Random Photos

Arm's-length self-portrait of me in Kensington Gardens, London, England. With the fab hat I bought at Petticoat Lane market!
Me and my girls. Tiffany, Me, and Aileen. Regular girls or the Three Stooges? You decide. And yes, I've gone ghetto my friends. West side for life (whatever the heck that means).
This one's at Thanksgiving dinner. I don't remember anyone taking this picture, but whatever. That's me, Edward (who owns the apartment space CEA rents) and our fearless CEA group leader Patrick.
I think this pictures perfectly epitomizes everything Tiffany and I are when we're near each other. Does that scare anyone else? And we're the travel buddies... amazing we're still alive, ain't it?
Me and my girls. Sorry it's blurry, but it's the only one we're all smiling in. This was at Thanksgiving dinner (which was really nice). Tiffany, Aileen, and Me.

Woke up on Friday morning and there's like 4 inches of snow outside!! Really beautiful. Tiffany and I may go snowboarding this weekend. (Any and all prayers very much appreciated.)

London Pictures

So here are my pictures from London, hope everyone enjoys them. I decided not to put up a lot of the pics I took mainly because they're just of monuments and such... if you want to see them watch a Rick Steves' show or get online. So here we go. The first one is Westminster Abbey. I was not a fan of the Anglican churches. It seemed more about the fame and the moeny than it did about religion. There's so many tombs in Westminster and so many tourists that it doesn't even look like a church at this point.
Most churches charge an entrance fee and don't allow photography. Or if they do, it's only for those that purchase a special pass (not that I followed any of those rules of course).
Next picture is an advertisment in the London Underground. They had a lot of REALLY funny ones. I liked this one, but since this is a family friendly site I didn't put up any of the off-colored ones, of which there were many.

Then there's me and Tiff in the British Museum. If we look exhausted, it's because we are. We pretty much went non-stop 15 hours a day while we were there because we wanted to see and do everything. While we accomplished our goals, it certainly took it's toll on us.







Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. This is the theatre where it premiered and the same theatre we saw it in. What a thrill (and what a price!!!) but it was totally worth it. The theatre was as gorgeous on the inside as the outside and the movie was really really good.
The last picture of London is of Speaker's Corner. It's a place on the far end of Kensington Park (tho it might actually be Regent's Park, they're the same general piece of land, but one side of the road has a seperate name). Anywho... this particular corner was designated by Parliament in 184-something for oratory. I really wanted to go and see who was speaking about what. This man had an American accent, but was speaking about Islam. He was making good points I thought until he said that the West needed to "smell the peace". I had to walk away then, because I started giggling. That's all for London. Staying in Grenoble this coming weekend.

London

Well, I guess the French blog wasn't a hit with my readers and since it's you I aim to please I suppose I'll go back to english. Which is rather fitting considering this entry is about the capitol of the original anglophone world... London.

Left on Friday in the midst of a miraculous 4 inches of overnight snow. I guess it was a Thanksgiving present. Les grenoblois don't know how to deal with snow though, so it ended up being a ridiculously long adventure to get to the bus station, but from there on out it was easy sailing... or flying as the case may be. We were there Friday afternoon through this (Monday) morning and instead of giving you a detailed description of everything, I'll just do a quick list of all the highlights we covered.

- Picadilly Circus
- Westminster
- Tower of London
- St. Paul's Cathedral
- Southwark Cathedral - stained-glass window and monument to Shakespeare
- Trafalgar Square
- National Portrait Gallery
- Kensington Gardens
- Petticoat Lane Market
- Madame Toussaud's (just Tiffany)
- Royal Opera House
- British Museum
- House of Sherlock Holmes
- Speaker's Corner
- London Eye
- London Bridge
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - we saw it in the theater it premiered in in London which was REALLY beautiful. It was a highlight for sure.

