Travel Bug ...

I’ve got it, and it’s a good thing that a two-week vacation is coming up at the end of February. Tina Lee gets to Paris on Friday the 15th, and we recently bought tickets to fly from Paris to Athens the following day. So we’re going to spend a week in Greece … which conveniently overlaps with the several-week festival of Carnival in Greece! I think we’ll spend the first couple of days in Athens, and from there we’re not really sure where we’re going to go. We’ve both read a lot about the different cities and islands, but since it’s low season (and we shouldn’t have too much of a problem finding lodging somewhat last-minute, knock-on-wood), we’re going to somewhat play it by ear. That’s usually the most interesting way to travel, anyway :) Then we fly back to Paris on the 23rd to have a day and a half there. Tina leaves to go home on Monday the 25th, and I’m going to Spain with a couple of my roommates. We just bought tickets today to fly from Paris to Madrid on the afternoon of the 25th … with a return flight from Barcelona to Paris on Sunday the 2nd. So that gives us 6 days in Spain, probably spending 2 days in Madrid and 3 in Barcelona, with a bit of flexibility in between. I also just found out that we could see an FC Barcelona game while we’re there, but it’s the semi-final match in the Spanish Cup so the date/time hasn’t been confirmed yet. But yeah that would be pretty cool to see! Ever since the ’06 World Cup I’ve been pretty intrigued by the Argentine Lionel Messi … you’d know this if you saw any of my rants at Brit’s during the World Cup that summer! I’m definitely ready for some quality traveling, so now that the flights have been made, my only challenge will be trying to stick to a budget to make this happen!

Sometimes I Feel Like I'm at Sleepaway Camp

Seriously … tonight was one of those nights where I had to question where I am and what I’m doing; well, this isn’t really as grave as it sounds. But anyway, today we woke up to find out that our hallway didn’t have hot water, and then we later found out that the whole girl’s dormitory building where we live didn’t have hot water. Of course this didn’t get fixed today. But don’t worry, the administration told us we could go over to the boy’s dormitory to take showers. Seeing as how I chose to forego this morning’s shower due to the cold water and I have a class at 8am tomorrow, I decided to take them up on this offer … as creepy and lame as it was. So myself and another roommate went over to their building tonight and got heckled by a bunch of 15 year old students – fantastic. It was the whole bit, just like at camp … repeatedly turning off the lights in the shower room, spraying water over the doors of our shower cabins, kicking empty shampoo bottles under our shower doors, all very mature. We tried to say some mean stuff in French upon leaving, but lucky for them, it was nowhere near what I really wanted to say to them in English. If the water’s not fixed by Friday night (tomorrow), then I think we might have to make this a roadtrip weekend somewhere.

French Trivia Night at an Irish Bar ...

.... with a team of two Germans, an Italian, a Chilean, and an American. You'd think that we'd maybe have a good chance of competing in a random trivia game. Yeah, apparently not. A few of my roommates and I heard about Trivia Night on Monday at our favorite Irish bar, so we decided to pull together a team of five and give it a shot. The questions were read out-loud in French, in the categories of General Culture, Music, Movies, Celeb Photos, Films, and Sports. A surprisingly high amount, in my opinion, of the questions centered around American culture (particularly in the music and film categories), and unfortunately I don't think I was of much help to my team! Whatever the reason (the often inaudible French question-reader, the bad microphone, the "anglophone" tilt to most of the questions & topics, or just too many pints) ... l'Auberge des Assistants (our cute team name) came in last out of all the teams. But we had a good time with it, of course! I was proud for having identified a random 10-second clip from Jaws (and no, not an obvious scene with the ocean or the shark in it), but was equally as ashamed when I incorrectly answered a question about the 40th American President ... sorry, Ronald. And who knew that the Miami Dolphins were the last (or only?) NFL team to go undefeated through the entire season? Not me. As a proud Hoosier, I went with Indianapolis on that one. It was fun, but we're not sure if we'll make a second showing for Quiz Night :)

