Adventures Abroad

It’s been one of those weeks (well, week-and-a-halves to be precise). The internet at the house conveniently stopped working for three days in the middle of last week and thus I was unable to post all of the exciting news that has been happening recently in France. Not that much of it has really been that exciting, but the lack of internet does explain why I am posting two entries so closely together.

This week-and-a-half of misfires all started on Monday evening. Monday sounded like a good day of the week to have Mexican food, and so I decided to try my hand at fish tacos. “What a good idea,” I thought to myself during one of those rare moments when I am actually proud of my ability to cook. Ha. What a joke. By the end of the night, “What a bad idea,” is the mantra that was running circles in my head. Being the naïve, debutant chef that I am, I was unaware that salted cod needs to be de-salted for at least 24 hours before it can be eaten because otherwise it is “inedible due to the high levels of salt that the fish absorbs.” Two things: 1) Why would you salt a fish to the point of rendering it inedible? 2) “High-levels” is the grossest understatement I have ever seen on paper. The finished product was beautiful upon first glance but I was literally dehydrated to the point of having a skull splitting headache an hour after ingesting a single bite. Kévin respectfully tried to continue his portion while I re-heated a pizza but I threw away the rest of the fish before he could finish because I was afraid he would be sick. As it turns out, we were both sick afterward with stabbing stomach pains and terrible headaches. If you can imagine swallowing three tablespoons of salt in one go, that would be the equivalent of this cod. It was perhaps the worst thing I have ever tasted.

Following this disastrous salty cod experience, I was determined to succeed at making edible fish tacos with edible fish on Wednesday night. The finished product was, again, beautiful, but this time when I went in for my first bite, all I could taste was disappointment. I mean this quite literally because the cod itself had absolutely…no…flavor. I give up at making fish tacos. This is the first time that I have failed so completely at making any sort of food and I finished the meal in tears with Kévin half-trying to comfort me and half-trying not to laugh at me because I was crying about fish.

And now to jump back to Tuesday. Tuesday morning I wanted to call the Rectorat de Nantes so that I could ask about prolonging my contract for another year of teaching. During our orientation in October, I was assured that it would be very easy to extend my contract. This was certainly a lie considering their current track record with all things professed to be easy which are actually very difficult. However, I would have somehow survived the tedious process and had my teaching contract in hand at the end of the day – that is, if the CIEP hadn’t decided for some mysterious reason that only German assistants would be allowed to teach in France for two consecutive years. Why only the Germans you ask? I was curious as well, but nobody could seem to give me a satisfactory response. It was, however made very clear that all other assistants would NOT be receiving extensions for next year. I received this news as gracefully as I could over the phone, but as soon as I hung up it was as if a violent storm had descended upon the living room. After my initial phase of shouting and cursing at all of the objects in sight (I was home alone), I promptly melted into a pool of tears on the carpet, plotting my revenge on the universe and all those who had conspired to change my plans for the future so thoroughly. The eye of the storm arrived next and I was able to – with a superhuman amount of calm – research all other options for staying in France for another year. Barring living as an au pair however, it is next to impossible for US citizens to obtain work visas in France. In order for a French employer to hire you, you must prove that you are better qualified than anyone in the European Union, seeing as these citizens do not need special work permits to hold jobs in other EU countries. I have a high esteem of my abilities, but it would be difficult nonetheless to prove that I speak English better than anyone in the United Kingdom. The eye of the storm passed just when Kévin came home and I was once again reduced to tears as I recounted the rather short series of events that so completely upended all of our plans for next year. So now the huge, unanswered question is, what am I going to do next year? On that count, I am rather stumped. Graduate school may be looming closer than I had anticipated…

In other (lackluster) news, my excursions in France have been spectacularly uneventful for some time now. Excepting a daytime trip to Pornic, my life is so uninteresting as to be comical. Last Tuesday, the history teacher that drives me to work, Fabien, was at a meeting in Nantes and thus couldn’t bring me to Collège Soljenitsyne. You might be thinking, “Public transportation is great in France. Why didn’t you take the bus?” Well, public transportation in France is great as long as you don’t live in the middle-of-nowhere Vendée. There are two buses that pass between Challans and Aizenay in the morning – one at 6:40am and one at 10:00am. Seeing as I had class from 8:30am to 10:30am, Kévin was nice enough to drive me in at 7:30 (which was not on his way to work at all). While I successfully avoided taking the 6:40am bus in the morning, this did not change the fact that the only bus between Aizenay and Challans leaves the town center at 5:40pm. This not-so-minor problem left me to wander the rural streets of Aizenay for seven hours after class while I waited for a bus. I asked one of the teachers on my way out what there was to see in Aizenay at which point she laughed and said, “absolutely nothing.” So, with “absolutely nothing” in store for me, I set out on a brave new adventure.

Carine was only half-right. There wasn’t much to see in Aizenay. In a style that closely resembles Challans, Aizenay is shockingly industrialized for a town of 7,000. I passed endless warehouses and construction companies before calling it quits at the Hyper-U at the town limits. Yes, I walked the entire length of Aizenay only to end up in a super market for lunch. Luckily, I was determined to find some green plot of land on which to picnic and upon close inspection of all road signs leading back to the collège, I found a park. And so, I ate my sandwich alone in a park in sub-zero weather in the middle-of-nowhere Vendée. On my way out, I noticed a llama and goat that perhaps feature in some sort of petting zoo during the summer months and are left to wander a fenced section of the park during the rest of the year. Seeing as I had just eaten alone, I decided to have a conversation with them before leaving. A monologue would probably be a more apt description, although the goat did bleat in acknowledgement when I told it what I had for lunch and asked if the grass was good this time of year. Naturally, the minute I turned to go I started cracking up due to the absurdity of the situation. I have now befriended a goat and a llama but my circle of friends is severely lacking in humans. Next goal: have a conversation with something that actually talks back.

Strangely, it is often the comical parts of life (i.e. talking to a llama) that help us realize the beautiful parts of life. Over the weekend, Kévin and I went on our second outing to Pornic, this time to admire the medieval port town by day. While we did not meet anyone new, an afternoon of sunlight and stunning ocean views helped to reacquaint us with nature at its finest. After two months, the pouring rain is beginning to relent and long forgotten images of sunshine are resurfacing in my memory. Next week marks the beginning of “winter” vacation and it promises to be fourteen days of beautiful weather and unparalleled scenery. It would seem that adventure is heading back my way. On to Paris, on to Scotland, and on to my next excursions…

Over the past two weeks I was reintroduced to the art of slow, steady breathing. Breathing, it would seem, is a rather important function that I quite conveniently forgot during the chaos that was the preceding three weeks. Consequently, I found myself plunged into a sort of waking apnea in which all the proper mechanisms for normal breathing were utterly lost on me. When I took my first conscious, deep, rejuvenating breath on Monday morning therefore, I was surprised at the amount of good it did me. I am happy to report that the horrible sequence of nightmares concerning the MGEN, the OFII, and my new school has at last subsided, which means that the immediate future promises less paperwork, more breathing, and more… well, lesson plans if truth be told.

The foreboding cloud of uncertainty that dogged my every step the last two weeks of classes has finally dissipated. After writing an email to the vice principal explaining how I thought I was poorly treated during our first meeting, I received an extremely compassionate response assuring me that, yes, miscommunication was at fault and that things would certainly go more smoothly in the future. This lifted an enormous burden from my shoulders. The thing that was somehow so mysteriously “my fault” suddenly became no one’s fault. While I do not profess to be skilled in the art of conflict resolution, it seems that honest communication is the best remedy for a superbly marred conversation. To date, my theory has served me well.

