Rosetta: The Abridged Version

Hello,
What have I been up to these past couple of days and why haven't I posted for a while? That's a very good question, thank you for asking. Here's why.

As school came to an end for what they call here Christmas Break (and got very confused when I tried to call it Winter Break because they actually have a real 'winter break' in February) the kids began to get more and more antsy in class. As luck would have it, I was to have class on the Friday before break so I showed up at 7:45AM in the teacher's lounge and met up with Elisabeth. While we were sitting around one of her three 8AM students called to tell her that they were going to be late, so finally at 8:20 we all met up in class. Elisabeth had brought us all scones and jam and she went to the teachers lounge and bought us all a coffee. We chatted, mostly in French, for the next 30 minutes and then it was time for the students to leave. I thought it was funny that the reason we were speaking French was because I had asked about French politics and Elisabeth had said 'this will be easier to explain in French' and then she proceeded to explain it. After that we were supposed to have an hour break and then another two hours of class but Elisabeth wasn't sure if we were going to have class today so she went off and asked someone and sure enough all the students had been told they would not need to show up today. So I was free to go. This was convenient for me because it meant that I was up at 9AM on a Friday with the whole day ahead of me to get things done. I made some peanut butter cookies as Christmas presents for my french friends which went over very well and everybody loved (I was especially happy as my recipe was in cups and Fahrenheit and not only do I not have any measuring utensils I also don't have degrees of any kind marked on my oven).

Finally Monday arrived and it was time to head to Paris. Now, I had packed my bag and come to the conclusion that it would be possible to fit my computer in my bag (just barely) however my tiny little laptop has, over the years, seemed to become more and more heavy, especially after the last time I decided to bring it with me on a trip where I had to carry it bodily from train to train. Conveniently, Savannah informed me that she would be bringing her iPad so we would have access to internet for all our planning and possibly emergency needs. On this information I decided reluctantly to leave my computer at home.

I got to Paris around 1:30 and met up with Maria who just happened to be in Paris that day before her flight to the Canary Islands the next day. We went and checked into the hotel and then looked for a restaurant in the area. Unfortunately, all we could find were asian restaurants because apparently we were in the asian part of Paris. We finally settles on a place called Food King and split a 4 cheese pizza. By that time we were very hungry and it tasted delicious.

Savannah arrived at 8:15 the next morning and I had asked the concierge at our hotel how long it would take to get to the airport. He told me it would probably take about 45 minutes so I left a whole hour early the next morning. My trip cost my 12€ and took about an hour and fifteen minutes. By the time I found the arrivals Savannah was very relieved that I was there as she had been waiting about five minutes (I had been hoping to be waiting for her when she got off the plane and I had even brought my book in anticipation of a little wait). We hopped back on the RER and headed back to the hotel. Here's what we did in Paris over the next 4 days:
-Had a Croque Monsieur
-Saw the Catacombs
-Visited the Latin Quarter
-Walked the Champs Elysées
-Saw several Christmas Markets
-Had some chestnuts
-Saw the Arc de Triomphe
-Visited the Pompidou Museum
-Saw the Sacre Coeur
And many more fun and exhausting things.

Our flight to London was the cheapest I could find and this meant it had an 8AM departure time. 8AM minus 2 hours (recommended security check allowance time) equals getting there at 6AM with an hour estimate travel time means getting out of the hotel and being at the bus stop at 5AM. We were a bit stressed because metros do not run that early in the morning so we were scheduled to catch the last night bus and if that didn't work out we would have to wait 45 minutes to catch the first metro and pray that we got to the airport on time. When we got on the night but my first thought was, 'oh good, there are plenty of people onboard, that makes it feel less scary.' However, Savannah's first thought was 'All the people on this bus are very unclean looking men, this could be bad.' Luckily, our bus ride passed without incident and even our transfer went smoother then planned (we had been told to catch the 71 at our transfer by the concierge and after we would have a ten minute walk to the airport. However, once we were at the stop, the bus driver informed us that the 31 would take us straight to the airport. The system our concierge had used to look up our best options had given him the 'quickest' route, which preferred a ten minute walk over a 20 minute wait for the 31 bus. We however, at this point, were definitely more inclined to wait 20 minutes then have no idea which direction to walk to find the airport from the 71 stop). We arrived in plenty of time at the airport and had a very uneventful flight to London were my father was scheduled to meet us at the airport.

