Brussels Sprouts

Train rides are always the most interesting experiences. In the metro, it's the norm to avoid eye contact at all costs or glare at the foreigners talking about how cool such-and-such was (normally I get the glares!). Then on long distance trains you have to fight for your right to sit in the seat assigned to you.

My most recent fight of this nature began on my first train on my trip to Brussels. Luckily, with a polite smile and a lot of politesse the woman gave up the window seat when I explained I reserved it especially because I enjoy watching the country during train rides. We ended up talking, and she inquired whether I might be from Lille, the destination of the train. Now, for poor little old me who had felt for the few previous days that I was fumbling in French in the most terrible way, this was one of the best compliments ever!

Then there came the train switch at Lille. There was a woman sitting in the aisle seat next to mine, and it was quite an effort to even get her attention to ask to get by her. Once I had her attention, she rolled her eyes and said "c'est sale (it's dirty)," and looked away. I looked over at the seat, and indeed it had an empty coffee cup and a bag of chips. No doubt the remains of her breakfast. She didn't make eye contact with me again, and I said that I reserved the seat and I was going to sit there. She stood up long enough to let me in, but did not give me the space or the time to pick up the items from the chair and put my bag in the overhead holding area. I dropped the trash to the floor and put my bag on my lap, thanking my lucky stars that this ride meant only 45 minutes of sitting next to her. Within minutes, an even greater stroke of luck befell me when someone else came up and claimed to have reserved the seat she was in. After her immediate refusal and eventual compliance, I had the opportunity to situate myself better, allowing for a more comfortable journey to Brussels.

Upon arrival in Brussels, I did what any American tourist would do: I bought lunch from Subway.  Then I went to the tourist office and got a map and started to walk to my hostel.  The check-in time for the hostel wasn't for another couple of hours, so I dropped my bag off and decided on what to do for the afternoon.

I went to The Atomium, which was built in 1958 for the World Exposition.  I guess you can say it's Brussel's version of the Eiffel Tower (both were build for world fairs, and now they're both tourist attractions).  It's design is an iron atom, but it's magnified about 165 billion times the real size.  You can pay to go inside and go from sphere to sphere, which I did, but in order to get the really good view you have to go to the restaurant, which was reservation only.  Inside the spheres there were exhibits set up on the world's fair.  I would say it was worth it to go see the outside of The Atomium, but I wished there was more to the inside of it.

While in The Atomium, it began to rain, and it continued for quite a while.  After I left, I went back to check in at my hostel then I grabbed dinner at a restaurant that's specialties were grilled meats.

The next morning I decided to grab breakfast at a place called Mokafe that has a pretty good reputation.  While I was less than impressed at the establishment (perhaps I should have gone in the afternoon), I did like that it put me both in the center of Brussels and in the center of a cute indoor shopping area.  I couldn't help walking through the chocolate shop and trying out a few of the goodies.  I'm not sure, but I sort of think that just being in Belgium makes the chocolate taste better!

After wandering the mall, I went to the cathedral which was built on top of the old cathedral.  In the basement there were the ruins from the old cathedral.  Also, right across the street from the cathedral was a modern building that apparently attempted to mimic the architecture of the cathedral, but it just comes out as an eyesore to most people.  However, this is apparently one of the things the people of Brussels pride themselves on: the variety of the architecture.  No two buildings are really alike, and there are gorgeous buildings right next to ones that are falling down.

Next, I headed to the Gröt Markt, the main square in town that is home to expensive restaurants, people selling flowers or paintings, the City Hall, and the city museum.  There was gold all across the buildings in the square, and the architecture was something else.

When one goes to Brussels, apparently the thing to see is a famous fountain that has been around since the 1600s.  This fountain must be something spectacular, right?  Well, it's a fountain of a little boy peeing.  One of the versions of the story behind it is that a fire had started and everyone was panicking, but the little boy peed on the fire to put it out, and that is what he will continue doing forever.  It's a tiny statue of the boy, but there were tons of people there to take pictures of it, myself included.  I will say this, though, this fountain brought me to my first waffle in Belgium, and it was delicious!

