The Great Apple Pie Adventure

Last night, Serena and Tessa hosted an international soirée at their house where everyone was supposed to bring a dish from their country. After considering the possibilities of what I could bring from the United States (hot dogs, hamburgers, baked beans, anyone?), I decided that it would be in everyone's best interest if I brought something for dessert. I toyed with the idea of pumpkin pie, which would have been quite appropriate as autumn has arrived and Thanksgiving is just around the corner, but I thought that might be too complicated locating the right ingredients. So I decided on an apple pie instead, equally appropriate for the season as well as equally American.

Baking an apple pie, however, did not come without some minor difficulties. What I learned is that improvisaton was key. First of all, there's the issue with the pie plate. Our typical, relatively shallow American pie plate with the tilted edges is not easy to come by. Instead, I borrowed a pan from Serena and Tessa (since they live in a fully equipped house) that was slightly deeper than usual and had edges that were vertical rather than slanted. Then I had an issue finding brown sugar at Carrefour. As an alternative, I found this sugar that was in cube form, combined with some sort of sugar caramel. I figured that would be an adqeuate substitute...

So I got home and started my pie from scratch, crust and all! With the rolling pin that I also borrowed from Tessa and Serena, I got the dough ready and attempted to lay it in the round pan... it took a couple tries to keep the dough from breaking and to get it wide enough. But eventually it all got done; I got the crust finished, cut the apples, and made the yummy butter-sugar-cinnamon glaze, and stuck the pie in my mini French oven. Needless to say, I was quite impressed how it came out, considering it was the first time I had attempted to make any kind of pie in a long time.



So at our soirée, we had a bunch of different things to eat! For appetizers, we had empanadas (from Colombia) and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (from the good ole US of A). For the main course, the Italians made two types of pasta, one with a red sauce and one with tomatoes and shrimp. And for dessert, we had my apple pie and some chocolate cookies. It was great, and my pie was quite a succes! I'm gonna have to try to do some more baking during my excessive amounts of free time.

In other news, we've gotten another flatmate, who's taking the third room that was still open. His name is Benoit, and he is obviously French as well, which makes my mission to live with French people a double success! He's moved here from Tours in search of work, and he's going to start looking for a job in the restaurant industry tomorrow. The three of us get along really well, which is awesome, and I have a feeling that we're going to have a great time.

Even better news! The Bbox has been activated, which means that I have an excellent internet connection and I'm finally able to call home whenever I want! So I've spent a lot of time over the last two days calling people I haven't talked to in what seems like forever. It's really nice to know that I have this option, just so I can keep in touch with friends and family back home without having to worry about insane charges.

Tomorrow begins week number two of work... Let's go!

I'm a terrible blogger

So I'm apparently a terrible blogger. I've been in Annecy for almost three weeks with no update. Shame on me.

Needless to say, things have been going splendidly. Life has sort of been flying by; it's almost hard for me to believe that it's only been three weeks that I've been here. So much has been happening, so many good things.

The group of friends that I've been hanging with is just fantastic. It's a completely mixed group that consists of me, a Canadian girl (Hannah, with whom I shared a hotel room here in Annecy for four days before orientation), two Italians (Serena and Manuela), a guy from Taiwan (Victor), a girl from Mexico (Poema), and finally an English girl (Tessa). We all have an amazing time together, and it seems as if we've known each other for so much longer than a few weeks. And one of my favorite aspects of our group is that since we're all from different country, many of which aren't anglophone, we use French as our common language, which is exactly what we all came here to do. Many of the English teaching assistants have found themselves in groups mainly of English-speakers, and I would assume that they speak in English for the most part when there together. So I'm really happy with my group of good friends here.

I've also had good luck in the French department because I've found myself an apartment to share with a French guy who's here from Tours. He is really cool and super chill, and we get along really well. He's not home all that much because he works in restaurants as a cook and server with crazy hours, but when we are both around, conversation is easy to make. It's really awesome to be able to live with someone close to my age (he is a bit younger) because we have a lot in common. It's really great et je suis très content.