We had not written down the address of anywhere we would be staying because dad was supposed to pick us up at the airport and have everything taken care of, and plus, if something went wrong, he had e-mailed me the address of the hotel and so I knew we could find it even without him. However, when we were faced with boarder control they were none too happy that we didn't know where we would be staying. In fact they took it VERY personally and the lady helping me demanded, 'How do you think this looks? You don't even know where you'll be staying.' I tried to explain that I was meeting my dad and trusted those details to him but she angrily informed me that, 'If I tried this in America they would kick me out,' and 'I could send you right back to France for this.' Savannah and I told them that we could step out of line for a minute and find the address of our hotel on her iPad to which they responded, 'You should have done that before,' even though we were the last people off the plane and therefore there was literally no one waiting in line behind us. Finally, the two agents decided to let us pass and gave us one last lecture as they stamped our passports angrily. Later we would find out that my dad had had an even harder time of it since he didn't have a return ticket and apparently England had just had some big flap about boarder security. So we stepped out of our gate and my dad was nowhere to be found. After cooling our heels for a bit we jumped on the DLR to our hotel and as we were checking in dad arrived. He had not slept all night and had decided to go on an early morning walk which had lasted longer than he realized and so he had missed our arrival. Here are some of the things we did in England:
-Crossed the Tower Bridge (four times in a row)
-Saw the Design Museum
-Went to an authentic pub
-Ate fish and chips
-Saw 39 Steps
-Saw Chicago
-Visited Oxford Circus
And many more fun and exhausting things.

We picked up my friend Katie who is another English assistant here in France and we headed to Essex for Christmas as my dad's house. He lived in a very remote town which was difficult to get to but even more difficult to leave two days later after a very enjoyable calm Christmas filled with hot chocolate, yummy food, and a 2000 piece puzzle which we made quite a dent in but were unable to finish. We were trying to travel on December 26th which is known in England as Boxing day and is considered a holiday. We also ran into a train strike and long story short had to call our taxi to come back and give us a ride from the train station he'd just dropped us at to a bus station in a different town. All in all, not the cheapest way I've ever traveled. We spend another day in London, said goodbye to Katie and my dad and caught our flight back to Paris (almost the same exact story with our flight being so early we had to travel on the night bus to make it there in time). We caught a train back to Touquet very near immediately upon our arrival and ended up back home in time to do a little shopping an for me to show at least the main strip of my town to Savannah. Now we are hanging out in my house and calming down after our extremely tiring adventures. We have no plans except for getting Savannah to the train station on Sunday so that she can head home. And there you have it, the abridged version of my Christmas plans.

Meg: Then One Froggy Night...

As previously mentioned, I taught a class the song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," today and it was an eventful time.  More eventful than I would like, but, hey, at least I have an interesting story to tell all of you!

This is another tale of woe from Meg-the-idiotic-teacher, but at least this time, no drugs were involved!  I had two classes today, and the first one was me teaching about Thanksgiving again.  This went pretty smoothly because I've done that lesson a bunch of times now, and I know what words they do and do not know.  (For example, they have no idea what a Pilgrim is or why anyone would pardon a turkey.) It was a fun class, I always enjoy meeting new students that I haven't worked with before.

But onto Rudolph.  I thought it was a good song because it's very American, and fun.  I downloaded a version of the song that I thought would be good and I brought the MP3 with me on my USB key.  However, I failed to remember that France isn't always "tech" friendly, and I had no way to play said song.  So I had to sing it, many times, in front of this class of 6th graders... by the end of my first rendition of the song, I'm sure I was bright red, and I had that I-want-to-sink-into-the-floor feeling again.  But the students were sweet and clapped when I finished, which made me feel slightly better.  After I sang the song and we went through what the song meant, I had a little game for the kids.  The night before I had wrapped a present 14 times (but I failed to count when I was at it) and every time a student got a question right, they got to unwrap a layer of the present.  Whoever got the last question right won the cheap candy bar I had bought at the grocery store the night before.  The quiz was super easy... I asked silly things like, "What color is Rudolph's nose?" Which was good, because the English level of the students wasn't very high.  The tension mounted and mounted as we got down in layers, the students began to be very enthusiastic about answering questions when they thought the next layer would revel the gift.  I think they were a little let down at what it actually was, but in the mean time I think they enjoyed it.  Then we proceeded to sing through the whole song, which required more singing by me, which went alright, although I cracked a couple of times on some notes, and went slightly off pitch some of the time too, which mortified me.  I had the students repeat lines after me for them to get the pronunciation, they did a good job on all but one line. "Then one foggy Christmas Eve, Santa came to say..." They replied, and I didn't quite understand one word so I repeated it, "foggy." They responded, "Froggy" "Foggy!" I said a little more clearly.  "Froggy!" They replied.   I laughed a little and then moved on.  It was pretty funny.

