To See a Bit of this World...

Sad News From Home

2009-08-01T11:46:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I found out that my horse, Prince, passed away of liver failure…
So here is my tribute to him, though words do not do him justice…

“A lovely horse is always an experience.... It is an emotional experience of the kind that is spoiled by words.” ~Beryl Markham

But I’m going to try anyway. He was a great horse... one of those special horses that touch your heart, make you fall in love with them and give you all they have because they love you so much. I met Prince when I was sixteen and brought him home with me that same day… it was love at first sight between us. He had a personality that was incredible.

He was the biggest horse most people had ever seen, 17.2 hands high, but with such a baby mentality. He would be the biggest horse in the field, but the one that got picked on the most. If he got scared, he would unsuccessfully try and hide behind you. He would stick his head in your hands or reach his white-snipped nose all the way out to you for a kiss… He would play with my hair and chew on absolutely anything he could get his cute little mouth on.

When I first got him and had him at my house, we put a JollyBall in with him and the other three horses… he loved that thing! He would pick it up and fling it at the other horses because he thought it was funny and would only stop after George got tired of him an hour or so later, took the ball away and tossed it to the other side of the fence where he couldn’t reach it! He loved playing with road cones too… thought they were fun to chew on or walk around with.

He found small things fascinating, maybe because he was so big… He loved cats, found babies incredibly interesting, thought goats smelled funny and that donkeys sounded funnier.

He didn’t like dogs and would go out of his way to chase them just for fun. He liked to mess with people. When we were building their large winter shelter, my dad and brother had a hard time because they would be on the ladder trying to do something, reach to their back pocket for the hammer just to find that Prince had taken it out of their pocket and was proudly walking around with it in his mouth.

When he was at Horse Butte, he was always in the way and poor Dan had to put up with Prince following him around, taking things off the 4-wheeler to play with them. He would come running to the gate when I came to get him and stick his head in the halter for me. He hated being ridden indoors, and would seriously mope if we had to ride inside. He loved the trails and was the kind of horse that would spook just for fun! When I got him he was five years old and had never been outside of an arena…

That first summer I took him out on the trails, found a nice, straight area, put the reins down and told him to run! He had no idea what I was asking for… he had never done that before. He literally tilted his head back at me as if to ask me what he was supposed to do, but he quickly figured it out though and there was no looking back after that!
By no means was he perfect… he could be atrocious with the Ferrier…

I remember one winter day when poor J.T. left limping and bleeding, but eventually he got better and better. When I first got him he would knock people over with that big, beautiful head… not paying an ounce of attention to the fact that you might have been standing there. Some time out with Rick and Kitty cured him of that and gave him some much needed manners. Every once in a while he would misstep and land on my foot… but only broke my toe once. He routinely tried to buck me off for the first few years (never succeeded), but finally calmed down and turned into a pleasure to ride.

For all his faults, man was he a beauty… He was really stunning, one of the most handsome horses I’ve known, with a very regal air about him.

That’s how he got his name, which I changed from “Pinky” to Prince. He had a thick, gorgeous mane and tail that always seemed to be clean. He had doe eyes that betrayed his emotions easily and gave him such a sweet head. He had what we call in our family a “kissy spot” a little snip on the end of his nose that was put there specifically for getting kisses, and he knew it too… he would stick it all the way out to get a kiss from you.

Lastly, he was the type of horse that really attached to one person, loved them with his entire being and would do anything for them. He was that way with me and was that way with Kate, the girl I gave him to. His devotion and trust in his “girl” whether it was me or Kate, was absolute and undeniable. That is what makes the loss of him that much more painful. He was one of those rare horses that touches your life and can never be forgotten.

“The love for a horse is just as complicated as the love for another human being...If you never love a horse, you will never understand”
“Nothing is more sacred as the bond between horse and rider...no other creature can ever become so emotionally close to a human as a horse. When a horse dies, the memory lives on because an enormous part of his owner's heart, soul, very existence dies also...but that can never be laid to rest, it is not meant to be...”

- Stephanie M Thorn

I will always remember him as the Prince Charming of my teenage years!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Somewhere in time's own space
There must be some sweet pastured place
Where creeks sing on and tall trees grow
Some paradise where horses go,
For by the love that guides my pen
I know great horses live again.
~Stanley Harrison

Goodbye Poitiers, Hello Touffou!

2009-06-22T12:39:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while since I’ve done a blog, so I figured I should update everybody on what is going on with me!

A week ago I finished my internship teaching at the Lycée des Feuillants high school in Poitiers. The internship was a great way for me to get a taste of teaching and to learn an awful lot about the French school system, not to mention culture and language.

Last Saturday I moved over to my new internship in the Château de Touffou, which is amazing. Seriously, I never thought that I would ever actually be able to say that I live in a castle in France… this stuff doesn’t usually happen in real life!
Living in the Château with me are Madame Ogilvy, the owner of Touffou, her daughter Laurence (who everybody calls Minouche), her two children, Olivia (13) and Alex(11) and Paulina, who does the cleaning and cooking with another girl who comes everyday but doesn’t live here with us. Didier lives next door and does evrything from gardening to serving dunner to figuring out why the internet isn't working.

This is the part I live in... third window from the left at the top. The Renaissance wing, built in the 16th century... and it has WIFI!!!

Madame Ogilvy is a fascinating, 72 year old woman. She is really nice and I could tell quickly that we would get along really well. There are times when she cracks me up because she does so many things at once that she will start a sentence, and then halfway through, remember something she forgot and walk away, halfway through her next thought already. On our way back from Poitiers on Tuesday she randomly pulled into a car dealership and she said, “I think I’m going to buy myself a new car” Hers was in the shop and we were having to drive the rental car the shop provided, which shamelessly advertised all over the car, that she really didn’t like. Of what I had seen in few days before I really thought she was just going to walk over, point to the one she liked and say, “I’ll take that one, thank you.” I really think she almost did too… but she got halfway over to the car and then changed her mind, or just remembered that she was expecting people for dinner. Either way she came back to the car and off we went. She got her car back from the shop two days later and now doesn’t need to buy a new car.

This is where I watch T.V. if I want to...

The two kids that are here live with their parents in Florida, but they and their mom spend their summers out here with their grandma and I think the summer is going to be great. We are all getting along very well so far. I am getting some experience working with kids that are the age I want to teach, so it's good for me. I've taken on an unofficial role as the boys math tutor because their mom doesn't have the patience and since I did a work study in a 5th grade math class I know how to handle any problems we have, so it's working out really well for me. The girl follows me around everywhere and has officially declared to everybody that she wants to be just like me and that I am her new role model... My child psychology classes are being put to use in an internship that I am getting French credits for! It's going to be great fun. We decided that Alex is going to spend the summer riding horses… going to camp so he can spend time away from his sister and make friends. Olivia is studying French everyday with a tutor because she's decided to stay in France next year and live here while going to a boarding school in Poitiers during the week, so I've been helping her with that too... good for review!

The formal dining room... set for 21!!!

My job here is to give tours of the Château. The Sunday morning after I got here we had an antique car club come in with all their cars. They parked them all around the parking lot and took pictures of them with the Château as the backdrop. There were sixty of them and I had to give the tour with half of them because there was no way Mme. Ogilvy could take them all, so I had to jump right in and that was it, off I went. Along with the tours I help out Mme. Ogilvy as much as I can.
She doesn’t have a secretary anymore like she used to, so I come in handy sometimes. This weekend we have 21 people here from her late husbands company for a conference and it has been crazy! These are CEOs of companies and such, so they are used to being catered to! Because I’m the only one who speaks fluent English (these people are all from either New York or London) I am being used as the host who welcomes people and shows them to their rooms. I am also the person who has to figure out why the faxes aren’t coming in. I am also the one to organize the lists of taxis and how many people are going to be eating at each meal… etc.

The small gardens...

I am learning a ton and having a great time!

A Small Trip to See Some Things....

2009-05-09T10:11:00.000-07:00

So last Friday I went on a really nice little trip to visit some things that are around here. In the morning I went and rode a horse that a girl wants me to ride for her until the end of the school year because she doesn't have time to ride him while she is studying for her Bac. He's a really nice dapple grey, though a little lazy, which means more work for me, but I don't mind, not I just have to wait and see if I need a license to ride, which I believe I do(so very French), so I need to get one.

One of the Spanish teachers had invited Desi and I to spend our day off of school visiting some places we wouldn't have been able to see otherwise because a car was needed to visit them. So in the afternoon we visited a few different Abbayes, the ruins of a Midieval castle and a cute little English tea room/book store.
It was a really nice way to spend the French national holiday Jour de la Victoire, the victory being during WW2 and it really should be the day the Americans came in and saved our butts, but that's beside the point :) it was a really nice day.

We started out at the Abbaye de St. Benoit, an abbaye built in the 12th century that wasn't far from Poitiers at all. It was a very simple building, but some sections of the living quarters next to the actual church had been reconstructed.

Then We went on our way to St.Martins, where I actually got to meet some monks... One of them opened the museum for us even though it was closed and under construction because the woman we were with asked him to open it for the two of us, who, unbeknownst to us, really wanted to see the History of Monks museum and the émaux gallery that is there too... So émaux are paintings, but made out of a secret mixture of elements and I don't really understand the whole mystery behind them, but they were pretty. The museum was pretty cool and I learned some things about Monks that I unfortunately promptly forgot, except that there are some orders of monks that are not allowed to speak to eachother, which I think is a little bit overboard.
This place was a little weird because the outside of it was really old, but the inside had been redone, so when we went inside expecting a classic, 12th century interior like the St. Benoit one, just to find a 20th century one, it was a little bizarre.

Then we went on to a little town where there were the ruins of a midieval castle as well as a little English tea room and book store, which was actually the original point of this whole outing, getting to this tea room so we could buy some books in English if we wanted to(I bought four books, one Harry Potter just because, a biography of Jackie Kennedy and two books about French sayings and idioms). The guy who worked at the place didn't speak any French so I had to play translator, which is fine unless it gets to be too many people at once and then I tend to mix up which language I am supposed to be speaking to which person, but that's okay because the Spanish teacher and Desi would be having an entire conversation in Spanish and then the teacher would turn to me and explain what they were talking about, the only problem was that half the time she would entirely forget to switch to French, so she would explain to me in Spanish what they were talking about in Spanish, which i thought was really funny, especially when she never noticed. The ruins were cool, though it always bums me out that things like that are in ruins in the first place.

Then we finished at a really pretty abbaye called the Abbaye de Nouaille Maupertuis. It was a protected abbaye with a wall and a moat around it.

We had a hard time trying to remember what the french for "moat" even with someone whose native language was French, and then Desi said she didn't think there was even a word for that in Spanish because they don't really have those in Spain because there isn't a lot of water in Spain and I said that was rediculous because even if they don't have them in Spain they would have come across them during the many times they came into France to conquer something or another. We finally figured out the word in French, and not because of my brilliance in French, but mostly because the road that we were walking along and that followed the path of the moat was called, "path of the moat".