I was a bit tired of 'aimlessly' sight seeing, so I decided to get the Hop-on Hop-off bus ticket.  The guy gave me a fairly large discount since I was alone, and since I bought the ticket by the final stop on the route he pointed me to the starting point which was about a five minute walk.  Once on the bus, it was nice to see the layout of the city and I noted a few places that I wanted to return to later.  There was a man sitting in front of me that seemed a bit odd, but I figured he was with the people sitting next to him since he talked to them occasionally.  About 45 minutes into the ride, I noticed this man suddenly fall over.  I couldn't believe what I'd just seen, and looked around to see if his 'family' was concerned.  He got back up pretty quickly, and since the people I thought he was with didn't pay it any mind I just let it go.  Then, these people got off at the next stop without him.  Another couple moved to their seat, and he tried talking with them a little and they noticed that there was something majorly wrong with him, then he fell over again.  The man went down to try to get the bus driver, but the driver didn't think much of it at first.  Apparently this man was a regular on the route, and the driver just let him ride around since he thought the man had no one in his life.  He often slept on the bus (which I'm now wondering if he was really sleeping or if he was always having these attacks).  The driver finally pulled over and came up to check on the man, and he decided to call an ambulance.  The couple helping him out looked through the man's bags and found a diabetic card, so they tried to get him to drink some Orangina until the paramedics arrived.  We met the first response team at an intersection, and we stayed there for quite a while.  I could hear people downstairs speculating that the bus was broken down, and it seemed silly to me that they didn't put two and two together that emergency response workers had come to the upstairs section of the bus.  The entire time that all of this was happening, I was kicking myself for not going up to the man the first time I saw him fall over to make sure everything was all right.  When they had us switch buses, they told us that the man was going to be okay.

The next bus was packed, and there wasn't really room for all of us.  I just rode until we were back at the Manneken Pis stop again, and walked back to a beautiful church garden I had noticed on the bus ride.  Then I walked up to the Courthouse where there was a nice panoramic view of the city.

I was thinking of using the hop-on bus as my way back to my hotel but I waited and waited and none ever came.  So, I decided to take a chance on a tram, which I've done in the past and have ended up even more lost than when I started out.  This tram actually took me within a few blocks of my hotel, for which I was grateful, and then I grabbed dinner and called it a night.

One of the things that everyone told me to do in Brussels was to go to the Comic Book Museum.  To be honest, I wasn't blown away by it.  Yes, there were a lot of comics that came from Belgium, and I never would have known it had I not gone, but I guess since I'm not really a museum person this was just another museum to me.

I got back on the hop-on bus to finish out the part of the route I didn't get to listen to due to the switch in buses the previous day.  I probably should have gotten off to see the Japanese Pavilion that was built there, but I wasn't sure if you could actually visit it or if it was just on the side of the road, and I didn't want to chance sitting around forever waiting for the next bus.  I ended up riding the rest of the route, and I honestly hadn't missed much.  At the end of the ride, I grabbed lunch at a pizza place.  I sat down on the bar stools in the joint, and looked over to see the same Japanese family I had sat next to the previous day at another restaurant.  With all the restaurants in this part of Brussels, it was really odd that we chose the same restaurants two days in a row.

Since I had already started out the day at a museum, I decided to visit two more: the Chocolate Museum and the museum about the city.  I enjoyed the chocolate demonstration at the chocolate museum and they had quite a few cool chocolate sculptures.  The city museum had a lot of old stuff, but I most enjoyed the models of the city before it was destroyed and rebuilt.  Then, on the top level of the museum they had all of the costumes for the Manneken Pis and a video of people's reactions to the fountain, which just confirmed to me how ludicrous the fountain's popularity is.  A security guard walked by as I was watching, and we exchanged an 'isn't this ridiculous' look that made me feel that I'm not alone.

I then stopped at a little waffle restaurant to get my third waffle of the trip.  There was a woman working alone, and she seemed to want to be so precise and make everything just perfectly.  She was concerned about asking all of the people whether they liked the food, and was sad if they said they didn't.  When it got a bit busy, it seemed like she was going a bit out of her mind, but she was trying to seem like she was keeping her cool.  When it was my turn to pay, she asked if I liked the waffle, and she told me that she wasn't sure since I have such a 'happy face' that she didn't think that I would tell her if I didn't like it.

After the waffle, I wandered through a ton of stores and tried to go to a few of the recommended spots in my young traveller's map, but most of them I couldn't find and it didn't seem worth trying to find (a urinal on the side of a church, for example).  I ended up buying my traditional playing cards from a store run by an Indian man, and he told me in French the equivalent of "Don't you see anything else you like?  I have lots of beautiful things for a beautiful girl, and I can give you a discount."  When I just said no thanks, he countered with the exact same in English, and again I had to just say, Thanks, but no, but it made me smile that he used that 'beautiful things for a beautiful girl' expression.  I decided to try to go to the Porte de Halle, a building from the old city, but by the time I got there it was closed for the day.

That night I tried a Thai restaurant down the street from my hostel, and it was delicious!  I was the first customer of the night, and by the time I left several others had come in, but I was shocked that every single group that came in was speaking English.  Maybe it's just a place with more tourists...

