La fin? Déjà?

Dear friends,

Tomorrow is the beginning of my LAST WEEK teaching in Nevers - I can't believe it! How have 7 months gone by already? The weather is finally gorgeous here (I've actually been getting quite tan), and we're all realizing that we're about to go our separate ways. I'm panicking about packing, as I only have 2 large suitcase and a backpack to get all my stuff home. I did a half-hearted trial run this morning, and I think it's going to take some major ingenuity to get everything in there.

I'm still planning to go to Iceland next week, and I'm hoping that part will all go according to plan!! Let's all hope that the long-name-volcano doesn't erupt anymore (at least, not until after May 8) - how ridiculous would it be to get stuck in Iceland?!?

While I'm looking forward to being back in the US, I am going to be sad to leave all the great people I've met here. (I'm also accepting the fact that I'll probably never live in another apartment as cool as the one I lived in here!) It's been a good 7 months, though, so I can't complain!

I hope you are all well!

Espana!

Hola amigos y amigas!

I'm safely back in Nevers after my 8 wonderful days in Spain - luckily I flew in the day before all the airports closed because of the volcanic ash, so thank goodness I didn't get stranded! I'm supposed to spend 3 days in Reykjavik (on my way back to the US) in a few weeks, so I hope the volcano is in check by then... I'm looking forward to it and want to be able to go!

My trip went really well, even though the weather wasn't always what I'd hoped for. I started in Barcelona, where I arrived last Wednesday afternoon to a cool, grey, rainy day. I spent 3 days in Barcelona, and I really liked it. It's very pedestrian-friendly, so that always wins cities points in my book. It has a lot to see, and I spent tons of time just wandering around, seeing the sights, including lots of amazing Gaudi architecture. I visited the Sagrada Familia (which I walked to from the city center - it's FAR out there!), Casa Mila, and the Park Guell, and I have to say I'm a big Gaudi fan. Park Guell is a gorgeous park on the edge of the city - it was originally designed as an upscale housing development, but luckily for us, that fell through and it became a public park instead! One of the city's main thoroughfares, La Rambla, cuts right down from one of the main squares to the waterfront, and it has lots of street performers, stalls selling things (like flowers and pets!), and TONS of people. It's very lively, and great for people-watching. Barcelona also has a gorgeous cathedral in the old city center, and lots of great museums. Picasso spent several years of his youth in Barcelona, so the Picasso museum had a wonderful collection showing the progression of his work from "normal" to what we now recognize as "Picasso" - very interesting! It's a big city, though, and I did lots of walking - my feet felt like they were going to fall off by the end of each day...

After Barcelona I headed to Valencia, a gorgeous city about 3 hours by train down the coast. It was definitely one of my favorite parts of my trip; it was just such a pleasant place to be! It's not too big, and there's an amazing park that runs through a dry riverbed in the middle of town, which makes it perfect for strolling in the sun and sitting at cafés. I took a walking tour one day, and the city also has a really interesting history... Apparently the city got swapped between the Moors and the Christians several time, and one of the basilicas in town claims to have the authentic holy grail. Likely story, right?? Valencia is famous for its oranges, and I also learned on the walking tour that the orange trees all around the city are treated with something to make the oranges taste awful, to prevent people from picking and eating them all! It was also in Valencia that I discovered my favorite Spanish chain restaurant, which would become a daily staple for the rest of the trip. It's a chain of tapas restaurants, but the food was SO cheap; I never ordered any item that cost more than €1.20, and I would get completely full for under €5 or €6!! (And a beer only cost €0.60. Yes, you read that correctly - SIXTY CENTS.) Why is France SO much more expensive than every other continental European country?? My hostel was also amazing in Valencia - it was in a great location and was just great in every way. Normally you get really rough, crappy sheets and blankets in hostels, but this place had actual DUVETS and duvet covers, AND the beds were already made for you when you checked in!

I headed to Madrid after Valencia via a first-class train - I bought my tickets online beforehand, and the special web price for first-class was one euro less than the normal second-class price, so obviously I went for first class! It was AWESOME. It was almost like being on a plane; I got served breakfast, then sat and read my book while drinking coffee and watching Spain go by. I highly recommend the experience. Madrid was also wonderful, although it didn't feel big at all for being such an important city... I visited the Royal Palace, which was huge and ornate, and even had a peacock on the property! Unfortunately you're not allowed to take pictures inside, but it was a very impressive palace. The church next door to the palace was also amazing, with really gorgeous frescoes. It was pretty different from most grey stone churches I usually visit, and so pretty! I went to Madrid's main park one afternoon to enjoy the weather, and it was very nice to just wander. I spent my last day in Spain going to some of Madrid's best museums - it was a bit kamikaze, as I went to the Prado Museum, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, and the Reina Sofia Museum all in the same day! (I spent 6.5 hours in museums that day...) They all have amazing collections - I got to see Picasso's "Guernica" - but it was A LOT of museum-ing to do in just one day.

I went for a day trip to Toledo on my second to last day in Spain. I wish I could say I loved it, but I'd be lying to you. The cathedral there WAS amazing, but other than that I just wasn't feeling it. It also didn't help that things close for "lunch" from 2 to 4 each afternoon in Spain, so I really didn't have many options as to things to do, and it was too cold and rainy to just wander around town for 2 hours...

Anyways, we're all having a hard time believing that our time in Nevers is really almost over. I only have 8 days of work left before I'm done, and I don't even want to start thinking about how I'm going to be able to pack up 7.5 months' worth of stuff into 2 suitcases! I hope you all are well, and I look forward to seeing everyone in just a few short weeks!!

Already April?!?

Bonjour mes amis,

I'm sorry it's been a while since I last posted, but I hope you have all been well since then! I haven't been anywhere since Paris in mid-March (one reason for the lack of timely posts!), but I'm getting really excited about my upcoming trip to Spain - I'm leaving on Wednesday! There was a big grève (strike) 2 weeks ago, so a lot of us had classes canceled, and one of my friends had her school completely closed because all of the teachers were striking. There have been quite a few strikes since I got to France - this is partly because the French just go on strike a lot (it's a pretty integral part of their political system), but it's also because Sarkozy has passed some educational reforms that are doing away with quite a few teaching jobs. For every 2 teachers that retire, only 1 will be hired to replace them. This doesn't seem like a huge deal to me, as there are many teachers who don't even teach close to a full day of classes, but obviously the schools and teachers are very upset about it. Anyways, we had this big strike 2 weeks ago - I read the next day in the news that 30% of French primary school teachers were en grève that day! - so we all had the afternoon free and ended up going for a coffee at Café l'Agricole, our favorite café in Nevers' town center. As we were finishing up our drinks, a big group of strikers marched into the Place Carnot, where the café is. They had big banners representing their unions, a megaphone, road flares, and they were all shouting anti-Sarkozy, anti-reform slogans... Unfortunately we couldn't really understand them, but it was very exciting (and soooo French) to watch! Of course, the minute they finished this march (which probably started at the Préfecture, one of the Education Nationale's main administrative buildings in Nevers), several small groups broke off from the strike and sat down at the café for a drink! We sat and watched them for about 15-20 minutes; what an experience!

You may be aware of how much free time I have here, and my fellow assistants have the same issue. We've all gotten really good at making simple things take much longer than necessary, but we also now have time for all those ridiculous projects one thinks of but never has time to execute. This means that I can now add "Board Game Designer" to my résumé - a couple Wednesdays ago, a few of us had the brilliant idea to make a board game version of our time in Nevers. So many hilarious and slightly absurd things have happened to us here; it really is perfect material for a board game. It's made on the back of an old pizza box (so it has a huge grease/tomato stain on the bottom), but it's actually a really great game! We played it last week, and it works pretty well. Everyone has a game piece and starts at the Gare SNCF de Nevers (Nevers' train station). After rolling the dice, you can land on "good things," "bad things," "locations," "Il Faut Que," or "travel." If you land on a "good thing," it means you've successfully done something necessary to live in Nevers, and you can gain "dignity" or "frequent-flyer s'miles) cards, or you can move ahead spaces. For example, one of the "good things" is: "You successfully opened a bank account! Gain 1 dignity." (Let me remind you again that opening/closing accounts of any type in Frances is VERY complicated and involves tons of paperwork.) If you land on a "bad thing," it means something unfortunate has happened to you, and you either lose a turn or have to give up "dignity" points. For example, if you land on: "Step in merde (dog poop)," you have to give up 1 dignity point. If "You chose SFR as your internet provider," you lose a turn. As the square says, "You'll probably be on the phone for a while." If you land on a "location," it's just a place in Nevers where we've spent a lot of time, and you just pass that turn "having a drink at Café Ag" or "strolling along La Loire." If you land on an "Il Faut Que" card, you have to do what the card says to gain your choice of dignity or frequent-flyer s'miles cards. For example, one "Il Faut Que" card reads: "Put together a full meal for under €5." Another reads: "Put together a spontaneous lesson plan." There are also "travel" squares, where if you land on them you have to give up a certain number of frequent-flyer s'miles cards to get there, depending on how far the destination is from Nevers. For example, if you travel to Orléans, you have to give up 2 frequent-flyer s'miles. I can't really capture the greatness of this game in a blog post, but hopefully you can all see how wonderful this board game is...

