ESPANYA – PT 2

It is only Tuesday afternoon and I already know one thing: by Thursday morning I will have taught one class all week. Why, might you ask? Here’s the scoop:

Yesterday I got to come to school later than usual because my 10 o’clock class won’t be around for a few weeks. This meant I got to sleep in (yes!) and take a train at around 11:30 to make my 1 o’clock. Oddly enough, this very train (which, may I remind you, I would not have taken had I had my normal schedule) just happened to have some electrical cables fall on in while it was rolling along. The noise from the cables banging on the side and roof of the train was slightly frightening, but otherwise we were fine. However, it stopped a mile away from my train station and we sat around for another 2 hours while the electricians checked it out. Then they had us get out of the train and walk down the tracks a hundred yards where a bus was waiting to bring us where we needed to go. So, of the four classes I have normally on Monday, one was cancelled ahead of time, two were cancelled while I was watching Scrubs in the cold train, and I made it to one.

Today: student/parent strike. Okay so it’s not a strike in the sense that they aren’t the ones working, but needless to say none of the high school kids are here in protest to some changes they are making to the schools. As teachers, we get to go to the empty classrooms, take attendance (or lack thereof), and hang out until it is time for us to leave. My day hasn’t ended yet and therefore I, in theory, don’t know if any students will show or not. However, I can say confidently that I will have none of my four classes.

The explanation for tomorrow is a little less exciting: my contact teacher finally agreed to change my schedule slightly so that instead of seeing one class every wednesday I see two classes every other wednesday. Tomorrow is the off day.

All in all that makes the record 1 for 8 in three days. Now, back to the Spain trip before I forget it all…

There are three awesome things about Granada.

Since I love food, the first and possibly best part of the town is the free tapas. There is an actual law in the city that requires bars to provide free tapas with every drink you order. What this means is you can have dinner (if you like eating lots of fried finger food for dinner, that is) and drinks for the price of the drinks. At one place we got to our fourth round of drinks and passed up the free tapas because we were already full… Needless to say the guy serving us (the owner I think) was severely taken aback and brought us a plate of olives anyway. Then when we were leaving he gave us all shots of some sugary liqueur. He didn’t speak a word of English but I understood when he pointed to the shots and said “para nosotros” (from us). Then I was proud of myself because when we asked him for a picture and he thought we meant of just us, I was able to pull out “no, con tigo!” (no, with you!). Needless to say we left there happy and full.

The second awesome part of Granada was the walking tour we took with some British ex-pat. He knew alot about the city so we ended up learning alot about it. The older area is all on hills so there are lots of neat little winding roads and passageways all the way up. If you go far enough north and up the big hill you eventually get to the caves, where houses are literally built into the side. Back in the day, and to some extent now, it was gypsies who inhabited these wierd hybrid homes. However, since the 60′s there are apparently alot of hippies who live there now in coexistence with the few gypsies that are left. Anyway our tour guide lived right next to the caves so he took us up there after the tour and showed us where to go.

Finally, the third awesome part of Granada is the most popular tourist attraction in all of Spain: the Alhambra. Basically it is an old Moorish palace/fortress built in the 14th century which was eventually repurposed as a Christian palace. For more historical information just go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Hambra

Anyway, the whole thing is on top of another big hill across the valley from the caves and can be seen pretty well from most open parts of the city. The walk up that hill is pretty intense, and the path we took around the walls of the fortress made me feel like we were in Middle Earth. Needless to say I just had to whistle the Lord of the Rings theme while walking up.

That’s all for now. Next time: from Granada to Sevilla.

Over and out.

ESPANYA – PT 1

ESPANYA!

So… It’s back to the daily grind for me. Last week was the BAC Blanc for 1ères and Terminales (Juniors and Seniors basically). What this means is these students were taking practice tests for the BAC (the final exam to receive your diploma) and some missed my classes because of it. OF COURSE, not a single person from the school informed me about it or what classes wouldn’t show up. Monday there was one that didn’t show, and Tuesday I had another class that didn’t come. Thank god I asked someone about the one Tuesday! Needless to say, I wasn’t excited to return and get back to work, because I had what may have been the best vacation/trip of my life so far.

