Not too shabby

Just got in from seeing “La Chance de ma vie,” a comedy about Julien, a marriage counselor who is jinxed when it comes to women. Even though at times they talked really fast and it was difficult to understand some things, it was really funny and had a great soundtrack. It was a nice way to end a fairly busy week.

I had off on Monday so I slept most of the day. On Tuesday I had my afternoon classes before I went to my neighbors for dinner. We had the French version of chili – struggling, but Corinne gets an A for effort – and la galette des Rois or “King cake” celebrating the Epiphany. It’s a combination of puff pastry and frangipane, baked to a crispy buttery perfection. Inside the King cake is “la fève” or a little porcelain figurine, and whoever is lucky enough to get the fève in their slice gets the crown and is King or Queen for the day. Emmanuel got the fève (must be the name), but everyone got a crown because Paul and Émeline had saved theirs from years past.

On Wednesday, I had the day off so Qunxing and I went to Dieppe. I never made it last Sunday, but I saw the weather was supposed to be nice so I took advantage of the extra free time. I couldn’t have asked for a nicer day, and that’s reflected in the fact that pretty much every one of the pictures I took that day looks like it could be a postcard.

Thursday afternoon at the collège I attempted to teach the 6ème how to tell time. Their teacher had yet to do it because she didn’t have a clock, and now I understand why she wasn’t exactly eager to get to it. They had a hard enough time telling time in French, let alone trying to understand it in English. I thought it would be pretty clear for them, especially since the American way of telling time is less complicated, but after a half hour they still weren’t getting it. In my last class of the day I had a 4ème from one of my Tuesday classes come and ask if he could sit in with the 6ème because he wanted to learn more. Normally if a kid asked that you’d think he’s a nerd, but he really isn’t very good at English, and it’s not hard to understand why considering his classmates make it impossible to learn.

That night I had fondue bourguignonne at Sylviane and Jean-François’s house. Fondue bourguignonne is different from “regular” fondue in that you dip beef in hot oil rather than bread in cheese, and you have a variety of dipping sauces. I think that Jean-François and Sylviane were both genuinely amazed (and maybe slightly disgusted) at how much I ate. I was hungry and it was that good. I lost track of how many times I heard “oh la la” and “I’ve been beaten” from Jean-François, and from both of them “I’ve never seen anyone eat so much.” Sylviane recounted the spectacle the next morning to the students, telling them that she and her husband are thinking of entering me in a contest.

Friday night I went to a 20^th birthday party for one of my students. It was smaller than the last one so it was easier to talk to everyone and make the rounds of bisous. For one of her gifts, she got tickets to Barcelona – nice friends huh?

Say "la vie"

Even though the music video is terrible I really like the song. After a combination of OneRepublic, this article, and a Friday night at home, I’ve realized that I’ve regressed a little and let myself slip into some sort of “comfort zone;” something that I set out to avoid when I started this adventure. I went to a graduation ceremony and party at the lycée by myself tonight, and it really was weird being the only English speaking person in a gymnasium full of people. I did get the chance to talk to some of my students and teachers, but being there was still a little overwhelming. While at that point I was looking over the metaphorical edge, in terms of taking full advantage of my surroundings, point number 2 of the article has really made me reflect on my experiences so far. In the beginning, I started off strong and surprised myself at how I was breaking out of the shell that I’ve managed to build over the years. But now I realize I’ve done what every person in a new and unfamiliar situation does – I found a group and I’m sticking with it. Yet after the commencement ceremony tonight, I’ve realized that some things need to change. The weather is supposed to be nice this weekend, so Sunday I’m going back up to the coast to visit Dieppe – one of the cities on the “Bucket List” I made before I came back. Time to do work.

