Mmmmm... turkey!

The French do not celebrate Thanksgiving. Seeing as Thanksgiving is a more or less fake holiday in the US, I didn't think I would care. It's just a day people cook and eat a lot and then everybody else (i.e. Leigh) likes to watch football except for me, so I have to find something else to do for the rest of the day. So it's not something I consider to be a big deal.

Then this year I couldn't go to my Dad's house for a long weekend, help with the cooking, enjoy a few days in the country and sleep in. That's when I realized that I like Thanksgiving and I want to celebrate it, even if it is a fake holiday. It's a break in the work/school schedule a few weeks before Christmas madness starts, a time to eat good food and relax with family. So even if the Europeans did infect the Native Americans with Small Pox and then slaughter them in their sleep, I can appreciate that I have the opportunity to celebrate "the harvest" by being thankful for my family and my good fortune.

I was very lucky this year though because my supervisor here in France is from Tennessee and celebrates Thanksgiving. This year neither of her adult children could make it back for the holiday so she invited the four of us living in my apartment to enjoy a meal at her house. Obviously we all had to work on the actual holiday, so we celebrated last night (Saturday) instead. It was really nice to sit at a table with friends and eat familiar foods. We also talked about Christmas plans and lifestyle differences between our various countries (USA, France, Germany, and Canada).

Since Leigh was my date, this was also a sort of coming out experience for both of us to my supervisor at work. I normally don't share much at all about myself at work out of the principal of maintaining my privacy and keeping work separate from my home life. Luckily this was a good experience for both of us. My supervisor and her husband didn't bat an eye when the conversation turned toward legal issues in the States that are negatively affecting Leigh and I right now and they seemed to regard our relationship with the same respect they would of any other young, married couple. I can't say that I was surprised, because this is France and conservative Americans don't usually migrate to here, but I was a bit relieved at any rate. It's always scary letting your guard down in front of people with whom you have a professional relationship.

Anyway, today is Sunday so everything is closed plus it's raining outside. I will most likely spend today getting motivated to finish filling out my CAF forms (I need money!) and watching TV online. Soooooo laaaaazy!

trip to Cannes

Today Leigh and I took the bus to Cannes to see the beach and this uber ritzy part of Cote d'Azur. I will talk more about our actual trip in Cannes on my website sometime soon.

We took the handy #200 bus from the stop just down the road from the new apartment toward Cannes. It only takes about 20 minutes to get there and the roads are nice. We had no plan, no map, and very little money, so it was very much a fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants kind of thing. Everything turned out pretty well. We didn't get lost and we even found some fun shops we will definitely return to when we both have some spending money to get fun gifts for our family members and a few things we saw for ourselves too (aka beautiful cloth napkins made from Provecal fabrics, etc).

One thing happened on the way there that was a little bit disturbing. Southern France has a large North African population and not all white French people are happy about that. I knew this before I got here and have noticed some negative attitudes going both ways in the past 2 months, but what I saw today was beyond any of that. Leigh and I had front seats on the bus to Cannes and our driver was a Black guy, presumably of North African descent. He stopped for some new passengers about halfway to Cannes and these two guys got on the bus. I assumed they were Russian or something because they both had shaved heads and that seems to be fashionable for Russian men these days, plus they spoke French a bit strangely so I thought maybe it was their accent.

Turns out I couldn't understand their French because they were using words that are not taught in textbooks! The two men started giving the bus driver trouble and repeated a word that sounded like the French for "Canadian," which was confusing at the time. After a very, very short Google search I found that the word is used as a thinly veiled replacement for the English term "N****r." After about 2 minutes of being taunted by this word, the bus driver told them to get off the bus then hit the buzzer on his dashboard to call back to the station. The guys got off the bus, but before the door closed one of the called back in English, "White Power!"

This was horrifying. Absolutely horrifying. I grew up in the south and, while I heard the "N word" dropped fairly often, I never heard a person ever say "White Power" in any way other than to discuss white supremacy in an abstract sense. As Leigh said after the incident was over, this is the last place in the world I would have expected to witness this kind of thing. I have to hand it to the bus driver: throughout the entire ordeal he kept his cool and after the guys got off the bus he just went back to his job as if nothing had ever happened. That's both gutsy and professional.

