The Rhône-Alps!

Since I got back from Christmas vacation, things have been looking up. I'm only working two days a week because my seniors are all doing internships between now and February break (I miss my seniors!), I got a ticket to visit home during the February break (and also start taking stuff home because we all know how much stuff I can accumulate in 7 months), and I've partially taken over my 5A class (7th graders) while the teacher is out sick for a few weeks.

So teaching has been going well; I was on my own with the 5A for the first time this week (only half the class at a time though), and got to handle a Doctor Who lesson on my own. The kids really seem to like it, and they didn't give me too much trouble which was good.

I got back from Chambéry Sunday night after spending an amazing weekend with one of my old French buddies from CMU who is an assistant over there. Basically, all I can say is MOUNTAINS. I think I need to move somewhere with mountains.

I spent all of Thursday on the train and got into town just before dinner time. Megan picked me up at the station and we went back to her place for dinner. We spent Thursday night catching up as she showed me around town a little bit (though the Christmas lights weren't on -- sad). We ended up actually talking until like 4 in the morning, and it was just the greatest thing. I forgot how fun it can be to interact with other human beings, haha!

On Friday, Megan had to work, so I headed off to Annecy (on Megan's recommendation that it was "the cutest city ever") and spent the day wandering around. (Annecy is, in fact, probably the cutest city ever.) I also discovered the most amazing food in the history of food -- the hot dog in a baguette (with mayonnaise). That night, Megan and I got pizza and watched a movie. We even made it to bed nice and early (at 3am)!

The architecture in Annecy was super charming

La pièce de résistance in Annecy -- the lake and mountians

Selfie!

Building in the middle of the canal (on a tiny little (manmade?) island)

On the little island

On Saturday, Megan showed me around the market in Chambéry. I was SUPER tempted to buy some mimosa, and I also got to pet a kitten (which was so awesome; I miss my cats). Then we decided to head over to Grenoble.

We packed up some snacks to take with us on the train -- some aged goat cheese that I had bought in Chambéry (baguette obligatory), some pretzels, and some cookies. Once in Grenoble, we wandered around for a while. We were disappointed that the cable cars that went up to the Bastille weren't working (annual closure for the month of January), so we kind of gave up on that for a bit.

Eventually, we decided to stop for coffee to look over our map and make a plan. And that's when we decided to climb a mountain.

Since the cable cars weren't working, we would have to take the trails up to the Bastille. Quickly, before we changed our minds, we headed out across the river to the start of the trails.

We hiked 1.6 miles (starting at an elevation of approximately 212m and ending up at about 498m). We were passed by runners, bikers, families with small children (you name it). Most often, we were passed by these people twice -- once as they passed us on their way up, once as they passed us on their way down (and we were still on our way up). Basically, I'm in horrible shape, so we had to stop often (you know, to admire the view and also not die) and it took us a bit longer than everyone else. Neither of us thought we were actually going to make it to the top (and if I'd have been by myself, I probably wouldn't have), but we did.

View of La Bastille from the city

Mountains

The start of the trek up the mountain

almost there (88m of altitude to go!)

The view from near the top

At the very top of La Bastille

Taking a quick break to not die

I know it's a pretty baby mountain that we climbed, but it felt like a huge accomplishment. The last time I climbed something even remotely this big was Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh (and Arthur's Seat is about half the height of the Bastille).

Anyway, after about an hour and a half of lying to my legs ("these are the last stairs", "we're almost done", "we're almost there"), we finally made it all the way back down the mountain where we headed for the train station and back to Chambéry for the night where we watched a movie and ate the cupcakes we had bought earlier in the day.

Today was another train day. There was even a delay, so that I missed my connecting train in Paris. It worked out though -- they got me onto the next train, and I had four whole seats to myself for the 4.5 hour ride home.

Teaching is going really well. I feel like I'm starting to hit my stride and am more confident with my students. I'm also starting to learn some of the signs that the teacher's use to help their students with grammar. Next week I'll be taking a group of 6th graders by myself on Wednesday to work with them more intensively, and hopefully my one professor will be back so we can continue with Doctor Who like normal.

Tomorrow I'm leaving for Barcelona for the weekend, so I'm super excited about that.

(I will add more photos when my computer has decided that it's done being a butthead and will actually upload pictures without taking a million years and also erroring on half of them.)

Professor Katherine is at it again!

So this week I had two exams--one in civilization, one in grammar. Civilization was pretty easy (got my grade back already--18/20!). Grammar was....not so easy. I'll get my results tomorrow, but I'm really expecting the worst. Oh well. I tried.

