"I know, right?": Ashley Vanessa Barcelona. Paris. Perps.

The prospect of unveiling my weeklong vacation with Mess is a daunting and altogether impossible task. This is made more difficult by several things: so much happened, I don’t want to leave anything out; you probably won’t believe at least a third of what happened; and writing witty blog posts is time-consuming and exhausting. But, as I have obligations to my loyal readers (mostly Chelsea, who will badger me if I don’t write every other day) and I feel the burning need to do our week justice in the digital world, I will try my best. Using bullet points.

• Nine hours train ride to Paris next to a stranger = not my favorite way to spend a night.
• Staying at the Hilton near the Champs-Elysées = epic. We jumped around in the giant bathrobes and felt posh.
• First day in Paris we were dressed super cute, and got stopped by a Parisian who asked us for directions. We were mistaken for French people. Enough said.
• Nine hours train ride to Paris next to a stranger = not my favorite way to spend a night.
• Staying at the Hilton near the Champs-Elysées = epic. We jumped around in the giant bathrobes and felt posh.
• First day in Paris we were dressed super cute, and got stopped by a Parisian who asked us for directions. We were mistaken for French people. Enough said.
• We went to the Musée D’Orsay towards closing time and did not have enough time to see the paintings we had gone there to see. We ran through the Impressionists room, and left totally disappointed. Luckily, Mess and I are perfect for each other, and both agreed to go back the next day—we spent at least two hours there staring at Van Gogh, Degas, et Monet. Le sigh…
• While at the d’Orsay, we saw a giant painting of a recumbent woman’s hairy vagina. On the second day, we gathered up enough courage to take pictures of it.
• Our second day in Paris was the most perfect day of our lives. Here is what happened:
o We started the day with a delicious breakfast on the Champs-Elysées, complete with the best orange juice I have ever had. How posh.
o We re-visited the d’Orsay.
o We had lunch in a cute little French bistrot behind the Saint-Sévérin cathedral for very little money. I can’t remember the name, but it was lovely.
o We wandered around Montmartre, and had two portraitists on the Place du Tertre insist upon drawing our faces, though we told them no many many times. When they finished, Mess had a picture of Angelina Jolie and I had a picture of a 7 year old girl that looked vaguely like a baby Ashley. We gave them each ten euros and were incredibly embarrassed, though we thought it hilarious. What kind of a portraitist can’t draw portraits?
o On the way up to the Sacré-Coeur, an old man got in MY way, and roared, literally roared, when we did the step side-to-side thing.
o On the steps leading to Sacré-Coeur, a cute French boy was playing guitar and giving a concert to a group of people that had spontaneously gathered there, singing songs in French, English, and Spanish. He said Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”—quite possibly the best song ever written. He was les yummy.
o Walking down the Montmartre hill towards the Moulin Rouge (trying to find the Irish pub that my friend Karen worked at a few years ago), we had to walk through Paris’ red light district—Pigalle. We saw AT LEAST four women prostitutes try to pick guys up…(“bonsoir, monsieur”) I actually felt safer there than most places in Paris. It was, for once, the guys they wanted, and not us.

• Barcelona was overall terrifying and confusing. We don’t speak Spanish, and I hate asking for directions, particularly when I can’t do it in the right language.
• On the train to Barcelona, we were taking naps, and my sister was swatted with a newspaper by the man across the aisle. He said, in English, “Where do you go?” We had not been speaking English the whole time he was on the train.
• After getting off the train in Barca, we walked directly to a metro station and started buying tickets. There was a guy at the machine next to us that kept asking “Speak English?” and I ignored him, like I always do with creepy men like that here. Eventually, Messy realized that he was trying to indicate that there was something ALL over us. We had something that looked like it could have been vomit or bird poop all over our backpacks, our coats, and our jeans. When we tried to clean it off, it smelled like milk and chocolate. Someone had thrown ice cream at us in the 5 minutes we had been in Barcelona. Awesome.
• We got lost in some scary Barcelona alleys looking for our hotel, were followed for a little bit by some men who kept saying “gringas”. We finally went into a Starbucks to buy some food and ask for directions.
• Our hotel room was hilarious. We walked in and couldn’t stop laughing. I can’t really explain it.
• We had forgotten forks at the Starbucks, and so we ate our cheesy pasta with our fingers.
• The next day, we wandered around shopping, which was actually quite nice. Barcelona is not nearly so scary in the day. We went to La Boqueria, this amazing food market, and then just wandered around the Gothic Quarter looking around.
• While on a crowded street, a man tried to hand us an advertisement for a shoe store. When I said, “no, gracias” he followed us for about 10 feet, chanting, “pussyhole, pussyhole”. I was so shocked that I laughed, because that is not even a real thing to call anyone.
• The next three days in Perps were fairly uneventful, as Perps generally is, unfortunately. We did, however, see some dead fish lined up on a wall.
• We spent the whole week thinking up lists of possible names for this blog post, including but not limited to: two for me AND two for you, I know, right?, Crapbag, and “Have you ever been pooped on?” “You mean by a bird, right?”.


