Vacances

Well, it's time for another update! So much has happened in the past week! I'm writing this in London, where I have a much better Internet connection, so I can use Skype now. More on that later...

If you've been watching the news, you probably saw that France had some pretty bad strikes going on in the transportation industry. I wanted to go to Paris a week ago Thursday, and I couldn't because everything in the country was shut down. That was the 'official' date of the strike, but on Saturday when I tried to go to Abbeville (the second largest city in Picardie), we were told that there were no trains coming back to Amiens because of the strike. But that day still was fun. We went to a little plant garden and a market in town and ended up at a café (my first time at one). I also stopped inside a pastry shop and saw some incredible French food (and bought some, too). It was a good day to see a little more of the city. That night, I went with some British and German friends to watch the World Cup final. It was not very exciting. Our football is much more exciting than soccer and rugby. Most of the time.

I had a growing experience in class last week. In my English to French translation class (which is much much harder than the other way around), all we do every week is translate. The prof calls on a student who gets to go up in front of the class, read the paragraph in English, propose a translation in French, and then work through it until we end up with a good final draft. Tuesday, that student was me. There were a couple other people that did different paragraphs, but mine was the longest, and I was in front of this class of 40 or 50 students for at least 20 minutes. It was really difficult, but I was able to talk to the professor and correct my mistakes without getting too embarrassed. There was only one time when she said "Ca ne veut dire rien en français"--"That doesn't mean anything in French." I was pretty close most of the time.

I decided that I was going to the All Saints' holiday in London. Getting here was a horrible experience. After I bought the train tickets in Amiens, I realized that I didn't have my passport. So I had to run back to my room and get it, and I missed my train. Getting from Amiens to Lille wasn't a problem. My ticket was good for all day. But from Lille I was taking the Eurostar. All of those tickets are non-exchangeable, non-refundable. I decided that I was going to go ahead and try to go, although I was expecting to have to buy another ticket. I really didn't have another choice since I'd already shelled out a lot, buying round-trip tickets. So I went to Lille. (On a side note, I ran into three of the American girls in the station. They also were taking a train to Lille on the way to Brussels.) When I was ten minutes away from the Lille station I looked at the notes I had written and saw that the last train was leaving in ten minutes. I was pretty mad, because the helpful guy at the counter at the Amiens station had told me that I'd have enough time to make the next London train. And at Lille, there are two stations. The international one is 400 meters away from the one I was arriving at. So I ran over, looked at the terminal, and (praise the Lord) I saw that there were more Eurostar trains that day. I went to the ticket office, and told an agent there my predicament, and he said, no, there's no way to exchange these tickets. He looked at other trains, and there was only one train left that day that wasn't sold out, which cost 50 Euros more than the ticket I had already bought. I just asked, "isn't there anything I can do?" and he said, "well, tell me your story..." So I told him what had happened that morning and he went and made a phone call. He came back, saying, "we never ever do this, but..." and he stamped my missed train ticket, and didn't charge me a thing to go on the other train. Let me tell you, I've never experienced relief like that before.

I got to London, and took a cab over to Tony's place. I'm staying with a friend of my uncle Mike's. Tony has been incredibly helpful so far. He showed me how the Underground works and gave me advice and probably the coolest thing about him is that he's a football fan! He's originally from Detroit, and he is still very much attached to the NFL after seven years in London. Finally, someone I can talk to about football! Oh yeah, he also got me a ticket to the game in London yesterday!! For those of you who don't watch ESPN, the first ever NFL game played outside of North America just took place at the brand new Wembley Stadium, in front of a sellout crowd. Probably half of the crowd was Americans, but there were plenty of European fans, and still more people who didn't have any idea what was going on. I helped explain the game to some of Tony's British friends. It was an experience.

London is great. I've heard a lot of languages, but it has been a huge relief to hear so much English, and to not feel guilty when I speak in English! I guess I needed this vacation. The weather here was terrible the first couple days, but today is sunny and in the 60's (Fahrenheit, of course).

I've already done some walking around and seen some great things, including St. Paul's Cathedral, the Wellington Arch, and Buckingham Palace, and I finally have some things planned out to do. When I finish writing this, I'm going to take a trip to the London Museum. And it looks like I've finished writing this now.

A bientot!

Stephen