fa-la-la-la-la la-la-la-la

Christmas time! My favorite time of the year, even if it is awfully cold. Speaking of awfully cold, we had our first snowfall of the year last week (okay, more like a week and a half ago). Pictures are up on Facebook. Apparently snow is rare here, but we got several inches. It was beautiful and the perfect excuse for sitting inside drinking my Christmas tea (Thé de Noël).

Snow! With medieval towers! And cathedrals! And ocean! What else could I possibly need?



Of ourse, desserts you say. Yes, I would also need desserts. So here we go with the past few weeks of sweets. In order, we have a petite buche de Noël, grand marnier flavored; an apple tart with custard in the middle; a meringue shell dipped in dark chocolate; and a chocolate and orange mousse cup with fruit on top. They were all delicious, in many different ways. Not too sweet, not too much sugar, lots of variety in flavors and textures. It will really be a miracle if I've lost any weight at all being here. I might even lose weight at home for lack of patisseries.




And for lack of good bread. I swear, I've eaten more bread in the past few months than most people eat in a lifetime (and by people, I mean not French people, obviously, because they eat a lot of bread).

I've been exceptionally busy now that I'm back from the Il de Ré schools. My schedule is more predictable and I've been doing extra tutoring as well, not to mention spending time doing social things (but not too many. We all know I suck at having a social life). I definitely think I'm in over my head with this teaching thing. I have no idea what to do to help students who don't understand, and I struggle every day to figure out what to do with the kids and how to get them to talk. Not to mention what to talk to them about. I have so little in common with them. They've asked me my favorite movies, songs, singers, books, etc. and they've never heard of any of them. It kind of frightens me, actually.

I've also been struggling with the usual Christmas shopping of the season. I only have a handful of people to shop for, but that might make it all the more difficult. Anyway, I have presents I got in Angers for my brothers and their respective spouses (or spouses-to-be). I also knew immediately what to get my mom and dad. Everyone else? I have no clue. So I winged it. Hope y'all enjoy regardless. I fail at shopping for other people (at least when I'm having to buy things that will fit in my suitcase, not break, and won't push the weight over the limit of 50 lbs. And when I can't get everyone the exact same thing).

My suitcase sits out in my living room, half-packed. A week from today, I'll have already left La Rochelle for Paris, spending the night in a hotel so I can catch an early flight. I'll only be in the states for ten days, so if you want to see me (and aren't already going to be seeing a lot of me, i.e. family), let me know. My schedule involves not getting too adjusted to the timezone, lazing around, and eating my way through my list of foods I've missed. Bojangles, for one, sushi, chinese food, a burrito, a real margarita, etc. The trick is not getting fat while I'm at it. And yes, I'm aware of my unhealthy obsession with my weight. I'm working on it.

The future terrifies me more than I can possibly express. Thinking beyond April makes my heart race (not in a good way) and my lungs literally jump into my throat. I don't know if I'm going to grad school (I'm not in the states, anyway, although I'm looking into going to a school here in France), and I don't know if I'll get renewed for the assistanceship. I'm not even sure I want to, because if I do another year of this, it's another year behind everyone else. I like the idea of getting a degree here, but living in France isn't easy. I know it sounds great, and it is, but it takes a lot of being lonely and a lot of being confused and scared. The question isn't whether or not I can do it (I can), it's whether or not I want to. My parents like to point out that I always make my life more difficult than it has to be, and I know I do. Is it worth it, though?

The road less traveled and all that.

I'm watching Rachel Maddow made a yummy cocktail online. I can't wait to get home and make yummy Christmas cocktails, like eggnog and rum and some peppermint one that I found online. Oh holidays. I love thee.

The French kids all think "Deck the Halls" is hilarious. They burst into laughter every time they hear "Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la". For some reason, that just amuses them beyond belief. (I've been teaching them American Christmas carols.) Now it's stuck in my head.

holly, ivy, mistletoe, and the gently falling snow

Happy Thanksgiving, tout le monde. Tonight instead of turkey and pumpkin pie, I am going to a Green Day movie-concert (a movie of their Munich concert). It should be interesting at least and I don't have school tomorrow so that's a plus. This weekend I plan to go through and clean my apartment. I'm also writing Christmas cards (French ones!) to send to interested parties back home. I just figured it'd be neat to send out cards from La Rochelle this year. I already have list of people who will be receiving one; if you want a card, and aren't sure whether or not I've got one with your name on it, email me your address and ye shall receive!

I'm in the middle of beginning my Christmas shopping. It always takes me a long time to pick things out (perfectionist that I am) but I've got at least half done so far. The rest I'm going to wait until after the start of the Christmas market so I see if there's anything worth getting. The giant square a few blocks from where I live is in the middle of construction. Two dozen or so little wooden houses are being built to act as the stalls for the market. Christmas markets are awesome and I've yet to find a city in Europe that doesn't have one. I adore this season in France. All the streets and alleyways in town have been strung up with lights and greenery, lights buried in the trees and hanging down across the old city gate beneath the clock-tower. They haven't been lit up yet (still November after all). When they do, I'll have to drag myself outdoors in the cold night air and take pictures with my phone.

