zen.

I'm in between (cancelled) classes and trying to stay calm and take some deep breaths.  I will not think about raucous middle schoolers for the next 30 minutes, before I have to go deal with 24 of them for two more hours until vacation. 

That's why I'm focusing on Café del Mar- a group I've had on my ipod for quite awhile, but really only started listening to recently.  It's perfect for a dreary morning walk to work, or a calming pause in between classes of rambuntctious preteens. 

I definitely recommend checking them out, infuse a little zen into your Thursday.  It's almost Friday!

How do you add some zen to your day when you need it ?

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alli

my wheels.

Mon vélo !

The basket and the bell- little louder than expected.

Oh yea.  This year's bike kicks last year's bike's butt. Too many apostrophes.

Da da da.

Mon vélo!  I have now entered the world of bike commuters- this baby takes me to and from work four times a day- I've taken to the French tradition of coming home for lunch and heading back to work in the afternoon.

I'd like to get some cool sophisticated looking writer-looking bags to connect to the back wheel to help with my shopping trips.  And I still have to figure out how to disconnect the back light- it's powered by the pedals and makes a completely obnoxious noise when you're pedaling.  Not to mention the drag it creates.  Dragging tires + windy days + backpack and basket full of groceries = not a very fun trip to Casino, the local grocery store.

The wind picked up this afternoon, so I'm a lot happier to be sitting inside, looking outside.  The grapevines across from our apartment windows are yellowing a bit more everyday.  I wish they would just stay forever, it makes for such a wonderful rich orange and yellow quilt across the hill.

Teachers seem to be sometimes just as frustrating as students around here, but I'm trying to keep my patience.  The discipline tactics are surprising, if not shocking sometimes, so it's providing for quite the cultural insight.  I just keep thinking that this is where I will be all of next week :

Montalba le chateau, in Southern France.

The first vacation of the year is already next week, which is just crazy.  I remembered it coming quickly last year, but wow!  I'm keeping the tradition of roadtripping for the vacances de Toussaints for the second year in a row.  I'll be sure to takes lots of pictures, and hopefully I can get some internet to post along the way too.

How is your Tuesday going?

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alli

photo

le weekend.

Hello friends!

Before the hectic-ness that was my Monday morning..... I spent a very lovely weekend up in Sens.  Despite my train between Dijon and Sens being cancelled (trains are mysteriously falling en panne- having electrical/technical problems.... my theory is the vacation's coming up pretty soon) I spent a wonderful Friday afternoon walking around in Sens and later hiding in cafés to escape the cool weather and misty rain.

Saturday we went to go see a film that pretty much embodies all of French culture :

Le petit nicholas

The petit nicholas- little Nicholas- is also a series of comics/books for youngsters.  Nicholas is constantly off on new adventures or getting into trouble.  The movie is a tribute to the books and a story about how Nicholas thinks his parents are having a new baby and his plan with his friends on how to get rid of it so he won't lose all the attention.  Very cute, very French!

Saturday night, to celebrate the birthday of an assistant, we went to eat at my favorite Indian restaurant in Sens.  I filled up on delicious Chicken Masala and Garlic Nan, and we spent the wee hours of the morning at the apartment in Sens with 13 people crammed in the tiny kitchen (SO reminded me of last year) playing charades and talking linguistics and vocab differences.  We had several countries covered, and the conversations were a mix of German, Spanish, French, English and even a bit of Italian.  A linguistically diverse group I should say!

Sunday we all got together again for a crêpe party (with Nesquick powder added to the batter. drool) in the early afternoon.  The weather was crisp but sunny as can be, so Stéphane and I strolled along the Yonne and 'soaked up the sun' (which is his new favorite English phrase) before I hopped on a train back to Beaune- thankfully this time minus the delay/cancelled trains.

I've quickly learned that Monday mornings have a pattern of being confusing and hectic.  Last Monday morning I didn't have a key to the classroom I was assigned.  Thankfully a teacher opened the door for me and all was well after a few minutes.  Later during the week I talked with another teacher that told me she would leave her key in her mail box and I could use it whenever I needed and return it later.  What would you know, the key wasn't there this morning when I went to look for it.  Parfait.  So I went to la vie scolaire, kind of like the attendance office, to ask for someone's keys.  Before I had even opened my mouth, the woman looked at me and said, oh are you the English assistant?  Um yes.  She had a message to relay to me (3 minutes before class started) that the teacher who usually gives me a group of students to work with was absent.  Ok, she was gone last week too and there wasn't a problem.  But she wasn't finished.  She told them that I could take the whole class.  Ha.  Nonono.  I looked at her in disbelief and kindly but forcefully explained to her that that was not my job.  I was not a teacher, I was an assistant.  I did not take the whole class, I took a part (already, I'm taking about the double the number of students that my job description says).  I didn't have near enough photocopies for the class, and besides half of them had already done the activity last week.  She just looked at me and said, sorry, that's the message she told us.  Genial.  Fired up and frustrated, I marched up the stairs and ushered the kids into class.