I'll put up some interesting stories along with pictures in the next few days when I get a chance to take my laptop to school, so be on the lookout. I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Hiver

C'est vraiment l'hiver en Grenoble maintenant. Le dernier weekend je suis allee a Avignon et Orange avec le groupe de CEA. C'est assez interessant, mais je ne suis pas catholique donc, le Palais des Papes ne m'interesse pas beaucoup. Le ville d'Avignon est tres jolie, et je pense que c'est presque comme Grenoble (mon prof de grammaire pense que je suis tres stupide pour ca, mais elle ne m'aime pas, donc je ne souci pas). J'ai presque perce mon nez, mais j'ai eu trop de peur de ca. Je suis desolee. Cet jeudi est le fete de Thanksgiving... et pour votre information les francais ne celebrent pas Thanksgiving!! Mais, le groupe de CEA mangeront un repas ensemble a l'apartement d'Amanda et Laura. Et ensuite, Tiffany et moi vont aller a Londres pour un longue weekend. Je veux visiter Stonehenge aussi, mais il y a beaucoup de choses en ville de faire. Et mon amie Priya et ses amies vont aller a Londres cet weekend aussi, nous voulons aller au bar avec eux. Avez-vous un bon Thanksgiving! A bientot.

Des Photos d'Avignon

Language

Living in a country where you don’t fluently speak the language really makes you appreciate both the powerful complexities of language and the huge gaps that it will never be able to cross. I feel like no matter how long I lived here, and studied the language, and learned new words and phrases I would never be able to accurately describe how rose smells, or be able to write a journal like this. My brain has been programmed for 20 years in English and by this time I think it would be hard to change to a new language. But by the same token, I don’t think there’s any language in the world that can express a sunset over the ocean. There are no words that will ever be able to really tell someone what love is. How is that in the millennia or so that language has existed we have failed to create words and verbal ideas for such things? Surely sunsets and emotions have been around long before language was born and will be around long after there are people who speak those languages are gone, but as humanity we have never deemed them worthy of words? Or are they among the rare collection of things that will never be expressible in written form? Maybe there are some things that humans have endlessly tried to explain but they are forever out of grasp and must be experienced to be understood. People take language for granted. Even when we are speaking to others who natively speak the same language we get things confused and mixed up. So what is the point of language after all?

Bordeaux

A nice calm post... but things might start to get kinda wild now... stay tuned everyone. :)

Whew. Finally back from Bordeaux. Tiffany and I went for the weekend. For some reason it is nearly impossible to get from Grenoble to Bordeaux by train. We took a 12 hour night train on the way there (which was MUCH better than the last night train) and a 10 hour all day train on the way back. At least I got all my homework done, I was able to read quite a bit of my book, and I got to nap too! Bordeaux was a really nice city, albeit incredibly cold. I wore two shirts, two pair of socks, a sweater, my coat, and gloves the entire time. Our hostel room was incredibly cold, and the heat never did work, and the walls were paper thin. We could hear the man next door snoring through the wall over the music from our headphones. The main cathedral in town is really beautiful, so we checked that out on Friday. There’s also a tower next to it that offers really incredible panoramic views of the city from the top. It was Bordeaux’s jazz festival so we got tickets to one of the concerts Friday night. Right beforehand we decided to go check out their park, which was rather extensive and beautiful, but apparently it closes at dark (there were no signs whatsoever) and we almost got locked in the park since it’s completely surrounded by a very tall fence. Luckily we got out, but unluckily we went to the jazz concert. My dad really likes jazz so I’ve heard a lot of different kinds of jazz. Tiffany lives in NYC and she’s heard a lot of jazz too… so we’re both wondering why this was jazz. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was only “music” in the very broad and technical definition of the term. The guitarist and saxophonist seemed intent on showing off the top 50 most annoying noises their instruments could make, and I don’t think they or the drummer were ever playing the same song at the same time. It can be most accurately described as sounding like a group of 13 year olds who decide to start a garage band, but have never played instruments before. The first song started and Tiffany said “Oh, they’re tuning”. No. No… it was the song. The 15 minute long song. Certainly a story though. Saturday we checked out one of the museums in town and walked around a pedestrian quarter for a while. Then we went on a Chateaux/Wine Tasting tour offered by the VERY helpful and modern Tourist Office in Bordeaux. If you ever go, make sure to stop in there. The tour was really nice because it was well narrated in both French and English (my brain kept translating each language into the other…) and it was on a tour bus which was good since it was FREEZING and raining and everything was included for a very reasonable price. I am not a fan of the Bordeaux wine from the Medoc region, but it was really interesting to see different ways of making it, and some of the chateaux there are amazing, especially because quite a few of them are still the primary residence for the family that owns the vineyard. Sunday was all day on a train. The last leg was a different train from Lyon to Grenoble and it was either overbooked, or a lot of the students were riding illegally without a ticket, because by the time Tiff and I got there there were no seats left! A note to any train riders out there: After about 20 minutes of sitting on the tiny stairs, your behind goes completely numb. And when we got back to Grenoble we realized that the trams still weren’t running at night as the city’s violence deterrent… Luckily my family loves me very very much and Elise sent my brother to pick us both up and drive us both home! A very relaxing weekend of travel overall. I reccoment Bordeaux to anyone travelling in France. The city has been completely re-hauled in the past decade thanks to a new mayor. The streets are wider and safer, the tram system is gorgeous, brand new, and very easy to figure out. The VAST majority of buildings are in the classical style which gives the city a very old-world feel and the tourist office is immensely helpful. Just take lots of warm clothes! Hope everyone is having a good week!

