Ex-Pat Thanksgiving

So, you may be wondering, loyal readers, how I celebrated that delicious American holiday of Thanksgiving so far from home? Well, Thursday night my good friend and fellow assistant Lauren opened her home to all us transient ex-pats on the condition that we all bring something besides the turkey* she was providing. We gladly obliged and had ourselves a surprisingly amazing showing of old traditions as well as some new ones. Thursday night I left my house with my friend Ana and on our way to Lauren's (who lives a bit out of the way) we kept meeting more and more assistants at metro and bus stops. We formed a sort of pilgrimage across the city with our tin-foiled dishes in hand and plastic sacks. I think we were quite a spectacle, and one French woman on the metro even wished us a "bonne fête" after asking us where we were from!  My friend Kettie, who celebrates a more "Hatian version" of Turkey Day brought fried plantains and 2 kinds of pasta salads (one veggie for me!), Ana who is a Spanish assistant made 2 lovely tortillas des patatas which are traditional nosh in Spain. There were brussel sprouts, glorious mashed potatoes, green beens with roasted almonds, and 2 kinds of stuffing. Brittany's mother even mailed her a can of Ocean Spray cranberry sauce which we thinly sliced into 15 pieces!! For dessert we had three varieties of pumpkin pie, one sweet potato-buttermilk pie, a chocolate mousse pie, homemade donuts, vanilla ice cream and whipped cream! 

*Kudos to Lauren for finding a whole turkey (not something that is common in France), after several personal visits and calls to a local butcher. 

I kind of overdid it and spent all day Wednesday cooking chez moi with Ana. Wednesday morning I dragged her to 2 different outdoor markets in addition to the grocery store and ended up preparing 4 separate dishes: creamed spinach (adapted from Smitten Kitchen), mashed sweet potatoes with marshmallows, an apple-pear-rasin-ginger compote, and a pumpkin pie. Phew. In retrospect I might have been better off making just one, but lets just say, I learned a lot, and everyone really appreciated everything I brought.

To sum up, here are some things I have learned from my very fist ex-pat Thanksgiving: 

- Do not attempt cooking 4 dishes to bring to the soiree, stick with 1. Especially when the kitchen you are working with is not equipped with a dishwasher

- Do not attempt baked goods (i.e. pumpkin pie) if the extent of one's oven's settings is a gauge going from 1 to 10

- On the same subject of our favorite dessert,  do not attempt when it is necessary to dismember half a pumpkin to achieve what we know in the US as Libby's canned pumpkin 

- You know the spinach you bought from the market is fresh when you take it home to wash and find multiple tiny slugs hidden inside

- It is hard, but not impossible, to enjoy Thanksgiving leftovers without a microwave

 I, along with the other assistants who showed up bearing pumpkin pies, managed to turn these gourds  into...

these rustic beauties. Apparently we American girls are masochists. I feel a lot closer to my pilgrim ancestors after such an authentic experience of taking a machete to an actual pumpkin. Mine is the 3rd up from the bottom!

Bienvenu a OFII

So I've had a minor blip in ma belle vie francais, and it's called the Office of Immigration. Actually, it's called OFII - Office Francais de L'Immigration et de L'Integration.

As if 2 trips (each lasting several hours) the the French embassy in New York before I left wasn't enough pain, the process of validating one's visa continues even after you cross the border of your destination. Who knew?

Well, to be fair, I knew what needed to be done once I arrived here in theory, but, if I have learned anything from being at the bottom of the bureaucratic food chain here, it is that the way things are supposed to be carried out in theory has nothing to do with how they are actualized.

Once I arrived in France and had my passport stamped at the border I was to send a copy of my visa, the stamped page, my teaching contract, and the immigration form the NY consulate had signed for me by registered mail to to the OFII office. I did all of this promptly once I arrived. Next, I was to receive a letter confirming that they received everything. Check. So far so good (often an ominous sign). Next I was supposed to receive a letter with an appointment to see a French doctor so they can do a routine check up and ensure I'm physically fit to mange and bois my croissant and café with the best of them. This medical visit is the key component to validating my long stay visa, thus allowing me to leave and re-enter the country freely. If you miss this medical appointment, we were told multiple times at orientation, it could be months before you are given another one and thus (further) prolong the validation of your visa.