Other than making awesome board games, I've also been teaching some, and my classes have been going really well. I had a really great one this past week - I was working on telling time in English with a class of CE2s (they're about 8/9), and they were all really paying attention, participating, and GETTING IT! It was super exciting, and I finally felt useful!

I hope everyone had a good Easter yesterday; I made brunch with 2 friends at one of the other girls' house here in Nevers. It was wonderful - we had biscuits (made by a real Southerner!), scrambled eggs, fruit salad, Easter chocolate, and mimosas! We also hard-boiled and dyed eggs, but all French eggs have brown shells rather than white ones, so the eggs turned out slightly funny colors, but it worked for the most part!

I'm already on vacation AGAIN - it started on Friday afternoon. As I said at the beginning of this post, I'm headed to Spain for 8 days during this break, and I'm leaving on Wednesday. I'm starting with 3 days in Barcelona, then I'll spend 2 days in Valencia, then 3 days in Madrid (one of those days will be a day trip to Toledo). The weather's been pretty grey and VERY rainy here in Nevers, so I'm looking forward to some sunshine! I've wanted to go to Spain for a long time, and I'm really excited for the trip. It's also going to be my first solo trip (other than a few little day trips), so I'm also excited about experiencing that - I'm sure it'll be an adventure, no matter what!

I can't believe it's already April - I only have 2 weeks of work once I return from vacation, then my contract is over and I'll be headed to Reykjavik, then back to the States for the first time in 7.5 MONTHS! Can't wait to see you all!

Paris, Springtime!

Bonjour mes amis,

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, I hope you're all doing well! As I mentioned in my last post, I went to Paris for the day a couple of Wednesdays ago. It was really nice to get out of Nevers for a little while, it was a GORGEOUS clear day (but still very windy and quite cold) in Paris, and I got to see some parts of Paris I haven't really explored before. I left a snowy Nevers at 6:58AM and enjoyed watching the sun rise during the easy 2-hour trip to Paris. I had planned to start my day at the Musée Picasso in Paris, but when I got there at 9:30, its listed opening time according to the website and my guidebook, I found a sign saying it's closed for renovations from August 24, 2009 until 2012!! THREE YEARS. Fortunately I've been in France for long enough now that this didn't surprise me too terribly much, but I was still a little disappointed that I couldn't visit it. I wandered around the 3ème arrondissement for a while, and visited the lovely Hotel de Soubise, a mansion in the center of Paris that is now home to the Musée de l'Histoire de France and the National Archives. It also seemed to be under restoration, and most of the exhibits had been removed, but it still had a pretty interior, and it was good to get in out of the wind for a few minutes.

One of my very favorite movies is the French film Amélie, and there are a couple scenes in the movie that take place around the Canal Saint Martin, a canal that runs through Paris. Because it's kind of up in the northern part of the city and there aren't many touristy sights or museums in that area, I'd never been up there before, and so I walked up to the canal and walked along it for a few minutes - so now I've officially seen it! I'm sure it's much prettier in summer, when all the trees are green and leafy, but it was still a nice little walk. As this was a day in Paris dedicated to some of the things I've never done, my next stop was the Opéra Garnier, a gorgeous opera house in the 8ème arrondissement of Paris. While I had previously seen it from the outside, I'd never been inside before - it has a beautiful interior; lots of red velvet and ornate ceiling decorations, etc. (Random trivia: The Phantom of the Opera is about the Opéra Garnier)

Eglise de la Madeleine is another one of those Parisian landmarks that I've seen many times, but only from the outside, so I headed there after the Opéra (after a quick browse through the Galéries Lafayette, a HUUUGE department store). It's really nice on the inside, kind of dark and lots of sculpture to see. I tried to walk past the Palais de l'Elysée, the French presidential residence, but there was a ton of security around it and I couldn't actually see the building. I don't know if there was something special going on that day or if they just always have that much security, but at least I walked around some of the perimeter...

I crossed the Seine at my favorite bridge, the Pont Alexandre III, and went into Eglise du Dome des Invalides, the church in which Napoleon has his tomb. It's big and has a huge gilded dome on top, and the area between the church and the Latin Quarter is very nice for strolling. Because I'd now been walking for many hours without stopping and because we don't have a Starbucks in Nevers, I had to take advantage of the many Starbucks around me, so I took an hour-long coffee break on the Rue Saint Michel, people-watching and enjoying my normal, American-sized cup of coffee. I also stopped in a Shakespeare and Co., a wonderful English-language bookstore just across from Notre Dame and treated myself to 2 new books - such a treat! I spent the rest of my afternoon slowly wandering through the Ile Saint Louis, back towards the train station, then ended up getting back to Nevers around 8. I was exhausted, but it was a great day quand meme!

It's really started feeling like spring here in the past week, and the daffodils along the Loire have bloomed, which makes for a much more pleasant walk to school. I even got slightly sunburned reading on my patio on Friday afternoon! (Although, as most of you probably know, that's not saying a lot - I burn very easily.)

That's really all the news I have for now, I hope you are all well.

A bientot!

Adventures in Italy, Austria, and Germany (Warning: long post!)

Dear friends,

Hello once again from Nevers! I got back last night from an amazing 2-week trip around Italy, Austria, and a little bit of Germany. I went with my friend (and fellow assistant) Lizzi, and we had a great time and were both sad to be back in Nevers last night! We started our trip on Friday night, February 5. We left Nevers for Dijon at 5:23, so I practically skipped home from my last class and anxiously waited for Lizzi to come over so we could leave for the station – I had to force myself to vacuum and clean my room to keep myself from just bouncing around the apartment! We got to Dijon around 7 and went to grab some dinner before our night train to Rome was scheduled to leave at 9:37. We got to the station around 9 to see that our train had a 20 minute delay. That wasn’t too bad, but then it grew to 25 minutes, then 40, then an hour and 45 minutes, then THREE HOURS! We didn’t end up getting on the train until almost 1 AM, which was frustrating, but there was nothing we could do about it… The night train was a really weird experience – we had our own little compartment with bunk beds, a tiny wardrobe, a sink, and a mirror. Luckily I was exhausted, because I don’t think I would have been able to sleep otherwise! It’s a very odd sensation to be horizontal on a train in the dark when you’re trying to sleep – we were going through tunnels, which causes your ears to pop, and sometimes the train turns and your feet are above your head! We ended up being on the train for about 13 hours, so we were more than ready to get off when we finally arrived in Rome around 2:30 (of course, we were SUPPOSED to arrive around 10:15!).

As soon as we got off the train, we went to the National Museum of Rome, which had an impressive collection of Roman statues and busts, as well as a wonderful collection of coins from ancient Rome to modern times. Next stop was the Capuccin Crypt, which was SO cool. It’s the bones of more than 4,000 monks, artistically arranged into scenes and decorations, like chandeliers! Sadly, you aren’t allowed to take pictures inside, but I bought a cool postcard.

We hit a slight snag when we finally got to our hostel to check in. The main building was being renovated for the summer, so the woman who worked there walked us about 10 minutes away to another building that I suppose is owned by the hostel. We’d reserved an all-female room, and there was someone’s stuff in the room – stuff that clearly didn’t belong to a girl, and it really wasn’t what we’d reserved, so we had to go out and find another hotel, because neither of us really wanted to/felt comfortable staying there. We ended up finding a pretty nice hotel that wasn’t too expensive when split 2 ways, and it included a delicious breakfast buffet – of course, we got very good and smuggling food out for lunch!

We went for a walk around Rome our first night there – it’s absolutely beautiful! We saw the Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain – Rome has lovely fountains, which look pretty both in the day and night.

We had gorgeous sunny weather for our second and third days in Rome, so on Sunday we went to the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, and Palatine Hill (where all the emperors used to build their palaces, it’s actually where the word ‘palace’ comes from). They were both amazing, and it was incredible to be around things that are just so OLD! Our next stop was the Pantheon, which we had a bit of trouble finding… Rome doesn’t have the greatest signage for its tourist attractions, so I’m pretty sure we walked all the way around the Pantheon before we actually found it! The first two kings of Italy are buried there, and so is the artist Raphael. We had an afternoon reservation at the Borghese Gallery, so we meandered up to the north of the city, stopping at the Trevi Fountain (again) for a gelato break. The Borghese Gallery is a great private collection of art – lots and lots of beautiful Bernini sculptures – in a beautiful former cardinal’s mansion in a park to the north of the city.