This place had a little garden that was supposed to be the same type of garden they would have had in the middle ages. The inside of the abbaye was really pretty too.
Then we headed home, except on the way we stopped off the road in the middle of the woods so that the teacher we were with could go to the bathroom in the trees because she didn't think she could wait until we got all the way back to Poitiers.
When we did get back to Poitiers we had her over so we could eat the cake we bought from the monks and drink some tea. It was an all-around very nice Friday.

A Weekend of Basketball

2009-04-28T03:35:00.000-07:00

So I spent the whole weekend with my basketball friends, it was great.

Friday was the Poitier vs. Nanterre game held here, so I volunteered all day. I got there at 3:30 and spent a good 3 hours spreading, skewering and cutting various foods for the VIPs after the game, then I went over to seat those same VIPs in their respective boxes. Then was the game. The players really like to stress us out... finally winning in overtime, but at least we won!
Then it was cleaning up the stadium, which is done by the volunteers. After that I hang around to watch the players sign autographs and take pictures for all the little kids, which is always nice to see. I also see a poster up on the wall talking about a poker tournament on Sunday for a local charity.. A professional basketball player at every table... Sounds like fun, maybe I'll do that on Sunday.
Then it's over to the VIP/volunteer room to drink 'punch' i.e. OJ with Rum in it, with all the other volunteers, VIP and players. I spend about an hour being drug around by Kenny, one of the American players, so i can serve as his personal translator because he doesn't speak French at all. The players and VIP all trickle out around midnight and then it's just the volunteers left drinking healthy amounts of punch. After a few glasses, my coach likes to practice his English skills, making sure I understand everything that he says by punctuating with the small amount of English he knows, which is always very funny! It's just about time to leave when he asks me what I'm doing on Saturday...I had nothing really planned, so he asks me if I want to go with them to Boulazac to see the Boulazac vs. Clermont-Ferrand game. Absolutely! I get home about 1:30 and crash.

Saturday I get up around 11 or so and go have brunch with Brianne and go to the market because my fridge is completely empty. I invited her to come to the poke tournament with me, which sounded like a lot of fun, so plans for Sunday are set.
Then I run home just in time to get picked up to go to the Boulazac game. We head over to Alain Renoux's house... He's the one who got me into all this, since he is one of the administrators at the high school and is also the treasurer for the Basketball association and He's the one who has the minibus we're taking to Boulazac. So we get on our way and the first thing they do, after spending about half an hour trying to figure out the GPS, is open the cooler full of alcohol. There's some punch left over from last night and a couple bottles of cider as well. So my coach, who is sitting next to me in the very back, starts pouring glasses, the first of which is handed to Alain, who also happens to be driving!! Yikes!! How very French! But he only had one glass... I guess that is supposed to make it no obig deal! Then we get to Boulazac. We're all in the parking lot drinking punch before the game starts, all dressed up in our Poitiers gear standing around the Poitiers basketball minibus, which is very well labeled. Pretty much every person who walked by pulled out their tickets to check who was playing, they were pretty sure it was Boulazac-Clermont, so why are the Poitiers people here?
So why were we there? Here's the deal... The Poitiers team is ranked second, but also tied with Clermont for second. if Boulazac beats tyhem, they will be knocked out of the tie with us and we will be solidly second. That and it was against Clermont that the refs were obviously biased towards our team and where they kicked Rasheed out of the game in the last seconds so that we couldn't really win. We really wanted to see Boulazac cream them, and I am happy to report that that is exactly what happened! They beat them by 16 points... Justice!!!

Apparently it is tradition to stay and eat at a restaurant in Boulazac because it is the Dordogne region, where there is really good food, so that is exactly what we did, which was a lot of fun! Then we head home. I get home around 4am and crash.

Sunday Brianne and I get picked up at a quarter 'till two for the poker tournament. We get there and I introduce her to all my basketball friends and the American players on the team and then we get down to the tournament. I started out pretty badly, but won two big pots towards the end of the free rounds, just before the real part of the tournament started, the part when you can't re-buy more chips. Kenny ended up leaving as soon as he could, obviously didn't want to really be there, and Rasheed stayed in for a while, but got out kinda early. Kenny asked me to text him who the winner was, because he was going home to play video games. We started out around 90 people I think. Brianne went out 29th (I think) and I hung in there until 13th, which wasn't too bad I thought for someone who had never played in a tournament before. The winner ended up being the coach of the pro team, which was really funny because he kept telling every table he went to that the person who got him out would win free VIP tickets to a game, but that they would be banned from entering the stadium! I texted Kenny the winner and he said "Damn, now I have to listen to him talk about it for the rest of the season!" All in all it was a really nice day for a good charity, and the top 16 players got a free entry into the Poitiers Poker club's next tournament. !
So it'a about 9:30 when Brianne and I get back to my place and we're tarving. I don't have muh in the house, but we pile some corn, potatoes and eggs together and make burritos that we ate along with some sweet potatoes, which are yummy. She had to work on Monday morning, but I am finally on VACATION!!!

Life is Good

2009-04-23T03:31:00.000-07:00

So... Today after class one of the senior girls comes up to me and says, "you ride horses don't you?" That would be a yes... So we talk a little bit and I say that next year I will be looking for someone who has a horse but not enough time to ride it, and she says that she has that problem right now and is looking for someone to ride her horse. See, over here they have the Bac, a high school exit exam, and since she will be studying for it she is looking for someone to ride her horse for her since she won't have time... Score!!! It's perfect because it is just until the end of the school year, which is when she'll be done with her Bac and when I leave... And just when the weather is getting beautiful I might be able to ride a few times a week! I'm so excited!

Another thing is that I went on to my bank yesterday and saw that the train station put my 300 euro payment through not once, but twice, and the second one was pending, so I thought I was going to have to fight with them, but when I went to look today, it didn't go through, which made me very happy!

Oh, and the kids I am working with this week actually put into use the "active reading" that I had taught them. They were able to answer all the questions about the text after only one reading when beforehand they would have had no idea! I was very excited to see that sometimes they actually learn something and to know that they may pass the English part of their Bac because of something I taught them.

Yesterday I cut about 6 inches off of my hair and I really like it! It's easier to handle and curls nicely when I ask it to because it isn't so heavy!

To top it all off.... I opened my summer suitcase today! I had packed all my summer clothes into one suitcase when I moved from Lyon and hadn't opened it because I could't wear any of the clothes, but the weather is soooo nice that I finally opened it!

I'm in a really good mood, so now I am going to go to the Prefecture and try to change my VISA from student to intern... I'm sure my good mood will probably be gone by the time I'm done, but it'll start out good!

Easter Weekend at La Rochelle

2009-04-21T03:58:00.000-07:00

So at the last minute my friend Brianne and I decided to go to a place called La Rochelle for Easter weekend. La Rochelle is a midieval tourist town on the coast.

I love the ocean!!!! Seriously I really do and the weather wasn't completely horrible either.When we got there on Saturday it was overcast, but not officially raining, and eventually the clouds lifted a little just in time for us to enjoy a spectacular sunset

So, when Brianne and I travel together we pretty much have the best time ever because it consists of finding food, walking around a little bit or seeing something, then stopping for dessert or a café/tea, then walking around a little more, repeat processSeriously, it was the most relaxing weekend ever and we ate way too much really yummy things (see food porn provided!)

On Sunday we went to the aquarium and saw lots of fish, which I have officially decided are fascinating!!

Seriously.. Some are big, little, fat, skinny, made up of who knows what! They are very colorful, some can change colors, some of them are huge and some of them are tiny.

On Sunday night we decided to go bowling...
.
I love bowling, and Brianne does too, so off we went, mostly because the bowling place was about 2 minutes walk from our hostel. I didn't bowl too badly, even though it's been a while... I even got a...

On Monday (no school because of Easter!!) We took a boat to a cute little island called the Isle d'Aix.

It was a beautiful day and we just walked around a little and then had a picnic on the grass overlooking the sea.

There were two lighthouses, which I think are cool...

Not to mention the horse drawn carriage. There was one white horse and one black horse... I'm a sucker for horses, duh!!!

And then the boat coming to get us from the island was late and we thought we were going to miss our train, so for the first time during the weekend we actually rushed. We were very happy when we got to the (beautiful) train station in time to catch the train back to Poitiers.

Souvenirs of La Rochelle... Sunburns we got on Isle D'Aix because we forgot, or rather didn't even really think about, sunscreen!

Basketball and an Ambulance

2009-04-09T00:07:00.000-07:00

It wasn't for me..... Don't freak out!

So I went to practice last night and seriously I can barely walk today...
We did a bunch of workouts and then went on to do some strength training with those basketballs that they make extra, extra heavy. We did a lot of squats and now I can barely walk down the stairs, of which I don't think I really ever appreciated how many there are at the school until this morning!After our workouts we started actually playing... well for a couple seconds that is. We do the tipoff and everybody runs for the ball, except the girl who did the tipoff, who ended up on the floor. I think she twisted her knee, so she couldn't get up or flex her knee. So... four of the girls who play qre nursing students, who just had their final exams and internships to become official nurses, and they all went into nurse mode. Because she couldn't move it without hurting, a couple of the girls ran next door and got the paramedics (we play in their gym) and she got taken to emergency in an ambulance! Of course, in the US they never would have called an ambulnce or probably even gone to the ER. But here in France they go for every little thing possible.

So we continue playing, but we don't have much time left, so we play to 10 instead of the normal 20 points. My team won, and I made 8 of the ten points! I really wanted to be done!

Then we go to the other gym to take our showers and eat dinner. Wednesdays are the only days I get to take a real, hot shower because at my place we only have 40 seconds of hot water at a time, so it is really nice to have a real shower, even if it is with a bunch of other girls!

Then we had dinner: Microwave lasagna, brownies and champagne with orange juice! It was great...

Now I have to go to class, which is on the 4th floor... I'm on the 1st floor...

Wednesdays

2009-04-08T08:20:00.000-07:00

I like Wednesdays!
I don't start until 10 am, so it is a rare chance in the middle of the week to sleep in a little bit. Sometimes I have a class at 10, but most of the time, like today, the teacher will tell a couple minutes before that there is no class or that she won't need me. That gives me the whole morning to do whatever I need to do. Then I have a class at 11:40, the other half of a class I have already had the day before, so there is no preparation. Today the kids had to get up and talk for two minutes straight in English about a comic or cartoon about GM foods. Yesterday they did really well, but today they kind of flopped and so they grades were pretty low.
Then I have two special tutoring sessions, one for basketball players and one for Judo players.
With the basketball player I had today I had him explain to me his normal schedule, and then the subject inevetably moved over to basketball. So we got to talking about the basketball game I went to on Friday night. Our team lost, not because the other team was better, but because the referees obviously wanted the other team to win. I don't usually buy into that whole thing, usually if a team I am for loses, it's just because we weren't good enough that game, but this was obvious and blatant.
The Poitiers team is a rear-end type of team, meaning we play not-so-well in the first three quarters and then kick it into high gear in the last quarter to come from behind and win it. That's our MO, and everybody knows it. We are ranked second in our Pro division, behind the Paris team.

