« Cette sacrée neige de merde! » (approximately: "This f'ing snow!")

Since I last wrote, I went to Barcelona (again) for the weekend to see Fall Out Boy in concert. I was really only there for one day, so I honestly just walked around and then went to the beach. Completely underestimated how cold it would be, but I did put on my bikini and walk in the water, even if only for a few minutes. I was going to go out for Carnivale with the hostel -- but drinks were served at 9:30pm, and by 12:30(am) there was still no sign of actually leaving to hit up 3 different clubs. At that point, I gave up and just went to bed.

Proof that I am actually wearing a bikini (kind of)

I put my vest on because it was a bit chilly

I ordered a beer at lunch -- just wanted a little one; this glass was the size of my face

The concert was amazing. I love Fall Out Boy and they're awesome live. It was also general admission, so I didn't have to wait like a shark for tickets to go on sale, pay like $800,000,000 for a pit ticket and then get in line at the butt-crack of dawn to actually get anywhere close to the stage. It was extremely chill. I arrived about an hour before doors opened, milled around while the opening act performed (The Pretty Reckless -- not too impressive) and then got about 4 people back from barricade near the left side of the stage (where Joe stands) while they were setting up the stage between acts.

The music was great, the atmosphere was incredible, and I'm like 99% certain that Pete smiled at me because I was the only one who didn't whip out my camera the second he came over to our side of the stage. All-in-all absolutely wonderful. I had like 3 big re-centerings during the February vacation: Notre Dame, being home, and this concert. Maybe that seems silly, but their music, especially their latest record (Save Rock & Roll) has really meant a lot to me. So it was a really great way to re-focus for these last couple months here in France.

Joe Trohman -- actually an angel

Pete Wentz

Patrick moved around so much that it was hard to get a shot of him that wasn't blurry

Actual angel Andy Hurley during his sick drum solo

Patrick finally standing sort of still

When I got back to Dax it was business as usual. My classes are going well, though two of my teachers are still out sick. One is going to be out for the rest of the year and they're still trying to find a replacement (in the meantime, we're communicating by email so that I can continue working with the students), and the other is due back next week. My high school classes are starting a unit on Nelson Mandela, so on Thursday I went with them to the cinema as a chaperone to see the movie Mandela. It was really an excellent movie and a good way to ease myself back into working at the high school since I haven't seen these students since before December break.

Yesterday, the Résidence organized a trip to La Pierre St. Martin, a ski resort in the Pyrenées, so I attempted skiing for the very first time in my life. Overall, the trip was really awesome. There were 5 of us residents (Mathieu, Thomas, Esteban, Adriano, and me), and one of the workers (Jacques, who is an experienced skier). Throughout the day, the ambiance was just really nice. Mathieu (the only one I had met before) made sure to include me in their conversations and help me out when I needed it (this generally involved holding my hand so I didn't trip and fall down stairs in my ski boots or slip on ice).

For Esteban, Adriano, and I, it was our very first time skiing. Jacques took us to the bunny hill and set us to work («first you must learn to walk with the skis on»). He then left for a while while we tried to get accustomed to our new ski-feet. We were all doing pretty well until Adriano started sliding backwards down a little slope, I fell over trying to help him out, and then Esteban slid down the same slope Adriano did when he came over to figure out what we were doing. Something was wrong with my skis -- the clamps that held the boots in place (and subsequently released them) were WAY too tight, so I couldn't undo them by myself.

By the time Jacques came back, I had resigned myself to sitting in the snow (« Non, ça va; je suis bon comme ça. » "Nah, I'm good.") and Esteban & Adriano were stuck against the fence nearby cursing the snow (« Cette sacrée neige de merde! »). But we were generally all laughing and in good spirits. Jacques helped me undo my skis (it was then that I realized that there was actually something wrong with my skis -- I wasn't just a weakling).

