I left Montpellier at seven o'clock in the morning on Saturday, the 11th. My host mom brought me to the station, and waited with me until the train arrived. I was very grateful for this, because I had been stressed about the possibility of having to navigate the train station by myself. I was going to have to do enough of that as it was.
I managed to get myself to Lille and then across the British border without too much trouble, and before long I was back in London. It was weird. It felt like I had just left.
Suddenly being around a lot of people who were speaking English was weird enough, but I found that actually speaking English was even more bizarre. The words felt strange in my mouth. The fact was that, apart from a few short conversations with my parents via Skype, and the occasional English demonstration for my host mom, I had spoken nothing but French for over two months. Which was a really amazing thought.
My dad met me at St. Pancras train station, and we proceeded to spend three whirlwind days in London, running all over the place and seeing as much as we possibly could. It was a city that I had longed to see for years- to the point where I felt as though I had already been there. It looked... different than I had imagined, probably because I had been imagining some Victorian-age city with castles, and maybe some wizards. But it was nice, and I need to go back. Three days is a disgraceful amount of time to spend anywhere, especially in London.
Here are some pictures, because I took a lot and geez, it's London.
It rained every day. And I didn't mind. In fact, I think I would have felt cheated if it hadn't.
If you like standing around in a crowd of tourists while being ordered about by cops, go to the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. This was about all I saw.
We also went to the Natural History Museum. It was awesome. I'd explain why it was awesome, but here's a video instead.
Also this.
And this.
This is Kensington Palace. I was here for the gardens, for reasons I'll explain later, but the palace was actually really great too. It featured an extensive exhibit on Queen Victoria, who I mainly know for 1. living forever, 2. being ridiculously obsessed with her husband, and 3. giving hemophilia to most of the ruling families of Europe (most notably Russia's).
So it was nice to learn a little more about her.
I'm a lifelong, die-hard Peter Pan fan (not counting the animated Disney movie. Ew.) so when I learned I would be going to London, my first priority was visiting Kensington Gardens, which is where Peter lived before traveling to Neverland. That was literally all I knew about the gardens. I didn't even know there was a palace there. And I also didn't know that there was actually a Peter Pan statue there- for which I am eternally proud of London. Good job, guys. Five thumbs up.
Unfortunately, when we left the palace it was raining, and grey, and miserable, and completely unsuitable for taking a nice stroll through the gardens. But the thought of leaving London without seeing the Peter Pan statue was out of the question. So I dragged my dad around the park in the rain and, though it took some serious looking, we finally found it. And it was worth every second of the effort.
This is the British Museum. It's basically a huge storage shed for all of the various items the British Empire has... erm... acquired over the centuries. And we were only able to spend about and hour-and-a-half there. This was a bad plan. Chaos ensued.
While in the midst of a sensory overload (and what basically amounted to a history nerd version of a sugar rush), I was somehow able to get some decent pictures.
THE ROSETTA STONE!
THE SPHINX'S BEARD!
A GOOGLY-EYED HORUS FALCON!
PERSIAN ARROWHEADS FROM THE BATTLE OF MARATHON!!!
NEREIDS!
THESE ARE TOKENS THAT ATHENIAN CITIZENS WOULD PUT IN THIS BIG SORTING MACHINE THING TO DETERMINE WHETHER OR NOT THEY GOT TO BE PART OF A JURY. ISN'T THAT COOL?
FIGURES FROM THE WEST PEDIMENT OF THE PARTHENON, DEPICTING THE CONTEST BETWEEN ATHENA AND POSEIDON FOR PATRONAGE OF ATHENS!
THESE SHOULD REALLY BE IN THE ACROPOLIS MUSEUM IN ATHENS, BUT OH WELL.
PERIKLEEEEEEEES!
After my dad dragged me out of the museum, and I stopped freaking out, we went to Westminster Abbey.
This isn't Westminster Abbey. This is the obligatory picture of Big Ben.
This is Westminster Abbey. It's the church where all of the coronations take place, and where most of the UK's influential people are buried. I found the graves of a lot of really famous people, including Darwin, Elgar, Newton, Chaucer, Dickens, and a whole bunch of royalty. I would have taken pictures, but I wasn't allowed to.
This is Trafalgar Square, featuring Nelson's Column, which I only know because of that one quote in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
So this was second on my list of must-visits, after Kensington Gardens. Forbidden Planet is a big fantasy/sci-fi/book/comics store, which already would have made it a prime destination for me, but what's really special about it is that it's the store where Douglas Adams had his first book signing ever. The year was 1979 (the year after the store opened) and the book was The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I think they should put up a plaque or something, but eh. Can't be too picky.
In addition to that, it's a really awesome store, and I could have happily spent several days in there. As luck would have it, we were there the day they were compiling their stock, so parts of the store were closed off, but there was still plenty to see. I ended up buying a Hawkeye trade paperback, and (fittingly enough) a signed copy of And Another Thing... by Eoin Colfer, which is the sixth and final book in the Hitchhiker's trilogy.
And then we rode on a double-decker bus, which was just like riding on a normal bus, but higher up.
The next day we went to the Tower of London, which isn't really a tower at all. It's a fortress, made up of a collection of buildings from different time periods. It used to be a prison for high-profile criminals. Now it's where England stores its crown jewels and ravens.
This is a rack, which is one of the torture devices that they used here. I was sad they didn't have any for sale in the gift shop.
The last person to be executed in the tower was a German spy, during World War II. Apparently he broke his ankle when he parachuted into British territory, so they let him sit in this chair when they killed him.
