Weekend Plans!!

Payday in France = spending your money at the market and on travel plans

This evening I booked tickets for this weekend to go to Villefranche-de-Rouergue to see Karen!








It will be just like this picture! Minus the UVA-setting, the fraternity, and that dude in the background. Also, I'll probably have on a scarf.

And we'll be here.

I'm excited. Mostly because I'll be happy to see Karen but also to go and see a new place (plus we might take a day trip or two) and to get out of Perigueux again.

Big things are happening in Perigueux, though. Christmas lights are all set, Christmas trees are going up, the Christmas market is being constructed...too bad that the big unveiling (which I'm guessing is going to be Saturday, December 1) is going to take place while I'm out of town. But there's going to be some kind of Christmas festival in Villefranche this weekend, so I'll still get my full French Christmas dosage for the weekend.

It's funny that the French go all-out for Christmas yet are much less religious than the Americans. Not that we don't go all-out for Christmas...but there sure are a lot of lights here. (This has probably been the 15th blog post I've mentioned the unlit Christmas lights in. I'm also going to stop saying the word "Christmas" because when I look at the last two paragraphs, it's the only word I see.)

Anyway, I also bought tickets this evening to go to Lyon with Marina next weekend. We're going for the massive "Fete des Lumieres," a huge tourist attraction that takes place every December 8 in Lyon to celebrate some holiday about the Virgin Mary. When I was in Lyon in 2011 in the middle of July they were talking about the Fete des Lumieres (which, by the way, means "Festival of Lights" for those of you who don't speak French). It's a huge deal and the whole city gets flooded with hundreds of thousands of tourists. We'll be staying on a mattress on the floor of Marina's friend's room in Lyon - which is great! (There are no hotels available in Lyon. Or outside of Lyon. Until you get about 30km away.) The videos and pictures of this festival are amazing (plus I'm excited to go back to Lyon and show Marina the city), so I think it will be a really amazing experience.

This is the only picture I'm uploading because if I put up the Google images or a YouTube video, the pictures I take next week will probably pale in comparison. So you'll just have to stay tuned for those. (Lyon filles, I'm super bummed you can't be there with me!)

I started looking into tickets to go to London and Oxford in March (during the winter/spring vacation we have then) to see my friend, Michelle, who attends Oxford. I can find cheap plane tickets directly from Bordeaux to London - and her break overlaps with mine...and I can be there for her birthday as well. So many small victories! I'm in the process of figuring out those details, but that is exciting, too.

And (cause I really was on a travel planning binge) I reserved some of the tickets/hotels for the trip I'll take with Mark after my family leaves. After I travel with my family (around France and a little bit of northern Spain - I'll explain in detail when we're actually traveling...in three weeks!!) Mark and I will travel as well, mostly using Toulouse as a home-base to do some day trips. But, again, more on that later when it's more pertinent.

I also occasionally teach while I'm here...someday I'll write a post about that. That will be my goal this weekend while I'm taking the train to and from Villefranche: prove that I also have a job here.

French names

Popular names in my classes:

Boys:
Romain
Florian
Maxime

Girls:
Anaïs
Aude
Clémence

Most stereotypical French names:

Boy:
Pierre-Michel

Girl:
Camille

Weirdest names:

Boy:
Tanguy

Girl:
Loes

Name most like my name:

Girl:
Mégane

The tale of five villages

Big news: I finally have internet (real internet - a router, unlimited access) in my apartment; I won't have an excuse for only updating once a week anymore. I'd forgotten what it's like to respond to e-mails when I feel like responding to them! I still, however, don't have a functioning cell phone. Long story, but to get it to work with the new cell company, I needed to get it "unlocked" so I took it to an internet cafe on Wednesday night. They told me to pick it up today (cause for some reason they needed several days to unlock it) and then for no reason at all, they were closed today even though they were supposed to be open. And tomorrow is Sunday, so they are of course closed. Maybe Monday I can finally end the cell phone saga...

There is plenty of other stuff that still needs to be figured out (stuff with the government paperwork, health care, linens in my apartment - it's all never ending) but that is uninteresting and also bums me out. So instead I'll talk about what I did this past week.