Bordeaux Pictures

Me freezing my behind off by some wine barrels

Town Hall in Bordeaux
Me in front of HUGE wine vats
View of the city from the tower
Cathedral de St Andre

Riots

Bonjour tout le monde. I've gotten a lot of questions, comments, and concerns about the violence in France right now. I'm really not sure how American media is portraying it, but from what I can guess I'd say they're blowing it way out of proportion as a way for the ever-misled Bush administration to further prove French "inferiority". I realize the situation has been going on for almost two weeks now, but to give you an idea of how low key it is here, I knew nothing until Sunday. No big newspaper headlines, my host family didn't mention it, nothing in Politics class, nothing. So here's the lowdown...

There has been civil unrest in certain French cities, originating from Paris suburbs following the death of two adolescents who were fleeing from the police and sought refuge in a power station. After climbing the protective fence, the two were electrocuted in a part of the facility. (I still fail to understand how the death of these young men is anyone's fault but their own. Some say they were running from the police, the police deny it, but regardless these two young men chose to climb into a power sub-station in their Parisian suburb... what did they think was going to happen?! Perhaps it was the straw that broke the camel's back or it was just an excuse to take out other anger at the government... but continuing)

This coupled with a particularly violent rhetoric from the Minister of the Interior directed towards the criminal elements of certain communities, that some of the community members have understood as being directed at their communities as a whole, has provoked a rash of incidents. I personally believe that the fact that the majority of the violence is being carried out by immigrant youths stems back to the fires in Parisian illegal housing, which the government didn't do much about, over the summer...

Numerous cars have been burnt as well as symbols of public authority such as schools and police stations. Usually youths on motorscooters ride around and throw Moltov Cocktails into car windows. The "violence" has reached Grenoble, but is restricted to two main areas, both commonly known to be of high immigrant populations. These places are easily avoidable, but car fires and such are only carried out after dark (about 9pm here) so it's really not a problem.

No one in Grenoble seems affected by any of this. My friend Tiffany and I were discussing how, if something like this were happening in the US, there would be armed guards on public transportation and police absolutely everywhere and people would stay in all the time... thus further propagating the sense of fear that those starting the violence wish to spread. However, the French don't really seem all about allowing those who use illegal and dangerous methods to get what they want... (hmmmm... and we wonder why they didn't support the Bush Administration's decision to invade Iraq...) So life here hasn't really changed at all, I still have friends going to Paris to visit, and Tiffany and I are headed to Bordeaux this weekend. We're all perfectly safe, and as long as I continue using common sense I won't ever be put in any danger. Hope everyone reading this is having a great week!! Talk to you later!!