One of our Americans, Rasheed, is the one who always makes a 3 point shot in the last seconds to win the game, which is exactly what we needed when the last 30 seconds came around. So what did the ref do???? he kicked him out of the game! And nobody has yet to really figure out why... we weren't even playing qt the time, just waiting for the ball to be thrown in to start the play. Needless to say we were pretty pissed, but nothing compared to Rasheed, who was livid. Finally we asked to know the "official" reason for him getting kicked out of the game... a "provocative look" at the ref!!! That isn't even a rule!!

We lost by two points.

Then I have two boys who are Judo kids. They are pretty funny, but not very good in English because they hate their teacher (unfortunately somewhat justifiably).

But we got onto the subject of Harry Potter last week, so this week we watched some of the first movie, completely in English and then I had them do some activities based on it and they really liked that. If I can get them to like English and work more at it despite their intense dislike for their teacher, I will feel my time here as having been successful!

And now I am about to head off to my own basketball practice, which is always fun!

Some GREAT news!!

2009-04-07T04:52:00.000-07:00

I have officially given up on trying to play catchup with the blog and am just going to start off fresh..... The most important thing being that I just (like 2 minutes agp) got my
ACCEPTANCE
As a teaching assistant for next year here in France!!!!!!

Unfortunately I did not get placed in Lyon like I had hoped, but in the Académie de Poitiers, where I am right now. The thing is that the "Académie de Poitiers" means I could be placed in any of the four departments that make up the academy, so I could be teaching in aschool in the middle of nowhere... but I'm not complaining at all!!!!!

A Little Behind: Week One

2009-03-24T09:59:00.000-07:00

I’m a bit behind (okay... way behind) because I have been extremely busy, so I’m going to recap what I did the last few week, but one week at a time.
Monday I had an English teacher not inform me that she was going to have a substitute and that I would have to have a lesson plan ready for them, the consequence being that when I walked into the class and the substitute said me she had been told I would be all ready I was at a complete loss as to what to do. The substitute and I had to ‘wing it’ with that class, which usually never comes out good… it was like pulling teeth to get them to say anything! For the next day I had a lesson planned for that teacher’s classes, and from now on I will always have a back-up plan ready in case that ever happens again. I decided to have them analyze a song; “Change” by Taylor Swift because the song has a theme we can work off of and she sings pretty clearly, so they might possibly be able to understand a word or two. I think the kids liked it, though it made me realize just how much they don’t understand when they are listening to English. I even gave them the lyrics and then we ended up making it an exercise in translation so I was sure they understood.

The high school also received 19 English exchange students with their two French teachers on Monday. When I arrived the French students had just returned from their week-long stay in England, and now the English students were here for their week in France. The English teacher in charge asked me to chaperone with him all day on Wednesday and Thursday, which would give me a chance to see some of the sites of the region as well as give them an extra chaperone. Wednesday we were at the amusement park here in town, Futuroscope, and Thursday we toured a winery, mushroom caves and a subterranean farm. It definitely tested my patience a few times… you would think that I was talking about elementary kids, but these are juniors who, at some points during the two days, had to be treated like they were in elementary school because of their behavior.
It was a nice two days, though getting to go with them turned into a much bigger deal than I had wanted it to be. One English teacher is in charge of the exchange with the students from England and he (Eric) asked me if I would like to go with them to do all their sight seeing, which would give me a chance to see some things I may not have had the chance to see otherwise. I just had to make sure that it wouldn’t be a problem with any of the other English teachers if I missed their classes on Wednesday and Thursday, but one of the teachers I asked (Françoise) told me that she would prefer I was there for her class instead of going with the English group because she had designed her lesson plan around me being there. It was no big deal for me, it was a last minute thing anyway and I didn’t want to leave her hanging when I was supposed to be there so I just told the group I wouldn’t be able to go because I had a class to do. I had no idea what I was getting myself into because then Eric promptly told me that it was because the other teacher really hates him, won’t do anything for the exchange that he is in charge of and therefore won’t allow me to go with them, keeping me behind even though I will only have one 50 minute class for the whole day (all my other classes that day would have been with the teacher who is with the English students). I told him it wasn’t a big deal and that I definitely didn’t want to start anything with this other teacher who is really nice to me all the time, so I would just stay back and do the class, seriously no big issue. Then, as the other chaperone teachers and I are leaving on Wednesday morning, I get stopped by the vice-principle, who tells me Eric had explained to her the problem and that she would take care of it so that I can go with them the next day. I was not very happy with him because it made it seem like I went over the other teacher’s head to get what I wanted, especially because she walked up just when the VP was saying that, so we discussed it all together and no matter how many times I tried to tell them it was not something to make into a big issue, that I didn’t mind staying behind, it still got turned into one. The next time I saw her I tried to explain that it isn’t at all what I had wanted to happen and that it got turned into a bigger thing than it should have been, and now I am hoping that it doesn’t have an affect on my working relationship with her. This situation taught me that as much as I might try to stay out of the politics of the office, sometimes there’s nothing I can do about it because if people really want to they can make an issue out of anything, even if that anything, in this case me, doesn’t want to be in the middle of it.

Friday I had no classes because the students had what we would call state testing in the US, which would have been really nice if I had known that there would be no classes. The teachers did not tell me until I came in on Friday morning that there were no classes. In the afternoon I finally got a chance to go out to the Château de Touffou and meet Mme. Ogilvy. I was very excited to get to go out there! She is a very nice woman and I think I’m going to have a great summer out there with her. She showed me around the grounds, in the same order that the tour is done, but I didn’t get to see much of the actual living area because Sylvie, my internship director over here who took me out there, was a little pressed for time. So I didn’t get to see my future room, I just know that it’s in the tower! So we decided that I would be starting as soon after Sept. 15th as I possibly can and that I will get paid 400 euro a month!!! Which is complete pocket money because I will have my food and housing and everything else at the Château. I will be working with a 25 yr. old French woman (Melodie) who worked there last year and my days off will either be Mon and Tues. or Tues. and Wed. since she is required by law to give the employees two consecutive days off and they are closed on Tuesdays. Then she gave me the little guide on the place and told me to memorize it and that was it. I’m going to go out there a couple times before I start so Melodie can show me the tour.

P.S. That tower right there, my room is in that tower...

After Touffou, I met Mandalyn for a drink and she introduced me to two other English speakers, one form the US and one from Canada. These girls are 19 and 20 and got to Poitiers in September. They’re not that much younger than me, but the age difference really struck me because all they did was complain about how boring Poitiers is and that there is never anything to do, they just want to go home and hang out with their friends. They hadn’t met any French people, so I was trying to help them by explaining how I had met people, but I guess they just thought I was lecturing them because they started getting annoyed, saying I was preaching to the choir because they had tried everything. Eventually I just wanted to tell them to grow up and put a little bit of effort into their time here because it’ll be over soon and they’re going to regret that they didn’t do anything with their time here, but I jut dropped it and stopped trying to help them. I know it isn’t easy to get involved and meet people, but it’s not impossible either!

Saturday I got to relax a little. Eric had invited me to go with him and the French teachers from England to La Rochelle, which is a touristy beach town not far from here, but since I had been invited to see the Cadre Noir de Saumur, one of the best riding teams in the world, I didn’t go with them. That gave me Saturday morning to relax a little and then Saturday night I went and saw the show. It wasn’t the real Cadre Noir like I had thought, but a show put on by a group of people who came from Chantilly to do an internship with the Cadre Noir. Their internship was over and this was their final performance. It was a really cool performance and the best part was that it was free! They did some pretty cool stuff with their horses. I took a lot of video which came out pretty good, but not really pictures because flash wasn’t allowed and the lighting was really bad for pictures.

Sunday we started really early, at 8am, and went to see a couple of Châteaux in the Loire valley, Chambord and Chenonceau. Manon was yet again nice enough to drive us and this time her boyfriend came with us. Desiree asked us if she could come too, so we were five altogether, which made for really cramped driving, but it was fun. We had originally planned on just visiting Chambord and then going to Tours, but we ended up visiting Chenonceau instead of Tours.

I had to be back in Poitiers before 7pm because I had been invited to have dinner with the two teachers from my high school who were with the English exchange, Eric and Michel, along with the French teachers from England. Since it was their last night there and I had spent so much time with them, I really wanted to be able to have dinner with them. We got back just in time for me to be able to change real quick to head to dinner. One of the teachers from England walked down and got me and then we walked to where we were meeting Eric who was going to drive us out the Michel’s where we were having dinner. We had to wait for Eric’s boyfriend, Stephan, who was also joining us for dinner and then we were on our way. Dinner was really nice, we had real couscous, which I enjoyed, and I got to play with their cat, who was really cute and I also dropped a glass bottle of apple juice, shattering it all over the floor. It was really nice to be included in their weekend!

A Day in the Dordogne: Part 4: Rocamadour.

2009-03-14T04:59:00.000-07:00

Rocamadour.

Rocamadour is a town of unparalleled beauty. It really is incredible. We were there at night, as you can see by my pictures (I love my camera’s nighttime landscape setting!!) and so it was beautifully lit up. Rocamadour is a pilgrimage sight and a stop on the road to Santiago de Compostella. The legend is that Zaccheaus (from the song “Zacccheaus was a wee little man”) who was the wife of Ste. Victoire and knew Jesus personally, escaping religious persecution, came to France and became a hermit living in the cliffs and caves at Rocamadour.

A perfectly preserved skeleton was found in the cliffs and it was determined to be his body. So it became a pilgrimage sight with chapels built into the cliff walls and a medieval town developed below the chapels. There is a chapel with a black virgin who is said to perform miracles if you pray to her.
Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims came to Rocamadour, climbing the stairs from the town to the chapel above on their knees. The day of the pilgrims has passed, but the beauty and power of it’s location is still very much alive and therefore tourists search it out in droves during the high season.
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We were there in the low season on a cloudy night and it was very nice. We climbed all the way from the town to the top, which is lit up by flood lights. A sight I will probably never forget was the shadow of the church in the clouds above. I tried to get a picture of it, but it came out blurry because my camera’s battery was dying and couldn’t take a real night landscape picture.

Then we climb back down from the top. We used the stairs and the ramps that show the Stations of the Cross on the way down and Mandalyn took pictures of each of the stations for me because she’s nice.

Then we headed home. It ended up that Manon’s friend who has the key to her parents’ house was out of town, so we had to drive all the way back to Poitiers. So three hours worth of English conversation exercise for Manon later (mostly to keep her from falling asleep while driving), at about 1:30 we finally get back to Poitiers. It was the best day ever. Seriously, it was! And I am soooooo sleeping in tomorrow!

A Day in the Dordogne: Part 3: Sarlat.

2009-03-14T04:51:00.000-07:00

Sarlat.

When we got to Sarlat both Mandalyn and I needed a bathroom, so we sit at an outside café, order some drinks and then quickly use their bathroom. Sarlat is one of the cutest little medieval towns I’ve ever been to.

It really is a beautiful place with beautiful architecture and a nice feeling to it.