Spain… Jesus, where on earth to begin? I can tell already this is going to be way too long to put in one post (both for my sanity as well as any readers’). To preface it all, I would love to add pictures into the post but it is not worth the hassle wordpress creates for me.

Days 1 and 2 – Malaga (MY BIRTHDAY!)

The trip started at Gare Lille-Flandres, one of the two train stations in Lille. Even on my way there I experienced something that made me chuckle for the next five minutes. In the tunnel from the metro to the train station there are posters advertising any number of things. This morning, there was a poster with a dog on it… and in real life an old man staring at it talking to the dog. From the minute I turned the corner and saw the man until the moment he was out of view, this guy was just standing there talking to the poster. God only knows how long he must have been there before or after.

We had our rendez-vous at the station and boarded the train – me, Rebecca, Stephanie, Megan, Mary, Katherine, Laura Dixon and Guillaume (the French boyfriend). Megan and Mary, bless their hearts, brought a bottle of champagne to celebrate my birthday, and we enjoyed it on the train at 10:30 in the morning. It put a smile on my face.

The flight was from Charleroi (about an hour south of Brussels), which is coincidentally the crappiest town in Europe due to its weather, industrial sprawl, and crime (I think). While waiting for our flight in the airport, we played a lot of the card game Egyptian Ratscrew, which became a reoccurring activity during our downtime in Spain.

We got to Malaga and took the bus into town, arriving around 9 or so at night. It was quite exciting at first, as Carnaval was going on. There people everywhere, dressed up, partying and making noise in the streets.  Trying to get our bearings, we walked about 25 minutes in one direction (most of which was in a beautiful park, even if it was at night), only to find out we had to go back the other way for the same amount of time. Although it was way out of our way, I could have walked all night through that town- it was so beautiful and warm!

After checking into our hostel and dropping off our stuff, we went out to find a place to eat. We ended up at a delicious tapas restaurant called Pepa y Pepe where we met Lina and Laura, who had coincidentally planned a trip to Malaga and Granada for the same dates. It was really nice to have all of my best friends from Lille together for my birthday. I had a great time.

By the way, Tapas, if you didn’t know, is a traditional Spanish style of eating where everyone shares a bunch of what I can only describe as mostly deep-fried appetizers… but absolutely delicious deep-fried appetizers. For instance, we ordered a succulent plate of deep-fried chorizo, some tasty chicken wings, deep-fried cucumber with honey, fried seafoods, and croquetas (deep-fried balls of mashed potatoes and cheese… OMG YUM!), just to name a few.

On our way back to the hostel we had a huge confetti fight with the piles of confetti spread about the roads. Then we found a little bar right next to the hostel where we met some very interesting Spanish characters. Keep in mind it was a Sunday, not necessarily a huge bar night, although our new Spanish friends wanted us to go salsa dancing with them. Luckily, we declined and retired in our beds. The next day there was confetti everywhere in our hostel as well as every subsequent hostel we stayed in, all remains of my birthday night.

The next day we had to take a bus to Granada in the afternoon, but we got up early in order to explore the city a little bit. Malaga isn’t too large and outside the center area there isn’t much to see, but it beautiful, especially the view from the beach. Although the sand is dark and not as nice as at home, the view of the ocean and mountains together in the distance was inspiring. Other than the beach, one aspect of Andalusia (the southern region of the country) that really caught my attention was the abundance of orange trees everywhere. The fruits are just so vibrantly colorful!

At the bus station everyone grabbed a kebab for the road (though mine was finished before we even got on) and we took off at 3 o’clock. All of the rolling hills and mountains of the Spanish countryside made the hour and a half go by quickly as we headed into Granada…

(more coming soon)

p.s. I have to give a shout out to Linda, Rebecca’s mother, who apparently reads this (one of probably four people). Hello, Linda, and thanks for reading! You’ve raised your daughter well!

Weekend Accomplished

The prediction was correct: this weekend lived up to its promise.