The next morning I grabbed a bottle of fresh squeezed orange juice from a tiny grocery store, and just spent the day going into stores and buying chocolate.  I grabbed lunch at a tourist trap in the main square, but the vegetarian lasagna was great!  I walked to the train station and finished the trip by getting a final waffle from Haagen Daas, and then it was time to go back to Paris.

First Impressions

After a too-short stint spent on the home turf, I have returned to France.  I think the anxiety of my return to teaching made me terribly antisocial while I was home, so I didn’t contact as many people as I would have liked.  I did make it out to the Fair Grove Fall Festival, though, which I really enjoyed.  In all, I felt that my zombie time served me well as I was still recovering from the shouts of three-year-olds.

Now that I am in France, I can still feel that ‘funk’ that I was in, but I hope that I am slowly creeping out of it.  You see, I visited my schools this week.  The first thing I noticed was the lack of screaming.  Due to my experience with Spanish schools, I never would have realized that the building even had children hidden behind the doors, until recess that is, but kids need to let their steam off sometime.  My first impression was that this year actually has the chance to be completely different from last year.  I am working with slightly older children (8-11 compared to my majority of kids between 3 and 5 last year), and these kids actually seemed like they pay attention to the teacher.  Who knows, it may have been because I was walking around with the director, but even just walking through the hallways it seemed like there was very little noise from the classrooms.  So, I guess what I’m saying is that I’ve bought into the notion that a child is to be seen and not heard, right?  But I’m actually thinking it is less than that.  There were very few times when I felt I had the attention of even a few of the kids last year, and just going through the classes it seemed that here the kids were giving their teachers their undivided attention.

My welcome was also much better than last year – someone from the school district showed me around and she introduced me to the director and the teachers, and then I went into all of the classes I’ll be with and told them my name and what I would be doing with them.  Throughout the day, I think my French held up all right, but I could tell I was really starting to waver by the end of the day.  Maybe I’ll have a better rapport with the teachers since I can speak French, and they all seemed shocked that I could.  But maybe having that ability to socialize with them at lunch will also make my time in their schools less awkward than it was last year, as well.

Then, I had my first days of official work, which I spent observing / assisting.  I guess it went all right, and it is still a lot better than Spain, but it seems that each teacher will want something different from me and I’m not really sure how that will work out.  Some want me to take groups from the class and work with them in a more personalized setting, and others want me to just assist during their class.  And while the level of English of the teachers teaching English seems to be higher than in Spain, there is still a wide range of proficiency.  And it seems that the ones less comfortable in English are trying to get the children to understand concepts that are still way beyond them.  I tried to say this, but it didn’t go over very well…  Oh, well, I guess I’ll just see how it goes, and hopefully since I only work two days a week (yes!) it will go a lot better than last year and that 'funk' will move away from my life.

On getting settled in France, I suppose you could say I’ve cheated a little bit compared to the other assistants.  I already had a bank account from my previous stay (which, I was chewed out a little bit for leaving it open, but at least I already have an account!).  For lodging, I just used an agency so I would have a place to stay as soon as I got here.  I’m only in this apartment for the first month, and then I’m moving closer to my train line.  I’m currently near the most famous cemetery in Paris, Père Lachaise, and while it seems to be a good enough area, I still feel like I’m cut off from other parts of Paris.  To get to the center, it’s taking me about half an hour by metro, and to get to my train station so I can take the RER another hour to my two towns it’s taking between 25 and 40 minutes.  My new place will be near Bastille, which is only one stop away from the train stations I need.  So, that will be much better to cut down my commute time.

I have heard that a few people have already left the program because they haven’t been able to find a place to live.  I know a lot of assistants feel that they were deceived a bit about how easy it would be to find somewhere, but it’s all a part of the game, really.

As far as the other assistants, I feel like I’ve started to make friends with a few of them.  I don’t think we’ll have any other official time together as our two days of orientation are now over, but we’ve exchanged phone numbers and email addresses, and I feel that I've been staying busy between school and going out doing things.

Last Saturday was La Nuit Blanche here in Paris, when a lot of museums and special exhibitions are open for the entire night.  I went out with Kelly and Max, and also invited another assistant, Rebecca, along.  We had crepes at Creperie Josselin, and then walked for ice cream and just wandered around to find things going on.  It seemed that everyone was out!  We went into the Police station to see a marble sculpture exhibit, there was a light show on at Notre Dame, and we went across a bridge that had a huge square metal structure built over it.  I’ve also been to a one-man show with a couple of other assistants entitled “How to become Parisian in one hour” which was quite good, and picked fun at the French, Americans, and several other nationalities.  And tonight I’ll be going for Chinese food with a few people, so I guess you could say I’m staying busy.

