As Christian as the Pope on Christmas

Well, not really. And he was on a jumbotron! You apparently have to reserve tickets way in advance in order to sit inside St. Peter's Basilica for the service, but despite the on and off rain I really enjoyed sitting outside (no standing and kneeling -- which I wouldn't know when to do anyway -- and we were able to beat the crowd home).

It was surprising how few people were there; I was almost expecting Obama inauguration type crowds, but perhaps the rain deterred a lot of people. There was a section of chairs set up in front of the Basilica, but they weren't even full. Despite the proliferation of umbrellas, we were able to move around until we could see the Pope's lovely visage on the jumbotron!

Speaking of which, here's a clip of the midnight mass ceremony (not the most interesting part, but hey, it was my first Catholic mass! I never knew what was coming next):

It's now closing in on 1:00am and I've got an early train to catch to Florence, but hopefully soon I can catch up on writing about my trip!

Merry Christmas.

When in Rome

...eat obscene amounts of pasta. Also explore, marvel at the rich history, and accept your sore and rain-soaked feet. At least that's what I've been up to so far.

It's been wonderful to get away from freezing France; aside from today's exceedingly rainy afternoon that's given me time to update my blog (long overdue, I know), we've had nice enough weather. Most days have been at least a little overcast, but that's what you get for coming on the off-season. It's actually hard to believe I've already been here five days... I'll try to do a more in-depth blog later, but so far here's what we've done:

Monday: Solo day before my friends arrived. I had spent the night before in the Lyon airport to make my 7:00am flight and thus hadn't really slept, but my hostel was nice enough to let me shower and leave my bags there even before I'd technically checked in. Lacking a solid itinerary, I walked around and tried to orient myself in Rome. Took the above picture, since the weather was more or less cooperating! I stumbled across a Vincent van Gogh exhibit at the Museo Vittoriano and decided to spring the 8 € to go in. The exhibit was entirely in Italian, which made it hard to fully appreciate, but they did have some cool paintings.

Walking around Rome by myself, I couldn't help feeling that this isn't a city especially geared towards solo travelers. Not that it's unsafe; it just feels more lonely to be by yourself here than in Paris and other cities I've visited. Perhaps it's the nature of the giant tour groups you see walking around, combined with Italy's seemingly family and couple-focused culture. Italian waiters and other people I interacted with seemed to be much more judgmental of my eating dinner and roaming around by myself than Parisians were. Who knows!

As far as food goes, knowing that my friends probably wanted to stick to a pure Italian food agenda, I tried an Italian Chinese (Cinese, in Italian) restaurant to finally assuage my dire, life threatening craving for wonton soup. More garlic than I'm used to (it is Italy, after all), but still delicious!

Tuesday: Vanessa and Steph arrive (they also had a red-eye flight), so I met them at a different hostel near the Basilica Santa Maria Maggiore. It turned out to be more of a B&B whose host only speaks Italian and Russian, but we've been able to understand each other reasonably well. We visited the Caracalla Thermal Baths, which are huge and ancient and awesome (as is everything in this city). Not only were they baths, they were also a sports complex and marketplace that covered several acres. We also tracked down the church that houses the Bocca della Verita (below), a giant stone face whose mouth will supposedly cut off your hand if you tell a lie in front of it. then headed to the Piazza Navona to check out Rome's Christmas market, which was surprisingly un-Christmasey. France's Christmas markets had this one beat!

Wow, I did not make it far in this entry, but it's time for Christmas Eve pizza dinner and then seeing the Pope on a jumbotron for Midnight Mass! It's the first time I've been to a midnight mass, so even if it's in Latin or Italian or any other language I don't understand, I'm looking forward to it. Merry Christmas to all!

Débrouillez-vous !

Oh man, I should not have complained about Scratchy McPoopsalot crawling about in the ceiling... karma rewarded me by making the school's bell go off non-stop starting at 5:00 this morning, which is impossible to tune out from right next door. Yet another reason to move to St-Etienne! I'd much rather deal with the occasional police siren; at least those pass by after a few seconds. Since no one in the administration shows up at the school until after 8:00, the bell kept going off until after classes had already started. It figures this would be my day this week when I actually didn't have an 8:00am :/ I tried to grab a recording, but I don't think Blogger will let me upload just a sound clip. Besides, I've already been torturing my students this week with country Christmas music, so I don't need to torture whoever reads this with mind-numbing chiming.

In much better news, I got a definitive yes for the apartment in Saint-Etienne. Move-in day is December 30, the day after I get back from Italy. Thankfully I don't have very much to pack, though I am wondering just how I'm going to do the move... I can't say I really fancy dragging two huge suitcases plus some extra bags 20 minutes to the train station, on the train, then another 15 minutes to my new home. If only I could drive stick shift, I'd rent a car... I guess it's a move that will have to be done in stages, as much of a pain as that may be. The end result will be worth it! I guess I could ask one of the teachers to help me out by using their car, but that really would be an imposition since none of the ones I know live in Feurs, and it would eat a day out of their break.

One piece of advice I got from the past assistant that I've really taken to heart is "débrouillez-vous!", or "take care of it yourself!", since many people (though certainly not all) in the school's administration and the teaching assistant's program could give a rat's ass if something goes wrong. I've learned to resolve my problems myself, even if it's often inconvenient. When I missed my OFII appointment last month, I immediately emailed the program coordinator to see what I should do, since I was having trouble contacting OFII. Her response: "Oh yes, that's a huge problem! ...Make sure you tell me when you get it fixed."

I've also had problems with classrooms. Three or four times a week I arrived with my group of students, only to find there was already another class in my room. I've then had to run around the halls looking for an empty classroom while my students mill about in the hall. The person to talk to about this issue is the assistant principal, but every time I tried to talk to her, she was either in a meeting, on the phone, or told me to come back later since she was busy. After the fourth or fifth "come back tomorrow morning", I decided to take matters into my own hands and went around checking the room schedules posted on the doors and found empty classrooms for my problem hours. One of the profs saw what I was up to, found it absurd that I was still having classroom issues a third of the way through the school year, and only then was I able to get feedback from the assistant principal (who instead of helping just confirmed the schedule I'd already figured out). Yeesh. Moral of the story: débrouillez-vous!

The teaching itself (once I find a classroom ;) is going pretty well. This week it's been pretty relaxed, since with break on the horizon the students are quite unmotivated, and I've had a few classes canceled due to teachers giving tests before the break. I've been sharing some American Christmas songs with them, including Dean Martin's version of "Walking in a Winter Wonderland," "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," and this absolute gem that I mentioned earlier (listen at your own risk, mwahaha). It's been interesting to see which they prefer, especially when I keep my opinions of the songs neutral. They're not big fans of Dean Martin, but it's usually half and half between Rudolph and Clint Black (except for a couple classes that have hated the country song; one behaviorally-challenged student was so ballsy as to tell me it was con, or "fucking stupid"). For the most part, I've been enjoying getting their reactions and hearing about French holiday traditions.