Thursday after class (3 for 4 classes showed by the way) I went with Cousin and Greg to play billiards/pool. Afterwards Greg and I went with his cousin and a couple friends to one of their apartments. We hung out and played a game called caps. You set the bottle cap upside down on top of your beer bottle and the objective is to take another cap and throw it at the other people’s bottles to knock off their caps.

Having slept on the floor that night I got almost no sleep. So, Friday I napped all day until the early evening. After waking up I went to Rebecca and Stephanie’s to plan our grand trip to… SPAIN! In addition to us three, Laura Dixon, Guillaume, Megan, Mary, and Catherine are all going. Our itinerary is quite ambitious: one night in Malaga (on my birthday!), 2 in Granada, 3 in Seville, and 5 in Barcelona. Every hostel we have found so far costs less than 15 Euros/night, so we should have plenty of money to go out! Anyway, we all sat around with our laptops researching hostels and booking them.

Saturday was another relaxing day, crazy night. First I went to Megan and Mary’s and hung out with them and Liana and Chelsea from Valenciennes. Then, after dinner, we went to a party at some British assistants’ apartment. All of the assistants from the area (okay, not ALL, but a lot) were there, and it was a blast. The best part was the dance party. We danced to lots of different music, but most notably were the Spice Girls. Now, I enjoy the Spice Girls, but I had never listened to them with real British girls. Let me just say that they know EVERY word of EVERY song. I was, of course, the only male able to enunciate more than three words.

Sunday was once again proof that I’m becoming nocturnal. I hung out, took a nap, and woke up just in time for dinner. Lina cooked a delicious Chicken Soup from scratch and then we watched Triple X, the worst action movie ever made.

When I started this blog I figured I would stray from the boring life recaps that I have done the past couple of entries. I am going to try very hard to stop doing this as often. Perhaps at some point I will do enough deep thinking to write an interesting blog…

On a separate note, I am completely oblivious as to how I can actually put pictures in my entries! Urgh.

Strike!

(This post should really be dated Thursday, January 21 @ 2:00 p.m.)

Yup! Those darn French teachers are at it again! They are on strike to stop new reforms that the Minister of Education wants to implement. Basically it comes down to the same-old same-old: downsizing (or reduncancies if we are in the British version of The Office), more hours and responsibility without higher pay, a more complicated system, etc.
What this means for me is that I get to come to work like normal and wait to see if my students come or not… again. Since most teachers aren’t here (some are and, unfortunately, lots of English teachers still come), many students and parents figure it isn’t worth showing up at school to waste their time. As an assistant I am not part of the union, so I don’t have the same rights as the teachers. However, unlike the students, I will get my pay docked if I don’t show up. Basically we assistants are the bottomfeeders of the French school system.

So far I’ve had one out of two classes show up and I won’t know until 4 o’clock if the other two will come.

Since my last post life has been mostly like normal: work Monday through Thursday, go out with friends Friday and Saturday, and relax and possibly do something with the roommates. For instance, last weekend went as follows:

Thursday night, Benoit, Lina, and I went to an Irish pub (McEwan’s) with a few of our American and French friends. The two other assistants, Laura Dixon and Rebecca came with their boyfriends, Guillaume (Laura’s French boyfriend) and Tom (Rebecca’s American boyfriend visiting for a couple weeks). When we got back home, Lina and I were in the mood to dance, so we cranked up some Black Eyed Peas and went to town.

Friday night, Lina, Laura Gaertner—a different one, also an assistant—and I took a trip to Valenciennes, the city where I almost decided to live. We hung out at Laura Randall’s apartment (yes, I know, way too many Lauras in the vicinity) with a large number of other assistants from Valenciennes. I was the only guy, except for Pablo, a Spanish assistant from Chile. We had a lot of good discussions over some bottles of wine, then took off to a bar, Le Paradis, which was packed with people dancing to a strange compilation of music from the 80s and the present. A couple of the Valenciennes assistants, Chelsea and Liana were nice enough to let me sleep on their couch for the night. The next morning Laura Randall and Rose came over and the five of us watched Arrested Development for a couple hours before I took the train back to Lille.

