Tarbes updates:
- Last Saturday we spent the day in Auch, a city about an hour north of Tarbes. It's the home of D'Artagnan, one of the three musketeers, and is quite pretty although smaller than Tarbes. Unfortunately, it was quite cold and windy so we spent most of our time there in a restaurant, a café, and the cathedral. The best part was the drive there and back, during which Marta asked us to sing to her so we sang songs from her favorite musical, The Sound of Music, and then when we ran out of those we sang every Disney song we knew.
- This week I am doing a lesson on Motown with my students, and with the exception of my first class on Monday, they are all really liking it! (duh, who doesn't??) Even my really lame class yesterday liked it so much that when I told them I had more music to play them but if I put it on they might not hear the bell when it was time to go, they were like "we don't care! put it on anyway!!"
-Possibly inspired by my awesome lesson on Monday, my favorite students asked me to go out for a coffee with them. They are in the class that is always way more enthusiastic about everything than any of the others, and they are the best and most fun students in the class. It was four girls, and they said they wanted to practice English so we had coffee yesterday afternoon and only spoke English--gotta love the super motivated students! It was really fun and we talked about some of the differences between French and American and English people (they are all obsessed with England), and one of them asked about fashion in America. They said that they heard it was more casual--French people put GREAT care (and time, and money) into their appearance, and they were shocked when I told them that it's acceptable to go out in sweat pants or pajamas in public in the US. That's one of my favorite things about America since coming to France. I love that everyone looks great all the time, but I'm usually way too lazy to put any effort into my appearance and therefore feel like a frump everytime I go out. The girls I was with yesterday said they liked my clothes and I was super flattered, esp. since they all dress really cool, and we had a laugh about how they said something about me to a school employee who didn't know who I was and they were like "You know, the girl who always wears the yellow coat" and the person knew immediately who I was! I bet everyone in Tarbes knows the yellow coat girl by appearance--here everyone wears black. only. always. I feel like I have to do my part to indroduce some color into their lives, even if it means never blending in.
- Today I bought my return ticket, which means I picked the date I'm leaving France! I am leaving France on May 16, flying to Reykjavik, Iceland and staying there for 7 days, then flying from Reykjavik to Toronto on the 23rd. I had initially wanted to spend more time in Europe in the summer but I decided I would probably be able to afford one "big" trip before coming home and since IcelandAir is really cheap, that big adventure will be in Iceland! Not to shabby... plus I'll still have a few weeks in France between when I stop teaching and when I go home.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Friday, January 21, 2011
Not too much has been going on in glamorous Tarbes, the most beautiful and exciting city in France, but here's an update anyway:
1. It has been unseasonably warm for January (think 60° and sunny), which has ruined our plans to go skiing but provided ample opportunities for charming country walks. Since I still can't put pictures on Facebook, here they are:
2. Estonia adopted the Euro as its official currency during the break, and Molly may have introduced the first Estonian euros in France!
3. I still don't have internet which is a drag because it means I can't talk to my family but has totally unforeseen benefits. You can't possibly imagine how much more productive one is sans internet. I already finished one French book, The Elegance of the Hedgehog (read it!) and have now started on Madame Bovary, that grand oeuvre of French literature. The few people I have told that I'm reading it have groaned about how boring it is, but Sara told me it's her favorite book and, well, it must be a classic for a reason, right? I'm not committing myself to it but I thought I'd give it a chance, plus now that I've started reading in French it seems lazy to read in English (I'm sure that won't last long!). My room has also beenexceedingly clean cleaner than usual which I'm going to attribute to my lack of internet as well.
4. I just finished applying to law school!! Like 3 minutes ago! WOO!
On that note, I'm off to start my weekend.
1. It has been unseasonably warm for January (think 60° and sunny), which has ruined our plans to go skiing but provided ample opportunities for charming country walks. Since I still can't put pictures on Facebook, here they are:
2. Estonia adopted the Euro as its official currency during the break, and Molly may have introduced the first Estonian euros in France!
 | ||
| The handing over of the Estonian euros. The other benefit of documenting the occasion was that we also got a pic with our favorite bartender |
3. I still don't have internet which is a drag because it means I can't talk to my family but has totally unforeseen benefits. You can't possibly imagine how much more productive one is sans internet. I already finished one French book, The Elegance of the Hedgehog (read it!) and have now started on Madame Bovary, that grand oeuvre of French literature. The few people I have told that I'm reading it have groaned about how boring it is, but Sara told me it's her favorite book and, well, it must be a classic for a reason, right? I'm not committing myself to it but I thought I'd give it a chance, plus now that I've started reading in French it seems lazy to read in English (I'm sure that won't last long!). My room has also been
4. I just finished applying to law school!! Like 3 minutes ago! WOO!
On that note, I'm off to start my weekend.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
So. Two weeks into the new year and here's the progress of the new me, slowly but surely...
