American Gladiators

Why do I have to leave now, when the moment I've longed for has finally come: the return of American Gladiators.

A Good Week

Weeks to Departure: 3.

Pete visited this week, so I felt bad spending half the time he was here on the phone or internet dealing with moving business. But I finally had success in making arrangements, and as the cliché goes: when it rains, it pours.

My mom has a meeting in Frankfurt, Germany starting the 18th so I thought, instead of flying to France, I'll fly to Germany and vacation with my mom, then get to France from there by train.  It should be easy.  The train would have cost $200-$300, and taken about 23 hours and 3 transfers, no thank you.  Flying wasn't much better, the only flights from Frankfurt to Marseille under $600 took at least 7 hours, due to long stopovers, and got me into Marseille around 11pm, which wasn't too appealing either.  After days of looking for alternatives and finding none, I finally realized that thanks to Star Alliance, I could frequent flyer my way between the two cities.  (Phew.)

In only a few hours on the phone, I got out of two phone contracts without a fee (yay!), and most of the rest of my week was devoted to looking for an affordable appartment in one of the trendiest and most expensive towns in the south of France. On the day of Pete's departure, I finally got an email from someone at the main school I'll be working at. They have a place for me to stay at the town highschool. I don't hve any idea what its like, but it will do temporarily at least.  Guess I should ahve spent more time with Pete, and just let things fall into place.  
If only that were my way.

What's in a name?

"Respelido" is the word in Prouvènçau (a dialect of Occitan (langue d'oc) particular to Provence also known as Provençal or Provençal Occitan) which means "Renaissance." Provençal and closely related languages were once spoken throughout the south of France but starting with the reign of Charlemagne, the language of northern France (langue d'oil) gained dominance. In 1539 the Edict of Villers-Cotterêts decreed that the northern form of French should be adopted nationwide for administration and commerce (and of course, public education). In the late 19th Century, Frédéric Mistral, a resident of St.-Rémy (where I'll be living) and a group of authors called the Félibrige wrote in Provençal in an attempt to revive the language. Mistral wrote the words to a song called "La Respelido Prouvènçau" (The Provençal Renaissance) which celebrated the culture and products of Provence, and called speaking Provençal "the greatest right" of the people of Provence. The Félibrige was not able to revive the Provençal language, but Mistral did win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1904. And despite the fact that the only Provençal I'll probably see in an entire year will be on street signs, the culture of the region has managed to stay healthy despite the influx of tourists. Named after the song of it's son, the cultural museum of St.-Rémy is called: La Respelido.  See the words and hear the tune of La Respelido by follwing this link.

Now it's real

I went to Washington D.C. this weekend and visited Vanessa, who is finishing up her State Department internship. Today, I went to the French embassy and got my visa de long sejour. It's still over a month before I head over to France to be an English teaching assistant, but I figured visa day would be a better day than most to start up this blog. Until I leave, I'll post occaisionally about the past and present of the Alpilles region of Provence where I'll be living. To start, the image bars at the top and bottom of the blog are details of a painting which Vincent Van Gogh painted while staying at the insane asylum in the monastary of Saint Paul de Mausole right outside the town I'll be living in: Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. The monastary operates an asylum on its grounds to this very day.