November 30, 1998

What you will discover in this letter: Sleeping and Paris do not mix, what the cathedral builders forgot, how the French give new meaning to ‘going in circles’,

My new digital camera was waiting for me when I checked into the hotel in Paris. (It’s a long story; don’t ask why it was delivered to the hotel.) Once I got settled into my room I took off with a friend of mine. We had the rest of the afternoon and evening to spend wondering along the streets of Paris. We didn’t have any particular goal in mind. It was during this little stroll that I sent an email to everyone from the cyber-café. While meandering our way back toward the hotel we ran across a small cathedral - relative to the others we would in the coming days. Inside the cathedral they were preparing for a Mozart concerto. Emily - my friend - and I managed to get half price tickets and seats right next to the choir to hear Mozart’s 21st concerto and Mass K.317. So there I was, first night in Paris unexpectedly sitting in a cathedral about to hear a splendid concerto. Serendipity truly is the best lead dog.

After the concert I walked Emily back to the hotel and then went to the lobby to sit with my camera for the next four hours learning how everything worked. After that I spent the next four hours walking around the Seine taking pictures. If you every visit Paris I highly recommend taking a late night stroll. The city is beautiful under any conditions but particularly at night.

November 24, 1998

This will be my last email before I leave for Paris. My itinerary is basically this:

Thursday: leave at 12:15 am. Arrive in Paris at 2:15 pm. The rest of the afternoon and evening at our disposal.

Friday: Walk to Notre Dame from the hotel. Then on to Sainte Chapelle by foot and from there to St-Denis (pronounced: Sah-Dahnny) by coach. Return to hotel at 5 pm with the rest of the evening free.

Saturday: Chartres cathedral.

Sunday: Castle of Coucy and then on to Laon cathedral. Arrive back at hotel at 4 pm with the evening free.

Monday: Depart Paris for Amiens cathedral. After the tour we are off to Calais for the ferry ride. Arrive in Swansea around 11 pm.

I will get an email off to everyone sometime Tuesday with a sketch of the trip and my impressions. Sometime later in the week I will have pictures and more details up on the website.

Au revior, idano

November 20, 1998

I was on the bus headed for the City Centre when out of the corner of my eye I beheld something miraculous. Here amidst the shops of Swansea was a sign that said POCO’S!

(For those of you who are not in the know Poco’s is a Mexican food restaurant in Tucson Arizona. It is rumored that they are going to change their name to “Poco’s Navel Yard” because the burritos they serve are so big that they could probably show up on sonar.)

I had not yet had breakfast and it was almost noon. Instantly my brain interpreted the sign and sent a message to the stomach.

Brain: “Alert! Alert! Poco’s detected on starboard bow; flood all digestive enzymes; this is not a drill, repeat this is not a drill.”

Unfortunately my brain acted out of instinct and did not take the time to read the rest of the sign. Immediately following Poco’s were two more words.

Brain: Wait. We don’t need no stinking words after Poco’s. That’s it just one word.

Reality marched on despite the protest of desire. The next word began with a “C”, followed by an “o”.

Brain: “Please be ‘Poco’s Co.’ They have incorporated and gone worldwide.

No such luck.

Next came double “f’s” and double “e’s”.

Brain: “Doh! ‘Poco’s Coffee Shop?’ Are you kidding me? What does Poco’s have to do with Coffee? If this is God’s idea of a practical joke then I’m going to become a saint so that I can assure myself of getting to heaven so that I can throw a pie in his face.”

So here I am, hopes dashed upon the rocks, hungry, and disappointed.

Brain: “Okay Stomach, false alarm. Recall the digestive juices.”

No response

Brain: “Stomach. Report.”

No response

Involuntary response centre: “I can’a close the gaits, Cap’in. If we doe ge some food in here soon Cap’in, she’s gonna have a meltdown.”

Brain: “You’re going to have to do something. Even at warp-9 it is going to take a few minutes to get food. And were going to have to visit a Lloyd’s ATM cashBase to get the resources to pay for the food.”

Involuntary response centre: “I’ll do what I can Cap’in but I can’a work miricles. You better not stop to talk to any of the cute natives along the way.”

Brain: “No promises. Now get to work.”

So off to the bank. Money in pocket. Searching for sustenance.

Memory: “Captain. I have searched the databanks for suitable sustenance suppliers. The most logical selection based on our current need for “Now Food” is a Burger King located 1.2 . . .

Brain: “Just feed the coordinates into the navigation system and set coarse at maximum warp.”

