Speaking of holidays, Leigh and I have more or less put the finishing touches on our Christmas trip! We have bought all travel tickets and made all housing reservations except we have not yet bought our return train ticket, but that is in the works. So on December 18 we fly to Geneva, then take the train to a tiny French speaking village called Gryon to stay at a hostel/chalet for two nights. The purpose of this is to see the Alps, eat chocolate, and maybe go to a thermal spa. We'll spend one day in Geneva on Dec 20 and fly out really, really early the next morning for Amsterdam. We'll spend 3 nights in Amsterdam, allowing time for museums and a day trip to Maastricht, and sleep at a Christian hostel called Shelter City (basically a YMCA for backpackers but it actually has church services and Christian outreach if you choose to partake).
On Christmas Eve we are taking the Thalys bullet train (le Grande Vitesse) from Amsterdam to Paris. From what I have read Paris is supposed to be really fun during Christmas. Aside from the usual museums and such it also has Christmas markets, fantastic department store windows and great shopping. It looks like we will stay there until New Year's Day because our return tickets to Antibes would be about half as pricey that way, but it depends on the availability of the apartment we are borrowing from a very kind assistant in Paris. If we do get to spend New Year's in Paris it will be great. I read somewhere that tons of fireworks are set off from the big ferris wheel near Champs Elysees and there are parties all over the city. Plus we'll ring in the New Year 6 hours before anyone in the USA!
*Phew!* It's going to be a long haul but I suspect it will be an amazing journey.
In other news, I found out about a very affordable French class in Cannes that I plan to start attending sometime next week. For 40 euro + registration fees I get 1 1/2 hours of instruction per week for the whole year! I'm so excited to have the chance to learn French in a more controlled environment and then to practice what I learn in my daily life. It's exactly what I was hoping for. Living here I have already become more comfortable with my elementary conversation skills and I learn new words and phrases pretty often, but it's not enough to help with fluency in a real way. I think that this class, coupled with reading or studying a bit on my own, will be the kickstart I need to start improving my French by leaps and bounds.
My final bit of news is that the class play I have been helping with is starting to come together. The show opens in 3 weeks and will run for 3 days at school with one performance for parents and the community. I'm so excited to see how it turns out! Leigh is coming to the evening performance, which I'm just as thrilled about, so she will get to see the kids and coworkers that I tell her about all the time and also see the results of all of our work.
OK, a current rundown of living in France as an American...
Things I love:
- my new apartment
- my new friends
- chocolate
- wine
- my job (mostly, but nothing is perfect)
- having Leigh here with me
- quiche from an awesome, recently discovered patisserie
- quick/cheap day trips to places Americans usually only get to dream about and always assume they will never get to see
Things I hate:
- banking with HSBC France, but that's another story
- always feeling broke even though I'm technically not/ cost of living in Cote d'Azur
- the prices of haircuts here (30+ euro for women and impossible to get an appointment)
- limited/strange business hours
Things I miss:
- my family
- my cat
- having a car
- customer service
- American food (seriously, tonight on the way home all I could think about was a meatball sub!)
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