History In the Making

What's up now, Tupac. "We ain't ready, to see a black president, uhh", you say. Maybe that was true back in '96, but lucky for all of us your country came through and proved ya wrong son.

I'm not about to say much else since let's be real, there's nothing that hasn't already been said. And who wants to read more about this anyway. So rather than wax poetic using my own poignant yet insightful words, I'll share some other people's who just happen to run countries...

First, the usual flowery-ness...

UNITED KINGDOM
Prime Minister Gordon Brown

"The whole world is watching the inauguration of President Obama, witnessing a new chapter in both American history and the world's history. He's not only the first black American president but he sets out with the determination to solve the world's problems."

No Pressure dude.

FRANCE

President Nicolas Sarkozy
"We are eager for him to get to work so that with him we can change the world."

'So that we can change the world'...

Ah, France.

No further comments.

SPAIN

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero
"Obama gives us hope and his words put us on a better path for a smooth and fruitful relationship with the Spanish government. The arrival of Obama gives us an opportunity we won't pass up."

Anyone who seriously uses "fruitful" in a sentence is a friend of mine.

And now for my favourites...

IRAN

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki

"We prefer to wait and see what the practical policies of the American government will be."

And now, how do you really feel?

RUSSIA

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

"We are ready for this. Our president confirmed this in a telephone conversation with Barack Obama straight after he was elected. I think there will be additional telephone - and not only telephone - contacts between our leaders."

Russia is ready. There will be additional contact. He thinks. And not just on the phone...

Snap.

VENEZUELA

President Hugo Chavez "Hopefully the arrival of a new president will mark a real change in relations between the United States and the countries of the Third World, one of respect for sovereignty and the freedom of the people. But nobody here should be under any illusions. This is the North American Empire we are talking about."

Ahaha. Fair enough Hugo. FAIR. ENOUGH.

Side note - Canada's response is conspicuously missing since Stephen Harper was too busy tryin' to keep his job. Canadian politics were "exciting" like that for the first time ever so get back to him next week. Also, word on the street is Obama's first international trip is to Canada so somebody call up England and let them know that we're still America's best friend after all. We'll stop crying ourselves to sleep on our huge pillow.

Also, where can I get one of these?

New Year Newness

Turns out 2009 has started out right and January has been the month of unprecedented events. Haircuts, road trips, and cut up hands, to name just a few.

Let us begin with the hair situation. I blame the American for this since she put the idea in my head one day and I ruminated about it day and night until one day in a fit of spontaneity I finally decided to go for the gold and chop it all off. 3 years of hard work, all gone in the snip of a blade. Fortunately the stylist that was fixing to redo my melon was the world's happiest French girl and hated every second of it. I think we came in, oh I don't know, 2 hours before closing time, and in this country that means 6 hours too late. Sometimes that gets lost in translation. Needless to say it was a fail in a bigtime way and I came home looking like a 6 year old. The German was horrified but pretended to like it and Matt attempted to tell me he didn't know how he'd feel but "I could pull it off".... I'll tell you one thing sir - Nobody pulls off 6-foot 6 year old.

Round 2 came the next day when I went back to our old standby at the salon by the post office. She was so memorable when she cut my hurr a couple months back that I still don't know the name... but the important thing is she did me a solid and fixed the 'do. So I think I've come around and have jumped on the bandwagon. Shout out to my sister Sarah who cut hers a few weeks ago. Sorry to steal your thunder, but you know you're prettier anyway.


Besides the road trip to Carcassonne the other week, I took a couple of trips in this fine month. First was Saturday morning which isn't really a road trip in the true sense of the word since it was only 20 mins down the freeway but I had to test the limits of our new wheels to attempt to get to practice in time.

It all started when a certain friend of mine, who I won't call out by name 'cause I'm a lady like that, was supposed to catch a train to the airport at 9:04 AM but miraculously slept in til 8:45 when I woke him up and we have 3 minutes to leave. I'm shakin' my head. The cat decides to take a shower.