I've just got three more classes on Thursday, and then it's break and Italy and moving to St-Etienne!

Movin' out, movin' up

Things are looking up here! I visited an apartment in St-Etienne this weekend that I'm hopefully going to move into after I get back from Italy -- still waiting on the final confirmation from la colocation (French term for a shared housing situation), but my chances are good. It's a huge apartment right in the center of downtown, a few steps from the tram station and just a 15-minute walk to the train station that takes me to Feurs. My room is just a little bigger than a closet -- in fact, I think it once used to be a closet -- but for only 150 € a month, including food (and internet, finally), I'll take it! There would be six other roommates, five of which I'd be sharing a bathroom with *shudder*, but for the price and location I can put up with a little bit of dirt and clutter.

I met a few of the roommates on Friday, and I get the impression that it's very much an ensemble living experience; they like to mingle and eat dinner together instead of each shutting themselves off inside their rooms, and since they're all French, it's an excellent immersion opportunity. I'll admit that the idea of the community monthly food allowance does throw me off a little, but they said it's been working great so far. Basically the idea is that everyone puts in 50 € a month, then each week whoever's got time takes a bit of the money to go buy groceries for the whole apartment. Perhaps my American capitalist heritage balks at the idea of not being in control of what I have to eat, but the idea of fresh vegetables from one of the roommate's grandmother's garden certainly is tantalizing...

The only big drawback is the commute. It's only three days a week, but after looking at the train schedule, I'd have to catch a 6:21am train in order to make it to Feurs in time for my 8:00am classes, which means leaving home at 6:00... yuck. At least I can get a good bit of reading (or more likely napping) done on the train. I'm sure I can get used to waking up at 5:00am (also, the shower would probably be uncontested then!), and if not I can just catch up on sleep on the days I don't work.

I guess one other drawback is that I couldn't go running in the countryside quite so easily anymore, but I'm still planning on training with the Old Lady Running Club after school during the week, since there's a 7:00pm train I could catch back to St-Etienne. From what I've heard, Sainté isn't a very runner-friendly city like DC is; people aren't used to seeing runners, so apparently it's not uncommon to get hollered at. However, my friend Kathleen lives on a private campus that's nice to run on, and it's always possible to take a bus or train to a less populated area for longer runs. The marathon is in almost exactly five months, so I need to kick it into gear soon. Probably going to wait til after Italy though... carbonara, gelato and marathon training do not mix well in my brain. Or stomach.

In other news, I finally got my successfully-unlocked iPhone back, and my French SIM card works in it! I'm learning that just about anything is possible in France, as long as you're willing to wait a few weeks or months for it. Between the phone, internet, and various paperwork mix-ups (still waiting on social security and housing financial aid...), this experience has so far very much been an exercise in patience, though not without its eventual rewards.

Urgh, one other reason I've just been reminded of why moving out of the assistant's cottage will be good: there's a creepy-sounding little (or not so little) creature that likes to move around in the ceiling when it gets dark, and it always sounds like it (or they?) is directly above my bed. Fanny told me she couldn't even sleep last night because it sounds like at any moment the ceiling was going to come crashing down. Ah, Feurs.

And now for a few more pictures of snowy Feurs from last week... more are posted on facebook, but these are my favorites.

The Joys of Travel in the Snow

I'm sad to report that my feelings of goodwill for the French bureaucratic machine somewhat dissipated after last night's attempt to get home from Lyon. After the McDo internet inexplicably stopped working -- ironically at exactly 7:00pm -- I decided to head over to the train station a little early. It's a good thing I did, because all the trains were running late, and consequently the station was about as packed as DC's National Mall at Inauguration (though maybe with a couple million less people and a couple hundred more suitcases). I bought a ticket and hopped on the next train to St-Etienne, which was actually the 6:30 train already running 40 minutes late.

I got the impression the train had already been waiting at the station for a while, since it too was jam packed, but I managed to find a seat. We waited for another 30 minutes. People were getting restless. A fight broke out behind me, maybe over the last seat, or maybe someone bumped up against someone else the wrong way due to the packed train? Hard to say; the angry, overlapping French voices were difficult to interpret.

Finally, someone came over the loudspeaker and said that they'd found a conductor for the train, and to please wait patiently for another 10 minutes. And the people rejoiced. Fifteen minutes later, another voice told us that the next train to leave for St-Etienne would actually be leaving from voie (track) E, and to please vacate this train for that one. A mass exodus ensued with everyone shoving and rushing to be first to the other train, because if that one had been sitting there a while too and this one was as packed as it was, there's no telling if everyone would fit on it.

Not having eaten since breakfast (yeah, yeah, I know I should have taken advantage of being at McDonald's earlier), I was feeling all the more grumpy for being hungry and decided to avoid the rush in favor of grabbing a sandwich. One look at the neverending lines was enough to convince me that food wasn't worth missing my train, and I joined the rush to voie E. Apparently someone was in an even bigger hurry than I was to make the train, since on the escalator I got shoved from behind and managed to bang my knee pretty solidly on one of those lovely, pointy metal stairs. I had to keep walking to get to the train, but thankfully there were still a couple seats left, and I was able to stretch my leg out a bit.

The train finally got going at 8:30, and by this time I was starting to worry about whether or not I'd miss the last connection to Feurs. In some small way, luck must have been in my favor, since the last Roanne train, which passes through Feurs, was also running late and still sitting at the station. What was less lucky is that the elevators at St-Etienne-Chateaucreux are still down, and I had to pass under the station to get to the Roanne train. Stairs + throbbing knee = a bit unpleasant. I'd rather not go into detail about how enjoyable the icy 3/4-mile walk back to the lycée from the Feurs train station was. At least there was asprin and food waiting for me at home! Fanny had made German Christmas cookies during the day, so sampling those almost made up for my crappy evening.

I was hoping my knee would feel better this morning, but so far the only difference is that the rake marks from the escalator have become more defined; at least there's no bruising or swelling, I guess, though walking is certainly no fun. So much for running this weekend...though knowing me I'll probably try anyway.

On a much brighter note, here are some snowy sunset Feurs pictures, taken from the train tracks by the lycée:

OFII success! Day-trip to Lyon

(Actually written on Friday, posted on Saturday thanks to the annoying internet problems that seem to catch up with me wherever I go)

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I've got two hours before my train back to Feurs, so I might as well post a short update. There are still many things up in the air as far as internet and living situation go, but at least I'm now significantly less likely to be deported. After last month's train fiasco, I was determined not to miss my OFII (Office Français de l'Immigration et de l'Intégration) appointment today in Lyon, since apparently they get mad if you blow them off twice (and there's no way to let them know if you have a good reason for missing the appointment, since no one answers the phone or responds to email).