We were surprised to find that Santa Maria Maggiore, the church just up the street from our hotel, had banners up advertising that the relic of Sainte Bernadette would be there on February 9 and 10 – Sainte Bernadette “lives” (well, her body reposes) in Nevers! Lizzi is doing her year abroad project on Bernie (as we call her), and was quite perturbed that this dead saint is following her around Europe…

On Monday morning we had reservations for the Vatican Museum, which was HUGE (it has 4 miles of displays!). We were both exhausted (from Lizzi’s 21st birthday festivities the night before), so we didn’t spend too much time inside, but we DID get to see the Sistine Chapel! I have to say, it wasn’t at all what I was expecting – the “man touching God” part of the ceiling is only one small part of the ceiling, which is covered in lots of smaller frescoes. It was a wonderful museum, though, although we had some trouble figuring out how to actually exit the building, which would also prove to be a recurring theme of the trip. After the Vatican Museum we headed down the street to Saint Peter’s Basilica, the biggest church in the world (incidentally, it’s in the smallest sovereign state in the world, the Vatican City!). The basilica was HUGE (clearly) and gorgeous inside – it also has Michelangelo’s Pietà, which is absolutely beautiful. (It’s Mary holding Jesus’ body.) Saint Peter’s Square is also enormous, although it didn’t seem as big as it always looks on TV… We didn’t see the Pope, unfortunately, although we had been hoping to run into him. I also visited the Victor Emmanuel Monument that afternoon, a monument to Italy’s first king. It’s epically large, and really pretty, and offers a really good view of Rome from the top! We visited St. Peter in Chains church that night before dinner – Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to build it as his tomb, so it has a wonderful Michelangelo statue of Moses. It also holds the chains that held St. Peter (apparently)!

Tuesday morning we headed to Florence, where we started by wandering around the city for a few hours. We climbed the Duomo, which, at 463 stairs, is the highest church dome/tower I’ve ever climbed! The church is made of white, pink, and green marble, so it was an interesting change from all the grey stone cathedrals you see in France. The top of the dome gave a wonderful view of Florence and the beautiful surrounding Tuscan countryside, so it was definitely worth the deep burn! We spent a while zig-zagging across the Ponte Vecchio, the covered bridge in Florence that has tons and tons of jewelry shops with sparkly window displays. We visited the Uffizi Gallery and the Galleria dell’ Accademia on Tuesday, and I got to see – with my own eyes – several works of art that I’d only ever seen in textbooks! We saw Botticelli’s Primavera and The Birth of Venus and Michelangelo’s David. I think the David is my favorite work of art I’ve ever seen – you turn a corner in the gallery, and BAM, there it is! It’s much bigger than I expected it to be, and it really took my breath away. After all of our culturedness, we walked out to an overlook/park that’s a little ways out of the city – it’s up on a hill, so it had a really good view of the city.

On Wednesday morning we headed to Venice, which is about 2 hours by train from Florence. I absolutely loved Venice; it’s kind of magical in that it doesn’t quite feel real. It was during Carnevale that we were there, so it was really cool to see lots of people walking around in full costume and masks. We took lots of vaporetto (bus-boats) rides and spent hours just wandering through the back streets and canals, getting lost then finding ourselves again. The Basilica of San Marco, on the Piazza San Marco, is stupendous, and lovely both inside and out. We visited the Palazzo Ducale, which is where the Doge (like a duke, but he didn’t really have much actual power, from what we could figure out during the visit) lived. It was beautiful inside, and it also gave us admission to another museum across the Piazza where they had an awesome collection of sketches of Venice.

We headed to Vienna on Saturday morning, and spent most of the day (7 hours) in transit. We had to cross through the Italian Alps, so we had amazing views from the bus and train – there were lots of skiers on our train! We spent our first night in Vienna at my flatmate’s friend’s apartment – she goes to school in Vienna, and her apartment is amazing! We went out to a club with Sarah (my flatmate), Hannes (her boyfriend), and Katrin (her friend, with whom we were staying), and it ended up being a good time, although Lizzi and I were super tired and were not excited about it at the beginning! It was VERY cold (well below freezing) while we were in Vienna, so we spent most of Sunday in museums to escape the snow and ice. We spent a good few hours in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, which had an incredible (and very well-organized) collection of paintings by the European masters, as well as an interesting temporary exhibition on Vermeer’s The Art of Painting. We spent the afternoon in the Hofburg Imperial Palace, where the Hapsburg ruling family lived. We got to go through part of the palace’s collection of dishes and tableware, and they had rooms and rooms of incredible place settings and cutlery. The actual living quarters of the palace were amazing, and we got to learn lots about Franz Josef and his wife Elizabeth, known as “Sisi,” who sounds like she was an actual toolbag. She spent TWO hours a day brushing her hair! Sunday night we went to the Haus der Musik, which was an awesome interactive music museum – we got to ‘compose’ our own Viennese waltz, and we also got to conduct the Viennese Philharmonic Orchestra – I felt like a kid, and it was so much fun!

On Monday we went to the Schonbrunn Palace, which was the summer residence of the Hapbsburgs (who normally lived at the Hofburg) - it was a palace on par with Versailles, and it was a very worthwhile visit. Our ticket also covered the palace gardens, which I think were lost on us because they were all covered in snow. The cathedral in Vienna is also beautiful, all Gothic and pretty, so after visiting that we did a bit of wandering around before dinner. Food in Austria is amazing, and it was much cheaper than in France! Lizzi and I each got a huge plate of food (far more than we could ever eat) and 2 big beers for only €12 each!

After Vienna, we headed to Salzburg, which is definitely one of my favorite places we visited. We were basically staying in a B&B, although our room was in this hilarious Austrian woman’s basement. Her name was Brigitte, and she was really making us laugh. She was probably in her late 60s, and she brought our breakfast to our room both mornings – where our bed was this wicker contraption that we compared to Moses’ basket… We were a little afraid of waking up in the river! She also forgot to explain how to use the COIN-OPERATED SHOWER, so we were just standing there trying to figure out how to get the water hot when, luckily, an American woman who was in the room across the hall came out and told us we had to use the tokens that were on our table. Needless to say, it was rather hilarious, especially because we thought that we only had one token for each day and did a shower relay, sprinting down the hall in our towels to maximize the hot water usage! We did a lot of wandering in Salzburg, although we also visited Mozart’s apartment (although not his birthplace, because apparently there isn’t as much to actually see in his birthplace) and the Hohensalzburg Fortress, a huge medieval fortress up on the hill overlooking the city. It’s a very cute town, and they filmed The Sound of Music there, so we got to see lots of those sights as well.

Our last stop was Munich, where we arrived on Thursday morning. I really liked the city – it’s elegant, and it feels like a city without being overwhelmingly big. The Rathaus (the town hall) is beautiful, and it has lots of pretty churches to visit. We did a trip out to Dachau on Friday morning to visit the concentration camp. It was freezing and snowy, but incredibly worthwhile. We ended up spending about 4 hours there – the museum is really well-done, and of course we spent a lot of time just walking through the camp. If any of you is ever in Munich, you definitely should make the trip out to Dachau, it only takes about 30 minutes on the S-bahn.

We traveled all day yesterday – left Munich at 9:23 AM and arrived in Nevers at 8:30 PM, and now I’m trying to prepare myself for the realization that I actually have to go back to work tomorrow!

A pre-trip update

Dear friends,

Bonjour from Nevers! Several other assistants and I spent last weekend celebrating some birthdays in a small town about 20 minutes from Nevers called La Charité sur Loire – I wrote about it last time. It was a great weekend – we had a party on Friday night, then spent Saturday exploring the town. It’s pretty small, but very pretty! It’s also right along the Loire River, so there was a beautiful view from the ramparts on top of the hill that overlooks the town. The cathedral is also really old (from the 1100s, I believe), and the town just has a lot of quaint character.

Most of this week has been occupied with making Valentine’s Day heart cards with my classes (they’ve been loving it!) and taking care of final trip preparations. I honestly can’t believe I’m leaving tomorrow night for 2 whole weeks; I’m sure the next time I post it’ll be pages long! Lizzi and I are leaving Nevers at 5:23 tomorrow night for Dijon, where we’ll have about 2 hours for dinner before our night train leaves. We’ll arrive Saturday morning in Rome, where we’ll spend 3 days. After that it’s Florence, Venice, Vienna, Salzburg, and Munich before heading back to Nevers on Saturday, the 20th. I have no idea how I’ll be able to pay any attention at all to my classes tomorrow; I’m going to be too excited!

I hope all is well with all of you, my next post should be full of tales of my travels!

A quick update :)

Dear friends,

I hope all is well with you and that it’s warmer where you are than it is here – it’s absolutely freezing, and it’s supposed to snow again tomorrow! There was snow on the ground for almost a full month both before and after winter break, so I really see no reason why it should snow again.

