La Vie en Vosges: looking down on the vosges and looking back on a year in Lorraine

With school out of the way by Thursday, on Friday I began the cleaning/packing process, starting with taking down the massive amounts of postcards, leaflets etc that I’d amassed over the months here and tacked onto the wall in at attempt to make my room look a little less like a prison cell. Though is there anything stopping a prison inmate from doing the same thing? It’s probably some of the limited interior decorating one can do in prison. But I digress.

In the midst of my wall-baring I heard a knock at the door and it was Bertrand inviting me to lunch with him and the others from the inspection (minus the one crazy mean lady who they all trash-talked almost the entire time). It was a good meal in a nice terrace setting on a beautiful day with good company. So basically, it was great. I got to talk to and learn more about the others who before I’d had very limited encounters with. Example: the tech guy for the schools used to be one of the top ten tennis players in all of France. But then he hurt his shoulder and ended up as the tech guy for St. Dié. Whomp whomp….

Later Friday night I was whisked over to Benoit’s house for a party for all the teachers at my Thursday school. Everyone was in a good mood since school had just ended and the beer and wine was flowing. One of teachers there loved the fact that I loved French cheese (it had been a common conversation topic between us throughout the year) and she took the party as an opportunity to just PLY me with fromage. When she came around with the plate, she asked me what kind I wanted and when I replied she just said “Naah, you’re leaving soon, you should have some of each” to which I did not refuse. But then she gave me about a kilo of each kind. It was wonderful and terrible at the same time.

I caused quite a stir in presenting my contribution to the food spread: zucchini bread. There was a lot of skepticism and some people thought that I had mixed up the French word for zucchini with some more dessert-suitable term but I was adamant that, no I was not making a mistake and yes, there were vegetables in the cake. When some of them finally got up the nerve to taste it, they were big fans and pretty soon everyone joined in so ultimately the American dessert stood it’s ground among it’s French counterparts

After dessert I was handed a collective card/gift from all the teachers. It was a necklace and it happened to go PERFECTLY with what I was wearing, which made me vaguely suspicious that one of them had snuck out during the party to buy it. But I didn’t notice anyone sneak out and I don’t know what store would have been open at that hour, so I guess I can conclude that either they got lucky or that I’m really predictable. Either way, it was a lovely gift and I was touched.

Over the weekend, I picked up where I’d left off in the cleaning/packing process and by Sunday evening I was essentially all packed. This was when I was whisked off to Pascale’s house for a big French dinner (foie gras included, yum!) with Alex and Pascale’s family. Alex and I both slept over at Pascale’s Sunday night so that we could all set off together the next morning for…paragliding! We drove to a town called Gerardmer to meet up with the paragliders who then told us that weather conditions were better at the other location so we followed them in our car to a mountain in Alsace called le Markstein (which is funny/hard to say with a French accent). Then we buckled in to our parachutes, got a little mini-lesson on takeoff and landing and pretty soon, we were flying! It was absolutely amazing. Perched in my little seat, I floated, feet dangling, high above the Vosges. I couldn’t possibly imagine a better send off than that.

And then it was over! A train, a shuttle bus, another train, another shuttle, a night in the airport and two flights later, I planted my feet on US soil. Mission accomplie.

All in all, I’m really happy with my year in St. Dié. I liked spotting familiar faces around town, having a “usual” order at the café and the other little things that mark having really lived somewhere. And of course, the teaching. There were good days and bad days, but I look back upon the whole experience fondly. I had a lot of fun and hopefully helped some young minds grow a little bit, or if not, at least inspired them to go hunt leprechauns.

FIN

Adieu, Adieu to yieu and yieu and yieu...

The last week of classes started off well enough with a weekend getaway trip to Brittany. It’s a region of France I’ve always wanted to see, and I realized (rather late) that this year was probably a good time to tick it off the list. And it didn’t disappoint! I was only able to see a couple of towns (St. Malo being the primary locale plus two neighboring towns) and would have loved to see more but finances and time constraints being as they were, I’m very pleased with what I accomplished. In a way it was kind of odd since my last trip in France was to a place that reminded me a lot of the place I’ll be coming home to in a week. St. Malo is basically Cape Cod, but a lot older and with a chateau. Plus it has about 1.3 billion more crêperies (literally every third building was a crêperie. Sometimes more often. The Bretons take their crepes very seriously). I strolled around the walled city a little bit, did a LOT of beach lounging, picnicking, and walking (the rather lengthy walk from the hotel to the town was essentially all shoreline so I couldn’t really complain) and, of course, sampled some of the local cuisine.

Then it was back to St. Dié for a last week of classes. And I must say, as a whole it was fairly anticlimactic. On Monday morning, classes were like any other, though my favorite class gave me a little booklet of drawings as a going-away gift. It’s really adorable. It was supposed to be a drawing of something they’d learned in class but mostly it’s pictures of me with things written like “I love you! I love you!” and then a tiny little “a cat” in the corner. After bidding farewell to that school, I hurried home to finish up preparing for my live-action last lessons with the kids at the school I usually video-conference with. I had put a lot of work into thinking of fun activities hoping to prove that I could in fact be a good teacher when given the chance to a) Bertrand from the inspection who was bringing me there and b) the kids themselves. But as soon as I got to the inspection for my ride over, it became clear that all of my planning had been for nothing. We were just going to have juice and cookies and the kids were going to ask me questions about America. Ok, whatever. It went well in any case. One seriously ADHD kid who had always made skype an ordeal could NOT get over how short I was—cute at first and then really irritating. At one point he started laying his head on my shoulder and then later he left, telling me he’d come back and kissed my upper arm. Odd. The teacher brought up pictures of Boston on the computer and the kids were all super impressed, even when I explained I didn’t live in the city proper. I wasn’t all that surprised judging by the pungent smell of manure that filled the nostrils as soon as you left the schoolhouse.

