FEUILLES FRANÇAISES EPISODE XII ~ October 15, 2010

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the final episode of Feuilles Françaises. It’s been one heck of a run. I am very sorry for the delay in getting this out to you all, reentry from life in Europe is often like the space shuttle, you kind of burn up on the way back in, and everything comes at you so fast. And, to be honest, I have been dreading this a little, because it really closes out the experience, and that means letting go. I have been chipping away at this episode for the better part of 6 months on weekends, evenings, and lunches...

At the Baths in Budapest with Ilea!


The baths, complete with people would oughtn't wear Speedos...

Here are the promised photos from the Spas in Budapest. I have finally caught up with Ilea on this continent to get them from her waterproof camera.

My final week and a half in France was much like the rest of my stay. After my extended vacation with Mom and Dad, I returned to work on Friday. Unfortunately, missing the majority of that week of classes meant that I did not have a final class with about half of my students. That was a real bummer, not getting to say good bye to a lot of my kids.

The medieval town hall of Nevers

For the most part, I spent that first weekend back in Bourges, doing laundry, and starting the arduous process of packing to come home. However, with so little time left, I could not pass up the chance for a little day trip. The town of Nevers is located about 45 minutes from Bourges, and I had often heard it was a charming town. It is also the final resting place of the Saint (the only one that I know of) who shares my birthday, Saint Bernadette who discovered the healing spring in Lourdes.

So, apparently modern stained glass windows can be pretty afterall...

So I headed out to Nevers for the morning on Saturday. It is a small town, a lot like Bourges with the medieval houses and such, but it seems to have three times as many churches. There was one on every corner, and the neat thing was, each one was in a very different style. Their main cathedral is a little confused, one of those that took so long to build, that the style changed entirely over the course of the construction, so it was began in the Romanesque style, and finished in Gothic. And in Nevers, I actually may have found the first modern stained glass windows I actually like. They were very cool and created a riot of color in the cathedral. The entire thing was lit up with patches of intense color. It was very cool.

Saint Bernadette (I did not take a photo of the Saint, it is a photo of a post card, I didn't want a trip to Hell for photographing a Saint).

I ended my visit with a trip to see Saint Bernadette. No, not her tombstone, her. She is a bit peculiar, she never decomposed at all. When she was exhumed for inspection at the outset of her canonization process, she was found to be exactly as she looked when she died. So she is on display in a gold and glass coffin (which looks suspiciously like the one Snow White was in).

From Nevers I headed back to Bourges, and by a happy coincidence I ran into Jessie Reynolds at the station. Jessie is another assistant (from Montana) in a village a bit outside of Bourges. So we ended up passing a relaxing afternoon in the sun sipping wine and eating ice cream (there is a stand in Bourges that sells melon ice cream, not sorbet, but cream-based ice cream… Oh. My. GOD!). We experienced some fantastic weather that weekend, you would have sworn it was summer.

That evening I proposed an outing to the movies and with Gina, Viola, and Jessie I saw Les Aventures Extraorinaires d’Adele Blanc-Sec. It’s a new French film based on an old comic. Adele is part Indiana Jones, part Anne of Green Gables, with a little bit of Jurassic Park mixed in. It was a fun movie. Not exactly Oscar caliber, but fun. Though, in the CGI department, the French have a ton of catching up to do.

On Sunday Jessie and I went to the market near my house. I will miss that quite a lot. Something about going to the market like that seems so very French, everyone does it all the time. Not like in the US where going is some sort of strange treat. Nowadays, I look at the produce section and Shaw’s and get depressed, the selection and quality leaves much to be desired.

Jessie also wanted to see a fencing match in town, and having never seen one, I chose to go along. It was rather neat. It was the Bourges team against another town fighting for a spot at the Nationals. Bourges ultimately lost, but it was actually fascinating to watch, extremely fast, and very exciting.

It was a nice relaxing weekend overall, and that was nice. I love to travel and move all the time, but every once and a while it is nice to have a break and hang out in Bourges.