My rendez-vous was at 1:30, so to be absolutely certain of not missing it I took the 9:30 train out of Feurs and did some inadvertent ice dancing on the way to the train station. Eight inches of snow over the past couple days has yielded some very icy streets, but so far I have managed to avoid busting my ass... let's hope I haven't spoken too soon. I've got somewhat mixed feelings about the snow; having grown up in warm, humid Georgia, the usually rare sight of accumulated snow at first heralds joy (and certainly disbelief in November), but once the snowball endorphins wear off I realize how incredibly unprepared I am for trudging around in the snow and ice. Pretty from a window, treacherous to actually go out in... even the normally 30 second walk from my house into the lycée became more adventurous.

Speaking of treacherous, the weather this morning was absolutely ferocious. Heavy snowfall, biting wind... not a pleasant walk from the Perrache train station to the slightly hidden OFII building. I wasn't sure I still had feet by the time I figured out where it was, and then I had an hour and a half to wait until my appointment. Since they were about to close for lunch, I figured I'd find a café to pass the time, but the only places around I could find were expensive-looking restaurants. But rather than subjecting myself to frostbite, I decided to subject myself to angry-waiter glares when I only ordered a coffee in an upscale Italian restaurant and mooched off local internet. It's so nice to get unrestricted internet once in a while... ok, here I'm going to hold back from lycée-internet-sucks rant.

Actually, I can't restrain myself (though I did try). Wednesday there was an appointment set up with France Telecom to set up a new line, since we've long since established that the current one is physically cut and nonfunctional. They came, they crawled around under the house, they saw where the wires hooked up... but did they put in a new line? NO, of course not! Why not, you may wonder? No reason given. Just didn't do it that day, even though the appointment was specifically to put in a new line. Ok, end rant. It's almost enough to make me appreciate AT&T... almost.

Alright, back to the regularly scheduled program of French Bureaucratic Appreciation. For the most part, the OFII appointment went smoothly; I'd expected to have to wait at least 20 minutes, but my name was called right away and I was out in less than 45 minutes. After a slightly uncomfortable moment with the doctor (did he really have to stick my hand in his sweaty armpit to put the blood pressure band on my arm? did listening to my heart really require sticking his hands down my shirt?), I was deemed healthy enough to remain in the country and finally got the coveted titre de séjour in my passport. Now I can leave France with the ability to come back!

Being in no particular hurry to get back to frigid Feurs, I decided to wander around and gradually make my way to the Part-Dieu mall and train station. I'd actually hoped to try CouchSurfing, but unfortunately didn't have that idea in time to line something up, so back to Feurs I must go. Much of the snow has already turned to muddy slush, but there are still some pretty views if you're willing to stand the cold long enough to pause and admire them (to the left: Fourvière in the background, taken in the Place Bellecour; the statue is of Louis XIV). Thankfully it had stopped snowing this afternoon and the wind held off enough to make it a pleasant walk, despite the sub-freezing temperature.

Ugh, the McDonald's fumes are starting to get to me. Even in France, you can almost see the grease floating in the air... but oh, the wifi makes it worth it. I almost feel guilty for not ordering any food, and then I remember what country I'm in and how silly it would be to eat at such a quintessentially unhealthy American establishment when there's much fresher, tastier food readily available. Gotta get out of here before I succumb and buy a Big Mac.

Thanksgiving

Friday, November 26

Once again I’ve resorted to writing my blog during the internet-less evening and posting it the next day, so that’s why it might seem strange if I mention “yesterday” as being Thanksgiving… which, by the way, was almost perfect. I really couldn’t have been happier with the way the dinner turned out. I owe a huge thank you to my mom and to Steve Wildey for being such awesome chefs, and to Justin for sharing Steve’s recipes with me; and also to Françoise, the English teacher who hosted the dinner and let me invade her kitchen to cook for two days, but I doubt she reads my blog!

Unfortunately I can’t post pictures yet because I am a dumbass and forgot my camera at Françoise’s house, but I should have it back on Monday and will upload then. This dinner was really a two-week-long project, between picking recipes, preparing the intimidatingly long shopping list, tracking down ingredients, and the actual cooking itself.

On Wednesday morning, Claire very kindly drove me to Carrefour so I could try to track down the last of the ingredients on my list, and I learned definitively that brown sugar, molasses (which I guess are kind of similar), corn syrup, cranberries, and wild rice don’t seem to exist in France. Corn syrup I can understand since it’s essentially heart disease in a bottle, but wild rice? Brown sugar? Who knows. At least goat cheese and butter were in abundance! After roaming the WalMart-dwarfing aisles of Carrefour, Claire dropped me off at Françoise’s house so I could get started on the cooking. Since I was off on Wednesday but worked Thursday, it made more sense to prepare as much in advance as possible and then reheat it all the next day.

It took about six hours of nonstop cooking, but I knocked out the pecan pie, wild rice and goat cheese stuffing, fennel and rosemary mashed potatoes (not pictured, having already been put in the fridge), and sweet potato soufflé, which left only the turkey and gravy for Thursday. I was able to multitask and work on a couple recipes at a time without forgetting anything or setting the kitchen on fire, so I count that a great success! I had to make quite a few modifications to the recipe to allow for the (non)existence of certain ingredients in France, but maple syrup made for a surprisingly effective replacement for molasses, corn syrup, and brown sugar, and regular French potatoes worked just fine in place of Yukon Gold ones.

I wound up staying the night at Françoise’s, because by the time I’d finished cleaning up after myself it was close to dinner and bedtime for her kids. Staying at her house also gave me a wonderful opportunity to catch up on Dexter and Chuck online… oh, the joys of having the internet in the evening. Perhaps one day in the far distant future I too shall be so fortunate.

Bright and early Thursday morning I had an 8:00am class and had hoped to start brining the turkey beforehand. It was then that I made the gut-twisting discovery that since I hadn’t specified anything to the butcher, they had left the head on the turkey (though it was ever so delicately twisted under one wing), and the heart and lungs were still FULLY ATTACHED on the inside… though I guess I should be thankful they’d at least plucked it and taken out the rest of the innards.

So needless to say, brining the turkey had to wait until after that first class. I’ll do my best to spare you the gory details – and gory they were – but let’s just say that it took me and my 3 € Ikea knives a solid 20 minutes to decapitate the damn bony creature, and then I also had its feet and tail to remove. Next came the exquisitely delicate procedure of sticking both my hand and a chef’s knife inside a 6-pound turkey with the goal of extricating the organs while not removing my fingers. Okay, so maybe I didn’t spare you the gory details… but at least I didn’t take pictures!

Lacking a pot big enough to accommodate both turkey and brine, I had purchased a cheapo bucket from Carrefour that worked just fine; and lacking a fridge big enough to hold said bucket, I stuck it outside in the hovering-above-freezing weather to keep cool. I boiled the freshly liberated giblets (what an ugly word that is, and it’s not much prettier in French, either: les abats) in chicken stock and white wine with some vegetables for two hours to make a broth for the gravy, then took a break from cooking to go to class.

