Celebrating St. Lucia, Visiting St. Malo, and Being Grateful to the Saints for Efficient Bureaucracy.

This is going to be pretty quick, as I am in the midst of packing for my Christmas adventures which (fingers crossed) involve me leaving tomorrow and going to Wales. The Eurostar had a nice little breakdown earlier this week due to a snow storm (one serious to actually let some snow stick in Rennes!), but it seems as if it’ll be back to normal tomorrow.

Last Tuesday I went into Rennes for one of the other assistant’s St. Lucia’s day celebration. I was a big fan of this plan, both because Kirsten was my favorite American Girl Doll in my youth and she celebrated St. Lucia’s day and because I like to ignore the 75% of my heritage that is German and instead focus on the small bit of Scandinavian in me. We drank apple cider and ate sweet rolls (reminded me of all my boller in Norway!) and chatted about the upcoming holidays. It was a lovely holiday gathering!

Friday was a very exciting day, as I finally (FINALLY) finished up the last of my requirements for my French Visa to be official. I’m now legally allowed to leave the country and come back, which is excellent timing as I’ll be leaving the country in just a few days. I had to go to the Office of Immigration and Integration for a medical visit. All of us in Brittany are lucky, as people in other academies had to go to several offices, while we only had one stop. I was expecting that this would be a full days outing with lots of complications and many missing forms and great confusion. In anticipation for this, I arrived almost an hour early, although I didn’t actually expect them to do anything with me that early. Much to my surprise, they only needed four things from me (my letter that gave my appointment time, my passport, a copy of my lease, and a passport photo), and they started with me about five minutes after I arrived. They checked to make sure I’d gotten all my shots, made sure I wasn’t going too overboard with the bread and cheese, gave me my height in meters (1.76, I think it was), and then shuttled me off to another area for my chest x-ray. I’d also heard horror stories about how you had to walk down a hall practically naked for this chest x-ray (which would not surprise me at all), but this was not the case. You went from the changing room to the x-ray room, where there was just a doctor, and you even got to keep your jeans on. After that, I actually had to wait about five minutes for my personal visit with the doctor, and that was the longest I’d had to wait all day. The doctor informed me that I did not have tuberculosis (which is good, because if I DID, I’ve already exposed hundreds of French students to it), listened to me breathe, took my blood pressure, and then sent me back to the main desk, where I got a nifty little paper and sticker to put in my passport. Voila! The whole process took less than an hour. It was efficient by US standards, which is absolutely amazing for French standards.

I had decided it was time for a day trip this weekend, especially since I had four days with nothing to do before my departure to the UK. So on Saturday I headed for Saint-Malo with Lauren. Saint-Malo is a coastal town north of Rennes, and it was absolutely beautiful. The region got a bunch (read: two inches) of snow on Friday, so everything looked very Christmassy. We took the train up and then walked to the old city (the new city is outside the walls, as they discovered that walls are not conducive to cars), which is still walled. Unlike Avignon’s walls, you can walk on top of Saint-Malo’s and look at the ocean. It’s a very popular place in the summer as the city is surrounded by nice beaches. We spent the day walking around the walls, wandering the streets, eating a DELICIOUS lunch of a chèvre salad, lamb with mashed potatoes, and a chocolate crêpe for dessert, and stopping in at several cafés and any cute shops. They also had a Marché de Noël just outside the walls, and we had some mulled wine there while browsing. We stumbled across Père Noël, who was handing out candy to the kids. There was also a group of Guadeloupians (or at least, I assumed they were Guadeloupians as they had sashes that said Guadeloupe on them) dancing, singing, and playing the drums hanging around. It was a lovely day, and while I’d love to go into more details, it is currently 8:33PM, I have to hop on a bus at 7:12AM tomorrow, and no, I’m not done packing yet. So, I leave you with a picture of the lovely Saint-Malo, and I’ll be back after Christmas with a hopefully more substantial update.

Joyeux Noël!

Weather, Work, Winter Solstice, and Wanderings

Weather: The sun just came out yesterday for the first time in two weeks. I wish I were exaggerating. The second of the two weeks was particularly miserable since there was never ending rain. I never thought of myself as someone who minded rain or weather all that much. When we first got our school assignments, a lot of other assistants were complaining about the weather in Brittany. I rolled my eyes and generally felt superior because really, if I could get through 3.5 winters in Wisconsin and another 18 in Chicago, surely some rain wouldn’t bother me. These worrywarts were clearly a bunch of southern wimps who had no idea how bad cold could get or what a real Midwestern winter was like.

