Outside a French window

I think that a lot of people use their blogs to make observations about what's going on in their lives. I mostly use this to sum up interesting events or trips that I've taken, which explains why sometimes I don't post for a week or more at a time. I've felt motivated to blog recently though, mostly because I need something to occupy my time, but also because I feel like I should write about the everyday things as well, even if they're not as interesting as the trips.

I don't know if I've put up pictures of what my street looks like when it's not on an overload of Christmas decorations. And since I look at it every single day, it seems worth sharing. I've said before that I don't love living alone and that, as a result, I find that it's pretty lonely. Logically. I would also say that it doesn't help that I've seen the guy who lives upstairs a grand total of three times and the guy who "lives" downstairs only once. Plus the buildings across the street (a street which is only about ten feet wide) are uninhabited as far as I can tell. The shutters are never open in the building across from me nor in either building beside it. One level of one building seems to be occupied by offices, but the rest of the shutter are either always shut or open onto empty rooms.

This is what's directly across from the window by my bed.

In some ways this is good, because I never have to worry if I accidentally forget to close my shutter when I change my shirt, nor do I have to worry that someone will look in and see me doing Pilates. But it is a bit isolating. It's also strange, since Perigueux isn't filled with empty apartments or anything. It definitely feels inhabited...just not here.

The street itself (down at ground-level) is much nicer. There are always a lot of people walking down it during the afternoons and on the weekends since it's a pedestrian street and right in the center of town. Sometimes it is cool to look out and see such a French street. It's not like I forget it, but sometimes there are big reminders that I am in la France profonde. Meaning I am in a seriously French little town in a seriously French part of France.

The little blue sign says "Rue Saint Silain, On y est bien!" It's almost a rhyme and it means "Saint Silain road, it's good here." I don't know why the sign exists or if it belongs to any particular establishment, but it's kind of funny.

This is looking in the opposite direction.

This hasn't been the cheeriest of posts, but I felt like writing anyway. The beginnings of weeks are always the worst, and Tuesdays are my least favorite days so I'm mentally gearing up for tomorrow. I've also been having a particularly homesick week or so. While in some ways it feels like "it's already February 18th," it also really feels like "oh my gosh, it's only February 18th." It parallels my experience, I suppose. There have been some good parts about being here (the traveling, improving my French, making friends, getting to know the real France) - but it has also been extremely difficult (basically everything else). It would have been a heck of a lot easier if I could have imported my friends/family/Mark to help me out.

Plus there's something that struck me today when I was talking to Mark. I was already aware that the weather really can affect my mood (I just didn't know to what extent until I moved here). But I realized that the fact that I am never really satisfied with my meals is really eating at me too. (Pun intended.) Believe me, I am pretty shocked that I miss certain foods this much - I never would have expected to be one of those people. And maybe a lot of it has to do with the fact that since I'm homesick I just want foods that I could eat at home. (It also has to do with the fact that I can only cook with a stove; I don't have an oven or a microwave, so I'm severely limited to soups/things you can boil/things you can fry and cold food.) But I seriously think that when I go to England and I get to eat a turkey sandwich, I am really going to noticeably feel better.

I have explained what the typical sandwich is here, right? A baguette with ham and butter. That's all. Ewwww!

But in three months exactly I'll be on a flight home!

School stuff

I've been meaning to steal these pictures from Mark for awhile now and put them up on my blog. When Mark was here we went to the school after classes had let out so he could see it. He wanted to see the teacher's lounge and the classroom where I teach most of my classes. Since there weren't a whole lot of people around, we could take pictures without being totally conspicuous. So here's some evidence of what I do with my life 12 hours of the week:

Here's my box in the teacher's lounge so people can leave papers for me. I don't actually get that much in it, but sometimes it's useful.

And here's me posing slightly awkwardly with my box - way down on the floor.

Mark was excited that my name was listed on the list with all the other teachers and assistants. Marina is listed there as well.

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the teacher's lounge, which is actually quite nice. There are just always people there and I would feel really awkward just getting up and taking pictures of the room. It would be weird.

My classroom was empty when we went though, plus I've taken a few photos on my iPhone.

Here's a photo of my itty-bitty classroom. When the students walked in for the first time, every class said, "OH! C'est une mini salle!!" (Salle is room, so you can probably guess the rest.)

View from the room. On one of the days that it snowed earlier this year. People are rarely out there using the tennis courts and stuff. The French aren't as into P.E. as the Americans are.

And Mark took a picture of me "using the board." Unfortunately I didn't have my dry-erase markers with me, otherwise I would have written something!

