Jingling All the Way to Vacation!

A (semi)quick post before Christmas break:

Teaching about Christmas (I opted not to do the Hanukkah lesson) went pretty well. There were, of course, the inevitable questions like “Does Santa really exist?” and “How does Santa get in if you don’t have a chimney?” and of course the more cynical “Santa doesn’t exist. My parents buy me presents.” I think my favorite comment though was when we were talking about the elves who make the presents and a really little kid got super excited and yelled “and they also repair shoes!”

Various highlights of the last couple weeks:

-Alex mastered the art of mulled wine which was a nice treat for everyone.

-The recording of “Jingle Bells” that one of my teachers has is actually a cd of French children singing christmas songs. It’s pretty hard to teach a group of kids a song when the example they’re learning from is a mumbled mess that sounds more like “mudsfjnjuenwjjdneuajhuewjfh” rather than “oh what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh”

- Last weekend Alex, Tommy and I decided to go to the movies. Keeping things interesting as always, Tommy decided that rather than sneaking in a bag of candy, he would sneak in a roast chicken. Additionally, once we settled into the theater, as the aroma of roast poultry permeated the dark room, Tommy whipped out his sunglasses—the only prescription glasses he owns—and explained he needed them to see the movie. We’d had a good amount of mulled wine just before so both Alex and I passed out in the middle. The sight of the three of watching the movie, two sleeping and one wearing sunglasses and eating chicken, may have been more entertaining than the movie itself.

-Alex lost his keys again (which have since been retrieved) and this time the replacement key they gave him was the master key to all the rooms on our floor. So naturally we went on a little treasure hunt into the rooms next to mine that are marked “reserved for theater”. Most of the rooms were pretty boring with random tables and broken chandeliers, but we struck gold with the costume room and now are left only to think of some genius way to put them to good use.

-As a little Christmas celebration before we all parted ways, the assistants and the teachers (or at least Estelle and Aline) went out for Kebabs one night. Everyone was getting on very well, and we had a fun time training Tommy to act more straight in preparation for meeting his boyfriend’s family. (“How do you think I feel? Betrayed, bewildered…”)

-I went to see Alex play in the winter concert with the St. Dié Orchestra. It was perhaps the strangest concert I’ve ever been to. It had a little slide show going on the whole time (like a youtube video of a song accompanied by a quasi-related photo montage) and the encore was a rendition of the YMCA complete with village people costumes donned by various musicians and the conductor. Not exactly the nutcracker or Handel’s Messiah, but certainly entertaining.

Tomorrow it’s off to Basel to meet up with the fam. Hopefully everything goes well, but apparently whenever Europe gets a little bit of snow they freak out and cancel all their flights. So, things could be getting a later start than expected but in any case I’m still really really excited!!!!!

Festivals of Lights

First things first: Happy Hanukkah!

As possibly St, Dié’s only current Jew, I tried to do my part with this little makeshift menorah and potato pancakes. I also tried to make a dreidel, but that didn’t turn out so well. They don’t have gelt here, but I did buy some really delicious seasoned olives from the marché as a little Hanukkah gift to myself.

Now, onto Christianity: Happy St. Nicholas Day!

Today was officially the holiday but most of the festivities took place over the weekend (and they gave us all St. Nick brioches in school on Thursday which was a tasty little surprise). I’m still a little hazy on the details of his story, but I know it involves a butcher who chopped up (and maybe ate?) a bunch of kids who St. Nicholas then brought back to life. And from there he become the protector of children and then went on to be santa claus—simple enough.

In any case, there was a big parade Saturday night to celebrate it. I walked into town with Alex but he was playing with the orchestra so when he went off to join them, I went and got some mulled wine and took in the festive atmosphere. Almost immediately after I had found a nice little spot to stand and watch the parade, a gaggle of really obnoxious pre-teen girls invaded. But by then the street had really filled up and as someone under 5’ and over 20 years-old, a place which offers visibility is too good to pass up.

The parade was pretty substantial, with bands and floats from a wide range of towns and associations. Some were pretty random like a Shrek float and lots of people who had just stuck a bunch of branches onto themselves and were walking around as trees. (We later found out that this year’s theme was forests which explained a lot. Also, forests was the theme at the FIG this year—coincidence ? I think not)

Because of the poor quality of my camera, it looks as if I attended a ghost parade, which is actually kind of a cool idea.

After the parade, we heard there would be fireworks over by the Cathedral. I was expecting a couple of sparklers but what came next was a SUPER impressive display. I’m talking better than Needham 4^th of July fireworks for those of my readers who know what that means. Combined with the epic music (and ignoring the accompanying narration of how St. Nicholas got lost in a snow storm trying to find father Christmas and then realized that he was father Christmas) it was quite the spectacle. I’d even go so far as to call it MAGICAL.

As we made our way home we made a little detour through the newly-opened St. Dié Christmas market which is small but charming nonetheless, and got some more mulled wine to warm our thoroughly chilled appendages.

Cultural note: Christmas here is pretty much exactly the same as it is in America. Though one main different is that here in France, rather than St. Nick having to deal with the nice and the naughty alike, they have kind of a good cop, bad cop system. So St. Nick can save face by being the nice guy who gives the good kids their presents while “Père Fouettard” (father whip-man) mercilessly beats all the naughty kids. And according to Hannah and Tricky, the Austrians have the same idea. So all you nasty American kids who get the coal—just be happy you don’t live in Europe!

Sausage and Pretzels and Beers--Oh My!

A lot went on this week, so this post is gonna be a doozy.

