Un an plus tard

One year later...

On September 2, 2010 I arrived in France and began the adventure chronicled through these "dispatches".  I suppose it's appropriate that definitively close this blog on the anniversary of that exciting day.  Here are a few memories, for posterity's sake:

-Joyfully meeting Katherine and Cathya, laden with our baggage (and, in Katherine's case, banjo), and after squeezing on the Roissybus to l'Opéra rushing to Saint Lazare (nearly losing Cathya in a crowd of lycéens).

-Me missing the train to Deauville because the line at the ticket counter was too long and Cathya kindly staying behind to wait with me.

-Walking into the narrow entryway at 28bis for the first time, leaving all my belongings there, and choosing my room for the next 10 months with the girls while Ivan looked on.  I think I made a good choice.

-Meeting dear Ivan and Seb for the first time and being to a pizza dinner by them at the Pizza Morny.  The beginning of a great (though often bizarre) relationship, despite a)  our exhaustion b)  me somehow ordering the only pizza on the menu without cheese and with anchovies (yuck) and c) my pizza not wanting to be cut and sliding around on my plate  in an unsuccessful attempt at evading its fate.

Now that I get a whole 15 minutes to eat lunch it's strange to consider the 45 minutes we had sitting with the petits or the grands (on alternating weeks), sharing their water pitcher, mediating the fights over bread, cutting their meat, and generally enjoying elementary lunchtime antics.  While it was often exhausting and always far too loud in the cantine, it was the first place that we met our students and one of the spots where Cathya, Katherine, and I could put aside the choice we made of which classes to teach and get to know all the young diables of Fracasse.  Speaking of which, I have some photos to share that are incredibly overdue...

From the remise des prix

Mme Testard's class

Students in Nathalie's GS (Adele, Tom M. Max, Zoltan, Jeanne, Eliot)

Tom and Angele, the twins I gave English lessons to

Rafael, Gabriel, Angele, Tom

Zoe, Caroline, Paloma

Last lunch at Breney.  Nathalie Tribhou, Annie-Laure, Sylvie, and Annick

Sylvie, Annick, me, and Annie-Laure

The last day of school

The garderie gang: Lydia, K, A-L, Ivan, me, and C

Playing "Dans ma maison sous terre...".  The chorus still gets stuck in my head.

Louna, the girl whose name I never remembered, and Alice with my buddy Basile

Jarno, who won the English award for his CP class

Dear Faiza

Annie-Laure and I are huddling together in an attempt to keep her wind allergy at bay.

Me with Marie P.

We couldn't leave without saying goodbye to our excellent neighbors, Patrick and Murielle.  The flag was Patrick's idea.

Bonsoir!  Bonsoir!

Les planches, as seen on my 23rd birthday.

Thanks for a great year, les filles!

So, what do I see, looking back one year later?  Des veritable mongagnes russes, but no hauts and no bas that I would ever give up.  Mille mercis à tous.

Retour au normal

Well hello there, folks.  After 1 train, 1 taxi, one hostel, one shuttle bus, 2 airplanes, and Dad's snazzy new car, I am officially home.  Leaving Deauville was not easy after making my home there for ten months, but my move was made easier by the knowledge that I'm not returning to make my home in a pit of vipers.  The nearly 4 days that I've spent on American soil have been quite pleasant so far, though I cannot help noting some differences/things that I miss/have missed/forgot existed:

Differences/Things I will miss:
-THE YOGURT AISLE!!!!!!!  One of the greatest parts of living in France (okay, minor exaggeration) was the huge variety of yogurt/yogurt dessert options, and seeing the 4 sad fridges that make up my Kroger's yogurt section.  Where is the brassé?  The riz au lait?  The fromage blanc?  The lovely mousses?  Back in Deauville, clearly.
-Watching Un gars, une fille, Vous les femmes, Gad Elmaleh, and the French news with Cathya and Katherine (or even by myself)
-Walking everywhere.  Even though Deauville is tiny I still ended up walking a lot, and even though I still knew I needed to exercise, it was nice to have physical activity such an easily achievable goal.
-The beach and the planches.  It was never warm enough for me to go swimming in the Channel (except for the last Sunday and Monday, maybe, when I didn't have time), but it was nice to be able to go read on the beach or splashing in the waves to cool off (or freeze, as happened when I did that in February).  
-Public transport.  Sigh.