As far as my job is concerned, I really haven't done all that much yet. I just started this week, and it seems that, at least for the first few weeks, I'm going to be doing a lot of work with individual students on practicing for the oral part of the Bac, a huge exam that comes at the end of high school here in France. Basically, I have to give them a visual document (usually some sort of cartoon), and they have to analyze it. On on hand, it's nice for me because I don't have all that much to prepare really, but on the other hand, I have a feeling it might start to get a little old. I guess I'm just going to have to work with what I've got and get creative!

My computer has been giving me quite the headache recently, though. For some reason, it's just decided to start acting up for no reason. Last Tuesday or so it just started freaking out, freezing and all sorts of stuff. I called Apple on Wednesday and was on the phone for an hour doing all sorts of resets. After none of that worked, I decided to make an appointment at the Apple store in Geneva the next day so that I could have someone look at it directly. I'm really lucky to be so close to Geneva! If I were anywhere else in France, I would have a really hard time getting access to an actual Apple store.

Anyway, so I woke up at 5:00 am to take a 6:30 bus for a 9:40 appointment. I got there and the guy at the store commented on how darn slow the machine was working. I bought an external hard drive at FNAC before because I had a feeling we were going to have to do some crazy stuff that would possibly erase all my documents. So I tried to save everything while in the store, but after about an hour it wasn't really working. What they wanted me to do was to completely uninstall the operating system and then reinstall it. However, I would need the installation CDs, which happen to be in, you know, the US!! And it would cost about $100 to get new ones there. So I emailed my mom and asked her to ship over the CDs, I said I would go home to back everything up, and they said that I could do the uninstall/re-install on my own at home. So now I'm still waiting on the CDs, which should be arriving an the next couple days, God willing...

I also got a Bbox by Bouygues Telecom. For 30€ a month, I'll have high-speed WiFi internet, cable television, and a phone line that can call even to the US for free to both land lines and cell phones! Great news! I feel like I'm so out of touch with a lot of people back home, and I'm really looking foward to being able to call people when I want (working around the 6-hour time difference, of course). We've gotten ourselves a phone, and apparently next month my flatmate is going to be getting a TV and a computer, so we'll be splitting the cost in two, which will be great! Now I'm just waiting for the line to be activated, which should take another few days.

Anyway, that's enough for now. I hope that satisfies all y'all's blog-deprivation. I promise I'm going to be better. The last few weeks have just been a little overwhelming, to say the least.

A bientôt!

A bientôt, Paris!

And my brief séjour à Paris has come to an end. I’ve spent the last two days wandering, getting reacquainted with the city where I spent an entire semester. I didn’t have anything specific I wanted to accomplish, so with camera in hand, I simply roamed. I haven’t done that much walking in a really long time, probably since I was here last. I took pictures of all the usual things: la tour Eiffel, l’Arc de Triomphe, le Sacré-Cœur. I’m not really sure why I felt the urge to take pictures of all these touristy things of which I already have hundreds of photos. It was probably just so I could use my new camera, which I absolutely adore!

I stopped by IES, the school where I studied last year, and said hello to a couple of people who work there. Just like chez Mimi, it was weird being back, but at the same time felt like I hadn’t left. Everyone was extremely excited to hear that I would be heading to Annecy and said that I would just love it.

On Thursday night, I went with Mimi and her friend Isabelle to their friends’ home, where there was a pot-luck type dinner followed by a comedic musical revue sort of thing. The singers were actually invited by Mimi, who has been good friends with of the ladies for several years now. It was a show of about two hours, complete with crazy faces, ridiculous personas, and finished off with an orgue de barbarie. The music is notated in books that resemble those of a player piano. The books are loaded into the organ and then a wheel turned. The end result is a sound that makes one feel as if at a circus. This is the type of performance that Mimi does when she goes to her music festivals (she actually went to do a show in the country this morning). Anyway, so that was really entertaining. They would do silly things to the audience member, and once, one of the women ran and stood on a tiny baby stool in from of me and basically threw herself into my lap. It was insane. She then kissed me on both cheeks and left two huge lip prints. So nuts.