I don't have much else to say tonight, but I thought that this kind of post was long overdue! I've prepared most of my stuff for the week, so I'll probably take it easy tonight. Or do some job research or something.

Also, the weather was beautiful again today and looks like it might be nice all week. So excited!

One thing I forgot to mention

There was one eventful thing I forgot to mention.

Today at the market I bought a big bottle of homemade pumpkin/squash/onion soup. I got a recommendation from the lady selling it and was very excited to try the soup and then save the nice glass bottle and use it for something in the future. I even bought a baguette to eat with the soup.

Though you've already guessed where this is going, I'll tell you anyway. When I was half a flight of stairs (really, like six steps) away from my apartment door, I fell and broke my bottle of soup all over the place. The only upside was that it was in a bag so there wasn't glass everywhere, just pumpkin soup that had gushed out of the bag when I fell and glass cut the plastic open. Thank goodness there are only two-and-a-half of us in the building (the guy downstairs pretty much just uses his place for storing furniture, so he doesn't totally count) and therefore no one walked by to witness me wiping soup off the stairs.

And instead of eating delicious fresh homemade pumpkin soup with a baguette for dinner, I ate a packet of Ramen.

Sunny days

This blog post is purely dedicated to the fact that there has been sunshine in Perigueux the last few days. I've been able to go on runs and drink coffee outside (it's still chilly, but sunshine is everything) and generally not have to be bummed out by the weather. Tomorrow is supposed to be really nice as well, so I'm definitely going to take advantage and go for another run.

One of the (many) photos I took while on my run on Friday.

And a photo from today. There were a ton of people out of the voie verte (the path along the river) both yesterday and today. I saw bikes, roller skates, dogs, scooters, horses, you name it.

I know that we're just going to go back to clouds and rain, but I'm going to appreciate this sun while I can. It might not be nice again until April.

Little swamp/bridge that I pass when I'm out running.

The sunshine even made me feel charitable toward Perigueux itself: I stopped and took a photo of the cathedral on my way home. It's still impressive in its massiveness.

This week has been fairly uneventful. Normal classes, normal tutoring lessons. I've prepped a little for next week and I'll spend most of tomorrow getting the rest of my classes and tutoring lessons ready. On Valentine's Day Mark and I watched a movie "together" by muting our Skype session, pulling up a g-chat window, and then starting a movie on YouTube at the same time. It actually worked out pretty well!

I only have two more weeks of teaching and then it will be time for the March break, so that will be good! I'm looking forward to both parts of my trip! And then it will only be six more weeks of teaching! There won't be much I miss about the teaching...but I'll miss other aspects of being here, I'm sure!

That's all for this evening. I might go sunshine-crazy again tomorrow and take more pictures while I'm running, in which case I'll put them up on the blog again. Believe me, this is big news.

Why I spent the evening of my 23rd birthday in a McDonald's

That title probably piques your interest. But I'm going to leave you hanging and start at the beginning of my weekend, which was Thursday.

On Thursday, Katie and I took the train to Bordeaux to stay with Hanting, a girl I know from UVA. (Lucky Hanting requested the Bordeaux area as well - except she actually ended up living in the city!) Friday morning we headed out to the airport to head to Milan. The flight was pretty quick (just over an hour) and, despite the fact that I don't like flying, was cool because we flew right over the Alps, which were pretty amazing to see from above, particularly since they were covered in snow.

Here's a photo I got with my phone.

Milan is actually very close the the Alps. I didn't realize how close until we'd landed and the Alps were still right next to us. We pretty much flew over them and then landed immediately afterward. You can see them from high points in the city, though they're probably an almost two-hour drive away.

The best thing about Milan was the sunshine. It was colder in Milan than it is in Perigueux (Milan is actually a bit farther north) but there was nothing but sunshine while we were there, which was such a relief after endless rain and clouds in Perigueux. It also made for great pictures.

Look at that blue sky! I haven't seen that much blue sky in at least a month! Probably six weeks!

We went out to explore the city a bit on Friday afternoon/evening. I think I'll just post a bunch of pictures to show you what we saw and explain a bit in the captions. We mostly just wandered around and then ate some pizza. It was sooo nice not to eat French food. I know some people think I'm nuts not to love French food, but it has never been my favorite cuisine and there is just so little variety! But I'm not going to get started on another of my "foods I miss" stories. (Mark listens to me daydream about food just about every time we Skype. I usually start talking wistfully about turkey sandwiches and Sunday brunch.) But I'll just get hungry if I start that now. Pictures:

The (very cool) Milan cathedral. It's very elaborate both inside and out. And extremely clean. Though, for some inexplicable reason, it allows DKNY to advertise on the side of it. Seems a bit out of character for the country where the Pope lives. (Or, well, the country where the country where the Pope lives is located.)

