Follow the Yellow Brick Road--aka the Tram Track

“You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.” –Winnie the Pooh

I believe it is about time for me to catch up on things that have been happening over the past week. Until Friday, there wasn’t a whole, whole lot going on. However, once Friday came around, things picked up very quickly. Now it is Sunday and I have much more to report.

We’ll get the less interesting things out of the way first…work:

Monday I had a meeting with an “engineer” of sorts and Marion where I learned how to map the faces of the elderly individuals in the photos that I have been sorting. By putting 14 points in specific places on all of their faces, we will eventually map the asymmetries and cross reference the finding with each individual’s health history. At the moment however, I am just putting 14 points on stranger’s faces which is about as enthralling as it sounds. By the end of the day I am usually slightly cross eyed, suffering a minor headache, and absolutely ready to stop sitting in a chair and staring at a computer screen! By Friday, I had mapped 230 faces—3,220 points!!!!

Fortunately, Marion and Fred make good office company (when they are there). I only saw Marion on Monday this week because she had to work a lot on her other project which takes place either in her hometown (about an hour away) or at the hospital in town. Fred came back on Wednesday and was in and out from Wednesday to Friday. I found out that he just very recently completed his divorce and he is now looking for a new place to live, along with a bed, refrigerator, washer, and pots and pans. So, needless to say, he is rather preoccupied at the moment. But when he is in, he is great company. He has a great sense of humor which I appreciate and he is very attentive to any needs I may have (besides my need for company…). I realized this week that he bears a striking resemblance to Hugh Grant. I could think of worse people to resemble for sure. 

Meals:

Lunch is still slightly uncomfortable since no one really makes an effort to speak English, so I usually just pretend I’m very intrigued with my food. Which actually doesn’t take a whole lot of effort because the food is pretty fantastic…not really even by cafeteria standards. Wednesday I had duck and grilled zucchini plus dessert , yogurt, and a starter for less than 3 euro! Also, the guy at the end of the line that takes my card to run it through know my name now haha! He’s very friendly and we exchange hellos in French when I go through the line now.

At home, meals are much less awkward. We have all figured out each other’s modes and methods now, I think. So I make my own meals and we all just sort of work around each other in the kitchen. We all sit down to eat together though which is really nice because I absolutely hate eating by myself. I do now find it enjoyable. And since I find cooking to be uber relaxing, it is the perfect fit because I’m able to prepare my own food, but I’m still able to eat with company.

Exploring:

Monday and Wednesday I went out for a run which was very nice if I negate the fact that I’m ridiculously out of shape and the hills in this area are outrageous. On my first run, I ended up at the IRD where I work. There is a nice little forest with a path across the road from IRD, so I ventured into there, but then I got creeped out because it reminded of the setting in Vampire Diaries where they locked up the dangerous vampires to petrify. That thought got me moving pretty quickly out of the forest…I guess that’s one method of motivation. Wednesday I ran in a different direction and ended up at the university that right down the road which I didn’t even know about. I also stumbled across the tram line that I did not know was there, so now I know how to get home after the buses stop running. It’s rather humorous when I go out exploring and I run all over the place and just when I think I’m totally lost and will have to really think hard to figure out how to get back, I stumble across somewhere I’ve been a dozen times. Which is what happened Wednesday when I was on my run thinking I was in no man’s land and then suddenly turned a corner and wound up at the grocery store. The same thing happens when I wander around in town; I will end up at the same historical landmark two or three different times and each time I’ll come from a different direction. I guess this place is smaller than I thought. 