Perigueux is very nice - but it is also small and very quiet. Our coping mechanism is to go out and see other parts of the region, the Dordogne, as often as possible. Even if we go to other quiet villages (which is pretty much our only choice in this part of France), just getting out of Perigueux gives us a much-needed refresher. Luckily, it's hard to go wrong. There are a lot of beautiful and interesting villages close to Perigueux, so we've seen a lot of great stuff already!

Wednesday, Marina, Azahara, and I only had classes to teach in the morning, so we rode to Bergerac (like Cyrano, the main character of my favorite play Cyrano de Bergerac) with one of the teachers I work with who lives there. We wandered around the city for the afternoon and then took a bus back to Perigueux for two euro. Not a bad deal.

Cyrano statue #1.

Cyrano statue #2.

The cathedral in Bergerac is clearly totally different from the cathedral in Perigueux. It's cool to see all the different architecture - and how much it varies between towns, even though the towns are fairly close to one another.

Old church in Bergerac + Cyrano statue #2

Example of the architecture in Bergerac (with the wood on the houses and the different colors). Perigueux is mostly stone and very Renaissance-looking.

The river in Bergerac.

We found a "barbe a papa" (cotton candy) stand at a fair in Bergerac...

...and Azahara got the biggest cotton candy I have ever seen in my life.

All in all, we really liked Bergerac (though I really think that most of the reason I liked it was because of Cyrano) and had a very good afternoon there. We found some cool shops and bought presents and ate yummy food at the fair (Marina and I bought what were essentially hollow churros filled with Nutella) and wandered around.

Today we basically repeated that - but in four villages! One of the Spanish teachers at Bertran de Born offered to take us out into the country to see some villages and castles. So the aforementioned crew set out again! Be forewarned, I don't have a ton to say about all the villages, because mostly we just wandered around and took pictures - so I will make up for that by putting up lots of said pictures.

First we went to Sarlat, a medieval village I'll be visiting when my family comes in about four weeks. Basically all of the buildings in the town are the same color - they're required to be - and are reaalllyy old. The streets were very winding and narrow. It's also apparently the home of the cathedral where they filmed a movie about Joan of Arc.

Sarlat's cathedral.

Pretty house with pretty ivy and cool stones. A lot of Sarlat (a lot of France, really) looks like this.

An old church that has been turned into a covered market. Those enormous doors actually work and they open and close depending on the hours of the day.

The region of Perigord (I know that I've called it Bordeaux, the Dordogne, the Aquitaine, and now Perigord - but they all mean different things and they're all true; Perigord is a cultural classification) is none for it's foie gras - but also for it's walnuts. A lot of the oil on this table was made from walnuts. In this market I also tasted alcohol made from truffle. Sadly I mean the mushroom type of truffle, not the chocolate type of truffle.

More Sarlat.

We left Sarlat and went out into the "pleine campagne" to see some other small towns and castles. First we went to Beynac, a town built on a cliff overlooking the Dordogne River and capped by a castle that was owned by the French during the Middle Ages and beyond. That may sound obvious since, well, I am in France, but across from the castle in Beynac is another castle in a town called Castelnaud - and that one was owned by the British. The two towns/castles spent several hundred years fighting and throwing stones at each other. Yeah, it was stupid. Seems like they could've moved farther apart. Or ignored each other.

View from top of the cliff in Beynac. Looking down the river, beyond the bridge, you can see the castle that was owned by the British.

The (very steep) streets of Beynac. They were a joy to climb back up after we walked down to the bottom.

But I got to take this picture when we walked all the way down! Pretty cool, right?

Looking back on Beynac and the castle on top of the cliff.

So since we were only a catapult's distance from the castle at Castelnaud, we went over there next. We visited the castle at Castelnaud, which is now a museum filled with weapons from war during the Middle Ages. Aside from catapults and canons and guns there were also crossbows that could shoot arrows that were four feet long. And shields that weighed 40 lbs. And weird knight armor. But it was all pretty cool and we got to go all through the castle (which was freezing because it's made of really solid stone and has almost no windows - gotta keep those pesky Frenchies out) and had some cool views of the valley from the towers and walls.

Walking toward the castle.

Looking down on the village of Castelnaud from the walls of the castle.

One of my few pictures with people in it.

Examples of the many catapults that were used during the Middle Ages. Apparently the strongest and most powerful catapult could shoot stones weighing 225 lbs up to 200 m - precisely two times an hour.