The rest of my classes went well last Thursday and Friday – I’m much more like an actual teacher in some of them than I have been previously, so that’s a change. (A good change, for the most part!) A group of assistants went out to one of the two bars in Nevers on Saturday – I’m always really surprised when I end up having a really good time there – and it was a really good time. In other exciting news, I booked my flight back to the US on Saturday!! I’m now officially coming home, yippee! My contract ends on April 30, so I’m flying out of Paris on May 5. I’m flying into New York JFK and plan on spending about a week there visiting Hilary, and Lizzi decided she wanted to take advantage of knowing people (and having travel buddies), so she’s coming to New York – and the US – for the first time! We’re on the same flights (and have seats together), so I think it’ll be really fun. We’re flying with IcelandAir, which lets you add a stopover in Reykjavik for no extra cost (except for your hotel/food/etc., of course), so we’ll also be spending 3 days and nights in Reykjavik before continuing on to New York – how crazy is that?!? I’m really looking forward to it, though, because hopefully it’ll be nice weather by early May, and it should already be light until pretty late at night by then, too!

Next week is my last week of work before another 2-week vacation, which is most exciting. The kids are always a little crazy right before a break, so my plan is to make Valentine’s Day cards with as many of my classes as possible – I did it to kill some time with one of my classes on Tuesday, and they loved it! Given the excruciating attention to detail and perfection in French elementary school children (seriously), it should easily take up 45 minutes, AND they’ll have something cute to bring home! Win-win.

This weekend I’m off to La Charité sur Loire for birthday celebrations, then next Friday night I’ll be on a train to Rome!

Bisous from Nevers!

A new schedule

Hello Everyone!

As I mentioned in my last post, my teaching schedule changed on Monday. This means I had my last class with most of my classes last week (except for one of my favorite classes, with which I’ll be working all year). It made me think I should leave all the time – I got tons of hugs and adorable drawings from my CE1 class (my youngest class, approximately the equivalent of 1st grade), and 3 of the students in my oldest class wrote an entire skit in English and put it on in front of the whole class - I was so proud of them!

I started at my new school on Monday, and unfortunately it was kind of a rough day – I showed up for my morning class only to find that the teacher hadn’t prepared for me to be there, so all I did was introduce myself to the class (which took all of 5 minutes), then turned around and went home. This is an hour-long round trip on foot! So, I was already kind of frustrated when I made the trek back out there after lunch for my afternoon class. Unfortunately again, there had been some miscommunication as to when I was coming/when I was supposed to be there. The older classes are in the middle of national testing, so they were sitting down to a mandatory exam when I arrived to do English – and the teacher told me they’d already done English! Needless to say, I was pretty furious that I’d ended up wasting 2 hours of my day fruitlessly walking back and forth between my apartment and this school, so I told them I was going back home and that if my afternoon class asked for me, I wasn’t going to be there. I was scheduled to have another class later that afternoon, but as there was no teacher’s name on my schedule and no one seemed to be able to give me a hint as to which teacher it might be with, I decided I’d had enough of the disorganization and just wrote the day off!

Luckily, yesterday was much more successful, and I actually got to go to all my scheduled classes! Ecole Brossolette, my new school, is literally right across the street from one of my old schools (Ecole de Mouesse), but it’s VERY different. It seems to have a different demographic of students, and most of the teachers strike me as pretty different as well. I guess it’s too early to make observations like that, but that’s how it seems at first glance.

Today was my day off, so Lizzi (my friend with whom I’m traveling during our February break) and I took care of some of the preparations for our grand adventure. We went to the train station to make some reservations, and it seems so much closer now that we have some tickets in hand! In case I haven’t written about it before, I’m going on a big trip with Lizzi during our 2-week break in February, and I’m REALLY excited about it. We’re starting by taking a night train to Rome, then going to Florence, Venice, Vienna, Salzburg, and Munich before returning to Nevers.

Before that, though, there’s another exciting weekend coming up next week. One of our other assistants, Eva, has a mother who actually grew up in Nevers, and her family still has a house in La Charité sur Loire, a small town nearby. Lizzi and Eva, who live together, have the same birthday (oddly enough), so we’re going to the house in La Charité for the weekend at the end of January. I think it’ll be a nice way to celebrate a few birthdays and to see yet another small town in the environs of Nevers, so I’m really looking forward to it.

I hope you all are doing well, à bientôt!

Limoges

Bonjour mes amis!

I hope all is well with all of you and that you haven’t been too cold – I hear it’s absolutely freezing in many parts of the US! As I may have posted earlier, it’s been miserably cold here for about the past month – I think that’s how long there’s been snow on the ground, too! It finally got above freezing today (I think the high was in the upper 30s) and it felt SO warm! Other than the cold, I’ve been doing well since my last post, and of course I’ve had more adventures since then!

Hilary and I went to Limoges this weekend, which was snowy and cold, but really fun! For those of you who are thinking, “Hmmm… Limoges… That name sounds familiar, where have I heard that before?,” Limoges is world-famous for its china and its porcelain. We arrived on Saturday around lunchtime and then spent the afternoon exploring the city and doing some shopping. The French only have sales twice a year – in January and in July – so we had to seize the moment! It would have been irresponsible not to, right?!? We visited several churches, all of which were (to our surprise and delight) heated and had lovely stained glass windows. Most of them also still had their Christmas decorations and Nativity scenes up, so that was nice to see as well. We did have a sad moment when we tried to go to one of the city’s museums to see their collection of porcelain and art and couldn’t find a way to get into the building. They were doing work on the building, so there were big work sites up all around it – we walked all the way around the entire building and never once saw a door through which you could enter! We never found a sign explaining if/why it was closed, either, but then, I guess we ARE in France! We walked through the older section of Limoges after that, and found a cute little half-timbered street called rue de la Boucherie (literally, the butcher’s street) with a tiny chapel dedicated to St. Aurelien, the patron saint of Limoges’ guild of butchers – very different, but pretty cool!

On Sunday we visited the Musée National André Dubouché, a great collection of porcelain in a beautiful building. It was completely dedicated to porcelain, but it had a video about the production of porcelain that was actually legitimately very interesting, and it had a lot of cool stuff! For example, I saw a plate that was made in 1345 in China and is now one of the most valuable pieces of porcelain in the world. They’d also made reproductions of [past and present] heads of state from countries around the world, so I got to see what Abraham Lincoln’s plates looked like! (The have a bald eagle in the middle, then a ring of purple around the edge of the plate, in case you were curious.) Our trains back to Nevers from Limoges were slightly delayed on Sunday night because of bad winter weather, so I was glad to get back to my warm, dry apartment after so much time spent outside!

My teaching schedule changes on Monday, so this is my last week with my current classes. While I’m certainly glad to be done with a few of my classes, I’m pretty sad I won’t have some of them anymore – they’d grown on me! I’m sure my new schools, classes, and teachers will be fine, but I definitely don’t relish the idea of starting all over again and of having no idea how things are run! I hope all is well with all of you, gros bisous de Nevers!

Paris, Bruges, Moulins

Dear friends,

Bonne Année! Happy 2010! The rest of my Christmas break in England was very enjoyable, and I got to see lots of family and do quite a few fun things. As I said briefly in my last post, I went into London with 3 of my cousins on the Monday before Christmas. It was absolutely freezing, and while we were in Camden Lock it started snowing SO hard – it was really pretty though! That night we went to see Avenue Q, a really funny musical with puppets – it’s kind of like a rude, inappropriate version of Sesame Street. We ended up spending the night in a hostel in London (not the nicest place I’ve ever stayed, but I guess you can’t expect too much for £7 per night…), so we also spent Tuesday in the city, shopping on Oxford Street, walking through Hyde Park, and checking out the Christmas displays at Harrod’s.

On the Wednesday before Christmas I went to Harpenden, another city near where my aunt lives, to see another one of my cousins and her darling 3-year old son, Ben. The last time I saw him he was very young (it was almost 3 years ago), and he’s gotten so big and adorable! We went to St. Albans (one town over from Harpenden) to walk around and have a coffee – it was so pretty in the snow, even if it was super cold.

On the day before I left England, Kathryn and I went to Bletchley (a town about 40 minutes from Bedford, where I was staying) to visit Bletchley Park, where British intelligence was able to crack the Germans’ Enigma code during WWII. My dad is a big history buff and told me I had to go visit it – even though I still don’t really understand how the actual code-breaking machine worked (it seemed really technical and confusing), it was actually a really interesting visit. Bletchley Park is a mansion with big, pretty grounds, and they had a good permanent exhibition about life during the war and, of course, the codebreakers. The work done at Bletchley Park during the war was kept a secret until the 1970s, so it was pretty cool to see something that was so top secret for so many years!

