Vacances de Noel

My second of three 2-week vacations begins this weekend! This one is the Christmas break (not to be confused with the winter break in February). I'll be taking two trips: the first to Istanbul (I did my best to find a non-Christian country where I could do tourist-y things during Christmas), and the second to Paris and Strasbourg with my friend Sean. I'm really excited about the trips: Istanbul and Strasbourg are both places I've wanted to visit for a long time.

~ Map of my travels ~

Saint-Quentin - Istanbul, Saint-Quentin - Paris - Strasbourg

Happy holidays everyone--see you in 2014!

*map from Google

Day Trip: Compiègne

A few weeks ago, Sarah and I took a leisurely day trip to Compiegne, a town about halfway between Saint-Quentin and Paris.  After a relaxing lunch of mushroom omelets, fries, and salad, we wandered to the Chateau de Compiegne. The chateau is a Versailles-like palace that is wrapped up in Louis XVI and Napoleon history; it was very grand and beautiful, with large gardens to explore as well.  The rest of our trip was taken up with wandering around the city's charming downtown and a stop at the Christmas market where we indulged in some freshly made churros.

~ Where we had lunch, decked out for the holidays ~

~ Marble map of France in the chateau ~

~ For a casual, intimate dining experience ~

~ Amazing trompe l'oeil painting ~

~ I wish you could still buy this kind of chair ~

~ Awesome library and pretty cabinet ~

~ Flower room ~

~ Gardens ~

~ Town Hall and Christmas market ~

Winter in Saint-Quentin

Towns across France have been getting in the holiday spirit lately with Christmas music in every store and festive lights on every street.  I've been enjoying the Christmas markets (Marches de Noel) here -- I went to the markets in Nantes and Paris during my semester abroad, and this year I've visited those in Lille, Compiegne, and of course Saint-Quentin.

Maybe I'm biased, but I like the market in Saint-Quentin the best of all the ones I've visited. Like in other markets, there are many small chalets selling Christmas trinkets, food, and other items.  Here, though, there's less to buy and more to do: the market includes an ice skating rink, sledding hill, mini zoo, and a whole section of the square set up with snow-encrusted pine trees decorated with candy ornaments (very Willy Wonka-esque).

I've been to the market several times in the past few weeks with other assistants--we've enjoyed skating, sledding, and the occasional vin chaud (mulled wine) in the market's large and impressive tavern. I'll be sad to see the market go after vacation ends in January!

~ Christmas tree on the market's edge ~

~ Hotel de Ville seen through a ceiling of lights over the market ~

~ Crepes, waffles, and other chocolate treats ~

~ Candy-covered trees ~

~ Inside the heated tavern ~

~ Lights leading to the market ~

Hunger Games: L'embrasement

I’m a big fan of The Hunger Games series, as are many of the assistants, so we were determined to see the new movie when it came out. In Saint-Quentin there are very few foreign films offered in their original version. We resigned ourselves to watching the film with French dubbing, and resolved that if we understood nothing, we could always go to Paris where we’d be likely to find a theater showing original English movies.

To my extreme surprise, the trip to Paris doesn’t seem necessary. I understood almost all of the dialogue (it helped that I’ve read the books, too), and while I’m certain to see the original version when I get home, I managed to thoroughly enjoy seeing the movie here.

~ The French movie poster ~

(image credit: http://www.tribute.ca/movies/posters/hunger-games-lembrasement/37415/)

Weekend Trip: Lille

Early in December I took a weekend trip to Lille, one of the largest cities in France and about an hour north of Saint-Quentin. As a result of being so near to Belgium, Lille’s Flemish architecture gives it a different feel from other towns in northern France.  I liked the look and atmosphere of the city: the wider streets and colorful buildings were more welcoming and cozy than the austere stone and gothic architecture of other regions.

We began our trip by visiting the birthplace of Charles de Gaulle.  This included a walking tour of the house where he grew up, as well as an exhibit about Franco-German relations over the years. The house was quite nice, but the exhibit was the most fascinating part of the experience.