Here's where my biggest mistake comes into play.  I didn't think it would be fair to give just one child a present and leave everyone else out, so I had picked up two bags of sweets the night before so that at the end of class everyone would get something little.  What I failed to notice was that the package said, in French, that each candy had a little firecracker in it.  You know the kind you pull, it sparks and makes a loud noise?  Yep, I gave some of those to a bunch of 11 year olds.  The teacher told them to wait until they were outside to play with them, but, of course, they didn't listen, and every time I heard one of them pop, I winced slightly at my own idiocy for bringing them in the first place.  I'm pretty sure in the USA they would have been considered weapons, and I would be fired, or if I was student, expelled.  Gotta love France.  And speaking of, this will be my last post on here for a while, because I'm going home on Thursday for Christmas!  I can hardly wait, so, I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas/ whatever other holiday you celebrate or don't celebrate at this time of year!

Happy Holidays.

Rosetta: I'll Just Swing By England

You know what I love about France? The fact that it is totally normal to 'take a day trip to England' or to 'drive up to Germany for a day or two' or to 'go to Paris for the weekend.' I went to England last weekend with the Amicale (this is the organization at my school for teachers to do things together). The trip was very inexpensive and a good chance to get to England. We left at 5:30AM and arrived at around 10AM after taking a bus all the way there (we left the bus for about an hour and a half on the ferry). We arrived in Canterbury late in the morning and the first thing I noticed was a Prêt à Manger (a chain lunch type food store). Now I remember Prêt à Manger from my Europe trip when I was younger, we noticed that there was one on every street, that or a Starbucks. However, I was disappointed to not be able to find them in France because in my mind I rationalized that Prêt à Manger (ready to eat) was a French chain and not seeing it in France I assumed it had gone out of business. So you can imagine my glee to find one in Canterbury... That and several Starbucks. The trip went well, we saw the Christmas market and went into about a million stores. I found a Christmas present for my dad and then we had lunch and caught our bus back home at 5PM. We didn't make it back home until 9PM so you can imagine how tired I was that night, good thing I caught a couple of winks on the bus.

Last week I caught some sort of 24 hour flu bug and ended up missing some class. I kept asking the teachers when would be a good time to make up those hours with the overall reaction being mostly change of subject, answering of a different question entirely. So I guess I won't have to make up those hours, we will see when I get my paycheck this month if missing hours has any affect. I suspect it will not however, as the secretary at my school is in charge of telling the French government how many hours I've worked and I don't think she is in the loop about me missing class as I just called the teachers directly. I hope this is the case because that takes a lot of the pressure off if I do need to miss class again for any reason.

Today I did role playing with the students for the first time. They have a real desk set-up with telephone and computer complete with a program for taking reservations. I played the customer and was given an 'identity.' I would enter and either check in or make a reservation. They always included some hitch, like my name not being on their reservation list or me showing up a couple of days before my reservation date. It was pretty fun for me because I got to act like I didn't speak French and if they said something confusing like 'there is icing,' I got to say 'what?' instead of trying to explain that is it 'ice skating rink' because they also had their teachers there who were helping them out with those types of things. I also got to come up with problems of my own to ask about, "is there a phone in the room?" "Can I have an extra room key?" etc. I quite enjoyed my time even though it was 3 hours straight.