To finish up we stopped in one more town, Domme. It's a tiny town on top of a cliff and surrounded by a wall. We saw maybe 12 other people in the town because I guess it is also a vacation town - I don't know where all the French people go during the year, but all the towns we visited today were very quiet! Apparently they're busy in the summer...

Walking along the walls of the city.

Looking down on a garden and the valley. I didn't take too many pictures because it was getting dark and there weren't many lights in the city.

It was a good day - but now I'm so tired that I'm falling asleep over my computer. More later! Enjoy the pictures! I'm still loving my new camera!

Pretty weather

We've been having gorgeous weather this week in Perigueux, which has been fabulous. It's been sunny and not too cold - and I am holding onto it as long as I can, because I am dreading the freezing winter that is apparently right around the corner. I've been running along the river a lot (going to do that again this afternoon), and I realized that I haven't put up any pictures of how pretty it is along the river:

Looking back toward Perigueux and the cathedral.

I took this picture a few weeks ago but most of the leaves are actually still on the trees, so it's still very pretty to run along the river and see all the colors in the hills and on the trees lining the path.

Also: it's a flat path. So that's awesome.

My favorite picture of the river!

I had a fairly boring and uneventful weekend, so I don't have too much to report. I think I need to get myself out of Perigueux and do something exciting soon! I'm planning on going to see Karen in Villefranche soon! :-)

Photos of the apartment! Finally!

Just going to start right off the bat with photos:

Walking up the street toward my street (which is on the right).

This is my street, with a big fancy sign and everything! They haven't lit up the Christmas lights yet, but they are everywhere and I think the city will be really pretty in a few weeks when they turn them all on. My street is just for pedestrians and is lined with little shops.

The street again. There are tables in the street today because there is a city-wide food festival of some sort for the whole weekend, so people are selling food/goods in the road like a mini-market. Tomorrow will probably be crazy with the real market and the food festival.

The door to my apartment. I'm on the "second floor" (which is third floor in English) - so not the windows that are covered, but the ones above those that you can barely see.

Living room - still in need of a rug! But I'm choosing to wait for my next paycheck before I buy a rug. Bathroom is on the left but it's not exciting enough to take a picture of... There are decorations on the walls to the right and behind me, you just can't see them

Kitchen - tiny washing machine to the right of the sink (which only kind of works), and stove - which I have to light with a lighter.

Bedroom - I hung my scarves on the wall to bring some more color to it. I also only have a twin-sized blanket for the bed, but a teacher at the school is going to let me borrow some linens next week so hopefully I'll have better bed stuff after that.

Two big windows, which are great. There's also a closet that was behind me when I took this picture.

It's a start, the apartment. I want to get a few more things, but a few teachers and the mother of the children I'm tutoring told me that they will let me borrow stuff. So next week I will have a few more things to spruce the place up. It still doesn't feel all that homey, but it's okay. And Marina is only a block or so away, so I can just wander over there.

Speaking of the kids I'm going to tutor, I'm actually tutoring their mother as well. She decided that she wanted English lessons too, and of course I said yes! We did a lesson yesterday; I gave her some exercises from an English book I found and we went through an article from the Washington Post. She said it was exactly what she needed and that she'd like to continue like that. So that's great! She's very nice, and I enjoyed working with her. I'll tutor the kids on Tuesdays - it's her two children and their friends, so I think we'll start by playing some games and next month looking at Christmas carols and stuff. I have a little planning to do for Tuesday, but I have plenty of time this weekend to do so.

Classes at the school went okay this week, too. The first day I didn't have quite enough material and had extra time at the end of the class, but now I just know for the next time to prepare a little more. I did have one class that went really well (it was about French/American stereotypes) and the students were really interested in it. I'm going to use that lesson with some of my other classes next week. With some of the younger students I'm going to talk about Thanksgiving. And one of the classes asked if we could talk about sports for a lesson - I'm definitely game for that! (Pun intended.)

I'm without a phone and internet temporarily...but that is a whole other story. Hopefully I'll get it all worked out soon!

Happy Friday - bon vendredi! 

(And to my Lyon girls: bon vindredi!!)

Apartment (part 2 of 3)

This is the second of three posts about my apartment because I once again am not including pictures. It’s not ready for its close-up yet! But I promise that pictures of both the outside and inside will soon appear. The building in on a small, pedestrian-only street in the old part of town, and I’m right above a hat shop called Tête à tête. How French – and how punny!

