Likin' the Bikin'

Because my last post lacked a Madge update you guys get a SUPER DUPER ÜBER MADGE UPDATE! I know, I know, deep breaths. You should know that Madge does have a real name – wow! Shocker! – But I refuse to actually hear it. Last week I had the privilege to ride solo with Madge: we didn’t talk or anything, but I had a Madge Moment. And I kind of freaked out.

A few days ago our bus was having issues and Madge had to get out of the lurching bus every stop to bang on the side and check out the front. At one point we were blocking three roads, no biggy.

Oh! Just realized this is going to be a quadruple whammy if that’s even allowed. The thing about Madge is that she’s basically a teenager: she listens to their version of KDWB, texts, just wrestled a scooter helmet from two of the biggest guys I know today (it was in a joking way, of course, but in a Madge way), has a GIANT tattoo on her back of a butterfly or something wicked like that (haha), and she understands that we want to stay on the bus when the mornings are chilly so she shoos us out by walking down the aisle saying <<bon courage! Allez!>>  (basically “let’s go, you can do it!”)

                  Just the other day we were waiting for Madge at the usual spot at school when she came strolling on up with some Mickey D’s. When she couldn’t eat any more she handed back a few burgers and her pop to some guys in the front row. I just about died.

Guess who just met their rotary club finally?! My host parents and I went to Fréjus one evening and I was all ready to make this big speech, meet everyone, and stay for an hour or two. However, when we arrived it was pretty loose and I ended up ditching my paper and winging my speech. I thought they’d ask me a bunch of questions but the only one they asked was “how come you don’t have an accent?” That made me so happy! I really should have said, “it’s probably due to the fact that I’m obsessed with your country and love learning the language,” but I toned it down a bit. After that I was presented with their Rotary club banner and I gave them one from the Northfield Rotary Club as well as a book on Minnesota. I’m glad it was small, low-key, and fun; I’m determined to invite myself to another meeting.

Last weekend was our second Rotary outing and we visited the infamous St. Tropez. We all met up at the port in St. Raphäel and took a boat along the coast. I stupidly wore a skirt and waddled like a penguin the entire time until I wore my host dad’s sweater, which was like a dress on me. Although we weren’t able to explore a ton we still got to eat lunch on the beach with our host families, go off on our own for an hour and a half to stuff ourselves with gelato, macaroons, and pastries, and take pictures. It was during this time that I my friends have started calling me Justin Beiber and Titeuf because of my hair…

The port!!!! It was gorgeous

Some of the current inbounds - note the stupidity of wearing a skirt.

If you're hungry don't look down - go eat a granola bar or something because I swear you'll go insane from these beauties:

On the way back we went on the top of the boat – another dumb idea but I still thought it was fun – where the wind spewed sea water on us every few seconds. Once we had had enough, and after I couldn’t tell if my friend Emily was spraying me with spit or if it was just the waves, we headed downstairs. Of course the door to the bow of the boat was open and everyone was still soaked. I ended up dragging some friends outside because it honestly didn’t matter at that point and because when you’re on a boat it’s a must to reenact that one scene from Titanic. It just is. Unfortunately the spewing stopped because we were too far inland, but we still had fun looking like crazy tourists.

One thing that I need to work on here is dressing myself properly. I swear, every time it’s windy I wear a skirt, every time I wear a sweater it’s hot, and every time I wear a tank top people think I’m crazy. My host parents have to constantly remind me that it’s “cold” outside because my body doesn’t register that it’s close to winter. I’m seriously parading around ALL THE TIME like it’s a freakishly warm day in Minnesota where people - you all know who you are – wear shorts and a T-shirt when it’s fifty degrees but it’s literally seventy.