Yesterday I went to a flower shop that was near IES and made a bouquet to give to Mimi before I left. It was really pretty; I’m sad that I didn’t take a picture of it. I wanted to express my thanks for letting me stay with them again. It was incredibly generous, and I felt as warmly welcomed as I had before. It was really wonderful. She loved them, saying that she just loves to have fresh flowers in the house!

Last night, I went to happy hour in St. Michel with my friends Awa and Enyi from MMLA. I had seen Enyi on Tuesday, but it was the first time I’d seen Awa since we left Vermont. They’re both studying in Paris for the year. We went to ZeBar, one of our regular spots for happy hour and it made me miss my friends from last year. Nevertheless, it was a lot of fun to show the girls one of my favorite places, and we just chatted and shared our experiences and all that. I hope that I’ll be able to make it up to Paris a couple more times. I’m sure I will. Then later I went out with my friend Jason, who is studying here for the semester, and whom I have not seen in over three years. It was really cool to see him again; it’s been forever! I took him and two of his friends to another one of our favorite places, L’Abat-Jour à Coudre. In this bar, there’s a really cool bohemian décor and there are tables that have old sewing machines. It’s kind of random, but we used to go there pretty often, so I figured I would show Jason and his friends where I used to go.

So now I’m on the train down the Annecy. I was insane and decided I would take the metro. I mean, I knew that it was a bad idea; I had done the same thing last year when I got in at the airport. But I survived and am all the better for it! The girl with whom I’m going to be sharing a hotel room in Annecy for the first few nights actually had a ticket for the same train, so we met up for the first time at Gare de Lyon. Her name’s Hannah, ad she seems super nice and it’ll be fun to get to do some exploring with her! The train was a mess at first, though. At a certain point, the two sections of the train are set to break apart, one going to Annecy and the other heading to Milan. It turns out that the cars were incorrectly labeled, and so there were Annecy people in the Milan cars and vice versa and no one knew what was going on and it was chaos. Everything ended up working out, though; I made it onto the correct train, thank goodness, because as much as I would love to accidentally end up in Italy, I’m sure it would be quite inconvenient.

Oh, and I almost forgot! Mathilde, my penpal for about 9 years now, has been incredibly helpful with helping locate somewhere to live. She had initially offered to come up to Annecy (she lives about two hours away by car in Valence) to help me search for an apartment, but it turned out she couldn’t take off work. So she ended up setting up an account for me on appartager.fr, which is a roommate search website. I don’t particularly want to live alone in a studio, nor so I really want to live with other English speakers who I’ve already been in contact with, so this was probably the best way to find a flat to share with French people. I ended up replying to a couple announces on the site that looked interesting, and in fact, a landlady called me and asked if I was still interested! It’s a three-bedroom apartment with one open room. The current tenants are a 29 year-old French guy and a 25 year-old German. I was thinking that it might be weird to live with people who are that much older than I am. Maybe not. I’m going to call her today when I get to Annecy to set up a time to go see the place!

I also have to call my professeur responsable when I get there so we can set up at a time to meet up as well. I’m planning on going to the school on Tuesday morning, but he offered to get a coffee beforehand to meet me first. He seems really friendly, and I have a feeling it’s going to be great!

I should be there in about three hours or so! Here we go!

Day 1 (continued)

Let me see where I left off... oh yes, Jardin du Luxembourg!

So while we were enjoying the perfect weather in the jardin, our friend Annelies (also from MMLA) met us and accompanied us to a restaurant near the Panthéon, right by Flavien's university, where yet another friend Enyi was to meet us! It's nice to know so many people, and it was so bizarre to see all of them out of the camp context. So weird, yet so cool!

After lunch, Flavien and I decided to get ourselves out of the city and use the incredible weather outside as an excuse to go see Vaux-le-Vicomte, a château about 45 minutes southeast of Paris. Neither of us had ever been there before, and it turned out to be a really beautiful castle (I mean, duh...). The gardens in the back were just immense. It's just incredible to imagine how much money the royalty spend on their homes... with gold plated objects and ornaments all over the place! And the castle was mainly owned and developed by Nicolas Fouquet, whose symbol I suppose was the squirrel... so I found that QUITE amusing and wished Margaux could have been there!!

