Oops

Wow, I've been terrible, haven't I? The longer I've gone without posting, the harder it is to start again, but here I am. A LOT has happened in the past two months. I've been to Dijon, Dole, Montbéliard, Colmar, Geneva, and some place called Calgary. I've also had a sinus infection, been incredibly sleep-deprived, and had many great moments with friends. Let's begin at the beginning, shall we?

The weekend after my previous post I ended up going to Dijon with Andrea, my friend who works in Besançon. My fantastic proviseur adjointe welcomed us into her home, so we got to spend time with her her family as well as explore the city to our heart's content. Dijon was lovely, a little cold maybe, but after a while that didn't really matter. We saw the main cathedral, the wicked art museum, the medieval district, the Chateau des ducs de Bourgogne, and the farmer's market, where I bought crème de cassis, the liqueur used in kir, my fave cocktail. We also spent at least twenty minutes ogling the wares of a used book stall- so many gorgeous covers, so little money to buy them with....

On November 16th, Felipe and I went into Besac for our visa validation appointments. First, we had to go to a pulmonary specialist's office where we had chest x-rays done, as well as the speediest physical that I've ever experienced. Official x-rays and health certificates in tow, we went to the OFII office where, after a mercifully short wait, we became official temporary residents of France!

Next weekend, I welcomed a bunch of friends from Besac and MontB to Morteau, and we spent Saturday and Sunday hiking and enjoying the unseasonably warm weather. It was seriously warmer that weekend than it had been at the end of October! On Saturday we went to Roche Jeannin, a huge rock formation that emerges from a steep hill overlooking the valley, and saw the Table du roi on the way down (a huge flat rock that was supposedly used for druidic sacrifices!). Sunday morning, I made "Canadian pancakes" and then we hiked up Mont Vouillot for an afternoon picnic. Friends, nature and pancakes, what more can I ask for?

The following Saturday, I went to Dole for American Thanksgiving and a Coeur de pirate concert. Due to the train strike, I ended up arriving several hours later than I'd planned, but still in time for dinner with Jessica, Marie, and more assistants from Dole and Lons-le-Saunier. The dinner was held at the apartment of a french friend of theirs, the only place they had access to that had a full kitchen! It was delicious and I was so glad to be getting my yearly dose of Thanksgiving, albeit a month and a half later than usual. After dinner, we walked across town to the concert hall, where there was a festival celebrating the local artists of the year. The headliner, however, was Coeur de pirate! I really don't know how she ended up performing in Dole, but it was the first date of her European tour and ended up being a great concert. She was a lot smaller in person than I thought she'd be, and a fantastic live singer.

The first weekend of December I went up to stay with my friends in MontB to see their Christmas market and also hopefully go to a Christmas market in Strasbourg or Colmar. Friday night we went to a mom and pop restaurant in the middle of nowhere that served a whole group of us a whole lot of delicious local food. We had Morteau and MontB sausages, hashbrowns, cancoillote (amazing liquid cheese), salad, and bûche de Noël, accompanied by copious amounts of wine. After that, we went to a local bar and then we jetted off to a club called the Moulin Rouge, which didn't remind me at all of Moulin Rouge and more of Union, a frat boy-infested club back in Edmonton. Suffice to say, it was a very late night that left us all pretty useless the next day...
Saturday night we were invited to have raclette at the house of one of the guys who came to the club the previous night. I jumped at the chance, never having eaten raclette before, and didn't regret my choice. Raclette is a typical Savoyard and Swiss dish, involving raclette cheese, potatoes, vegetables, and charcuterie. The cheese is heated in mini pans on a central element that you put in the middle of the table. Once melted, you scrape it onto the potatoes and enjoy. It was absolutely delicious.
The next morning, my friend's boyfriend drove one of his cars and let another assistant drive the other as a group of us went up to Colmar, a city in Alsace about an hour and a half away from MontB. It was absolutely gorgeous. The architecture was very German- all half-timbered and brightly coloured stucco. I felt like I was in Germany again, to be honest. There were also several small canals coursing through the streets, which were all fully decorated for Christmas. The flower planters had pine trees in them, hilariously coated in fake snow- there wasn't actually any real snow! As for the Christmas market, it consisted of quaint wooden stalls spread over several city squares, offering everything from scarves to Christmas ornaments to vin chaud. It was also completely packed! Even though we kind of had to rush back to Montbéliard so I could catch my train, I'm so glad that I got to see a typical Christmas market.

My odyssey back to Canada began on December 17th. A teacher at the school who's actually from Switzerland came to Morteau to pick me up and then drove me to Neuchatel so I could catch my train to Geneva. I figured out the Geneva bus system in the dark and eventually made my way to the hostel, arriving at 8pm. Exhausted, I was in bed by 9:30! The next morning, I was up early to catch my 9am flight. I find it funny that I've now been to Geneva four times (once with the rents when I was 17, three times using the airport) and have barely spent any actual time in the city. Maybe I should rectify this in the next few months.... My flight home was relatively painless: I arrived in sunny Calgary all in one piece with all of my luggage.

