After the Spring the Summer
I have officially moved past the one month until departure mark and have 29 days until I leave for my first summer destination. Now that plans are set and tickets have been bought I feel I can officially say something about what I'll be filling my summer days with. So destination number one: Le Chemin du Pain (or translated to English - The Path of the Bread). Since before college began I've wanted to become a WWOOFer, which does not stand for some association having to do with dogs but rather is an acronym for Willing Workers On Organic Farms. Here's how it works.
1. Choose a country where you want to work on a farm/in a garden/do cool outdoors things with cool outdoors people.
2. See if that country has a WWOOFing organization and sign up to be a member online.
3. As a member you can see what farms have posted information about themselves and are accepting WWOOFers
4. Choose whichever crazy farm you like - whether you want to live with vegan hippies in Hawaii or work the land in England or, as I decided to do, work with a couple in the dead center of France for three weeks
5. Email the WWOOF hosts and wait and pray for a response - do these people even check their email?? Most of them seem to be a little outside of the typical Wifi zone...
6. Wait and wait and wait some more...and then one day you'll get that email and suddenly you'll be buying a train ticket to the middle of France where you'll be on your own for the first time in your life, knowing actually no one...
7. Learn how to make friends in new places, embrace adventure, and work on your French listening skills
That may not be every WWOOFer's experience, but it was mine. I emailed Le Chemin du Pain because their description talked about how they own an organic boulangerie, work at a dozen farmers markets, have an organic garden, practice vegetarianism, and keep bees (which means I could potentially be making honey). So May 9th I leave for Moulin sur Alliers where my host parents (do I call them host parents??) will be picking me up after they finish at the morning farmers' market.
I'll admit it - I'm nervous to just get on a train and be on my own in the middle of nowhere...in a town that the French would call the...trou du cul du monde (you can look up the translation). That's literally what Felix told me it was. But I don't care. I'm going to do this and I'm going to get so far outside of my comfort zone I will probably have anxious dreams about it for at least three days before I leave. Except it will be worth it and it actually isn't possible to be disconnected from the world, even in the middle of France.
After seventeen days at Le Chemin du Pain I'm going to return to Paris for one night before I fly to Tel Aviv again to spend three weeks doing research for a professor in Jerusalem. I loved Israel so much that I knew I had to return, but I also realize that unlike last summer, I need to actually do something productive this summer. So I decided to listen to the words of basically every professor and advisor ever at USC and I looked for research. Somehow, USC has very few professors who do work concerning Israel but after a few hours of looking through the various departments I found Professor Dan Lainer-Vos, a tenured professor of Sociology who studies Israeli-Americans and Irish-Americans. He focuses on the sociological aspects behind Israel and Ireland's incredibly strong community building - if you've ever met someone from Ireland or Israel you know that they have fierce patriotism. For my research I'll be working in the Israel National Archives in the Foreign Affairs section, looking for information about the Israel Lobby in Washington D.C. during the 50s and 60s, and how it influenced American foreign policy in the Middle East. Whew that's a longggg sentence to explain. But basically, I found something to do (and possibly will be paid to do it!) for the three weeks before I meet my mom in Switzerland.
Yes, long summer I know. And maybe you are thinking, this sounds a little expensive...But what's great about WWOOFing is that you get free room and board in exchange for your work! And provided I get funding from USC for research - I've never heard of someone being turned down - Israel becomes free too (flight and living costs!). Which means my costs go waaaay down. I was always amazed by people at school who managed to get everything funded and even make money from the school, but it turns out it actually isn't as hard as I thought. It just takes concentrating on the computer for multiple hours to find someone who fits with what you need (for me this was a professor researching Israel).
So to briefly finish, I will go to Switzerland and spend 10 days in the Alps possibly biking but definitely hiking with my mom. When she leaves I'll stay in Switzerland where Mati is coming so that we can do Tour du Mont Blanc - a one hundred mile hike through Switzerland, Italy, and France around the alps (please let me be in shape by then - darn those baguettes). We'll be camping for nine nights, which means that again, looow costs. Sleeping outside turns out to be the most affordable thing you can do in Europe. Finally, we're taking a train to Venice for a few days, then to Rome for a few more (God bless the trains of Italy for being cheap and fast) and FINALLY I come home to Reno for my cousin Rachel's wedding. Which will be awesome. So there you have it, the official summer plans. I cannot believe they are actually happening nor can I believe that I will only be in Paris for 29 days (-5 days in Prague). The time has flown by. While the summer seems like it will never come, I know it will. And while it's here it will seem never ending, and then suddenly it will be gone. Yesterday I finished my final papers so in these last few weeks I plan to take advantage of what's left of this semester abroad.
(Photo cred. to National Geographic - of course, only they take such awesome photos of the Tour du Mont Blanc)
Verona - one of the stop we'll make between Venice and Rome for Mati's birthday
(Photo cred to dailymail.co.uk)