Loire and les vacances

So far, the break is going well. I met the parents in Charles de Gaulle airport (note: taking the RER train--the equivalent of a cattle car--is not the best plan). We got back to Blois, ate lunch at the Louis XII, crashed, and then had a nice dinner chez moi with the other assistants.

Saturday, we went to dinner at Le Castelet with Alan, Tom, Dorine, and Rose. Tasty dinner...they have regional specialties that are also historically-inspired. Like fish cooked in red wine...apparently white wine is trickier to produce, so back in the day, they stuck with red wine for most things. I had rillettes (kind of like grainy pâté), pot-au-feu (basically a stew of beef, carrot, potato, turnip, leek...), and o my goodness chocolate orange mouuussse......

Chocolate orange mousse.




Sunday, we went to mass at the cathedral St. Louis--felt like I was back in experiential learning classes with Dr. Oldrieve...for my parents to go to a French mass had to be like medieval peasants hearing a sermon in Latin. We also toured the chateau de Blois.

Monday, we went to Tours. Walked around town, checked out the Gallo-Roman ruins, the 15th century houses still in use. Ate crepes.

Tuesday was spent at Chenonceau. I walked around the gardens a bit as I'd seen the inside, and it was lovely. It was just nice to walk in a wooded place; I miss trees. Blois is sadly lacking in trees, at least in the town.

Wednesday, we had a quiet day in Blois. Shopped in town, had a very nice lunch at the Indian restaurant, walked past my school, and spent the rest of the day doing laundry, packing, etc. Crepes for dinner, homemade.

Today, we're leaving for Paris in about an hour. I'm looking forward to getting out of the Loire Valley a bit! Paris, Scarborough, then Carcassonne. Back in 10 days or so.

Winding down

This week is finally almost over...funny how, now it's over, it has seemed to fly by. Yesterday, Alan and I went to the other side of the river...visited one of the quietest churches I think I've ever been in. My hair hitting my jacket was the equivalent of a bomb dropping. According to an inscription on the wall, Jeanne d'Arc came there to pray.

The classes have been going well today. I had my first group for only twenty minutes; I then had to take them to a panel of speakers on homosexuality. It's been almost 10 years since I was in a sex ed class...I don't remember even addressing the issue of sexual orientation. Here, there were three speakers--all homosexual--who presented themselves to the class and explained they were here to answer questions. They showed a video of a similar presentation to an American classroom, where kids asked all sorts of questions...I think this was basically to give the students examples of questions they might ask. They handed out sheets of paper for kids to write questions on, but up until I left, they were still asking questions orally.

The parents are going to be here in 18 hours!!

Azay-le-Rideau

Yesterday, we went here. Azay-le-Rideau. The chateau was built in the 16th century, and feels a lot homier that some of the bigger ones. Unlike Chambord and Chenonceau, you get the feeling that Azay-le-Rideau was really part of a town. This is probably a function of its size and location...small(er), and you can see the town from the chateau. Its grounds are fairly modest in comparison, but it is charming. With Chenonceau I'd say elegant, Chambord I'd say stunning...but you could live in Azay-le-Rideau. It'd be the kind of place where you'd take a book out in one of the boats and float around the moat on a sunny afternoon, or play petanque on the lawn.

Strikes and students

There was another strike this week--Thursday--again because of proposed changes to the way teachers can be required to teach more hours or else lose part of their salary. Also, concern over cutbacks in available posts. For me, this meant smaller groups of students, or even whole classes that didn't show...probably because their main English prof had told them beforehand that s/he wouldn't be coming. If they don't have regular English, they seem to figure that they don't need to go to the English assistant's class, either.

I read that some American schools are thinking of extending their school hours. Here, we start at 8am, go as late as 6pm, but are these kids realllly getting that much out of school? The French system seems very rigorous--my terminales (in their last year of high school) seem to have spent their whole term preparing for the dreaded oral exams. Same thing with my prepas kids (those who have finished high school and are now taking a sort of technical or business 2-year course, to prepare them for entry into the prestigious "grandes écoles"). It reminds me of proficiency tests and the way teachers had to "teach to the test." It IS different though...at least in English, it doesn't seem to revolve around rote memorization. The students are learning methods...not just how to speak English, but how to use that language to effectively present a text, an image, an issue, etc. In any case, one thing definitely seems to be the same, wherever you go...some kids will put forth the effort, some are going to sleep through or skip class. If you don't care about being there, it doesn't matter how many hours you're at school.