To make a long story just a little bit longer: I’m sitting in a bar called “McCluski’s”, watching the Miami Dolphins and the Saint Louis Rams on a big screen TV, with a bacon-double-cheese-burger ensconced in a very happy stomach.

Later: After the football game I went next door to see “Saving Private Ryan”, again. (It just came out over here.) Football, a good American war movie (We win again), hamburgers, what a great all-American kind’a day I think to myself as I leave the theater. Then I walk right past a Medieval castle, across the street from the theater, and do a mind warp back to Wales.

November 20, 1998

Let me tell you about the people that live here in my house. First, let me tell you about the house. (Note: the flash on my camera is broken so pictures will NOT be forthcoming until I get a new camera.) I live in house 69. There are eight rooms, four upstairs and four down (the ladies have the upstairs), a bath upstairs and a shower down, and a kitchen and a dinning area, both downstairs. In room 1 is me. My room, like all the others, is about 8×12″. Plenty big for one person. Room 2 is Nick, a good bloke from Britain who is studying marine-bio and spends most of his free time surfing. Room 3 is Sean who is originally from Tanzania but looks more like a British aristocrat; he is studying philosophy and psychology. Room 4 is Tasch; he is from Germany and is studying literature. Upstairs in room 5 is Rashme; she is an East Indian from Canada; she already has a degree in polysci. and is now getting a degree in law; she studies, all the time. Next

is Stephanie, she is British and is studying biology. There is Peggy, from France, also studying biology and is another studyholic. Finally we have Franca, from Italy. (Pronunciation note: to pronounce ‘Franka’ correctly you say ‘fr + cat purring sound + anka’.) she is studying literature and her English is not so goodly, but it is improving.

Aside from the eight official residents there are two other people who are here all the time - Paola and Jenny. Paula is Franca’s friend from Italy and Jenny lives two houses down and is pretty much everyone’s friend.

As you can gather there is quite the international scene going on here. It isn’t rare to be in the dinning room and have conversations going on in two different languages. On one occasion there were four conversations going on and all in different languages. English is the only language that everyone knows but the Italian girls speak French better than they do English and of course Peggy is a native speaker and then Reshme speaks French fluently and some Italian. When we are all in the room together I have to constantly remind them not to lapse into French or Italian. I hate it that I don’t speak any other languages. Jenny, who is from Sweden but looks and speaks like an American-new-age-hippie-chick, speaks six languages, fluently.

I’m hopeful that after getting Latin down pretty well I’ll be able to learn a little French and Italian from the girls.

Many of you on this mailing list are ‘computer literate.’ Some of you know more than others and some of you make a living being ‘in the know’ with computers. Anyone who knows anything about computers has probably run across someone who knows less than they have and needed help. All the sudden you’re an expert, comparatively. For those of you who have lent computer assistance before might find this rather humorous. My polyglot friend Jenny knows next to nothing about computers, but she does have a 386 laptop running Windows 3.1. It just so happens that she got a job translating a document from English to Swedish and they want the translation done on a computer. Good thing she has the laptop to work on; bad thing that she knows nothing about it. So she comes to me to help her get things sorted out. Now it has been many years since I have worked on a Win3.1 system so I’m a bit rusty, but all she needs to do is make a document. As bad as Win3.1 is MS-Works is worse. So I have to help her use an outdated operating system and the worst word processor conceivable. But it couldn’t be that hard, right. Oh, did I mention that the language is set to German on the operating system? Well not everything is in German some of it is in Swedish. So, here I am trying to help someone who knows next to nothing about computers and they have to translate everything for me. The upshot of this is that I now know that “Ja” in German means “yes.”

So I was wondering, can computer literacy count as a language? I think it should. Perhaps I’m not the mono-linguist I thought I was. Now if I could only get NAU to wave my language requirement.

This past Friday I went on a tour, run by the history dept., to three Medieval castles. Of course I took many pictures. I will put them up as soon as I can but I don’t think it will happen this week. Funny thing about school is that sometimes, rarely, I have work to do. Like, ah, college - bubble gum popping sound - would be, like, so much more fun if it weren’t for the classes. Or as Mark Twain said, “Don’t let college get in the way of your education.”

Chow, idano

November 19, 1998

I’ve been meaning to email you to let you know how the basketball is going over here. In short I’m not on the team, but that may change. The way they do things here is you try out for the team on the first day of the meetings. Now it just so happens that I had one of the worst days of basketball I’ve ever had. I could not dribble the ball to save my life. I did manage to make it to the final cut but that was it. I later found out that the people that returned from last year are on the team automatically and they get just about all the playing time.

