"Bonjour Madame! Allez Allez!"

Since I've only been working a few hours a week I've been trying to do some constructive things like reading some classics for the first time. Right now, its War & Peace, that's definitely a time commitment. But I'm enjoying it, especially the parts not describing the battles in great detail. Also I've been going on jogs, which, to make more enjoyable usually turn into walks. But the other day I was jogging along and a few students from my class were at the train station and saw me running and seemed pretty excited to see me outside of class. They yelled, "Bonjour Madame!!" And I looked over and waved, "Bonjour..." I used to dislike being called Madame by my students but also find it kind of amusing so I've given up on changing their ways. And they cheered me on, "Allez, allez!" And jogging, and being caught of guard, I just smiled and said "Merci" which I felt was an awkward response but thats usually how my French is, so c'est la vie. It's nice encouragement though, jogging around a nice, old French town, and kids cheering you on "allez allez." I'm just enjoying it while it lasts now, since its not for much longer!

And one other side note, also about students in France. Yesterday at a class with some new students I was still taking my coat off and the students were all ready situated so they waited, standing up by their seats, for me to take a seat or give them permission to sit down. The students don't enter the class and then don't sit down until they have permission to. It's completely normal here, but I'm always caught off guard by these little signs of respect from the students. And like in the South where its normal to say Sir and Miss, etc. they always refer to adults by Madame or Monsieur. They're not all always little angels, but they make you think so sometimes.

A weekend in London

We spent a rainy, chilly weekend in London a couple of week ago, but no one goes to London for the weather. It was Mareike's first time in London so we saw the main sights, a 2nd time for me. We went to Buckingham Palace this time, which I didn't see last time, and its nice that I've seen it I suppose, but its not that interesting. At least not from the outside. I sometimes can't keep from thinking, while in London, about how much more impressive Paris is. It's not to say that London isn't a great town. It is, there's plenty to see and do, but there's so much more to see in Paris! Things to do in London though, there's plenty. This time around we saw a play and two musicals all in 2 days. The play was titled The Woman in Black and it was a horror with only 2 actors and very entertaining in a small theater with, it turns out, lots of easily startled students! On Saturday we saw a matinee of We Will Rock You to get out of the rain for a bit. It was a huge production with lots of fun music from Queen. Such a spectacle. I never would have thought of going to an extra musical that afternoon but I'm glad we did. Then Saturday night at last I saw Wicked. It was also really neat to watch after loving the music for a few years now. I loved my 2nd trip to London and it was nice having two weekends there that were so different. So to sum up my take on London in a sentence, its a neat city that really calls for a cozy cup of tea with such dreary weather.

Buckingham Palace (the Queen was there, Richard told us, because the flag was raised.)

"Not all those who wander are lost"

It was such a lovely sunny day down on the beach I decided to take a nice long wander up the coast, and I had my camera with me so here's what I passed along the way....

Almost to Wimereux,



and then a homeless man, two evil guard dogs, and a possessed



rabbit had me headed back to Boulogne, via the road this time.

One new turn and I came to a little village I've never seen before, Terlincthun, with some worthwhile sights to see.

some questionable, some cute buildings

A little farther on I came across a cemetary from the Great War. A beautiful resting place near the sea and rolling hills of the French countryside. Stumbling upon history is a fascinating thing and sometimes moving, too. But today it didn't seem very historic at all.

Always feel a little relieved towards the end of my wanderings when I spot this dome :)

Germany

I spent two weeks in southwest Germany with Mareike and her family in Febuary. It was such an amazing experience that I'll cherish for a lifetime. I love experiencing a country by staying with a family because you really get a peek into another culture. Her family didn't speak English so Mareike was the trusty translator for two weeks. Not easy for her I'm sure! There were many questions about the U.S. Her grandmother, who lived upstairs, seemed thrilled to have me there, and she used a pen to put a mark on Cincinnati, OH on her globe so she could always remember where I'm from. They were pretty excited to ask me questions about everything from sports, Obama, health care (very interesting to them), restaurants, what my parents do, and one memorable question from her grandfather was if I heard the story of Little Red Riding Hood. He thought it was outlawed in the U.S. ever since the prohabition because she had wine in her basket. My response was "she had wine in her basket??" and they all laughed and decided they deleted that detail for the American Brothers Grimm's books (am I wrong about this? Was anyone else aware she did? It seemed all the Germans knew that little detail.)


It was Carnival in Germany for about 5 of our days there. Everyone gets dressed up in costumes and celebrates all day long, there's parades, and there's a king and queen in each town who make laws for the holiday. We got dressed up and went to a big tent where thousands of people do the same and dance and eat and drink. It was pretty entertaining. One of my favorite stories about Carnival though came from Mareike's grandparents. I asked if they celebrated it in their youth and they said they did, everyone would wear a mask and go to a masquerade. At midnight everyone would take off their masks and discover who's who. But they laughed about the story, because her grandfather always would always know her grandmother by looking at her shoes- she only had one pair. They were so sweet!




One more story from Germany for now, here's a picture of a particular type of farmhouse that is only found in the Lorraine (this area in Germany was once French.) I thought it was such a pretty farmhouse, right across the street from Mareike's boyfriend. He described the layout of these farmhouses for me; the family lives on the left, and when you go in the front door you can go right and there's a door that leads directly to the barn.

Whew, its been a long time since my last update! At last, I'm back in Boulogne and taking it easy again after a few weeks of travelling. The two week holiday in Febuary has come and gone, and with it my two weeks in the Saarland region of Germany where my friend Mareike lives. Shortly after that, Colleen came to Europe for a whirlwind visit of London and Paris. At last I've been to London! Its lovely, but as luck would have it, I ran into the most friendly, kind people in Paris, and not so much in London so in that sense London is 2nd to Paris for me.

