Back To Work...

After my jam-packed weekend with the models I was done with vacation and was back to the work life.  By that I mean back to working only Mondays and Tuesdays.  


After my first day back on Monday (which I'm starting to like more and more as I get to know the kids and teachers better) we had our first volleyball match of the season that I couldn't play in because I didn't have my license yet.  I went anyway and kept score of the game (we don't have official refs or anything, usually the home team provides a ref/score keeper), and then afterwards we brought out a bunch of food to eat together, both the home and away teams.  I was super surprised to find out, however, that we had started at 8 and the match didn't get over until 11:00!  And THEN we ate.  


By the time I was back home it was about 12:30, and I was already whipped and therefore not looking forward to having to wake up early the next morning for work.  I sent Isabelle a text that said I would just bike to school the next morning, so she didn't have to wait for me to give me a ride, which gave me a few extra minutes of sleep.


The next morning was pouring rain.  I woke up too late to ask for a ride, so I was stuck with my bike.  I was drenched and freezing cold when I got to school.  I left my bike there at Van Gogh (the name of the school) and caught the bus to Vissenty for the afternoon.  It had stopped raining when we were done so Isabelle took me to my bike and I rode it home, after which I have no recollection of what I did o_O 


On Wednesday I was planning on meeting up with Holly in town for a bite to eat and was really looking forward to sleeping in, when and I woke up to a text from Fabienne that said she would pick me up in 15 minutes. I had totally forgotten that I was supposed to teach Thomas that day.  Everything worked out though, because Holly wasn't able to make it into to town till later that afternoon anyway.  


So after a couple hours basically just hanging out with Thomas and eating a delicious lunch Fabienne took me home and I took my bike into town to meet up with Holly.  We gave Ashley a ring too and we all hung out for a couple hours, getting a drink at a café and unsuccessfully looking for s'mores stuff.  That night I think I bought Skyrim on eBay. 


On Thursday Ashley and I met up in the afternoon for lunch, but we kept it simple and just got a sandwich from a boulangerie and enjoyed the sun, who had decided to join us for the end of the week.  Ashley was prepping to go to Grenoble that weekend to go bungie jumping, so I wished her good luck and I went back home to prepare for my own weekend, starting that night.


Alex, Marion, Thibaut, Guillemette and I all went down to Valence for this soirée étudiant at a club called Blue Note; basically a huge party for university-aged students.  We got there and waited in line for at least an hour before we were finally let in.  It was only 6€ for the entry and you got two drink tickets, which was sweet!  


Observation: Again, I don't go clubbing very often in the States, but I noticed something cool about this club.  Whoever is driving the party gets a special wristband after he or she gives their keys over the counter to someone, who returns the keys only after the driver blows either or 0 alcohol rating or whatever they decide is a reasonable enough number to drive. I think it's 0 though...


Anyway, the club. was. huge.  SO many people there!  I wanna say at least a thousand.  It was incredible.  I loved the atmosphere, minus the crazies.  There's always crazies.  We partied it up until like 3:45, and were out of there by 4.  That's 4 a.m., by the way.  After carpooling back to Annonay, Guillemette finally dropped me off at home around 5:30 I think.  


I honestly am doing my best to remember what happened on Friday, and I can't come up with anything.  Biggest mystery of my life.  Apparently I tweeted this "I love green apple candy but I'm not that big of a fan of green apples... #youcantexplainthat" but have no idea why I did.   


Saturday was also really fun.  In the morning, I got up and biked down into town where they were having this big market for people from all around Ardèche.  Even people from Germany and Italy came to sell their goods, it was really cool to walk around and just browse.  Turns out one of my team mates, Rémy, had his own booth for selling apple and apricot juice that he makes himself.  They were both heavenly, and I look forward to drinking more throughout the year.


Later, in the early afternoon Alex, Thibaut and I did some grocery shopping for that night's soirée raclette.  Raclettes are a popular dish that consist of cooked potatoes, melted cheese, and meat. Lots and lots of meat.  We had a type of salami, ham, hot dogs, and some other stuff that I either didn't recognize or don't remember the name of.


As we were shopping I saw Skyrim sitting all by its lonesome on the shelf.  I held it for a while in awe, but eventually had to move on. I would have the next week, in English...


After taking care of the groceries we met up with Guillemette and Océane by chance at the wedding store in Annonay for a few minutes before heading out to St. Victor where the garçons live.  I got to meet Alex's mom, dad, and sister at his house, which is super nice, and we all enjoyed a glass of locally bottled apple juice, which was devine.  


