¡Porfin, Vacaciones!

Two weekends ago my friend Nico invited me out with him and his friends because his roommate is a clown and was going to perform as a part of the celebrations for the weekend of St. Nicolas. St. Nicolas here in Lorraine and (also in parts of Germany and Belgium) also sort of eclipsed Santa Claus here at one point, and for a while people exchanged gifts not on Christmas but on the feast of St. Nicolas on December 6th. The legend of St. Nicolas has something to do with a butcher stumbling across several children, chopping them up and storing them to prepare some day with some sour kraut, and then St. Nicolas coming and bringing the kids back to life. Lovely?

Anyway I was just too curious to see Nico´s clown roommate (by the way, just imagine walking into your own kitchen and seeing a clown sitting at the table eating a bowl of cereal...). It was really entertaining and surprisingly science-y since this guy got his master´s in chemistry before deciding to devote all of his time to clown-ing.

Saturday night there were fireworks and a re-enactment of the legend of St. Nicolas, and we had plans to go, but when I heard that Place Stan was jam-packed, we decided to stay in my friend´s apartment and watch the fireworks from there. Place Stan is the place in the picture banner on my blog, and since I am on vacation and have time to explain it, I will give you a little history lesson. Stanislas was this guy who was elected king of a combination of Poland and Lithuania. His daughter married Louis XV of France. Then he lost his kingship , caused a war of succession, became king again, and well in the end, ended up with nothing. As a consolation prize, Louis XV gave him the region of Lorraine. So Place Stanislas is the main square in Nancy, and let me tell you it is gorgeous, with lots of gold embossed things and beautiful statues and buildings...and of course, an enormous statue of Stanislas himself in the center. So anyway, the idea of squeezing into Place Stan with tens of thousands of other people in the drizzle wasn´t appealing enough to get us there, but we did enjoy the fireworks from afar.

So I had a kind of slow week when classes were over with nothing to plan, but then the exams all tumbled in. And, well at first, the power of grading exams was kind of exhilerating...but it didn´t take too long for this feeling to wear off! Luckily a lot of my exams were oral, and well it is just such a breeze to let the students do all of the work to just sit there and grade them. My basic conversation class was probably the funniest since I told the students to use as much vocabulary we learned in class as possible..we´d read the story ¨Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel´s Coat¨by Roald Dahl, in the story he uses the phrase ¨dirty dog,¨so in half of ten minute conversations between students, I ended up with one student calling another a ¨dirty dog.¨

Last Saturday one of my friends and I went on a day trip to Paris, and we started out with the flea market and then my favorite second-hand store and finally went to the Orangerie, which is an oft-neglected museum just next to the Louvre full of Monet paintings that take up entire walls. It was absolutely amazing to stand in the middle of a room and to be completely surrounded by these paintings. The rooms were designed for the paintings, and the walls were kind of rounded, so it was like actually being there. Amazing. There were two problems with the trip to Paris, though. First of all, we took a bus there because it was a special (cheap!) school trip. Paris and Nancy are an hour and a half away from each other on the TGV trains, and this is misleading since the trains are going at about a zillion miles an hour. By bus it took us around 4.5 hours to get there. The second problem was the weather--freezing and cold, and the bus ride home was especially soaking wet and freezing. Still, it was really great to see Paris...this was the first time I have been since Paris and I were there...3 years ago I guess? Or more?

So yesterday I left for Spain, and the trip was super complicated as usual. I made some British friends on the way there, and we figured out how to get to the middle-of-nowhere Ryanair airport. When I flew into Granada, Carlos was waiting for me. He and his dad drove from Almeria to get me, and we still had a long-ish drive home (longer since the road between Almeria and Granada was frozen). Granada is freezing, but here in Almeria it is over 50 degrees Farenheit...maybe even up to 60, and sunny...this temperature difference is due to the high altitude in Granada. Today I left the house only with a light sweater...and was warm. We went to his little sister´s Christmas program today, which was hilariously ill-organized...I mean how DO you organize a group of 5 year olds on a stage singing and dancing? Anyway it was adorable and nice to get me in the Christmas mood. Carlos´ family has a nice Christmas tree, and things around here are pretty festive, especially with a kid around.

Eso es todo. Hasta Luego.