Dudes. I'll never understand.

So we miss the train from the Albi station by approx. 2.3 minutes and decide to pull a Bond move to try to beat the train to the next town on its way to Toulouse. The 90-year old behind the wheel of a white Renault on its last legs foiled that plan though and we missed it once again by 2 minutes. Just how many of y'all can say you've missed the SAME train twice? That's what I thought. Respect.

So at this point it's like 9:40 and I tearfully leave the friend to take the next train at 9:51 and pray he makes his flight. Meanwhile I got more pressing concerns in the form of practice in 20 minutes, no court shoes with me and a 23 minute drive ahead. So I kick the Kia into high gear and attempt to beat the clock. I failed and despite going 170 km/h for most of the drive was 8 minutes late. Unexpected road trip vol. 2 of 3 unspectacularly complete. The GPS lied to me and my coach was none too pleased. Luckily he was a little distracted when I arrived and this is where the next event seamlessly comes in...

The American. I'ma choose my words wisely here - it's obvious we're tight and I've got nothin' but love for her, after all she's my literal saviour in this country - but she has the unfortunate habit of accidentally getting hurt in one way or another everyday. I mean EVERY day.

Case in point, Friday night while cutting fruit (I'll once again not name names but it was produce of the yellow variety, and ends in 'nana') somehow the knife slipped and she filleted off the side of her left pointer finger. So bananas, knives and bits of finger are flying and the blood starts gushing. Luckily we worked some magic and pieced it back together so she made it through the night.

The next morning our coach gets the news and being that The American is a setter and her hands are literally her livelihood, this was kind of a big deal. As he's trying fruitlessly to redress the wound I come flying through the gym door - hair unbrushed, sweating and gasping for breath. I thought I was off the hook for the first 3 minutes and attempted to pretend I had been warming up in the parking lot... but I was busted shortly thereafter.

So in an attempt to redeem a bad start to the weekend we won a game Saturday night. Just kidding. Well, we did, but actually The American and I redeemed it by taking a little trip Sunday on down to the French village of my youth 2.5 hrs away. I've been back to Montagnac twice since back in the day of running those streets as a 6-year old but with the new haircut, this time I finally looked the part. We poked around a little and I found my old house only to sadly discover nobody was home and the front window was boarded up.

#34 Rue de l'Hospice. The house formerly known at #26...
until the renumbering of 2003 came along.

So in the spirit of nostalgia, I took a walk around the way to what my siblings and I affectionately called Geezer Corner to catch up on the latest village gossip and chew the fat with the local elderly. Suckily, I'm sad to say that times have changed and these days, between me and the scraggly pigeon, I'm the oldest thing sitting on that classy cement bench.

Lost as last year's Easter egg

Montagnac tour complete (yeah back off, it's a small place) we were on to bigger and better things to watch a some men's ball in a town next door. Some Canadian players were in the house and represented for the home and native land. Side note - to me, men's volleyball is like the kid to get picked second last in gym. He's the kid that wants to be taken seriously and somewhere under the too much exposed man-thigh, short shorts and cheering & hugging between every point, he has talent. It just gets overlooked sometimes. And don't worry, I would kill to watch it daily and I am bearing in mind I play the women's version of that sport so I'm not sure what that says about me... or my kid brother who tears up the guy's game... but it's all love.

So yeah. That's about all I got. But last piece of newness - turns out since the Ukrainians screwed up their visas for this round of Euro cup, they had to forfeit and my dream to play against Severodonchanka Severodonec was foiled. Fortunately my dream to get HANDLED by an Italian team will finally be fulfilled as it looks like we automatically advance to quarter finals against Jesi who beat Cannes who beat us. That means nothing to anybody but me and French kids but suffice it to say you can all start praying for me now. And for The American please. We need her. Fingers and all.

Crazy castle-y type place we found on the way

My future home

Admiring my future digs

Doin' my best Ray Charles

Cheating Death

So this has been an interesting week. A collection of recent happenings...

