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

Montilly sur Noireau

OK. Post number two!

Yesterday, Olivier and I went to Montilly sur Noireau for a fair type thing. We found out about it from the signs with pictures of farm animals and carnival rides that were up around town, and from my students who jokingly suggested I go. Since there is nothing else going on within a 10 mile radius we put in on our calendar! Also, our neighbors told us that there are baby animals there so we pretty much had to go.

We were planning on on going Saturday morning because that is when most of the animals would be there, but we got lazy and decided to go Sunday instead. On Sunday, after a pancake breakfast at home, we headed out into the grey chilly air, not really knowing what to expect. Before we got outside the town limits (aka three minutes later), we saw an old man hitch-hiking, so obviously Olivier stops and asks him where he is going. He was going to the same place we are (of course) so we picked him up and all three of us headed to the fair. The man turned out to be very sweet, although he had a very thick accent so I understood only about half of the words that came out of his mouth. Luckily Olivier small talked enough for both of us, and the drive was less than 10 minutes long.

The lovely cows of Montilly sur Noireau

The fair was in the middle of a field, and things were pretty muddy from all the traffic and rain. There were all sorts of stands winding around every which way, filled with people selling everything from dried sausage to as-seen-on-TV type window cleaners. There was a whole covered section of household improvement items like window treatments and roof repair outfits. There were sections of jewelry and clothes and produce and candy. They had one long section of food which was obviously my favorite. The food choices were one thing that really stuck out to me. In the US if you were at a carnival like this you would see food like hotdogs and french fries and hamburgers, maybe corn on the cob or chicken fingers or fried cheese curds. In France you see french fries, but also whole rotisserie chickens and pork loins and merguez sausage and kebabs with fries. I ended up getting a sausage in a baguette bun, of course. It was delicious. The only other thing we bought was a bag full of dried saucisson for 5 Euros! We thought we got a pretty good deal.

Pork for sale!

Another highlight, besides the food, were the puppies. We thought we missed the animals, but thankfully we were mistaken. We heard the sound of dogs barking and followed the noise until we came to a puppy section! At first I was a little sad. Usually puppies in this sort of place come from puppy mills and their lives are sad and they will be killed if they don't get adopted. Luckily these dogs were being sold by people who came from farms nearby or who breed dogs out in the country. Some even showed pictures of the dogs running happy and free! They had all kinds of puppies, lots of hunting dogs, things like Setters and I don't know what else. I don't really know dog breeds, but I do know cute, and these dogs were super duper cute. Olivier is a much bigger dog lover than me and he had to pet every dog we saw. He was making this one little kid jealous because he was too short to reach farther back in the cage to pet more dogs. Sorry kid.

After a couple of hours we decided we had seen enough and decided to go back home. Olivier requested we watch 101 Dalmatians when we get back to continue the puppy theme, and of course I said yes.

Although the fair was a little too crowded and there was not a lot of cool stuff, (it was kind of crappy and expensive for the most part), it was fun to do the typical thing with the rest of the community and see what fairs like this are all about. Luckily the food and the puppies made it all worth it!

A terrible photo of some of the food stands. . .Sorry!

I don't work today so I will try to prep a little for my classes tomorrow, though I don't really know what I am supposed to do, and Olivier and I are going to take a forest walk after lunch. It is raining pretty hard so I hope it lets up soon!

I apologize for the state of my photography skills.  There was a lot of smoke from the cooking fires and I felt like a creepy tourist taking pictures. Oh well! I'll do better next time, I swear!

Thanks for reading!

Shoshana

First Post (Take Two)

Hello all!

I am trying to restart blogging. I had a failed attempt with Wordpress and after two posts before I left for France, I gave up. But here I am again, ready to start fresh. Thanks Blogger!

I wanted this blog to be a way for me to keep in touch with everyone in my life as an alternative to writing super long boring emails with the same stories five times a week, I can now just write on super long boring blog post! I also want it to be a diary-like deal where I can look back and see how lame I sounded years ago! Can't wait!

Alright. I will recap a little bit. I packed, I freaked out, I flew to France and got settled in my new town. I went to the bank, grocery shopped, and ran out of money within a month. My first day of really teaching is today. For my first class I will be showing a class of seniors a video clip and asking them questions about it. It is gonna be great. After that I will introduce myself to another group of students who have some classes like physics and geography in English, so I am hoping their level will be pretty high. I have had a very easy week transitioning into my teacher life and all the other teachers seem happy to have me around, and have been very understanding of my cluelessness.

UPDATE:

So it is now Saturday and I have had a little time to think about my first day and first ever teaching experience, and I have to say that overall it went pretty well. My first class was a disaster. It was totally my fault too, which is the worst part. Anyway. I was taking half a class, for half the class period (about 25 minutes) and was given a lesson to facilitate. Easy enough right? Well, the sheet I that I got looked easy enough to put into action. In practice I totally screwed up the order of events. I talked too fast because I was nervous, and we went way over time meaning that the second class, although working WAY better, only had 10 minutes for the lesson. Oops.

I think it was just hard because I wasn't as comfortable with the worksheet as I thought, and I didn't think to do stupid things like putting up the corrections on the board. Oh man, it was a mess! Luckily I was way more in control with the second class, and I introduced myself like a normal person should and then started the class in the right order.

Luckily the second part of my day went way better. I basically introduced myself to a class (seniors who had some classes in English like physics and history so their level of English was great). Another thing that helped was that there was no lesson plan chosen for me so they basically just asked me questions the whole time and we talked about Flers and what Americans thought of French people. I of course pulled out the silly ones, and tried not to say anything that might be offensive . . . I had two classes like that back to back and they all really listened to me and seemed genuinely interested in the things I had to say. It was a nice change.

My first day was not super easy or without problems but I think that overall it was a pretty good first day. I am really looking forward to doing better next time! One great thing I realized from all of this is that I am not at all intimidated by high school students. I thought I would be or that I would be embarrassed, or that I would care what they thought of me, and I really didn't. I was more embarrassed that they didn't get much out of the lesson, and that I didn't know my stuff, and I was mostly more annoyed at myself than worried that they thought I sucked. It was a relief to feel at least that I had only myself to improve, and that the students weren't the problem at all.


In other news, Olivier and I had dinner with my neighbor and her friend last night. My neighbor is my age and works as a surveillant (it is something we don't have in the US, but it is basically a teacher who is only in charge of discipline and watches detention and makes sure everyone is behaving in the halls and things like that) in the same high school as me. It was nice to be able to talk about how weird it is to be right out of school and in the position of authority. Her and her friend told us about a festival happening in a town nearby with a big market and lots of animals. Olivier and I are going to try and stop by tomorrow! 

Today we don't have any big plans. We cleaned the apartment, which was a great time, and might walk around a nearby town later this afternoon to get out of the house a little. 

I will try to start updating this blog more often! Thanks for reading!

Shoshana