can't stop writing.

It's become a force of habit to write a weekly email, so even though it's late and I've not really got internet, I'm sitting here writing. There would be a nice view over the valley if I hadn't drawn the curtains to keep out the bugs - we're in a rather posh hotel in Cortano because there weren't any openings anywhere, though tomorrow we move to a convent where our accomodations will be a bit more austere and a bit more reasonably priced. It's eleven and we've just come back from an excellent dinner and a ramble around town, up hill and down dale, cones of gelato melting about as fast as we could eat them.


It's been a long week with lots of traveling. First there was the sleeper train from Paris to Rome, which was nice. I hadn't been on a sleeper train since India, and I have to say, as a whole, I preferred them, though this train was certainly generally more comfortable. Less character, though, and no calls of "chai! Chai chaiyya chai!" or "teeeeeeea. Kaaaaaaappi. Kappi, tea" and no channa or sweet curd to buy. No families pulling feasts out of stacked metal containers. No barred windows to prop open, just lots of air conditioning that made my throat sore. But a pleasant train nonetheless, and we met some friendly people. Went to sleep in France, woke up briefly when the train stopped in Switzerland (but it was dark, nothing to see here), and woke up again to sunshine and square houses with red-tiled roofs and hills that were definitely nothing to do with Northern France.


I'm plugged into the tiny iPod, soaking up some music and just relaxing. Our posh room has a nice tub and I had a bath earlier and scrubbed away the lingering dirt of Rome and Sorrento and Capri and Pompeii. Sorrento was the first place we stopped: we caught a train from Rome to Napoli and then from Napoli to Sorrento, to stay at a little place in Sant Agnello, next to Sorrento. It's a hotel/hostel/cooking school called Mami Camilla's, and it was delightful. First, the food was great, and cheap. Because you can go and sign up for a week long cooking course, the lunches and dinners are student-cooked (with help from the excellent chefs), and so you can get a four-course meal in great company for fifteen Euro. The people that came and went were all so interesting: we met some Swedes, a bunch of English people, some Aussies, and of course a few fellow Americans, including two young tv-industry types on their honeymoon who told us a bit about what it's like to work at NBC or write for Prison Break. Second, the dorms were clean and homey, recently decorated and really well done. Not much street noise at night, either, and our roommates weren't too bad. Altogether a comfortable and highly-recommendable place.


We used Mami Camilla's as a base for the three days we were there. The first day was just getting there and settling in: they had hammock chairs that I made good use of, and Dad sampled the local wines, and everyone sat about and chatted and taunted the dogs (one enormous mastiff named Spike who had too much tongue for his muzzle and was gentle as anything, and then a fiesty Chihuahua called Lola). Sorrento's a sweet little place, all sunshine and citrus trees, and Mami Camilla's has its own small groves of lemon and orange trees, which meant there was always fresh-squeezed orange juice at breakfast. The second day we were going to head out to Capri, but it was a bit cloudy, so we ended up going to Pompeii instead, where a guide offered his services for "less than a thousand Euros. Ninety-five!", so we eschewed his help and just rambled around the ruins ourselves with the maps and explanatory pamphlets. It was an interesting place to see, even without the history laid out for us. The ruins are really extensive, and there's always the mountain glowering. We tramped about for hours and I took about two hundred photographs of doorways and archways and alleyways and shrines and statues and more archways and windows. I'm noticing some trends in my photography, I have to say. Very grateful for Saurabh's gift of the digital camera, though - otherwise I'd go through a billion rolls of film and have not much to show for it. These I can download and tidy up and upload so that you can all see them that much faster (in fact, they've been up for a few days already at my Picasa album along with the photos of my students and Cambrai).


The second day was clear and lovely, so we caught the hydrofoil out to Capri with a bunch of French students (mostly because we were too late for the ferry, but it was a great ride, very fast through the perfect navy blue water with its perfectly white crests of foam). I stood on the back of the boat and put my sunscreen on and licked the salt off my lips, listening to the students chattering.

"Where are you from?" I asked one of them (in French, of course).