On Tuesday I had a couple new groups of kids for the first (and unfortunately last) time. I learned that I’ve got a nickname circulating: “BG” because “tu es un beau gosse.” Hey, I’ll take ‘em where I can get ‘em. The kids were all really enthusiastic, which after seeing how things can be sometimes with their real teacher, is a nice change of pace. Wednesday afternoon I had a class by myself because the teacher never showed up. After waiting for her in the hallway for about 5 minutes, I opened the classroom to let the students in and found that she had left her bag, laptop, projector, etc., on the desk, so I figured she was just running late. I sent a couple of students to go look for her, but they were unable to find her. Honestly, I was impressed at how long they paid attention and participated so late in the afternoon. After the first exercise though they did crash and burn, and with 10 minutes left in class I had to pull teeth and cut my losses. Thursday afternoon at the collège was fun as usual; I did a physical description crossword and several rounds of “Guess Who” with the 6èmes and watched different versions of “A Christmas Carol” with the 4èmes (tough, I know). Marianne, the 6èmes teacher asked if my timetable was going to change any time soon because she wants to put me with a different class. She was smiling while she said this but she commented that, “they come back to me and are like, ‘I hate you!’ They think I’m terrible.” I know that’s not the case because when I sat in on her classes even I enjoyed them, but I guess they prefer me because I'm something different and have given them candy.

While I didn’t end up booking my trip for the first part of winter break, I’m glad I held off this long because originally I had planned to go to Tunisia and Morocco - dodged a bullet there (literally) because now there are massive riots in Tunisia with people dying and things getting burnt.

But back to the ceremony earlier this evening. So the theme was “Gastronomy through the Ages.” They did a really nice job of decorating the gym with different booths from Neolithic and Egyptian times to the 1800s and even the future. Each booth featured a couple of different cocktails as well as a variety of fancy finger foods. Faculty, friends and family were all invited; one of my teachers said they were expecting around 500 people, which is a pretty big deal considering the event was in honor of at most 30 some students. Here are some photos of a couple of the booths:

Bon week-end à tous!

Who would've thought that Thursday would be the best day of the week

Well, it’s been a while, but nothing too out of the ordinary went on this past week. I don’t think I’d fully gotten over jet lag until Thursday since my series of half-hour afternoon naps that ended up lasting 4 hours kept messing things up.

Tuesday night I ate out with Sam, Alex and Liz at a restaurant in town that one of my teachers had recommended to me – La Tannerie. It was reasonably priced and the food was great, a starter, main dish and dessert was only around 15 €. It had a really nice interior too.

I had a couple of new classes this week at the lycée, the one group of students I have in another class, but the other two I’d never worked with any of the students before. Their teacher had warned me that their English wasn’t very good, and their French not much better, but I was able to improvise a couple of activities to get them talking since the only help she provided was that I should “talk about ‘selling’ vocabulary with them.”

I was really proud of my lessons at the collège this week, and the kids seemed to like them too. One of my teachers said, “My kids come back to me and they’re bilingual saying, ‘oh we’ve already done that with Matt.’” We worked on physical descriptions and after a PowerPoint with some pictures of people who look like their dogs (Google it and you’ll see what I mean) and superheroes, I had them draw Wanted posters of an imaginary criminal.

This weekend a group of us went out in Rouen for a round of “pub golf” to celebrate Alex’s 21st birthday. Usually you’re supposed to go to 18 different bars and get a drink at each (there are a bunch of rules apparently) but Rouen doesn’t have 18 bars so we settled for only 3 or 4 holes before heading to a club. People may have hated us as we disrupted traffic playing with a plastic golf set made for 4+ or because of our golf get-ups, but we had a good time.

Not too much planned for this week. My Monday tennis routine will start up again, but not sure yet of any side trips for the weekend. But speaking of trips, goal for the week: plan my trip for the first half of winter vacation.

From Nightmare to Nirvana

For me, this Christmas was the most special one I've had so far. While I've known that the holidays are not just about presents, Santa, and decorations for a long time, this year in particular I really recognized and appreciated how important family is not only during Christmas, but also throughout the rest of the year. If not for the love and support of my family I'd be without the emotional and financial means to make it home. I never would have had the drive to fight so hard to be here if I didn't know and appreciate exactly what it was that I would be coming home to. So for those of you that I haven't seen over the past couple of days, I'm going to give you the CliffNotes version of the adventure that was me coming back stateside.

