Update

I realize that it's been a while since I've posted any sort of update. Two reasons for that: only like two people actually read this thing (hi mom), and, to be honest, nothing really interesting has been going on.

When I tell people I moved to France for a year, they tend to think that that means my life is full of adventure and crazy stories and constant travel. True, moving abroad is an exciting adventure in itself, but in all honesty, my day-to-day life is pretty ordinary. I plan lessons, I go to work, I buy food, I eat food, I buy more food. That being said, I do meet up with other assistants regularly enough. A few weeks ago we went to a chocolate festival (where I ate my weight in chocolate), last weekend we went on a hike up the trails behind the Bastille. We celebrated one assistant's birthday by going out to Tex Mex. (Side note: I don't think you understand the significance of this, so I'm going to explain. France wins at certain things, and it fails absolutely at others. Providing me with Mexican food? That falls in the latter category. So I was very excited that this place (El Tex Mex, it's called...very original guys) existed. The food, though, was kind of a disappointment. Not awful, but not what I was hoping for. Hey, they tried. But France, in the future, just stick to crepes.)

Chocolate festival 

La Bastille, another beautiful view

The car I watched burn outside my window

But besides that...

On my week:

Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday I teach at my schools. Besides my regular job, I've been lucky enough to find babysitting/tutoring gigs: Tuesday evenings I have one private student not far from where I live, and Wednesdays I go to Crolles, which is a really nice, rich neighborhood about an hour north of me. I babysit one girl for 3 hours, then I walk over to their neighbor's house where I teach her three kids, one after another, for two hours, then I go one house over to her friend's house and teach her son for an hour. Apparently they've worked out a system that they've already been using for a few years: the first family finds an assistant willing to babysit, and they they sort of "share" her among themselves. I like it, it lets me see how other French families live, they feed me free lunch that I don't have to cook for myself, and it makes it worth my while to go all the way up to Crolles.

On coffee:

Ever since Toussaints I've been downing the stuff like it's finals week all the time. I give France a lot of crap for its sub-par coffee, but even so I think it's safe to say I'm officially addicted. "Okay, I'm just going to finish this box since I've already paid for it, and then no more." Guess what I buy at the store the very next day?

On handwriting:

This has been a constant issue ever since I started teaching. In France all the kids learn cursive, and for the most part their handwriting is impeccable. Mine looks like that of a ten-year old boy who has partially lost control of his extremities... and I don't write cursive. Probably 50% of the time I write something on the board, at least one kid isn't able to read all of it. And apostrophes, they do those differently here, which has caused some confusion. Last week I went into one of my kindergarten classes while they were doing handwriting exercises and I legitimately took notes.

On teaching: 

The first few weeks of teaching were actually a lot harder than I had expected. I had no clue what I was doing and most of the teachers weren't helping much. But the last few weeks it's gotten a lot better; I see what works, what doesn't work. I've gotten better at adjusting on the spot if what I prepare doesn't fill the time or doesn't seem to be working. At the same time a handful of the teachers actually started doing their jobs and preparing things as well. There are still a few that don't do anything though, they don't seem to understand that the time I'm there isn't another coffee break for them. Yesterday I was having some trouble explaining a game to them so I asked to teacher to explain it better "oh...what? Sorry I wasn't listening." Really dude?

On the kids:

I've been there for two months, and still, every time I walk through school grounds, hoards of kids shout my name, "Ola! Regarde, c'est le prof d'anglais!" It's cute, but I don't think I'm meant for stardom. I'm not going to lie, sometimes I try to hide a bit to avoid being mobbed by little humans.

The younger ones are funny. I was doing a game which required them to first learn some food words, and I made the mistake of adding brussel sprouts to the list. Half of them didn't even know what it was when I said it in French, and I actually felt bad watching them struggle to pronounce it. One kid never got it:
"Brushel shprushle!"
"No, it's: bru-sel sp-rout."
"Brushel Shprushle"
"...yeah okay, good job kid."

