Big video blog of Paris

Diana and I headed off to Paris and Blois for Halloween vacation. We crammed as much as possible into every day and were able to see an incredible amount. Check out my facebook album “France” for lots of pictures, but here are some videos from our adventures.

This is Notre Dame cathedral on our first day. We were lucky to be inside when the sun was shining, so we got to see the amazing rosette windows.

Here is the entrance to the Louvre, the former royal palace of Louis 14th, and now a baller museum.

Paris was extremely busy that week because of the vacation. Here we are at the entrance to the Eiffel Tower, ready to brave the long lines ahead. It was worth it though.

Up we go to the first level.

And finally, the very top!

Les champs de Mars, the big green space in front of the Eiffel Tower

Sacre Coeur is an iconic church in Paris. It’s built on top of Montmartre, one of the highest parts in the city, so you can get a great view from the front steps. Montmartre is traditionally the artists’ neighborhood. Most of the famous French writers and painters that we know today had studios in the area. Think the set on the Moulin Rouge, and that’s more or less what it looks like. Minus Ewan McGregor in the giant elephant.

The girls and I decided to embrace our inner five year old and hopped on the carrousel in front of Hotel de Ville. I picked the one who looked the most like Max, of course.

This is the entrance to the Hall of Mirrors, the beautiful reception/ dance hall for French royalty at Versailles.

This is the last video I took on the trip. After a day at the Louvre, I came out and loitered around the entrance fountains with East of Eden.

Protests in France

These black and white photos in the beginning are courtesy of my friend Lea. We met in Lycee Lacassagne when I lived in Lyon in 2005. Then, I remembered having to walk around a burning car to get into school. Unfortunately, it looks like the same violence has come back to the city.

A sign for a protest on Tuesday in the Sans Souci (without worries) neighborhood

Diana, Rebecca, Zach and I walk by the protest on our way downtown. Quimper's protests, unlike Lyon's, have been peaceful.

Protestors along the main boulevard

High school students from Lycee Cornouaille, the school behind Lycee Chaptal, march behind their banner.

It’s a confusing and uncertain time to be in France right now. Unions have now blocked gas stations from being refilled across the country. Our local station in Quimper ran dry a couple days ago. I’ll be interested to see whether food prices increase because of the blockade. I told my cousin, Tim, that I felt a bit like I am getting a preview of life in 2050. For now, fall vacation starts in two days. Though normally, that means students will scatter across the country to go home or to travel, I’m not sure if it’ll be possible given the gas situation and public transportation strikes. I had planned to take a train to Paris on 26 with Diana, but now we’re just taking it on a day-to-day basis, watching the news and hoping our train will still run.

what i’m reading

It’s not often that I read a book that’s so beautiful it leaves me in awe every time I turn the page. I found Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez at the mediatheque last week and picked it up, not knowing anything about it other than it was by the same author who wrote 100 Years of Solitude, a book full of haunting and magical imagery that still stays with me. I can’t see a yellow butterfly without thinking about the girl in the book who is surrounded by them and flown into the sky. I’m about halfway through Love in the Time of Cholera, and it contains the same mesmerizing attention to detail and beautiful imagery- like the part where Juvenal Urbino looks out his window and sees the city slowly turn its back to the sun, every building outlined in gold and the sea set on fire.

The beautiful place where I live

A seabird drys its wings on the ramps along the quai. When the river was still the main route of trade and transport, these ramps are where the boats would enter and leave the water.

The outer wall of Cathedral Saint Corentin

The towers of Saint Corentin from the main boulevard along the Odet River

A footbridge across the Odet River

Footbridges over the Odet

Boulevard along the Odet

A statue near the train station of two women in traditional Breton dress

Flowers growing in the walls along the street

Vive la Revolution!

Students gather in front of Lycee Chaptal Friday morning

Front doors to the high school are barricaded by trash cans that the students have gathered from the neighborhood. No school today!

Doors to the courtyard are also barricaded. Traffic is a bit unorganized after the students have passed through.

The Stable

This forest borders the paddocks of the stable. I've never seen anything like it. Every time I walk through it, I feel like I'm in an Ansel Adams photograph.

The leaves are falling, but everything's still very green

Horse crossing sign along the road leading up to the stable

Here's a small part of the fields and paddocks surrounding the main building, which is to the left and higher up on the hill. Quimper is ahead and to the right.

The stable is an old farm, so all the buildings are this same weathered stone.

How amazing is this barn?! Ha, but there's no chance Max would go into these stalls willingly.

I can get a weekly fix of both horses and kitties at this place. I'm tempted to put this little guy in my pocket every time I come.

The house of vegetarians

Hello dear friends. After a week of living in a small apartment on the third floor of the highschool and sleeping three to a room, we finally got to move into a small house just inside the school’s courtyard. I have my own room! The guys, Zach and Malte, are staying in the apartment, and les filles (Diana from Costa Rica, Rebecca from Cornwall) get the run of the house. As it turns out, we all happen to be vegetarians (though I’ve been known to cheat on occasion), so it’s been lots of fun seeing what they make out of the fresh produce and yummy grains that are everyone in Quimper.

