pleine des charmes

salut, friends!

I have a petit pause in between what I was just doing and what I am about to do (that is, from eating lunch to going to one of my high schools to meet the prof and talk about my job). This morning I attempted to go to the other school, which is the one where Francois goes. I found the school, but it is a middle school and a high school, and I didn't know where to go. So I asked a lady at a desk where I needed to go to find the high school administration office. She told me to go through some doors outside and voila, I'd be in the high school. Well. I got swept into a sea of middle schoolers (thank goodness I'm not teaching middle school!) and walked in circles around the high school forever finding no front office, no person who wasn't a student, no one who looked like they could tell me anything at all. And this place is HUGE. I had a tentative rendez-vous with the English director, but since he didn't tell me where to go, he will have to understand why I didn't show up. Impossible to find anything. I eventually gave up and left. Hopefully I'll have better luck at Rascol.

Yesterday, I was sitting on a bench eating a sandwich, and these two girls came and sat on the other side of the bench. They were speaking English, and it was the first time I'd heard anyone speaking English since I got here, so I was obviously intrigued. I finally got up the nerve to talk to them, and I found out that they are my fellow-assistants! They are working in a teeny tiny town called Galliac but living in Albi because it's bigger and there's more to do. So I have friends now! Yay! They are moving into a sweet apartment right by the cathedral that's in a 500 year old building......this is France, y'all.

In other news, Corrinne and Micka are letting me borrow their oldest son Pierre's bike. Pierre is in Canada at the moment, doing political science things. We'll see how it goes with this bike...it's a super intense mountain bike for men. Ha....like I said, we'll see.

I just noticed that there is a pumpkin patch right beside the house, with huge pumpkins in it. I wonder if it's ours or the neighbors'.

I think we have some guests staying in the guesthouse today. They might have been here last night too, I don't really know. Oh also I met the dogs yesterday! They are sweet darlings. One of them is a lab named Valium (seriously...it's because when he was a pup he just slept all the time). And the other one is a mutt named Snoopy. I will be walking them some, so they need to get used to me. And we have a cat named Mi (like do re mi) who loves hangin' out in my room.

Mi on my windowsill

Sadly, the thing that lets me put pictures from my camera onto my computer has stopped working. Hmph, technology! No pictures for a while.... :(

meandering

Well friends, I made it. Discount traveling sure can take it out of ya. I flew from Charleston to Dallas, Dallas to Madrid, and Madrid to Toulouse. I then took a bus to the train station, then a train to Albi. The time from leaving my house in Charleston til I got to my house in Albi: about 27 hours. I did actually sleep a bit on the long flight, which is a miracle from God because I'm never able to sleep on planes. The time I spent trying to understand Spanish during my journey made me all the more excited when I finally got to Toulouse and could communicate with people. And thank goodness I could, because figuring out which bus to take to the train station was not exactly intuitive.

You know, French people are way nicer than Americans give them credit for. For example, there were some stairs I had to go up to get to the platform where my train was, and though I could have probably struggled to get everything up there alone, a nice lady offered to help me which made it tons easier. Then, the train itself was a small regional train, so there was no luggage compartment, so I didn't have anywhere to put my stuff. The lady sitting across from me told me I could put my giant suitcase at her feet and not to worry about it. She was there with her son, who was probably the cutest little boy I have ever seen in my life. His name was Isa Bilal. They were from Algeria. She and I chatted for most of the train ride, which was good prep for meeting my family later, since I was pretty jetlagged and having a little bit of a hard time forming complete thoughts, especially in French. Such sweet people.

 My American cell phone, as expected, did not work in Toulouse, so I was unable to contact my mom to tell her I got there. Then, I couldn't find an outlet to charge my French cell phone or a Tabac to buy minutes, so I couldn't use it either. I had told the people I'm living with that I would probably get to Albi around 6:30pm (which was an incredible guess on my part...I got there at 6:15), so I just kinda hoped they'd be there to pick me up even though they hadn't heard from me. Aaaaaand of course they weren't. I waited a while, then I started to panic a little bit. I couldn't use a pay phone because they only take French credit cards, and I didn't have internet, so I was 100% helpless...not something you want to be when traveling alone. I was about to burst into tears when I finally asked a lady at the train station if I could use her cell phone to make a local call. Saved!!! So Micka came to pick me up and everything was fine.