The streets are generally too small for cars, so there are normally not very many of them around. We lucked out and got there just in time for Carnaval, so we were well situated in the main town square to watch the parade go by and see a bunch of kids dressed in costumes running around. There were crepe venders selling Nutella crepes for 1 euro 50, which is a really good deals. Mandalyn mentions that she had yeat to actually eat a crepe here in France. WHAT??? Well… we quickly changed that! The parade comes along and there is a 15 foot tall Little Red Riding Hood on a trailer being pulled by a van. She is apparently the mascot of the carnival this year. She’s made of paper and things like that, and then there is some guy dressed in a Big-Bad-Wolf costume. Apparently at the end of the parade the mascot gets taken to the stadium or somewhere like that and then all the kids get together and burn it! Not violent at all? Why didn’t they make the wolf what gets burned? Why do they burn the mascot in the first place? I really need to look up the reasoning behind this tradition ‘cause it seems pretty violent to me that all the kids are going to burn the poor Ms. Hood! I’m sure it has religious origins, since the carnival is done during lent, so it has some sort of Catholic origin.
So we’re looking at the map and realize that Rocamadour, which is one of the spots that I visited when I was here five years ago, isn’t too far from Sarlat, so we decide to go there too. Now that would make it so we have to drive back 3 and a half hours when we get done… or we could just stay the night at Manon’s parents’ vacation house that isn’t too far from Rocamadour. Sure, why not. We’ve just made this a weekend outing.
So we’re getting ready to go, taking one last look around when something catches my eye… a group of three bronze geese statues. It was then that the realization that I had been here before hit me like a ton of bricks! My mind goes thousands of miles away to Oregon where, in a box in my old room somewhere is a picture of me five years ago sitting on a bronze statue of a goose that is part of a group of three. I had completely forgotten that we stopped by Sarlat when I was here five years ago. Now that I think about it, it makes sense because we were at Rocamadour, which, as I said, isn’t too far away from Sarlat, and Sarlat is known as one of the most beautiful medieval towns in France. So I run down to the geese, confusing the heck out of Mandalyn and Manon in the process, and have them take a picture of me sitting on the geese, all the while explaining why I freaked out… it was great fun and then we were off to Rocamadour.

A Day in the Dordogne: Part 2: Perigueux.

2009-03-14T04:38:00.000-07:00

Perigueux
There was a lot to see in Perigueux because it has not only an ancient roman sites to visit, but also a medieval area as well.

Roman Ruins
The main site was a roman tower built in the second century. The name of this town when it as a roman town was Vesunna and this tower was the inner part of a shrine to the roman goddess Tutela Vesunna.

There was also an old castle that was built by the Romans, but then converted some during the renaissance as a castle for nobles. Technically I guess it would be half Roman, half Medieval! The castle was destroyed in the 16th century by the Protestants because its owner was a sworn enemy.

Medieval Town
There is a whole medieval section of the town as well. There is the really old church that used to be the cathedral until the title was given to the new cathedral. Both the churches have a fairly specialized style of domes that you can see in the pictures. The second, younger cathedral really is huge. The only reason why we were even there was because I saw the church from the bus on the way to an away game a couple of weeks ago. I saw the church from the road and thought it looked really interesting, so I decided to figure out a way to get back there to see it, and voila… the birth of this day in the Dordogne!
The medieval section of the town was very classic with little tiny streets and walkways.

While we were there we ate lunch. Now, Mandalyn’s time in France is coming rapidly to a close and she really wants to try real truffles and Fois gras. Luckily we’re in the truffle and Fois gois capital of France. Now I wasn’t planning on having such an extravagant lunch, but when in France, especially if you’re only here for 10 weeks, we have to take the chances we get. So we find a place that has both on the menu and get a table. Mandalyn orders the pasta with truffle and I order the fois gras plate, with Manon ordering the salmon. It was all really good. Of course, I love fois gras, I wasn’t disappointed, and it was my first time (I think) tasting truffles.

Truffles are really very unique and I can’t compare them to anything else; I can’t really even think of anything that comes close. Sometimes I have to stop and marvel at the creation around us, like truffles, which are impossible to cultivate. With all the science and research that has gone into trying, people have not been able to figure out the combination of things in the wild that come together to create the truffle (which might be why it is so expensive) and so there is no way for them to be farmed or specifically grown by man. There are some things that God guards control of for Himself and, contrary to what some people believe, man does not have the ability to control all things.
Anyways… after our 80 euro lunch (including a very nice dessert wine to go with my fois gras)
we headed out of Perigueux on our way to the next stop on our itinerary for the day: Sarlat.

A Day in the Dordogne: Introduction & Part 1: Brantôme

2009-03-14T04:36:00.000-07:00

A Day in the Dordogne: Introduction

Saturday morning I met my friends at 8am to get on our way and see a bit of the Dordogne region of France. Home to some beautiful Roman and Medieval cities and Fois Gras and Truffle center of the world. I’ve separated the trip into different blogs for each different place we went to. We started on our way and stopped at Brantôme, the Venice of the region, on our way to Perigueux, then went from Perigueux to Sarlat and then finished our evening at Rocamadour. It was the most amazing day of discovering this beautiful region of France. Ever since I visited Rocamadour when I was in France 5 years ago I’ve always wanted to go back because it really is an incredible place to see. I am very thankful to Manon, who was willing to go all around visiting places with us!

A Day in the Dordogne: Part 1: Brantôme

Brantôme is known as the Venice of the region since the town was built on and around a canal system. It seems in visiting this town that we can see a summary of the history of mankind… their faith and art that has passed through the millennia and rests today for us to see. There are many caves in the town, as well as grottos nearby that boast ancient history and art(that unfortunately we didn’t have the time to visit). The area has been inhabited since before the first century and there has been a church at the site of the present church since the place has been inhabited.

The first Christian church replaced a Roman temple to Mercury that was built in the first century, and even then that temple replaced a Celtic temple that was even older. The church that is there now was rebuilt in the 10th and 11th century and has survived wars and the revolution that destroyed the monastery that was also here. There is an Abbey right next to the church.
The church’s bell tower still has some elements of the 4th century church, making it the oldest in France.

There is a memorial to a man with the name Brantôme, and I am assuming that it is because of him that the town has its name.

It was threatening to rain while we were there, but it was actually pretty nice and the canals were really beautiful.

There were bridges everywhere and houses on the water with little water mills. All in all, it was a very nice start to our trip through the area.

Practice, Paris and the Wrights

2009-03-06T03:58:00.000-08:00

So Wednesday I went to basketball practice, which is always great fun. During warm-up I made a couple of lucky 3 point shots and they started calling me Mrs. Wright (Rasheed Wright is one of the Americans on the Poitiers team). Then for the rest of the night I couldn’t make any shot at all! I recently realized that I am really not very good at basketball… but it’s just for fun, so no big deal. So we get done with practice, which was fairly easy compared to the other practices we’ve had… not as much running as normal. Then we head over to the big gym where the guys practice so we can shower and eat dinner. We get there and the guys are practicing… these are the older guys who play just for fun like we do, but at a much higher level (like our coach, who plays with them). So we walk in and some of the girls say “ I don’t think we ran enough during our practice, let’s play with the guys too.” Sure… why not? Some of the girls thought we were crazy and just went and showered. I stayed and played for about another hour, and some of the girls stayed for their whole practice, which means they played for four hours… and now they have trouble walking. I took myself out in time to still be completely exhausted, but I'd still be able to move the next day… I’m just playing for fun!

Then while we’re eating they verify with me that I am going to Paris with them. What?? I totally wanted to go, but I didn’t know they were even taking a bus so I didn’t think I was going to be able to make it and I was really bummed. Apparently when they made the list of people that would be going, they automatically put me on the list. Score!!!!!!! So this afternoon I’ll be getting on a bus and driving for four hours to Paris so I can watch the game, I’m so excited. I feel a little bad because I told Mandalyn (another American intern) that I would go out with her tonight…. But I really want to go to the game in Paris. I asked if there was another spot on the bus so she could come with us, but it’s full. Oh well.. I bailed on her last night too…I told her we would go to karaoke again, but then the Wrights invited me to dinner and I couldn’t turn down their offer, so we’ll be doing karaoke next week.
So Rasheed picked me up and I had dinner over at their place. They have an 18 month old who is sooooooo cute. Her name is Rayne; her and her mom Becky live in North Carolina and during the basketball season Rasheed lives here in Poitiers. He’s been playing basketball here in France for six years. Sometimes Becky lives full time over here and sometimes, like right now, she stays in the States and visits when she can. She is learning more and more how to cook from scratch because of being in France, since over here pre-made boxed or canned food where all you have to do is follow the directions doesn’t really exist here. She made a wonderful chicken and rice dish with banana pudding for dessert and it was great. I got to read “Are you my mother” and watch a little bit of Dora the Explorer with Rayne and got to know the Wrights (who are soooo nice) a little bit, it was all around a very nice evening.
And I’m making it up to Mandalyn on Saturday. We wanted to go to Perigueux, but the train tickets were expensive and only gave us 4 hours over there, so I asked one of my French friends if she wanted to go and we would pay for the gas… She has nothing better to do, why not? Score!!! And then if we have time we can see a bit more of the Dordogne region since she knows a few places that are really nice. Mandalyn’s coming with us, so I say it makes up for me bailing on her at least a little bit.

Now I have to get a sufficient amount of munchies for a 4 hour trip and then get ready to go to Paris.
Ciao!

Boy A and Le Porteau.

2009-03-04T04:32:00.000-08:00

So the high school I work at decided to have a special three day program for some of the sophomores that are having the biggest problems in school. Instead of being at this high school, it was going to be at the other high school (Porteau). These kids were described as “Motivated sophomores whose grades are nevertheless low enough to jeopardize their continuation.” I am assigned to chaperone them on Monday night to see a movie “Boy A” and then on Tuesday to have them for two hours to strengthen their basics for English conversation. So the movie went really well… they really are a good group of kids and I was with another teacher, so no big issues. The movie was really good, though a bit heavy with a weird ending.

It was thought provoking and in it’s original English with French subtitles, except that it was a British film and half the time I was reading the subtitles so I could understand what they said.

Tuesday had me first trying to find my way to the bus I needed to take across town to get to the other high school. My roommate, Desiree had vaguely explained to me where the stop was… all the way up the hill in the main part of town (about a 10 minute walk). I get there and I can’t find which of the stops was for the number 7 bus… I don’t see it until I see the actual bus pull away. Crap! I’ve missed it and now what do I do? Back down the hill to the high school. Does anybody have the phone number to the Lycée Porteau, because the next bus puts me 30 minutes late for my class. So I get on the bus, just to find out that there is a stop for this bus about a minute from my apartment!! I’m gonna kill Desiree… She goes to this high school every week… how has she missed the fact that there is a stop right by where we live????? We drive right past it! Oh well… I’m on the bus now. I get on the bus and ask “can I have 2 tickets please” I always buy both tickets when I get on so I don’t have to buy one for the way back… just saves time. The woman says “No, you can’t have two tickets.” I thought she was messing with me… it sounded like she was messing with me, so I was joking back with her… Oh well… I guess I’m not allowed to come back… that’s too bad. But then she wasn’t kidding… apparently we’re only supposed to be able to buy one at a time for those specific tickets. Well…. I guess now I know.
So I get off at the stop and there’s the school… fairly easy to find, except I didn’t know how to get in, the door I tried was locked.. Maybe I need to go to a different building. So I follow the signs that say Le Porteau door 3 and 4 (the entrances the little map I saw said I could find information) which have an arrow on them… I go in the direction the arrows were pointing until I get farther down the road and see the same signs across the street, but pointed the other direction! What? I am sooooo confused. Finally I go back to the first building I saw and just pull on doors until one opens… Success!!! I find an office with a person in it and asked for the students from Feuillants… She’ll take me! Great! I have found my students… I was a half hour late, but I was there! I find out later that the arrow is the school’s logo! It had absolutely nothing to do with directions…. No wonder why they were pointing the other direction when they were across the street!