That list of bullet points doesn’t do the week justice at all, of course, but you get the idea. Another week or so of the surreal life of Ashley Benson, this time accompanied by her lovely sister. I’ll post pictures up to the Snapfish account forthwith.

I can't help it...I'm a list-er.

List of things I never used to do before moving to Europe, but that I do all the time now:

1. Dry my clothes on radiators.
2. Run outside in a tank top in February and then sit in the sun for half an hour before going inside.
3. Spend less than $5 on amazing bottles of wine.
4. Buy baguettes almost daily.
5. Sit at cafés on a (more than) weekly basis, drinking coffee from a “for-here” cup.
6. Legitimately buy groceries at markets.
7. Text—soooo much cheaper than actually calling people.
8. Cry on the phone to random strangers whilst trying to sort out internet.
9. End up at random festivals on the beach or in the mountains, getting chased by bears or offered free wine.
10. Wait. A lot.
11. Hang out in high schools. Almost all the assistants I know live inside high school campuses.

List of things I used to do all the time before moving to Europe, but that I never/rarely do now:

1. Eat burgers, and any sort of take-out or ethnic food.
2. Get a latte to go.
3. Cuddle with a cat.
4. Do laundry at home.
5. Spend too much time in a crafts store.
6. Watch the Food Network.
7. Undertake far too ambitious dinners (my studio kitchen is MUCH too small).
8. Take a car to the grocery store.
9. See family.
10. Hang out on university campuses.
11. Homework.

And one thing I did in America and still do in Europe (this may actually be the ONLY similarity between my experiences on the two sides of this earth):

1. Listen to the “This American Life” podcast on the bus on my way to work.

Never Have I Ever Been Chased by a Man Dressed Like a Bear in the Southern France Wilderness…Oh wait, yes I have.

I don’t know what it is about southern France, but it seems like nearly every weekend, I have something bizarre happen to me; some new place to get stuck in, some new hi-jinx to get myself into, et cetera et cetera…This weekend, of course, was absolutely no different.

Friday was the last day of work before mid-winter vacation, and we had several out of town friends coming in to visit for the weekend. Isabel mentioned a festival that the Catalan teacher at our Lycee mentioned that was taking place on Sunday in a little village called Prades-de-Mollo about two hours away from Perpignan, right by the Spanish border. This is serious Catalan country—it was so weird but also really cool to be in the middle of a crowd of people, most of whom were speaking Catalan amongst themselves. The festival was called “La Fete de L’ours” which means the Festival of the Bear. Nobody really knew what it was all about, although Isabel did say that we needed to wear clothing that we could throw away afterwards. Hmmmm….suspicious, but Isabel is persuasive, and we managed to get two cars full of people willing to go to a strange place with “throw-away” clothing. We got there a little late (after a fiasco involving a burnt out clutch and two trips in Isabel’s tiny Toyota), and followed the crowds into a cute little medieval village with cobble stone roads and ruins and a castle on top of the hill, and cute French houses with bright colored shutters. The usual.