Passionsspiele 2010

Every ten years, a little town in Southern Germany puts on a play.  They started this tradition in the 1600s after the plague wiped out much of their population.  The townspeople made a vow to put on a passion play every ten years in the hope that God would stop the deaths in their village.  Legend has it that after the first play was performed, no one else died, and they have continued to put on the play every ten years except for a very few exceptions.  Nowadays, this play brings a lot of attention to the little village of Oberammergau, and it attracts tourists like me for one of the performances during the summer.  I barely remembered this village, but when my mom and I went through Germany 5 years ago, we stopped there.  My mother remembered about the play and that it was supposed to take place this year, and suggested that I go.  I was very indecisive about it at first, but in the end I went.

The day I left, there was a delay on my flight.  It didn’t hurt me that much, it just meant that I did not have as much time in Munich as I thought I would.  When we were landing in Munich, the sun was setting and it was obvious that it had been a rainy day.  We flew by one of the brightest rainbows that I have ever seen.  It was a magnificent sight to see, and I regretted that I didn’t have my camera nearby to take a photo.  After we landed, I went directly to my hotel, and more or less collapsed.  One of the things I noticed immediately in Germany was that I was not dressed appropriately for the weather.  I hadn’t even thought about it being chilly in Germany since it was only an hour’s flight away.  But, on the train to the hotel, it was obvious that I stuck out from the dark jackets and scarves as I was wearing a white skirt and short sleeve shirt.

I slept in the next day, and then made my way to the city center so I could walk a little bit through Munich on my way to the train station.  The center was, of course, one of the places my mom and I went to 5 years ago, and I remember there being a protest their the first time about the war, but this time the protest was even larger and it was to inform people about veganism.

At the train station, I bought my ticket, but when it printed out of the machine it was just one piece of paper with my destination on it.  I was confused, thinking it had assigned me a specific train and time, but on further investigation it seemed that I had to look up how to get to the city on my own.  Before leaving, I ate a pretzel sandwich, which I think was a pretzel with cream cheese and green onion.  The onion wasn’t very strong, and this was my first pretzel of the trip, but not my last!  I got on my train, changed at a town called Murnau, and then I rode another 45 minutes through the Bavarian alps and farmland to Oberammergau.

Oberammergau seemed to be a very pedestrian-oriented city.  I had looked up how to walk to the train station to my hostel by roads, but once I arrived in the city I found that there was a foot path that followed along the river directly to the hostel.  It was a beautiful walk.  I checked into my room, and made my bed.  This was my first real hostel experience: 6 beds, mixed dorm, no one I knew.  I was also rather worried that I would get midgets as my roommates, but I kept telling myself that there must be some sort of restriction about that.  See, there was some sort of soccer tournament going on for kids in town, and it seemed that several of the teams were staying at the hostel.  So, the mix I saw in the hostel were the people going to the play, and the soccer-playing kids.

After getting settled and reading a few flyers about the city and passion play, I walked into the village to orient myself a little.  The first thing that I noticed was that nearly very building had a mural of some sort on it, and the majority of them were religious.  I walked through a few shops, but resisted any temptation.  I ended up at the city’s museum, where I had a free entry with my play ticket.  The majority of the museum was dedicated to the woodcarving of the region, and there was also a section about the history of the play.  They had old costumes and props used in the play in previous years.  After the museum, I went back to the hostel, where I had free supper due to the play as well.  It was spaghetti, and while I was eating it, it was all right, but later on I regretted it.  Part of the package for the play was that all meals were free from where we were staying, which in nicer accommodation might have actually been worth it, but in a hostel, it was not, for me anyway.  I wanted to eat ‘German’ food, so I decided the next day I would avoid the temptation of free food.  While at the hostel, I also checked for my roommates, but they were not yet there.

 I left again, and read for a while on a bench by the river.  It was so peaceful there, just listening to the water running, and I found the little village to be serene and calm.  After I finished my book, I continued walking and found a hiking path.  I was nowhere near dressed for it, but I went for a short walk anyway.  Along the way, I found some very woodsy slugs, and a field with three horses.