"France!" she said.

"Yes, I know," I said, "but where?"

"Northern France."

"Where?" I asked, all a-tingle.

"Sin-le-Noble. Do you know it?"

"Yes!" And I do - it's one of the stops on the way to Douai, not so many towns over. Anna and I always joked that we really liked the name, even though Sin has nothing to do with sin, and is really pronounced more like "San", and there aren't so many nobles around. So that was nice, to meet some people from the area where I am. Was. Whichever.


We took a boat tour around Capri, Capri with its cliffs and its rocks and its greeny plants. The cliffs are so high that they catch or make clouds, even on a clear day: all around was sunshine and then the one scud of fog over the cliffs. We paid for the long tour all around the island because it was only three Euro more than the tour that only went to the Blue Grotto, where you have to pay again to get in, and it was definitely worth it. Two hours of tooling around in the beautiful water, listening to the boatman talk in English and Italian about whatever it is we happened to be seeing, avoiding the seagulls, taking a thousand photographs of rock formations and boats and lighthouses and villas and statues. We got around to the grotto and waited about half an hour to clamber out of our boats into tiny rowboats, pay nine Euro each, and squeeze through the passageway into the grotto, which really is lovely. The sunlight reflects off the water and off the rocks on the bottom and filters into the cave from underneath and just lights the place up with this perfect blue glow. Very calm, floating in the little boats with the boatmen singing that song about the moon over Capri (except ours was rather sullen, and the only song he sang was "and now you give me a tip for my good work").


After that, we took the funicular up from the beach to the town of Capri and had lunch with a couple from Chicago whom we met on the boat (also on their honeymoon - 'tis perhaps the season). Capri is posh too, mostly for the rich and famous despite its small size and accessibility, but fortunately it was the off season, and the narrow roads weren't choked with people, though it was rough when the students from various countries and schools would all try to cram through the same alleyway. Then it was gelato in the square and people-watching, since we didn't have enough cash for the chair ride to the top of the cliffs and we'd had a lot of sun anyway, and then we sat on the beach for a bit and then caught the hydrofoil back to Sorrento, and took a bus back to Sant Agnello so as to avoid the long hike up the hill from the marina. I met some French people and talked Italian buses with them, and then met some English and Australian people and talked cricket.


Tourists are interesting. The more I see them, the less I like them, generally, even though I am one. Self-hating, sure, but at least I'm not one of those tourists with an agenda. "I must see this, I must do that!" Maybe I'm no better than any of the others, but I'm content to wander. I don't expect a place to be my end-all, to answer all my questions. I'm not looking for ultimate peace, or for the perfect view of anything. Capri is beautiful. It didn't change my life. Maybe a place will, but that's not what I'm looking for when I go there. I come to the world and I let the world come to me. A cappuccino in Italy is good. A cappuccino in America is good, maybe not quite as good, but you can get a lot of different things in the U.S., and I'm sure Italy would quail at the thought of a gingerbread latte. Things are different everywhere and I refuse to rank them. Dad tonight was complaining about how there's no good food in Fayetteville, as compared to Cortano or Italy in general, and that's just not true. No place is going to solve all your problems and save you forever. Not even Paris, city of lovers.


Paris, city of keys. Roma, city of clocks, where I found a watchface in the road. I had Indian food in Rome too: there was a little place near the Colosseum that had a nice menu, so we went back after circumnavigating the Colosseum and the nearby ruins. "I wish they had South Indian food," I said, and then looked closely at the other menu, and it turned out that on Saturdays and Sundays at lunch, they did! So I introduced Dad to the joys of dosai and idli, sambar and chutney, vadai and lassi. Dad used his knife and fork and I used my fingers (thinking of Jaya beaming and Saurabh wincing) and basking in the sounds of Hindi and Italian from where the boss lady was talking to her son about menu formatting. Then I ended up talking India and Bollywood for at least half an hour with the boss lady, and that was nice. Wherever you go, there you are. She said that family in Italy, at least, is like India, though the Indian communities are better in London and the U.S., and we agreed that Bombay is a strange place with odd customs (people are getting into cohabitation and everything there) and she offered us pan parag, which Dad had to pretend he wasn't running to the bathroom to spit out.


