Time keeps on tickin'

We're still spinning around in circles here in Evansville, getting our lives back in order while living out of suitcases. After nearly a year of marriage, I have wedding pictures ready to print & have made several steps toward being Mrs. Betz full-time instead of still having lots of Ms. Veit pieces clinging on.

With this new phase of life comes a new blog--one that allows a lot more freedom without paying for it, which is great since I don't have many followers & can't handle a big blogging commitment. From now on, all posting will happen over at meganbetz.wordpress.com.

Please, please continue your subscriptions--and if you haven't been a subscriber (but are one of the faithful readers who click through facebook or twitter), consider subscribing now. It's easy: you just click subscribe in the top right corner of the page, just below the search bar. That way, you'll know via e-mail when a new post is up, & I'll know that I have people interested in my posts.

The blog switch is part of the name switch, moving to a Megan Betz account from a Megan Veit account. I've spent the last two days doing a lot of this switching. Yesterday, I sifted through hundreds of wedding photos, renaming files & making difficult choices. Today, I changed all of my e-mail contacts & member profiles over to my Betz e-mail. I feel so married!

There are some exciting steps to come, & I promise I'll start posting again when I'm doing something more than frantically taking things to Goodwill, repacking & visiting family. More soon, over at the new francofile.

another update

Checking in: It's another early morning getting things re-packed to make our move to the new apartment next month a little easier. For now, here's a blog post about our latest life step & a beginning of the pictures I took in NYC.

We made it!

Notice that the "Living in Nancy" banner is no longer heading our posts...  We've made it back. The clocks have officially been set to Midwest time.

After a night sleeping in the Dublin airport, three days in NYC with my best friend & an indirect flight to southern Indiana, we have finally returned to Joe's family. We were greeted at the airport with balloons, flowers & boxes of surprises. It was great to see how much we were missed & how much people do to show they love us. 

The next few days are a scramble to get vehicles in order, cell phones ordered & lives settled back into place as much as possible. This is hard for me. I have another month before my life becomes full-time, & I'm not good at vacation. I'm already re-arranging the schedule & creating to-do lists for each day, each visit, each sector of our life. Luckily, I share my life with a man much more relaxed. We're working on a balance.

Forgive me for skipping everything about our NYC trip for a bit. I'll be posting about it on my new blog, meant for pushing us through our second year of marriage (& beyond). For the time being, I'll just be posting the random update post while we stay with Joe's sister & her fiancé in an amazing guest bedroom with–You guessed it!–a double bed!

Tonight, the girls are sitting on the floor attached to laptops, watching the pets (a bunny five times larger than mine & an energetic black cat in love with his laser pointer) while the boys sit on the couch, killing zombies via Xbox. Tomorrow, the truck goes in for surgery & we start re-packing our lives for the official move into our first apartment.

I usually say that I don't suffer from time changes, but it is 9 p.m, & my eyes are heavy. We've got a lot to think about, a lot of people to visit, a lot of hot weather & a lot of sleep to catch up on. The Betz Family Takes Evansville is just beginning! Next stop: Wapak.

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Momma, I'm comin' home!

This won't be a long post, because I don't want to start crying again. Joe & I have mixed emotions–more than mixed. Probably the highest setting on a mixer, in fact. We hate leaving la Belle France, but we're anxious to get back to friends & family... and life. There is so much life in store for us, within the next two months alone.

Can't wait to continue being your francophile once we're back stateside. First stop, NYC! After several trains and changes, we'll arrive in New York Friday afternoon.

More soon & tons of love,
Megan

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the last holiday

Hope you had a happy Independence Day, America!  

I know what you're thinking. Yes, that bi-color typing was as annoying for me to do as it is for you to read. And yes, Joe is wearing a fake Freddie Mercury-esque mustache.

I spent the morning of the fourth getting rather worried that I would look like a giant reptile. My severe sunburn, after calming down, switched into major blister-and-peeling mode. Growing up, I was obsessed with picking at any wounds, flaking loose paint from anything I could reach & dipping my finger in melted wax just to chip it off. Peeling sunburns are rather distracting for me.

I also have lotion that smells like the "Mediterranean South"–loads of lavender & fig. It's almost too much for me to handle when I'm using it once a day. Now that I'm slathering it on five or six times, I feel like the smell will never leave me. My new skin will just grow right over the perfumes, & I'll come home smelling like the south of France. Maybe that's a good thing?

