Yelle!

On Friday, I went with Susie the roomate to Arles where we went to an Aussie bar called Wallabeer, and then saw a Yelle concert (anyone who saw the youtube video trashing Florian Zeller - that was her singing.) She's a pre-packaged-controversial pop star and all the coolest Arles highschoolers were out to celebrate their 1st day of vacation in style. All the kiddies started moshing to the electropop, which was a bit annoying and made me want to give them a lesson in genres and in not jumping into my beer but the concert, overall, was a lot of fun. The other cool thing to do in Arles, when not seeing Yelle in concert, is riding a bike around and popping up on the back wheel everytime you pass people. They look absolutely ridiculous doing it, and I failed at sneaking a picture of it, but I'm going back with Julia so there's always next time.

Cold and monster faces

The radiators do not work. In fact, I'm sure they work, unfortunately, their isn't any power going to our thermostat. At first, Susie and I couldn't find the thermostat, and Nora, who has lived here for a year, was never around. Then she showed me where it was but wasn't really sure how to work it. I went to the neighbors' today and confirmed that yes, despite what Nora said, the screen was supposed to work. The circuit breaker isn't flipped so we need an electrician, and fast. It has been in the 40s each night this week, which is especially horrible when you're sick like I've been, and my hands haven't stopped being cold for about two days. At least the utility bill for this month will be cheap. (It took me two days to get this message online, we just got heat, 10 minutes before I leave for vacation)

Speaking of being cold, with the sun so strong here, the best technique for keeping warm while waiting for a bus, is to sit in the brightest sun possible. After an hour wait Tuesday, I noticed that night that my nose was red. The picture washed out the color, but its funny nonetheless.


This week has been a week of monster faces, the verb "to have," body parts, and numbers. How many eyes does the monster have? He has 13 eyes.

It feels like Chicago

The Mistral has been blowing for four days now, and it blew the last of the warm air away about two days ago. Today = a boots and heavy wool sweater day for me (with gloves!) and a full winter coat day for the provençaux. I feel like I'm back in Chicago. Hopefully tomorrow will be the last day of the Mistral, which always blows for an odd number of days.

This is the last week of class before the Toussaint (all saints day) vacation. Which is just under 2 weeks long. About half my classes today had to do with Halloween, my favorite being my littlest ones, where we walked like monsters, crawled like spiders, floated like ghosts, and flew like witches and bats, sound effects and all. While French animals do not make the same sounds as American ones, French monsters, ghosts, and witches do.

My favorite thing that happened today, however, was a teacher telling her kids to listen well to the nasal sound in "afternoon" when I said it. The problem was, as you bright people have already figured out, that there isn't a nasal sound in afternoon, what she picked up on was me recovering from a cold.

Which brings me to my last point of the day. I realized last week that I cannot be a teacher. My immune system is not up for spending everyday with cute little germ magnets.

A Market and a Strike

I heard last Saturday that their was going to be a transportation strike today. Then on Monday a teacher handed out a sheet while I was in her class announcing that she and other teachers were also striking on Thursday: there would be someone to look after those of her students who showed up, but there would be no class. So yesterday I called my boss at the school administration and asked her if I should show up to work today. She told me not to. I already don't work Wednesdays or Fridays, so that left me not knowing what to do with myself.
While the transportation workers are protesting Sarkozy's proposal to take away their very early retirement age, which dates back to the days when train conductors shoveled coal all day and thus were allowed to retire a few years before they died of emphysema. Nowadays they have a normal life expectancy but can still retire in their 50s and live off of social security for the rest of their lives. That does need to change. However, the teachers are striking because they want to reduce the number of teachers in schools. I'm teaching in small towns and the schools don't have receptionists. Once classes start, the doors of the school are locked from the outside because their is no one to monitor who could come in. The principals also teach their classes full time, and most elementary school classes have 25-28 students. Their doesn't seem to be teachers to spare, so I do think the teacher's strike is valid.

Yesterday morning I went to the weekly market with my roommate, where I bought lots of vegetables, fresh goat cheese, black olive tapenade, and "scrubland" honey - tasty because scrubland in southern France includes herbs like thyme, lavender, rosemary, germander, savory, oregano, and wild fennel. It was all very cheap, and very tasty. So I've started a tradition of a market-day omelet.



We also went over to the house of our neighbors Lynn and Frank after Lynn popped round to tell us she was skipping class that afternoon. We hung out for a while and had a new awesome treat: Macademia nut icecream with dark chocolate pieces on top. We spent half an hour on the phone with their company and got their wifi to work on my computer by removing the password which for some reason just wasn't working on any computer except Lynn's. So, now I have internet at home! Which means I can skype, and write on this thing more often so that each time I post, its not monstrous. Frank, who is a gardening teacher at the high school, came home and told us about swimming pools where plants are used to clean the water. Sounds really cool.

