Where Am I? Postcard Challenge #10

Update: April 28, 2010: No one guessed the right answser.  As I'm going back to this city May 4-9, I thought I'd extend the contest until May 8th.  Good luck!

So my contract is up, and now it's just travelling. This evening I'm meeting my mom, which I'm super excited not just because I haven't seen her in seven months, but because it's her first time in Europe. Guess where we're going:

1. Six hundred hears after first being conquered by its historical rival...

2. ...the city nearly burnt completely to the ground. There are no known reports of violins being played. Bonus: What years am I referring to in clues 1 and 2?

3. Its bright lines can look like a knot to the uninitiated. Bonus: What is the reference?

4. Ben is a pretty big deal here.

5. My trips bookend a fairy tale event, which is taking place. Bonus: What is the event?

Know where I'm going? Leave your answer in the comments below before May 8th at 5:00pm (CEST) for a chance to win.

Good luck!

Last Ticket

Last night it was with great excitement that I bought my last ticket. The one that will take me home after nearly nine months away.

Yesterday a student asked me if I preferred France or Canada. It's not that I prefer one over the other, but more that I feel things here coming to a natural end. Although I'll miss the friends I've made here, I am really feeling ready for whatever is next.

So with this in mind, it's nice to have a date set; it makes me feel a little less transient.

(Photo by NASA via Design*Sponge, illustrating a Vancouver City Guide I highly recommend.)

Nothing Toulouse

In Making a Second Visit to Toulouse

When I was last in Toulouse in November to see Siskiyou play, I met Paloma, my friend's sister living abroad in France. At the show she invited me back. So the last weekend of February, which happened to be the first weekend of my February/March break, I paid her and her husband a visit.

I love Toulouse. If I were ever to spend another year abroad in France, it would be in Toulouse. It is such a beautiful city, which could just be le style toulousain of rose brick with turquoise accents. Or the Garonne river. But there's something more to the city I find alluring. It has both the feel of a small town (you seem to be able to get anywhere in town in twenty minutes by foot or bike) yet also has the vibe of a big city.

While there, it was also comforting to speak with Paloma, an expat about cultural differences I'd noticed and be reassured by her. Just because I speak French does not mean I've been automatically attuned to cultural differences. But that's another post.

Overall, I spent a lovely few days with Paloma and her husband, who showed me the sights I'd not known about and missed in November, and fell in love with the city.

Payin' the Rent

My room mates and I pay rent at the end of the month and so we're getting ready to settle for our last month, April. Ever since hearing Pairie Cat's song Paying the Rent, it always seems to pop in around rent day. For me, this jingly and poppy, albeit cynical song seems to make parting with my hard-earned money on rent day not so be so bad. Give it a listen here.

Oh, and early Happy Rent Day to everyone else!

How are Things on the West Coast?

This is my current desktop picture. I can't believe how fast this year abroad has flown by. I thought the period from la rentrée from Christmas vacation to February/March break was short, but these last weeks from la rentrée from March break until Easter break have gone by in the blink of an eye. After some travelling and Postcard Challenges, I'll be home!

It's bittersweet. Despite the downs, among the many ups, I'll be sad to be leaving my French town and France. But at the same time I'm looking forward to whatever life is going to bring my way next. I currently have the famous John Lennon quote, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

I'm also excited to see all the ways in which Vancouver has changed, the new little details I'll notice, and even bracing for reverse culture shock.

So, dear readers back home, how are things on the West Coast? What should I know about before coming home?

(Photo by NASA via Design*Sponge)

Red Dress Blue Dress

I love this French Connection dress I spotted over on A Cup of Jo. She posted it in blue but I fancy the red as I've been going through a bit of a blue period fashion-wise. I recently bought a blue tulip skirt, a cute silk blue and white polka-dot dress, and blue leather flats.

I think it's funny that I'm going through a "blue period" because I recently saw the Picasso in Paris 1900_1907 at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. It was a really good exhibit surveying works from his blue and rose periods, and ending with sketches for Les Demoiselles d'Avignong. The exhibit runs until May 29, so I highly recommend it should you find yourself in Amsterdam.