After Vaux-le-Vicomte, we decided to stay out in the country in a hotel because it would be much cheaper than finding someplace back in the city. Here's the deal: Flavien goes to school in Paris, but his classes don't start until October 15 and won't be able to get into his new apartment until October 1. That's why I didn't have anywhere to stay in Paris that first night! So much to Flavien's chagrin (though he did get quite a kick out of it!), we stayed in the Campanile in Meulin, just a little motel out in the country. It was quite nice! For dinner we drove into Fontainebleau (where there is another château) and had a pleasant pizza dinner. We then drove by the château, which was stunning even at night, and decided that we just had to come back the next morning.

So that's exactly what we did. We woke up around 10 the next morning and drove back to Fontainebleau to go on a tour of the château. I had never been there either, and it was especially cool because I did a presentation on François 1er and Fontainebleau (one of his masterpiece constructions) this past semester in one of my classes. Vaux-le-Vicomte had looked like a baby compared to this one! One of Fontainebleau's notable features is the staircase at the entrance (see below).

After Fontainebleau, we made our way back to Paris with a couple things on our to-do list: I had to get a cell phone and needed to get a new bottle of my cologne... I know, the former was just so incredibly important! Quite easily, we got me a phone from Bouygues. It's a pay-as-you-go type deal, and it's especially cool because there are different pay-as-you-go plans you can choose, and you can change it every time you top-up! So one cycle, I might choose a certain number a minutes with a limited number of text messages. If I find I didn't use my minutes but texted a lot more, I could change it to fewer minutes and unlimited texts, all for the same price to top-up. Pretty cool! Then we made it to St. Germain and found my cologne at the Fragonard boutique. I first started using this cologne when I visited the Fragonard factory in Grasse when I came after junior year of high school and have used it ever since!

Then Flavien took me to the court house, where, as a law student, he spends a lot of his time. It was really interesting to go inside, and we even went to observe about ten minutes of a French trial! I had no idea what was going on, but that's ok. After that, we had a quick bite to eat before heading down to Malakoff to drop me off at the Dalibot residence.

After an interesting time trying to parallel park his car, we finally made it to Mimi's, where I was warmly welcomed by Mimi herself. We then chatted for a bit and had a drink on the patio at her house. After about half an hour or so, Flavien had to get on the road because he was heading back home to Reims at full rush hour... on the périphérique. Not too good. I should see him soon, though!

It is just so wonderful to be back! It's actually a really weird feeling... while it feels like I've been gone forever, it paradoxically feels like I never left at all! Seeing the family around seems so normal, even though I've felt like there was so much to catch up on. They're currently hosting two students from IES who are extremely nice, and André (a good family friend) came over for dinner. Ahh! So good to see everyone. After a quick dinner, we went and saw Inglorious Basterds. Interesting movie, to say the least.

Then when we got back, I got to see Chloé, my host sister. So nice to talk and catch up and all that! I just can't get over it. It's amazing to be able to come back here. I'm so happy that I've had this opportunity!

I hate that I am a day behind, but once again, it's quite late. I'll have to fill y'all in on today tomorrow!

Bienvenue en France!

Et c'est parti! Je suis là! I have slept for a total of about an hour and a half in the past two days, but everything is wonderful and I am so happy to be here.

The airplane ride was quite pleasant. I was seated next to a very nice woman named Mary from Hawaii who was embarking on a 42-day trip all around France with her husband, and guess where one of her stops happens to be: Annecy! It was lovely chatting with her for the first hour or so of the flight, and as we were preparing to exit the plane, I gave her my email address and said I would be more than happy to meet up in Annecy when they're there in about two weeks. I unfortunately didn't get much sleep, probably only about an hour total, so I watched two movies and spent much of my time watching the little airplane on the screen fly across the Atlantic Ocean, over the British Isles, and finally onto mainland France.

So random! So yesterday before I left, I was saying good bye to my friend MaryLee over iChat and she mentioned that she knew someone from her high school named Colin whom she had spoken to and who was doing the same program as I am. This morning, in line to go through customs, I saw someone I went to middle school named Colin in a few people behind me in the line, and it turns out to be him, and we were on the same flight from Dulles! How crazy!! He's going to be in Nantes, and I told him that if he ever comes down to Annecy, he should definitely let me know. Such a small world, it's insane.