Monday began my last week of school. With the majority of my classes, we just played games that last class. Many of my students seemed surprised that I was leaving so soon. But it does make sense, the third years (last year of middle school) had a big exam le Brevet (bruh-vay) coming up which determines whether or not they get to move on to high school, and the same goes for the Terminals (last year of high school), so I can see why the assistant contracts expire in April. It was very hard to say good bye to a couple of my classes, and especially my English conversation club.

Gina, Viola and I did manage to keep up our Monday supper tradition right until the end, though the last Monday we went out to dinner to save someone the burden of cooking. I really miss them and our adventures. There was something so special about sharing that experience with other people in the same situation. They were like a family away from home, and I miss them both terribly.

Between classes I had a very busy week, I had three weeks of job application back-log to sort out, a massive blog to write, and had to start squeezing in farewells.

I was very upset on my last day of school (my contract expired on Friday, April 30, but that was an off-Friday for me, so I am talking about Thursday here), I was on my way to my last class ever in Bourges, a 4th year class that I enjoyed very much, when the Assistant Principal called me and told me my class was cancelled. I was really crushed. But, as Viola pointed out, at least it ended as it always ways, so they get points for consistency.

My bed on the over night train...


Sleeper car with 6 bunks... I was first on and managed to snap a couple photos!

Carcassonne

My wanderlust would not be contained for two weekends in a row, and so for my last weekend in France I took off adventuring again. On Thursday night at about quarter to midnight I hopped a train to the South of France to the medieval city of Carcassonne. I took an overnight train, a European first for me. It was sort of cool. I had a bed in a compartment with five other women (three bunks on each side), and I did manage to sleep on the way down. It was sort of cool to just go to sleep in one city and wake up in an entirely different one.

The incredible vaulted ceiling of the Jesuit church in Toulouse.

Upon arriving in Carcassonne, (very early in the morning), I dropped off my luggage, and headed out to Toulouse. I had a mission that has developed over the course of the year. I have a French planer with a map of France in the back, and one day I decided to mark all the cities I have visited on my various sojourns in France. And as I began marking I noticed that I had been to more than half of the regions (remember France is divided into 22 regions), and so whenever I got the chance, I have been ticking them off. Toulouse happens to be in the Midi-Pyrénées, one of the unvisited regions, and only an hour from Carcassonne. So I went for the day.

Town Hall in Toulouse

Toulouse was not as interesting as I had hoped it would be, or just not very well adapted for tourism. Honestly, it was easily one of the least interesting cities in France I have ever visited. One good thing came on the day, by chance I ran across two fellow Americans in a church and we ended up spending a portion of the afternoon in a café, the Castlemans were from San Francisco and were very fun to talk to. I saw them the weekend before last when they came to visit me at Minute Man. It was very strange, like having two worlds collide.

Outside the walls of Medieval Carcassonne

The castle within the fortifications

Fun fact: the fortress of Carcassonne can be seen in the Kevin Costner version of Robin Hood

Carcassonne by night

I spent the evening and all day Sunday exploring the medieval city of Carcassonne. Carcassonne is home to the most complete medieval fortress in Europe. The first portions of the fortress date to 100 BC, they are Gallo-Roman fortifications. Like many other fortresses of similar age, Carcassonne took many centuries to reach its final size (which is huge) and the final construction was completed in the 13th century. The fortress was heavily restored beginning in the 19th century when the remaining medieval and pre-medieval structures were to be destroyed. The public outcry began a movement which saved the structures.

Touring the ramparts

(It was a long tour around the ramparts)


Ok, so maybe I took a few pictures...

A wonderful little wine bar I found in the old city of Carcassonne right around the corner from my hostel

Walking the ramparts of Carcassonne is like going back in time. It is amazing! You expect to see knights clad in armor cantering their steeds through the portcullis at any moment. It is such an interesting place to visit! It is a little touristy, but all the same, it is beyond compare. I stayed at a hostel within the walls of the fortified city, and I ate in restaurants within the walls. I spent the majority of the weekend meandering and exploring on my own.

Inside the Cathedral within the fortress of Carcassonne

Cathedral of Carcassonne


One window tells the entire book of Genesis, this of course, is Noah and the Arc


Carcassonne Cathedral


I do miss being surrounded by such intense beauty all the time!

