Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Home-almost

As most of you are aware, I'm back in Toronto for the next two weeks! I promise to post pictures of my trip home too.... home is an adventure too! :)

I'm heading to meeeechigan today for the weekend then I'll be back in Toronto until I head back to France.

My plans are sort of up in the air due to having a cold so call me if you want to get together! :)

Sunday, February 14, 2010

48 hours in summary

After 48 hours + of travel I have yet to reach my destination of Toronto. As you well know, it's valentine's day and I was seriously hoping to make it there since Oli has something special planned for us.

Here's a run down so far of my travel experience:

8:16 a.m leave St. Chely for Clermont-Ferrand
----bus is late....lots of snow...one lane open ......40 minutes late.
10:45 I miss my train for paris.
11:15 I am on stand by for the next train, meaning its full but if there is a seat available, by all means I can sit in it.
6:10 p.m. Paris! After missing my train, the next one was late getting in due to 'protesting' on the tracks, I've made it. phew! I'm so cold and frustrated with the lines at gare de lyon I take a taxi to my hotel. (Well worth it!)
7:00 p.m. In my room, quickly put my stuff down then head out to look for 1. a grocery for dinner. 2. pharmacy ---I have a throat infection coming on .....
7:40 ish. Eating my salad and pretzels alone in my room after walking around quickly for an open pharmacy. Alas no luck. Boo.

11 p.m. please let me fall asleep and wake up....nope. can't achieve that tonight. Oh well two hours is better than nothing.

6:30 a.m waiting for the the shuttle to take to CDG to catch my 10:50 plane to cincinnati.

7:30 a.m. waiting for delta to open check in.

8:40 am. checked in. on stand by for a direct flight to toronto if this one is full. (This never happens)

10:00 am getting frisked by french authorities again before boarding the plane.

12:50 p.m. FINALLY taking off after a 2 hour delay.

9:05 p.m/ 3:05 p.m land in cincinnati. Plenty of time to make it through customs and recheck my bag for toronto.

10:30 pm/4:30 p.m. Flight is delayed to 5:15, then 6:45 then 7:45.

12:30 am /6:30p.m Flight is officially cancelled. I'm given a new ticket for 2p.m the next day, hotel voucher at the doubletree and 2 meal vouchers worth 14 bucks. *Thanks delta*

2:00 am /8:00 p.m. make it to the hotel, register for internet and call Oli to let him know I won't be coming.

3:00 a.m./ 9:00 p.m Running on two hours of sleep. Coughing like no other. need shower sleep.

9:30 p.m. can't keep my eyes open, so tired. hotel is amazing with huge inviting bed with fresh cookie.

.........5 a.m the next day.........

Refreshed and ready to go! Oh wait. my flight isn't for hours!!!! Hopefully this time delta will schedule a pilot and I'll make it!

bisous

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Mad libs and telephone unite!

Today in class I gave each student in my BTS 2nd year class (20 year old students) a word and they had to use this word and say at least three sentanced connecting to phrases before them to make a class story. It was so rediculous that I had to type it up:


"Once upon a time, jim carey met two friends who are harold and kumarin a car. They are listening to music that is "what is love". Harold is white and kumar is brown. They are very crazy about listening tomusic because they want to have fun. They want to dance in a smallcar. It's a twingo with no seats. They are going to a party. They are training in the car. Harold and Kumar are smoking weed so they are hungry. Kumar especially loves hamburgers so the three friends aregoing to a fastfood. On the road to the fastfood they ran out of gas. As they spent all their money, they need to go back to their house toget money so they found three lions. They used the lions to run home since they had no gas. With the lions the three friends went in front of a restaurant but as they had no money, they decided to steal roasted meat. When they took the meat they saw a right arm in the pocket of the meat. It's a canibal restaurant. The lions ate the right arm and at this time Harold fell in love with the lion and he decided to buy him a ring because he wanted to marry it and have children. While they are walking to buy the ring, they found a magical lamp onthe sidewalk and they decided ti make it shine. When the lamp shinned as much as the sun, a beautiful genie came out of the lamp and he told them that he can make all his dreams come true. And harold asked him for a beautiful ring and beautiful house with his lion and children. They will be happy with their children."

I bolded the words I gave them. All in all I was looking for a romantic valentines day story and I got this random mess. It reminded me of mad libs combined with telephone from when I was little.

I hope I make it ok to paris tomorrow. We have gotten quite some accumulation (about 6 inches) since yesterday. See you all on the other side of the pond!

bisous

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Some old and new, mostly food

I finally figured out how to get the pictures of my blackberry, thanks to Oli's help!

Here was at the restaurant in Marvejols. I had a creme caramel dessert that was so pretty!