First of all, I got to teach about Thanksgiving which was a lot of fun. I explained about how every school had a thanksgiving play and so we put on a little show in a bunch of my classes in order for me to tell the story of the first thanksgiving. The kids really enjoyed it (though they were definitely pretty racist in their portrayals of native Americans. I was a little uncomfortable but I guess coming from a country without any of that past/tension, for them it’s more cowboys-and-Indians and thus ok?). As they are in elementary school, I gave the kids the elementary-school-version of the story. You know, the one where the pilgrims and the Indians are best friends forever? But in one of my classes the teacher decided the kids should know that in reality, we Europeans mercilessly slaughtered the natives, “So it’s odd that you celebrate it as a holiday”. Hey buddy, back off—I LOVE thanksgiving.

On Wednesday I went up to Epinal where someone from Oxford University Press was presenting a new English textbook kit for elementary schoolers. I had decided to go on strictly social grounds, knowing that some other assistants would be there, but it ended up being somewhat informative as well. And afterwards all of the assistants went out for drinks which was really fun. As soon as I got back from Epinal I had about three minutes to scarf down some leftovers before Alex and I hurried on over to the Darou for game night with other Alex and Nicholas. Note: playing taboo in a second language = hard

Thursday was Thanksgiving! I taught classes in the morning and then in the afternoon did some shopping/cooking/ buying of a pre-roasted chicken (without an oven options were pretty limited). Strangely enough the other American that I live with had completely forgotten about it and decided to go to the gym rather than eat thanksgiving dinner with us, but Estelle and Alex were both quite excited for their first thanksgivings. Both were super skeptical when I brought out the cranberry jelly (Alex: “I don’t trust the way it moves”), but then they tried it and really liked it. Point for the American team. Boo yea.

Our Thanksgiving mini-feast

In keeping with Weisman/Clausen Thanksgiving tradition, I watched “Home Alone”, but I decided to watch it dubbed into French. The French title can be translated to “Mom, I missed the plane!” but other than that no major changes. (They do however change “you’re what the French call les incompétents” to “you’re what we call les imcompétents”). It felt really weird to be watching it alone and the parts where Kevin realizes how important family is really tugged at those heartstrings. (Love you fam!—Clausens included). But before I could get too emotional/ sleep off the Thanksgiving food-coma, it was off to Munich for the first international Beer Summit with Hannah, Tricky and Kevin!

Day 1: Got up early to catch my series of three trains. The middle one was late which screwed things up a little, but in the end, I only arrived one hour later than originally planned. And the ride was really pretty since everything was covered in fresh snow. For some reason I had the feeling I was riding a train across Russia—random but pretty cool.

When I arrived I was greeted by my fellow beer summitters (or as Tricky pointed out, since it was more than one day, it should more accurately be called a beer conference) and Socktoberfest celebrants at the train station. They had all gotten in earlier that morning and so I missed the weekend’s first event which was a visit to the potato museum (which apparently is run by the German consul to Guatemala?). Sad sad.

We headed back to the hotel/hostel we had booked for an amazing 9$ per person per night. They wouldn’t let us check in for another 20 minutes so we waited in this creepy room with a pool table with no cues and a captain fantastic/Elton John pinball machine dating back to who knows when. (When Kevin tried to plug it in, Andrew remembered the movie “Big” and advised against it.)

After settling in at the hotel, we ambled over to the Octoberfest museum which had some amusing posters/postcards, some hilarious English translations and an enormous number of beer steins. After the museum, we walked around the city center which had its Christmas market already in full swing. As we were about to leave, Tricky noticed some people gathering on the balcony of the town hall and we realized that we had haphazardly come across the Munich tree-lighting ceremony, which like most ceremonies took waaaay too long for something to actually happen. As far as I can tell, there was some analogy about the strength of the tree and the strong chances of getting the Olympics in 2018 and then finally they turned the lights on and it was quite nice. Since that took quite a while, by the time it was over we were ready for the first beer hall of the night—Hofbräuhaus.

We scrunched in at a table and soon struck up a friendly conversation with our German neighbors (I use the term “we” fairly loosely since my three other companions speak fluent German and I speak one sentence: “don’t fall in love with me, I’m bad news” which surprisingly wasn’t all that useful this trip) and soon they were teaching us drinking songs and hooking elbows with us so we could sway properly as we sang them. Our waiter was also quite a character. When we asked him for an English menu for me he said “why not” and for the rest of the night whenever we said anything to him, he just said “why not”. And hey, why not? The beer came by the liter and the sausage and kraut were wunderbar. No wonder everyone is so jolly here.

Prost!

After Hofbräuhaus, we moseyed on over to the next beer hall, Augustiner Keller, which was in this cool vaulted brick cellar. It was really cool but in a very different way, with a trendier feel and far less lederhosen/accordion. It had its endearing touches though, like a giant beer keg made into a booth.

Filled to the gills with beer, we returned to our room in order to observe the Socktoberfest holiday (with some thanksgiving-leftover festivities thrown in for the hell of it). We ate chickpeas and pumpkin pie (with socked hands of course), though sadly no flock of seagulls or yahoo answers.

Day 2: Our first stop was the toy museum, but when we got there it hadn’t opened yet, so we wandered around the markets a little bit, and visited some churches (Tricky was able to show us his favorite one which featured skeletons wearing crowns). After the museum we went for brunch to another beer hall to get the traditional German breakfast of white sausage and beer. I was a little self-conscious ordering a beer before noon but, after a quick survey of the room, realized it would be weirder if I didn’t—what a country!

festive beer hall #3

During our post-brunch stroll, we came across a church tower that Tricky remembered had nice views. It wasn’t open yet though so we killed some time by getting some mulled wine in the market. Let me tell you, there’s nothing like a climb up a very tall windy staircase (very vertigo-esque) after a couple of drinks. But it was definitely worth it to see views like this:

Then we headed over to the Deutshces museum (Munich’s version of the Smithsonian) and saw lots of boats and planes and telescopes and space shuttles—basically lots of boy stuff. It was cool though.

