and hello again. i really need to get on the ball with this thing don't i? i hate having these huge gaps in between my posts.
i am in vendée with ben and his mom. the village is called fontenay and it is bigger than sérignan! they even have a mall and an xmas market! sérignan didn't even try to put up a market and béziers' is pretty sad.
friday morning, karl, the cooking teacher at school, drove me up to la roche sur yon. the drive was 6 hours and pretty fun. we talked a lot about french food and my options as a vegetarian. i will be coming in and joining his classes when he does veggie dishes next semester so i am super stoked to finally learn quiches and tarts and ratatouille and stuff! i took a train to nantes and ben met me at the station. that night i met quite a few of his friends who all play the guitar really well, and when we were walking home it had snowed! i didn't have my camera though. it all melted by the time we woke up on saturday.
saturday: woke up really late and brunched with ben and cedric. i had this strange baked camembert with honey on bread. and some over-dressed salad. and it was crazy expensive. then we walked around but it started raining so we decided to get going to vendée. we piled into the car, ben gave a couple friends lifts up there and we got to his mom's place around 9. then we had dinner- a soup of mixed veggies and too much black pepper and no salt. with bread of course and clementines for dessert. i'm pretty sure clementines are just mandarins here cuz they look and taste the same. then we went out to visit his friends at night and talked until very late. it's cold and a quite village town so there isn't much else to do.
sunday, woke up late and walked around the town looking at the xmas market which was teeeny. and we went to the mall but i didn't get to look around much, with 3 guys they could only stand shopping for an hour or so. and none of them got any of their gift shopping done. came home and relaxed and talked. i showered finally! and we had a lazy dinner and channel surfed till we were pooped- around 11 haha. then we went to bed.
monday: woke up at 10 after a very good night's sleep and had some brioche and homemade banana berry jam. i don't know what type of berry though. don't know what the plan is for today; the weather is cold and gloomy.
all we hear on the radio these days is the snow in paris and the north and in london. i cant go anywhere without hearing about it! it's pretty crazy! people everywhere are stranded and i am very glad i didn't decide to travel out of the country.
i am learning a lot of french youth slang from ben and his friends and it is all very amusing. i just can't really tell the difference between the very impolite and the crude. which everyone else finds hilarious.
craving: spicy spicy indian chinese food and a hot tub
currently listening to: french talk radio
Monday, December 20, 2010
Saturday, December 4, 2010
i could dream of ways to see you, i could close my eyes to dream
so the fates have declared this to be yet another weekend spent in serignan and bored out of my mind.
tuesday night: i went out to dinner with some teachers to a giant buffet restaurant. it was only slightly awkward. they were all really nice to me. i spent a while before at home, trying to decide whether to go or not because i had googled the restaurant and discovered that it is quite expensive. 23 euro per person. and mariana, the spanish assistant fell sick and wasn't coming. but i went for it since i have so little to do around here. the conversation revolved around teaching but it was mostly over my head. not that i didn't understand, i just had no way of contributing. they also talked about traveling in france and other outings they were organising. the food was amazing. especially dessert. i really have never seen such a large dessert spread in all my life. and it was categorized according to ingredient. the ice cream really blew my mind: caramel beurre sale. yumm. it's caramel ice cream with salty butter. i cannot get enough of it. and ooh what the french can do with chocolate. almost makes me wonder why they bother with frogs' legs, snails and whatever goes into tripe. aziza, my favorite teacher refused to let me pay even though i never said anything all night about the cost or anything. she said it was her treat. god bless her. she keeps saying that she's so grateful to have the chance to pass it along and help an assistant because of the incredible experience she had when she was one in liverpool.
wednesday: i went in for a class i see only twice a month. they're a group of students who take extra english and so they are slightly better than all my others. i spent the 2 hours with annie, their teacher, observing. they spent an hour asking questions about stokholm. at the end of the year they will be taking a 5 day trip to sweden to work on their english. they were quite excited about it and wanted to know all the details immediately. annie forced them to ask any and all questions in english and even though they struggled, (approx. 5 minutes to frame each question) they managed to express themselves really well in english. some of their questions were so strange though and made me wonder if they paid any attention in geography... or life. a few students thought it took all day to fly to sweden. the whole class wanted to know if they used the same electricity outlets as france. and a lot of girls wanted to know if the ABBA albums they wanted to buy would be in english.
the majority of the class was spent whining over the choice of stockholm. everyone wanted to go to london to practice english and couldn't understand why they were headed to a country where english wasn't the national language. i think it is a very cool idea. none of these students speak swedish, and i'm assuming that the odds of meeting swedes who speak french will be low, so the language everyone will be forced to use is english. i think these kids are incredibly lucky and i really wish i could go. i'm not going but not for lack of trying. there is a set number of adults required and i do not count. even though my english is awesome. boo.