Bon, I obviously wasn't going to change the situation now, I'd just have to make the best of it.  Thank GOODNESS I had made a double sided photocopy last week for the restaurant activity I did last week, as a 'just in case' time filler.  The half of the class I worked with last week worked on that while I talked about restaurants with the other group, and in the end they performed for the whole class which was great.

While last year I don't think I would have been as bold, I marched right up to my responsable after class and shared with her about my frustrating morning and how I wanted to be SURE that I would not be told again (by someone other than a teacher), 3 minutes before a class, that I would be doing something that was NOT my job.  Thankfully, she understood completely.  Whew.

The rest of my Monday went semi-smoothly, besides dealing with some highly unmotivated rambunctious students this afternoon.  Instead of feeling beat down while locking up my room after class tonight though, I tried to look at the positive.  I now have the new challenge of finding some kind of activity that will engage all my students- tricking them into speaking English.  I think there's a value to be had in a sneak attack...

Happy Monday everyone!

I know Sunday Stories is a bit en retard these past couple of weeks, bear with me.  And photos to be coming soon of my new wheels!

alli

maybe.

Maybe.  I was never a morning person because I couldn't enjoy them.  I spent my mornings rushing to shower and get ready and finish up things before class or work.  Every morning was a flurry of commotion drying my hair between sips of coffee, glancing at emails and putting on makeup at the same time.  I was pretty much setting up my day to be nothing but hectic.

Even though it's hard for me (as a non-morning person) to fathom getting up a little earlier just to not be rushed, I have to admit it's made a huge difference for me in the past couple of weeks.  Instead of pressing snooze a couple times and then hopping right into the shower, I go make a cup of coffee and pour a bowl of cereal.  Then I can glance at emails, read some news, etc.  And afterwards I still have enough time to get ready at normal speed instead of being in hyper-active-going-to-be-late-mode.

Something else that's made a difference?  That when I open my window shades in the morning, I get to see the tinnnnny sliver of a moon in the pale blue morning sky outside my window.  Which is gradually replaced by the sun streaming into my room.  Maybe my mood and my new morning methods will all go out the window once the days are considerably shorter, or once I start opening my shades to cloudy rainy skies instead.  But for now, I'm quite content with my recent discovery.  That in fact, I could maybe be a morning person after all.

Just as long as my coffee machine doesn't break.

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alli

ps.  Heading to Sens tomorrow for the weekend- my old stomping grounds!  Planning on wandering along the streets, maybe a morning market, sitting in the quiet cathedral, eating some scrumptious indian food, and seeing old friends and new friends.  What are your weekend plans?

moon photo.

life is good.

I <3 comfy clothes.  Even though I enjoy dressing up, sometimes after work there's nothing better than lounging in comfy boxers, sweatshirts or pajama pants.

One of my favorite brands for comfy t-shirts is Life is Good, as much for the softness and quality of their clothes as for their quirky sayings.  So imagine my delight when I spotted this adorable long sleeved Life is Good shirt design yesterday in Beaune of all places :

Double delight?  4.17 euros!!!  Life is.... well, you know.

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alli

le weekend

A visit to Chalon sur Saône, a town south of Beaune

I've been looking for some good rain boots recently...

My walk/bike ride to school route

L'arc marking the Northern entrance into Beaune's centre ville. 

Peaking through les remarts- the city walls- for a view of the fantastic roof of les Hospices

One of my favorite houses in Beaune.  A little less jolie because of the gray clouds.

A surprise hot air balloon launch right next to the road!

SO wished it was me up there floating over the road.

Saturday afternoon was spent driving around and exploring villages around Beaune.

Sunday we visited le Chateau de Savigny

Instead of 17th and 18th century furniture, the chateau was filled with motorcycles and model airplanes

And the jardin was a lawn filled with over 60 fighter jets from all around the world.

Me and my roomie, contemplating the bizare-ness of the chateau's collection.

                                     

Our lunchtime picnic view

Hello !

Well, my Monday morning post is coming on Tuesday morning this week.  I will be so relieved when I finally have internet in our apartment, my goodness.  My weekend was a fantastically surprising one- it seems each day something unexpected happened.  Friday Stéphane chauffered me and two other lovely assistants to Chalon sur Saône for a day visit.  We walked casually around the city's marché, stopped for lunch and visited a photography museum close to the river.  Saturday was spent driving around exploring nearby villages, winding through the quaint city roads to see what we could find.