Our trip to Cannes was overall pretty fun, though I was fighting a feeling of funk all day. For some reason I woke up on the wrong side of the bed and then I got pissed off because I found out I wouldn't be able to access my bank account via debit or ATM for at least 5 days while my new PIN was ordered. I need a new PIN because I'm an idiot, but that's another story. My point is that it sucks that basic things take so long in France and that my life status here as an alien resident is such that when any little thing goes wrong it throws me for a loop big time. My whole schedule gets screwed up and little things that were finally getting easy for me (like running to the grocery store) suddenly become a hassle all over again.

Anyway, this post is starting to sound really negative and I don't mean for it to be. Today was mostly great, complete with beautiful weather and a stroll along a rather ritzy shopping area. I am sure I will be returning to Cannes more than once before I leave France. Tomorrow is Sunday so I will probably hang out at home or maybe go for a walk because everything is closed on Sundays. This week is going to be an odd one because I don't work again until Thursday morning due to my mandatory medical appointment in Nice on Tuesday. Hopefully the weather will be nice so Leigh and I can make it a fun day too.

It's Coming On Christmas

It's been a while since I last posted, probably because I have spent this time just getting back into my routine after the trip to Italy. I am loving the frequent, long holidays this job affords, but it has the bizarre affect of keeping me from ever feeling settled into a routine. That being said, I think this job is perfect for me at this particular stage of my life because I tend to get bored when I feel settled and then I start feeling resentful and get wanderlust. This job keeps me on my toes because every day is different, my weekly schedule is a little odd and I ALWAYS have a long, fun holiday just around the corner.

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!)

Movin' On Up

On Saturday Leigh and I went to Grasse, the perfume capital of the world, with our new roommates Sam and Duygu. It was a fun trip. We took a free tour of the perfume factory and did some (rather expensive) shopping at the factory store. Leigh and I each splurged on some eau de toilette for ourselves and got gifts for others too. I plan to post more about this on my website later this week.

When we got home from our day trip we decided to start planning our Christmas trip. After some online searching and final decisions being made, we bought all necessary plane tickets and made reservations for two cities. I then heard back from another language assistant who lives in Paris confirming that we could use her apartment for free during the holiday. What luck!

As of now we plan to fly to Geneva on December 18 and take the train to a small village about 2 hours away to stay at a chalet in the Alps. After a few nights there we will fly to Amsterdam and stay at a Christian hostel for a few nights and will take a day trip to Maasstricht, the town my family is from. Then we will take the Thalys bullet train to Paris (tickets not yet purchased) and stay there long enough to see the left bank, the right bank, Versailles, and do some shopping before taking the TGV back to Nice (tickets not yet purchased). It will be a long trip, but surprisingly less expensive than our Italy trip and will include some places Leigh and I have both wanted to visit for a long time now.

I haven't really been updating about the situation at the apartment, but it's not good. The living conditions include such charming items like leaks in the ceiling and floor, black mold growing everywhere (thanks to the leaks), a difficult and constantly dirty kitchenette, frequent visits from caretakers and poolmen (so I get no privacy or mornings to sleep in), and most recently a visit from a HUGE GARDEN RAT. Anyway, I have been really looking forward to moving into the bright, shiny, new apartment near the center of Antibes. Leigh is about at her wit's end living here, so we actually decided to move in mid-month and lose some rent on the old place. Oh well.

Today Leigh and I packed up all of our stuff in the shithole studio apartment on Cap d'Antibes. Early tomorrow morning we will take our stuff to the new apartment by bus and will NEVER EVER RETURN to this place again. Thank God, I think I'm getting spores in my respiratory system.

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quick update

So Leigh and I went to Italy last week and now my job/classes at the CIV are back in full swing for the next month and a half. I have a few new classes that I am teaching and I have picked up some volunteer type hours helping put on a play with a group of younger students. They are so cute and so ernest and I love working with them.