I liked Rome. Rome was after Sorrento and Capri. The most surprising thing about Rome is that it's so small - there are some buses and a rather rudimentary metro with only two lines, but it's very walkable. We walked to Republicca and we were almost at Trajan's Column, and from the Column and the Wedding Cake, the Colosseum is visible. If there weren't so many buildings in the way, you'd be able to see the Trevi fountain as well. But there are plenty of little alleyways full of gelato, including San Crispino's, the best I've had so far (bergamot sorbetto and then a ginger-cinnamon ice cream: no wonder Let's Go calls it the best gelato in Rome). Lots of trinkets, lots of things to see and do in Rome, and it feels so friendly. There was sunshine and more sunshine, and some very nice restaurants (I forced Dad to try Ethiopian food and he liked it).


I've been reading a lot as well, with all these trains and long waits and early nights in hotel rooms because we don't always want to be out after dark when we don't know a place well. Julia sent me the first two books of the His Dark Materials trilogy, which meant I had to buy the third one, and I picked up Wicked as well. Lots of stuff about good and evil: might as well go on that theme. When in Rome, as they say, and if any place is going to lecture about sin, it might as well be there, all cozied up to the Vatican. We tried to go to the Vatican museum but didn't realize it was one of the days when it closed exceptionally early, so all we got from that was a nice ride on the metro.


Been missing my girls and the folk from Cambrai, so I'll probably skip home for a couple of days (and I can do my laundry!) to curl up on the couch and drink hot chocolate, even though it's getting too hot for hot chocolate and cuddling. I'll relate to them my few words of Italian and they'll correct me, since they were able to take Italian classes at Fenelon (pity Jacquard was too little to teach Italian, and that I wasn't around for half the classes at Fenelon and therefore couldn't take it, otherwise I'd be a bit more useful here). But I'm glad I came to Cortona - it's a little walled city perched up on a hill, all small windy streets and cobbled slopes, and as I've said, the views are very nice. It's quite peaceful here, since not many cars are allowed in the city, and the food's been wonderful. We ate twice at the same restaurant. I had two different kinds of gnocchi (and although one of them looked suspiciously like scallops, it's been nice to be in Italy where there are more things I can actually eat). Tomorrow we'll walk up the Citadel and I'll take another too many photos and eat a lot of gelato, and then Tuesday hopefully I'll catch a train to Paris and soak up a bit of the North before I head back south to meet Dad in Provence before coming back to Cambrai for the last time to finish up the packing. I'm anxious about the results of the French election, and about leaving, because it's finally sinking in that I have to leave my girls and Matthias, that Steffen and Katie and Anna have already left, that the little white house will be empty, that I won't have text messages to look forward to.

Oh, France.

Home now for a couple of days, soaking in my girls and the lovely spring air. Oh, Cambrai. I wish we had time to walk out to the hotel where Max works one more time, to take tea in the dining room that makes us want to take a turn about the room Eliza-Bennett style. Hotels built in castles, courts built on top of castles, surprises around every corner. I will miss the place, with the three spires.

Anyway, I'm off before I get maudlin. We had train adventures last night and I'm tired - remind me for the next email.

The last update from Cambrai

Hallo, all.

As Dad and I are leaving on a train at 1.15, this is probably the last update from Cambrai. It's been a good seven months. A fantastic seven months, really, no major tragedies or disappointments, and lots and lots of joys to balance out any tedium.

The colza is in bloom (so Amélie tells me), and the fields that aren't green or dun or cream are preternaturally yellow, so bright that it almost hurts to look at them. It hurts to look at them anyway, given that I won't be seeing them for much longer. No more bus rides. No more waiting in the growing light and watching the buses uncurl like caterpillars. "J'aime me laisser conduire sur les chemins du cambrésis", they say on the sides: I love to let myself be driven along the roads of the Cambrésis. And it's true. But not any longer. I never did get off the bus on a random afternoon to play with the two dancing chocolate labs behind somebody's gate. Never got a photo of the chicken statue. Never ended up going to the lace museum after all.