French: Since the internet is no longer the vaccuum that sucks away all my free time, I'm already halfway through reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog (in its original French version, duh), which my mom recommended to me after reading it in English. I also finally got to the movie theater here, where they play mostly American movies dubbed in French (so lame), so Sam, Marta, and I went to see one of the few French movies showing there because what's the point of seeing movies dubbed in French. Anyway, the movie was Les émotifs anonymes, which was a very cute film about two people with anxiety problems (the actual translation of émotif, which does not mean "emotional" as I had previously thought) who meet as a result of their mutual love for chocolate, and fall in love. But they both have super anxiety and are afraid of everything, especially of other people, resulting in some hilariously awkward scenes that had Sam and me crying with laughter.
School: my new positive attitude towards my students has been holding up pretty well, with the exception of a few particularly trying groups we all seem to be enjoying ourselves more in class. I have one class that just loves everything we do, which makes it kind of difficult when I have a lesson that I planned to use with other groups and I think "oh yeah, this will be a good one!" and then the next group is totally underwhelmed by it. But anyway, it's the good classes that make up for everything else. I'm usually surprised and flattered when the teachers come to me the next day and say "my students said they had a lot of fun with you yesterday", because most of them try never to act like they are having fun, but I have one group that I see at the end of the day on Mondays that are so enthusiastic and fun that I always leave school smiling afterwards. They are a pretty creative group, so I try to think of fun/creative activities for them to do, and of course all my other classes benefit from this as well, even the ones who I don't think "deserve" the fun activities.
Other news around the town:
Sales. Unlike in America, where the big stores use any excuse to have a sale (hello, Presidents' Day sale, anyone?), French stores only have sales twice a year, in January and July. The January sales officially started on Jan. 12, yesterday, and the streets of Tarbes were totally overrun with frantic shoppers. Unfortunately it also happened to be Wednesday, the day when the students don't have school in the afternoon, and unfortunately I had used the morning to go to the pool, so we had to compete with the entire town, who all seemed to have taken the afternoon off to go shopping. Anyway, I found some great leather boots that were half price! so yeah!
La Galette des rois. January 6th is Epiphany, which translates in French as the Feast of Kings. There is a special cake for this occasion, and the tradition is that there is a fava bean inside of the cake, and whoever gets the piece with the bean is the king or queen for the day. I'm not quite clear what it means to be the king because some of the teachers told me that for them it means that you are responsible for buying more cake for everyone but others just say it means you have good luck. Anyway, this Tuesday the teachers ordered a ton of these cakes as well as several bottles of cider for us to enjoy during the morning break.
French: Since the internet is no longer the vaccuum that sucks away all my free time, I'm already halfway through reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog (in its original French version, duh), which my mom recommended to me after reading it in English. I also finally got to the movie theater here, where they play mostly American movies dubbed in French (so lame), so Sam, Marta, and I went to see one of the few French movies showing there because what's the point of seeing movies dubbed in French. Anyway, the movie was Les émotifs anonymes, which was a very cute film about two people with anxiety problems (the actual translation of émotif, which does not mean "emotional" as I had previously thought) who meet as a result of their mutual love for chocolate, and fall in love. But they both have super anxiety and are afraid of everything, especially of other people, resulting in some hilariously awkward scenes that had Sam and me crying with laughter.
School: my new positive attitude towards my students has been holding up pretty well, with the exception of a few particularly trying groups we all seem to be enjoying ourselves more in class. I have one class that just loves everything we do, which makes it kind of difficult when I have a lesson that I planned to use with other groups and I think "oh yeah, this will be a good one!" and then the next group is totally underwhelmed by it. But anyway, it's the good classes that make up for everything else. I'm usually surprised and flattered when the teachers come to me the next day and say "my students said they had a lot of fun with you yesterday", because most of them try never to act like they are having fun, but I have one group that I see at the end of the day on Mondays that are so enthusiastic and fun that I always leave school smiling afterwards. They are a pretty creative group, so I try to think of fun/creative activities for them to do, and of course all my other classes benefit from this as well, even the ones who I don't think "deserve" the fun activities.
Other news around the town:
Sales. Unlike in America, where the big stores use any excuse to have a sale (hello, Presidents' Day sale, anyone?), French stores only have sales twice a year, in January and July. The January sales officially started on Jan. 12, yesterday, and the streets of Tarbes were totally overrun with frantic shoppers. Unfortunately it also happened to be Wednesday, the day when the students don't have school in the afternoon, and unfortunately I had used the morning to go to the pool, so we had to compete with the entire town, who all seemed to have taken the afternoon off to go shopping. Anyway, I found some great leather boots that were half price! so yeah!