Several weeks had passed since I received that first letter, and I began to wonder when this appointment might arrive. My friend Amy told me last week that she missed a phone call from OFII who left her a message saying her doctors appointment was a few hours later that same day. Kind of strange, but I didn't think too much about it. I then heard a similar story from another assistant who received a call on her mobile from OFII. I started to wonder...I didn't know OFII made personal calls? I thought of them more as an impersonal, all caps no greeting or sign off letter kind of operation. Maybe they were trying a new angle.

Then on Tuesday the Spanish assistant at my school recounted to me how she too almost missed her appointment. She said she spoke to the OFII office who told her that the whole batch of letters with the medical appointments on them had gotten lost in the mail during the strike, and that the office realized this when no one was showing up to their appointments so they started calling. The people who missed their appointments because of this were reassigned appointments for late December.

I tried not to freak out too much about this new piece of information as I sought out my contact person at the school during lunch.  Even though she has nothing to do with  my visa, she has been in charge of the English assistants for the past few years and, as a French person, might know what happens when something as sure as the post is sabotaged by strikes. She gave me a characteristic chuckle and told me that yes, it was prudent that I was looking into this now because a few years ago they had an English assistant who went home for Christmas without validating her visa and she was not allowed to come back into the country.  Well, now they had my attention. I told her I was going to call them toute suite. She said that was a good idea.

I went immediately to the teachers lounge where there is a phone so I could call the OFII office. According to their website they take a lunch break from 12:00-1:30. So I waited, playing over various scenes in my head of being stranded at JFK on December 26th with my 2 cousins who had already bought their plane tickets to visit me for the New Year. At 1:35 I called back, but was told by an unctuous automated woman's voice (accompanied by overly cheery music), that they in fact do not re-open until 2:00pm and would I kindly call within those hours, then I was promptly disconnected. Maybe the person who was supposed to change the hours of operation on the website was still on lunch break. I called back at 2:00 and received the same automated message. I guess lunch breaks are approximated. As I had to go though a secretary to dial out of the school, I felt bad asking her to call a 3rd time for me, so I decided to suppress my anxiety and try calling once I got home.

Once in the comfort of my own home, armed with a mug of tea, I felt ready and calm enough to take on the OFII. I dialed the number. I waited. I was welcomed with a new recording, which once again sounded like the introduction to a cheerful musical rendition of the Office of Immigration. I was systematically assured that my call was very important to them and that it would be answered in due time. I waited. And waited. And waited. And...then was disconnected. I called again. I was disconnected again. I was annoyed, but was not going to give up so easily. I've gone though my share of waiting in lines in France, virtual or otherwise, let the others more feeble contenders give up, my call was going get through. On my third try I finally got a hold of a human, who sounded nothing like the happy woman from the recording, and she didn't even welcome me to the Office of Immigration. In all my brain numbing waiting I had forgotten what I wanted to say. I scraped my brain for the vocabulary and came up with visa and medical visit. She hurriedly said something while I was mid-awkwardly-strung-sentence, and before I could even get a "Pardon?" in there I was on hold again. More waiting and I finally spoke to someone. I started to tell her my story and she cut in that I should now be waiting for my medical visit in a fashion that suggested I should have learned this around the time I learned fish swim in water. I explained that yes I knew that's what I was supposed to be doing, but that I had heard there was a problem with the post and some letters were lost. I couldn't be brushed off so easily. There was a brief silence, and I felt a fleeting moment of triumph, "oh you know about that," she seemed to be thinking, and then she said the magic words: Date of birth. Last name. First name.  I had broken the defense against any and all inquiries and was in.  They had asked for my information, as in, they were going to check on it for me.

The woman told me that my doctors appointment was in fact for December 1st at 9:00 and hung up before I could pose anymore questions.  I still do not know where my appointment is, or whether the letter informing me of the details is coming in the mail, but at least I know I did not miss my appointment.

It's the little victories.

A bientôt!
Linz

American not so Express.

