The Past Two Weeks (Part 2: Bayeux and D-Day Beaches)

Ok, so I guess when I said tomorrow I really meant a couple of weeks. Sorry, guys.

Bayeux

A lot has happened since Toussaint break, all of which I will write about, I swear. But, going back a few weeks. . .

My second half of Toussaint break was spent in the company of two wonderful Americans, Mary from Michigan and Bridget from Kansas. Mary lives in Bayeux, which is farther north, about an hour and 15 minutes from Flers. It is a gorgeous town, a bit bigger than Flers, and much more quaint and adorable. I think it made Olivier a little depressed to see how nice it was, the jealousy bug can be rough.  Bayeux is famous for its tapestry, (which we unfortunately didn't have time to see, but it gave us a good excuse to go back!) and its cathedral. We did visit the cathedral because it was free and absolutely gorgeous. It even had a crypt! It was my first crypt! (Nerd alert!) I felt like Buffy could have been around any corner!

Anyways. We got to Bayeux around 5pm and walked around town with Mary. It is a much more tourist friendly place, and a lot of tourists use it as a starting point before seeing the D-Day beaches because it is only about 10 min from the Channel. We had a lovely dinner of spaghetti with Mary's Norwegian  housemate and then went out for a beer at a local Irish pub. It was a great night, and it was fun to speak in rapid girly English. We talked boys and all other things we were starved for while the boys bonded over who-knows-what. It was wonderful.

View from afar, the cathedral.

Better view. B-E-A-utiful! 

The next morning we picked Bridget up from the train station and packed up a picnic lunch and were on our way to the beach!

  We kind of started randomly, directly north of Bayeux and saw a bunch of D-Day sights just following the coast. We started in Arromanches and went along all the way to Point du Hoc in the West.

We visited Gold and Omaha beaches and the American cemetery and museum which  were really amazing. I had been there before but we didn't have a ton of time and I remember running out of the museum to catch a peak of the cemetery before I had to get back on a bus. This time we had until the place closed and time flew by. We stayed there for almost 3 hours and we didn't even notice. The American cemetery was really interesting because it has pictures and stories of people who fought and pieces of their lives like good luck charms or letters or playing cards that the kept with them. Every new picture or story brought a new bit of reality to the past. It was crazy to think about the fact that every soldier had a story and about how many soldiers died on the beaches there, but ultimately were able to push through and push back the Germans. Crazy. The beaches we visited were very peaceful and had scattered memorial sites with markers or information. Mostly though it was just beautiful. The day was perfect and it was hard to imagine everything that had happened on the beaches before.

Mary and I took a picture of each other at our first stop. 

We drove home exhausted but satisfied by the amount of beach that we had seen. It was only after that I realized that the 11th was Veterans day and that we went right before. That probably explains why it was so crowded in some places. Luckily there is lots of space on the beach, and it was beautiful.

American Cemetery

Next up is the story of my visit to Caen for my Social Security card!

Teaser: I am now the proud  owner of an x-ray of my chest.

Thanks for reading!

Shoshana

The Past Two Weeks (Part 1: Angers)

Hello again,

After a very long absence I am finally back in Flers with the motivation to tell you all the juicy details of my Toussaint break. As I wrote in my last post, my first week of break I spent in Paris (suburbs) and Angers with Olivier's family. It was so much fun and I ate way way too much good food. We celebrated four birthdays in total and I ate a peice of about six different birthday cakes. It was wonderful.

My first weekend was spent in Saclay, which is a suburb of Paris where the aunt, uncle and cousins of Olivier live. For the uncle's 50th and the cousin's 25 there was a combined birthday party. It was a really fun mix because there were people of all ages there, and let me tell you, it was not the 20 somethings who went to bed last. I was a wimp and snuck off to bed around 2:30ish but there were about 40 people still there when I left and apparently (Olivier told me after) there were about a dozen people still going strong until about 5am. Those crazy party people. There was a ton to eat and they played a good mix of music all night. It was funny because they played old 90s music and there were a bunch of American songs that brought me back to 5th grade. Another great thing about French parties (I don't know if I have mentioned this before) is the dancing. It is traditional to do what they call "The Rock" (you have to imagine it in a French accent, doing that crazy throat "r" thing) it is basically swing dancing, and the 50 something set was on fire with that stuff. Olivier's aunt got tossed through the air like nobodies business, and everyone was spinning around like crazy. It was a little intimidating but luckily Olivier's dancing is a lot like mine so we did our own version out of range of getting kicked or smashed into by the "rockers." Another thing that I love about French dance parties is the style of solo dancing. I don't know why it is like this, but French people dance like me. I know most of you reading this probably don't really know how I dance, but it is not good. I flail my arms, do some jumpy things back and forth and sway. It is not super cool, let's just say that. I don't know how to club dance or move my butt in ways that are cool or attractive, but luckily in France, neither does anyone else! I am with my people. I can not feel ashamed of my lack of moves because everyone dances like me, and they just don't care! It is awesome!

