anticipation//made: i want to run a marathon

it's vacaaaation, thank goodness!! the last two weeks flew by and were a little bit stressful, so it's nice to be able to unwind and not think about lesson planning and hyperactive 13 year-olds for a few days. several of the assistants went out to dinner this week - our last time out together before the holiday (sniff sniff). it was a tres cute restaurant, the waiter for sure got a kick out of our anglophone-ness...it just seems that we always add to the atmosphere wherever we go...aka we laugh. a lot. we also complied a mixed CD for Manu (tasse et glace guy) for his christmas present - it was appropriately entitled "the t et g groupies," and Andrea, Hannah, Kate, Mandy, Sophie and I all put on 2-3 songs for the cafe. i would probably have shriveled up and died without tasse; it is my happiness here. all love.

for the holiday i'll be traveling with amy, one of my nearest and dearest from AU. about a month and a half ago, i booked us a hotel and tickets for tunis, tunisia - since we were both going to be staying over here for the holidays, we decided to travel somewhere that doesnt celebrate christmas, so that we (hopefully) won't feel homesick. so i've been looking forward to this trip for quite a while; my teachers are super excited for me, it's going to be warm(er) there, it's my first trip to africa, etc etc, when i receive an email from amy. as of mid-last week, she still hadnt received her carte de sejour (residency card - i got mine 2-3 weeks ago), which allows her to come back into france, since her long stay visa will have expired before she leaves on vacation....it's complicated, but should have been easily fixed by either traveling with her recipassee (document saying that the carte is in progress; i had mine since oct) - which apparently she didnt have - or by getting an extension on her visa - which was apparently a difficult thing to do at her prefecture. so suddenly my plans for the holiday were thrown into question since amy wasnt sure if she would be able to take care of her documentation to be able to travel legally...so basically i spent the better part of last week trying to convince her that everything would work out and refelcting on whether or not tunis would be safe enough for me to go there alone. i mean, i already had a ticket, right?? well happily - and at the very last minute - amy sent me an sms saying that her papers were in order and she was good to go. so we leave tomorrow afternoon from paris CDG and come back on the 31st. I can't wait!!

doom and gloom regarding the unsavory thought of spending christmas in the hexagon (no offense), classes were also super annoying the last few days, what with the kids' ants-in-the-pants anticipation of vacation. i do not doubt that i was at least as excited this friday to be off school as my students were; quite likely i was more. for all the priceless moments there are in class, i still dread going to school everyday. it's fine - at least i was lucky enough to figure out im not a teacher while living in france, with it's copious paid holidays and good health care system - but i cant wait to have a job that i actually like again. im thinking about studying business-y things...i want to plan/organize/manage things, not stare at uninterested faces for hours on end.

the application for the peace corps is coming along, but i have to get fingerprinted after vacation for my file. what the heck, why not - i mean, i've already filled out every other kind of form,taken x-rays, so fingerprints should be a breeze....riiiight...

i dont know if i already mentioned it, but i signed up for a marathon! in april! in austria! dont ask me why or how i came to make that decision, but kate, a fellow assistant, said that she was doing it and that i should too, and that was pretty much all it took. peer pressure just barely. yikes. in any event, i think it will be good for me. granted, im not much of a runner - this spring for cross training i got myself up to running about 3 miles non-stop, but i hated every minute of it - but it's been growing on me since i started running more frequently last month. my ankles and knee dont love it, but im building up muscles for better support and ive been trying to watch my technique so im not putting unwarranted stress on my joints. ive already built up to running for an hour with just 3-4 min walking in the middle, so with several months to read up on the finer points of completing a marathon, training, and winning the mind-over-matter battle, im sure that i will cross the finish line, which is all i want to do. i dont care too much about the time; our mantra is "if katie holmes can do it" (she recently ran the NY marathon in over 5 hours). anyway, it's something to do with all this free time, and it will be a fun trip at the end of this teaching gig, since the girls that arent running promised to come along and cheer us on, beers and pastries in hand.


so yeah, this is actually shaping up to be one of the best holiday seasons ever, from thanksgiving and our great dinner to xmas in tunis with amy to new years in paris. and that just keeps getting better and better - me and amy, plus tanya (finally got her visa from russia to france sorted out), and now mandy, christine and nicholas!! blanche nuit the 31st, holidays with my favorite ppl in my favorite city...now just cross your fingers our flights dont get canceled and that the hotel in tunis isnt sketch...a bientot!! joyeuses fetes a tout le monde!

grenoble winter wonderland

grenoooooble marche de noel rocks my socks!!
oh, and last weekend we went to Lyon to see the Fete de Lumiere, craziness in the streets (4 mil visitors over the weekend), stayed out dancing on a boat til 5am, then caught a train back to valence at 7h30...but the pix are not so awesome. lo siento.


