mesmerized by the water, awed by the mountains: bastia, l'ile rousse

yes, yet another vacation. what am i going to do once back in the states, with like 2 days of paid holiday? groan and regret whining so much about france, no doubt. but we'll deal with that later, non?

for the first and only time, our entire little clan of the coolest assistants d'anglais (andrea, hannah, kate, mandy, sophie, et moi) succeeded in coordinating a trip together, striking out to explore corsica. prior to this trip i never really thought too much about going there, but now that i've been and have seen a smidge of the island, i definitely have to return. Feb is the off-season, so we scored awesome ferry tickets: Toulon to Bastia overnight (21h - 7h) in cabins for just 68E RT and a 3-star hotel in the vieux port for just 20E/nuit. sweeeetness. the only ferry i'd ever been on was the one from jersey to NYC, so when i saw our huge boat with 9 floors, restaurants, games rooms, escalators and elevators, well it was pretty much like being on the titanic. or something...our trip started off well, finding some native toulonais (?) to help us find the ferry (they're just so much nicer in the south!). of course we arrived justbefore the boat was due to leave port. aka we were our usual spectacle, this time 6 girls trying to run through the port and parking lots with huge hiking backpacks and duffles, over-stuffed on pizza and salad, kind of like a gaggle of laughing penguins or something. on the upside, the ferry people were super sympa and drove us out to the boat, showed us to our cabins, the whole nine.

luckily none of the motion-sickness prone girlies got sick that night, and i have to admit that the accommodations were much less sketchy than i was anticipating (i think after staying in so many hostels and traveling on a budget like a pro, i might just be easily impressed, though) and i slept pretty well. waking up was still hard, at 6h30, with announcements that the restaurant was open for breakfast being piped into the room...we straggled into the sleepy metropolis that is bastia and made our way slowly to the Hotel Posta Vecchia, stopping frequently to enjoy the sunrise and pink shadows on the shop facades. Dropped our bags in the luggage room at the hotel, took cafe and baguettes in the vieux port to fortify ourselves for a long morning stroll (we couldnt check in - and nap! - until noon).

We spent the morning exploring the ramparts of the citadel and climbing Bastia's hilly, picturesque streets. the sunlight on the Med is unlike anything ive ever seen before; the sky seems so close and so pure and the sun just makes you feel happy all over. although the weather was still too cool to swim, we sat along the sea walls and took in plenty of sunshine. the weather was perfect on Tuesday, our first day in Corsica, although the following 2 days were rather more cloudy and slightly chillier. Up in the citadel we discovered gardens with lemon trees, and while reestablishing our zen mentality on the ramparts, we planned out our future lives as fisher-women...and saw dolphins! for real, a dolphin couple, just out there chilling with the birds and fisherman. very cool. we then spent the better part of and hour trying to walk out to the lighthouses that guard the new port and offer a great view of the vieux port and the hills to the northwest of the city.

view from the top of a cliff en route to St Florent

Since bastia is a pretty small town with not a whole lot to do aside from eating pastries (PS the boulangeries are hidden, but they are AMAzing. mandy and i found the best one, of course - totally a family venture, with grandma right there making the tarts and making sure that we got what we wanted. mandy fell in love with their delectable tarte aux pommes and we became instant regulars) and walking up hills, so we decided to rent a car for the second day and explore some neighboring towns. the original idea was to drive from St Florent all the way up the Cap Corse, stopping at beaches and vineyards as we went, but after considering how treacherous the roads in the hills are (uber uber tortuous twisty-turny) and the fact that we didnt want to go over the 250 km gratuit that came in the car deal, we decided instead to drive across the north to l'Ile Rousse, another beachy-port town. Mandy and i rented the car - well, she was the driver (i really do need to learn officially how to drive a shift) and i swiped for it...it was definitely a 5-passenger car that we squeezed all 6 of us into. not terribly comfy, but it was certainly a bonding experience or something. im proud to say that we worked well together to prevent any physical manifestations of motion sickness - not an easy feat considering the driving conditions - and also avoided being pulled over for not having seat belts or any of that jazz. the perk of driving and not taking a bus was that we could stop whenever we felt overcome by the beauty of corsica, meaning pretty much the whole time we were ohh-ing and ahh-ing. there are snow-capped mountains for skiiing in central-northern part of the island, turquoise seas with sandy beaches, weird semi-cacti-like vegetation and scrubby bushes, cows, boats, it's beautiful.