My last event for the day was to go to a light show at the church.  Basically, there was a show where lights were shined on certain sculptures while the story of Jesus was told, along with music as well.  It was all in German, but I got the gist of what was going on.  It was definitely a unique way to appreciate all of the artifacts in the church.  Afterwards, I went back to my room, which was still empty of people, but there was evidence of habitation, most notably smelly, sweaty clothes and shoes on my bed.  Now, I haven’t stayed in many hostels, and this was my first one without sharing a room with friends, but I’m pretty sure it’s commonly known that if a bed is made, that means it’s taken.  Moreover, I had left my towel on the bed to show signs of possession, but I guess all of that was just looked over.  After removing the foreign objects from my bed, and leaving a note of explanation if the perpetrator returned, I went to take a shower.  When I got back, no one was back, and I got ready for bed.  A few minutes later, a girl named Mica walked in, and she was in the bunk above me.  She was kind, and it was okay to have her as a roommate for a couple of nights.  We went to sleep, and a bit past midnight, three British guys stumbled into the room.  One of them came over and looked at me stupidly, and I explained that I moved his stuff, and that I had made the bed earlier.  The next day he told me that he thought someone who worked there had made the bed and he didn’t realize it was someone else’s…  oh well.  The three guys smelled awful, and I didn’t notice any evidence that any of them bathed in the two days there, and they smelled as though they hadn’t bathed in weeks.  I couldn’t sleep that first night since I kept getting a whiff of their stench, and it was too cold to keep the window open.

Somehow, I made it through the night, and headed straight out the next day.  I walked along the river a bit, and let the sound of nature soothe me.  I had seen something about a ski lift, so I went in search of it to see if there was a view of the valley.  I had seen postcards of people in enclosed lifts, but once I arrived at the ski lift I knew about, it was a true ski lift, open air, feet hanging in the air, the whole shebang.  When I got on, the man working told me that there was a bar just as I was taking off, and it took me a moment to notice the waist bar above my head.  At first the lift was shaking back and forth quite a bit, and I found it to be pretty frightening, but I survived.  I was also, again, wearing the wrong clothes for such an adventure: everyone else was in full-on hiking gear, and I was wearing a dress and sandals.  It didn’t matter, though, I was just going up for the view and to come back down, and they were all going to hike further up the mountain.  After grabbing a coffee at the top, and playing on the swing, I went back down the mountain.

I made it back into town around lunchtime, and went in search of German food.  I finally came across a restaurant that looked decent, and I sat down and ordered German macaroni and cheese.  I was rather hungry due to the disappointing dinner the night before, and the spatzel hit the spot.  It was delicious!  After I was finished, I ordered the ‘Eis Caffe,’ thinking that it was iced coffee.  It was actually a real dessert, with coffee, ice cream, and whipped cream.

After that yummy meal, I wondered through some more shops in town, and ended up buying too much, but not as much as I would have liked.  They had cute knick knacks everywhere, and if I had anyway to carry one home, I would have bought some watering jugs shaped like animals!

I got to the play about half an hour early, and was glad to find that my seat was on the end of a row.  I suppose it made sense, but my roommates were sitting right next to me during the play, and the guys still reeked.  I just tried to breathe in from the opposite direction from where they were sitting the entire time :-).

The play itself was very well done.  Over half of the 5000 people that live there participate with the play in some way.  The last time it was put on, nearly 500,000 people came to see the play throughout the summer.  The play itself had a particular structure: The narrator would explain a scene, the choir would sing a religious song while a living portrait was shown, and then the act from the passion play started.  At times, they had hundreds of people on the stage.  The crowds in the play were made up of men, women, and children.  The first half it was a bit disorienting since I was trying to read the English script during the play, and then I found that if I tried to read it all while the choir was singing, I could get through most of it and be able to pay more attention to the play.  The play if 5 hours long, so they had a 2 and a half hour break halfway through.  During the break I ate another pretzel, and apple strudel, and I tried to read the rest of the play so I could just pay attention for the rest of the play.  This turned out to be a good idea since the second half started as it was getting dark outside, so I wouldn’t have had the light to read the script during the play anyway.

After the play was over, I went back to the hostel to sleep, and this night I sprayed my pillow with perfume to block out the smell of my roommates, which was a very good idea.  I packed my bag so I could just grab it and go to the restroom to change in the morning, and not have to come back to the room, but all of my roommates got up at 6 am (2 hours earlier than my alarm), and I didn’t have to deal with them other than pretending to sleep while they were packing their bags.  When I got up, I took my time.  There had been lightning and thunder through the night, and it was obvious that it had rained.  There were still clouds laying lower into the valley.  I walked to the church to go to the English mass, and I was thinking it would be a rather full service and I could just hang out in the back.  Au contraire, I was one of 4 people there.  I’m not catholic, so I had no idea when to sit, stand, kneel, etc.  On top of all that, the microphone wasn’t working well, so the priest had insisted that we all come up to the pulpit and listen to the sermon from there.  I’m glad I went to the service, even if I was a bit uncomfortable with it, and I was glad when it was over after 20 minutes.  But, I did learn that the first passion play took place where the cemetery is being the church, so it turned into an educational experience as well.  When I left the church, it had started to rain, and I walked in the direction of the train station.  Along the way, I heard a cat, and went over to pet it for a few minutes.  It was very friendly, and obviously well cared for.  There were several cats waiting outside of the store where that first cat was, and I think that the storeowner probably feeds them.  After a few minutes I left the cats, found the train, and I was on my way back to my last week in Cannes, for a while at least.

