Bachelorette fun

I guess this post isn't really anything exciting without accompanying photos, but you're all going to have to wait. I still haven't unpacked from the weekend (i.e. laundry) and need to do so shortly along with uploading photos. Meghan, I promise I'll get them to you soon :)

But let's talk about the near train wreck that almost occurred on Saturday night:

After a normal dinner -- complete with too much food causing nearly three of us to want to vomit -- we piled into my car at 9:30 p.m. with the intent of heading to Fremont for some line dancin'! On the way, several members inside of my vehicle have to fight off the urge to doze off, as it was already 10 p.m. When I get to the gas station, this creepy man in an RV is looming really closely to our proximity and kind of creeping out everyone else. I attempt three times to fuel up, but my card will not be accepted and of course, I forgot my actual credit card and only had the ATM. So I jump into the driver's seat and back into the next pump as creepy man next door is saying something awkward and scary. Long story short, attempt #3 fails and I have to go to the window for some help. Turns out the man who works at the gas station is mildly mentally unstable -- to put it nicely. He did not understand that I wasn't getting gas out of the pump and then did not understand that I wanted to pay manually to do so.

10:30 p.m. we're on the road and getting ready to enter the Saddle Rack. Except when we arrive, Laura realizes that she doesn't have her identification, kind of crucial when entering a bar. Expecting the worst and hoping for the best, we make our way towards the queue. One bouncer checks me, then proceeds to question Laura. She pours her little heart out, saying we're a bachelorette party and she doesn't have her ID and we can't go all the way back to Pleasanton to get it. He sends her off to the next bouncer who proceeds to have her empty out her massive purse and see what she's got. A bandaid, highlighter, pen, feminine products and international student card. Grudgingly he let us in....

And that was just the beginning. Since Laura forgot her wallet, she also forgot her MONEY. So I was on door duty covering most of the girls' entry fees. Meaning that my bills were also winding down. After crossing the threshold into the bar, Laura and I agreed that we definitely deserved something to drink after all of this mayhem. So we go to order two bottles of beer, which one bartender says should be about $8. Between the two of us, Laura and I had $9 so that was (painfully) sufficient for a tip included. We go back and ask if anyone else wants anything, then order two beers from a female bartender.... who tells me it's going to be $10.50. At this point, I sort of freak out because neither of us has the extra two dollars so someone else in the party spots me and I give her a measly 50 cent tip. Then we run away from the bar area, far, far away.

Thinking it can't possibly get any worse, we take our seats at a small table when a 75-year old toothless man comes by and asks two girls in our party if they want to dance. Laura nudges them to go and when they still refuse, he of course asks Laura. Looking at me she's like, "what the heck?" and goes off to dance with him. They waltz across the line dancing floor for a bit and then he extends his second hand out to me and twirls the two of us for about five minutes. It was awkward and painful and fun.

At least we got some smiles out of the night :)

MENTEUR!!!

I'm in a bit of a little bind here. Ok, maybe two little binds.

One of them concerns my Spring Break. THIS LYING PIECE OF S--- WEBSITE notified me that the vacation would be from April 5 to April 20. Bear in mind it is the official ministry of education's website. However, I guess this is sort of my problem for not checking in with each of my individual schools.

Apparently schools who are only in session four days a week (that'd be both of mine, since I get Wednesdays off) don't actually start their vacations until April 9. Well that's all good and fine, but I've already booked my flight for Germany leaving on April 7. So I'm going to have to ditch two days of school. Only the second time I've done so. However, I'm being smart here and am thinking up a worksheet to give the teachers to occupy the students' 30-45 minutes that would normally be spent with me.

The other bind is more of a deliberately self-imposed one. Temptation is luring me towards missing more school. You see, I think part of the reason we have two extra days of school to attend in April is due to the fact that we get so many random days off in May! Normally, I don't have to work Wednesdays. For some reason, we get May 8th off, which is a Thursday. At first I thought about doing something fun, but I'd have to work Friday, May 9th anyhow. But I'm tempted to play some hookie because we ALSO get off Monday, May 12th.

