So, it seems like a long time since I've posted, when in fact it's only been a week. I'll start with a recap of my day in Amiens:
I managed to catch a bus to the place where my meeting was and got there quite early (and of course the orientation didn't start until 30 minutes late, so I could have taken the train that morning and saved my night in a sketchy hotel). The orientation was pretty typical, although there were a few surprises:
1. There were these amazing people who took care of all our complicated paperwork for us; I had no idea this was going to happen so I was shocked when I could weeks' worth of red tape cut in one sitting
2. Our free lunch was delicious! We got a three-plate sampler of a galette au four, some pain de viande, and something else really excellent (and I kind of made up the names of those dishes, but if you know French cuisine you'll get the idea). Throw in a tarte aux pommes and a cup of cider and altogether it was quite nice.
3. I got to visit the cathedral during our 2.5-hour lunch break. The cathedral at Amiens is really famous, and rightly so; it may be the prettiest church I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of them. It's bigger than Notre Dame and much, much less somber. The stained-glass windows of the cathedrals in Picardy got bombed out over the course of the two world wars, so they were repaired with cheaper clear glass, and I think it's an improvement. You lose the symbolism in the windows, but I think the brightness compensates...there's plenty of other iconography inside to see without dark stained-glass windows. I even got to see a relic: the head of St. John the Baptist. Even if it's not actually his head, it's super important because in the Middle Ages people would come from all over Europe to revere it.
After our orientation Alex, Hector (the Mexican assistant who lives with the other English assistants in the boarding school), and I made our way to the Gare, only to find that the trains were on strike because a conductor had gotten stabbed. After a shorter-than-expected delay of 30 minutes, we caught our first train, then our second, but the third had been cancelled. SNCF to the rescue! SNCF is the French rail company, and it is AWESOME. The trains are always clean, usually on time (barring a grève, i.e. a strike), and not too expensive. They also payed a cab for the three of us from Laon to Soissons, a cab which cost 90 Euros. Thanks nice man at the Laon station!
So that Saturday I set off with Benoît, Irène, and Camille to run some errands/do some sightseeing. First we went to one of the Parisian suburbs to drop off some packages for a lady to deliver to friends in Senegal (the customs department in Senegal is so corrupt that nothing valuable can get through the post, so everything has to be sent by a courrier). Next, we went to Vaux de Vicomtes, which is the castle that inspired Versailles. I'll bore you all with a quick history lesson (omit the bracketed part if you don't care):
[begin history lesson
So once upon a time there was this guy named Foucquet who built this uber-extravagant palace north of Paris. He was one of the finance ministers of France under Louis XIV, who was really jealous of this chateau (Vaux de Vicomtes). Another one of Louis's finance ministers (named Colbert, incidentally) made some really shady deals and got caught, but blamed it all on Foucquet. Louis was so jealous of his fancy house that he rigged the trial, stuck Foucquet in prison then exile, then built Versailles just to show him.
end history lesson]
After our little afternoon at the chateau (where Tony Parker and Eva Longoria got married, incidentally), Benoît asked me if I wanted to go to Paris for the evening to catch some sights. Of course I said yes, so we hopped on the freeway and soon were driving along the Seine. It was surreal to be in Paris like that; it's always such an ordeal to get there the other times I've been that just waltzing up casually was strange, but in a very good way. I grabbed a couple of pictures in front of the Eiffel tower, but other than that we never left the car. We stopped on the outskirts to have dinner in Bercy Village and found a very nice crêperie that served Alsacien cuisine, including both crêpes and their cousin, the pizza-like flammekuche (Alsace used to be part of Germany, if you didn't already guess from the word flammekuche). That was one of my favorite meals since I've been here, even though I was about to fall over from exhaustion.
Sunday, Katie and I went to the Protestant church in Soissons. There's only one, and it was TINY. There were somewhere around 10 people there, out of a city of 28,000, so a far cry from the packed-out cathedral last weekend. However the service was very nice, the pastor spoke very clear, comprehensible French, and there was actually a sermon instead of the mini-homily thing the bishop gave at the cathedral last week. The members were also very friendly and glad to see 2 young people; one nice gentleman even gave us his business card and said to call if we needed any help. He had his two adorable kids with him, and Katie wants to babysit them. It was a very nice, welcoming experience, and both Katie and I want to go back in two weeks (the pastor works in Soissons every other week, and goes to Laon on the other Sundays).
This week's teaching has gone really well; I even got to introduce one class to a Taylor Swift song ("Picture to Burn" for for my curious readers) and then guided them through translating it into French. Today I had to go to Laon, the capital of the départment (which is roughly equivalent to an American county), to have my immigration medical visit. At 9:15 am. Not counting travel time.