Sous le Soleil Exactement

I’m gone from Spain now, but I am happy that I made these two friends.  I also was very fortunate with my landlords of my apartment: my last day in Spain I had gotten rid of all of my food and decided to eat lunch out, but my landlady, Maxi, invited me over for lunch with her family.  She also insisted on making me a tortilla española to have for the airport, and it was delicious.  One of her daughters drove me to the airport, and I am terribly grateful.  I know that they were probably better landlords than the majority of the people out there (I’m not sure if they felt a bit of responsibility for me since I was foreign, as well), and I hope that I was a good tenant for them.

Since I’ll be teaching in France I felt that I should touch up my French a little bit.  So, what better way is there to do that but to go back to Cannes where I studied in 2006?  I can’t think of anything at the moment.  The journey was reminiscent of my voyage 4 years ago.  I stopped over in Paris, I went in search of the Eiffel tower, and there was a world cup game going on.  Only this time, I feel so much more experienced with travel in France and Spain.  I’m able to do things more efficiently: I know how to use the metro and how and where to get a cell phone.  I have friends in Paris, and it was wonderful to spend time with them.  I guess what I’m saying is that in a way I realize that I have changed over the past four years, even if sometimes I feel as though I’m still the same person.  Sometimes I don’t think I have changed, but when I compare my trip in 2006 to my trip in 2010, I can tell that there are major differences.  I can only hope that they are for the better.

My time in Paris was short, but I felt like I was arriving at a home away from home.  I just enjoy France so much more than Spain.  I met up with Mandira and we ate crepes and watched the World cup game of the US vs Ghana by the Eiffel Tower.  It was a great time.

I left Paris to head on to Cannes, and that trip felt much easier than the previous time I had taken it.  For instance, I only had one bag with me instead of two.  And, once I got to the train station in Cannes, they now have escalators, so I didn’t have to carry that bag up and down the stairs (or, like what happened 4 years ago, have a random person grab one of my bags and help me).  I then got to the college, and instead of moving in immediately, I waited a few hours for my new landlady to arrive and take me to my studio apartment.  I have to say that I am much happier living away from campus, even if that means that I am not as socially active there.

For the most part, I have been trying to recuperate from this previous year of teaching.  To do that, I have been enjoying the beach.  I still can’t believe that I’ll be teaching again in a couple of months, and I am still torn about the decision.  But, hopefully, when all is said and done, I’ll be much better at French than I currently am.

As far as my classes here, they’ve been okay.  Sometimes, just to relax I use the 15-minute break during class to walk to the sea just to listen to the waves for a few minutes.  My first teacher, Giselle, was wonderful at the conversation part of the course, but I didn’t particularly like her style for teaching grammar.  For that, it was as if she would just give us grammar exercises without any explanations, and then be surprised when we did poorly on the homework.  However, her classes were heaven compared to what came after her.  With Véronique, there’s just no easy way to explain her classes.  She is a new teacher, and it felt like there was no structure in her class.  A group of us were not satisfied with her, and we took our concerns to the school’s administration.  We’ve now switched classes to be with our third teacher, Marie-Hélène, and she is much better.  I feel like I’m learning something again!

Over a weekend I went to Avignon to take a tour of the lavender fields.  I didn’t realize, but there’s a theater festival that goes on in Avignon for the entire month of July.  It was as though all of the wayward wanderers of the world had descended upon the city to try to have their 15 minutes of fame, or at least experience someone else’s.  It was impossible to walk down the street two steps before someone was advertising his or her play.  It got to the point that I just started saying, “Sorry, I don’t speak French,” because that was the only way they would leave me alone.  While sitting at lunch, I was given at least 5 flyers for various plays.

I took the day-long lavender tour, and it led to a fairly tiring day.  It started around 9, and we got back around 6.  We went to lavender fields, lavendine fields, and sunflower fields.  We also stopped at a provençal market (sorry, mom, I didn’t see any tablecloths I thought you’d like at this one), a lavender distillery, the lavender capital: Sault, an old city: Gordes, and the lavender museum.  On my train trip to Avignon, I had watched in vain for a glimpse of a lavender field.  I saw random lavender bushes every once in a while, but never a field.  Well, I found out later that what I was seeing was actually lavendine, a lavender hybrid produced to grow at different altitudes.  When we were driving away from Avignon, our tour guide explained to us that true lavender grows only at high altitudes, and for various reasons true lavender only grows in Provence.  The road she took us along into the fields reached a summit that was marked by a sign, and then we dipped into a valley on the other side where there were lavender fields as far as the eye could see.

