Leaving Our Legacy

My last night in Rennes I finally did what my roommates and I have been procrastinating about for 8 months ... made a poster of us to leave for future assistants. For months we've been calling ourselves L'Auberge Bretonne (a take on l'Auberge Espagnole, if you know the movie), and we knew that we had to commemorate this on a poster or something. So I used tons of little black & white photos that we printed out, added info about us & our hometowns, and wrote a few encouraging words to next year's assistants. The last night there was a bit somber, so I guess this was good "closure" for me ... or something like that.

"Aux prochains assistants: Amusez-vous bien a Rennes, n'hesitez pas de connaitre la culture de la Bretagne, et profitez de la machine a laver (c'est notre cadeau pour vous)! Ciao ciao!"

"To future assistants: Have fun in Rennes, enjoy the Breton culture, and take advantage of the washing machine (it's our gift to you)!"

The Quest for my Ortho Shoe

This will be short and sweet, but I just wanted to show you the difference between what I could have had (ewwwwww!) and the shoe that I ended up with (actually kinda cute until you put it on my foot ... at which point it becomes not-so-cute and awkward). Yesterday I found a store that specializes in orthopedic/support shoes, which I thought would be great ... bigger selection, etc. But THIS is what they brought out for me to try on when I showed them my prescription:

I'd like to thank my lucky stars that they didn't have my size immediately available ... otherwise I might have been talked into buying it then. It was seriously uncomfortable and even more seriously un-cute. I tried walking with it, and it completely threw my whole body-balance out of whack ... I seriously think a month in that think could have given me back problems for life. The woman suggested that I would need to wear another natural platformed shoe on my good foot to even out my balance a bit. I was about ready to change my plane tickent, throw in the towel on trying to enjoy my last 4 weeks here, and come home early. However they were out of my size so I had to go to a different pharmacy. PHEWWWW

So Andrea and I (she's awesome & has accompanied me everywhere!) went to a different pharmacy, and when I showed them the exact same prescription as the other place, THIS is what they presented me with ... MUCH better :

Now do you see how it's kinda cute, like in a creepy way? Well, it's way cuter when it's just sitting there on the floor than when I have to wear it. Anyway, it has grown on me and is definitely leaps and bounds more comfortable than the alternative. AND ... no more crutches! After eleven days on crutches I had hit my max! I have a new-found respect for all of you brave enough to have survived multiple days on crutches - not fun!

Ok, off to explore la ville in my new kicks - tootles!

Jordan's Visit!

As I’ve already mentioned, the seriously bad timing of my little injury coincided with Jordan’s trip to Europe and our planned travels to Portugal, Spain, and Morocco. I called him from the hospital on Saturday, after I learned that I couldn’t do much of anything for the next two weeks, and asked him if he wanted to cancel his flight or something. He was like, “My flight’s in four hours, so I’m coming.” What a trooper, haha! He’d already bought a Eurostar ticket from London to Paris, and our plan was to meet in Paris but that obviously wouldn’t work anymore. “I’m going to call some people, look up some stuff online, send a few emails, then you can call me back in 30 minutes and I’ll have a plan of what I’m doing.” Thank you, Jordan Shane – I honestly don’t know anyone else who could have handled this as coolly as you. So his plan was to come to Paris from London and then try to find a train to Rennes … basically I had no clue when I’d hear from him or see him again. But Andrea had called her friend in Paris, who had agreed to meet Jordan and let him spend the night at her place if needed … so we had a back-up plan!

Sunday night I was back at home and got a message from a random Belgian cell phone saying that Jordan would be in Rennes at 7:30 that night. I’m still not sure how he did it – even for someone who knows Paris & speaks French, it would be tight to arrive at Gare du Nord at 4, buy a ticket to Rennes, and get on a train from Montparnasse at 5 – but he did it! Then operation-pick-up-jordan-at-Rennes-gare started. My roommates & I couldn’t go into town to get him, so Andrea called her Chilean friend who kindly volunteered to go to the train station, find him, take the metro to the bus, and then put him on the right bus to my place. So Jenny and her boyfriend spent about 20 minutes asking random strangers if they were Jordan – turned into quite the fiasco. I was on the phone with Jordan, trying to describe to him the people who were looking for him, while Andrea was on the phone with her friends trying to pass along my description of Jordan. Well it worked and he eventually showed up!