Thanks to perfect timing from mother nature, it feels good to be back in Boulogne. Spring is arriving and it's making me happy. We froze in Germany, and London and Paris were cold and wet. The mistral (uber strong) winds/rain came through our last day in Paris, and since we've just had sunny weather in Boulogne Sur Mer. Its 6pm, and still sunny! I love it. In the picture, you can see there are more clouds now than we've had all week, so I'm making up for lost Vitamin D in Feb! If only it was a little warmer I'd have to be at the beach right now.

Oh I wanted to share my calendars I made back in January with all my free time (only working 12 hours a week max, usually less.) I wrote the month in French (mars-March, avril-April.) I decided to make them since my perpetual calendar just wouldn't stay hanging.

There's so much I want to write down about Germany, London, and Paris, so there will be more to come soon!

Mercado de San Miguel

The best part about walking around a new city is running into a great place totally unexpected. I just love this joy of making a discovery on your own or with a friend. Christa and I decided to be touristy on Saturday and go around town on a double decker bus, which is great because you can get on and off these buses all day and see the whole city. So we stopped off near Plaza Mayor and ate lunch outside, in February!

We strolled around afterwards and ran into this great market, Mercado de San Miguel. Turned out to be our favorite destination in Madrid. It had a fun atmosphere with so much going on and a lot to offer. You can order sangria, champagne, wine to sip on while you order breads, cheeses, meats, seafood, produce, chocolates, sweets, and much more. We enjoyed a fruity sangria followed by pistachio and vanilla walnut petits fours. So tasty! Had we not just eaten lunch at Plaza Mayor we would have gotten much more to eat I think... Next time! Mercado de San Miguel.

Madrid!

Its been three days since my visit, but I still can't get over how wonderful Madrid is. Even though it was a quick trip to this beautiful Spanish city, it was long enough for me to fall in love with it. I was absolutely amazed with the architecture, the people, and the food. The city has an incredible amount of candy shops (seriously, I mean a lot), beautiful buildings, Starbucks, and people dressed up in costumes in the touristy areas. I don't know what is it about Winnie the Pooh, but he's all over Madrid! They have a different time schedule in Madrid, or should I say no time schedule, because its so laid back. Nothing is open early in the morning so there's no reason to wake up early. But everything stays open very late. For dinner for example, we'd go to a few different spots for tapas starting at 11. Everyone I talked to was so, so friendly, and a lot of people seemed obsessed with Americans and American accents which was pretty amusing.

Spanish food is DELICIOUS. They'll fry just about anything, which is fine by me, and serve eggs on just about anything, another great idea I'd say. One place I really loved was a popular shrimp tapas bar called La Casa del Abuelo, which gets packed and everyone stands and eats shrimp, theres only a few things on the menu and its all shrimp. It was SO good!! But the price wasn't, for my plate of 5 shrimp is was 14euros (21 dollars). Eek. Fortunately all the other food we ate this weekend was really reasonably priced and just as delicious.

One great thing to enjoy in Madrid is the architecture...

I'll have to let you in on my favorite place to go in Madrid in my next post... :)

Doors

Going along with those old fashioned shutters, I love the doors on the houses in Boulogne.

A day in the life of an English assistant in France

Today was supposed to be my busy day, with 6 classes. Happily last night I got an email saying I wasn't needed at 8 am. So my day began at 9 am where I take just a few students from a brilliant euro class. These students choose to take an extra hour of English and are I believe the friendliest group of kids you could come across. Most of the kids consider it a dream to visit America and they all seem to have an intellectual curiosity and sense of humor, making it my favorite hour of the week. The teacher was concerned that one of the girls wouldn't speak up, but I decided to play a game, Alibi, where everyone has to speak English so it worked out easily. I somehow got last place. We also talked about their future plans, so I may have lost my Alibi game to a future journalist, editor, and diplomat.

The next two hours turned into just an hour of work, where I listened to students (who were just a couple years younger than me) talk about online shopping for groceries. Turns out everyone would prefer to shop in the supermarket. The main reason? They all said, you don't meet people if you shop online. In another class last week I learned about why Walmart and similar large stores wouldn't work in France while they'd work in neighboring countries like, say, Germany- "we care about what we eat."

My last two classes were also cancelled as the kids are on work placements, so my busy day quickly turned into a pretty relaxing one. This gave me a chance to make my almost daily trip to the market- no need to downsize on trips to the market when its just a matter of walking there, and I have plenty of time for that. At last, I picked up something that will work for hanging my Perpetual Paris calendar!! The nails and thumbtacks didn't work, but these little coat or towel hangers are perfect for the job. Thrilled to have the new addition to my little chambre.

France Part II

Global warming isn't in effect in Boulogne Sur Mer, where they say it rains all winter and rarely snows. It was odd enough that it snowed the day I left for my very merry Christmas in Cincinnati, but there was snow on the ground when I got back yesterday and started up again this afternoon. It is serious enough that staff members from La Vie Scolaire went to the classes this afternoon to say if you need to leave you can, because of the snow! At first this seemed funny to me, because it's not like it's a blizzard, but apparently the trains have issues or get shut down in the snow and lots of students use them to get to Boulogne for school. As it turns out, all the students needed to leave.

Its been a nice two days back in France so far. We assistants determined within the first kiss on the cheek from a teacher we don't know very well that the New Year must be highly regarded here... each and every teacher says Bonne Annee (Happy New Year) or Meilleur Voeux (Best wishes) along with their entry Bonjours now, and kiss all the other teachers and assistants on the cheek twice, just for the new year... So, bonne annee! Bisou bisou.