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!

Of Baguettes and Bises

It’s been a while since we had a nice little cultural lesson, and since my week mostly consisted of work, I’ve decided to spare you the rundown on that in lieu of some cultural tidbits.

Our first subject of anthropological investigation is the baguette de tradition française. Slightly shorter and a tad bit stouter than the standard baguette (it also tends to run about 35 centimes more than your standard baguette), this variation of the baguette has a law dictating what can be put in it and what name it can be sold under. I’m not kidding. It can only be sold using the terms baguette, tradition, and français. Those can be in any combination, but if it uses those terms, it can contain nothing more than flour, yeast, salt, and water. On the side of the bag it comes in, it cites said law and informs you exactly where the flour comes from.

And it is delicious. This is the most important part. Don’t get me wrong, a standard 60 centime baguette over here is way better than any baguette you’ll get in the States (for the closest approximations in the Chicagoland area, see Devon Market on Devon and Granville or the French Nuns on the West Side who go from church to church selling baked deliciousness). But a baguette tradition…YUM. I could easily go through one on my own in a day, eating a some with salad, dipping a little in soup with dinner, having a bit with some goat cheese, and then having some with Nutella for dessert (not that I ever buy Nutella—nope, not me, I am far too health conscious for such things, right, Mom?).

Now, on to the bises, or kisses. Most people are well aware of the cheek kisses (one on each cheek) associated with the French. As I learned very quickly in Avignon, these greetings are not as straight forward as they seem—in Provence, you have to do three kisses (no matter how many, you ALWAYS start by bringing your right cheek to the other person’s right cheek—God help you if you start on the wrong side), and supposedly it’s four in areas of Northern France. Here in Bretagne, it’s only two, but I’ve also picked up many of the other similar social niceties.

First of all, les bises are not limited to adults, though they do depend on gender. Women will faire les bises when they meet other men or other women, but men only share them with women. When men meet other men, they shake hands and occasionally pat each other on the back. All of my lycée students do the exact thing that adults do, and I’m quite a fan. First of all, there is something adorable about boys who still look like they’re about twelve and who haven’t quite reached five feet tall when they shake hands to greet each other. So cute. Second, this is all SO much more refined than the way American teenagers greet each other. I was lucky if any guys I knew in high school grunted and slightly lifted their chin in my direction to indicate that they’d seen me. And even when I saw my close friends, we’d just smile and maybe wave if they were across the hall. Les bises are a very classy way to open and close interactions with people, and we need to find a way to introduce them in American high schools, stat.

Age does come into consideration for children. When children greet or say goodbye to an adult, they don’t do the full routine. Instead, they just give the adult one kiss on the cheek. Every time the grandchildren come over, they come find me and give me a kiss on the cheek. Again, highly adorable.

The only downside to all of this is that if I try to start using les bises when I’m back in the US I’m going to seem pretentious. Guess I’ll just have to stay here.

Before I end this, I’ll give you the entertaining student quotes of the past few weeks. First of all, one student informed me that, for Christmas, he’d given his sister red lips. My brain immediately started picturing a pair of red lips wrapped up with a bow on top until he gave me the French translation: rouge à levres. Lipstick. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. That makes much more sense. We also had some fun geographical conversations—one student told me he wanted to live in the US when he was older. When I asked where in the US, he responded, “Canada.” “Canada’s not in the US,” I said, a bit perplexed. “Really?” He asked, quite taken aback. Today I had another student inform me that Chicago was in Michigan, which was news to me (I gently suggested that maybe he meant close to Lake Michigan, but he was pretty convinced it was in the state of Michigan). Geography classes clearly aren’t what they used to be.

I hope all is well wherever you are and that you’re making it through the winter without getting too cold. I’d tell you about the weather we’ve been having, but then all you people in the Midwest might try to kill me, so we’ll leave that little detail out. Bon courage!

The long-awaited Christmas update

I’m still alive, I swear. Just suffering from the post-Christmas back to work syndrome. I haven’t dealt with this syndrome since I was in high school—in college you can ignore the fact that you’re going back to work and focus on the fact that you’re going to be in the same city as your friends again. Alas, after an even more exciting break than those I used to have in high school, getting back to work is even harder. However, the first week is almost over and it seems as though I’m going to survive, so it’s about time I got around to writing up my vacation.

