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I have finally really connected with my little French sisters, Gabrielle the 5-year-old in particular. Initially, she was very timid around me, which I can understand. I am a stranger suddenly living in her house; I speak French with a funny accent; and I don't always understand what she's saying. However, something must have clicked, because now she is permanently attached to me. I think it was our trip to the fair on Sunday after I came home from the world's fastest tour of Avignon. (photos here) Gabrielle, her mom, me, and a family friend named Cecile drove to Carnon to go to a traveling fair, which is called a fete foraine in French, and Gab absolutely had the time of her life. She rode everything that she was allowed to ride - bumper boats, bumper cars, the giant slide (6 times, in fact), trampolines, bungee trampolines, and finally the ferris wheel. She also "won" prizes at a couple of games that were rigged for kids such that you couldn't lose. Ironically, the very first thing she did was play a game where she shot balloons with a rifle...even though the French don't have the right to bear arms....yeah....
The ferris wheel was definitely my favorite thing at the fete foraine because I got to ride it too; the trip was really an outing for Gabrielle, and I didn't want to ask my host mom or her friend to pay for me to ride stuff lol. What was really funny about the ferris wheel was the fact that my French mom is absolutely terrified of heights, and yet she agreed to get on the ferris wheel anyway...The entire time, she has her head buried in her arms and she's freaking out, telling Gabrielle not to move so that she won't fall out. Cecile and I are just cracking up, and when my French mom says she'd rather give birth than be on the ride, Cecile (who actually was her midwife) starts pretending to coach her through breathing exercises for birthing children. Hilarious. Anyway, sometime during that evening, Gab decided that I was her new favorite person.
The next evening at dinner (Monday night), she insisted on sitting next to me and then spent the entire time after dinner passing tiaras around the table, making everyone a princess including me. Then, after dinner, she and I played together in the living room where, of course, we were wearing princess crowns. She drew pictures, we worked on numbers and letters, and she started asking me about how to say lots of things in English. She had been doing this intermittently, but yesterday evening I think it finally clicked for her that I speak another language most of the time and that I can help her learn it. It was really sweet.
This morning, I was finally able, for the very first time since I've been in France, to sleep in!!! Yay! After I'd gotten up and had breakfast in my room, I was working on my project (which seems to consume my life, booooooo), when I heard a tiny French voice outside my room. "Amanda? Tu veux manger avec nous?" Teehee! Gabrielle was outside my window and she wanted to know if I wanted to have lunch with her and her family. Duh! At lunch, again, she insisted on sitting next to me. Then, after lunch we played together some more, and I have to say, our communication is improving drastically. For the most part, we understand each other all the time now!
This afternoon, both of my French mom's sisters and their husbands came over to hang out and play in the pool. Gabrielle insisted that I get in with her, and that is where I spent the rest of my afternoon - throwing her around and otherwise horsing around in the pool. And boy does she squeal if you do something that she doesn't want you to lol!
And lest you think the tiny French baby doesn't like me, she and I have developed a special bond too. She now "talks" to me, which is ridiculously cute because it's baby French. Example: At lunch today, Raphaelle handed me her empty bottle and said "Core", essentially "encore" or in English "more". She also hands me things randomly - like her bib - and wanted me to walk around with her today while I held her hands. Yay!
So, once upon a time, I actually had nothing officially planned by either Fauvel, the University of Montpellier, or anyone else, so I decided to be brave and go off exploring...all by myself!!!! I had gotten a brochure from the Montpellier tourism office at the very beginning of my stay in Montpellier about a place called Aigues-Mortes, a fortified town from the Middle Ages that served as a Protestant prison after the Edict of Nantes was revoked. I thought it sounded really cool, so I looked into it online a little bit more before deciding that that was where I was going to spend my Saturday. I talked to several other people from William and Mary, but everyone had sort of made their own plans to explore other places and no one was terribly interested in Aigues-Mortes. Thus began my adventure alone...