P.S. What's all this about the Pope retiring? First Pope to retire since the 15th century or something crazy like that.

P.P.S. Is "Pope" even supposed to be capitalized when I use the before the word? 

 

The fancy shopping mall of Milan. Pricey, pricey but very fancy and pretty! We walked through a few times. The ceiling is all glass and the floor is all kinds of pretty tiles and mosaics. There are also lots of cafes adjoining the Prada and Louis Vuitton stores. 

More evidence of the mosaic floors and the glass roof.

The first afternoon/evening we actually ate in a restaurant right next to this galleria, which was definitely a tourist trap. As such, I was expecting the food to be sub-par...but this is Italy. So, of course, I was wrong. The pizza was still better than pretty much any pizza you'd get in America. I just had a plain margherita pizza - and it was delicious. I would doubt that there are many places in Italy that don't serve good pizza.

The center of Milan isn't huge; it was pretty easy to walk around and see everything in a short amount of time. We definitely didn't need more than a weekend to be there. (We didn't make it to Lake Como because we didn't get the center of town early enough on Friday. If we'd had a few more hours we could have seen a bit more on Friday and then gone to Lake Como on Saturday! I'm bummed about that - but not very much.) You can't really compare Milan to the other major Italian cities: Florence, Venice, Rome. It's really nothing in comparison. My grandfather put it well in saying that while the other big cities feel very ancient and historical, Milan feels much more modern and less in touch with those ancient roots. But if you consider Milan on its own and not in comparison to the rest of Italy, it's really a very pretty city and has a lot of nice things to see. It was definitely nice to wander around and see the sites.

In the evening, Katie and I wandered around the center of town some more. Friday was my birthday, so we stopped in a cafe and had some gelato and wine to celebrate.

Yum.

Here's where the night gets a bit rough though. Katie and I headed back to the apartment where we were staying with some other assistants. We had to meet them since we only had one set of keys to the apartment. They were late in getting back because they were stuck waiting for a tram to show up so they could get back, so Katie and I ended up sitting outside in the freezing weather for about 40 minutes. (We opened a bottle of wine we'd bought to try to warm up a bit.) When the other assistants came back we went inside the courtyard of the apartment complex and went to open the apartment door...which refused to budge. I had locked the door when we left, so it was completely bizarre that the lock refused to turn. After several calls to the owners, they eventually showed up - and found themselves out of luck with the lock as well. At this point, Katie and I had been outside for about an hour and a half and it was almost 11pm. The owners were apologizing and after being unsuccessful at either opening the door or finding the seven of us different accommodations, told us we would have to come stay at their house. (For some reason it wasn't possible to break the door or get the locksmith to come out since it was Friday night.) We were, of course, thrilled about this. But, the birthday gods were friendly, and on our way to the owners' house, one got a call that the locksmith guy actually could come and open the door for us. He asked us to go wait in McDonald's right by the apartment. Which was definitely not the place I wanted to spend the evening.

Luckily, McDonald's in Italy is cleaner than in the United States... and it serves beer. Katie and I promptly bought French fries and beer (well, Katie bought the fries and beer because she said this was a pretty crappy birthday evening for me) and sat down with the other girls. (Later I got a second beer from Gemma, one of the other assistants - she agreed that this wasn't the greatest birthday evening.) At the time, the evening was not so great (minus the friendly people buying me beers). But, in retrospect, pretty funny. And most definitely the only time I'm going to spend not only a birthday in Italy - but a birthday in McDonald's in Italy. Well also, drinking beer in a McDonald's. Cause that's not happening anytime soon in America.

The McDonald's crew.

Saturday ran much more smoothly than Friday. Katie and I got up early and went right to the cathedral to climb to the top. The roof of the cathedral is pretty amazing, and you can walk all over it, which is very cool. It's very elaborate and has lots of creepy gargoyles and weird statues. You can also see the Alps from the top!

The path around the roof and an example of a creepy gargoyle (what a gargoyle should look like!)

VERY cool roof.

 

Another shot of the roof. This time new and improved because it includes Katie.

I took this to try and show the Alps in the background. They're a bit obscured by haze, but they're out there. They're enormous and very beautiful! I was pretty excited to be so close to them!

