Printemps and Picnics

I could apologize here for the lack of updates, but I don't know if anyone is still reading, so I may not have anyone to apologize to.

Short version of the last month: crazy nice weather, lots of Lebanese sandwiches, and even more picnics.

We’ll focus in more detail on a few fun weekends. The first weekend of April, Lauren and I returned to Vitré to visit Caitlin. I had a skype interview and wanted to use Catilin’s reliable internet, plus I had some serious baking to do. Caitlin, in addition to having reliable internet (quelle idée!), also has an oven. Ovens are hard to find in assistant-affordable housing, so I had hoarded brownie mix and canned pumpkin for a while waiting to have the chance to bake with it. The brownie batter (which, let’s be honest, is all I was really interested in—you stick it in the oven and it just loses all the fun) was delicious and made me quite happy, and the pumpkin bread was excellent. There was even enough canned pumpkin left over for Caitlin to make a batch of pumpkin scones this week. The rest of the evening was spent dancing and following the first Sox game of the season (which, you’ll all be happy to know, they won).

Saturday we headed back to Rennes, where we had a low-key afternoon and enjoyed some delicious ice cream since the weather was so nice. That evening there was a clothing/book exchange/cocktail party hosted by Kelsey, another assistant. It was a really good idea, since I was way low on books to read in English, and I’m completely sick of 90% of my clothes. I’ve had the same limited wardrobe since September, and I miss my clothes at home! I got rid of a few sweaters and tops, and I snagged one short sleeved sweater and a cardigan. The simple addition of these two pieces of clothing have made my life so much more enjoyable the past two weeks. I was also able to bust out a few pieces of summer clothing, which made my wardrobe seriously exciting. Post-clothing exchange, we all danced for several hours. It was lots of fun. The only downside was that in theory the party was supposed to end pre-dinner, so no one had eaten. Instead, the party went until 10:30, and we all relied on the light assortment of chips and dips and a few strawberries for dinner. This was not quite enough sustenance for all of the dancing, but we were having too much fun to leave, so we just devoured what food there was.

For the second weekend of April, Caitlin, Lauren, and I headed to Fougères to visit David and Amanda, who are assistants there. Back when we had all hung out in Vitré together, we’d decided that a falafel party needed to happen in Fougères, and happen it did. We arrived around 6pm, and we were quite French and enjoyed a little appéro of wine with bread and cheese. Of course, we then ate so much of that that we weren’t hungry in the slightest for dinner, so we decided to go for an evening walk around Fougères and its parks, which was lovely. The sun is staying out really late here—I didn’t realize how much further north Brittany is than Chicago, and that combined with the fact that all of Western Europe’s time is off (when Germany invaded France, they brought them over from the same time zone as England, where they belong, to Germany’s time zone) means it’s light past 9PM. Anyway, after our walk, we headed back to create and enjoy our falafel spread.

Once we got up on Saturday, we all headed to Fougères marché to gather food for a picnic. I stuck to my standard bread, brie, and strawberries, along with an apple cake for dessert.

An aside on dessert: the French are really big on sweet things. I don’t think I’ve discussed this here before, but it rubs off on you. I get used to having something sweet after every meal, and my body gets mad at me if I haven’t had sugar in too long. That can’t be healthy…

Back to the picnic, we found a spot with a view of Fougères’ château, and we ate a leisurely lunch and listened to music. This was one of the first really warm weekends—I’d guess it was about 75, and it felt lovely to feel the warmth and sun! Once we got ourselves moving again, we walked around the château and some other parks, and then we stopped at a café for some drinks before we hunted down food for dinner. We ended up making moules-frites (mussels and French fries), accompanied by a salad, and with ice cream for dessert to celebrate the season. The evening finished with a dance party that went on for some time—I succumbed to exhaustion around 1AM despite the party going on two feet away from me.

Sunday morning we had an American breakfast of eggs and sausage (YUM), and we sat around and chatted until noon, when Caitlin, Lauren, and I went back to Rennes. Caitlin then hopped on a train to Vitré, I grabbed my bus to farmland, and Lauren stayed in Rennes.

Okay. I’m going to post this now rather than trying to catch up even further. Hopefully I’ll be back in a few days with stories of my Easter weekend and some work updates (you know, work? That whole reason I’m in France to begin with?).

Joyeuses Pâques!

The internet's back, and so am I

There were lots of technical difficulties in my life this week--no internet at home, plus my phone credit expired on Monday, and as we didn't get paid until yesterday, I was unable to buy more phone credit unless I wanted to use some of my American money. And I didn't.

However, the internet has made its return, I can call whoever I want, and today was the last day of work before a two week vacation. Life is good.

Due to aforementioned technological difficulties, I have not yet gotten around to writing anything about my nostalgia-filled trip to Avignon last weekend. However, I can tide you over with some pictures!

