quoi de neuf?

To see my lastest pics, click this link! http://picasaweb.google.com/mary.a.hollis/January#

"quoi de neuf?" = what's new?

Coming back after Christmas has been a neat experience, because while nothing here in Valence is particularly new for me, the fact that I'm still here is. When I studied abroad 2 years ago, we dove in, soaked it up, and did our very best to get situated for 4 months, and then finally, once we had our feet on the ground, we packed up our bags, said au revoir and got on the planes home. Now, here I am after Christmas, all settled in, continuing to live my live in Valence and deepen my friendships and my experiences. That, in and of itself, is a cool, new thing.

Last week, Cloé, Nicole, and I became heroes. How to become a hero? Save something. What did we save? Doggies. You may remember that I concluded my last blog with a little blurb about how we were afraid that our upstairs neighbor had abandoned his dogs in the apartment. None of us was too keen on just sitting around and waiting for the barking to stop, but when you call the police, or the rental agency, or whoever and complain about dogs, no one really jumps to attention. After several days of such frustrating phone calls, Cloé had an idea. She called the firemen and told them that she was concerned about our neighbor (I mean, no one had seen him in weeks, right?). 5 minutes later, 7 firemen showed up at our apartment. We explained what we knew about the situation, and we before we knew it they were all sitting in our kitchen, visiting, drinking coffee, and waiting for The Big Truck to arrive so they could break into the apartment upstairs. 2 hours, 7 firemen, 3 policeman, a giant truck, a closed street, and 1 animal protection services van later, the doggies were rescued from upstairs!

They had indeed been left tied up in the apartment for several weeks with limited food and water. Lucky for them, 3 tender-hearted girls who hang around the apartment a lot live downstairs.

We had phenomenal weather last week, so over the weekend, some of my girlfriends and I embarked on an 18 kilometer hike across the crest of the mountain that over looks Valence! We began by hiking up to Chateau Crussol, then we followed along the ridge, went down on the other side, and continued along some country roads until we reached the little village of Tournaud. This is not exactly where we intended to go, but it was a nice place to finally sit down and eat our sandwiches. After a quick break, we turned around and hiked back, trying to beat the sun before it went down! It was so nice outside that I wore shorts! You can't ever really predict the weather here. We did in fact beat the sun back to the start, but our bus did not. We stood in the dark at the bus stop for 40 minutes waiting for it to take us back over the river to Valence (it was not warm anymore). Still, it was a great day and a great way to get some exercise after the delicious traditional German dinner prepared for us by our German friends on Friday night!

This past week, Claire and I discovered that the one and only Usher was performing a concert in Lyon and that tickets were still available! I rushed to FNAC (the coolest French store ever! a dvd/cd/computer/office/bookstore, mixed with a ticketmaster and photo center) and got us 2 of the remaining tickets. After a full day of work on Tuesday, we darted home at 5:30 and got our stuff to hop on the train to Lyon! We made it to Halle Tony Garnier just in time to get an awesome spot on the floor to watch Usher perform all of his greatest songs (and more importantly his famous dance moves) on the OMG Tour 2011. To see the music video for his hip-hoppiest new song and the namesake of the tour, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD9Trx8D-8U&feature=fvst.

We stayed the night with one of Claire's friends in the center of town, and the next day, I went and met up with my friend Halley Anne for a beautiful day of shopping in Lyon! Or more appropriately, "lèche-vitrine," the french expression for window-shopping. (Literally translated, window licking. How appropriate). The "soldes" are an annual tradition of extreme sales that happen in France all during the month of January, and they are a great excuse to wander around the shopping hub of Lyon. To make the day even more enjoyable, Halley Anne took me to this place: http://www.bestbagels.fr/manger_des_bagels_a_lyon.html, where we ate delicious bagel sandwiches for lunch! They also sell rare American products such as Betty Crocker brownie mix, Heinz 57 sauce, Dr. Pepper, Carmex, Ben and Jerry's, and a whole plethora of other little delicacies that we may or may not have realized we were missing. It was so nice to catch up with such a sweet friend, and a great way to spend my day off!

At work this week, Nicole and I have been helping Rosine throw Anglo-German breakfasts for middle and elementary school kids, and it's been a nice change of pace. It's also been a fun weekend, but more on that later!

bonne année!