In theory, if I ditch just one day of school -- May 9th -- I'd be free from Tuesday afternoon until the following Monday night. Ummmm, vacation anyone?

It might be important to mention that I'm already breaking my contract 2.5 weeks early so I can make my sister's graduation ceremony at UCSB on June 14th....

What are they going to do, fire me?!

Home is where the heart is

...So cliché, yet soon, my heart will be (partially) in France. The prospect of my dad moving out here to start up his new job in less than one month and coming for a visit in one week is a very, very exciting one! With that comes more visits from my other family members.

Here's a map of where he'll be living, that's Geneva, Switzerland to the northeast and Lyon, France to the west. Hope you bring some warm clothes, Dad :-)

Although he'll be about 5 hours northeast of me by car and 7 by train, it just opens so many more doors! He and I can travel to fun places one weekend a month. He can make his way down here and pick me up to visit our family and family friends near Toulon. I can go out there and experience life on the French/Swiss border! And did I mention I'll get to see my family on multiple occasions during the next seven months?!

Obviously, you can tell I'm getting pretty homesick. Now that the excitement of travel has certainly dwindled and even come to a lull, I'm left dreaming about the next school vacation in about a month and a half.

Don't get me wrong, everything here is still fun and different, but I'm starting to get into a routine that doesn't quite meet the expectations I originally had for France. But this weekend does hold the promise of meeting some local French boys. I'm meeting Ludo to go out on Saturday night, and perhaps I'll be having dinner with Sarah and her neighbor's friends just before that. If I can get into a groove and begin speaking French more frequently than I hardly am doing now, I'll start to feel better about things. Actually going back to teaching has helped me a little because it's forcing me to speak French since the little ones don't understand much English at all. It's better (as far as learning the language is concerned) than being on vacation with other Americans speaking only English together!

Oh and one thing I really missed about home was Grey's Anatomy! I can't watch it on ABC.com here, because those bastards have blocked free access for anyone outside of the U.S. But suddenly it dawned on me last night to full-out illegally download episodes through a file-sharing service. Like we used to do in the dorms when we missed out on our favorite shows. And it actually worked!! I've got the first three episodes of the new season on my computer and tonight ABC is airing Episode No. 6... so I'm not too far behind! Plus, I'm sticking it to the man (I've never said that and being a moderate-conservative, never really wanted to until right now... must be the liberal European sentiment winning me over) by illegally downloading a show they refuse to let me watch for free online. If I was back at home or still in college, I could watch on ABC.com to my little heart's content, so they're not really losing out on a future customer. I have every intention of legitimately watching once I return home.

Anyways, I'm hoping I made the right decision to be here for nine months.

...Did I do the right thing to sign up for the nine-month program instead of seven? Most of my friends leave in May, but I'll still be around after. Hopefully by then I'll be much more accustomed to living by then and already have friends here to keep me busy! So far I'm content, it just is a lot of work to go from day-to-day here!

Stupid Foreign Girl

...is what the two guys who robbed me must still be thinking right now.

As well as all the teachers whose classes I come into. And my roommate. And the people who work at SFR and sold me a second phone in two weeks.

Either way, yesterday was quite possibly my worst day here. While using the wireless Internet at McDonald's and talking to my mom on Skype, two men kept trying to sell me newspapers and shoved them in my face and kept saying things to me in an accent I couldn't understand. I tried to ignore them because if I grabbed the paper, they'd start asking for money. So I put my arm over my backpack -- luckily, I just put my wallet AND PASSPORT in it two seconds earlier -- and tried to make it really obvious I was having a conversation in English with someone else. The first continued to throw the paper in my face and reached for me, so I took it and violently shoved it back at him. That was probably my mistake right there. If I hadn't been so rude, perhaps I'd still have a phone.

