Trips! Trips! Trips!

Hello again. I hope this Sunday finds you well and that you are not to depressed about last night's Packer loss. I was just alerted this week to the presence of a Packer bar in Paris, which is pretty shocking considering the average Parisian's disdain for American culture. I'm stereotyping, I know. But really, if they're going to participate in any aspect of our culture I am surprised it would be American football. I guess there are probably enough ex-pats in Paris to keep that place going.

Anyway, this weekend has been devoted to sweatpants and bottle(s) of 1 euro wine (and it's not disgusting! I felt like Magellan when I found it. What a discovery!) and trip planning. It has taken over my life. Which is not too impressive a feat because let's remember, I live in Perigueux. It starts this upcoming weekend with a trip to London. I'll be meeting Kristin, who will be participating in a job fair for the upcoming school year. The fair takes place at a hotel overlooking the Tower Bridge, and we will also be staying there. Here is a picture from the hotel website of one of the views:

She'll be at the fair during the day and I'll explore, then at night we'll be able to hang out. I'm pretty excited about this - I have only been to London once - about 10 years go, and I don't remember much. I do remember that it was right after the US invaded Iraq. I'll never forget that because people brought it up nearly every time they realized we were American. They weren't impressed.

The second weekend in February I'll be going with a bunch of girls from the program to Milan for the weekend. We found round trip plane tickets on one of the budget airlines for 40 euro - which is the same price as the train tickets to get from Perigueux to Bordeaux to catch the plane- about an hour train ride. Ridiculous! But we'll take it. Since there are six of us, we opted to rent an apartment - living the hostel free dream! Wooo.

I also have another break from school coming up during the first two weeks of March and am planning to explore Portugal and Spain. Unfortunately it won't be warm enough for the beaches yet, but I'm sure it will be a lot sunnier than it is here! And I'll be able to sample wines from other regions - an important civic duty. Good thing I've already learned my lesson about Port wine - you actually aren't supposed to drink half the bottle like you can with other wines (by "you" I mean "I") due to the 20% alcohol content. That was a fun night. Oh well, most alcohol - related lessons we must learn the hard way, right? Mid April will bring Ms Barb and Mr Marty (it's ok if I call you guys that, right?) to Germany and I'm excited to meet them there. Hopefully I'll hit up Amsterdam and Belgium on either the way to Germany or on the way back to France. I'm not going home without trying Belgian fries. I've heard so much about them.

I'll return from that trip in time to meet my parents, who arrive April 30 for a two week trip. We're going to rent a car and do some traveling around France. And THEN Megan and I are going to fly home, making a few day stop in Iceland on the way. I still can't believe we're doing this. It all started on Friday night when we were looking online for potential flights home in May - she'll be going back to DC and I back to WI. We were alarmed by the $3000+ one way tickets back to the states and wondering if they'll go down eventually. Then Megan pointed out that there was a $550 flight back to DC from Paris via Iceland. And we thought, "wouldn't a few day layover in Iceland be cool?". A google image search of Iceland confirmed that yes, it would be cool. I realized that easyjet, our budget airline of choice, runs a 60euro flight from London to Reykjavic, and then the flight back to DC from there would only be $260! Dollars, not Euros! So we jumped on it. I found a $100 flight from DC to Madison, so we're pretty excited that not only are we getting home for about 1/6 the cost we were anticipating, but we get to explore Iceland, too. It really does look amazing. For example:

and :

Exciting things to look forward to! Traveling was the #1 reason I came here (maybe not the best #1 reason, but it's true), so looking forward to these events will hopefully get me through the work part of this situation, which I still haven't figured out how to approach without stress. I am in the process of making Rainman - like countdowns to each of these events, but I'll stop there. Rick Steves and I have some work to do. We've had quite a weekend together already, let me tell you. Have a good week!

I'm back! Again.

Look what I rediscovered in 2013? I wish I could tell you that I stopped blogging because I got too busy, but that is just not the case. What happened was that I got internet at home. (??!!) I since have been using my spare time to research websites on which I can watch my favorite and dearly missed TV shows for free (crap, I hope Big Brother isn't reading), planning my next trip, and keeping up with news stuff now that I can. Oh, and facebook. I'm sad to admit how much of a time suck that is. Though I haven't been blogging, I have been posting pictures and commentary on my shinanegans on said time suck. It's much more of an appropriate form of media for a person of my generation. I'm much better at giving updates in 140 characters or less than I am of writing multiple sentences and trying to make them flow together in a (somewhat) sensical way. Oh, the shame. So if you have facebook, which I'm pretty sure everybody but one person does (you know who you are. Just give in already.), you're probably up to speed.