Never, ever, take out traveler’s checks in dollars when traveling to Europe. I’m swallowing my shame in admitting that I fell prey to this seemingly obvious mandate. Before I left the US I took out a few hundred dollars in Amex Traveler’s Checks with the idea of either 1. Cashing them once I arrived in Paris to pay for the first few weeks’ expenses, or 2. Depositing them in my new French bank account once I opened it as a base amount. After running all over Paris in the first few days I arrived I gave up the idea of exchanging them for cash as I would loose such a larger percentage of the sum in the process. To find this out, I roved the city from bank to bank each one suggesting I (futilely) try another one for better rates. I nearly got kicked out of the Bank of France as if I were asking for a handout by suggesting that they would debase themselves by changing over traveler’s checks. Silly me to think the Bank of France was just another bank. Exchange bureaus were no better. With the rates I mean, they at least gave me the satisfaction that I had come to the right place.

So I pocketed the checks in a safe place and brought them here to Toulouse with me. After I opened up my bank account I asked the very nice woman who helped me if I could deposit these checks in my new account. She assured me that I could, with a small fee of course, only not at that  particular office. I must go across town to another branch where they actually handle money she said. OK. At least there's a light at the end of this tunnel and I have somewhere concrete to go to get rid of these things. A few days later I show up at this "other branch", checks in hand and requisite banking vocabulary memorized. When it was my turn in line I placed my checks on the counted and explained I would like to deposit them into my account. My worst fears came true as the teller looked back at me as if I had just presented him with Monopoly money. He turned to his colleague and asked for help with this preposterously unprecedented task. Maybe he was new. His colleague came over and swept up my checks and brought them into another room to examine with 3 other tellers. I could hear them talking in puzzled tones though the open door until I finally heard one exclaim, “Ah Ahmereeecan Exprez!” Voila. She came back out and gave me the necessary deposit slips, I signed my checks and walked out satisfied.

But that would have been way too easy if the story had ended there. After a week of no activity in my account I started to get worried that my precious checks had gotten lost in translation. So I returned to the bank across town. I was assured that everything was fine and that things like this often take almost a month to process, plus with the recent strike who knows how long these things could take. I tell you, these strikers are impressively effective at slowing things down.

Several days later I was awoken from my dream that my checks were en route to being safely deposited in my account, (literally and figuratively, it was 8am) by a teller who had called my portable to tell me, more or less, that my checks could not be deposited and I needed to come back and pick them up from the branch. As it was before 10am my French was even worse than usual and I misunderstood where I was supposed to pick up the checks, costing me a trip to the wrong branch, and looking like an idiot. But what would life abroad be without my daily piece of humble pie?

When I finally got to where I needed to be (the front of the line at the correct branch) I explained I was there to get my checks back. Blank stare. Oh crap. I stood there awkwardly for a while not wanting to leave sans cheques but not sure who else to talk to. Then I saw the woman who had taken them from me in the first place and after a few moments of my grammatically incorrect panicked explaining that they had seemingly misplaced a sizeable chunk of my savings account, she remembered who I was, smiled grandly, rifled around a filing cabinet, and presented me with an envelope with something French illegibly scribbled on the front (probably something like, “Silly American, who uses travelers checks anymore?”) with my checks inside.

So I walked out of there profusely thanking the people who had run me all over the city, told me they could complete a transaction they in fact could not, woke me up at the unheard of hour of 8am to tell me so, and then scared me to death that they had lost my signed travelers checks.

I can now say with certainty that travelers checks are a thing of the past that our parents (sorry readers of parental age) are convinced are a good idea to travel with and in fact never are, inside or outside of the US. 

La greve continue

So apparently the strike is not totally over for the students. I’d heard mutterings Monday this past Monday (Nov. 1st) that there might be another blockage of the school Tuesday, but I thought to myself, no way, they’re over that, plus the law has already been passed through both houses of Congress here (le Sénat et l’Assemblé Nationale). Wrong. So I had to once again take about a 10 minute longer route to find an entrance that wasn’t blocked by trash bins and students. Seriously, this is getting a bit old. At the cafeteria I heard some of the teachers who are more sympathetic to the cause grumbling about the police presence outside the school as if it were totally inappropriate. Maybe it’s the American in me but I don’t see what the big deal is having police outside the gates of the school making sure students and teachers are able to exercise their right to circulate and enter the school. Could it be that the extreme left of the country is bringing out some rightish sentiments…?

On the other hand, I understand a bit better why people in France are still resisting the reform. My Mom sent me some USA Today articles on the strikes which I was reading with Gisele today and we were remarking over the way the manifestations were being represented in the American media. For the most part, the press is leaving out the peaceful demonstrations, and only publishing sensational photographs from cities where the manifestations turn violent at the end when people who may not have necessarily been part of the protest, come in to stir up trouble (Lyon, Marseille). We both agreed that sensational photography was typically journalistic in any county however. The articles also left out how French people who strike during the week and not just on Saturdays are giving up a day’s work of their salary.