The festival began around 3 o’clock, but it seemed like people had been milling around, talking, being Catalan, drinking, and generally making merry for a few hours. The bears, a nice 8 year old boy sitting on a stone wall explained to us, come from the castle up on the hill. They are covered in black grease paint, have been drinking for several hours, are wearing matted fur suits, and carry a greasy black stick that they threaten people with, or, in my case, hit people in the stomach with. There were three bears, and as far as we could tell the point of the festival was for the three bears to chase the villagers around the town, attacking them and smearing black grease paint on their faces. The bears are surrounded by a convoy of men dressed in camo and red berets, who also had grease paint on their faces, guerrilla-style. They were carrying supplies for re-greasing, and re-fueling (bottles upon bottles of rosé) the bear, as well as rifles that they periodically shot into the air. It was actually quite terrifying. No one really explained what any of this was for, or what it symbolized, but we all concluded that it probably has something to do with man’s triumph over animal, or nature, or something…

The first thirty minutes or so of the festivities involve crowds of people running from the gun-wielding men and the greasy bears. We were actually, genuinely scared. Seeing a crazy man dressed in fur rugby tackle someone to the ground, smearing grease paint on his face isn’t the most reassuring thing in the world. Towards the end of the first hour, it turned into the crowds chasing and taunting the bears, rather than the other way around. People would follow the band playing the theme song for the festival (a tune whose lyrics were, actually, la laala lala lala la lala la la alalalalal lalalalalala), the rifle shots, the banging of the bears’ sticks on the ground, and the crowd’s shouts and groans to find the bears, who would then run at the cutest girls or the most pompous looking guys to cover them in paint. I guess the deal is that if you get tagged by the bear within the first half hour, it’s kind of shameful, so everyone runs away. On the other hand, if you finish the night with a white face, there’s something wrong with you, and you are shamed.

Emma was the first of our group to get tagged. The bear ran up, pinning our little group against the stone fortress’ wall. He put his hands on either side of her head, pecked her on the mouth, and then wiped his hands all over her face. Then he ran away. I managed to stay clean for a while, until some random dude came up to me a few hours in, holding a blackened cork. He told me in French that I was too white, and that it annoyed him, and so he wiped the cork on my face. A few minutes later, the real bear ran by, stopped when he saw Jon and I, and got us both within the same minute.

Inexplicably, to us non-Catalans at least, in the middle of a square full of people taunting the bears, five or six men dressed in white coats and covered in white paint, flailing chains and scraping dull hatchets along the ground pushed their way through the crowd.

Later on, after we had all gotten tagged, we decided we were cold, tired, hungry, and thirsty, and so we went into one of the café/bars along the main square (we had to wait for the bears and the guerrilla soldiers to leave before we could go in) to get a drink and something to eat. Emma and I were sitting at the table while the guys tried to wash some of the grease paint off their hands, and the people dressed in white started to come into the pub. One of them came up to our table, and starting to pretend to sharpen his axe on our marble table. His buddy came up with a bucket full of blood sausages (a Catalan specialty), holding one in his hand. He then proceeded to rub the blood sausage all over my face, and then the man with the hatchet told me to be still or he would cut me—he was rubbing the blade of the hatchet along my face. I think it was kind of like shaving me? I don’t know—there was no explanation for that, either. All I know is cold blood sausage juice dripping into my mouth and onto my sweatshirt is nasty.

We moved to a different bar shortly afterward, and found the rest of our group of people. We ordered sandwiches and a few drinks, and stuck around for a bit of the after party. The most memorable moments from the night include dancing the YMCA wearing black grease paint with a bunch of Catalan people in a bar, the camo-man that had a flask of something he was sharing with everyone, the short old man (we’re talking really really short) who pulled from the previously mentioned man’s flash while wearing Jon’s aviators and trying to speak to us in Catalan, and the creepy man in the white coat and paint that stuck his tongue in mine and Emma’s ears—apparently if you are at a Catalan festival and you are a French person, you can do whatever you want. This is what I’ve learned this weekend.

After the drive back to Perpignan, we all took turns scrubbing our faces in my bathroom. Throughout the whole day, I would sometimes look at one of my friend’s faces and burst out laughing, because I remembered what we were doing and where we were. We were in a tiny mountain village in southern France, getting chased by a man in a bear suit, covered in black grease paint, having the time of our lives. And there’s nothing funnier than that.