I notice that the last time I blogged was after my last school break. I just returned from another, and this time I got to go home for Christmas. I'm glad I went, not only to fulfill the prophecy of the last blog during which I predicted I'd use the dryer as much as possible and stare at people I miss, but because I'm sure Perigueux was quite the deserted place over break. Most of my friends here either went home or were busy entertaining visitors. So, I got to spend two weeks doing my favorite things - happy hour, yoga, enjoying drip coffee (more than 5 oz of coffee was exciting), seeing great people, hanging out with former CMP families/teachers, and yes, drying my clothes. I even met two babies, which was exciting. I told them not to grow till I get back, but I don't think they'll listen. Typical.

So far, I feel pretty good about being back. It's only been three days, but that's good news nonethless. The school aspect of the job has been a bit frustrating, due to the sheer number of kids, teachers, and schools I work with and the lack of direction and feedback I've received, so that has caused some stress. But there are less than four months left, so that's not bad. Since being here, I've become obsessed with the passage of time. I'll always think something like "14 weeks left of teaching, that's not bad.. 14 weeks ago was the beginning of October...". I'm like a kid who measures time in episodes of I Love Lucy. Really, that's a thing. I know children who have used that time telling strategy. These daily calculations make me feel a little like Rainman.

I have learned, though, that sometimes things are hard, and you just have to deal. I know that sounds like a no-brainer, but as a person who has not really deviated much from my routines over the past 10 years and hung out with the many of the same (wonderful, of course) people for most of my life, it was more shocking than I expected to be removed from all of that. I'm not used to lots of ups and downs and this experience has been full of them. But, people much wiser than I have informed me that experiencing ups and downs and learning to navigate them is part of being an adult. What?! And I tried to avoid growing up for so long. Sigh. So that's what I've been up to; learning about myself. Ugh. Oprah would be proud of me and that makes me sick. So I'm still here, trying to figure out these funny French and how to teach them. But I can do it, because it's 2013 now and I am going to be more of a Gryffindor and less of a Hufflepuff this year. Yeah, I just said that. If you know what that means, good for you. If you don't, read Harry Potter. Also, why haven't you gotten around to that yet? And you thought I was done mentioning Harry Potter...

In other news, I have joined a gym. That has also helped my mental health considerably. The gym is pretty nice - it is like the gym I belonged to in Madison, where you have a key that allows access even when it is not staffed (read: during hours in which working in France must be illegal - Sundays and the two hour lunch), and has spinning and body pump classes that someday I'll try. The gym also has all kinds of rules, which I find funny considering there seems to be no rules in other aspects of French life. The operation/parking of motor vehicles comes to mind. People can seemingly park or drive wherever they want - sidewalks, doorways, whatever. But you MUST purchase a full size beach/bath towel and sit on it at all times while at the gym. The first three times I went to the gym I did not realize the extent of the towel etiquette, and got a talkin to each time. The first time, I didn't know you needed a towel. No problem, the guy gave me one. The second time I didn't realize you actually have to RENT those towels. Oops. The third time, I didn't know that you have to sit on the towels, they cannot be on the handlebars. They also have you wipe off the machines like we do in the states with the sanitizer, and I've seen the staff following people like me who sweat a lot with a mop, so I think this must be part of their aversion to sweat. I've heard that's a very french thing. I sweat a lot, I can't help it. Then I walk home looking like a sweaty, red-faced mess, past all the perfectly outfitted French people sipping expresso on sidewalk cafes. Sometimes they look disgusted, but I really want to point out that that's a pretty judgemental look coming from a man wearing a pink silk scarf and an outfit so tight I swore it was a wetsuit. And are those tap shoes? They look like it.

Well, time to plan my lessons for tomorrow. Thanks for sticking out this long post. A friend of mine recently suggested shorter blogs more frequently. I never thought of that. I'll work on it. Happy 2013!