I tried to teach some of the youngest ones "ice cream." I don't think they quite understand that English isn't just French pronounced differently. I showed them a picture of ice cream, "what's this?" (Ice cream in French is glace, just by the way).

"GLEES! GLOOS! GLASE! GALOOS! GLEES!" I couldn't correct them I was laughing so hard, it was like something Dr. Seuss would name his characters.

On housing:

Still slightly awkward. In order to get from my room to anywhere else in the apartment I have to walk through the living room, between the TV and the couch, and the people I live with always seem to be watching TV. I can't get used to basically announcing every time I have to go pee or get a snack. I can't complain too much though, the rent isn't high, I live really close to work, and the city isn't too far away either.

On feelings:

For a couple of weeks I was feeling kind of crappy. It wasn't homesickness, and it wasn't really loneliness. It was two things: I felt very isolated, for one. I'm an awkward person as it is and it takes me a long time to feel comfortable around others, it doesn't help much when they all speak French. At home, at work, even going out with assistants, I constantly felt... closed off. At the same time, a few weeks ago I made the mistake of realizing how quickly this is going by, and that I needed to start thinking of some sort of a post-TAPIF, big-girl, real-life plan, which is always a dangerous road for me to go down. Long story short, I had something of a quarter-life crisis. And I dealt with all of this by sitting in my room and binge watching Suits on Netflix. It all peaked on Thanksgiving. It was the second year in a row I wasn't home for it and I was feeling a little down. We didn't do anything to celebrate it here, so it passed quietly.

Looking back, I feel unappreciative. I'm living abroad, fully supporting myself working half-time, I was able to find side jobs, I can travel. Feeling isolated... quite frankly that's my own fault, personal demons I have to deal with that have nothing to do with France. As for my future, I'll give myself a few weeks before I open that box up again (so basically sticking my fingers in my ears and shouting "la la la, I can't hear you.")

Alright, there you go mom and the odd person or two who find themselves reading this. Consider yourself updated.

It's funny how things turn out...

I was working on lesson plans and listening to Spotify when Edith Piaf's Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien came on, and I had a little flashback to high school french where we learned this song during one of our units. I still find it funny, thinking about where I am today considering how much I detested French for the first few years I took it. I was convinced Madame hated me (but then again, at that point in my life I was convinced everyone hated me... ah, adolescence), I was annoyed by almost everyone else in the class, and what I hated most of all was putting effort into a subject I was "never going to use." Well...you can eat your words, past self.

I often wonder what Madame Hallenbeck would say if she found out I not only kept up with French, but I'm living here, doing this.

It's funny how things turn out, what I thought would be the most useless class was the one that eventually let me travel and led to my first post-college job.

The time I ran to a castle

I've said this before, but I swear, every time I go out and explore this area a little I fall more and more in love with it. It's not everywhere that a simple run can lead you to a chateau. 

Behind my apartment there is a big hill which takes you out of the city and into the countryside. If you go a little further you get to a little nature reserve (which has become my favorite spot) where you can sit on the dock over the small lake and watch the birds (Skribbles flies here! Only my mom and Kerry will get that though...). I had never gone past there before, but today curiosity got the better of me and I kept going...and going and going. I ended up in a little town, and I kept seeing signs for Chateau de Bon Repos, so I followed those and a little farther up, there it was, a 15th century chateau, just chillin' a few hundred meters from some peoples' houses, overlooking the mountains, with some donkeys right next to it just to add some extra charm. I just stood there smiling at it like an idiot (and pet the donkey, of course).

Not a bad find, for a morning run...

On the way back I ran on a gorgeous trail I had never been on before. More donkeys. And horses. And cows. I stopped and stared at a cow for a while, it stared back at me... I don't think it  liked me much, so I left. 

Remember a week or two ago when I published a post about finding miles and miles of trails behind that park five minutes away from my place? Well somehow I ended up there again, and from there I went back home.

I was gone for hours, and when I got back I was muddy and starving. It was amazing.