On Tuesday the kids from all of my classes gave me a sheet of paper which they had signed and written little messages on. A popular message was “vive Julia!” which is empowering in a way I suppose. In one of the classes, I walked in to find a 7 foot black guy looming over me and then learned that my last-class-thunder had been stolen from me by one of the students’ basketball coach from Dominica who had come in to answer questions. I sat in the corner for the whole class listening to explanations of why Magic Johnson was a better player than Michael Jordan and how great Kobe Bryant is, doing some occasional translating. I was a little bummed that my last class was spent this way, BUT at the end of class, all the kids ran up to me and asked for my autograph in their notebooks or English dictionaries. I was so tickled by this that I soon forgot any lingering resentment towards Dominican basketball coaches.

Thursday was my last and most underwhelming last day of teaching. I got to the school only to find out that two and a half of my classes would not be in school because they were in the finals of a handball tournament. I guess it’s a good excuse, but I was sad that I wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to so many of the kids. In the one full class I did get to meet with, I entered the classroom only to find that one of the students had fallen gravely ill, which sort of put a damper on things. Inspired by the gift from earlier in the week, I had the kids write and draw a picture of something they’d learned this year. Everyone except maybe two kids drew a room of the house which is the last topic we’d covered in class, so now I have my own little homemade Pottery Barn catalogue to remember them by.

And then, all of a sudden, the year was over. I have four days left before I board the plane back to the US and am forced to ask myself “well, now what?” and I fully intend to enjoy them. There will be cheese, there will be baguettes, and there will be jumping off of mountains*

*with a parachute and a trained professional securely attached of course.

Somebody Just Kill Those Pigs Already: Dancin' in the streets of St. Dié

I’ve officially got one week of classes left! And this past week I did my last ever video-conference class since I’ll be getting a ride over to the real-life school for the last class of the year. I have mixed feelings about this: one part of me thinks it will show the kids that I’m a fun, real, 3D person and not just some face on a screen yelling at them to pay attention, but another part thinks it will just rub it in how much more effective actually being in the classroom is this proving the last 9 months of skype-teaching a complete failure.

I had dinner at the hippy Principal’s house the other night. It was nice to be in a real house with real furniture and character. (Not that the internat doesn’t have character, it’s just of the bleak, cold, dark, creepy variety). The dinner was delish and conversation focused mostly on movies and dogs, two things I could talk about for a long time.

This past Tuesday was June 21^st. Most people know that as the solstice, but here in France it’s even more cool—it’s the national day of music. Everywhere in the country people have the right to play their instruments in the street (whereas on any other day they would need a permit) and most places celebrate with lots of public concerts and general merriment. St. Die was no exception. I headed out with Estelle, Aline and a couple other teacher’s from Jerry to wander around town, drink a couple of beers and bob awkwardly to the different musical stylings scattered around town. We spent a little too much time watching a hard-rock group called “the Half Dead Pigs”, moved on to a guy singing classic French ballads from the 60s (which I felt very left out for not knowing), passed a country music ho-down and ended up watching Romaine, the principal’s daughter who I did English lessons with, play covers of Bon Jovi and Limp Biscuit (is that how they spell it?). So, in theory the day was super cool, there were tons of people out on the street having a good time, but none of the music was actually that great. In fact, most of it was pretty terrible. Mweeeehhh mweeeehhh….

Tomorrow marks my last European excursion of my year in France—one last little I-have-to-make-the-most-out-of-my-year-in-Europe weekend. I’m headed to Brittany’s emerald coast to get a glimpse of France’s view of the Atlantic. Is the ocean always bluer on the other side? We’ll see.

Family Reunions and Yard Sales: Summer (and my cousin) comes to St. Dié

I had visitors! I don’t get to see my one and only cousin very often as he lives about 2,000 miles away in Denver. Naturally, the middle of nowhere France seemed like the perfect place to meet up! After a lot of vague “we should meet up” messages on facebook, I finally got a message that said they’d be showing up in St. Dié, and then the next day, they did. Here they are!

Cousins in the Vosges!

St. Dié must have heard the rumor that tourists were coming to town because when I left the house that morning, I discovered that they’d hung up world flags all over town. I wondered if there was some event about to take place that I didn’t know about, but no, the self-proclaimed “world capital of geography” just wanted to make that point a little clearer I guess. As we walked home to the internat, Alex impressed me with his knowledge of flags.

The Alex I’m not related to had some time off work so decided to come on back to Saint Dié to meet some non east coast Americans. We took them for a beer at the Darou, pointed out the post modern statue of liberty on our walk home and explained that by now all possible things to see and do in St. Dié had been exhausted. But they assured me that they were tired from all the traveling they’d been doing and were happy to have an excuse to do nothing. I hope they weren’t lying since that is exactly what we did.