Happy New Year from Valence! In France, people continue to wish each other "bonne année" all the way through the end of January. It's a perfectly acceptable way to greet each other, especially when it comes on a tea biscuit, as seen above. This little place, called Tasse et Glace (mug and ice cream), has become one of my favorites in Valence. I went there last Wednesday with my friend Carey to unwind a little bit and read. Not only does it feature countless flavors of tea, hot chocolate, and ice cream, as well as other treats, it also has free wifi. It's decorated with trendy lamps, comfortable chairs and sofas, and tables filled with magazines and games. The biggest highlight, however, is that every afternoon from 3- close a man comes with his massage chair and gives 10 minute massages for 10 euros with a tea or coffee included! Here's me enjoying a tea and Carey enjoying a free sample massage. Come one, come all!

Also, drumroll..... Finally some pictures from my life as a teacher! I've refrained from really taking any before now, because I'm usually teaching, but this little girl's shirt was too funny to pass up and it was the last class of the day!

Hello Hannah Montana, all the way over in France. I don't know if you can tell all of the intricate design here, such as the bubble shoulders, but it's pretty spectacular. You also may or may not notice the long, faint scratch above her right eye. Some of the kids in this class have really taken a liking to showing me their scars and injuries, so this little girl came up to me after class to explain how the dazzling, dangling rhinestones from her t-shirt had scratched her in the face as she was trying to put it on. Hysterical.

I've also been collecting silly bandz this week! The first one came from little Enzo, who I'm about 98% sure is in love with me. He presented me with a statue of liberty silly band from his USA pack. I wore it to school the next day, and two other kids in two different classes also gave me silly bandz! Mom, I need you to send me my collection from home, I'm going to start trading. Here are two pics from École Élémentaire Joliot Curie. The second is a mural on one of the outside walls.

I think that French schools may be a little bit more sparse than their American counterparts in terms of materials and classroom decor, but the longer I've been here, the more I've realized that this does not detract at all from the dynamism or vibrant nature of the learning that takes place. It just means that the teachers, like me, have to be a little more creative and craftsy. Since I've mostly finished with some of the banal basics, (like counting and the ABCs, which I felt obligated to tackle early) we've been able to move on to more interesting topics so far this term, such as food, likes/dislikes, colors, clothes, etc.

I really hit the ground running my first week back here! My fantastic two weeks at home surrounded by friends and family totally recharged my batteries. I got here on Monday afternoon and was able to unpack and get myself together a little bit, and I got up at 6:30 on Tuesday and went right to school to teach! There were many highlights from this past week, one being a free trip to the opera to see Carmen! The family that Claire lives with had 12 extra tickets so a bunch of my assistant buddies and my roommates and a couple of Cloé's friends were all able to go and watch the show.

It was a great performance, and I knew quite a few more songs than I thought I would! Who knew I already knew some French opera?! I bet you'd recognize it too, the show includes one of the most popular opera songs in the world. Click this link to hear a sampling: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd0FNpiBDyA

The next day, I had another tennis date with my friend Marian at the club, and I got to try out the new court shoes I got for Christmas. She invited me to come back with her later that night to watch a semi-professional tournament that was going on there! Marian's coach was playing so we stood on the sidelines with some other fans and watched the match. On Saturday night, I went to a birthday party for a guy in my running group with some of my other assistant friends. He'd really worked hard on the food and decorations, and it was a nice evening.

Another huge highlight last week came on Sunday when Cloé's mom invited us over to make galette des rois (king cake)! They eat these to celebrate Epiphany, and they are very different than the ones you see in the US associated with Mardi Gras. We had fun learning how to make them, and Cloé's whole family came over later in the afternoon to eat them with us. I got the hidden little king in my piece- yay for power and good luck this year!

Other good news from this week is that Nicole and I found a printer/scanner/copier on the French equivalent of Craigslist for 25 euros, so we bought it! Technology and baller lesson plans here we come! Bad news from this week is that our upstairs neighbor seems to have skipped town and left his two big dogs upstairs by themselves. Someone seems to be coming every couple of days to let them out, but this has been going on for quite some time, and the dogs have started barking around the clock. I can't imagine that it smells too nice up there either. We've called animal protection and the rental agency, but there is a lot of legal tape around the situation. Hopefully we'll be able to do something in the very near future!