Christmas Morning

Christmas comes early in France. Or at least it feels like it…

As I’ve gotten older, the excitement of Christmas Day itself has molded into a more long-lasting and subtler version of happiness. I don’t lose sleep and jump out of bed as I used to. Part of the natural aging process, I suppose, but I do miss that excitement sometimes.

This week I found something to recreate it perfectly. Monday felt indeed precisely like the 22nd of December – when it would just start to hit me that Christmas was indeed only 3 days away. And Wednesday just couldn’t go by fast enough. I even found myself watching the clock at the climbing gym, hoping that I would look at it and realize how late it was, have to go home, and then be able to convince myself I was tired and be able to crash so that I could hurry up and wake up in the morning.

That never seemed to work when I was younger, so I don’t know why I thought it would this time.

My excitement kept me up until 12:30am, packing my lunch, arranging my gear, tying and re-tying knots and checking to see that I could get to campus on my bike lugging it all.

I left my apartment just before 7am, Gael giggling and holding the door open for me as I ducked my abnormally large self through the doorway. I grinned a huge “later dude” as well as I could in French, clambered down the stairs, hopped on my bike, and was on my way in the cool dark Grenoblois morning.

I found the bus without incident, threw my gear in the underneath storage compartment, climbed on the bus, flopped into the quickest seat I could find, and half-slept/half-oogled-out-the-window until we finally arrived.

The first half of the day was, as we say in French, “nul.” That means: values nothing, is really lame, worthless… And I was quite disappointed with my introduction – and even a little worried that after all the hype and excitement I just wasn’t going to dig it. I wanted to push, but they wouldn’t let me go. Arg. It was torture. We waddled like penguins up and down and all around, inflicting pain upon ourselves but with no fun to counter.

We took a normal long French lunch break – and while I normally love that the French stop and take time to eat, I was chomping at the bit to go, learn, charge, practice. But no. Instead I sat on my butt (which was getting colder and colder by the minute), with two very lovely English girls, and we all waited impatiently together.

Finally we recommenced… on a recommencé… hm. That’s a bit of a Frenchism, but I have to balance my anglaisismes in French sometime… We split the groups, and were on our way. This time, with our smaller group of all very similar skill levels, we got much more practicing in, and profited (il faut en profiter!) quite well from a silly exercise squatting with our hands out in front, moving our hips as we turned from side to side to keep our shoulders squared to our destination.

It was magical. I progressed much more quickly, had a blast, and left feeling sufficiently destroyed as I had hoped. In the end, a stunningly good introduction.

So, what did I do today? For hints check out my Flickr photos… ;-) Enjoy! I sure did.

Bienvenue a English Monday

Fou rire. When you start laughing and can’t seem to stop, even though it hurts.

But not because of our linguistic adventures.

Gael’s French friends in Toulouse who he met while studying in Montreal last year installed English Mondays at their apartment to practice speaking. This inspired Gael to propose the same, and today was our first “English Monday.”

We had lots of good laughs, both searching for words to translate various hand gestures and sound effects (it’s hard sometimes being the foreigner, but it’s also pretty darn hard being the support for the non-native speaker!).

It must’ve been the English that irritated his sinuses or something, because Gael kept on needing to blow his nose. He said it felt like something was stuck between his throat and his nose. Must be that darn “th” sound. It’s like me and those French “r” sounds.

After several failed nose-blowing attempts, Gael giggled with relief and amusement – in his tissue he found a solid 2 cm of tagliatelle pasta.

That’s got to be a relief.

La cabane

When I explain to people here what I’m studying, French literature and geology, one of two things always happens. Either I get a confused look and a “well, that’s different” response, or they block out one or the other and ask me either what type of literature I’m studying or if I rock climb. French students register in universities that are focused either in sciences or humanities or engineering… never a mixture. I’m enrolled in two universities. It’s a little complicated sometimes, but totally worth it.

The reason I bring this up is because, well, one, it’s silly and happens faultlessly one way or the other, but also because today I had a literature day. Outdoors.

Today was a literature day not because I read some great book or wrote some paper I was really proud of. Instead, it was a literature day because of how each event seemed to roll into the next, building on some story that has yet to unfold.