Since I moved in to the apartment I’ve mostly focused on decorating it so it feels less lonely and empty (I’m really going to be living on the bare minimum in terms of kitchen stuff/furniture since I’m not going to buy too much stuff that I’ll only be able to use for six months – I just need to find a happy medium between comfortable and Spartan). Like I said before, I’m really still not so hot on living alone, so I’m doing everything I can to not feel lonely! Aside from decorating I’ve cleaned too, but I still need to do more of that. I’ve put up all my pictures from home, hung my scarves on the wall, and lit candles everywhere (which is actually mostly to combat some icky smell that seems to be lingering about the apartment despite me mopping the floor four times). I also got creative today and bought plastic place mats with funny pictures that I tacked to my walls as colorful posters. Also, I say “creative” but really I mean “cheap” because they were a heck of a lot cheaper than the posters/wall hangings in the home goods store where I bought them.

I spent today in Bordeaux because I had to go for a medical exam to validate my visa and get yet another large stamp/sticker in my passport. It was annoying to have to take the train there and back today, but it’s also always so nice to go to a city that is bigger than Périgueux; like I’ve said, I feel way more relaxed when there are people everywhere. The quietness of Périgueux stresses me out a bit, subconsciously.

Tomorrow is my first real day of classes on my own. Three of the five classes I have tomorrow will be me teaching in a separate classroom. I’m a little nervous, but I have a lesson planned out about road trips in the United States, so at least I’m prepared. And if it doesn’t go well – hey, it doesn’t go well. In any case, it won’t be a disaster. And I decided a while ago that as long as half of my classes are easy/interested to learn, I’ll be okay, and I’m already anticipating that it will be more than that. But tomorrow will be the first real test of that.

Since Vienna, there isn’t much to recount. There really isn’t anything to do in Périgueux over break. I hung out with the other assistants a lot, but we didn’t do too much. We decided that it might be good to join a dance class (yes, I’m so desperate to do something that I’m willing to take a dance class – and I hate dancing!) or another activity to have something to do regularly and to meet some young French people if possible. Marina also recommended that we start doing a mini “exchange” in which she would help me learn some Spanish and I would help her work on her English. So we’ll start that this week as well! I also have my first real tutoring session with the little kids on Thursday, and I’m definitely looking forward to that. That will always be a good thing to look forward to during the week.

I’m off to watch Modern Family for now. I’ve gone through my Modern Family DVDs about three times already. I definitely should have brought more TV shows with me…

Apartment!

Pictures are coming, I promise, but it's nothing to look at now. I keep making trips back and forth between Marina's place and mine as I start to move in. Thankfully it wasn't too dirty (at all) when I moved in, so I've just been doing some minor cleaning.

It's still weird to think about living alone - it's not something I ever wanted to do or thought that I would do. But it's good practice being an adult...or something like that. Plus it's only six months. Plus Colleen can do it, so I can, too! :-)

That's all - just a quick update on that. More to come, hopefully tomorrow!

Vienna is full of Austrians

I keep referring to people in Vienna as German. I think if they understood me, they'd be offended by this. I have to keep reminding myself that Vienna is in Austria, not Germany, therefore the Viennese are Austrian, not German. The German language (and its utterly unpronounceable street/landmark names - today I tried to say the name of the Vienna airport, Schwechat, and just kept going "Shhh...Shhh" and the guy at the hostel desk started imitating me and laughing) is throwing me off.

In general, the aforementioned Viennese seem to think I'm one of them, however. I guess I really do look German; those familial roots of the Synders/Harders/Bolbachs are really showing through! Almost every time that I've entered a museum/cathedral/bar the Austrian working in the location has spoken to me in German and has seemed to expect German in response. I've responded with an awkward pause and then usually an eloquent "What?" which has led to the Austrian saying, "Oh. You speak English," and then transitioning into a language I understand. They all also seem to think Katie and I are sisters. Simply because we both have blond hair and speak English. We walked past a guy on the street today advertising a concert who said, "Hey, look! Sisters!" No, dude, we're not.

Vienna is a pretty interesting city. It's very uniform in it's architecture. It reminds me a bit of Paris minus the black iron gates over every window (that sounds totally snobby, sorry about that). It's elaborate but not overly so, and it's a very easy city to navigate. We spent most of our 2.5 days wandering and checking out buildings and we never got too lost, despite our crappy maps.