And to think I almost decided to live in the city, I would have never discovered this if I did. It's one of those places you would never find on TripAdvisor. That's what I love about Grenoble (and Echirolles), the longer I live here the more hidden gems I find. 

Hidden Trails

This morning was unintentionally awesome. I decided to go on one of my increasingly rare "runs" (i.e. glorified walks) to a park I had passed by about a week before. Turns out there's a trail that runs behind it and keeps  going and going out into the countryside where it forks out into several other trails. No roads, barely any houses,  horses and donkeys, no people. Back home I would have to drive an hour for trails like this, here, it's a ten-minute walk away. How have I lived here for two months without finding this??

On my way back I was running behind this middle-aged man, and as I was passing him he said something to me. I took out my earbud, "what was that?"

I thought he asked me if we could run together until the end of the trail, which seemed a little strange, but I said why not, we were almost there anyways. Then he sped up, so I sped up to keep up with him, then he sped up again, so I sped up, etc., until we were full-on sprinting. Looking back on it I think he was asking me to race. (And I realize how creepy this sounds, but trust me, it was fine).

"Ah, ca fait du bien"

Turns out he had been a serious runner in his youth and he ran those trails all the time, usually at a leisurely pace but every once in a while he liked to push it. He explained more or less how the trails are laid out, gave me the name of some local running club, and then we parted ways. Thanks, kind stranger.

I really wish I had brought my camera, it was really gorgeous.

I've been feeling sort of crummy this last week, and this was just what I needed, a hit of endorphins and a forest.

Bastille: Take #3

I had (yet another) day off today, so I decided to climb up the Bastille again. This time I wandered around for about two hours on the trails that continue up past the main Bastille hike. It was gorgeous. I still can't believe all this is just a half hour tram ride away.

First hike in the Alps!

I finally went on a hike the other day with a few other assistants! It was great, but about halfway up it started to drizzle. As we made our way up and through the snow and then started to come back down, it slowly progressed into a full on downpour. Eventually we decided to get off the trail and veer onto a rode where we hitched a ride with a nice old man who let all five of us squeeze into his little car, and drove our freezing butts into town. So it was a little cold and wet, but it was great :) Next time I won't ignore the weather report though.

You can't see it, but once we got to the top it was covered in snow

I was a little bummed we missed the great view, there was so much fog we couldn't see anything! 

Made it to the top!

Toussaints #7: Getting Back Home

Our trip back from Rome to Grenoble was without a doubt the pinnacle of our insanity. I suppose that it was only appropriate that our most terrifying day fell on Halloween. Even before the trip I had something of a panic attack just looking at our return trip, I didn't think we would make all our connections from one place to another (there were a lot). At best I knew we'd come out of our "vacation" somewhere between exhausted and dead.

We woke up at 3:30 am to catch a shuttle to the airport, had some coffee, and flew to Milan. Chelsea had had some problems printing out her train ticket that we needed to get back to Grenoble, so we took a metro to the Milan SNCF office to get that, then we took another metro to the middle of nowhere to catch an 8.5 hour bus from Milan to Lyon. By that time we were very, very tired, after not only that early morning but also two weeks of little sleep and lots of travel. I had a little notebook where I made quick notes of where we had been and what we had done, and I wrote "we are the kind of exhausted that makes you wonder if maybe you accidentally inhaled too much of that pot you just walked by. What the hell were we thinking?"

We had a few hours to kill so we went in search of something to get for lunch and dinner for later, but we couldn't find anything. We wandered for a good half hour before we saw a sign that said "centro," assuming it mean the center of town we walked there which took another half hour-ish. I found a little corner store and got way too many apples because I was too tired to count, and then we finally found a little kebab/pizza place.

You have to imagine us, two girls with three big bags, five if you count the huge ones under our eyes, on the verge of collapsing right there, struggling to order food from a man who spoke no English. Chelsea ordered pizza. I pointed at what looked to be a calzone and got him to tell me what was in it, realized I didn't care, weakly pointed to it and said I would take one. Then remembering dinner I pathetically looked up at him "falafel?" "Ah, si," and pointed to another plate. Okay, I'll take that too. He looked at me, confused "so this one, and not that one?"
"No no, this one AND that one." More confused looks. He could clearly see we were half dead.