I’ve added pictures of this to the Snapfish account for posterity’s sake. Check them out!

On Being the Fat American

I’ve got a plate of cheese and crackers in front of me. Today, in addition to breakfast and lunch, I have had an apple cut into slices with peanut butter, some hot cocoa and “Butter Cheese Sticks—Snacky Cracky Time” (I kid you not that’s what they are called. It’s on the box in English), and I’ll probably have a yogurt between dinner and bed. I am a grazer. Everybody knows this, just as they know that if I don’t graze and get too hungry, I start shaking, lose all color in my face, and turn into one of the bitchiest people on the planet. The slightest irritation can send me into a rage…immediately followed by a mumbled, “I’m sorry, I’m just really hungry.”

At home, friends and family have gotten used to my constant munching, and school professors were generally willing to let me snack in class. Two hours is a long time to go without food of any kind! I have been told that this is actually a healthier way of eating, although I think it’s probably healthiest to eat when your body tells you you’re hungry and stop eating when you’re full (except for that one guy on CSI that one time where he didn’t have the signal that told him he wasn’t hungry so he just thought he was always hungry and so he was starving all the time and they had to chain him down and lock the refrigerator but one time he got out and ate himself to death because he didn’t know when to stop eating).

Despite my grazing, I consider myself a healthy eater—when I am snacking, I am snacking (generally) on food that is good for me. I don’t overeat (except on Thanksgiving, Christmas, Superbowl Sunday, and any potluck I go to) and I try to stick (without being overly conscious of it) to daily allotments and the luck. But every time I turn on the television or walk near a billboard advertising food, I am smacked in the face with a reminder that I am unhealthy and overweight because of my eating habits.

The French health administration, or whatever their equivalent is, requires that every commercial or advertisement for food includes a PSA at the end, using one of several pre-determined messages pertaining to food and health. It’s similar to the way packs of cigarettes back home must say “Cigarette Smoke Contains Carbon Monoxide” or “Quitting Smoking Now Greatly Reduces Serious Risks to Your Health” (in France, 30% of the packaging is taken up by the large words FUMER TUE—smoking kills, and another 40% on the opposite side is taken up by smaller, more detailed warnings. And yet I still have yet to have gone an hour without seeing at least three smokers in my line of vision). The PSAs concerning food say things like, “Avoid eating too salty, too sweet, and too fatty”, or the version that is used during kids’ programming: “To grow up big, avoid eating too salty, too sweet, too fatty.” Fine, ok, I’ll avoid it. Another incites people to, “Mangez, Bougez!” which translates to, “Eat, Move!” meaning get off your butt and exercise. I am all for working out so that I feel ok about that extra bowl of ice cream. The one that really bothers me, the one that really pisses me off, is the one that says, “For your health, avoid snacking between meals.” Fuck you, France, I do what I want.

Coming to health-conscious (well, not when it comes to the lungs or the liver…) France, I expected…Well, I don’t know what I expected. I knew that I would get flak (or at least references) to America’s reputation as the fat capitol of the world. I didn’t expect my students to shout, “McDonald’s!” and “Hamburgers!” when they found out I was American. I didn’t expect to be talking about impressions of Americans with my students, and (while I, an American, was standing right in front of them) tell me that Americans are fat. Really guys? I’m right here. Is that necessary? What I also didn’t expect was France’s overwhelming obsession with thinness to extend to billboards advertising pizza and commercials for milk.

It’s really awkward being constantly punched in the face by such overt anti-obesity messages, especially as an American. When in the company of French people, I find myself trying to eat slower, and eat less. The teachers in the cafeteria at school always leave a portion of their meal on their plate. I’ve tried, but I’m hungry. I can’t help it! When I do clean my plate around the Frenchies, and clean it quickly, too, I thank God that I am in pretty damn good shape, and am at least breaking one American stereotype, since I can’t break them all.

Odds and Ends, Bric a brac, Bits and Pieces

It's been a few days now since my last post, and I suppose it's about time for an update--with the dead cat and the Inauguration, I realize, also, that I haven't yet had time to recount my hijinks from last weekend, and now I have another weekend story to recount, as well.