Gisele has worked her whole life as a teacher and has planned for some years now to have the upcoming years free to travel and immerse herself more fully in the languages she has been studying (English and Greek). While I don’t believe that if you retire at 62 rather than 60 you are going right from work to the tomb (as some people here have claimed), I understand that it is destabilizing to have years you had planned on having for yourself taken away in a sense. I am thinking right now of my Dad and many other people I know in the US whose retirements have been unexpectedly prolonged due to the economy, sending kids to college (another thing the French do not have to worry about as many of their universities cost a few hundred euros), taking care of aging relatives, etc. and how we kind of accept it as part of life that work might infringe more than we hoped/expected on our lives, so what is the big fuss about working 2 more years to the ripe old age of 62?

I guess to understand the strikes here you have to understand that, on a basic level (and please pardon my gross generalizations), people here work to live not live to work.  Evidence of this can be seen even in the languages, as in the US if someone asked you “What do you do?” you would understand the implied “for work?” and respond accordingly. In French, if you asked someone “que’est ce que vous faites?” They would most likely look at you blankly thinking you were asking them what they do in the most general terms, or what they are doing in that moment, and it is necessary to add the “comme travail?” to get the response you are looking for. 

To bring my diatribe to a close: I can understand why people like Gisele and some of the teachers at my school are striking against the reform and even how striking is very much a part of the culture here (I even heard someone call it a 4th branch of government), yet it still bothers me that high school students are making me walk an extra 10 minutes to get to work! Alas, my patience and understanding can only go so far…

Somewhat ironically, on Monday and Tuesday I did some lessons on Election Day in the US with my students. So that they understood the lesson more fully I tried to draw comparisons between our 2 political parties and some of the parties they have in France. We deduced that the Republicans are more like the UMP (Sarkozy) and the Front National (right party) in economic terms and that the Democrats share some beliefs with the Socialist and Communist parties. Roughly speaking. You should have seen the looks on their faces when I told them we in the US consider France to be a Socialist country. You see, my darling 15 year olds like to consider themselves true Socialists and think of Sarkozy and his administration as as far right as it gets. They were scandalized to hear the term Socialist applied to someone as undeserving as him. I then tried to explain that, relatively speaking, many of the social goods they receive in France (their health care, their Sécu Sociale) align more with Socialism than the Democracy we operate under, although many people in our country think this is changing. When I showed them some photos of Tea Party demonstrators bearing signs denouncing Obama as a Socialist, they said “But we don’t understand, in the US Socialism is considered bad?” I didn’t anticipate that it would take longer than once class period to get into ideological differences stemming from out nations’ founding. A lesson for another day.

Thursday was a jour férié as it is Armistice Day of WWI. Since I don’t work Wednesdays or Fridays, I was as of Tuesday, on a 5 day weekend. Seriously, who needs to strike with all these vacations?

I have been having very relaxing days and spending a lot of time hanging out around the house with Gisele and Gabriella and getting to know them better which I like very much. I am definitely learning how to slow down a bit here and not constantly feel like I need to be doing something besides getting to know my roommates more, practicing my French around the house, cooking, and writing in my blog. All things that make me very happy!

Wednesday night I attended a crémaillère, or a house warming party, at a French girls’ new studio which was very enjoyable and I got to practice my language skills and meet some more Frenchies. The past few days I have been speaking mostly in French, and switching over less from English and I have definitely noticed a difference in the facility that the words come to me in French. I make a lot more careless errors when I am speaking half the day in English.

OK well that’s all for now. A bientôt. Bises. TGIF.

Linz

Mangsters Inc.

Last night was my turn to host the dinner group chez moi. Gisele, my landlady/roommate helped me set up the living room and salon to accommodate everyone and it turned out really, really nice! I was SO excited to host people here and have my very first dinner soirée! I only wish my Mom could have been on the invite list!! We had 3 kinds of cheeses for appetizers - Cantal entre deux, brie, and a camembert. We ate the cheese in the American fashion, that is before the dinner and not after as the French do! Then I halved some avocados and filled the insides with a cold shrimp salad I had made using mustard and mayo with a lemon wedge. For the main dish I made a version of ratatouille (note: do not attempt any semblance of this dish without a mandolin, it makes a potentially simple dish take a lot more time) with whole grain rice on the side and, of course, fresh baguettes I bought from my neighborhood boulangerie that afternoon. I felt very French carrying my 2 loaves of bread under my arm walking home! Unfortunately I didn't have the opportunity to take any photos once people arrived but here are some photos of the food and the set-up!