Side note: all that work for the gravy turned out to be for naught, since I wound up spilling it all over my feet between Françoise’s car and house and didn’t even realize it til I got inside, wondered why my toes were wet, and saw the empty container. Perhaps trying to carry the turkey, gravy, measuring cups, recipes and my bag all at once was not such a smart idea… but hey, if every Thanksgiving dinner has to have its moment of crisis, then I count myself lucky that mine was so minor. I was able to whip up some replacement gravy with bouillon, white wine, flour, and pan drippings, which was functional but probably not nearly as flavorful as the one now adorning my boots.

When I got back from class, Fanny was making bread for the dinner, so I decided to postpone cooking the turkey until I got to Françoise’s house. That actually worked out much better in the end since it was such a small bird and didn’t take very long to roast, and it also had more time to brine that afternoon. Instead of it being ready to eat at 5:00 but having to wait until 7:00 when everyone else showed up, it was just coming out of the oven at 7:00 and gave us time to enjoy an apéritif while its juices settled and the other dishes were warming up in the oven.

More than anything else, the turkey was really my main cause for concern. Having never cooked one before or paid much attention while Mom was cooking one (I blame being dehydrated and comatose after running the half marathon for the past two years for my lack of Thanksgiving prep knowledge!), I didn’t know how to tell the difference between burning and roasting, and I wasn’t sure if I’d correctly modified the cooking times for a 12-16 pound turkey to accommodate my tiny little 6-pounder.

We actually didn’t eat until closer to 8:30 – such is the nature of French dinner parties! – but finally I put my foot down and ordered everyone à table, since it didn’t make sense to keep reheating things over and over.

And then, the moment of truth… how were the French (and German!) people going to react to Thanksgiving dinner? How was I going to react to my own cooking, for that matter? Was anyone going to die of salmonella?

Miraculously, everything turned out wonderfully, and everyone seemed to genuinely enjoy the meal. It was the first Thanksgiving for all of them, so perhaps it worked to my benefit that they had no basis of comparison :) Apparently I broke the stereotype that Americans can’t cook or don’t have much knowledge of what constitutes fine cuisine, so I was happy to have succeeded in that respect. Françoise commented that she had been a little apprehensive when I had first started cooking the day before, but that I’d really exceeded expectations. It made me feel really proud when everybody went back for seconds. They all seemed to like the sweet potato soufflé the most, so I hope you don’t mind that I’m sharing the recipe, Mom, though it’s certainly a bit different in its translated-for-French-ingredients incarnation!

The pecan pie was also well received, though by that point I think we were all too stuffed to really appreciate it (confession: I am thoroughly appreciating a slice of leftover pie as I’m writing now; and no, there is nothing wrong and everything right about eating pie… alone... in Feurs... on a Friday night..... maaaaybe I’ll have another slice).

We wound up staying until shortly after midnight – I felt bad about having to keep telling my family to call back later, and I felt really bad for Lilian and for Fanny, who had class starting at 8:00 this morning! I also feel silly for forgetting my camera as well as the book I’m reading and the flowers that Claire, Fanny, and Pascal brought, but in a fullbellysleepy haze, laden down with leftovers, I admit I was no longer fully functional.

It was a really wonderful evening though, and I’m really glad to have done it. I’m afraid now my family will no longer accept the excuse of me being too tired or not knowing how to help cook Thanksgiving dinner in the future!

As for the rest of my weekend, tomorrow night the American exchange student invited me to a Thanksgiving dinner at her host family's house, but aside from that I'm in for a solitary weekend in Feurs. Plenty of time to go running (I didn't run at ALL this week!), read, and plan lessons... sometimes it's nice to lay low for the weekend.

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On another note, it snowed today in Feurs! Snow in November... so weird. I guess this means there's a lot more to come, and I probably won't be so excited about it when it's up to my knees, but for now it's very pretty. Fanny very generously let me play around with her digital SLR since I didn't have my camera, so figuring out how it works while she's out of town visiting friends may be another weekend project for me.

pre-Thanksgiving panic!

It's just been one of those weeks. I knew I might be getting a bit in over my head when I cooked up the idea of making Thanksgiving dinner, and this week so far has definitely lived up to its predicted stress level. Between it being the end of the month (and thus me all too eagerly awaiting my next paycheck) and needing to gather/prepare all the ingredients while still staying on top of lessons, there's been a lot hanging in the balance. This morning I had two classes, and then dashed over to the Tuesday marché to pick up the turkey and a bunch of other fresh veggies and just barely made it back in time to drop off my purchases before running yet again to the nearby middle school for class.

So it was quite a welcome surprise when I walked in the teacher's lounge and found they were having a Beaujolais Nouveau release party/luncheon, and before I knew it I'd been poured a glass of wine. However, because of the rush from the market and me just barely being on time as it was, I didn't have time to drink it before needing to go to my class of 8th graders... so I brought it with me. Sadly I had no time at the end of class to enjoy it either, since I had to run -- literally a dead sprint -- to get back to the high school in time for my next class (why oh why I agreed to teach a class that ends at 1:50 and start another at 1:55 when the two are halfway across town from each other, I will never know). So sad. It sure smelled nice, though... le sigh.

Now begins the real intensive Thanksgiving shopping and cooking. I've already made a few recipe-hindering discoveries, such as that there's no corn syrup, molasses, brown sugar, or canned pumpkin/sweet potatoes in France, but so far I think I can work around them. Runny maple syrup can replace molasses, riiiight? And fresh sweet potatoes ought to be better than canned ones anyway? We shall see... So far my shopping has been limited to the smaller supermarkets within walking distance, so I'm hoping that tomorrow when I go to the monstrously huge Carrefour that I'll be able to find more of what I'm looking for.

On a more positive note, today's Thanksgiving market shopping showed me that I'm starting to be recognized around town. When I went to the butcher this morning, they knew before I said anything that I was the one picking up the turkey. I also usually go to the same fruit/veggie seller who has the best selection, and he asked why I was buying more than usual today (suffice to say I don't usually buy fennel bulbs, celery and a kilo of sweet potatoes). Maybe it's just my foreign accent that gives me away, but it's still nice to see friendly faces.

Tonight I have the brine to prepare and then leave out overnight; hopefully it won't freeze tonight, since there's absolutely no room left in the fridge! Even though it's small -- really more like a big chicken -- the turkey takes up quite a lot of space in our tiny fridge. Tomorrow I'm cooking as much as I can since I'm off class, and then Thursday is turkey/gravy day. Here's hoping I don't burn anything...

...a slight change of plans

In short: Italy for Christmas.

I think I had mentioned a few blogs back the possibility of going to Germany for Christmas, but I met a few fellow English assistants last weekend who were planning on spending the holiday in Italy and were happy to include me in their planning. Since I'd already been feeling somewhat anxious about practically inviting myself to Fanny's house for Christmas, I'd been researching other options, and she seemed enthusiastic about me going to Italy. So, no imposing myself and also no disappointed would-be host! I think it's going to work out fine. I'm flying in to Rome on December 20th and am probably going to couchsurf that night since the others don't get in until the next day -- I couldn't resist the cheaper ticket -- and then take a train on the 26th to Florence for a couple days before flying out of Rome on the 29th.