Future Plans:

Tuesday night I booked a flight to visit my friend in Dublin next weekend. Technically I booked two flights because I’m flying RyanAir which is a smaller airline, so they don’t do connecting flights. Instead, I had to book a roundtrip flight from Montpellier to Leeds and then another roundtrip flight from Leeds to Dublin. I thought I had done this all correctly and I had received two confirmation emails and I was sooooo ecstatic to finally have plans to see someone I knew and spend time with a friend that I mistakenly got my hopes up. Wednesday when I checked the confirmation emails, I realized that somehow, despite very careful  and close attention, had booked to round trip flights from Leeds to Dublin and none from Montpellier to Leeds….ugh!! I immediately had a mini freak out/anxiety attack/break down and then…..called my mom. Because, really, what else is there to do?? She was able to get back to normal functioning so that I could navigate through the website and find the spot where you can change flight itineraries. Whew! I think I probably ended up paying a fair bit more than I should have, but as my mom said, “There are some things that just aren’t worth getting worked up over.” And with all the things here that I HAVE thought are worth getting worked up over, I don’t really have any energy left to get worked up over any fixable mishap. So, *fingers crossed* and *knocking on wood* (to chase off any unwanted bad luck) I will be leaving Thursday afternoon to see Dabbs. I will arrive in Dublin on Thursday night around 9ish and I will stay until Monday when I have an 8 o’clock flight out! I would like to get my hopes up, but I have decided that it very rarely ever works out in my favor; so until I see Dabbs in Dublin on Thursday night, I will pretend that it isn’t even happening ;)

This weekend:

So, this weekend, Marion was staying home which is a ways away, Fred was trying to find a place to live, my friend from home that is studying here was in London, and Claire and Peter had plans of their own, leaving me toute seule. I decided to just get over it and make the most of the situation. Friday there was a HUGE music festival ALL OVER town called Fête de la Musique.  Basically any musician anywhere, or really any person who has even a semblance of a dream of being a musician, can set up in a free area in town and play music. So I headed into town for that. There were heaps and heaps of people everywhere (including the areas outside of the city center).  I just wandered around as usual, stopping when I heard some good music, and carrying on when I heard some not-so-good music.

Eventually I walked past an Irish pub that a girl from UofL that has been to Montpellier before suggested to me as a good place to go if I’m missing English. Not only was I missing English, I was just missing talking period. As anyone who knows me well (or maybe even not so well) will agree, I’m not one for extended silence. At the bar, there was a group of about 10 young girls hanging out and talking to the bar tenders (in English!!). I really didn’t want to come across as creepy or desperate, but since I am most definitely desperate, I decided I’d risk it anyway, so I asked them where they were from. They were all very friendly, and a few started talking to me, but then they all decided to move outside, to I took up talking to the bartenders who are brothers who lived in California, but have dual citizenship in England, but have lived in France for the last few years or so….

After a while a few of the girls came in and invited me to come sit outside with them. Since it was a beautiful night and there was music (and company) there was no way I could say no. They are all here with a study abroad program from the University of Minnesota and they’ve been her for two weeks living in individual homestays, but they get together for group outings and they are all moving into dorms on Monday. We all talked for a while until they were ready to leave and, being inviting to join and really not wanted to spend another evening alone, I joined them. I had a really, really good time just talking to people my age and finally being with other people that I could relate to.

We meandered around the city finding different spots to stop and listen to bit of music and random bars to stop in and grab a beer. The night was absolutely gorgeous. It was that perfect temperature where you don’t really even “feel” the air…not too warm, not too cool. Ahhhh, it was great. Eventually the group starting splitting off little by little and I ended up with just one other girl Amanda who was very laid back and fun. We went into a tiki bar place where we got mojitos and then strolled along the streets until we wound up at an “English” part of town where they were playing more music that we knew and the crowd was much younger.  It was the first really enjoyable night that I’ve spent out since I’ve arrived here. At least up until we decided to go home. 

That’s when things took a turn for the worse. When we got to the tram stop (around 12:30), we realized that the tram routes were changed in some areas due to the festival. (The "trams"-- or what I refer to as trams--are more like streetcars, so they run along tracks. Montpellier has four different tram lines running in different direction out of the city center.) Apparently the tram line that I was supposed to take home was the one that was the most changed because it ran through the central area of the music festivities. However, since all the signs were written in French, we couldn’t tell exactly where the tram was running and where it wasn’t (I think anxiety had a bit to do with that too). Since Amanda was going the other way, she didn’t have that issue. So, when we thought we had figured out what the signs were indicating, she took her tram home. Leaving me there to figure out that what we had believed the signs to say was not, in fact, what they had said. I actually can’t even remember what we thought they had said at first…probably because it made absolutely no sense, but I remember realizing that my tram (Line 1) was definitely not coming to the stop where I was waiting. I knew where the next stop for Line 1 was though, so I decided to walk to that one since it wasn’t too far and it was through the middle of park.