End of Work Week 1

My schools are all very different. Tuesday I went to the second school. There are only 2 classes there who want my help, and I spent the 1st 15 minutes there being passed around between teachers, then following one around as she looked for more teachers for me to work with - to no avail. So it looks like I will be working only 1 1/2 to 2 hours there instead of 3 - I'm not crying. But it was a disturbing way to start out. At my Thursday school I'm spending 1/2 hour with 5 different classes, and they, unlike the other schools, had the documents that said what the kids were supposed to learn each year, which is helpful. Thursday evening I went out to an Argentinian movie/concert at the local cinema with my roommate Susie and my neighbors Lynn and Frank. The music was really good, and the guy had great stories like, "I wrote this song when I was bumming around France as a street musician on a tourist visa. I overstayed my visa, and the police made me leave the country, but at the Spanish border they required $5 to enter the country, and I didn't have that much money. So I couldn't go into either country, and I wrote this song." The movie was about a Maradona super-fan, it was very funny. Also on Thursday I got food poisoning, which I'm still recovering from, so I'm debating whether or not to go to Avignon this evening to watch the rugby world cup match, or whether I should count on France to win, take it easy, and go watch the final at the hug screen at La Defense in Paris next weekend. I'll be sad it they don;t make it through and I spent the last game that France was in with a stomach ache at home.

Provence is very dry. Looking out from my window, even the greens are tinged with brown. Because of this, like a desert, it doesn't hold heat, which is more and more noticeable as it gets colder. The mornings are cold, afternoons hot, and the evenings cold again. The sun is strong, and its direct light is the source of most of the heat. Even in midday, when I'm sweating in the sun, its chilly in the shade. And with the starkness of the always-sharp sunlight from the always-clear sky, I can't help but think about the astronomy class when I learned about the extreme temperature differences between sun and shade on a land with no atmosphere at all - the moon.

1st day of school/ Marseille photos

It was my 1st day of school today, and I'm pretty excited about the year. The classes are less my own than it was made out to be - I won't be assigning homework or worrying about discipline. Besides that, the teachers varied quite a bit on how engaged they will be in the lessons, probably very dependent on how good the teacher's English is. In France, primary school teachers have to teach a foreign language just like they teach math and French. However, they aren't given much preparation so the levels of the students vary a lot depending on who they've had in the past. And my day ends with the youngest kids so I'll have to keep up the high energy but it will be fun to end each Monday with songs. Tomorrow afternoon I will work in the school of a neighboring town.

As promised, pictures from Marseille, they are small because there were problems uploading them. Oh, well:

A good day

The orientation Marseille was a giant waste of time but the weather was warm and sunny - just about perfect. I went on a boat ride to the cliffs and inlets arouind Marseille, as well as the Chateau d'If of The Count of Monte Cristo fame. About 10 of us went, and we had the whole front of the boat to ourselves. As the sun beat down on our faces and the breeze cooled our backs, we couldn't help but yell "we're in ther fucking south of France!" Another good result of the soul-murderingly terrible orientation: I now have friends in the two cities neighboring St Remy: Avignon and Arles, as well as a friend in the alpine spa/ski town Digne-les-Bains. Guess where I'll be skiing this winter?

Right now its the small victories and defeats that determine whether a day is good or not. Yesterday was great. I woke up and trimmed my hair - always a risk - and it looks good. The England-Australia rugby (world cup) match was a close one, and, St Remy being a vacation town, there were plenty of English around celebrating their win. Plus, as England had been the underdog, their win bode well for the French that evening. Both my parents and Pete called, and despite the internet saying their were no available seats, my mom managed to move my flight home for Christmas up two days. After the match I went to the grocer, and on the way, I found a not-expensive cloth-lined market basket that fits perfectly into the armoire in my room, so I don't need to use my suitcase as my sock and underwear drawer anymore. Plus, the woman at the grocer commented on how pretty the basket was. After dinner, I went out to watch the France-New Zealand rugby match. As I passed by the cafe with wifi,that I come to just about every day, I waved to the patron. He came out and asked me where my computer was. When I said I was watching the match, he told me which cafe had the best TV to watch it on. Then he asked if I was on vacation. I guess I had been coming to the cafe longer than he expected of any anglophone. I told him I was here for work, and would be here for a year. He told me that if I needed anything, help with french, or anything else in my move here, to come in any time and ask him. I had just become a regular, which is hard to do as a foreigner in tourist season. That was the whipped cream on the sundae of a good day, and then, of course, came the cherry: France (the host country of the rugby world cup) won their quarterfinal game against New Zealand (favored to win it all), against the odds and despite horrendous 1st half play. I will not be living in a depressed land, at least not for the next week.

Reunion à Marseille

So, I named my last post "Frankfurt Slideshow" and then, when there were slideshow problems, forgot to change it. Hopefully a simplified version will come soon. I'm still working on getting internet at my apartment, but for most of this week I'm staying in Marseille, and the hotel has wifi.

I was sent an email, probably on friday last week, that I didn't read until yesterday. It was a schedule for the orientation in Marseille that starts tomorrow. They expect most people (including me) to go back and forth from their town to Marseille for the orientation. Some people from the boonies in the Alps are givin a hotel room for three nights. I got a hotel room for one night, the minimum, despite the fact that the bus schedule to my town makes the schedules of the other days impossible, whereas some people from Avignon and Arles (the closest cities to me, and where I have to change from bus to train) got two nights in a hotel when they could very well go back and forth. So, since its impossible for me to get to Marseille by 9am tomorrow because there is no bus early enough into Avignon, I had to get a room for myself tonight. However, I sent a plea to the administration and they got me a room for tomorrow night as well as Wednesday. Depending on the schedule I may have to pay for another room Thursday. But I don't know because under 'Friday' my personal schedule says: individual activity, see your personal schedule. Also because my schedule and the appointment sheet for my extrêmement important doctor's appointment conflict on what day it is.

French Bureaucrats (the original bureaucrats): blending extra hassle with incompetence.