Yet another catholic holiday meant a long weekend this past week. It was Pentecost this time around. I’m not very familiar with catholic holidays so based solely on what I’ve witnessed around town, my best guess is that Pentecost is the holy day of garage sales. They were everywhere! Throughtout the long weekend scattered around town people were in fornt of their houses or garages (which can be pretty far apart from one another in this town) selling stuff they didn’t want anymore. And on Sunday, after going for a coffee, Alex (not the cousin, he’d gone by then) and I stumbled upon a whole street lined with different stalls of people selling their useless crap. There was definitely a fair share of cool stuff too, and I was soooo tempted a couple of times, but the last thing I need is more junk to lug home.

I found out yesterday that Romaine, the girl I was giving conversation classes to, was accepted into the program she was trying to get into. This is a good thing since due to the weird school system in France which I still don’t really understand, if she hadn’t gotten in, she would have to become a plumber. It will also make the dinner I’m having with her family this weekend a lot less awkward.

I have been assigned an important mission by one of my students. Once I’m back in the US, when I see Shakira I have to tell her that Benjamin said she’s poop.

Quel Aurore!

I have several noteworthy updates and then a bunch of anecdotes that aren’t necessary, but that’s never stopped me from sharing in the past, has it?

Noteworthy update #1: There is a new person living at the internat. Her name is Aurore (which is too similar to “horreur” for me to trust myself saying it out loud so I don’t really call her by her name). She’s here for a month doing an internship in town. Like Estelle, she lives nearby and goes home on the weekends so her presence hasn’t really had much of an effect on the social climate. In fact, I’ve only ever spent more than 5 seconds with her once, when the fire alarm went off. She mostly makes her presence known by labeling her possessions like stuff in the fridge and her own soap dispenser in the bathroom.

Noteworthy update #2: A couple of days ago I got a call from the principal of one of my schools. He explained that his daughter had passed the first round of applications for a competitive university and now had to do an interview in English so he asked if I was willing to do some conversation sessions with her. The program she’s trying to get into is a political science program and so he said we could talk about current events and “the British institution”. I had to admit that due to my lack of internet, television or daily newspaper, I’m not all that up to date on current events and my knowledge of the British institution (whatever that even means) is pretty minimal, but despite these failings, they still wanted my help and I was happy to oblige. The daughter’s name is Romaine and she’s really sweet. For the past week (ending yesterday), we’ve met for an hour everyday at her house. Walking into their living room is like walking into a Buddhist temple and each room is filled with objects from all over the world. Apparently they are currently in the process of doing an upstairs study that’s Native American themed. Now I’m thinking that totem pole assignment he gave me a while back wasn’t for the school…

After the first day when I told her how I missed American coffee, the lessons would start off with her handing me an enormous mug of coffee and then I’d get around to making up as legitimate-sounding questions about world politics as I could, which she’d always handle with poise (and often confusion). All and all, a pleasant experience. Plus they have a suuuuper cute dog named Pepito who I am in love with. I was perhaps a little too honest with them about how lonely things have been since the boys left and so they’ve invited me to dinner later this month and Romaine invited me to concert her band is playing in. Hooray for pity invites!

Now the little stories I thought I’d share because what I’ve written so far is too short to be considered a true Julia post.

At school:

In one class the kids were answering a list of questions about themselves and the question “What if your date of birth?” was immediately followed by the question “what is your age?” I was making the rounds helping people when I came to a girl who looked really confused, and she asked me “do I say what age I am now or how old I was when I was born?”

In another class the teacher had made a handout to help the kids to answer the question “how are you?” and there were pictures and corresponding replies like “I’m fine, thanks!” but I thought it was kind of funny that all of the replies had an exclamation point at the end. It works with “I’m fine, thanks” but seems a bit strange in sentences like “I’m tired!” and “I’m not very well!”

Not at school:

I had a skype date with Erik the other night so I went to a bar with wifi. As soon as I sat down, this little girl walked right up and sat down across from me at my table. I’m not sure if maybe she goes to one of the schools I teach at and recognized me or if she was just a very bold child but she just started talking and talking. She told me how many brothers and sisters she had and when I asked her what her name was she said “ I’m Collette and I’m the sister of my brother and sister” (aha, that Collette). She talked about how she wanted a kitten and did I know Germany? Before I knew it, Erik was calling and I had to explain to her that I couldn’t talk with her anymore and ended up showing her Erik on my computer which was probably a mistake since she was fascinated and so came and sat down right next to me to watch. I think it kind of creeped Erik out for a very wide-eyed six year old girl to be on the screen with me, but he handled it like a pro and eventually she left since it was probably past her bedtime.

Wait, how many? : a solemn address

I’ve been meaning to post about this for a long time and finally got around to taking a picture the other day (though really, the picture isn’t really necessary). I pass this street all the time, and I think it’s hilarious. For those non-french speakers, this can be translated as “people shot in world war two street”. Definitely a little more edgy than naming it after a tree or a president. Also, I think it’s funny to think that everyone who lives on the street has an address claiming a different (and all probably grossly inaccurate) number of people shot. Can you imagine writing a letter to someone who lives at 95 people shot in WWII street?

Life in the Bike Lane

Not all that much to report here. Things have returned back to normal after the break. The kids are still (generally) very cute. One day last week different kids kept on running up to me at recess and handing me flowers/weeds that they’d picked. I had a fairly good-sized bouquet by the time the bell rang. However, I’m not sure if they’re getting any more accustomed to my teaching methods. The other day we were learning emotions and I suggested we play charades. Silly me, I thought it would be obvious that they should charade the emotions we’d just spent 40 minutes going over, but the first girl to go started to mime going fishing.