(Photo from French Connection via A Cup of Jo)

La ville rose

The buildings along the Garonne river in the postcard above (which I also photographed myself when I visited in November) are like the Toulouse equivalent of San Francisco's painted ladies. Aren't they beautiful? I love Toulouse. It might be my favourite city in France.

I'll tell more about my February trip to Toulouse shortly. Have a happy weekend!

A Day in My Life in France

My school, taken October 20, 2010.
(Note: I started this post in early February.)

So many of you back home have been wondering what my days are like and how I like teaching. While I could share my emploi du temps, work schedule, it would probably make for a rather dry post. Because of the general strikes in October, some students barricaded my school so I didn't get to teach much my first month here. As a result, when I got back from my Toussaint holidays in Belgium, I still felt really new to it and that I couldn't really make an assessment. Now, beginning my fifth ending my seventh month of teaching, I feel I've gotten into my stride.  And that this post will never be written otherwise.

School in France is organized differently than in Canada. In Canada, high school students typically have all their classes between about 8:30am and 3:00pm Monday to Friday. Here, school hours are 8:00am until 6:00pm although students do not have ten continuous hours of class. Instead, class schedules here are organized more like university schedules; a student might have a class from 9:00am until 10:00am and another class from 5:00pm until 6:00pm. Another bizarre thing about schedules here is that some classes only convene every other week. As a result, I only see some of my classes twice a month.

All my colleagues are super nice and friendly. It made settling into a both a foreign country and new town where I knew nobody much easier. Having just graduated from university last May, it feels a bit strange going to school and being on the "other side," the teacher's side. Although I've feared being mistaken for a student (my lycée is also an école préparatoire, prep school, for the grandes écoles so the prépas students are between 18 and 21 years old), it has yet to happen--to my knowledge at least it shockingly happened twice in the same day with the same woman shortly after writing this.

As for teaching, I like it well enough, or, I don't dislike it.  At least, that was my line during most of the seven months of my contract.  Now that I have a week left, I'm feeling a bit sad that it's ending.  I like teaching, I think I'd be good at it, but I feel that teaching (public) high school is a vocation and I don't feel the calling.  I do think I'd enjoy teaching older students, or teaching in another capacity as part of my career.

Stripes!

Black and white striped shirts. How very French, non? One of the things that amuses me most about living in France is seeing the French perpetuate this stereotype about themselves. I've wanted to blog about it for a while, but wasn't feeling brave enough to do "street style blog" photography, so my lovely friend, Caylena, a professional photographer volunteered to step up to the task. Thanks Caylena!

Check more of the French wearing striped black and white shirts here.

(Photos by Caylena Cahill Photography)

Genius Travel Tip

As most of my travel to destinations outside of France has been by plane with only a carry-on bag, I've had to be mindful of the restrictions on liquids. One of the ways I get around this travel restriction, as well as pack light, is by bringing solid shampoo. This was a tip given to me by a friend a few years back. Not only is it shampoo, but it can also double as a bar of soap.

You can find them at Lush. The ones I've used have been Godiva and Karma Komba.

Chartres

On the second day of our séjour in Paris, Emily and I hopped a train to Chartres for a daytrip. What can I say?

Chartres is known principally for its cathedral. It is the best preserved medieval cathedral and is distinct in that it has both Romanesque and Gothic towers. It also contains what is believed to be the relic of the Virgin Mary's veil, which makes it my second relic sighting after the relic of the Holy Blood in Bruges (I didn't actually notice the relic of Saint Valentine's skull in Rome).

In fact, our daytrip there reminded me a lot of my trip to Bruges; we walked around, admired the town's beauty, took lots of photos and had a drink by the canalside.

The Aries zodiac sign and corresponding statues of figures representing each month.
The cathedral had awe-inspiring stained glass windows, but what I thought was coolest part was the zodiac and month sculptures decorating the West entrance.

Ode to Sainté

While my post on canine landmines was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I really do like Sainté. When I first started teaching, my students would always ask me what I thought of Sainté. Not knowing the town all that well, I'd say I like it well enough. And I do:

• I'm glad to not be in a village of 500 people. 
• I also find that for a town of 180,000 residents, it has a pretty vibrant cultural life.  There's an Opéra-Théâtre, more than one theatre, an art house/foreign language cinema and more.
• I find that the city, if not les citoyens, try hard to beautify it: they plant numerous flower beds around town, have made the main town square pedestrian-only, and are trying to encourage transit and vélib use.

