France, September 2008-#1

First Post!

So I've arrived and begun settling in! I live with two housemates, one from Poland and one from Greece. (The Polish girl, Kasia, is peeking from behind the tree, the Greek girl, Myrto, is laughing in a little street we visited in Carpentras.) They are really nice, and we bought a red tea kettle together for our stove. We live on a tiny street called Rue Agricol Perdiguer between a beautiful old square and "Main Street." (The third picture is of my street.) There's a park with fountains at the end of the street, and lots of cute little restaurants and cafe all over. The weather has been cool, like the beginning of Fall, and I have to keep telling myself I do not have enough money to buy all the beautiful clothes in the shop windows, which are all over! I went to an African dance class with a friend of my housemate's and it was so much fun! I'm going to join and it will be every week with a class full of other white girls trying to do African dance. There are middle aged women and high schoolers, so it's really a diverse group - which is great! Other than getting things organized and figuring out logistics like internet and cell phones, I've met another assistant and we've gone running along the Rhone and visited a small museum of contemporary art which was...very...contemporary? But interesting none the less. It was the Collection Lambert, and I guess all of the art belongs to a wealthy family that rotates their personal collection and sometimes invites artists to display their work. It's in a beautiful old stone building (as most things are here) and I keep feeling like I'm in a fairy tale, walking down tiny cobblestone streets and seeing palaces in the distance. It's wonderful! Oh! One more amusing anecdote: a few nights ago, I spent an hour or two trying to explain sororities, fraternities, and secret societies to my colocs (housemates) and one of their french friends. It was a lot harder than I thought! The concept does not exist here, and simply having a network did not seem a sufficient justification for paying a lot of money to live in a house with other people. I told them there were lots of fun activities and a lot of people do it, etc, but they just couldn't wrap their brains around it! The closest they came to understanding was to equate it with the houses in Harry Potter (Gryffindor, etc.) I thought that was an inspired comparison, but also that the only way to understand was to watch American movies...so perhaps we'll have a movie night with movies like Animal House, Legally Blonde...any other suggestions? Ok, for now I'll have to stop - I'm still using the internet at a cafe around the corner, but I will continue to post and put pictures up so that you can lead this incredible French life vicariously!

bisous!