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?
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Sunday, November 18, 2007
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.
Friday, November 16, 2007
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.
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.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
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.
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