I had the task of teaching everyday life in the US this past week. After a few days of panic of not knowing what to do, I managed to find enough to talk about. This lesson also gave me a chance to make a plug for iced coffee, as I explained that Americans not only weren’t scared of ice but they add it to all kinds of crazy things like coffee. I was about to tell them that adding ice to coffee was the best idea since sliced bread, but then realized that argument wouldn’t really work here in the land of baguettes. The kids were flabbergasted to learn that there were not eight bakeries on every street in America and that we bought bread loaded with preservatives (I was extra careful not to make the mistake of saying “préservatifs” which happens to mean condoms) that lasted for days.

Another funny and somewhat embarrassing moment from this week was when I was standing by a group of students as they were coming in from recess and I was “rangé-ed” (basically, pushed into a neat line) by the teacher thinking I was a student. When he realized who exactly he was pushing he blushed and apologized and with a resigned sigh I admitted it was not an uncommon mistake to make.

This past weekend was no ordinary weekend for St. Dié. As is was “vélo-datienne” (a play on the word for what people from St. Die are called—déodatienne). It came in two parts. Friday was a legitimate bike race for the serious of cyclists. A little mini Tour de France right here in Saint Dié. And having been to the actually Tour de France, I can assure you it really wasn’t all that different aside from the number of spectators (tour de France= millions. Saint Dié: a handful of people standing on the corner). I was reading on a bench along part of the designated path and every now and then a car with a siren would drive past followed by a cluster of bikers. So, not really all that thrilling.

Saturday, however, was a whole other story. This was the day for the less serious of bikers to participate in the 24-hour relay bike race. But not just normal bikes—wacky decked-out bike constructions-basically anything that was powered by pedaling. There were groups from local businesses and associations, but also just groups of townies who got really into building crazy bike contraptions.

Here are some photos I snapped.

Yes, that is a man covered in soda cans. And my favorite:

It seemed like the whole town was out, be it participating or spectating. All the teams had tents set up around the track and were grilling on their little barbeques while they weren’t cycling. And for the non-riders there was the usual clump of churro and waffle stands that appear whenever anything happens in town. In the park later that night, as people got bored watching the same bikes pass by every five minutes, they moseyed over to the park where there was a cirque de soleil–esque performance going on complete with scantily clad men and women holding each other up by their tongues (not actually) and impressive acrobatics with weird gladiator plotlines.

As my time in this fine town draws to a close, I’ve been starting to count down the time I have left in normal ways (ex: only 17 more days of class!) and less normal ways (ex: the number of packs of yogurt I will most likely buy before leaving). I have mixed feelings about the whole thing really. The fact that the internet will most likely be down for the rest of my time here is one thing making my approaching departure a little easier to handle.

Spring Vacation: Do the Polska!

The adventure begins.

Metz “two dous” : My night train to Berlin/Wroclaw left around midnight from Metz, a city I hadn’t really explored at all, so I decided to go in early and spend the afternoon there. I spent the first part of the day at the newly opened centre pompidou—a museum which looks a little bit like it should be inhabited by smurfs. It was a cool space though and I enjoyed the visit thoroughly.

After the museum I kind of just meandered around the center of Metz for a while getting a feel for it. I apparently looked lost since someone came up to me and offered to help me find where I was going. When I explained that I was just trying to explore the city, he kindly offered to be my guide. His name was Amadou and he turned out to be Malian (which helps to explain his extreme friendliness) so I was, yet again, able to indulge in my nostalgia for the country. He showed me around the university area, we had kebabs, and at the end of the night he walked me to the train station. And then I was off!

I got my first taste of being out of the language comfort zone when on the train, asking about a stop, I asked someone if he spoke English or French and he responded, in French, “never”. In Poland, a lot of people spoke English, but randomly some of the people who you’d really expect to, like the international ticket office lady at the train station, did not. But with the use of some hand gestures and some friendly eavesdropping Poles, I was able to get everywhere without a problem.

Stop 1: WROCLAW

First impression: pretty!!

Second impression: Why am I looking at Antoino Banderas? (he was everywhere)

Wroclaw is pretty small, so very walkable, and there are lots of really nice restaurants, funky cafés and parks so I had a very pleasant visit. I even came across a movie being filmed (actually more like I was about to walk on set but a guy in a vest held out his arms to stop me saying “Cinema. Cinema.”) The hostel I stayed at was also super nice, despite it being totally empty. The only other guy there was this Polish dude who just hung around in the common room watching Polish TV all day and chatting with whoever was at reception.

I had my first taste of Polish cuisine which did not disappoint. I participated (aka ate) in the Polish milk bar tradition, translation: a cafeteria where you can fill up on tons of hearty polish food for super cheap. Thank you communism.

Stop 2: KRAKOW

After help from the locals figuring out the only-polish train announcements, I squeezed onto the train heading to Krakow. The trains in Poland are all compartment trains which is cool and it was nice to be able to open the windows.

The first thing I did in Krakow: leave Krakow. After arriving pretty late at night and getting up early, I hopped on a bus to Oswiecim aka home to Auschwitz-Birkenau. I knew it would be tough, but at the same time, something I really should do. I don’t want to sound too cliché, but I just cannot put into words anything that would do justice to how a place like that makes you feel. I didn’t really feel like going around snapping pictures, but I did take this one:

Back in Krakow, I walked around and explored what it had to offer. Primarily:

-lots and lots of churches and more nuns than I’ve ever seen. And lots of tributes to ex-pope John Paul II. Think it’s a Catholic country?

