Day Tripping Part 5: Carcassonne - the medieval-est city I have visited

Today was a continuation of the day trips I have been trying to take while in Southern France. I was most excited about traveling to Carcassonne (which is about an hour a half west of Montpellier by train). Carcassonne, I had been told by multiple sources, was supposed to be deep in history, tons of medieval folklore, a giant city surrounded by a castle and super pretty. Of course, the nature of our travels would disagree. It was already raining by the time we got to the train station. Regardless of the weather, we carried on. After wandering around the city for about an hour trying to find the poorly signed tourist office, we finally got a map of the city and were directed to the other side of the bridge where 'Old Town Carcassonne' was. The city is really beautiful, even under the rain. We visited several churches on our way to the old town. When crossing the bridge, you can see the beautiful castle structure looming overhead, high up on a hill. After walking about 20 minutes in the drizzle and passing the trailer park of Carcassonne (though this was a real camping trailer park, not an American style homestead, if you catch my drift), we arrived at the castle. They offered an English tour at 2:30PM but due to weather concerns, they threatened the cancellation. We decided to tour ourselves, no audioguides or anything. Since this is such a tourist destination, much of the castles' signage was also in English. Isn't it nice that English is everywhere?

Anyway, we figured out that much of the castle had already been destroyed throughout time and wars so much of what you see today is a recreation. The city within the castle walls had the most touristy shops and restaurants that you could ask for. Basically, you walk over the bridge and moat into the castle walls and there you have the city. Once you walk a bit further in, you come to the actual part of the castle that you can walk in after paying a fee, of course. I love the fact that rarely do they check my ID for anything so I can often get in at reduced prices. Many tourist places offer discounts to people under 25 so I just lie and normally get in. Student prices exist as well and since I have that International Student Card that I bought from Grand Valley State University a day before I left, I use that all the time too. using that card isn't even really mischevious since the University knew I didn't attend that school but sold me the card anyway. That was nice anyway! So the tour of the castle was cool. You mostly get to walk around the tourrets and on top of the city walls. We also tried not to fall due to slippery conditions. And yes, even though I am a klutz, I made it through the day without falling. Walking on top of the city walls was really neat anyway because you could see how it was constructed for battles and arrows with all the slits and holes in the walls/floors. After the castle tour, we visited a huge church within the city and then had lunch.

Searching for a lunch place was an adventure in and of itself. Since we were in such a touristy area, the menu prices were ridiculously overpriced. We nearly left the whole area to get back to the current town of Carcassonne for lunch. On the last little street that we went down, we found a little tapas cafe. This was most definitely more of a locals place which suited us just fine and so did the price. I had a sort of pumpkin soup which was quite tasty indeed with fresh parmasean on top. The cheese ravioli was wonderful as well, though I felt the portion was rather small. The cheese on top was baked on which made it even tastier. Of course, we had local Carcassonne table wine which we ended up buying a bottle of on our way out of town.

One of the churches we saw:


After old town Carcassonne, we wandered around the current city which was a little boring on a whole. Besides some churches, it was getting too nasty out to really enjoy any sights. Even their Christmas market was mostly closed down. We found this great tea shop for an afternoon snack (crepes of course) and some really interesting tea. I find myself really becoming a tea connoisseur so I love tasting new loose leaf tea combinations in every place I can. This place did not disappoint even if the crepe was only so-so. I really enjoyed going to Carcassonne even if the weather didn't cooperate.

Here I am on the draw bridge going into old town Carcassonne:

Christmas in Marseille

For Christmas, in order to kind of get out of my house and away from the throngs of visitors and family that I did not know, we decided to escape to Marseille (where Laurent lives). My landlords' son and daughter had been hanging around for a couple days and I was getting really uncomfortable. So, after a simple train trip of an hour and 40 minutes, we arrived in Marseille. Now, I had been told that Marseille was a bit more "urban" than the other cities in the area. I thought it was great. Now grant it, I have been to Marseille a handful of times, but never really seen much of the city besides a couple places that Laurent drove me to or the mall. This trip was special since we walked all over downtown and the surrounding areas. Laurent and his whole family were in Paris over our Christmas time trip, so we got a whole apartment to ourselves. The weather was really gorgeous for the majority of the trip which made sightseeing much more entertaining. We saw the Palais de Longchamps which you can see below. It was amazingly huge and only a couple block away from Laurent's place! I never knew!!
We then walked all the way downtown. Now, I say all the way because you are basically just walking down a big hill to get downtown. We saw this really strange long block called "Saint's Row". There were all these stalls selling saints and other manger accoutrement (including little animals)! It was a little strange and plentiful. After "Saint's Row", we walked down to the sea. There was this awesome bell show. Bells and video below. This man was basically playing a piano where all the strings were attached to these bells and Christmas carols came out. I was blown away and you can see the crowd was pretty huge in that area.




After a cafe and some souvenir shopping, we ended up kind of wandering around the area waiting for dinner time. We ran into Laurent's church which was beautifully lit as you can see here. Dinner was great, as usual. We had muscles, seafood soup, seafood spaghetti and muscle stew. Wonderful! The seafood there, you have to assume, is super fresh since they are literally, fishing right off the dock.

Christmas eve was spent wandering around downtown again and finally finding the museum called "La Vielle Charite" that had a special Van Gogh/Monticelli exposition. After about an hour of trying to find this hidden gem, we succeeded. I wish I knew that art students got in for free! I got in for half price but since Will said he was an art student, free! If only I knew! Well, it was cool anyway since you got to see the influence that Monticelli had on Van Gogh. They had a lot of paintings side by side in comparison so you could really see how influential Monticelli became for Van Gogh even though they knew each other a very short time. We did try to go to midnight mass at Laurent's church and even though the sign said the doors were open at 11:30pm, when we got there at 11:37pm, it was packed! Standing room only. Well, I mean, I wanted to go but didn't want to stand for the hour long mass or even longer. So after 10 minutes of standing around hoping to get a seat, we gave up and went back home. I was really disappointed because the church was beautifully decorated. Here is a picture of the church right before sunset.