At the dinner we also decided on a name for our group: Mangsters Inc. (Manger = to eat) like the Pixar film :)

Un weekend extraordinaire!

Excellent weekend! Friday I checked out the Musée de Vieux Toulouse, which is a museum which all kinds of maps, paintings and artifacts on the history of the city. I was really lucky because I went on Friday the 5^th and the museum was closing on the 6^th as it is in a very old building that cannot afford to put in heat, it closes for the season. I also arrived just in time for a guided tour, which made all the difference. The museum itself wasn’t very large or impressive in terms of what they had on display, but learning more about the history of the city was very cool. It’s so amazing to me that I’m living in a city that has been around since the Romans.

I have been giving private supplemental English lessons to a student named Nicholas from one of my classes at Bellevue who is in preparatory classes to enter a <<grande ecole>> or a kind of specialized university in Math and Physics. His exam is at the end of the year and has a considerable English section that I am helping him prepare for. His level of English is definitely low so we have started with relearning the basics. It’s new for me as I have never taught English as a foreign language before, and in fact am not very familiar with the structure of the language or how to explain it to someone as, duh, it’s my native language. Trying to explain the difference between the past continuous and the past perfect has given me a whole new appreciation for people who learn ESL! Fortunately the lessons seems to be working for him so far, so as of now we are going to continue working 2 sessions of 1.5 hours a week until the end of the year. He is incredible nice and polite, he asked my permission before using the formal address with me, and when I asked him about his weekend (in an effort to spark some English conversation) asked if it appropriate for me if he asked me about my weekend in return. Sheesh.

So Saturday morning I had a private lesson with Nicholas. Afterwards, I headed to the Jardins Royale in a part of Toulouse I had not yet explored to meet up with a bunch of assistants. On my way to meet everyone I stumbled upon this fabulous marche d’antiquites. It was 2 very long aisles of giant umbrellas set up all in a row creating a kind of continuous canopy. Underneath, all the venders had not just set out their wares for sale, but created sort of intallation or decorative art in the form of living rooms. They rolled out carpets, set up their dining room tables and chairs, coffee tables and armchairs, armoires and bookshelves. They hung lamps from the canopy, and set up pictures, books, silverware and everything else they had for said so that it seemed as though you were walking through a sea of people’s extraordinary living rooms. What’s more, it was about lunchtime when I arrived, and the venders had set up picnics at their living room tables and were eating their lunch amongst the fabulous antiques they were selling. I’m not talking PB and J’s or tuna salad here either. The fabulous surfaces were laden with massive slabs of artisan bread, tins and jars of caviar and fois gras and open bottles of champagne and wine. It was really incredible. Everything was very expensive, as I said more an antique market than a flea market, but because the vendors were more selective in their wares it was easier to walk through and admire the displays and you didn’t have to pick through it. More of an observable market than an interactive one.

When I finally met up with the assistants they were hanging out in a gorgeous park I had not discovered yet. Even though it wasn’t a bright and sunny day it was warm and the leaves were all yellow orange and red like at home and slowly falling onto the still plush lawns. It was a gathering of many English and Spanish assistants whoI already knew but also many new ones who live further outside Toulouse and had come into the city for the weekend. We spend a couple hours in the park, then broke up for a bit to meet up later for a soiree. Saturday evening I met up with a French girl who I met through the daughter of a professor at my school. We went out with 2 other assistants, Anna and Kettie, for beer at a cool Belgian beer bar in town. We then met up with all the assistants who were socializing along La Garonne river in the center of town. My French friend Ismahane remarked how it was both funny and refreshing how foreign visitors always partake in the activities that the native youth did when they were younger. Apparently drinking next to the river in plain fall is a somewhat juvenile activity reserved for high school students, but nevertheless is a lot of fun. We were an incredibly large group, probably around 30 so we ended up splitting up; some of us ended up in a nearby bar which my friends and I left shortly after and went to a dance club where we danced until 4am! It was an incredibly fun night, I’ve been waiting for a while to go out dancing in Toulouse which is apparently know for it’s night life.