I can’t say that I was too exciting the first couple of days he was here, with the weird side effects from the medication, having trouble sleeping, etc. He got to know my two remaining roommates, Andrea and Maria, pretty well, went to the grocery store with them, spent some time online to figure out his travel plans, etc. One day he took the bus by himself to Mont St. Michel and then we met up downtown that night to eat at a creperie. I think he enjoyed his ham/cheese galette and chocolate crepe, or in his words “this is awesome – the best parts of breakfast for dinner!” Then we had drinks outside on the “Rue de la Soif” – bar street, glad that Jordan got to see that part of Rennes a bit. Oh yeah did I mention it has turned beautiful here – like 70’s, sunny, light outside until at least 9:30? Mmhhmm nothing like superb timing.

On Jordan’s last night here we had some friends over for drinks (Andrea & Jordan's now-famous caipiroskas), which of course turned into Jordan teaching everyone how to play Raznick’s Rollers (or something like that) – a drinking game involving dice, a table, and a bowl/dish, invented by he and his Milwaukee buddies, of course. I think he loved getting to meet some of my international friends, and I’ll be surprised if there’s not a new “Chilean Rule” initiated into the game of Raznick’s Rollers. They also had a rather lively debate about the pros & cons of the giant beachside swimming pool at a resort in Chile (Jordan being a huge fan of it and Andrea being completely against it as an unathentic tourist trap). Through a strange mix of Spanish, English, and French, Andrea & Jordan seemed to get along really well ... great because the three of us would have traveled really well together ... and sad because we didn't have the oppotunity. Well, I'm still holding out for the future - who knows! He left Thursday morning to spend two days in Paris before flying to Seville and then onto the coast of southern Spain. Needless to say, I’m jealous. I don’t know many other people who could do solo travel for a week, but Jordan can talk to pretty much anyone. Stay tuned for some of his travel stories – I’m expecting details so that I can live vicariously!

Rousing Game of Raznick's Rollers at our place ...

20 Hours in a French Hospital, woowoo

*Warning: Don’t scroll down if you’re scared of a few bloody pictures*
My karma is officially pissed off at me. Two days after officially finishing my teaching contract, I end up in the hospital in Rennes. Nothing like impeccable timing … 2 days after my insurance here enters “questionable” status, 2 days before the arrival of Jordan from the US, and 3 days before our flight to Portugal for my open-ended May travels.

I bought tickets to go to a multi-group, outdoor concert on Friday night at a nearby university; it’s called Rock n Solex and it’s a four day event featuring “solex” motorbike races among students during the day and concerts in a big tent outside at night. First we went to a friend’s apartment for aperitif hour to meet up with everyone before the concert, and then all walked over together. The atmosphere at the concert was pretty crazy –tons of people everywhere, with what seemed like very little security or control. Anyway, Andrea and I got separated from our group at the entrance because everyone was pushing, etc, and it was chaotic. So as we were “waiting in the line” or lack thereof, I apparently stepped on a broken beer bottle and got a piece of glass stuck in my left foot. It entered pretty deeply – through my Converse and everything! I immediately sat down in the grass nearby and took off my shoe, which was completely soaked in blood. Pretty gross, sorry but here are some pictures.

Beginning of the night, then an hour later ...

A first-aid staff person came over right away and tried to clean my foot off a little bit, then determined that I needed to be taken by stretcher to the medical tent. I was begging for them not to use the stretcher because that’s super embarrassing … seriously, it’s like being in the middle of MusicFest (for you Memphians) and being carried away on a stretcher = not cool. Even thought I knew like 15 people out of thousands at the concert. But it was the only option, so they carried me over to the medical tent where some friendly nursing students consoled me while waiting for the ambulance. At this point the pain honestly wasn’t too bad, so I didn’t think it was all that serious, beyond having to remove the chunk of glass and getting a few stitches. One of the workers was even kidding around with me, saying hopefully the paramedics would be cute. So two paramedics arrived (one of which was pretty cute!) and drove me to the hospital. Andrea was with me during all of this, but had left a few minutes earlier to go get my French insurance card and then met me at the hospital She’s awesome – actually flagged down cars to drive her to our place for the card and then to the hospital. Now that’s an amazing friend!