Last weekend, I went out to dinner with a friend, and couldn't resist taking a picture of my crème brulée dessert.

I bring to you also the dessert from last weekend that has replaced the mille feuille aux fraises as my favorite. It's still a mille feuille, but it's praline flavored. Mmmmm.

Tonight I treated myself (in absence of pumpkin pie) to a pastry à la framboise. Light with just enough tart.

(Yes, you can see my sewing kit in the background. I've had to reattach several buttons on my coat. I'm really not good at it, hence having to do it over already.)

l'habit ne fait pas le moine

Today was one of the professor's birthday at school, so to celebrate, we had three bottle of champagne during lunch. This was probably a bad idea, as I have two classes this afternoon that I should probably stay awake for. Still, it was worth it. I love a good champagne, especially on a Monday. Mondays are the worst.

I did very little this weekend, which shouldn't surprise given my tendency toward laziness. I've also been spending too much time assessing my possible futures, with little to no definitive improvement or solidification of plans. Who knows where I'll be this time next year. That's one thing I do miss about being in school as a student, the regularity. The predictability. I always knew what was coming and what I needed to do for it. Now I have no idea what I'll be doing or what I need to do now in order to make that possible.

Falling asleep in the teacher's lounge at collège is probably not a good way to start.

This weekend I went to see a movie, L'homme qui voulait vivre sa vie. It was good, though not something I'd want to watch again. You know the kind of movie that leaves you exhausted after watching? It takes so much energy just to watch; the emotions are strong, intense, and you feel them with the character. Well, this movie is one of them. It's a very introspective piece, you see the whole thing through the point of view of one man and his own personal journey. Compared to most American movies, there is almost no dialogue. Most of the story comes through with emotions and acting (which was superb). The problem, of course, is that I like happy endings. When I want escape from the world, it doesn't matter how miserable it might get in the middle, the end always has to be happy and satisfying. If not, why bother? That's why I read the last page of a book before buying it, or why I make sure and read the synapsis of a movie before daring to watch. I see no need to make myself unnecessarily sad.

That being said, today I got to work and listened to a conversation in the teacher's lounge about how one of the professors' step-son killed himself yesterday. He lived in Japan, recently been divorced, and had a young child. They (the professor and her husband whose son it was) had spoken to him only the day before, and he had plans to come back to France for Christmas in eleven days. But they got a phone call yesterday from the ex-wife, crying and saying "He's killed himself. It's not my fault. It's not my fault." Now the family has to drop everything and fly to Japan for a funeral.

Stories like that mess with me, and I'm not entirely sure why. Perhaps because I can't imagine how that must feel, and I keep trying to put myself in the parents' shoes, saying "He would've been home in a few days. We just spoke to him. He was so far away and there was nothing we could do; why did we let him go away, did we do something wrong?" To have gone all year without seeing him, to know he'd be home in less than two weeks, and then suddenly be faced with the reality that they'll never see him again.

This is why I like my movies and books to end happily-ever-after.

In other news, I've been studying up on my French idiomatic phrases and informal language, and I stumbled across this one I thought would amuse: j'ai d'autres chats à fouetter. Literally : I have other cats to whip. It means I have other fish to fry/other things to do. Also, the French say "walking on eggs" rather than "walking on eggshells." This is why I love learning languages. Elles m'amusent.

choosing my confessions

Why do romance novel authors feel the need to include a prologue detailing some traumatic experience to explain the hero's angst/abandonment/love issues? It's really annoying. If you're a good writer, his reasons for being the way he is should come across without having to write out a scene where his parents are dead and he is left all alone, boo boo.

In other news, this update is brought to you by obscene amounts of caffeine. I got maybe four hours of sleep last night, if I was lucky, which I never am when it comes to sleep. This week has been more hectic than usual, because I've been commuting out to the Il de Ré everyday. As an assistant, I'm assigned to three different schools; two are in La Rochelle and one is out on the nearby island (hour by bus, thirty minutes by car). In order to simplify my schedule, the professors agreed that two weeks out of six I would spend at the one school on the island, lumping my hours together so that instead of having to go out there one day every week. I'm in the first of my two weeks here, and because it's so far away, all my hours get clumped together, and I spend from 9 to 5, Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday with a bunch of snobby middle schoolers.

I got up this morning at 6:30, after having fallen asleep sometime around 2. I chugged two cups of breakfast tea, and bought a coke on my way to the bus stop (along with a pain au chocolat, because chocolate never hurts). For now I have time to sit in the teachers lounge and write a bit, hence being able to tell you more about my life in France.

Today the school is having a bake sale for the parents to buy "cakes" to fundraise for school trips. I put cakes in quotation marks because they have a very different concept of cakes. Pies, tarts, cheese cakes, things that are basically big brownies, etc. I would have made a cake myself except I don't have an oven. Or a mixer. Or eggs, or flour, or sugar.

