Our Sapin de Nöel

Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree...

Christmas time and Valenciennes Art

Hello everybody!

So, we went to London Saturday before last. We got up at 4:30 and got back at 3:00, both AM. We spent a total of six hours in London, but it was worth it. We got to eat a proper English breakfast on the ferry across the channel and Thai food at a restaurant around the corner from the British museum. Dinner was on the ferry too, but the storm at sea and us circling in wait did not settle well with me (Kade). I spent forty-five minutes breathing heavily and avoiding vomiting. Still worth it. The British Museum has one of the most impressive collections I think I have ever seen. Massive. And Caitlin got to see her childhood curiosity, the bog man, AKA Lindow Man. But six hours simply isn't enough and we'll have to return one day.

This last Saturday, we went to a Christmas dinner party at the home of one of Caitlin's colleagues. My French is definitely coming along, because I at least knew the subjects of conversations pretty consistently and was actually able to comment every so often. We filled up on snack food, nuts and little cheese hors d'oeuvres, and then had to stuff ourselves with the traditional but quite good meal they had prepared. An entrée (appetizer) came out, and we had suspected the worst after having badmouthed the French in the past for eating such things as foie gras, so we were relatively prepared to act enthused. Our strength wavered only slightly when it was revealed that this particular goose liver dish was layered with lingue de boeuf, cow tongue. Mmmm...just like mom used to do. You spread it on spice bread, and it was really rather good. Anything that fatty usually is. From then out, it was just potatoes gratiné and some stewed beef in red wine. A traditional buche de Nöel for dessert. Their two kids at the table were bored out of their minds.

Finally, I just finished a new video project, this one a little more creative than the previous posts. The video is a little washed out because of the YouTube processing, but c'est la vie.

Iraqi bloggers

I was flipping through the BBC news website and stumbled across a roundup of Iraqi bloggers, from within the country and also refugees. Whatever your opinions of the war and subsequent occupation, this shows the chaos and hopelessness that so many people currently feel. It is obviously too complicated to comment on here, so here are the links:

Newer roundup: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/7069943.stm
Last roundup: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/6940384.stm

There are links to each person's respective blogs as well as an excerpt. And this is only a sampling from those writing in English, the educated elite of Iraq: dentists, university students, kids from rich families. Imagine the desperate cries of those in even less fortunate situations.

Lighter aside: Caitlin and I are off to visit our first Christmas market of the season in Valenciennes today.

Christmas lights/Muslim Turkeys/French cysts

It's officially Christmas time here in Denain, both on the streets and here in our flat. After a successful expat Thanksgiving, complete with American, German, and English assistants, imported canned pumpkin, and a turkey so freshly butchered (according to Halaal tradition of course) that it still had feathers; the Sapp/Schemahorn Christmas tree is erected in the living room, bringing life to our cave-like apartment.

I have to admit that this has been a quite difficult week. I really missed my family over the holiday, our assistants dinner was fun- but I want to spend Thanksgiving with the people I love most; thus I have not been in the best of moods (especially where French kids are concerned), so the illumination of our city streets has been a godsend. We purchased a 9euro tree at our local discount store, "Incroyable," and outfitted it with assorted glittering ornaments. Everything is covered with spangles here for Christmas, including the matching sparkly gold knife, fork, and spoon that apparently no French tree is without. They are everywhere in every color.

Local Frenchies have not let us down in the least. There are chaser lights in all colors, "Joyeux Fêtes!" luminaries, and the traditional Santa Clauses perched atop roofs and hanging from windows. Whereas American Christmas lights tend toward a few traditional colors: red, green, clear; the French mix it up with a splash of orange, or a little fuschia for zest. Our evening jaunt to the bakery is now a stroll through a regular winter wonderland. The freezing temperatures help.

As a side note: Kade is growing a cyst currently the size of a marble, but we're hoping it will grow to robin's egg size before Christmas. After watching youtube's offerings on home cyst removal, we've decided to wait for socialized health care to kick in. How big can it get in a month?

Small Town French Carnival

This morning, I literally watched as the circus came into town. It was a caravan of trailers, trucks, and campers, one vehicle carrying a gigantic rolled up tarp and some armature riddled with light bulbs, the all-important "big top" I presume. They effectively shut down midday traffic by coming into our small town. Anyway, here's a little video of our trip to a local town carnival a couple of weeks ago.

Union.... UNION!!

We're in strike-mode here in France at the moment. Kade and I had to attend an assistants meeting in Lille yesterday, which is normally about an hours train ride away. No big deal, 4 euros each way, they usually leave once per hour. Since Wednesday however, we have had a transit strike (a "grève") in France, meaning for every 10 scheduled trains only one actually departs; and it's not even a train- they bring in buses to leave from the train station- so what's normally a short and comfortable ride on a charming French train becomes an extended period stuck on an overcrowded bus while they play imported Ludacris songs on the radio and everyone gets carsick from the traffic. Ok, not everyone. Just me.

Legally transit strikes are not allowed to completely shut down the country, at least 1 in 10 regional trains have to run, and 90 out of 770 high-speed trains have to run; but in Paris I think the subways are down, the inter-Paris train is down, and traffic is too bad as a result to go anywhere by car. While Parisians seem to be up-river sans paddle, we are OK here in our little town. We go everywhere by tramway normally, so aside from yesterday's jaunt to Lille, we are unaffected (although some students can't make it to class- I'm beside myself with distress over it). The scroll at the tramway stop warns that they might start striking Monday, but it is the French way not to worry about it until it happens.