Since beer halls aren’t terribly vegetarian friendly, we had Thai food for dinner before going out to drink more beer. Unfortunately, right when we set out, so too did half of Munich, newly returned from a soccer game. So we ended up having quite an adventure. The first place we went to came highly recommended by Rick Steves. Rick Steves, as it turns out, is an idiot. It was super lame. Then we tried going to one of the larger well-established beer halls but that was packed. So Hannah suggested we try to find one that her sister had suggested but which nobody really knew where it was. We hopped on a series of trams and buses out into the suburbs where our maps were no help, and eventually gave up because it was really cold. So we ended up back at Augustiner. This time though, there was some kind of German choir group sitting at the table behind us who would occasionally burst out in song in the middle of their drinking which was kind of fun.

Sunday was more relaxed. We went to an art museum in the morning and had “Indian fastfood” for lunch (where we actually ended up waiting quite some time for our meals).Then it was time for us to head back to the train station and our respective homes. All in all a very successful weekend and I can’t wait for the next European beer summit!

(also sorry my pictures suck, I’m gonna try to steal some better ones)

Gay Paris (can't escape the gay)

Classes this past week , in general, went well. In one school I taught about Obama as a cultural lesson. I made the mistake in my first class to go a little too in depth into the American governmental system. Ah, the looks on their little faces when I tried to explain what congress was…

The kids still get really excited whenever I show up and they LOVE running up to me during recess to say “hello!” and then run away. Or sometimes they linger and talk to me about something they find fascinating like a leaf or something. One student came up to me after class one day and gave me a sign that she’d made for me with my name on it. In classic little kid fashion she way overestimated the size of the paper so there’s a giant JUL and a teeny weeny little IA squeezed in at the end. I love it.

I started the video conference classes this past week as well. So, when I said above that classes went well in general, I left room for me to rant about how horrible teaching English via skype actually is. Pretty horrible. The camera they were using was pretty bad and out of focus the whole time so I couldn’t see what was going on, and the slight delay made saying things and asking them to repeat it a pain in the arse as well. But, Bertrand from the inspection who had gone to the school to help set up and see how it went (and basically led the classes for me since my web-teaching was totally ineffective) said he thought it went really well. He is insane.

The most exciting part of my week though was definitely my spur-of-the-moment jaunt up to Paris on Saturday to visit my Carleton pal twiggy who was in town with his new Taiwanese beau “Tree” (his name means cypress tree in Chinese). When Tree apologized for having a gay couple as company, I told him the story of my last weekend which he thought was hilarious and suggested I start advertising as a "gay man magnet". That is an idea...

They were staying at a hotel in chinatown which was cool since it’s a part of Paris I’d never been to and since I was with one real Asian and one American who speaks Chinese, I got the insider-experience if you will. We had Japanese noodles for lunch and Chinese (real Chinese, not just the chicken drenched in soy sauce that you’d find in St. Dié) for dinner—when in Rome! (Or I guess in this instance it would be ‘when in little Italy’). Tree was incredibly generous and insisted on paying for everything. He was sneaky about it too—I’d look up from my wallet to realize that everything was already paid for, like magic! Resistance was futile but the boys conceded to let me pay for movie tickets later that night.

We had a great day. Apart from the great food, we walked around a lot, we went to the most beautiful Starbucks I have ever seen (Twiggy called it Versailles Starbucks), AND we went to a store that sells American food products and I bought a super-expensive box of Stovetop stuffing and can of cranberry jelly for the upcoming thanksgiving. It’s probably a good thing we don’t have an oven since I probably would have spend my entire month’s salary on boxed/canned Thanksgiving foodstuffs. I was also eyeing a bag of ever-so-delicious-looking Reeses peanut butter cups (How could the Europeans not know the wonders of peanut butter?) but it was 10euros for a pretty little bag and I just could not do it.

Stay tuned, upcoming events include: a St. Dié Thanksgiving (I even downloaded home alone in French as preparation) AND beer summit/socktoberfest/general merriment in MUNICH!

Random sidenote: Last night I dreamt that I passed Barack Obama eating chocolates in the teacher’s room and all I could think to say to him was “bon appétit!”

Extra footage: Here’s a photo of me and Tree outside of the movie theatre. It was this really cool area called cour St. Emilion in the 14^th arrondisement. Festive!

Sitting Pretty in the Noodles

The good news: I believe (fingers crossed) that all of the bureaucratic formalities which France loves soooo much have finally come to an end. On Tuesday I spent the day running around Nancy and it’s suburbs going to multiple hospitals and immigration offices in order to wait around insane amounts of time in order to get a little card taped into my passport that allows me to not be deported (so I guess kind of worth it). Luckily the mass amounts of stress I was feeling at the beginning quickly dissipated when a) I met up with a bunch of other assistants who had the same exact appointments and b) I realized all the French people were super laid back about everything. So first I waited and waited and got a chest x-ray that lasted 2 seconds, then I waited and waited and was brought into a room with a doctor who asked me if I was pregnant, if I smoked, and if I was up to date on my vaccinations, then I waited and waited to give the immigration people proof of my very thorough medical examination, and that was that. More positives: I finally got to see Nancy which is in fact quite nice, AND I got to keep my chest x-ray which is currently hanging on my wall as art.

On Wednesday, Tommy’s boyfriend Nico arrived for his visit. Ruling: shockingly normal. Or at least an impressive façade. While the two lovers had their little reunion, Alex and I went out with other Alex and other Nico for a drink at the Darou. Nico is a big fan/collector of board games (The fun kind, like pictionary) so we had a couple of beers, played some games and had a jolly-old-time.

Thursday I spent the entire day making animal bingo cards.