Being home was weird. I didn't have to run the shower for 20 minutes for the water to be warm! I had an actual kitchen at my disposal! I could hug my parents and my dog instead of just staring at them on a computer screen! I tried to see as many friends as possible, saw two movies (MI:4, Sherlock Holmes 2) and spent lots of time with family. During Christmas dinner at my aunt's house, I met my cousin's new girlfriend, who was English and had also done the teaching assistant program. We bonded a little over our mutual experiences. My last hurrah was a dinner party with friends on the Friday night before I left, at which I discovered wine + cookie decorating = hummus icing? Ick!

My flight back wasn't so enjoyable, as I was on a plane full of babies. Then I had to wait four hours for my flight to Geneva in the Amsterdam airport, trying to sleep on a bench intersected with armrests. Then there was the two and a half hour train ride to Morteau that I spent nodding off and then waking myself up again in a panic, not wanting to miss my stops where I had to transfer trains. All in all, I was awake for about 26 hours. Thus, my first week back at work was full of bêtises and extreme fatigue. I wasn't completely over my jetlag until about half-way through last week. Add homesickness to that, and you've got the full, miserable picture.

I haven't really done that much this month. Felipe had a friend staying with us for the first two weeks, whose name was also Sarah. We went to the local Clock Museum, a Hip Hop Festival, and made tartiflette together. Sadly, she left this Sunday. It was really nice having a girl around. This past Saturday I went into Bezak for girls night with Andrea and Yenny (the only Canadian girl I've met here!) as well as Suzanne and Cari, two assistants from MontB. We went shopping and I ended up finding a few great deals at the soldes (bi-annual sales held all over France). Then we had delicious Italian for dinner. Cari and Suzanne headed back to MontB and the rest of us went to Andrea's apartment, where we met up with a German assistant and played Apples to Apples and watched part of Bridesmaids. It was a good night!

For a conclusion, I have to state that I will never go this long without posting ever again! This took me forever to write, and I had to leave so much out because of expediency. I will post again next week, because I might be doing something exciting this weekend!

It's Adventure Time

So I've been sadly neglecting my blog for the past couple of weeks....This is because nothing much was going on. I've been observing classes, grocery shopping, going on lots of walks, and that's about it. Not having a car makes getting around more difficult, because there are lots of small villages around, but no buses to take us there, which is really too bad because they're mostly just a little too far to walk to. Observing classes is going well, I feel like I'm really getting a handle on the kids' level of English (which is not the best, so I will mainly be working on fluency and pronunciation with them!) Tomorrow will be my first day of classes, so I'm working on last minute prep at the moment.

Anyways, now on to the adventure part of the post. Planning on going into Besançon on Saturday, I put a post up on the Franche-Comté assistants group Facebook wall asking if anyone wanted to join. On Saturday morning I met up with Andrea in Place de la Révolution, and we had tea while waiting to see if anyone else would show up. No one did, but we had a great day wandering around the streets of the city and then walking all the way up the hill to the Citadelle, which is a Vauban-designed fortress built mostly in the 17th century. I believe he also had a hand in designing the Citadelle in Québec city. Now instead of a military installation, it's a UNESCO World Heritage site, home to two museums, an aquarium and a ZOO. It was a little surreal watching baboons climb all over the walls of the dry moat. Andrea and I decided that we were far too tired to go into the museums and enjoy them properly, so we just walked all the way around the ramparts and had gorgeous views of the Doubs/Besançon valley. It was also really nice on Saturday, so we decided to "profiter du beau temps". When it's not as nice outside I can go back up there and go to the museums.

On our way out of the Citadelle, we ran into Jack, an English language assistant from her school, along with five assistants and a friend of theirs in town for the day from Montbéliard. It's a mid-size town an hour north of Besac by train. Most of the assistants are American, but one is English and one is Swedish! I ended up going to the main square and having a drink with them all, and then got invited to come and stay with some of the girls that night at their house in Montbéliard. I had to decide pretty quick, since the last train to Morteau was at 6:30. I didn't have anything with me, just a backpack with a camera, water bottle and train schedule, but I really didn't want to go back. It seemed silly to miss out on a chance to get to know my fellow assistants and see another part of Franche-Comté! So I missed my train and went out for dinner with them instead. After a delicious pasta dinner we said goodbye to the Besac assistants and caught the train to Montbéliard.

I spent the night at the really cute little house that three of the girls rent together. The evening itself involved a lot of wine, meeting more assistants from both Montbé and Vésoul, a lot of conversation, and a short visit to the local Irish pub, where the bartender spoke perfect English. It was excellent. Morteau feels a little bit isolated from the rest of the region, and I really hadn't met a lot of other assistants, so it was nice hanging out with a bunch of really cool, like-minded people. On Sunday, Matt, the British lycée assistant, showed me around town before I had to catch my train. I saw the Rhine-Rhône Canal and a really cool astrological clock. I didn't end up getting home until about 8 last night! They've invited me to come back sometime, and I've invited them to come and hang out in Morteau at some point as well, especially when it snows, because then we can all go skiing together. I'm ridiculously excited for skiing! And also for friends, of course :).