Saturday night, Benoit, Lina, Laura and I went to a concert of a band from San Francisco, Thao with the Get Down Stay Down. It took place in a restaurant/venue on a boat in the river which runs through Lille. In addition, since Lina knows the band from her time in Montreal, we stuck around afterward and had a dance party with the band and some French people. Needless to say, it was a blast and a half, and we considered going to another of their shows in Brussels at the end of the month.

Sunday was nice and lazy. I sat around on the internet and relaxed until the early afternoon. Then, the usual gang—Lina, Benoit, Damien, Chanthana, Cousin, Camille, Christophe (the older brother of the twins) and I—went to a go-kart track. Most of them raced except for me, Lina, and Chantana. I was low on money from the weekend’s earlier adventures but I will participate the next time. Afterward we came home and relaxed with a movie.

Anyway, that was last weekend, and this weekend seems to be just as promising. I completely left out my plans for the next vacation, but when I have time I will describe that in detail.

Update

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted on this blog…

Those words are probably quite often posted on blogs. At least by people who are lazy like me. Where to begin? I’ll try to be concise.

The beginning of December had become probably my best time in France to date. I was starting to get comfortable with the daily life and I was spending a lot of good times with my roommates and their friends (my friends as well, of course). I can say the same for the time I have spent here since I visited home. One of the reasons we get along so well would probably be our views on life. Like me, they are all quite laid-back and like to just enjoy themselves. Add to that their sense of humor and the fact that they are slightly crazy, and you can see why I get along well with them. Generally we like to hang out at home, play video games, watch movies, go out and have a drink, or do any number of other activities together (movie theater, restaurant, etc.). Oh, and we eat dinner together most nights. Generally it is Chantana who cooks.

Right now we have had kind of a full house, which I really like because I enjoy having company even if we don’t do anything. It really feels like we have our own strange, sometimes dysfunctional, family here. Permanently there’s me, Lina (from Kansas City), and the brothers, Benoit and Damien. Other than that, Chantana (Damien’s girlfriend) has been here increasingly more and more and basically lives here now. I believe Damien has asked her to move in, which I am okay with because she does some mean cooking and brings a bit of balance to the house. Lastly we have Bastien, or Cousin as we call him (because he is the cousin of Benoit and Damien and is basically Benoit’s best friend). Cousin has been staying here for about a month because his grandmother was staying in his apartment for christmas. Other honorable mentions in our house (those who are here quite often but don’t actually live here) are Camille, Cousin’s girlfriend, and Greg, the childhood friend of the boys. Perhaps another time I will practice my descriptive writing and talk a little bit more about each of the personalities we have here.

Like I said, I was getting very comfortable here in December… then I visited home for a couple weeks. Let’s just say I took full advantage of my time there. I got to spend time with my parents and grandmother (who has Alzheimer’s and is quite the joy to be around because she doesn’t stop talking) and see the rest of my extended family for Christmas. I hung out with friends almost every single day and can say that I did a pretty good job of seeing almost everyone, though there are a few I missed, unfortunately. I even managed to go on a date and spend some time with a wonderful girl I know. All of this made time pass incredibly fast and it was over before I knew it. It wasn’t hard to come back to France, but the couple days after were difficult. The homesickness combined with severe jetlag really had me down.

Nonetheless, France has taught me to pick myself up quickly when I get that way, so I think I am back to where I was before I left, though I do still miss my friends and family back home.

Wednesday was the beginning of the “Soldes” (sales) in France. Sales are done a little bit differently here than in the U.S. Back home, stores have sales whenever they want, but here, stores are only allowed by law to have to really big sales during the year. From how Benoit described it, they get two weeks at this time, two in the summer, and then two to be used at any other time. What this creates is massive consumerist pandemonium during a few weeks in the year where everyone goes out and shops themselves silly. I haven’t taken part yet, though I do need to get a few things (a scarf, external hard drive). Apparently the markdowns get better as the time goes on and the selection becomes less desirable. I’m not as worried about selection as I am saving money, so I will get to it in a while.

Last night me and the roomies discussed visiting Amsterdam in a few weeks. I am rather excited for this trip, as its the first one I will have taken since going to Berlin in September. All the other assistants have traveled like crazy (some every or every-other weekend), while I have stayed in Lille.