Despite Eurostar’s fabulous breakdown, they managed to barely pull things together in time for my trip. I had a very long day, as I left my place at 7AM to catch a bus into Rennes, at which point I switched over to the metro to get to the train station. Hung out at the train station until getting on my train, which took me to Paris. I then got to take another train to get from the Montparnasse station to Gare du Nord, where I had a bit of down time before checking in for my Eurostar train. I was delighted about the fact that you do actually have to go through customs, meaning I got two more nifty stamps in my passport. Eurostar still wasn’t running at its normal speeds, but it got me to London in plenty of time to hop on the Tube (in case you’re counting, that’s vehicle number six of the day) to get from St. Pancras station to Paddington station. I then had some time to kill in Paddington before my train to Swansea left, so I treated myself to a lovely peppermint mocha from Starbucks. Mmmm. Delicious. I then had a train ride to Swansea before our family friend, Padraig, picked me up in his car. It took roughly thirteen hours and eight vehicles, but I made it. Huzzah!

Last time I was in England it was after spending about five or six weeks in France. At the time, as it was the most time I’d ever spent out of the US, six weeks felt like a TERRIBLE amount of time to go without my native language (because we did SO much speaking French among the IAU students, REALLY), and I was utterly delighted to be back in an Anglophone country. This time around I was mostly looking forward to getting a taste of Americana (thus starting off the trip with Starbucks) and seeing family friends. I wasn’t really thinking about the language, although it turned out I should’ve been, because I FORGOT ENGLISH. Not conversational English, but social niceties like sorry and excuse me and all that fun stuff. Anyway, apparently 3.5 months living with a French family, working with French people, and not using any language besides French on the streets means that even if you do write regular blog entries in English, read plenty of novels in English, and have a good number of friends in the area with whom you speak only English, you will lose your social fluency in English. I had a number of moments during my trip when I absolutely froze because I couldn’t remember the English equivalent of “je suis désolée pour vous deranger…” I also discovered during my stay in Wales that I could not for the life of me understand a lot of Welsh accents. I usually pride myself on understanding all accents of English, but it turns out that is no longer the case. I felt as if I was listening to rapid-fire Spanish, where I could pick out the occasional word, but I mostly just tried to nod and smile at the right points in the conversation. Thankfully I could handle the accents in London pretty well, which kept me from utter despair.

I stayed with our family friends, Ruth and Padraig, in Wales. It was wonderful to be in a home-like atmosphere for the holidays, and they made me feel so welcome. I was offered lots of delicious food, given a steady diet of tea, and there was even a fireplace for me to sit in front of. Even the weather was in on it, since there was a good four inches of snow on the ground. That’s not at all normal for the area, and as a result, no one shoveled. Apparently the normal idea is that it isn’t worth shoveling since the snow will melt soon anyone—the only problem was that the snow stuck around for a good week. I’m amazed I didn’t once fall flat on my face, despite wearing impractical (but adorable) shoes the entire trip.

The first day I was there Ruth and I went into Swansea’s city center to hit up a bookstore (YAY for books in English!) and stop in some other shops. I had a terrible time selecting books, as always, but finally picked out three (all three of which I finished before I made it back to Rennes—so much for restraint), and then we made our way to a lovely café near the river in Swansea. We had hot chocolate with Bailey’s (YUM). After popping in a few other stores (including Boots, so I could pick up my favorite hair gel which is sadly unavailable in France), we went to Tesco, an impressive supermarket (erm, grocery store, that is) that provided me with two things of utmost importance: oatmeal and brown sugar. My mornings have been absolutely fabulous since returning to Rennes and getting to eat that for breakfast. I don’t remember when I started eating oatmeal for breakfast (I think it was probably around age nine, the point at which my mom cut me off of Lucky Charms), but once I got started on it, it was my staple (aside from a brief foray my senior year of high school into Honey Nut Cheerios and from the five months I spent in France in 2008, when I had to resort to cold cereal). There is nothing better on a winter morning than tea and oatmeal with a bit of brown sugar. After I stocked up on my kilo of oatmeal and kilo of brown sugar, we headed back to Ruth and Padraig’s.

I went to Midnight Mass with Ruth and Padraig on Christmas Eve and discovered, much to my shock, that there are several Christmas carols that have different tunes in the UK than they do in the US. And they aren’t completely different songs—the lyrics are the same—but the tune is different enough to completely confuse you. The first song they sang I didn’t know, but when I saw that they next one would be “O Come Let Us Adore Him,” I figured I was good to go. Not! There was another one that again had the same lyrics, but apparently a more traditional tune, but I can’t remember what it was. Anyway, I was rather perplexed by the whole thing. It’s odd, because I’ve come to anticipate plenty of cultural differences, but there are always some that can’t be anticipated. Different tunes to Christmas carols? Who knew? Anyway, you’ll be happy to know that Silent Night has the same tune in the UK (probably because we all stole it from the Germans), and I just decided after mass that I’d have to do my own singing of “O Come Let Us Adore Him.”