Christmas day, like in America, was spent indoors and watching "A Christmas Story" and other Christmas-y movies. Everything was closed, as in the US, so we really couldn't go anywhere anyway. I made an awesome dinner though (as seen below). I'm really quite proud of myself. I made lemon-garlic salmon (with super fresh salmon from the market), real mashed potatoes, brocolli, cauliflower and some sort of weird hybird vegetable that came with it and dessert was awesome! It was like a chocolately, nutty goodness puree in a flaky crust, topped with coconut sorbet. We were stuffed! Food picture below.



Some of the seafood shops on the street:


The weather on the day after Christmas was kinda cruddy so we just walked down to the mall, looked at all the crap and then meandered the area until it was time to go. I leave you with this funny picture of me with my scarf. Yes, it was chilly most of the time we were there and this is proof.

An American in France part 1

Will came to visit me for the holidays and we have had a great time so far. I have been playing tour guide and food aficianado of Montpellier and France in general. It's a difficult task but I am up for it. We have already been to the zoo. Here is Will next to the goats that got ridiculously close to the fence. If he could have gotten out, I think he would have! He was evil and a bit scary.

On Friday, Will came with me to school and watched me teach my little kids. He snuck this picture of me (below) teaching which I thought was super cute since one of my kids was raising his hand to answer. We had a little show and tell with Will at the end of class. They were super excited since he was so much taller than them and had a big Californian accent. They loved it and asked a lot of funny questions including: How tall are you? How much do you weigh? What fruit do you eat in California? What kind of vegetation is in California? What are the common flowers there? Do you know any famous people?

Will proceeded to tell the kids that he knew Britney Spears and drove a Ferrari. They loved it and I think half of them believed him.


After the zoo and school, we walked all around Montpellier with Cathy as a great tour guide as well. This is in the Peyrou park which gives you a great view of the city from above.
Here we are in front of the LED Christmas tree in downtown Montpellier enjoying the brisk air and huge throngs of people.
This billboard was for a movie called Agathe Clery. On top it says: "She is white. She is racist. She is going to be black." I thought this was a little politically incorrect and the preview didn't make it look any less politically incorrect. Now I am a bit interested to see it just because it didn't seem to really have a plot, just her turning black. Oh the French!

Part of a tour of my house

I thought I would give you a little tour of my place since my friends took a bunch of pictures at my place today as well.

Here is my kitchen:
(Dela and Cathy pictured)
(Junko, Dawn and Leymi pictured)

Here is my dining room/piano area:

(Dela pictured)
(Junko pictured)

Here's my living room:

(Leymi pictured)

And here is the cat that lives with us. She has no name. I am not kidding. I asked my landlords what her name was and they said that they never got around to naming her. I call her "kitty".

Holiday party at my place

Today, in celebration of the upcoming holidays, I had a few people over to my new place for a potluck feast. Below is a picture of the food. Junko and Aleksey brought a home-made quiche (ham and cheesyness). Leymi brought a spinach tart thing. Dawn brought/made mulled wine and Scottish shortbread (kinda like cookies). Cathy brought chicken stuffing (made from scratch) and we made eggnog together (from scratch). I made Hanukkah sugar cookies as pictured below as well.


(You can also see in this picture our super cool, homemade eggnog that was quickly devoured!)(Top are my Hanukkah cookies, bottom is the Scottish shortbread that kinda broke into little pieces in transit).

After lunch, we watched the animated "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and I thought I would be really nice and download the Spanish subtitles for Leymi. About 10 minutes into the show, I realized that they were the subtitles for the Jim Carrey "Grinch" movie. Whoops! Then we watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas" with the correct Spanish subtitles. That cartoon made me realize that the kids are SO mean to Charlie Brown. They actually call him stupid and an idiot. What a bunch of jerks!

Here are some fun group shots.
Starting clockwise from the 7:00 position: Dela, Aleksey, Junko, Me, Dawn, Cathy and Leymi (with the short brown hair)

Here we are again: Dela, Leymi, Me, Cathy, Aleksey (in the back), Junko and Dawn falling down in the purple shirt.


Dawn and me in a very tight embrace!
Dela and me in a funny pose.
Here I am in my living room, probably on my way to setting up my computer for movie madness.

I leave you with the ever popular British word lesson of the day: manky = dirty
In a sentence: Now my shirt's all manky because I have been making mulled wine for 2 hours.

Happy Birthday to me = peanut butter, Wicked and tea

On Wednesday, December 10, a few of the assistants and I celebrated my 27th birthday. I spent the majority of the day not really doing anything, which was fine. I got a really well-priced haircut and Dawn, Cathy and I got ice cream in the afternoon and then walked around the Christmas markets that I mentioned before for a few hours until dinner where we met up with Junko and Aleksey. Here are some really great photos of the Christmas markets at night.


(This is from behind the entrance. "Bonnes Fêtes" means "Happy Holidays".)

This is one of the fountains downtown with the promenade into the other half of the markets. They said that they were trying to light the promenade as they do in Paris along the Champs Elyysées. Having been in Paris at Christmas before, I must admit that they did a pretty good imitation.

We went to dinner at this Greek restaurant called "La Petite Aphrodite" which means "The little Aphrodite". It got really great reviews and was supposed to be a really cozy family-type restaurant. When we got there, we realized that we were the only people there and they actually had to turn the heat up since we were pretty cold. I think our server was also the cook and the dishwasher. We only heard noise in the back when he went back there so we might have had a jack-of-all-trades there that night. Here I am:
This was our small group (Cathy was taking the picture so she is not in it). Dawn, Junko and Aleksey are on the other side of me (obviously).
Our dinner was fine. I don't think it is worth returning to but the tzaziki sauce was great and clearly handmade. The baklava dessert was tasty as well.