So I finally get started with the students. I have them all introduce themselves… Name, age, hobbies, the standard. Then I prepared a short refresher lesson on question words. We work with that a little bit, but they were pretty solid on their questions. On we move to something a little bit more fun. I was thinking that they are working at the school during their vacation, so something fun would be appreciated. They get paired up, with one group of three. I give them situations and they have to think up the conversations. One of them is a girl coming in 2 hours after her curfew… think of the craziest excuses she could give. Another is a group of three friends explaining what crazy things they are doing for the vacation… the next is two boys fighting over the same girl (why would she like you better?) and the last one is a student who comes to class late and without the homework… make up the conversation between the two and the crazy excuses the student comes up with.
Off we go… Anybody have any questions on grammar??? Yes! How do you say “faire l’amour” Uhhh…. Okay, why do you need to know that? Because that is what I am saying that I will be doing for the whole first week of vacation! Okay… we say it the same way “make love” or you can say “have sex.” Well… they’ve learned something new haven’t they?
Next question… How do you say “extraterrestre?” …. Aliens, why? That’s one of my excuses for missing curfew, I got abducted by aliens.

Good!!!
Okay… what’s next? What’s the past tense for “eat?” Ate, why? Because I want to say his mother ate my homework. Okay… the classic excuse uses a dog, but whatever, go for it.
Is this right??? “She prefer a playboy like me, not someone like you”… It’s pretty good, but should be either “she prefers playboys” “she will prefer” or “she would prefer”… Seriously, who would prefer a playboy? Oh well, whatever. What about this “you go to steal my futur small friend?” You’re pretty close, but it should be “you are going to steal my future (with an –e- ) girlfriend” (In French they use literally “petite amie” or “small friend” to say girlfriend.)

So finally we get to actually see the scenes… They’re not bad. I take a couple of mistakes and reinforce those concepts, like when to use the verb in –ing form, or how to properly use the F word… okay, so maybe it’s not a concept per se, but I told them if they’re going to use it, which I did stress extremely that they shouldn’t, they should use it right (when you say it to someone you shouldn’t put the “I” in front of it because it means something very different!). All in all it goes really well and we laughed a lot, but also spoke English, which was the goal.

We still have some time, so I teach them a tongue twister…. Repeat this… “She sells sea shells down by the sea shore” They do pretty well… then they teach a French one to me:
Un chasseur sachant chasser doit savoir chasser sans son chien de chasse. (A hunter knowing how to hunt needs to know to hunt without his hunting dog).

They did a lot better with the English one than I did with the French one.
We’re almost out of time. Let’s review the questions… everybody has to ask me a question. They do pretty well, and then we’re done. It was great fun, once I finally got there!

Some big news...

2009-03-03T03:12:00.000-08:00

THEY CASHED MY CHECK!!!!!!!
(They being the French Embassy!)
My application wasn't lost in the mail like I thought!!!!
That means I will most likely be in France next year!!!!!!!!

YAAAAY

:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

Horses, Chauvigny and fajitas.

2009-03-02T05:17:00.000-08:00

Saturday
After sleeping in a bit, I get up and cook myself the most amazing spaghetti sauce omelet, which was a feat considering I don’t have a non-stick pan. It is an amazingly nice day outside, T-shirt weather all the way and another French friend that I met through the high school (she is a university student doing a kind of tourism trade school that the high school offers) comes and gets me and we go off to see some horses. She knows a friend that rides at a nice little center, so we go and see some nice horses. The place looks really nice, but it wouldn’t be possible for me to get out there without a car :(.

Then, because it is soooooo nice, we decide to drive out to a medieval town about half an hour away. It is called Chauvigny and was a cute little town.

We walk around and see the three medieval sites (not much to see but it was nice) and then we go to a crepe café to have a bite to eat. It was a quirky little place with a live iguana in the top window and a really friendly black cat wandering from one person to the next looking to be pet.
Manon orders a lunch crepe that has some sort of mixture of vegetables in it, and I order a chocolate, banana and whip cream dessert crepe. Then we split them and it was amazing. We walked around a little more... took our pictures with a statue of a little kid sitting on some steps...

and then off we go back to Poitiers, back to Manon’s place to hang out… I’m going to help her a little bit with an English level test she is taking soon because she wants to do an internship in the U.S. soon so she has to know her official level of English. So we switch to speaking English so she can practice. She has a cute little dwarf rabbit. He was extremely cute and so I ask to hold him… such a sweet little bunny, then he bit me!
Oh well… I guess he didn’t like me.

I get home about 7, run out to see if anyone is on Skype… nobody… oh well. I call Mandalyn, does she want to come over… I’m making fajitas? She would love to because she did end up going out with that group of French people (who asked us to go dancing with them on Thursday night) and she thinks she might have accidently agreed to go on a date with one of them tonight (which her husband would probably not be too thrilled about) so she would love to have something else to do. Okay, come on over! We make fajitas, which were incredible, and then watch a French movie that was completely crazy but good. No going out, since I’d been out for the last three nights, so a quiet night was exactly what I needed.

I love my life.

Appetizers, Stadium Seating, Becky and Rayne

2009-03-02T04:49:00.000-08:00

Hi Everybody
So Friday was another basketball day for me. I started out at 3:30 getting picked up and driven over to the stadium and the adjoining rooms. Off I go making appetizers… buttered bread with sausage or chorizo on them, rolled up pieces of ham with spreadable cheese, pieces of bread with guacamole, etc.

Then we had to figure out if it would all fit in the fridge… finally we make it all fit.
Then it’s off to staple seat numbers onto the tickets that people buy for the Coup de France, we sold out in about 2 hours and I don’t think I’ve ever stapled so fast in my life, it was great fun! Unfortunately the man picking out the seats for the people who wanted to sit together cut them in the wrong direction, of course this mistake is caught about halfway through and I don’t think they realize just how many families will not be together, but one above the other. I asked him when we started if it was okay they weren’t together and he told me that they were, even though he was giving them A1, B1, C1, D1… etc. instead of A1, A2, A3… so there are going to be a lot of unhappy people on the day of the game! Then it’s off to sell schtongs (I have no idea how that’s spelled) to people who want food. Instead of paying for the food, you pay for a 2 or 1 euro coin thing and you can use them to buy beer (non-alcoholic), fries, drinks or whatever. So I got to do something that had to do with interacting with the French public, it was great fun. A couple of minutes after the game starts no one is out buying food, so we get to go watch the game, we were winning by a fair amount. Half-time, back out to sell, and then we go watch the end of the game. The other team has fought its way to being tied and it literally comes down to the last second of the game. We are two points ahead and the other team takes it out under the basket with one second left on the clock. They get a shot up in time and we all hold our breath… it doesn’t go in and we win! But seriously, they have to stop doing that. When it comes down to the last seconds of the game, we’re only one or two points ahead, and the other team has the ball, it can get really stressful! At least we won...

After the match I get to meet the wife of one of the American players. Her name is Becky, she’s married to Rasheed and they have the cutest 19 month old little girl named Rayne. We talk for a while and we will probably be getting together over the next week because she doesn’t speak French and it’s nice to be able to see someone who speaks English. Midnight comes around and we’re getting ready to leave. We hang out for a while with the players and then Matilde, my ride, gets asked (by Kenny, the other American player… in every sense of the word :) ) if she is going home or going out, she says either she’s not going out at all or she’s going for it and will be out until 5am, but she needs to find someone who’ll go with her. Now I was out until 3am the night before, so I don’t really want to be out that late. She ends up convincing me and we end up going out (when in France!!), but only until 2:30… and that was only because the night club we tried to go to after the first one we went to seemed to be completely empty so we just went home, or else we probably would have been out until 4 or 5. But all in all it was another night of fun with my basketball friends.

Me with the two American players... On the right is Kenny Younger (from Texas), on the left is Rasheed Wright(South Carolina.

Crepes, Friends and French Karaoke

2009-02-27T05:02:00.000-08:00

Wednesday found me back at Basketball practice with the whole gang. We ran our butts off, but had a lot of fun… plus it’s good for the health. I was sore from riding, but not nearly as much as I had thought I would be so it wasn’t too bad. Tuesday was Mardi Gras, which is the one day out of the year that people dress up in costumes (they don’t do Halloween here), they call it Carnaval and there was a massive amount of confetti all over the streets. Anyways…Usually crepes are eaten for Mardi Gras, but since we don’t practice on Tuesdays we had crepes for dinner on Wednesday. I have to say, it was pretty awesome.

The teacher/sports director at the Lycée who got me into the basketball thing was our chef for the night… he got a few marriage proposals after people started eating, but he’s taken (and she was there), but that gives an idea as to just how good these crepes were! That and the drink available was orange juice with a healthy amount of rum in it, so that may have contributed as well. So yesterday (Thursday) was, I have to say, pretty awesome too. I had a late start, since crepe night didn’t finish until about 1am. So I do some stuff around the house then I get a phone call from one of the college-age girls that one of the English teachers introduced me too, do I want to get together for a drink around 2:30… absolutely! So we meet at a cute little café and sit outside because the weather is nice enough that I don’t even need a jacket! So we chat for a while (mostly about horses because, surprise, surprise, she rides as well, actually she used to ride), drink our little Diabolos (not even alcoholic, but lemon soda with whatever fruit syrup we want added, we both had banana and it wasn’t bad at all), and take a stroll around town. We part ways about 5pm after I show her the apartment and plan for her to take me out to the equestrian centre she used to ride. Next has me in the computer room on Skype with Cassie, checking my e-mail and to see if the French embassy has cashed my check yet (no such luck), along with doing a little bit of research on King François the First of France (He used to stay at the Chateau de Touffou, so I wanted to have at least a little bit of knowledge about him). Then I call Mandalyn… does she want to come over for some spaghetti and then we could go to Thursday night Karaoke? Absolutely! So I make myself a fairly large batch of spaghetti, I have to feed myself for the whole week, and we get on our way to the bar at about 10:30. We didn’t know how popular it would be, but now we know that we need to get there much earlier! By the time I had found a song that I kind of knew, it was full for the night! Oh well, we were amused by the French people trying to sing American songs, and French songs for that matter. We were drinking pineapple juice with vodka in it. After two of those I tried one with Apple juice instead… it tasted like what I would imagine horse pee would taste like! Oh well… now I know right? There are pool tables, so Mandalyn and I start playing (after getting instruction from the server), and we both sucked, so it was fun. We had the French guys playing at the next table ask if we wanted to play together? Sure why not? But then they say “we could play together, then we could leave together!” Errrch!! Back up, that’s not happening… for one, Mandalyn is married, and for two there’s no way I’m going anywhere with a bunch of French guys, so we skip the whole playing together option and just finish our game.
We leave about 1:30, go back to Mandalyn’s place, listen to some Clutch and some music by a French band we’re going to go see in concert next Friday. So at about 2:30 we start walking back to my place. We stop in front of the 15th century Cathedral to remind ourselves that we live somewhere right now where buildings like this exist… That is to say, buildings that are older than the country we come from. We also stare at the big dipper, and remind ourselves that it is the same big dipper they see in Oregon, then we get on our way. So we get to my place, she leaves to go back to her place and I climb the 52 steps to my apartment. A minute or two later, I get a call from Mandalyn, there’s a group of fairly wasted French people (who had passed us as I was opening my gate) who want to know if she wants to go dancing and if she could call her friend to come with? No way, it’s 3am, my feet are killing me and I just want to crash, but I ask her if she’s going… “I’m not sure” she says… “I might know if I spoke French better.”(a little note, she doesn’t really speak French) I tell her to go home, but I think she actually did go with them… mind you that when we got back to her apartment she kept drinking, since she had some pear vodka that she mixed with Orange Juice, so at that point she was pretty wasted.
So… later I’ll learn whether or not she went with them, since she’s going with me to volunteer to set up for the basketball game that’s tonight.

