then packing then sleeping then hitting Paris solo! I'm extremely excited and happy :) I've had the time of my life over here. I've been exhausted, surprised, delirious, desolate, stoked, laughed till I cried, frustrated, quiet, confused, confident, scared, lost, found, in great company, alone and completely blown away by everything I've done over here. I will sincerely miss everyone I've met over here and all of the little places I found. It's been one hell of a month, it's felt more like 3 months, and I wouldn't take back a single second.

I'll miss you France. Thank you so much for everything.

And thank you all for coming along for the ride with me, your company has been lovely.

I'll write up my final updates when I see you on the otherside!

x

I permanently have a dreamy expression on while you're talking

Frequently, much to the amusement of Celine and her family, I can be caught just wandering around the house slowly saying French words to myself for no other reason than because I can and because I love the sound of the words. The best example of this is me standing scraping food scraps into the bin after dinner just saying "Poubelle" over and over, in my oh-so-romantic French voice, purely for my own enjoyment. Here's a list of words I never miss a chance to say...

~A list of epic French Words~

Word: Rigolo (Rhi-go-low)

Means: Funny

Eg: C'est tres rigolo :)

I adore just wandering around saying that things are funny in French.

I often use this word in combination with "bizzare" C'est bizzare!

Word: Mercredi (M-erh-krah-di)

Means:  Wednesday

It's just one of those beautiful words to say/hear in French. Don't ask me why.

Word: Poubelle (Poo-beh-ll)

Means: Rubbish

I think I'm fond of some of the dumbest words possible in French... This just strikes me as the best meeting ever of "Pumba" (Lion King) and "belly"!

Word:  Peut-être (Poo-tetra)

Means: Maybe

First of all, it sounds like someone saying Potatoes in a hilarious accent. Second of all it's great fun to say pootetttraaaa and you get to shrug and look non-chalant while you say it...

Word: Pamplemousse (Parm-pleh-mousse)

Means: Grapefruit

This one is curtesy of Andria I first learnt the word. And I have to agree, it's just the sexiest word ever, I wish it meant something cooler than grapefruit. Anyone who says it just sounds like they're kissing some amazingly soft imaginary object and it's hard to say it without putting on bedroom eyes.

Word: Allo (Ah-lo)

Means: Hello. But it's mainly used the way we say "right/so/okay"

For example people just wander around getting things ready going...hmmm. allo. Here's the juice! Or *write write write...flip the book around to show you* Allo. See here?

Hehe it's an extremely adorable trait and is often used in conjunction with "Voila". I've found I'm picking up on this habit really quick too though so watch out, when I come home I might accidentally do this... a lot.

~This list will only continue to grow because this language was clearly made purely for my personal amusement and enjoyment~

You all smell awesome (and other weird things I learnt in the first weekend)

~The following is a very speedy list of all the most important things I have learnt within these first two days

It won't let me move this picture to the relevant section so I'll just start the post off with my delicious nutella crepe to make you jealous

1. Everyone here smells amazing.
   Okay yes, I agree that sounds really weird, especially since it made it to the top of the list, but bear with me for a moment here because I swear to God it's a truth that hits me every twenty minutes or so when I meet someone new. I think this must be one things the men of France have realised the significance of far more so than Australian men have because all the men here smell lovely, and so do the women! Everyone wears awesome perfume and it rocks. I think it's because the French quickly worked out that if they were going to greet each other by bumping faces a lot and getting nice and close then they had better make that an appealing process... which brings me to my second point...
   
