At the mill house

Christmas has been lovely here with Sarah's family. It is so humbling how kind and welcoming they are! Sarah's cousin Hilary and her fiance Peppe (a chef) came from Geneva with their cat and dog in tow, and we've all had a wonderful time. It's hard being away from home, and so this is a blessing.

When we arrived, it was really cold. Frost covered the ground in a thick layer. Since then, it has melted and the grass is green underneath. They live in a mountainous region of France, so next to their house is a river and a steep summit. 15 foot long icicles hang down from where a stream drips in warmer weather. And it's freezing, so much that you can just leave food outside. Not enough room in the refridgerator? No problem, put it on the porch. This is a strange habit to get used to.

I have tried lots of foods since arriving. Oysters. Foie Gras. Caviar. Terrine. Surprisingly, these things are not disgusting. My grandpa was right all along! Dinner at 10 pm makes it impossible to wake up before 10 am and eat breakfast. It's a completely different schedule.

It's been so relaxing. I'm not ready to leave! But tomorrow, Andie (a friend from college) and I will meet in Brussels and travel around a bit. We're going to Berlin, Dublin and London. Then it's back to work on January 8th.

And Happy New Year in case I don't post before then.

The horse knows the way...

We're off to Sarah's aunt and uncle's house tomorrow. They live in an old mill house on a river in Central France. Because they may not have internet, this could be my last post until the 27th.

Last night, Valenciennes had a huge celebration. Apparently for the year 2007, it was the Capitale Regionale de Culture. I didn't realize all that entailed. Last night, they inaugurated a new sculpture and had a massive spectacle. The areas here in the north of France are known for having Geants--giant puppet characters that show up and dance around. Around 15 of them performed last night amid smoke and lights. Fireworks shot off for 30 minutes before the parade. Chefs in white tents passed out soup to the cold spectators. A comedy? troupe entertained people. It was madness, but last night they (literally) passed the cultural torch to Bethane, so I'm hoping this doesn't mean an end to special things in Valenciennes in 2008.

I took a picture with Santa Claus with some friends. Actually, we were taking a picture next to some white Christmas trees (they spray paint live trees white, red, blue, purple or silver here). Santa walked out of the town hall. We yelled "SANTA". This poor man had no idea what we said, but somehow sensing that we yelled at him, he took a picture with us anyway. In French, he is called Pere Noel (Father Christmas), but he is just not the same sort of jolly and joyful as my Uncle Vic.

My students LOVED the letters from the U.S. It was so cute translating them! One little boy had to get a letter from a girl... so of COURSE it was the one signed "Georgina Smith P.S. I love you as a friend." He blushed and blushed and blushed. I tried to explain what it meant, but that isn't really in the culture here. Guys and girls aren't just friends as easily as at home. Also, it was so good the letters talked about the real meaning of Christmas because then I could talk about it with them (without breaking the law). Not all the kids seemed to know it was Jesus' birthday. And that we exchange gifts because of the wise men. It was just so great!

Also, I read them "The Night Before Christmas" and had them learn the first few lines. They put the 'h' sound on the wrong words and leave it off the right ones. "And hall trew da 'ouse" is how it sounds when they repeat. Alvin and the Chipmunks have a funny version of it, by the way. You should have seen the kids eyes when they heard the chipmunk voices!

That's the big news from my end. Miss you all. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

The frost is cruel

Frozen. Frozen. Frozen. It's cold outside. Trees and cars never defrost. I'm finally understanding all those Christmas carols Texans learn can't fully appreciate.

Good King Wenceslas
Baby It's Cold Outside
Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!
It's Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas

Getting ready for the holiday has been fun. I brought Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Candy Cane Hersey's Kisses to the kids... These flavors are completely American. We read The Gingerbread Man, The Night Before Christmas and made Christmas cards.

The word for word translation for snowman from French is "good man of snow." Isn't that great? People tell to soak up the holiday the French way and not worry about being away. But it's difficult. There are so many little things to miss.

Paris in the Sunnyshine

Was wonderful! Cold and sunny. Today I truly enjoyed the city. A few summers ago, everything was hot and crowded. Last time, it was cold, rainy and crowded. People love Paris because of days like this. I'm sure.

