where did the month of april go?

beats me.
i'm back, after a 12 day stint in the lovely US, specifically new england, more specifically VT/NH/MA. my vacation, despite not being in greece or sicily with the others - or poland - or amsterdam, was wonderful. all those people get to go home in a couple weeks or so. bryan is staying til the end of may. but almost everyone is headed out.
anyways - i digress... or digest as some might say.
my vacation was wonderful. spending time at home, doing nothing, going to MHC to see friends and talk to professors about my life plans (vomit) having meagan and bekki come up to visit - it was quite magical. the little dose of comfort i needed to get through the next couple months. yikes.
i've had some thoughts on returning - although i'm absolutely exhausted and confused as to what time it really is. the first is that i don't think i could call france home - even while i live here. i was tlkaing with a couple old ladies on the plane (i orignally wrote phone there - WOW) who asked if i was part of the student groups (high schoolers, i might add) headed to spain. i said no, i was working in france so i was headed back there. and they said "ohhhh so you're headed home! how nice! great place to live!" i don't know if they thought i was french or not. i don't think so - i was chatting it up with them outside the toilets for a while but all i thought was "naw ladies, i'm leaving home to go back to my apartment in france". of course i didn't say this, i just raved about how close my house was to castles.
which is true - it's not all bad here, (just wrote bad with two d's because color me badd came on my itunes... i'm really in rare form) as katie said "when i have a bad day, i'm like shit i'm in holyoke. when you have a bad day it's like oh yeah i'm in france" true statement. road trips to different parts of france are fun, the friends i've made are great, and WHEN IT STOPS RAINING EVERY 20 DAYS the city is beautiful. no, i'm not kidding. it rains here all the freakin time. i left 70 degree weather in new england to come home to rain. anyways. i think the hardest part about being here is the constant reminder that this ISN'T home, even if i wanted it to be. it has been so hard to assimilate and be accepted here as an american, or maybe just as a foreigner, but definitely as an american. which i expected. but at some point, after being here for a few months, i guess i imagined it to become obvious to everyone that i was here for a while and that i wasn't as close minded as they thought. but every time i meet a new person - the same subject comes up: the president, mcdonald's, LA/hollywood/miami, religion in relation to schools, overweight americans, and the death penalty. when they don't bring these things up - i'm shocked. someone always does though. i've stopped getting angry and have learned how to change the subject of a conversation. many methods.
when you come right down to it - i am american. and i am quite proud of it. not to say i'm about to be waving an american flag screaming stars and stripes forever down rue national here - although i did sing the star spangled banner in place plum one of my first nights here. the opinions these people have of my country are generally based on television and movies - the people who have been there understand my frustrations. when i'm told i come from the land of george bush i want to scream I'M FROM VERMONT YOU JACKASS. HE'S OUR PRESIDENT BUT THE MAN IS FROM TEXAS AND TEXAS AND VERMONT ARE TWO DIFFERENT PLACES. I'M FROM THE LAND OF HOWARD DEAN. REMEMBER THAT GUY? HE'S NUTS. but i have learned to control my anger, laugh, and say right. half the time these people don't know what they're talking about, and i've learned that i can't teach them. better to just enjoy my time here with the good people, doing the things i love here, and forget about the rest. i can't teach an entire culture about my culture in a night. and it's not my responsibility.
my responsibility is to teach my young'uns about the US and english and whatnot. maybe that some of them need to start wearing deoderant, even at age 11. sorry, that was mean. but there is one girl in one of our classes and the teacher and i will take turns opening the window and door. it's bad.
again - i digress/digest. i've got two months left. if i'm more awake tomorrow, and feeling a bit more positive, then i will do lesson plans. after giving them their tests i see that i have one class of geniuses. they are all brilliant. oh my goodness. so anyways. what i was going to say; i may try to plan out as much of the next two months as possible - my one class moves so slowly cause mondays are missed so much - and i only see them mondays. but whatever. their teacher doesn't seem too concerned, nor does she have much faith in my superiors. i have learned that, as the brilliant lenore reilly carlisle put it - i want to be in schools, but i don't want my own classroom. i do NOT want to be a teacher. i love the environment of schools, but nono. no teaching for me. maybe if i see a program in a school i agree with. the problem here? they have a standard they want these kids to live up to - and we don't have a standard to reach for... or the means to get there. we have our progressions, which are guides as to what they should be learning. fact of the matter is- none of us are certified english teachers, specifially ESL teachers. that's what they need. we are not able to reach these standards because we are not qualified. if they really want to bring their program up to a higher level... they need to make some serious changes.
which brings me to....
what am i doing with myself after france. OHHHHHHHH NOOOOOO
the ever-looming question.
well. working as a school counselor has been put on the table for me. so that widens my choices - but also helps me figure out what kind of a path i want to be on in grad school. now i've started looking into schools of education and not just psychology - that helps a great deal. still thinking clinical - don't get me wrong, but i need to do more research - literally, have to have more experience with research to boost my application and also research programs more. i have yet to hear back from UW professors i e-mailed (sad face). but we'll see how it rolls out.
wow! on that note, i'm going to go be useless for a bit before alyson gets back and we do laundry.
later gators

