Originally in Spain, there was no Santa Claus on Christmas. Presents were delivered on the Epiphany (January 6th) by the 3 wise men, and if you ask me that makes a lot more sense. But with globalization, you can´t suppress all of the Santa movies and the marketing, and now there is an awkward combination of both legends. When Carlos was a child he was able to choose which one he wanted presents from, and well now his sister receives presents from both. I guess what I have the most trouble understanding is how you keep two stories straight for the children. It´s hard enough maintaining one lie.
Here, Christmas is celebrated on the night of Christmas Eve so a lot of his family came over and we had an enormous wonderful meal. Luckily my comprehension skills are getting a lot better so I was less bored, but my speaking skills are still pretty weak, so I was pretty silent. On Christmas day we really didn´t do anything at all. So that I didn´t lose my traditions entirely, Carlos and I exchanged presents--I gave him some new games, and he gave me a new suitcase, and we spent most of the day playing the game.
Other than that, there is really not much to report. Mostly just extreme laziness as we have both had trouble waking up before noon....yes in that sense it is a pretty normal holiday.
lundi 29 décembre 2008
jeudi 18 décembre 2008
¡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.
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.
jeudi 4 décembre 2008
"Dans le SCELV, on se tutoye." was the first sentence that my boss ever said to me in person. This was a rather confusing sentence to start off with, and it took me a minute to realize that she was telling me that in our department we use the informal form of "you" with everyone. This, I think, illustrates how opening and welcoming the people in my department are.
The first time I went to lunch, the other teachers told me it was in a kitchen behind a "secret door" in an academic records building and down some dark stairs. It is truly strange that there is somewhere on campus so removed because every other inch of the fac de lettres (the humanities campus) is packed, and there are not enough classrooms or anything. (The other campuses are better equipped, especially the law campus--I think you can see the government's general attitude towards humanities students in the terrible state of the fac de lettres...) I slipped away to go to the bathroom on Monday while they were heating up lunch, and as I tried to leave the stall, I made a horrible realization. The door wouldn't open. It wasn't locked.
Don't panic, I told myself. Just bang on the door and scream at the top of your lungs, and someone will hear you, and it will be ok. After ten minutes of screaming and banging I started to lose hope, and the movie that Carlos and I watched this summer about a boy who is accidentally locked in a closet and never escapes came rushing back to my memory. These were evidentally bathrooms that no one cleaned on a regular basis, and I knew that my colleagues were down the hall, but they apparently couldn't hear me, even though I was saying their names. Voice nearly gone and hands red, it was tempting to stop, but I knew that if I didn't get someone's attention during lunch, then they'd all leave, and then no one would be on this floor of the building. After about twenty minutes I was discovered by a German teacher (the same German teacher I went with to Trier), and one of the lunch bunch members went and got a screwdriver and got me out. Apparently this is not the first time that this has happened. The rest of the day was kind of hard. I was shaky and nervous. But well I have learned my lesson. I will never go anywhere without my cellphone again.
In my pre-moving to France reading rampage of memoirs of American and British expats in France, I stumbled upon Almost French by Sarah Turnbull in which she warns about how letters written in French are full of formal and fluffy expressions, and I didn't pay too much attention to this until I started having to correspond with many French administrators in the universities, and I started encountering emails addressed to "My dear distinguished colleague" and signed "with all of my appreciation for your help and attention. I am at your disposition for any other information that you may require." I've even seen fluffier--it is like an art form. This is contrary to my own person email template:
Dear (person),
(Stating what I need or what I need to know)
Thanks!
Kate
I am working on the fluff, but it's hard, and I'm not sure how thick to lay it on? Anyway, I've started just making sure that there is a grammatical error or two in the email just so that the people realize that I am not French, and I probably don't know any better. (Actually I rely on this excuse in many different situtations...)
The thing is that I have had to send a lot of emails like that lately. Working at three campuses is tough because I am dealing with three sets of administrators, and simply finding out when my exams are/what classrooms they are in is unbelievably complicated. And then there is the emails I keep getting from the students. I have a new sympathy for teachers. Every student has some sort of situation that requires special attention. I am not unsympathetic to actual problems, but you just wouldn't believe the triviality of a lot of this stuff. So I've been spending a lot of time emailing students and trying to figure out how to accommodate whatever situation.
Yesterday I had a meeting at the hospital. I had received an email asking if anyone wanted to tutor doctors in English over the telephone. Tutoring without having to leave the house sounded too good to be true so I had an interview with some official head of medicine doctor yesterday, and I'll be starting next week. My courseload for next semester so I should have time for this tutoring and hopefully some more.
In thanking you my esteemed readers for your gracious attention. I rest at your disposal for any input or questions that you ma require.
Trier
Did I mention that we saw the house Karl Marx was born in?
S has clarified, and it wasn't the king of Ghana that we saw but a king of one of the major tribes of Ghana. Still cool though...
Vin chaud!
Last look at the Trier Christmas market
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