For more information and updates in general I reccomend http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4413964.stm but please remember that things happening in suburbs of Paris are MUCH MUCH worse than things here. Also please feel free to e-mail me or snail mail me with any questions, I'd be happy to answer anything.

d-weigel@onu.edu Dana Weigel, 3 rue John Kennedy, 38100 Grenoble, France

Compliment

So I recieved the best compliment in the entire world the other day!! I was at the art supplies store with Tiffany and Aileen (Aileen's quite the artist) and when we went to leave the guy at la caisse asked if Aileen was American. And she said yes, and he asked Tiffany if she was American, and she said yes, and then he said "But you're French, no?" To ME!!! How incredibly cool is that!?!? A Frenchman thought I was FRENCH!!! I haven't been that excited in a while. It really made my day. And my weekend.

The Da Vinci Code

Ok, so Tuesday afternoon I bought The Da Vinci Code because so many people had told me I just had to read it. Now, normally I'm not a fan of books that get a lot of hype but this one actually lived up to it. As a work of fiction it is incredibly well put-together, with very dynamic characters and a fascinating edge-of-your-seat plot. I finished all 589 pages of it in less than three days. It's that good. And it has some really interesting facts in it as well. For instance, did you know that the perimiter of the Louvre in Paris is 3 miles long?! Insanity. So just wanted to reccomend it to everyone. It's worth reading.

Portugal: Part Two

I'm lazy and tired today, so pictures are going up like this because it's a LOT easier.

Sunrise over the ocean

Me in the Atlantic at Lagos

My favorite picture of Tiffany at the beach
The take their feista in Lagos very seriously

Lagos sign

Me and Tiffany at the fort point in Sagres
Me on the rocks at Sagres
The Atlantic at Sagres