First off, I had the rare opportunity to eat with wooden utensils at a post-game meal Tuesday. You read that right. A game on a Tuesday. It's unprecedented. Just kidding. But yes, wooden silverware, circa 300 B.C. I suppose silverware isn't really an accurate name at this point... But take a moment to appreciate how much more exciting a meal gets when you're eating off uncoated wood. A fool's just beggin' for a splinter. Lip splinter... now that's something you just don't get to say everyday.

Livin' on the edge

The highlight of the evening came when I showed the above "tools" to Matt & The German upon returning home (you better believe the American & I kept those. Collector's items, no doubt), whose first comment was "Hey, this is balsa wood.". Balsa you say... That was definitely my first thought when I saw those and put the first death-cheating forkful of eats in my mouth. Luckily my lips survived unscathed and will live to see another day.

Second, in keeping with the death-defying theme of the week, it snowed quite a bit ("quite a bit" in France means literally about 2 cm) and the country was in a panic. We decided it would be an opportune time to head to Carcasssonne, a sweet medieval city supposedly about an hour and a half away. The way there was an adventure since the GPS took us the back route through some sort of mini mountain range and it got down to a record -9 degrees Celsius which just blew the American's mind. Since I talked to my moms last week and she reported it was -31 out, I celebrated by pullin' out the flip flops and rolling all the windows down.

Family picture in the mountains

Unfortunately upon descending from the mountains, we discovered that not only had it had snowed at lower altitudes as well (and this was accompanied by a biting easterly wind) but the trip taken more like 2 hours. Lucky for us, this means we arrived in Carcassonne at exactly 5:03 PM, aka 3 minutes past closing time for EVERY shop, cathedral and restaurant in the city... Of course we did.

We did a quick once over of the ville, which was a crazy deja vu for me since the last time I was there was as a spry young 6-year old, navigatin' the cobblestone streets on one rollerblade while my brother was rockin' the other boot... Ah yes, 1992 was a good year and back in those days, a pair of rollerblades went far in the Meek household.

Anyway, we saw the outside castle-y bits and after finding that though every sign of human existence had vanished, the main cathedral was unlocked. If you've ever been inside a pitch black, empty, 400 year old building, you know how creepy it can be. The wind picked up at a key moment, knocking the half-open door about, which made us think they were lockin' up the place and we'd get stuck inside for the night. But we made it out alive and I cheated death for the 2nd time this week.


On the way home, it was sheer chaos. Apparently 2 cm of snow is cause for mass hysteria in France and people were driving at approximately 20 km/h (aka walking speed for the Americans out there), hazard lights a-flashin'. We saw one guy going maybe 40, but he was leading one of the convoys of cars we saw travelling in packs and so was just takin' one for the team to chart a course in the treacherous conditions.

Being that I've seen my fair share of winter driving conditions that put this "storm" to shame, it was time to show I had the skills to pay the bills. I was going a reasonable yet cautious 80 km/h and I think I gave more than a few monsieurs cause for concern. Plus it only took us 2.5 hrs to get home so we drove for 5.5 hours to spend 1.5 hours in Carcassone. A successful trip by all accounts.

By the way, to show that I wasn't just tryin' to be a rebel without a cause, all the snow melted the very next day... there was kind of a lot.
'

By the way, I neglected to mention we finally got new cars a few weeks ago.
It is now much more difficult to break traffic laws on the DL.

Finally, this has nothing to do with anything but it was my Frenchest moment so far so I feel the need to share with the class... My teammates were trying on each other's berets before practice yesterday. That's some realness. Who, under 50 or otherwise, owns a beret, let alone wears it, let alone compares it to someone else's and has beret envy? Only. In. France.

P.S. Today I learned that the French do not, in fact, call the delicious breakfast staple below "french toast" but pain perdu aka lost bread. Free lesson for the kids.