Yesterday, Diana was feeling a bit homesick, so she made us two big plates of nachos. I was thoroughly impressed, because Latin American cuisine isn’t exactly easy to find in France. It was a success though. Her nachos might have actually rivaled El Rancho.

This is where all the deliciousness happens.

Appropriately enough, after the nachos we hit the town. There’s an English-style pub downtown that we wanted to try. The beer was pretty good- I tried Coreff, a wheat beer made in Brittany, and they even had organic beers on tap. Saturday night was also football night, however. France won and people got drunk and obnoxious. I kid you not, it turned into Harpo’s on game day. We ended up leaving when a guy tried to jump the fence by our table on the patio and ended up falling on top of a group of people and breaking all their glasses. It certainly was an interesting night…I think I’ll be more careful about where I go out after football games though.

I’m so thankful I’m living with roommates. Not only is it great to have someone to go out with on a Saturday, but we’ve had a fun time settling in and making the house our own. This morning, Rebecca and I cleared the patio of weeds and ivy (which turned into quite a job- all the rain translates into very tenacious plants).

Rebecca taking a break after clearing the patio

Here’s a few more photos of the rest of the house.

There's a narrow wooden staircase that leads up to the rooms

Here's my bedroom. I'm still trying to hunt down a fan, but at least the window's big.

The living room and my bedroom window

Lycee Chaptal is the on the left, our house is on the right

Here is poster in the entryway that shows some of the local shops on our street, Pont l'Abbe

there and back again

My fellow language assistants and I took a day trip to the northern city of Brest yesterday to go to an orientation session for all the assistants of the region. We woke up at 5:30, hopped on a bus, and an hour and half later we were watching the sun come up over the commercial port in Brest. One of the city’s main industries is ship building, so it looks very industrial- lots of cranes and warehouses along the shore. Here’s a video I took as we drove by the shore.

A local highschool hosted the orientation. We spent the morning going over administrative stuff like how to enroll in social security, what do send to the immigrations office, and then in the afternoon we broke up into small groups according to our native language and talked about teaching. It was very informative- I feel like I have a much better idea of what I’m supposed to do with these kids.

We took the train home to Quimper around dinner time. It was really fun to be able to sit with the assistants and get to know one another. I took a video so you can meet them too. Diana, from Costa Rica, is sitting by the window in the beginning. Rebecca, from Cornwall, is sitting across from me and none too pleased with the camera. They are my roommates in the apartment right now. The guy is Malte, our German roommate who speaks 8 languages, and then Maria from Spain by the window and…wait for it….Claire O’Connell!!! Irish-American journalist extraordinaire, and my friend from my study abroad in Senegal! Yep, she’s living not 20 minutes away from me in Concarneau. It was so fun to catch up with her and remember Dakar. I’m looking forward to another year of adventures with her!

In a few minutes I have my first meeting with the English teachers in the highschool. I’ll meet them, discuss the expectations, and finally get my class schedule. They said they’re giving me Fridays off so I can travel and have long weekends! I like them already. I briefly met one of the classes in the hallway and they seemed nice. The comment I heard the most was “wow, but she’s really young!” Good thing I brought teacher clothes so I can (let’s hope) convincingly play dress-up.

Rainy day in Quimpertown

It’s been raining all day, and according to my dashboard, I should think about building an ark. I’ve been very adult the past two days, opening bank accounts, sending in immigration papers by registered mail (sounds simple, but it wasn’t, let me tell ya), introducing myself to the principal, and getting a library card. It’s a little tough to be so productive in this kind of weather, but the citizens of Quimper some how don’t seem to mind. As I jumped between puddles and huddled underneath my little umbrella, I can’t tell you how many people walked by me, no umbrella, as serene as if it was 75 and sunny outside. Maybe I’ll get used to it? Maybe the people in this place have discovered how to make themselves waterproof?

For me at least, it was the perfect day to read, so I ran back from the library with French versions of Harry Potter and Love in the Time of Cholera tucked into my bag. Once home, I cracked open a bottle of Breton cider and snuggled under a blanket with a book.

Sorry for the super close-up/ crazy eyes…I’d been walking in the rain for awhile.

Downtown Quimper, II

Here’s a look at the Steir River, the second river that winds its way though the city. This bridge is right next to a covered marketplace that fulfills every stereotype I’ve ever hoped for as far as a French food market goes. Big butcher shops, stalls with piles of fresh fish, aisles of weird fruits and veggies (even figs!), plus a cheap creperie that I plan to visit stat. Quimper does a great job of providing gorgeous public gardens. Every footbridge in the city is bordered by these kind of flowers and ferns. Take a look at the people picnic-ing at the top of the wall! Love it.

Another view of the Cathedral. Check out those sweet gargoyles. They give free tours of the left tower every Sunday- I can’t wait to check it out.

Fall is on it’s way here in Quimper. This is a look of the Breton Museum (part of the cathedral Saint Corentin) from the interior courtyard.

The leaves are changing, but the flowers are still in bloom!

Quimper used to be surrounded by a wall, which was built to protect the city in the 8th century. Remparts and canons were built along the south and east, where attacks were most likely to happen. On the other side of the traffic light, you can see an old rempart on the hill.