Holy shmoley I need to update you guys on biking. It rocks my socks. I met up with a group of ten other men, women, and younger boys last Saturday for the first time and I had the most amazing time! We don’t dawdle around on our bikes; it’s hard-core-in-the-mountains-pee-your-pants-because-you-could-hit-a-rock-and-flip-over-while-you’re-biking biking. I was extremely proud of myself for keeping up with the experienced group even when we were going straight up the side of a mountain and then straight down one after another. The bike I’m using isn’t made specifically for biking VTT (meaning biking on all terrains) style, but it works for now. During the three hours that we biked we passed right alongside vineyards so that if I reached out I could have plucked off leaves from the vines, beautiful houses, purple and yellow wildflowers, thyme that infused the air with a laughable stereotypical smell, and beautiful hidden ponds. I. Can’t. Believe. How. Lucky. I. Am. Or maybe it’s that I can’t make you understand how lucky I feel. The people in every group can make or break the atmosphere of the experience and let me tell you I have found the worlds finest. In this group we don’t leave anyone behind and I was encouraged and complimented the entire time. Now, I don’t know if you realize, but the variety of skills goes from us kids to nearly professional with pimped out bikes and all the equipment necessary. I just can’t get over the fact that these people are so sweet! I guess I just won’t.

Yesterday was my second day of biking and I didn’t have as much energy as I had before, but I was determined to try my best. It turns out that many of the others were not on the top of their game either, so when the leader decided to get us lost and take us up two mountains, my friend Josephine kept yelling <<Je vous déteste!!!>> “I hate you guys!!!” Even though at that point I was dying since we literally carried our bikes up the mountain for an hour, I got to laugh because of how ridiculous the thought of a biking group hiking up the mountains with their bikes was, and I got to smile every time I turned around and saw the gorgeous view. The great thing about having strong, nice guys in our group is that they can

a) help carry your bike over huge boulders,

b) make you look good when even they are struggling up the hills, and

c) save your butt when your bike gets a flat tire… in the mountains…

                  Before I get into that “Really??” moment I had yesterday, I just want to say that even though everyone knows the descent is the best part, you have no idea how hard it was not to scream out of pure joy when zooming down the winding roads on our way down the mountain. I’ve always been an en route biker where smooth paths are normal, but since I joined VTT I’m like a dog sticking out its tongue from the car window whenever we break out of the woods and onto the road. We killed those mountain roads. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared of making a turn, but I swear I was careful and only skidded once. It would have been into a ditch and not off the face of the earth, mind you J.

                  Here’s my “knock on wood” moment. When I first biked here I found that I made blogs up in my head: “And then I was like, ‘ohmygoshIjustmetJohnnyDeppandItotallyKNEWthatwasgoingtohappen’”

(Note: that did not actually happen but I swear it will – knock on wood)

One of these blogs included, “So then I thought, ‘watch, I am so going to get a flat tire in the mountains and I’ll have to be rescued because I don’t have a spare…’ and out of the blue I landed off a rock particularly hard and popped my tire.”

So, umm, that’s actually pretty close to what happened.

Here I was pedaling away in the mountains and super happy that I just got to fly down the mountain(s) I just carried my bike up for an hour when I noticed that my bike was getting more and more difficult to push through and there were interesting sounds emanating from my back tire. It was flat. I was in the mountains. Crap. Luckily – there’s always a “luckily” – one of the super nice guys who periodically checks on me and a couple other newbies was there and was able to call someone to fetch us once we got to the main road. Usually they can replace the tire but my bike doesn’t have the same mechanism to take the tire off like the other bikes. Needless to say, my new motto will now be, “Bike hard, and carry a big wrench.” After hopping into your stereotypical kidnapper van – sorry, I don’t mean to freak you out; it’s the club director’s van so we’re all good – I couldn’t help but laugh at my situation.

Once I was chauffeured home after biking for four hours and around 30km, I rushed to get ready to meet friends in the neighboring town to join the festivities of the Roc d’Azur. It’s basically biking heaven. Although we didn’t see much due to the sheer hoards of people (they’re also very skinny here, so that’s saying something. They didn’t even have typical fair-food, instead they had grapes on a plate) we did get to see some amazing tricks and a race for younger people.

I ended up spending the night at my fellow American, Emily’s house where we talked to her parents and basically crashed from exhaustion. One thing we talked about is the United State’s lack of knowledge on history other than our own. Here in France they are much more knowledgeable on the main cities, culture of each part of the world, and politics because it’s 1. Older than a few hundred years and 2. My host mom explained to me that it’s impossible to get the whole history of France without learning about everything else. One thing that will stick with me for the rest of my life is when she said, “It’s important to know where you come from.” It’s more than knowing that I come from Norway, Sweden, etc. That sounds so stupid now. I don’t literally come from all of those countries, that was the doing of my ancestors and they each carried with them stories of how they lived and what they passed on to my family members.