Anyways. The next day they put out even more food for a lunch with mostly the uncle's friends and some of the younger set who had stayed the night. We ate these delicious thing called nems. They are the French version of an egg roll I think, and people love them. I love them too, they are delicious, but they are a very exciting thing that all French people know and love, apparently.

After the yummy lunch of nems, Olivier and I drove back to Angers. Of course the lunch went until 3ish and then we had coffee and cake and more wine, so we left when the sun was starting to go down and by the time we got to Anger it was around 9:30ish, such is the French Sunday lunch.

When we got to Angers we were alone in the house except for Olivier's dad and nephew who was staying for a few days over the break, and we did some outdoor work in the garden until Olivier's mom got home. She got home on her birthday, and Olivier and I prepared a cake and set the table nicely, and helped get dinner ready. We slipped out to get a quick birthday gift and that night had a quiet little birthday dinner for her.

The next day Olivier and I went over to his sister's house to help put in a staircase and to do other work that needed doing. I ended up mostly just playing with the one year old twin boys for most of the time, but we did manage to get some pruning done and cleared some of the back garden. I even sawed off tree limbs myself. It was fun to do a little physical labor after sitting around like I have been for the past few weeks. With us were Olivier's oldest sister and her boyfriend, so it was a little like a mini party there too. We drank a lot of wine, and made a fire in the fire place in the dining room.  It was a cozy little stay.

The next day we drove back to Angers where most of the rest of the family had arrived. They had all brought their respective other (boyfriends and girlfriends) and we ate a quick dinner and everyone caught up a little bit.

The next night was planned a double birthday party for Olivier's sister, Gabrielle, and mom, Marie, and we made three more cakes and planned our costumes. They wanted a Halloween theme, and in France they stick to the more traditional scary costumes with the occasional princess or two. We all found things to put together from the costume box at the house and one of the other sisters, Sybille, bought a little costume make-up kit and we went from there. I was a disco vampire (just a vampire with a gold cloth skirt and cape) and there were other vampires and dead soldiers. We planned and made a big dinner and everyone wore a costume and we stayed up late talking and of course drinking wine. One of Olivier's brothers and his girlfriend even juggled fire outside after dinner. It was pretty crazy.

I took a bunch of pictures of the night. It was too hilarious to miss. Also, I just want to give some photo credit to Olivier who I call "my tourist"  because he likes to take pictures more than me.

Ok, here goes. No making fun, please? Ok, you can if you want. 

Me, Baptiste (Gabrielle's bf), and Victor (a bat, and Olivier's nephew)

Actually, scary.

Beautiful sisters and vampires (Gabrielle and Mayeule)

A knight, (aka Clément) serving dinner (the blurry princess next to him is his daughter)

Ladybug Ferréol with girlfriend Nadège

Littlest sister Noémie with niece, princess Capucine (sister to bat Victor)

Palex (Pierre-Alexandre boyfriend to ->) Sybille (sister)

Marie, Mathias (nephew, son of Mayeule) and Capucine again.

PS. Sorry again for the photo quality of some of these, I think the camera lens was humid or something.

Well, that's all for now. I will write about my second half of break tomorrow! Get excited. It was super!

Thanks for reading!

Shoshana

Toussaint Update

Hi again!

I just wanted to give a quick update because I will most likely not be around for about a week. Toussaint break starts today and Olivier and I are going to Paris to celebrate his cousin and uncle's birthdays, and then we will be in Angers with the rest of his family for his mom and sister's birthdays! We are also planning on staying with another sister to help her work on her house. I will try to post some good pictures when I get back!