Then there was Friday. I was in the kitchen eating my lunch when some of Tommy’s new friends, a young gay couple he’d met at a club a couple weeks back, stopped by. I’m still unclear whether he had invited them or whether they just showed up but in any case he apparently had very little interest in entertaining them so it was just the three of us for quite a while. Despite their eye-liner and half-unbuttoned shirts, they turned out to be quite nice, and their tiny little dog Turbo, who’d they’d brought along was amazingly un-yippy which was a very pleasant surprise. Gradually more people came to join us. Nico woke up (at 5pm), Alex came home from school, and Tommy came back from the high school with a student friend in tow—a student friend who happens to be a cross-dresser with bright pink hair and the facebook name of “kolor wonderplush”—who was very nice and very tolerant when I continually messed up my gender pronouns. So the seven of us hung out in the kitchen all night: six gay guys and little straight Julia (if only there’d been one more it could have been some warped version of snow white and the seven dwarves).

On Saturday Alex had a concert gig with the orchestra at a church mass in town to celebrate the patron saint of music’s day and I decided to attend. The music was nice (though at one point they played “Pomp and Circumstance” and I kept on waiting for a line of people in cap and gown to come walking down the aisle) but it meant having to sit through a catholic mass which was sort of uncomfortable since I had no idea what to do when. Plus it kind of creeped me out. (I was worrying the whole time whether I’d have to eat Jesus, but that part turned out to be pretty easily avoidable.) I did discover, however, one of the cutest things on this planet which is little kids giving each other “les bises” (the little kisses on the cheeks when you see someone). I almost died.

But I guess my little religious excursion paid off since today we had a St. Dié miracle! After weeks of cold and rain and terrifyingly strong winds, today was sunny with temps in the mid 60s! Alex and I made sure to take advantage of this meteorological anomaly and sat outside at a café, sipping our coffees and basking in the warm November sun. Ahhhhhh

Also: favorite French Idiom of the week: “avoir le cul bordé de nouilles”.

Literal translation: to have your ass surrounded by noodles

What it actually means: to be really lucky.

Hmmm…

Push the Mushroom

Didn’t do too much during my post-Luxemburg vacation days. Caught up on the latest season of Project Runway and drank lots of hot bevs to stave off frostbite in my very cold room. On Monday though (we went back to school on Thursday oddly enough) Pascale, Alex’s teacher friend invited us to join her and her nephew Pierre for a little jaunt up to Epinal to go to some tour at the “Imagerie d’Epinal” and we happily accepted.

On the drive up, we learned that this Imagerie and the prints it created during its peak in the 19^th century (historical events, schoolbook illustrations, fairytales, etc) is actually pretty famous throughout France, and the only reason why someone not from around here would have heard of Epinal. Apparently there’s even a French expression about it! When we got there, the place was pretty neat. Despite attempts to make it really hokey with people walking around in costumes and balloon animal-making magicians, the actual printing machines that were being exhibited were super cool. Pascale got chosen to use the Guttenberg press, and she gave the print to Alex—jealous!

Then we went down to the “modern-day” part of the Imagerie which was super bizarre. Lots of weird collages of random celebrities or corny themes like “children”.

Example of the cool stuff the imagerie did in the 19^th century

Example of the stuff it produces today

But we went a little further and found a station where you could get personalized stationery, luckily in the more classic Epinal style as opposed to the funky-collage style. As much as I love stationery I don’t think I’d ever be tempted to have my own personalized Brigitte Bardot letters.

We made a detour on our way back as Pascale insisted on showing us Gerardmer, a very pretty town about 30km away from St. Die which has a nice lake and attracts a fair amount of tourists in the winter for its skiing. Because of the newly turned-back clocks though, it was getting darker faster than she had anticipated and she started panicking that we wouldn’t be able to see anything once we actually got there. This is when I learned that the French version of “put the pedal to the metal” is literally translated to “step on the mushroom” which we all agreed was funny. From then on, Pierre would every once in a while in a put-on, deep, serious voice say “Push the mushroom” which because of some combination of his voice, his accent, the ridiculousness of the phrase and it’s calming consonance, I just thought was the greatest thing ever.

After Gerardmer we went back to Pascale’s house and while she prepared dinner, Alex Pierre and I plopped down in front of the telly. And what did we find? Le Juste Prix, otherwise known as The Price is Right. OK: you’d think you could not get more inane than the American version, but then you go to France. I actually could not believe my eyes/ears. One of the hosts’ name was the equivalent of “Mr. Doofus” and it was basically the three stooges (though probably not as funny) with some classic guess-how-much-this-enormous-chess-set-costs games thrown in as an after-thought.

Pascale’s dinner was delish. And after the main course, I reveled in a cheese that had to be kept well sealed, apart from the normal cheese plate in it’s own private storage case because it smelled so strong. And, as the boys made a stink about it (no pun intended), I helped myself to a second helping.

My return to school was pretty painless. Highlight: in one class we are apparently having the kids memorize the song “We will Rock you” by Queen. I had to sing the first verse for them as an example and I felt pretty bad-ass.

After school I met up with Bertrand and the tech guy to venture a couple towns over and visit the school I’ll be video-conferencing with. Despite it being close (it took maybe 20 mintues to get there) this town was worlds apart from Saint Dié. It was a one-room school-house that shared a building with the Mairie and the view out of the window was a hill spotted with cows. Also, when the teacher left the class to come set-up skype with us, the kids didn’t make a peep! That would just never happen in my other schools. It’s making me feel a little better about the idea of running a class solo. Over the internet.

On my way home that afternoon, I saw the Saint Dié is starting to put up Christmas decorations already. There was even a guy selling roasted chestnuts out of a stand shaped like a train. I’m not sure if I’m happy or if I think it’s too soon. I think I’m leaning towards happy though. Then I remembered that I’d seen a street blocked off on my way to school earlier that day and decided to investigate. I don’t know if this has anything to do with Christmas decorations going up or not, but apparently there is a carnival in Saint Die. It’s strange, because no one said anything about it and there were no posters around for it, but sure enough, I turned the corner and there it was! Alex and I went back the next night to check it out. Here he is looking super happy to be at a carnival.