Small World - Wisconsin sighting in France

On Friday night my roommates and I went to a party at the apartment of a Chilean assistant and her French boyfriend, in Rennes. There was another group of assistants from a small town in Normandie, who were here visiting for the weekend. These assistants were a mix of Irish, English, Chilean, and American. I started talking to one of the Americans and found out she graduated last year from Madison - so that was kinda exciting for me! She then said she was from a small town outside of Milwaukee ... which turns out to be Brookfield - the hometown of a bunch of my friends from Minneapolis! She of course went to Brookfield East, where they all went to high school. So to all of you Shanes, Malaneys, Thurners out there... it was such a fun coincidence to be at a party with this girl in France! I, of course, tried to convince her that she must have known some of you, haha! She recognized your names but is several years younger than all of us, so I don't think any of you know her. Random, huh!

After the party we went to a Cuban bar for lots of dancing and then ended up at our usual late night place. The rest of the weekend wasn't too exciting ... went downtown on Saturday afternoon for a bit of browsing and cafe-hopping, and just hung out at home Saturday night and most of Sunday. I'll throw in a couple of pictures from Friday night.

Best Care Package Ever!

Last Friday morning I was delighted to find a fabulous little package from Camille in my mailbox! Nothing but the good-old American faves ... 2 family-size packs of Twizzlers, Peeps bunnies, caramel corn from Traverse City, authentic Maple syrup, and a pack of Pat O'Brien's infamous Hurricane drink mix! And leave it to Camille to throw in a few international delights as well, including coconut/chocolate Ritter Sport bars from Germany and some "Happy Panda" cookies from Japan. I took a pack of the Twizzlers to a class with my favorite students, and they loved them!! Merci beaucoup, Camille - je t'aime!!

It's a little sad when ....

... the best part of your day is finding a freshly-baked, warm baguette. On the way home for dinner the other night, three of us stopped at a small grocery/convenience store to get baguettes for the rest of our roommates. To our dismay, they were out of baguettes - oh no! As we were about to leave empty-handed, a woman rolled in a cart of fresh baguettes ... perfect timing! And we even got to select them and put them in the paper wrapping ourselves - an honor usually reserved for the bakers themselves - how exciting! So we naturally used this as a photo opp, why not?! I know this is a pointless post, but I just wanted to share the pictures :)

Wild Animal Sighting, Chez Nous!

Wednesday night my roommates and I met up downtown to get an apéritif together … nothing out of the ordinary. We went to a bar, got a drink, and played a little foosball together. Then we missed our intended bus back home, so we naturally went to another bar … subsequently missing another bus. But this bar ended up being pretty fun, and the owner started telling us about her “home-distilled” flavored vodka shots. She had HUGE bottles filled with vodka and different types of candy used to flavor them … Malabar, caramel, bubble-gum, licorice, etc. So we tried a couple of the shooters and finally managed to get the bus back to our place. But the most interesting part of the evening happened as we were walking up to our building … we found a porcupine in the grass!! Well, in Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, the words my roommates were saying were something along the lines of “porcupina” etc … so I naturally assumed it was a porcupine. However, I was later informed that it was a hedgehog, and after a bit of thought … yes, I must agree this is probably more accurate. So I checked out Wikipedia (remember, I work 12 hours a week) and can confirm that it was a hedgehog. And I also found out that there are no living hedgehog species native to North America … so that’s kinda cool that I was able to randomly see one here! We probably shouldn’t have touched the poor little guy, but we’ll blame that on the beer and vodka shots. Bien sur, I took some pictures!

Chez Moi

Where I live ... so obviously this post should have been done a few months ago, but I wanted to wait for a nice and sunny day to take pictures of my place. So here you go, a pictorial description of my modest home in Rennes ... freshly cleaned and enjoying a rare glow of Brittany sunshine on a January afternoon :)

Outside of the building ... this is the girl's dormitory, where we assistants have a hallway to ourselves on the first floor. Picture on the right is three of my roommates.















Here is a view of our hallway ... seven bedrooms, a bathroom, shower room, and kitchen.