News of the day is that it snowed! Really! It started snowing, then hailed for about 10 minutes and then was snowing pretty hard for an hour. It was gorgeous big fluffy snow. It wasn't cold enough so it didn't stick, and everything here is super green so it was a weird mix, but it was SO COOL!

This was the hail part, it accumulated a little, but the snow didn't stick.

That's it for now! Thanks for reading!


Shoshana

Exploring Flers

Hello again!

This week has been a little bit dull to tell you the truth. My tutor (the teacher I work the most with ) was not working this week because she was helping to chaperone a very cool program with two of her higher level English classes. They have an exchange program with a high school in Sweden, and went to visit them last March. Now the Swedes are in Flers, visiting their partners for the week. This means that my first day of work of the week was today, Thursday.

To fill my time I have been doing a lot of walking. I try to get out every day that I don't work, and even some days that I do, just to explore Flers a little bit. Unfortunately Flers is not the largest of places, and the city center lost its thrill weeks ago. I still love it, but it isn't the same feeling, seeing the same dozen stores you have seen for a month. I am very lucky, though, that Flers is small enough, and strangely shaped enough (imagine a fat spider, and its legs are the populated areas), for me to be able to walk out of it into a more rural landscape. Olivier and I took one walk like that Wednesday afternoon, and I thought, since I remembered to bring my camera, that it would be fun to show you what I saw on the way. 

First, was this house. I loved the brick details, but what really drew me to it was the backyard. Yep, if you look closely you can see that they have a bunch of sheep in their  yard. And yes, this is still inside the town limits, maybe 5 minutes from my apartment in the city center.

 I took a closer picture of the yard and the sheep.

 I took this picture with my back to the house with the sheep, so you can see that it was a fairly populated area. Flers isn't the cutest of towns, but you can see the guy walking his dog with what I think is a baguette. See! They really do that!

 Here is a picture of a little farther out. One of my favorite parts about Flers is that if you walk for about ten minutes in any direction you start to see scenes like this in the distance.

I just loved this house.

This is a picture from outside the city center, we climbed up a pretty steep hill.

 

 About half an hour later we made it out of Flers! The sign says St. Georges des Groseillers. We had to get out of the way of a bunch of tractors which were on their way to harvest some corn.

I hoped you enjoyed these pictures! I enjoyed taking them!

Shoshana

Orientation in Caen

Caen, and my horrible photography. . .

Ak! Sorry that it has been over a week since my last post. Again. I have no excuse. I also have some interesting stories to tell about my time in Caen for my orientation with all the other English assistants in my area. It is not like I had nothing to write about!

Alright, so, last Monday I woke up before the sun to take a bus, and then a train, and then a bus, to a high school in Caen to learn about how the French school systems are structured and how to be effective in the classroom. I had heard from people who had done the program previously that it was going to be very dull, and not in the least bit helpful, so I wasn't really excited about the information, but I was excited to get to talk to some native English speakers, and to hear about other people's experiences.

When I got off the train at the station, I knew I had to take a bus to the school. I was a little nervous about getting there and was looking in the bus shelters when I heard raised voices, and saw a crowd of mostly girls chattering away in English. I walked over and said, "you guys are assistants right?" Of course they were. I met a Canadian, a few Brits and a bunch of Americans right away. They were all really nice, and it was a little weird to be able to speak English in full force for the first time. I know, it doesn't make so much sense that I was excited to speak English, but the English I have been speaking has been a little different. Mostly I speak either with students who have a hard time understanding basic English, French people who speak perfect but British English, or my boyfriend, who is great, but has a hard time understanding when I speak really fast, or with too many weird Americanisms. Ok, short story detour. One time (I swear I did not even make this up) I was sitting in our living room and Olivier walks in from the kitchen. He asks, "Are you ok?" I said, "Yeah, I'm just chillin'" He says, " Oh, do you want me to turn on the heat?" I laughed so hard, to myself. All alone. So you can see that speaking with other Americans was a change from my life right now. I was all over the place. I think that most people thought I was funny, but really I was just hysterical because I was so excited. It was fun. It was a lot like freshman year of college, actually. Everyone was talking to everyone, people were super friendly, and everyone was trying to tie down a best friend asap. It was a little crazy, but in a good English way.