Then we went to the Globe- a reconstruction of Shakespeare's theater. It's that white building.
The lighting in the picture is terrible, but the building really is a very nice reconstruction.
Yeah. The actual Globe theater hasn't
even been excavated, because of lack of funding. They figured out it was under this building, and they put a nice label on the ground to keep track of it, but that's all.
The Rose theater, a slightly older theater in the same neighborhood, had an only slightly better fate. It was partly excavated, and then the government put an office building on top of it.
And for dinner, we went to a pub. Actually, we ate at pubs most nights. They were really nice, but all of the food was ridiculously heavy.
And then we left the next day, with one flight into Washington, DC and then another one home.
It was, as always happens after long trips like this, very surreal to be back, because it simultaneously felt as though I had been gone for a long time, and as if I had never left.
I realize this blog has been very sparse, and I feel kind of bad about that. It's partly been laziness, I'll admit, but it's mostly been the nature of this trip, as I think I mentioned before. A lot of my time in France was spent following a repeating routine, and was very rooted in my family- which I'm not going to go into too much detail about on the Internet, out of respect for their privacy. But I do feel like I need to say something about my experience living with them.
Left to right: my host sister, my host mom's boyfriend's son, my host mom's boyfriend, my host mom, and my host mom's ex-husband.
This was my first time living with a host family for an extended period of time, and I soon realized that this type of arrangement had very definite positives and negatives. It meant I got to know them fairly well, and I had their support, and a home-like environment. It provided optimum immersion. There were cats. On the other hand, it created a really bizarre paradox- as I was both a "part of the family", at least temporarily, and at the same time I was a guest enjoying their hospitality. In other words, I was supposed to treat their house as my own, but not really. This put a kind of awkward social pressure on me that I wasn't sure how to deal with, and frequently caused me to hide in my room for a little while, to escape from it. This wasn't my family's fault- it was just the nature of the situation.
I also found that living for this long with strangers created other kinds of tensions. I occasionally felt resentful toward my family- for not paying enough attention to me, for not doing things the way I was used to them being done- and this was just another symptom of the situation. A psychological effect of being away from home for an extended period of time, and dealing with a new environment.
I did really like my family, though, and am going to try to keep in touch. My host mom was maybe the same age as my actual mom, or maybe a little bit older, and she was very nice. She was easy to talk to- both figuratively and literally. She had a very slow, clear way of speaking that made her very easy to understand. She is an athlete, who rock climbs and hikes and scuba dives, and she loves the outdoors and is very environmentally conscious. She only bought meat that she knew came from well-treated animals, and only bought fruits and vegetables that were grown close to home. She takes issue with society's obsession with buying things, and doesn't have a TV. She is very interested in Buddhism, and tries to live her life in a way that makes her happy.
She is also, as I think I mentioned, a nanny, and has been for eleven years- which shows just how patient and tolerant she is, considering the fact that I was sick of crying babies after the first week of being there with them. Some of the older (relatively speaking) kids, though, I got to know fairly well, and it was really great for me to have them to hang out with. In the beginning I had an impossible time understanding them, because of mumbling and baby-talk (most of them were still learning French themselves) but as time went on, I got better and better at figuring out what they were saying.
I also learned a lot of child-care and bodily function-related vocabulary, which is good, I guess.
I also had a host sister, and the first thing that struck me about her was how similar she was to my actual sister. They're about the same age, they're both artists, they're both very friendly and outgoing... They even have the same foot problem. I really, really liked my host sister, but I didn't get to spend much time with her. She was, as I mentioned, very friendly, and almost instantly seemed comfortable chatting with me, and sharing insights into her life. She has a great sense of humor and a very funny, animated way of speaking. She has a very relaxed attitude toward life and toward school- the latter of which frustrates her mom a bit.
But as I mentioned, I didn't see her nearly as much as I wanted to, and this was because she doesn't really get along with her mom's boyfriend. She would frequently go over to her boyfriend's house, or the houses of various friends, just to get out of the house. I don't blame her for this at all. I just wish I had gotten to know her a little better.
My host mom's boyfriend actually wasn't around much either. He's a wine consultant (yes, apparently that's a job) and he spends most of his time traveling around the world uh... looking at vineyards and stuff, I guess. In any case, he was interesting in that he knew a lot of random trivia and spoke very good English, but I didn't spend much time with him, and I didn't really mind that.
The other main people I hung out with were two of my host mom's neighbors, who would come over occasionally to talk and have tea and play Scrabble. They were both extremely nice, and I really enjoyed talking with them. I also learned, shortly before the end of my stay, that one of them is the descent of a Russian aristocrat who had managed to flee the empire before the 1918 revolution. I didn't really have a chance to ask her more about that, and about her family, which I'm really sad about.
And finally (finally!) you will notice that I called this blog "Teaching(-ish) in Montpellier". This ended up being much more accurate than I'd anticipated, since I did very little teaching. My host mom would often ask me about words and phrases, and I would help as much as I could, and I enjoyed it, but she had a very busy life, and endless things to deal with, and in the end, learning English went to the bottom of the priority list. And my host sister had no interest whatsoever. I tried speaking English with her, but she refused to participate. She wasn't mean about it. She just didn't want to, and there wasn't much I could do to force her.
So there you have it. Not much teaching, but I did learn a lot- about myself, about France, about people and human nature... and I think my French might have even improved a bit too. It was a good trip, and I'm glad I went, and I'm glad to be home. And I regret nothing.
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