seasons greetings

from Paris! I am here a night early in order to meet Al's plane early tomorrow morning. I'm excited to see a familiar face and celebrate Christmas here. Then we're off to Cologne in Germany for a few days to stay with someone Al knows, and finally off to Amsterdam for New Year's Eve. I have much more to say about my trip to Bretagne and all that, but I'll do that later when I have more time and I'm not paying for the Internet. Have a wonderful Christmas and a great start to 2006!

Break, Take One

Alright, off we go. A brief recap of my Christmas break.

The first weekend of vacation I went to Caen to hang out with my friends there for a few days. Nothing too crazy, but fun as always. It was a weekend filled with Star Ac., food, shopping, and my favorite fellow assistants, Jen, Karina, and Natalie. Sunday I headed back to Carentan early because I was invited to a Christmas party at the house of an American couple I met through the Anglophones club. A crazy mix of Brits, Frenchies, and randoms-all in all a good time. Got to see their house, which is fantastic, partake in a little Christmas spirit, and talk with a nice French couple who ended up sitting next to me.

Tuesday I was up early and off to Bretagne, or Brittany as we say in English. I had visited some of Bretagne when I came to France in high school, and I decided to head back while I had some free time. I started out in Saint Malo, which is a beautiful seaside town on the English Channel. The oldest part of the city, Intra Muros (inner walls) is surrounded by ramparts, and I found it to be gorgeous and quite cozy, even in December. Since I was traveling alone, I spent the first day on my own walking on the beach, around the ramparts, and in town. It was fun and relaxing, and the way the town was decorated really put me in the Christmas spirit. When I went back to the hostel that night, I met my roommate, Dulce, who is from Mexico. She recently finished high school and decided to come spend a year in France, and was also traveling in Bretagne for the first week of her break. After talking, we realized that we had both planned on heading to a nearby city, Dinan, the next day, so we decided to go together.

Dinan ended up being even more charming than I had expected. I decided to go there because of the things I had heard about it from Michele, un francais who works as an academic advisor at UM. It is supposedly the best preserved medieval city in Bretagne, and it didn't disappoint. The houses were...quaint (I can't think of a better word), the streets curvy and narrow, and there were artisans every 50 feet or so. Dulce and I had a lot of fun wandering around, peering in windows, and admiring the architecture. We once had to stop and laugh at a new house that was being built, in the same crooked, old looking style as the medieval buildings around it. I guess you can't have something modern in the middle of all the oldness. We ended our day with a delicious Breton galette de ble noir (kind of like a crepe, but savory, and with darker flour) and then headed back to Saint Malo.

Thursday morning Dulce and I parted ways-she left for Mt. St. Michel, and I was off to Rennes for the day. Rennes was not was I had expected-bigger and grittier than I would have liked. I was expecting the old world charm of St. Malo and Dinan, and in a city the size of Rennes, I guess it's just not possible. It had its nice parts, but I still prefer the other two cities. The shopping, however, was a bit better in Rennes, so I spent my time there wandering in and out of various shops, enjoying the local color, and taking in a bit of Christmas spirit. All in all, I had a wonderful time in Bretagne, and it reminded me why I wanted to return to this part of France. Highly recommended to anyone who's looking to glimpse a bit of French life beyond Paris.

P.S. I just remembered-I was reading a bit of Natalie's journal (courtesy of a link on Karina's site) and she wrote "no, I still don't live in Paris. There ARE other cities in France." Thank you, Natalie. It always amazes me how I can repeatedly tell people "I live in Normandy" or "I studied in Grenoble" and the question immediately following always goes something like "So how you live in Paris?" or "How do you like living in Paris?" There is more, much more, to France than Paris. Asking me about Paris is like asking me about New York when I tell you I live in Michigan. Just in case you were wondering. :)

