A whole year?

She's still her

She didn't gain twenty pounds (she probably lost a few), her hair is not green or cut into a Basque-style mullett, no tattoos (but a pierced nose, albeit a tiny stud), and she's not an obnoxious snob who thinks everyone she left at home is a provincial buffoon. So, did Chloe change?

A little. Like my mom said after her visit in May, "She talks more." As in more conversation instead of sitting back and letting others do the talking. Last night we went to a Rotary picnic with about five returning exchange students and several who are getting ready to leave. The returnees were asked to briefly talk about their experiences and give advice to the outbound students and their parents. Chloe was second up, she didn't hesitate to address the group, and no one had to ask her to speak louder. After the next girl spoke, Chloe asked if she could say one more thing: Speak. As in speak your new language as much as possible and forget about sounding stupid. That, for her, is a big change. Before, she would have addressed the group if asked but she would have been uncomfortable and nervous. And she would have never volunteered to speak again after her obligation had been discharged.

The changes are subtle and we'll never know exactly how this past year will shape her personality. She's much more at ease around people she doesn't know well. She'll ask a stranger for directions without balking. Because she went to "the best school in Pamplona" (according to a host father) and studied hard, she knows a lot more about world history, which gives her a deeper awareness of the world around her. She'd voluntarily take the map and plot our course (although maps were all but useless in Rome) and she navigated the subway systems with aplomb. And I let her with less than my usual amount of second-guessing. She's not the only one who changed.

These are simple things that on the surface are hardly worth mentioning but they indicate a, well, oh, hell. I'm too tired to work around the cliché: she's more self-assured. She's more compassionate because with experience comes the knowledge that there are many shades of gray to every story. She's more conscious of waste: water, electricity (although she was looking forward to not being crucified for leaving the light on when leaving a room), food, and space. And she's more horrified by bigotry because she'd rarely seen it up close and was shocked to hear it expressed openly and without apology.

But, like I told her before we left Pamplona as I tripped yet again over her shoes and dirty clothes on the floor of the room I alone was sleeping in, "You're still a pig." "Yeah - you didn't expect that to change, did you?"

We'll never all just get along

Being an exchange student is supposed to widen a person's perspective, make her realize that the world is not such a huge place, and that there are many different ways of doing things but that differences aren't necessarily bad, just different. Except in the case of washcloths. How can a large part of the world not use washcloths? Washcloths are a useful grooming aid but I tried to do without: "While in Rome . . ." and all that. Never again, however, will I travel without one. Cultural tolerance be damned in this case. Toothpaste and washcloths were among our most exciting Parisian purchases.

Before we came home I teased Chloe that she'd become quite the little bigot. She was talking about different versions of Spanish and half-jokingly shuddered and mentioned that they weren't "real" Spanish. Until then it hadn't occurred to me just how much America tries to be a nation of cultural sensitivity and makes more of an effort to be tolerant of differences than many other countries. Her comment about real Spanish wasn't original thinking - it's the opinion of many of her friends and families in Pamplona. During the year she'd also mentioned that she'd often hear derogatory comments about the African, Ecuadorian, and other immigrants who were employed mostly in service jobs. I heard one Spanish person explain her disdain for Mexicans because they were too dark, talked too slow, and most of them were dirty, and she was expressing a common opinion. The irony is that most people in America would, upon hearing her speak, assume she was Mexican. And there is always a fair amount of America-bashing and baiting to be heard in conversations. You can always tell a person itching to get into an argument about the shortcomings of America: he or she will work George Bush into the the first few sentences of the conversation.

Most kids who go on exchange are relatively open minded, but it can be a struggle to remain so in the frequent company of closed-minded companions.

Oh, my

If you want to get fully immersed back into one aspect of American culture, jump right into the deep end and go to Wal-Mart.

While standing among the hordes at San Fermín in Pamplona I realized that I, at 5 feet, 4 inches tall, am just about as tall as the average Spanish man. And we saw no fat Spaniards. Chloe was told that bulimia and anorexia are huge problems in Spain and many of the girls and women we saw support that theory (if you're bigger than a woman's size 10 don't plan on buying clothes in Spain). On average, the girls and women in Spain were thinner than in Rome and Paris, and much thinner than in Germany and Copenhagen. Lots of Chloe's friends didn't eat lunch (other than Chupa Chups) and she's spent the past year living with small, thin (too often scarily thin) people who walk everywhere and are in relatively good shape.

