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.