Portugal: Part One

Settle in folks, or ignore this all, because it's gonna be a long one...
I have never been so happy in all my life to hear French. I don't think I'll be complaining about not speaking it again for a very very long time. The Portuguese language is essentially the result of a bunch of drunk Spaniards with a lisp deciding to really confuse the rest of the world by making their own language. Or maybe that's just my interpretation. But I'm getting ahead of myself...
DAY ONE: Tiffany and I left Thursday afternoon for Portugal from the Grenoble bus station where there's a RyanAir shuttle to the airport. In true French style, they overbooked the bus and Tiffany and I had to shove ourselves on it so that we weren't left standing on the sidewalk as our luggage and only way to the airport drove away. This should have been an indicator that the trip would be interesting... the flight all the way to London and then London to Porto. It was raining and we decided that since it was already late it was probably best to just take a taxi to our hostel. The taxi driver didn't know the address and had to ask someone else and then there was a traffic jam for approximately 4 minutes, 3 of which our driver spent laying on the horn. Somehow this seems to sum up Porto, Portugal pretty well. It's not a city I reccomend. We got to our hostel and checked in, it was a really really nice place (though it smells EXACTLY like Claire's (friend from high school) house which brought back a lot of memories and was nice. We went out to ask where to eat and there was another tenant there... and Brazilian man who offered to take us to the restaurant down the street. Probably not the best idea in the world (going off down a dark road late at night to an unknown place with a man we don't know) but we were really hungry so off we went. In Portugal if you tell someone "Io nao fallo portuges" (I don't speak Portuguese) they immedeately respond in Portuguese. To make a long story short, we saw a million pictures of his baby, were repeatedly assured he wasn't married and he claimed to work for Brazilian television. Then he found a Portuguese man who spoke English and could translate so he asked for our numbers and asked to take us out for the night, we lied like crazy and ran back to the hostel.
Day TWO: Left hostel ridiculously early to catch a train. Rode the train forever and ended up in the wrong city! Ooops. Luckily there was a train going to our city in like 5 minutes and they smiled and nodded at the stupid Americans and let us use the old tickets. We got to Lagos (say it Lah-goosh) around 8 and miraculously found our hostel where she informed us we had signed up for a shared bathroom room but she could change it if we wanted to pay extra. Luckily we're cheap, because the "shared bathroom room" was an apartment. On the waterfront. With a kitchen. And a balcony. And we were the only people there all weekend!! Talk about amazing luck. For $12 a person per night we got our own APARTMENT!!! It was incredible. Also, we had NO idea but this past weekend just happened to be essentially the 4th of July type celebration for this little town. Which meant there was a huge festival, a fireworks display (that we had a PERFECT view of from our balcony) and all sorts of nifty stuff going on all weekend. Gorgeous town too, right on the ocean, with palm trees and blooming flowers and everything.
Day THREE: Left Lagos mid morning for a day in Sagres (say it Sah-gre-sh) which is the southwestern most point of the European continent. We frolicked in the Atlantic, walked along the coast, explored the fort, rented bikes to explore more... it was just a really awesome day!! Got back to Lagos really late after waiting for the bus for two hours (Portugual makes French public transportation look early...). We had been planning to go out on the town but ended up falling asleep to a movie on tv (American film, Portuguese subtitles... really good way to learn a language actually).
Day FOUR: Slept in til about noon then got up and explored Lagos all day. Another fort, another beach, went to the festival for a while, found a convertor at a Portuguese Dollar Store, went out to eat at a nice Portuguese restaurant and fell asleep at like 9pm.
Day FIVE: I ended up waking up early enough to go watch the sun rise over the ocean... pretty much one of the coolest things I've ever done. Then we went to get our train tickets back to Porto. For some reason the train connections were all REALLY close this time and we litterally had to RUN onto one train as it was pulling out of the station. Insanity. Got back to Porto early and tried exploring, but it's a really slummy scary town and after getting lost for over an hour and not finding a SINGLE restaurant we succumbed to McDonald's (I'm so sorry everyone, I hate myself for it too) and then got lost trying to find our way back to our hostel for about 2.5 hours. Again, DO NOT VISIT PORTO!! Stayed up talking and watching random American TV shows with Portuguese subtitles, being dorks and analyzing the language til way too late.
Day SIX: Woke up at 6:30 in the morning and checked out, where the man told us to take the subway to the airport. Considering is was approx. a million times cheaper to do so, we found the subway station, asked a worker to explain ticketing, and got very clear directions from him on which lines and which stops to take to get to the airport. Unfortunately he was wrong. So we had to backtrack, take a bus which reeked of urine, run across five lanes of highway traffic with our luggage, run up 4 flights of stairs and get to the ticket counter only about 5 minutes before it closed. This was the beginning of the 'Trip Home Fiasco of 2005". We got to London, but a combination of the flight being a bit late, our terminal being a million miles away from every other terminal, luggage not coming, me not knowing which luggage was Tiffany's, Tiffany getting confused and getting in the wrong line, and RyanAir ground staff having an attitude problem forced us to miss our connecting flight back to France. Eventually we found another flight into France, but not the city we had train tickets for, and not Grenoble. 2 hours in London Stansted Airport and a two hour flight later we were in the middle of a cornfield somewhere near Limoges(no, we'd never heard of it either) stranded at the airport. There was no bus to get into town and a bad combination of age and driver's license validity made it impossible for us to rent a car... so one very expensive cab ride later we were at the train station in Limoges. Where we found out our other tickets were non-refundable, and the only train to Grenoble left at midnight... 6 hours away. So we hung in Limoges train station for 6 hours (it wasn't really IN the city, so we couldn't go tour or anything) and then got on a very weird sleeper car where we were packed in with four other people, two of which snored and someone really smelled... Waited in the Lyon train station for another hour at 6:30 in the morning and then took a final train to Grenoble, but it got there late so we ended up not making it to class.... Thus, we arrived, safe and sound, back in Grenoble, 26 hours after leaving our hostel in Porto. Whew.
Overall I give trip an 8 out of 10 though, because it was wonderfully relaxing, great views, totally different, and now we have a million stories to tell the grandkids. Glad to be back home speaking French though. That's all for now. Over and out!!