For my last class today, one of the teachers told me that Marylise had meetings so she wasn't sure if I would have class with her or not. Coincidentally, my earlier classes were right next to the room Marylise was having meetings in so she pulled me aside, gave me her keys, and asked me to start class without her if she wasn't done yet. They are technically not allowed to do this (as they stressed over and over again at our orientation day) but as I don't mind I just agreed and ended up doing the full hour of class without her. She had a couple of activities set up that went really well. The students were nice and didn't cause any problems (she assured me afterwards that she would not have left me alone with any students she new were problematic). I am going to do the same thing tomorrow while she is in meetings with a different class.

When I first came to France I was warned that I would see my share of strikes, as they are the national pass-time here. Thursday is scheduled to be the first strike. I am not quite sure how strikes work here but I have gathered that a teacher who goes on strike loses salary for those hours. I have some other assistant friends who are getting Thursday off from school because their teachers are striking. Every teacher I've asked at my school didn't even know that there was a strike happening and responded that they don't ever participate in the strikes. So much for having time off due to strikes (unless at some point a train is on strike and I am unable to get home in time but that doesn't sound like too much fun to me).

Meg: Always read ALL the lyrics

Ok, I was hesitating all this week, but I decided to go ahead and take the 50th post on this blog... I wish I could say that it was 50/50 who posted what, but I've been a bit quiet here.

Anyway, a couple weeks ago one of the teachers asked me to come up with a song about New York City that was modern and had the names of the monuments in it.  At this point I was rejecting the idea of going with "New York, New York," by Frank Sinatra or the age old Broadway classic because they're kind of old.  (And on a sad side note- the kids in one class didn't even know who Frank Sinatra was!)  So I decided to go with a song that has been on the radio within the last couple of years, "Empire State of Mind," which has a catchy chorus and the "hip" factor I was looking for.  The problem was that I only remembered the chorus and a couple of lines of the actual rap because I never paid that close attention to the song.  Mistake one.  Then, a couple days before I was to do the lesson, I chose to use the Glee version because 1. it's slower and 2. I thought it would be cleaner.  Mistake two.  As I was preparing the night before I glanced over the lyrics, saw that there were some minor parts that wouldn't be easy to explain, but I thought I could come up with an alternative translation that wouldn't be offensive.  The example of this being a line that is "everyone rode her just like a bus route," I thought I could explain away that that meant she was very popular with the boys and had a lot of dates.  I didn't spend too much time looking over the rest of the lyrics.  Mistake three.

After all this, I knew the song would be a little difficult for the kids, but I thought, in the end, that they would enjoy it none-the-less because it's modern and still popular enough in the US.  Many of them actually already knew the chorus of the song, just like I did, and sang along while I played it for them.  By "knew" I mean they knew the general sounds of the words, but not really words themselves.  Fine, all good.  It wasn't until I was standing in front of the class being asked what things meant that I realized what a bad mistake I made.  For one, there is tons of slang in it that I don't even understand which I had to pretend to know and try to explain to the kids.  Here come the troubling phrases.  "Took it to my stash spot," "corners where we selling rocks," and "MDMA got you feeling like a champion," to name a few.  (Side note again- on the website that I just used to look up these lyrics there were some pornographic images... pleasant.)  I was sweating bullets by the end of the class period, hoping that we would run out of time before we got to those specific lyrics.  Thankfully we mostly did, but it was a close one.  Lesson learned: read ALL the lyrics of the song well in advance to the lesson itself.

On a much lighter note, next week I'm going to teach the children to sing Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer- if you can think of any references to drugs or prostitution in that song, please be sure to comment and let me know, I never want to go through a class period like the last one again.    

Meg: Where is Tulle?

My students were very funny today.  I gave them a quiz with questions about the US in multiple choice form, for example, Who was the first President of the United States?  a. George Bush b. George Washington or c. Boy George.  We read all the questions aloud and they did a pretty good job on the quiz in general.  Than I made them write questions about France for Americans (namely me) to answer.  Here are two of the questions that they wrote: 

In case you can't read this, it says: Where is Tulle? a. It's lost b. I don't know or c. doesn't exist.  I thought it was pretty funny that they know just how small their town in.  However, as the class continued the questions began to get sillier and sillier.  And although there were some serious questions like, What is the most famous monument in Paris? and Where does the President of France live? I got a couple other gems out of them.  Not pictured here, one of the students asked: What color is Sarkozy's white horse?  (There had been a questions similar to that on the American quiz.)  But the options were a. green b. black c. pink.  I wisely answers c. pink.  (The class knows that is my favorite color.)  Lastly, I got this gem:   

How tall is M. Sarkozy?  a. 2 meters b. 38.5 centimeters or c. 1.58 meters.  Which I found funny especially because those measurements mean absolutely nothing to me, so I chose 38.5 cm.  Good times.  Basically it was a very good day of teaching for me and I really enjoyed all the students I worked with. We had extra time at the end of class so I had them all play telephone, which didn't really work that well because I gave them sentences that were too easy.  Next time I'll be sure to carry some paper with me so that we can play pictionary telephone, which is far more fun.

