International Faire

I'd seen signs advertising the "Marseille Fair" around town for weeks, but I didn't know that it was an international fair. I mean, they did call it the "Marseille Fair," so I thought it was a fair about...Marseille. I still intended to go, but I probably would have been more excited had I known it was an international fair. Because anyone who's read this blog even once or known me for about more than two minutes knows that I love me some international exhibits!!!

I think I love them because it seems like a shadow of what is to come in heaven, when peoples from all nations will be together, each unique in their own language and cultural expression, but joined as one in praise to the King. I imagine that when we're There, we'll be able to go from one culture to the next, learning, tasting, experiencing all the creativity that God put into people when He created each people group. And thus...I love these fairs, where I can meet people from Senegal, and Iran, and Armenia, and Tahiti, and Algeria. Taste their food. See their clothes. Hear their music. Touch their handiworks. All the while knowing, that one glorious Day, it'll taste even better. Look even prettier. Sound even more fascinating. Be even more interesting. And all in praise to the King.

So...I went to Italy first. (Wouldn't you?!) There were mounds and mounds of sun-dried tomatoes, and the biggest olives I've ever seen in my life! (And I've lived in several olive-growing countries!) I bought a little more than a half-pound of the sun-dried tomatoes, and I am so stinking excited to cook up something that would make Rachel Ray proud with them!

In the not-so-tasty category...we walked by this smoked pig...and yes, the man is cutting (and serving) from the pig's rear-end. We didn't taste any samples there!
I did buy some white truffle creme sauce in Italy as well. (White truffles as in the insanely expensive mushroom, not the little chocolates). Truffles are so expensive here in France that I've never even gotten to taste one, and this woman gave me a free sample of her sauce. I went week in the knees that stuff was so good! She also had a truffle basalmic vinegar that made my eyes roll back in my head, but I couldn't afford it. For those of you who don't like mushrooms, have no fear! I also bought the chocolate kind of a truffle. :) In Canada, I bought some maple cookies. In Switzerland, I bought some really good Comté cheese. (Why did I have to go to Switzerland to get a French cheese?)

There was one section that was like being in an infomercial exhibition. Every gadget you've ever seen on TV for sale at 3 in the morning was being demonstrated! Cleaning gadgets, cooking gadgets, massaging gadgets, hair removal gadgets. It was good French listening practice, and quite entertaining...but people overload. We had to exit there very quickly.

We headed over to the furniture area...and oh my. Let's just say that the French and I have very different taste in furniture.

Mob boss's wife?

After much laughter in that area, we headed over to Algeria, where we made some friends. Then on Armenia, where we watched some dancing to live music. And then, finally, headed home...as we had no money left and our introvert selves were maxed out. Below is a photo of my purchases.
It was a grrrrrrreat afternoon/evening. So if you ever come visit me in Marseille, come in September, so I can take you to the Fair.

Making friends

Noailles is one of the areas of town that has a high concentration of Arabs. Their produce market is there, as well as all kinds of stores where you can find stuff from the "bled," or "home country." I love to do my produce shopping there, because (a) it's cheap, (b) I can find way more kinds of produce and of better quality than in the stores, (3) I can practice my arabic, and (d), it's just fun.

About 2.5 years ago, I had a moment in Noailles. Well, today, I had another. I just needed some Cubanelle peppers, (Rachel Ray...always calling for the fancy stuff) and an onion. I popped out of the metro and started wandering through the market. As I spotted the peppers, I also heard the vendors speaking in arabic to the ladies standing next to me. I waited my turn, and when the vendor noticed me, he switched into French.

"Oui, madame?"

In French, "These peppers are sweet, right? Not spicy?"

In English, he responded, "Yes." (I didn't even notice the language switch.)

The ladies began teasing him in arabic about switching from French to English, and so he asked me in French, "Where are you from?"

In arabic, I responded, "I am American."