One more shot of the roof. Can you tell how clean it is? Most major cathedrals in major cities are super clean - but I really noticed the cleanliness of this one. Come to think of it, Milan was very clean in general.

Apart from stopping for coffee about four times (ohh Italy actually knows how to do coffee, unlike France which only serves itty-bitty little espressos - I just wanted a giant cup of American-style coffee), we went to the Milan castle as well. It's full of a bunch of "mini-museums," but the coolest attraction was Michelangelo's last statue that he ever worked on. He never finished it - because he died - but it was interesting to see what his statues looked like when he had just started them, particularly when thinking about what the David looks like. It's absolutely amazing what he could do with a piece of marble. The castle itself was monstrous, and we wandered around the grounds a bit and out to a park behind the castle as well.

One of the fancy courtyards of the castle.

The main central area of the castle. This place was just enormous. It was built centuries ago and was restored/redecorated/rebuilt/changed/etc. a bunch over the various monarchies who lived there. Also, the insignia in the main tower was of a dragon eating a human. No idea why.

A park/carnival on the other side of the castle.

The front of the castle. Look at the rainbow in the fountain! Can't you see why this weather would make me crazy? The only time I see a rainbow in Perigueux is when it stops raining for 15 minutes, the sun comes out to taunt everyone, and then the clouds roll back in and dump 1000 gallons of water down on us again. (I really can't wait for spring; I'm assuming the weather will be better then. I also know I could never live in a place like Seattle.)

After the castle, we ate some doughy/meaty/cheesy goodness (and cannoli) for lunch from a food stand. And then we stopped for more coffee.

Lunch.

We ended the afternoon by walking over to the incredibly expensive designer shopping district of Milan. Fashion capital of the world? Yes. While it was not so fun to see dresses and shoes (ohhhh the shoes) priced at 2000 euro, it was fun to see all the new styles. Though apparently pastels are in style this season...? Ew. I think I'm going to skip that trend.

The shopping district was pretty and full of really rich people. It was a good place to window shop though. I hate window shopping when the clothing is reasonably priced. But when it's absurdly priced - well then who cares? Since I'll never be able to afford it, I might as well enjoy staring at the crazy shoes and dresses! It's almost more like looking at museum displays rather than shop windows.

Pretty courtyard in the expensive shopping district.

Feeling festive for Valentine's Day! Everyone deserves a $3500 pair of shoes! Women and men.

And that about sums it up. We ate pizza again for dinner and had some good, cheap Italian wine. Sunday was an incredibly long day of traveling, but I arrived back in Perigueux and did absolutely nothing for teaching today. So a weekend well spent!

Don't worry, today was fine, it was okay that I didn't prepare.

Birthday party!

I'm getting ready to walk to the train station, but I have a little time to kill, so I thought I'd quickly post some pictures from my birthday party last night! My friends all came to celebrate since I'll be gone on my actual birthday - it was lots of fun, they were great. The girls and our friends Eve, Flor, and Juan all came with a ton of balloons, streamers, noise-makers, and food.

It was the first (and presumably only) time that I had "Happy Birthday" sung to me in four different languages - though when they sang it in Spanish, they sang about three different versions since we had Spanish-speakers from Spain, Mexico, and Argentina. Apparently there are a bunch of different versions of the birthday song! First they sang in English, then French, then the first Spanish version, and then they just kept adding versions, until finally Cathi sang it in German (mostly by herself since German is pretty much unpronounceable).

These are my birthday cards - they were super elaborate and very funny! Marina added logos from some of the government agencies we had to go to a dozen times. They also all got me a scarf, earrings that look like chocolate bars, and a framed photo collage of pictures of us in Perigueux.

I think this was before all the birthday song singing started. Azahara made cheesecake - it was pretty delicious!

Sitting around my little table and snacking/chatting. Also, here's evidence that my apartment is much brighter and happier than it was when I first moved in. I kept my Christmas lights up and I have lots of posters up - in addition to all my colorful scarves hanging. I still don't have any emotional attachment to this apartment - but at least it's not a depressing place to come back to anymore.

Picture with the girls. From left to right: Eve, Marina, Cathi, me, Daniela, and Azahara.

It was a good night! We had a lot of fun. We finished by drinking mate ("mah-tay") a tea-like beverage that they drink in Argentina. I've definitely gotten to experience a lot of different cultural things while I've been here - it's cool!