In other news...

We made one heck of a curry last night. It's a sad day when your wok is too small, and last night we pushed that envelope. But all turned out well.

Today sounds windy and slightly threatening, so it seems to be a good opportunity to lounge around with a book and some tea. While I have been told that "Les Trois Mousquetaires" could substitute for your average sleeping pill, I am liking it so far. Also need to prepare presentation for French class: we're each presenting a poem from our country over the course of the next few months, and my turn is this coming Tuesday. I chose EE Cummings' poem l(a. Try translating THAT one into French though...

Love love love France

This country...I want to hug it. Where else do you get free museum days?? Rose, Philipp and I took the 9:43 train out of Blois, got into Paris around noon. I went to the Hotel Cujas to make reservations for the parents' visit, then we headed off to the Pantheon. What a great/strange building. It's half-sacred half-secular, a monument to the great minds of France. Rousseau, Dumas, Voltaire, Hugo, Zola, Marie Curie...the list goes on. I'm kicking myself for not bringing my camera...was tired of living through the camera lens, but ugh, still kicking. Afterwards, we got sandwiches and crepes at a boulangerie, ate them in the Jardin du Luxembourg. It was sooo sunny today, about 50 degrees with sun on you. Free museums bah, I could have sat outside all day. But the Louvre was next on the list, and you can't miss the Louvre, especially for free. I hit a bit of the Richelieu wing, seeing mostly medieval and Renaissance scultures, a few Flemish paintings: good golly Rembrandt and Rubens. After about two hours there, we called it a day. Only so much you can absorb. Rose and I stopped by a cafe to bask in more sunlight, sipping on over-priced wine and counting the number of Smart Cars that went by (five in the space of about 15 minutes). They can park sideways, they're so small. Whoa.

Back in Blois, I'm finishing up lesson plans for tomorrow. The Superbowl is playing here at midnight, but I don't think I can convince myself to stay up for it. How terrible. Two midwest teams, and I'm copping out. Ah well, we wouldn't get the commercials anyway.

La chandeleur

Françoise had Alan and me over for dinner last night, and as it turns out, this was a good night to be eating with a French person. The second of February is "La chandeleur," which basically means you eat crepes. Looking up the details, it appears that the origin is actually pagan--the Romans used to celebrate the god Pan on this day, carrying torches through the city ("chandelle" means candle). Then the Christians came to power and replaced the pagan holiday with one of their own, celebrating Jesus's presentation to the temple forty days after his birth. You lit a candle at the church and then tried to make it back home with the candle still lit. If you succeeded, it was sure that you would not die in the coming year. Now, where do the crepes come in? There seem to be a couple superstitions: if you don't have crepes on February 2nd, your flour will go bad. If you flip the crepe with your right hand while holding a gold coin in your left, you'll be financially secure for the rest of the year. You also had to fold the gold coin into the crepe and then throw it on top of your cupboard, to stay there until next year. And yes, you did scrape up the remains of last year's rotted crepe; the first poor person to come to your door would receive last year's gold coin.

In any case, we had various mixes of ham, cheese, egg, and mushrooms in our savory crepes; the sweet ones involved butter, sugar, nutella, and jam. There were no candles or gold coins involved, so we'll see how that pans out for us.

Other happenings: the parents have booked flight, hotel, and Mom and I have Eurostar tickets to get to England...yesss, we're going to Scarborough! Alan and I have booked our trip as well...we're heading to Carcassonne, a walled medieval city 20 miles from the Mediterranean. Three weeks until Winter Break, and counting. Teaching is getting better, I've been trying to use more music/film clips in class to get away from the monotony of "read this article, discuss." There's only so much of that the kids support before they threaten to go comatose.