The awkwardness of the stretcher ...

I stayed in the emergency room area at the hospital for about 4 hours, and the nurses there were really friendly. I still wasn’t in too much pain, but they gave me an IV for the night, and then finally removed the piece of glass; it had entered between my big toe and the toe next to it. Here are some glory shots of me in the emergency room, once again, sorry for the gore, but it's been well-documented :

They had me spend the night at the hospital, so that the surgeon could look at my foot in the morning and determine if I needed surgery. Andrea didn’t want to go home, but the nurses finally made her leave around 4am or so. I guess I slept through the night and then woke up in the morning when the surgeon wanted to have a look at my foot. He said he didn’t think there was much damage but they needed to perform exploratory surgery anyway. Surgery in France? Sure, why not! Ugg so the surgery was one of the most uncomfortable experiences of my life … yuuuck. I had anesthesia in my leg & foot, but they explained that my foot wouldn’t be completely “dead” to touch – rather, I still had sensation in my foot but couldn’t feel pain in it. I don’t know how to accurately describe it, but it was gross being awake through all of that … ewww. So after the surgery the surgeon explained that the glass had entered deeply enough to cut a nerve and tendon; so they fixed those and then sewed the foot up.

I obviously was really disappointed with this news because it was more serious than I originally thought. What it means is two weeks on crutches without walking on the bad foot, a week of antibiotics, 10 days of a daily shot (which my roommate is giving me!) to avoid blood-clotting, a month wearing a funky orthopedic shoe (with a 3 inch heel so avoid putting my toes on the ground), and 2-3 months without running. Bummmer. But the most disappointing factor was the horrible timing with all of this. Jordan arrived two days after this happened, and he, Andrea, and I had already bought tickets to fly from Paris to Portugal, then from southern Spain back to France. So he obviously had to drastically change his plans but has been amazingly awesome about it. It just really sucked for all 3 of us, but everyone’s being positive about it.

So anyway I was able to leave the hospital Saturday night around 10pm, and my two roommates have been taking care of me ever since. And Jordan was able to get a train to come to Rennes for a few days, so it was awesome to have him here, even if circumstances were a bit strange! More to come on all of that … just wanted to give the medical update! So for now, I'm taking it easy, hobbling around a bit on awkward French crutches, and not doing much else for now.

Personalized T-Shirt from my Roomies

hcMy roommates and I went out to a really great, Breton creperie last Thursday to celebrate the Italian assistant's last night in Rennes. Yet another goodbye meal = bittersweet. I enjoyed my usual galette "complete salade", which is cheese, ham, and egg melted in a yummy dark-wheat crepe, topped with a very light salad. At the end of the meal I received a huge surprise as my roommates presented me with a personalized tank top. On the front are several pictures of us, and the back reads: "L'Auberge Bretonne ... ou Bizarre?" I absolutely love it!! Of course I promised to wear it to the school cafeteria the following day for a little show-and-tell. I wish I could post the video of my reaction to the gift (but it's just too painful for me to hear myself exclaiming "thanks, i love it, how did you do this, when did you do it" etc in my horrendous French accent), but here are some modeling picts.

Last Raclette Dinner for L'Auberge Bretonne

L’Auberge Bretonne, as my roommates and I have coined our little international community, had our last raclette dinner together on Friday night to say goodbye to the Russian assistant. We toasted with Breton cider and then ate raclette with sautéed potatoes, mushrooms, proscuitto, and French ham. I also used this as an occasion to give my roommates little scrapbooks that I’ve been working on for them the past couple of weeks. I selected and developed my favorite pictures from the last 6 months together (not an easy task if you know how many pictures I take!), and arranged them in small scrapbooks with different quotes, lyrics, brochures, local magazine cutouts, etc … personalized for each person. I think they really enjoyed them, and it was fun looking through them all, laughing about all of our random memories from the year. Unfortunately, we were soon interrupted by yet another unfriendly visit from the dorm supervisor. It was 10pm on a Friday night, and there were 8 of us sitting at our kitchen table