Which makes the people walking out of Wal-Mart leaning on their shopping carts full of Cheetos, cheap cookies, and extra-extra-large sweats as they lumber their way to their cars parked as close to the entrance as possible look like the cast of Dawn of the Gasping for Breath. It's quite a shock coming from a place where everyone is walking to the store to pick up the ingredients for that night's dinner to a place where people are shuffling behind a shopping cart full of enough food to feed the average neighborhood for the next two weeks. Not everyone who shops at Wal-Mart is morbidly obese and not everyone screams "One. Two. Don't-make-me-get-to-three" at their kids while shopping there. But it's been my experience that there is a higher percentage of those kinds of people there than at anywhere else I've ever shopped.

Chloe's come home from her year in Spain consciously aware of how much unnecessary crap we Americans eat, the sheer quantity of food we eat at the average meal, and how little exercise we incorporate into our day-to-day lives. There is no getting around the fact that we Americans are much fatter than the citizens of almost any other nation. Fat-acceptance aside, the only explanation is that we simply eat too much and exercise too little.

It would be logical for Chloe, a sixteen-year-old girl, to come home obsessed with being thin at any cost, but instead she's come home much more aware of the dangers of eating disorders and she's both worried and repulsed by the sight of too-thin girls and women. Rather, she's come home concerned with being healthy, which means eating right and walking more. We'll see if that translates to walking to and from the ferry (a shorter distance than she walked to school in Pamplona) rather than getting a ride every day.

Homecoming

We got home last night and Chloe was happy to see everyone, the pets, her bed, and the computer. I was sure that Scout, who was a puppy when she left, would be apprehensive about this relative stranger in the house but she wasn't. One of the cats was on her bed ready to sleep with her as if she hadn't been gone and the door to her bedroom hadn't remained closed for most of a year.

Steve and Christopher were working long hours most of the time we were in Europe and ate day-to-day and managed to shovel up only the big chunks as far as housecleaning so I have some grocery shopping and cleaning to do. Chloe is terribly excited to go to Wal-Mart and Costco where she can buy quantities of things for cheap

Cousin Brenna made a big sign welcoming Chloe home and posted it on her bed, which effectively covered up the stuff underneath (her bed is on a platform four feet above the floor). Chloe's very happy about the sign because it was such a sweet thing to do and it allows her to avoid looking behind it so she doesn't have to face just yet all the sorting and purging she has to do.

I'll back-post about our trip, beginning with the bull running, as I have time in the next few days. And photos, but don't worry: I won't post all 1,000 of them. It's good to have Chloe home.

Worth the trip

Because this is my favorite comment - in French-accented, hesitant English - from the last few days:

To read a translation is to view a picture from behind.

This from a man in a suit with a briefcase in the Gard du Nord as we were waiting for our night train to Berlin. He was reading the new Harry Potter (Chloe so wanted to buy it, but I didn't pre-order it from Amazon UK months ago just so she could buy it in Paris and then schlep it around Europe). Because the book was in English, we asked him if it was good so far. We were surprised when he answered with difficulty in English. That's when he told us why he had the English version.

We had to check out of our hotel at noon, so we had lots of time to kill before our train left at 8:30 pm. We lugged our stuff to a taxi stand (apparently French taxis do not come to you - you must go to them) and had him take us to the train station so we could leave our luggage and explore for the rest of the day. There was lots of security and lots of beggars, a few quite aggressive, wandering the train station (everyone is still nervous after the London bombings on July 7).

The left-luggage line this time was also quite long and made even longer because we had to wait because there were no empty lockers. So, no one could leave anything until someone first came back to retrieve the luggage they'd left. Once again a woman crowded in front. I watched her as she quickly and quietly moved in front of people and rapidly made her way to the front of the line. When she stepped in front of the back-packing party in front of us (they were next to go, and we'd been waiting nearly an hour), they were confused. I helpfully explained that she'd been cutting in line for the last five minutes. They told her No in English and German, and she answered in French. They told her No in French (again, my mono-language slaps me in the face). Suddenly she speaks English enough to announce that the line is too long. Well, of course then. Please, take our place because the line is not too long for us, especially when we have no idea when the next party will come to claim their luggage, thus vacating space for our own. No problem, we're all standing patiently and politely because we have nothing else with which to occupy our time in the City of Light.

By the way, if anyone, usually a young woman with longish hair, no makeup, and a flowing skirt, approaches you and says, "Excuse me, do you speak English?" your answer is a blank stare as you keep walking forward, unless you want to get sucked in to a tale of woe that only you with your recently exchanged euros can fix.