- Obwarzanek: They’re like bagels but kind of twisted and thinner with a bigger circumference. For all intents and purposes, they’re bagels and they’re delicious and they’re EVERYWHERE. I am so proud to be descended from their inventors.

-Lots of very very old buildings.

-A castle (I didn’t go in though)

-a 24 hour pierogi restaurant—yummmmm

-lots of really cool cafés (especially in the jewish quarter), like this one who’s tables were all old singer sewing machines. When I ordered a tea at this place—they randomly gave me rose.

-really cheap and really delicious street food. Krakow’s got reputation for a good party scene, so obviously they need the food to accompany a night out drinking, primary zapiekanki, pictured below. It cost a buck.

Before I knew it, it was time to head back home. I struck up a conversation with the Polish woman who helped me find my train, who turned out to be working for IHOP. For a split second I thought I was in the presence of a pancake pro, but it turns out IHOP is the international house of prayer, obviously. She was moving to Berlin and invited me to stay with her. Had she been a pancake pro I would be more inclined to accept.

On the night train back to Metz, I shared a compartment with quite the motley crew of travelers. There was a French guy who was decked out in hardcore combat boots, studded dog collar jewelry and was pierced everywhere possible on his face. Soon after the train departed though, he proved to be quite docile as he munched on gummy bears and at one point applied foundation to his piercing-speckled face. There was a German lady who every hour or so (bear in mind this was the middle of the night) would break into her seemingly unlimited stash of sausage. Then there was a pair of Australian girls in the midst of creating an educational television series where a girl time travels and learns about different eras in history. Girl 1: but how could we trigger the time travel?

Girl 2: Hmmm….she could get really drunk?

Girl 1: oh yeah, that’s brilliant, she’ll just get really wasted!

Australian education at it’s best.

And then I was back home in good old St. Dié.

Without internet.

Ugh.

How do you Jew? Passover in a small French town

Lots of little things in the last couple of weeks but nothing too astounding.

I was told I had to do a lesson on American music which had me stumped for a bit since it’s a rather broad topic. (Tommy suggested I talk about the Beatles and when I reminded him that they were British he proposed doing a lesson on the Monkees instead since they were trying to be like the Beatles. American music = the Monkees -the end.) I did come up with something slightly less specific in the end, and after playing them a pretty wide selection of songs, was surprised to discover that their favorite was Bruce Springsteen. They talked a big game about wanting to listen to Michael Jackson, but when it came down to it, they rocked out the most the “Born in the USA” and when the teacher played “Streets of Philadelphia” a bunch of them started swaying their arms back and forth together. I had the strongest urge to turn down the lights and give them all lighters to wave.

Cutest story of the week however was when a kid, trying to tell me that he was sick, smiled and said very proudly “I suck”.

Alex and I went to the café to use facebook the other day and I was accosted by the café owner asking me to show him pictures of hot American girls and wild college parties. He was sorely disappointed when I started showing him pictures and nobody was wearing togas OR bikinis. Sorry dude. We also met another eclectic café patron—a retired Parisian limo driver who taught himself English by memorizing the lyrics to all of Bob Dylan’s songs and then conversing with American movie stars (though he didn’t mention any by name…)

Last week marked Alex and Tommy’s last week in St. Dié and there was a fair amount of farewell activities to send them off with (though Tommy ended up bailing on most of them). On Monday night we went out to dinner with Estelle, Aline and the two Alexs at the St. Martin. I got a salad because…I have decided to keep Passover. I knew it would be tricky (especially with the constant temptation of French bakeries around every corner) but the masochist in me is up for the challenge. I was rewarded for my baguette-banishing will power by finding matzo which I had assumed would be unfindable. But there it was, “pain azyme” advertised in this jew-devoid town as diet bread. I had so anticipated not finding it that I hadn’t brought a grocery bag, so I had to carry to box all the way home which made me feel a little awkward but I made matzo brei for breakfast today—SO worth it.

We went to the Darou on Tuesday night but because of this week’s dietary restrictions, I had juice. Let me tell you, the Darou is just not the same when you have juice.

On Thursday, Tommy and I went to dinner at the house of this old American guy who retired here but helps out at the high school sometimes. When Tommy told him about me, he kindly invited us over for a little American pow-wow in St. Die. It was a very pleasant evening (despite some of Tommy’s odd conversational contributions) and Eric told us all about how he’d had been a principle at international high schools in a whole slew of European countries. He’d also spent six years in Senegal so I got to reminisce about Mali with him a little bit which was nice. We exchanged info at the end of the night, so I could be seeing more of him in the upcoming months. But not right away because….

I’m going to Poland Tomorrow!! Sadly, due to pre-trip preparations this morning I had to miss the quarter finals of the national baton twirling competition being held in our very own St. Die. Drat.

In(dian) St. Dié

Not a whole lot to report. The continuing nice weather is making all of St. Dié’s residents jolly and the sidewalks are once again filled with chatting café-goers. The good American girl that I am, the second it gets warm I start craving iced coffee which, since Europeans are scared of ice for some reason, is hard to impossible to come by. Looks like I’ll have to do it myself.

We had a long-awaited game night with Alex and Nicholas and Estelle last week. After a particularly awkward encounter with Nicholas while Erik was here (he passed us on the street, I stopped to do the bises and introduce Erik but he kind of just very quietly said “bonjour”, kept his dead down and kept walking) followed by weeks of no contact, I was afraid that I’d scared him off for good. But he finally came around I guess. It was a good come-back since everyone got a little silly and we all had a really fun time.