Here is us together. We weren't ready and the owner didn't really know how to take a picture with the phone.
Here is Sarah's shrimp dinner from le Bureau Pub. Their presentation is always amazing plus the food is so good too!

This is a picture of today. Yesterday I spent 45 minutes laying in the sun with 50 degree weather and I woke up to this in the morning. So far tonight, it has stopped but the meteo people expect us to keep getting more. I was surprised to see my first snow plow truck here in lozere and they are truly trucks! I saw him outside between the middle school and high school so I snapped a quick pic. The guy probably thought I was crazy taking a photo of him but memories, oh sweet memories are what counts!

I spent today making sugar and spice espresso cookies with the brown sugar I found but alas they turned out horribly. I doubt I'm going to keep cooking them after two batches. They came out flat crispy. I still have two rolls of dough to cut so I'm going to save them and give them to Mme H if she wants to try baking them in her regular sized oven. I think the problem here is the dough though so I doubt they will turn out for her anyways. Sorry, no pics of the disaster!

Bisous

Monday, February 8, 2010

A french filled weekend! :)


This weekend we celebrated S's birthday finally! A bunch of her friends came over and C +husband too. It was so funny because I taught the frenchies how a real tequila shot is done. haha. Much to my amusement they seemed to like it but since everyone drives here most of them only wanted to do one or two. So cute. S and I were the only one's to head out the l'annexe, the only decent club in St. Chely. (You need a car to go there which is dumb) The atmosphere wasn't spectacular and there were too many creepy guys so we only stayed for two hours. We ran into a bunch of gym goers and I saw some students which is always awkward but hey, what are ya gonna do?

Here's me needing some help on how to say "tease". (Not in the dirty sense!)
Here is Chouchou and C at the party with S's cowboy hats! We all go the gym together!

I also have some great new from the doctor! I don't have that horrible arthritis but just an 'arthrose' caused by my scoliosis. I an run and do everything as long as it doesn't hurt. Swimming is the best apparently so I start doing that regularly when I return.

I met with the proviseur today, which always makes me nervous I did something wrong but apparently I saw something that they need me to testify to. One of my older students puts his hand in his pants all the time and I thought at the time gross and then the next week he did it again. I avoided looking cause I didn't want to know what he was doing down there but apparently its an issue raised by all his teachers. The students think it's no biggie cause he does it all the time and the teachers are disgusted by it that they want him to get help. Also he's 'major' meaning if a minor student saw something or a parent bad things could happen to the school. I want to help the teachers' case but I didn't want to look so I didn't see much during class. (He's done this two weeks in a row with me but according to his classmates its been going on for awhile) I hope he gets the help he needs.

On another note, kinda cheesy but I learned something about french restaurants I forgot to mention! When the cheese course comes on a huge platter you have the right to take three different kinds and the size is about a 1/2 cube. Interesting right? I'm glad Mme H explained that to me when we were out the other week together!

I saw La princesse et la grenouille (frog prince disney movie) this weekend at the REX in St. Chely. It was super cute! My first disney in french and it was pretty understandable. :)

Bisous


Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Memories of teaching and a roommate!

Yesterday was interesting for multiple reasons:

(I don't like to post too soon but I just had to! ) I had forgotten what it was like to teach a full day of school and Oli so succinctly reminded me that her works until 5 everyday. I worked from 9 am until 5 pm with an hour for lunch and an hour break at 3. I worked more than a normal american teacher would in a day which made it worse. Most teachers only work about 5 hours in front of kids and I did 6. It's exhausting teaching because I feel I put so much of my energy into the kids to get them excited about learning but I just encounter resistance. Needless to say at 9:50 I got into bed to relax and read on my kindle but after 3 pages I was asleep. I slept so good too!

Another interesting thing yesterday was that I had a roommate for night. We'll call her E because I'm not sure of her full name. She's a student teacher at the primary school and she'll be staying two nights a week for two weeks. It's strange having someone in the apartment and even more so because I actually live here and I'm sure she feels weird about stepping on my stuff. (I have stuff that's mine everywhere, though neat, it's not like I can contain myself to my room and that's quite unfair of anyone to ask of me since I'm here full time.) She's nice but we didn't really talk as usual with french people. They aren't very open right away, only after a few times of meeting.

Then I have this picture of my partial french map of magnets. It's sideways and I couldn't get it to rotate so you'll just have to imagine it the other way. I have almost the entire east coast of France! Now you can see why I'm so fanatical about these stupid things:

Bisous

Monday, February 1, 2010

Random Pictures


Here are some recent photos I took! I was sick with the stomach flu all weekend so I didn't have time to upload them.

This is S and C, at the bureau celebrating S's birthday. :)
This is the first apple pie I made here. I haven't eaten it and I hesitate to give it away because I made it the day I got sick...On verra...



This is the snow we got saturday and I thought it was beautiful from my window.
Bisous