Speaking of American food, I've been doing a lesson on Thanksgiving in all my classes this week. The kids who aren't being total brats and ignoring anything I say are actually quite confused by the concept. There isn't really a word in French for 'thankful' and they don't understand that a turkey is different from a chicken (even though they have turkey in France and it's called something different from chicken). I also got a bunch of grossed out faces when I explained about pumpkin pie, which is delicious but I can see how they would think it sounds nasty. Some of the other American assistants and I were discussing how we could put together some Thanksgiving-y food for us next week, including a pie, but we'll see if anything actually comes of that (I find that people talk a lot more than they do). I had dinner with two of them last night in an Indian restaurant I've wanted to try, and it was decent. The best part was I got a tea (they called it "Marsala Ceylan" with milk and cardamom) which essentially tasted like chai. That might have been what kept me up all night but it was worth it. No price is too high for chai. Theoretically.

I don't think I've been this tired since the time last year I was awake for a 36 hour stretch. And I seem to remember mild hallucinatory effects. Or maybe that was a hallucination—wait. See, this sleep deprivation thing can make even the most sentient of beings incoherent.

I'm pretty darn incoherent, even in my head, which is saying something, because my head can be quite the acid trip on its own.

I've been doing research for my novel, and discovered that there are still so many things I want to see and haven't. So for my own continued education (and love of old things), I'm planning a thorough trip through the historic Périgord region in May, once my contract is over and I have some spare cash for travel before returning home to work and be a slave to school (if I manage to get into grad school, which is dubious). One my to see list: castles, castles, castles, castles, and medieval cities. And cathedrals. And ruins in general. I might also take the time to visit the prehistoric cave paintings that litter the region (seriously, this area is like my dream come true—so much old stuff! everywhere! This must be what heaven is like).

I suspect I'm becoming predictable.

I'm also growing my hair out which always translates to impending doom.

Desserts from this week:

you say stop, I say go go go

Just as I've been getting over my fear of flying, I woke this morning to a rather unpleasant nightmare about dying in a plane crash. Then I had a day of teaching, in the windy rain, and I decided to treat myself to an apple tart. Not that I really need excuses for treating myself, but I like it when I have one.


Tomorrow I'm off to Poitiers for a medical visit for my residence permit. Which means early morning and trains, but also no work. Yay for being an alien?

angers

these are the days worth livin'

It makes sense that I'd have less time to sit around blogging now that I'm back in La Rochelle, immersed in daily life. And day to day life tends not to be the stuff worth reading, unless you're the most interesting man (or woman) in the world, which I'm not.

I got back to work this week—okay, one day, still it was a long one. I dealt with high school students in the morning, who were no interested in anything other than themselves (surprise, surprise) and middle school students in the afternoon, the first class of which went really well, the second somehow was more frightening than the high school students. How is that possible, I ask you? I'm twenty-two years old, a group of cocky twelve-year-olds shouldn't make me nervous. Should it? I feel like I'm twelve again being intimidated by my peers.

But I am the teacher, and getting to tell a student to pick up his stuff and move to the front of the class because he's chatting too much with his buddy is incredibly amazingly fun. And thoroughly satisfying. If only I'd had that power as student, my life would've been much less stressful in school.

This morning, I got up and went to the market to buy some veggies for food this weekend. I wish I were more of a cook, because I think if I were the market would be some sort of heaven. There are fruits, veggies, fish, meats, breads, and sweets of all kinds. I bought some zucini and red peppers to go in my curry I plan to make tomorrow for dinner. Tonight I had ramen noodles and left over dinner from last night, which I'd gotten in the market on Friday. It was a potato, cheese, and ham sort-of casserole. Very good. I decided to take the weekend to get some writing done and work on my applications for grad school, so I haven't been doing much execpt hanging around the apartment today.

At the market, I was on my way home, and I passed one of the last stands, a bakery. I couldn't resist buying a box of little treats so I could try several different ones.


So far, I've eaten three of them, and each one has been delicious. Delicate flavors, only slightly sweetened. The perfect treat.

Earlier this week, I bought myself a strawberry tart to munch on, and thought I'd share it with you now:

It had a cream filling that was perfect and the crust was just the right amount of crisp and flake. I swear, the French have got sweets down to an art form. It's rather unfair, except I get to eat them while I'm here, and that's good.

I also tried a cupcake in Angers for breakfast the day I left. It was raspberry-pistachio flavored, and probably one of the best cupcakes I've ever eaten, including my own (which are very good, if I do say so myself).

Speaking of Angers, I thought I'd show you a few rough, untouched photos I took of the city. I promise prettier ones will be coming once my dad gets them all beautified.

The Gallo-Roman ruins of a first-century arena (the cathedral in the background dates to the 11th century):


Saintes:


Cathedral in Saintes:


Cognac:

Tomorrow I'll post pictures of Angers. And these aren't all of them, just a few of the horizontal ones (because, yes, I am too lazy to go and flip the other ones around). Although there aren't many of Cognac because, let's face it, I didn't go there for the view.