After he left, another man came and did the same thing with the other guy standing near the door. It wasn't until I went to look for my phone to see what time Sarah was coming that I realized they'd swiped it and were no longer in the building. And then I realized my phone was at the end of the table and not in my bag before they approached me, so it very quickly and discreetly could have been stolen. Of course they used the exterior stairwell, so no one ever saw them. Except for two boys, who described them as speaking like this, "ba ba la ba ba," and wearing a turban. That they were not, but you get the idea.

Then my stomach started churning and I was freaking out. When Sarah finally arrived I was totally frazzled and couldn't pay attention to anything. And I feel so bad, because as we were leaving, another man of North African descent was standing near our table and I was worried he'd do something to us. Actually he was just waiting for the outlet, but of course now I'm going to be a little wary of everyone. Later when I went home, I couldn't eat, had the worst stomach ache I've had in a long time, and tossed and turned for a few minutes in bed. Then I took some Tylenol PM and passed the F out.

It was a good thing and a bad thing at once. Yeah I probably lost about 90 Euros during the theft, but I've learned a VERY important lesson. No more keeping anything out of my bag or in reachable distance to anyone else. I'm always going to have all my belongings very close to me.

Second lesson, never use public wi-fi ports again! Luckily I finally got my computer to work on our internet network here, so that should NEVER again be a problem.

It's not the end of the world. I have a cooler new phone. I wasn't hurt at all. I'm so lucky that I just put my wallet away and my credit cards, money, PASSPORT, etc. are still intact and with me.

Worse things could have befallen me that day. And I'm still alive to tell the story. Tomorrow I'll talk about my first and second days of teaching, because this is about all I have the energy to share for now.

Paris is a SUBURB of Berlin...

I'm going to have to be very careful with my pronunciation here!

Last night I was trying to explain to Karina that next week's transport strikes are the result of Sarkosy's decision to either raise or lower the retirement age in the train industry -- I couldn't remember which.

She was initially shocked because apparently I said he wanted to fuck the age of retirement... same thing I guess.

My task while I'm here is to take command of the pronunication differences between "baiser" and "baisser" -- the former being the vulgar of the two and the latter being "to lower."

Luckily I get a break from everything for the "middle of the week off" Wednesday ritual. And no more observations, YAY! The next time I'm in a classroom, I'll be doing the (very repetitive and excruciatingly slow) teaching. We get two more days to play in Nice -- or attend more orientations, whichever wording you prefer -- bon week-end and then hello teaching on Monday!

Also, I've made a list of where I'd like to travel during my time in Europe... If anyone would like to join at anytime, please email me!!

My vacations are as follows:
Saturday, October 27 - Thursday, November 8
Saturday, December 22 - Monday, January 7
Saturday, February 9 - Monday, February 25
Saturday, April 5 - Monday, April 21
End of the school year: Thursday, July 3

Now where I'd like to go:
Belgium, Czech Republic (Prague), Denmark, Egypt, Finland, Germany, Greece (Islands!!), Ireland, Italy (Cinque Terra, Rome, Venice), England, Luxembourg, Monaco, Morocco, Netherlands (Amsterdam, Rotterdam), Portugal, Russia, Scotland, Spain (Barcelona, Madrid), Switzerland (Genève, Zurich)

Places in France:
Aix-en-Provence, Bordeaux, Brest, Bretagne, Cannes, Champagne, Grasse, Grenoble, Lyon, Normandie, Paris, Toulon, Vence

Fleurs du mal

Le Guignon

Pour soulever un poids si lourd,
Sisyphe, il faudrait ton courage!
Bien qu'on ait du coeur à l'ouvrage,
L'Art est long et le Temps est court.

Loin des sépultures célèbres,
Vers un cimetière isolé,
Mon coeur, comme un tambour voilé,
Va battant des marches funèbres.

— Maint joyau dort enseveli
Dans les ténèbres et l'oubli,
Bien loin des pioches et des sondes;

Mainte fleur épanche à regret
Son parfum doux comme un secret
Dans les solitudes profondes.

— Charles Baudelaire