Since I’m a member of the basketball club here - they have clubs for everything - I get to play every Sunday. For the first two weeks I was all right. I’ve played enough to get a modicum of dribbling skills back and I’m definitely the best guard out there. This past week, well lets just say “basketball was very very good for me.”

You all know how I have a knack for “shit-shots” or so you call them. Well you should have seen me the other day. The first game was pathetic. My hands were cold and I turned the ball over at least five times. (We play games to 7 straight and behind the arch is 2.) I had my Chinese exercise balls with me so between games I would twirl them in hopes that they would warm my hands up. Boy did they ever.

The next game was much better. I had a few layups and made a few steals. It all started to happen in the next game. I had a perfect 3/4 floor pass to our big guy. The pass was just over the fingertips of the defender. I got a nice round of applause from the guys waiting for the next game. In the same game I had a offensive rebound, pump-faked, dribbled under the basket and circled back into the paint, dribbled behind my back three straight times, circled back the way I had came, pump faked again and made a fall away. (Another applause) We won that game, but just barely.

It all started in the next game. I had a coast to coast layup, made a steal and had a layup in which I got clobbered in the process. The guy couldn’t believe I made the shot. Add a couple of jumpers and we won the game going away.

Mark, remember that pass you made to me at Bear Down where you thought you over threw me? I have a better one now. Almost the same exact situation except this time I had a defender to contend with. I caught the ball in the air brought it up above my head and then cupped it under as the defender went by and made a reverse. In the same game I made my only real shit-shot. On a fast break the pass came right over my shoulder but I let it go so that I could take it in off the bounce. It went a little further than I thought and all I could manage to do was grab it and throw it up as I ran full speed past the basket, and then into the wall. I turned around hoping that someone on my team would get the rebound only to see it fall through the hoop. (Standing applause this time.) Throw in a few jumpers and assists and another win.

The next game I’m feeling pretty cocky. (Yes me.) First time down the court, three point range, swish. Next time down the court, same place, same result. Next time down the court my teammate makes a three pointer from about five feet behind the strip. Next time down the court (we lead 6-0) I shoot from about 10 feet behind the strip - swish. We were on the court for maybe 2 minutes.

The next game was just a continuation of the last few - layups, steals, assists, jumpers. For the day I can remember missing just two shots. Aside from the retched opening game I only remember one other turnover. So when we show up it is nice to know that I am the go-to-guy on the team no matter who is on the team with me. I had better enjoy it while I can. I have no doubt that my reintroduction to American b’ball will be harsh.

Adieu, idano

Btw, I can’t get used to the three-step rule here. I still take just two.

November 9, 1998

Yesterday at basketball there were only twelve people who showed up. That means a lot more playing time for me. The bad news is that while we were waiting for enough people to show up to play full court we played some three-on-three. I went up for a jumper and came down on the side of someone’s foot spraining my left - good - ankle. I walked it off but all day long I couldn’t pop-stop for jumpers or sprint. We played for about an hour and a half and then someone had the bright idea - me - that we should match up the Americans against the Europeans. (Five Americans and six Euro’s at this point) The bad news is that the Europeans had the 3 of the tallest players while us Americans were all guard types. We were playing to 15 win by two and counting 3s as 2. We had to play a zone because we were oversized and I couldn’t move to my right fast enough to guard anyone one-on-one.

It started off fairly even but the Euros began to pull away and had a 10 - 6 lead. That is when I twisted my ankle again. You can’t imagine how pissed off I was. I pounded the floor, cursing. I jumped up and hobbled down the court. There was no way I would quit a game like this. We got the ball and I took a two pointer and missed. They came down and scored - 11-6. Next time down the court I took another 2-pointer and made it, followed by another - 11-10. They scored a few points and we scored a few points - 13-12. I stole a pass and managed to limp down the court for a lay-up - all tied up. They score, I hit a jumper - 14-14. When we got the ball back I got a pass about 5 feet outside of the three point arch at the top of the key. I pump-faked a shot and my guy went for it. I dribbled past him to the right. Another defender came up. I crossed over back to the left, knifed in-between the two defenders leaned in, jumping off my left foot - barely - and took a leaning three-pointer. Bank-swish. It wasn’t pretty because I had no intention of banking it but we won. America brings home the cup.

Ciao, idano