Oh, the hooting and hollering that commenced because I'd spoken in arabic! All four (the two vendors and the two ladies) all began asking me at once if I spoke arabic. I gave my token line of, "I speak a little bit because I lived in Tunisia for four months." More hooting and hollering, questions shooting from every angle. Turned out the two ladies were from Tunisia, and so because I was speaking their dialect, I was suddenly their new best friend (or toy to show off?). They invited me to their pizzeria and told me to come anytime and ask for them specifically.

My token line is helping me make friends pretty quickly these days. That makes me smile.

So I left Noailles with a smile on my face, two new friends, and my Cubanelle peppers and onion that only cost me 60 cents. It was a good day.

Wild Goose Chase

Because I have moved so many times, I've ended up with a lot of mailing addresses. Someone recently (very kindly) sent me a care package...but to my old address in Marseille instead of my current one. We didn't discover the fact until a few weeks after the package had been mailed, and so I feared that it had already been through a failed delivery attempt.

Going to the post office has never been a pleasant experience for me in any country, (I can hear my dad coughing "understatement" from all the way across the ocean), and so I've been working on finding the nice post office in Marseille. Surely, out of all the post offices, there must at least one nice one. And I will take a bus if I have to, in order to go to a nice one.

So the day after I found out that I had a package headed my way, but to the wrong address, I went to the nice post office, praying for grace, mercy, and favor, and approached the worker behind the desk.

"Bonjour. I have a slightly bizarre situation." (Intrigue the French worker into being nice and helpful...)

"Ooh, do tell."

"Someone in the US mailed me a package...but they accidently put the wrong address on it. How can I know if it has already been attempted to be delivered, and what would happen to it if the mailman has already tried to deliver it?"

"Well, you can look up the tracking number on it to find out where it is, and if a delivery attempt was made. If they did try to deliver it, and it's the wrong address, they'll send it to the big post office, where it'll wait for 15 days, and if it's not claimed, be sent back."

"Great! Where's the big post office?"

"Near the giant thumb. Do you know the giant thumb?"

I stare at him for a minute. Sometimes language needs a moment to sort itself out. The word for "thumb" is also the word for a "microchip", and sounds identical to the word for "flea." In any case, none of the words seemed to make sense...giant thumb, giant microchip, giant flea. My mental wheels spun as fast as they could, trying to sort it out, and then I remembered: Marseille has a round-a-bout with a statue of a giant thumb. (I have NO IDEA why, and I like to imagine that the Giant from Jack and the Beanstalk is buried under that round-a-bout, and his thumb is all that's left of him.)

"Yes, the giant thumb. The post office is near there?"

"Yes." And he gives me the address.

I decide to go to the post office that has jurisdiction over my old apartment, just in case the package may just be sitting there, before wandering all the way to the giant thumb. Again, I approach the worker and say, "Bonjour. I have a bizarre situation." As soon as I recount it to him, he tsks at me and says, "Sorry. Packages with the wrong address are sent immediately back to the sender. Immediately. What good would it do to hold on to a package that is undeliverable. Sorry." He was so rude about it that I wanted to point my finger at him and say, "You, sir, are the reason that there is a stereotype that labels French people as rude." I held my tongue, though, and went on my way.

When talking to Joy on the phone about it, and asking her how I could use the customs number to track down the package, we discovered via the USPS website that the package had indeed made it to France...but the website said that due to the incorrect address, had been returned to the sender...the day before. I wondered if that meant that it could possibly still be sitting in the big post office, not mailed back to the US yet.

I ran out the door to go hunt down the big post office by the giant thumb. (You know you live overseas when...) My GPS on my phone said that it was only 2.5 kms/36 minutes walking away, but I decided a bus would be faster. Ha. When will I ever learn?

For some reason, I had it in my head that bus 19 went that way. I stopped a woman at the bus stop, and asked her if bus 19 went to avenue d'Haifa. She said she didn't know, but to ask the bus driver. Now...had I been in Paris, that would have been the end of it, and she would not have said another word. But, Toto, we're not in Paris anymore! She climbed on the bus and informed the bus driver that I needed help.