I met up with Marlene at the train station and we made our way to the city of Laon, just a 25 minute, 3.50 Euro jaunt down the track. We then realized that to get to the hospital, we had to climb to the top of the hill where the old city is. And when I say hill, I mean small mountain. I'll post a picture later, but suffice it to say it's enormous. Fortunately it was cool enough that I arrived not disgusting, but we were out of breath. The medical visit went really smoothly. The hospital was modern, well organized, and staffed with friendly people. It was a huge contrast from the time I went to the hospital in Greece. And of course I have to tell that story, but it's not that important so I'll put it in brackets again:
[start digression
When I was in Greece last summer studying, I accidentally took a dip wearing my insulin pump. A few days later, it died completely and I had to order a new one. The problem is, Greek customs officials are not exactly the most efficient in the world, so I had to get some long-acting insulin to fill in the gap. So Manuel, our fellow archaeologist/driver/translator, drove me to the hospital in new Corinth to begin our afternoon-long odyssey for long-acting insulin. Inside the hospital we didn't know where to go, so we wandered around aimlessly, occasionally asking for help, until we got to the wing we wanted. The hospital was very shabby, with equipment that looked straight out of the 1970's, faux-wood paneling and all. We sat down in the doctor's office to wait for him to come back from lunch or siesta or who-knows-what, and the grouchy charge nurse came in and started, quite literally, screaming at us. Manuel screamed back. I sat in terror. Even though I knew shouting is much more culturally acceptable in Greece, it still scared me a little. Eventually the doctor showed up, gave me a prescription but no instructions, and sent us on our way. The good part: we didn't pay a dime. Although maybe they could have used my dime to start updating their mustard yellow shag carpeting (forgive my exaggeration; of course they didn't really have carpet. But it would have gone well with the rest of the decor).
end digression]
Anyway, after a quick chest x-ray and interview with the doctor (Have you had your tetanus booster in last 10 years?--yes--Do you have proof?--no--Oh well, I'll sign anyway), I met up with Marlene again and we wandered back down to the bottom of the city to catch a train and made it back to Soissons without further adventure. One of my afternoon classes got cancelled (the third one this week), so all I have between me and my big weekend of concerts, champagne house tours, the discothèque, and a family dinner is 3 hours of work tomorrow.
But before I sign off, I need to throw in a couple of random points.
1. If you're tempted to eat at an American restaurant in France, just don't. The family has taken me to McDo's twice and Buffalo Grill once, and each time I have been disappointed. Buffalo Grill is a really kitschy French chain that serves hamburgers, steaks, salads, etc, trying to imitate an American steakhouse, but it really doesn't cut it. I ordered chicken, expecting to get a nice bird hot off the rotisserie (or maybe battered and friend in lard to its crispy golden perfection), but instead I got something in between. Clearly the man who invented Buffalo Grill has never eaten at Loveless Café, or KFC for that matter. There's too much delicious food floating around here in France to waste a meal on subpar American cuisine.
2. Vacation starts next Friday, and I've got a grand adventure in store! I don't really know the details yet, but I do know where I'm going and when. First I jet off to Vienna, where I'm meeting up with my friend Elena from Vanderbilt. We're seeing a bit of Vienna first, then going to Salzburg (I just really want Mozartkugeln), Munich, Prague, and finally Amsterdam before heading back to Paris and/or Soissons. It's gonna be quite the adventure, and I'm going to try to make the entire 2-week trip with only a carryon suitcase. Wish me luck.
3. We're already making epic plans for Thanksgiving dinner here at the house. We're going to do it the day after Thanksgiving, since obviously the French don't get the week off, and it going to be great. I've already started plotting how to get the North American ingredients like pumpkin, sweet potatoes, and turkey. I'm inviting everyone I know, so it looks to be quite the evening. Also, if anyone knows how to pipe the Black Friday football games to France via the tubes (aka the internet), let me know.
4. I miss American football and all my favorite TV shows a lot. I'm about to cut loose and start buying them off iTunes because I can't seem to trick my computer into thinking I'm still in the US. But as Auburn isn't quite having a championship season (nor is Vandy, but then again I had no hopes for that), it hasn't been as painful as it could have been.