Next is the shower room and kitchen:















And here is my room ... desk, small bed, big window, closet, wardrobe/picture wall, and sink:






























I know, I know, you're all jealous ... hahaha :)

Almost Exciting as a Snow Day ... Another Teacher's Strike

Today there was another teacher/student strike – I think the 3^rd or 4^th one that we’ve had this year. This time it was to protest a new proposal that would reduce the number of people employed in public education next year. We always receive notification in our mailboxes a few weeks before a strike, but this time I also received a flier that students were handing out on the way into the school. However, not all professors always participate in the strikes, and technically as assistants we don’t have the right to strike since we are part-time employees … so I never really know in advance if it will affect me or not. Anyway, today I only had one regularly scheduled course to go to, and I wasn’t really looking forward to it since sometimes it’s a bit annoying to just have on course to go to, right in the middle of the day. But I received a call at 8:30 this morning from my professor, telling me that she would be striking today so there would be no students there. So I went back to sleep for a few hours … and the only thing I can equate this feeling with is to that of a kid who wakes up, turns on the news, and finds out that it’s a snow day – NO SCHOOL, woohoo!! So what did I do with my free day?? Well, I wasn’t as productive as you might have hoped. I spent about 4 hours online in the teacher’s lounge … nice and empty on a strike day. But I did get tickets booked for our flights to Athens! Tina is flying into Paris in mid February to join me for a vacation, and we decided to spend a week of it in Greece! After a week or two of messing around with different options through Easyjet (Paris to Milan to Athens, or Athens to Berlin to Paris, and ultimately just getting burned by price changes) we finally decided that the easiest option would be the direct flight from Paris to Athens. So Tina gets to Paris on Friday afternoon, and our only option is to leave for Athens at 6am on Saturday. We’ll be able to spend the afternoon and evening in the city, but we’ll have to take the last train Friday night to the airport and camp-out there until our 6am flight. At least we don’t have to pay for a night of lodging this way … that’s a bright spot, right??

Stade Rennais Soccer Game

I went to my first Rennes soccer game last night – a French friend that I met last week invited me and the Chilean assistant to a game because he knew we played & enjoyed watching soccer. The match was between Rennes (ranked 12^th in the French league) and Nice (ranked 4^th), and it ended up being a really good game. We got pretty cheap seats, towards the top of the stadium, but we were directly behind the Nice goal for the first half … which ended up being great because Rennes probably had 15 shots on goal to Nice’s 4 or 5, at least for the first half. Rennes should have had at least 2 or 3 goals, but ended up only getting 1. Then the Rennes goalie made a bit of a mistake, and Nice scored The rest of the game stayed tied. The atmosphere in the stadium wasn’t as “crazy” as we (Americans) expect most European soccer matches to be, but it wasn’t definitely a lot more crowded and lively than a Wednesday night soccer match in the US would be. But my Chilean friend found it really amusing that it was so calm, compared to the craziness of South American football matches. Apparently all of their stadiums have really high gated fences around the field to stop spectators from attacking the refs, players, etc. I can only imagine …:)

Smoking Ban in France - **UPDATE**

Just wanted to update the apparently misleading info that I left in my last post about the new smoking ban in France. I was notified that apparently the rate in France is more around 25% ... whereas 40% is closer to the rate in Greece ... if you're curious. To all my "loyal" readers out there, I just wanted to remind you that I've never presented this blog as being politically correct or well-researched. If that was the case, let's all hope that I would have chosen a more legitimate name than Molly McGulliver's Travels :) I don't really have the time or interest to do additional research for the blog; this is a quick and fun way to update my friends and family on my experiences. Thanks for reading :)

Brittany Weather ... nightmare

So I think I've finally begun to really experience the true weather of Bretagne. So far there has only been one really bad day (today ... so pardon my "venting"), but I think I walked to class in a hurricane this afternoon. Since we are close to the Atlantic coast, we get a lot of the coastal weather ... which means it rains a lot. I can handle rain, but it's the rain & wind combination that is crazy! The wind actually broke a window in one of the door's in the school lobby this morning! While I was walking (about 20 minutes on foot) to the medical center where I teach, I actually caught myself thinking "Hmm, maybe February in Minneapolis wasn't that bad." But I don't think I'd go that far ... anyway, hopefully this will pass!