For all the drawbacks of a small town, I tell my students it could be worse.  And that being from a small town is a blessing in disguise.

Where Am I? Chartres

You guessed it, I was in Chartres!

We passed through the capital of l'Hexagone, Paris, where today Emily ran the Marathon de Paris--42km--in 4:14, beating her time by a minute! Go Emily! Of approximately 40,000 runners, she came in 17,888th. Meanwhile, I was "marathoning" through le musée de l'Orangerie. But I'll rave about our trip in another post later this week.

Thank you to everyone who participated! The lucky winner of the draw this time is Boders! Email me your mailing address and I'll send your postcard!

Where Am I? Postcard Challenge #9

This weekend I'm going accompanying my friend Emily who is running a marathon--how awesome is she?  The marathon is on Sunday, so Saturday we are going on a day trip.  Here are the clues for this ninth postcard challenge:

1. We will be passing through the capital of "le hexagone."

2. We will be visiting  a famous cathedral.

2. This cathedral contains what is believed to be the relic of the Virgin Mary's veil.

Think you know where I'm going? Leave your guess in the comments below before 9:00pm CET. I'll draw a lucky winner when I'm back on Sunday night.

Good luck!

The Social Darwinism of Discount Airlines

Photo of the sun above the clouds on the flight from Bordeaux to Lyon

Back in October, before my trip to Belgium, I had never flown with Easy Jet. Puzzled that my boarding pass didn't have an assigned seat, I asked some British friends over tea. They told me that flying Easy Jet or Ryanair was an experiment in social darwinism in that it's a scramble to get a good seat. With this in mind, I positioned myself to be the first one on the plan and chose a window seat.

Since then, I've flow Easy Jet to Amsterdam, Rome, and back from Bordeaux. At no point have I felt it to a matter of social darwinism. In fact, I've been quite satisfied with Easy Jet.

I haven't flown Ryanair--from SaintÉ they only fly to Porto, Portugal (shame, I know)--but the reviews I've read and heard make me apprehensive to do so.

Grenoble

Last Saturday, my friend Emily and I went on a day trip to Grenoble, a French town also in the Rhône-Alps region about two-and-a-half hours away by train.

Grenoble is a mountain town, known for skiing, but we chose to go for the Marc Chagall exhibit that was showing at the Musée de Grenoble. I like the exhibit, but not having a background in Russian avant-garde art, I felt there could have been more explainations as to the artists' (which included Vassily Kadinsky, Natalia Gontcharova, among others) philosophies and ideas. Nevertheless, the exhibit was awe-inspiring and totally worthwhile.

After visiting the museum, Emily and I had lunch, but we didn't have gratin dauphinois. Instead we went to this delicious Indian restaurant.

It was a sunny hot day so later that afternoon we went for a walk partway up the mountain rather than take the téléphérique--a type of gondola which the locals nickname "les oeufs" or "the eggs." I really liked Grenoble. The city's backdrop of snow-capped mountains reminded me a lot of Vancouver and the Rockies.

(All photos by me except exhibit poster via Musée de Grenoble)

Where Am I? Grenoble

You guessed it, I was in Grenoble!

Congratulations to Gareth, the lucky winner! Email me your mailing address and I'll send your postcard!

Thanks to everyone who played. The next opportunity to play will be this Friday, for a trip I'm very excited about!

Where Am I? Postcard Challenge #8

Today I'm going on a day trip, so here are the clues for this eighth postcard challenge:

1. The king bought this bankrupt university and installed his eldest son as ruler, who thus earning the title of "Dolphin."

2. This city is famous for a dish of potatoes baked in cream with a pinch of nutmeg.   
Bonus: What is this dish called?

3. It is a former host city for the Winter Olympics. Bonus: Which year did this city host the Olympics?

Think you know where I'm going? Leave your guess in the comments below before 4:00pm CET on Monday, April 4th and I'll draw the lucky winner.

Good luck!