with a bottle of wine and few beer bottles. He yelled at us for drinking alcohol on the premises, etc. It’s just a bit hard to take him seriously when we’re a group of responsible adults (everyone well above the drinking age) enjoying our last meal together with some drinks. And puhlease we were looking at scrapbooks at the time … I don’t think it gets much less “party atmosphere” than that! Anyway, my camera was sitting at the table when he busted in, so I sneakily turned on the video mode to capture the confrontation, hehe. We’ve of course watched it several times … basically the Italian assistant is left to defend himself after the man unfairly singled him out, another assistant casually ignores him & continues to flip through a scrapbook, another actually continues to drink her glass of wine, and the rest of us each try to put in our two-cents, defending ourselves in French. It’s hilraious … I tried to upload it but couldn't due to length. Aside from this interruption, we had a great night together celebrating the bonds that we’ve made over the past 6 months. It’s hard to say goodbye to people after spending so much time together, adapting to a new environment together, and sharing so many new experiences.

Here are some pages from the little scrapbooks I made :)

The Beginning of the End ...

It’s crazy, but I have officially begun my last full week of teaching! After this week, we have two weeks of vacation at the end of April, followed by 3 days of teaching until the end of our contracts on May 1^st. The time has absolutely flown by! The first few months were hectic with administrative paperwork and just getting used to new friends, new job, new living situation, etc. Three weeks into teaching we already had 2 weeks of vacation, and then after that the Christmas holidays came and went. January was full of planning for the February vacation, then March passed quickly, and here we are in April. It seems like I’ve just recently gotten totally comfortable with teaching/efficient with preparation/etc … and it’s soon to be over! The first assistant left last weekend to go home to Russia, and the rest will be leaving at the end of this week (with the exception of the Spanish and Chilean assistants, who are also sticking around for part of May). The assistants from Europe all got permission to not come back for the official last 3 days of our contract in May, after the spring vacation. I think the end is definitely bittersweet for us all. Above is a picture of the 9 assistants (only 7 of us live together at the school; the 8^th is an Austrian who lives in a nearby city and the 9^th is a German who lives at the school next door) at our last lunch all together in the cantine.

Adventures in (French) Babysitting

Well, I actually don’t have any terribly exciting adventures in the babysitting domain … just the fact that I babysat for a professor at my high school last week. She’s American, married to a Frenchman, and they have five and eight year old daughters. The whole family speaks both English & French fluently, and the girls were adorable! As a baby-sitting job it was really pretty simple … they were eating dinner when I arrived, then they spent an hour showing me their rooms & toys, and then it was time for bed. Up until this point we had only spoken English together, but the youngest girl wanted me to read her a book in French before going to bed. As soon as I started reading it out-loud in French, she started giggling and called her sister into the room – “Come here, you’ve got to hear this!” And, yes, the other sister had to agree – “Ton accent, c’est fort.” Yep, I know I’ve got a pretty strong accent. The five year old continued to laugh for the rest of the book – good to know … my French speaking is apparently hilarious to little kids, super! After they both went to sleep, I put a movie in; finally got a chance to see Bride and Prejudice, a Bollywood Indian-wedding classic that I’ve always wanted to see!

What happened to March?!

This is just a random entry to catch everyone up on the last few weeks. I’ve been relatively quiet on the blog front for March and April. After my February vacations, I’ve just spent most of my time in Rennes, hanging out with roommates, teaching, and going out a bit. I’ll quickly describe a few of the goings-on from March below:

First off, it was a month of fun birthday celebrations. In the beginning of the month I went to a birthday party for the French boyfriend of one of my American assistant friends. It was a great night full of Breton cidre, American fun-fetti cupcakes (yumm!!), and a little bit of French drinking-game Jinga … always a good time!

The second birthday celebration was for m roommate Andrea, and we all went out to eat fresh mussles together at a restaurant in Rennes. There were about 15 of us, and almost everyone ordered a different plate of mussels and fries; I think the place has about 12 different kinds of mussel dishes on their menu. I got “Moules à la Normande,” which was mussels stewed in a cider & crème fraiche sauce with sautéed apples … delightful! See below for my huge serving …

For her birthday she had four of her Chilean friends to come stay, so their presence gave us a good excuse to party for the weekend! We spent one night hanging out at our place, another at the apartment of a different Chilean assistant, and others in a creperie and bar. Many of these nights ended up in late-night, rowdy soccer in the hallway or outside. Since I’m not exactly in top shape right now, it’s a good way to ease back into playing, haha! Pictures below are of some of this month's visitors ...