But I did take my two favorite students to a café for their last class, and we had a very nice conversation, and then when I was going to pay, Virgil insisted on paying, like a gentleman. He'll do well in the U.S., and Astrid will do well wherever she goes. My wistful girl, hoping for so many good things. I gave her my Jane Austen seven-novels-in-one, because that was the best I could do to reassure her. And the teachers threw me a lovely little party on Thursday afternoon, soda and presents and the cookies I'd made and all the naughtiest kids, mostly on their best behavior. I nearly cried. They got me a book about the architecture and geography of the North, a little journal, and a comic about teaching and teachers, and I looked at everyone and thought how dull my weeks at home will seem at first, without these people to occupy me. I'll miss riding home with Christine or Amélie, and chatting with Virginie and Romain and Nathalie and Adrien and Marie Claude and Marie André and Stéphane and Stéphan and all the others.

The American-hating philosophy teacher never did say a word to me, though.

Sometimes I think I'll be lost without the spire of St. Géry to pull me home. It's visible from so far out of town, rising over the roofs, over the rolling fields. It's my landmark. It's home. Dad and I walked out along the canal today and ended up in a part of Cambrai I'd never been in, but I found St. Géry and then it was easy to get back. It's so beautiful, this town, and even though I've lived here for a while, it still startles me sometimes. There are big fancy beautiful things like the cathedral and the belfry and the chateau, and then there are the gardens with their elaborate planning. And simple things, even, like walking through the place with a cone full of sorbet, pear and blackcurrant. There was a wedding going on on the steps of the town hall, and everyone else was out at the tables of the cafés, stretching their legs into the sunshine and calling out to friends who walked past. There are a lot of delights in a small town. We went to the posh bakery for one last round of pastries and carefully avoided making coffee with Cata's filter that seems to be made from a sock.

Here are some photos of Cambrai, and the colza, and my students. I may continue to update this blog later, when the reverse culture shock hits, and I feel it's probably going to hit really hard. How will I go to the grocery store in English? What a strange thought. How will I find anything? How will I order in restaurants? When we were in England for a few days, I kept wanting to order in French.

No more lemon yellow kitchen. No more blue room (though my room at home is just as blue). No more cranky stove that wants to kill us and crazy washer that takes two and a half hours to do a load if you don't put it on the fast cycle. No more leaving clothes to dry on the rack. No more bags and bags of stale baguettes so that we have to invent recipes to use them all up. And it will be all right, but it's hard to know that now, even though I know it. On the plus side, no more French bureaucracy.

I've made a lot of friends here and had a wonderful time. I'm sure that if I could stay longer, it would only get better. But my students and a lot of the teachers have my email address.

I'll be glad to have a dryer again, and Mexican food and vegetarian food, and I'll be glad to see family and friends and the dog, but life in France is easy and sweet and I will miss it a lot. And for all the things I didn't do, there were plenty of things I did do. I went to Belgium, Sweden, and England (and will have gone to Italy). I picked up a bit of German and some Spanish. I learned how to cross the street (pretend you don't care if the cars hit you) and how to give guys in bars the brush off (grab someone else). I can navigate the Paris metro and the aboveground Paris, or really any Metro you throw at me.

And who can be sad when there is Italy, and sunshine? Not me. Or at least, I'll try.

Easter in Cambrai

Hello, all!