love from michigan

This morning I was getting ready for school when my doorbell rang. It was about 9 a.m. and I couldn't think of who it could be. I started for the door thinking it might be the other English assistant stopping by on her way to the train station, because that was the only thing I could think of. Then as I was walking down the stairs I heard an engine and realized it must be the mail lady! Yes, my life here is sad enough that I know the sound of the mail lady's truck. So I skipped down the last few steps and, sure enough, there she was with my package from home. Except she caught me by surprise because she said "I have two packages for you" and pulled two big boxes from her truck. I was expecting one, and that had me pretty excited, but two?!? I quickly signed and took them from her, and as I walked back up the steps I followed my usual mail routine. "Who's it from?" is always first-the first one was from, as I expected, my mom, and the other from Miss Daisy Danao herself. How wonderful is she? The name check is always followed by the content check (ok, so I cheat a little, but come on, did you really think that the declaration form was just for the customs people?) Looked like exciting Christmas goodies all around. The final thing is the date check, and both packages made it over in less than 7 business days. Quite impressive-the post must be picking it up for the holidays. They never fail to impress, especially since at least two cards have made it here on U.S. 37cent stamps as opposed to the 80cent ones they're supposed to have. Shoot, Eva's card made it to China with a 37cent stamp 5 years ago, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Anyhow, I had to finish getting ready for school and didn't have time to give both packages the proper mail opening attention, so I decided they'd have to wait. Which makes me remember, what am I doing here? I have two packages waiting for me at home!!

telephones, soup and guacamole

in no particular order are what's on my mind these days. For those that I haven't already complained to, I had been waiting (quite literally) several months to have a phone line installed, only to find out a few days before my appointment that the contract had a minimum of a year, or a rather hefty fine (I just tried to spell that phine-how am I teaching English again?). So needless to say I got out of that right quick, and after a few more weeks of calling from phone booths I'm considering just getting a cell phone for my last four months here. So I have a feeling my weekend in Caen will include some cell phone bargain hunting-wish me luck.

Yesterday, like all Mondays, I had the day off. After spending some time on the computers at school I was on my way to the market to get some carrots for my potato soup when I ran into Paul, one half of the American couple I met through a club I joined here. He and his wife Arlette retired here from California almost four years ago. He was on his way to meet his Australian friend Warren for a drink, and invited me to join them. Turns out Warren was a humanities professor in an Australian university when he decided to give it up and start traveling the world. He was, among other things, a leathersmith in Mallorca, and eventually ended up marrying and settling down here in Normandy. You never know what sort of interesting people you'll meet along the way, eh?

I'm at school for a little longer, then I have to head home and start eating because somehow I've accumulated more fruit and cookies than you can shake a stick at, and I've got to clear some room for the ones I know are on the way from my maman. Happy eating to me!

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas...

The "illuminations" around town have finally been turned on, and I have to say they do know how to do Christmas around here. But maybe that's because what I'm comparing to is the huge, awful hand-me-down lights along the St. Clair River every year. (sorry, but they're ugly!) So far, I've found Christmas here to be more traditional, which is to say that it's not as commercial and removed from the "true meaning," so to speak, as home. Don't get me wrong, I like presents, but I can see that here the presents are part of the celebration instead of being the celebration, and I have to say I rather like it.

This weekend was full of beginning of Christmas fun. Early Saturday morning I left for Nancy via Paris. Before I left I realized I had a two-hour gap in Paris, and after studying the map a bit I realized I had just enough time to make another of my Christmas wishes come true-I went to see the animated windows at Printemps!!! A few weeks ago, I was watching the news and they showed the new window decorations at Printemps, a big department store in Paris. Now I've never spent Christmas in a big city, and especially not a European city, so these windows were something I had always imagined but never seen. Basically, some professional comes in and creates moving window displays-kind of like a looping puppet show. This year the theme in Britain, and so the windows all have something to do with that, and all the little guys in the animations are made out of socks (I'm not sure why). It's just one of those things that, for me, makes Christmas seem a bit more magical and fairy-tale like, and there were crowds of people there watching them, so being part of it all really felt kind of cool.

After spending some time in the stores, I got on a train for Nancy. Steph met me at the train station and after a few hours at her place, we headed downtown to the St. Nicholas fireworks with some of her roommates. Because Nancy is in Northeastern France, in a region known as Lorraine, and so close to Germany, they celebrate Christmas in some of the more traditional Germanic ways, which includes celebrating St. Nicholas Day. The fireworks in Nancy were set up in Place Stanislas, a square in the middle of town surrounded by stately buildings that house the town hall and a disco, among other things. The fireworks were set up over one of the buildings, and laser lights illustrating the story of St. Nicholas were projected onto others. Overall, we decided that French fireworks are a bit more elegant than American ones, considering most American fireworks I've seen involved shooting a bunch of random stuff off in no specific order. These fireworks were mostly white and floaty, and were timed to go along with the story and the music of the whole thing. At one point, St. Nicholas appeared above the crowd, except because of the size of the building they had to put him in a crane, covered with fabric to reveal it's true crane-ness, of course. This amused me and frightened me all at the same time. After the fireworks we headed to a club in town where we danced until closing time at 2 a.m. Needless to say, the next morning we weren't moving very quickly.