The first Sunday of the month all museums in Toulouse are free so Ana, Kettie, Alberto, Lauren and I went to check out the Musee d’Histoire Naturelle. I had lunch at a professor’s house, one who had invited me for dinner a few weeks ago. It was very, very nice and a lot more casual than the dinner. I’m not sure if that was because it was the second time I was invited or because it was a lunch…Even though I live in a house here and am lucky enough to have more or less all the comforts of home and company, it is still so nice to be invited to someone’s house to share a meal with them on a Sunday. It ended up being me, her 15 year old daughter and 20 year old son. Sunday evening I saw The Social Network at an independent movie theater I hadn’t seen yet, bringing my cultural activity count up to 3 for the weekend. Not too bad.

Monday night was the first night of a sort of dinner club some of the assistants and I have started. It is 7 of us who either live in houses or apartments large enough to cook for and accommodate everyone. The idea is that someone different cooks every Monday and/or Thursday for everyone else in the group. That way you cook once a week but eat out the other 5 or 6. The invites bring the wine and something for desert. Monday’s are usually Meaty Mondays and Thursdays are Veggie, however, Lauren (who luckily for us works as a chef in the US) whipped me up a veggie option of her duck ragu! The whole soirée was really really wonderful, and we all joked that Lauren’s would be a very tough act to follow, as one of her roommate’s cats had just had kittens who came out to play at the end of the meal. Who can compete with a duck ragu and weeks old kittens?? I am up next this Thursday and keep going through menu options in my head…any ideas??

That’s all for now! A bientot!

Linz

Les Bisous

I have been meaning for some time now to bring to light one of the main cultural differences between the US and France: something known as “bisous,” or kisses. No, it is neither a myth nor only reserved for French films that for almost every single person in France this act is second nature. The French make “bisous” look so easy and so chic. However for some reason I have constant stress when it comes to this habitual greeting. Do I go left then right, or right then left? I’ve tried both, and it seems to be the wrong way. After much careful observation, I have deduced that, most unfortunately, this isn’t like conjugating verbs where study and practice make perfect, and there is no rhyme or reason to the  left-right or right-left conundrum. It’s a crapshoot, and I ALWAYS seem to go the wrong way, which results in this awkward situation where both parties' puckered lips are rapidly approaching each other. I’m sure they can see the fear in my eyes as I waver between left and right looking like a confused and terrified bobble head.

How often do you bisous? When you haven’t seen someone for a few hours, or a few days? Do you simply go with the cheek bump, or do you actually make contact lips to cheek? How loud do you make the kissy noise?  Women always seem to “faire les bisous”, men and women typically do as well (which is slightly off putting at times), while men and men only when they are family or are very close.

Believe it or not, sticking out you hand for a handshake, though simpler, would be much more awkward, “way too professional” they say, so I’ll keep trying with be bisous. 

Déjà les vacances...

When I exited the metro this morning at Bellevue on my first morning back after vacation I was relieved to not be greeted by angst-y high schoolers on strike, make-shift trash bin and duct tape obstacles or the French SWAT team as I was in the preceding weeks. While the national strike against the retirement reform isn’t officially over, I guess the kids have had their fun and dropped it like last season’s Benismons. Here, even striking goes out of style. I am still very much liking work but wish it was a bit more regular. When I made my introductions to all the classes in the first few weeks all the students seemed very excited and interested in coming to my classes, however my attendance has been way low and I’m not altogether sure they know what classrooms we meet in either. I tried explaining this to one of my colleagues today, and how I felt that it was difficult to get in the rhythm of teaching, knowing the students and their differing language levels and formulate productive lessons what with recent "irregularities." She waved her hand and rolled her eyes at that, as if having the school literally barricaded and half the staff and even less students show up for weeks on end, the French police surrounding the place at 7am, then everyone taking a 10 day vacation (for no apparent reason) was, though slightly disruptive, an otherwise normal October for them, and told me not to worry about it. Geez, I remember being stressed out about missing one period of high school. I can’t even imagine what would happen if this occured in the States, the Superintendent would probably declare some sort of Educational Marshall Law and hold 12 hour school days 7 days a week. I digress.