Yeah.

Maybe I’m just going soft, but I will now officially state that I was very, very wrong and that everyone else whining about the weather was right. I never think of Chicago or Milwaukee being sunny—you want sun, you go to Provence—but I have since revised that opinion. You do not usually go more than a day or two without at least seeing some sun. And when the windchill is forty below, at least you have sun to look at. Not so, here. Here, even if it doesn’t usually dip below freezing, there is rain, more rain, mist, fog, and then even more rain. Anyway, thankfully the sun is back and hopefully it’ll stick around for a day or two.

In other weather news, we had a fantastic weather diversion about a week and a half ago with the presence of snow. Everyone, everyone, told me that it never snowed in Brittany. Rain, cold, yes. Snow, no. Well, they lied, because there were some definite snow flurries. I was thrilled by this, much preferring snow to rain. I went off to school as normal, quite cheered up by the Christmassy weather. I arrived at school to find that there were pretty much no students.

No, not another grève. Instead, all the school buses had been canceled due to the snow (and at this point no snow had even stuck to the ground!). More than half of the school uses the school buses to get there, so there went that half. And, in the wonderful solidarity the French share, when half the school can’t get there, everyone else decides to stay home, too. My first class had no students, my next class had one, and my last class was canceled because the professor couldn’t make it. You see, in addition to the school bus people being terrified to drive, so was the rest of the region. I had been warned that when it snowed, people didn’t go out, and it turns out that was completely true. It wasn’t exactly necessary that day, but the next day there was actually the thinnest layer of snow on the ground, which had fallen over night and not melted! Naturally, the school buses were canceled again. In all fairness to the French, the area is really not at all equipped to deal with snow, even just the slightest bit. They hadn’t plowed or salted the roads (or the sidewalks, which led to me almost killing myself as I tried to walk into school). I actually had a few students in my first two classes that day, but no one showed for the last one. During a fifteen minute break in the middle of the day there was some more snow falling, and it also managed to stick to the ground for a full, oh, ten minutes before it melted. The students immediately took advantage of this by having a snowball fight outside during the break. I felt bad that they had to scrape the ground to get up enough snow to make a snowball, but they didn’t seem too bothered by it.

Work: As a combination of the snow, exams that were going on a few weeks ago (it was the end of the trimester), and various other things going on this week, I have had a lot of classes canceled lately. Shocker, I know. I’m getting a bit frustrated about how much I don’t get to work, especially because I’ve discovered that I absolutely love teaching high schoolers. I taught a class Monday morning on one of my personal favorite Christmas songs, “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.” The class first had to fill in the blanks on a worksheet with the lyrics, while listening to the song a couple times. They were singing along with the song by the second time through, which made my heart happy. We then went over some of the harder constructions and the occasional tricky word before I put them in pairs. They had to write a dialogue between a child who wants a hippo for Christmas and a parent, and then each group performed it for the class. They got quite creative with the dialogues (one girl’s rationale for needing a hippo was that her dear pet crocodile had just died), and I had a great time watching them. Even better, their regular teacher told me yesterday that they absolutely loved the lesson. That was easily the highlight of my week. Now if I could just once work all of the hours I’m supposed to in a week!

Winter Solstice Markets: This section is actually about Christmas Markets, but Christmas doesn’t start with a ‘w’ so for the sake of consonance, and, more specificially, alliteration (awww yeah, who paid attention in English class in HS?), we’re going with Winter Solstice.

The Marchés de Noël opened at the beginning of December, and this week I had a chance to explore them a bit. One reminded me a lot of the St. Nick’s Bazaar at St. Gertrude’s, with lots of people selling jewelry, knickknacks, incense, delicious looking chocolate covered fruits, and, of course, lots of food. I had a delicious galette saucisse, a slightly-less delicious tartine jambon et raclette (too dry and too salty), and, best of all, some tartiflette. Tartiflette is a delicious concoction that consists of potatoes, butter, onions, small pieces of ham, and probably some more butter. The portions of tartiflette are huge, so I brought a bunch back with me and will be enjoying it as a side for my dinners for the rest of the week.