1) Chateau in Vitre (for all you francophones out there, please mentally insert accents where needed--I currently feel too lazy to copy and paste them into blogspot).


2) Remember that time Lauren and I bought a chicken? Voila. Photographic proof.


3) My lovely cousin Nicole sent me canned pumpkin and a highly entertaining book. Yay Nicole!


4) Avignon, where skies are apparently always blue. I don't think I've seen a sky without clouds since I was in the US last summer.



5) Le Pont d'Avignon revisited!

Not dead, just busy

January, WHERE DID YOU GO? You were barely here, and you’re leaving already?

To all of you who were very concerned, I am not dead. Just busy. And no, the snowstorm that managed to cripple even Chicago did not make its way over here. Our highs have been bounced back from just below freezing a week ago (it was painfully cold, and confirmed to me that returning to Chicago winters is going to be difficult) to the mid-50s for the past few days. I went running in a t-shirt Friday. It was excellent—I’m just hoping that winter is gone and the temperatures steadily increase from now on.

Anyway, some updates on life. Teaching is going well. I have a new schedule for the second half of the year. I no longer have Tuesdays off, and I have to be up around 6:30 most days since I’m working a lot more mornings (I know, my life is SO hard—though I still think I need to make up for all of the sleep I lost in high school when staying up past midnight doing homework and then pulling myself out of bed to go skating at 4AM). It’s been fun meeting some new students, although I’m starting to lose hope that I will ever learn all of their names. Considering there are quite a few who I only see once every two weeks, and some even less frequently, I was just barely starting to remember the names of the first group of students. That said, I do finally have one class where I know everyone’s name (granted, said class only has 16 students in it, but still).

I’ve shifted teaching methods recently and started working more off of text based documents. On their big exam at the end of their high school careers (the bac), it’s more likely that they’ll have photos and cartoons, but articles tend to offer a lot more vocabulary, and it also gives them a more concrete subject to talk about. I’ve pulled some articles off of the Time for Kids website, and I’ve also been using articles from The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (they’re a bit more comprehensible than articles from The Chicago Tribune or The New York Times). I’m pretty happy with how this has been going.

I’ve also started giving a private English lesson once a week to a 14 year old girl. It’s nice to get back to one on one tutoring since I did so much of that in college—it feels very familiar. She’s very nice and motivated, and it certainly doesn’t hurt to have a little extra money.

I’ve made a few trips to Vitré the past few weeks to visit Caitlin, who’s an assistant there. A few weeks ago Lauren and I did a mid-week trip there to make funfetti cupcakes (Caitlin has a full size oven, which is extremely rare for studios in France). Aside from our baking, we also walked around the town and explored their castle a bit—it’s still in use today, it just houses bureaucratic offices instead of Dukes and Duchesses. They’re doing a lot of excavation just around the castle, because about four or five years ago they somehow discovered that there were more ruins buried in the same area, some of which date back to Roman times.

This weekend we did another trip to Vitré, along with David and Amanda, who are assistants in Fougères. Lauren and I got in around five, and we accompanied Caitlin on her grocery shopping trip. David and Amanda got in right as we got back, and we all sat around being French and having afternoon coffee. One of Caitlin’s friends also showed up and we all headed off to an Indian restaurant for dinner. I can’t remember if I’ve gushed about Indian food here yet, but I only discovered it over Christmas, and it’s my newest addiction. I do not understand how I managed to miss out on it all my life. My house in Chicago is FOUR BLOCKS NORTH OF DEVON, FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE! Anyway, the food was delicious, and I also had a semoule cake for dessert, which was amazing. We made our way back to Caitlin’s, and then we assembled a mushroom and sausage strata for breakfast the next morning. By that point it was about midnight. Caitlin’s friend had to head home, and I was not feeling up for the shenanigans that the others seemed to anticipate, so I decided to be true to my old lady self and crash early. It sounds like they had a fantastic time, but I do not regret my decision to sleep AT ALL, since they didn’t make it back until 5AM. The next morning (once they all pulled themselves out of bed), we enjoyed the delicious strata and sat around chatting until we all departed for our respective homes.

I’m afraid I don’t have much else to add. I’m trying to pin down my travel plans between now and May—I’m going to Avignon for the weekend in two weeks, and I’m going to Brussels with Caitlin the second week of March. We have the first two weeks of March off for vacation, but I’m hoping to get a position teaching at a language-intensive workshop for the first week (again, extra money=never bad). If I get that, I plan on splurging on a trip to Copenhagen for Easter (I LOVE SCANDINAVIA). Also trying to figure out if it’s at all feasible to do a weekend trip to Switzerland. At some point you just have to accept that you cannot get it all in and admit that Europe cannot be done in a year. I will do my best to be back within, say, a week, with an update (and potentially pictures). Good luck digging out of the snow!