You can skip this next tidbit if you like, but it might interest you if you’re all social justice or want to know how my country isn’t perfect.

I kept those thoughts with me as I went to the movies last night with my host parents to watch a film called “Terraferma” meaning something like “closed territory” in Italian with French subtitles. 

It was about illegal immigrants from Africa who make their way across the Mediterranean in search of a better life in Spain, France, and Italy. In this particular story a poor fisherman and his grandson find a wreck and help several passengers aboard including a pregnant woman and her child. Housing illegal immigrants is obviously illegal but the fishermen housed the woman and her children nonetheless. Here’s where I get all philosophical. You ready?

I thought about how in the United States we are all about helping those who are “less fortunate than ourselves” by giving money or liking a Facebook page – literally a few clicks and we’re better people, right? Yeah, you know what I mean. The first thing that I thought of was Kony in Uganda. Yeah, sure, we sent money to “help stop the bad guys and free the children” but after giving money it was out of sight, out of mind. No more guilty conscious. But as soon as it comes to helping others from different countries find a place in our own hometowns it’s like we forget that they have individual stories and feelings. It’s like we don’t want to allow them to have a face and a name so that it’s easier to dismiss these problem-makers who take our jobs and never learn our language. I just think it’s important to look at this issue from two angles: the lawful angle, because of course it makes things complicated, and the real-person angle, because every person has a story.

I laid awake in bed last night (it was movie quality, no joke) thinking about all of that and decided that the best thing I could do right now is to tell all of you about this and maybe research a little on my own. Erasing my ignorance one bit at a time will help more than giving money or Facebook time.

Although this has no correlation whatsoever other than the fact that it has to do with France and yours truly, I just want to say that I love bisous. In the United States when we approach a group of friends we just give a general wave and hello and it’s completely impersonal. Here, however, you go up to each person you know individually and never repeat the greeting (which I did today apparently). So far I have eskimo-kissed a guy at my bus stop accidentally while doing the bis, and almost kissed several people smack-dab on the lips because they gave me hugs without realizing how difficult it is to hug and do the kisses at the same time. One of the weirdest things I’ve found, though, is when you do the kisses with someone and they sniff you. It’s bizarre.

I really want to just tell them:

“I don’t know if that was intentional, if you needed to inhale, or if you just don’t realize that that mechanism called my ear that you just kissed next to is capable of hearing, but that weirded me out.” I think this scenario deserves a meme.

                  Even so, it is the best thing IN THE WORLD to have friends come up from behind and give me a kiss right on the cheek. There’s a certain “level” you get to with friends where you can just point to your cheek and they will give you a kiss and then they will turn their head so you can give them a kiss in return. It’s freaking adorable and it’s my substitute for hugs this year. Just to clarify, no, guys do not kiss other guys on the cheeks, but yes they do the air kisses and touch cheeks (bisous) or they do little business handshakes with each other.

                  Since I haven’t delved much into the language, I guess the best way to describe where I’m at is that I forget I’m speaking French and it doesn’t make a difference if I’m switching between my two languages anymore. It’s weird. I can now be listening to English music with one ear bud, watching/listening to the news on TV in French, and blog at the same time while comprehending mostly everything.

                  One of my good friends, Vincent, loves speaking English with me so much so that one day he literally grabbed my arm and wouldn’t let me go to gym class so that he could talk some more. I will deem this a new section in my blog called “Vincent’s Vivacious Vernacular.” Here are a few quotes:

“It’s raining cats and dogs!” (I was really proud of him for knowing that one!)

“Maggie, I’m sorry I’m such a French cow – “

“What?!”

“I’m sorry I’m a French fry!”

“What are you talking about?!?!”

“Maggie, I’M SORRY I’M SUCH A FRENCH PIG!”

“… Hahahahahaha! Vincent, you speak really well!! (just not right now….)”

“So you say, ‘What up, bro?’ Instead of ça va, okay? It’s literally ‘what is new brother (I said this in French).’”

“Okay, so to you I would say, ‘what’s going down, sister?’”

(Me laughing my butt off)

I hope that leaves you in a good mood, so with that, I will say until next time!

Bisous,

Maggie