We grabbed his raclette machine, which melts cheese in little trays and then cooks meat on top, and then headed out towards Thibaut's house.  We stopped though at this little turf soccer field that had basketball hoops to kick/shoot around as we waited for the girls to get ready and come over.  


Eventually we ended up at Thibaut's, preparing the potatoes and setting places for everyone.  There were seven of us total, including some of their friends and Thibaut's brother Greg, who he lives with.  After we were all set, we stuffed ourselves to the brim with potatoes, meat, and cheese.  I've never felt so good/bad at the same time.  The good news is that it was so delicious I didn't even care.  I hope I'm not getting fat...


We started a movie called Sexy Dance 3, which you might know as Step Up 3D.  Why the name change? No idea.  I thought it was hilarious, and if you would like to laugh you are hereby invited to do so.  We didn't get very far into it, as we had plans to go to another party and it was starting to get late.  So we headed out to St. Alban to the soirée célibataire, or the party for singles!  


It was relatively small compared to the club we were at a nights earlier, and 90% of the people there were still in high school.  Alex explained to me that it was because most people in that area our age are at their universities during this time of year, which makes sense.  


It was also much more savage than the club we were at in Valence.  There was your typical circle of bros who just push each other around during a song and ruin it for everyone else.  I ended up on the ground one time because I got shoved by an unexpected prepubescent hulk of a boy who happened I happened to be standing by at the wrong place at the wrong time.  I also witnessed two fights, neither of which slowed nor excited the pace of the party.  People pretty much just danced around them until their friends broke it up.  We left around 2:30 to Thibaut's, and then Guillemette once again took me from St. Victor to my cozy home in Davézieux. 


After a peaceful sleep, I met up again with Alex, Thibaut, and Guillemette on Sunday to go to this little lake that is kindof close to Anonnay.  It was a beautiful day, as it had been all weekend, so I got some pretty decent pictures.  We were planning on taking a dip, which isn't allowed, but the water was freezing butt cold anyway so we only went up to our knees before giving up and getting dry.  Then we walked around the lake, which is about 4 km if I remember correctly.  

There were a lot of people there, as the weather was great and people go typically walking together on Sundays.  Afterwards we were all pretty hungry, so we drove back to St. Victor to Thibaut's to finish off the potatoes, cheese, and meat from the night before and also to finish watching Step Up.  The dancing was really impressive, and I understood most of the plot, which there wasn't much of to begin with.  Not that I was expecting "Inception" with a dance twist or anything...


For the third night that weekend Guillemette brought me back to my house, and we said our au revoirs and à bientôts.  It was a pretty incredible week, if I do say so myself, and I was even beginning to look forward to work the next day!  Not so much the waking up part, but I think I'm starting to appreciate what it is I'm supposed to be doing here, and therefore I'm taking more of an interest in it as well.

Anyway, if I can remember anything else about that Friday I'll make sure I come back and add it.  The end! Of this post!

Weekend Avec Les Mannequins

This will be my best attempt of describing an event that's slowly fading and being replaced by a rapidly increasing amount of memories, which is why I'm thankful to have had my camera with me - on the second day.

Saturday was the first day of the défilé, which can directly translate to a parade, but the French say it in reference to a fashion show as well.  So anyway, my friend Marion (are you starting to remember names? or is this like the first post you've read...well she's my co worker's daughter who invited me to the first party I went to here, the first person my age I met) picked me up at my house with her friend Thibaut who also knows Alexandre (my friend who was modeling that weekend).

We drove out to a smallish city which is really close to the Rhône river, which runs through Ardèche (the region I live in, for you n00bies), to go to the site of the show, which resembled the ball room of the old community center in Richland.  There were several different booths for people who specialized in providing different things for weddings : meats, candies, music, bounce houses, photographers, hair stylists, jewelers, and even a guy with a horse and cart!

Basically it was a place for people to come who were planning on getting married, and then the wedding dresses and suits that were being modeled were a kindof a special attraction at the end of each day. Actually, there were two per day.  One in the afternoon and one a few hours later, each one lasting about 50 minutes.  There were two different stores, each with their own set of models, who took turns modeling their own song, one store after another.

