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.