It turns out Bordeaux is really famous for wine: the title of this post has almost nothing to do with it, in keeping with the random

It’s probably going to take me five times longer to type this because my fingers have been corrupted by a week of only using French keyboards – that’s right folks, I haven’t used the internet on my computer for over a week- I know this for certain because my antivirus is throwing a hissy fit: “OH NO! I HAVEN’T UPDATED MY DEFINITIONS FOR OVER A WEEK”, antivirus can be quite the drama queen.

This is an example of my favorite kind of french books- the kind of french books intended to teach english to french people, more specifically those purporting to teach them how to speak "like an english speaker". These books are always hilarious, whether they're right about what english speakers would say, or not. This one is particularly awesome in that it claims, not to teach one english, but to make one's boss THINK one speaks english. I would have bought it if it hadn't been 12 euro. Or if I had remembered to bring 8 euro with me before leaving to go to E.Leclerc (=supermaket), where I found this book and where I was planing on purchasing body wash and fach wash (this actually worked out, just barely)

Anyway, last week was pretty uneventful: I went to a bunch of DEFLE (have I explained DEFLE here yet? DEFLE = the department of French for foreign non-french speakers) classes that I’m not actually going to end up taking (maybe), I ate like 4 McFlurrys (French McFlurrys, like most “mac do” (pronounced “mac doe”) fare, are different than American McFlurrys – basically they are soft serve with a candy topping and “nappage” (which is like chocolate syrup or caramel, you actually have to pay extra for this, but it’s totally worth it :) ), I developed a habit of over using smilies and lol because of incessant texting, I read three books (they were short, okay!), and I started making a habit of going out at night (mostly this involved a lot of sitting at this monument and talking).

"this monument"

The weekend the before that, I spent my time being a cultured bordelaise because it was the weekend of Patrimoine, which is the weekend during which cool stuff in europe that isn’t normally opened is opened. I went to the Musee d’Aquataine (Aquataine= the region of france in which Bordeaux is located, this is a historical museum about its past (no kidding, right?)) - this is actually always open, we just happened to go. Then we walked through the Grand Theatre, which isn’t, “grand” that is. It was very pretty and cool to see, but large it was not. Tristan and I had a conversation while sitting in the theatre in which we pretended to be pretentious 19^th century british bourgeois while we waited for Claire to catch up with us.  That night we ate at Ed Wood Café which is like the Corvette diner only in France – yep, I traveled half-way around the world to go to an American 50’s style restaurant, go ahead and judge me. We had yummy milkshakes, and laughed at all the French people who ate their hamburgers with their forks. Then on Sunday we went to a free classical music concert in the Jardin Public. I don’t have pictures of any of this, I don’t know why.

CAT!

Something I learned (or really was reminded of) in my “Bordeaux Art” DEFLE class (which would me more aptly named “random French vocabulary pertaining to Bordeaux- and by random I mean you probably don’t even know the English word for this stuff”) is how lucky I got when I picked the name of this blog. So, you know, “chateau” is a French word that generally means “castle”, or “really gigantic house”.  But it is also used to name vineyards, after the presumably grand house that is part of them, in this way, wines are called “Chateau insert_name_of_house_here”. And this is the origin of the slang Chateau Lapompe, to mean water (la pompe meaning the pump). I more or less new all of that when I choose to use it as a name, what I didn’t know is that naming vineyards this way is actually a custom specific to Bordeaux. So, you win, me, you win. On the other hand I haven’t actually heard anyone call water anything other than l’eau.

Look familiar? I found this in my 3rdish day in france, just before finding E.Leclerc. Until I stumbled upon it again, I believed it to be from Eureka, CA, which would have been really oddly specific- it turns out it just says Eurkea on it because it's, yah know, the state moto. It says Pessac Automobiles on the seal. So still random, but slightly less so.

