Zanksgiving

Zanksgiving. That is how I most commonly heard Thanksgiving pronounced last week, but the French were totally interested in celebrating our delicious holiday! Technically, the Thanksgiving celebration began last Saturday when I visited my friend Halley Anne in Lyon and found sweet potatoes! I bought the place out, and we toted our sacks back to Halley Anne's place to drop them off before continuing our fun. She and I treated ourselves out to a long and traditional Lyonaise lunch in the heart of the old city, shopped around a bit, and we met up with a few of her assistant friends for dinner!

On Tuesday, I had a "formation" or training all day with some other assistants in my program to work on recording ourselves and making videos for classroom purposes. But then, Wednesday and Thursday were totally devoted to Thanksgiving! I went on Wednesday morning and got a ton of fresh Thanksgiving ingredients from the market, and I put them to good use over the next couple of days. On Wednesday night, my bible study threw a big Thanksgiving party, so I brought a sweet potato casserole with marshmallows! My friend Claire bought and stuffed 2 huge turkeys, and with all of our efforts combined, we had a pretty spectacular Thanksgiving for our French friends! It was cool because none of them had ever really tasted the majority of traditional Thanksgiving food.

On Thursday, I, like almost every other woman in America, spent my day slaving away in the kitchen (except in France)! Except for a quick trip to la piscine (the pool) for a swim with my friend Susannah (a very French activity), the rest of the day was totally dedicated to being as American as possible. Cloé, Nicole, and I threw a big thanksgiving party at our apartment that night for our both our French and assistant friends. Somehow the theme changed from simply Thanksgiving to Yay America. We encouraged all of our guests to come "dressed like Americans," and we did our best to look the part as well. This being the first time that I'd ever actually made Thanksgiving food on my own (I have such respect for you now, Mom), I was super proud of myself for the results. I turned out a pumpkin pie (made from an actual pumpkin that I bought at the market), another sweet potato casserole, regular mashed potatoes, a green bean casserole, and 10 oven baked turkey breasts! Once all the other guests came with their contributions, we had quite a spread of food and wine for the occasion!

After a big week, I was really happy to hang out and enjoy Valence over the weekend. On Friday night, my friend Carey came over and we made some chicken salad together. Carey is from Columbus, Ga, so we can share in missing the south from time to time. Then, we hopped over to our friend Pierre's apartment to watch the Iron Bowl- living in France can be so much like living in America! Saturday I went out to lunch with some girlfriends and enjoyed doing a little shopping around Valence! All the Christmas decorations are going up and you can totally feel the atmosphere changing for the holidays!

This will be another busy week! My little little from TriDelta and another Vandy girl are coming to stay with me for two nights on their tour through Europe! I'm planning to take them out to eat in Valence tomorrow night, then we're road-tripping to Geneva for the day on Wednesday. On Friday, I'm headed to Strasbourg for the weekend to see Susan and the world-famous Christmas markets!

Surprised!

One of my recent popular activities with the kiddies involves me acting out expressions and having them tell me how I'm feeling. They love watching me feign surprised, angry, hungry, happy, tired, etc. And in return, I get to enjoy calling something out- "SHOW ME" (remember, simple commands here)- and having 27 little 8-year-olds act back to me. We've also recently been loving alphabet bingo, complete with sucettes (suckers) for prizes, and literally ANY song in English.

I got a fun surprise this week!

I don't know exactly what this device is called in English, but it's called a ULM in French. We'll just go with ultra-light flying machine, or the thing from that movie Fly Away Home about the geese. Anyway, yes, I flew in one of these!

Last Thursday was a national holiday here so no one had to work, and my friend Pauline invited a couple of us to come over and make crême de marron out of some chestnuts that she'd picked. Instead, she took us to a hanger in the middle of the countryside where our friend Lionel surprised us with rides in his ULM! It was a beautiful day with awesome views of the mountains, and we got to fly over the river. Obviously, Lionel drove, but I did get to steer for a minute!