I asked him if the bus goes to avenue d'Haifa. He whistled that long, descending note of a whistle that tells you you've made a mistake, shook his head at me, stopped the bus (in the middle of the road), and said, "No way lady! Not this bus. What you need, see, is bus 23. Hop off right now, go up that road over there, see it? Follow it, and you'll find bus 23. It goes to avenue d'Haifa. Off you go now..." and he opened the door to let me off in the middle of traffic to go hunt down bus 23.

I followed my GPS down the road he'd pointed me towards, and sure enough...right as I came out on a main road, there was bus 23 sitting stopped in traffic. Since I saw that I was nowhere near a bus stop, I ran up to him and banged on the door (as I've seen the locals do), and he opened it to let me on.

For about five minutes, the bus followed the path on the GPS exactly. But I could see there was a turn on the GPS (walking directions), and I didn't know if the bus was going to turn. I leaned over to ask the woman next to me if the bus would turn onto avenue d'Haifa, all the while speaking in a quiet, Parisian public transport tone of voice. Well, again...this isn't Paris.

The woman responded (in slang), "I dunno... Hey everyone...avenue d'Haifa? Does that ring a bell to any of you?" Yes, she yelled to the WHOLE BUS to help me find out where to go. They hollered back and everyone joined in informing me about avenue d'Haifa. One of them even pressed the button for when I needed to get off. I was so bewildered by the friendliness, helpfulness, and um, noise, that I just kept mumbling "merci," over and over as I scurried off the bus.

And sure enough...there was the giant thumb.

Turns out the post office was not easily visible on avenue d'Haifa, and I had to ask for more help. When I finally found it, I went in and again explained my bizarre situation. The woman informed me that the package would indeed have been returned immediately to the sender. With a little bit of desperation in my voice, I asked, "Is there any way someone can look, just to double check, that it hasn't been mailed back yet? I am just hoping for that slightest chance of good fortune." She looked at me like I was sad, pitiful, and insane, and then said, "Yes. You can go to X place and ask there...that's where it would be. But they will tell you the same thing...it's gone already." I thanked her, followed her directions, and ended up in the bowels of the grand post office in Marseille.

The workers were a little surprised to see a non-worker there when I appeared...and especially when I opened my mouth and they heard my foreigner accent, as I, again, recounted my bizarre situation. With her uber-Marseille accent, she told me, "Non, non, it would have been returned already. We send the mail out first thing in the morning." I played up the puppy dog eyes again, and convinced her to please go look. She even took my paper with the customs info, and showed it to her supervisor to have him help look for it.

I am sure that after all this, you are expecting a happy ending of, "And they came back out with my box!" Nope. No such luck. It had been mailed back to the US the day before. One wild goose chase. I stopped and took a picture of the giant thumb on the way home...and that's about all I have to show for this whole long story.

The Kung Fu Chiropractor

A few weeks ago, CSI got a terrible kink in her neck and couldn't even turn her head at all. So my boss's wife made a double appointment for the two of them to go to the chiropractor together. I didn't know there was a chiropractor in Marseille, so I was pretty excited to hear this news! I asked the boss's wife to please make me an appointment while she was there for hers.

Well, the next day, she and CSI begin recounting their experience at the chiropractor to the rest of us. They said they were sitting in the waiting room when they heard this scream that sounded like a kung-fu/karate chop "hiya!" CSI's eyes got big as she imagined what sort of pain this chiropractor must inflict to make someone cry out like that.

They went into the office, had a very weird conversation with the chiropractor, (not to be retold on the blog), and then CSI laid on the table to get her adjustment. All of a sudden, the chiropractor shrieked the karate chop "hiya!" right as she pressed down on CSI's shoulder. It wasn't the patient who was doing the screaming, it was the chiropractor!

The boss's wife said she watched the woman work, and she makes all these moves right before she presses down that make you think she's about to karate chop your back in two like it's a block of cement bricks. Oh man.