Well, that’s all for the moment. This is Ryan signing off.

A bientôt.

New Words

Since I’ve been in France, I’ve found myself making use of new vocabulary more and more naturally. I figured I would dedicate this next post to some of the new vocab I have learned and enjoy using. Most of these are probably not safe for conversations with people other than friends.

kiffer (synonym: aimer) = to like
s’en taper (synonyms: s’en ficher, s’en foutre) = to not give a damn
casser les couilles = to break balls (I was particularly amused when I learned the French say this.)

Of course, I will have to add some of the ch’ti expressions I have learned from my friends here.

Châque éd’dins! < sac dedans! (synonyms: vas-y!, dépêche-toi!) = Get moving! (This comes from an expression one would use at a soccer game to encourage your team.)
le brin (synonym: la merde) = shit
Il y a du brin dans le tuyau. = literally There’s shit in the pipe. (You say this when you have bad cell phone reception and you can’t hear the other person very well.)

Those are just a few that I have learned so far. I know there are more, but I hit a wall trying to think about them. I’ll add some more that I think of later.

Starting Over aka Whiny Post

Courtney and I broke up; I am now a single man.

I can’t say it was easy to take at first. I had already been feeling homesick and she was the one thing that could cure it. She literally is the only thing I had from home in France. To be fair, she is still in France, and we still intend to see each other while here. I seem to have a good record concerning break-ups: 3 serious girlfriends, all of which I am on positive terms with. By far this was the smoothest break-up of them all.

The first couple days were hard, but it actually got better by day 3. I was positive, I believed it was all for the best, and she even came and visited a week later and we were fine. The problem is that I am back in my boring, lonely pattern again. I work (not a whole lot), and when I don’t work I generally sit at home. It’s not that I don’t make an effort to find things to do. More accurately, I make some effort to find people to do things with. However I only make that effort with a few people, and so I really succeed in finding something to do. When I first started this program I was forced to try to network, and I did so relatively successful. I seem to have lost that ability now, especially since there aren’t as many people desperately looking for things to do. I’m starting to realize I simply need to up my game.

Anyway, school has been going well. I seem to be in a pattern now and am getting more organized. I have about 11/12 classes per week, but because they are all split into groups, I have probably around 25-30 different courses. That means this is week 4-5, and I am still having classes for the first time. The organization required for this actually takes more time than planning lessons, because I have only done three different ones (introductions, a worksheet to find out if they would be a democrat or a republican, and a murder mystery type thing). In sum this means my job is pretty easy.

Random thought of the day: French people hate peanut butter! What?!

I’ll write some more when I think of what i want to write about. Suggestions please!

School

This week was my first real week teaching at the school. It was slightly daunting, but it really seems like a cakewalk. I only see each group once a week (or every other week), and since most of them are classes split into two separate groups, I could, in theory, do the same lesson the whole week. Of course, that wouldn’t work well considering their different skill levels, but I do have four classes of secondes (sophomores) in two days, so I imagine this will play out to my advantage (and boredom). I think it will take a week or two to really get in the swing of things- both for me, and for my students and colleagues. Things have been pretty hectic, and I’d like to recount the last two days to reiterate the pains of French culture.

My schedule was supposed to be made last week Tuesday under the care of my contact teacher. She said she would call me over the weekend to let me know when I will be teaching. For the most part, I already knew I would be working four days a week, likely with Wednesday off. However, it gets to be Sunday afternoon and I still haven’t heard anything. At that point I called her several times and got a message later at 8 at night to tell me I needed to be to school at 10 o’clock. I knew I would probably have to be there early, so it was no problem. Plus, she informed me that I would have Fridays off, not Wednesdays! Yippee! I can travel over the extra long weekends with all that extra money I have! Right… Regardless, having long weekends is definitely a good thing.