I flew back to Paris from London VERY early on the morning of New Year’s Eve and conveniently met Hilary at the airport (our flights landed shortly after each other). Of course it was very cold and grey in Paris, but we managed to walk from our hotel near the Centre Pompidou to the Louvre, so we visited the Louvre before it was time to get ready for dinner and New Year’s Eve festivities. Our original plan had been to watch the Eiffel Tower (which sparkles for about 10 minutes starting at midnight) and fireworks from Montmartre, the big hill in Paris where Sacré Coeur is situated, but it was too foggy and cloudy to be able to see anything from up there, so we had to change our plan of attack. We ended up just eating dinner at Montmartre and then walking to the Champs Elysées with a couple bottles of champagne to ring in 2010 (France doesn’t have open container laws, so no worries there!). We found a side street with a good view of the Eiffel Tower, and it was so pretty when it started sparkling! Overall, it was a great (and pretty laid-back) way to spend New Year’s!

On Sunday we headed off to Bruges, Belgium, which is definitely now high on my list of favorite places – it was ADORABLE! We got there in the afternoon and spent a few hours just wandering around – it kept getting cuter and cuter, and I didn’t see even one thing that wasn’t completely charming. It has lots of canals and bridges, and the architecture is gorgeous as well. On Saturday we got up and went on a great tour of De Halve Maan Brewery – we had a hilarious tour guide, we got to climb up on the roof for a great view of Bruges, and it ended with a beer in the brewery’s café – not too shabby! We then visited Bruges’ Church of Our Lady, which was a Madonna and Child sculpture by Michelangelo, which obviously was pretty cool. I also really enjoyed the Gruuthuse Museum, which is essentially a collection of mostly-secular objects from daily life in Bruges in centuries past. It’s in an old private residence of someone who was very rich, so it was great to get to go into one of those beautiful homes that are so common in Europe! I REALLY enjoyed Bruges, and I also found all the Belgians I encountered to be very friendly, so I highly recommend it!

Hilary and I got back to Nevers on Sunday night, and I had classes Monday and yesterday. They’ve gone pretty well, although it’s definitely hard to get back into the routine of work after so much time off! Luckily my next vacation starts on February 5, so I have something to get me through all this tough work… I don’t work on Wednesdays, so today Hilary, my friend/fellow assistant Mari, and I went on a day trip to Moulins sur Allier, a pretty little town about a 30-minute train ride away. We saw 2 lovely cathedrals and got a private presentation on a beautifully-painted triptych at the Cathédrale Notre Dame. Moulins also has a pretty cool museum dedicated solely to stage costumes from theatrical productions, so we saw an exposition on costumes from early 20th century Russian operas. Kind of random, but still very cool – we spent quite a bit of time playing in the “children’s museum” portion of it – they had lots of fun things to try on, like furry Russian hats! We also had a much-needed coffee at Moulins’ Grand Café, a beautiful Belle Epoque café that hasn’t changed its interior décor since 1899 – it was beautiful!

Sorry for the monstrously long post, I hope all is well with you all – Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!!

Dear friends,

Merry Christmas from England! I left Nevers on Saturday morning and luckily arrived here as scheduled! There was a TON of snow all throughout France and England (it was very pretty!), so there were all sorts of travel disruptions – a friend of mine who was supposed to fly out of Paris on Friday night didn’t end up getting home until Sunday afternoon. The Eurostar train – the one that goes under the English Channel – also stopped running for a few days after a couple trains got stuck in the Chunnel. I would have been SO terrified if I’d been there!

Christmas in England has been fun, but I never realized how many of their traditions are different from ours – my cousin and I went out to the pub last night (apparently Christmas Eve is a big going-out night), then we had turkey for Christmas dinner, pulled Christmas crackers, and ate Christmas Pudding! I spent Monday in London with 3 of my cousins, and it started snowing while we were walking through Camden Lock, a really cute area – it was so pretty, although very cold!

I haven’t done anything too terribly exciting since being in England, but it’s been very nice to relax and spend time with family. I’m looking forward to New Year’s Eve, when I’ll return to Paris and my friend is coming from the US to spend 2 weeks in France with me – we’re meeting at the airport, and I can’t wait!

I hope you’re all enjoying Christmas – I miss you all!

Orléans

Bonjour mes amis,

I’ve had another good week since my last post – it’s been busy and filled with Christmas spirit, of course! One of my classes was cancelled for a field trip on Tuesday – my longest workday of the week – so that was a nice surprise! I didn’t work on Wednesday, so I slept in very late and then tried to send a Christmas package home to my family. (Note the operative word there, “tried.”) I ended up going to La Poste twice on Wednesday and STILL ended up bringing the box home with me. I was just planning on buying one of the prepaid boxes at the post office, so the first time I showed up with a few wrapped presents and some packing material. Unfortunately the only option cost €35, which is about $50, which is more than the actual presents cost!! I left the post office, bought a box, packed the box, then went back to the post office to mail it. I didn’t have any packing tape, but I was sure they’d have some there that I could use to seal up the box (seriously, EVERY post office in the US has rolls and rolls of packing tape available for use). Unfortunately my assumption was unfounded and I was told that it wasn’t well sealed and that I’d have to leave and buy some tape to seal it up. It was super-frustrating to say the least, but I finally got the box sent on Thursday!

On Thursday night I went to the Maison de la Culture again to see “Tango Metropolis,” an Argentinian tango show. It was really different from Cendrillon, the only other show I’ve seen there, but I really enjoyed it! It was basically just 2 hours of short-ish tango routines, but there was also a live band – complete with a wonderful old man playing accordion – that added a lot to it.

Nevers had its Marché de Noël this past weekend, on Friday afternoon, Saturday, and Sunday. I went with a group of friends on Friday afternoon to have a look around – and enjoy some vin chaud, of course! It was much smaller than the ones in Lyon and Orléans, but I was pretty impressed. There were lots of artisanal stalls with mostly-useless-but-cool housewares – you know, the kinds of things you’d buy at craft fairs. There were also several vignerons (people who make wine) with stands selling wine, so one of my friends and I did a few tastings and ended up buying a bottle each.

On Saturday I got up WAY too early to take a day trip with 4 other assistants to Orléans. Our train left Nevers at 6:58, but it was definitely worth it, as we had a great – but FREEZING – day! We arrived in Orléans around 9 AM and spent a few hours wandering around the town – we visited the Hôtel Groslot, a gorgeous big house that was once the private residence of someone important and rich, and the Cathédrale Sainte Croix, the main cathedral in Orléans, where Joan of Arc attended Mass while she was in Orléans to liberated it from its siege during the Hundred Years’ War. Because she liberated the city from its siege by the English, Orléans loves Joan of Arc (Jeanne d’Arc) and there are statues of her all over the city – we even saw one of her naked?!?

We also visited the city’s art museum and then the Maison Jeanne d’Arc, the house where she stayed for a little while when she was in Orléans to liberate it. Like I said, it was absolutely freezing, so we spent much more time than necessary at every indoor attraction, meaning we were inside the 2-room Joan of Arc museum for about an hour, if not a bit longer… As Orléans is actually a city of some substance, there was also a lot more shopping than there is in Nevers, so that certainly gave us something to do for a few hours! We then went to explore the Christmas market, one of the main reasons we’d decided to go to Orléans in the first place. There were lots of stalls selling more cool-but-unnecessary things as well as food – so we ate dinner (and dessert!) at the market before finally heading back to the station to catch our train. Overall I really liked Orléans – it’s a very pleasant town, and it was decorated so nicely for Christmas!

Yesterday we had a Christmas party and my and Sarah’s apartment – it was a wonderful success! We started by making cookies for a few hours in the afternoon, then took a break to go to the Christmas market again, then came back and decorated cookies, made spiced wine, ate dinner and cookies, and watched Love Actually! We also did Secret Santa, which was lots of fun. It was my first time making Christmas cookies solo, and it was pretty hard without a pastry cloth or a rolling pin! (I ended up using an empty wine bottle…) I think they turned out all right, and it was fun anyways!

I can’t believe it’s my last week of work before vacation – I’m leaving on Saturday to spend Christmas in England with some family, which I’m looking forward to! My favorite school is putting on its own Christmas market tomorrow night, so I’m going with a few friends – I think it’ll be cute!

That’s all for now, I hope all is well with all of you!

Tea Salons and the Fete des Lumieres in Lyon

Dear friends,

I’ve had a wonderful week since my last post, so it might be a long one – brace yourselves! I finally got my checkbook from my bank on Tuesday, a whole 18 days after I ordered it (they told me it would be “une dixaine de jours,” or 10 days). I should have known it would have taken forever, but ce n’est pas grave now that I have it and can officially pay rent!

Two of the assistants had their boyfriends in town last weekend and for the beginning of the week, so we had a dinner party on Tuesday night so we could all meet them. It was really fun, but kind of challenging linguistically. For the most part, all the assistants speak English (and French, obviously) except for one, the Spanish assistant from Costa Rica. Sarah’s boyfriend is Austrian and speaks German and English, and Tish’s boyfriend is English and speaks English and a little French. We ultimately decided to speak in English for the night, but there were lots of little side translations into French and German going on!