I suppose that any proper discussion of my new job in Aizenay should include a description of what it is I actually do. Like my previous work in Challans, my time at Collège Soljenitsyne generally consists of preparing a 25 minute lesson plan that I repeat with both halves of the class. While it is nice to have only twelve students at a time, this system of splitting the class in two also means that I have to repeat the same lesson four times in a row if ever I have back-to-back classes. Other that the broken-record effect that this creates, I quite enjoy my small class sizes.

And now to discuss the students. When I first arrived in Aizenay, I was impressed by the level of maturity that the pupils seemed to possess. They are quiet, well-behaved, and respectful in a way that my students in Challans never quite mastered. During my first week of classes, their demure attitude was refreshing because it meant that I was forced to do less shouting. However, now that I am in my fifth week of teaching, I am coming to find that silence is not always the best company. My oldest students are the worst. I think that their timidity must be due to some sort of weird classroom chemistry, because all of the teachers that have these pupils say they are almost frustratingly silent. Like, so silent that they cannot even collectively respond to a yes or no question. They literally stumble over each other in their haste not to be heard. If this sounds a little backwards, it is. When I ask a question, my students will politely tell me that, “No, I don’t want to answer but Thomas does”, at which point Thomas will tell me, “No, I think that Ludivine was about to raise her hand”, at which point Ludivine will tell me, “No, I’m almost sure that Lucie was about to say something.” It’s really quite aggravating. The phenomenon is a strange one but it has forced me to set a new goal for myself: puzzle through the mystery of the silent 3èmes and make them more responsive. It promises to be a lot of work.

And now for a few more fun tidbits from the past week. We were served alcohol in the staffroom twice this week, once to celebrate the birth of a granddaughter to the principal and once as a goodbye gesture for a teacher who will be traveling around Europe by bike for the next six months. I am learning a lot during my time as an assistant, but when the first bottle of champagne made its appearance on Monday morning (yes, Monday morning) it still came as quite a shock to me. We’re allowed to have champagne during recess? Hard apple cider over lunch? I don’t know what higher entities condone the consumption of aperitif in the staffroom, but I’m coming to realize that everything worthy of celebration is celebrated in style here at Collège Soljenitsyne.

Maybe this happens in staffrooms all over the world and I am just now finding out about it. Sometimes I almost feel like a spy that is only pretending to be an assistant so that I can gather juicy tidbits about what really happens in the lives of teachers. Perhaps I’ll write a book, to be entitled “The Other Lives of Teachers” and featuring such exciting information as the reading of confiscated love letters during breaks in the staffroom. “It took me one second to fall in love with you, but it will take an eternity for me to forget you.” This really did happen this week and the poor student who wrote the letter had the terrible misfortune of being caught pouring her heart out in a note rather than completing her homework on Louis XIV. A shame, because her writing was actually quite good…

Aside from the new discoveries I made in the staffroom this week, my adventures in France have been less than exciting recently. Unless, of course, you count scanning ads for houses and finding a castle for rent as exciting. Which, come to think of it, I do. In fact, this may have been the most excellent discovery I’ve made since my first visit to the Colosseum. Upon closer inspection of the ad, Kévin and I found that the rent was rather cheap – only 1,800 euro per month for a three-bedroom, two-bathroom, fully-equipped section of the west wing, the uppermost level of which is located in a tower. Imagine having a tower as your balcony. Unreal. After our discovery of such an add, we of course had to go see this château for ourselves. The gates had long been closed at 8:00 pm, but we nonetheless took a tour of the grounds and imagined what it would be like to sign a lease agreement for a castle. Said castle is located in a pretty little port town just to the north of us, called Pornic. I’m considering making it my summer abode, funds permitting.

Despite the unreal amounts of rain that have been falling over the past few weeks, Kévin and I have still managed to make the best out of our little corner of France. The weekend after our excursion to Pornic, we decided to venture south (only slightly south) to the tourist hub of les Sables d’Olonne. As we quickly found out, the term “hub” can only be appropriately applied during the summer months. The city is smaller than Challans, with only 14,000 permanent citizens, but the housing is organized to accommodate at least 40,000. The natural result of this setup is that les Sables d’Olonne more closely resembles a post-apocalyptic ghost town than a flourishing tourist destination from November to May. The empty high rise buildings that line the ocean front lose any charm that they may have had to begin with (which isn’t much, in my opinion) and instead give the impression of large skeletal monsters long forgotten and left to crumble, one by one, onto the desolate depths of the ocean. Luckily, Kévin and I were able to divert our attention from this rather haunting scene by taking an ocean-side path away from the city and off toward an ancient church and the lighthouses on the cliffs. This view was far more agreeable than that of the abandoned buildings, and we spent the better part of three hours exploring tide pools, the disused monastery on the hill, and the various rocky outcroppings along the coast. After three hours spent without seeing another living being, and with only the sound of the howling wind and crashing waves for company, we decided to return to the city center for food and human interaction. The latter of these two was difficult to find. We passed a dozen shops that were closed before settling on an Italian restaurant, seemingly one of the only open businesses on the waterfront. Our decision ended up being well worth it, and we were greeted by a very friendly host who made the best panna cotta I have ever tasted…

And now, back to reality. While reflecting on my recent weekend excursions is a welcome break from both the rain and lesson plans, it unfortunately does not put time on pause. I’ve got bingo to organize, a pet test to prepare, and a film to critique. Tune in for more adventures soon. A bientôt.

I hate to start this entry with the title of a book series by « Lemony Snicket » but regrettably there is no other description that so aptly fits recent circumstances in France. What with the ongoing game of hurry up and wait that I’ve been playing with the French government since October, my fresh change of schools, and the endless meetings and appointments that I’ve been running to since the end of vacation, “unfortunate” is indeed the only word that seems to encapsulate the moment. From here on out, I will italicize everything having to do with unfortunate. (As a quick side-note, the pictures in this entry have nothing to do with the content, but are rather there for simple viewing pleasure…)

May I just take the opportunity to announce that dealing with paperwork in France is complete rubbish. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it needs to be reiterated – rubbish. After four months of anticipation, I am still awaiting my French social security card that will allow me to see a doctor and get discounted medicine should the need arise. With the way things are headed now, I expect to receive it somewhere around my thirty-ninth birthday. Unfortunately, my visa will no longer be valid at this point, so maybe I should just tell the authorities not to worry about it. Not that they were ever worried to begin with – this might just encourage them to continue doing whatever they were so frantically not doing for the last four months.

This new wave of frustration toward the French paperwork lag has been perfectly (and not surprisingly) timed with the resurgence of appointments that I’ve had to attend since my return to Challans. Like the MGEN, (social security/ insurance entity) the OFII (Office Français de l’Immigration et de l’Intégration) has been processing my paperwork since October. After a similar four-month delay, I got word at the beginning of January that they were ready to receive me for my obligatory medical examination. The appointment (of course) was scheduled for the Friday afternoon of my last day of classes in Challans. Seeing as I cannot legally stay in France without this appointment, I was forced to cancel my last two classes, to my great disappointment and that of my students. Luckily, the appointment itself passed very quickly and I was even received a whole hour-and-a-half before my scheduled time. (Because of the train timetable, I got there two hours early.) I was delighted when I walked out two hours later, right when my scheduled appointment would normally have been starting. The good news is, my x-ray came up negative for tuberculosis and I can thus truly begin living my life as a temporary citizen. So, success number one in this paperwork marathon – I now have the stamp accompanying my visa that authorizes me to leave the Schengen zone and travel to the exotic ends of the earth (like the United Kingdom and other such non-European Union countries.)

My optimism after my OFII appointment was, unfortunately, short-lived. Not five days later, I found myself in the MGEN office in La Roche Sur Yon, asking for the ten-thousandth time why my folder hadn’t been processed yet. Apparently the apostille, a stamp certifying the authenticity of a document, was missing from my birth certificate when I first submitted my paperwork. Instead of explaining directly what this was however, I received no less than four cryptic messages telling me that my document could not be completed because of certain missing elements. Once I finally figured out what these “certain missing elements” were, I had to call in a favor to the US so that the authorities in Colorado could send my birth certificate (with the apostille) to France. *I didn’t really call in a favor. My mom is just really helpful.