After a leisurely lunch (during which, when I ordered a coffee with my main dish, the waiter stared at me and asked incredulously “at the SAME TIME?!”), we went to the Lille art museum, one of the best in the north of France.  The museum was in a lovely building and had a good variety in its collection, including some impressive Impressionist pieces, a long gallery of porcelain, and a Rodin among the sculptures.

In the evening we visited Lille’s Christmas market. It was extremely crowded but very festive—I indulged in vin chaud (mulled wine), a gauffre (perfectly crispy waffle) with nutella, and a cheesy pretzel for dinner. We also rode the market’s Ferris wheel, which was much faster than a regular Ferris wheel and gave us a cool view of the city at night.

~ Colorful Flemish buildings ~

~ Inside Charles de Gaulle's house ~

~ Lille art museum ~

~ Sculptures ~

~ Van Gogh ~

~ Christmas market and view from the Ferris wheel ~

Happy Chanukah!

Happy Chanukah! The holiday is winding down and I’ve been diligently “lighting” the candles on my family’s velcro menorah (sent to me by my parents, along with some presents and dreidels) since Wednesday. Chanukah’s not a huge deal but I’ve been trying to acknowledge it, especially since I’m in a town that has upwards of 60 Jewish inhabitants. In addition to menorah-ing and presents-ing, I indulged in some Chanukah cookies (seen here). I’m already looking forward to lighting a real menorah again next year.

~ Chanukah lights, circa freshman year of college, decorating my window ~

~ Presents imported from the States ~

~ Dreidel cookies! ~

~ Makeshift menorah ~

Throwback to Nantes

Exactly two years ago I wasn’t that far, at least geographically, from where I am now: I was visiting Paris with my family. It was during my semester in Nantes, and my family had come to France for a week over Thanksgiving. We took a long weekend in Paris (including a Thanksgiving dinner at Le Saint-Martin), and spent the rest of the weekend visiting monuments, museums, and eating as much French food as we could.

It’s funny what’s changed, and what hasn’t, during my second round of living in France. I still spend time with friends, but rather than Americans I have a group of international friends in Saint-Quentin. I still see teachers all the time, except rather than taking their classes, I’m working with them to help teach. I’m not a student any more, though I am quite possibly learning more in Saint-Quentin than I did in Nantes.

Regardless of the similarities and differences, I am grateful for my time in Nantes, as I’m grateful for the opportunity to live in France again. Since I would never have been a teaching assistant were it not for my semester in Nantes, here are some of my favorite photos from two years ago as a sort of tribute to my remarkable first time living in France.

~ With the fam in Nantes~

~ Parents at the Louvre ~

~ Jardin des Plantes in Nantes ~

~ IES trip to Mont-Saint-Michel ~

~ Bri, Scott, Lisa, and Annie in Saint-Malo ~

~ With Annie and Rachelle in Rome ~

~ The beautiful gardens of Chateau Villandry ~

And my favorite picture from the whole semester:

~ Our celebratory night out right before going home ~

Thanksgiving in France

This is the first year that I haven’t been with my family for Thanksgiving. It’s weird and a bit melancholy to be so far away on this holiday, which is my mom’s favorite. I’m lucky, though, for having my fellow teaching assistants here. We planned an international Thanksgiving celebration on Wednesday night and ended up having a wonderful evening. Here are the numbers:

5: nationalities represented (3 Americans, 3 Germans, 2 Brits, 1 Mexican, and 1 Italian)

2: Mexican games played (basically Mexican bingo and Mexican dreidel, and they were awesome)

5: bottles of wine, cider, and juice consumed

0: traditional Thanksgiving foods eaten (instead, we had lasagna, croissants, chips, fries, salad, broccoli, carrots, spaghetti with pesto, cookies, and chocolate mousse)

10: sincere and heartwarming recitations of thanks. This was the best part of the evening: going around and saying what we’re thankful for. While every family has a different tradition for this part of the holiday, it seemed important to include it with our international group. We also all gave thanks in French, which was certainly a new experience for everyone!