Those who were modeling for the same store as Alex were: Guillemette (who I met previously), Océane, Charlène, Annabelle, Laurie, and Céline.  The last one was the only girl I didn't actually meet.

We stayed for both of the shows that day, and then later that night Thibaut and Marion headed back to Annonay while the rest of us went out to eat at a buffet-style restaurant.  That's where I ate my first tartiflette - a big mixture of potatoes, cream, ham, and cheese.  I also took a giant slice of crêpes stacked on each other and layered with creme and raspberries because I'm a big fatty.
After dinner we were planning on going to a discothèque, but it was still pretty early, and since we were gonna wait for Océane to join us anyway we drove up to this great lookout point over the city and watched a movie called "Bienvenue Chez Les Chti's (Welcome To The Home Of The Chti's."

It's a movie about a guy who is made to move from Marseilles to Beurges (from the very south to the very north) to work as the director of a post office.  The movie pokes fun at the stereotypes of the Northern French, especially the 'Chti's,' French people with a thick accent, so "ça va?" sounds like "sha va?"  Even though I didn't understand all of it, I did get most of it, even with the accent!  It was hilarious, easily one of my favorite movies.

Anyway, after the movie we drove out to the discothèque "Le Cube" and met up with Océane there.  It was pretty sweet, but there weren't a whole ton of people there.  Maybe a hundred?  With your ticket into the club you get a drink ticket, which I thought was pretty cool.  I don't know if it's like that everywhere, but I don't really get out much...so...

The DJ who we were listening to when we showed up was pretty good, but then the featured DJ took over after about an hour and it was some Jamaican guy and his posse who were stuck in the techno of like 10-20 years ago, so after like half an hour of lame music and the Jamaican rapping poorly we left.  It seemed a little pricey for how long we stayed, but it was still fun!  We all headed back home around 3:30ish I think. Because the weather still wasn't that great on Saturday, I hadn't brought my camera, so unfortunately there aren't any pictures from that day.

The next day was pretty similar, except it was just me and Thibaut who went to support Alex and our new model friends. After the shows Alex, Thibaut, Guillemette, Laurie, and I all went out to dinner at La Paille Courte (The Short Straw), where I ordered the house special - a type of sausage, with the house sauce - a type of mustard, along with a piece of chocolate cake.  Thibaut is super generous and paid for everyone's meal which makes him one of the best people ever.  We all said our goodbyes and headed back home, thus officially marking the end of my 26 day vacation!

Dernière Semaine De Vacances

This would be like Episode 2 of "The Missing Chapters Of The Last Couple Weeks Of My Life."

The day after Halloween was Toussaints, or All Saint's Day.  We didn't really do anything to celebrate, but I pretended to make a big deal out of it haha.  I went to my Marion's house (her mom is my co worker at Bernaudin) that day to give her brother, Thomas, his first private English lesson,  and it was awesome!

He's 15 or 16, plays soccer and video games, and has a really hard time with English.  I found that surprising, because when we were first talking I showed him where I lived on Google Earth and like ten minutes later his mom came in and he started from the view of the globe and zoomed in all the way to my house.  The kid has a phenomenal memory, so I don't know why he struggles with the language barrier.  Maybe it's a left brain/right brain thing? He's really good at math, so I don't know.

Anyway, I told him a little about myself and he told me a little about himself, and then when he realized that I'm a gamer too, it gave us some common ground to talk about - while we played.  We got on his computer and played Team Fortress 2 for probably an hour and just spoke bits of English (but mostly French) while we traded off games.

Fabienne (the mom) bought pizza, and I think there was a seafood, four cheese, pepperoni-esque, and ham.  Pizza here is different, but it's still super good. So anyway, we ate pizza and then Fabienne gave me 20€ and her and Marion took me home.  Not a bad gig in my opinion!

I have no recollection of what I did Thursday.  I think that might've been the day where I was out looking for anything to do, hopping from store to store when I ran into my friend Alex at the register in a clothing store called Kiabi.  Turns out he was only working there for three more days, so it was cool that I saw him! He invited me to go meet up with his model friend and hang out as they went over their routes (for lack of knowledge of modeling terms) for the show that weekend.  Desperate to do anything, and also eager for the chance to meet another French model, I agreed to tag along.