thursday was pretty boring. the students were noisy and hilarious and i managed to teach very little. i tried showing a group of 13-14 year olds video clips of the pilot of the tv show lost to discuss what they saw. it worked a little. they earnestly attempted to speak in english and give me words and sentences about what they saw, but they mostly bickered about rubber band bracelets and who was farting and discussed the show in french. it is as if they all have attention disorders. or they're just not into it.
friday was so boring i made myself a chocolate cake. and i iced it too. i'm trying to figure out how to make a moist cake and this recipe called for mayonnaise instead of oil or butter. and i have mayo i'm not using so it was perfect. except that it came out dry as usual. it's very yummy but i want it moist!!
and saturday: i didn't do anything all day. except read, watch tv online, eat, and take a shower. and sing. i seem to do a lot of that these days. i really hope gladys and jean pierre can't hear me. and tomorrow's sunday. i am desperate for some pasta with a roquefort cream sauce and spinach and mushrooms but nothing's open sundays so i have to wait until monday to get the ingredients for that.
craving: lunch at cascade with vee and the twins
currently listening to: the quiet- my typing, random intestinal sounds, and natalya's soft humming
tuesday night: i went out to dinner with some teachers to a giant buffet restaurant. it was only slightly awkward. they were all really nice to me. i spent a while before at home, trying to decide whether to go or not because i had googled the restaurant and discovered that it is quite expensive. 23 euro per person. and mariana, the spanish assistant fell sick and wasn't coming. but i went for it since i have so little to do around here. the conversation revolved around teaching but it was mostly over my head. not that i didn't understand, i just had no way of contributing. they also talked about traveling in france and other outings they were organising. the food was amazing. especially dessert. i really have never seen such a large dessert spread in all my life. and it was categorized according to ingredient. the ice cream really blew my mind: caramel beurre sale. yumm. it's caramel ice cream with salty butter. i cannot get enough of it. and ooh what the french can do with chocolate. almost makes me wonder why they bother with frogs' legs, snails and whatever goes into tripe. aziza, my favorite teacher refused to let me pay even though i never said anything all night about the cost or anything. she said it was her treat. god bless her. she keeps saying that she's so grateful to have the chance to pass it along and help an assistant because of the incredible experience she had when she was one in liverpool.
wednesday: i went in for a class i see only twice a month. they're a group of students who take extra english and so they are slightly better than all my others. i spent the 2 hours with annie, their teacher, observing. they spent an hour asking questions about stokholm. at the end of the year they will be taking a 5 day trip to sweden to work on their english. they were quite excited about it and wanted to know all the details immediately. annie forced them to ask any and all questions in english and even though they struggled, (approx. 5 minutes to frame each question) they managed to express themselves really well in english. some of their questions were so strange though and made me wonder if they paid any attention in geography... or life. a few students thought it took all day to fly to sweden. the whole class wanted to know if they used the same electricity outlets as france. and a lot of girls wanted to know if the ABBA albums they wanted to buy would be in english.
the majority of the class was spent whining over the choice of stockholm. everyone wanted to go to london to practice english and couldn't understand why they were headed to a country where english wasn't the national language. i think it is a very cool idea. none of these students speak swedish, and i'm assuming that the odds of meeting swedes who speak french will be low, so the language everyone will be forced to use is english. i think these kids are incredibly lucky and i really wish i could go. i'm not going but not for lack of trying. there is a set number of adults required and i do not count. even though my english is awesome. boo.
thursday was pretty boring. the students were noisy and hilarious and i managed to teach very little. i tried showing a group of 13-14 year olds video clips of the pilot of the tv show lost to discuss what they saw. it worked a little. they earnestly attempted to speak in english and give me words and sentences about what they saw, but they mostly bickered about rubber band bracelets and who was farting and discussed the show in french. it is as if they all have attention disorders. or they're just not into it.
friday was so boring i made myself a chocolate cake. and i iced it too. i'm trying to figure out how to make a moist cake and this recipe called for mayonnaise instead of oil or butter. and i have mayo i'm not using so it was perfect. except that it came out dry as usual. it's very yummy but i want it moist!!
and saturday: i didn't do anything all day. except read, watch tv online, eat, and take a shower. and sing. i seem to do a lot of that these days. i really hope gladys and jean pierre can't hear me. and tomorrow's sunday. i am desperate for some pasta with a roquefort cream sauce and spinach and mushrooms but nothing's open sundays so i have to wait until monday to get the ingredients for that.
craving: lunch at cascade with vee and the twins
currently listening to: the quiet- my typing, random intestinal sounds, and natalya's soft humming
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
but it just may be a looooonatic you're looking for!