My classes have been going really well, and I think the kids are really excited now that we’ve started working on Christmas vocabulary! We’ve also been practicing a simplified version of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” in a lot of my classes, as that school puts on a Christmas Market. The kids have been working on making Christmas crafts to sell there (they’ll also have hot chocolate, coffee, and vin chaud being sold on school grounds, which I’m pretty sure would NEVER fly in the US!) and they’ll be singing Christmas carols. I plan on going and bringing some of the other assistants with me, and I’m quite excited – I think it’ll be really cute!

On Friday afternoon I went with my fellow assistants Sarah, Mari, Lizzi, and Tish to Nevers’ cutest (and possibly only) salon du thé, En Apar’thé. It’s about the girliest place I’ve ever seen in my life, but it was a wonderful way to spend a cold December afternoon – it was all decorated for Christmas with a beautiful tree, and we all ordered the same tea, the Esprit de Noël. They also have lots of delicious little desserts that are served on beautiful china – we definitely plan on going back!

This weekend I went to Lyon with 5 other assistants for the Fête des Lumières, which is held there every year. It’s a big festival in which there are really cool light shows and light installations all around the city, and I really enjoyed it, even if it was SUPER crowded! We arrived in Lyon around noon and spent a few hours exploring the city – we saw the Place Bellecour, which is one of the biggest public squares in Europe, and climbed up the (VERY steep) Fourvière hill to visit the Basilique de Notre Dame de Fourvière, a beautiful basilica dedicated to the Virgin Mary. In fact, the entire Fête des Lumières is in honor of the Virgin Mary, as she saved Lyon twice from terrible fates – once in the 1500s from the plague, and once in the 1800s from German invaders during the Franco-Prussian War.

On Saturday night we went into the very crowded centre ville to see some of the installations of the Fête des Lumières. The Fête’s theme this year was “Playing with Weather and Time,” so most of the shows/installations dealt with that in some way. One of my favorite installations were at the Hôtel de Ville, where lights shining on the façade produced the effect of the building being subjected to all 4 seasons in rapid succession – it froze, then cracked and fell apart, then there spring raindrops and flowers, then summer heat and fire… It’s kind of hard to explain it, but it was amazing to see! The other installation I really liked was the one at the Cathédrale Saint Jean, where the title was “La Construction de la Cathédrale.” The lights projected onto the façade first showed an architect’s hand sketching the plans, and then we watched it “being built.” All in all, it was just a wonderful festival, and I’m so glad I got to see it!

(You can read a little bit more about it and see some awesome pictures here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/8401011.stm)

Lyon is a beautiful and lively city with a lot going on – it used to produce a lot of silk, so it has some neat covered passageways called traboules that were used to transport the silk between buildings without exposing it to the elements. These same traboules also came in handy for the Résistance during WWII, as they could be used to smuggle people between buildings. On Sunday afternoon we visited the Centre d’Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation, an interesting museum dedicated to, oddly enough, the French Resistance during the German occupation of France during WWII and the deportation of Jews from France.

We were all also very glad to see that there was quite a sizeable Christmas Market, so we did a bit of wandering through there and I managed to buy some spices to make vin chaud, I think I’ll use them as a Christmas present!

I’m looking forward to this week and weekend, as I’m going back to the Maison de la Culture (where I saw Cendrillon) on Thursday night to see a show called “Tango Metropolis;” hopefully it’ll be good! Nevers’ Marché de Noël (which sadly only lasts 3 days) is this weekend, so I’m planning on going on both Friday and Sunday afternoons. Even if it’s not very big, it’ll be good to get me in the Christmas spirit! A group of us is going to Orléans for a day trip on Saturday, I’ll let you know how it goes!

I hope all is well with you, à bientôt!

Bec d'Allier, Cendrillon, and Thanksgiving

Dear friends,

I’ve had quite a great week since my last post – lots to talk about! To start with, I mentioned in my last post that a couple other assistants and I were going to take a walk to the Panorama du Bec d’Allier, the place where the Loire and Allier rivers meet, a little ways out of Nevers. We set off last Sunday afternoon for our weekly walk, knowing that this one would be a little longer than normal. When we left, the sky was blue and the weather was nice, just a little bit windy… After walking for about an hour and a half, we finally reached the Bec d’Allier, and I think we were all slightly underwhelmed, although we were glad it was another thing we could check off the list. About 5 minutes after we turned around to start back to Nevers, we started feeling light raindrops. We were all wearing scarves, so we wrapped them around our heads and continued walking – not too big of a deal yet! Over the next 45 minutes, however, the light rain turned into an icy, apocalyptic, torrential downpour that resulted in all 4 of us getting absolutely soaked to the bone and freezing. We were finally so miserable that we actually stopped at a random house (out in the middle of nowhere, of course) to ask them if we could come in and use their phone to call a taxi – mostly just because we wanted to get out of the rain! Of course, as soon as we stepped inside, the rain stopped and a double rainbow appeared – great. It ended up being an older couple living there, and the husband ended up driving us the rest of the way back to Nevers; it was so nice!! From the comfort of my warm and dry living room, our Bec d’Allier promenade was a hilarious adventure, but at the time it was pretty awful!

It turned out that my other Tuesday school wasn’t striking, so I still had to work, but at least I got an extra-long lunch break! On Tuesday night I went to Never’s Maison de la Culture with Lizzi and Tish, 2 other English assistants, to see Cendrillon (Cinderella). It was being performed by the Geneva Ballet, and I think it was the most interesting interpretation of Cinderella I’ve ever seen! Cinderella was an Asian woman, and instead of a Fairy Godmother she had 5 men wearing nothing but tighty-whities (with wings sequined across the butt), fluffy white socks, and glitter all over their chests…. It also ended with Cinderella topless on stage and the Prince wearing only a jock strap. Like I said, it was interesting! It was a much more modern interpretation than I was expecting, but I still really enjoyed it – and will be laughing about it for a long time!

I didn’t really do anything on Thursday to celebrate Thanksgiving, but we did have a big Thanksgiving dinner at my apartment on Friday night for 11 people – all the Nevers assistants (as well as some out-of-town friends) – it was a smashing success! As I believe I mentioned in my last post, we had ordered a turkey from a butcher shop in town. I called them on Thursday afternoon to confirm that we still had a turkey and that we could pick it up on Friday morning. The man told me that yes, it would be ready for pickup on Friday morning, but that maybe it was a little bit bigger than what I had requested (I’d ordered one between 5 and 6 kilos, or about 12-13 pounds). Exactly how big was it, I asked. He told me they only had one turkey, but that it was 9 kilograms – almost 20 pounds!! (It was also going to cost €90 – that’s like a $130 turkey, as a reference point) Because we neither needed a turkey that enormous nor had €90 to spend on one, we decided to scrap the “turkey-as-the-main-dish” idea and get a chicken instead. We still had turkey – 2 turkey tenderloins – and all was well! We also had sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, green salad, green beans, pumpkin pie, apple pie, and brownies. Everything was delicious, and it was really fun to share such a quintessential American holiday with our English, German, and Costa Rican friends.

Right now I’m looking forward to the next few weekends, as we have lots of fun things planned. Next weekend a few of us are off to Lyon for the weekend for the Fête des Lumières, then the Saturday after that we’re going to Orléans for the day, and then the next weekend our Christmas break starts! I’ll be spending Christmas with an aunt, uncle, and 2 cousins in Bedford, about an hour outside of London.

That’s really all the news I have for now, hope all is well avec vous!

A day in Beaune

Dear friends,

A group of 7 other assistants and I went to Beaune today, and it was amazing! 4 of us left Nevers at 7:23 this morning (it was a long day) and met the other 3 in Beaune. As I explained in my previous post, Beaune is already famous for wine, and every year it has a wine auction at the Hospices de Beaune, a really cool old building that was built in 1443 to serve as a hospital for soldiers wounded in the Hundred Years’ War. That wine auction is taking place this weekend, so tout le monde s’occupe du vin (everyone is all about wine)! We spent about an hour and a half exploring the quaint centre ville of Beaune before trekking 25 minutes through the rain to the Fete des Grands Vins de Bourgogne, a big wine exposition and tasting event (if that’s not dedication, I don’t know what is). For €24, we received a commemorative wine glass, a book with a list of all the wines to be found at the event, and unlimited tastings of any wine in the exposition – and there were over 3,000 different types of wine! It was in a big hall, and there were 14 different circular booths, each of which had many different wines, grouped by the communes in which the domaines (the wine houses, like the name on the label) are found. While I certainly didn’t love all the wines I tasted, I did find a few I really liked and would definitely consider buying at some point. We ended up staying for a few hours, and it was a wonderful way to pass a rainy Saturday afternoon!