The info part of the day was actually not half bad. They gave us free breakfast before they started and talked to us all (about 60 or so English assistants) in a lecture hall and told us about our region, Basse Normandie,  how it is special, why they need assistants and how the chain of command in schools works. It was kind of dull, but it was only an hour or so. After that they broke us up into groups depending on where we worked, middle school, technical high school, or general high school. I was in a classroom with about 25 other people and an English teacher from the region. We got to ask her questions and she ran down a long list of things we should know, things we could do, and things we shouldn't do. Apparently yawning in class is a big no-no. Oops. I actually learned a lot and got some good tips for controlling a classroom and some target learning goals set by the country.

My favorite part of the day though was the lunch. We got almost two hours for lunch, and it was free for us generously offered by the school. We got the French equivalent of hot lunch. It was of course, rediculously delicious. There was a choice of chicken, fish or pork, puree of carrots (with curryish spices) and something green and vegetabley that I can't remember now. With that came a salad (green and choice of tomato, cucumber or grapefruit) a fruit, a dessert (I chose creme brulee, and yes, even cafeteria creme brulee is amazing), a cheese and baguette,  and there were bottles of cider on the tables, and coffee for afterwards. It was really impressive for a school lunch. The cider in France is not the same as cider in the US.  In France cider is sparkling, and alcoholic, and it is delicious. Normandy is famous for their cider, and there is a lot available everywhere in France. They have two kinds, brut which is less sweet, and doux, which is more sweet. I used to like the doux better, but now I prefer brut. Yummm!

Of course I would spend a huge paragraph talking about the food, but besides the food, the best thing about the day was meeting so many people. One of the girls I met came and stayed with me last Thursday, and I am hopefully making plans to see another friend over the break that I have at the end of the week.

Yes, I have a two week vacation at the end of this week. Crazy, I know, but hey, I'm not complaining! It is Toussaint break (All Saints) and I am going to spend the first part of it celebrating four birthdays, and then helping one of Olivier's sisters work on her house. We promised that we would help out a few weeks ago but bailed like a couple of meanies, so we owe her some hard labor.

I always say this, but this time I swear I will write again before this week is over (and by that I mean Friday night).

Thanks for reading my ramblings, and kudos if you made it all the way through!

Talk to you soon!

Shoshana

Yogurt! And other things, but mostly yogurt.

Hello again!

Today I want to talk about something that doesn't, in my opinion, get enough attention. People talk endlessly of France's cheese, wine and bread, and don't get me wrong, that stuff is amazingly delicious and deserves every credit it is given. All I am trying to say is that there is another star in France, and that is yogurt. When you go to a grocery store in France, there are long aisles filled with cheese, but the aisle next to that one is filled with yogurt, in almost as many varieties. There are all kinds of brands and types. There is also fromage blanc and faisselle (both thick cheeses that are a like more yogurty ricotta in texture and are very rich), and very interesting flavors that I had never seen before, like prune, mango and pineapple. Yogurt is eaten more as a dessert in France than as a snack or a component of a sack lunch, but while I have been here I have tried many kinds of yogurts as often as possible. My favorite yogurt by far though was the yogurt that Olivier's mom makes in her yogurt maker. I love the little glass jars they are made in and how much thinner and more tart the homemade yogurts are compared to store bought.

When I was visiting France over the summer Olivier's mom generously gifted me with my very own yogurt maker when I exclaimed over one in the store. I wanted to wait to use it in my own place for the first time and I dilly-dallied on getting good yogurt for starter for way too long. Luckily when I visited Olivier's family a couple weeks ago, Marie (that's Olivier's mom) gave me a little bottle of powdered yogurt starter. Less than a week later, I had made my first batch of yogurt, and it was way easier than I thought!

My yogurt, cooking away!

All I had to do was mix the powder with a cup of milk and wait and hour or two before stirring in the rest of the liter of milk and pouring all of that into my little glass pots. I turned on my yogurt maker and less than nine hours later I had seven pretty little yogurts waiting to be eaten.