Our Fave Cafe in Rennes

Just a quick word on L'Haricot Rouge ... a very cute little cafe in Rennes that specializes in different flavors of homemade hot chocolate. My roommates and I found this place a month ago and usually end up going there about once a week together, just to chill, play games, hang out outside of our little high school dorm. And there are board games to play there .... playing Taboo in French actually does wonders for your vocabulary! Here is a picture of us all there together (order of assistants: Italian, English, Russian, Chilean, Portugese, me)

Secret Santa Chez Nous

My roommates and I all agreed to do a 10-euro Secret Santa gift exchange, so we picked random names last week and are going to exchange gifts/have a Christmas dinner next Thursday. It’s funny because the tradition exists in each of our countries, but we all have different names for it … but none of us really know what it’s called in French! So we’ve resorted to referring to it as “des amis secrets” = secret friends. But when you’re only playing with 7 people who all live together/generally go downtown together/shop together … it’s not too difficult to figure out everyone’s secret! So we will see what elements of surprise are still there when we finally exchange gifts!

La Fete

So we finally decided to have a party at our place, and it ended up being awesome! First of all, we kindof know that we’re not allowed to have guests or alcohol in our hallway, but technically no one ever told us the official rules of the place … so we figured we would just give it a whirl! Due to the fact that we only have one small common area (the kitchen), we thought we would keep it small. Well, that doesn’t work because everyone brings friends of friends, etc. There were several of the other English assistants, some friends of the Chilean assistants, a group of Spanish exchange students that we’ve just met, and then just random friends. The Spanish kids all showed up with homemade bottles of their specialty drink, which is a 50/50 mix of red wine & Coke; think I found a new fave drink!

There ended up being around 40 people here at some point, all crammed into our kitchen & shower room. It sounds like an awkward space for a party, which it was, but it was really fun! Then around 2am the “surveillant” showed up, very angry, and told us that we couldn’t have alcohol here. He even found the stash of boxes/bottles that we had tried to hide in the shower, woops :) He got on his phone to call the principal, yes that’s right!, and everyone emptied out. The principal didn’t show up, but another person from school administration did. We all ran into one room, but she obviously found us, and we explained to her that it was just a small gathering of assistants from other schools in the area. She was actually somewhat nice about it, but we will see if anything happens this week … it feels like freshman year all over again!! The only sour part to the evening is that my camera is missing … have no idea what happened to it, and maybe it could still turn up, but I’m pretty sure that will be #1 on my Christmas list this year.

Cooking a l'Americain, woo yeah!

Almost all of my roommates have shared some type of food or drink specialty from their native countries, so I decided last weekend it was time for me to introduce them to some good, ‘ole Southern USA cookin … well not a very thorough introduction, but I did my best. If you know me even remotely well, you should have easily guessed that the first thing I made was PANCAKES!! That’s right, we’re not talking French-style crepes, but hearty, thick, butter & syrup pancakes! Although that was my goal, the final results sadly ended up being very similar to crepes. In the international food section of a French grocery store, I found a box of “Recette Americaine” pancake mix; the only instructions were to add water and melted butter, but this produced the lumpiest (yet too thin & watery) pancake mixture that I’ve ever seen. So they actually ended up resembling crepes much more than traditional pancakes. And my thriftiness, coupled with my lack of love towards Canada, prevented me from buying the Canadian Maple Syrup (which would have cost about $8.50 for a small bottle), so they really didn’t come close to experiencing the real thing. I have promised the roommates an encore pancake feast in January, so hopefully I can persuade Mama Wynn to bring Bisquick and Log Cabin in December when she comes :)
I did slightly redeem myself last night by making American hamburgers for my roommates. I found ground beef patties, authentic Heinz ketchup and “hamburger bread” … and it was a much more successful meal! My Italian friend apparently knew an American family who made homemade cinnamon donuts, so he is convinced that, as a good American, I should also be able to make donuts … but I’m obviously not even going to attempt that one!