In other news, Sarah and I had been having a lot of problems with our wifi in our apartment – it was going either really slowly or not at all, so I had to call the technical support line. I spent about 20 minutes on the phone with the technician, which was immensely more challenging en francais than it ever would have been in English! Luckily he was super-patient and even went through the process twice with us – once for my Mac, once for her PC. It all worked out well though, and now our wireless works perfectly! (Knock on wood for me, would you?!?)

I don’t have much other news à ce moment, I hope you all are well!

Armistice Day and 22 :)

Bonjour mes amis,

I have now been living in my wonderful 1970s apartment for over a full week, and I’m so happy to call it home! We’ve already taken advantage of the fully equipped kitchen to do some cooking and to host a dinner party, and we’re already planning our big Thanksgiving meal…

I haven’t done too terribly much since returning to Nevers from Liverpool; I’ve worked a few days, gone for a few runs, and turned 22! Two other assistants and I went to a Festival du Chocolat on Saturday afternoon (yes, it was as good as it sounds!), where we saw chocolatiers making chocolate and got to taste about 8 or 9 different chocolates… for free! There were also several chocolate sculptures, as well as a man who was painting white chocolate plates with different-colored chocolate “inks” – very neat. I also finally got around to watching Hiroshima Mon Amour this weekend – it’s a 1959 French film based on a novel of the same name by Marguerite Duras. It’s a rather bizarre film, but the main character in the movie is a French woman from Nevers (of all places!), so it was interesting to watch it and look for familiar places…

As you may have figured out from this blog, France is all about les jours fériés (national holidays, days when no one works and most things are closed)… Armistice Day (November 11) is a jour férié, so none of the assistants worked. This worked out rather well, as my 22nd birthday was on Tuesday, so we were able to have a big party in our apartment that night! We had a few assistant friends come from other towns and spend the night in Nevers, which wouldn’t have been possible if schools had been open as scheduled on Wednesday. It was a great birthday, and it was wonderful to get everyone together and celebrate.

I’ve started doing tutoring sessions with Guillaume, the 16-year old high school student whose mother teaches at one of my schools. It’s not too much work – he mostly wants to focus on improving his spoken English, so we just chat for an hour, which I enjoy.

A big group of assistants is going to Beaune, a town about 2 hours away from Nevers by train, on Saturday. The town is famous for wine and its annual wine auction, held in November at the Hospices de Beaune. Luckily for us, the auction this year is this coming weekend, and the town becomes all about wine for the weekend. We’re going to spend the morning exploring the centre ville before heading to an exposition du vin, which features tastings of more than 3,000 wines! Even though I’ve already been to Beaune twice before, I’m really looking forward to Saturday – it’s always fun to visit places when they’re doing what they do best, which, in the case of Beaune, is wine!

I have to go to Dijon on Monday for my mandatory medical exam, which all non-EU citizens must have in order to get our carte de séjour, which allows us to legally stay in France for periods longer than a few months. It’s rather inconvenient that we have to go all the way to Dijon (which is 2-3 hours away from Nevers, depending on which train you get) on our own dollar (or euro) WHILE missing work, but I guess it’s just what has to be done.

I hope you all are well, à bientôt!

Liverpool and INTERNET!

Dear friends,

I’m back in Nevers after a great week in Liverpool, which I found to be a really fun city and really enjoyed. It’s a big city, but it has a very manageable city center and it’s a good place for wandering, something I always like. Because Kathryn (the cousin I visited there) had class during the day while I was there, I had plenty of time to see the sights, and I think I managed to get through quite a few – I saw the Albert Docks, the Tate Liverpool museum, The Beatles Story museum (The Beatles came from Liverpool!), the Victoria Gallery, the Walker Art Gallery, Lark Lane and Sefton Park, the Anglican Cathedral, the Catholic Cathedral, a really cute nearby town called Chester, the Merseyside Maritime Museum, and we also went to see a play (The Black Album) and a ballet (Giselle)! I managed to spend an entire week in England in which it only rained on my last night there, something I wasn’t sure was possible and which I think should count as a real achievement.

Liverpool is in the northwest of England, and it has historically been a big port city. It had lots of shipyards back in the day, and so lots of Irish people moved there to work on building the ships. The influence of this migration is still easily found today in the Liverpudlian accent, which I personally think should count as an entirely different language. Liverpudlians (or Scouses, as they’re also known) have a VERY strong accent, to the point that I often had trouble discerning if they were speaking English at all, much less understanding them! They seem to be generally friendly and laid-back though, although the 80s could learn a thing or two about how to tease hair from Scouse girls – I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much super-teased hair in one place in my whole life!

More seriously though, Liverpool is a lovely city with lots of pretty architecture, tons of free museums, and many different neighborhoods, all with their own personalities. I spent my first day exploring the area around the Albert Dock, a section of the Liverpool docks that’s been spruced up and now has all sorts of museums (like the Tate Liverpool, The Beatles Story, and the Merseyside Maritime Museum), restaurants, and shopping. It was really nice weather that day, so it was very pleasant to spend the afternoon down by the Mersey (that’s the river that goes through Liverpool, from which all the ships were launched).

Not only did I go to The Beatles Story museum at the Albert Dock, but I also got to see several true Beatles landmarks. While the real Cavern Club, where the Beatles played 294 shows, has been torn down, I walked past where the original entrance was and saw the bar they used to frequent before and after their shows there. I saw the hospital where John Lennon was born (it’s since been converted into a block of apartments), as well as the real Penny Lane! It’s really not a very exciting street at all, but the City of Liverpool has to specially bolt down (and replace!) the street signs there because Beatles fans steal them all the time! Kathryn and I also went for a drink in the Philharmonic Bar, a really cool old pub near the Philharmonic Hall – John Lennon used to go there as well.

Liverpool has two cathedrals, one Anglican and one Catholic, and they actually face each other – they’re at two ends of the same road – interesting, non? I visited both of them, and they’re like night and day. The Anglican Cathedral is absolutely massive (I think it’s one of the biggest Anglican cathedrals in Europe, if not the biggest) and really beautiful, both inside and out. It was designed by the same guy who designed the famous red phone boxes, and I think you can see the resemblance if you look closely enough at the two and think about it. The Catholic Cathedral, on the other hand, is very interesting. It was built in the 1960s, and it really shows. It’s circular and built of concrete, and it kind of looks like a spaceship or something out of Star Wars – you should Google it; it’s really hard to explain. It has a lot of stained glass though, which makes for some really cool light effects inside during the day.

Over the weekend, Kathryn, her flatmate Nina, and I went to Chester, a nearby town, for the morning. It was a really darling little town – there was an open-air market when we went (honestly, it was kind of like being back in France), and we spent the morning wandering through the half-timbered town center and browsing through some of the stores there.
In addition to all the museums I visited, we added a bit of culture to my trip by going to both the theater and the ballet. We got free youth tickets to see a play called The Black Album, which was about an English Pakistani who goes off to university and gets caught up with a group of Islamic fundamentalists, who disapprove of the romantic affair he’s begun with one of his professors. I’m pretty sure I missed some things, but it was interesting, and I enjoyed it. We went to see the English National Ballet perform Giselle on Sunday afternoon – I’d never been to a ballet before, and it was beautiful – I loved it! It made me really excited for Cendrillon (Cinderella), performed by the Geneva Ballet, which a group of us are going to see here in Nevers in a few weeks.

I left Liverpool early Tuesday morning, spent a few hours in Paris, then got the train back to Nevers. Moritz, a friend and fellow language (German) assistant, was on the same train as me, so it was a nice surprise to have some company for the 2-hour trip.

Sarah and I moved into our new apartment on Tuesday afternoon as well, so it was a very busy afternoon, getting all my stuff from the Foyer to the new place. I wish I could describe my new apartment to you all and do it justice, but I think I’ll just have to wait until I get a camera so I can take some pictures – it’s actually like you step back in time about 35 years. Every room has different wallpaper, and calling it vintage is putting it nicely. It’s super funky, and I’m pretty sure the carpet is also original (needless to say, I won’t be going barefoot). I really do like it though – it’s totally furnished and tout équipé (completely fitted-out) with everything we’ll need for the 6 months we have left – an oven, a microwave, all kinds of kitchen utensils, a vacuum, an iron and ironing board, even a TV!

About 5 minutes before I posted this, Sarah and I finally got our internet sorted out - I'm honestly like a kid on Christmas morning, bouncing around and doing all sorts of internet-y things! At first we thought there was a problem with our phone line, then I realized that the neufbox (our wireless router) wasn't actually plugged into the phone jack.. Clearly we're very intelligent!

That’s all for now, sorry for the monster post – j’espère que tout va bien avec vous!

October break!

Bonjour mes amis!

