Merry Christmas

Christmas 1997: I was ten years old, and listed every single gift I got that year in my journal. Here is (most of) that entry, complete with original spelling. I hope you enjoy it.

Dec. 25 '97

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This was maby the best Christmas I have ever had, I say that every year. The whole family got a fuse ball table. I also got all my gifts: TWO mini Doddle Bears, a "Tote 'n teddy," a bear in a plastic shiny bag, Addy's Christmas (not from Pleasant Company, but same fabric and everything else [almost]), My Christmas PJ's were Addy's nightgown, a tambrine for dance (it is so pritty!), four spools of ribbon that I used to tie on the tambrine, a pair of shoes for Addy, a calgrife set, a box of crayons, Addy's Ice Cream Frezzer a 20$ gift certificate for Gap, an American Girl CDrom for makeing plays, I pair of darling piggie slippers ... stocking: a magnet wheel toy, stickers, a grow dino, tornato tube, two sets trading cards, and a paint pen, mormen adds. Two things that were not in my stocking, but that I forgot: a bractlet bead loom, and a years subscription two the magazine "Cricket." At 3:00 we went to Tanya's and Nancy's house. We all played on the moon shoes she got, even mom and dad! Tanya's big present was a geco .... What I got every body: Dad: three dark green bathtowls and three dark green wash cloths. Mom: a Christmas tape. Emmy, shower gell, a little soft plastic shower ball to rub gell on, and roll-on lip gloss.

Ha Ha

As of about three this afternoon, I no longer have wisdom teeth. A few reflections:

Nitrous Oxide: Ug. no euphoria, just a sense of things being distant and muted, and of feeling lethargic. I was telling this to my mom, who then told me nitrous oxide belonged to the “dissociative” class of drugs. Appropriate. It’s there along with ketamine. Wow, lots of fun. The whole experience only reinforced the whole “it’s hip to be drug free” mentality in my mind. I felt like I could still think pretty clearly during what I was awake for. I think. I really don’t like the idea of being separated from yourself. I wouldn’t want to ever intentionally mute how I think or, well, just my sense of being me.

One of my biggest fears about this whole thing was saying stupid things under anesthesia. When I woke up, I wanted to ask the nurse if I had said anything. I also wanted to ask how long I had been out. I went with the latter first. My mouth was numbed and stuffed full of gauze, so after a few moments of concentration of yes, I am thinking clearly, and then of a few silent practice runs of forming words with a mouth that wouldn’t move, I came out with, “Howlonaibo?”

“Yes, it went just fine, dear,” said the nurse kindly. She must go home with a lot of funny stories.

A First

My first impression of France was that it had a serious case of seventies architecture. When I got picked up from the airport on Monday and we got on our way, I finally just stopped looking out the window—at sound walls and awful buildings—and started reading my book. Things got much better, though, once we got out of the city (and its congestion). Even though sparkling water isn’t a thing here, and even though I don’t have an internet connection in my room, I’m starting to like France.

I wasn’t really sure where we were going after I got picked up from the airport—I didn’t know if, or where, Alliance Française had found me a host family. It turns out they did, though—a family in Rouen. Noriko sleeps in the bedroom down from mine. She is here learning French with the Alliance Française so she can go to a baking school in Rouen. She is from Japan, where, she explained to me, you eat rice, not bread. But bread has charmed her, and she is here to follow her dream.

And I am here to follow my own, I guess—speaking French. We have both been displaced, then, because home can do a lot of things, but it can’t teach Noriko how to bake world-class bread, and it can’t teach me how to speak French.

Tuesday I got driven to Duclair (a town of 4,000 about a half hour from Rouen) and introduced to the people at the office of the MJC, where I will be doing my internship. And then for the next two days I hung out with a group of Ukrainian kids who are here to perform in Duclair’s theater festival. After a day and a half of hanging around and waiting for stuff, I realized where I was:

and I savored the irony of how I came to France for an internship because I didn’t want to go anywhere near a tour bus while I was in Europe.

During the last few days, I have also wandered around Rouen. There is plenty to see, and so far I’ve been to l’Église Sainte Jeanne d’Arc and the surrounding square full of half-timbered houses and chic shops and the Cathedral de Rouen, and a museum dedicated to works in iron that is housed in an old church. The old and the new all end up together here—because I guess, no matter what, everything has to end up in the present. Please enjoy this fine example of palimpsest:

According to Christine Rolland, the half-timber with x's date in the fifteenth century. Beyond, are buildings from the eighteenth or ninteenth century, and in the background, you can see the ninteenth-century steeple of the tenth-century Cathedral of Rouen. To the left, the church of Saint Joan of Arc, which was completed in 1979, and in the foreground, chairs and tables that are used every day and stored in the ruins of...a really old church.

Every morning I wake up and I think, so, I’m in France. That’s cool. There is lots of French here. And lots of really old stuff to see. And I guess it’s all part of it—even hanging out on the Ukrainian’s tour bus.

A Last

Last day in Geneva (hopefully not for forever). It rained today, but I went out anyway to find a little more cash to get me to the airport and to deposit my old shoes in a clothes-donation box downtown. I took one last walk along the Rhone, where I took these pictures. Like I mentioned before, there is lots of grafitti along here, and I was rather partial to the mural in the photo.

I had lunch with Simone, and am now gathering up the last things to pack. I hope it all fits.

My House

This is not Switzerland.

However, through the wonders of modern technology, I get to see what is happening at home. I have provided, for your viewing pleasure, pictures of the home I left and pictures of what my home has become.

Things are wrapping up in Switzerland. Yesterday, I went to a watch museum downtown. I went on my own, which meant it took me a long time to find it. I like it when I have other people to navigate for me. I also spent about five minutes in a museum of modern art. Very modern art. I was the only person there, besides the guard who was sitting eating a sandwitch. The whole combination--silent images projected onto big screens, dark rooms, strange smell, some guy sitting in the dark watching me--meant the overall effect was: creepy. I left.

I turned down the chance to go to an elementary school language fair (I think) this morning and I've been working on the paper. Not the most exciting thing ever, but I've been a little overwhelmed lately with being in unfamiliar situations, with strangers, in a foreign language. It is enlarging and enlightening, and I am glad I am here outside of the familiar, but it is fatiguing.