Two days ago I was looking through a plethora of collected bus, plane and attraction tickets to lazily compile into a travel journal in the coming weeks. My eyes caught the Malaysia Air ticket which read Kuala Lumpur - Paris, and below it, our collected date of arrival in France: May 1st. It was now June 1st. So we had been in France for one month already. And though it had passed quicker than we could pronounce all the myriad cities and villages we had visited, what a month it had been.
After the end of our second week in France, most of the risk of inadvertent faux pas or language mix-ups has been shrugged off. There were still the odd one or two though – for instance, it is against traditional customs here to let anyone other than the head of the table take the first slice of bread, and the noun baiser (kiss) means a much more extreme display of affection when used as a verb – though on the whole, we were all settling in smoothly.
With this newfound homeliness came newfound confidence. The group of us were now bus and train competent, and spent our days exploring the likes of Aix-en-Provence, Arles, Vannes, Avignon, Montpellier and Nîmes, all of which are bustling metropolises whose streets are lined with galleries, brasseries, clothing stores and market stalls, as well as the odd tourist attraction, which are often found in the very heart of these cities. The countryside is also as delightful as when we first arrived, and many of us spend hours at a time in the afternoon riding nowhere in particular, but instead being guided by whichever path looks the most appealing (which is a good plan until you get lost for four hours and end up riding forty kilometres, as I did a few weeks ago).
Several of us have also been offered the exciting opportunity to visit local junior high schools and answer questions on life in Australia. “There are like, crocodiles and snakes and spiders just living in your backyard, right?” I was asked by the American teacher who is taking me to be interviewed by her English class in the nearby town of Vauvert. I think all of us are looking forward to answering such questions in front of the prying eyes of thirty or more French students.
Last Monday the group of us (minus Sarah, whose placement is hundreds and hundreds of kilometres to the North of France until the middle of June) met up in the heart of Nîmes to share our experiences to date. We stopped at a local bakery – where we saw the dozens of flavours of intricately decorated, freshly baked macaroons, tarts, slices, breads and baguettes on offer – here stocking up on culinary delights before eating lunch under the shade in the sunny Jardin de la Fontaine. Afterwards we made the steep journey to the top of the nearby Tour Magne, which stood as a Roman age lookout at the peak of the gardens. Here, the entire city of Nîmes stretched out before us. It was a sight like no other.
The following Saturday I also had the opportunity to witness one of the traditional cultural activities of my region: bull running. Before we left to watch the spectacle, which would take place a mere three kilometres from the outskirts of my village, my host mother warned me of how dangerous the activity could be not only for those competing to catch the furious bulls, but also for spectators.
“In fact, three years ago,” she explained, “two tourists were killed during the running when they tried to take a photo of the activity”.
“But that won’t affect me, right?” I asked, my camera and two lenses strapped over my shoulder.
A half hour later I was standing with my host sister and several family friends in the middle of an intersection in the countryside, waiting for the spectacle to being, though not quite knowing what to do when it did. It took but one cry from a spectator further down the road to thrust everyone into action; within three seconds everyone had fled from the intersection and scrambled up a concrete landing or jumped across to the other side of a ditch, whichever might protect them from the aggravated bulls. And within ten seconds a pack of four furious bulls ran through the intersection, flanked by professional horse riders, though nearly smashing into nearby cars all the same. Being but three metres away from all this action caused an adrenaline rush unlike any other.
At home, we were still sharing cultures with our families, who we all got along with more and more. On the whole, we weren’t just visiting France; we were living in France. And we were becoming more and more absorbed in their culture; their language, their food, their customs, and so on. No complaints here though. No, none at all
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