I swear at this point he must have thought we were some poor foreign hobos, I could literally feel the pity he was emitting. We stood awkwardly for a while, until he told us to put our bags down and sit. He tried to make a few jokes but we were too tired to do anything more than weakly smile. In the end when we were paying he totally undercharged us, "it's okay, it's okay." Once we left the place we just started laughing at how incredibly pathetic we must have looked to the nice old man. We still had some time so we walked to a park where I became a fully-fledged hobo and took a nap on a bench. Yup, dignity has a funny way of dying at moments like that. The last thing I wrote in my notebook: "Lord please just get our idiot selves back home safe."

We got up and started walking back, expecting it to take us an hour, but after walking five minutes we were back at the station. Our poor brains were very confused and we spend a few minutes just staring at each other and turning our heads "but how... what?" So we magically had another hour to kill which we used to drink more coffee.

We finally got on the bus, struggled through 8.5 hours of sleepless sitting, and were dropped off in Lyon. In case you didn't already think we were idiots, let me try to convince you. When we were buying tickets we figured we could get off in Lyon and hop right onto the train, so the half hour between when we were dropped off and when the train left seemed perfect. We failed to realize that there are two train stations in Lyon, and we were being dropped off in the wrong one. We realized this about a week before we left, so we planned on calling a taxi and praying and crossing fingers and toes and everything else that we got there on time. Thank God we did, because it was literally the last train from Lyon to Grenoble, otherwise we would have had to sleep in the station or something. That would have taken me to a whole new level of hobo, and I'm not sure I'm ready for that yet.

We got to Grenoble, the lovely family I live with came to pick us up because the trams stopped running, and I got home around 1:00 am. It was so, so, so nice having my bed back, being in a place with good wifi. And it was really nice to come home and have someone to give you a hug and be happy you made it back alive.

So the trip back was nuts. We got back about a week ago, and looking back, yes, I think it would have been smart to cut the number of places we saw in half. But sleeplessness aside, it was a privilege and a blessing to be able to see so many places and meet so many amazing people. :)

Toussaints #6: Rome

Rome: Where I saw very old things, took way too many pictures, climbed a tree, and fell in love with a church

Aaah, Rome. It most definitely lived up to it's reputation. Rome was no question one of my favorites, despite the number of people who tried to force me to buy selfie sticks or roses or cheap bracelets and how difficult it was to find anything to eat. I wish we had been there for more than a day and a half, but even in that short time we saw quite a bit.

We had our fourth and last covoiturage trip from Florence to Rome, which was... interesting. We got to our meetup point hours too early and we ended up hanging out outside of an opera house, listening to birds, talking about music and just relaxing. And of course getting coffee, which served as our best friend and primary source of energy throughout the whole trip.

Our driver was a well-dressed guy, probably in his late twenties, driving a really swanky car. He spoke barely any English, sp there was quite a bit of Google translate involved. He stopped three times for coffee, with each trip his eyes seemed to get wider and wider. After the last one he got back in the car, hit the steering wheel a few times and shouted "let's go, go, go!!"

"How much coffee do you usually drink?" I asked, stunned by his sudden burst of enthusiasm.
"Like...five"
Five pure shots a day? Geez.

Speaking of coffee... I don't think I've commented on Italian coffee yet, have I? It seems like everywhere I go the coffee shrinks. In the US we have nice big cups of relatively weak coffee which I miss dearly. In France I get coffees which are about the size of two shots, they make me sad. And then we get to Italy, where you need a microscope to see the tiny espressos they serve, way too strong. The last few days of the trip I gave up and started ordering cafe lattes (here's a tip: don't order a "latte" in Italy, for them it just means steamed milk) which were really, really good. Okay, coffee note over.

We started talking about our stay in Rome and he asked us where our hostel was. When we told him he looked at us with big eyes that said "oooh....that's not a good place." He typed something into his phone to translate, turned it around and it said, I kid you not: "beware of rapists."