Sarah and I strolled around the Latin Quarter in the morning. The Sorbonne, France's oldest university is there, and gave the area its moniker because during the Middle Ages, everyone spoke Latin there. We ate lunch with a professor from A&M who is on sabbatical writing a book and lecturing at the Sorbonne! What fun! They had the fanciest flower-shaped tater tots I have ever seen.

In the afternoon we visited the Marais and saw:
A lock of Marie Antoinette's hair
The left epaulette of General La Fayette
Victor Hugo's bedroom
Street signs in Hebrew
Plates covered in Revolutionary propoganda
And the site of the Bastille (but they tore it down... nothing's there but a giant traffic jam)

This is refreshing. Renaissance art in Italy wore me out! When we went to Nancy last weekend, Sarah and I loved looking at the odd modern art. After a month of classic, you just need to see a flashlight projecting onto a spinning bicycle wheel on the end of a table, and some real make-you-think paintings. We also saw lots of art glass and things from the Ecole de Nancy.

Only two more days of work! A teacher friend from Texas got her class to write Christmas letters to a class of students here, and we're passing the letters out tomorrow. I can't wait! I'm just a little nervous because the kids' letters are precious and all start out with a sentence about how we celebrate Christmas because of Jesus' birth... but there may be a rule against reading that in a French class room? I'm not sure. It is a fact though! Christmas wasn't started to liven up the winter with decorations and cookies.

Pets

One of my favorite sites to see in France (a must-see):
Small animals peeking out from behind a jacket or cardigan. French people zip them right up into their outfits, and you see their heads popping out and wiggly lumps. It was quite disconcerting the first time. To date, my favorite instance of this phenomenon was a on man wearing a coat that fastened with snaps... and it was snapped closed above and below this cat's face.

What an inventive source of transportable heat!

Am I still in France?

So much has happened today! All of a sudden. How could this be a Friday in France? Normally Fridays are just the hors-d'oeuvres of the weekend... my bank doesn't even handle cash on Fridays.

I dropped off reimbursement papers at two different places. Only had minor troubles. At the CAF office (France provides partial reimbursement of rent--everyone here gets it) the woman was looking over my papers. This is the part where they normally nitpick to find something wrong and send you home. All she found was one place where I hadn't written in my roommates' names in a margin where there was no indication that they should be written. With triumph in her eyes, she said, oh, maybe come back another day. I looked at her and said, " I can do right now. No problem. All is okay." She reluctantly gave the stack of papers back to be fixed. And that was that. In 8 months I will probably have some money put directly in to my French account. No telling when or how much.

It's the same case with the papers for a partial reimbursement of work-induced travel costs. They make you fill out a stupid amount of forms, make copies of every paper with both your name and a few stamps on it, and then send these documents through a mysterious chain of hands. But apparently, the money arrives.

Also, a man came and fixed our internet... He had to change our phone jack and rearrange a few things outside. And TA-DA we have a telephone and *gasp* cable television. Now I don't want to leave on the weekend trip Sarah and I had planned to Nancy. It's too good to be true. We haven't had this for a month and a half! Do you think an earthquake will strike?

Tomorrow, one of my schools is having a Christmas show. The kids are going to sing some English carols. Also a song about rabbits and robots. The cafeteria has been morphed into a Christmas village. The windows are covered with holiday pictures, and paper icicles hang from the ceiling. Two very colorful (gaudy?) Christmas trees stand in the corner, and a disco ball dangles from the ceiling.

Brugges Christmas Market

Sunday morning, my roommates and I were up and off on another trip! This time it we took a bus to Brugges, Belgium, that one of the schools had rented. It's funny how close Belgium is on the map, yet it's so difficult to get there without a car. The French and Belgian train lines don't really link up very well.

Anyway, Brugges is really charming. Flemish architecture. Horse-drawn carriages. Chocolate shops everywhere you look. Canals. Some people herald it the Venice of the North. But at least 8 other cities claim this title including Amiens and Valenciennes (what a joke!). There must not be an international copyright on it. They set up an ice skating rink in the town square, but I didn't get to go before the rain started. I'm fascinated with the idea of being able to ice skate outdoors.