I still don't know what I'll be doing for New Year's Eve, but hopefully something in St-Etienne will come together. If not, I'll probably sleep through it in Feurs; between having 8:00am lessons most days and there being not much to do here in the evenings, I've been going to bed somewhat ridiculously early these days.

Also, the possibility of moving to St-Etienne still looms on the horizon. Fanny is a stronger advocate for this than I am, since even though it sucks to be without internet, phone, or TV, I've more or less gotten used to it (especially since I never had TV or a landline in college anyway). Moving to St-Etienne would probably also mean giving up on the running club and on my scenic countryside runs alone, though after having lived in DC for a few months I know city running is doable. There's also the certainty that rent would be higher, and there would be an hour each way commute to school....

Yeah, so I'm not exactly oozing enthusiasm. But at the same time, living in St-E would mean not being so socially isolated, we'd almost certainly have internet, and I could look into getting a second job. After all, I only work 3 days a week, and honestly I've felt kind of weird not having at least two jobs. Maybe in a bookstore or at least tutoring English? Also, grocery shopping on Sunday or Monday would also be in the realm of possibility... Anyway, that's still in the very early stages, especially since mid-November isn't exactly the ideal time to be apartment hunting in a college city.

In the more immediate future, I (perhaps somewhat stupidly) offered to make a huge Thanksgiving dinner for the English teachers at the lycée next Thursday, so in my free time I've been somewhat frantically chasing down recipes and trying to figure out what ingredients I might actually be able to find here (wish me luck with pecans, cranberries, and canned pumpkin...). I know I'll at least have a turkey, since on Tuesday I went to the butcher in Feurs and ordered one to arrive next week. He warned me that it probably wouldn't be a very big one since in France turkeys are more of a Christmas dish, so as of now they aren't quite as big as they will be in a month. But since I'm only making a dinner for 8 to 10 people (only 8 to 10, he said... heh), it should be sufficient.

Also on the menu are wild rice and goat cheese stuffing, glazed carrots, fennel and rosemary mashed potatoes, sweet potato soufflé, gravy, salad, pecan pie, and maybe cranberry sauce and triple chocolate pumpkin pie, depending on if I can find the titular ingredients. I'm predicting a massive food blog for next weekend, provided everything turns out well and is worth writing about! One of the teachers has volunteered her house for the feast, and since neither of us have classes on Wednesday, that's going to be major cooking day since I do work on Thanksgiving itself. There are a couple dishes that have to be made that day, though, so if possible I might host my "classes" in the little cottage; aka make the students help me cook and show them American measuring implements, Thanksgiving traditions, etc. Hopefully I can swing it! If not, there will be much running back and forth and hoping the turkey/my house doesn't explode in the hour I'm teaching class.

Oh yeah, I did finally get a new rendez-vous for the Immigration office. I'm glad I didn't go over to Lyon to hassle them about it, because it would have been a waste of time. My next appointment is for Dec. 3, and come hell or high water or more striking, you can be sure I won't be missing that one.

Once again the hour of internet cut-off approaches, alas. Tomorrow I'm going into St-Etienne to see about picking up my (hopefully unlocked) iPhone and working on some Italy trip details, but aside from that it should be a pretty low-key weekend. Actually, there's a 9k race in St-Galmier on Sunday that I might run, but the weather's looking iffy and I'd rather not run in the rain. So maybe not such a low-key weekend after all.

bon weekend!

Weekend in St-E

Somehow half the week is gone, and it's already Wednesday! I'd actually meant to go into Lyon today and see if I couldn't nag the OFII office into giving me a new appointment (since it's now been three weeks since I missed my immigration/medical appointment and I can neither get a hold of them by phone or elicit an email response), but an empty pantry and overflowing laundry bin convinced me to put that off til maybe Friday and take care of chores today. Also, the idea of buying train tickets and spending four hours in transit just to probably get turned away was not very appealing, but I also can't afford to wait much longer. If another month goes by without my visa being stamped, it will be invalidated... and a month goes by surprisingly fast in a country so well known for its red tape and bureaucratic hang-ups. Come to think of it, in just another few days I'll have been here two months already... weird.

Going back in time a little bit, I had a really good weekend in St-Etienne. I headed over there on Friday afternoon and met up with Claire. I've been on the lookout for a place to unlock my iphone, so we walked around a bit to shop and keep an eye open for sketchy phone shops. We finally found one such upstanding establishment, but since I unknowingly did the latest update it's taking a long time for them to unlock (and/or hack) it, and it won't be ready til this Friday. After shopping, we headed back to Claire's house, and she and her boyfriend had some friends over for dinner, which was delicious fondue. You really can't go wrong with chunks of meat cooked in hot oil and served with homemade creamy blue cheese dipping sauce and chunks of bread. Claire also made a gratin dauphinois: layers of sliced potatoes, milk, and emmental baked in a casserole, and it was very moist and tasty.

After eating and sampling several red wines, we headed downtown, and I learned that I am surprisingly not awful at darts (though I'd be more inclined to call it beginner's luck). The first bar we were at was fairly small and quickly got a bit too crowded, so we moved on to the group's favorite bar, the intriguingly named "Soggy Bottom." I can't help thinking of DC and Foggy Bottom, so Betsy, when/if you come visit me, I'll have to bring you "au Soggy." It also makes me think of O Brother Where Art Thou and the Soggy Bottom Boys, so I'll have to find out if there's a connection there...

On Saturday the weather was unusually warm and sunny, so Claire suggested we go for a walk/mushroom gathering expedition in the woods near St-Etienne. Either because it's too late in the season or because someone else had already passed by, we found only one non-poisonous variety, but it was still nice to get out in the pretty weather (since it probably will be the last warmth we'll have for a while!). I do wish I'd been more prepared for the walk, since in an effort to pack light I'd only brought one nice pair of boots to wear all weekend, but they made it through the sometimes muddy two-hour walk relatively unscathed.

Saturday evening there was a "black tie" party hosted by some English assistants in Bellevue (southern neighborhood of St-Etienne). I didn't really bring any "black tie" worthy attire with me to France, but it was a great chance to meet new people and further get to know people I hadn't seen since orientation. Also, my friend Kathleen had the absolutely inspired idea to make pigs in blankets using French ingredients... I guess somewhat understandably, you can't find canned croissants here (why bother when you can get them fresh from a local boulangerie?), but puff pastry crust made for a good replacement.

Arg, I have more I want to write about, but I really ought to use my last hour of internet tonight on lesson planning rather than blogging. Topics for the next entry:

- potential of moving to St-Etienne (which if we do, this "last hour of internet" will no longer be an issue!)