There was a beautiful Cathedral within Carcassonne. It had few windows, but those that there were were absolutely stunning.

Canal du Midi

On Sunday, I took occasion to tour the Canal du Midi which was a 150-mile long canal connecting south-western France with the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. The canal was built in the 17th Century and much of it survives today (though it is seldom used for much other than tourism).

Detail of the decor at the Palais Jacques Coeur

I again took the over night train to return to Bourges where I resumed my packing and farewell-ing. On my final day in Bourges, I took the opportunity to visit the Palais Jacques Coeur, which was a block away from Littre, but I had never visited it (even in Europe it is true that one never visits one’s home town). Jacques Coeur was a wealthy merchant who rose to the position of finance minister to the King of France. The palace is more of a mansion, but the masonry and statuary are beautiful, and I am glad I took the time to visit before I left.

I also took one final trip to the cathedral, and finally toured the crypt, which was not terribly exciting, just the tombs of bishops and cardinals and such.

Packing up my things was as difficult as ever… trying to fit everything and redistribute it properly so as to not have to pay for excess baggage, or worse be so over the weight limit that you have to throw things away there at the airport. So there was much unpacking and repacking and weighing my final evening in Bourges. Somehow I managed to fit everything (though my carry-ons may have been more than double the permitted weight, but Iceland Air needed not know that).

I purchased my return tickets long before the trouble with the Volcano happened, and because it was cheaper, I elected to fly home via Iceland, and my flight passed within view of the legendary volcano.

On Wednesday, May 5, I left Bourges for good. Marie-Paule took me and my voluminous luggage to the train station where I caught a train to Vierzon, changed to a train directly to the airport (thus avoiding the metro), waited in line FOREVER at the airport (somehow my luggage came in underweight), boarded my plane for Iceland (NO VOLCANO TROUBLE YIPEE!) We flew right past the volcano, which was very interesting, and a little scary.

My flight from Iceland to Boston was uneventful, and as always, when I sailed through customs, my family was there waiting to take me back to my normal life in Merrimack.

This summer flew by in an absolute blur. Within 24 hours of arriving back home I had scheduled a job interview and scored a date (I didn't feel the need to broadcast it at the time, but I suppose it is fair I confess, Drew and I broke up in Venice). A week later I resumed work at Minute Man, continued interviewing, and before long had a full-time boyfriend (who conveniently lives nine houses up the street). The rest of May, and much of June was spent interviewing for various jobs. All in all I sent out 50 applications, sat for 6 interviews, and in the end only one of each mattered. At the end of June I was hired by Epping Middle School as their 8th Grade Social Studies teacher (which is why this blog is so incredibly late). I am almost two months into my first year, and for the most part I love it. It is far more work than I ever anticipated (and I expected it would be a lot of work), I am always on the edge of exhaustion, I make board games on my weekends, and get up at 4:15 AM, but I could not imagine it any other way.

On a side note, I met a friend from France in Boston a few weeks ago, Tatiana, one of the girls who "rescued" me that first night in Bourges and took me to my hostel. Her family came to visit on vacation, and giving them the grande tour of Boston was funny in a way. I felt as though I came full-circle.

Epilogue

This is always the hardest part of my blogging, the end. But, for me, it is one of my favorite parts, and, to be honest, this part I do for me. My experiences over 7 months total some 7,000 photos, 300+ pages of blog, a few hundred lessons, and a stack of train tickets an inch thick. It is a lot to process.

I always knew that this experience would be different from Paris in 2006. When I lived in Paris, every day was very exciting. I was always running off to this Museum or that historic site. Bourges was just not that exciting. But, it generated an entirely different experience. In Paris, I always felt like a bit of a tourist. I never left my apartment without my camera and in some ways (maybe because of the strike in part), my six months there was more like a long vacation.