I could hardly sleep on the 20th, knowing that the airports in London and Paris had canceled all their flights that day, yet I still had hope that my flights would leave the next day and that I'd be able to make it home. I had a taxi booked for 7.30 AM because I didn't know if the buses would be running because of the snow and black ice, but at 6.00, a half-hour before I wanted to get up, I picked up my phone and saw a text message from my cousin telling me that both of our flights had been canceled. Immediately, I jumped out of bed, flipped on the lights and started up my computer. I got on the phone with Katie and we scrambled to find a flight home. After several calls back and forth to one another, as well as 3 or 4 to my parents (who I woke up in the middle of the night), I was able to secure a ticket home. However, the only catch was that it left from Geneva, Switzerland and went to Rome before ultimately ending up at JFK. At that point, now that I had a ticket that was the least of my worries because I still wasn't sure if I could make it to the train station. Still in my pajamas, I ran down the steps, went outside and slid down the street to the bus stop to see if the buses were running. Luckily they were so on my way back I called and canceled the taxi and once I was back at the school I started looking for a room with a printer so that I could print my confirmation emails. Thankfully I have the master keys for the school so after visiting a couple of classrooms, I sprinted through the darkened hallways and down the steps to the teacher's lounge where I was able to open and print what I needed to.

I tried to order my train tickets to Geneva online, but my French debit card was denied and I knew I didn't have enough money in my American account, so I knocked on the door of my Chinese neighbor to see if she could come to the train station with me so that I could use her card to buy the tickets. Together we slid down the street trying not to face-plant on the pavement or get hit by a car while carrying my massive suitcase. We made it to the train station in plenty of time and my French card was accepted, and I was glad to be able to sit down for a while on the hour-long ride to Paris. Once in Paris, I got on the metro to Gare de Lyon and waited for my track assignment to Geneva.

I only dozed off for a couple of minutes during the 4 hour ride down thanks to the enormous old man next to me who smelled like sour milk, pig manure and litter box. I was starving, but couldn't stand to eat while sitting next to that. I breezed through customs in Geneva before I took yet another train to the airport. At the airport I decided to see if I could get on an earlier flight since mine wasn't until 11.30 AM the next day. I handed over my confirmation email, and after a couple of minutes of eyebrow raises and "je comprends pas" I finally asked what was wrong, and the woman told me that I had no ticket and my reservation had been canceled. Stupefied, I asked the woman how that was possible; I had the confirmations from the airlines, they'd taken the money for the tickets and no-one had notified me that the reservation had been canceled.

Three hours later thanks to a phone call to an American representative at Delta, a nice lady who let me use her iPhone and gave me a phone card, my reservation had been found, I had a boarding pass and my suitcase had been checked. Spending the night at the airport was no treat since I only had 6 juice boxes, 2 apples, 2 pears and a stale baguette to eat and my glasses were in my suitcase, but I made my way through 2 books and 3 different playlists. I didn't sleep out of fear that my stuff would be stolen or I wouldn't wake up in time for my flight, so when Katie finally got to the airport the next morning, I looked terrible and felt worse; especially when I found out that she didn't have a spot on her flight home.

As it got closer to boarding time, Katie and I had to go our separate ways and I had no news of her until I saw my mom and brother some 13 hours later. When I got to Rome I had to do that awkward speed walk from one terminal to another 15 minutes away because I still needed a boarding pass for the second leg of the journey. I pushed my way to the front of the line (yes, I was one of those people that everyone hates) and after my boarding pass had been printed, I was told I could get it in 5 minutes. Even though I thought that was kind of odd, after what I'd been through already 5 minutes wasn't the end of the world. However as minute 4 came and went, I looked around me and noticed the flock of passengers on stand by. I inched my way back to the counter where a guy was printing and exchanging tickets of Italian passengers. He picked up my seat-less boarding pass and looked at it before another Italian came up to exchange tickets. Realizing that if I didn't speak up soon, I wouldn't be going home, I interrupted him as he started to work on the next passenger and asked if he could get back on mine since all I needed was a seat. The next 30 seconds were the longest 30 seconds of my life and as he handed me my boarding pass it took a huge effort to not cry out or jump or something. I was going home.