So, to be at school on time at 10, I had to take the 8:10 train. Here is my morning schedule:

6:30: wake up, shower, eat
7:30: walk 7 minutes to the metro
7:40: take the metro to the train station
7:50: wait 20 minutes for the train because I don’t know how to time things right
8:10: Get on the train
9:15: arrive in Somain and walk 10-12 minutes to the school.
9:30: hang out in the teacher’s lounge until it’s time for class

Two and a half hours later, I had my first class- BTS PM2. Basically, BTS classes are people who have already graduated but are working toward some sort of professional degree and need the extra English lessons. Generally, they REALLY need the English lessons. This class is no exception. The problem was, I didn’t know if I would have these classes all alone, or with the teacher, so I didn’t prepare anything, assuming we would likely work together at first and sort out the details for later. The students themselves didn’t know until 8 o’clock that day that we would have the class… I have my own classroom, but since I didn’t know what was going on, I went to the teacher’s room. She wasn’t there. Luckily, the secretary put my schedule in my mailbox, so I knew what room to go to. However, I don’t have a key to get in the room, so a student has to go get the intendante (disciplinary person- basically a parapro) to open the door. It should be clear by now that I have this class to myself, and so I am going to have to BS my way through it. This wasn’t really that hard since we needed to get to know each other anyway, so we just did some introductions and I *tried* to get them to talk, with some success. It turns out teaching a class is similar to playing a show- the audience doesn’t really know anything is wrong if you don’t tell them. As long as you act confident and prepared, they don’t really notice. Oh, and they informed me I won’t be seeing them again until December because they have internships in November. Thank god they told me, because none of the teachers seemed to think it was important enough to tell me.

So I have lunch at the Canteen (awesome cafeteria- more on this later) and go to my next class, which isn’t normally going to be my class. It is the seniors in the European class- the best of the best. This one I worked with the teacher in their class, and I taught them about the death penalty and bearing of arms. I found this to be really fun (and easy, because I prepared for it… the teacher forewarned me about the topic of the class). When the students are really good at English, it provides for a more interesting class where you can teach fun topics with a minimal amount of repetition and dumbing down.

Next class, BTS again… This time with a teacher. However, not a teacher with whom I agree about teaching methods. Because this is a BTS class, she thinks they need to redo all of the most basic parts of English. I do, more or less, agree with her in this regard. However, instead of letting them talk, she would rather interrupt them everytime they make a mistake. Oh, and she re-explains everything in French. Both of these strategies rub me the wrong way. Anyway, we went over the present and past tenses, and how English uses helping verbs like do or have. She doesn’t agree with me that they are verbs, though any English teacher in the United States will say otherwise… So, eventually she looks at me and asks me to explain the differences in usage of the word do in different types of sentences. I stared at her blankly, then made my attempt at explaining some minute piece of grammar without any preparation for how I would explain it. Needless to say, she interrupted me about five times to re-explain in French.

Finally, I had another class to myself. I waited in the classroom for about 10 minutes without seeing any students, so I went to that teacher’s classroom to see what was going on. We deducted that whoever’s responsibility it was to tell the students about the class did a shabby job… I sat in on that teacher’s class, then made the 1.5 hour trip home.

Fast forward to Tuesday:
Due to train strikes, I had to take the 8:10 train again, even though I didn’t have class until noon. Extremely tired, I tried to kill some time reading, then went to lunch where I was a zombie. Then I go to my noon class, and guess what? No students. It turns out that teacher forgot to tell them about my class.
Luckily, the other two classes that day showed up and were actually somewhat willing to speak English. It is pretty obvious I am going to have to figure out how to discipline students and keep them from talking in the middle of class. This is something I’m not necessarily looking forward to in class.

Wednesday:
I had to get up nice and early to make the long trip for one class which will last less time than my commute.
Please universe, let there be a way to change the day of my Wednesday class… I didn’t get to ask them if they would be open to changing the day we meet due to their rowdy behavior. They are by far the loudest group so far, and for one little brat it was blatantly obvious he didn’t want to participate productively at all in the class. He had his headphones in at one point, didn’t stop talking, and from what I can tell, it was his fault he and his partner had done practically no work during the activity. I had to move him to another desk closer to me, and even then he didn’t stop periodically saying stuff in the middle of the kid’s presentations. In general though, the class is just loud, and I had to threaten to ask for their “carnet de correspondence” (a little booklet they carry around in which teachers write if the students are bad- their parents have to sign off on it) if they didn’t stop talking. Let’s just say the class got nice and quiet for about 3 minutes…

So, that was more of a full summary of classes so far (save for today’s), but I think it gives a general idea of what teaching here is like. Maybe in a month or two I’ll make a comparison to see if this is just because it’s the first week, or if teaching in France is really like this all the time.