 
Things I missed/forgot existed:
-Grape nuts!  What a joyous surprise on Sunday morning.
-Ale 8-1.  Still haven't had one yet, but some friends were partaking at a 4th of July party and I sense that it won't be long until I follow suit.
-Counter space, well stocked pantries and refrigerators, and  dishwashers.  Lovely inventions.
-Icy cold water!  I didn't even realize how much I missed this until I noticed how refreshed I felt yesterday after having 3 glasses.  To quote my grandmother, "Water is a cool and refreshing beverage."
-Non UHT pasteurized milk.  Ie Milk that must stay in the fridge prior to being opened.  It's so much tastier.
-Clothes dryers.  Non-prickly towels are such a boon.
-The library.  I picked up 5 books, 9 cds, and 2 movies from the famed Paul Sawyier Public Library yesterday and it was a beautiful thing.  I'm not sure where Deauville gets off having closed their library and not having opened the mediatheque yet.  



Lists aside, it's nice to be home.

Sortie Scolaire

With only 8 full days left in dear Deauville I am trying to make the most of my time here so that I can leave with good memories and few regrets.  This endeavor has occasionally proved to be more difficult than anticipated recently due to the fact that my students are all very excited for the end of school and no longer particularly interested in English (or in behaving).  Still, I'm having fun.  Tuesday night was my last time with my young ward Felix, so his mom and dad took us out for dinner at a nice seafood restaurant where, between the two of us, Hortense and I filled 4 bowls with crustacean and mollusk detritus.  As a reformed seafood hater, this is a big deal.  I ate tons of crevettes roses et grises (pink and grey shrimp), huitres (oysters--okay, I just ate one, but still, Cousin Bob would have been proud after all the Christmas Eve parties he spent trying to trick me into eating one), tourteaux (smaller crabs) and crabes (normal sized crabs), langoustines (mini lobsters--not sure what English version is), and even an amande de mer (no idea, but it looked like a little clam).  It was all quite tasty and we had a nice conversation.  They also were nice enough to give me a cool mug that shows the 4 seasons of Normandy (here's a hint: pluie, pluie, pluie, et...pluie) and a really nice illustrated grammar/phonetics/conjugation guide/dictionary that's written for 5-7 year olds but will still be perfect for me to use with my classes next year.  A very thoughtful gift indeed.

(Oh wait, I haven't shared my big news yet:  I have a job! I've been hired by my old elementary/middle school to teach Spanish to the K-4th graders and French to the 5th-8th graders.  Very exciting!)

Anyway, while I will certainly miss the pastries, the cheeses, the wine, the moules...as well as being surrounded by French, being a 5 minute walk from the beach, the markets, etc.  I know that what I will miss the most when I leave here will be the people, and particularly my students.  I've already had to say goodbye to a few who have left on vacation and it's been hard knowing that I won't ever see them again or even that I won't know who they become as they grow up.  

All of this sentimental blah blah is to say that today I went on a field trip with the GS classes (kindergarten) and I was very glad to be able to spend some quality time with the two classes that I've grown the closest to this year.  We went to Caen to visit the Jardin Botanique and the Colline des Oiseaux, the latter of which is a landfill that was turned into a park, complete with an enormous rose garden and a labyrinth (definitely a hit with the students).  I was in charge of 3 students, Charlotte, Aymeric, and Lea.  We had a great time searching for the objects ranging from plants to wells to fences with interesting patterns that the two maitresses had taken photos of and distributed to us as a sort of scavenger hunt.  All in all, an excellent (if a bit tiring) day.

My cute group: Charlotte, Aymeric, and Lea

Yay!  We found photo #9!

We're big kids in the grande section (literally, big section), but not so big that we don't sometimes suck our thumb.

Eva loves explaining things to the class.  Aaaaand jumping on the stairs...

Hoani inspects the cacti

Enzo (birthday boy--6 today!) is eating sandwiches that are as big as him.  The bread is normal sized--it's just him that's tiny.

Friends.

Lea J inspects a rose.

Matteo and Lea sniff the rose

Clemence

My buddy Louis (or Lou Lou, as he sometimes calls himself) in the maze

Petting the donkey

Charlotte, la coquine.

A Parisian Pentecôte

Another French holiday (our last for this stint!) has come and gone, and of course I am left with plenty of photos to share and stories to recount.  This time two weeks from now we will have left Deauville for good and spending the night in Paris before catching our respective flights on the 2nd, but since we will be exhausted from lugging our (hopefully less than 50 pound) suitcases around it's doubtful that we will get to see any of the city on our last night in this beau pays.  It's a good thing, then, that on this latest visit of Paris I got to see everything that was on my list: the Catacombs, the Jardins de Luxembourg, the Opera Garnier, and the Sainte Chapelle, plus a little more.   