The title of my post is also what I received for my birthday. Since I had become such a tea snob in LA, I passed along that information to my friends here. My mom sent me my special loose leaf tea apparatus brew kettle and now I have great French loose leaf tea to make. I got some great Orient (with flavors of cherry) tea from Cathy and some fruity-type tea from Dawn that was called "Mysterious Mixture". The name of the tea is what actually made Dawn buy it, she said. Why not buy tea with no real name? I thought it was really funny. Junko and Aleksey gave me a funny card that apparently went thru hell to get to me. Dawn, generous great Dawn, also gave me Jiffy extra chunky peanut butter for my birthday. Peanut butter, in France, is both expensive and hard to find so receiving that for my birthday, while it may seem strange, was really cool because I have actually missed peanut butter since being here. You don't really miss stuff until you know you can't have it. Root beer and Mountain Dew do not exist here either. It's a cruel world!

And the best present received, as of yet, was from Dawn as well. She got 2 tickets for both my mom and I to see WICKED (the smash Broadway hit musical, for those of you who don't know) in February in LONDON when my mom comes to visit. Not only do I get to go to London, I get to go to London with my mom (she is flying into London when she comes to visit France...it was so cheap as far as trans-atlantic flights go), and NOW, I get to see my favorite musical in London's west-end which is the equivalent to Broadway. I CANNOT WAIT!

The evening ended with numerous phone calls and IM sessions with friends in the States. I am happy to say that, even though I was all the way over in France, I had a great birthday surrounded by new friends!

Christmas Markets & Teaching Hanukkah

Recently, downtown Montpellier has transformed into a winter wonderland of holiday festivities. Most notable, the Christmas markets which I have now grown to love and frequent. There are about 40 little blue huts set up all over the downtown "quad" for lack of a better word. Each hut (or mini-house in my opinion) contains different items of note for sale. Jewelry, wooden kids' toys, leather articles, tons of different liquers and wines, foie gras, chocolates, candies clothes, scarves and other exiciting knick knacks are all for sale. This is not to mention all the little vendors set up for little snackies including crêpes, cotton candy; warm spiced wine, coffee, cookies and hot cocoa. Can you tell how much I love it already? I went last weekend to their official opening night and enjoyed some really great live music on Friday night sung by an American band, of all things as well as a Grand Marnier crêpe. I thought the crêpe would be way better but instead, the alcohol was a bit overwhelming and not too flavorful. Alas, live and learn I suppose. I especially enjoy going to the market to just browse like crazy and comment on all the silly crafty items for sale. To be fair, there are some really great items for sale as well. I particularly like one of the hat shops with really funky furry hats in funny shapes. There is also an ice skating rink set up downtown now which is super cheap to use and even has skate rental. I think I am trying that out really soon.

In school, I have already started teaching toys (in the vein of Christmas). We have now learned: doll, car, train, ball, skateboard & bicycle/bike. Almost all of my kids mispronounce train. They always say tree. It makes me giggle. This week, in the hopes of teaching them something completely new, we are also learning Hanukkah and some vocab words associated with that. I must admit, teaching Hanukkah is really difficult. The kids have never heard of it nor have many ever heard of Jews. Imagine the difficulty in not only explaining a holiday but also a religion. I haven't really explained the religion though. I mean, come on. They are 2nd - 4th graders. Anyway, notable Hanukkah words are:

• Menorah
• Candle(s)
• Cookie(s)
• Present(s)
• Dreidel
• Gelt (the chocolate foil-wrapped coins)

I can't tell you how exciting it is for me to not only teach my culture but teach the little English girls in my classes completely new words. Finally, they get to learn at the same level as the other kids. I take a little pleasure in that. It's very challenging but it was very important to me to teach a little bit of my culture to the kids here. I actually doubt I am going to teach much about Christmas. I am going to run out of time anyway since I only have 3 more lessons in each school before vacation. I think all the kids are restless and it's getting harder and harder to keep the kids' attention. I also figured that the kids are going to learn about Christmas in English for the rest of their education. When will they ever learn about Hanukkah otherwise?

Finally, a picture for you. Here is one side of downtown with our cool LED-lit Christmas tree. The building behind the tree is the Opéra Comédie. The words in lights "Joyeuses Fetes" means "Happy Holidays".


Your British word lesson of the day: strop = tantrum. In a sentence: She's too old to have a strop like that.

Thanksgiving in France

I am shocked at how lax I have become on this blog. My apologies.

On Saturday, a bunch of the assistants and some other people all gathered at one of the assistant's houses to celebrate our great American holiday of over-eating and togetherness. It was a pot-luck dinner so everyone brought a dish, unless you were me. And then you brought 3 different dishes. I made my aunt's bubble bread (which is a sort of Garlic bread), my grandmother's Lemon Jell-O and for those of you who have had it, it was amazing this year too, and my mom's green bean casserole. Needless to say, I looked a little funny bringing in 2 Lemon Jell-Os, 3 loaves of bread and 2 green bean casseroles. But I had heard that there were going to be a bunch of people there and I didn't want to run out.

Thanks to my over-planning, I got to go home with one Lemon Jell-O, one green bean casserole and 1-1/2 loaves of bread. There were about 30 people there but since everyone brought something, there was a ton of food and I don't think anyone thought to take a picture of the spread we had. That was a gross oversight. The food was pretty great though. There were Americans, Germans (one of the assistant's roommates was German so she invited people), a Venezuelan, British, one French guy I think and probably some other nationalities that I wasn't aware of.

I wish I could comment on all the food but here are some notable and some possibly strangest Thanksgiving food items: potato pancakes, a ton of baguettes, rice, tons of wine, egg rolls, 7 layer taco salad, pork chops, lamb chops...

Dessert was awesome: apple pie, some great tiramisu type dish, little petit-fours everywhere.

Notably missing food: turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing. I was pretty surprised and bummed that many of the other Americans that came made nothing traditional (with the exception of one girl who made apple pie). To be fair, finding ingredients that are super common in America were very difficult to find here including: sour cream, Cool Whip, frozen bread dough, Jell-O (which doesn't exist here. I had to use plain Gelatin that I found in the back of the baking aisle shelf), lemonade that isn't carbonated, French's fried onions... All of these ingredients I needed for my Thanksgiving dishes and I had to improvise. But still... the Americans should have done something a little better than bring a box of cookies! (which someone did by the way...)