When we turned around a curve in the road about 10 minutes from Beaune, there was a big gray something on the side of the road, kind of like a tent.  We had just driven by there the week before, and I didn't remember anything being there before.  As we got closer we realized it was a hot air balloon, half inflated and getting ready to take off!  We pulled off to the side of the road and grabbed our cameras to watch it puff up and float over our heads.  It was quite the team effort, with several people holding ropes tied to the top to keep the balloon from careening sideways into the trees.  Once it was up in the air it zipped upwards and away, into the cloudy afternoon sky.

Sunday we visited le chateau de Savigny, by far one of the most quirky interesting castles I have ever seen.  The owner of this chateau brings packrat to a whole.new.level.  Each big room in the chauteau was dedicated to something different- several for motorbikes, one for race cars (full size real race cars), a wing for cases and cases full of model airplanes, and the ground floor was a preserved and completely silent kitchen and hall straight out of the middle ages. 

The grounds of the chateau were no less surprising- after walking through a viticulture musuem dedicated to all things wine (with about 30 tractors specialized for driving through vineyards) we skipped on to the lawn where about 60 fighter jets were jigsawed on the grass.  It was quite impressive, but it broke my hear to see them sitting en plein air without any shelter or anything.  Constantly under the rain, wind, bright sun.  So much history, with no one to take care of it, dommage! 

This morning my bike ride to work was aboslutely gorgeous, under a wonderfully brilliant blue sky and the sun sparkling calmy through the trees.  It was the perfect temperature- cold enough that I was glad I had my gloves and scarf, and not too warm so I didn't arrive sweating in the teacher's lounge before my class. 

Honestly, I'm still adjusting to my new role as 'disciplinarian' which apparently comes with my role as assistant au collège.  I'm not sure I'm so fond of the discipline part yet- it's exhausting when you spend more time yelling at kids than speaking with them, especially when there are some there that really want to participate. 

Hope you're having a lovely Tuesday morning!

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alli

leaves.

I realized today when I :

a. opened up my volets (window shades) this morning to a gray sky

b. grabbed a jacket and a parapluie (umbrella) before heading out the door

c. left my bike lonesome at my apartment

d. soaked in the perfume of wet leaves along my walk down cobblestoned streets towards school

and

e. heard hundreds of middle schoolers screaming bloody murder and sploshing through the rain during the récré (recess)

it's fall.

Don't get me wrong, I welcome the season of tall boots, layered sweaters, colorful umbrellas, big scarves, hot chocolates in the late afternoon, and seeing your breath in the morning.  But let's make a little agreement, shall we fall ? 

Let's not rain when I have to change buildings between classes.  Or during the 15 minutes I ride from my apartment to work in the mornings and evenings.  Or to the grocery store, ps.  I've already made that request though, and it didn't yield anything positive the last time.

I'm in a weird sort of limbo at the moment with observing classes, participating, helping the teachers, etc.  I've spent most of my downtime this week planning out my lessons for next week, and even though I'm slightly anxious about how they're going to turn out and how the students are going to behave, I'm excited to jump in.  Although one teacher taking me aside this morning to tell me a student that I'll have next week has violent tendencies because his brother and father are in jail..... didn't exactly boost the comfort level.  Mais bon.  On verra bien.  We shall see !

Weekend plans include sleeping in, a visit from Stéphane, a road trip to Chalon sur Saône not far away from Beaune, wandering through the windy cobblestoned Beaunois streets, and staying warm with dry feet : ) 

What are your weekend plans ?

alli

Moleskine journals.

link

I <3 moleskines.  All shapes.  All sizes.  I've gone through at least 4 of the journals (diaries).  My fave is the Moleskin Large Squared Notebook.  The little boxes instead of lined paper always remind me of French paper/graph paper.  I like to think it adds a studious element to my journal entries, and even though they add more structure to the page, I feel less constricted when I'm looping words along the little boxes. 

Also in my collection is the Moleskine 18-Month Pocket Soft Cover Weekly Planner which serves as mon agenda as they say over here in la France.  I was looking everywhere for a smaller size, since mine is about the size of a notebook, but I'm planning to pick a new one up come January. 

One of these little guys never leaves me purse either- perfect for jotting down song lyrics, ideas for a story, quotes, lists for the supermarché, addresses.  They're super compact and so easy to throw in my purse. 

And last but not least, the City Guides are also becoming part of my collection.  I bought one for Berlin when I went last November.  It's so fun to write down the wonderful things you visited, or sketch a funny drawing reminding yourself not to go that one café next time.  I don't have a guide for Paris yet, which is really surprising, I know !  Planning on buying one soon, because I know there will always be many more visits to Paris for me : )

Do you like to take little notes during the day ?  Do you write in a journal ?  Do you have a favorite ?

alli

Fren-glish

Those who know me well, know I love me some Fren-glish every now and then. I find most English phrases can be enhanced by adding a French word here or there. Especially memorable are the sentences where no French accent whatsoever is linked with the French word, or vice versa. Oh Fren-glish.

