At the beginning of November I moved to a new apartment in the Bastille area of Paris. Since then, I feel like time has passed at a much faster pace, possibly because I'm not counting down to the day when I move apartments this time. My apartment is in the courtyard behind the green door, and I have to go through a tunnel to access it. My new street is much more lively than my old street, and it is full of restaurants and bars and clubs. I have tried quite a few of the restaurants now, and they've all been quite good. There's even a Mexican restaurant (a rarity in Paris) just to the right of my door. I've only been there once, but it was a great meal.
So, what exactly have I been doing to pass time here? Well, I guess it comes down to going to Disney. A lot. I think I've been 6 times now, so I'm definitely getting my money's worth out of the annual pass. There's always something to do there, and it's always enjoyable.
I've also been working, the reason why I'm here. Both November and December felt a bit like a wash at the schools. It seemed like the kids were excited about Christmas and it showed. But being on the other side of things, I'm not sure whether things get more relaxed at school because the kids aren't up to doing schoolwork or because teachers don't want to evaluate anything. Anyway, I got to teach about Thanksgiving and even had the students make hand-turkeys. I think they turned out relatively well, and at least I didn't have to cut them out for the kids like I did with the pre-schoolers last year. One other thing about teaching here is that all of the kids have English copy books. A lot of the teachers don't even really have the kids write much of anything in them, it's all stuff that they have to glue inside and complete. Well, with the turkeys I was thinking that the kids could take them home and share with their family, but no, their teachers wanted them to glue them into the copy books so that they would have something to remember me by.
For Thanksgiving, I celebrated with my assistant friends - from left to right: me, Rebecca P, Rebecca W, Kelsey, Stephanie, and Eva. We each made something and ended up with quite a feast. We had turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green bean casserole, and cranberry sauce. Everything was absolutely delicious!
I guess you could say that Christmas festivities were in full swing in Paris by around Thanksgiving, if not before or a little after. At my schools I was teaching about Christmas, and even taught the kids how to make snowflakes.
One of the places I enjoyed going to see the Christmas lights was the Champs-Elysées. All of the trees lining the streets were lit up, and there was a German Christmas market along the street. There were Christmas presents, interesting inventions, and delicious food sold in the market.
December also brought one (well two, but I wasn't here for the second) of the more substantial snowfalls that the city has ever seen. It came on a Wednesday, and when I left snow was sticking to the leaves on the plants just outside of my apartment, but I didn't think much of it since it wasn't sticking to the ground yet.
I went out and saw the Christmas tree in the Galeries Lafayette. It was ginormous! And gorgeous. Walking around outside was getting more difficult since the snow was starting to stick and turn to straight slush. I would take a step into the slush, and then the water at the bottom would soak into my shoes. It was not the most comfortable thing ever. Some store owners were using things that looked like squeegees to push the slush off of the sidewalks in front of their stores. I really doubt that was the purpose for the squeegee-like items, but I guess when you live in a city were you don't think you'll need a snow shovel you have to use what you have.
When I got back to my apartment, the plant had fallen over from the weight of the snow. To this day it has not recovered and still blocks my way into the apartment.... Poor plant.
Parisians also started buying Christmas trees. Most of the regular flower stores started selling them on the sidewalk in front of their stores.
And the pâtisseries started selling Buches de Noël, or Christmas Logs. The last night before I headed back to the states to spend Christmas with my brother, I went to a café with friends and got a beautiful Buchette de Noël, complete with an ax.