Here's a pic of Dawn, me and a very nice girl and friend, Leymi (from Venezuela) eating. This was the dessert course!

Here is a pic of me and Dela (the English girl who had the shindig at her place).


Your British word lesson of the day: jelly = Jell-o & jam = jelly. In a sentence: I made great Lemon jelly for Thanksgiving this year. I had some butter and jam on my toast this morning.

Spelling words in English

I have realized that it's actually been awhile since I posted anything about what I am teaching and how classes are going. Well, fear not my friends. Here you go.

For the last 3 weeks, I have been teaching food items. The kids now know how to say the following 14 super exciting words:

• Apple(s)
• Cake
• Candle
• Banana
• Pizza
• Egg(s)
• Sandwich
• Orange
• Orange juice
• Tomato
• French Fry
• Carrot
• Chicken
  
• Cheese

Oh boy. Has doing this for 3 weeks been ever so exciting. I say that with some prety thick sarcasm. However, you can't just teach kids 14 words once and expect them to remember them. It's all about repetition. So, we have been learning how to say the words, how to draw the words, and this week, it was all about writing the words. The kids learned last week how to say "I like, I love, I don't like & I hate". Since the "h" sounds doesn't really exist in French, for my own amusement, I had to make the kids repeat "hate" about 30 times before they sort of got the sound down. It's so interesting to see that simple sounds for Anglophones (such as myself) are so difficult for Francophones. I can litterally see the kids really struggling to make the "h" sound.

Anyway, like I said, this week, all of my kids have been writing out the words. Now many of the words we learned are either written exactly the same in French or at least really close. The notable exceptions are "French Fry, Eggs, Cheese, Chicken, & Apples". My favorite thing to do this week was let the kids come to the board and write the words as they thought they were spelled. This proved to be most entertaining to me. Notable favorite spellings were:

• Cheese: chiz; chese; chize
• French fry: foch fiy; fenc fy, frenc foi
• Eggs: égxc, egz, éjxz

Eggs mispellings were my personal favorite. What was interesting about the mispelling of French Fry was that I could see the kids sounding out the word. This meant that they clearly didn't actually understand the sounds we were making to make the words. Hopefully, after writing the words and seeing the letters, they will be able to pronounce the words better. That was my intention anyway. The kids also got to write full sentences with the terms "I like, etc". I figured it would be a bit beyond their comprehension to teach them the correct phrasing for "I like" + "tomato". So I let them just write "I like tomato" instead of "I like tomatoes". I mean, they are only 2-4th graders. We need not get completely grammatically correct.

I also began the daily repetition of certain things. Everyday I say "take out your namecards" and then ask them what it means. Then I ask "what day is today" and "what is the weather outside". That's fun for me since the kids have kinda memorized that routine so before I finish the question, kids have their hands raised to answer. Soon we will write out everything. For now, I am trying to focus on the oral part since I know once they get into middle school and high school, they will have very little occasion to actually speak the language. It will ALL be written or read, so why not speak it now?

Some of you may be wondering if I taught Thanksgiving. To disappoint many, unfortunately, no I did not. I really wanted to finish the food unit this week in order to start Toys/Hanukkah/Christmas unti for the remaining 3 weeks before vacation. In 2 younger classes, since they were a bit too little to actually be able to write all the words out in a comprehensible manner, we did do the turkey hand outline drawing. You all remember doing that in elementary school, right? Trace your hand on paper and then make it into a turkey. So I did a tiny bit with Thanksgiving but the kids didn't really understand what it was all about. You can only expect so much from 8 year olds in a foreign language.

Your British word lesson of the day (this is actually more Scottish than British but I didn't want to rename this section): greet = cry (greetin' = crying) In a sentence: Quit yer greetin' or I'll call your mum.

Storytelling deboggle

I realize that I am posting a lot lately but I slacked for a week so now I am trying to catch up.

On Friday, instead of going to school, I was invited to read a story to small children in English. The story was called "We Are Going on a Bear Hunt." Apparently, it was well known in Europe but I had never heard of it. I got to do this storytelling as part of the "Maman des poissons festival de litterature", which translates to The Mother Fish Litterature Festival. All of the assistants were allowed to volunteer and I was chosen to do it on Friday. Anyway, they did this story in both German and English so I went with the German assistants to Pezenas, France which is about an hour away by car. We got picked up by one of the directors of our program and driven to this small, summer, tourist city and taken to what equated to a theatre library to read the books. We both read the same book but in our respective languages. The Germans went first. We had to teach the small group of children (10 kids or so) some of the vocabulary from the story in our own language so they kinda understood what was going on. We, thankfully, only had 2 groups to do this with because by the time I got halfway through doing this with the second group, I was bored with it.

Anyway, we taught the flashcards, we read the story and as a special added bonus, there was an animated version of the story in English (with a British accent of course so the kids were kinda lost). After the 2 hours of our work, we were offered the choice of either going home with the director who drove us out there or we could take the train home and have lunch with all of the people from the festival. We all said we would love a free lunch and would take the train home. There were 3 of us (2 Germans and me!). After lunch which turned out to be crappy high school cafeteria food, we decided to look for the train station and see what time we can catch the train home.

Before we get to that story, let me describe my French high school cafeteria food. There was a choice of some sort of appetizer which looked like some kind of paté smeared on a piece of bread with a pickle on top (I passed on that) or a weird cheesy turnover which I took. Then there was a choice of 2 different kinds of cheese, roquefort which is really strong and gross in my opinion and a milder cheese which I chose. Next was the dessert. Everything was in a really weird order. Dessert choices were pineapple, pineapple cake thing (which I chose) or a fruit cup. There was a seafood soup to try after that. It looked a little weird to me so I passed on that. Finally, we arrived at the main course station. Our choices were either sausage (which looked like it has been out for about 18 hours under a heat lamp) with beans, some sort of pork loaf thing with beans or a fish purée mixed with mashed potatoes. I chose, what seemed to me, like the lesser of 3 evils and went with the fish.