We've been doing Eastery things all day: an egg hunt for chocolate eggs, scrambled eggs from the eggs that Cata and I blew the insides out of so that we could dye them with the dye kit that Anna acquired, lots and lots of chocolate in general. I'm in the process of making a fruit salad and a big bowl of stuffing for the Easter dinner tonight, but the others have gone to MacDonald's for the second time today, so I have a free moment to write. We've got a rental car for the weekend and we're trying to make the most of it: last night we went late-night bowling in Douai, and tomorrow we're going to the Asterix Park for Easter Monday (I will avoid the roller coasters). But there's a sure sign Cambrai is moving up in the world. Not only have we got a MacDonald's (Macdo for the French), we recently acquired a Domino's. The delivery people zip around on their scooters and introduce the French to the height of American pizza, or something. Personally, I yearn now and again for Eureka, or for the fried tofu at Chuong Garden, or for any Mexican food at all, but I don't care about having a Domino's around, except as a status symbol. Take that, Paris! Maybe we'll get a Starbucks too! Except for the fact that we won't, and that's all right: everyone who lives here is resigned to the diminished importance of Cambrai, once the jewel of the Spanish Netherlands.

I've been uploading more photos and forgetting to tell you all about them, so there are some here of my visit to Paris on Tuesday, and here you can see more of England and Sweden.

I can't believe it's the last week. I can't believe my last week is a short week: no one works Easter Monday, and so I've only got Thursday and Friday. I'm going to bake cookies for my kids on Wednesday night, and maybe make a chocolate pie for the teachers' lounge. All the profs are stressed, because they've had conferences all last week that lasted until nine every night. Virginie just remembered some things she wanted me to do earlier and now there's not really time. Romain remembered that next week is my last week and that was both nice (that he knows when I'm going, and he knew when my birthday was) and sad, because it reminded me that I'm leaving so soon. I'll miss him, the beau gosse of the teacher's room, because he's a sweetheart, and he's really funny. And I'll miss the English teachers, of course: Virginie, to whom I belong, and Marie-Claude, who thought I should flirt with Gautier because it was Valentine's Day, and Veronique, who was sweet but not always communicative, and Severine, whom I almost never saw because she was off on maternity leave. The older man whose name I don't actually know who gives me mixtapes and talks to me about astronomy and local history. Adrien, who I talked to all day on Thursdays. Nathalie and Marie-the-sports-teacher, with whom I talked India and France. Marie-Celine, who was always frustrated that the naughty boys remembered my name and not hers, though I only came to class once.

It should be a fun last week though. I get to cancel one of my classes with my least favorite group of seconde to have a party with Marie-Claude's naughty boys, who are going to bring things to eat. It's the last round of football at Fenelon (for us) and Cata's making empanadas for everyone. I really ought to go to the lace museum in Caudry. At least I've eaten a croissant and bought a shirt with some French on it. My goals for France are accomplished.

Life will go on while I'm not in Cambrai. Next year the premiere and the seconde will have another assistant, probably, and maybe they'll behave better or maybe they'll behave worse with him or her. I'm kind of possessively pleased that Virgil and Astrid won't have any other assistant: they'll graduate and move on and do other things. So it goes.

Oh man, and now I have to start packing. How to clear up the detritus of half a year in another country? We've made the little white house our home. I've got papers and clothes and all sorts of things to range away or throw away.

Anyway, happy Easter to everyone!

la rather belle vie

It's another sunny Sunday: the weather's decided that it's spring again and so we've got the windows open. Mind, it might be France's idea of an April Fool's joke (which here is les Poissons d'avril - the fish of April). But the weather report says it will be lovely (or at least not-rainy) the rest of the week, which is excellent, as I'm off to Paris on Tuesday to visit a friend. Warm warm warm weather coming up, I hope.

Not a lot of things happened this week. We're all getting stressed and mopey about the end of school in two weeks. I've got to start sorting out my school paperwork, for one thing, and writing a letter to next year's assistant. Fortunately, the Moroccan prof said that I could stay in France and just move in with him, but I imagine his wife would be a bit cranky about that. Still, it's nice to know I'll be missed. The students had their best startled faces when I told them I was leaving forever after vacation. A lot of them I'll miss. Astrid and Virgil, my advanced students, the only ones who actually come to class (from that group) and the only ones I've had all year. Astrid and I talk about everything: her grades, how hard she works in school, how hard her brother didn't work, her life outside of school. Virgil is coming to the U.S. next year, repeating a year of high school before he applies to an American university, and he wants to badly to play or coach basketball. The passion in both of them is incredible. Then there's David, who always wanted me to come and play football (and I wish I could have), Teddy, who I always think is little and quick but who's taller than I am (and who is bright and sassy without being disruptive), and Nico, who is quiet but very thoughtful. François once came to class even though he's not in my classes anymore. The girls from seconde trois have started behaving, mostly, and it's only Vianney who needs some discipline.