- planning monstrous Thanksgiving feast for the lycée's English teachers

Food Blog: Squash & Asparagus Ravioli and Veggie Fried Rice/Quinoa

While I wait for my Paris vacation pictures to upload on facebook (only two weeks after they were taken! yeesh) and for Claire and her boyfriend, Jean-Marie, to wake up, I might as well see if I can knock out the promised food blog. I'm actually a bit annoyed with myself for having woken up so early... we were out til 2:00am and I still couldn't sleep past 9:00. Thanks, Feurs, for conditioning me to go to sleep early and wake up early since there's nothing to do past 7:00pm :P But this weekend's antics will have to wait for a later entry.

First up: Wednesday night's pre-race blend of squash and asparagus ravioli in a mushroom pesto sauce, accompanied by sliced tomatoes and avocados.

To be honest, this meal consisted more of assembling and warming ingredients than actual cooking, but it still turned out well! (confession: the pesto did come from a jar...) I bought the ravioli at the farmer's market the day before, and although the shopkeeper recommended adding the asparagus ravioli to the squash ravioli (which he was almost out of), I think it was too much of a difference in taste for the two raviolis to really blend well. Individually, though, they were both delicious!

I got the idea for the sliced tomato/avocado salad from Fran, though a bit of lemon juice on top didn't quite equal the yummy herbed mayo she made. I did the best I could with neither fresh herbs nor mayo!

Thursday's dinner required a bit more creativity. I've been craving Chinese food, and an ample amount of rice and sautée-able vegetables put the idea of fried rice in my head. But having become somewhat of a vegetarian-by-default (at least when it comes to cooking at home), adding some protein seemed like a prudent idea. I spotted a box of quinoa in the pantry and was pleased to see that the cook times for jasmine rice and quinoa are similar enough that they could be cooked together, since I wasn't feeling ballsy enough to go all in for fried quinoa.

I made the rice/quinoa blend and chopped up an onion, some carrots and mushrooms, fried a couple eggs, then stir-fried the veggies before adding in the already-warm rice to fry. I used olive oil instead of vegetable oil, and lacking soy sauce I substituted lemon juice, salt, pepper, and paprika, with no real expectation of how well it would turn out.

The result: it was surprisingly good! The lemon juice latched on to the carrots, which made for an unusual (although quite tasty) flavor, and the jasmine rice and quinoa blended very nicely. I wish I'd had some snow peas or other green vegetable to throw in, but what the dish may have lacked in color it more than compensated for in taste.

I also made a salad that Fanny introduced me to that consists of chopped oranges and endives as well as raisins and walnuts. The bitterness of the endives took a little getting used to at first, but now I really like this salad and we usually have it a couple times a week. I also had an avocado with lemon juice, since it was perfectly ripe and added a bit of color to the plate. Definitely a meal I'll have to repeat and refine!

Continuing with the food theme, I'm going to get going since it's lunchtime here!

Le cours à pied (the race)

Alright, I'd like to start by saying that even though its internet capabilities sorta blow, small-town France knows what's what when it comes to organizing a race (or at least preparing food for after the race... but I'll get to that in a bit).

As I mentioned in the last blog, the race was in Bonson, a tiny little town just over halfway between Feurs and St-Etienne (picture of the train station to the left). Between flyers I've seen and talking to people, I've learned that races here rarely conform exactly to an even number of kilometers, like a 5k or a 10k, and this one was no exception at 10.5 km (~6.5 miles). I didn't hear an exact number, but I'd estimate about 1,000 people participated, which is quite a lot for rural France!

Marie, a member of the running club who's also a teacher at the lycée, picked me up at 8:00am and we got nice and thoroughly lost before finally arriving in Bonson, but still with plenty of time for me to sign up before the race. Even for a last minute inscription, it only cost me 10 €, which included a t-shirt and food after the race. Not a bad deal, compared to $40 for the Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta!

The race started at 9:30, and thankfully by this time I think the temperature had finally risen a few degrees above freezing. At least it wasn't raining, like the forecast had predicted it might! I do wish the race had had a staggered start, since as it was we were all crammed in behind the start line; there was a good bit of shuffling back and forth after the start gun went off before we actually got moving.

From there, I followed my usual road race formula: start too fast, get about halfway through and realize, "Oh crap, I'm about to keel over," then pick up speed again towards the end after my unintentional recovery period. This course was made all the more exciting in that the last third or so was on unpaved gravel roads, so after the on-and-off rain of the past few days, there were many puddle-filled potholes to avoid. With the bright, baleful autumn sun shining in our eyes and making rocks and puddles hard to see ahead, it really was quite the obstacle course there at the end. And yet against all the odds and my own tired legs, I didn't trip! I attribute this in great part to the fact that all that was going through my head for that last section was something along the lines of "don't.fall.don't.fall.don't.fall.don't.fall..." Faceplant successfully averted.

My time at the 5k mark was around 23:45, at the 10k it was 48:something (hard to see with the aforementioned sun glare), and my official finish time was 50:38 for the 10.5k course. That comes out to a pace of about 7:45 min/mile (or 4:50 min/km), which is faster than I thought I would do! The other ladies in the club were about a minute behind me, and I'm also surprised to have finished ahead of them (though I think they set a more consistent pace).

I really like that they post the results for everyone right after the race, so you've only got about a 15 minute wait before you know your official time and where you stand in your age/gender group. Hopefully it's big enough to see in the picture, but mine's the second name on the sheet: I was the 392nd to finish (aaaactually I was 391, but the guy whose name you see above mine elbowed in front of me at the finish line, and I was too exhausted/on the point of death to protest). My race number was 2574, and my category was SEF (senior femme? I think that means women under 40, based on the fact that V1F and V2F stand for "veterane femme", 1 for 40-59 and 2 for older than 59). I finished 12th of all the SEF runners, which is pretty exciting!

While I was waiting for the other members of the "Foulée Forézienne" (the name of the running club) to finish and before I'd quite recovered my breath and an even heart rate, I decided to investigate the nourishment options. I wasn't quite sure what to expect after a race in France, but I figured it'd be similar to the spread you find after the Peachtree or Atlanta Half Marathon: a bottle of water, chocolate chip granola bar, banana, maybe an orange.

Oh, no. In under a second flat, my post-race nausea was overcome by a ravenous appetite as I espied chunks of dark chocolate; slices of brioche; a fruit plate with figs, oranges, bananas, and apple slices; and little pots of semoule (sp? not quite sure I've got that name right), a tasty cross between couscous and flan with raisins mixed in. The drink options also put the Peachtree's bottle of water to shame... coffee (!?) was the most common drink, but there was also tea, Coke, and little cups of tap water on hand that just paled in comparison to the other caffeinated/sugary options. The idea of drinking a nice, dehydrating cup of coffee after running for 50 minutes was so ridiculous that I just had to have two cups. Also, the fact that it was a hot drink when the temperature was hovering around 5°C didn't hurt either...