Vacation was really nice. I stayed in Toulouse for the first few days, (starting last Friday,) then my friend Emma (who I mentioned I studied abroad with in Rennes and who is now teaching there as well) came to Toulouse with her friend who she went to college with in Maine who happened to study abroad here in Toulouse. Got all that? So we spend Wednesday to Saturday in Toulouse and Emma’s friend Sarah introduced me to some French friends she had made when she studied here which was great as I’m always trying to expand my Froggie network. Saturday morning Emma and I took the TGV up to Rennes with relatively no problems, by French-on-strike living standards. As sad as it is, I never really believe a train is coming until I see it pull up. We took a really nice TGV to Nantes then changed to a sort of commuter rail that runs throughout Brittany. On that second train we were not guaranteed seats, and since some of the other trains had been cancelled because of the strike, it was also overpopulated; (As it is if you train here suddenly goes on strike, you can use your already paid for ticket to enter any other train,) there were people all over the aisles, stairs and doorways. Luckily this train was only an hour as the atmosphere was less than calm cool and collected. Mothers were climbing over appendages and suitcases, bouncing their babies up and down the aisles trying to keep them occupied and comfortable One particular lady got into a dispute (to put it nicely) with one of the conductors going around validating tickets. I didn’t start actively listening till it really started getting interesting and thus missed the point of contention. I’m pretty sure the woman was screaming (yes, screaming) about paying 50 euros for her ticket and having to sit on the floor without a seat. She had to have been in the wrong about something though because the conductor wrote her a citation at the end of the ordeal which by that time lasted a good ten minutes, and I’m pretty sure you can’t get a citation for arguing as that is something of the national sport here.  The kicker was that at then end once the conductor had left the train car, the woman exclaimed “Sorry to the nonsmokers, but I’m having a cigarette” and proceeded to light up in the train car. That at least cleared the mothers and children out. Only in France.

Rennes was a ton of fun, Emma and I went out to all the old bars and restaurants we hung out at when we studied there and it felt like no time had passed. Saturday night we sort of hit the ground running and went to our favorite bar on Rue de la Soif (literally “Street of Thirst,” a pedestrian road crammed full of bars which Rennes, who to be frank has a reputation as a city of alcoholics, is infamous for). After the bar closed, our friend who works there took Emma and I to this really cool concert venue where there was a battle of the DJ’s happening complete with lasers and strobe lights. Pretty cool. Halloween passed pretty uneventfully, there was a costume party thrown by one of the teaching assistants in Rennes which Emma and I went to for a bit. It just wasn’t the same as American Halloween although I still requisitely ate enough candy corn to make me want to be sick the next day and thus hold me over until next season.  Monday was Touissaint and therefore a jour fériér or holiday, and I spent the entire day with my old host family at their house.  Emma and I headed over at noon for “lunch” with my host parents, their 2 daughters Margaux and Mathilde, and the new student they’re hosting. I’m definitely getting the hang of these 7-hour lunches and didn’t plan anything else for the rest of the day. It was so wonderful to see them again and I definitely got a little choked up when they opened the door to my old house! I was extremely nervous for some reason walking over there up my old street from the metro stop. I didn’t know if my French was going to be good enough to keep conversation flowing, or if it would feel weird coming back, I was also hoping my language had improved since I had stayed with them. I quickly realized how ridiculous the worrying was because as soon as I saw them I felt immediately at home. The girls are obviously two years older but still have the same dynamic personalities and they weren’t shy at all with me. My host mom made an amazing meal that we ate outside (unheard of for Brittany in November). We then went for a walk and threw a Frisbee around a nearby park, then came back for tea and more chatting, it was dark by the time Emma and I left. 

I took the train back Wednesday bright and early and was not deprived of yet another conductor-customer dispute. I guess tensions are running high.

Last night one of the assistants in Toulouse threw a costume birthday party for Marie Antoinette whose actually birthday was on Election Day (ironic?), the 2^nd. It was funny and nice to get in touch with everyone again after vacation. A lot of the Spanish assistants had gone back home to Spain as it is so close, some people traveled in France, some farmed on local farms nearby through the organization WWOOF (something I really want to do), and some more adventurous assistants went to other countries. I have neither the funds or desire to leave so soon, not when there’s so much to see in Too-loose!

That’s all for now.  Bisous!