Salut-là, Je reviens

I’ve been missing from this blog-world for a while. A lot of things have happened, but I haven’t written about them. I think the biggest reason is because most often when I write, I write personally, about personal things, in a personal manner. And personal is not for the world wide web, people. But perhaps I shall get personal? For now? Mmmm, nah...sorry to tease. I’m still going to write for you, for me, for whoever the hell reads this (keeping it public-friendly), which is the thing about blogs. I’m not so sure it’s the thing for me, but it’s good for me comme même. And it’s fun.

Let’s see, the last time I wrote was about my flight from the states back to France. That’s right, I went home for the holidays and it was well worth the trip. There’s nothing more important than family. I was in Florida, which is not really “home” to me as much as it is the place where my parents live; but home is where the heart is, and the heart is where the family is. I was home for 8 days. It felt gooooood.

I did, however, spend the earlier tier of the Christmas season in France. Got to experience the French Christmastime cheery-cheer-warmth. Much like our consumerist American Christmases back in the states, France has its own marketing tactics: Christmas markets! (These are real markets, by the way, not imaginary money-glommering internet cyberspheres of figures and never-ending formations of frantically-changing formulas).

I must say, the French Christmas markets are simply much more charming than the shopping malls of, say, Frisco, Texas. Many of the vendors (though not all, I will admit) are true artisans, specializing in a specialty just for you! You’ll find homemade hats, handmade breads, and happily-made wooden knick-knacks galore. I bought a rather nifty wooden trinket my brother Jack. A little piece of wood, about the size of your fist (assuming you’re not like 8 years old), that transforms into an intricate little castle. I oughtta post a picture of it, the thing is so cool, though I failed to snap a photo and have already given the gift. My brother opened it on Christmas Eve, 16 days ago. Which brings me to the fact that this post is, unfortunately, way out of date!

Christmas has already passed, and so has New Year’s. HOWEVER, it snowed all day today in Besançon. So, despite the fact that the holiday season is apparently “over,” I gladly opened up my iTunes screen today and clicked it into shuffle-mode of Sufjan Steven’s Songs for Christmas. (Click here to watch an awesome cartoon video that I now realize could have potentially used as a teaching tool due to all the repetition. Probably all the better, though, that I left it for you all to check out and not for the kiddos).

Here's me and Catherine under some Christmas lights!

You can also buy vin chaud at the Christmas markets.

That deserved it’s own paragraph. This stuff is amazing. 3€ in Paris, 2€ in Besançon. Worth it! Red wine, (sometimes) rum, honey, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, orange slices, warmth. The combination creates magic.

You can also, of course, buy insanely tasty foods: raclette, tartiflette, tartine, crêpes, gauffres, and more. Me and some friends went to Montbéliard for the soul purpose of attending their Christmas market, and that’s where I bought a tasty Nutella crêpe with an added touch of some sprinkled coconut inside, yum!

But enough about crêpes and food! I could write about food and the amazingness of the food I eat here for pages, hours, DAYS! I’ll save it for another time. Here's a pic of me with my coconut-nutella speciality.

[P.S. - the Christmas market you'll find on the famous Champs-Elysée run is not what I'm talking about when I'm talking about French Christmas markets. That thing is a commercialized, Paris-ized madness of fake and tacky wooden huts that want to get all the tourists who have succumbed to traveling around in the wintertime!]

I spent New Year’s Eve in Paris.

Doesn’t that sound so exquisite!? It was (except for the part where we were packed into the entrance of a metro stop for twenty minutes...packed so tight that I couldn’t even move my arm. I could have lifted my feet of the ground and have been in the same spot, like floating. Come to think of it, why didn’t I do that?!).

I passed the arrival of 2010 with Jordan and Tim, some buddies with whom I worked last summer. My favorite part was New Year’s Day, when slept in so late that we literally ‘woke up and went out to dinner.’ We spent almost a total of three hours in a restaurant somewhere not too far from Notre Dame. We didn’t spend three hours there because we wanted to, I don’t think even the French would have sat through that long of a meal. The service was poor (big surprise). But the company made it worth it (and the food was just good enough to bear it).

After, we walked to Notre Dame and you wouldn’t believe it, but there seemed to be a full moon - smack dab dangling there above the centre of Notre Dame. It was glorious. That building is incredible. Of all the touristy things that are over-rated, Notre Dame is not one of them. The moon situated there in the perfect spot fondly reminded me when I was in Toulouse at les Jacobins (see my October entry entitled 'l'automne') and the sun was settling behind the surrounding buildings in just enough time to leave some light for a glow into the stained glass windows from the interior.