SPOILER ALERT: Spectuloos does not equal Peanut Butter

Wednesday, I walked all the way the home from downtown Bordeaux, despite the fact that there is perfectly good public transportation. I have no rational excuse for this. It was decidedly irrational behavior, though it started out slightly rational. After standing for about 5 minutes at the Musee d’Aquitaine tram stop, I was getting a bit impatient. This isn’t one of the nicest stops; it’s a bit dirty and some people around me were smoking (smoking, in general, by the way, is less prevalent and less bothersome than I expected). I wasn’t feeling super fantastic as I’ve had a bit of a rhume (cold) the last couple of days, and suddenly I wanted to be home immediately and began dreading the long tram ride (if you call 20 minutes long, sometimes it feels that way, other times it goes by in a flash. In any case it was sounding pretty long about then).  So I looked at the sign which told me the tram wouldn’t be to the stop for 4 more minutes. I looked down the street and decided I certainly had enough time to walk to the next stop before the tram would get there, so I did. I easily beat the tram to Victoire, the next stop, but when I saw the crowd waiting for the tram and shortly after, how packed the tram was, I decided to keep walking.
I reasoned that I would walk to Simply (a super marker whose slogan is “Be Happy, Be Simply”- that’s not a translation. Side note: Simply has some hilarious ads for itself in the windows, having customers say things like “I can shop here without being embarrassed!” (in french). I must be missing some sort of subtly or the necessary culture background, because I can’t imagine why anyone would be embarrassed to go to any super market.). Anyway, Simply is a fairly decent walk from Victoire, and about 3 stops off campus (there are 3 more stops on campus, before mine). But I thought a walk would be nice, as I hadn’t done anything all day excepting eating, sleeping, and enjoying the “authentic” designer UCLA shirt/ sweatshirts being sold at a store in Bordeaux (for more 40 euro and 90 euro respectively, and I thought the UCLA store was expensive), and I didn’t have anything else to do. Besides the tram would likely be less crowded by the time that it got to that stop, and I was going to go to Simply anyway to continue my quest for peanut butter which I had begun the day before.

I was thrilled to find that Simply did sell peanut butter, the only trouble was that it was tiny, tiny, tiny jar of Skippy and cost 3.75 euro. There was something that COULD have been peanut butter next to it, but I wasn’t sure. I decided to continue on to Casino (another grocery chain, and one I hadn’t been to yet) which I believed to be located one tram stop down, which OBVIOUSLY wasn’t worth the wait for the tram.
It turned out to be two stops down, but I walked anyway. I found that they didn’t have anything that was DEFINITELY peanut butter, but they had the stuff that was next to the peanut butter at Simply. It looked like it could be peanut butter, and it came in crunchy and smooth. So, what else could it be? I was slightly uncertain, because there weren’t any peanuts on the jar, instead there was a picture of a shortbready kind of cookie, and the story of its invention written on the back didn’t seem to be correct. But peanut butter goes awesome on cookies, and maybe they wanted to frenchicize the story of invention. Besides, I really WANTED it to be peanut butter, and who was I to say that Spectuloos does not equal peanut butter? So I bought the jar (and two bananas, so I could make the peanut butter & banana sandwich I craved) on hope alone. After buying these things (which was a bit of a fiasco, because how was I supposed to know that I was supposed to weigh and print out a price tag for the bananas?), I opened the jar of what I was then certain was peanut butter. I found it to be the consistency of peanut butter, and was already beginning to celebrate victory when – umm, that’s not peanut butter, or else it’s really odd peanut butter. In fact, it tastes quite a lot like the cookies pictured on the front. I feel disappointed and disenchanted. I wonder what anyone would want with a substance that is the consistency of peanut butter, but that tastes like these cookie things. (If anyone has any suggestions, let me know, as I know am the proud owner of a jar of Spectuloos.)

I put it back in my bag and continued to the tram stop. As I approached I considered walking the rest of the way, but I dismissed that as a crazy idea. But when I arrived and saw that it would be 12 minutes before the next tram arrived, I decided to keep walking to the next top, because it would be unbelievably ridiculous to walk this far because of a 4 minute wait, only to wait longer than that. And this logic carried me almost all the way home, and the belief that it would be ridiculous to take the tram at this point carried me the rest of the way. 

It was actually quite a pleasant way to spend the afternoon, and it was interesting to see the areas of Bordeaux which have been to me tram-over places at a slower pace.
Also, I finally took a picture of something I’ve been meaning to capture since the beginning: 

This is one of the university restaurants, I don't know why it's shaped like a boat.