Teaching has been running pretty smoothly. On request, I’ve been teaching about native Americans in one of my classes (the lesson should technically only have taken one class but we got side-tracked from talking about the nomadic Sioux to discussing if gypsies are dangerous). I had worked pretty hard making up a lesson plan and activity sheets, but in the end it was all kind of unnecessary since the teacher pretty much took over and for some reason knew a whole hell of a lot about native Americans. Fairly impressive but also kind of annoying since I ended up having such a limited role in the whole thing. But the same teacher did come up to me afterwards with a rather strange assignment for me. He is looking to buy a small totem pole for the school but his search has proved fruitless, so he’s recruiting me as an American to look for one. If anyone has any ideas of where to find a personal-sized totem pole, let me know!

In other news, Pascale took Alex and I out the other day to revel in one of the Vosges’s springtime delights—wild daffodils. There is a big festival in a nearby town that has a big parade with floats made out of daffodils, and I thought she was taking us to see those. Instead, we just went out, found a hillside covered in daffodils and made bouquets. Honestly I think I enjoyed it a lot more than seeing a parade float made from them—I felt Anne of Green gables or something out picking wild flowers. My bouquets were super ugly but the ever-helpful Pascale tidied it up a bit and made it nice. They’re pretty much dead now, but it was very nice to have some natural color in the room for a bit.

The only other real thing of note is that I’ve decided what I’m doing for my last school break. I’ve book a train to Wroclaw, Poland—I’m going to the homeland! I still need to work out the itinerary; Gdansk, Krakow, and the towns where the great-fam lived are all possible stops. Whatever is decided, I’m really excited and think it’s going to be a great trip!

And Then There Was Light: St. Paddy's day, Purim and sunshine!

I meant to post earlier than this, but I’ve been distracted by absolutely gorgeous weather. It’s been hovering around 60 with sunny blue skies for pretty much the past week, so when I haven’t been in the classroom, I’ve been outside making the most of it. Sadly Alex, my usual sunny day buddy, hasn’t been here to frolic in the sunshine with me since he’s on his high school’s trip to England. Poor him.

Mentionable school moments:

- In one class we’re learning “I like” which almost all of the kids pronounce as “I lick” which is unfortunate but often hilarious. Example: “I lick cats”.

- I taught about St. Patrick’s day in a bunch of classes and in one of the CE1/CE2 groups (the littlest ones) the lesson quickly evolved into “how to catch a leprechaun 101” which I should have put a stop to sooner than I actually did since I was pretty amused by the whole thing.

- My Skype teaching has been moved to Monday afternoons which I rather like seeing as the sooner I can get it over with the better.

- Example of the things only young minds can get away with: we were discussing the idea of the melting pot vs. tossed salad metaphor in one class and one girl absolutely insisted that all Africans and all Asians looked the same. The teacher and I both tried to convince her it wasn’t true, but she just would not let it go. I felt a little uncomfortable on behalf of the one Chinese girl in the class.

- As I was just leaving the school one day last week, I saw one of my students running towards me. I assumed he was eager to show me something he’d found or ask me how to say the name of some wrestler in English, but instead he just gave me this big hug and looked up at me and said (in French) “class this morning was so great!” I almost died. Then a new kid in school who had seen the whole thing came up to me right afterwards and asked if I was the kid’s mother.

Other happenings of note:

- I was warned by Alex ahead of time that Wednesday of last week was known as “Père Cent” and was a Lorrainian tradition. It marks the 100 day countdown to when the high school seniors take the Bac (their equivalent to the SATs essentially). So to celebrate, they all dress up in costumes and parade the streets dousing each other in mass amounts of flour with the occasional (and far less pleasant I’d imagine) egg or condiment thrown in. They all seemed to get really into it and the costumes were far more impressive than anything I’ve seen an American high schooler wear on Halloween. I’d say it’s definitely got March to the Rueb beat. I couldn’t help but think though how much flour was being wasted. The bakers of St. Dié must have been looking on and lamenting all the bread (figurative and literal) that could have been made.

- The Darou had a special St. Paddy’s Day event with a musical group confusingly named “Moussaka”. Despite the name, they did play some very Irish sounding jigs and it was a lot of fun. Though there was one song where they would abruptly stop playing every now and then and the crowd would have to yell “moussaka!”. Plus, every pint of Guinness came with a free shot of whiskey AND all of the waiters were wearing kilts (which, when I ignorantly pointed out were Scottish, I learned were apparently invented in Ireland. Or so the Irish claim. Who knew!?)

Alex gives St. Patrick two big thumbs up

- It was Purim last weekend and since there’s no Jewish bakery in town (or Jews for that matter), I decided to make hamentaschen myself. They weren’t as pretty as I was hoping, but pretty tasty. I also made noodle kugel which gentiles Alex and Estelle tried and agreed was extremely bizarre, but good (at least that’s what they said to my face).

my not-so-pretty but yummy hamentaschen

- Lastly, I discovered that my favorite German discount grocery store is closing and I am currently reeling over this great loss.

Wieners Galore: my trip to Austria

Back in St. Dié now having had a fantastic February break. Vienna (and it’s accompanying excursions) was great. Hannah was a fantastic hostess and eastern-central Europe was full of goodies to explore.