Anyway, why do I wait until 2 am to finish my blog? Probably because I'm less antisocial that way. Sleep is for weaklings anyway. I thiiinkzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I managed to catch a bus to the place where my meeting was and got there quite early (and of course the orientation didn't start until 30 minutes late, so I could have taken the train that morning and saved my night in a sketchy hotel). The orientation was pretty typical, although there were a few surprises:
1. There were these amazing people who took care of all our complicated paperwork for us; I had no idea this was going to happen so I was shocked when I could weeks' worth of red tape cut in one sitting
2. Our free lunch was delicious! We got a three-plate sampler of a galette au four, some pain de viande, and something else really excellent (and I kind of made up the names of those dishes, but if you know French cuisine you'll get the idea). Throw in a tarte aux pommes and a cup of cider and altogether it was quite nice.
3. I got to visit the cathedral during our 2.5-hour lunch break. The cathedral at Amiens is really famous, and rightly so; it may be the prettiest church I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of them. It's bigger than Notre Dame and much, much less somber. The stained-glass windows of the cathedrals in Picardy got bombed out over the course of the two world wars, so they were repaired with cheaper clear glass, and I think it's an improvement. You lose the symbolism in the windows, but I think the brightness compensates...there's plenty of other iconography inside to see without dark stained-glass windows. I even got to see a relic: the head of St. John the Baptist. Even if it's not actually his head, it's super important because in the Middle Ages people would come from all over Europe to revere it.
After our orientation Alex, Hector (the Mexican assistant who lives with the other English assistants in the boarding school), and I made our way to the Gare, only to find that the trains were on strike because a conductor had gotten stabbed. After a shorter-than-expected delay of 30 minutes, we caught our first train, then our second, but the third had been cancelled. SNCF to the rescue! SNCF is the French rail company, and it is AWESOME. The trains are always clean, usually on time (barring a grève, i.e. a strike), and not too expensive. They also payed a cab for the three of us from Laon to Soissons, a cab which cost 90 Euros. Thanks nice man at the Laon station!
So that Saturday I set off with Benoît, Irène, and Camille to run some errands/do some sightseeing. First we went to one of the Parisian suburbs to drop off some packages for a lady to deliver to friends in Senegal (the customs department in Senegal is so corrupt that nothing valuable can get through the post, so everything has to be sent by a courrier). Next, we went to Vaux de Vicomtes, which is the castle that inspired Versailles. I'll bore you all with a quick history lesson (omit the bracketed part if you don't care):
[begin history lesson
So once upon a time there was this guy named Foucquet who built this uber-extravagant palace north of Paris. He was one of the finance ministers of France under Louis XIV, who was really jealous of this chateau (Vaux de Vicomtes). Another one of Louis's finance ministers (named Colbert, incidentally) made some really shady deals and got caught, but blamed it all on Foucquet. Louis was so jealous of his fancy house that he rigged the trial, stuck Foucquet in prison then exile, then built Versailles just to show him.
end history lesson]
After our little afternoon at the chateau (where Tony Parker and Eva Longoria got married, incidentally), Benoît asked me if I wanted to go to Paris for the evening to catch some sights. Of course I said yes, so we hopped on the freeway and soon were driving along the Seine. It was surreal to be in Paris like that; it's always such an ordeal to get there the other times I've been that just waltzing up casually was strange, but in a very good way. I grabbed a couple of pictures in front of the Eiffel tower, but other than that we never left the car. We stopped on the outskirts to have dinner in Bercy Village and found a very nice crêperie that served Alsacien cuisine, including both crêpes and their cousin, the pizza-like flammekuche (Alsace used to be part of Germany, if you didn't already guess from the word flammekuche). That was one of my favorite meals since I've been here, even though I was about to fall over from exhaustion.
Sunday, Katie and I went to the Protestant church in Soissons. There's only one, and it was TINY. There were somewhere around 10 people there, out of a city of 28,000, so a far cry from the packed-out cathedral last weekend. However the service was very nice, the pastor spoke very clear, comprehensible French, and there was actually a sermon instead of the mini-homily thing the bishop gave at the cathedral last week. The members were also very friendly and glad to see 2 young people; one nice gentleman even gave us his business card and said to call if we needed any help. He had his two adorable kids with him, and Katie wants to babysit them. It was a very nice, welcoming experience, and both Katie and I want to go back in two weeks (the pastor works in Soissons every other week, and goes to Laon on the other Sundays).
This week's teaching has gone really well; I even got to introduce one class to a Taylor Swift song ("Picture to Burn" for for my curious readers) and then guided them through translating it into French. Today I had to go to Laon, the capital of the départment (which is roughly equivalent to an American county), to have my immigration medical visit. At 9:15 am. Not counting travel time.