Well, my appointment was the next week, and I went in prepared for the "hiya" shrieking. She looked at my x-rays, asked some questions, and then had me lie down on the table. She did some massaging for a bit, a few small adjustments, and then, sure enough...HIYA! It's a little jolting to the nerves a bit, but it makes you laugh, and causes you to relax even more, which is a good thing.

So Kung Fu Lady has me move over to another table, and as I'm lying down, she asks me, "Have all your other chiropractor's used the same techniques as I do?" I said, "For the most part, yes. Well, excepting for the screaming." She laughed...and then she good-gamed me!

My kung-fu shrieking chiropractor spanked me on my bottom!!!

THEN, she says, "I bet you never had a chiropractor do that before!" No, no, I don't think that I have.

A 7.50 euro lesson

Almost all of my purses have a metro pass pocket located on the back side of the purse. It's pretty handy because you don't even have to take the pass out. You just press your purse up to the machine, and it can scan through the leather.

I tend to change my purse every day to match whatever outfit I am wearing. (Yes, I am that girly.) I keep my purse pretty tidy, so it's not that hard of a task. I move the metro pass from its pocket in the former purse to today's purse. I move my wallet, my girl-scout/be-prepared bag, my pens, my fan or umbrella (depending on the weather), and my reusable grocery sack. No problem.

Well, this morning, I had a problem. The metro pass pocket was half unzipped...and the metro pass was not in it. I looked around the house very quickly, and then in frustration thought, "Someone must have pick-pocketed me and took it out...thus, the half-unzipped pocket." I grabbed my passport and an extra photo (the two necessary items needed to get anything done in France), and ran out the door, hoping that getting a replacement pass would not (a) break my bank and (b) take too much time.

At the metro office, they kindly looked up for me whether it had be returned...it had not. So the woman informed me that I just needed to go to the machine outside, click a certain button, pay, and bring the slip back in. Then, she'd give me my new pass.

Since in France it must be customary to carry a minimum of 10 euros of coins with you at any given time, I began shelling the coins into the machine. 7.50 worth of coins. When I'd gotten 7 euros in, and had only 50 cents left to go, my 50 cent piece rolled back out to the bottom. I picked it up and immediately dropped it back in...and it rolled back out to the bottom. I looked in my wallet...and saw that I only had 40 cents left.

Suddenly there were two gypsy children by my side, ready to help me. Allow me to insert a back story here, because I am learning that reactions to certain things are quite often connected to pas experiences.

Same situation, only 1o years ago...I am standing at a ticket vending machine at a train station in Portugal, and a gypsy child appears. When I do not give them money, they proceed to try to rob me of my change in the bottom of the machine. And then, when I politely, gently push them away from the machine and tell them "No," they yelled a curse at me. Not a cuss word. A curse. And while I do believe that the Spirit of Christ in me protects me from curses...I do not trust gypsy children hanging around me when I am handling cash at a machine.

So there I was, having paid 95% of my ticket, with a non-functioning 50 cent piece and a gypsy child at my side. She reached into the machine, grabbed my coin, and began scraping it against the machine. She then popped it in the machine and it rolled right back down to the bottom. As I tried to tell her thank you, the operation timed out, and all my money began rolling back to the bottom. I told both the kids thank you, and gently put my whole body between them and the machine while I scooped all my change out.

I asked a man next to me if he could make an exchange of coins for me since the machine wasn't accepting my coin. He said, "Of course, in just one second." So I restarted my operation while he bought his ticket, and popped my 7.50 of coins into the machine. When I got to the fateful 50 cent piece, it went in fine...but one of the 1 euro coins rolled back out. FRUSTRATION. The gypsy child stepped back over, reached in, grabbed my coin, rubbed it against the machine, and put it in the coin slot. It went in...but the 50 cent piece rolled back out.

She reached in her pocket, pulled out her own 50 cent piece, and put it in. It worked, and the machine gave me my ticket. I looked at this sweet little gypsy child who was not trying to steal, not calling down curses, but just trying to help in hopes to earn a few coins in return. I looked down in my wallet, and pitifully apologized for only having 40 cents left to give her. She happily took it and thanked me.