It was so cool to be there and see the way that light works so exquisitely with architecture. The sun and the moon. And the chances! It makes me feel balanced when that happens, or at least feel, if even a little bit, the balance of the world. Nature positioning itself so pristinely with our eyes resting on magnum opuses. Gaudi would have liked to join me that night, I’m sure. I’d have shook his hand, but I think I’d be more impressed by the moon than by shaking the mastermind's hand. The moon is always around, which makes it more rare than you might think. Think about it, if the moon were gone, we'd miss it much more than we miss Gaudi.

Et voilà, I’m back in Besançon, and I’m a’ feelin’ good. I was quite happy to see my students again the first week back from vacation. They’re so good and cute and I love ‘em. This past week I taught them the major countries in the world where people speak English. I taught them eight. Can you guess which eight? Don't cheat, they're listed right below!

USA - Canada - Great Britain - Ireland - South Africa - India - Australia - New Zealand

...gotta also post a picture of the trio from New Year's, of course..

la distance entre toi et l'object : : :

Sometimes when you look at an old building from far away, the tattered windows aren't so noticeable. Sort of like how the wrinkles in a elder's face aren't so crisp when seen from across the room. Sometimes things appear more attractive from far away. The farther away you are, the more you can see in proximity to the present. But the closer you stand, the more you can try to understand. This has a lot to do with distance ... and the time between you and the building ... you must be able to see that long ago, it could have been glorious, triumphant, and proud. The closer you get, the more clearly you are able to discern the shattered windows and the ruined stucco, the damaged panes and the defeated construction. The worn out colors become more vibrant.

-

Abandonment.
When you're so close to something, you see the abandonment and almost feel it, and in that way you are nearer to the life of the thing, and you are prevailing it's recklessness through appreciation.

Besançon, France - à côté du Doubs

l'automne

Surprise! There are seasons here in Besancon! The colors of the leaves here are gorgeous. I've gone leaf collecting and I have begun pressing leaves for decorations on my wall. Having lived in Texas for 11 years, I was truely deprived of the changing colors...but perhaps that makes me all the more appreciative.

Halloween came and went. I didn't dress up and of course regretted it the next day. Of all the holidays, I always seem to be least festive about Halloween, which is sad because it is actually very fun. However, I did make a deal of it in my classes... I drew pictures for my students (a jack-0-lantern, a witch, a haunted house, a skeleton, a ghost, bats) and had them color and label their pictures! My kids are great, but let's be honest. I've been given no training whatsoever in teaching English, so I don't necessarily like the fact that I am coming up with lesson plans out of nowhere. Sure, us assistants have been given some guidance, and we have access to a plethora of materials. But when I began, I just didn't know where to start! Now that I've have my kids for a total of two weeks (with a week and a half in between!) I have a bit of a better grasp on what direction I want to take. At first, I was a bit weary about spending my days with little ones...you know, all that energy spewed out at me in a different language. Also, I was a bit sad about having to teaching such simple things like colors and numbers instead of being able to hold discussions about news, politics, and American culture, as I would be able to if I was teaching in the high schools. All in all, though, I've come to really enjoy it. The kids are adorable, and for the most part they adore English class. I've come to an understanding that as a primary school language assistant, I am to teach the kids English, yes, but more than anything I am here to inspire them to learn the language. They are not advanced enough even for things such as complex grammar. If they can have fun and I can show them that learning English is fun and important, then I have succeeded at least a little bit. So, yea, they'll learn, but really my goal is to get them anxious to keep learning!

In other news, I've done some traveling.
The schools have a week and a half off for "La Toussaint" (All Saint's Day) and I had quite the break. The first weekend I went to Lyon with Emilie and Catherine. We stayed at her brother's apartment and met her brother's friend, Philippe, who cooked amazing meals for us both Saturday and Sunday afternoon. He made us a chinese dish that looked like omlettes, but waws like nothing I've ever tasted. A savory pie with ham, cheese, potatoes. "American" spring rolls. Fresh coffee. And all his sauces were home-made!

Recipe for Tapioca and Coconut Milk Dessert:
1. Boil a large pot of water and put in 3-4 teaspoons of tapioca grains. Cook them until transparent (the best is to test by tasting, they should be the consistancy of the way Italians cook pasta). Strain and set aside in a bowl.
2. In another pot, head 500 ml of coconut milk with dry raisins and/or cherries and 2 teaspoons of sugar or honey. Reduce heat for five minutes and add the milk to the tapioca beads.
3. Mix and serve in bowls or cocktail glasses (for a classier presentation).
4. Serve at room temperature - do not refigerate after making, just let cool to room temp.