I booked my train ticket online (only 22 euros round trip), and thanks to my super-nice French dad, I was able to print it out at home. I got up early on Saturday morning (around 7:00), and caught the tram to the train station. Once at the train station, I had to pick up my actual tickets at the window, and then I waited on my platform for my train. The train ended up being 5 minutes late, but since my layover at the next station was 40 minutes, the delay was fine. I made it to Nimes, my layover station, and since you can leave the station and come back (unlike in airports), I walked around for a little bit before my next train. Then, I successfully made it onto the next train and all the way to Aigues-Mortes!
I did, however, have a small snaffoo of sorts once I got out of the train station at Aigues-Mortes. I couldn't figure out which direction I was supposed to walk, so I just picked randomly. Oops. As it turns out, I picked the wrong direction, and I could not get back across the road because there were so many cars! I ended up waiting upwards of 15 minutes to cross the road. Ugh. I miss that about Williamsburg. All you have to do is get within 3 feet of a crosswalk, and cars in all directions stop immediately!
But, it all turned out fine! I made it back across the road, in the correct direction, and into town! Yay! I stopped at a creperie for lunch in the town square where I had a ham and cheese crepe and some amazing ice cream. Then, I made my way to the tourism office, got a map, and walked to the entrance to the ramparts and the Tour de Constance (the giant tower).
Once inside, I used my lovely French to ask for a ticket and an audioguide. The way it works is that once you get your tickets, you go upstairs, and the dude at the top of the stairs hands you your audioguide and takes your ticket. And then ticket-taker-man gave me a compliment that made my day :D (this whole conversation was in French, of course). He said, "Bonjour" and I said "bonjour" back then handed him my ticket to get an audioguide. He then asked if I wanted the audioguide in French. I said no thank you, that I'd prefer to have it in English. He gave me a funny look as he was reaching for the English audioguide and asked, "But you do speak French, don't you?" I replied yes that I spoke both. And then he says, "I mean, I figured with a French accent like yours that you had to speak French!" Teehee! We then talked for a little while about how I was studying in Montpellier for the summer and how I'm a French major in the States, etc. before I headed off for my tour, grinning stupidly the whole time.
Aigues Mortes was an absolutely amazing day. I pressed every button on my audioguide and learned about every every everything there was to learn about the city. It was founded by the French King Louis in the mid 1200s as an official port on the Mediterranean. He intended for it to compete with other European ports on the Mediterranean like those in Italy, but because of the marshy soil and the lack of natural resources, it never really took off. It did, however, end up being where he launched two crusades from, and it did become somewhat of an important French port when Montpellier's cloth dying business grew. And, during the counter-reformation, the Tour de Constance served as a prison for Huguenots who refused to recant their faith. Also, in more recent times, it has become a large salt-producing town.
So I spent literally the entire day exploring the ramparts and the towers of Aigues-Mortes practically undisturbed by anyone, which I loved. Aigues-Mortes is not as crowded of a tourist destination as other medieval walled towns like Carcassone, but that was more than fine with me. I was able to saunter at my own pace, stop and take pictures of anything I wanted, and not have to try to lean over people to see things. There was one part of my day where I was slightly disturbed by some French hooligans who thought that it would be a good plan to chuck rocks at me while I was on the wall...I ignored them and suppressed my urge to tell them that I was going to call the police if they didn't stop. Apparently, however, someone else was unable to suppress that urge. Ten minutes after I walked away from them, I heard a lot of yelling and scuffling. I popped out from the tower where I was at the time and watched one of the kids get arrested and shoved into a cop car while the others threatened the policemen with their tiny preteen fists. Hah! Justice was served!
I did run into a fellow William and Mary student by accident halfway through my tour, but we both continued on our separate ways. We did catch the same train back into Montpellier, which was an adventure into itself. My exploration of the town did not take as long as I had planned, so I asked the attendant at the Aigues-Mortes train station if I could change tickets. He was happy to oblige for my portion of the journey from Aigues-Mortes to Nimes, but explained that I'd have to go to the counter at Nimes and talk to another attendant about changing that connection. I was able to change my ticket once I got to Nimes as well, however....once I had my new ticket approved, the attendant at Nimes informed me that I had one minute, that's right - one whole minute, to make it to my new train. ACK! I sprinted like mad, hopped on, sat down, and it took off. Phew! Perfect timing :D
I made it back to my house just in time for ice cream :) The end.