When it finally came time to celebrate, we totaled about eight Frenchmen, three British girls & three Americans. The numbers don't even accurately reflect the revolution. I'm happy to report the the Red Coats & Colonists got along rather well for the evening. That may have something to do with the fact that we spent most of it, when not stuffing our face with our friend's fabulous apple & cherry pies, soaking up gin or whiskey. (Again, representing both countries... though I think the whiskey ended up being Scottish. Hey, we were trying.)

For more pictures from the night, click here. Not pictured is the walk from our friend's to the party location–about ten minutes of pie-, pallet- & pasta salad-carrying. We looked like a mess, but we were too excited for ourselves to care. Also not pictured:

There were no national anthems, no fireworks, no true families, but we had a great evening. The night was our last big outing, our sort of farewell to our night life here. It was another friend's last night in town–when I woke up to type this, she was already three hours into her travels–so our original group of friends has dwindled quickly. We're the hangers-on, the last bits of those that have to leave.

The soirée had us thinking of home for obvious reasons, & for once I forgot about all the tasks in between. It will be so nice to watch Joe & Dad starting the fire, getting our dinner going while my youngest cousins run around the backyard & the Ladies sit on the deck. It will be nice to sit around a table with Joe's sisters & the families that they're building, each of us sharing our year's adventures.

Hope you had a happy, safe holiday. I'm back to packing!

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I can't handle it.

Happy Independence Day, America!

It's been another long series of days since I posted, & now it's July. It's the 4th of July. My family will wake up, prepare desserts to donate to the cake wheel at our church's annual carnival, help the church by working a few hours at the hamburger stand (while eating free hamburgers & onion rings, which is why I enjoy helping). They'll watch fireworks from our front lawn, in our neighborhood where the trees are now growing too tall to see the lower bursts of color.

I miss that. I'm realizing that I have no idea what to do when I see them, when we drive up to their house in Joe's small truck in the afternoon & walk up the steps of the deck that my dad built. How can I hug all three at the same time? I think my heart will burst before I reach them.

I'll be home, or at least stateside, in roughly four days. I'm not handling this well. We have continued the gradual saying goodby to friends, breaking down more with each goodbye–starting with small tears in my friend's hometown, after spending a day with her in Luxembourg, then larger tears when saying goodbye to another friend who has been unbelievably kind & welcoming to me this year. She even got us one of the lovely burgamote tins that Nancy is known for (as seen in Amelie!) & a bracelet like the one I've seen her wear.

Diane, who has absolutely spoiled me with friendship

It's incredible how many people have come to mean so much to me here, & how quickly we have all scattered across the world–from Japan & back to the UK, to every corner of France, to the States, to Luxembourg... It's even more incredible to me that beyond missing the people, I can cry for missing a place so much. France feels like home to me, a spiritually & politically safe haven for me. The hardest part about leaving is not knowing when we'll come back–when I'll feel this way again; when we'll see these blue roofs & colorful shutters; when we'll speak this language; when we'll be able to buy wine for less than the price of soda.

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon packing. I took our decorations from the walls & books from the shelves. I folded sweaters & packed things into space-saving bags. I decided what clothes I'll wear in NYC. I sat in the middle of the floor crying, waiting for Joe to get back from a coffee rendez-vous with a fellow assistant, feeling like I couldn't do it. I can't drag my suitcase around this country & watch as the plane lifts away from Paris. I can't let go of this tiny apartment where our marriage began.

Today, we'll spend the day acting American. We'll get together with friends (who are mostly British at this point) & paint our faces & drink cheap beer while cooking American food. We'll wear red & burn sparklers on balconies. We'll use the night to finish saying goodbye before we leave quietly on a forecasted hot, sunny Thursday afternoon.

I had my last big adventure on Friday, waking early & taking a train to Longwy before Joe woke for his last day of work. A former student had invited me for the day, first visiting her hometown then going on a drive to Luxembourg. The tiny, rich country is only minutes from her house; the tiny country's capital city is only half an hour. It was our first time hanging out together, after months of trying to organize something, & it was lovely.

Claire, with whom I didn't get to spend nearly enough time

I was amazed by the amount of history Longwy, a town of roughly 5,000 people, had–visits from the Sun King, a town square completely destroyed by World War bombings, a tradition of making beautiful ceramics. Equally amazing was my friend's ability to explain the town's history to me in a way, I realized, I could not do with my hometown.  I need to learn more Midwest/American history!

For pictures from the day, click here. Longwy is in France, & then the other half of the pictures are Luxembourg City, a place that is unbelievably clean with ancient & modern buildings blurring into each other. Lots of people from all over Europe (particularly those near the Luxembourg border, so France, Belgium & Germany) work in Luxembourg. The result is this mix of languages, fashion & food styles, cultures & social ideas that you can see when you turn each corner. What a crazy place! Think of having that much diversity in a state smaller than Ohio!