The other Marché de Noël in Rennes is at Place de la Mairie, and it was clearly the more expensive of the two markets. They had artists doing demonstrations, but I was scared to get too close to anything, because the prices were so outrageous. I did not want to be the one responsible for breaking a €300 piece of pottery just to get a glimpse of the potter at work. Though there were some very pretty pieces of jewelry and such, they were all far out of my budget.

Wandering: I decided this week that it was time to forego a Saturday morning run in lieu of a Saturday in the city. Yesterday I returned to the Marché des Lices, which is the only place I’ve found that has romaine lettuce regularly, and while I was there I picked up some Kouign Amman, because I couldn’t resist (I have since discovered that the name, which is in Breton, translates literally to butter cake). I then talked Adriana, the Spanish assistant, into going back to the tea house I was at last time. One of these days I’m going to splurge on some loose leaf tea from them, because it’s amazing.

From there we did a lot of wandering. We stopped by the Marchés de Noël, entertained ourselves in a kitchen store (I so want to own everything in that store, even though that would only be practical if I decided to stay in one place for an extended amount of time), stopping in a grocery store, and ducking our heads in any other stores that called to us (I successfully managed to not buy anything despite the fact that Adriana kept dragging me into shoe stores, which sorely tested my resolve). The other big stop that I had for the day was at the Franco-American Institute, which has a lovely library of books in English. I am going through severe book withdrawal, and so I had decided that something needed to be done before I started ordering massive amounts of books from Amazon UK (books which I would then somehow have to take back to the US…or leave here, and then go and purchase more copies of in the US, because I like having my own copies of books). For some odd reason, several things which are free in the US (such as checking accounts and libraries) are not so in France, so I had to shell out €20 for my library card there. However, I also checked out the second two books in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, and after doing some quick conversions in my head, I realized that if I’d wanted to buy those two books, it would’ve cost me €21. So the library card already saved me more than my initial investment, and now I have a large supply of English books to read for the next five months. Phew!

Weather Part II: I wrote this over several days, so I have another weather addendum. We had exactly one day of sun and one day of partial sun before the clouds came back (yesterday). If anyone knows of any jobs where I can live in Provence for the rest of my life, please do let me know. I miss having months of sun at a time…

An American weekend in Paris

Last weekend was excellent.

I don’t usually embrace my nationality a whole lot while in France (aside from the moments when I talk about how where I come from you can go shopping at 3AM on a Sunday if you feel like it whenever I feel particularly bothered with everything being closed). Last time I was here I would flat out lie and pretend to be British or Canadian, because people were seriously not fans of Bush. Obama, regardless of what any Americans think of him, is much more popular internationally, so I’ve stopped lying about being from the US. That said, I only have so long in France, and I’m all about profiter-ing from my time here by embracing the French-ness. And, for the first two and a half months, that was exactly what I did. Then I went to a skating competition.

I haven’t been to a Senior level skating competition (excluding synchro competitions) since I competed at Indy Challenge in the summer of 2004. That, US Junior World Trials in the late 90s, and the 2000 US National Championships are the extent of my competition attending experiences (as a spectator), and all of those were only National competitions. Indy Challenge was an early season competition with only Pairs and Dance teams competing, and since I was busy competing myself, I don’t remember much of that, although I’m pretty sure I saw the Senior Pairs Short. The US Junior World Trials were in a Chicago suburb when I was younger, and my dad took me to watch. That was a pretty fantastic experience—if I was skating at all at the time, I had probably been skating no longer than a year, and I was absolutely in awe of everyone I saw. It was especially nice because I saw several up and coming skaters and then got to see them break through over the next few years. My biggest skating competition experience to date was the 2000 US Nationals in Cleveland. That was awesome. Not even going to get into the details or this whole update will be about that.

Anyway, the point of this recap is that I have not been to a Senior level competition in years, and all the competitions I have been to were National competitions, where most skaters had a lot of friends and family around cheering them on like crazy. And as for the dozens of synchro competitions I’ve competed in over the course of my life, I was always pretty sure that the real competition was to see which team could cheer loudest, not which team could win.

The crowd at Trophée Eric Bompard (which, when I was a kid, was called Trophée Lalique, and thus I shall be calling it Trophée Lalique for the rest of this update and probably the rest of my life as well as I do not adjust well to change) was not nearly so boisterous. On the few occasions when they were boisterous, it was for either for the two Frenchmen competing or for one of the Japanese ladies competing. The German World Champion pairs team also got lots of cheers, as did Finnish ladies champion Kiira Korpi. Not sure how there were so many Japanese fans there, but it makes sense that in Europe there would be a decent German and Finnish turnout. While I like figure skaters from all over, I’m definitely a bigger fan of US figure skaters. Maybe because I know more about them, I see them more often on TV, or because I can find more long, complicated ways in which someone I know knows someone they know—whatever the reason, most of my favorite skaters competing this weekend were American. And I supported them vocally.