I was able to skype with my family on Christmas day, which was fun. It was morning for them, so I got to watch them open all of their presents. The rest of the day was spent cozily inside (I’ll never be able to make it through another Chicago winter again), mostly watching movies.

On Boxing Day (which, apparently, has nothing to do with the actual sport of boxing), we went over to Mark’s, one of Ruth and Padraig’s friends. He had his sister, his aunt and uncle, and another family friend there (and Sasha, the one-eyed cat). We had a delicious meal around 2pm, which was my first meal of the day, and I ate enough to make sure that it would be my only meal of the day. I would just like to say that Yorkshire pudding drowned in gravy is kind of delicious and I think I may need to start making these for holiday meals. We also played Trivial Pursuit for several hours in the evening, but everyone else totally had an advantage, since it was the UK edition of the game. I had no idea what half of the events were that they referenced, let alone why certain things happened at those events. I was, however, able to supply some valuable information about what Disney duet Celine Dion sang.

On Monday the 27^th I bid farewell to the incredibly hospitable Ruth and Padraig, and I hopped on a train back to London to spend a day and a half there on my own before going back to France. I had even splurged on a hotel (though a very modest one with shared bathrooms) as a Christmas present to myself. My train was a little late getting in, and I naturally wandered around the station in circles for about ten minutes before I finally got my bearings, but after that I easily made my way to my hotel and checked in. I then set off in search of a cheap dinner (ended up grabbing assorted food from a grocery store and thus spending approximately 2 pounds, go me!), and then decided it was time to start profiter-ing. I wandered down Edgeware Road for no particular reason other than it was close to my hotel. It ended in a huge intersection near Hyde Park, and since I was a little wary of getting lost in Hyde Park (as I got lost last time I entered a British park), I decided to make my way down Oxford. The roads were SWARMED with people, very few of them actually speaking English. I heard more French than I probably do on the average work day (since my goal is always to make the kids speak English). It was a massive shopping day, and while I’d entertained ideas of buying a few things, I changed my mind after stepping two feet into a store and realizing just how packed it was. Turned around and decided to return to walking.

Once I was thoroughly exhausted, I turned around, headed back to my hotel, took a shower, and collapsed. I got up early, grabbed breakfast (yay for hotels that have breakfast included and bring you your own pot of tea!), and then headed off. I took the Tube to the Tower of London, which I had my heart set on seeing. It was a little pricey to get in, but it was absolutely worth it. Yeoman Wardours are traditionally the guards of the Tower, but they really function more as tour guides, and they are hilarious. Ours was cracking jokes about Scotland, Americans, French, Germans, men, and women, and asked at one point if there was anyone he had managed not to offend yet. He also pointed out that only Britain would have a monument to traitors to the crown—there was a monument to all the people who had been beheaded there, including Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard, and Lady Jane Grey. There was another Yeoman Wardour doing a tour inside a chapel where most of those people are buried (I don’t understand what it is with the Brits and burying people under churches…first Westminster, now this), and he was also fantastic. I had the choice of going in to see the Crown Jewels, which I considered, but there was a line roughly two blocks long to do that, and I didn’t need to see some pretty stones THAT much. Instead I opted to walk around the outside walls, which had some gorgeous views of Tower Bridge.

Once I was all historied out, I left. I had no other big plans for the day, but I was determined to get more walking in. I ended up walking pretty much the entire central area of London, all the way back to my hotel, over the course of the afternoon and evening. I walked by St. Paul’s, got slightly lost (whoops), saw the Bank of London, figured out where I’d gotten turned around, walked by St. Paul’s again, made my way to Fleet Street (home of Sweeney Todd and the historical printing and publishing center of London), stopped near Somerset House (another large palace), walked to Covent Garden and meandered around there until I got sick of the crowds, then continued my way up Oxford. I stopped for dinner at Hummus Bros, the same restaurant I stopped at last time I was in London, since I knew it was both delicious and affordable. I took a slight detour to the theater district, which made me very jealous, and then I went back to Oxford and continued my way back to the hotel. Once again, I pretty much collapsed from exhaustion once I got there.

I left the next morning to head back to France. My last train from Paris to Rennes got diverted and arrived two hours late, which I was not happy about, but other than that the trip was fine. And what happened when I got back to my room? Yup, I collapsed. And slept about 13 hours.

OKAY. The Christmas entry is now done. I can go take care of some lesson planning, and you can go do whatever it is you need to do. I’ll be back in a week with a (hopefully) shorter post. Bonne année!

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.