Tonight in Bordeaux, Katie and I are staying with a girl who went to UVA. We should be in Milan around noon tomorrow, and then we'll have pretty much a day and a half to see the city. Also, Lake Como is only an hour from Milan. At first Katie and I were thinking that since we don't have a ton of time, we should just focus on Milan - but if Lake Como is so close....Maybe we'll discuss on the train to Bordeaux!

That's all - gotta go make some last minute checks to make sure I'm prepared!

Thoughts from a rainy Tuesday

Though in Perigueux, I don't think there's any other type of Tuesday.

I am excited about going to Milan this weekend - mostly because the forecast is for sunshine. I think it's supposed to be pretty cold, but at least there will be SUN. I am so tired of the rain and the gray! It's looking like we're going to leave Bordeaux in the rain/snow/clouds and land in Milan with lots of sun and blue sky.

Today a man from the city hall came to record stuff about me/my apartment for the city census. Very official. The man who asked me the questions was nice; he made the same comment that almost everyone else makes when they ask me where in the U.S. I'm from. "D.C.? Whoa, that's a big change." It was also a confirmation of my French skills that I didn't have any trouble with the questions he was asking (about lodging, background, work in Perigueux, etc.) It's always nice to know I'm doing okay.

I also decided today that if there is a crowd of French people there is also a cloud - of cigarette smoke. On Tuesdays I don't have class until 10, which is the first class period after the 15 minute morning break. During the break, 100+ (probably much more than that when you consider people filtering in and out and going across the street to the park) students go outside the school to smoke. I have to push through this crowd to get into the school. The smell always makes me think of college parties (minus the smell of beer) though, honestly, there was a whole lot less smoke at frat and house parties.

Additionally, French teenagers walk at the same sloth-like pace as their American counterparts - and, I would imagine, their counterparts of any nationality. Sometimes I get stuck walking behind them when I leave the school and it's énervant. But today I was wearing my new shoes and they were starting to hurt my feet by the end of the day, so I was thankful that I had an excuse to walk slowly when I left school.

Tomorrow my friends are going to come over to celebrate my birthday because I'm leaving Perigueux on Thursday night to catch the Friday morning flight to Milan. My only class tomorrow is also canceled. Woohoo!

Maybe I'll write another post before Milan - if not, the next post will be about Milan and will include pictures!

I needed to write a post!

Yikes - it's been awhile since I've written a post! Like I said last weekend, nothing interesting has really happened recently. It's just been standard teaching and Perigueux (boring, rain); I supposed I could write about teaching and tutoring, but it's really not all that interesting, and once I get to the end of the day, I'm not really in the mood to write about work.

Karen was here last weekend and then came again this weekend; it's pretty quiet in Villefranche! Last weekend we did a lot of shopping (because it's still the big sales month in France) and I bought a couple dresses. I picked up a pair of shoes that match the one dress this week - which brings my pair of shoes total up to four. I think I'm done with shopping in France, or else I'm never going to get everything home. This weekend we hung out a lot - but more excitingly, we planned a few trips! We made our reservations for our Normandy trip: we're going to spend one night in Paris, two in Rouen, and four in Caen. From Caen we'll be able to take a day trip of the beaches and the Normandy museum, and also do day trips to Mont-Saint-Michel and possibly Honfleur. I think we'll make calls on where we want to go once we get there, though of course the beaches are a definite.

Karen also decided that she's going to travel with me in May! Hooray! She bought tickets to come to Reykjavik with Katie and me, and we talked a lot about what we want to do before. As of now, the tentative plan is to go to Stockholm with Michelle (my friend who I'm visiting in England), go to Berlin before to stay with my friend Cathi, and go to Venice before that (Karen hasn't been there before and I am more than happy to go back). Beforehand Karen will be in Barcelona with her family and I might go to Nice/Aix-en-Provence on my own (if I'm going to travel for a few days on my own I figured I'd pick French cities that I want to visit - that way I know the language). Hopefully these plans will go from tentative to sure this week! Plane tickets are only about $65 between a lot of these cities, so we could do all of our traveling for about $200 or so - which is kind of absurd.

And, speaking of traveling, I go to Milan next weekend, so soon I'll have fun pictures to put up again! And then it's only three weeks of school after Milan until the winter vacation (Normandy and England). I realized that at that rate, the next few months are really going to go by very quickly.

Today I need to plan out my lessons for the week, both for school and for tutoring lessons, and  I really don't know what I want to do. I might try to do some planning for next week, too, since I definitely won't be planning while I'm in Milan!

I'll try to write another time this week. I guess the point of blogging while I'm here is also to write about everyday life in France. It just hasn't been particularly fascinating lately!