Raw Pig Parts

The holiday vacationing continued with a train trip from Munich to Paris en route to Barcelona in the wee morning hours of December 27th. After hangin’ out at the train station from midnight to three AM (during which my aforementioned German convo with a drunk Britney Spears fan took place), we saddled up for our journey across The German’s motherland back to France.

We finally arrived in Paris at 10 AM and were feeling great. “Hey everyone! Come and see how good I look!” A quote was never so fitting. We were also tired and hungry but lucky for us, only had 9 hours to kill before our flight to Barcelona. Also lucky for me, the high quality bag I packed all my goods in decided to fall apart piece by piece such that by the time we arrived in Paris, the extendable handle had long since lost a screw and wouldn’t come out of its home, I had only one wheel and one strap. Don’t worry though, the other wheel and strap would fly off at untimely moments before the trip was through, leaving me to carry the bag in both arms as if it were a small child rather than filled with dirty socks.

Anyway, it was cold and the wind was angry that day so we sought refuge in a mall where I promptly fell asleep for a couple more hours sitting totally upright… My neck never felt so good. We took our luxurious RyanAir flight (I’ll not go into further detail but I know y’all out there that are familiar are shaking your heads right now) and finally arrived in Barcelona a full 24 hours after we left Munich.

The next few days were a delight. It’s hard for me to use that phrase seriously but in the spirit of a new 2009 (as opposed to an old one…?) I’m trying to do better with the cynicism. Update: It’s been a week and I’m already struggling. I digress.

An American friend of ours – also known as Matthias - decided to make a pilgrimage to the continent of his forefathers and met up with us in the citay so it was three’s company for the rest of the trip.

The man, the legend.

The next 4 days consisted of shopping, old buildings, a lot of walking, and a bit too much fast food in the form of kebab, aka delicious spiced meat of the gods. We saw the requisite sights; Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, Catedral de Barcelona, Las Ramblas, etc. and it was in a market at the the latter that I witnessed my first pig head just chillin’ for sale, complete with eyelashes still attached. And a bargain at only 4 Euros! Just the perfect belated Christmas gift I was looking for. There were also a plethora of cured pig thighs hanging about, also with hoof intact, in case you wanted to take your leg for a brisk jaunt trip the block before digging in. I was tempted.

Smile and some pig heads smile with you.

New year’s eve in Barca was interesting. We went for dinner and were enjoying a lovely meal when we remembered they have a tradition where you’re supposed to eat 12 grapes, one at each stroke of midnight, to represent good luck in each month of the new year. Or the old year. Crap I forget. But we definitely missed the boat on the first half-dozen strokes of the clock (or in our case, waiter banging a pot lid. Stay classy Barcelona.) and were forced to shove the grapes in 3 at a time to get ‘em all in in time. That’s tougher than it sounds when there are seeds involved. Anyway, I’m not sure if that’s a bad omen for those months in the coming year or a representation of 2008… but either way I’ve been a little on-edge since. Right right right, now I remember why I don’t let fruit decide my fate.

After dinner and the grapes incident we decided to walk down Las Ramblas which can only be described as a complete gong show. From what I understand, there are no laws against public intoxication or consumption so the Spanish just cut loose and wander the streets in droves. The specific street they frequent is Las Ramblas and the ground was literally wet all over with alcohol… It’s raining wine! Hallelujah! I was offered drugs by at least 8 shady lookin’ fellas and only tried a couple different varieties of Spanish Charlie before deciding it doesn’t compare with the pure coke on the streets back in my ‘hood. Just kidding mom. It was enlightening though and for the first time in my life I actually felt somewhat unsafe (I tend to delusionally believe people aren’t gonna eff with a 6’+ giant. There are some perks to being this large & in charge after all) and was pretty glad to have The German & Matt as wingmen. Fortunately they had bought the same black wool coat and aviators - their rugged individualism had kicked in – so they looked like bodyguards and I was just giving them some work.

The German and Leroy were sleeping soundly when I peaced out the next morning at 7:30 AM since they stayed in Spain for a couple more days to see the FC Barcelona game on the 3rd. The early morning New Year’s Day wakeup was the highlight of the trip but I had to catch a train back to Albi to get home for training on the 2nd. Someone has to work around here.

