tidepools & injuries.

this weekend, i decided to go exploring again... this time up at perros-guirec. at the bus stop, i ran into jo & joe, which changed my plans a little... no problems though, because when the weather turned from simply lovely to cold, it was nice to share a café in the company of friends.

while perros & ploumanac'h are only five minutes away from each other by car, literally right next door, they're worlds apart. both are touristy indeed, but perros is, in my opinion, much more heavily populated, and the ugly downtown area there, with its many cafés & a casino, is much more unattractive than that of the quaintness you can find up at ploumanac'h. kinda like charlevoix, but more concrete. however, if you walk down the beach aways, (or climb, like i did), you can get away from some of that over-developed commercial district.


you can't tell from the picture, but i was sitting on the edge of a cliff of sorts, after climbing up a couple giant boulders.


and if i'm correct, said boulder is to the left... sweetness.



i kept close track of the tide, for fear that i might get stuck somewhere, but as it was constantly going out during the day, i figured i had little to worry about. the receding tide provided a plethora of pools, tide pools that is, to poke around in... unfortunately, i did not carry a big stick. oh well. next time.



one of the highlights of my day was finding this little guy & "rescuing" him... he's cute here, but he puffed all up to look pretty scary when i poked him with a rock.



safe & sound... and back in the water where he belongs.

so about the injuries, you ask... actually, only one real injury, and even then, it's nothing out of the ordinary in my book. i was hurrying a little faster than i should (normally, i'm extremely careful on the rocks, as they can be slippery or unstable at times, and i know it'd suck big time if i really got hurt), and as i made my final leap out of the rocks & onto sandy firm ground, i cracked me knee pretty hard on a protruding rock. needless to say, it's left a lovely bruise & a lasting impression. i wonder if the doctor will give me a hard time about it at my medical exam on friday.


yeah!

vacances.

as a lot of you at home already know, the french love their vacation time. if you don't believe me, read this:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/06/27/60II/main704571.shtml

anyway, since i now live in france (and benefit from things like nationalized health care & overly long vacations), i figured i'd steal this opportunity, to profiter de l'occasion, if you will, and plan a little trip of my own.

as many of you also know, my family has taught me the art of seeing the most for your money, and i think that by the time i come home, i'll have done them proud. in order to get the most out of my trip for the little that's in my wallet though, i'm taking quite the road trip to get to london, and i'm getting the chance to see so much on the way (and for a little over $150 usd for all of the transportation, i just couldn't go wrong). here, you can get an idea of my tentative itinerary thus far:


View Larger Map

yes, i've spend many-a-hour online, comparing prices & itineraries, accommodations & sights, but it'll all be sooo worth it in the end. and yes, brittany rice, it looks as though i'll end up in bournemouth at some point (if even for a couple hours). i've been sure to include such highlights as mont st michel, stonehenge, & winchester cathedral. the time in london's been set aside for visiting friends, the tate modern, squeezing in some main attractions, and just checking it all out before i have to head back to the mainland. i'm absolutely pumped.

gotta love france... and its vacances.

banana bread

so i've determined that since we live at a higher altitude, experience a particular climate, or simply for unknown reasons specific to northern brittany, the fruit ripens much faster here than what i'm used to. this resulted in the two of four bananas i bought last week becoming a lovely shade of brown by last friday. sooo... i decided i'd make banana bread.


my banana bread... almost as good as mom's.

when one first thinks to prepare a favorite recipe from home, they are unaware of many factors that come into place, and many things can become "lost in translation." this has been my experience when living abroad, knowing that not only do you often have to translate recipes from french to english (this being a literal translation), but the same goes for tranlating american recipes so that they are somehow "french." i've had this happen on both ends, when i've tried to take a french recipe that i learned while living in paris, and recreate it back in the u.s. for my family. i've found out the hard way that recipes (and their components) don't always translate. this may not make sense to you, so i'll explain.

after you decide on a recipe that is obviously american, you first must find the particular ingredients (or in many cases, a close substitute), sometimes relying on a dictionary for exact translations. this is particularly important when baking, when precision is key to the chemical process, and substitutions are not always the best way to go. take baking powder and baking soda, for example. baking powder in french is levure chimique, not to be confused with levure de boulanger (baker's yeast), especially since the word levure translates to yeast. also, baking soda is known as its scientific name bicarbonate de sodium, and is available in pharmacies.


my levure chimique/sweet 'n low look-alike.