First time ever in the mountains

The "I'm not sure what I've gotten myself into" face

Selfie on the ground (Adriano & Esteban are behind me, stuck against the fence)

With all 3 of us up, on our ski-feet, and away from the little slope, Jacques taught us how to crab walk up the hill so that we wouldn't slide down. (I am very good at the uphill crab walk.) Then he brought us to a little slope (baby, baby slope) and told us to lean forward so that we would slide. Esteban managed it first, with me following. Jacques said we'd stop by ourselves -- and I did. On my butt. Once again, I needed rescuing because of my too-grippy skis.

Esteban & Adriano took a smoke break (so French, haha) so Jacques worked with me on stopping. If there's one thing I can do, it's stop. Until my stops accidentally turned into turns, which then turned into falls because I kept overthinking it. Esteban & Adriano came back and Jacques worked with them too. Finally, it was close to lunch time, and my not-quite-so-fluent French betrayed me. What I understood was that it was lunch time and "We're tired of walking, so we're going to take the rolling carpet to the top of the hill". I assumed that lunch was at the top of the hill, so I was all for the rolling carpet even though it didn't really seem that safe to me.

During our first break

The boys roughhousing

The boys, from left: Thomas, Mathieu, Esteban, Adriano

Attempted group selfie, but Thomas cut out Esteban

We all get on the carpet (Jacques first, then Esteban, then Adriano, then me, with quite a few people in between all of us). But the moment I slid onto the carpet, I lost my balance. Jacques had quickly barked out instructions ("Knees [something I didn't understand], knees [something else I didn't understand], face forward, don't look around") but I didn't get a chance to clarify. In any case, I lost my balance, beefed it, and almost took out two children (one in front of me, one behind). Luckily, there is an emergency stop button on the carpet.

An attendant helped me off the carpet, and (because I was now super nervous about trying to get back on it) I asked if I could just walk up the hill (to where I thought lunch was waiting). So I walk up the hill (exhausted when I get there, also having passed Adriano, beating him to the top), where I find that it's just a hill -- to get out (and to lunch) you have to ski down. At this point, having spent more time on the ground than upright in my skis, I decided to walk back down the hill and wait for the others to ski down (which took a while -- none of us were very good).

With my feet aching in the boots all during lunch, I decided to call it quits. The boys all headed back either to the actual slopes or the bunny hill, and I decided to grab a bottle of water and just enjoy the view. It was my first time actually being in the mountains, after all.

All-in-all, it was a fantastic day and we were all exhausted for the car ride home and slept most of the way. When we got back, Jacques offered to cook us dinner, so we also got dinner included, which was nice.

Kid sleeping in a sled -- I could've used a nap too, kid

Now I'm just gearing up for these final few weeks -- Vanessa is coming to Paris during the first week of April vacation and my friend Melissa and I just booked our tickets to Cardiff for the second week of vacation. I'm watching airfares like a hawk trying to get my flight home booked, and I just booked a weekend in Carcassonne -- something I'm super excited about because it's one of the UNESCO sites I've most wanted to visit for a few years now.

I'm hoping to get to Arles as well, to visit the town and countryside that inspired Van Gogh so much, but it's looking doubtful due to lack of affordable accommodations for a solo traveler. And I've still got to plan my vacation for May -- I'm starting to lean toward Istanbul and Greece, but I need to check on prices for everything. I remain open to suggestions.

I've also started hearing back from grad schools, so I'm working on making my choice about where I'll be next year (still waiting to hear from a couple places as well). So overall, life is getting to be pretty exciting, even though my time here in France is coming swiftly to an end. I can't believe I have to start thinking about closing my bank account, turning off my wifi, and all that end-of-the-year stuff. (It feels like I *just* got the wifi working!!)

Premature nostalgia hits again, but I'm actually going to miss this apartment. I've gotten so used to the space and to the city. And now that the nice weather is back (HALLELUJAH!) it's hard to imagine leaving it for more than a quick vacation. Oh well, back to teaching tomorrow. :)

Until next time, DFTBA.

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!