Final stretch

We're basically finished working. Next week we'll just be saying our so-longs. But we ain't home yet. Starting next Saturday, we're going on one last two-week travel extravaganza. Some friends are meeting us along the way. First, we're hitting up Seville with Rob and his new shorty (alright, Caitlin and I are on the third season of The Wire and I've picked up some good vocabulary). Then it's off to Lisbon where we meet up with a couple of the other assistants. I'm going to the Offf festival (www.offf.ws) and Caitlin's hittin' the playa (that might not be correct in Portugese). After that, back to Paris for a week with Mandy, Gabe, Crystal, and Sam.

I think we are already ready to come home, so after a couple more weeks of this crazy life, we'll certainly be anxious to throw in the towel, hang up our guns, and settle down a bit...but now we have to go find real jobs, and since our crappy health care system doesn't cover everybody, we've gotta deal with that too. C'est la vie.

I almost forgot, it will be my birthday while we are in Spain, so we're having ourselves a good old-fashioned Mexican Cinco de Mayo in Spain. Same language at least. Surely we can find ourselves some tequila somewhere.

Here's an illustration I did and I'm working on animating it.

Stop Motion Lovers' Quarrel

First of all, congratulations to Mikey and Danielle. It's like baby-world right now. We cannot wait to meet your offspring. Feel free to post some pictures.

Kade made this using pictures from the photobooth feature on our computer. Enjoy.


Lovers' Quarrel from Kade Schemahorn on Vimeo.

Public Domain Video: Homos About

I found a bunch of communist plot style public domain footage that was pretty explicitly anti-homosexual. It was fun to edit it all together to create a Gay Panic PSA.
HOMOS ABOUT from Kade Schemahorn on Vimeo.

Babies and Breeding

We here at Les fous, would like to extend our heartiest congratulations to Greg and Suzy who will be the proud parents of a baby come September 22, along with our sincerest hope that they will not be arrested in the process of their home delivery. Also we would like to point out that their baby looks like this:






It no longer has a tail and it is starting to look like a cute little human. Awwww.

Not a lot else going on in fair Denain. We have 3 more weeks of teaching until holiday, and then one week after. We have just bought tickets to spend a few days in Seville with Rob and Stephanie before going to Lisbon with some other assistant friends before meeting up with Crystal, Sam, Mandy, and Gabe in Paris before coming home! We also recently learned that another good friend, Chris, will be spending a month in Europe starting in just a couple of weeks and we're hoping to meet up with him in the South of France while we're there with my mom. We have been really lucky that so many people have been able to come. It really helps curb the homesickness.

Let's see, what else is up.

Just as Spain's windy season ends, ours has begun.
I (Caitlin) have applied for a job in Portland, hope to hear more tomorrow.
There is an epidemic of chickenpox circulating among the faculty's children.
Kade and I have built a blanket fort in our living room, and I'm typing from there now.
Now that the writer's strike is over, we are enjoying the Daily Show once again via the internet.
Kade's family will be visiting the first week in April.
We're counting the days until we can see you all again.

So stay classy, whether you're in Missouri, Portland, Spain
, or Japan.

The Good Natured One's Birthday

Richard's birthday vid
Uploaded by CitizenKade

Punk rock and language wars

Alright, I hereby implore all you music fans and/or linguistics nuts out there to comment on the following video. Well, not so much on the video, but more on the fact that the bands in the video (two of which are comprised, in part, by my students) sing in English. Why is it that English has become the standard for pop music even among those who can't understand it?

At the Rock Show - Haspres
Uploaded by CitizenKade

It's official...

...we will be returning to the States. We bought plane tickets for the flight home on May 17th.

On a more interesting note: after having gone through the 3/4 liter bottle of top-notch olive oil from our visit to the Italian coast, our stores were in desperate need of replenishment. Luckily, and for no apparent reason, we have a small Italian grocer in our little town here in the North of France, so we went to check out their selection. There were about three to choose from, one I recognized from the States, a bucolic scene printed on the label, quaint and earthy Italians trying to get me to believe they had freshly pressed the bottle's extra-virgin contents. We picked up another bottle (less forcefully marketed and thus more authentic seeming) when the shopkeeper asked us if there was anything he could help us with. I said, "No, we're just looking for some olive oil," hoping he would then comment on the quality of our selection. He one-upped me and told us that if we brought an empty bottle, he had some artisanal stuff made in the South of Italy by his cousin. We gladly put the bastardized oil back on the shelf and returned toute de suite. It was only seven euros to fill our 3/4 liter bottle and it tastes great. I know you're all jealous now. Don't you wish you had a local Italian grocer with sweet hook-ups?

This Saturday we begin yet another (not the last) two-week vacation during our sojourn abroad. We will be off to southern Spain for a week to visit Suzy and Greg where, hopefully, it will be significantly warmer and drier than dreary Denain.

Carrot pants

I was chopping carrots when I found one that looked like some pants (see fig. 1).

Figure 1:



So, I put 'em on Venus (see fig. 2).

Figure 2:


They're more like capri pants, really. This is the kind of stuff I've got time to do here in France.

Le Jardin de Luxembourg

Le Jardin de Luxembourg - Paris
Video sent by CitizenKade

Just a small portrait of the Luxembourg garden in Paris, one of the most classically French looking places I've seen. I took this footage back in the fall.

Another vacation over and more to come

We had an amazing winter vacation. Caitlin's parents, brother, and soon-to-be sister-in-law all faced an onslaught of jet lag and spent a week with us looking at the Eiffel Tower out the windows of the rented penthouse we stayed in. I almost feel guilty...almost.

It was the fourth time I had actually been to the city, but the first time I really got to know it. You always hear about the magic of Paris, but I don't think you can really experience it until you stop standing in lines for tickets to the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower. Don't get me wrong, you've got to do all that too. But Paris is certainly more than the Mona Lisa.

Emma (Truman friend for those not in the know) was in Europe too, for almost a month. She stayed with us for a few days and traveled around to various European destinations, mostly destinations where friends and free beds awaited. If you happen to know Emma, I'll let her tell you about her traveling fun, but I can't leave out Amsterdam in this post.

We stayed three days in Amsterdam, marveling at the almost universal fluency of the Dutch population (at least within the city) in the English language. Amsterdam is probably one of the most livable cities I have ever had the pleasure of visiting. Absolutely beautiful for one thing. The canals and beautiful architecture you could stare at all day. Second of all, the whole city is reclaimed property, reclaimed from the ocean, so it's totally flat. Everybody and their mum's got an upright commuter-style bicycle to get around on. Not a fence, pole, or railing in the city that hasn't got a mess of bikes chained to it.
Oh, and the pancakes! Apparently, the Dutch love their pankakken. Sweet, savory, you name it, they'll serve it to you on a flapjack.
We also saw a concert at the local Concertgebouw (the concert hall off the museumplein [the lawn/park surrounded by some of the city's greatest attractions]).

Suzy and Greg also accompanied us on that trip (some more Truman friends) but they are already in Europe working as language assistants in Spain so it wasn't as much of a haul for them. They came back and stayed at our apartment for a week here in Denain, left today for Brussels, and now Caitlin and I are back to it being the two of us again for a while.

Hope everyone had a great holiday season and we miss everybody back home. Until next time.