Anyways, after these shenanigans, I was finally assured that yes, really, my paperwork would be correctly processed this time. This verbal confirmation means little to me, however, and does not change the fact that an original copy of my birth certificate is floating around in some unnamed folder somewhere. When the woman asked me why I would be so silly as to give an original copy of my birth certificate to the MGEN, all I could do was stare blankly… When I came for my first appointment with them in October, she was the very one that convinced me it was necessary to give them the original copy of my birth certificate. And no, I didn’t misunderstand her then, because she explained that the only way to skip through the proper hoops without delay was to submit original documents. This leaves two possibilities: a) she doesn’t totally understand her job, or b) she doesn’t skip very well.

And now to rewind. If you like the whiny, sardonic tone of this entry, don’t worry, I will continue shortly. If you don’t like the bitter tenor of this entry however, you will be relieved to hear that that last three weeks haven’t been all bad. Indeed, there were teary goodbyes in the middle. The week after vacation marked my last week teaching in Challans. I didn’t realize how attached I’d become to the students or the teachers until it was time for me to leave. My last week of lessons was a smashing success (a US trivia game) which made it all the more difficult to say goodbye. The English teachers hosted a farewell recess for me and we all met up to eat cookies and discuss my time in Challans for the brief 15 minutes that fit into everyone’s schedule. The six of them signed a goodbye card, and then as a parting gift, Véronique gave me a comic book that parodies the busy lives of teachers. It was a touching gesture and I was certainly sad to leave when the bell rang. We all promised to keep in touch and, seeing as I will still be living in Challans, I am sure to see them again.

Fast-forward to real time. I’ve now been teaching at my new post in Aizenay for two weeks. And what a two weeks they have been. To give a little bit of the history regarding my prior interactions with Aizenay, the only email I have ever received from them read something along the lines of, “Ask the teachers in Challans.” Really good advice, considering that my primary school and primary contact is supposed to be the middle school in Aizenay. So, this sets the scene for the level of organization that greeted my arrival. But please, read on…

Two weeks before Christmas Break, I sent an email to the principal of the school requesting to set up a meeting so that we could decide on my schedule before the holidays. I never received a response. Being the responsible adult that I am, I decided that I would call the school the Monday after vacation if I still hadn’t gotten in contact with the appropriate people. The vice principal in Aizenay beat me to the punch however, and called Challans to ask why I was not at the meeting they had set up for me on Monday morning. Ummmm…. Finding out that I was late to my own meeting came as a surprise to me – I never received word that there even was a meeting. This minor misunderstanding was luckily patched up when I agreed to reschedule for Thursday. Apparently, there was a problem with the email address they had been sending messages to. I am convinced it was a typo because I have had absolutely no issues with my emails to date. (The part where this becomes my fault is really exciting! But I’m not there yet…) Anyways, the teachers in Aizenay were all incredibly nice, very welcoming, and enthusiastic about working with me. The principal and all the other administrative figures were equally as charming and helpful. So, apart from the slight mix-up at the beginning, it seemed that my first week in Aizenay was going to run very smoothly.

That was until I got sick on Wednesday morning. My first two days of classes were great, but after a night of nausea and a morning spent fainting intermittently, I decided to stay home on Wednesday. This posed absolutely no problems at the time and I warned all proper authorities of my absence as far in advance as was conceivable, which, unfortunately, was two hours before the start of classes. I have no lessons on Thursday and with the centimeter of snow that fell on Friday morning, classes were canceled on Friday as well. Barring the rather comical fact that school was cancelled for a couple milimeters of snow, that still makes two absences within my first week of teaching. Did I mention that I am prone to migraines? I am prone to migraines. This minor detail should be all but insignificant, except for the fact that I succeeded in having two rather stellar migraines – one on Friday morning (no problem because of the school cancellation) and another the following Wednesday morning (more of a problem because of my absence the Wednesday before). I, again, did everything I could to warn the necessary teachers, the principal, and the really nice history professor that drives me to work. When it seemed like I had successfully done my duty, I thankfully crawled off to be sick for four hours with a skull-splitting headache. Unbeknownst to me, there was some serious miscommunication at work.

And now for the exciting crescendo to top this series of unfortunate events! Sooooooo….. I will try to keep this short because the massive proportions that this little incident took on were staggering. In a nutshell, I arrived on Friday morning to my classes only to be called in to talk to the vice principal. She was the only person that I had not met on my prior visit to Aizenay, and, unfortunately, our first conversation coincided neatly with my rather untimely absences. During the course of our short meeting, it was revealed that I was assumed to be irresponsible, unmotivated, lazy, and deceitful. This staggering list of adjectives came as quite a shock. I am irresponsible because I never took the initiative to contact Aizenay and thus missed our first meeting (I did contact Aizenay. Several times. It was me who never received a response). I am unmotivated because I seem to take my job as assistant teacher for granted, which can be proven by my two unlikely absences (As someone who wants to eventually be a teacher, I find this one particularly unfair). I am lazy because I never took the time to hunt down the vice principal to introduce myself. (I tried. She was either in meetings or not at school every day that I went to look for her.) Lastly, I am deceitful because I decided not to come to school two Wednesdays in a row – which seems suspiciously like an excuse to prolong my weekend. The fact that I called the school last-minute for both absences is further proof of my irresponsible, unmotivated, lazy, and deceitful nature. A tautological argument, but that’s beside the point… The list of accusations left me dumbfounded. I quickly and rather clumsily tried to explain that unfortunately I never received any emails from the school, unfortunately she was never there when I came to look for her, and that unfortunately I get migraines that I unfortunately cannot predict and whose trigger I unfortunately do not know. It sounded like garble even to my own ears, but I never expected to meet the vice principal in such a situation, where I would immediately be forced to defend every one of my actions since my arrival. And so, here I am, embroiled in a scandalous intrigue whose origins I am still having a hard time pinpointing. All I know is, it’s my fault. I don’t even know what the “it” is, but I’ve been made aware that it’s my fault all the same. Right?

Are you confused? Me too.

And now, to finish this entry as gracefully as I can, I will say that I foresee better communication and reconciliation in the near future. At least, that is what I hope the coming week will bring. I’ve successfully and very correctly used some form of the word “unfortunate” thirteen times. Whew. And so ends this series of unfortunate events. (Fourteen.) Until next time…

Back to school. After over a month of silence, my brain is slowly coming out of hibernation. Since this month included several big changes (with schools, vacations, etc.) I have decided to break it into two parts. Happy reading… it is going to be a long one.

Part One: The Part before Christmas Break

During my final week before vacation, the weather gods had a hearty laugh. After my last entry spent musing over the unseasonably warm weather in Challans, the clouds finally decided to weep freezing cold rain all over the Vendee. It came down in steady sheets for five days, with barely a moments rest. When the rain did stop cascading and slowed to a torrential downpour, that is when the wind decided to pick up. It was almost as if an inconsolable child had come to drench all of Challans with its wracking sobs and blustering hiccups. It seemed that the wet was indeed coming from everywhere. It was in the ground, in the air, and dumping from the sky as well. By the end of the week I was gloomily re-writing verses of Bing Crosby’s Christmas classic to the refrain of “dreaming of a wet Christmas”.

