A few things that I’ve seen or done in the past few days:
1.) You know the chip wagons that are scattered around streets (more so in Ottawa, than in Coquitlam)? Well, I was walking downtown and instead of seeing a chip wagon, I saw something that I would hesitate to call a “blood wagon”. It was a van parked on the side of the street, and people were going inside to give blood. I don’t know if that’s a French thing, but I’ve certainly never seen anything like that before. If anything, the “blood wagons" in Canada bring the supplies and set up and operate from a room in a building instead of the a back seat of a vehicle.
2.) Do you find it odd to see a girl in shorts and a t-shirt walking into a residence? No? I didn’t think so. Then why on earth does every single person I walk by after or before playing a sport insist on commenting on the fact that I’m “sportive”. Also, I swear, in a residence of almost 1000 people, there MUST be another girl that plays soccer. I have had more people ask me if I’m “la fille qui joue au foot”. First of all, that means that people I don’t know are talking about me. And secondly, I can’t possibly be “the (ONLY) girl who plays soccer”. Oh well, I suppose it’s not such a bad rep to have. It is weird, though.
3.) It’s Sens madness all over again. When the Sens were in the playoffs, I knew that if they won a game, I wouldn’t be going to bed early that night. I lived on a main street, and I would hear honking and yelling until 2 or 3 in the morning. It’s the same thing here with soccer. (And a little bit of rugby at the moment.) If France is playing a soccer match, and you’re not watching, well, if they score or if they win, you’ll hear it for another two hours after the game.
4.) I went to Marseille again yesterday. Talk about rugby madness.
Marseille is one of the locations for the world cup games. I hadn’t factored that into my plan for the day. The streets were FILLED with British and Australian fans. People were dressed in their colours, carrying flags, with painted faces, sporting their jerseys or their homemade rugby ball hats. I swear I even saw an Aussie in a kangaroo suit. (He’s on the right hand side of the first few seconds of the video. You can see his tail.)
5.) The purpose of this trip to Marseille, was to a.) Get a rug for the ugly floor of my room, and b.) Bring my bike along to explore the city a bit and ride along the coastline to a park that Tonin recommended to me. I bought a beautiful blue and beige Turkish rug. The geometrical patterns sure beat the puke-green tiles in my room. I couldn’t stand to be bare-footed on my floor before. Now my feet feel much more comfortable (and instead of sweeping, I can just shake the carpet out the enormous window [which, by the way, is open 85% of the time because the weather is gorgeous and because, more importantly, there are NO bugs—EVER!])! As for biking to the Park, well, that never happened. I left my map open on my desk back in residence. Bugger. I got completely lost, and wanted to see if I could figure my way out without asking anyone. Eventually, I got hungry, bought a baguette, and asked the lady at the Boulangerie for directions. Wow, was I ever far from where I wanted to be! I even somehow ended up at the entrance to a tunnel that would take me back to the downtown area, but a.) You had to pay to use the tunnel, and b.) Bikes were most certainly not allowed in it. After explaining my situations to a very kind man, another nice man carried my bike up a flight of stairs to prevent me from having to retrace my steps: against traffic and on a highway. He pointed me in the right direction to get myself where I wanted to go, and I was off again, attempting to not kill people while riding on the sidewalk and to not get killed while riding on the road. It was quite the ride.
6.) Finally when I was where I wanted to be, I reached the chaos. It was dark, about 8pm, and I would compare it to the daytime part of a Canada Day in Ottawa. There was stage set up right on the water, and a concert going on with drunken people wandering around, and random sports chants and cheers could be heard overlapping in every direction. While attempting to take a picture of a charming street with an outdoor bar, a bunch of dudes from London all wearing their team England jerseys insisted on being in the picture too. They decided I needed to be in the picture as well, and I ended up being in the middle of a group of about 15 people posing in the middle of the street. It was a guy who took the picture. Would you like to know how it turned out? Voilà.
Standing amongst fifteen other people, this was the result. I have not cropped this picture in any way, shape, or form. I couldn’t believe it. They all had a good laugh, and then a couple of them insisted on taking another when the rowdy ones had left. I present to you, as they put it, “a picture that will make your mother proud”. Right. Awkward.
I eventually ended up getting the picture of the charming street with all the flags of the teams who were still in the World Cup.
As for getting to that park, I’ll have to go back again another day.
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