Rosetta: Christmas Magic

Le Touquet has now been decked out (as in 'deck the halls'). There is a canopy of lights covering the main street from the entrance of town all the way to the beach. There are white trees on every street, which I first assumed were fake but on closer examination realized were actually real Christmas trees painted white. The big trees that line the main boulevard are speckled with lights in blue and white, some of which are set up to simulate the look of falling snow. The path leading to the entrance of the town hall is bordered with two rows of white Christmas trees and the entrance itself is lit with more lights in pretty blues and whites. And amongst all this beautiful Christmas feeling I can't help but laugh. At the entrance to Le Touquet there is a strip of white light invoking the idea of silhouetted mountains, hung high across several streets (curving slightly with the roundabout). And, on these mountains you can see a big light likeness of Santa on a sled traversing from right to left in stop motion. Of all the decorations this is the one that strikes me as the most touristic, while all the rest are almost breathtakingly wonderful. So, if you happen to come to Le Touquet this holiday season, I suggest you laugh at the silly Santa on your way into town and then ignore him and enjoy the rest of our winter wonderland. Merry Christmas!

Rosetta: The Christmas Ball

Every year the students put on a Christmas ball. They serve a huge dinner for upwards of 700 people in the town hall and afterwards there is a dance floor available. This years theme was 'Italiano' so I just got back from a very good meal. It was not pasta or pizza like you'd expect but a much fancier imitation of France's Southern neighbor. We started with hors d'oeuvres of course, a small variety plate that was listed as 'modern pizza' but I didn't see much resemblance. After that was a dish of diced scallops served in a log of jelly with slices of orange included (skin and all), this dish was interesting to try but not sensational enough to finish. The main course was a delicious chicken log stuffed with a tomato and mystery filling and covered in some sort of green sauce. This was served with a minced and fried potato triangle much like something you could find at an American diner and kidney beans. Desert was also very good, it was called a 'strawberry mousse' but it was served in the shape of a rectangle cake and had many layers of yummy. And of course, no French meal is complete without the after dinner coffee which in this case came with 'second desert' a shot class filled with a this chocolate mousse and whipped cream. To finish the evening we danced and then walked (and/or ran) home in a perfectly cliché rainstorm, arriving at the house romantically sodden. The whole evening lasted a total of 7 hours and I would award the food an 8 while the music merited something less than a 4.

Rosetta: Chinese Cuisine

In the United States I would always snicker when I saw a sign advertising 'Chinese Cuisine'. I mean the word Cuisine is just French for cooking (slash food, slash kitchen). So I would laugh at the irony of a Chinese restaurant using a French word on their sign. However, Thursday night I literally ate Chinese Cuisine. We have a group of Chinese students come study at our school for one month every year and then sometimes they put together a Chinese Dinner for everyone. It was rather fun and had lots of new things to taste, however none of it made me crave more so I would give the food a 6 (it was well presented at least). It was authentic Chinese because it was made by real Chinese students (plus their Chinese cooking teachers who had come with them). Because I knew who was doing the cooking, I was fairly prepared for all the novelty asian dishes, but the part that caught me off guard was a very familiar tasting bowl of chicken rice soup. I quite enjoyed it, however not many of the others did. The 'cuisine' part happened because it was cooked in a French kitchen with the help of French cooks and French students and the best part, they served the meal with bread rolls on the table because you can't have a meal here without them (even a Chinese meal). It was very quick paced, and the dishes came out staggered so there was always something to eat. I was very amused because the Chinese servers kept switching out our used plates for fresh ones which consternated the French diners because they did not have time to soak up the sauce with a bread roll which is practically compulsory here.