 I enjoyed my day in the lavender fields, even if it was a bit of overkill.  That’s what I signed up for though!  One of the older couples on the tour told me around lunchtime that if they saw another lavender field, they would scream, and that once you saw one field you had seen them all.  Well, yes, that might be true, but there’s also a sense of majesty in seeing something that beautiful, and I took as much of it in as I could since I knew it was not an experience to be taken lightly.  Walking into the fields it felt as though the world had fallen away, and it was just me, the flowers, and the buzz of the bees all around me.  That same couple that didn’t seem to realize that what they had signed up for was a lavender tour also refused to walk into the fields even a foot because of their fear of the bees.  While I also wouldn’t want to be stung, for me, that constant hum was a bit more like a reminder of the nature that was surrounding me and not something to be feared.

One of my mistakes for the day was that I didn’t put on sunscreen in the morning; I thought I threw it in my bag, but I hadn’t.  So, by the end of the day I was red as a lobster.  Fortunately, I had purchased myself some lavender oil at the distillery, and one of the reputed medical purposes was that it helped sunburns.  So, I tried it out, and while I still hurt for the next day or so, the burn never peeled and has now added a deeper tan than I had before.  So, I’m convinced enough to say that it works!

My last day in Avignon, I went into town and just wandered around a bit.  I ended up on the tourist train, and the only part of it that I truly enjoyed was that it went up into a park by the Palais des Papes which had an amazing view over the Rhône River.  I then ate lunch, and rounded out my last couple of hours by going to one of the plays in town.  It was a two-woman show, and I don’t think there was actually a plot other than showing the women’s interactions with each other.

Back in Cannes, I’m trying to enjoy being by the beach as much as possible, but sometimes it’s difficult.  For instance, just before I went to Avignon, I was swimming and stopped suddenly because some seaweed floating on the surface of the water scared me.  As soon as I started treading water, BOOM!  I kicked what I’m certain had to be a jellyfish.  Pain shot up from my foot, and I hightailed my way back to shore.  I found it a bit ironic that I got scared by nothing, was trying to tell myself that it was unlikely that seaweed or anything else would get me, and then I kick a jellyfish.  Now I realize that being in the water might be like the bees: I need to take the chance to reap the rewards.

After that, I went a little over a week without swimming.  I still walked along the beach, but the water always looked a bit cloudy, and I prefer it when it’s clear.  The last couple of days it’s been perfectly clear, and I’ve been swimming like a guppy fish.  Sometimes I wonder what it looks like with me as a grown woman out in the deep water, swimming to the seabed and back up again, and then I think I’m glad that I’ll never know.  It’s fun!  And the other day, I even found a watch that was still working under the water.  Now that I’ve fiddled with it, I realize that the clasp doesn’t work quite right, which is probably why it got lost in the first place.  But who knows?  Maybe I can get it fixed.

Bryant was in Nice last week, and he and a couple of his friends came to Cannes to see the fireworks for Bastille Day.  It was a great show, and afterwards we went in search of ice cream and then just wandered around.  Apparently, I took them in the wrong direction for the wandering, because when I walked home I found where there was a Michael Jackson tribute show going on.  I just loved that they were playing MJ on the anniversary of France’s revolution.

While I like it here, I’m also really ready to be back home for a while.  I miss a lot of things, and sometimes I still can’t believe that I’ve decided to stay on this side of the Atlantic for another year, especially when that reason is teaching!  But, I’m trying to look at it as an opportunity to be here, and hopefully get better at French along the way.  Only 3 more weeks!

The first and last kebab

Before Christmas, Bryant, Sara and I all decided to go out for kebabs.  The only problem was that Sara only had a one hour break, and that really wasn’t enough time to go out and eat them in a restaurant.  Since Bryant and I had two hours, we decided to go get the kebabs and bring them back to eat in the Bilingual room at school.  At this point, we still didn’t know each other that well.  I thought they were both content with the job, and nice people, but we hadn’t really connected yet.  The day we got kebabs that all changed.  I don’t remember if we discussed the job, but we all said that we would show no shame in the face of the kebab, and we all ate the kebabs in any fashion we could.  Perhaps I should also mention that kebabs are a bit difficult to eat, and the only way to even consume them in a fashion where you don’t end up with food all over yourself is to first eat as much of the filling as you can before picking it up to eat as a sandwich.  However, this first day, we just went all in, using both hands and ending up with sauce all over our hands, the table, the entire room!  This day was the day when we say that we became kindred spirits.  I think that they would say that the feeling is mutual.