All of this was served buffet style like your typical cafeteria so we just loaded our trays and walked on down the line. There was a carafe of wine on each table and because we were there with the litterature festival, we also got little aperitifs (hors d'oeuvres basically with a drink). The aperitifs drink was disgusting. It was some sort of alcohol, I am guessing, mixed with sickeningly sweet mandarin juice completed with floating mandarin pieces within. The hors d'oeuvres were terribly dry bread-type things which had no flavor and were gross to boot. The lunch that we got in line, was tolerable but not at all great. The fish purée was actually not too bad and the dessert was yummy but could have been sweeter. In all, ok for a free lunch but I never would have paid for it.

After lunch, like I said, we tried to find the train station. We thought we would go to the tourism office because surely they would have a map and train schedules. The tourism office, like almost everything in France, was closed for lunch and we had about 40 minutes to kill. We decided to just ask someone on the street where the train station was and we would figure everything out for ourselves. What train station, the man asked. There is no train station in Pezenas. You can only get back to Montpellier on a bus. Imagine our shock and surprise. When we got to the bus station, it wasn't really a bus station. It was more like a parking lot full of buses with some old schedules stapled to a board, which of course we didn't trust nor could we interpret it. We asked some random girl if she knew how to get to Montpellier and how much it was but she wasn't really sure and couldn't provide much info.

By this time, it was about 1:45 and the tourism office opened at 2. We decided to just go back to the office and sit outside and wait for them to open. When they opened, we were the only ones in there, by the way, we asked if they had a bus schedule for Montpellier and how much it was. They gave us 2 incorrect bus schedules before finally finding the correct one. Apparently, no prices are listed anywhere and these 2 gems of women (and I say that with as much sarcasm that could possibly drip from my mouth) were not at all interested in helping us. I mean, clearly we were foreigners and stranded in the city. Even while we asked them for help, they said, that's all we can do. You have to ask the bus driver how much it is and we can't do anything more for you. Now, I would have forgiven or at least, understood, their reluctancy to help us if the office was crowded and others were waiting on us to finish. But, we were ALONE in the office. So, after their wonderful help, we asked what we could do in the city since the bus, we figured out ourselves, wasn't leaving Pezenas for another 2 hours. Unfortunately for us, Pezenas is a summer town. Everything closes up, restaurants are closed for 6 months at a time and museums were closed as well. We basically ended up walking around the city 4 times before we finally just ended up at the bus station and waiting for the bus at 3:45. Finally the bus arrived but we were told that it didn't depart until 4:15 AND we had to wait for them to go to the high schools and pick up the kids before we could even get on and hope there was a seat. Finally, at 4:20, we were allowed on the bus and had to pay 7.60 Euros (which is WAY too much in my opinion for a bus ride of an hour). Train trips of an hour are like 5 or 6 Euros with a discount card. The bus didn't even drop us off in Montpellier proper. We were dropped at the end of a tram line.

So, after getting on the tram finally, we thought we were scot free. Oh, how horribly wrong we were. After 3 stops, the tram broke down. After waiting 15 minutes for an announcement on what we should do or if they were going to be able to fix this, we got off and started walking home. In all, if you count how much time it took us to get home right after lunch, we spent over 5 hours trying to get home. Needless to say, one of the German girls wrote a scathing email to our director who stranded us in the city with no real exit and we had to pay much more than we intended just to get home. We were doing our program a favor by missing school or donating our free time and this was what we ended up with.

I would like to say that at least I learned that Pezenas is considered Moliere's home. Moliere, for those of you who don't know, is a very famous playwright. I might actually venture to say that Pezenas wants to be Moliere's home. All of the research that I did on this city just said that Moliere was in Pezenas for some time when he first started writing and was there with his theatre group. I guess if you are a small town in France, you are going to try and hold onto something famous. Everything about Pezenas revolved around Moliere. There was Moliere Hotel, Moliere Cafe, Moliere Square and even a Moliere statue which I leave you with.

My new home

Hi everyone, I have decided to move. More detail on that below. Effective immediately, please send any letters, packages, love notes to the below address:

Jennifer KIMPFBECK
Chez Marc LARTAUD
481 Rue Adolphe ALPHAND
34080 Montpellier
FRANCE

But why am I moving you ask? Thanks for asking. My living situation is not ideal to say the least. My roommates are very cold and downright rude now. I live with an older woman (in her 40's, typical spinster loner) and a student who is NEVER there and NEVER speaks to me when she is there. I am not sure what my favorite complaint about my older roommate is. Would it be the one where she left a little sticky note on my door one night that read:

"Jennifer,
I thank you to not make any noise when you get home since you come home so late. Thank you for your attention to this matter. - Valerie"

That one is a gem! And it's not like I am banging into crap when I get home or drunkenly stumbling into her door. Perhaps it's this complaint:

One day I left some dishes in the sink with full intention of washing them after my dinner. I forgot about them and left them overnight. I went to school and when I got home, there was a note printed out and taped above the kitchen sink that read:

"Please think about others. Thank you for washing all of your dishes right after each meal to insure the happiness of the rest of the people who live here."

I believe the dishes were in the sink for about 20 hours. Or, here's another fun fact about where I live. I have been highly discouraged to flush the toilet late at night because apparently, it wakes up the old spinster. Well, now that I am leaving, you better believe that I am flushing the toilet every night and sometimes I get up late at night just to flush the toilet, just to piss her off. I also flush the toilet early in the morning before I go to school. These little things make me so happy, knowing that I disturbed her precious sleep.

Another great item of note is the fact that I have lived there for 2 months and we STILL do not have a washing machine that I was promised before I even moved in. We have one but it's been broken since before I got there and I was assured that it would be replaced before I even got there. I am still waiting.

Perhaps the fact that I have had no hot water for 4 days may play into the factor that I am now counting down the days until I leave. It's Sunday, by the way. That's my last day. Apparently, something is broken in our hot water heater and our landlord who lives on a small island off the coast of Africa (I am NOT kidding) needs to pay for the piece so who knows when that is going to happen. I have been lucky enough to get access to Dawn's shower so never fear, I am bathing. Needless to say, since the hot water has been non-existent since Saturday, I was pretty pissed yesterday when it still wasn't fixed. I don't know if I could have given the spinster a dirtier look.