I hope all of you had as nice of a Thursday as I did.

Some Basketball, Some Rice and Some Horses!

2009-02-25T02:19:00.000-08:00

Since I don’t have internet access, I’m having to do recaps…

Saturday

So today I went to the basketball game in Boulazac. My coach came and got me around three, we met up with everyone, and got on the bus to drive three and a half hours. We drove through a place that I have to back to and see because I saw some signs for an old roman city as well as a church that looked like the biggest and most different church I’ve seen so far, so during my vacation I’m going to go check it out. We got there an hour before the game started and spent that hour getting warmed up to make as much noise as possible for the Poitiers team. We had drums and horns and flags… because it was an away game, we wanted to make sure we could make our presence well known next to the local crowd, which was much larger than we were. In the end we were much louder than them… the loudest of all being the 10 yr. old girl sitting next to me.
Pretty much the entire game we were behind, and not just a little bit, I’m talking 20 points or more. Every time our team would get the ball they would screw up the shot and then the other team would go down, shoot a three point and always make it in. Not to mention that the referees would call a foul on our team almost every time the other team shot, so they gained many of their points in free throws. When we got to the point where we were 26 points behind I was just hoping we’d lose with a little dignity and not nearly that far behind.
Well… we get to the last 2 minutes of the game and we’re still 15 points behind. That was when the two Americans on the team really kicked it up a notch. They were able to get us to 7 points behind at the one minute mark. Now we’re going completely crazy because we might actually have a chance at winning this thing. So one of the Americans, Rasheed, gets a 3 point shot that actually goes into the net. The other team takes it down and somehow it gets turned over and the other American, Kenny, takes it all the way down and slam dunks it. Now we’re 2 points behind and everybody is screaming their heads off! Then the other team takes it down, tries for a 3 point and actually missed, which was I think only the third time they missed a 3 point the entire game. So we’re at 30 seconds left in the game Rasheed recovers the ball, takes it down and make a 3 point shot! We’re one point ahead and going nuts!!! After being 26 points behind, we never believed it could happen! One catch, the other team has 20 seconds to get a final shot it, and everybody was on their feet hoping that they wouldn’t make the shot, but also that there wouldn’t be a foul that would allow them to take free throws, because we would have lost if they got that chance. So they take the shot and, just as the buzzer rings, Kenny jumps up and pulls it out of the air. We go completely wild… it seriously was awesome!
So it’s about 9:45 and we stay there screaming and cheering for another half an hour, have a quick snack at the gym provided by the other team’s volunteers and then we go to dinner. The people in charge of our group had reserved an entire restaurant for us. We eat duck with potatoes for dinner and then at midnight pile back onto the bus for the three hour ride home. I get back to my place around 3:45, but it was definitely worth it, and the 25 Euros it cost me (not bad for transportation, ticket to the game and a duck dinner!).

Sunday
As much as I wanted to sleep in, I had told Mandalyn, another American intern here in Poitiers, that I would go to mass with her since, although she is not Catholic, she wanted to go for the cultural experience. So I get up at 9:45 and my phone rings… Big surprise and the highlight of the day, it was Morgan! So I got to chat with Mo while getting ready to go to mass.
So mass starts at 10:30. My roommate and I get to walking, but I can’t get a hold of Mandalyn. Now I’m thinking I’m not going to be very happy if she’s forgotten because I got up early enough to go even though I had only 6 hours of sleep. We go and sure enough, no Mandalyn (I find out later that she had had a migraine the night before and took some medicine that knocked her out, so she slept through the morning). Oh well... we stay anyway since we were already there, and then we go back home, make lunch, I take a nap and then we chat with our families on Skype. It was altogether a very nice Sunday.
Picture: Where I went to mass... I think it was built somewhere aroung the 12th century!

Monday
Today is the first day of vacation. My roommate is off to Iceland to visit her boyfriend and I am writing my paper for Natalie. To get my communication credits, Natalie has me writing a small thesis paper for her every two weeks, yay. So I’m doing that, along with the journals I have to write every day and send to my other credit supervisor to get the other credits once a week, and I called Sylvie to officially accept the internship at the Chateau this summer. My roommate heads off to Iceland and I am just working away. It was a pretty simple day. In the evening I went into the teacher’s computer lab, sent all the papers I needed to and got to talk to Cassie for about an hour on Skype, which was the highlight of my day. Then I go back to my empty apartment where I attempted to make dinner.

Picture: The building I live in, the little round windows at the very top are for the apartment where I live.
I make myself some salmon, which came out really well, along with some corn and rice. It was the rice that didn’t work to well. I decided I would make a lot, since I have to feed myself this week and leftovers would be used up quickly. Yeah… well I tried to make too much in too small of a pot. It didn’t come out exactly how I had planned, but it wasn’t terrible either, well, the part that didn’t get ruined when it all boiled over and out of the pot and onto the gas stove! Well… now I know I shouldn’t try and make so much at once.

Tuesday
Today I went horseback riding. One of the women that I play basketball with rides western once every two weeks and invited me to go with her. So we go out there and they put me on the cutest little three year old white appy. She really is quite cute (very small compared to what I’m used to) and her name is Shannon. So we go on a nice long (2 hour) trail ride where we walk, trot, canter and gallop our way between farm fields and through (sometimes over!) the woods. My little horse had her first experience trying to go over fallen branches… She wasn’t too thrilled, but we eventually made it. So we had a great little ride, even if it was kinda cold and cloudy. Of course, it’s been over 3 months since I was last on a horse, let alone at high speeds for two hours, so there is a huge likeliness that I won’t be able to walk tomorrow. This wouldn’t be a big deal since I am on vacation and all, but I have basketball practice!! We’ll see how that goes. But it was really nice to get on a horse and visit some French countryside… Oh, and a weird twist was that the place is pretty far away, about half an hour, and as we were driving along I saw a sign that said “Château de Touffou” which I got to see a glimpse of from the road and it’s not very far from where I was riding. Big bummer was that I left my camera behind, which I was seriously bummed about when we passed a field with a mammoth donkey running around in it, or the field with the two mini donkies in it, oh and not to mention the cute little horse I was riding that I don't have any pictures of. :(
But, to fill in the picture gap, here's a picture of the school where I work... built originally in 1856 as a place of study for Jesuites and then it eventually became a private, Catholic, high school.

Summertime

2009-02-19T08:21:00.000-08:00

The big news: I am spending the summer in France. I hadn’t planned on it, but hey,things happen. So here’s the story; Cynthia, my director from Oregon, was here, as I have already written, I got to have lunch with her and it was great fun. Well. Cynthia is here visiting all the internship sites in Europe and Oceana and she went to a site where they haven’t had any interns in 4 or 5 years and the woman was thinking about leaving the program, so Cynthia really wants someone there this summer.
Have you ever heard of David Ogilvy (there’s a book: King of Madison Avenue)? His wife who, according to Cynthia, is one of the richest women in the world, owns the Chateau de Touffou, which is about a half-hour from where I am now.
Cynthia says this place is amazing. They completely re-did it with every room decorated in its original theme and the art that is there was restored and set up by the man who does the art in the Louvre. Apparently Cynthia was talking to her about the different interns that are in France right now and when she started talking about me the woman decided that she wants me there this summer, apparently I am exactly what she’s looking for! Being as powerful and wealthy as she is, Cynthia says that she gets what she wants and that she is willing to pay me in addition to giving me room and board, living in a chateau! She is looking for someone to give tours of her chateau in English. The intern would be integrated into her family life and help with the scheduling and running of the tours, since she is required to open her castle to the public during the summer, seeing as she gets money from the French government because her castle is considered an historical monument. Apparently I have a presence that she is looking for. I guess this place is like the Camp David of France, since she makes most of her money hosting private conferences and retreats for the world’s elite, so it has to be someone who carries themselves well, even around powerful people, and has a high level of French.

And then Cynthia mentioned that I ride, well… The stables at the Chateau will be full of horses this summer, so I’ll be able to ride during my free time! She is also hoping that I might be able to give her 14 yr. old granddaughter lessons.
So, the moral of the story is that I am going to be spending the summer here. I’m not completely sure about the dates, but I will be starting as soon as I leave the Lycée, and if I can leave the high school earlier, even better because the castle opens to tourists on June 15th and goes through Sept. 15th, but I think I will be done Sept. 1st. That way I will be able to get back to the states for a couple weeks before I have to be back in France for the teaching program (if I get accepted… I am getting a little worried because they haven’t cashed my check, so I don’t know if they even got my application… That would definitely suck! Of all the things that could possibly get lost in the mail, it would be something that important!)
Anyways… I am really excited for this because it is going to be something completely different than the internship I am doing right now, it will keep me in France for at least the summer, especially if I’m not going to be here next year, and I’ll be working with Mrs. Ogilvy, not a bad person to have as a contact on a résumé.
Voila!

A Fun Weekend...

2009-02-17T09:35:00.000-08:00

Hi Everybody!
So this weekend had to have been one of the best ever. It started off actually more on Thursday when I got to see Cynthia, my internship advisor from Oregon. She is on a trip to visit all the intern sites that she is in charge of which includes New Zealand, Australia, and Europe (there are interns in France, Italy, Romania and I don’t know where else), not a bad job… except I don’t think people realize just how exhausting that can really be, especially when you have a bunch of meetings in different places that you have to get to on time! Anyways… she had a meeting with my director on Thursday so I got to see her and show her my apartment, which is technically part of the internship and we made a date to have lunch on Saturday.
So here’s the thing; unlike most people in her position, Cynthia is not stationed at the main campus in Corvallis but in Central Oregon at the Cascades campus, so almost all of the interns she was visiting have maybe met her once, some of them just over the phone, but since she is stationed in Bend, I saw her all the time. I pestered her with hundreds of questions in her office on a regular basis, so I know her more than the other interns and I realized that it is really nice every once in a while to see someone from home! So we had lunch on Saturday with another intern that is here in Poitiers and we got to talk and it was great and she brought me some good news as well, but more about that later. Now she is off to Romania or something like that, but it was good to see a familiar face!