Place Victor Hugo

Snow Covered Mountains!!

Troll Haus, it's become something of a tradition for us

Kate, Mandy and Hannah with books galore!

bah humbug scrooge mcgrinchy

im not huge on the holidays, but i do always love shopping at night with all the lights in the trees and the smell of snow in the air, right? but since im not at home, not with my usual crew, it's been a bit harder to find the holiday spirit - until this week, anyway. the christmas lessons rolled out in full force - super fun word scrambles, crosswords, guessing games, 'how did you feel when you found out santa wasnt real' annnnnd mariah carey. thats right, no jingle bells for my kids, we're listening to "All i want to christmas is yoooooou' and filling in missing lyrics. aka ive listened to that song about 30 times this week. heh. but it's been fun - the guys are all like "dude this song it too girly" and the girls are all "ooh elle chante trop bien" and they sing along. my 3e class yesterday took the cake, though. after a rather dismal session last week - long story short i thought i wasnt working with them, but then got an email the morning before class that i needed to talk about ALL 50 STATES, wft?, they didnt really like my little "did you know?" fun facts, whatever, and the teacher was like "umm no. that was not good." oops - i figured the song would be fun and then we could play a game or something, rather than lecturing "Christmas traditions in the US." oh my god. the guys started dancing in their seats and pretending to sing...i couldnt help but crack up, which of course egged them on even more...it was awesome.

my 4e sang "we wish you a merry christmas" to me, that was charming...

i had the MOST interesting/awesome teacher dinner with the crew from Jean Zay, my wonderful school on friday. Chantal's boyfriend, Michael, lives most of the time in London (he's english - a banker/chef/acupuncturist), so the first thing he said when he picked me up was that i could tell him how i really felt about living in france...although i vent a lot with the assistants, so i didnt have too much to say - i think he was mildly disappointed! haha, it was awesome though - he cooked this wonderful chinese dinner and the food just kept coming - spring rolls with lettuce and rice paper to wrap around the outside so as not to muss up your fingers, sauteed veggies and cashews (of course i took a lot of smack for being a veg, as usual, but he said that next time he'd make me tofu!!), grilled shrimp, beef and veggies, chicken and veggies, and a huuuge fruit plate with oranges, chinese grapefruit, lychees, and some other chinese fruit - and christmas cookies, baked by yours truly. it was a really nice evening, lots of laughing, violin music grace a Manon, chantal's daughter (6 yrs old, bilingual, cutest kid ever), and michael's weird super-sarcastic-to-the-point-of-being-bitter humor....fun times.

and of course, mandy and i baked cookies and rocked the christmas carols on thursday. i swear, france + mandy is turning me tres domestic. we had a mini-adventure baking chez moi, converting her american recipe into metric and ad libbing the baking of the sugar cookies - theres only one cookie sheet in my house, so we used a bunch of tart pans as well. they tasted good, but we shoulda looked for green and red sprinkles...oh well. they were still loved by the teachers in all my schools!

and in other news, my recruiter for the Peace Corps called on thurs, too, so thats moving along. we'll see what happens...sadly i dont really have a great background for enviro/health stuff, which is what i would like to do, since thats what im thinking about for grad school/real life, but it's understandable. the fact that im cpr certified helps in the health dept (although honestly, that might be expired, but i would renew it anyway once im back in the states) funnily enough she said that im a good candidate...for teaching...and asked if she could add that to my preferences. my desire to do the PC outweighed my daily dread of the classroom, and i said yes, i'll do whatever you want. urgh.

it's almost vacation!!!!

on how kids can be priceless

today i began teaching christmas. most likely by this time next week i will have begun to detest it unless wonderful moments like this one occur frequently: i was talking about christmas in the states, and a girl asked if people put out les creches. i said yes, those that celebrate christmas as a religious holiday put up a manger, writing the vocab on the board. "Quoi?! tu manges de Jesus aux Etats-Unis??" manger (fr) = to eat. i almost peed myself.

lumiere en fete

i loooove these crazy trees, and with the lights they're even more chouette!

fireworks WITH OPERA (maria callas) = love france