And that pretty much sums it up. Hope you all had a good one. Here’s to a solid 2009.

Breakin' it down

Starting 2009 off right with 5 desserts for 3 people...

...5 was a bad choice.

The American legacy abroad.

About to chocolate key a fool

The carnage

Juuuust around the riverbend

Contemplating the meaning of life
or how anyone could construct something so... stunning? Ahem.
Outside Sagrada

Bavarian Shuffle

I realize Christmas is already long past so this is probably a good week overdue but... that's the way it goes around hurr. I couldn't even come up with a better excuse than that.

In light of last-minute changes to the original Christmas plan, The German and I headed back to his motherland to spend the holiday of all holidays with his parentals in their little village in the woods about an hour outside Munich.

The original plan was Venice and though I won't go into details of how it got axed, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise seeing as how the city got a lot more water than usual (hard to do, you say... but it seems it's possible) and the streets were flooded. So rather than invest in a quality pair o' rubber boots and splash around for a few days, we headed instead to the land of schnitzel and wurst... Wow that's weird, my first reference to a country mentions their food. That's never happened before.

I never thought I'd say it but I actually hoped for snow while I was in Deutschland. Shocking, I know, and unfortunately my wish was never granted. I thought 18 years in Canada would tide me over for life without feeling the need to see snow ever again, but turns out my heart longed for a white Christmas. Who knew. Instead it was just really cold and I found out really cold + snow = somewhat better than without snow, since you can throw it at people and at least things look pretty for a few days. Lesson learned.

The German, gettin' his cold face on.

It was cool to see how The German & his fam do it up for Christmas since his moms is Slovak and his pops is of solid German stock so holidays around his place are kind of a mixture of two worlds. Come to think of it, life at The German's house is kind of a crazy tower of Babel-type experience all year long. The young genius speaks Slovak with his mom and Bavarian/German with his pappy and - this probably comes as a surprise - English with me since my German/Slovak sucks too bad to say anything intelligible and I've decided Bavarian is a full-on language of its own, so it's clearly hopeless there.

Actually I didn't really decide that myself since I'm told by my other German friends from the north that whenever someone from Bavaria is speaking on TV it's also subtitled in High German so everyone outside their Southern 'hood can figure out what the eff they're goin’ on about. It turns out Bavaria is basically the Quebec of Germany (or Texas if that analogy speaks more to you), since they think they should be their own country, have their own constitution, are very proud, and speak a language the rest of the country could care less about. Kidding, kidding.

I may or may not be putting my relationship with The German in jeopardy here, but all in the name of truth for the masses... He's already preppin' the "You don't care about how many people you leave dead and bloodied along the way just as long as you can make it as an investigative journalist, no matter how many people you leave dead and bloodied along the way?" Zoolander quote, I can feel it.

Anyway, it really was nice to be with a fam for Christmas and I'll take off my cynical hat for a sec to warm your hearts with stories of Christmas lore. I'm not sure what that means but I've always wanted to say lore... We went to midnight mass, decorated the tree and ate like kings. In my case, a bit too king-ly and I have my work cut out to recover my girlish figure. Yipes.

That's one cookie, or 8, too many...

So the whole trip was a delight until we left on our 3 AM train from Munich to Paris. This sucked in every single respect except one solitary glimmering moment in the whole ordeal which was when I had 2 "conversations" in German; the first was with a drunk man at 2 AM who told me & The German about the book he'd written on Britney Spears(he was the "only one that believed in her! And where did she go? Right back to #1. Minimum #1! Maximum #3! I'm just waiting to get paid. Any day now."), the other was with a cleaning lady who straight up told me my German was good. Say what...? The cleaning supplies may have been intoxicating her too.

Part 2 of holiday adventures, the Barcelona chapter, is coming soon…ish. At this rate, I should get my game face on and write about it sometime before Valentine’s day.

'Twas.