The sudden arrival of the wet, winter weather was not the only strange thing to happen this week. December 17th marked the first day of the last week of classes before Christmas which, normally, should have been great news. However, it was a long, tedious start to a tedious week and I felt as though there was a cloud hanging heavy above my head that successfully muddled all thought. Upon reflection, I wouldn’t at all be surprised if this was in fact the case. Perhaps some of this hazy confusion had to do with the onset of fever and chills that greeted me the Tuesday before. Another part of it was certainly the fact that my schedule changed drastically the week before vacation. Most of my students were en stage, meaning that they were shadowing various business owners all over the Vendee during normal school hours. With these students gone, I had the opportunity to work with some of the younger English learners. They were eager and enthusiastic, but the change to my schedule threw me off and had me repeating myself or forgetting sections of my lesson for the entire week. When the bell rang on Friday afternoon to signal the start of the Christmas holidays, I said a silent thanks to whatever French entities allow teachers so much paid vacation. Unlike my brief stint of teaching before the Toussaint holiday, this time I felt like I really deserved the two weeks.

Part Two: The Part where I am on Christmas Vacation

Christmas break was wonderful. Kévin and I planned to leave at 9:30am on Saturday morning to make the nine hour drive to his family’s house in eastern France. Naturally, we left at 11:30am. The drive was altogether unremarkable, though a painfully long nine hours. We passed the time trying to find words starting with each letter of the alphabet on billboards, which took an incredible two hours. (The letters W and X are surprisingly scarce in the French language.) Since I still have not perfected the art of driving a manual transmission, I was left to contemplate the countryside while Kévin drove the entire way.

When we finally arrived at his family’s house, dinner had already been served so we ate re-heated leftovers and told his parents about the trip. Not an hour later, four of Kévin’s best friends came over to welcome him home. After four months of seeing absolutely no one between the ages of 18 and 25, it was nice to interact with people our own age. And slightly overwhelming for me. With Kévin, his family of six, and four of his friends, our homecoming was a loud and busy affair. Seb, Lindsay, Damien, and Francis stayed until 2:30am before calling it a night, at which point Kévin declared that it was time to go out and see more of his friends. Soooooo…. I agreed to tag along. We arrived at “La Ferme” at 3:00am. To explain, “La Ferme” is the nickname for a farmhouse owned by one of Kévin’s friends, Justine. Since no one lives there permanently, it is the choice location to host soirées for all of her friends. Seeing as the world did not end on December 21st as predicted, the theme of the night was zombie apocalypse. As fate would have it, Kévin parked his car in a field of mud only to get completely stuck. (I’ll explain what fate has to do with this in a minute.) Playing my part as the dutiful and ever-so-helpful copilot, I got out to push the car onto higher ground. For about three seconds it looked like it would work – that is until my boots got stuck, he successfully reversed, and I fell flat on my face into a puddle of uprooted grass and mud. I was cracking up and spitting out mud when Kévin got out of the car to see if I was alright. Or at least, I thought he was checking to see if I was alright, until his first response was, “Wow, tu n’es pas très maligne toi”, the rough translation of which is, “wow, you’re not very clever.” Thanks a lot. Sooooo, as I was saying – as fate would have it, I looked every part the zombie for the party, though my look was trending slightly more toward Gloppy the Molasses Monster. (For those of you who never played Candyland, this reference will be lost on you.) Anyways, to speed up to the conclusion of this night, I met approximately fifty more of Kévin’s friends and acquaintances covered head to toe in mud and debris. The logical aftermath of the outing was that I got sick and was in bed for the following three days. I would not recommend standing outside for three hours in the middle of the night drenched in mud to anyone…

And on to the holiday part of the holidays. Christmas was a magical occasion, even though my family was glaringly absent for the first time ever. We had our Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve, which is a tradition that is unfamiliar to me. And what a French affair it was. As an appetizer, we had mixed nuts and wine followed by mushrooms in cream. The main course consisted of frog legs in cream and frog legs in butter with herbs, with a different selection of wine. There were also mini-waffles in the shape of window panes to complete the meal. Dessert was a homemade “galette des rois”. To explain this last item, a galette des rois is a pastry like dessert in the shape of a pie in which a fève (ceramic trinket) is hidden. Whoever gets the piece with the fève in it is named king for the night and must wear a paper crown.

After eating more than our fill, Kévin, his parents, his two sisters, his sister’s boyfriend, his two brothers and I all squeezed into the living room to watch old family videos. And this is where we ended the night, completely satisfied and already anticipating an early wake-up call for Christmas morning. Before heading to bed, we all made sure to place a slipper under the Christmas tree, which is the French equivalent of hanging stockings on the fireplace. And so goes my introduction to a true French Noël.

Christmas itself passed in somewhat of a blur. Everyone got up to open presents at about 9:30am (much different than my accustomed 5:00am Christmas wake-up call in the US). Since there were nine people there, opening presents was somewhat of a mad dash and the paper tearing frenzy was finished in a remarkable 15 minutes. Breakfast followed shortly thereafter, and a heavy dose of homesickness along with it. Everyone was preoccupied with new toys and games for the rest of the morning and I, who was feeling lonely and sad, curled up on the couch and slept fitfully for several hours. Luckily, my homesickness faded later in the afternoon when I was able to Skype with my family and open presents with them via webcam. It was great to see them and certainly put the completing touch on a wonderful Christmas.

And now, to recap the following few days in less than eight pages, I will try to mention only the highlights:

• Choosing wine for New Year’s Eve: Because Christmas is followed so closely by New Year’s, Kévin and his friends wasted no time in making preparations. On the 26th, we met up with eight of Kévin’s friends to do a wine tasting. As someone who is enthralled by all things typically French, I was delighted to spend an afternoon perusing cellars and making wine selections. We settled on 12 bottles of white wine and 3 bottles of crémant, hoping it would be sufficient for our predicted party of twenty for New Year’s. Crémant is champagne, though, because of France’s appellation controls, it is not allowed to have that label unless it is actually from Champagne. Just a fun fact.

• Soldes: In France, the soldes (sales) are a big deal. Unlike American retail stores where there is often a discount section, everything in France goes on sale at the same time. The catch is that this only happens twice a year. Sooooo, from early January to mid-February, most stores are completely bombarded by eager shoppers. To celebrate our wine tasting success that I mentioned earlier, the girl contingent of our party of ten decided to go shopping with the hopes that we would find some early sale items. Shopping in France with a group of French girls was slightly surreal for me, and all the more so when I thought of the comical stereotype we were playing out – the girls spent the afternoon shopping while the boys stayed at the apartment to watch soccer and drink beer. What a quintessentially (gendered) French outing.

• New Year’s Eve: This year marked the first time in a very long time that I did anything interesting for New Year’s. “Interesting” of course entails actually staying up until midnight and interacting with other human beings. Which I did. Hoorah. In total, we ended up with a party of seventeen people, each assigned to bring a different course for the New Year’s dinner. The concept of a “New Year’s dinner” was strange to me, but I dutifully helped Kévin select the cheese that we would bring for the occasion. I was struck, not for the first time, at the laid-back atmosphere that surrounds everything “food” in the French culture. Kévin and I were the last to arrive at 9:00pm, but luckily for us the aperitif lasted until 11:00pm. Dinner went on for another hour afterward and we were all so absorbed in the food that we missed the countdown to New Year’s. So, with two minutes delay, we did our own countdown at 12:02, ringing in 2013 in true French style. We broke out kazoos, confetti, and champagne to celebrate, as well as several sarbacane. From what I can gather, a sarbacane is like the commercialized version of the spit-wad where everyone is given a cardboard straw and several colorful balls made of paper mâché to spit at one another. Curious. Anyways, after our general celebration of the New Year, we jumped back into eating – finishing with the cheese course, dessert, and coffee/tea at approximately 1:00 am. From there, the revelry continued for another seven hours with dancing, karaoke, and story-telling until we all made our way to bed at 8:00 am. I’d say that counts as an interesting New Year’s.