Eating humble pie, I went back into the office and got my new pass to replace the lost one...which fell out of my pants pocket onto my bed as I was getting ready to do laundry tonight.

A few Facebook statuses

Here are a few Facebook statuses from the past month that I don't want to forget...

"While working on my visa renewal paperwork, I discovered that one of the things I have to send in is an honor statement to not live in a polygamous state while living in France. Well, that's a new one."

"You know you live overseas when you look at the past expiration date on an American item you brought over with you, that you can't get here, and think, "meh...it'll be alright."

"Cute little old French lady approached me and said, "I've never ridden the metro before. Where am I and which stop is the train station?" Then she counted each stop along the way to know when to get off. So cute!"

"I am still always a little surprised when I see goats for sale in the middle of the city street market."

Chick-Fil-A Grand Opening in Marseille

CSI's birthday was at the end of last month, but she couldn't celebrate here in Marseille until this month. I told her I wanted to throw a sleep-over, and then I told everyone else the "full plan." You might remember from this post that she loves Chick-fil-A. She told me once that her one of her favorite things to do back in college was to go to a Chick-fil-A opening, and camp out overnight in order to be one of the First 100. I began planning while I was in the states in May, and stocked up on Chick-fil-A paraphernalia: cups, straws, lids, napkins, and bags.

So on Sept 9, 2011, the Chick-fil-A Marseille had its Grand Opening at my house! Everyone came dressed in black and white (so that we could be semi-dressed as the Chick-fil-A "cows,"), and I decked out the house in red, black and white. I printed out a bunch of the Chick-fil-A cows from the internet, and hung them all over the house. (Example: In the bathroom, the cow was wearing a sandwich board that read, "Beef is a real partee pooper." HAHAHAAHAHA.) Then, each friend brought things to make it a real Chick-fil-A experience: lemonade, sweet tea, salad, and brownies. I supplied the fried chicken and fries. Each friend also made a coupon (again, using Google images to make it look legit) to give CSI as a gift. We ate chicken, a cow cake, played games, took our "Eat Mor Chikin" picture, and stayed up watching movies while drinking cookies n cream milkshakes out of our imported cups. Fun times.

Happy Birthday, CSI!

Chez Moi

Princess William asked me today on the phone when was the last time I actually got to pick my own apartment out. Hmmm...2005 in the UAE. And before that...1997 in college. Actually, I sort of got to pick my place in Portugal. I went with the bossman to look at three places, two of which were terrible and one of which (at the time) was (seemed) amazing. It didn't seem like much of a choice, really, but I wasn't complaining.

I didn't get to pick this place. I did choose to live here, though. Some friends of mine went to the states for a year, and were going to put all their things in storage for the time. I offered to live in their place so that (a) they could return to the same apartment when they got back to France and (b) I could save up awhile longer for furniture and appliances and (c) take my time looking for an apartment.

So I'm here now, and in about six months I'll begin the process of looking for my own place. Once I find that place, I can still live out of this one while looking for furniture and moving things slowly over to my new place. I love not being rushed into big decisions. And this apartment is really great. It's HUGE. When you figure that in the last two years, I was pretty much homeless, living in a hotel, sleeping on a futon in a children's playroom, etc., this place feels like a mansion!

It has a massive balcony, a massive (especially for France) kitchen (with a dishwasher!!!), a big living room, two bedrooms, and two baths. And about 40 closets.

Here's the living room/dining room/office.

From the other angle.

It's a super quiet apartment, which is wonderful. It's near a bus line that gets me to the downtown touristy area pretty easily, and on one of the metro lines, and it's about 3 kms from the beach. I feel like I'm pretty far from camelridingcowgirl and Classy Spice, but hey...same city is better than 4 hours on a bullet train or with an ocean between us.

It's so wonderful to finally, after all these years, have a place that is mine. That I can call home. Where I can put down some roots. Just wonderful.