end o' march update.

well what can i say?
it's been a month of celebrations - my birthday was a blast, as i previously mentioned. since most of the assistants are leaving at the end of april, i've been trying to maximize my fun time with them while they're here. although i have now made friends with some urasmus students who will be here until mid-june, but as simo pointed out, i'm still the last one here. oh well. i spent easter with the same crew of people for about three nights straight. friday was a kareoke night, which moved into dancin with the french, italian, and germans that i know here, along with the few americans who were around. saturday night i joined up with thomas, elise, and franck for a delicious dinner chez thomas (elise cooked - quite delicious), party that the italian crew invited us to, back out dancing - piggy back ride from simo, heart to heart with bryan, simo trying to convince american girls he's from san francisco (have i mentioned he's an italian), the bartender who is on the dance floor recognizing me now (i had a chat with him one night about the states, he spent some time in philly) and ignoring other patrons to give me my drinks (i'm such a cutie he can't resist), long walk home with bryan and malek. easter sunday we have dinner at the italians, franck and thomas serenade all of us with songs about each and every one of us, maria's crazy but unbelievably nice and genuine boyfriend federico (he's going to be in a james bond movie - the next 007 keep an eye out for a ginormous italian man) teaching me each accent from each major area of italy, having federico and simone talk to me in italian accents from naples forever, dying of laughter about this, half falling asleep there, dome and pascal drive me home. we dont work monday here in france after easter, and monday is pasquetta in italy (literally meaning little easter) which is spent eating good food and drinking a special italian pasquetta wine with friends (see left), so i did, chez franck with thomas, elise, dome, pascal, barbara, and simo. it was a good day. and it's been a good weekend of celebration.
which leads me to the week - yesterday was teaching which wasn't too bad at all, five classes. last night i couldn't sleep well... but whatever. i updated my myspace page which now looks awesome. today i met with my landlord, he's willing to cut me a deal on the apartment, it's normally 750 a month, alyson and i are getting it for 620, and he's giving it to me by myself for 510. it's only 200 euro more a month than i'm paying now, and for two months - i figure it's worth it to not deal with the hassle of moving and changing address, and i get this big nice space to myself. i will also still get reimbursed from the gov't so that's a good thing. i can transfer savings from my us acct to my french one and be set :)
i re-did my hair - it's more red this time, although there's more color washing out when i wash my hair this time round and it's making me nervous...
it's also my mother's birthday (and my uncle's) so happy birthday to you both.
i got all of my worksheets and plans done for the rest of this week and next week, so i'm looking forward to a weekend of no worries before heading home next friday.

twenty three!