Since Hannah had to work during the week, I did some solo exploring in the mornings and would meet up with her for lunch and activities in the afternoons. On Monday morning I explored Vienna’s main market—a HUGE upgrade from St. Dié’s handful of stands and when I went to meet Hannah for lunch, our original plans for dining at a well-known sandwich shop were foiled by a man dying in the place minutes before. After having found an alternative lunch option, we strolled the extensive gardens of Schönbrunn, the Hapsburg’s summer palace before going inside for a tour. After that we went to a museum with wavy floors designed by an artist obsessed with the idea of spirals followed by a traditional Viennese café (where waiters wear tuxedos! Class-y.) For dinner Hannah took me to a traditional Austrian restaurant where I had the schnitzel for which the city was named (kidding, but it’s no joke how much they love schnitzel here) and some tasty potato salad.

Schönbrunn and the museum with uneven floors

By Tuesday, the dead guy in the sandwich shop had been cleared out, so we went back and tasted a “Vienna institution” which are essentially little open-faced sandwiches with various toppings, each pureed into a mousse and smeared on a piece of bread. Despite my initial skepticism about this mousse-cuisine, it was pretty tasty. Hannah went off to Tutor and I went off in search of the Jewish Museum. When I got a little lost and asked a local for directions, he told me that the Jewish Museum, like EVERYTHING ELSE in Europe, (he didn’t include that last part) was closed for renovations but as I had walked way further than I should have, I was actually just around the corner from the Jewish Quarter Museum, so I did that instead. Afterwards I met Hannah at the movie theater where we took in yet another Vienna institution: The Third Man. It’s a British movie but it takes place in post-war Vienna and the city is rather proud of it, seeing as the movie screens daily and there are walking tours based on the film, tours of the sewers where a famous scene is set, as well as a museum whose most prized possession is the zither used to record the music. To be fair, it is a truly great film. This was not enough to get Hannah and I to tour the city’s sewer system however. After the movie we went to dinner at a funky little hole-in-the wall place near Hannah’s apartment. The atmosphere was so cozy and convivial that even our waiter sat down at the table with us to take our order and give us our bill.

Wednesday was pretty low key. I strolled around the city a bit in the morning and met Hannah at an art museum in the afternoon. We saw a great exhibition on the “blue rider” movement (Kandinsky, Klée, etc), some classy palatial apartments, Durer's rabbit, and a show of Mel Ramos with masterpieces like this one:

Thursday was the first of my day trips: Bratislava! I found a really funky coffee shop, walked around a castle, saw Europe’s narrowest house (now a fast-food restaurant), dined on the traditional Slovakian dish of potato dumplings served with local sheep’s cheese, bacon and sour milk, 63 CENT BEER! , and had an all-in-all pleasant visit. As soon as I got back to Vienna, (it was only about an hour by bus, apparently Vienna and Bratislava are the “twin cities”. Here I was thinking it was Minneapolis and St. Paul…) Hannah whisked me away to dinner with a couple of friends--one American and one Austrian who spoke flawless English (and who knew about Carleton!). The food was good and the waiter was just about the cutest old man you’ve ever seen. When we asked him about the beer on tap, he came back a little later toting his two pairs of glasses and a book about Austrian beers, so we all learned about it together.

Bratislava, Bryndzové Halušky (the national dish of Slovakia),

and the narrowest house in Europe

On Friday Hannah and I went to the outskirts of the city out by the forest. We had coffee looking out on the Vienna vineyards and the city beyond. Quite lovely. Afterwards we went to the Prater, the city’s carnival park thing made famous by the Ferris wheel and it’s appearance in (surprise surprise) The Third Man. The steep ticket price combined with Hannah’s fear of heights deterred us from riding, but we did get some pictures from the ground.

After that we went home and watched “Sissi” a really cheesy movie about emperor Franz Josef’s wife which we had been inspired to watch after touring all the impressive palaces. Then it was off to the train station to pick up Tricky and another traditional dinner in a typical Heudinger- a wine house outside of the city.

After his four hour train ride from Innsbruck the previous day, Tricky wasn’t too keen on another long ride to Budapest, so we decided to stay a little closer to home. We got a day-pass train ticket and went to a couple cute little Austrian towns out west from Vienna. First was Melk with its impressive monastery and beautiful views and afterwards we took a one-car train out to the town of Krems (which sadly we didn’t get to until after dark but we could still tell it was a cute town). We went back to Vienna for dinner, where Tricky and I got our wing fix (he is my wingman after all). Our dinner here was colored by a man dressed like Santa Claus going from table to table trying to sell cards of himself in Hawaii.

On Sunday I took advantage of being in a city to get something St. Dié is completely lacking in: Chinese food! We went to lunch at an all you can eat Chinese buffet where we ate so much that it basically counted as our dinner as well. Afterwards, we strolled around, went to the Wien Museum which was free that day and went to yet another classical Viennese café. Later, while Hannah studied up on school shootings (not her choice of subject) for her lesson plan the next day, I decided last minute (which I could do amazingly) to see a concert by the Vienna Symphonic Orchestra. A standing seat was only 5 euro and I even had a pretty decent view! Here is what I heard:

Kodály: Tänze aus Galánta für Orchester

Liszt: Klavierkonzert Nr. 1 Es-Dur

Brahms: Symphonie Nr. 1 c-Moll, op. 68

Lovely.