After the marathon that was Christmas and New Year’s, Kévin and I kept a pretty low profile for the rest of the vacation. I contented myself with completing a new winter coat I had started sewing, playing board games with Kévin’s family, going on a short hike, and making wood fired pizzas in the stove in the veranda. It truly was a perfect vacation. Neither Kévin nor I was very enthused with the prospect of heading back to work, but after two false starts, we finally motivated to make the trek back to Challans and our unheated, silent house… And now, since this entry has gone on for far too long, I will cut it short here and save my adventures in Challans for another day.

As winter approaches and the world slows down around me, I inevitably find myself slowing too. Consequently, my writing becomes more infrequent and all of life’s little unexpected hiccups seem to be going dormant along with the flora and fauna of Challans. Perhaps this is what you call routine. Unfortunately, it is these unexpected hiccups that make for the most unusual adventures and I’m afraid to report that the last two weeks have been distinctly devoid of all things new and exciting.

The weather in Challans has grown decidedly colder in the last few weeks. The entrance gate to the house has frozen shut twice now and I can’t say that I relish standing outside in the cold trying to force it open on my way to school. This sort of coastal winter is not something that I am used to. The weather may be getting colder and I may wake up to a few millimeters of frost on the ground every once in a while, but the sky remains sunny and the cloying humidity gives everything a wet sort of shine. When I was living in Tacoma, the weather gods at least had the good grace to shower us with droves of icy rain (and occasionally snow) to remind us that winter had truly come. Here, I feel as if I am living in some sort of eternally sunny microclimate that does not respect the traditional rules of seasonal change.

The biggest mystery to me is how a place like Challans can enjoy so much sunlight and still be so wet. It is the type of wet that comes seeping up from the ground and hangs heavy in the air instead of dumping from the sky. When I told my students that we sometimes get as much as three feet of snow in one storm in Colorado, they were shocked beyond belief. They started laughing in an I-don’t-believe-you sort of way when I told them that school does not get cancelled for less than eighteen inches of snow. They reported that one centimeter in Challans would be enough to close the schools for two days. Alas, it does not look as though I will be enjoying a white Christmas this year…

I will admit that the sunlight has its advantages however. When I finally motivated myself out of my pajamas and struck out for a hike last weekend, I was fortunate to be accompanied by blue skies. To my delight, I discovered many hidden treasures along the way, which was more than a little satisfying considering that documenting Challan’s beauty has been one of my ongoing projects.

I strolled across marshes and over streams, wandering through territory that was comprised of an interesting mix of cobbled pedestrian paths, hiking trails, and unused dirt roads. I must confess that I have never been on a hike quite like it. It was much more like a tour of the outskirts of Challans than a proper hike in the middle of nowhere. I am not complaining though. Aside from the occasional sounds of dogs baying and guns firing (I realized belatedly that it’s bird hunting season) the outing was perfect. I made it home without incident, sporting a brand new pair of quarter-sized blisters on my heels. After eight miles of hiking on mostly paved roads, my feet took quite a beating. However, it was a small price to pay for the satisfaction of hiking through the scenic environs of Challans.

I mentioned in my last post that one of my goals in the coming weeks was to meet new people. Taking eight-mile hikes by myself is, admittedly, not the best method for making lasting friendships. However, I was pleasantly surprised last weekend when I was invited to a dinner with all of the English teachers from Collège Milcendeau. Kévin and I were assigned the aperitif and made it to Véronique’s house bearing a plate of ham roll-ups and biscuits. We began the evening with an hour or so of chatting during which we ate hors d‘oeuvres, drank champagne, and gossiped about various dramas at the school. When all seven of the professors had arrived , we moved conversation into the dining room for a traditional French raclette. A raclette is a dinner of various dried meats (ham, sausage, etc.), potatoes, and melted cheese. Each person has a small rectangular dish into which they place their choice of cheese before putting it in a heating apparatus in the middle of the table. This was my second raclette and I must say that it makes for a very lively meal.

We each had a turn frying quail eggs to go along with the raclette which proved to be much more difficult than any of us anticipated, as the shells were incredibly thick. Our party of eight eventually turned to a party of eleven when Veronique’s family came to join us. The meal was finished with an English Christmas pudding (my first) that was surprisingly good. I had only ever heard negative things about Christmas pudding from people in the US, so I was rather happy to discover that the genuine artifact is quite delicious. In typical French style, the meal finished around 1:00am and by that time we were all ready to head home. Relating back to my mission of meeting new people, I thought that this excursion fell neatly in place. I may not have met anyone new, but I certainly enjoyed getting to know the teachers that I work with a little better.

And on to the holidays… I will be spending my first Christmas away from family this year, a prospect that holds little joy for me. However, to take my mind off of the oh-so-important element of family, I decided to devote myself fully to recreating a genuine Christmas here in France. On December 1st, I began listening to all of the Christmas music that I could get my hands on. Last week I started buying Christmas decorations. Yesterday, I bought a Christmas tree and a blender so that I could start making holiday soups (like butternut squash, miam). On another note, the grocery store seriously redeemed itself on Friday for the glaring lack of yams and cranberries during Thanksgiving.

For some unknown reason, both of the aforementioned items mysteriously appeared in the fruit and vegetable section as I was hunting for walnuts. I was both incensed and overjoyed – a tricky mix of emotions – but my lingering frustration from Thanksgiving eventually gave way to excitement at the prospect of an early Christmas dinner with honeyed yams and cranberry sauce. And now, I think I will cut this entry here so that I can enjoy and overdue screening of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”.

For someone who never EVER expected to write a blog, I am coming to find that I rather enjoy chronicling my weekly adventures in France and sending them out into cyberspace. I do not presume that all of what I have to say is vastly important or even interesting – on the contrary, much of it is quite banal. However, there is something about writing that I consider deeply therapeutic. On the days that I sit down to reflect on my week and give it written form, I find myself transformed. Perhaps part of this transformation has to do with the fact that I take comfort in routine and a small amount of self-discipline. Perhaps another part of me misses exercising my brain at a level that exceeds eighth grade education. Perhaps some strange and inhuman piece of me misses the satisfaction of doing homework now that I have no professors to guide me. In any case, blogging has provided a surprisingly sweet outlet for organizing my thoughts on a weekly basis. But this blog is not about the art of blogging, this blog is about…

Adventure. This is a word that I use frequently in my entries, I know. But, as I cannot find an adequate synonym, the word shall stand. This week’s adventures were of a subtler kind, the kind that masterfully disguise themselves amongst the hustle and bustle of everyday life. I dreamt of hurricanes and earthquakes on Sunday night, never expecting that my students would somehow manifest their unpredictable tempers on Monday morning. But so it was, six hours of hurricanes and earthquakes accompanied by crying, shouting, and stomping as I have never experienced it before. I think that someone must have forgotten to tell me that it was national teen-crisis day. Ironically enough, I got online later only to discover that it was International Children’s Day. Very funny Google.

The rest of the week followed much the same pattern. For the first time in my nearly two months of teaching, I was forced to take down the names of two students who were disruptive during my session with them. When I reported back to the professor, he took their carnets, which I believe has earned me the eternal wrath of those two particular students. A “carnet” is a very handy booklet which tracks the behavioral issues of each student. If they arrive to class without the carnet, they immediately earn a detention. Teachers sign the carnets whenever someone misbehaves, along with a brief note of what they were doing. The carnet is then re-signed by a hall-monitor-like person who is in charge of discipline. There is a system of points that are deducted each time the carnet is taken, but that’s another story too complicated to detail here. In short, they don’t mess around with disobedience.

This should come as a relief to me, seeing as most students do not want their carnets taken. However, I have come to find that it is a double-edged sword. Students do not want their carnets taken, so most of them behave. For those that do not behave and whose carnets are taken however, they remain sullen and disinclined to work for several sessions. So, we’ll see how I fare in the coming days with the students I punished this week.