I suppose I will have to tell this spinster that my last day there is Sunday. I haven't talked to her since yesterday when I made it very clear that I was not at all pleased that we STILL didn't have hot water. I am so glad I get to go across town to bathe. It's just wonderful.

Needless to say, I can't get out of there faster. The great news is that I found a great place just a little north of the city. My commute into the city, into the train station to go to work is going to be about 15 minutes longer making it a 30 minute trip into town but for me, it's totally worth it. I am moving into a HOUSE, not an apartment which is already better. It's a pretty new house. The couple have only lived there for 3 years so everything is still pretty new and shiny. The couple has a cute orange outdoor cat who likes coming inside at night. I met with them yesterday for a drink and to just discuss the details of our arrangement. I do not have to give them a deposit, which is awesome! I get a room with a double bed so I don't feel like a small child sleeping in a twin and my own private entrance into my room from the outside. The house has a washing machine, an awesome rainshower type shower with the cool metal rainshower nozzle thing and a cool kitchen with lots of gadgets and appliances. There is a coffee tree inside the house too. The husband does some sort of horticultural, tropical plant research so they travel rather extensively and have been to Central American quite a bit. The married couple has 2 kids who no longer live at the house. Guess how old their son will be on Sunday? Yep, 27. He is a whole 10 das older than me. I thought that was hilarious. It's kinda like moving into a family, which is a little weird since I haven't lived at home for over 10 years but for France, it's much better. They will actually talk to me and have dinner with me. The wife is interested in getting English lessons from me so I can finally earn some extra money. Marc and Helene are for sure clean, healthy living and nice people. I think I am going to be much happier.

I am greatly looking forward to a letter or even a postcard. It would be so great to get any kind of mail while I am here. Hint, hint!

Trapped in my school

Today I went to school like any other ordinary day. I normally teach 3 classes for a total time at my school of 2 1/2 hours on Mondays. Today, one of my classes was cancelled, which does happen from time to time. Not only is it a huge inconvenience for me because I generally miss a train and have to wait like an hour or so to get back home but all of my classes are in different spots of my lessons once one of 3 classes is cancelled. When I was told my class was cancelled, I asked the principal if I could stilll teach the class since it was just the teacher that was gone and not the whole class. The whole class does leave once in awhile for sailing or whatever other crap is more important than English lessons. Anyway, my mean, angry, old, bitter principal said no, I couldn't teach the class and, in addition, I wasn't allowed to leave school grounds until my normal time, meaning that I couldn't even leave early. Apparently, due to their ridiculous insurance policies, if I got hurt on my way to the train or whatever, it would falll back on them. I was considerably annoyed at this point. I asked if I could sign something releasing them from obligations but apparently not. Thus, I was obliged to sit in the office for about an hour, like a punished child, until it was my regular time to leave. I have never dealt with something so ridiculous or proposterous since living in France. I literally have never had more daggers shooting out of my eyes than today when the principal wouldn't let me leave. Now, obviously, I could have just walked out, I mean, what could they really do to me? However, because I was arguing with the principal, I missed one train so I had another hour to kill until the next train. Therefore, I just decided to sit in the office in the warmth, while I waited out the time until my next train. After about 15 minutes of me just staring at the secretary with nothing to do, I asked if I could use the computer in front of me. She said yes, of course. To put the icing on the cake, I thought it was funny that I wrote this post while imprisonned in the school.

I am an AUNT!

I have the great pleasure of introducing you to the newest Kimpfbecks in the world.

My brother had his twin boys last night, Friday, November 14, 2008.

Baby A - Liam Toby. 5lb 11oz. 19 inches - 10:15pm
Baby B - Aiden Ray. 7lb 14oz. 21-1/2 inches - 10:29pm

They were born naturally, no C-section. Mary was in labor for about 16-1/2 hours (but she was only in hard labor for about 5 hours). The family is doing fine and I have never been so homesick in my life.

Link to a bunch of pictures:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=ghxeex3.kwn5q8v&x=0&y=4ywnzl&localeid=en_US

Here is Liam Toby.
And here is Aiden Ray.

My mom made their T-shirts. :)

A Walk Through the Garden

Today, due to Veteran's day or Armistice day as it's known here, I had the day off. A few of the other assistants and I decided to talk a walk in the "Jardins des Plantes" (Plant Garden). It was a really nice botanical garden of sorts complete with a bamboo forest, stone statues and an orange grove which we couldn't get to. Below are a few pictures from the area. The first one is this weird telescope building, or so Cathy said. I thought the creepy face on it was worth posting.


Here is the group that went. From the left: Cathy, Dela, Junko, Dawn and Aleksey.


Below, it a very amazing tree. Not only does it look cool because of all the knots, as you might be able to see in the picture, but there are bits of paper with wishes and secrets stuffed in there. It's nicknamed the Love-Wish Tree, we found out. We, guiltily, read some of the pieces of paper stuffed in there. They said things like "I wish I had someone" or "I wish I would stop wanting more and be happy with what I have." It was very romantic and a little sad.
After our long walk in the park, we were walking back to downtown for some coffee and crepes, and we unwittingly ran into a homeless guy pooping in the park. Unfortunately, I saw him just as he was pulling up his stripped undies. I thought everyone would want to share in this ridiculous experience. Oh, and speaking of poo, we also ran into human poo at the garden on one of the paths. This poo was complete with toilet paper. It guess it was just that kind of day today.

Unfortunately, the crepes were pretty disappointing and we won't be returning to that creperie (restaurant that specializes in crepes). They were very chintzy on their fillings and we all felt like we got a little screwed on our crepe experience. Thankfully, Montpellier is full of creperies, so we can continue the search for a favorite.

I leave you with this really ridiculous mannequin with the purple, lacy, mesh underwear. This was on display in one of the higher-end department stores and I HAD to take a picture. I figured my gay friends would appreciate the sexiness of these undies but I just laughed at how lacy and see-through they were. How can you respect a man wearing these? :) However, if you put it into perspective, women wear much more scandalous underwear, so why wouldn't men have the same?

