the king's speech

I lost my voice. This is the second time this has happened to me since I've been here. And no, I haven't taken up smoking like a frenchman, although I do sound it. Now, losing my voice at the end of a cold is pretty routine for me, nothing to worry about. But I'm writing about these specific cases because in this condition I find it even more difficult to force the nasal vowels through my nose or hack up enough spit to properly pronounce an 'R'. So French people understand me even less, and I'm forced to listen even more. Throughout my stay, I've learned a lot from listening (hopefully). I listen when in groups of French people, like at Bible Study. You see, I'm what they call an 'E' for 'extrovert' in the Myers Briggs Personality Indicator. And probably a bit of a know-it-all. So, when following conversations and discussions everything inside of me wants terribly to share each thought and anecdote that comes to mind with the group. My heart picks up the pace a little and I get all squirmy in my seat.  However, speaking out is rarely a possibility with my delayed expression time and feeble voice to boot. So I listen. Still not my favorite thing to do but I'm learning to appreciate it.
Last time my voice left it got so bad that one Saturday evening I really couldn't make most sounds necessary for either French or English. So, not trusting myself to allow my voice to rest in a social setting, I want to the movies alone. I saw The King's Speech in English with French subtitles. And wow, did I empathize with King George IV (ie Colin Firth) in his inability to speak freely. Thankfully, my voice came back and is on it's way back this time.  And maybe one of these days my language level will no longer be an impediment, either.

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 Et voila! Laura Ann Miller paid a visit to my overseas reality. What a joy. Our friendship dates back to third grade and has deep roots in the 4300 and 4400 blocks of northeast Shorewood, Wi.  I collected her from the Gare du Nord last Friday morning and she sojourned for a full ten days, just leaving yesterday.  Laura's been to Paris twice before, so she could skip some of the historical attractions and spend more time on Paris 2011: spring poetry, meeting friends, theater and hours of conversing the way you only can when nobody around you can understand your slang/fake brooklyn accents. She also lived in the South of France last year for six months and thus could get around by herself when I was busy, as long as she had the Paris practique (map) with her.  We did so much I'm convinced she must have actually been here for a month.

In front of Ernest Hemingway's main stakeout during the 1920's La Closerie des Lilas  café in Montparnasse.

A Sunday antique fair after church

Kids on a field trip playing tag in front of Castle Chantilly, where Laura and I went for the day.  We visited Chantilly together on our high school French exchange and it were determined to revisit the wonderful town/birthplace of whipped cream. 

Castle library.

Recitation of T. S. Eliot on the castle grounds

Metro. 

Back in Paris, we found the bubbler that produces sparkling water. Seriously! It's amazing. In the Jardin Reuilly. 

A boy chasing bubbles on a bridge (pont des artes) over the Seine while his Dad and brother look on. 

Tuileries. Proof! I also have one in front of the Eiffel Tour, but that's cliché. 

It doesn't get much better than génial.

i went on a trip!

itinerary:
Madrid, Spain: 3 nights
Barcelona, Spain (Catalonia): 2 nights
Montpellier, France: 5 nights

 It was a grand trip. Full of a some beautiful things in museums and a lot of beautiful things in plain air. Sometimes, I like to bring a really random book with me on trips (I brought For Whom The Bell Tolls with me to Cairo a few summers ago) just to kind of keep things real. You know, remind me of the vastness of history and the world so I don't get swept away by my surroundings. So I brought Maya Angelou's autobiographical novel, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings with me to Iberia. I had a lot of great moments with Maya: crying in the Madrid airport, contemplating American racism from Antoni Gaudí's Parc Güell overlooking Barcelona and picnicking under a windmill in Collioure (small Mediterranean town in France). Certainly the type of book that hurts when it's over because you have to realize that you don't actually know the characters. Anyway, visions of Stamps, Arkansas are forever entangled in my memories from last week's voyage.  Here are some pictures to narrate what I actually saw and did.

I went to Madrid with two friends from my program, Emily (left) and Emma (not pictured). This is a photo in La Parc de Retiro in Madrid of Emily and Arnaud, a friend we met at the hostel in Madrid. Turns out that Arnaud, who's from Paris, lives around the corner from my host apartment so we can be friends in France, as well:)

El Tigre, a tapas bar in Madrid (recommendation from Lizzyfizz). At this restaurant, all you have to do is buy a beverage and they bring out plates and plates of tapas for free!  Most of the tapas varieties feature some form of sausage, which is plentiful in Madrid as you can see in the background of this photo. 

La Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudí's unfinished cathedral in Barcelona. The most awe-inspiring cathedral I've seen yet. It doesn't really translate in this photo, but Gaudí architecture is porbably the basis of the CANDYLAND board game. 

Fruit stand in the Boqueria market in Barcelona. So fresh! So cheap! 

The above photo is of Manue et Manu (short for Emmanuelle). Manu (right) hosted me in Montpellier, France, for five nights and did an outstanding job showing me around the region. I met her while working at Cedar Campus on crew the summer after my freshman year of college.  Her friend Manue, who stayed with us for three of the nights, was in the south to visit different GBU (French Intervarsity) chapters because she's going on staff in the fall. It was fun, although exhausting, to speak with them in french, especially about our 'sister' campus ministries. Another highlight was eating lunch at her parents house in nearby Béziers, where we drank aperitifs from their vineyard, watched her foster sister's hip-hop infused ballet routine to a Justin Beiber song and I answered questions about what the Tea Party really is.

An old Roman arène (arena) in Nîmes, a city in the south of France established by them (the Romans).

Parc de la Fountaine in the same town, Nîmes, which has plenty of beautiful old Roman things.

Courtyard of an old church in Bézier, France. 

A late winter landscape. 

The medieval city, Carcassonne. Yes, like the board game. There's a moat and everything! And people still live in there. 

Gargoyle. In Carcassonne. 

Collioure, France. A hop, skip and a jump away from Spain.  Part of Catalonia, actually. 

The sea in Collioure. It was an incredibly picturesque town and incredibly windy along the water. 

The Collioure gare.

An exhibit on Polonia and immigration to France at the National Museum of Immigration (back in Paris). The second painting from the right is one of my host mom's father's, himself a Polish immigrant. My mom invited me to the tour for people involved in the exhibit.

Sneak attack photo by Aldona. 

It was a great ten days. The following week I ran in the Paris semi-marathon (last Sunday). Quite memorable and fun, but at the time pretty difficult. We ran in the Bois de Vincennes on the east of Paris, left toward Place Daumensil, Place de la Bastille, along the Seine and around Hôtel de Ville and back the the bois (it was a race du bois, if you will **Kayla Dubois**). A few interesting differences between this race and the one's I've seen in the US stood out to me. Like the fact that only less than one quarter of the runners were female, whereas usually it's fifty/fifty in the States. Also, there were little hired orchestras and bands of many sorts lining the course to encourage the runners. And is was quite encouraging. As a runner, it was standard to applaud the bands if they finished a piece as you were running past. My friend, Maggie, has a post-race picture I'll post soon. In the meantime, here's a mini course map:

Is there a picture-to-word ratio limit for blog's? If so, this entry probably exceeds it. My apologies. But photos are more interesting.