A little place in the country

We lost the cranky kids and there was a bit of a walk to the palace from the train station, but first confusion in getting out of the train station. You must show your ticket to leave the station and this time there was someone there checking. Didn't matter much because everyone told her that they'd lost their tickets (they had) and she let them through anyway. Adding to the confusion is that some people had multi-day bus and train passes for Paris, but Versailles doesn't count as Paris so they'd essentially just stolen a half-hour train trip. She let them through, too.

Everyone who's been there says you must go to Versailles. Believe them. Versailles is one place where we would have had a much better visit if we'd done a little research beforehand, both of the history of the place and of how to navigate throughout the buildings and grounds. And if you buy the one-day passes early enough (otherwise you buy different tickets for different parts of the palace and grounds, and without the one-day pass, which must be purchased by early afternoon, you can't get in to certain sections), the kind that let you bypass the long lines, don't feel too smug. We didn't, but most of the people waiting in line with us had, and they were none too happy about it. There were few signs telling people what to do or where to go, and the few I found were at the front of the line, sometimes an hour or more from the end. We had to check our bags at the entrance to one of the sections, but when we got out we had no idea where we were and had to wander around outside for quite a while to figure out whence we'd come so we could claim our bags. Again, a couple of sheets of A4 (what, you thought they just randomly decided on the size for a sheet of paper?) and a Sharpie would have gone a long way toward eliminating confusion.

The entrance to the palace. As many as 5,000 people would stay here when the king was entertaining. Someone has to powder all those wigs, and they all need a place to sleep.

Looking toward the front from the gardens and lakes below. The Sun King came darn close to turning nature into one of his subjects.

Looking the other way. If your sister were to tell you to go jump in the lake, she'd have to specify which one.

This is someone's bed. I don't remember if it was the queen's, but lets say it was. I overheard a tour guide say that, in an effort to appease the peasants so they wouldn't resent the royalty so much (fat lot of good that did), they were allowed into these bedrooms so they could watch the queen's retinue perform her morning ablutions and otherwise get her ready for the day. I've learned to not believe everything that tour guides tell their paying customers, so I have no idea if that's true.

If they were my kids . . .

At the various tourists sites we've visited in several countries, I've noticed a few people talking to their kids in their native languages as well as English. Those kids have no idea how lucky they are to be effortlessly learning a second or maybe third language. People will say that she speaks English with a Spanish or Italian or Polish accent, but how can we tell? I heard a woman speaking English to her child with what sounded like some sort of African-language accent. But who did she learn English from? An American? Irish? Maybe from an Australian? And now her children are learning their mother's multi-accented English that sounded not so much like conversation but a beautiful song.

Today, however, I was embarrassed to hear Americans speak English. While waiting for the train to Versailles to leave, a grandmother and her three teen-aged grandchildren boarded. I could hear some discussion outside the door with the helpful train employee who spoke perfect but accented English and had been answering questions in polite English. This wasn't good enough for the three ingrates. I heard "too much French" and then, as they boarded the train, one said, "We're not Fre-e-nch! English, please!" A few minutes later, "I can't wait to get home." Then, no kidding, "If there's a lot of walking [when we get to Versailles], there's going to be trouble, Grandma." I struggled to find a hint of playful sarcasm in the kids' voices. After listening to them the entire ride, there wasn't any there. They were just crabby kids from southern California who'd spent the last week in London and Paris with their obviously generous grandmother (who seemed like a nice woman). They complained about the flights. About London and Paris. About the people, the food, the accommodations, the modes of transportation, and the heat. That she didn't leave them in London the second night should go on her application for sainthood.

Fireworks

Pamplonians are rightfully proud of their clean, green city, and especially proud of their San Fermín fiesta. We heard from many people how fantastic the nightly fireworks display was, and they were right. So they're probably not interested in hearing that the fireworks display from the Eiffel Tower on Bastille Day is far more spectacular.

Cranes hold huge towers of speakers for the music that accompanies the show. The crowd applauds, cheers, sings, oohs, and ahhs. Tens of thousands of cell phones and cameras were held over heads, recording the spectacle. Before long the smoke from the fireworks overpowered the smoke from the cigarettes. Chloe and I are forever ruined for fireworks displays.

Brasil was spelled out frequently in the displays and there was much mentioning of Brasil in the audio program. The hotel owner explained that Paris focuses on another country every year and this year it was Brazil. He said that there are cultural events throughout the city during the year that relate to the chosen country. Another reason, it was apparent, for him to feel superior to us Americans who wouldn't know foreign culture if it whacked us upside our uncivilized heads.

