It was an itsy, bitsy, teeny, weeny cultural difference

Yesterday I went to the swimming pool with four of the other language assistants - all of whom are girls. Strangely enough, I'm the only male language assistant in Gap. Two of them had talked about the pool a few days ago, and Tuesday night we decided to go as a group to check it out. It's a small public pool, but it's very clean. In fact it may be the nicest public pool I've ever been in.

So I showed up in my athletic shorts that double as swimming trunks, and a woman who works at the pool came over to me and said, "Le short n'est pas acceptable. Il est interdit ici. Tu dois porter un maillot de bain. Tu comprends?" (Shorts are not accepted. They are prohibited here. You must wear a bathing suit. Do you understand?).

I looked around and, of course, a 'maillot de bain' means a pair of speedos, which all of the other men were wearing shamelessly. I told her that I didn't have a 'maillot de bain' and that I always use my shorts for a bathing suit. She stuck to the policy but graciously informed me that she would look to see she could find an extra suit that I could borrow.

She came back a few minutes later with a tiny pair of bright blue speedos and said to bring them back to her when I was finished. I took one look at them and knew that this was going to be a very funny day. I put them on - stuffing as much of myself as could into this ridiculously small piece of fabric. When I thought I had done a sufficient job, I took a look in a mirror and was horrified. I felt indecent...they hardly covered my butt.

What could I do, though? The girls were already swimming and I had already paid. So, I walked out proudly in my little speedos and started swimming too. The girls didn't say anything when they saw me, and then I realized that they couldn't appreciate my embarrassment because, in their countries, what I was wearing was perfectly ok...they're all from the EU.

I was less embarrassed because of that, but if you could have only seen me in these speedos - it was priceless. Immediately afterwards, I went to the sporting goods store and bought a boxer-brief style speedo that will at least leave more of me to the imagination.

Let it snow!

It snowed today! It's the first time in almost 3 years that I've seen it! Gap is beautiful...

A View from the Top

Last night, my friend Tom called to see if I wanted to faire une randonnée. 'Randonnée' is the French word for 'excursion,' but it is frequently used to mean mountain hiking. I was really looking forward to going since it would be my first time hiking in these mountains since I arrived (excluding the time that my landlady drove me up to a mountain path and then left me to find my way back down - see the post 'Running Man').

We left at 8:15am this morning, and we were hiking by 9. It was really beautiful on the way up. As we started getting closer to the peak the path was getting pretty narrow and there wasn't much separating me from 500-1000 feet drops. We were almost to the top, and Tom asked if we should go to the peak. Of course I wanted to go the peak, what kind of a question is that? You don't hike for three hours up a mountain and then not go to the peak. I realized, though, that there wasn't much of a path up to the peak and soon I was questioning my decision. It turned into more of mountain climbing instead of mountain hiking, but the top was BEAUTIFUL! One of the most exhilarating views that I've ever seen. The peak was 2592 meters (about 8500 feet).

I tried to sing Happy Birthday to Erin on a video that I made at the top, but all you can hear is the wind. Sorry, Erin. Check out the photos!