Well, I made it through my first 2 weeks of work and was rewarded with a 12-day vacation! I don’t have to be back at work until November 5, so I’m taking advantage of the break to go visit one of my cousins for a week in Liverpool, where she’s currently in dental school. I’m not leaving until Tuesday, so until then I’m bumming around Nevers, packing up and cleaning my apartment. Sarah (one of the German assistants) and I are moving into our new apartment on November 3 – the day we get back from break – so I have lots to do before I leave! I lied about being done with French administrative formalities; now that I’m moving, there are tons of things to be signed and taken care of… We’re currently working on getting internet set up for the apartment, so hopefully it will be set up and installed shortly after we move in! As you can imagine, getting internet in France is quite a long and involved process, as are most things. We first had to go to France Telecom to get our phone line opened (I honestly do not understand why this needs to be done), then had to go back to SFR (another phone company) to start the ordeal of ordering our Neufbox, which is basically our internet box/wireless router. It’ll be really nice when it’s all set up, because the Neufbox comes with a phone line, and as part of our €30 monthly fee, we get free calls to landline AND mobile numbers in the US – in addition to wifi, of course! I'm not pleased, however, that I received a text message from SFR this morning saying that our order for internet had been received and is being processed and that the "delai de mise en service est de 21 jours environ" - it could take up to 21 days for our internet to start working!!

Work has been going pretty well, although the kids were pretty wild this week because it was almost break. In almost all of my classes I talked about Halloween and how it’s celebrated in the US – we talked about costumes and trick-or-treating and learned words like “witch,” “ghost,” and “skeleton.” I also got to carve pumpkins the other day in one of my classes! I’m pretty sure it would NEVER be allowed in the US, but the teacher had told the kids to bring in spoons and knives (to empty and then carve the pumpkins, of course) to school. It was a fun Friday afternoon activity, and although I was terrified that someone was going to lose a finger, we managed to successfully carve 2 pumpkins without any injuries!

I’m going to be tutoring a high school student in English while I’m here in Nevers – he’s the son of one of the teachers at one of my écoles primaires. On Thursday night Madame Billot picked me up in town and brought me to her house to meet Guillaume (yes, his name is actually Guillaume) and the rest of the family. They’re really nice, and I’m excited to start working with them after the break (and to start earning a little bit of extra money!).

[Finally] Starting work!

Dear friends,

I started work on Monday, and I can already tell that this year will be something to remember! First of all, the French school system is VERY different from the American system, and French children are actually quite different from American kids as well. Even though I’ve only been in the French school system for two days, I’m already starting to see where the French bureaucracy and national obsession to detail comes from… Or maybe I’m seeing the result of French bureaucracy and a national obsession to detail – either way, it’s very interesting. Today, for example, I was in a CE2 (Cours Elémentaire 2 – the students are about 8 years old) English class at one of my schools. We were working on asking “getting-to-know-you” questions like “What’s your name?,” “Where are you from?,” etc., so the teacher asked them to make a table so they could record the responses of their classmates. I kid you not, every single one of the nineteen kids in the class got RULERS out of their pencil cases to draw their tables. I’ve also never seen a French person underline something freehand – they always get a straight edge or another piece of paper so as to be able to draw a perfectly straight line. Quelle absurdité!

I am also learning that certain phrases, which I always knew to be uniquement et typiquement français, are learned and utilized from a VERY young age. If you were to ask me for the two most typical French phrases, I would respond with 1) “C’est pas grave!” and 2) “Ah bah oui!!” If you spend any amount of time in France, I can guarantee that you will hear both of these phrases several times a day. In the past few days, I have heard 6-8 year-old French children saying both of these, something I find absolutely hilarious.

But a bit more about my actual job, now that I’ve started and can give you a more accurate idea of what I’ll be doing for approximately 10 hours each week (as I posted previously, they’re having trouble getting me to a “full” 12 hours…) I’ve been assigned to work in 4 elementary schools in Nevers, so my time has been split into 2 halves, and I’m working in 2 schools (Ecole de Mouesse and Ecole Claude Tillier) from now until mid-January and then in the other 2 schools (Ecole Jean Macé and Ecole Brossolette) from mid-January until the end of April. From what I’ve done so far, it seems that my job will consist mostly of working with small groups of students (about 4 at a time), playing games and reading stories – en anglais, bien sûr! According to one of the teachers, the kids always love the English assistants, because they never have to do anything with them but play games!! I also get to put together mini-lesson plans about American culture – for example, I have to put something together on how American children celebrate Halloween for my CE1 (Cours Elémentaire 1 – the students are about 7 years old) class next week. All in all, I think it’ll be quite enjoyable, although I have been warned that there can be some discipline problems in the schools to which I’ve been assigned. They’re all classified as ZEPs (Zones d’Education Prioritaire), which basically means that the kids come from more economically disadvantaged homes. Luckily discipline and punishment is not under my realm of responsibility, so I’m not too worried!

The other assistants and I have been trying to make the most of our time in Nevers and in France, so we’ve been doing all sorts of things we maybe wouldn’t do at home – especially if they’re free! On Monday night, for example, I went with 3 other girls to a dance class for which one of the British assistants had seen a flyer in town. When we walked in, we quickly realized that we were easily the youngest people there by about 30 years… We stayed for the whole hour and danced the cha-cha with old French men – I think we were all just trying to keep a straight face most of the time! (Making the story even better: all 4 of us were taller than about half the men there, something they weren’t shy to point out.) While I don’t think I’ll be going back, it’s definitely an experience I’ll remember (and laugh about!) for a LONG time!

I only have 6 days of work until my first vacation starts, when I’ll be going to Liverpool to visit my cousin for a week. Until then, a few of us are going to Bourges, a town about 45 minutes away, on Saturday – I don’t think I'll be trying to find any parks this time!

A bientôt!

Clermont-Ferrand

Bonjour mes amis!

Yesterday a group of 6 of us (4 English and 2 German assistants) went to Clermont-Ferrand for the day. Our train was supposed to leave at 8:57AM (it’s about an hour and a half from Nevers), but I think there were some strikes (or “perturbations,” as the SNCF likes to call them) in the system, so our train was delayed 30 minutes, and we didn’t end up leaving until 9:30. I think we were all slightly sad to think we could have slept for 30 more minutes! We arrived in Clermont-Ferrand, which is in the Auvergne region, south of Burgundy, around 11:15 and headed in to the centre ville, which was about a 15-minute walk from the train station. Clermont-Ferrand is situated in a chain of extinct volcanoes, so it’s really hilly, and we had to do a lot of walking up and down some pretty steep collines (hills)! Its location in an extinct volcanic range also means that it has some very distinct architecture – the main cathedral in town, Cathedrale de Notre Dame de l’Assomption, is built out of black volcanic rock. Because the rock is so much lighter (because of the air bubbles in it), it means they could build the cathedral higher than with regular stone. Its huge size, coupled with the fact that it’s jet-black, makes the cathedral pretty imposing!

Although I’d heard from several French people that Clermont-Ferrand is an industrial town (Michelin is based there and they have a tire factory there), it had a very pleasant centre ville with some pretty places and lots of impressive statues. In the Place de la Victoire, for example, where the cathedral is located, there’s a big statue of Pope Urban II, who actually launched one of the Crusades from Clermont!

Clermont-Ferrand was originally two separate cities, Clermont and Montferrand, but they were combined in 1630 by an edict – Clermont definitely got the better end of the deal! We took the tram out to Montferrand (it took about 10 minutes) and explored for a bit – not that there was much to explore, it’s very small!!

As I said above, the main cathedral in Clermont-Ferrand is very tall, and you can climb up to the top for a great view of the city and the surrounding mountains. We climbed to the top, which was 252 steps (!), but the view was gorgeous!

After we climbed the cathedral, one of the other assistants and I decided we wanted to walk out to the Parc de Montjuzet, which was recommended in both of our guidebooks – it’s on the outskirts of the city and at the top of a pretty steep hill, and both books said that it was “perfectly manicured” and offered amazing views of the city and cathedral. Let’s Go France 2009, my guidebook, claimed that it was a “15 minute walk northwest of the cathedral.” This, however, turned out to be a blatant lie, and I no longer trust the walking times quoted in the book, as it turned out to be approximately a 35-minute hike up a VERY steep hill. By the time we got to the park, it was already time that we needed to turn around to get back to the train station to catch the train back to Nevers. It turns out that we were actually a bit further away than we thought we were, and we ended up having to full-out sprint through the streets of Clermont-Ferrand to make it back to the station in time. We got on the train with about 2.5-3 minutes to spare; it was very distressing! Even with that traumatic experience, it was a great little day trip, and I’m looking forward to our excursion to Bourges next weekend.

I finally start work tomorrow, so I’ll be observing my first class at the Ecole de Mouesse tomorrow afternoon! I’m mostly excited, but also slightly nervous, because I don’t really know what to expect!