After lunch I got whisked away to be a volunteer helping to set up the basketball game… So I want to be immersed into the town as much as possible, therefore I am fully immersing myself into the basketball world, since that was the first opportunity that I had… Of course you have to remember that I just asked to borrow a basketball and the next thing I knew I was playing on a team and becoming a volunteer for the profession basketball team of Poitiers. But any opportunity that I get to actually be with French people I jump on…
So I get to the volunteer room at about 3:45 and things are in full swing. People all over the place are in the process of making snacks. Now all of the girls that are on the team I play with on Wednesday nights are supposed to be there volunteering, but I’m the first one there since I got picked up by the athletic director (the one I had asked for the ball) at the high school and he just happened to be there picking up the sound equipment for the game. So, I get there and start in on helping to make little ham bites (you take a piece of sandwich ham, spread some cheese on it, roll it up and cut it into bite-size pieces... I think I have learned an enormous amount about appetizers since I've been in France) and little pieces of bread with tuna spread on them, and next thing I knew I was given a bright orange volunteer t-shirt and a pass to wear to the game. Then we clean the room up and start putting tables out with table cloths, cups, napkins, etc. for the VIPs after the game.
Next step is to get paired up and go into the stadium (their professional games are in stadiums the size of an American high school basketball stadium… Don’t judge! Maybe they’re not up to NBA level just yet, but they might get there someday! For now there is a group of volunteers that run the games and make the snacks and seat the people with season passes… It’s more like a family.) so that we can make sure that people with reserved seating get to the right spots…I felt completely useless because I didn’t really know the layout of the stadium, but I’ll be better next time.
The game started at 8pm. We won. I realized just how much I really do like Basketball... And then the volunteers had to clean up… flyers were handed out at the beginning of the game so you can imagine that they were all over the floor by the end of the game, but with as many volunteers as we had it was short work and then we went over to the rooms we had set up and had some snacks and talked with the players. Mush to my surprise, there are two Americans who play for the Poitiers team! It was really funny because I surprised the crap out of one of them because there were about five of us standing around speaking French (his isn’t bad, I was impressed) and then during a lull in the conversation I switched to English and said “So you’re a fellow ex-patriot?” I thought he was going to fall over, seriously it was really funny. He was not expecting another American in that little room in Poitiers, France. His name is Rasheed and he’s from North Carolina. The other one’s name is Kenny and he’s from Texas. So if you had to put a person as an exhibit in a living encyclopedia of what a basketball player is, any of these two would work perfectly… Anyways… to continue, everybody started heading out at around midnight and the girls I play with all went out for a drink. We went to a bar with standing room only and hung out for a while. My ride was really tired, so we went home early, meaning around 1:30am because that is early for a Saturday night in France.
So it was an exhausting day, but great fun. Sometimes putting yourself out there can have really good results.
Sunday I slept in and then my roommate and another American intern and I walked around Poitiers visiting all of the churches, which was a lot of fun and a nice, relaxing day.
Life is good!

First Weeks Report

2009-02-15T11:11:00.001-08:00

So it’s the end of my first week on the job and so far everything is going really well. I have met all but one of the English teachers… there is still one out on sick leave that I will meet on Monday. Just within my first week I have learned some important lessons. The first is that if the teacher you are assisting does not demand respect from the students, it is almost impossible to get any for yourself as the assistant. The way I learned this was through my roommate, who is the Spanish assistant. First we have to realize the difference between Spanish and English in the high schools. Everybody is required to learn English and almost all of them have English as their number one second language and have been studying it since they were in Elementary school, but they are also required to take a third language, and a lot of them pick Spanish because it is easier and they have to pick something. They don’t really want to be there and they don’t really care, so Desiree has had a lot of problems with the kids in some of the classes she helps to teach. She has a particularly hard time with one specific class of sophomores, but I had that same class today with their English teacher and they were all fairly good. The difference is that the English teacher demands respect from the students and I am not too sure the Spanish teacher does to the same degree.
Another lesson learned that one of the English teachers told me today was that a teacher should always start out being really strict, and then you can loosen up a little as you go along. That way you gain their respect right off the bat, and when you do give them a little slack, they really appreciate it because it isn’t something you usually do. She said they have to know right off the bat that you are not there to be their friend, but there to teach; you are the adult and they are the kids. That doesn’t mean that you can’t be nice to them or available to listen to them, but that they know there is a line and they better not cross it! I thought that was really good advice. I’ve always wanted to be one of those teachers who everyone thinks is really cool, but not someone to piss off. When I was in school it was Mrs. DeVico… seriously, the woman was about 4 ft 7” and really cool, but everybody knew not to piss her off!
There is one English teacher who I can tell already is going to take advantage of my presence here to take her classes as much as I can. The other day she asked me if I could take one of her classes later that day, and that she would be there so I said no problem. I prepared a topic I thought would be interesting to them (the differences and similarities between the French and American high school systems) and went to the class. The teacher introduced me to the class, told the kids to be nice to me and then she left. She went to have an extra long lunch and I got to do the conversation with the class. I never realized how hard it could be to get teenagers to talk! Seriously, even if it is in another language, most teenagers like to talk, but this was like pulling teeth! This was a ‘special case’ she told me, so I don’t think I will be taking that class on a regular basis.
I don’t think I will have my full, regular schedule until after the vacation, which starts after next weeks classes,

Putting Myself Out There

2009-02-12T11:22:00.000-08:00

Today I got to take a class all on my own. Good thing they were good kids. There is a teacher out on sick leave for the week, so I wasn’t able to meet her, but I have four classes with her throughout the week. On Monday my supervisor told me that if I wanted to I could lead a discussion in that class but that the teacher wouldn’t be there because she was out sick. I figured that they were seniors in a special high level English class, so they shouldn’t be too bad. It was actually a relief to be able to meet some students who actually wanted to speak English. Today I had a class of Juniors and seriously it was like pulling teeth to get any of them to say a word. I even prepared a subject that really relates to them, the differences between American and French high schools, and it was still really hard.
I finally met the last of the English teacher, M. Vincendeau, who gave me the rest of my schedule. So at the end of the week I will have been teaching or tutoring for 25 hours per week. Not bad considering I have to prep for all of those classes as well. I start at 8am only on Thursdays, which is nice. Monday and Tuesday I start at 8:50 and on Wednesdays and Fridays I don’t start until 10:00, so it works out really well.
Last night I went a played basketball with a group of women who just play for fun, which would explain why I can barely move today! I don’t really know what I was expecting, but I don’t think I was expecting for there to be a coach and training with a lot of running a sprints. Mind you, it’s been ages since I’ve played any kind of organized basketball, so although I didn’t make a complete fool of myself it is only because I pushed myself to the point that I can barely lift my arms today. It was a lot of fun though. Apparently this group stems from the professional team of Poitiers and most of the girls volunteer for the organization, so on Saturday I am going with them to prepare for the pro game that Poitiers is playing in, and then we’re all going to the game together.
I’m pausing a second to realize this is exactly what people are talking about when people say that when you’re abroad you should try and integrate yourself into the culture and community as much as you can, I’ve only been here a week and I have already joined a sports group that has connected me with a bunch of girls that are French and are my age. It really is a great start to my time in Poitiers.
Anyways… back to the basketball… Like I said, I didn’t know what I was expecting or getting myself into, but I played my butt off, and then everybody hit the showers, which I was not expecting at all… next week I will bring a towel and a change of clothes and all my shower things. This week one of the girls lent me a towel and some shower gel and I, for the first time in my life, took an open shower in a locker room with all the other girls… Hey, it’s like they say, when in France, do as the French do! Then we all went over to another room and had dinner together. We had what they call Raqulette ( I have no idea if that is spelled right), which is when we take a thick slice of cheese, everyone has a little tray that slides into something like a hotplate and melts the cheese. Then the cheese is poured over and eaten with potatoes and different types of meat. I had had the same thing with my host family and it was really good.
Another bonus, one of the women who plays also rides horses. A bizarre twist is that she rides western, which is really very weird for anyone in Europe. It was really funny because she said that she rode, but she wasn’t sure if it would be okay for me, but that she rides western. Good thing I can do both English what they call classic) and western. But seriously, if I hadn’t gone I would not have met that whole group of people. So I am pretty happy for putting myself out there and getting involved.
Oh, and my IE3 advisor from Oregon is in Poitiers right now! It was really good to see her and get to talk to her. She had a meeting with my supervisor here at the Lycée, I got to show her the apartment and we’re going to have lunch on Saturday. It’s really nice to see a friendly face from back home.
I’m supposed to go out tonight to a bar we found that has karaoke on Thursday nights, but I am pretty exhausted so I probably won’t go even though I’m pretty sure it’ll be fun, that and I’m not sure I want to spend the money tonight!
CIAO!!!

Skype, Peas, and some Basketball

2009-02-10T11:23:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody,
So the way I was able to talk to my family on Skype was to pick up the connection from the professors lounge... we had the password, so it was no problem except that it wouldn't let us go beyond the school's website (but it would still connect to Skype). So I was going to ask the tech guy if he could help me figure out why it wasn't working. Unfortunately my roommate, who doesn't speak French, decided to try and get him to help her with it before I was able to talk to him. I don't know what she said to him, but we are now blocked from connecting at all :( So I can't get on Skype any time in the near future. I am going to try and find him to figure out if he can add at least my computer onto the list of those allowed to connect, but until then I am restricted to e-mails.
On a funnier note... apparently the students here don't really like my roommate, who is the Spanish assistant, since they were throwing their peas at her tonight at dinner! She was mad, but I thought it was funny! We couldn't figure out who it was... she wanted to get them in trouble, but I just wanted to throw some back!

Today I didn't have any classes because there is a teacher out sick, but I met with the guy who is in charge of the Freshman, and he is also the athletics director. As he was adding more hours to my schedule I asked him if he would be the one I would ask if I wanted to borrow a ball to shoot some hoops on the courts they have here. Well... I start playing basketball with a group of adults who he knows that play for fun on Wed. nights and I have been invited to see a professional basketball game this weekend... Poitiers is playing Nantes (in Nantes). So it was a pretty productive meeting... That and he has given me a class to teach where he is going to have all the Freshman and Sophomores that have the biggest problems in English sent by their teachers to my mandatory extra English class... should be great fun!
Oh... and there is a teacher that is out sick this week who wants me to teach her class on Thursday for the first time, but without her... again, should be interesting! Hopefully I won't have too many problems since they are seniors! Anyways... I now have a kitchen table and a blanket and a light in my room. So I have gained some important things, but lost the ability to Skype for right now.
Tomorrow is my first English for Dummies class and basketball in the evening. Plus my director from the US, Cynthia, is arriving in Poitiers tomorrow since she is touring all her internship sights, so it should be s fun day!