I slept on the plane and inhaled the food, and as we circled JFK I enjoyed the high of being back in America. Even though I still had 3 train rides ahead of me until I got home, at that point I was just happy that everything was in English again.

After that day, I've got a new appreciation for what it means to be an American. I know the rest of the world thinks we're loud and obnoxious, fat and arrogant, but there's honestly no place that I'd rather come from. At the beginning of this experience I thought it'd be so awesome to be French (or European in general), but now that temporarily - for all legal intents and purposes - I am a French citizen, it's not what I thought it would be. Sure the French have some things working in their favor, but at the end of the day, America rules. End of story. Just like people, no country is perfect, but I've got a newfound admiration for both the people and the places in this country I call home.

"There's that French blood!"

Tonight, I learned an interesting French saying that (roughly) translates to, "spending time with good friends is like eating a steak." At first I didn't get it, but once Sylviane motioned to her cheeks and continued to explain - she must have picked up on the deer in the headlights look on my face - it really does make sense. So when you spend time with good friends and family, like I did tonight at our "soirée crêpes," you do a lot of talking and laughing, which causes your cheeks and stomach to be sore. Similarly, when you're trying to chew your way through a good steak, by the time you're finished your jaw is tired and your stomach is full. C'est sympa, non? 

Sylviane invited Lisa and I over for crêpes and I was told last week to prepare myself for a competition, as we would have to cook and flip the crêpes ourselves. While I am confident in my cooking abilities, my last encounter with blueberry pancakes didn't exactly turn out as planned, so I was a little apprehensive. But after a demonstration by Jean-François, as Sylviane said, my French blood came through and I'm now a crêpe-flipping master. Granted, Lisa also got hers on the first try and they're not that complicated to make, but she had a hole in hers, so I win by default.

Seven days until I return stateside and I've got to say I'm looking forward to eating lots of steak with everyone.

Noël à Paris

Sacré Coeur.

Christmas tree inside Galeries Lafayette.

Again.

The façade.

Ferris wheel at the the entrance to le jardin des Tuileries. Eiffel Tower on the left.

The Louvre.

Lights along the Champs-Élysées.

Printemps.

The Land of the Ch’ti

Last Saturday and Sunday a group of assistants and I visited Lille, the land of the Ch’ti. The word “Ch’ti” designates not only the people who live in the region called “Nord,” but also the dialect that they speak and a brand of beer. It’s very difficult to understand, even more so than Québécois (which the French enjoy making fun of). It snowed the whole train ride up, and because of the weather we arrived later than expected so we weren’t able to drop off our bags at the hostel before it closed for the afternoon. After trudging around in the snow for 45 minutes we found a restaurant that was open for lunch and warmed up. I didn’t think that France would be cold, but for the past week or so it has been colder than normal. Just to give you an idea of how cold that is, on the news last week they talked about how it was warmer in Greenland than in France.

Once we got into the hostel and dropped our bags off we headed out to the Christmas market where we browsed the selection of 100+ booths while sipping on onion soup and vin chaud. After we’d seen all that there was to see, we headed to the main square where a 150 foot Ferris wheel was waiting for us. Why we thought it was a good idea to go on an open Ferris wheel when it was freezing cold, windy and sleeting I don’t know, but once it had finished loading passengers and we weren’t stuck at the top it was actually really fun.

One of many vin chaud booths.

The Ferris wheel.

View from halfway up.

The weather improved on Sunday and we spent the afternoon walking around Vieux Lille. I had planned to go to the Christmas market in Strasbourg – which supposedly is one of the top 5 best in the world – but when I saw that a one-way ticket is 97€ even with my 12-25 discount I decided to pass. Tatiana, one of my teachers at the collège, is from Strasbourg and while she said that it is really nice, the market isn’t that great because it’s all the same stuff. But the real reason it’s so popular, she said, is because of the lights… maybe next year.