at Ile rousse we frolicked in the sea until we were numb up to our knees, then set out to the tour genoise, out on a little spit off the mainland, aww-ing at the fat boat cats lazing around the boats. walking out to the tour and the lighthouse, clambering around on the red rocks, marveling at the stoic majesty of the cliffs, i had a fit of nostalgie, remembered the fun times i had in St Malo with the Paris semester kids, and i also decided that i most certainly need to return to this place sometime, maybe chill out for a year or so. there is just so much to explore, 3 days was no where near enough time. i was grateful that we went over this holiday rather than in april, though,because the towns are just so tranquil without hoards of tourists...but i want to see flowers and green and go snorkeling sometime, too...

he stopped dead in his tracks and started serenading us: nice, grasse, cannes

after 3 days in bastia, we headed back to the continent via bateau, and trained it from toulon to nice. sophie left us in favor of italy *tear* nice is nice (hehe)...15th largest city, je crois, right on the sea, wonderful sunshine, so warm we didnt need jackets during the afternoon, pink and yellow-painted buildings...our hostel was undergoing renovations, but the staff was incredibly friendly and made sure that the free wifi was working for us, pointed out good neighborhoods, loved us bc we actually spoke french with them, as opposed to the other awful americans who were SO HEINOUS and loud and gross.

i just stayed in nice for 2 nights, so we had to bouge quickly to profiter from the short stay...friday we wandered the vieille ville, climbed the colline du chateau (great views of the city), visited the marche de fleurs, ate some chouette gelatto at the baie des anges (beach), took some sun, found Rue de Jesus ET Place de Jesus (inside joke, but really, this city must love jesus or something), ambled along the promenade des anglais at sunset and then up to the russian cathedral (sadly closed bc we reached it after 18h). the highlight of the day was the random street performer we stumbled upon. this was no ordinary artsy-fartsy dude. this was not a tecktonik street battle. this was not a mime. oh nooo my friends. this was a flashdance wannabe crazy man, kicking his legs over his head and rocking out in all black, with red bandanna flourishes around his knees and a feathered headdress... he had the most delicate hands...he floated and shimmied like you wouldnt believe...in fact, he shimmied right on up the light pole and did a little pole dance up there...it was hypnotic. and hilarious. we were captivated for far longer than was appropriate, but it was just SO GOOD to people-watch the passers-by. oh lord. it was wonderful. go ahead, click on that photo right there...you'll see what was up...you know you wish you were there...

the view from the park up by the colline du chateau
art installation at the place masenna
to round out the visit, saturday we went to grasse, one of the perfume capitals of the world, and cannes. we toured the fragonard perfume factory in grasse, where they explained the intricacies of creating fragrances - it takes tons of flowers to make one litre of essence! crazy! fragonard uses a lot of locally-grown flowers, like roses, mimosa, jasmine, and tulips...and then we bought awesome fragrances at super bon marche prices! then i had a headache from all the smells, so i opted to go to cannes with hannah and andrea, rather than tour gallimard, another perfume house in grasse. Cannes was tacky and unimpressive - very commercial, very shishi, huuuuge yachts that blew my mind, rather nice beaches...we hung out for about 2 hours, then headed back to nice to cook dinner at the hostel. hmmm what else? it was caraval, so there was a huge parade sat night, that was semi-entertaining...and there were actually crowds of people out in the streets at night! it was amazing! soo not valence! voila. c'est tout.

for V-Day

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/12/02/210-french-kissing-map/

210 - French Kissing Map

Filed under: Uncategorized — strangemaps @

Over 18.000 votes have been cast in a poll to determine once and for all the answer to the burning question: Combien de bises? That’s French for ‘How many kisses’, and kissing in France is a lot more complex the French’s somewhat overstated reputation for carefree libidinosity implies.