We strolled around the city and the Christmas markets. By this time, you must be sensing a trend. Every town has a Marche du Noel. And they all want people to think theirs is the best. But really each one is almost identical and not spectacular thus far. Germany is supposed to be King of the Christmas Market, not France. So each market will have two parts, a food part and a gift part. The food stalls sell waffles, hot chocolate, Irish coffee, mulled wine, sausages, and street food. I sort of got burned at this point--figuring Belgium was famous for chocolate and waffles so they would be spectacular, I ordered them... and the results were disappointing. Should have stuck with a restaurant. The rest of the little houses sell ornaments, scarves, gloves, socks, soccer jerseys, cheese, African arts and crafts. You know, all the things that make a person think of Christmas in France.

It's been frustrating trying to find French Christmas artifacts to bring home. For some reason, everything says "Merry Christmas" on it. And all the Christmas carols are in English, too. Although some have been translated, including Jingle Bells and White Christmas.

I spent most of the day with Egle, the assistant from Italy, and she is teaching me Italian. She misses it a lot... we're lucky to have so many English speakers around, but no one else can speak Italian. Actually, in Northern Belgium near the Netherlands, it's more polite to speak English than French to the Dutch. And because it's so close to Germany, most things are in four languages. Also, I just learned that Holland and the Netherlands aren't synonymous. Holland was a historical part of the Netherlands, and now it's rude to refer to country as Holland.

We went in one chocolate shop called The Chocolate Line. They had a revolving nativity made out of chocolate. Also, the best chocolate I've ever eaten. Why didn't I buy more? The shop had a glass wall so you could watch the Meester Chocolatier concocting them in the back. That doesn't seem like a bad career path at all.

Paris

Paris at Christmastime. On a Saturday. What a day! Somehow between 7:33 and 19:52 we covered several corners of the city. My favorite thing was visiting the Rodin Museum. They have an sculpture garden outside with immense bronze sculptures. He captured gestures so well, they convey movement. So you walk around them, and look at their faces, and their faces seem to look back at you. Inside, we saw a blind tour group, and they were feeling the sculptures! I wonder what that would be like. You can't touch the planes of paintings or photographs, but how wonderful to have sculpture. By the way, teachers have free admission to this museum. So do people under 18 and the unemployed.

Shortly after the Rodin, the rain commenced and didn't stop. It's disappointing seeing such a beautiful city from under an umbrella. It's also dangerous because the sidewalks are packed full of umbrellas (actually enough that people without one didn't get too damp). Everywhere was really crowded in the afternoon. We went to the Galleries Lafayette, one of the oldest shopping malls in the world, to see the enormous Christmas tree. The French started the shopping mall, and this one has an enormous Art Nouveau glass dome that rests 8 stories above the floor. The Christmas tree went almost all the way to the top! Also, there were hoards of people packed in the store like I've never seen before. Getting off the escalator was rough because people were literally stopped... so you'd bump into the people in front of you, then people behind you would bump into you etc. It would have been like human dominoes if there'd been space to fall.

To recover from this, we stopped in Starbucks. The French attitude is generally against Starbucks, but the populous didn't get that memo because it was packed. Two and a half months without Starbucks... can you imagine the happiness? Unfortunately, they do not sell peppermint mochas (one thing I crave this time of year). But it's just lovely being in a familiar, dependable, comfortable place. That's why Starbucks do so well in the first place! The German girls, Sybille and Lena teased me about this, but then they understood. Last, we ran, yes, ran, to see the Eiffel Tower twinkle (on the hour for 5 minutes after dusk) and get our train back to Valenciennes.

Smores

Uniquely American. Megan says the only thing she'd ever seen about them before last night was in "The Sandlot".

