Saturday February 9, 2008:
On Friday night Bradie and I wanted to go to a carnival that we saw on the edge of town, but it was closing down when we arrived there at 9:30 so we decided to come back today.
We didn't play any games because they looked all the same and not any fun. We ate delicious sugary things like churros, though. They didn't have very many rides, but they were expensive, so we decided to choose just two or three to ride. We got into the whole French carnival thing on our first ride, when the man on the speakers asked "do you guys want to stop?" in French and everyone would scream 'non!' and crazily stamp their feet on the metal floor in front of their seats. So we joined in, too. Then we had to decide: ferris wheel or the craziest-ride-that-we'd-ever-seen-in-our-lives that I told you about yesterday. Indeed, we chose the latter. Last night when we saw this ride, there was 12-year old boy operating it and his little dog was stepping all over the control panel, so now that there was an adult alone in the operating booth it seemed much much safer. I watched the mechanism...imagine cars of the zipper except without the cages, just the body encasing and then completely open to the air (and you still do all that flipping around upside down) , and there is only one on each end of a REALLY long pole,apparently 60 meters in the air when you reach the peak (they claim...but I think it was closer to 100 than 200 feet). The pole moves around a fixed point in the middle, like a windmill with just this one pole on it and cars on both ends. And it circles around and around at a speed that couldn't have been safe. As I was deciding whether or not to revoke my decision, I bought my ticket for 6 euros. I don't want to die this way, I thought, but now I've got my ticket, so I'm going to do it. The rides were going on for at least ten minutes each, and the closer we got to going on the ride, the more scared I became. Only eight people go at a time, so even though the line was short, we had to wait about a half hour. Finally it was our turn and he strapped us in. Then we were slowly raised to the peak of the ride as they strapped in the people on the OTHER end of this pole I told you about. We could see the entire city of Aix and much much beyond from this height. I could see the apartment where I live with Colette. We could see everything. Then we felt it, the beginning pulls of the ride, and we were moving backwards. We felt the wind, we saw the vast view of Aix getting smaller and smaller as we dipped back into it, and we sped up and sped up, and when we got to the top and saw it all again, we flipped over and saw the whole town upside down. The wind blew by our faces and we saw everything in the late afternoon golden light and it was tranquil, actually, not scary at all. We flipped around, felt the wind, and saw everything, and it was peaceful and nice. We loved it. I would do anything for a feeling like that again...EXCEPT going forwards is the scariest thing I've ever done. After four minutes or so, we slowed down at the peak and they changed directions. We moved forward and our apparatus tipped forward and we watched the ground approach our faces with a speed I never want to remember. We flew back up, I closed my eyes. I was so scared. I closed my eyes and I felt my ears pop, my head start to swell, I felt us moving at a speed that was much too fast. We shouldn't have reached that height at the peak and then the bottom-most point again at such that speed. All the tranquility and all the fun was lost. I wanted to get off that ride. Bradie was feeling the same thing, and even though we had both loved going backwards, this forwards business was scary. When the ride finally ended, we were in a daze. We laughed, but we didn't really talk. But then Bradie said, "I think that's illegal in the United States because we have regulations on height and speed, and maybe they don't have that here". I'm glad we have that experience, and I have great memories of that feeling of seeing Aix like that, but I don't want to ever do it again.
When we left the fair, we got a call from another friend from school, Becca, who asked if we wanted to go to a ball. At first we said no, because we don't like to go out at night, really, but then we decided we should. We're here in France and this sounds like an interesting thing, not a bar or something, so we agreed.
