Normandie
Tuesday, August 24th 2004
I'm writing this by hand (to be later transcribed to my blog of course) while sitting in my 1 person attic room in Normandie while rain falls lightly on the window that's just above my bed. When it's clear (not now) the stars are amazing. I've done so much in the past few days.
I met up with the international group in Paris a few days ago, and I could write a lot about how each one of them is awesome in their own way, but needlessto say, I've been very humbled as an American. There's that whole business of the world being justified in their anger towards our government (everyone in Europe wants to have the "so you DO hate bush?" coversation) but also the realizationthat I can't speak French for shit. I'm very jealous of the people in my group. They all speak French better than I do. Most of them can speak broken english, plus whatever their home language is, Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, Polish, Russian, Potugese or Spanish. I want that so badly.
France from what I've seen of it is awesome. Paris, is very dirty. The pretty things are pretty, but now I associate it with the metro and the strong smell or urine. But you still can't beat a stroll by the Seine at night while the tower is illuminated and has sparkles that flash every hour.
In rough chronological order, the night I last posted I had an amazing time. One of those "these are the days of our lives" moments. I went out with the SB guy (Tyler) and the Australien girl and we met some people playing guitar at the base of the Eiffel Tower. Just walking by, Tyler and I stopped because there we were, middle of Paris by the Eiffel Tower at 11 at night, and we're hearing the opening licks to Hotel California. So we start singing and they're friendly, don't speak much English at all (except for song lyrics) but there is lots of wine, music and good times and it was an amazing amazing night. The photo's I have both accurately reflect my level of sobriety, and show a glimpse of how beautiful it really was.
Wednesday, August 25th 2004
Sinse I met the international group (14 of us), during the 3 days we had in Paris together we did much of what I did the previous week again which was kinda lame. Since we arrived in Normandie (Bellville Sur Mer) we've done lots of outdoorsy things. Normandie is like Hobbiton by the Sea. It's very green, but that's because it rains here, everyday, but only for intervals of 30-60 minutes. After that it's sunny and nice. So our groups has already been on a hike up the coast, then another day we went the D-Day beaches and a "peace museum" that was a lot like the Museum of Tolerence back in 6th grade, but it wass till a good emotional experience. I took a bottle of sand and sea water from the beach. It was eerie... Saving Private Ryan was right on, and it was weird to be in that spot, but have it be sunny and nice while knowing what happened there.
Yesterday... took a ferry to an archipeligo about an hour off the coast. That day was pretty much no fun. It was crazy windy, and the voyage was terrible. The huge swells were fun for about 5 minutes then the 2 separate schools of children that were on this boat would not shut up. Until people started throwing up. Almost everyone threw up on the trip. I only did a little bit, and probably wouln't have if I hadn't been surrounded by little kids holding bags of their own yellow vomit. "Je vais vomir!" was the rallying cry, and after about 1 awful, disgusting and nauseating hour, we got to the archipeligo where there wern't fucking Perfect Storm sized swells and we disembarked wet, some crying, and it wasn't cool at all. But I guess we bonded and stuff... So we're kinda stuck on this island until out ferry leaves again in 5 hours, so I walk around with a group and I assure you, It would have been absolutely beautiful, this quaint little village with no cars, had I not been so pissed off at the world because right then it was just an obstacle between me and feeling better. After that I came around a bit and had a good sit with the group. The return trip was awesome. Sunny with dolphins swimming beside the boat for a half hour, and we were going WITH the swells so instead of getting slammed we surfed the huge swells