Along with the onerous weight of teen hormones that I had to combat this week, I also fell into the trap of talking about Thanksgiving. As a traditional American holiday, I thought that Thanksgiving would be the perfect topic to get students thinking and speaking about different cultural traditions. What I did not anticipate was the sad, nagging sensation in the pit of my stomach that accompanies a holiday spent without family. Based upon their ethnocentric conception of the world, it was very difficult for my students to grasp the importance of Thanksgiving in the United States and thus to understand why I might miss my family at this time of year. Some of them tried to equate Thanksgiving with Christmas, where instead of presents everyone just eats copious amounts of food. Many others assumed that it was Christmas and were shocked to find out that we celebrate Christmas just like they do, on the 25th of December. (What? They celebrate Christmas in other parts of the world?) I found this somewhat funny, and could not help thinking of the years I spent as a child, believing that my family invented hot chocolate and that we were the only ones who knew about it…

My students were not the only ones to show incomprehension at the mention of Thanksgiving. I found myself close to tears in the fruit aisle at the grocery store looking for cranberries that could not be located. Kévin couldn’t understand why I was so upset about a berry, but it was difficult for me to explain the traditional significance of cranberry sauce for me. How could they not have cranberries? How could they not have sweet potatoes? Didn’t anyone know how important these holiday items were for me? Alas, France thwarted my attempt at having a complete Thanksgiving meal. It did not, however, prevent me from patching together the best dinner that I could under the circumstances.

After spending four hours cooking in the tiny toaster oven in our kitchen, which happens to be the only oven in our kitchen, I am happy to report that I managed to bake rolls, scalloped potatoes, turkey, stuffing, and apple pie. I also threw together mashed potatoes, a citrus vinaigrette, and an apple-walnut salad. Kévin’s shining achievement of the evening was the green beans á la crème that took him all of ten minutes to prepare. The lack of cranberry sauce and yams notwithstanding, I’d say we did a pretty good job. Kévin pronounced himself thankful for the food, I pronounced myself thankful for my year in France, and we finished the evening with an episode of Tintin to celebrate the holiday.

On a somewhat stranger side note, I found a falcon with a broken wing at the beginning of the week that had the poor fortune to have fallen near the school right at the end of classes. Kévin and I came to the rescue with a box and a large blanket to trap it in, only to find that we had no idea how to care for an injured bird of prey.

Luckily, we were able to contact a bird rescue specialist who gave us instructions on where to bring the falcon the next day. The falcon proved a beautiful, albeit scared and wounded houseguest on Tuesday night, but we were relieved to be able to send it to Nantes for professional care on Wednesday morning. For all my talk of wanting an animal to care for and shelter, I did not expect a falcon to be the first to fall under my protection. I was thinking more along the lines of a slobbering domesticated dog.

The final irony of this whole excursion occurred to me on Wednesday afternoon as I was cleaning out the plastic bin that the falcon had occupied during its brief stay with us: it has been the only living thing, aside from Kévin and me, to set foot in this house since our arrival in Challans. The fact that we placed it, unthinkingly, in the guest bedroom for the night only made the realization more comical. What could all of this possibly mean? As a strong believer in signs and portents, there is only one meaning I can make out. It’s something along the lines of, “Emily, it’s time to get off your bum and meet more people – like real, living, breathing Homo sapiens.”

And so, I move onto my second quest and another adventure – finding friends in France. Updates will be forthcoming… A la prochaine!

Having now been teaching for over a month, it seems only appropriate that I would eventually talk about the town I am living in, the school I am teaching at, and the house I will be calling my home for the next eight months. Up until now, I have mentioned only very briefly these rather important aspects of my life in France. This post is about the details. A lot of details.

First, the town. As I mentioned in a previous post, Challans leaves much to be desired. It is a flat, industrialized town that passes for a city only because most of the other villages in the Vendée region have less than 10,000 inhabitants. Rather than dwelling on my unfortunate location however, I decided to walk through Challans this week in search of everything and anything beautiful I could find. It was a wonderful exercise for my photographic eye, and forced me to take a closer look at the intricacies that make up this “city” I am living in. Fall colors, typical Vendeé architecture, patterned gates – these were the things that drew my attention and helped me put a name on the hidden beauty in Challans. It is a work-in-progress, but the pictures in this post are the results of this photographic adventure…

Ironically enough, the school at which I am teaching happens to be one of the ugliest buildings in Challans. It seems to me that every major architect designing schools in France must have drawn inspiration from the blueprints of numerous prisons. Indeed, the combination middle school/high school that I am working at was built for efficiency, not esthetic appeal. The school itself is a conglomeration of four buildings, each one comprised of rectangular stacks of square classrooms with identical windows on every floor. These four buildings open up onto a cement courtyard where the students go during recesses, lunch, and physical education. Much like a prison, the school is gated from all sides as if someone was afraid the students were going to escape. Once you are inside the building, things are not so bad, but from afar it resembles a large cinder block with evenly-spaced, rectangular cut-outs to let in daylight. I’ve found that I much prefer being inside the building looking out than outside the building marveling at its stern and somewhat intimidating exterior.

Alas, I did not come to France to critique the long-forgotten architects who designed Collège Milcendeau. (As a quick side-note to avoid confusion, collège is the French equivalent of middle school.) On the subject of classes, I find that I am very much enjoying being a teacher. The other professors that I work with are at once nice, helpful, and laid-back which has turned out to be a perfect combination.

When I arrived for my first lesson, I was terrified of being left alone to conduct a class on my own, but I am coming to realize that having the freedom to teach what I want, when I want is a very nice privilege. Oftentimes, I collaborate with a professor on a lesson plan and then we split the group into two, alternating after 25 minutes. This makes my lessons very short, but as someone who is completely new to the world of teaching, I think it’s a great way to test my skills as an educator in short stints. The fact that I am testing my skills on middle school students has proved to be quite an adventure. When I was shadowing professors during my first week, I was struck by a big bad dose of déjà-vu that sent me reeling back to my own days as a 13-year old.

As far as I can tell, middle school students everywhere share certain universal characteristics – they flirt shamelessly before and after class, throw balled-up notes across the classroom (all the while thinking they are the very image of stealth), and interrupt often to comment upon the weather, the time, what a nice shirt I am wearing, the pencil shavings on the floor. When I turn around in time to see Olivier throw an eraser at Valentin, he points to the girl two rows back and exclaims loudly in French, “Madame, I swear it wasn’t me!” Sometimes I want to laugh, but knowing that this would only encourage them, I put on my sternest face and ask him to kindly explain how his eraser mysteriously appeared in Amandine’s pencil case.

There are times when I am at my wits end as well, and these are the times when I discover the strict, authoritative Emily that sounds almost like a real teacher. It must sound authentic though, because the students usually listen once I threaten to make them copy lines for the remainder of the class. I should also note here that the instructors at the assistant orientation in Nantes were mistaken when they said, “the longer your students don’t know you speak French, the more enamored with you they will be.” From experience, I know that students will only be more inclined to talk about inappropriate things in the middle of class when they don’t think you can understand them. And so, I decided to give up my exotic appeal in exchange for an amount of discipline. It not only shocked my students when they learned that I do in fact speak French, they also appeared more interested in a bilingual assistant than a strictly English speaking one. I will have to let the Nantes orientation leaders know that…

On the subject of my living situation, Kévin and I are renting a cute two bedroom house that is two minutes away from the school. It is spacious, well-kept, and, aside from a slight problem with humidity, perfect for a year in France. To my delight, I discovered that there is a dove nesting in the tree outside of the master bedroom and I often wake up to the sounds of birds cooing through the open window. As far as I am concerned, it is one of the most comforting sounds in the world…

The second bedroom has been transformed into my studio where I am free to paint, write, and design clothing to my heart’s content. The room is on the west side of the house so it gets all of the afternoon sun and is the ideal place to watch the sunset from my desk near the window. Kévin’s mom bought me a sewing machine when I first arrived in France so I am well-equipped to reacquaint myself with my artistic side. Considering that I am only working twelve hours a week, I have a feeling that my studio is going to demand much of my time and attention – something I am looking forward to.