Unlike more reserved nationalities, the French greet each other with kisses on the cheek – but the practice varies to the point where one risks l’embarras social when the kisser has another number of pecks on the cheek in mind than the kissee. Suppose, for a moment, that you intend to give three kisses and the other person turns away after two. Ah, the humilitation!

This must have happened a few times to Gilles Debunne, because earlier in 2007 he set up a website to resolve the French kissing conundrum once and for all. Debunne asked his compatriotes to send in how many kisses were the rule in their particular département. The number, which varies from one to four (five is too much, even for the French), shows an interesting regional variability.

• One kiss is the preferred option in only two départements: Finistère at the western tip of Brittany and Deux-Sèvres in the Poitou-Charentes region.
• Elsewhere in Poitou-Charentes, three kisses are preferred: in the departments of Vienne and Charente. The largest block of three-kiss-départements is located in the southeast. Trois bises are the thing to do in Ardèche, Aveyron, Cantal, Drôme, Haute Loire, Hautes Alpes, Hérault, Gard, Lozère and Vaucluse.
• Four kisses are de rigueur in a large region in northeastern France. Apart from the isolated coastal département of Pas de Calais, this is a contiguous area, consisting of 22 départements from Normandy to the Belgian border: Ardennes, Aube, Calvados, Eure, Eure et Loire, Haute Marne, Indre, Indre et Loire, Loire et Cher, Loire Atlantique, Loiret, Maine et Loire, Manche, Marne, Mayenne, Orne, Sarthe, Seine et Marne, Seine-St-Denis, Val d’Oise, Vendée and Yonne.
• The rest of the country is two-kisses territory, apart from the same département in northeast Paris that stood out by turning Royal red amidst a sea of Sarkozy blue in the first round of the French presidential elections earlier this year (see entry #108).

Not visualised in this map is the confusion within the départements. Apparently, the quatre bises won out only just in Pas de Calais, narrowly defeating the almost 50% who said they preferred just deux. What happens when representatives of the former group meet someone from the latter one? A faux Pas de Calais? And that’s not even taking into account the class and age distinctions that may play a role in how many kisses are required – or even whether they are expected at all.

“If you are invited to a dinner party with people you don’t know, you’ll shake their hands when you arrive. At the end of the evening, you might kiss them but it’s probably better to hold out your hand and see what happens,” says Constance Rietzler, director of La Belle École in Paris, offering courses in art and hopefully also joie de vivre, and quoted in this article in The Times on Mr Debunne’s website.

The map was sent in by Romke Soldaat of the website Frogsmoke, which asks the question: “What makes France such an endearing and infuriating country at the same time?

Why are the French a people that you love one day and hate the next?” And gives some pretty funny answers. Well worth a read.

food for thought

ok, i'll admit it, i DO miss fluffy, bounce-fresh towels and putting warm sheets on my bed. but france has the right idea with it's outside clotheslines and indoor drying racks:
Where's the Green?

also, this article is interesting - encore une fois on how americans live to eat and the french eat to live. im not particularly attached to either lifestyle - i like my whole foods healthy options and eating on the run, but it is nice to have ample lunch breaks to actually enjoy what you're eating... voila donc:

France - Etats-Unis, la fracture alimentaire
LE MONDE 2 | 08.02.08

©

non, on reste la,c'est trop genial!

primo: let's just have a quick reminder that this blog serves as a journal of sorts for me, so when i vent it's just that, nothing more. i am doing fine here! i mean, i might be slightly more crazy now than i was when i left the states in sept, but it's all good.

segundo: i just wrapped up the best teaching week ive had thus far. as ive mentioned, at least to the other assistants, my classes are rarely as bad as i make them out to be, and even when the lessons fall flat, it's all over in an hour, right? usually i have one or two good stories from the week, sometimes a raging headache, but nothing too terrible. but this week i feel like i might have finally hit my stride - and it's about time, non?