Once the others finished, we compared times and then I jogged back to Marie's car to grab my camera, but sadly we didn't stay long enough for me to get pictures of the course or the finish line. I did manage to grab a shot of most of us before we left, though (from right to left: me, Marie, Caroline, Danielle). Missing are Christine, more or less the captain of the group, who had gone to change and we didn't have time to wait for; and Isabelle, who ran the half marathon.

Now I'm back in cozy, cold Feurs and must figure out what to do with the rest of the weekend now that my one planned event is behind me. I'm thinking a food blog is on the horizon, since I cooked a tasty carbo-loading dish last night and don't have much more to do to keep myself occupied than by experimenting further in cooking (and since I'm here alone, no one else has to suffer if it goes horribly, horribly awry).

Encore des vacances!

Yikes, it's been a week and a half already since my last update! I've got good reason (or at least a good excuse) for the delay in updating, though, since almost all of my available Internet time goes into lesson planning rather than blogging. Fanny and I are still reliant on the school's internet, and with a cut phone line in our house that no one seems to know how to fix (including France Telecom), it looks like it's going to stay that way. Even though it's really annoying, I've more or less gotten used to the 7:00pm nightly cutoff, having no internet at all on the weekends, and Facebook and several other sites being inaccessible. C'est la vie.

On the other hand, how can you not love a country/school system that has handed me another five day break immediately after a week-and-a-half long one? I lucked out in that Veteran's Day falls on a Thursday this year, so since I never have Wednesday or Friday classes, it translates into a five day break. Of the past three weeks, I have had three days of work... pretty sweet. Of course after this week there will be no respite until Christmas break, so all of you who get days off of work/class for Thanksgiving can gloat while I toil away.

Sadly I am too low on funds to do anything with my mini-break, so while Fanny jets off to Austria I'm going to be sticking close to Feurs, with maybe a day-trip or two to St-Etienne. Something else to look forward to (or perhaps "dread" is the more appropriate verb here) is a 10.6k race tomorrow morning that I've decided to do with the running club in a nearby town called Bonson. From what I hear, Bonson falls in the same flat plain that Feurs is in, so it should be a nice, flat course!

If all else fails, I can always hang out with this guy I saw perched on the windowsill the other day, though he probably won't be very talkative. With Fanny gone and the school being closed, this place can feel pretty desolate sometimes, so I think a trip or two into St-Etienne is definitely on order for the weekend. This is also as good a time as any to crack into my totally legitimate, not-at-all-bootleg-from-a-side-street-in-Jordan Rosetta Stone CDs and see if I can't learn a few German words before Christmas. I haven't bought a ticket yet (though I really should because they're only going to get more expensive), but Fanny has invited me to Germany with her for Christmas, a prospect I'm really excited about. She lives near Dresden, which after doing some research I discovered is only about an hour's train ride away from Prague, so there are some very cool travel ideas developing there.

Last Saturday I went to Lyon with Fanny, and we explored the giant Part-Dieu mall next to the train station before heading over to the apartment of Christian, another German assistant, for dinner (homemade spaghetti bolognese, yum). This dinner was with the same group of German assistants we ate with on the last voyage to Lyon, so hopefully we can get a regular schedule of dinners going! They're all really nice and made a strong effort to speak French or English all evening, even though I was the only non-German speaker there. Fanny and I tried to offer up a dinner in Feurs, but something makes me think these Lyon assistants won't take us up on it...

On Sunday Fanny and I met back up with Christian and Inga at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon (Fine Arts Museum), where once again I was thankful to have brought my old UGA ID with me. No expiration date means I still pass as a student and get in for free! After the Louvre and Musée d'Orsay in Paris, Lyon's museum wasn't overwhelming but still nice to wander through on a rainy Sunday afternoon. It's got a couple Rubens paintings and a few lesser-known Picassos, but sadly for Lyon I think the Paris museums have a monopoly on the more popular paintings. Fanny and I had an early evening train back to Feurs, so after the museum we stopped by a café (above picture) to pass our last hour in the city.

I've grown terribly addicted to a drink called café viennois, a half espresso (actually spelled "expresso" in French, which Brooke might be pleased to know :), half (or obscenely more than half) whipped cream concoction that can't be anything but terrible for you. To the left is one of the more ridiculously proportioned café viennois that I've had (this one's from Paris), though I assure you I polished it off with only the slightest bit of a struggle.

Au revoir for now!

Rouen & Paris

Sadly vacation is almost over, and I have left the slightly urine-scented hustle and bustle of Paris for tranquil Feurs, where thankfully the school's internet is working even though it's still break! In fact, I have nothing else to do today but blog since it's both a Monday and a "jour férié" (la Toussaint), so even the places that might be open today are almost certainly closed. But picking up where I left off the other day:

Wednesday: One of my last classes at UGA was a French course on cathedrals, and one of our assignments was to do a presentation on a cathedral. Mine was Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Rouen, so feeling a certain affinity for Rouen's cathedral and knowing that the town was only a little over an hour away by train, I decided to dedicate one of my Brooke and Josh-less Paris days to a side trip to Rouen.

Rouen is definitely on the smaller side as far as cities go, but it still has a lot of interesting things to offer. My obvious first stop was the cathedral, which was an easy landmark from the train station and visible from many parts of town. Unfortunately (as is always the risk with visiting cathedrals), it was under construction, but that didn't stop me from taking a ridiculous amount of pictures anyway. In this picture I tried to capture as much of the monstrously huge facade as possible, but even backed up against the tourist office across the square it's still impossible to fit the whole thing in the frame!

Notre-Dame de Rouen is actually kind of depressing as far as cathedrals go, especially in comparison to the near-aesthetically perfect and beautifully restored Notre-Dame de Paris, which I saw the next day. Don't get me wrong; it's still magnificent, but after being bombed to bits during World War II, many of the stained glass windows that went in to replace broken ones are just clear ones.

Even a few windows make a big difference, though; the lack of colored light coming is surprisingly effective in giving the giant building a rather sterilized feeling (it probably also doesn't help that it was a very overcast day!), and looking up to see a plain window amidst many other colorful ones spoils the effect of the poor man's bible in which even the illiterate could "read"stories from the windows and be mesmerized by the church's power and magnitude.

Ok, enough of my cathedral nerdiness (for now). There's more to Rouen than a big stone building! It's also the city where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake, so there's a really cool-looking church that was erected in her honor, and behind it marks the exact spot where she was burned:

I also visited the Musée de Beaux Arts de Rouen and was pleasantly surprised to learn that it was free for "students" (I'm glad I decided to bring my UGA ID with me to France... even if it is no longer exactly accurate). I was on the hunt for any of Monet's paintings of the cathedral, and the museum had one (Portail de la Cathédrale de Rouen, temps gris), though I know there are many more in the series. After a bit more aimless roaming around Rouen and tasting what turned out to be a Breton (not Norman! Thanks, Geneviève, for the distinction :) cider in a café, I took the train back to Paris.