On Monday, because I had my heart set on it, I went on a solo excursion to Budapest. I definitely made the right choice—it was super cool. I was expecting it to be more like Bratislava in size and feel, but it wasn’t, it was a real city! It was beautiful, with lots of history but also lively and funky and very livable it seemed. There’s the walled off “castle hill” which is the really touristy section because of the famous church and fisherman’s bastion pictured below but the rest of the city (separated into two parts by the Danube: Buda and Pest) was really nice as well. I drank coffee in the former AVH Headquarters, lunched on true Hungarian goulash and rode the metro which seemed like it was from a couple decades ago which was sort of cute, and which, unlike all other undergrounds which smell like urine, smelled deliciously of fresh pastries. Mmmmm…

Budapest!

My last day in Vienna, I went out to the Belvedere, a Hapsburg palace turned art museum which houses, among other things, Klimt’s “the Kiss”. After art, I strolled around the gardens which you can tell would be lovely if not for everything being dead or drained. That seems to have been a common theme on this trip. Oh well.

The Belvedere and one of it's works

entitled "the enraged and vengeful gypsy"

Other general observations:

-Soooooo many school groups. There was at least one group at every museum I went to on this trip. Austrian kids must never have to go to school!

-I may have already mentioned this in passing but everything is closed for renovations. In some cases, I’m convinced that it’s just a front and the museum or church never had an interior to begin with, like a movie set.

Getting home was a little stressful. The flight from Vienna to Belgium went off without a hitch, but the train from Brussels to Luxembourg was late which caused me to miss the next series of trains, including the last one to St. Dié for the night. I ended up having to find the cheapest (and seediest) hotel I could find in Metz and continued on the next morning. And now it’s back to work!

Brussels: Let's get (manneken) pissed!

Feb/march break is upon us and it started with a great big Belgian Beer Summit bang! Erik and I met up with Hannah, Tricky and Kevin in Brussels on Friday. It was a great couple of days. While we were able to fit in some other things, our cultural exploration of the city consisted primarily of food and beer.

Day 1:

The first afternoon we had some lunch and promptly set out to find the best French fries in Brussels, based on a tip Kevin had picked up from a friend. When we got off at the bus stop where it was supposed to be, we were a little confused and disappointed since there didn’t seem to be any beacon of French-fried goodness to be seen. Then we realized that what we thought was a public restroom in the middle of the open square with a long line trailing behind it was what we were looking for. We each picked our sauce and were handed a giant (small and large seemed to be the same size: huge) paper cone of fries. As we reveled in our delicious find, we were entertained by a girl playing soccer with a stick.

Having downed a huge cone of fries each, we decided to bypass dinner and go straight to beer. We headed over to a bar Tricky had heard about which serves 2004 kinds of beer BUT couldn’t actually get into that part as it was super crowded. Though there was a section right above it that had an impressive-enough collection of Belgian beers on tap. We each had a couple of rounds and thoughtfully rated each one. Hannah kept a list of all the beers we had (not a single repeat!) over the course of the weekend and I think at some point I’ll add it to the ones I’ve tried at the Darou and publish it.

After beer it was back to our über classy hotel for socktoberfest festivities. We had bought a can of chickpeas and some salad dressing at the supermarket earlier on, and for our traditional Socktoberfest meal we combined the two to make a surprisingly delicious (and more surprisingly tunafish-tasting) snack. We drank a little more beer, watched a little Russia Today on the TV (apparently Russians are really into sushi these days) and went to bed.

Day 2:

The next day there were waffles (sadly not as good as the ones I’d had with the family on my last trip to Belgium, but certainly tasty) and we saw the city’s famous peeing boy who was decked out in his carnivale costume.

Manneken Pis--Brussel's BELOVED ode to public urination.

We checked out the Magritte museum and then had lunch at a delicious asian noodle house complete with a noodle-making/pulling girl in the window who we watched for several mesmerizing minutes while waiting for a table.

Then we set out for “the Beer Museum” which we were a little skeptical about but figured couldn’t pass up seeing as it was beer summit and all. This turned out to be more of an adventure than we thought since apparently there were two people with the last name Bertrand important enough to name a street after in Brussels. So we took the metro out to the first Bertrand street which was a pretty residential/sketchy area, only to discover that the address didn’t exist and we actually wanted to be at the other Bertrand. We got our bearings, had a tasty little ice cream break at a cute little place back in civilization, and then continued on our way. The Beer Museum was basically just an enormous room filled with beer bottles and a little fake-saloon.

Tricky playing along at the Beer Museum's bar facade

It did however come with a very informative pamphlet of all the different kinds of Belgian beers and a free glass of their special brew. The best part though, was the adorable wait staff who were all over the age of 70. The man who helped us was particularly cute. ( At a vote later on in the trip, he was named “person of the trip”. Second place went to a tall guy we’d seen in the metro station.)

After that we went back to the fry place and shared a little pre-beer appetizer and headed off to a bar Tricky Hannah and Kevin had found earlier and where the wait staff was super eager to advise us on our beer selections. One particularly enthusiastic waiter, when serving us a round, proclaimed “welcome to my paradise!” The beer was drunk and the votes were tallied. (That night we also spotted the person who would be voted “most sculpted beard of the trip”.)

And that was it. Short but sweet. We got up at four in the morning so Tricky Hannah and I could catch our flight to Vienna and Kevin and Erik could get their early trains to their respective homes.

As soon as we arrived, Hannah and Tricky went right to work showing me around Vienna. We had delicious falafel, Vienna’s famous sachetorte (a tasty chocolate-apricot cake), and I learned to avoid tourist traps like the guys dressed like motzart who roam the streets of Vienna looking for victims to pay exorbitant amounts for shitty concerts and tours.

I think it’s going to be a great week!