Wednesday (after the horrific grammar exam), Angela and I went to see The Hunger Games! Oh my goodness. It was so good. Granted, I'm not terribly critical of movies, but still. I enjoyed it immensely (and got to see it 2 days before everyone in the US!). After The Hunger Games, we were hungry (badum-ch!) so we headed out to the Rue de Borgogne for some food. We found a cute little place that offered tex mex, so I was all over that. Except their "tex mex platter" consisted of 4 onion rings, 4 things I thought were onion rings, but were actually donut-y, 2 chicken wings, 2 chicken nuggets, french fries, salad, and a couple teeny weeny crab cake things. Oh, with chips and guacamole. ....Not exactly "tex mex". But poor Angela decided to go with something she didn't know--well, turns out it was intestines. And it was disgusting. I honestly tried to take a bite just to try it, and it smelled so bad that I knew that there was NO way that it was going in my mouth. So, that was Wednesday's adventure--Hunger Games, "tex mex", and intestines.

Friday I had another intervention at the local middle school. So I ate lunch with the teachers again, then went and observed a French class just to kind of see how it worked. Then for the last two hours, I had two groups of students (mostly the same kids as last week, with a couple additions) and I got to try to get them to talk for an hour each.

The first group of students is pretty great. I had prepared a game that I had played in high school when learning French, and just reversed it into English. Essentially, I picked about 30 words (there were between 12 and 15 students in each group) and wrote them on little slips of paper. The students then had to come up in front of the class, one by one, pick a word and explain that word (in English) so that the rest of the class could guess. They were really good sports, and did extremely well. I know how hard it was when I was first learning French, so I imagine it was similar for them.

Then, I had prepared a couple theater games. One of them was suggested by a friend from Oakland (hi, Jessica!) and it's called "What Are You Doing?". Essentially, player one stands up in front of the class and mimes an action (like brushing your teeth). Player two comes up to player one and asks "What are you doing?". Player one responds with an action other than the one he/she is actually doing ("I'm brushing my hair"). Player one then leaves while player two begins miming the action that player one said (brushing their hair). And it continues. It took them a while to catch on. The first half of the class would make up their own action to mime instead of taking the suggested one, but eventually they got it. We ended up going through the whole class twice because they really liked doing it, but then they said they were out of ideas for things to do. It was such a blast! We were all laughing and having a really good time.

Then the second group came in. They went through the description game pretty fast. Same with "What Are You Doing?". They caught on right away, but only wanted to play it once. So then I taught them a game called "Questions". If you've seen Whose Line Is It Anyway, you probably know this game. Essentially, you have to interact entirely in questions. Example:

P1: When is your birthday?
P2: Why do you want to know?
P1: What, is it a secret?

Now, this game is hard for even native speakers of the language. So I wasn't terribly harsh in judging. A lot of the game with the students went like this:

P1: What's your favorite color?
P2: Blue, and you?
P1: What's your favorite food?
P2: Pizza, and you?

But I was just happy that they were talking. And I think most of them enjoyed that, even though I'm sure they found it super difficult.

So that was that. It'll be a couple weeks before I'm back at the school since I have theatre most Fridays.

Saturday was SO beautiful out. Maddie, Angela and I all went out shopping. I got hit on by some creepers (oy), but overall it was pretty fun. After getting back from Kiabi (clothing store just outside of town), Angela and I were parched, so we got a smoothie in the mall before heading home to change before dinner. Oh my goodness, that had to have been the best smoothie I've ever had. It was passion fruit, mango, and orange. Mmmm. Maybe I was just thirsty and hot, but it was perfect, and just what I needed.

So after that, I headed home to change before dinner (so as to avoid more creepers). I must have changed my outfit twenty times. Sometimes it's hard figuring out what to wear! In any case, Maddie, Angela and I met up again and headed over to the Rue de Borgogne. Angela led us to this nice little French restaurant and it was so nice out we even ate outside.

In terms of food: I had a tatin au tomates avec du crème mozzarelle. Essentially, this was a little pastry with tomatoes on top smothered in a creamy mozzarella sauce. This also came with a salad. After that, I had tartiflette--a traditional French dish that is basically scalloped potatoes with ham, smothered in cheese. It was delicious. SO good. For dessert, I had a fondant au chocolat. This is a little chocolate cake, filled with melted chocolate, topped with vanilla ice cream. I could just eat here forever.

After dinner, we decided to head over to a bar and have (another) drink (we shared a bottle of wine and had an aperitif before dinner). I had a Guinness (woo!). It was really good. So pretty much we just sat around outside and chatted. All in all, a very successful day.

Today it was gorgeous outside, so I ate lunch with my family on their patio outside, then sat with my host mom, my host dad, and the puppy outside and read for a while. Then I got to Skype with my parents, then I went back outside and read, played Uno with my host mom and Agathe, and then we ate dinner outside. Needless to say, I am sunburned. But oh well. It was just a gorgeous and relaxing day.

But back to school tomorrow--only three weeks left!