   
2. It goes RIGHT cheek LEFT cheek in France you moron Lisa.
   I very rapidly learnt that yes it was true everyone kisses hello in France, and everyone means everyone. Celine! Kiss kiss Celine's boyfriend kiss kiss, Celine's parents kiss kiss, kiss kiss (phew this is exhausting). I thought okay, so this is kind of cool, it instantly makes you pretty happy. Seriously, try this for one day, you can't help but laugh and smile because it's such a happy motion. But seriously, it's a bit weird. I know I haven't written the thrilling synopsis of my first weekend yet but suffice to say I was thrown straight in the deep end, I've met a LOT of French people and been busy since the moment I stepped off the plane (hence the delayed posts I'm sorry!). So the point was, even when you meet a whole freaking group of people, like 15 people at a dinner, you kiss everyone. And this is how I quickly learnt it goes RIGHT then LEFT since I tried LEFT RIGHT every single time and had a lot of awkward moments with these poor French people who must have immediately worked out I'm not exactly French. Hopefully my silly Australian accent was charming enough to excuse my ineptitude. I'm glad I learnt this one very quickly, it's a dead give away that you aren't French if you mess this up. So remember, RIGHT then LEFT kids! :)
   
   
3.  I am going to come home a good 5kgs happier, it's inevitable. I also need to learn to eat a lot more a lot faster. Every single meal here is ridiculous! Like ridiculously awesome, but kind of ridiculous. Every meal is like a giant feast with at least three courses. Oh and I'm also permanently slightly drunk since we have wine with every meal. I was so flattered Celine's Papa likes drinking wine with me because I managed to say in French that I love red wine and prefer Cabernet Savignon and, hey, I don't need to drive over here so sure I'll have a glass haha but it is un peu bizarre (a little bit weird) but I'm enjoying it a lot. But I'm straying from the point here, the point is it is RIDICULOUS how much they eat! And they're all skinny! Okay so for example.
   
   When I arrived we had lunch:
   -Little bites of pizza
   -Scotch, wine, this weird delicious licorice tasting alcohol drink from Marseille (Don't worry I just had a glass of the licorice thingy, the men had scotch)
   -Bread with three types of cheese
   -Quiche (I thought this was the main meal...nope..."appetiser")
   -Roast rabbit with a HUGE pile of butter green beans
   -Wine
   -Sausage
   -More bread
   -Custard and sweet bread
   -Coffee
   -"Is this dinner?" "Oh no no, this is lunch. Dinner is in two hours." WHAT!?!?
   And the portions are NOT small at all. Oh and you know you have to finish it within two minutes because suddenly the next plate of things will be brought out and everyone else has finished theirs already... it's like rapid deliciousment and it's awesome but crazy
   A second example: We then went out to dinner for Celine's cousin's Birthday (ps they have an adorable version of Happy Birthday "Bon Anniversary" hehe)
   -Olives and wine
   -Giant salad
   -Filo pastry pocket stuffed with cheese and (I think) chicken? Whatever it was it was awesome, but even this was a meal on its own!
   -Pizza (oh my god, it was like a little orgasm on pizza dough. There was three types, my favourite was the eggplant one)
   -Oh you think you're full? NO! Giant plate of cabonara pasta (I did not know what to do, I seriously just could not eat it. Meanwhile everyone else has just inhaled theirs. I have a theory going that French people have little black holes in their stomachs because from my currently limited medical knowledge this should not be physically possible)
   -There was also dessert but I don't know what this was since I was actually falling asleep at the table and had to excuse myself to sleep in the car. I'll write this out properly but I was fighting my hardest, it had actually reached the point of being a physical survival thing, my body kept trying to force itself to shut down, it did NOT feel good. The food however DID feel good. :)
   -Ps in between those two meals we also had nutella crepes. I think I've already put on 2 kgs...
   
   
4. Everything here is beautiful.
   It sounds overly simple, but honestly, it's simple but utterly true. My heart can't stop sighing. This place is gorgeous, it feels like I've stepped into some sort of quaint little movie. Everything would be perfect if I was fluent in French, but c'est la vie, and it brings me to my next point...
   
