Small victories

It’s been a while without any postings so I’ll just cut to the meat and talk about the good stuff. I’ve been thinking of the “small victories” concept for a while since there haven’t been any moments of epiphany but in hindsight I’ve been making lots of small strides towards getting settled here.

Victory number one was figuring out social outlets in town. Nice is a bit of an odd place in that it there doesn’t seem to be much unifying culture. The longer I’m here the more it seems like just a big bunch of people who all decided to live in the same place because it’s pretty. But for the most part people mind their own business, don’t make eye contact, and aren’t too receptive to impromptu conversation—at least that which would lead to future conversations. BUT, a few weeks ago I found a weekly language exchange that has about 10-20 people from all over the world. For the first part we speak French, then the second half is whatever other language you want. It’s simultaneously a great way to learn French and meet some people who are more friendly and outgoing than the average Nicois. Between that exchange and some other creative means I’ve been able to find fun and interesting people to hang out with and help keep me from going hermit.

Along those lines, victory number two is my progress in French. Though I’m still quite a ways away from where I’d like to be, I’m at least to the point now that I can communicate only in French when in public, understand people on the phone, write emails, and in general get my point across (even if a little game of charades becomes necessary). One problem I find is that around the time I start to become comfortable with a language I try to make a transition from thinking in English and translating to a more natural method of simply thinking in the language and expecting the words to be there. I think that’s the steepest part of the learning curve, and when I’m trying to break through that crux my command of the language starts to decline. So right now I’m either really on-form and can speak somewhat naturally, or I get stumped and can barely get a word out. Most of it comes down to how tired and focused I am… but it’s a necessary stage and hopefully won’t last too much longer.

Christmas Eve was perhaps another small victory. Just about since I’ve arrived I’ve been looking around for people to spend Christmas Eve with since Thanksgiving was a solo venture. The problem is that most people either have family here or they return home to their families, and those without either option (such as myself) for some reason tend to keep their mouths shut. So come Christmas Eve I had invitations to Christmas Day and New Years celebrations, but nothing for Christmas Eve, which is typically the more significant occasion for my family.

And so came a scheme. Walking and riding around the city one thing that kept jumping out is how visible homelessness is here. In Seattle there is a significantly larger homeless community than Nice, but the homeless here seem to make no attempt to conceal themselves and indeed there are few options in that regard because the city is so densely populated and every bit of public space is frequented by the general public. There also seem to be very little in the way of shelters, soup kitchens, street newspapers, etc to help take the edge off. And so it struck me that it’s not at all difficult to find some other people in the city family-less on Christmas Eve, I was just searching too hard and not really looking.

So instead of buying gifts here and sending them home to family and friends, I decided to take that money and go buy a bunch of food at the store, make little individually wrapped Christmas dinners, then walk around town and have a bunch of little Christmas dinners with the people I’d find. The concept in my head is sort of like purchasing carbon credits to offset your emissions… so for all of you who didn’t receive something in the mail from me, this was “your gift” instead of some silly souvenir from the Riviera.

That was the idea anyway. I managed to recruit a buddy to come along, so around 8pm when all the crowds cleared out and the streets were deserted, Danish and I started our urban trek with backpacks full of food we’d just prepared. It turned out to be a lot harder than we expected. Our primary obstacle was language—not French, but rather that we didn’t find a single homeless person from western Europe. The first guy we came across was our “easiest.” His name was Jozef, who came here from Prague just a few weeks earlier with his black lab puppy Franz. He spoke only Czech, but it was so easy to communicate with body language and gestures.

Our next few attempts didn’t go too well. One guy had a dog who was just lying there when we walked up, and had ignored all the other people who’d walked by and ignored him, but when we gave some attention he started running around barking and jumping happily and wanting to play. That was fine with us, but it made a big scene and people on the street started yelling at us and the owner was all but passed out anyway, so we just had to keep walking. Most others we saw were either asleep or too inebriated to be receptive.

From then on we became a little more “selective” and had to pass some folks by. From the outset we decided to go for quality over quantity, so rather than simply walking around handing out PBJs we wanted to make some really nice meals and go sit down with people and have an actual familial exchange—which, more than the mechanical distribution of gifts, seems the real point of Christmas. But that wasn’t seeming very feasible.

Our final stop is how the evening will be remembered, I’m sure. We were walking along the Promenade des Anglais, the main drag along the sea with all the ritzy casinos and hotels, and found a group of five guys sitting in a circle talking boisterously. We walked up and asked if we could join them and they happily welcomed us, pulling up bags and boxes for us to sit on. They were all from former Soviet states—Belarus, Lithuania, Kyrgyzstan, etc, and spoke a mix of French, Russian, and Spanish (one guy coming most recently from Barcelona). We ended up staying for about half an hour, trying to understand their stories and give some of our own. They offered us lots of food and drinks, though interestingly didn’t touch anything we’d given them (in front of us anyway). After a while things got too intense for us because they kept getting more and more hyper, hugging us and getting up and running around, bringing back extra boxes for us to sit on, event a giant oriental rug. We were really tired at that point and kept trying to leave, but whenever we’d make those motions Alexi, the most communicative and welcoming would get really despondent and upset that we were leaving already and kept asking us why we were leaving, where we were going, and so forth.

Ultimately we just had to shake their hands, wish them well and walk away, which was a really discordant end to the evening that left both of us not too warm and fuzzy and somewhat questioning of our “tactics.” When we went into the evening we didn’t know at all what to expect, but figured we’d just put ourselves out there and give it a go. We now have a list of criteria should we try again. I think everyone was appreciative but in the end I think Danish and I were probably more affected than they were. Which is pretty much exactly what I didn’t want to happen—a kind of unbalanced, voyeuristic exchange—but perhaps it was naïve to expect otherwise.

There are of course many other stories both from Christmas Eve and the last few weeks, but I’ll leave it at that for now. Some other not insignificant side notes: I both got into law school and got a scholarship, I’m thinking of applying for a really great job through the French embassy where you teach English 12hrs a week and get paid about $1200/month, and I leave for Zurich on Thursday for a RACE. Yeah, it’s been a while, huh? I’ll be hitting the intensity hard the next few days and trying to get back in the zone since this might be the last race of the season. Speaking of which, it’s been a long one… my first race this year was January 2nd, my last will be December 30th, and in the middle have been about 115 days of racing. Dang. Hopefully I can wrap up the season with another win?