The weather has turned cold here in the south of France so that Leigh and I have plans to go bargain hunting for sweaters and jackets tomorrow, though the word "bargain" doesn't really translate to French shopping. We will do what we can because it's chilly and I have been re-wearing the same outfits to work for over a month now.

It looks like I will be moving to a new apartment next week because the old place is proving to be almost unliveable. It is very difficult to cook here and impossible to keep it clean for more than a day at a time. Leaves blow in the front door every time we go in and out and there simply is not enough space for two people. Plus we're noticing some leaks in the ceiling and some puddling in the bathroom near the shower. This just won't do for the next month. Plus the new place is so very nice that it's hard to stay away from it, so we're finding the extra money for this month and essentially paying double rent to get out of the studio sooner.

In other news, we have some plans to see some nearby villages in the coming weeks. We are planning to visit Eze-sur-mer, which is a short train or bus ride away from Antibes. I really want to visit Arles and Grasse soon but am still awaiting my first paycheck, so that might have to wait. I would like to see other parts of the Cote d'Azur and the Var, but it might be best to wait until closer to spring when it gets warmer and sunnier. Since soccer is played pretty much year round in Europe we are also hoping to see a game or two played either in Nice or Monaco, but that is just speculative at the moment.

We have started making some serious plans for our major Christmas trip, so that is also very exciting. It looks like we will visit a small village in Switzerland for a few days, then see Amsterdam (with a side trip to Maastricht) and Paris, with a stopover in Brussels if our train schedule permits. So much to do! Now I just need to start getting paid so I can afford to do more than hang out at home eating baguettes!

I'm officially starting to miss having a car and certain American conveniences like stores being open late, businesses being open all day on Sunday, and delivery. When we move closer to downtown we can start getting delivery sometimes, but it's still crazy expensive here for most things- like a pizza that will feed two people for 12 euro or more! Leigh has implemented a new rule that we are allowed to think about things we miss and cravings but we cannot SAY them outloud because it makes it worse and there's nothing we can do about it usually.

That being said, I think I need a rule that we keep chocolate in the house at all times and that we make a more serious effort to cook American foods to keep our cravings at bay. I think first on the list will be cheeseburgers using "cheddar" cheese I found at Carrefour that more closely resembles a harder American cheese. Whatever, it'll do.

Back from Italy

Leigh and I made it back from Italy more or less unscathed. For details check out my website, just click on the various cities to read about our travels there and see pictures.

In all we had a good time, though we could have done without quite a bit of Italian attitude moments and some bad weather toward the end. Also, Vatican City was kind of a necessary annoyance. You know how there are some things you simply MUST see or do when you travel somewhere? That's kind of how it was at Vatican City. Before we even got in the front door I didn't really care enough about the Sistine Chapel to put up with the indignant attitudes, but I decided to swallow my pride and sense of self-worth to see it and then hauled ass out of their "separate state" in time to get over my irritation and enjoy Rome for the afternoon and evening. Our visit to Pompeii was fantastic and I found Rome to be enchanting overall. We are hoping to visit Cinque Terre for a long weekend since we were rained out of our hiking plans on Monday.

Anyway, it was pretty fun and I'm glad we spent some time there. We're already starting to brainstorm about our Christmas trip and some fun weekends- maybe the Swizz Alps, Barcelona, and/or Provence depending on time/money/etc.

Leigh and I went to a local restaurant in Vieille Ville last night and enjoyed typical local food. I tried soupe de poisson, a traditional Cote d'Azur starter, which was yummy and we also had steak and fries with a ratatouille-type vegetable dish on the side. We finished off with a French dessert each. It was a little spendy compared to what we usually spend on food, but we were celebrating my passing the Alaska Bar Exam. Plus I had been wanting to have an evening out in Antibes since I arrived at the end of September and now I finally have a date for that sort of thing! : )

Back to work tomorrow morning. I have all my regular classes plus a few new ones AND I've volunteered to spend about two hours per week helping put together the 4eme class play with my Canadian counterpart and an English teacher at the school. I'm pretty excited about the play and curious about my new classes, though I'm really looking forward to getting completely settled into my schedule so it's more second nature.