It hit me on the ride home when I finally got the full story behind the various people we had met that evening.

Felix and Tony, brothers, both very successful students and artists, are building this cabin because their parents moved away from the mountains and they couldn’t bring themselves to leave. They’ve dropped school, evaded rent, dumpster dive at the local swanky market, design cd labels for friends’ bands, work on the cabin, practice music and circus-ry for their intermittent jobs at local ski stations where they perform spectacles and are lodged and fed at the station for free. Fascinating kids. I spent most of the evening sunk deeply into the big soft sofa blissfully listening to them jam on guitar and accordion. Their music was so unique and extraordinarily beautiful. For me it was one of those moments where it hits me how random life can be. Who would have ever thought even just a few months ago that I would be in a half-built cabin sitting around a wood-burning stove with the friends of my roomate’s cousin on a Sunday evening listening to a beautiful accordion/guitar duo? Life.

So why a literature day? For me, literature is something you read into deeply, analyze. Every word and every scene in a literary work was chosen carefully by the author, and placed equally as thoughtfully.

Every event today felt like it was trying to tell me something. Every word I said or heard seemed so carefully placed and expressed. Every scene planned perfectly to unfold the story in such a way, to set up for whatever is to come next. I had the feeling that it all made sense, but not yet. I must be somewhere towards the end of the beginning – where all the setup is in place and the story is finally ready to begin. Funny, that’s where I usually get bored with books and stop reading them.

The day started early, which I love (though not when I’m in the painful process of waking up). Gael and I arrived at his godparents’ beautiful house in the hills at 9:30am, visited over a cup of tea, and after a good hour were on our way up to the cabin higher in the hills to scope it out for Gael’s New Year’s party. We found our way to the cabin fairly quickly, arranged the wood pile so it would be nice and dry for when they come at the end of December, and set off to climb the peak behind the cabin.

We went as far as we could on the trail until it disappeared and then oriented ourselves toward the cliff face and started climbing. Scrambling on hands-and-knees most of the way, dodging under branches and over blackberry plants, we picked our way to the base of the cliffs where we had planned to traverse until we got to the best place to climb through. We had picked out a place that looked passable by foot, but we still had a bit of traversing to do before we could really assess.

Skipping, hopping and sliding along the base of the rocks we saw many traces of chamois traffic, and profited quite well from the little steps they seemed to have also used. The chamois are a very interesting alpine mammal, somewhere between a deer and a gazelle, with a fuzzy black (in winter) coat adapted to the alpine cold. Awesome animals – and my goodness do they know the mountains. At one point we saw a whole herd of them sprinting across the hill we were so un-elegantly crossing at at least a tenth their speed.

We finally arrived at the base of our chosen pass, and deeming it indeed passable, started climbing. After some decent 5th class climbing (about 2 meters with a good soft landing), lunch in a cave, and another bout of 4th/5th scrambling, we found ourselves at the top of the mountain looking at the ski station where Gael learned to ski. No snow yet.

We explored some of the caves around (read: really deep random holes in the ground with signs posted and planks laid so you don’t fall in them), then broke out in a run following the trail on the arête (the soft grass, moist soil, and rolling hills were all too inviting for a little run). Started our decent, also running most of the way, though with a little bit of intermittent and unexpected skiing on the steep, muddy, leaf-covered trail…

Four hours and about 1000m of altitude change later, we found ourselves back at Gael’s godparents sipping hot chocolate, munching warm apple tarts, and chatting with his family again. I love this country.

Gael’s cousin came downstairs and we took off down the hill to his friends place. Me and my terrible night vision crossed the creek cautiously, guided by the dim light of the cabin. We rounded the corner into a clearing – and I could almost hear the film rolling in the camera over my right shoulder. It was so perfect. The soft voices, laughing, a guitar and accordion practicing a waltz, the single bare light bulb lighting the attic, illuming the rooms and the deck, inviting you to come inside where it’s dry and wonderfully warm.

Maybe it’s time to go pick up all those books I put down after a mere 100 pages back in the day…