also, when shopping, it is not always apparent where you will find particular ingredients, or what they look like. i've seen peanut butter in a can and boxed milk on a shelf. thankfully, i remembered from a cooking class i took a couple years ago in paris, that baking soda can be found in sachets that resemble oversized sweet 'n low.

after you've finally found all of your needed ingredients, kitchen equipment comes into play. many of you may not know that the french don't care for measuring tools in the kitchen. a teaspoon becomes a cuillère à café, and a tablespoon becomes a cuillère à soupe. even if you are able to find some sort of legitimate measurement, you often have to do some sort of u.s. to metric conversion. a dry cup will become grammes, and liquid cups will become litres. degrees have to be converted from ferenheit to celcius, then to gas oven "marks." even on the preparation instructions on the outside of packages you'll see "medium" instead of a specific degree.



well, i made it through the finding ingredients, translating the recipe, and squeezed my way around the degrees in celcius... and after all that, i tasted success.

a day in morlaix

saturday, i went with the roommates & some friends of ours to a somewhat-neighboring town called morlaix. the weather couldn't have been any better for our wandering, and we got the chance to check out a few of the sights there. the town was full of those timbered houses, the ones you think to see in smaller german towns, and i never thought they were so prevalent in brittany. everywhere, i tell ya. we visited one of them, now a museum, called maison pondalez, and its sister museum, musée de morlaix. there was an exposition of mathurin méheut's work, unknown to me until our visit. there was a painting in particular that i fancied, one depicting the rocky breton coast. the blues of the water were pretty intense, in contrast with most of his other olive-sepia toned works. i tried to find a picture, but have been unsuccessful so far... maybe i'll have to just go back & buy a postcard.


the viaduc & eglise st-melaine.




from the carnival at place charles de gaulle. wish it were open... i wanted to ride the bumper cars.


kinda looks like charlevoix, non?


group shot at the harbor, or le port. god, i love the self-timer.


galette. a typical breton lunch. this one's w/ chevre, ham, & egg. almost always accompanied with a bowl of cider. i've eaten these on the two other occasions i've eaten out in brittany, both where i have been "defeated" by the galette, unable to eat much more than half. this time however, i was not outdone by the savory crepe.


the after-lunch group shot.


the maison pondalez, which i already mentioned. inside were a bunch of plaques, talking about morlaix's history and such. if i were a good french student, i would've read more of them & probably learned something too. howwever, i am not a good french student, and i was more interested in taking in all the sights & sounds than retaining important historical facts. oops.

well, i think that's enough for now. i promise to post more later... like maybe pictures of the town i live in for example? anyway... one last shot. in this one i'm standing at place allende, and you get a pretty good view of the viaduc. enjoy!

first day of school.

after a much anticipated commencement, i finally got the chance to be in a classroom and meet some of my students. today, i had my first three (out of 12 total) classes and met with two (of my seven) profs. while i didn't get the chance to really "teach," i did get to at least go to work, so that was an improvement from last week. everything went relatively smoothly, despite my lack of a definitive lesson plan and the students' curiosity (or for some of them, quite the opposite... to be expected). i found out that (with these classes at least), my classes will be broken down into more manageable groups, and since the classes only meet once per week, i'll be rotating between groups as the weeks go by. some students i'll meet with every other week, while others i'll meet with less frequently... sort of disappointing since i won't get the chance to get to know my students, but i knew that was a possibility. oh well.

class basically consisted of a brief introduction of myself to the students, and then an hour question-and-answer forum, where they were given the opportunity to ask about my personal life, my reasons for being in france, anything at all american, and what i think about the french. a few of my favorites:

"why you choose to study french?"
"do you watch the program "dr. house" in america?"
"how do you feel about the bad temps (weather) here in brittany?" ...umm, that it's bad, perhaps??
"have you any children?" ...in which the teacher responded, "she's 24, remember?"
"what is your favorite typical french food?"
"how are your feelings of french president nico sarkozy?" ...a man i know hardly anything about, though i know he's not the most popular among the french at the moment.
"do you practice any sport?"
"are you going to vote for obama or the other one?" ...let's just say 'not the "other one"' ...and am i even allowed to answer this?

believe it or not, getting drilled like this (and trying to formulate appropriate answers the students would be able to understand), was actually a tad overwhelming... but nothing i couldn't take. the students were mostly polite, though not always attentive, not too far from the ones at home. thursday, on the other hand, will be comprised of the same, only i have six instead of three classes, and as far as i know, i'll be performing the same question-and-answer task. i've already labeled it as "hell day"... hopefully my students will be little angels & prove me wrong. there's just something about being functional at eight in the morning.