yes! that's how old i am now folks. and i must say, although there were some special people from home missing in my life here in france, i had quite a wonderful birthday. the day of my birthday i spent in chinon with alyson and bryan. chinon is a town not too far from me, which has a castle, and some very, very good wine. it also is home to another assistant friend of ours, who joined us for a birthday lunch in a cafe called "le cafe de la paix" the peace cafe! lovely! so after that we headed up to the castle - up quite a few stairs to get there - to find that it's 3 euros to get in due to the fact that they're doing renovations and restorations to many parts of the castle. so we got a nice little tour from a woman (the tour was in english! we figured why not?) and then pranced around the parts of the castle that weren't under construction, up to a seriously tall bell tower with a view of the rivier (la vienne) and discovered that both bryan and i are not okay with heights. oh well.
we then went to a special little wine store, where alyson bought me a birthday bottle of red which was labelled "elegance". we figured that was fitting for the birthday. we then sampled some other chinon wines at a cafe, grabbed some baguette and cheese, and headed back to the train so i could come back for a birthday dinner with whit, jen, and aly at one of my favorite restaurants in tours. it was a good birthday. good food, good friends, good wine, and a castle! how lovely.
the next day was a nice lazy saturday, which included some lesson planning, grocery shopping, the arrival of tim (with pastries!) and my birthday party. i decided to do something with a black and white theme. i had 30 people in my apartment. have i mentioned that my apartment is about the size of... well. studio b at dancers' corner. and one part of that is alyson's room which we weren't allowing people into. so it was crowded. i had to turn the heat off (which is insane because i'm always freezing in here) due to the number of people. countries represented include: USA, england, ireland, scotland, russia, germany, italy, france, greece, yemin, south africa columbia, poland, portugal. states represented from the USA: VT, PA, NH/GA (she moved), TX, RI, CA, FL, NC. quite a diverse crowd. it was a wonderful party. pic to the left is a USA/italy moment. hooray. and yes, i shot all pictures in black and white - that's all people were wearing! cause everybody stuck to my theme!
so for those of you who haven't heard - i will be coming home in april for about 12 days. i plan on doing nothing during this time. by nothing i do mean head down to mhc and get my rec letters in line for grad school and see my girls briefly. but in vt/nh... i'll be takin it easy. soakin up my parents and my dog and my dance studio and my restaurants and my bed and my room and my bathroom and shower and the view and the river and all of that. i've been doing some thinking about after france options (mom, dad, when i have a better organized list i can totally give you a solid power point presentation. i have ideas and plans and options. vous inquietez pas!). there are far too many options. but i'm now aware of what i don't want to do. HOORAY!
so i leave you with some lovely images of my birthday weekend.
left: 8 million people in my apartment
right: view of chinon from the bell tower.

snowflakes

i realized today what i've been missing all winter.
...
winter
...

i never got the pleasure of sitting inside and watching the snow fall... or coming in covered in snow - or even PLAYING in snow. yes, it was cold. yes, i saw snow capped mountains in scotland.
but i had a completely non-white winter.
how unbelievably sad.