In Bourges, I developed a daily life, a routine. More days than not, the camera stayed in the case in my bedroom. I went out with a purse rather than a backpack, I bumped into people I knew at the grocery store. I found a group of friends. I knew people in Paris, but we only saw each other occasionally. In Bourges, Gina, Viola, Anne, James, Marie-Paule, the Brels, etc became fixtures in my daily life, not just people I saw in passing. That made leaving harder this time. Before, I was just leaving Paris, and my independent life there. This time, I was leaving a different sort of home.

Things I will not miss: Cobblestones (they hurt my ankles), Sundays/Mondays (NOTHING is open), Pause de midi (NOTHING is open), Dubbed Films (it’s like 2 hours of bad lip-synching), being a constant pedestrian (yielding is not a law over there), my salary (I now make in two weeks what I made in a month).

Things I miss: Food (all of it), Wine (all of it), traveling all the time (having Europe as your playground is a little too fun), trains (I really hate commuting), my friends (I am worried that I will never see some of those people ever again).

Home. Home is where the heart is, and mine is truly divided. Everyone has been asking me how I feel/felt about coming “home.” And there is no easy answer. The trouble is, I live two lives on two continents. They are different, and I am not sure that I love one more than the other. So, it is always sad to leave one, but always nice to come back to the other. In France, I love the adventure, I love the challenge, I love having all of Europe as my playground, I love the food, the wine, the History. But, America is where my family and friends are, reenacting, hockey, real bacon and cheddar cheese, where it snows always in winter, and the leaves put on a show to rival any stained glass I have seen. The real trouble with my two lives is, they are mutually exclusive to an extent. Sure, I could move to France, but that would mean missing weddings, and Barbeques, Homecoming and Thanksgiving. And from America, I can always visit Europe (so long as I have the budget), but it is not the same.

On teaching. Wanting some more experience in a classroom was one of the driving forces behind this adventure. After five and a half years in school myself (and a brief stint student teaching), I was not ready to step into the role of full-fledged teacher. Many people told me I was ready, but I doubted myself, I don’t any more. This program gives the participants an enormous amount of liberty, in some cases it can be like my Paris experience, you come to have fun and work a little on the side. I approached everyday as a professional. I planned my lessons, I created activities, I managed my classroom. And though I had the option, I did not just chuck the difficult students out, I kept them, because now that is not an option, and I am grateful for the learning experience.

This experience also presented me with a very real teaching challenge: managing a classroom in my second language. On a good day, I am bilingual, French flows as easily and naturally as English, but there are always days when I simply cannot get my brain or my tongue around the words, and of course, when one is frustrated in ANY language, one’s language capabilities drop like a rock. Effectively managing a classroom in French without resorting to shouting or dismissing students can be a battle, and with very few exceptions (one being the student who chucked his neighbor’s pencil case out the window), I succeeded.

I am also very pleased with a lot of my lesson accomplishments. I think I really had some great ideas and some things that worked out very well. I am almost disappointed that I am not a French teacher (or not presently certified as such), because some of the lessons I made would work very well teaching French (incidentally, I am currently tutoring a freshman in my neighborhood in French).

A lot of people ask about or comment on my pictures. It is very flattering, but I must confess, most of it is luck, a lot of it is volume (when you shoot 7k, you are bound to end up with a few good ones), and there is a little bit of know-how (but not a ton).

When am I going back? Haha… I don’t know… maybe never, you never do know where life will take you. I always seem to go to France looking for something… in 2006 I was looking for a new start, in 2009, I was looking for some experience, and to a certain extent a last hurrah (quarter-life crisis???). I am now finally ready to begin my professional life, to become a full-fledged adult. I am living at home for the moment, but that is more a function of economics than attempting to cling to my adolescence. So I suppose, the true adventure begins here. This last year was a nice stay of execution before reality set in, but now that it has (student loan payments are a monthly reminder), I am ready to face it head-on, because I’ve been on adventures before, and I have learned that I always come out just fine.

And so, dear friends, thank you for joining me once again on my adventure, it was a pleasure to share my experiences with you. I pondered keeping a blog about teaching, but frankly, I do not have the time. So with a touch of regret, I am signing off one last time, I hope to blog again some day, but in the meantime… I remain your grateful and humble French blogger,

~Monica

At Pumpkinfest in Keene over the weekend with Nate, my boyfriend.