Long overdue…

Well, it’s been a couple weeks and I haven’t really done anything with my blog yet. I guess when you mix a little bit of laziness with the hundred or so stresses of living in a new country, you get procrastination. So, this is my attempt at correcting that procrastination. The question is: where to start? There are so many things worth talking about that this post could probably be 5 separate ones, which is probably the amount of posts I should already have at this point. I figure it would be worth starting with a short recap of my life since leaving the U.S.

Arrival

Courtney and I arrived in Paris on September 15th via United Airlines. Quite frankly, it was the simplest and quickest flight I have ever taken. Our layover in Washington D.C. lasted about 45 minutes, which was just enough time to arrive at our next gate, wait 10 minutes, then board. The big hop across the pond went really fast and by the time we knew it, we were in Charles de Gaulle Airport (or Chuckie D’s as Courtney’s dad calls it). Our friend and Courtney’s roommate Melanie was there to greet us, along with her dog Bosley (or Baba) and her new French husband J.C. They drove us back to their apartment, where Courtney is now living.
For two days, we just kind of hung out with J.C., Melanie, Bosley, and Bosley’s rival, François (the fourth and final roommate). We ran some errands, I got a cell phone, and Courtney bought some stuff for her room. Then, it was time to take off… again.

Berlin

We took a taxi to the airport at about 4:30-5:00 a.m., and our flight got into Berlin really early—something like 8:30. The next five days amounted to what was an unforgettable time, definitely in my top three traveling adventures. We did so much stuff that there is no way I can even remember it all. All I know right now is that my feet still hurt from all the walking. We went to several museums, but my favorite was by far the German History Museum. It’s rather new (from 2006 I think?), but is so large you should really take two full days to go through it. If it weren’t for skipping large sections of the museum, we would have been there 10 hours instead of 3. It’s basically a recap of the history of German peoples from about 10,000 B.C. to the 1990s, if that gives you any idea of the massive amount of information thrown at you. It was a little confusing to navigate, mainly because every little part of the museum was numbered so that you could follow along chronologically. The problem was that it wasn’t always so easy to find the next number, and you ended up skipping things on accident. Not that this was a problem though, since if you didn’t skip things, you would never leave.

Some other highlights of the trip:
-We went to a beer garden called Prater, and I had the most delicious meatballs of my life (Königsberger Klopse). Oh, the beer was good too.
-We hung out with Franzy (my ex!), her boyfriend, and Franzy’s friend Zissy. We went to a cheap student bar area where you could actually afford the food and drinks.
-Franzy took us to Potsdam to see the castle Sans Souci. It is basically the Versailles of Berlin, built by Fredrick the Great. That day kinda sucked because it was really warm and we had to do a lot of walking. By the time we got to the main castle, we were ready to leave.
-We saw the Eastside Gallery. This is a long stretch of the wall which was left up and is now exactly what the name implies: an art gallery. Artists are given portions of the wall on which they can paint, making it, in theory, the largest outdoor gallery in the world.

There were plenty of other sites we saw (the Reichstag, the Memorial for the Dead Jews of Europe, Alexanderplatz, Potsdamerplatz), but what I enjoyed most about the trip was just walking through the city. Every time I have been there I have fallen more in love with it, and there is no doubt in my mind that someday I would like to live there for some time. It’s a beautiful, lively, eccentric, and easy-going city.
So, at this point in the story, we have returned to Paris. The next couple of days were spent lounging around, to make up for the travel overload we got in Berlin. Not only that, but we also knew Courtney’s dad was going to show up, followed by her friends, so we would soon have to assume the roles of tour guides.

