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.