In other news, yesterday my sunburn was looking normal. My arms are bronze; my chest is bronze; my back is, well... I felt the top of my back, & something stuck to my hand. I felt it again, & the same thing happened. I went into the bathroom, lifted my shirt & saw the skin all peeling off of my back. I'm concerned about bits of it–looking rather tender & rosy. I asked Joe what he thought.

"Meg, I think you burnt off your epidermis," he said. He couldn't hide his look of disgust from the three vanity mirrors that were surrounding us. At least it's over now & I'll come back to the States looking like I just spent a lot of time in the European sun, getting all comfortably glowing & tan. I'll have you fooled, just wait.

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coup de soleil

I slept on the floor, under the open window last night. My neck's a little stiff, but the rest of my body is thanking me. I'm sitting on the floor in my underwear. Our door is propped open; our window is open despite the rain. I'm trying not to let anything touch me. Not even the wind. (Not directly.)

There are a lot of adventures packed into a very small window of time before we leave France–making sure we adequately say goodbye to everyone we're not sure we'll ever see again, checking out the last few bits of undiscovered Nancy territory. I'm a bit overwhelmed, but let's be honest: I'm enjoying the affection.

I was invited to a friend's house yesterday for a great, summery lunch (with fresh cheese made by her friend, fresh berries picked on Sunday...) I wore flip flops for the first time this year, and they rubbed the skin off of my feet, including a spot on the bottom near the thong-y spoke thing, before I arrived.

After a good lunch with my friend & her incredibly kind, welcoming mother, we headed to the outdoor pool–a pool that is bigger than any I've ever visited. I wish I'd taken my camera. If nothing else, you'd be able to see me in a swim cap, which are a required part of the attire.

Apparently, it is also required that men wear tinier swimsuits than you'd ever see in the States. I laughed at how out of place Joe would seem in his almost knee-length swimming trunks. One man, roughly age 55, had taken this too far: a thong Speedo. There were many screams and gasps and stares of shock for boys & girls alike.

We spent most of our time "bronzing" ("bronzer" is the French verb for to "lay out" or tan). My friend finds pale skin sad & rather unappealing. I find my pale skin my natural state and a sign that I will, if I don't tan it to leather, have a lower chance of skin cancer. I slathered on the sun screen while they were (while admittedly looking lovely & bronze) soaking up the oil.

The sunscreen didn't seem to help. By the time I got home, I was completely burnt, & it looks ridiculous. I sat Indian-style (excuse me, "criss-cross applesauce" style) most of the afternoon, so the burn follows all the lines of my sitting and swimsuit. I'm not quite lobster level, but it's painful. It feels like the bones and muscles were burnt, screaming from strain when I bend or twist or walk.

I gave myself a cold shower when I got home–something that never quite feels good to me, but that I knew would help me a bit. I smeared moisturizing lotion on, & I got ready for the opera.

To cover the burn, I wore my pencil skirt & a nice, flowing shirt that wouldn't have to touch my poor chest. Walking through the 90 degree weather to the opera, we calmed ourselves by the thought of air conditioning and cooling down before the performance began.

False. It's France. We were roasting, and we were tucked in tiny seats with no knee room (the stadium seating put the women in front of us two inches from my feet)–and tucked between a family that frequented the opera to the left and a group of elementary school girls to the right. The repeatedly explained to each other that they couldn't see anything; they had no idea what was happening; they were hot; they couldn't see.

The opera is beautiful; the orchestra played beautifully; the costumes were beautiful. But Joe & I are not opera fans. Maybe it was the heat or the claustrophobia or the fatigue we felt in the dark space. Maybe it was the frustration of trying to read the French translation of the Italian opera while also trying to catch what was happening stage left, the spot with the most action & the most people blocking our view.

We appreciate the experience, but between my sunburn ("coup de soleil" in French–a hit or cut, as if the sun smacked you and left a red mark) & my low heat tolerance I wasn't willing to go back into that room. Joe wasn't putting up any arguments. He got an ice cream; I got a large water and we walked through the park on our way home in the cooling night air.

Joe was kind enough to get groceries today while I "clean the apartment" (since that's clearly what I'm doing. I refuse to put clothes on until I have to work today. I refuse to turn the stove on. I refuse to close the window. I refuse to think about the fact that this day marks our last week in Nancy.

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