Right now we are starting to eat our third batch, which was made by mixing one of the pots of yogurt with more milk and starting the process over again. I usually eat one for breakfast and sometimes with sugar for dessert after dinner, so they go pretty fast. I am loving it!


Ok, enough about yogurt for a second. I just want to update you on how school is going a bit. I haven't gotten to work much yet because teacher's are not totally used to having me around and haven't worked me into their schedules, but what work I have been getting has been really great. One of the highlights was helping two girls put together a power point presentation for their pen-pals? partners? (they call them correspondents) in Sweden who they visited in March of last year, and who are coming to visit them in France in a couple of weeks. They had me look over the grammar of the captions for some of the photos, and they made some very cute mistakes. One picture of a landscape said simply, "What a wonderful world country" and one said "Thank you for these memorable memories" which I thought was super adorable. One of the girls has a hard time expressing herself, but she really wants to get better, and she isn't afraid to try, which is really encouraging to see. Next week should be a little more busy for me, and tomorrow I am going to Caen (the big city! ish) for my orientation with other English assistants who work in middle and high school. I'm a little nervous, but also kind of excited to be on my own for a day and to meet some other Anglophones!

I will tell you all about my big trip to Caen soon, hopefully with pictures!

Have a great Sunday!

Shoshana

Nature Walkin'

Hello all!

Sorry I have been silent these past couple of days. Believe me when I say it is not because I have been busy that I haven't been writing. I keep going to work thinking I will have a full day, and then am told that no one really needs me so I can work an hour or two if I want. Agh. But, more on that later. The truth is,  I have just been lazy beyond all reason.

Because I have been such a slacker I have a couple things to catch up on, like how I made yogurt for the first time,  and how I went on a lovely walk in the rain, and my last couple of days teaching. I think I will split them up into a post or two, but I swear I will get them out soon!

Anyways. I want to start with the walk I went on. Olivier and I have been trying to explore our area lately because it is truly beautiful, and we don't have much of a reason to get out of the apartment these days. Flers is a lovely little town, but the downtown is so small that it was only exciting for a couple days and now we have to look a little farther from home for some cheap thrills.

This Monday I didn't have work so we decided to take advantage by a nice long walk in the miles and miles of woods that surround our town. (Side note: One of the best things about living in France is that I don't know how to drive a stick shift, so I basically can't drive any car in France. This is a good thing because I really don't like driving, I know I am weird, it's just that I'm a nervous freak when I drive. Olivier, luckily for me, is a great driver, and is way more relaxed navigating than I am, so he gets to handle all of the driving. Yay!)

Anyways, we took the car out Monday, and before we left I asked him if he had an idea of where we should go, or if I should look something up. He assured me that he had something in mind. After we had been driving all of five minutes he told me that he had no idea where he was going and that he was just "following the forest". We were just trying to turn in the right direction whenever we saw some trees, basically. Luckily for us, in France they have pretty well marked trails and signs telling you where there is a "voie vert," meaning a marked trail. We parked the car in a random town whose name I do not remember and saw a little trail in the woods.

Olivier looking for mushrooms

The weird rocks we saw. Irrigation? Aliens? Wood Sprites?

It was a rainy day, typical of Normandy, and it felt more like we were getting spat on than actual raindrops were falling on us. Luckily when we had some tree cover it wasn't bad at all. Olivier brought along a mushroom guide and we kept our eyes open for any yummy mushrooms. We only found the poison kind, but it was still fun to look them up in the book, and to be on the lookout for something. Another thing we saw were some weird looking rocks, that were cut out, maybe for irrigation purposes? Who knows. We followed the path that became more and more narrow as we went on, and made it back to the road farther down near an old mining town, which was pretty cool. On our way back we found another entrance at the other side of the trail from where we started with a gorgeous little bridge. I taught Olivier how to play Pooh sticks. Does anyone else play that game? Where you each drop a stick at the same time on one side of the bridge, and see whose comes out the other side first? Just me? That's cool.

I will give you a hint, these are not mushrooms you want to be eating. . .

The bridge on the other side of the trail. It was beautiful.

Tomorrow I will show you some awesome pictures of yogurt, so get excited! Sorry if I just bored all of you talking about a nature walk. . .

Thanks for reading! See you next time!

Shoshana