I am growing accustomed to being a teacher, to living in Challans, and to renting a house in France. I am also coming to realize, however, that Kevin is a very convenient and comfortable crutch. He is a very nice and very talkative one as well, although I must admit that allowing him (and often asking him) to do all of my speaking outside of the classroom has made me somewhat of a social mute. When did I become so dependent, I ask myself? Have I forgotten how to make conversation? Do my vocal chords still produce sound? It seems to me, paradoxically, that I was much more autonomous when I was living in Dijon, with a host family, having my every need tended to by our wonderful program coordinator. After some reflection, I realized that the secret to this alleged lack of current independence is due to my corresponding lack of motivation to get out – by myself – and talk to people. As a student in Dijon, I had absolutely no problem going to supermarkets, bars, restaurants, book stores, markets, etc. and talking with the French people that frequented them. Now however, I find myself more shy and hesitant than ever I was before. The double irony of this predicament is that I speak French more fluently than ever before as well – indeed, I have been speaking French and only French for over two months now. Of course, I am talking on a regular basis with the other teachers I work with, but as all children learn very early, teachers are not real people with real lives and thus they do not count…

To work out the mystery of this unfamiliar silence that has settled over me, I decided to conduct an experiment. On my way into town this morning to run errands, I elected not to invite Kévin with me so that I would be forced – for the first time in two months – to do all of my own talking. I dropped a letter off at the post office and then headed to the Office of Tourism so that I could ask about maps for bike trails and hikes in the area. While I exchanged no more than ten words with the woman behind the counter, it somehow felt good to be exercising even a minimum of independence. With maps in hand I took a leisurely walk through centre-ville to continue on my quest of capturing the often illusive beauty of Challans. I was lucky today, and stumbled upon a park and a castle in the same outing.

The “castle”, called the Chateau de la Coursaudière, also happens to be the current meeting place of the Challans Billiard Club, something I find oddly amusing. It appears to be one of the older buildings in Challans but apart from its aged appearance, it more closely resembles a town hall than a castle. After several minutes of contemplation in the park behind the chateau, I decided I quite like this billiard castle. It was nice to wander freely in Challans and discover something of this town for myself, by myself. On my way home, I stopped by a boulangerie and had a brief conversation with the cashier which further bolstered my confidence in both my ability to speak French and my ability to leave the house by myself like a real adult. Wow, what a grown-up! As to the results of this experiment, I discovered that no, I have not forgotten how to make conversation, and no, my vocal chords have not shriveled up and disappeared. Two major successes in my week so far.

One other major and very necessary success has been my induction into the world of manual transmissions. At 22 years old, I am finally learning to drive a stick-shift. This rather exciting news has been somewhat tainted by the fact that I am learning in France, on roads barely wider than my pinky finger. There are also at least 4,000 roundabouts in Challans according to my latest estimate. I have flawlessly perfected the art of stalling, and not much of anything else. Kévin tells me that I am doing well and that it’s difficult for everyone at the beginning, but every time he does I feel the urge to bite his head off, or at least an ear. Things are moving along, I will admit, but painfully slowly. I will start a log of my progress so that I can keep everyone abreast of my exciting adventures in the world of automobiles. It will be entitled “A Series of Fits and Starts” by Emily Swisher, and it will read something like this:

Day one: stalled 39 times at 39 different roundabouts

Day two: tried to parallel park, backed into a tree, then stalled

Day three: stalled, made it past the first roundabout (success!), got pulled over for driving too slowly, stalled

I have a feeling that this is going to be a long and tedious process… In other news, the weather has been absolutely beautiful for November. It has been mild and sunny most days, with a few scattered showers since I arrived.

The leaves are starting to turn, or rather, have been turning for three weeks now, changing what once was green into a haze of yellow, red, and orange. It is as beautiful an autumn as I could have hoped to see. And for all the strangeness that I felt upon my arrival in Challans, I am slowly becoming habituated to this part of the country, its people, and its scenery. It may be flat, slightly over-industrialized for my taste, and lacking in people my own age, but it is certainly not without adventure. It is to this adventure that I pledge my utter devotion, in the hopes of discovering ever greater things about myself and my France. Until next time…

ATTENTION READERS: This is a very long entry. Bonne Chance…

Vacation! One of the amazing things about being an assistant in France is that I am entitled to eight weeks of vacation. That is, eight weeks of paid vacation. After merely one month of teaching at twelve hours a week, I hardly felt I deserved a two-week vacation for the Toussaint holiday. However, as someone who is rather fond of vacations, I am not complaining.

There are certain American traditions that I certainly miss living in France. So, to start off my break in true American style, Kévin and I decided to carve pumpkins and celebrate Halloween – a holiday that is underrated in French society (although it is slowly gaining popularity due to its market potential). Halloween happens to be my favorite American holiday so it was nice for me to be able to carve pumpkins, bake pumpkin seeds, and make pumpkin bread just like I do when I am at home in the US. When I suggested dressing up for the evening, Kévin looked at me as if I was crazy. We decided to forgo the costumes. We did however make the trek into Nantes to watch “Frankenweenie” in 3D and stop by an Irish pub where a soccer game was being aired. It wasn’t until after we left that I realized what a funny spectacle it was – an Irish pub, airing an English soccer game, in a French city, decorated in American style for Halloween. While I certainly missed giving out candy to trick-or-treaters (or trick-or-treating myself) I can’t say we didn’t have a good time discovering an American holiday in French fashion.

With two weeks to kill and absolutely nothing planned after Halloween, I decided to take the opportunity to reserve four nights in a Bed and Breakfast in the Loire Valley. Kévin had never visited the area and so it was up to me to play the tour guide during our stay – rather ironic considering that he is French. This trip marked my third visit to the Loire valley, an area that I never seem to tire of no matter how often I go. Perhaps this is because there are around 300 castles in the region.

While many of these are small and closed to the public, there are an overwhelming number of chateaux that are available for visits. This time around, Kévin and I visited six castles in a three-day period. On the first day, we started our tour with the castle in Blois, whose architecture is broken into three distinct styles – Classic, Renaissance, and Gothic – to mirror the tastes of the various monarchs who lived there over the centuries. Next, we made our way to Chambord, the largest chateau in the Loire valley. The first time I visited, our group had a guide which made the castle absolutely fascinating. While the chateau may be enormous, it is also rather empty, so knowing the history behind the architecture is essential to appreciating the castle. I recounted what I could remember to Kévin during our visit as we wandered through the cavernous, empty rooms. At one point, we happened upon a door that was half-way open and decided to explore the spiral staircase beyond. Upon reflection, it seems that someone forgot to lock that part of the castle because we soon found ourselves among a labyrinth of small, dusty rooms, some with WWII era medical equipment in them and others completely empty except for the occasional gargoyle. On the one hand, it was really interesting to see a part of the castle that is normally (I am assuming) closed to visitors, but after twenty minutes of searching for the way back out, I was relieved to find the ground floor once more. Images of the castle’s “oubliettes”, or dungeons, kept flashing in my head as we wound down tight spiral staircases. “Oublier” which means “to forget” is an apt description for these hidden dungeons, accessible only by a hatch in a high ceiling, where prisoners where quite literally forgotten and left to die of starvation or dehydration in the dark. Needless to say, I was happy when we re-entered a well-lit room filled with the din of tourists snapping photos.

After our rather interesting experience at Chambord, the rest of our visits were without incident. On our second day, we visited Chaumont-sur-Loire and one of my personal favorites, the under-appreciated Fougères sur Bièvre. Chaumont often hosts expositions through-out the year and their highly acclaimed garden festival is an event worth seeing. This time around, there was a stained-glass exhibit in the castle and an autumn festival in the surrounding gardens.