Rugby Violence

(Montpellier is in red. We are the Red Devils.)

Today, Dawn and I had the great opportunity to see a real live French Montpellier professional Rugby match. I have been dying to see a rugby match since living in Europe. A long while ago, while doing our city tour, Dawn and I met another American girl, 2 Norwegians and an Australian guy. It turned out that the Australian guy actually moved to Montpellier to play on their rugby team and then got a real day job as well with a computer company. We had exchanged numbers and had seen them all since then a few times. Luck would have it that the Australian guy invited us to see the match and even offered us free tickets today since they were playing a home game. So, not only did I get to see rugby, but I got to see it for free!

Knowing very little about rugby (except for its reputation for violence), I soon learned a lot after this match. There are 2 periods that are about 45 minutes long. I can't be sure exactly how long the period is because there was no clock at the stadium. The field is as big as an American football field, I am guessing. Each goal scored is worth 4 points and 2 extra points are awarded if they kick the field goal. Rugby balls are bigger than American footballs and bounce a ton more. It's a super violent sport. I would equate it with American football without pads or helmets. People just grab each other and pull them down and tackle them if someone has the ball. I loved it! I like rugby a lot more than football (soccer) because if someone gets knocked down, they don't roll around on the ground hoping to get a penalty. They just get right back up and keep playing. It's such a fluid sport with very little stopping except when a goal is scored. The guys just kept going and going. I was so amazed. Since they weren't big babies like many football players are, it was actually a little scary if someone was on the ground and didn't get up. We did see someone on our team get injured and he was carried off the field. We couldn't tell if it was a sprain or a broken leg but he certainly wasn't walking. Ah! The violence. It's almost as great as hockey. The guys were all dirty by the end and I was so impressed with their pure athleticism.

Unfortunately, we lost 26-28 but it was a great match anyway and it came down to the last 5 minutes so we only barely lost and I certainly cannot wait to see another game.

Saturdays in the Park

On this beautiful Saturday afternoon, Dawn, Cathy and I took a little walk to the farmer's market in Montpellier. Unfortunately, we were a bit too late for everything and got to see them packing up the place. I guess next week we should try to get there before 1:30pm. However, the trip was not a total loss as we visited a local wine cave and got to sample some wines of the region. The first red wine was probably the best we had all day. We chatted up the wine cave girl and then it became a little too awkward because we wanted to go and couldn't figure out a good way to exit since we were done tasting wines and done talking to her. There weren't any other people in the cave so it was hard for us to just kinda take off. Eventually, we managed to skate out of there after Cathy got 2 bottles of wine.

While taking the bus home from the failed attempt to see a French farmer's market, a very entertaining and quite bizarre thing happened to us. As Dawn, Cathy and I were nearing our stop, we commented on a shoe store we saw on the street. For some random reason, this older woman sitting next to us on the bus said that we need to not buy shoes from there since they come from China. Apparently, there have been reports that some of the packets of the silica gel they put in shoes has been causing horrible allergic reactions. I guess this French lunatic felt the need to tell us all about it. Then when we mercifully got off the bus at the next stop 30 seconds later, she got off the bus too. She then proceeded to say that she was happy that Obama got elected and wasn't it wonderful for the country. I said, thank you. What a mistake. She got in my face (she was a close talker) and I was literally leaning backwards to not be on top of her and within kissing range. I thought she was going to kiss me or spit on me or whatever. Anyway, she felt the need to tell me that Bush was a puppet of the church and he was a drunk. Obama was going to change the world in 5 years with a tsunami of change. Thankfully, she finally stopped talking and we could escape. That was the freaking most bizarre moment of being in France so far.

Below are some pictures I took with my new Hello Kitty phone of Montpellier's downtown. It was super busy and crowded. I guess it was a beautiful day and everyone and their mother felt the need to be out. It was a bit hellacious to even walk around downtown and enjoy the park.

They have a huge chess setup in the park downtown as you can see below. The guy with the striped shirt on the left was one of the guys playing and he was really funny to watch. He was running back and forth on the board like crazy and racing to hit the little clock after every move. Dawn and I watched this game for at least 20 minutes. Behind the players, some teenagers were practicing their breakdancing moves on the steps of a museum and that was really entertaining to watch too. I would be really interested in seeing more of that.
After watching the chess and breakdancers, Dawn and I met up with 2 other British assistants for tea. We went to this AWESOME tea shop with a TON of selections of types and flavors of tea. I think they boasted over 100 teas in the place. The whole back wall was lined with canisters of flavored tea. We each got a whole pot of tea when we ordered. That equalled about 4 or 5 cups of tea I think. It was super cheap in my opinion for as much tea as I got. I love this place and will return a ton! I am so happy that one of the girls knew this place and took us there. I can't wait to go back. I had a lovely fruity tea with like 4 red berries or something like that. It was sweet and tasty. Dawn got a lemon meringue type of tea. I thought it was tasty and a bit different. Dawn didn't like it. She is much more of a traditionalist and hasn't yet found a flavored tea she likes. I told her not to fear. We can certainly find her something in the shop. And, it gives me an excuse to go back there all the time. It's a win-win situation for everyone involved.

Your British word lesson of the day: can of juice = can of soda. In a sentence: I can't believe I paid 3 Euros for this can of juice. (It should be noted that they also say just: a can. So you could also say something like, how come they don't sell cans here at all? I really wanted a Coke.)

Day Tripping Part 4: Montpellier Zoo

Due to weather concerns, we decided to stay in Montpellier on Friday and enjoy the free things the city has to offer. Again, Dawn, Cathy and I went on this little trip. Both Junko and Aleksey were feeling sick the past few days so they couldn't join us.

The interesting thing about the Montpellier zoo is the lack of variety in animals. We saw a lot of nothing actually. The cages in the zoo are unlike the American cages where it kinda forces the animal to be close enough for viewing. Here, the animals are able to roam a bit freer making it harder for the public to enjoy the animal viewing. We saw some typical animals as well but the one of the most notable parts of the trip to the zoo was the lemurie (lemur house) were we saw a good 20 lemurs running around in different cages and habitats. That was most entertaining.