Other gastromic deliciacies I got to taste out were:
- macaroon cakes. Macaroons are a speciality in Lyon. Catherine and Stephan and I ate some macaroon gateaux for an afternoon snack. - speciality cheese that has living microscopic spiders on the rind. Yes, I ate an entire slice ... and hey! it wasn't half bad. It was a bit strong, but it was tastey. Emilie has been telling us about this cheese for quite some time, as she has worked on the farm where it is produced since she was 12 years old! When she was first describing it to us in French, we thought we misunderstood. Surely, there weren't actually living spiders all over the cheese! But there are, and if you look closely you can see them moving! Emilie explains that they die the minute they hit your tongue so it's no big deal. HA. I wasn't too terribly surprised, considering many cheeses here also has visible mold growing all over it and people eat that ... I mean, at least the spiders aren't old icky smelly fuzzy, uhh, mold, right? Catherine didn't particularly like the spider cheese (I really have to figure out it's real name), and so Emilie, Stephan, and Philippe (the Frenchies) began joking with us Anglophones that the tapico beads in the dessert (described above) were fish eggs. We sort of believed them at first...I mean after spider cheese, what do you expect? But not to worry, we didn't eat fish eggs and spiders in one afternoon...

Of course, we did other things in Lyon besides eat. We saw old Roman remains of an outdoor theatre, the Basilica on top of the hill, the 'old town,' Parc de la Tête, stopped by the Lumiere museum....which I will definitely go to during my next visit. And there was, of course, night life. Emilie and I went out at night to a free classic rock n' roll concert (where these women bought us Budweisers for 6euro a bottle!!! nice gesture!), and they played a cover for Muse, which inspired me to dance! Another night we went to a bar called the "Cooking Jack" (for Jack Daniels, of course) where we met a motorcycle gang. Oh, and I learned some useful self-defense karate moves from Philippe. watch out! To your left is me, Catherine and the chef, Philippe.

......the adventures don't end there....
My friend Vincent, who I know from when I studied in Grenoble, asked me if I wanted to spend some time with his family over vacation....in Toulouse! Of course, I couldn't turn down the offer. It was my first opportunity to stay with a French family. I ended up meeting his whole family and they were all so welcoming. I really felt at home. We took our bikes via the Canal du Midi to centre ville on our first full day. We ate a picnic lunch next to the Garonne river and saw some of the great churches and architecture of Toulouse. Let me just say, if Christians in Houston think that everything is bigger in Texas, they oughta open their eyes and take a trip to the 'ville rose!' These cathedrals are massive....just under daunting status. Notice here, at this gothic style church, "les Jacobins," the shadows hit the building at just the right spot for us to have gotten some glow into the stained glass windows. Our timing was perfect! And the inside was beautifully and naturally lit. My favorite church was Cathédrale Saint-Etienne; we also saw Basilique Saint-Sernin. All were "enorme"!

I ate well again in Toulouse, Vincent's mom cooked meals for us every day and I got a recipe for some of her homemade plum jam (divine!). She roasted chestnuts for us, "châtaignes." She has her own garden and much of what we ate was home-grown and fresh off the lawn! YUM! Vincent introduced me to "BD's," or "bandes-dessinées" (comics), which are very popular in France. And also we listened to some French true music, Georges Brassens and Jacques Brel (click to listen!). 'Twas quite the cultural week! Here is Vincent and I infatuated by some BDs.

On my way back from Toulouse, I passed three hours in Avignon, where the pope used to live. This is the perfect city to do in three hours! The pope used to live there at one point! ...behind this friendly entrance (dun dun dun)....

I've been back in Besancon for over a week now and have been taking the time to relax, read, and write! My friend Jordan, whom I worked with last summer, came to visit last weekend and we got to see Reservoir Dogs (Tarantino, 1992) at the Cinema Victor Hugo for a mere 5 euro! Gruesome yet good...Tarantino style. AND I bought a new black winter coat at the outdoor market, which I am particularly proud of because I bargained it down from 30euro to 25euro. chic!

I feel so lucky to know who I know here. Everyone has been unbelievably generous, literally to the point where I feel spoiled. But I'm appreciating every moment of it and am grateful to have already had such amazing things come my way. Let's just say, I'm indulging in French food, culture, and life in general...and I'm not afraid to indulge deep!