so after all that pre-vacation excitement

we have the end of vacation bummer session.
although vacation as a whole was GREAT!
where can i start???
saturday i went up to paris for the night so i could more easily meet my parents at 6 am on sunday. turns out that meant i didn't sleep since i met up with pascal and dominica and their friends for a while. and then that became like two am. and had to be at the airport at 6am. which meant leaving where i was at 530. so yeah. no sleep. grab the parents - who were jet lagged at CDG, head back to tours, grab lunch, take naps, grab dinner, go to bed.
spend the next day at blois and amboise and clos luce. clos luce was where leonardo da vinci lived the end of his life and died. it was a cool place though.
next day we go to chenonceau - SO GORGEOUS. see the picture to the left. then we head up to paris for a four night stint checking out: notre dame, the left bank, the eiffel tour, taking a boat tour of the seine, the pantheon, the louvre, and all over wandering about paris. it was quite a blast, my mom was overwhelmed by how big everything was, but she seemed to enjoy herself immensely. it was interesting being here with my parents, it was a nice little vacation but made me miss home even more, i got to see my parents but not experience all of the lovely joys of the VT life.
but anyways. then i head off to the lovely land known as scotland. first thing's first - i go to the world's end for some food and a strongbow. then head back to my hostel, where i meet lily and dodo. they are from france and austria, and we go out for a pub crawl to experience edinburgh's bars. the next day i spent wandering about the city - princes street gardens, the meadows, checking out the programs at the university (oooo mature grown up decisions - barf) then meeting up with lily and dodo again at the elephant house to get coffees in the place that inspired j.k. rowling to write a little number called harry potter. oooo also exciting. we head out for a ghost tour later that night (lily and i are scared in that picture) after making a silly grocery shopping trip, and then meet up with a friend we made on the pub crawl in the oz bar for a quick drink. the next day would be... monday. we get up early, i spend the day with them, and then at around 4 hear from a friend of mine from christmastime who lives in edinburgh, inviting me to crash with him and his roommate (another friend from christmas). crash at theirs for the next two nights, GO TO THE MOVIES!!!! IN ENGLISH!!!! saw jumper. not bad. not perfect. but alright. check out a posh bar in the not so posh area where they live. interesting experience. still have yet to climb arthur's seat - i need a nice day and a good pair of shoes to do that. the boots i had on weren't fitting. so after two nights of edinburgher (edinburger??) hospitality i go to glasgow - which is a cool little city. well not too little. i liked what i saw of it that day - hit up two museums and the willow tea rooms..... see image to the right. quite a nice little place. and well known for their teas. check out the university, but their psych program doesn't quite fit what i had in mind - although they do have a vet school... interesting. who remembers when i wanted to be a vet and james herriot was my favorite author. sadly, my last day in scotland - the reason i need to go back to glasgow - i wound up with a killer fever and chills and aches and pains. i stayed in bed all day after venturing out to check out the building shaped like an armadillo and the cathedral, but instead i went to marks and spencer and bought soup and went home after i realized my joints were locking into place in the ridiculous winds. so i went home and slept, in the lounge, across from a very nice australian boy who was inside reading for the same reason. i ate soup and updated my photos on my computer and he drank tea and read his book and that was about it. so i flew back here, and here i am. listening to jason mraz. and i shall leave you with the beautiful lyrics from his song "after an afternoon"which by the by is one of the few songs that actually mentions a girl with rich brown eyes and long dark hair. oh yeah baby. we are a sexy bunch that inspire beautiful songs.

face to palm
tear to tear
and mouth to tongue
heart to ground
say heart to ground
say any old thing.

oh yeah - photos from the trip with the parents are at:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2036425&l=1ba9c&id=10400438