First Day on the Job!

2009-02-09T11:55:00.000-08:00

So today was my first day working. I started at 8:30 with a class of students who are actually in college, but through a program that the high school offers. I was to take half the class(who are studying tourism) and hold a discussion on New Zealand and Australia... it actually went pretty well I think mostly because they have a fairly high level of English. Then I had a break because there is a teacher out sick, which gave me time to meet with my supervisor to get my hopefully complete schedule (it wasn't, but it was better than nothing) and to do some research on the Oregon Trail, which was the subject for my next class. Then I went to my second class, which consisted of juniors. I never realized hox hard it can be to get some high school kids to talk!!! But we got some things said and my first day was over!! It went as well as I could have hoped!

I was also excited to get a dining table! Just before my first class I ran into the maintenance guy, who is in charge of things like that, and the teacher I was with introduced me and asked me if I needed anything, so I produced from my folder a list (already in French) of the major things I needed for the apartment... they were really surprised that I had a list all ready (and even more surprised that it was in French!) I had written the list just in case my supervisor asked me during our meeting if I needed anything. So by the time lunch came around I had a dining table, curtains, pillows, a bedside table and lamp, and a shower curtain. Now since there is a sick teacher and a class taking a test I am completely free tomorrow to finish up shopping for the rest of the things I need like knives and hangars.

Still no internet, but at least now I have the alarm code for the building so I don't have to sit out in the cold to Skype with my family on the weekends! Things are looking up and things are going as well as I could hope!
Ciao!

Adventures in Poitiers

2009-02-08T05:14:00.000-08:00

So newest adventure here in Poitiers: no hot water for showers. Now we have hot water in the kitchen, which is right next to the bathroom, but the hot water in the shower stays hot for about thirty seconds, which makes showering interesting. I’ll just have to get used to it. Yesterday my roommate and I spent the whole day shopping (she’s been here since December just living in the very empty apartment because she doesn’t speak French, but also doesn’t want to buy things for the place, she wants the high school we are working for to provide them, but she doesn’t know how to ask for them). I was very excited to get things into this oh so very empty apartment. First off we started at the local market to get our fresh foods… you know, those things I can’t live without having in the house to snack on like apples, bananas and oranges, not to mention the good things to have if you want to cook like potatoes, onions and garlic. So we went to the farmer’s market where the normal French people buy their fruits and veggies (I felt very French for at least 20 minutes!) and then we took all that stuff back to the apartment, where I was reminded that we had no place to put the produce we had just bought. Put a fruit bowl on the list of things to buy!
So then it was off to the grocery store to get things like flour, sugar, sour cream, spices, etc. We also both took our laptops because there is free Wifi in the mall. The problem is that my laptop is heavy and everything I bought I had to carry to the bus stop and then back to the apartment, so by the end of the afternoon I felt like my arms were going to fall off.
And it was all for nothing because my computer has decided to do something really weird and allow me to connect and pick up the Wifi, but not actual be able to go onto the internet and look at any sites, but I am most certainly connected because I can use my Skype. It is a curious thing that I must ask the techi at the high school how to figure out why it won’t work. I have access to the teacher’s computer lab, but because my roommate doesn’t speak French very well she thinks that maybe the tech man at the school told her that there is an alarm on at the school during the weekends and because of that we can’t go to the lab… So to talk on Skype I have been sitting outside the building (it’s been snowing) so that I can pick up the connection and talk to my family). Another thing to go on my list of questions to ask the director on Monday (along with whether or not it would be possible to get a table to eat on in our apartment)!
Friday night all the new Americans in the program were invited to the director's home so we could meet everyone, including some of the host families. I used my prodigious mingling skills to find a woman who knows the horse industry in this town and is going to help me to find a horse to ride while I am here.
But today is Sunday and I am just relaxing (nothing is open on Sundays in France, so my shopping spree is on hold until tomorrow). I am now going to go and cook myself some lunch because I have a kitchen and I can!

A New Town

2009-02-08T05:10:00.000-08:00

So I now find myself in Poitiers. Saying goodbye was just as hard as I thought it was… but now I am starting my next adventure, and I have to say, I’m really excited to start it! So after six hours of traveling, with three suitcases that were all fairly heavy (my arms/shoulders are actually sore!) and a miscommunication at the train station that had me wandering around looking for the director, who I didn’t know what she looked like or had her cell number (amongst a bunch of striker/rioters…common here in France). Eventually she paged me and we found each other, but it was a little stressful. Then we go to my new apartment, which is being provided for me free of charge. Good thing too, because any money I have is going to furnishing the apartment… it is completely empty. There’s a bed, but no blanket, no wardrobe or any shelves to put my clothes. I have a kitchen, which I was really excited about, but no cooking utensils or pots and pans… I am actually really getting into furnishing the place. It’s the first time I’ve really had my own place, so this is going to be a lot of fun. Poitiers seems like such a charming little town and I am sharing the apartment with a Spanish intern who does the same thing that I will be doing at the high school. I am really looking forward to getting some classroom time in as well. Biggest bummer is that I don’t have internet access in my apartment, so contact with my family will be a lot more limited, which makes me sad! Anyways… I am off to do some more shopping… gotta be able to eat!
Ciao!

A Rainy Day

2009-02-03T12:01:00.000-08:00

So I woke up this morning with the rain still coming down. It poured all night. Every once in a while I feel like the weather matches my mood. I'm just kinda in a rainy type mood. You see the problem with seeing different parts of the world is that you have to leave some places behind in order to move on to others. This is what I am about to do. I am in the process of packing my suitcases. I hate packing. Seriously, if I was rich, I would pay people to pack for me. (The fact that I have too much stuff to take with me doesn't help my situation either)

As much as I hate packing, I hate saying goodbye to people even more. I have one more day here, so I stopped by the office where I did my work study and said goodbye, then had coffee with a friend I went to Italy with on vacation. We might see each other again, we might not.

And then there's my host family. I really like my host family, they're the best, seriously will not ever meet nicer people. I really don't want to say goodbye because as much as I might try, I'm really bad at keeping in touch. Right now I am riding on the hope that I will be accepted to the teaching program and come back to Lyon next year and therefore will definitely be seeing them again. If not, it's possible that I may never see them again, which makes me very sad.

Another thing that may sound silly, but just adds to my downcast mood, is I dropped my ring (a really nice gold ring with a real ruby in it that I've worn every day for years) into the sink in my bathroom. No big deal right.... that's why the U bend was created, was it not? So I ask for a wrench (not the first time this has happened in my lifetime), but the house is old and they've never tried to open this particular bathroom sink in the 10 years they've lived here. It's rusted shut and they're worried if they try too hard it'll break and therefore rend that sink useless, so I've lost my beautiful ring forever and there's nothing I can really do about it. *snif*

So I'm sitting here listening the continuous rain outside and trying to figure out why I decided it would be a good idea to move halfway through the year, why I had to drop my ring in the sink and whether or not I will actually be able to fit all of my stuff into the suitcases that I have.

It's supposed to rain all week. *sigh*

First Thing's First

2009-02-01T13:09:00.000-08:00

I figure of all places, the beginning might as well be where I start. First off, let me say that I never really pictured myself being a blogger... I guess that just goes to show that sometimes we do things we never thought we would. For some people it is jumping out of an airplane, curing a horrible disease or becoming President, but in my case it's blogging. So, what is the reason for this unexpected shift in my aversion to publicly chronicling personal information?
Well... first of all I believe my life got just a little bit more interesting and therefore the presence of a blog about the happenings in my life would not necessarily automatically put people to sleep, though there is the possibility that it will still have that affect on people... sometimes my life has that affect on me (for an example, see my journal, which includes mostly half-written entries, as I tend to fall asleep while writing them).
Another reason is that I have moved very far away from my family and therefore lack the constant venting outlet that was always available to me. That, and for some unknown reason they will probably follow this blog in an attempt to continue to feel connected to the person who decided to screw that fact that she has one of the craziest and best families (for the most part... there are always those aspects that would be better removed, kind of like a gangrenous limb) and move very far away.
So here's the story. I am 22 years old and in my senior year of college. I decided to stay in my hometown and go to school, living at home in the process. I figured when the local college offered me a full academic scholarship for my fairly high GPA, I would go for it (actually I would have been pretty stupid to turn it down). I had 3 horses at the time that I really didn't want to give up. Now that I look back, I probably should have given them up then, since I would end up doing it anyway three years later and it would definitely have saved me a LOT of money. But I digress... So instead of going away to school like most people, I stayed at home and went to school in town, keeping my horses and staying close to my wonderful family. Then I decided that for my senior year I would go away (it had to happen someday)... and really go away, not move the the next county or state, or even to the opposite end of the country, but really move away.. I wanted to see some of the world. So, I sold the horses, packed up all I wanted to take with me, gave the rest away, said goodbye to the fam and moved to France. I am halfway through my senior year where I am studying abroad in Lyon and Poitiers, France. Now I planned this fairly strategically, I am here for my senior year so that if I don't want to go back to the states right away, I don't have to, my bachelors degree will be done. Eventually I will go back to the states and go to Grad school to get a Masters in Teaching and settle down to a career in teaching, you know, that resposible blah blah blah, but I am going to put that off as long as I can so as to see as much of the world as I am able and can afford to!
So that's where I find myself today, just about to move from Lyon, where I studied French at the University of Lyon 2, to Poitiers, where I will start my internship teaching English at a private Catholic University.
So far everything is going great. Lyon is the second largest city in France, much nicer than Paris with very nice people, all the niceties of a big city but without the overwhelming urge to get out of the madness as soon as possible that many experience when they visit Paris. Next to Bend, Oregon (where I was before) it does not have as beautiful of a backdrop (does anywhere?) but it has Opera, ballet and many other big city perks (for instance: a real mall!) that Bend was lacking.
I live with a host family that is amazing. Seriously. no joke they are the nicest people EVER! I left an amazing family behind, and then got extremely lucky with an equally amazing host family over here.
My host dad is a doctor and my host mom is a stay-at-home mom who is also an MD. There are 4 kids in the family; Arnaud, who is 18 going on 30 and in his first year studying law at the local Catholique University; Flore, who is 17, in her final year of high school and is in the process of having to choose what she wants to do with the rest of her life (that's how the French school system works, there is no starting University with an undeclared major, you choose your major before you start and there is no changing your mind!) at barely 17 she is kinda freaking out about it, as I would be too!; Sixtine, who is 14, a real beauty who likes to sing, dance, goof off and is seemingly the only one who has the desire to follow in her parents' footsteps and become a doctor; and Quiterie, who is 12, really shy but funny and really smart! Actually, they are all really smart and all speak English really well. I know that a couple days from now when I have to say goodbye it is going to be a very sad day for me.

So that's it for now. In 4 days I pack up my stuff, leave my amazing host family and move over to Poitiers to start my internship and the next chapter in my attempt to see a bit of the world.
Salut!
Ciao!
Bye!