I actually had the girls from seconde deux volunteering new topics for the opinion cards the other day. "I want to talk about the bureau de surveillants!" said one of them, so I let her, and she talked about how handsome Gautier is (true enough) and how funny Rudy is (I couldn't say) and it was nice to see the students' relationship to the professionals that are there to help them out. We also spent a lot of time this week talking about how cute Romain the Spanish teacher is. And it's true, he's a wonderful guy, but it's also really funny to see the dreamy looks on all their faces when they say, "I love zee Spanish! M. Delagrange ees beautiful!" And then they make up stories about how I must be dating either him or Matthias. Oh, tiny ones, thank you for assigning considerably more excitement to my life than actually exists.

It's coming up on the presidential election here and what I'm surprised about is the lack of advertising, in comparison to the U.S. elections. I've seen a few posters: mostly on one billboard on my way to school that was covered with Royale, then Sarkozy, and now Bayrou posters. None of those homegrown ads on tv, and none of the polished ones either (though we've mostly had the tv off). I hear the teachers talking about the candidates, but overall, there's a lot less frenzy. I asked Max if he was going to vote and he looked at me like I was a little bit stupid. "It's my duty," he said. "Everybody votes." It's funny to hear so little when I know it's actually a huge deal. France could have a woman president, or it could have a crazy racist president. Never underestimate the power of fear: unemployment is already a huge problem in France and a lot of people think that immigrants make it worse, so an anti-immigrant, pro-white-French stance (nos ancetres les Gaulois style) is very welcome to a lot of people. I was talking to my two boys from seconde quatre about immigration, because they're studying Ellis Island and such. I had them write a little narrative imagining they were immigrants: where they'd be from, where they'd go to, whether they'd try to keep their old traditions or really integrate. They decided to be Chinese people immigrating to the U.S. to get better jobs, but they wanted to live in a Chinese community, speak Chinese at home, and use chopsticks to eat. I pointed out that this was basically living out their old lives in a new place, and they nodded.

"So what is it to be French?" I asked. They conferred for a moment.
"To be married to a French person."
"So if I got married to a French person, I'd be French?"
They gave me the shifty eyes. "To speak French? To live in France?"
"I speak French and I've lived in France for six months. Am I French?"
More shifty eyes.
"What makes the French spirit different from the American spirit? Is there a difference?"
The bell rang while they were still thinking, but they were thinking. And that was wonderful. I gave them a little bit of my own opinion: France knows where its boundaries are. France lives inside its language and its hexagon and its fine old traditions. America always wants to discover something new, to go beyond. They nodded a little and said goodbye and left, but I kept thinking. There are so many different people in America that the identity of an American is necessarily fragmented. We eat so many different foods, we learn about so many different holidays and traditions, we're taught that diversity is the best and strongest way from the beginning. And it doesn't stop the prejudices, but maybe it helps. It doesn't mean that we get French or (much) Spanish music on the popular radio stations, but you can find bhangra in New York clubs, and African music, and all sorts. I can hear people speaking other languages on subways and street corners without feeling the need to turn and stare at the weirdos who actually know another language besides English (we've gotten stared at a lot lately for speaking English or German or Spanish). And I'm not ashamed to be an American. There are plenty of good things about America, along with the plenty of bad politics that gets us reviled by the rest of the world. Sometimes I'm ashamed of other Americans, when they forget there's more to the world, but then again America is so big and contains so much that it's almost understandable that people get wrapped up in it and neglect to notice the other countries. America is a microcosm of the world in the big cities, and the influence of the hundred different cultures filters even into the smaller towns.

In conclusion, I'm going to miss my students a lot, and perhaps reading American Gods in French all week has gotten me thinking a bit too much.