I'm just gonna throw this out there and say that last weekend I survived a hurricane. There's no skirting around it. I was in a hurricane. There was a lot of wind, 16 people died, and I was there. Granted, it was only a Category 2, but it was still a hurricane. A few of the other assistants and I decided to head to Beziers to visit a another few assistants that live and teach there. We thought we'd do some site-seeing, too, since Beziers is supposed to be quite a nice place. We knew there was a wind storm predicted, but this area of France is always really windy and so we thought nothing of it. We arrived fairly late on Friday because of the train schedules, and didn't have time for much before bed but some wine and card games. The plan was to get up the next morning and go site-seeing before taking a 2:00pm train home. When we got up, the wind was blowing something fierce, and we found out that the storm was a bit more serious than we had anticipated. Site-seeing was not really an option--we would have gotten blown away in more-than-gale-force winds. We pushed our way to the train station, and "indefinite delay" was flashing on all of the incoming and outgoing trains at the Beziers station. We hung around the station for a while, hoping that the signage would change, only to be kicked out of the station as they were chaining everything up and locking everything down.

We sat around at a cafe for about two or three hours, trying to think of ways to get home. Buses? Nope--not running. Rent a car? Nope--too expensive, I was the only driver, too many people, and I can't drive a manual. Walk? Yeah no. We were stuck in Beziers. Defeated, we walked back to the assistants' apartment, and settled in for a long hurricane's night.

Emma and I again braved the store a bit later to go get groceries for dinner, which also turned out to an adventure in the wind. A baby almost touched my face with his, we almost got attacked by scary dogs, and walked past at least 7 downed trees. We brought back the giggles and weird Chinese food from the grocery store deli (the pork in the main dish tasted like chocolate. I don't think it was done on purpose).

We played a lot of cards, drank some more (though less this time) wine, and tried to play poker with toothpicks while listening to the wind howeling outside, banging against the windows and shaking the 60s building's walls. Poker brings out weird animal instincts to keep what's yours, even if it is just a pile of toothpicks.

The next morning, we picked our way through a slightly less windy city, stepping over fallen branches to the train station, only to see "indefinite delay" again displayed on the arrivals/departures board. There were no trains to Perpignan. Determined to not spend another night in that apartment that seemed to be driving us all slowly crazy, we found out that we could take a train to the nearby town of Narbonne, and then a bus back to Perps, but all trains surrounding Perpignan were down.

We arrived home a good 24 hours later than planned, tired and cranky but glad that electricity was restored before our return. School was cancelled the next day, and it was only on Tuesday or Wednesday that things seemed to return back to normal.

The normalcy was shattered on Thursday with a nation-wide general strike, to demonstrate the people's sentiment that the global economic crisis should not affect their jobs (what a better way to say "don't fire me or cut my pay" than not showing up to work for a day). The strike effectively shut down transportation in France, into France, and out of France, as it extended to Air France, buses, and trains as well. Schools were still open, but no one went. Post offices were closed. Even some restaurants, grocery stores, and clothes stores were closed. I pity anyone who went into labor or needed emergency medical services on Thursday last, because even hospital workers in France are allowed to strike. Hospital workers! This country and their effing strikes! It's a joke, really. They plan a strike for ONE day, and they think it will accomplish something. The point of a strike is to force society into realizing the importance of your work--which is exactly what happened when the Boeing machinists went on strike for almost three months. One day without mailing a letter isn't going to help--especially when the point of the strike is to protest the economic crisis. Ridiculous.

Anyway...

Yesterday I took a ski trip with the university and a few other assistants up into the Pyrenees. Yes that's right, I am so posh now, so European, that I took a skiing holiday to the Pyrenees. How bourgeoisie is that? We went to a place called Formigueres, and it was lovely and snowy and beautiful, but I was not confident enough of my skiing prowess to bring my camera onto the slopes, so unfortunately I have no pictures to share. But, I was much better the second time up skiing than I was last year at Baker. I can stop now, and turn, rather than hurtle straight down the mountain and run into a tree, snow bank, or another skier.

Not much else to report. I haven't taken the bus in a while, so I am not sure if the cat is still there, but I am betting it is.