The stained-glass exhibit was one that I had seen last summer when I visited with my mom. I was extremely happy that it was still being shown however because the artist set up his pieces in rooms that have not been touched or modified for centuries. Kévin and I wandered (this time with permission) through unheated hallways and rooms full of rusted armor, broken chandeliers, ancient paintings, and old furniture where the images on stained glass were the only reminders of the present. At one point, we entered a large room that was completely filled with rows upon rows of doors. It struck me as more than a little bizarre but also fascinating. On the whole, the visit was incredible. After our initial visit of the castle, we explored the stables, gardens, and tea shop before making our way to Fougères.

Fougères, in stark contrast to Chaumont, is a small castle with modest gardens. Perhaps it is this small, authentic feel that I like so much. Our visit of Fougères was rather relaxed and uneventful, though there is something I find deeply intriguing about this medieval castle. It is one of the chateau that I will make a point to return to on every visit.

For our last day in the Loire, we visited the chateaux of Amboise and Chenonceau, with a fortuitous stopover in the “Mini-Chateaux” park just outside of Amboise. I had never visited Amboise before so I was excited to see what was in store. I was even more excited when I discovered that Leonardo da Vinci was buried in the cathedral on the domain.

When I first saw the plaque on the floor with “Leonardo de Vinci” engraved below it, I thought it was a replica. But no, I paid homage to the great scientist himself in the small, rather unassuming cathedral that sits on top of the hill next to the chateau d’Amboise. Pretty cool. After a tour of Amboise, we headed off toward Chenonceau for our last visit but were distracted 10 km outside of Amboise by a sign advertising “Mini-Chateaux”. So, instead of visiting Chenonceau directly, we instead dressed up as a knight and princess and paraded through the park, which featured 45 miniature reproductions of the Chateaux de la Loire. It was an amazing experience (though slightly pricey) and we thoroughly enjoyed running around like children for an hour. Not only were the castles beautifully sculpted, they also gave us a great idea for what we might like to see on our next visit! Once our childish streak had run its course, we got back in the car and headed over to the big-kid castle of Chenonceau. Our timing at the park was absolutely perfect. We got there about thirty minutes before sunset which gave us amazing views from both the interior and exterior of the castle. After completing a tour of the castle, we watched the last rays of the sun disappear over the river before heading back to our Bed and Breakfast.

Our last night with our hosts at the B&B presents one of the perfect examples of why I love being in France so much. On our way back to the house, they texted us to invite us to play pool and share a few drinks with them before leaving the next day. We decided to eat dinner in our room that night anyways so the timing was perfect. When I realized that we didn’t have any plates or a corkscrew, Nadine and Marc welcomed us into their kitchen and invited us to dine at their table. Marc demonstrated how to make the perfect salad dressing while Nadine offered us a selection of French cheeses. After our dinner of homemade sandwiches, wine, and salad, we met our hosts in the living room for a game of pool. One game turned into three and before I knew it we had been there for five hours discussing politics, philosophy, architecture, anthropology, and psychology. After learning that I was an anthropology major, Nadine put me in contact with one of her close friends in Paris who happens to be a renowned anthropologist. To say that it was the perfect end to the perfect stay is somewhat of an understatement. And so, I will finish here, saying only that vacations in France are a magical occasion.

All adventures begin with an introduction. This is mine.

When I finally arrived in France after nearly fifteen hours of travel and a two-hour layover in Iceland, I was relieved to be greeted by the welcoming familiarity of the Charles de Gaulle airport. After spraining my back trying to lift my luggage just before leaving the United States, I was exhausted from a mix of useless pain killers and sleepless travel. Nonetheless, when I gratefully passed my suitcases into the hands of my boyfriend Kévin (who had taken the five hour drive to come meet me at the airport) it felt as if I were coming home. The start of this trip marks the second time that I will be living in France, though the first that I will be facing the adventure without the help of the study abroad office behind me. During the 2012-2013 school year, I will be teaching English to French middle school students – a task that frightens and enthralls me in equal measure.

For the first several weeks that I was here, most of my time was spent sorting through the piles of paperwork that the French government requires of people arriving from outside of the European Union. In France, there is a bank slip called a R.I.B. that is needed for every single paper signing ceremony, so before I could do anything else, I had to open a bank account. That was the easy part. The list that follows is the waist-deep pile that I am still wading through:

• Signing up for the CAF, a program that provides financial assistance for students, families with low incomes, and people like me who are only allowed to work twelve hours a week
• Signing up for a French social security number, which required me to give up the original copy of my birth certificate
• Providing financial documentation for my house to prove that I will have the means to pay rent, which required that I have a French financial guarantor – difficult when my parents live in the United States
• Signing up for a mutual insurer to cover what the French Health Care system does not
• Finding a médecin traitant (primary doctor) which is required for my insurance, social security, and health care
• Making an appointment at the OFII so that I can legally stay in France. This is a process that could take months, and yet if I don’t have it by the end of December, I could be deported.
• Signing another ten forms for my two middle schools. What purpose they serve is a complete mystery to me.

This is the shortened list. Aside from the flood of paperwork that has recently inundated my life, it is nice to be back in France – completely and shockingly different, but nice.

Although Kévin and I had planned on taking a road trip to Italy for a week before house-hunting, our plans took quite a turn when I realized how many paper-signing errands I would have to run. So, instead of Italian sunlight, we endured two rainy, eight-hour treks from Préty (where Kévin’s family lives) to Challans (where I will be working) in order to search for houses and move furniture. Luckily, we were able to break away from the madness for a day to visit Dijon, my home of six months when I was abroad. After sending a very last minute email to my host mom, we were invited to eat lunch with her at the house. I didn’t realize how much I had missed her cooking, her company, or Dijon until we were seated around the dining room table talking about her soon-to-be grandchild and the new tramway in the city. Needless to say, I was more than a little nostalgic for my time abroad as I wondered through the streets that I frequented as a student in Dijon. The narrow roads, the medieval cathedrals, the university, and Parc Darcy were all there as I remembered them, though flavored somehow differently by time and circumstance. It was a flavor of fond memories however – a taste that I rather enjoy – and it was wonderful to visit.

Aside from traveling to Dijon for the afternoon, the only other “leisure travel” that I have done so far is to ride a bike three miles from Kévin’s family’s house to the canals in a nearby village. Even this short trip was a much needed mini-vacation. Riding bikes through the French countryside in the setting sun seems a little cliché, but magical all the same. We ate cookies on the banks of the Saone river, waded in the shallow water, and enjoyed a brief few hours of sunlight before heading homeward. It is moments like these that make me so happy to be in France.

My situation in Challans, the city where I am teaching is somewhat different. To say that it lacks the charm of Dijon and Préty is quite an understatement. It is a small yet modern town of 20,000 people which is missing something of the warmth that I have grown so accustomed to in other French cities. On top of that, I am the only assistant in Challans so it has been somewhat difficult to meet new people. The professors I work with are all very nice, as are the students, but it seems strange to me to be living in a town without college students. Needless to say, this experience is going to be much different than my time in Dijon.

It will be quieter, calmer, and it will no doubt leave me with much time to reflect on my projects and goals. It will also push me to travel and explore in ways that I might not have before. It will push me to listen and take comfort in the simpler joys of living abroad. The smell of fresh croissants in the morning, small family gatherings, the smoky glow of stage lights in a small concert hall, the shouts of laughter and encouragement at a breakdance-off, the Basque armoire sitting in my living room – these are the things of inestimable beauty that occupy this new France I am discovering. So while it may be difficult, uncomfortable and lonely sometimes, this is my home for the next nine months. And I am overjoyed to be back.