ALLEZ LES BLEUS!

Again I’m going to have to take you back a week or so to bring you up to date. On Thursday the 3rd, I celebrated Chinese New Year with Qunxing, her friend Chung, one of Chung’s professors and Sam. We had Chinese fondue, which was more of a stew than anything, composed of a spicy red pepper broth with beef, pork, two types of tofu (I never knew there was a stringy kind), carrots, cabbage and mushrooms. We also had “ravioli” or what we Westerners call “dumplings” filled with pork, cabbage, garlic and ginger, as well as tea and a starter of Chinese sausage and peppers. My neighbors brought over their pet rabbit Nanar for good luck since it’s the Year of the Rabbit. He was a huge hit with Chung and her teacher. Speaking of rabbits, I’m sure this part will incite an “awwwwww” from my Mom; I ate rabbit for the first time this past week. Honestly, it has to be one of the tastiest meats I’ve ever had; tied for my favorite with lamb (I must have a thing for eating all the loveable animals). It was tender and flaky and delicious, although a bit boney. Now I would never cook it for myself, it’s everywhere in the supermarkets here, but one of my teachers at the collège had made it and saved some for me. To make it, she slow cooked the rabbit in cidre with potatoes, leeks, mushrooms and cloves. I put it over rice so it’d be more filling and c’était si bon.

On Saturday the 5th I went to the 6 Nations Rugby match between France and Scotland with Fiona, Alex, Sarah and her friend Matt from Belfast. After being out on Friday night, I didn’t have time to make it back to Louviers to grab my camera before heading into Paris, but I nicked Sarah’s photos to show you.

The tickets.

Stade de France.

Final Score: France, 34 : Scotland, 21.

Fiona and I knew nothing about rugby, but thanks to the patient teachings of Sarah, I was really able to get into and understand the game. It was exciting not only being in the Stade de France watching the match, but also being a part of the crowd and the stadium-wide wave. I really need to learn the national anthem because that, along with “Allez les Bleus!” and “Olé!” seem to be their cheering staples (along with oh la la la la, but that’s a given).

For the past couple weeks I’ve been working with some new classes on Tuesdays, and together we’ve been talking about American food. Each time I get a new group, I ask them what they think of when they hear “American food.” Responses include everything off of McDonald’s and KFC’s menu, with the occasional all-star throwing doughnuts and pancakes into the mix. Next question, “What do you think of when you hear ‘American?’” Every class said short and fat. Unfortunately, I can’t disagree with them when 70% of the population is overweight or obese. I probably didn’t help their word-association any because I showed them the intro of “Supersize Me” and we discussed what they saw in heard in the five minute clip.

At collège I did lessons on American middle school, Groundhog Day and the Super Bowl. I shared some of this year’s commercials with them; their favorites were the Dorito’s pug, the Darth Vader kid, and the Bud Light dogs. I also showed them my middle school yearbook, and one of them asked me if I was famous because I had this book with all these signatures and pictures of me in it. Ha!

Friday night I went out to dinner in Rouen with Françoise and her son Alexandre, Qunxing and another one of my teachers, Sandrine. We ate in a fondue restaurant that in my opinion was grossly overpriced for what we got, but it was fun spending time with Françoise and Sandrine outside of the classroom. Saturday I went into Paris to make the most of the last weekend of the winter “Soldes.” I got a couple of sweaters and some CDs, and justified it by telling myself that I wouldn’t be able to find any of them in the US.

Two final things to bring you completely up to speed: 1) My trip next week to Madrid and the Canary Islands is booked. I’ll be heading there for six days before returning home to meet my brother in Paris and then we’ll continue on to the French Alps to go skiing for a week. 2) I inadvertently got two students a hour of detention after a teacher turned them in for this hallway banter: “Oh la la! Regarde ses fesses! Magnifique!” I’ll leave it to you to do the translating.

I’ve got a golden ticket alright

Sorry about the lack of updates as of late, but the weather has been so nice and I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had the chance to sit down and put out an entry. Alright so I’ll take you back two weeks now to my trip to Versailles.

On the train ride home I had time to reflect on the day between laughing with Sam and Alex and worrying about whether or not we’d make the bus back into Louviers. After a couple of minutes of silence, I said it to them, “I hate that I sound so spoiled, but I wasn’t that impressed with Versailles.” Almost immediately after I’d made this announcement I cringed at the thought of what I’d just said. Versailles – the pride of the French monarchy, their stomping grounds for more than a hundred years where royalty from Europe and beyond had been entertained – didn’t do it for me.

Now I could write a couple of paragraphs to explain why it is that I’m not spoiled, but honestly I think it’s better that I just fess up: I am incredibly spoiled. I mean, in the short time that I’ve been here, I’ve probably seen and done more than many could hope to do in a lifetime. But the difference, however, between me and the Veruca Salts and trust fund babies of the world, is the how much I appreciate everything that I’ve been given.

Enough introspection for one post and now onto the explanation of why I said what I did. Now don’t get me wrong, Versailles is magnificent (I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so much gold in one place), and I can’t even fathom what it must have been like to live there. Yet, in spite of its grandiosity I felt that it was neglected. Maybe I pay too much attention to detail, but it was dustier than my room has ever been, the chandeliers looked more like plastic than crystal, and you could only see a small portion of the château. Plus, the fountains were frozen, the statues covered and the plants dead, so I’m sure that brought it down a couple of notches as well. I plan to go back in the spring, when everything is alive again to reform my opinion; after all thanks to my Pass d’Education I have free access to all national monuments and museums for three years ;).

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.