The transit workers are in a huff because the President wants to change their retirement age from 50 to 60. To us this seems obvious, why would they get to retire at 50? But the last time a president threatened to do this in 1995, the entire country was stuck for 3 weeks without any public transportation, Frenchies love their retirement, although from what I can tell, they would prefer to go ahead and retire at 30 and spend their days smoking in pubs- but the smoking ban takes effect in January-can we expect more strikes? One can only hope.

As for me, I'm waiting for the teacher's strike.

Italian Holiday: The Final Installment

Italian Holiday: Part III

So, it was a complete success...the vacation that is. Here are some sample pics. The video will be up soon.

Italian Holiday: Part II

We are in Italy...right now. Woohoo!


Happy Halloween, everybody.

Italian Holiday

We hate to brag, but after three grueling weeks in the teaching profession, we are officially on holiday for the next fortnight. I know, try not to be jealous.
Tomorrow we are off to Paris, and Monday we will fly to Milano. We are going to spend five days in the Cinque Terre, hiking, lounging, beach-combing, and above all....gorging on delicious fresh pasta and pesto (which is a regional specialty- you learn something new every day).
Like Suzy and Greg however, we are still awaiting our paychecks from our respective, benevolent European countries. It will be an exercise in self-restraint. But how much Italian shopping could we do when we are only each taking a backpack. We will be sponging out our clothing in tiny hotel sinks for the next week.
One spot we plan to visit is Lucca, an ancient Italian city which is still surrounded by huge ramparts. I (Caitlin) have my heart pretty much set on renting a tandem bike and riding on top of them, but Kade is skeptical I think about sharing a bike.
Note: we are flying on Vueling airlines, which I think is relatively new and definitely cheap. Check it out if you are flying in European territories. And unlike those heathens at ryanair.com and easyjet, the price they show is inclusive of taxes. So they don't show a 10 euro fare and then add 80 euros in taxes.
Just our tip of the day.
So if you need us in the next week, we will be checking email occasionally, but will mostly be out of the loop. If anything groundbreaking occurs, send carrier pigeon.

Our Town

Happy Birthday, Seth

We know that our singing is painful, but that's what you do for the people you love.

School days, school days

So they totally play "Grace Under Fire" on a Belgian TV station we get here.

Caitlin: The students are really bad, when they left class this afternoon I had a little panic attack in the classroom thinking there was no hope for the rest of the year. They really can't just be quiet, who on earth wants to be a teacher? Sorry to all of you who have masters to be just that.

I separated two chatty-pants French girls who couldn't put a sock in it. I think I may have made permanent enemies. I feel like the teenagers are forming factions to avoid work, English, and me in general. My students are very poor, and for the most part don't think that learning a foreign language is all that important. A lot of them have never traveled farther than Lille ( the capital of our region- about an hours train ride away.) However they have had all the advantages that imported rap music can offer.

The French teacher who is my acting advisor and best friend, Mr. Lienard waxed nostalgic about his first year teaching in a high school. He told me he didn't sleep through the night once the entire year. He likened work in the classroom to standing naked in front of a room of strangers, and quieting whispering students to watching 6 boiling pots of milk at once.

Needless to say I'm not feeling encouraged.

Of course the problem may be as simple as the fact I didn't come appropriately equipped with dry-erase markers. I think forced writing on the board would do a lot for my power quotient. I did take liberal use of my new found authority to walk about the room at will and randomly assign passages to be read aloud. I tried to think about what teachers look like in movies when they are hard at work teaching. I tried also to think like Sam Buffaloe. What would Sam do? While I don't have nearly the power that comes with a beard like his, I tried to laugh when I thought he would, and hold my hands up in front of myself like he does when making a point.
Maybe they don't like my new hair. Who knows. So far French people seem crazy, why else would they watch "Grace Under Fire?"

Our beautiful French apartment

Nous sommes arrivé

So, here's what's happened thus far:
We arrived on the sixteenth of September in Brussels and took the train to Lille. There, we stayed the night in a hotel. The next morning, we took the train into Denain and got our apartment. We slept that night on an inflatable mattress that we purchased at the supermarché. The next morning, a man came by and asked us what we needed. They gave us a fridge, a stove, some furniture, and a bed. We got our bank accounts set up. That took two hours and ten signatures. We are having phone and internet hooked up on Wednesday the 26th. Basically, everything is great and everyone is very friendly and helpful. What we don't have, we are borrowing from the teachers at our schools. What I've learned so far about this program is simply to roll with the punches and everything will work out great.

So now, all that's left to do is keep eating a bunch of cheese and drinking wine until work starts on the 3rd of Oct. We will be traveling to Lille for orientation then. Until next time.

Nos arrêtes sont arrivés.

We received our official contracts in late July. Everything is coming in a much more timely pace than expected.

Valenciennes

Yesterday, I got an email from the English teacher at the Lycée Kastler in Denain. She seems great and really helpful. Caitlin will be working at another school in the same town, but has not received direct communication from them as of yet. There is a larger city close to Denain called Valenciennes where we will probably be living. By train, we are 40 minutes from Lille, an hour and a half from Paris, and two and a half hours from London. Woohoo! C'est tout.

It's a bird, it's a plane...

We were accepted on Monday, and we bought tickets on Thursday. They are the cheapest one-way tickets we could find, non-refundable, non-changeable. Departure: September 15, 2007. C'est tout.

Acceptance

It is official. We are moving to Lille in September. C'est tout.