ive moved from relying on handouts to trying to play more games. jeopardy has been my cure-all savior, i love it, the kids love it, ive seen boys talk that usually dont so much as acknowledge my presence get into the lesson! none of the teachers have seen this type of game, but it goes without saying that as soon as 14-yr olds have something to be competitive about, they tend to get excited. it was simple - i just made 5 categories (food, clothing, countries, colors, sports/hobbies, and professions) with 5 questions each ($100 to $500), split the class into 2 teams, and away we went! it works on so many levels - i read the questions in english then gave them the card to read the question, they had to understand and make sure that they had the right vocab word, and then give the response in english. several questions had multiple responses, so there was the whole teamwork element of choosing the best answers, too. the best part was this afternoon, with some 3es at Valery - my worst school, where the 3es just dont care about annnnnnything - and we played for 30 min and they were supposed to switch with the other half of the class, but instead we got into an intense game of hangman, with the kids AcTuAlLy calling out the letters in english!!, and they were all like, nooo let's stay here, it's much better!! soo i kept them for an hour and i think they might have used more english in that hour than they have in the past month. i kid you not. (since it went to well, i might redo the game later on, using more grammar questions, too.)

so yah, ive played jeopardy with about half the classes i had this week, and the rest were fun, too. with the 5es i did clothing review - either describing pictures from magazines or doing a little color-cut-and-paste action, followed by a presentation to the class of "he is wearing a blue and green sweater," etc...and that was fun times because i gave them free reign to color however they wanted, they cold put skirts on the guys, add hats and outrageous hair-dos, whatever, just as long as they could describe it to me. we had a few aliens, some pom pom girls, a bum, you know, good times.

my last class today was some 6es - little ones, like 11 years old - and i had to review prepositions of place and house vocab. so i had my little house pic and i was going to have them draw in the members of the family and describe where they were located. pretty fun, drawing, yaay, but to warm them up (bc i realized that i dont really do enough pre-activity prep) i demonstrated the prepositions. ON the chair. and i stood on it. and they FREAKED out. and then i had them mime the prepositions. ON the chair. UNDER the table. IN the poubelle. BESIDE the assistant. it was a riot! it was hot and sunny, the door was wide open (luckily no one saw us...), we were laughing and then the settled down and wrote some realllllly good sentences!!! i was so impressed! and they didnt want to switch groups and go with the teacher (but they did, finally), and it was wonderful and funnn. and i left Valery smiling, which was a first and awesome!!

So i have a teacher that wants to steal my jeopardy game when im through with it! and my 4e at Zay said that i speak french very nicely : ) and oh! yes! with my super smart, on-point 3e at Zay i did an article on Obama/Clinton that linked back to the civil rights/women's rights movements. it was long. there were hard words. they did not think they would get through it. but we read slowly, and i translated a lot, and they had questions to answer, and it went really well! they had all kinds of interesting questions about US politics and the parties and how elections work and whatnot. we had some great discussions, half-english, half-french (it was a real workout for my french, all those fun past-tenses and the like, but i felt pretty comfortable with it, only had one correction!!) i love those kids. they are so bright. and wonderful. anyway, so my little milestone for the week/last 10 days was that many of my kids realized that they know more/can do more with english than they thought. and thats pretty freaking cool.

(i eat at mc donalds because) i like to feel international

Sarkozy has a new wife - Carla Bruni, formerly seen with such celebs as Mick Jagger and Donald Trump.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/02/AR2008020200730_2.html

Kiwi, my balding french cat, decided that she loves me best or something and will not leave my room anymore. It's 3/4 cute and 1/4 annoying - she has the most grating meow imaginable. But she likes to sit in the cubby hole in my desk, so that's entertaining.

Guiliana, my italian friend working in grenoble came down for the weekend to see me and mandy; finally the three mouflons were reunited! 2 feb. is le chandeleur (candlemas?), and the tradition is to make crepes (yumm) - if you can flip the crepe while holding a coin in your free hand, then you will become rich this year. and i got it on the first try!! first, housewife points. second, dolla$$! and crepe oeuf-fromage, c'est vachement trop bon!

i finished harry potter numero 7, finalement - really truly, i dont know why i let myself go all summer working at Politics and Prose and never buying/reading it. however, it actually quite nice to slip into that familiar, wonderful alternate universe over here - as close to going home as the real deal. shame that it's over now, though, but i am fairly satisfied with how it wrapped up.