When I got to that stop, I decided I would wait there because surely the tram would be coming to that stop, but when all of the people that were waiting at the stop piled into a tram for a different line, I reconsidered my previous conclusion. After taking a deep breath and reading the signs again, I finally understood what it was saying: Four consecutive stops for Line 1 were shut down for the night, so line 1 trams were running out of one side towards one of the Line 1 terminals and different Line 1 trams were running out on the other side of the closed stops towards the other Line 1 terminal (not sure if that makes sense if you can’t see the map). Essentially, I was pretty sure I needed to walk four stops up in order to get the tram I needed to take me home. So I began walking along the tracks. I found out very quickly that the reason the line was shut down was that there were bands accompanied by humongous crowds of people set up on the tracks. Humongous crowds of very drunk, very wild people. I think this would have all been somewhat enjoyable if I hadn’t been alone…and if I hadn’t been worried that I would never make it home. As I said in one of my blogs, my mind has an uncanny ability to conjure up every single worst case scenario when I’m alone—especially at night.

As I was walking, I saw some security guards, so I went up to them to make sure that I was heading in the right direction and that I had understood the signs correctly. Turns out they didn’t speak English, so I had an excellent opportunity to practice my lost and helpless French skills. Which turned out to be pretty good, in fact. They pointed me along in the same direction I was going and informed me that the trams weren’t running along this section tonight---which was fairly obvious considering we were having this conversation in the middle of the track as about two or three hundred other people did the same. When I asked if it was safe or not, the guard said “Uhh, are you alone?” to which, after I glanced around me to see if there was anyone else near me that looked even remotely associated with me and found none, I replied, “Uhhh, yeah...” (In French, mind you). He responded with, “Ummm…(pause)..no you should be okay.” Ahhhh, what reassuring words…! Not! But, seeing as though I had no choice if I didn’t want to sleep on the tracks with the drunkards, I continued along the not-so-yellow-but-certainly-brick road/track as I sympathized with the Cowardly Lion like I never have before.

As I approached the next stop which was also closed, I saw some Police, so I decided to stop and verify that I was still walking along the correct track. Our conversation (all in French again) went a lot like the last. They informed me that I needed line 1 to get to my destination (which I already knew) and that the tram was not running along the track this far down because of the festival (which I also already knew). But they did tell me that I was close to the stop where I could get the tram! Yay! When I finally battled my way through the crowds to the stop, I verified with security there that I was in the correct spot. I was, hallelujah, and a few minutes later, my chariot arrived in the form a blue tram with white birds painted on the side reading Line 1 on the display screen at the front.

I got back to my stop around 1:30 or so (the whole episode felt much, much longer than it actually was) and then I had to make the 15 minute trek back to my house, up a huge hill, and along mighty dark streets all alone. There was approximately no one out except for a few shady characters that didn’t help my already extreme anxiety. I swear, if any movie producer wants a good script for a new horror film, all they need to do is stick me in a unknown country alone at night and I will have no fewer than 15 written for them within 5 minutes and they will be very original with very diverse ending and they will make bank at the box office for all those sick people in the world that enjoy subjecting themselves to feelings of fear by watching a scary movie. I have never, and will never, enjoy scary movies; not only do they terrify while I’m watching them, but they manage to stick around in some little corner of my brain just waiting to jump out and reintroduce themselves when I’m in these types of situations. ARGH! 

But, in the end, I made it home safely—not necessarily soundly. And I curled up in bed, ate some cookies, and listened to music until I fell asleep. It’s amazing how relative the term “home sweet home” can be at times. 

“And a mess is still a moment I can seize until I know,
That all will be well.
Even though sometimes this is hard to tell,
And the fight is just as frustrating as hell
All will be well.”

“All Will Be Well” –The Gabe Dixon Band (This is the song that plays on repeat in my head when things start going wrong and I begin to get anxious or scared or uncertain. I find it to be very soothing and stress-relieving.)