This day really reminded me of how blessed I've been during my time here. The French people that I've met everywhere have been so welcoming and generous to me, even though I don't have a lot to offer them back. It's humbling and wonderful at the same time, and I'm doing my best to learn how to accept people's kindness gracefully and gratefully! Here's me with the captain, Lionel, and the other girls, Pauline and Susanna:

Another cool thing that happened this week was that I led the French bible study that I've been going to! One of the leaders asked if I could talk about the passage for the next week, and I invited my friend Carey to help me with it. We had kind of a tough passage, and we were a little nervous about how it would go in French, but it turned out so well!

As we've continued to have awesome weather, my French friends decided to capitalize on the recent spike of Americans around here, and we had an American football session on Saturday! Much to the amusement of my family and others who know me well, I taught a bunch of Frenchies how to play football! Hey, I may not be an expert, but I have enough sorority flag football experience to teach the basics, even in French. They really got the hang of it, and we had some pretty cool plays going by the end of the afternoon!

I'm looking forward to figuring out how to bring Thanksgiving to France next week!

La vie en rose, the sweet life

New pics from my hiking trips to Crussol and Crest! http://picasaweb.google.com/mary.a.hollis/CrussolAndCrest#
I've also added pictures from my trip to Bordeaux! http://picasaweb.google.com/mary.a.hollis/ToussaintsParisEtBordeaux#

I'm feeling especially lucky, because I lost my computer yesterday and I found it this morning! I realized I'd misplaced it yesterday, and I was certain I'd left it on the bus on the way to school. After a wild goose chase to the central bus office, the bus depot, and then the commissariat, I returned home last night feeling pretty discouraged. While eating sympathy crêpes prepared for me by my sweet roommates, I remembered that I'd stopped in a little Tabac by my school to buy candy prizes for my students before class. Cloé drove me there this morning, and sure enough the nice lady working there had my laptop waiting for me behind the counter!

Also, after a chest x-ray, a medical exam, and a meeting with the office of immigration, I now officially hold a validated visa and am free to travel in and out of France as I please! Looks like I'll make it home for Christmas!

I've been up to a lot since my last trip! I've got a nice routine here in Valence, and we always find fun things to sprinkle in. Halloween is not widely celebrated in France, but my friend Carey and I bought a little pumpkin at the market and had a fun afternoon carving it, turning it into pumpkin muffins, and of course doing my Biggest Loser workout video (which has become SO popular here, especially with Cloé! It was super funny trying to explain the premise of Biggest Loser to her because there are practically no obese people in France and, therefore, no need for a reality weight loss show). We capped off our Halloween celebration by going to our French friend's house to watch, quite literally, the worst english Halloween movie of all time, but, hey, our options were limited.

Another highlight was my friend Susan's visit to Valence! She's an assistant in Strasbourg this year, but she came to visit for a couple of days and we went hiking with some other girls to the ruins of Château Crussol that overlook Valence. These ruins are at the top of the mountain across the river and are easily seen from most places in the city. We had a little bit of trouble finding the way up the mountain, but after a couple failed attempts through a vineyard and a forest, and a run in with some donkeys, we made it to the summit!

The next holiday that we celebrated was the 5 of November, courtesy of our British assistant friends. This day, a British tribute to the brutal death of the traitor Guy Fawkes, involves bonfires and fireworks! Our friend Fiona had lots of people over, and we celebrated with smores, sparklers, pommes d'amour (caramel apples), and bien sûr les feux d'artifice (fireworks)!

We're continuing to have pretty weather over here, so Carey and I went to the nearby town of Crest one Saturday to do some exploring! Crest, confusingly pronounced "cray," is a tiny little place about an hour away that is home to a famous tower that was used as a dungeon for hundreds of years.

We have a couple of assistant friends there from all over the world, so we spent the day wandering around, making lunch, exploring the tower, and playing down by the river! We got beautiful views of the surrounding countryside.

Teaching has started back, and time is just flying by until Christmas! I've been continuing to make friends through tennis, running, and church, and I'm always adding new recipes to my repertoire. Some of my recent projects include chicken teriyaki, baked pumpkin pasta, and mustard chicken. AND I invested in a purée machine! French people purée everything, and I've never had mashed potatoes so good. À bientôt!