i am sleepy but i have a lot to do and i really want to blog because i have a lot to say but i'm sleepy.
this past weekend: didn't do much. it rained. gladys and jean pierre went to visit grand kids so i blasted music and sang very very loudly which felt great after my sore throat stuff. i had laundry drying in the garage that i wanted to get but couldn't cuz my remote wouldn't work. i tried the button every hour on saturday, stood outside the garage door pointing it at various corners, trying different degrees of pressure on the button. sigh. i tried to go shopping on sunday but the grocery store was closed. it was strange though, because as i stood outside the hyper u in the cold, there was a large sign saying how they are open 7 days a week, 8am to 8pm. i was angry and cold and looked around for someone to share my indignance with, but there wasn't a soul around. so i walked home. the gate wouldn't open. it's controlled by a remote and there is no overriding the remote. my remote is touchy sometimes, so i went for a short walk up and down the street to give it time to come around. didn't work. so i went for an even longer walk. came back and pushed the little button and nothing. and it was cold. so i sat down and thought. i didn't want to call gladys and worry her. so i decided to check out my options.
i found a spot through which if i absolutely had to, i could climb up and jump over a barbed wire fence into gladys' flower garden. then i sat back down on the sidewalk again to wait. i felt pretty self-conscious every time a car went by or an old lady hobbled by (crossing the street deliberately when she saw me) because this is not a place where people sit on the street. people don't even stand on the streets here unless they are talking to someone they just happened to meet or they are waiting for a bus. i called jules because i had to tell someone what was going on and during the call my phone beeped to let me know it would die, soon. not the best circumstances for a sunday night.
when it was too cold to handle, i decided to jump. it was pretty hilarious and took me a while to pull myself up. every time i heard a car drive by i burst out laughing wondering what it must have looked like to see a crazy girl struggling and scrambling through a hedge and over a very pokey fence. the fence hurt a lot. it poked through my favorite jeans. but i was in and i made my way inside to the warmth.
monday night when gladys and jean pierre got home, i told them what happened. he took my remote and with one push, had the fence open, perfectly. and i told them about the garage. and in front of my face, inside my room, he pushed the garage button once, and it opened immediately. of course. so there they were looking at me like i was slightly deranged, but to be pitied. and i was screaming inside.
and that is tonight's story children. stay tuned for the tale of the listening dinner and the anti-stockholm syndrome.
craving: orange juice! and peaches.
currently listening to: take you there- sean kingston
this past weekend: didn't do much. it rained. gladys and jean pierre went to visit grand kids so i blasted music and sang very very loudly which felt great after my sore throat stuff. i had laundry drying in the garage that i wanted to get but couldn't cuz my remote wouldn't work. i tried the button every hour on saturday, stood outside the garage door pointing it at various corners, trying different degrees of pressure on the button. sigh. i tried to go shopping on sunday but the grocery store was closed. it was strange though, because as i stood outside the hyper u in the cold, there was a large sign saying how they are open 7 days a week, 8am to 8pm. i was angry and cold and looked around for someone to share my indignance with, but there wasn't a soul around. so i walked home. the gate wouldn't open. it's controlled by a remote and there is no overriding the remote. my remote is touchy sometimes, so i went for a short walk up and down the street to give it time to come around. didn't work. so i went for an even longer walk. came back and pushed the little button and nothing. and it was cold. so i sat down and thought. i didn't want to call gladys and worry her. so i decided to check out my options.
i found a spot through which if i absolutely had to, i could climb up and jump over a barbed wire fence into gladys' flower garden. then i sat back down on the sidewalk again to wait. i felt pretty self-conscious every time a car went by or an old lady hobbled by (crossing the street deliberately when she saw me) because this is not a place where people sit on the street. people don't even stand on the streets here unless they are talking to someone they just happened to meet or they are waiting for a bus. i called jules because i had to tell someone what was going on and during the call my phone beeped to let me know it would die, soon. not the best circumstances for a sunday night.
when it was too cold to handle, i decided to jump. it was pretty hilarious and took me a while to pull myself up. every time i heard a car drive by i burst out laughing wondering what it must have looked like to see a crazy girl struggling and scrambling through a hedge and over a very pokey fence. the fence hurt a lot. it poked through my favorite jeans. but i was in and i made my way inside to the warmth.
monday night when gladys and jean pierre got home, i told them what happened. he took my remote and with one push, had the fence open, perfectly. and i told them about the garage. and in front of my face, inside my room, he pushed the garage button once, and it opened immediately. of course. so there they were looking at me like i was slightly deranged, but to be pitied. and i was screaming inside.
and that is tonight's story children. stay tuned for the tale of the listening dinner and the anti-stockholm syndrome.
craving: orange juice! and peaches.
currently listening to: take you there- sean kingston
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