I was pleasantly greeted by my good friend Flavien from MMLA right outside the departure gate. It was so incredibly nice of him to offer to pick me up from the airport; he had to leave his home in Reims at 4:00 AM to come pick me up at Roissy. It was so wonderful to see him since I last saw him in Vermont almost two months ago, and we've spent the entire day together.

We brought all of my luggage out to his new car (a gift for his 21st birthday coming up on Friday), and we ventured onto the autoroute for Paris, at 8:30 AM no less, prime time morning rush hour. Fortunately it didn't take us too, too long to get into the city. Once arrived, we parked his car and just walked around for quite a while, being sure to sit and admire the gorgeous Jardin du Luxembourg. It was very nostalgic being there because I couldn't stop thinking about all the time I spent there when I studied abroad. It had provided some nice bookends to my semester in Paris; I remember going there early in the term while it was still freezing and then at the end when we would just lie on the grass and talk and hang out. It's a lovely garden, and the architecture of the Palais is beautiful.

There is so much more to be told about today, but I am simply falling asleep at the keyboard. Keep your eyes open for my next update!

And we're off!

Today begins the newest chapter of my life. While it's certainly an exciting chapter, it's also still shrouded in a cloud of the unknown, and despite the details that I do know, the adventure I am about to begin remains for the most part mysterious.

I'm sitting right now in Terminal C at Dulles International, my two carry-on bags at my side, with just under two hours left until my flight to Paris. I've spent the last 24 hours running around like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to get everything together and packed and ready to go. This past weekend was Rosh Hashanah, so I didn't have much time to get things together, especially because we made a single night trip up to New Jersey on Saturday to see my dad's side of the family for the second night. It was really wonderful to see everyone before I left.

I've never attempted to pack for such a long period of time, at least not when I didn't have a car available to carry my things. Eight months in two suitcases is quite a feat to say the least, and amazingly neither of my suitcases went overweight! I asked my dad to lend me his luggage scale, and you know I was checking the weight every time I added something new.

But in the end, it all has worked out. My carry-on luggage (my backpack and a small duffel) are heavier than I would have liked, but something's gotta give, right?

I arrive tomorrow morning in Paris at 6:55, and my friend Flavien from MMLA (the language immersion program I've worked at for the past two summers) has graciously offered to pick me up from the airport. So that's going to be nice, for sure! Unlike last year, I won't have to lug my almost-50-pound suitcases up and down the stairs in the metro. Thank god.

I'm in a very bizarre state right now. One part of my feels like I should be really excited, which I know I am, but the other part of me is left feeling numb. I'm not really sure. Maybe it just hasn't hit me yet that I'm actually leaving for France in an hour and a half, and that I'm going to be gone for the longest I've ever been away from home so far in my relatively short life. Maybe I've gotten used to going abroad because I've been fortunate enough to have gone to France three times before this. Maybe it's my fear of not really knowing what I've gotten myself into that's subconsciously suppressing my excitement. I don't know.

What I am pretty sure about is that as soon as I step off the plane at Charles de Gaulle and see and hear French all around me, reality will finally reveal itself to me, and I just might pee myself on the spot (hopefully only metaphorically).

I'm looking forward to spending some time in the city of lights also because I'm going to get to see my host family from last year (see: my blog from my semester in Paris). I had such a wonderful experience with them and can't wait to catch up.

I'll be in Paris until Saturday, when I will take the train to Annecy, the city where I will be spending the majority of my time in France. I just realized I have not even mentioned the reason behind my stay abroad. For those who weren't already au courant, I am spending the academic year as an English teaching assistant in a public high school, Lycée Charles Baudelaire in Cran-Gévrier, a suburb just outside of Annecy. This is what I don't really have much information about. I don't know where I'm living, I don't know exactly what my position entails... much remains to be discovered. I guess that's why I chose the title of this blog; the next eight months are going to be one big adventure!