omigoodnessvacationsalmosthere

and yes that had to be said as one word. the above picture is the happiness with hair and also new sweater. oo sweater.
the weather here has been gorgeous lately - well, today it was beautiful. i spent the day getting ready, cleaning the apartment a little, running to the caf office. this is a beautiful thing, the caf. apparently you are only supposed to pay a certain percentage of your paycheck in rent. if you pay more than this, the caf reimburses you. so i finally got all my paperwork in today, and according to the lady i spoke to, i should get a lump sum of reimbursements for october, november, december, and january within three weeks.
hallelujah. right at the end of vacation, which is when i'm normally paid anyways.
i also met the lovely whitney for coffee/hot chocolate (she's not much of a coffee drinker) so we could discuss life and enjoy the weather while i waited for my landlord to come back from lunch for some paperwork, and she waited for her teacher to call cause they had a rendez-vous today. had a nice dinner, and went for a two hour walk with jen all over the city tonight.
today was pretty wonderful, except for th fact that for some reason, my key will not work in the outside lock of the main door of our building. inside lock - fine. outside - doesn't go in. jens and alysons do, so i called the landlord and she said well you've been able to get in haven't you? and i said well yes after i call my friends or ring someone else's doorbell. she said oh well someone else had that problem too. she then told me there was nothing she could do about it.
this would all be fine, except for my key really. really. does not work. for the past couple months sometimes it didn't work, and i figured it was just the cold weather messing with the lock. but today, it hasn't worked at all. if it doesn't work tomorrow i'm going down there and telling the old woman to make me another - this is ridiculous.
what else is new? whitney's birthday party was a blast, got to see some familiar faces that i hadn't seen in a while - note pascal and hilary washout picture to the right. pascal is a friend through the italians - he's french (from savoie, the region where my french professor from college grew up) spent some time here in tours with his girlfriend (who is italian - from sicily) and now lives in paris. so it had been a while. this is pascal's angry face, and my it's almost one in the morning and these boots are hurting my feet and i'm tired and had champagne face. although there are some pictures of everyone having fun. i swear.
jen and i went for a two hour long walk tonight. i know i already mentioned that - but the long walk was long overdue. i had forgotten how much thinking gets done on a long walk. a wise woman once told me that when you're moving forward it helps your thought process move forward as well. it's true. it also helps to have a nice sounding board like jen, who seems to be able to get right to the heart of every problem you have. it's incredible. but the basic conclusion of the walk was that we're at a crossroads in our lives, and we need the freedom to take whatever path we want. like the walk we took tonight. we were kind of moving in a direction, but only corner by corner, street by street, and eventually, when our feet were tired, and we felt like we should go home, we decided to head in a definite direction. that's what this france trip is all about. bit by bit, figuring out where we want to go next. on our own time. at our own pace. and on our own. there will be parts of the journey where we have a friend with us, but for the most part, it's us. doing our thing. and that's quite alright. i've spent a lot of my life making decisions with everyone else in mind. i think now is about the time when i start making decisions for myself. really. the idea that i'm going to live my life based on anyone's feelings by my own - at this point - is asinine. i've always tried to live up to a standard, or i guess what i thought was a standard. i've tried to please everyone. you know something? you can't do that. i am too afraid to hurt people. and i wind up hurting myself.
so. a promise i made to myself, was that the next time i come to a crossing where i can go left, right, or straight; i'm not going to think about what the person to the left or the person to the right or the person directly in front of me is thinking. they're not coming with me. as far as i know. i'm gonna make the choice. all on my own. because this is my life. the people around me - i love them. and i know i need them around. because without them i wouldn't be who i am today. but this isn't any one of their lives. no, it's not. and at the end of the day, at the end of the journey, their decisions aren't the important ones, mine are. because it's my life.
so now i get to ride off into that sunset and take hold of what is mine.

ALMOST BREAK!!! ALMOST BREAK!!!

so. here we are. it's the first of february. i have vacation starting... friday. i've got monday - 5 classes (but two are the exact same lesson), tuesday - six classes, wednesday - no classes, thursday - all day meeting with my bosses - one of whom is heinous and should really just quit the job, friday - two classes (but they are the exact same, and it's making up for me being sick last thursday as well). then i've got friday night which is mojito night at a local bar, saturday afternoon i head up to paris to stay there for the night, sunday morning grab my parents at 6am from the airport, to return back here to tours. spend the next two nights here with the rentals, then head up to paris tuesday night, spend my time in paris until saturday, when i fly up to scotland for a six day stint there on my own.
the time between now and the last time i posted has been alright - the curious george lesson has been a hit with the kids, although my boss didnt' get it. which is funny, because she was there when my other boss and i laid out the plans for what was going on. she observed me, after showing up 20 minutes late to the lesson, insisted on shaking my hand while the students were working which was awkward, and said "i don't understand this book thing" i got so mad i started crying and said i discussed this with your colleague. we planned it out ourselves. and she was like well i didn't know that from this one day lesson plan you have for me. you should plan better. which is when i said "i've done this lesson 7 times with all of my other classes. this is the last one. if you want to see the others you can. but i thought the lesson plans were for me. i know what i'm doing." and she said "yes but i don't know" and i said "well i'm sorry but i don't think 25 minutes of 1 of my classes is enough to judge an entire unit." she dropped it at that.
i was relieved to find out, from one of my teachers, that this boss of mine has such a horrible reputation that one of my teacher's friends (also a teacher) refused to take the administrative better pay position with this woman because she is so awful. apparently she not only talks down to the assistants, but to her colleagues. i almost cried again because i was relieved to find out it wasn't just me.
other than that, classes have been great. i've got one group of kids that's completely out of control, but it's alright. i'll get through it.
so for the upcoming week i have review lessons planned, to try and see how much we've retained in our curious george stories. hooray.
alright i'm beat, running errands was tiring today. plus jen and i have to do laundry tomorrow. ohhhh boy.

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