After the kebab adventure, we were able to open up to each other a little more about teaching.  We were all discontent with the lack of help we found at the school.  In the science classes I taught, many days I was handed the book as I walked in the door and told to ‘teach this, this, and this’ which I suppose gave me good practice at improvisation.  In my primary conversation classes, I was given lesson plans most of the year that revolved around science, and that just bored the kids.  I know that they needed to understand their science lessons better, but the way they told us to teach was not fun for the kids, and as a result, they were terribly unresponsive.  By the time I was told to start coming up with my own lessons (which I had more or less been doing anyway, just using the science vocabulary), the kids were still a bit put off with trying anything in English.

Then, there is what I had to do the majority of the time: infantile.  I understand that these kids are young and crazy, but it just felt impossible to do anything with them in a classroom setting.  I was told at the beginning of the year to not single one child out because then I will lose the attention of the rest of the class and not regain it.  I somehow feel that I lost control of the class anyway just because I was not allowed to use any Spanish with them.  There were a few times that I would try to do a simple game with them, but because they didn’t understand it was disastrous.  I also did research at the beginning of the year on teaching this age group, and the majority of what I found said to use repetition, repetition, repetition.  By Christmas the kids were doing well with the repetition of the routine, but after this there was a point where they became bored with it.  When I tried to change the routine they didn’t like that either.  It was also very difficult due to the fact that I had only had one resource to teach them with: flashcards.  We were told at the beginning of the year to not use any kind of worksheet/coloring sheet or crafts with them unless it was a holiday, and I assumed that because of this restriction that I should also not use videos, which I found out the last week was true since Sara was told not to do video for her final class with them.  I did anyway, and they absolutely loved the episode of The Little Mermaid that I showed them.  One little 4-year-old boy looked at me and asked conspiratorially whether the movie was in English too.  I thought that it was cute that he put the two ideas together.  And in every class I showed this video, the kids said the same things at the same time in the video, so I know that they understood the general concept due to the animation even if they didn’t understand all of the dialogue.  And on top of all of this, we had no books to read to these kids.  Closer to the end of the year, I found a website that had simple books in flash format.  I screen captured the books, printed them, and read them.  When the children realized I was reading them a story, it was amazing how much silence fell over the classroom.  We had asked our director for books all year, and she kept telling us that some were coming, but they never did.  At one point, she even asked us if children would even like books, and that question came form the mother of a 3 and 5 year old, so it just seemed ridiculous.

 My middle/high school classes were pretty inconsequential.  They were cancelled probably over half of the time, and then when I was there I was supposed to be teaching them out of the Cambridge book for the KET exam.  This was also difficult because most of these days I came directly from teaching 3 year olds, so I wrongly assumed that the kids would understand a lot more than the younger kids.  While it was true that they understood more, I would forget that I couldn’t talk to them normally.  My high school classes were similar to my primary science classes since I would walk into the class and be told what to teach.  Without the materials beforehand, it was extremely difficult to teach grammar points that I know since I’m a native speaker, but I had never heard of them before, such as countable nouns.

All year I have disliked the nickname Winnie the Pooh.  However, it was terribly cute that a 5 year old ran up to me on the last day and said, “Winnie the Pooh, te quiero mucho.”  So while at times it felt like the kids didn’t like me teaching them, it appears that some of them did.  I also saw a marked improvement in some of them with communication in English, and I wonder if that also had anything to do with me being with them once a week.

Outside of teaching, I tried to experience Madrid a bit more once my master’s classes finished.  I went to some of the touristic sites, and I went to an exhibition about King Tut’s tomb.

I will just say that this year has been an experience.  While I don’t want to be a teacher, I have accepted another teaching job in France that stats in October, and I know that my time in this school and my time in the masters program has probably better prepared me for what to expect in France.

The last week of teaching, Sara, Bryant and I went for our last kebab.  Before this, we also looked up job burnout symptoms and realized we were all suffering from over 75% of them, including self-medicating through food.  So, we decided to revel in it.  We were a bit neater eating our kebabs in the restaurant, and we were able to pick out some of the filling with a fork before picking it up (well, Sara and I used this tactic, but I don’t think Bryant did).  We had come to the end of the year, and we knew that we had made it through teaching together.  In addition to this self-medication, we also went to the hard rock Café for a special black tie Toma Ya dinner.  We sang along to the songs, and stuffed ourselves until we couldn’t move.  Unsurprisingly, Bryant was the only one who ate the entire meal – Sara and I only made it half way through.

That dinner was a great way to end the year, and I’ll miss working with those two.  All I can say now is that we did it!