After the lemurie, we ended up walking on a long trail to the next exhibit which looks like you are on a natural hike and not walking through a zoo. The brown bears were fun to see. There was a mama bear and a baby bear. This jerk French dude kept tossing bread into the cage for them to eat which was really bugging me. I ended up doing my good deed of the day and actually reported him to the authorities of the zoo as we were walking along. I didn't want those bears to get sick or whatever and that man had tossed almost a whole baguette in there by the time we left.

After the bears, we went to the lion habitat and the male and female were just laying down and chilling but at least we could see them. Generally, the zoo was fun and pretty great for a free afternoon. Below you will see some cool wooden carvings which we definitely climbed on and took pictures on.


Here is Dawn with a wooden sculpture:Here is Cathy with some weird stone sculpture we saw near a huge old tower:

Your British word lesson of the day: jaggy = prickly In a sentence: Those bushes were all jaggy.

Day Tripping Part 3: Nîmes

On Thursday, Cathy, Dawn and I again went on a day trip. This time to Nîmes (pronounced "neem"). Nîmes is about a half hour west of Montpellier. Halfway between Montpellier and Avignon, you can find Nîmes, which is well-known as a Roman city. The emblem you see above is the city crest for Nîmes. Yes, it is a crocodile chained to a palm tree. It is supposed to symbolize the conquest of Egypt.

Our first stop on the super cloudy day, was the Arènes de Nîmes (Nîmes Arena or Colisseum) as seen here:
This was super huge and still in use today actually but for bullfighting, not for gladiators as was the case in olden times. We had another audio tour but this time the little electronic guides were on lanyards and looked like stopwatches. We got to walk all around inside, up a bunch of huge stairs outside and we sat in multiple locations within the arena as we took our little self-guided tour. There was so much information that we ended up skipping through some sections because each audio tour section was anywhere from 8-15 minutes long. We did learn a lot about the city and the fact that this is the best preserved exisiting Roman colisseum in the world!

Here I am in the huge arena:
While at the arena, we had purchased the 3 pack of tours in Nîmes which included the Arènes de Nîmes, the Maison Carrée (Square House) & La Tour Magne. After our long stay at the Arènes de Nîmes, we walked about 10 minutes to the Maison Carrée as seen here:
It turned out to be an ancient Roman temple where the priests would go for prophecies and consultations of the Gods. Unfortunately, due to what I can only assume was some upkeep of the monument since most of it was covered with tarps and whatnot, we didn't really get to see the Square House as you see in the picture. Inside, we had hoped to see this awesome temple and artifacts. Instead, there was only a super kinds of cheesy 3-D movie about the history of the people of Nîmes and how the great spirit of Nîmes will live on forever in the hearts of all Nîmois (people from Nîmes). My God was it cheesy but Dawn actually enjoyed it. Well, to each his own I suppose. It should also be noted that the children, who would NOT shut up during the entire 20 minute masterpiece, were constantly trying to grab the random crap coming out at us since it was an awesome 3-D spectacle. That didn't ever get annoying! However, we were pretty disappointed that we just got to watch this movie and didn't actually get to tour anywhere else in the temple.

After the Maison Carrée, we decided on a little lunch. It turned out to be one of the best lunches I have had since living in France and one of the longest. In two hours, we managed to have an appetizer, an entree, a dessert and a coffee plus a carafe of rosé wine. The lunch was exceptional. The other girls choose a various meat plate for their appetizer which looked yummy yet full of pork. I chose the liver salad which was actually really tasty. Our entrees were all the same since we ordered the "plat du jour" (plate of the day) in order to get the amazing 11 Euro price for our lunch. It was an andouille sausage with a great mustard sauce and grilled onions, sides of butter beans, small salad with great mustard based dressing and "pommes noisettes" (Think of balls of mashed potatoes dropped in a deep fryer). Dessert was many choices but both Dawn and I chose the "ile flottant" that I mentioned Cathy had in Sete, while Cathy chose a great raspberry mousse. After our obligatory French coffee (which is very much like a shot of espresso for us), we started the trek to La Tour Magne.

I say trek because we thought we could make it there in 15 minutes. It turns out that we were wrong. So horribly, horribly wrong. However, on our way to La Tour Magne, we ended up finding the Jardins de la Fontaine (Fountain Gardens) with the Diane Temple (which was just in ruins but awesome to see anyway). The gardens can be seen here:
This was such a beautiful discovery and place. I loved walking around and looking at all the statues, fountains and extravagant walkways that were designed all around this area.

After we took our fair share of photos, we began what seemed like the hike to nowhere to get to the Tour Magne. We figured out after we arrived that we took the REALLY long way to get there by kinda taking trails through the woodsy area of Nîmes but it's all in how you get there, right?

The Tour Magne seen below was a little less impressive than I had hoped.
There wasn't much to it except climbing 140 steps on spiral staircases to the very top. The view from the top was amazing. To see Nîmes from up above was quite amazing. Being in such an old tower was aw-inspiring. It was erected about 15 AD which is impressive to say the least. The inside was mostly hollowed out due to a somewhat crazy local gardener who took a Nostradamus prophecy to heart and thought there was silver and gold hidden under the tower. Fortunately, he was stopped before the tower collapsed. The Tour Magne is the highest point in the city and used to be part of a huge fortification of the entire city. The Tour is all that is left now.

After La Tour Magne, we stopped in the free city museums. The museum of Natural History and of Archaeology were pretty impressive for free museums. The Natural History museum, unfortunately, had some really sad looking taxidermy and we think we found the reject section of poorly stuffed cats. Many of them were in a cabinet in the very back of room and the faces were quite distorted and nightmare-inspiring. In the Archaeology museum, we saw a bunch of Roman statues that had been excavated and large tile mosaics that had been unearthed from roads in Nîmes.

I shall leave you with this funny image of a duck salt shaker that Nîmes was using as a promo ad for some festival in the city. The festival isn't important. Just the funny image is important.