~ Paper turkey from home, which we used as a table decoration ~

~ Assistants at our Thanksgiving table ~

Baking Adventures

Earlier this week, I decided to honor my family’s tradition of making Chanukah sugar cookies, plus some Thanksgiving cookies for the assistants’ Thanksgiving dinner. It seemed like a straightforward plan: sugar cookies, pretty basic, not a problem.

Until I realized I had a tiny French kitchen and very limited baking supplies to work with. I ended up using a pot as one of my mixing bowls, was almost defeated by the cups to grams conversion, and ultimately had little piles of cooling cookies covering all available surfaces.

Luckily, with the help of some Monoprix sprinkles and chocolate icing, the cookies turned out fine and were added to our Thanksgiving feast. It was pretty fun, actually, to weigh the flour and sugar and mix everything by hand – but I think I’ll wait a little while before baking anything again.

~ Scale for measuring; mixing butter and sugar by hand in a pot ~

~ Happy Chanukah! ~

~ Thanksgiving cookie and European Union cookie ~

~ The finished product ~

Teaching Roundup 2: Thanksgiving, MLK, and Mad Men

I’m about to start my fourth week of actual teaching and my sixth week at school.  It’s been fun and stressful and feels like I’ve been running around my school for much longer.  Here’s the breakdown so far of the three pillars of my “English Assistant” existence: lessons, students, and teachers.

Lessons: My teaching duties consist of 12 hours of lessons per week, mostly working with students in small groups.  I have a lot of freedom when it comes to planning lessons, and I've found it to be fairly challenging so far.  Some of the teachers have instructed me to review a particular topic with the students, but most of them have told me to do whatever I want as long as the students are practicing their spoken English.  I was kind of daunted at first, but I’ve started coming up with more ideas (and there are a ton of helpful ESL resources online).

The past few weeks I’ve particularly enjoyed teaching lessons about MLK, Thanksgiving, and Mad Men. My first MLK class involved an impromptu American history lesson (from slavery to Civil Rights- ready, go!), but I think I pulled it off. All of last week was taken up with Thanksgiving lessons (my way to deal with not being home for the holiday is to make as many of my classes learn about it as possible). And I was thrilled to incorporate Mad Men into a class: instructed by the teacher to find work-place related video clips, I showed the pitch meeting to Lucky Strike scene from season one.

Students: The students have been the biggest surprise.  Despite my Hebrew School teaching last year and my pursuit of the TAPIF program, I do not consider myself to be a natural with kids, and before I arrived I was somewhat apprehensive about working with high schoolers all year. It helps, of course, that I’m not that far from my own adolescence, and once I got here I realized it would be no problem to relate, at least on some level, to many of the students.

I’m working with a range of students: from the school’s youngest (15) to oldest (early 20s) and from limited to advanced English ability. Though some of them would clearly prefer to not learn English at all, I’m finding that several of my classes are full of very motivated students (these are usually the ones who gleefully shout “hello!” when they see me in the halls). I particularly enjoyed when one advanced student came up to me at the end of class last week and asked me to explain what a “man crush” is.

Teachers: I am chiefly working with groups of students separately from the teachers, but I find that I still interact with the teachers quite a bit. The English teachers are a fun group—most of them are always up for chatting in the teacher’s lounge between classes, and I’ve started meeting with one of them to practice speaking French (I’ve had to become more proactive about improving my French since, amazingly, I do not speak loads of French in my day to day life).

While I’m glad that I get along well with the teachers, working here has still been a challenging adjustment. One of the reasons for this is my somewhat strange situation: while I have authority when it comes to working with students, I’m younger and have much less power than the actual teachers.  I guess this is sort of the definition of a language assistant, though, and I figure with time this semi-limbo status will feel more normal.

~ From my Thanksgiving worksheet - I tricked a few people with d) ~