Journey #1: LUXembourg

Though getting there and back turned out to be a bit of a hassle due to train strikes (At first I just thought they were kind of ridiculous and funny but after having to actually travel by train, very frustrating. It could be worse though. Alex told me that in England the firemen will be striking on “bonfire night” which just sounds like the world’s worst idea) Luxembourg was great! Hannah was a blast to be with as always and the country was very nice as well.

The landscape of the city was really cool since there was a deep valley that snakes around the whole thing. The pretty effect of hillsides dotted with ancient ruins slightly made up for the fact that our hostel was situated at the bottom of the valley, so in order to get anywhere we had to huff and puff our way up an enormous hill.

The first day we kind of just walked around the city, orienting ourselves and getting a feel for the place. We also came across this really cool chocolatier place which specialized in what they call “Hotchoc spoons” which is just a chocolate lollipop that you stir into a mug of hot milk until it becomes hot chocolate. It was yummy and the place had a very cozy feel. Grade: A+

For the next two days we invested in a Luxembourg Card which gave us free transportation on all buses and trains throughout the country plus free entrance into a whole slew of museums and attractions. On Tuesday we went to the art/history museum which was very nice (despite being very oddly organized) but sadly the part we really wanted to see called “Luxembourg life” was closed for renovation. So it goes. After a kebab lunch, we hopped on a train to a town on the German border where the Luxcard brochure advertised a wine tour. When we got there, the secretary told us to wait 15 minutes for the next tour and after we did that, the secretary just got up and led us (nobody else had shown up) into the caves, and we didn’t really realize that we were on the tour until about 5 minutes into it. We learned all about how to bottle sparkling wine and at the end had a glass each. While we sipped, we chatted with the “bartender” about the language situation in Luxembourg which is pretty funky since they speak kind of a mash-up of French German and Dutch, but everyone seems to speak each of those individual languages as well, and it’s always a toss up of what language you’ll find in a store window.

The next day after a more successful breakfast at the hostel (we got up early enough this time to get Nutella!) we headed northwest to a town called Vianden, famed for it’s chateau. The castle tour was self-guided and Hannah and I were the only ones around so it was a little odd/spooky but cool nonetheless. Then we encountered some other visitors including a bickering American couple who were too wrapped up in their argument to actually look at the castle and an Asian girl who asked us about the intricacies of the Luxembourg royal family and history which we couldn’t really help her with. Here’s Hannah in front of the castle!

Vianden the town turned out to be very cute. We tried to hit up the nearby Victor Hugo museum as well, but it was closed, as was the chairlift ride that we’d seen in our pamphlets that promised great views of the town. I tried to take a photo of a photo of what I presumed was the view from the top, but it didn’t turn out so well, as you can see.

In order to take full advantage of our Luxembourg cards we decided to stop by the military museum in Diekirch (famous for their beer, but sadly there was no brewery tour in the Luxcard itinerary). It actually turned out to be pretty cool and rather informative since neither Hannah or I could remember what exactly the battle of the bulge was, but knew it was a pretty big deal in this neck of the woods. As we were going through the museum, Hannah asked me about my family’s history in the war and I realized I knew remarkably little, so Papa, if you’re reading this: you owe me some stories the next time I see you!

Here’s a picture of me standing in front of my nick-namesake:

Upon our return to the city, we hopped on a bus to the Mudam, the museum of modern art. I had mostly wanted to go just to check out the building which was designed by I.M. Pei and which was, as expected, a very impressive space. Some of the exhibits were pretty interesting as well though—some very strange but some less disturbing like this room of floating geometric shapes.

One thing that someone had warned me about before leaving was that Luxembourg is a very expensive city. And this turned out to be quite true, at least food-wise. Every time we though we’d found a good deal, it turned out the restaurant would charge us an arm and a leg for something or other—like water at an Indian restaurant (where you’d think not having water would be a pretty serious issue, but in fact, I’ve discovered spice tolerance in western Europe seems to be generally pretty low). ANYHOW, we did what we could and comforted ourselves with the fact that we’d gotten such a good deal with the Luxembourg cards.

As usual, I didn’t take as many photos as I should have. To be fair, while Luxembourg was really beautiful, some of the prettiest scenery was from out the window of the bus or train and that doesn’t make for very nice photographs. In any case, here are some more random pix:

A crocodile baguette.

Hannah and I can honestly say that we checked out the Luxembourg art scene

Maybe my favorite statue--Bacchus in wine country

In conclusion, google-imaging Luxembourg would probably be a better bet.

Weetches, Speeders, and Skeleteens (I think the last one should become slang for anorexic highschoolers)

Today marks the third time I’ve stepped in dog poop since I’ve been here. Third time’s the charm? No, third time is just as aggravating as the first and second time. Right in the middle of the sidewalk! Now, I LOVE dogs. A lot. But so far the amount of time I’ve spent with any has been far exceeded by the amount of time I’ve spent scraping poop off of my shoes.

On a happier note, school was a success this week. A bunch of my lessons involved the kids (and almost always me) doing impressions of Halloween things which I think they very much enjoyed. And in one class we were talking about costumes and I got a little carried away and started talking about Lanie and my costumes from when we were kids (ex: mime, Santa Claus, pizza delivery man). I don’t know if the kids were amused at the costumes themselves or how excited I was about them, but either way, they liked it.

Today, I got to one of my classes a little early and the kids were reading aloud from a book. They were getting really into it and reading in different voices and everything. It was so freaking cute.

Home life: The fire alarm kept going off yesterday which was rather annoying. And it wasn’t even Tommy’s veal-hamburgers that was setting it off. A blameless offense is an annoying offense. Also, Estelle is gradually coming out of her shell and becoming a really fun person to hang around with.

The end of the school day today marks the beginning of the first school vacation. They didn’t even give us time to hit our first wall and we’re already on a 10-day break! Hannah over in Autriche has got the same break (and unlike Tricky is not studying up for the physics GREs) so we’ve planned a little adventure together. Come Monday it’s Luxembourg-ho!

Over and Out, but first…

Random note #1 : It’s interesting that at each school, there seems to be a diffent toy/game of choice. The school I’m at on Mondays is the one that hasn’t banned soccer so that’s what they all do. At Tuesday’s school, from a distance it looks like the kiddos have started a little cock-fighting ring during recess, but upon closer inspection, they’re playing with their toupis (=spinning tops on steroids). They have their own little arena platform and they watch and root for one kid’s toupi to knock the other out of the ring. At Thursday’s school, it’s all about the hula-hoop (you know, for kids) but I have yet to see anyone actually hula-hooping as it were. They prefer seeing how many kids they can fit inside one hoop and then try (usually in vain) to move in one direction together. I think that one is my favorite. What’s better than one cute little French kid? A whole mass of them bound together by a hula-hoop!

Random note #2: There comes a point in every American teenager’s life where they realize they have been duped since what our elementary school teachers tell us about cursive (“when you’re older, you’ll need to use it”) never really comes true. EXCEPT if you become a teacher in France. I always print when I write on the board since my cursive is atrocious, and I was recently called out on it—by a nine year old girl. Ouch.

Are You Feeling Fine?

Well, the first week of classes was a hit I’d say. I started out kind of rocky, trying to do a lesson plan about anglophone geography (which in my defense had been in the booklet they gave us) that turned out to be too much for a 45 minute session with a bunch of fidgety 8 year-olds. But little by little I started to get a feel for their attention spans and things got better.

In most classes we worked on introductions. At first it seemed like the kids had it down pat and I worried I was wasting their time. But then I started noticing a lot of dialogues like the following:

Child A: What’s your name?

Child B: I’m fine, thank you

Child B: Where are you from?

Child A: I’m nine

So I think working on it a little more was probably a good idea…

I did another question and answer session in one of my classes and I got some more rather strange questions:

--Do you have electricity in the United States? (a bit of a change from Mali where everyone asked me if all Americans drove around in limousines)

--Do you know about the Titanic

--Are there lots of woodpeckers ?

--There was one kid who was really fascinated by the time difference and kept on asking “if it’s midnight here, what time is it there?” “If it’s ten o’clock here what time is it there?”, etc and then he started just raising his hand and telling stories about other places he’s been or heard about with other time differences.

--My favorite question though: “are you a lady or are you still a kid?” (Hmm, good question. I ended up picking adult, but I’m still not so sure)

In another class, we were learning school objects and since everyone here teaches British English, they were learning “rubber” rather than “eraser” I started off trying to explain that there was a different word for it in American English but it was clear that we could only use one name for classroom learning purposes so: rubber it is. It really is off-putting hearing one 9 year old ask another 9 year old “do you have a rubber?”

School aside, I also had some nice leisurely days off. I did some mom-shipped American crosswords. (Alex and I tried to do a French one the other day, but when Estelle, our resident French person, couldn’t even do it,, we gave up. So Mom if you’re reading this, keep ‘em coming!) I went to the library and checked out the first in a murder mystery trilogy based in Nancy (the second of which is set during the FIG and thus in our very own St. Dié). I also checked out the dvd collection which was fairly sparse. There are some crowd pleasers, some classics (I took out « le Jour se lève » with Jean Gabin since I wanted to open with something classy and French) and some were just very random. We’ll see how desperate I get as the months roll on.

I also took advantage of the extra time to make some more time-consuming meals. I made some chili which turned out surprisingly well. Though the next afternoon when I was eating the last of it, Mr. François popped in and asked me why I wasn’t eating at the cantine and that their food was much better than what I was eating. I was slightly offended but let it slide.

Pretty tame weekend (apart from a fairly heated debate betwixt the roommates about the value of spectator sports. Shockingly, I was pro-sports. Who knew?). The weather has been pretty gross and the nasty cold which has been slowly spreading down the corridor has finally reached me. Blegh.

I’m still going to buck up and be energetic for next week’s classes though because they’re going to be Halloween-themed! Wooooooooo! (that is both excitement and ghost noise)

Fools (&) Russian

So, last Thursday and Friday I went around to the different schools to observe the various classes. The kids all seem super cute but the teachers are much meaner than in the US (the first teacher I observed—who luckily I won’t be working with—actually growled like a pit bull when one of the kids mis-conjugated a verb and then told him very matter-of-factly not to be an idiot.) In a couple of the classes I stood up and did a little introduction which basically consisted of me pointing to Boston on a map. One teacher made me spell “Massachusetts” which I did very nervously. I had just witnessed a child be pretty severely reprimanded for not spelling a word correctly so my knees were ever so slightly quivering as I told the teacher to erase the fourth “s” and add an extra “t”. I looked it up as soon as I got home and let out a huge sigh of relief.

One teacher let her students ask me questions about life in America. Some of the questions I got:

- Do you watch “les experts: Miami” (the French version of CSI)? Answer: no

- Do you write with feather pens? Answer: sadly, no

I finished observing Friday afternoon and then it was time for some FIG-ing.

Naturally, our first stop was the food stand area. Cheeses, sausages, breads, pastries, chocolates and more from all over France. It was awesome (though that hopeful look you get from the vendors as you munch on your free sample is hard for me to take).

The three of us went to a food demonstration with an acclaimed pastry chef and a very odd presenter who for some reason was dressed like a vampire. Now, I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that, for the French, pastry is no laughing matter. That assumption turned out to be pretty wrong in this case however, as the whole thing turned into something like a French farce. The tarte they made sur-scène (as opposed to the pre-made tarts they garnished at the end) was completely ruined and they kind of eff-ed up the oven in the process by coating one of the racks with plastic wrap. The finished product wasn’t anything special—it just looked like a cake with a lot of junk piled on top of it—and I cannot speak to how it tasted since I was rudely nudged out of the taster’s circle by two very large, round men.

The next morning I went to a talk at the library where the author of a book called “A Funny Russian Novel” was speaking. Turns out that the title was rather deceptive since the talk soon evolved into a discussion of what a poor state Russia is currently in. Not funny.

I met up with Alex in the afternoon and we went to a concert in the cloister behind the cathedral. It was a Russian/Martinique-an group which seemed to specialize in beat-boxing and weird didgeridoo-esque vocalizations, but there was some normal stuff thrown in there as well.

Later that night we went to a see a Russian pianist who was very very good. The theater though was a little strange as it slanted upwards rather than downwards (Alex: “I feel like I’m in an airplane that’s just started to take off”) and had a rather odd seat-numbering system that still remains a bit of a mystery.

The concert finally ended after about 30 encore performances (I started to feel bad for the woman, I think she just couldn’t say no. Finally someone turned on the houselights and that was that). After that, we met up with Alex’s teacher friend and her husband and we all went next door for a drink and another concert which turned out to be the same Russian/Martinique-an group that we had seen earlier that day. Besides the lead singer’s wardrobe change from cowboy to Chinese peasant, their performance was pretty much identical but we had fun anyways.

Sunday: After some early morning class preparations, I met up with one of the girls I’d met at orientation and the German assistant that was living with her. We went back to the food market (which was a repeat I was more than happy to do since it involved more free samples) and then watched some dances in the street, and went to a big book fair, and perused the Russian gift stands. After the girls left to catch their train, I headed back to the internat in order to give myself plenty of time to worry about my first day of work tomorrow.

French Toast

just a little note: The French call French Toast 'pain perdu' which literally means lost toast, but refers to day-old bread that's lost that fresh feeling. And now I totally understand why they would invent such a glorious thing:
1-everyone here buys fresh baguettes or loaves everyday. No preservative-loaded supermarket bread allowed. And everyone is pretty thin, so there's no way they eat the whole thing in a day.
2- the french don't make what we know as toast. They buy pre-toasted squares that come in a cardboard box.

and thus french toast is born. yum.

Goldilocks and the Three Beers

Monday and Tuesday of this week, I took the train into Epinal (the biggest city in my département) to attend the two-day orientation for the English assistants in the Vosges. There were 12 of us in total, which was a nice small number and we all got along quite well.

Orientation was run by Edith and another woman Corinne and the two seemed to be pretty friendly and would tease each other pretty often which was super cute. Corinne would especially poke fun at Edith’s English skills, which are to be fair, pretty bad. At one point we were talking about a lesson plan involving fairy-tales and instead of the traditional one we were all familiar with, Edith proposed the title of this post as a possibility which got us laughing for quite some time. (It really would have been a much better story)

The restaurant we went to for lunch was really delicious the first day, and the second we had to eat from a buffet where we had to choose from an assortment of not-so-fresh-looking seafood and lots of salads all of which were drenched in about three tons of mayo. After having caused some serious doubts about French cuisine, however, they redeemed themselves by serving a most delicious crème brûlée for dessert.

We were all a little sad at the end of the two days knowing that we’re all pretty scattered throughout the Vosges, but there was talk about visiting each others’ towns, and staying in contact for future travel. I hope something works out because it honestly was a great group of people.

Other news: Alex and I went to get our library cards today and discovered that the library is a whole lot nicer than we expected. There’s a walled off garden courtyard area that seems like a really lovely spot to sit and read (especially for when I don’t want to shell out the bucks to sit and read in a café)

St. Dié has kicked FIG prep into high gear. (FIG is the festival internationale de Geographie which is apparently a pretty big deal. There is one country and one topic chosen each year as a theme and this year it is Russia and forests.) On my way to check out the pool, I walked through this little fir tree and wooden cabin-lined pathway that was super cute. Though it does seem a little strange that the theme is forest/deforestation and yet St. Dié has probably destroyed about 30 forests in order to construct this little wooded wonderland.

Lastly. This post might not make any sensé at all. I’ve been sniffing paint fumes for the past couple of days since the internat has suddenly decided, three days after we’ve all settled in, that the foyer should be yellow.

Pictures!

The Internat Team: Tommy, me, and Alex

View of St. Dié from above

Sister city to St. Dié= Lowell, MA = super random

And then there were Trois

We have friends! There’s a young high school teacher who lives in the internat with us (though she, like everyone else it seems, goes home to Nancy every weekend) and she and a couple other young teachers invited Alex and I out for drinks. We ended up going to La Cabane au Darou, the “best bar in St. Dié”, a woodland creature-themed pub with a pretty amazing selection of beers. I felt like a hobbit. I really liked it. The teachers were all really fun as well. It only took about 15 minutes for them to start singing Carla Bruni and showing us pictures of themselves in wacky costumes on their phones.

In other exciting news, I now have a chair in my room. Bertrand brought one around yesterday. He apologized profusely for it being super ugly (which it sort of is, but I certainly am not complaining. I just turned the cushion around).

The last big event was the arrival of our new floormate. (There were supposed to be two more but it turns out that the German assistant I guess is a bit older and found her own living accommodations in a neighboring town. We were all a little bummed to hear that, but we figure if she didn’t want to live with us, she probably wouldn’t have been that much fun anyhow. )

New member of the internat team: Tommy VanDenberg from New Jersey. He refers to everyone as some combination of bitch, giirrrrl, diva, or pute and is currently in hot pursuit of the most happening gay bars in St. Dié—gooood luck. We took him food shopping (where he bought about 10 gallons of milk, 2 tons of eggs, 10 lbs of pasta and sauce and then looked at us and said “that should be enough to get me through the weekend, right ?”) and then back to la Cabane au Darou for a night of initiation and delicious Belgian troll beer.

Pictures soon!

Oh the Pain!

Things continue to go well. The weather is crap though. I’ve been waiting for a sunny day to go and take pictures of the town to post, but that may just never happen. It was sunny and warm everyday we were in Paris and the first day I got here it was gray and cold and rainy and it has stayed that way since. There are definitely enough cheery people to make up for it though.

I’ve been able to explore the town quite a bit in all my free time, and it seems pretty nice. If you talk to anyone here, they’ll tell you how ugly it is since everything was rebuilt after the war, and it’s true that it’s not one of those medieval French villages you see in postcards, but I don’t really mind. Plus, even though it may not look like a postcard French town, it definitely smells like one. You cannot go anywhere in this town without being a matter of feet away from a bakery. There are literally three within a minute walk from where I live. And when the wind blows in the right direction, it smells like croissants. It’s even better than malt-o-meal.

So far, it’s just me and a British guy named Alex at the internat. Despite the fact that I’m a little bitter he’s not Scottish, and my jealousy of his flawless French, he has turned out to be very nice. He has informed me that the two other assistants who will be living with us arrive tomorrow (another American—from New Jersey—and a German) and we’re both very excited to be one big happy family. Hopefully.

We went to the local cinema last night (there are actually two right next to each other) and saw Wallstreet: Money Never Sleeps. Sadly, it was dubbed which I absolutely hate but got used to after a while. It probably wasn’t the best movie to watch to gauge my comprehension though, since I probably couldn’t have followed a lot of the money talk anyhow. I’ll have to go so Eat Pray Love or something and see how that goes. The theatre here is weird. It has five or six screens but ALL of the movies play at the same times. 12:15 or 8:45.

Sad realization of the day: black beans do not exist in Europe. We went to the giant supermarket today and I found the bean aisle and looked and looked and, nada. I asked Alex about them and he didn’t know what they were (“describe them” “They’re beans, and they’re black”). Kind of a bummer. I bought red beans instead. I think things will be ok. We also bought some horse meat which we’re planning on trying tonight (so that the other assistants don’t judge us). When in Rome…

It Begins

This time it’s actually happening. Those who are not familiar with my unsuccessful attempt at blogging last year can witness my failure for themselves at www.weismanoncampus.blogspot.com But, in writing these words, I am breaking the curse! (I actually refused to have a blog about this year unless I could think of a catchy phrase/pun for the title. So you all have Johanna to thank for this being in existence, as she is the one who thought of it. She first suggested Live and Let St. Die, but I thought this one made a little more sense)

So, brief summary of what this blog is about: I’m Julia (I’m sure anyone who would possibly be reading this is aware of that though). My first year out of college (shout out to Carleton), I’m trying to prove that my major in French was not in vain, and so I’m living and working in France as an English language assistant. I’m living in a small town in north eastern France called St. Dié, hence the title of the blog (mini French lesson: if a letter is capitalized, it doesn’t need an accent, so I’m not even cheating).

Before arriving here though, I spent a week traveling with Johanna (Pictured). Our first stop was Reykjavik Iceland, which…was….AWESOME. We saw geysers, we ate fermented shark (who’s eating who now jaws?!) and submerged ourselves in the eerily blue, geothermally-heated waters of the blue lagoon (Which consequently turned our hair into straw—Johanna’s main talking point for the rest of the trip). But we do feel ten years younger as advertised.

Then it was on to Paris France which is soo beautiful but frustratingly not up-to-date with modern conveniences like elevators/escalators. Lugging a year’s worth of clothes, etc up and down in the metro was not fun to say the least, but I did get some help from some friendly Parisians and eventually got everything stowed safely in the hotel room, resolved to take a taxi the next time.

Paris was Paris. I feel like I don’t have much original to say. We laughed, we cried…

Finally…I got to St. Dié, and was greeted by two smiling faces: Edith who is in charge of languages in the general area, and Bertrand who is in charge of the elementary schools in St. Dié. I’d had some email contact with Edith, so I knew she was friendly, but both Edith and Bertrand exceeded expectations in kindness and helpfulness. They took me to the high school and introduced me to the person I’ll be paying each month and then we all went to see the room where I’ll be living. It’s pretty much a dorm owned by the high school that’s across the street from the school itself. Nothing special, but it was pretty much what I expected. Edith, however, was not having any of it and she kept on telling me that if I didn’t like it I could find somewhere else. I told her I was used to dorm rooms and was fine, but she and Bertrand basically took it upon themselves to make the room more livable. So apparently Bertrand is bringing me an armchair and Edith is bringing me drapes and new sheets. Maybe more, who knows. (Later in the day, she took me food shopping and insisted on buying me chocolate and flowers for the room. I told her she was being too nice but she insisted that it was normal. I still don’t really think it’s normal) She and Bertrand also insisted on taking me to the bank and helped me set up an account which I was happy about because the lady at the bank spoke fast.

In general, the whole they-speak-a-different-language-here thing is going pretty well. I think. I can pretty much understand everything addressed directly at me, but when I try to follow a conversation I’m not a part of, I just pick up bits and pieces. Everyone here though seems to be very impressed. Edith called my French impeccable (clearly not true) and others have said that I’m better than other assistants in the past. I’m pretty sure it’s only because I don’t have an atrocious American accent. (Accents do make a tremendous difference. The biggest problem I’ve had so far was understanding French people trying to speak English. My landlord-of-sorts started talking about Beacon Hill when he learned I was from Boston but it took me waaay too long—he had to start describing John Kerry—to figure out what he was saying. Baconal. Something like that)

Edith and Bertrand keep talking about past assistants. Mostly positively and others kind of slyly insulting. It’s making me really nervous. I feel like I have a lot to live up.

Oh god, I just realized how long this post is. Yikes.