We made it back downtown in time for the St. Nicholas parade, Because our position wasn't great and it looked like a pretty typical parade, though, Steph gave into my desire to wander through the Christmas market. It actually looked quite a lot like the market I went to in Caen-little wooden huts filled with people selling scarves, jewelry, Christmas goods and food. Since I wasn't really shopping for Christmas presents, I wasn't completely into it, but I did have an absolutely delicious creme de marron beignet (chestnut creme doughnut), contemplating the entire time how I could make my own with the chestnut jam Evan left me. After we made it back just in time to watch St. Nicholas pass, we started on our way to the creperie where we were meeting Steph's roommate Ailsa for her birthday dinner. We had a fantastic meal (with a dinner and dessert crepe, of course) and headed back just in time to get caught in the rain. Nothing a little tea and an American film couldn't remedy though.

Monday it was back to Carentan, and now it's just another week of teaching and whatnot. On my way to school this morning I caught a glimpse of one of my students through the window, and he got this huge grin on his face and gave me a huge wave hello. So cute.

I'm about to post some new pictures on my site, so check there soon!

lost in translation

It's crazy windy today. Last night on the news they said that we could winds of up to 130 km/hr today. Luckily my little apartment can take a little wind.

I'm supposed to be in class right now, but it was cancelled. I guess that's a good thing because in both of my classes this morning I talked about the death penalty and that just about did me in. That's a pretty complicated issue, hard to explain in a country where it doesn't exist, and even harder to explain in a non-native language. Plus, I think my students still don't understand that while the US is a country, it's made up of lots of different states with their own governments that can make their own laws. Just that one bit of information makes a lot of difference, and I don't like talking about issues that have so many layers I can't really explain to them. On that topic, though, did you know that Michigan was the first English-speaking government in the world to ban the death penalty? This was over 158 years ago. According to one of my students, it was only banned here by de Gaulle after WWII. I haven't checked if that's accurate, but if so, give me a break kids-my government got rid of it long before yours, so don't try to make me feel guilty! Oh, and just one note about where miscommunication can really lead: when I was checking the news this morning, I saw an article saying that in the US this morning the 1000th prisoner was killed under the death penalty (that is a really difficult sentence to phrase-how would you say that in English?). This is since the death penalty was declared legal again in 1976. Well, my explanation wasn't quite clear because at first my students thought I was saying 1000 prisoners were killed today (and just today) under the death penalty. Luckily I caught it and set it straight-whewee would that be a bad impression of the States.

Tomorrow I'm getting on a train to Nancy, to visit my friend and fellow assistant Stephanie, also a fellow Michigander. Nancy is in the Northeast of France, about an hour from Germany, so I think that in a car it would only take about 3-4 hours to get there. Since the tracks only run certain routes, though, I have to go back through Paris and my journey will take a lovely 7 hours. It's okay, though, because it will be fun and different, and we're going to the Christmas market there this weekend. I'm really excited about this, since I've wanted to go to one ever since one of my favorite former roomies Emily told me about the ones she went to in Germany a few years ago. My expectations are pretty high, so hopefully it lives up to legend. :)

Time to finish-my brain's tired!

still gobbling

My Thanksgiving weekend in Caen was, in a word, fantastic. I had three dinners that weekend, and I have to say that all of them were pretty darn good. The first wasn't a traditional Thanksgiving dinner (I'm pretty sure that the French don't understand what it's all about...) as they opened with gospel songs and there were Christmas napkins on the tables. Still, the food, though not real Thanksgiving nosh, was still tasty, and the company was great, so I had fun. The next night we had a real Thanksgiving feast at Natalie and Shannon's, complete with two turkeys, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberries, and pumpkin pie. It was amazing, and even the Brits and Frenchies in attendance enjoyed themselves. On Saturday, we had a day of rest, except that Jen and I went to Kristina and Charlie's (see previous post on horseriding) to make pumpkin pie and watch rugby. The next day, Sunday, we had another Thanksgiving feast, this time with chicken, but still extremely delicious. Once again, all the Brits and Frenchies in attendance (more of them, and all different ones, actually) enjoyed themselves. So my Thanksgiving weekend was a definite success, though I have to say I wish I hadn't missed the usual all-out feast at my house, or the leftovers!! No turkey sandwiches for me this year...

I only have one class today, so I'm already done. I have a few errands to do, and I also need to figure out some stuff for Christmas break, since I found out last week that Big Al Speck is coming to visit! Exciting news.

Check out my pictures page soon for Thanksgiving photos!