Thursday: With only one day left before Brooke and Josh came back from London, I decided to knock out as many museums as I could that I thought wouldn't interest them as much as me. I started out at the Musée Marmottan-Monet, which houses a large collection of Monet's works as well as some other impressionist artists. Maybe it's a little cliché or unoriginal of me to like Monet's paintings so much, but there's just something about the colors he uses and about the impressionist technique that really pulls me in. I bought a couple posters from the museum's store, so now my once-barren bedroom walls are looking a bit more cheerful, though one of the ones they gave me wasn't the one I asked for! Ah well, one water lily's about as good as another, I guess.

I then hopped on the métro over to Cluny, which houses la Musée Nationale du Moyen-Age (national Middle Ages museum). This museum is best known for the six "La Dame à la Licorne" (The Lady with the Unicorn) tapestries, though it's got a lot of other really amazing relics from the Middle Ages, including stained glass windows, statues taken from cathedrals (some of which still have splashes of the original color they were painted), religious objects and parts of monks'/priests' robes dating back to the 1400s, domestic items like plates and furniture, and knights' armor on display as well.

I was feeling a bit impoverished after leaving Cluny, as I'd broken my last 10 euro bill there and was down to a handful of change (only afterwards did I learn that non-EU citizens under 26 with a visa can get in for free, grrr), but really had no regrets on spending my last few euros on a museum, even if it meant skipping dinner that night. Deciding to opt for more budget-friendly/free attractions for the afternoon, I set out for a self-guided tour of the 5e arrondisement, which took me by the Panthéon and the Jardins de Luxembourg.

And then I stopped by an ATM and made the glorious discovery that I'd finally been paid for my first month of teaching, so the long wait and depressing evaporation of my American bank account is finally over! In celebration I bought myself a ham, cheese, and egg crèpe from a street vendor for lunch, though I couldn't finish it -- for the first time in the fromage-filled history of Emily Myers' dining experience, a meal had too much cheese on it and was oozing grease instead of yummyness. I should've opted for the Nutella and banana crèpe instead, even though it wouldn't have made for a very healthy lunch!

I knew that Brooke and Josh wanted to visit Notre-Dame de Paris, but I also knew that I'd probably take way longer in my visit than they would and I'd also be happy to revisit it, so I decided to go ahead and knock it out. And by "knock it out," I mean spend two hours there, taking pictures and sitting enthralled at its beauty (or really, resting my tired feet while craning my neck and looking like a gaping-mouthed doofus).

There's no ideal time to go to Notre-Dame, since it's almost always swarming with tourists (even during services) that move in a sheep-like current through the cathedral, so taking pictures that don't include half a dozen bobbing heads or that aren't blurry due to being jostled can be difficult, but it's still very much worth a visit.

A couple more Notre-Dame de Paris photos:

To the left is a picture of the choeur (choir), as taken from the transept; I took a few long shots from the entrance of the cathedral, but sadly they all turned out blurry. This shot from closer in, however, shows the modern altar with a backdrop of gorgeous stained glass windows.

For the picture to the right, this is the view from where I was sitting; it actually took me a while to notice the TV screens posted along every few columns, which I guess they use during services. Also, in the top right of the picture, you can see where the colored light coming in from across the nave reflects on the stone walls.

Friday: Early Friday morning, I bid farewell to my sketchy hostel and went to the Gare du Nord to pick up Brooke and Josh. We decided to take advantage of the pretty weather and spend the day looking at Paris' important monuments, so after dropping off our luggage at our hotel, we took the métro over to the Arc de Triomphe. After a brief cost-benefit analysis between risking our lives playing frogger to cross the 16-street intersection and climbing the Arc, we opted to instead satisfy ourselves with a few pictures in front of it and take the safer route down the Champs-Elysées and head towards the Eiffel Tower.

La Tour Eiffel is another monument that always seems to be under some type of restoration; its base was partly covered with brown sheeting, but of course this was no detriment to our picture-taking. As with Montmartre, the area around the base of the tower was teeming with tourists and tourist traps, but we navigated the flow with wallets resting safely where they belonged (after being scammed earlier in the week, Josh was particularly emphatic with his responses of "Non! Merci!" when jangling rings of Eiffel Tower souvenirs were thrust in our faces).

Although we were already pretty tired both from being up early (Brooke and Josh had been up since 4:00am to catch their train, and I'd gotten up at 7:00am to meet them) and the excessive walking, we decided to go to the Musée d'Orsay, home to many Impressionist/post-Impressionist works. It was here that I discovered the hidden benefit of getting into museums free with a European visa, though I was somewhat disappointed to learn that the museum had temporarily loaned out 53 of its Monet paintings to another gallery, so my quest to see more Rouen cathedral paintings as well as my favorite of his paintings (Antibes) went unfulfilled. The museum itself is really cool, though; occupying a former train station, it's got a very interesting layout without being too vast and intimidating (like the Louvre). I have very vague recollections of being there when I was about eight years old, though I think like Friday it had been at the end of the day, because my eight-year-old memories are of sitting/napping in the main hall with Betsy and Dad, waiting for Mom to finish her dash through all the galleries.

At the end of the day we retreated back to the hotel with our burning feet and rested for a little while before striking out in search of dinner. We initially tried to follow the suggestion in the Lonely Planet guidebook for a delicious-sounding Turkish restaurant in the area, but when we found it to be closed we settled for a nearby French brasserie that turned out to be pretty tasty itself. Brooke had been running through her French vocabulary since the first day and kept mentioning "canard" (duck), so Josh and I talked her into trying the duck confit, even though none of us could define exactly what "confit" meant. It was a good choice; thankfully my cold had abated enough that I could both feel not guilty trading bites with Brooke and Josh, and I could also taste the dishes I was trying! Josh's steak also looked tasty, and my salmon with rice was good (if not really inspired).

As an apéritif, I had them try kir, which is a glass of white wine with a little bit of crème de cassis (blackcurrant liqueur). I've tried it before and liked it, but I got a big kick out of Josh and Brooke trying it for the first time... at first, Brooke's face was twisted up in disgust, and then settled into a nod of mild acceptance, and she said she liked it after thinking about if for a moment or two. For dessert, Brooke had crème brûlée, Josh had "tarte tatin" (apple pie with ice cream), and I had "glace mystère", a ball of vanilla ice cream wrapped around meringue, dipped in chopped almonds/walnuts and drizzled with caramel.

Oh man, I am getting ravenous just reflecting on it... I made sure to clean out the pantry of all perishables before leaving Feurs, not thinking that when I got back it would be Sunday and then Monday and no stores would be open, so plain pasta has been my only option for the past couple of meals. Tomorrow is market day, though, so there's only one more dinner of plain pasta between me and fresh fruit and veggies!

Saturday was the Louvre and Sunday I had to head back to Feurs, but those will have to wait for another day. Despite plucking away at this all afternoon, my 7:00 internet cut-off approaches and I'm still not done. Actually, looking back on this entry, it's kind of ridiculously long. Sorry about that! I'll close with an image of sunset from our hotel: