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.