So, we started a fire in our fireplace last night! It was quite exciting. And to inaugurate our new heat source, we decided to play scrabble and make smores with the graham crackers my mom sent. Caroline thought they sounded disgusting. Megan dove right in. It was classic! Marshmallows melting and burning and oozing. Graham crackers crunching. Delicious. Once Caroline saw how much Megan loved the smore, she gave them a go (originally, she'd thought the graham crackers were savory like normal crackers--which do sound disgusting with marshmallows) and loved them, too.

And I won at Scrabble. Actually, JARS won it because of the J on a triple letter and R on a double word.

Road Trip in France

Driving in France. Completely different than driving in America. Like apples versus grapes.

Tuesday Nina, Drew, Jen and I set off for Bayeux (of Tapestry fame) equipped with PB&J's, cookies, and bananas. Getting there wasn't really a problem because we'd planned to take the toll roads. There are lots of toll roads in France. The map shows there are other roads that aren't toll roads, but there are no street signs on where those roads are. It's a conspiracy. Also, some direction signs had black paint over them (are they expecting an invasion?) It cost us around 26 euros to drive 3.5 hours. That's pretty steep. Steeper than the fancy Ponte de Normandie over the Seine we payed to traverse (you have to pay a Billy Goats Gruff toll to go over bridges). So anyway, we got there. Jen was our fearless driver. She brought her car over from England, and it's really exciting riding in a car built to drive on the left. Sitting in the front passenger seat, you just get the feeling that quite a bit is missing.

Anyway, so we bummed around in Bayeux that evening. This included attempting to put together a 1000-piece puzzle of a collie dog (not much else to do). We decided to wake up early and see the town, forgetting that the sun doesn't rise until 8:30, so our trek beginning at 7 am wasn't very eventful. The only people we saw were butchers and bakers (no candlestick makers). After breakfast, we went to see the ancient tapestry. It's from 1066 and is the length of a football field. It's displayed in a U shape, so you curve around it listening to a posh British narrator recount the Battle for the English throne between Harold and William the Conqueror. Because it wasn't crowded, the man let us go around it twice so we could hear it in both English and French.

After seeing the tapestry, we decided to go see the next battle scene northern France is known for--the D Day beaches. It was amazing to see them. They stretch on forever and are just bleak. It's hard to imagine the largest land invasion in history, but being there makes it easier. We went to the American Cemetery and Memorial, and the museum told stories of the soldiers. You can hear their letters, see their rations and look at maps of what happened. Finally, we went to Juno beach so Nina could see the Canadian site.

The way home was ridiculous. We planned to take non-toll roads. But couldn't find them anywhere. So a 3.5 hour trip ended up taking almost 7. Who knows what that was all about. French roads are nutty. I think it's just like everything else here--you have to know things that aren't published anywhere. If not, tant pis (too bad). But we sure did get a good laugh in the car from all the barney rubble (trouble) and finally made it home around 1am.

I broke the sink faucet.

Things had calmed down around here... actually that's not true. Our internet's still broken. Christmas is coming. My roommates returned from their weekend trips. Chili was bubbling on the stove. Lesson plans were on the table. And I'm going on a mid-week trip to Normandy tomorrow. But then, I turned the faucet of our kitchen sink, and it came off in my hand.

Only a bit of water sprayed uncontrollably. I stupidly tried to reattach it with the force of gravity plus my arm. But no. The copperish metal spout will not heal itself. For the record, brute American strength did not snap the French faucet. It was already decaying from calcaire and rust. Water here is so hard, everything gets covered in white bits and you have to clean it off with special products (they just call it calcaire). Should have just let the dishes lie in the sink dirty. Kids, let this be a lesson, never wash dishes in France. It's risky.

This week there will be lots of traveling to make up for not going anywhere this weekend (plans for Paris were called on account of rain and high winds). It's hard staying here with nothing to do for more than one day at a time. Europe beckons. It's so easy to leave. So tomorrow (don't have to work because my teacher has a meeting) and Wednesday, we'll be in Bayeux (of tapestry fame). Saturday, Paris. Sunday, Brugges.

It's just bad because sometimes school seems like an inconvenience. Rather than a necessity of being here. The problem lies in working just enough hours to keep us around, but not enough to keep us busy. But who am I to complain?