I hadn't realized that the entire Eiffel Tower was wired with explosives, but thought that maybe they'd just shoot them off the top, like they do on the Space Needle on New Year's Eve. After seeing this and the fireworks during San Fermín I'm guessing (she was far too gracious to have said so) that Alicia was a bit disappointed on New Year's Eve in Seattle last year.

Bastille Day

We've been having a little trouble with the lock on our hotel room door. Of course we have - I was told this morning by the owner, "The lock is not for children."

Yesterday we got back to the bus office but the hop-on, hop-off buses were parked for the evening because of Bastille Day. We managed to find a Metro station and had to take the Metro and the RER, plus a lot of walking, to get back to our hotel.

Our sense of direction in this beautiful city is a bit sketchy at best and all of the streets that we knew lead, eventually, to our hotel were closed by uniformed police officers manning barricades, so we just keep walking, hoping that we'd eventually find our way. We couldn't believe the crowds when we walked down the Champ du Mars below the Eiffel Tower. Earlier, there were maybe 100 people milling around. By 5:30 there were thousands.

After relaxing in our hotel room for a few hours we went back to the Champ du Mars to wait for the fireworks. Wow. Never have I seen such a crowd, even in Pamplona for San Fermín. There was not one speck of grass left unoccupied. Families were having picnics (it's still strange for me to see people openly drinking wine and beer in a park) and there were dozens of strollers cluttering up walkways. After walking around for about 45 minutes I spotted a tiny patch of empty lawn and dragged Chloe to it. Just as I sat down an old man materialized and yelled at me. Too bad I don't understand French. I didn't move, but after sitting down he stretched out in a reclining position, pushing his sandals into my back and blowing smoke my direction. I scooted just enough to break contact and then pretended I didn't see him for the rest of the evening. Which wasn't easy because the patch of grass we were on was sloping at about a 30 degree angle. I spent a lot of time hoping that I wouldn't find myself paralyzed when I tried to get up.

This is the Champ du Mars in the middle of the day before the crowds. The Eiffel Tower is behind us and that's the Ecole Militaire at the end of the lawn:

Same direction, about three hours before the fireworks:

Looking the opposite direction:

Everyone else has been nice

Everyone's heard the horror stories, but we've encountered only one rude Parisian and it was the driver of the hop-on, hop-off bus. She was so unnecessarily nasty that instead of getting angry immediately, people were so shocked that they stood there looking as if they'd just been slapped in the face by a stranger after she's taken their money.

A sign on the bus stop said that because it was Bastille Day and so many things and roads were closed, tickets bought today would be honored tomorrow. But the sign didn't make clear if any category of ticket would be so honored, and that was an important consideration because the tickets were 25 euros each (they were only 14 each in Madrid). So I tried to ask but she interrupted each of my attempts with "One ticket is for one day. One ticket is for one day." Her tone implied that she didn't finish her sentence, "you greedy American pig." A woman behind me (not American) tried to show the driver her previously purchased ticket so she could hop on without having to wait for us new customers to conduct our business, but the driver said, repeatedly, "You wait until I'm done here. I'm helping other people now." Not.

So I give her 60 euros and she's none to pleased that she has to make change. She tosses me two headphones and tries to shoo me out of the way so she can harass the next paying customer but one of the headphones gets nowhere near within my reach and falls down by her feet, where I can't reach it. I'm none too pleased myself at this point so I don't budge but say I'll need my other set of headphones. "I gave you two" and she tries to nudge me out of the way to reach around me to take the next passenger's money. Yes, but you threw one of them on the floor. Oh, the contempt as she reaches over her fat stomach and picks up the headphones and tosses them closer to me this time. I caught them and said nothing but started to walk up the stairs of the bus: "You could say thank you." Not bloody likely.

When we got off the bus by the Louvre it was in front of the office for the bus company. The best part was that the Coke machine in the lobby charged only one euro for pop or water, the cheapest we've seen anywhere. I noticed a couple trying to complain in broken English to a woman in the lobby about the bus driver. The poor young woman wasn't quite understanding them so I backed them up. I still wanted to know if our tickets were good for tomorrow so we accompanied the little group out with the employee to talk to the bus driver, who said it was hot and she didn't know what she was saying because she speaks bad English. You could say thank you, indeed. I don't know what she'd said to the couple (they were already on the bus when we got on) but the man complaining was livid and his English got worse as he spoke. He mentioned something about the many places he'd been and having never experienced such horrendous behavior before. We heard the rest of the crowd murmuring in agreement.

I asked the nice employee if our tickets were in fact good for tomorrow and she said, yes, of course, don't worry, all the bus drivers know that. It would have taken much less effort for the bus driver to answer me with "Yes" than to be as rude as she was.