At first I figured maybe I just knew too much about skating when I was the only one cheering for American pair team Felicia Zhang & Taylor Toth. I am, after all, far more invested in skating than the average person and they are, after all, just on their first season at the senior level. I could hardly blame people for not applauding them when the former Pairs World Champions were there. So, I continued the pairs event not too distressed by my excessive cheering, and it was a great event. I loved Zhang & Toth’s program, and in general pairs is a much better event to watch live than on TV. I had been completely disillusioned during the Olympics with what used to be my favorite event, but I was pleasantly surprised. Russians Bazarova and Larionov were fabulous. I hate admitting that people other than myself are right (particularly when it means I end up supporting a huge pairs dynasty like Russia, because I’d always rather cheer for the underdogs), but the Russian system of training really leads to amazing ice coverage and fantastic skating skills. It’s incredibly obvious in person but much harder to pick up on when watching on TV. Savchenko and Szolkowy, who won Worlds in 2008 and 2009, were also excellent, even though they did skate to Pink Panther, which is not my favorite music (largely because I had to skate to it and was less than pleased with my costume). They and the Russians were just in a different field from the rest of the competition.

The men’s competition was what I was least excited for, and for good reason. The highlight was Frenchman Florent Amodio, who did a very fun dance-themed program (Michael Jackson music included) and had the crowd going insane. There’s nationalism for you—I heard more “ALLEZ”-ing in the minute before his program started than I probably have in the rest of my life combined. He skated a really strong program and came in second. Brandon Mroz of the US was third, and while he was pretty good, the only thing exciting about his program was that I caught some people waving an American flag, which suggested that maybe I wasn’t the only American around!

There was a short break for the medal ceremonies for Pairs and Men’s. The medal ceremony did not include any real flags, just the images of flags projected onto the center video thing.

Ladies were next, and I was really excited to see the ladies field. Americans Mirai Nagasu and Alissa Czisny were competing (two of my favorite American ladies skaters, both of them former National Champions—Mirai in 2008 and Alissa in 2009), as well as Mao Asada (World Champion and Olympic Silver Medalist last year and the only woman competing today with a consistent triple Axel), Kiira Korpi (who won Nebelhorn Trophy earlier in the season, and who is three months younger than me…which makes her old for a figure skater, but I still can’t believe that I’m older than most figure skaters now), Lena Marrocco (who is French and adorable and definitely younger than me), and six or seven others who I will not document so as to keep you from getting too annoyed with me. Unfortunately, the event wasn’t the most well-skated event I’ve ever been to, but it was still fun to watch. Marrocco started off with a nice triple-triple, but she started to fall apart as the program went on, and she was clearly exhausted by the end. I was pleasantly surprised by Sonia LaFuente from Spain. I had never heard of her going into the competition, but she skated a clean (as best as I can remember) program to Les Miserables. I don’t think she has her triple lutz yet, but she’s a lot of fun to watch and I’m excited to see where she goes from here. Mao Asada, who has had a terrible season so far, had a very rough skate. She was going for the triple axel during the warm up with decent attempts—one two-footed landing and one fall, but in the program she did a single and a double on her attempts, which was disappointing. She’s supposedly reworking her jump technique, but I have to wonder at the wisdom of competing while doing that, because I think she only managed to pull off one clean triple the entire program. It’s been a rough fall for her, but she’s a lovely skater and I’m hoping she manages to bounce back by Worlds.