Micka and Corrinne are very nice, and extremely hospitable (well, they do have a bed and breakfast, after all). Micka is an incredible cook. They are both dentists, but he's retired so he takes care of the house and whatnot while Corrinne works. And though he plays a traditionally female role in the home, he still thinks that women are irrational and don't know how to do anything. He's nice, but I can't ever tell when he's joking. But anyway he makes homemade bread every day and he makes all the yogurt and whatnot. Amazingggg. And they love cheese (great news!) not that any French family I've ever heard of doesn't. They also love MEAT, so thank goodness I kind of eat that now. I told them I can't eat a ton of red meat, which they seem fine with. Their son François is very shy, but he is 16, so I guess that is to be expected. He plays guitar and is very athletic. I have to force him to speak English with me, which we did for the first time this evening. It was a little awkward because I was having to control the conversation, but overall it went pretty well. I hope eventually we can play some music together...that would be a blast.


So, I live in a mansion. This house is an oasis. I can't believe I get to live here. The room they put me in is great! The only kind of weird thing is that my shower is in the basement. But I'm the only person who uses it, and it's huge. I'll get used to it. And, it seems as though everything is walking distance from here. I spent the day wandering aimlessly around Albi, and I think I maybe saw the whole city. Just walking. The size of it is so perfect for me. I think I might try to get a cheap bike while I'm here. I don't think I'll ever even have to take the bus unless I want to.


Okay that might have been an information overload on all of you who read this, so I'm sorry...further entries will be shorter I promise. Here are some nice pictures. Tomorrow my goal for the day is to find a good place to sit and drink tiny cups of coffee. I don't have anything to do until Sunday, so it's like I'm on vacation. I just have to be careful not to get into the habit of eating croissants every day...

last cup of American coffee

Albi's cathedral

this is where I drank my coffee this morning

view from my window

not much chance of losing my keys

i'll be back, greensboro

Yesterday I had a tearful (but also joyful) farewell to Greensboro. I'm now back in Charleston, and it has just now hit me that I am leaving the country in a matter of days. Wowzers.

I have come to realize more reasons why the title of this blog is appropriate. My last month in Greensboro was possibly the most incredible month of my life thus far. The seeds of joy that have been sewn in my heart during that time will bloom and grow into mighty trees, as Daniel would say (sing), while I'm gone. This summer has been a crazy journey. It's about to get crazier! I have so many things I have to do, it's unbelievable.

That aside, let me tell you about last weekend. The album release show was absolutely incredible. I really think that the sounds that went out over Greensboro that night touched every person there...I don't think anyone walked away unchanged. This would be a ridiculous claim if I was crediting it to us, but I'm certainly not. I have never been part of something with such a huge group of friends working together to make something wildly excellent. Now the trick is to move the whole operation on tour so that other cities can experience what Greensboro did. To be continued.

I don't really have any good pictures of the show yet...we had some photographers and someone doing video, so I'll let you know about that when I get my hands on them. We played a live mini-show on WUAG for RadioGreensboro about a week before the show. I think it sounded great, even though there were only five of us. I think they'll post the recording of it on their website soon. This is us having an impromptu goofy jam session right after we played on the air.

In the meantime, you should probably buy Daniel's album, because it's incredible. Check it out on bandcamp.

Today I am going to attempt to get my life organized. As someone with a heart full of wanderlust, my goal is to have as few possessions as possible. I've been slowly cutting down for the past few years, but it's hard to get rid of stuff sometimes. This is what I'm taking to France: one reasonable-sized suitcase, a backpack, and my guitar.

these days run away like horses over the hills

So it is nearly time for me to embark on a new adventure. In this chapter, I will be flying away to France, living, working, and strummin' along in a town called Albi. As I am sure that none of you have the slightest idea about where that is, here is a helpful thing. A map, that is.

There it is, the rough location of Albi. It's about an hour from Toulouse, if that means anything to you.

Also it looks like this.

I'm not making this up. It looks like that for real. Sometimes I'm kind of embarrassed to talk about what I'm about to go do because it's really too good to be possible. And yet.

You are probably wondering about the title of this blog. La cueillette means "the harvest." I don't have any extremely profound reasons for using that as a title for this...probably because I'm leaving in autumn, which is harvest time here in the U.S. And also, symbolically, I hope to grow a lot during this time, both in my language skills and on a personal level. I've always liked the metaphor of sewing seeds and watching them grow. I'm into plants, what can I say.

For now I am thoroughly enjoying my time left here in Greensboro. My horrid waitressing job aside, everything is great. I spend most of my time playing music with the best people. What could be better?
We are playing an album show at the Blind Tiger on September 17th. Please come! It is going to be sweet! My dear friend Daniel is our lead man, these are his wonderful songs. Give a listen, pleez.

daniellevigoans.bandcamp.com