I met Guillemette in her apartment that's actually really close to Ashley's, and after they had drawn out their routes we all went out to eat at this nice-ish restaurant called "Outre Terre."  For like 16€ I got an entrée of some kind of meat paté, duck for the main dish, and a little chocolate cake for dessert.  Apparently it was very French, which is why I got it.  As I said before, the weather sucked all last week, so I didn't have my camera on me to take any pictures :/

Alex invited me to go with him to visit Tournon on Friday, but I had already made plans with Ashley to make cookies so I had to decline.  The next day was just as crappy as it had been all week, as far as weather goes, otherwise known as perfect cookie making weather.  I met up with Ashley at the grocery store and we shopped for a couple of ingredients that I didn't have leftover from the last batch I made, which included a large plastic bowl I used to cover my head as we walked back to her apartment.

We put on music fit for the mood.  Turns out half the songs we listened to were from the Twilight soundtrack.  I thought that was funny. Waaaaahhhhhh it's raining, let's make cookies and get fat so we can put ourselves in danger (cardiac arrest) so our loved ones will come to our rescue!!! Bleh.

I ate my weight in cookies that day.  The dough turned out a little different than usual, as in it stuck like glue to my hands (until I licked it all off).  Fortunately, the cookies turned out fine.  It was a little hard to judge when they were done because they spread out pretty far, resulting in a crunchy outside but a chewy inside.  Apparently it was deliciously impressive to my British friends - a huge relief.

Oh!  That also was the first day I did laundry since I've been here.  I remember because I hung my soaking wet coat next to other hanging articles of clothing strewn across the room to dry.  If you would have walked into my room without knowing what was happening, you may have been...confused.

My host family has a (small) washing machine, but no drier, which is typical here.  They just hang their clothes outside on a big clothes hanger thing.  As I stated before though, the weather had been super crappy so obviously I had to bring the clothes inside. Also, it took a couple days for everything to dry...I wore athletic shorts for underwear for a couple days.

That was it for the week as far as I can remember, but the weekend gets more interesting.  I'll let you nibble on this post while I work on the next one, which WILL have pictures. Of French models. Yep.

Halloween and Such

happy halloween! found this little guy trying to sneak
into my bathroom. i should've taken a picture of what
he looked like after i smashed his guts all over the place.

Basically I have no excuse for not keeping my blog up to date, other than the fact that I've been way too busy to spend four hours writing about stuff not too many people care about.  Now that I have that out of the way...I also didn't have my camera on me for a lot of the things I was doing over the week because it's been raining chats and chiens here.  I literally saw the sun today for the first time in 10 days.

Anyway, there will be a series of smaller updates to come.  The first of these will be about Halloween and some stuff before, which was a week and one day ago, today being Tuesday, November 8th.

It feels like it was just yesterday, yet I don't even remember much of it.  Must've been that killer party the night before where all I drank was Coke and fruit juice.  Nah, couldn't be that...but I did get to go to another party at my friend Romain's place in St. Étienne. This time Marion (my co-worker's daughter) couldn't come, so I caught a ride with my friend Morgane and her boyfriend.

We were only 7 that night, I think.  It was me, Alex, Romain, Romaane, Ana, Morgane, her boyfriend, and another girl was there for a little while but she left after a couple hours.  We listened to music and ate snacks and later pizza and drank and just had a good time together.  I liked just kicking back with a handful of people I already knew and playing some card games, opposed to getting together with a bunch of strangers and going clubbing (even though that's how I got to know some of the strangers from the last party).

It was a pretty tame night.  I didn't get to sleep ridiculously late, no one was crying or fighting, and everyone remembered my name the next morning!  Always a good thing.  Morgane had classes early the next morning, so we were on our way back to Annonay around 8.  I got home around 9 30 or so and slept until around 1, and then Isabelle surprised me with two pumpkins! They were little, but it was nice to have something to bring me a little closer to the States.  Her nephew was over doing homework, and when he was done I asked him to help me carve them.  We made a classic jack o' lantern face and a spider thing.  Later, Isabelle made soup out of the pumpkin guts.  It was...interesting! It broke down surprisingly well and was pretty thick, but it wasn't as bad as I make it out to be.  Needed a little salt :P

She took me to volleyball practice, but we didn't see anybody trick or treating and it was already 8! She said Anouk and her cousins would go together when they were younger, which surprised me.  I would've thought that being out in sort of the country they would have been less festive when it comes to American holidays, but I guess a good amount of people do, even though only one trick or treater came to her house that night.  I wish I would've been there, but I was at practice when it happened.

Anyway, that's all that happened on Halloween! On to the next post!