I met up with Marlene at the train station and we made our way to the city of Laon, just a 25 minute, 3.50 Euro jaunt down the track. We then realized that to get to the hospital, we had to climb to the top of the hill where the old city is. And when I say hill, I mean small mountain. I'll post a picture later, but suffice it to say it's enormous. Fortunately it was cool enough that I arrived not disgusting, but we were out of breath. The medical visit went really smoothly. The hospital was modern, well organized, and staffed with friendly people. It was a huge contrast from the time I went to the hospital in Greece. And of course I have to tell that story, but it's not that important so I'll put it in brackets again:
[start digression
When I was in Greece last summer studying, I accidentally took a dip wearing my insulin pump. A few days later, it died completely and I had to order a new one. The problem is, Greek customs officials are not exactly the most efficient in the world, so I had to get some long-acting insulin to fill in the gap. So Manuel, our fellow archaeologist/driver/translator, drove me to the hospital in new Corinth to begin our afternoon-long odyssey for long-acting insulin. Inside the hospital we didn't know where to go, so we wandered around aimlessly, occasionally asking for help, until we got to the wing we wanted. The hospital was very shabby, with equipment that looked straight out of the 1970's, faux-wood paneling and all. We sat down in the doctor's office to wait for him to come back from lunch or siesta or who-knows-what, and the grouchy charge nurse came in and started, quite literally, screaming at us. Manuel screamed back. I sat in terror. Even though I knew shouting is much more culturally acceptable in Greece, it still scared me a little. Eventually the doctor showed up, gave me a prescription but no instructions, and sent us on our way. The good part: we didn't pay a dime. Although maybe they could have used my dime to start updating their mustard yellow shag carpeting (forgive my exaggeration; of course they didn't really have carpet. But it would have gone well with the rest of the decor).
end digression]
Anyway, after a quick chest x-ray and interview with the doctor (Have you had your tetanus booster in last 10 years?--yes--Do you have proof?--no--Oh well, I'll sign anyway), I met up with Marlene again and we wandered back down to the bottom of the city to catch a train and made it back to Soissons without further adventure. One of my afternoon classes got cancelled (the third one this week), so all I have between me and my big weekend of concerts, champagne house tours, the discothèque, and a family dinner is 3 hours of work tomorrow.
But before I sign off, I need to throw in a couple of random points.
1. If you're tempted to eat at an American restaurant in France, just don't. The family has taken me to McDo's twice and Buffalo Grill once, and each time I have been disappointed. Buffalo Grill is a really kitschy French chain that serves hamburgers, steaks, salads, etc, trying to imitate an American steakhouse, but it really doesn't cut it. I ordered chicken, expecting to get a nice bird hot off the rotisserie (or maybe battered and friend in lard to its crispy golden perfection), but instead I got something in between. Clearly the man who invented Buffalo Grill has never eaten at Loveless Café, or KFC for that matter. There's too much delicious food floating around here in France to waste a meal on subpar American cuisine.
2. Vacation starts next Friday, and I've got a grand adventure in store! I don't really know the details yet, but I do know where I'm going and when. First I jet off to Vienna, where I'm meeting up with my friend Elena from Vanderbilt. We're seeing a bit of Vienna first, then going to Salzburg (I just really want Mozartkugeln), Munich, Prague, and finally Amsterdam before heading back to Paris and/or Soissons. It's gonna be quite the adventure, and I'm going to try to make the entire 2-week trip with only a carryon suitcase. Wish me luck.
3. We're already making epic plans for Thanksgiving dinner here at the house. We're going to do it the day after Thanksgiving, since obviously the French don't get the week off, and it going to be great. I've already started plotting how to get the North American ingredients like pumpkin, sweet potatoes, and turkey. I'm inviting everyone I know, so it looks to be quite the evening. Also, if anyone knows how to pipe the Black Friday football games to France via the tubes (aka the internet), let me know.
4. I miss American football and all my favorite TV shows a lot. I'm about to cut loose and start buying them off iTunes because I can't seem to trick my computer into thinking I'm still in the US. But as Auburn isn't quite having a championship season (nor is Vandy, but then again I had no hopes for that), it hasn't been as painful as it could have been.
Anyway, why do I wait until 2 am to finish my blog? Probably because I'm less antisocial that way. Sleep is for weaklings anyway. I thiiinkzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I can't believe you're already torturing poor French kids with Taylor Swift music. For shame!
ReplyDeleteYou haven't missed too much exciting football, Vandy's actually had a decent-ish year. They keep "almost" pulling off a big upset... the kicker stinks - he missed a 27 yarder last week. Cam Newton's been fun to watch in the NFL though, and I hate to say it, but Auburn's actually doing better this year than I expected (we're 6-3). I guess you can't get ESPN3 in France. :/