However, none of the three of us brought ball gowns with us to France. So we just wore plain black dresses that we had. I met the girls on the Cours Mirabeau at 10:30pm because the boys didn't even want to go to the ball until 11:30! We were going to a ball at the military school and we were waiting at the fountain to meet our three handsome French military gents. We watched military men dressed up with their dates pass us...they had big plumes and those fringe shoulder pad things and we started giggling and tried to practice not giggling when we met the boys we were going with. But the gents who met us weren't in such a funny costume. They greeted us wearing chic sort-of uniforms but more like suits. We all met each other and started walking towards the school which was a little ways away. Becca spoke beautiful French to them. I could barely say "my name is Pam" without messing up. Really. I said "I follow Pam" and then corrected myself. Bradie had the same problem when one of them asked her "how did you arrive here?" in French, she replied "I don't know" which made me laugh, but I didn't help her because it was funnier that way. (She thought he had asked how would she like to go there (to the ball)) Then he said "Oh, that's really bad" and she didn't understand, so I explained and she cracked up and answered "I walked".
At the school, we walked through an arch entrance and then the school was lit up with a huge French flag over the front. There was a red carpet leading up to it all, trimmed with lights on both sides and candles (like tiki lights). Inside, there were two rooms for dancing and then a room for hanging out and drinking champagne. At 11:00 there was almost no one dancing yet "It's too early" the boys told us. I'd never thought 11 was too early for anything before. And being at a dance with strangers was starting to feel awkward. But as I remember my French Canadian friend Marie telling me years ago, there is no French equivalent to the word "awkward". Bradie wanted to convey that maybe if we drank some champagne together then this evening would feel a little less awkward. Becca told the boys that we were "mal ö laise" but that means "extremely uncomfortable" so I tried to correct that, but instead of saying "I'm not extremely uncomfortable, I like these gentlemen a lot" apparently I said "I love them a lot" and one of them, Emilien, replied "merci beaucoup" which is when I realized my mistake. How awkward!!! So finally one of them got a bottle of champagne and we looked for a place to sit in that room, but almost all the chairs were taken, and we were a pretty big group. I said we could try another room, but he replied that this room is better because the music in the dancing rooms makes it too difficult for conversation. I replied in French "good thinking, because I have problems even before music." I am such a creep in French. Imagine if someone who you just met said that to you at a dance...what would you think?
We found chairs. We sat and conversed. We met each other. They were so gentlemenly the entire night. They were from an Engineering 'grande ecole' in France (remember what I told you about those 'grades ecoles'?) so I congratulated them, and then realized why, even though they were quite attractive, they took foreigners to the ball rather then cute French girls (Because they're study-hard engineeers) Their school has a military tradition, though, which is why their school is invited to the military ball every year, too. We had fun and laughed and after only two glasses I was feeling warm and ready to dance. And FINALLY they agreed to go dance! It was about 1am when we started. They played some old music, but mostly they played new stuff like they do at dances. I hate when that happens. But I enjoyed it anyway. Everyone there was either REALLY good (as if they had taken lessons...they made swing dancing look awesome even to techno music) or they were REALLY shy and try to hide the fact that they were dancing (like the guys that we went with) and they would move very little. One of the boys with us was really fun, though, and he had all kinds of dance moves. I loved it. He was goofy and fun, and he was eventually pulled into the middle of the dance with the other good dancers, while the rest of us remained at our comfortable distance a little bit farther away. We danced for hours and it was great! Then some slow songs came on. There were now the two guys (because the one had been pulled in for his killer moves) and three girls. This is the word awkward that they have no word for. One of them looked at us and said "this reminds me of...how do you say? High school." and I pulled Bradie towards him to dance and I feigned 'having to go to the bathroom' so that no one would feel this awkwardness any longer! We decided to leave soon after that because even though the party didn't look like it was going to end at all, it was already 4am and I still had a thirty-minute walk home. The boys walked us back to the cours Mirabeau even though they lived in the other direction. We walked past a little group of troublemakers and the boys told us in English that Aix is reasonably safe "as long as you don't go near to people like us". We didn't get it, but then he corrected himself "like them! like them!" he said, pointing to the troublemaking teens. It's funny, that language barrier. The leaving was long and drawn-out, and finally we parted ways. I didn't get home until 5am. I put my flower in a vase, put my pajamas on and crawled into bed.
Bradie told me the next day that the one she liked had sent her a text message. "Did you arrive at your home without problems? Did you have fun at the party? Clement." Maybe Bradie has a budding romance here, after her nice slow dance with Clement at the ball!