La Galette des rois. January 6th is Epiphany, which translates in French as the Feast of Kings. There is a special cake for this occasion, and the tradition is that there is a fava bean inside of the cake, and whoever gets the piece with the bean is the king or queen for the day. I'm not quite clear what it means to be the king because some of the teachers told me that for them it means that you are responsible for buying more cake for everyone but others just say it means you have good luck. Anyway, this Tuesday the teachers ordered a ton of these cakes as well as several bottles of cider for us to enjoy during the morning break.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Friday, January 7, 2011
Happy Holidays (a bit late)
So the rest of Venice was pretty much more of the same: walking around in the rain, getting lost down beautiful narrow streets, exploring different neighborhoods, and of course, eating! The three days we were there happened to be the highest tide of the year, plus it was raining, so we had to wade through about 6 inches of water at the very worst (at noon and midnight) and even the interior of St. Mark's basilica was flooded!
Next we headed to Florence where we celebrated Christmas, saw a lot of churches, ate way too much, and saw way too much renaissance art. On Christmas day everything was closed except the churches so we saw as many as we could. Some of the highlights were Santa Croce, which houses the remains of some geniuses including Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, and (allegedly) Dante (although apparently he is actually buried in another town); and Santa Maria Novella, which houses some amazing art which I wasn't allowed to take pictures of so you'll have to check out the Wikipedia article. That evening, we ate at an amazing restaurant for our Christmas dinner.
We all got the full three-course meal and ate slowly over about three hours, and were obviously completely stuffed afterwards so we walked around for a while. The following day, we went to the Pitti Palace, which belonged to someone in the Medici family, and saw thousands of really important renaissance paintings. Then we went to the Uffizi Gallery and saw thousands more renaissance paintings. It was kind of a lot to see in one day... Hannah and I started finding doppelgangers in
many of the paintings. For example, Botticelli's Judith looks like me! and I found one that looks like Jack Black. Anyway, to wrap up Florence: art and food.
Rome: We got there late in the afternoon, checked into our hotel, got some awesome pizza, and made it up to a park on a hill just as the sun was setting, giving us a gorgeous view of Rome and of course inspiring us to take thousands of photos.
Just as we were walking down the Spanish Steps, some kind of entertainment was starting so we decided to stick around to see what was going on. First some of the cast from the Beauty and the Beast musical did some songs from the musical to advertise it, then 3 tenors came out and sang for about an hour! Perfect timing! The next day we went to the Coliseum, Palatine Hill, and Forum, which were all very cool. It happened to be a beautiful, sunny day, perfect for walking around outside (and pictures!)
On our last day, we went to the Vatican City to visit Saint Peter's basilica. We wanted to see the Sistine Chapel as well because, like, how could you not? But, there was a two-hour line around the block, and you had to get a ticket to all the Vatican museums, which would have taken at least 2 hours, so we decided we didn't want to devote the whole of our last day to the Vatican museums. Don't judge. Instead, we got some awesome pizza, and went to another museum, the Museo dell'Ara Pacis, which houses the ara pacis, some structure that was left behind from ancient Roman times and they built a museum around it to preserve it. But the real reason we went there was because they had a Marc Chagall exhibit, which sounded way cooler to us than the Vatican museums. Don't get me wrong, I love renaissance art as much as the next person, maybe even more, but after spending the last three days looking at it, it was really refreshing to see some more modern stuff, in a modern building of white walls and glass.
So that concludes this virtual voyage to Italy, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!
NOTE: it took me a while to get to this post because my internet is TOTALLY BROKEN. I apologize for any frustrations this might be causing, like why I'm not putting pictures on Facebook, IT'S NOT MY FAULT! Anyway, I'm trying to see the positive in it and use this as an opportunity to try to get over my internet addiction and use my time more productively. Not working too well; I still think about it most of the time and go to my friends' houses to use their internet, but I did actually start reading one of my new French books, so maybe not having internet is helping... a little...
Next we headed to Florence where we celebrated Christmas, saw a lot of churches, ate way too much, and saw way too much renaissance art. On Christmas day everything was closed except the churches so we saw as many as we could. Some of the highlights were Santa Croce, which houses the remains of some geniuses including Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, and (allegedly) Dante (although apparently he is actually buried in another town); and Santa Maria Novella, which houses some amazing art which I wasn't allowed to take pictures of so you'll have to check out the Wikipedia article. That evening, we ate at an amazing restaurant for our Christmas dinner.