   
5. Learning physically hurts. I am permanently slightly exhausted.
   Sigh, I love this, but my god I seriously am exhausted. You know when you're in exam week, studying hard and your brain actually hurts a little? Like you feel as though it's powering through all it's glucose stores and forging new pathways (which is partially true) and you can actually FEEEEEEL drained and mentally exhausted from your brain working so hard? Yeah. Try that permanently. It's extremely bizarre to have to constantly stop and work out how to construct every sentence and to also attempt to filter and translate everything people are saying to you (Ps I suck at this. See next point.) That said, I cannot believe how quickly I'm learning French. More and more frequently I'm finding I can keep a real conversation going in pure French and it's stupidly exciting for me :) I oscillate between extreme optimism being like YEAH this is the first three days! By the end of four weeks I'll totally be able to speak French! annnnd moments of realisation of the extreme complexity of this ridiculous language, just as you think you're starting to get it, it changes and has some other stupid rule that changes EVERYTHING. I have a lot of moments where I just feel too overwhelmed and feel like it's a bit hopeless. Those moments are usually when I'm tired and everyone is speaking French quickly, I don't understand and I can't think quickly enough to understand it or make up a relevant sentence in time. Of course everyone has times they want to throw their hands up and give up when they're learning, the funny thing is I don't have a choice here :P And I don't mind that. I'm hoping that as the jetlag wears off and as my French improves this feeling gets less and less. I have definitely used the French word for "exhausting" a lot though, I'm quite fond of it hehe...
   
   
6. Dear French people. I love you, but you talk way too quickly.
   This is so true I can't even begin to describe it. I adore sitting listening to people speaking French, but it's very frustrating being surrounded by gobbledigook that I wish I could understand. It makes it hard to fathom being good enough to understand it at such a speed. Thankfully a lot of the time Celine will slow down for me or will say something in English for me. The problem is I don't think I'm learning by being surrounded by this gibberish when there's no reference point in my brain for the English. Then again, one of Celine's friends, Manu (ps I love her, I'll write a short point for her next), said it's like getting into a language bath, being immersed in it you'll start to understand more and more then be able to say more and more. I hope she's right, at the moment it's a bit weird and I feel rude just sitting there smiling and being silent 90% of the time when everyone's talking. Ps- Right now my housemate/new sister/French awesome girl Celine is on the phone and is angry so she's talking tres rapidement and it sounds hilarious to me and amazing. So emphatic and melodic! I want to be able to sound like this when I'm mad (Hell I want to sound like this all the time regardless of my mood)
   
   
7. Manu; the French Lisa.
   So I just happened to find the French version of me and I love her! She's extremely lovely and happy and can speak English with an adorable French accent. I walked and chatted to her when we all went to the harbor. Half English, half French, we talked about men and she told me about her feeling of being alone but not alone, being happy with your life but not being happy, wanting to share it with someone, but not share it with just anyone for the sake of sharing it, looking for someone where it doesn't feel like you're with them just to not be alone, being in love with someone who doesn't love you enough back, not wanting to settle, wanting a guy who is a gentleman, challenging, intelligent etc etc (ps I totally described all this in French with her, it was awesome) it went on and on back and forth and was uncanny how similar we were in our story/thoughts. She was really cool and I loved chatting to her. She also taught me the French word "Celibataire" (it needs an e accent, but I don't know how to do this on my laptop) which means "single" as in no boyfriend, until now I've been saying "seule" which also works, but I like this word more. I told her it sounds like a silly bear... or celebate in English. She didn't know what that meant, I told her it means abstaining from sex... she told me they don't have a word for that in French! Haha
   
   
8. Le cafe ici est tres petite et c'est tres adorable (The coffee here is very small and so god damn adorable!)
   It's weird! Their coffee is tiny! But I'm kind of hooked on this stuff, it's so delicious!
   
   
9. Charades is an international language. It's extremely scary but extremely gratifying to realise I can functionally communicate with Celine's parents when Celine goes to work during the day (they do NOT speak English). It's a bit daunting, but I'm really stoked when my French makes it over the net and their faces light up and they nod. The problem arises mainly when they answer me at top speed in French. But I smile and nod and catch a word here and there that gives context. When neither of us know what's going on I just repeat their words with a puzzled expression and then the game of charades begins!

Is it tradition in France to put crack in your coffee?

So that's the synopsis of the things I've learnt in France so far. Up next, a short guide of how to get lost in your new French town with Lisa Allen... a terribly stupid story