My life seems to be an inevitable mix of French and English recently- comes with the territory I suppose. Sometimes I find myself most comfortable speaking in a sort of mix, letting the words fall out as they may, in either language. Some things just have a better ring to them in French, or a sharper bite in English.

Tonight was an extension of this recent language mix I’ve been experiencing- I met and dined with a Franco-American couple living in Beaune. The woman is an English teacher (nationality: French) I’ll soon start working with, who invited me over to her apartment as a sort of meet-n-greet. After we discussed our class for awhile, her boyfriend came home from work and introduced himself- an American from Pennsylvania, who works at a well-known wine exporter based in Beaune. I have a special place in my heart for French-American couples : ) so most of our conversation was based around that. Something I found even more intriguing, was the fact that both of their parents were also French-American, having met/lived in/traveled extensively in both countries. A French-American couple with two sets of French-American parents. Dis donc !

The mix of languages in something I believe will continually intrigue me- the limits and strengths of a language, the constant pull and push between words and how they work in your brain to express your feelings. Is there an ideal language based on personality ? What if you grow up and find your ideal language is not your own ? Can you 100 % express yourself in a language that is not your mother tongue ?


Intéressant.

le weekend.

Hello all !


I’m hoping you had great weekends, full of wonderful fall things – big warm scarves, boots, crisp leaves, blue skies !


My weekend was spent exploring Beaune a bit more, getting to know this city I’ll call home for the next little while. Even though I loved Sens, I feel myself settling and sinking into Beaune in a different way. It may simply be because everything is new and exciting and undiscovered – I’m hoping it will continue to charm me as the months go on.

Friday was a stage, a day of training and administrative paperwork in Dijon, about 30 minutes away by train. It was also the chance to meet several other assistants in the area and promise trips to visit each other in our various cities. It was a rush of excitement, talking about our duties as assistants and ideas for lesson plans – I felt like I was a student, taking notes on the first day of classes.


Saturday morning had a wonderful start at the weekly marché in la centre ville, downtown Beaune. Next week I’ll certainly have to take pictures- I was seriously impressed !  I was expecting a small, concentrated market, but was pleasantly surprised with several streets overflowing with antiquités, frommage, des vêtements et des legumes et des fruits (antiques and baubles, cheese, clothes, veggies and fruits).  It was a bustle of people doing their weekly shopping, moving from booth to booth, pausing to say hi to their market friends and wish them happy weekends.

Saturday night we met up with two other assistants also living in Beaune, a German and an Australian. We found a potential favorite Saturday spot, Au bout du monde, a bar called ‘at the end of the world’, meaning more, ‘the other side of the world’ rather than ‘the end of life as we know it’. As a helpful reminder of how small the world is, we sat next to a couple from San Francisco who have been traveling around France/Europe for the past 8 (!!!) months, and met two guys from Australia and Portland, Oregon who were here studying the wine business.

Sunday was an exciting day because I got my bike ! A teacher offered to lend me a bike for the year, and I am already in love with it : ) It’s an orange Peugot, complete with basket, bell, lights (which automatically activate when I pedal) and a platform on the back to bungee cord things down to as well. I went for my first test run from the teacher’s house to my apartment and all went well ! If the weather is ok tomorrow, I think I’ll make my first daily bike commute to school. So exciting !

Since Stéphane was visiting for the weekend, I took full advantage of having a car here :) Across from our apartment is a big hill peppered with vineyards and country houses, which we decided to go check out. We wound up steep drives between the vines, turning wherever we wanted when we came to crossroads. We got to the top of the hill and then wrapped around and came down the other side, which looked so similar to Northern California/the hilly part outside of San Diego, that I had to remind myself I was on the other side of the ocean. We played tag with the sun which peaked behind the hills as we made our way down. And to my delight, we ended our adventure at the local airport. I knew it was somewhere around the area, and after spotting hangar-looking buildings in the distance and a huge sign that said ULM (ultra légé motorisé… the French acronym for experimental aircraft), I kindly asked Stéphane to please-drive-over-there-so-we-can-peak-at-all-the-airplanes ! It was quiet, the windsock flapping calmly with a Cirrus parked outside of the hangars. I laughed at the English translations on fliers posted by the doors of the flight school, asking if you’d closed your ‘fight plan’ instead of ‘flight plan’. Hopefully I’ll make it back there (by bike?) sometime soon, and maybe even hitch a ride over the vineyards : )

Here are some pictures from Sunday !

View from the hill opposite our apartment.

Sunny fields.

Shadowy paths.

Vineyard cabana.

Les raisins !

Wine route.

Beaune Challenges Aérodrome

Moonrise.

Picturesque, eh ?  Don't be fooled - it's a remote control plane :)

Wishing you a wonderful week ! I’m observing some more classes this week, and will start in the classroom soon enough !

Tell me about your weekend !

Alli