Classic Vienna architecture.

And some more!

We spent the first day exploring the city. And walking, walking, walking. Also eating. We tried Vienna's famous Sacher-torte, which is a classic Viennese chocolate cake with whipped cream. It was delicious, and we got to eat it in the original bakery/hotel where it was created.

Sacher-torte!

The cafe of Sacher Hotel.

We also spent a lot of the first day exploring Vienna's biggest cathedral, St. Stephen's, which was started in the 1100s and was never really finished. It has an amazing tiled roof (which was redone in the 1950s in the original style after the roof was destroyed during the bombings of WWII), but it's fairly dark and creepy inside. We took a tour of the catacombs (unfortunately I couldn't take pictures) and saw some truly freaky stuff. There were rooms with the coffins of people of the Hapsburg family and of cardinals - and there were also tombs/rooms just filled of bones of plague victims. Our tour guide made sure to assure us that the plague was no longer contagious just in case there were any germophobes in the groups. But really, seeing rooms overflowing with skulls and femurs is pretty creepy. There was also an ossuary (a room with organized bones) that was equally creepy because way-back-when they had sent prisoners down into the mass graves to clean the bones and stack them up neatly to make space for more bones. Ew.

A not-so-creepy picture of St. Stephen's

The exit from the catacombs.

Great view of the fancy and tiled roof of the cathedral.

The rest of the day was spent walking and exploring more cathedrals, parks, and buildings. Vienna has a lot of domed buildings, as an aside. And then in the evening as we were walking past the Opera, we decided last minute to try to get standing-room tickets. We were told that you could get cheap tickets at the last minute - and we got some for three euros each (even though we were wearing jeans and tennis shoes). By chance, the opera was The Barber of Seville, aka the opera with "Figaro" and most opera songs you've heard, so even though we couldn't really see anything from our standing section, it was really cool to be there. There were even subtitles in English (on the bars that we could lean against in the standing section) that we could read so we knew what was going on. We made it through the first half - and then I went to the bathroom at the end of intermission and didn't make it back in time before the second act started. I was subsequently banned from re-entering, despite the fact that Katie and my purse were still inside. So I was banished to sit on a couch in the coat check room (I unlaced and relaced my shoes and braided the tassles on my scarf) until Katie got concerned enough that I hadn't come back into the opera and came out (with our purses, thank goodness) and was directed to my couch. She said she felt like a mother picking her disobedient child from the principal's office. But, hey, for three euro, I can't complain.

Vienna Opera!

Super elaborate inside. I felt like a total scrub in my jeans and Converse sneakers and went as quickly to my seat as possible.

"View" from standing section.

Today we spent checking out the castles in Vienna. One, Schonbrunn, was the summer residence of the Hapsburgs; it was slightly outside of town. It had incredible gardens; they were definitely the best part of the castle. The other castle, the castle the Hapsburgs spent most of their time in, was in the center of Vienna, the Hofburg Castle. Both castles were really cool and interesting, but unfortunately we got a lot of repeat information. They both focused on the lives/reigns of Franz Joseph and Elisabeth, who ruled in the 1800s; while the couple was interesting (Elisabeth was totally nuts, actually), there were plenty of other interesting people who lived in the castles, like Maria Theresa (Marie Antoinette's crazy mom), who would have been interesting to learn about as well. But that's my only complaint. Both castles were totally worth checking out, and I enjoyed them both.

Except the Hofburg had a whole floor dedicated to dinner plates and cutlery. Seriously. It was so boring.

Schonbrunn, the summer palace. Not too shabby for a second home.

It's hard to tell because it wasn't sunny, but the gardens were enormous and absolutely amazing. There were mazes and normal gardens and a zoo and that crazy building at the top of the hill.

The leaves were changing color so it was so pretty!

I couldn't get the whole Hofburg palace in one photo!

Vienna was much cooler than I expected it to be. No one had told me they didn't like Vienna, but no one had raved about it like they do about Prague or Florence or something. But I really liked the city! It was pretty and interesting and easy to explore! I only wish I could have seen it in the sunlight!

Tomorrow we have a flight at 6 back to Paris and then a couple train rides back to Perigueux. We don't start classes again until next Monday, so I don't know what I'll do for the next week. Hopefully I'll be moving into my new apartment! But you can't be too sure...

Cheers!