It was when the second group of ladies skaters took the ice for warm-up that I started to realize that yes, I really was the only one cheering for Americans. It’s one thing to not cheer for a team just up from juniors, but Mirai Nagasu was fourth at the Olympics last year. My enthused reaction to her getting on the ice led the woman next to me to ask if I was American, which is the first time I’ve ever been asked that in France. Guilty as charged. This ladies group (which consisted of the medal contenders) unfortunately didn’t end up skating that much better than the first group. Alissa Czisny is an absolutely gorgeous skater. She’s taller than your average figure skater, but that gives her a really nice line on the ice. Her edges and spins are incredible, and I love watching her. Until she jumps. Because, sadly, most of the time she jumps, she doesn’t come down the way she wants to. And, once she makes one mistake on a jump, you can usually assume that she won’t land another clean jump for the rest of the program. As lovely as her program was, that’s exactly what happened. Mirai Nagasu had the strongest program of the night and won the long program (coming in second overall by a mere .05 since Korpi had a lead from the short program). Obviously, she did a great job and was clean on all her jumps (to the naked eye, anyway—she got marked down on a couple by judges using instant replay, which is fine), but she had a sad mishap on a layback spin that was painful to watch. It looked like she caught an edge and then she was completely unable to keep the spin going, which had to cost her a lot of points. Anyway, it was a huge improvement over her earlier long program this season, and it gives her something to focus on for Nationals and Worlds. I’m not wild about her long for the season; it seems a bit dull and doesn’t sing the way her past programs have, but it’s a post-Olympic year and there are bigger problems in skating. Kiira Korpi skated an overall solid program with one fall, and she does a great job on edges and transitions. I still think she needs to attack her last footwork sequence more (the music is Evita and that particular piece is Buenos Aires, which just begs for an awesome footwork sequence), but she’s really polished for this early in the season. Korpi was first, Nagasu second, and Czisny third.

By the time the Ice Dance event came around, I was cold (I think that the amount of time I’ve spent in ice rinks over the course of my life has permanently altered my body temperature and thus makes me get cold far too quickly), tired (despite all that time spent in ice rinks, much of it at six AM, it appears that I’m no longer very good at getting up at six AM to catch trains to Paris), and my back and calves hurt from sitting for so long (yes, I’m an old lady). But ice dance has taken over ladies as my favorite event ever since Michelle Kwan stopped competing, and it’s always been one of my favorite things to work on when I skate. While the Olympic Champions Tessa Virtue & Scott Moir had withdrawn from the event (the nerve of Tessa’s shins to get injured!), another of my favorites teams was there: Nathalie Pechalat & Fabian Bourzat. They, however, were the last to skate, so we had to first get through a Chinese team that skated to a weird techno version of Singin’ in the Rain (I wanted to give them a deduction for poor music). We then got treated to Canadians Kharis Ralph & Asher Hill, skating to Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. They were wonderful, with really nice knees and edges, and his lines on the ice are gorgeous. Following them we had a young American team just up from juniors who I’d never heard of (Cannuscio & Lorello). They had a rough skate, but they have a lot of raw talent and excitement, so they’re definitely another team to look out for. Another American team, Chock & Zuerlein, skated to Cabaret and a had lovely routine except for the part where she fell over and he dragged her along for a few feet. In synchro you’re supposed to immediately let go of anyone who falls, but maybe that’s not a rule in ice dance. They wound up with the bronze, a Russian team that didn’t make much of an impression on me was in second, and the utterly lovely Pechalat & Bourzat won with a Charlie Chaplin themed program. I first came across Pechalat & Bourzat in early 2008 when I was studying in Avignon. They were not the top French team at the time, but I happened to see them on TV during the European Championships and their edges and knee bend were amazing. I wrote in my journal at the time that they were going to be international contenders soon, and here we are, almost three years later, and they’re one of the top three teams in the world.

In case any of you are still reading this (HA! Maybe Anna, if she’s really procrastinating, but I’m pretty sure I lost everyone else with all the skate babble, and the only reason Anna understands it is because I forced the poor girl to learn everything I knew about skating so I’d have someone to talk about it with), I shall now quickly sum up the rest of my weekend and let you get back to your lives. I went to my hostel, got slightly lost on the way there even though I’d been there before, crashed, woke up, enjoyed my free breakfast and the fact that it came with free tea since this was a British hostel, hopped on the Metro since I had a few hours to kill before my train left, and searched out one of the only places that I knew would be open on a Sunday morning in Paris: Starbucks. I splurged on a tall skim mocha (since I am very well acquainted with French milk vocabulary and thus can ask for such things as skim milk) and spent an hour listening to Frank Sinatra and people watching. I figured that while I was being blatantly American over the course of my weekend, I might as well go all the way and have some delicious corporate behemoth-made coffee. And I enjoyed it.

Okay, I had hopes of getting entirely caught up, but I am just going to post this and be done with it. On our next installment: work, weather, and…um…walking? I do a lot of walking, I’m sure I can find a way to bring that up somehow.