Paris Touristique

When I studied abroad two years ago, I traveled around France and Italy with my parents for the two weeks before. I wasn’t sure I would ever see anyone as ridiculously out of place in France as my family. Then Courtney’s dad visited Paris.

Since he got a new job a while back, he has been doing a lot of traveling to China and the UK. His company works on electronic interfaces in cars (GPS, Music, Hands-free phones, etc.) and is heavily based in China for the cheap nerd labor. The company is also partners with Astin Martin and another high-class British car company (I forgot the name). He’s basically the right-hand man of the two owners of the company, so he gets to be the one they bring with to business meetings. Before he started this job, he pretty much hadn’t been anywhere outside the country. Oh, and he’s very loud and pretty shamelessly American.

Rather than doling on about everything we did, let me just point out a few the highlights:
-We went to his hotel room after he arrived and took him to dinner. He wore a T-shirt that said “Detroit” under a sweatshirt that said “Michigan.”
-We visited the Eiffel Tower, and he said/yelled “Whoa, that thing is bigger than the Starship Enterprise!”
-A waiter asked us where we were from, and he showed his credit card with an American flag on it.
-The only thing you could hear on the metro was him talking. (If you know anything about Parisian metro etiquette, you know that this is a clear mark of your ‘foreignity’)

I think you get the idea.

We said goodbye to Courtney’s dad one night, and hello to her two friends from Ann Arbor at noon the next day. Our jobs as tour guides were not over. Let me just say they, like Courtney’s dad, are not the quietest, most reserved people in the world, though not nearly to the same extent.

We took them to Sacre Coeur, ate some crêpes, walked around town, then took a little break. We were of course obliged to visit the big tower thing everyone always talks about, so we got some sandwiches and sparkling wine and camped out in the grass like all the other tourists. Needless to say, it was a good time as always. We talked, drank, watched a trinket-peddler get run down and tackled by 4 cops, and saw a bunch of drunk dudes walking and peeing on the “do not walk on” grass. The next day I took a break while they did some stuff, then we went to Père Lachaise cemetery for a tour of the dead French stars.

The following day was travel day. By that I mean our friend from Grand Valley showed up to Paris from London via train, the other two girls left for London via train, and I took a later train to my new home, the north.

Bienvenue chez les ch’tis

The trip from Paris to Valenciennes was not nearly as painful as I thought it would be. I still have nightmares about traveling with excessive amounts of luggage from two years before, so I was expecting the worse. Apparently a big suitcase, and backpacking pack, and a smaller backpack are not so hard to manage, even when the suitcase’s extending arm is stuck in. The train pulled up to the Valenciennes train station and I couldn’t believe I still hadn’t had a travel problem. If you’re counting, the score is Ryan 4, Eurotravel 0. Anyway, I stood outside the train station for a little while to be picked up by the husband of the family I was going to stay with temporarily. Waiting to be brought to the house of people you have never met before can be pretty daunting, but I kept an open mind.

Then he arrived: Benoît, the late thirty-something physics teacher and evangelical christian. That’s right, the family is a part of the .6% of France which is evangelical protestant. In fact, Benoît’s personal hobby in the last few years has been trying to reconcile the rift between the scientific and Christian communities. No, he’s not a creationist, and he’s not a supporter of Intelligent Design. He’s a part of a small community of Christians (many call the movement BioLogos) who are trying to show that science and God don’t clash, they merely explain different parts of the world. The physicist/junior pastor frequently gives lectures about this area of controversy, as well as maintains a website dedicated to this philosophical endeavor. His website actually comes up at the top of the list when you search “Science” and “Foi” (=Faith) in google. To be honest, I totally agree with his stance from a secular point of view. To learn more about the biologos movement, go here: biologos.org

I arrived at the house to find the rest of the family waiting for me. I shook hands with William, age 11, Elliot, age 9, and Emma, age 6, followed by Chrystelle, the English teacher who is my main contact at school. We sat down to eat almost immediately, prayed, and ate. This is where my real French culture and language immersion experience began.

More coming soon…

Inauguration Day

I have finally decided to take the plunge and catalog my adventures in digital text and picture format.