We arrived in Paris around 10 am on Saturday morning, and because l'Opera Garnier is right around the corner from Gare Saint Lazare we decided to begin with a visit to the Phantom of the Opera's stomping grounds.  

L'opéra nationale de Paris

Nifty and very grand staircase

the foyer

Cool ceiling

Speaking of neat ceilings, the auditorium itself has the coolest ceiling of all.  It was painted by Marc Chagall, has all sorts of neat Parisian images in it, and of course has a chandelier hanging from the middle.  


Our next stop was the Catacombs, the underground ossuary housed in the former quarries very far south in Paris.  Essentially, in the late 1700s many of the cemeteries in Paris were full to bursting and the system of mass graves was very unsanitary, so many new cemeteries were built at the outskirts of town while bones from the existing cemeteries were transferred to the former quarries.  Here they were piled along the walls and arranged rather artfully.  What's more, at some point between the opening of the catacombs and now, plaques inscribed with quotes from classic literature or the Bible regarding death were installed at intervals so that as you walked through the shadowy corridors lined with bones you were reminded of the seriousness of the place, just in case you had forgotten.  All in all, it was a very unique and somber place literally hidden out of sight in busy, glamourous Paris.  A few other notes from this experience: while the paths in the catacombs are such that it is impossible to get off the path, there are also access hallways that the workers use.  Before we even reached the bones a man emerged out of one of these somewhat hidden entrances and scared the dickens out of us.  He was very apologetic, and in retrospect it was hilarious.  Basically, I can understand why under 14s are not allowed in without an adult.  Also interesting is that, unlike most Parisian monuments, there is no sort of security check when you descend into the Catacombs, but upon leaving you are stopped so that workers can peer into your bags with a flashlight to make sure you haven't stolen any of the bones.  Speaking of which, here are some of them, in case you were interested.

One of the many inscriptions reminding us that life is fleeting.  About half were in Latin.

After such a cheery place (and after a lovely banana and nutella crepe), we decided to make our way up to the Jardins de Luxembourg.  We weren't the only ones with this idea, even if June weather in France hasn't been particularly warm or sunny this year, but we still managed to snag some of the nifty free lounge chairs that can be found in French parks.

This is the only time I've ever seen one of these little pavilions in use.  It seemed like a high school orchestra was giving a free concert.  They were a little squeaky at times, but it was still a nice surprise.

You can rent sailboats in many of the parks in Paris.  I think of Stuart Little each time I see them.

It seems that with each boat rental you get a free stick with which to push your boat around or whack your neighbor.  Brilliant.

For the rest of the afternoon we wandered around the Latin Quarter, gazed at some buildings, and then settled in at a cafe for a drink while we chatted and enjoyed some street musicians.  Demi peche, anyone?

More doors for my collection.

Couldn't get very close to this one.

La Sorbonne

La fac du droit, for a certain lawyer in our midst.

The Pantheon, where Great Men of the Republic are buried (including my street's namesake)

Day two of our Parisian adventure had an excellent beginning: I ate a bagel with cream cheese.  This may seem ridiculously pedestrian for many of my readers, but considering that a bagel, cream cheese, and a hot chocolate was my favorite snack for much of my childhood and I haven't had one in the ten months I've been here, I must say that yes, it is a big deal.  And for the record, it was D-Licious.  


Nearly as exciting was our visit to the Sainte Chapelle.  I'm not sure how I made it this long without visiting it considering I remember seeing photos in 4th grade that made me want to see it.  Anyway, it's quite remarkable, even without the relics Saint Louis brought back from the Crusades.  Just look below, if you don't believe me.

After the Sainte Chapelle it was time to visit the bouquinistes and their lovely wares one last time.  Cathya and I got engaged in a long conversation with two of the bouquinistes, which was fun since in a few weeks these sorts of conversations will be basically over.  The only less enjoyable parts of our chat were when our incredibly well traveled pals kept talking about how disgusting KFC is when I said I was from Kentucky and when they kept asking when the Americans were going to give DSK back and saying how it's ridiculous that an old man like him was being locked up.  Don't even get me started, messieurs.  

In case you were wondering who the bouquinistes are.

And what sort of visit to Paris would it be without a trip to Berthillon on Ile Saint Louis?  An ice cream-less one, of course.  We decided to live it up and get 2 dips each, which really isn't scandalous since each dip is tiny.  I got dark chocolate and fraises des bois, which is basically like homemade ice cream made with strawberries from your garden.  Excellent choices and an excellent final meal in Paris.