"WHAT?!"

I spent the rest of the trip terrified, quietly staring out the window.

When we finally got to our hostel we saw that it wasn't bad at all, I don't know what that guy was talking about. It was a strange hostel though, a hostel/hostel hybrid, where some rooms were regular hotel rooms, and some were shared. We had a long room with four beds in it. Not as homey as our Budapest hostel, but better than our Florence place, and a palace compared to our box in Venice.

We got there, locked our stuff, and headed out to see Rome at night.

And then I fell in love with it a little bit, it was beautiful. We quickly lost our way and then spent four hours wandering around, until about midnight, maybe later. The city is gorgeous at night, after most of the tourists have gone to sleep and everything is lit up. The sites were closer than we had thought they were going to be; one moment we were at the Pantheon, the next we were right next to the Colosseum. Good news, since we only had one full day there.

They say that the best museum in Rome is the city itself, and I completely agree. Most of the walk was us swiveling our heads around saying "ooh, that's a cool-looking thing with a dead guy's statue on it, let's got there."

The best part was that we both finally had fun. Throughout the trip when one of us was "awake" (a relative term), the other had a tendency to be half dead, but that night in Rome we were both energized. At one point we stopped in Piazza Navona and stared at the Fountain of Four rivers while sitting in the middle of a walkway next to the entrance of a restaurant we could never afford. We talked about nonsense, took endless selfies, and discovered that Chelsea can't open her eyes very wide which, in the state we were in, seemed to be the funniest thing in the world.

Afterwords we walked to the Spanish Steps then climbed up and wandered off onto a quiet road where we got an amazing view of the city. I wish my camera took better photos at night, it was beautiful.

On our way back we passed by the Roman forum and the Colosseum, took more photos, and then we walked home through a park, I climbed a tree, all was good.

Bottom of the Spanish Steps

I wish my camera was better, it looked so much better than this photo

The Pantheon, one of the best-preserved Roman ruins built in the 2nd century. There were bats in there! 

Fountain of the Four Rivers. Google it, my pictures suck. 

Roman Forum, there were many sections like this, I suggest YouTubing it: "It was for centuries the center of Roman public life: the site of triumphal processions and elections; the venue for public speeches, criminal trials, and gladiatorial matches; and the nucleus of commercial affairs. Here statues and monuments commemorated the city's great men. The teeming heart of ancient Rome, it has been called the most celebrated meeting place in the world, and in all history" Wikipedia 

Colosseum

Finally both awake and ready to wander! 

The next day was our only full day in Rome. We started off by going into the Roman Forum, Palatine Hill, and the Colosseum which was great. I mean, we were walking through the remains of 2,000 year old buildings and palaces. Definitely worth 12 euros.

After that there was lunch and more wandering. At one point we actually ran into two other assistants who had also decided to go to Rome, it was crazy.

We ended our day in the Vatican. We didn't get to go into the Vatican Museum to see the Sistine Chapel, since that itself takes a full day, but we did go into St. Peter's Basilica which blew me away. It. Was. Stunning. Hands down the most gorgeous church I have ever been to. It was gigantic and the ceilings and walls were amazing and there were Michelangelo art pieces... it was like a museum but better. And it was free. Even the square around the church was amazing, which made waiting in line to get through the security check (yes, they screen you before going in) a pleasure. Honestly, do me a favor and google "St. Peter's Basilica," because my photos just fail to capture how gorgeous it was.

We went back to the hostel relatively early since we had a very early morning and a very long day ahead of us. Like I said, I loved Rome and if I ever have the chance I'm going to go back to see the rest of it.

Roman Forum, the ancient center of Roman public life

Palatine Hill, one of the most ancient parts of Rome

If I remember correctly these were some old apartments 

Colosseum

Some random park we found that had parrots

View from said park

Wall of the Vatican

Outside St. Peter's Church. Google it, these pictures don't do it justice

Haha, typical child in a catholic church