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!