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| Salad of oranges, pecorino cheese, and balsamic vinegar |
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| Pasta with pears and gorgonzola |
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| Osso bucco (Hannah's) |
We all got the full three-course meal and ate slowly over about three hours, and were obviously completely stuffed afterwards so we walked around for a while. The following day, we went to the Pitti Palace, which belonged to someone in the Medici family, and saw thousands of really important renaissance paintings. Then we went to the Uffizi Gallery and saw thousands more renaissance paintings. It was kind of a lot to see in one day... Hannah and I started finding doppelgangers in
many of the paintings. For example, Botticelli's Judith looks like me! and I found one that looks like Jack Black. Anyway, to wrap up Florence: art and food.
Rome: We got there late in the afternoon, checked into our hotel, got some awesome pizza, and made it up to a park on a hill just as the sun was setting, giving us a gorgeous view of Rome and of course inspiring us to take thousands of photos.
Just as we were walking down the Spanish Steps, some kind of entertainment was starting so we decided to stick around to see what was going on. First some of the cast from the Beauty and the Beast musical did some songs from the musical to advertise it, then 3 tenors came out and sang for about an hour! Perfect timing! The next day we went to the Coliseum, Palatine Hill, and Forum, which were all very cool. It happened to be a beautiful, sunny day, perfect for walking around outside (and pictures!)
On our last day, we went to the Vatican City to visit Saint Peter's basilica. We wanted to see the Sistine Chapel as well because, like, how could you not? But, there was a two-hour line around the block, and you had to get a ticket to all the Vatican museums, which would have taken at least 2 hours, so we decided we didn't want to devote the whole of our last day to the Vatican museums. Don't judge. Instead, we got some awesome pizza, and went to another museum, the Museo dell'Ara Pacis, which houses the ara pacis, some structure that was left behind from ancient Roman times and they built a museum around it to preserve it. But the real reason we went there was because they had a Marc Chagall exhibit, which sounded way cooler to us than the Vatican museums. Don't get me wrong, I love renaissance art as much as the next person, maybe even more, but after spending the last three days looking at it, it was really refreshing to see some more modern stuff, in a modern building of white walls and glass.
 |
| so fresh! |
NOTE: it took me a while to get to this post because my internet is TOTALLY BROKEN. I apologize for any frustrations this might be causing, like why I'm not putting pictures on Facebook, IT'S NOT MY FAULT! Anyway, I'm trying to see the positive in it and use this as an opportunity to try to get over my internet addiction and use my time more productively. Not working too well; I still think about it most of the time and go to my friends' houses to use their internet, but I did actually start reading one of my new French books, so maybe not having internet is helping... a little...
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Notes on my small town
Things are getting back to normal here in Tarbes; most of my friends have come back from break and we're all excited to see each other again. Here are just a few (more) reasons why I love my life in France:
I've never loved going to the bank as much as I do here. It makes me feel so competent because I don't need any help with bank words in French. Who would have guessed how exciting it could be to ask for a cashier's check or diagnose problems with my debit card??
I had a library book that was 35 (!!) days overdue. I knew it was overdue before I left on my 2-week Christmas break but was too lazy to return it, and decided if I had to pay a fine I would just stop going to the library and come May, flee the country without outstanding fines on my library card. I went to return the book today and the fine was €2.40. For 35 days. In Grosse Pointe, I would have had to buy the book at that point (believe me, I'm an expert at overdue library books).
Lastly, for those of you interested in my "job", after the break one of my more discouraging classes was replaced with a small group. I now get to work with 3 (only!) really motivated girls in terminale (senior year)who are taking the oral English exam at the end of the year and somehow got placed in the class that's taking the written exam. So for an hour a week, I get to hang out with 3 girls (who actually want to learn!) and practice talking in my native language. Quite an improvement, in my opinion!
I've never loved going to the bank as much as I do here. It makes me feel so competent because I don't need any help with bank words in French. Who would have guessed how exciting it could be to ask for a cashier's check or diagnose problems with my debit card??
I had a library book that was 35 (!!) days overdue. I knew it was overdue before I left on my 2-week Christmas break but was too lazy to return it, and decided if I had to pay a fine I would just stop going to the library and come May, flee the country without outstanding fines on my library card. I went to return the book today and the fine was €2.40. For 35 days. In Grosse Pointe, I would have had to buy the book at that point (believe me, I'm an expert at overdue library books).
Lastly, for those of you interested in my "job", after the break one of my more discouraging classes was replaced with a small group. I now get to work with 3 (only!) really motivated girls in terminale (senior year)who are taking the oral English exam at the end of the year and somehow got placed in the class that's taking the written exam. So for an hour a week, I get to hang out with 3 girls (who actually want to learn!) and practice talking in my native language. Quite an improvement, in my opinion!
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