rock hopping in ploumanac'h

today was one of the first in awhile that i didn't experience any rain... and it looked decent outside, so i decided to go on a little adventure. the bus in lannion will take you up to the côte de granit rose (the pink granite coast) for two euro... so i picked a destination on the map (or rather a bus stop) & went for it! ploumanac'h... i still don't pronounce it right, so don't ask. the weather cooperated all day (or at least until i was home, when it started to drizzle a little)... in fact, the sun even came out for a bit. my goodness, the weather can turn on a dime though here in bretagne.


at the beginning of my hike... i didn't want to go too far because i've heard horror stories of how fast the tide comes in & i didn't really feel like getting stranded.


un jolie coquillage.


these rocks were huge! i did a lot of shimmying & climbing & leaping, mind you, carefully (some of the rocks were slippery w/ algae, shells, & kelp), to get from one boulder to another...






self-portrait #1.


hiking along the path... which i neglected to do earlier that day. oops.


self portrait #2.


la mer et les rochers.


i found a "chair" in the rock!


the sun came out for a quick second, and it was gorgeous... the rocks were glistening... but then, like i said, the weather can turn like 'that', and i had to put my jacket back on within minutes of the sunshine.


self portrait #3... in front of le phare min ruz de ploumanac'h.


a decent view of les sept iles... there's an estuary there, and there are several species of birds that winter there. also, the tracks that lead to nowhere... in front of the coast guard station.


another one of le phare and the storm i thought was going to roll in (and catch me in it).


and finally, one that reminds me (okay, just a little bit) of home.

all in all, it was a fantastic day... hopefully the weather will cooperate with me more often so i can adventure out into the unknown! (wow, that was cliche of me... i promise, it won't happen again.)

orientation hell.

today was supposed to be set aside for our program orientation in saint-brieuc... had i known what it turned out to be, i would've stayed in bed.

well, to make a long story short, we were running late, missed our bus because the directions we were given (from the locals, mind you) were wrong, then missed the train (whilst trying to find another bus), and basically were an hour & a half behind schedule. that was the start of the day. after an espresso in the only cafe that was open at 7am, we were at least on the right track to getting to our orientation scheduled for 9am. keep in mind, it takes over an hour by bus to get to saint-brieuc from lannion. by the time we switched busses twice, survived both a rainbow & a hail storm, all within the same ten minutes, and asked even a jardinier (gardener) for directions, we made it, only a little over an hour late.


jacqueline's action shot of la grêle.


the biggest hail i've ever encountered.

while we didn't miss much, i'd be willing to bet that the part that we did miss was the some of the only valuable information we received all day (like how to go about getting our "carte de sejour." we did get to mingle with some other assistants, so that was nice, and we weren't reprimanded at all (which we shouldn't have been, provided we weren't given a map, directions, or anything at all for that matter), and we were at least fed a decent lunch at the cantine.

the latter part of the day was basically wasted with an exercise the french like all too much... place a picture on the overhead in a classroom, cover part of it up, have your students describe the picture (and make up some random story why your description is what it is), and then reveal parts, repeating the previous steps, until the whole picture can be seen, and we can continue to over-evaluate it. i have a personal thing against these exercises, partly because i tell it like it is, and partly because i guess i just have no imagination (or don't really care)... these exercises comprised the only part i performed poorly on when i took the diplome de langue in '06. go figure. anyway, instead of teaching us methods we can use, we spent two hours on these exercises, with the english assistants describing the pictures in french (yawn), and the instructor playing prof. needless to say, i didn't really get a whole lot out of describing the girl in the anti-smoking ad, nor do i think it helped prepare me better for my teaching experience. oh well.


arc-en-ciel. guingamp.

i guess i have to look on the bright side. teaching will start soon enough (i hope!), and everything will eventually fall into place. perhaps the rainbow was just a reminder of all of this. at least i was able to laugh about the whole situation... all day long.

2 days in paris

...not to be confused w/ the julie delpy film.

anyway... i arrived in paris on wednesday, i guess it was, at 6:30 am, met an assistant who let me leave my ridiculous amount of stuff at her hotel & sat on benches in random parks, freezing. keep in mind, i woke up at 5am michigan time the day before, had a layover in dulles from 11:30am to 5:30pm, and was without internet until diana helped me find a library (a children's library albeit, but free wi-fi nonetheless). i lugged my laptop around for the day & sat in jardin des tuillieries, watching the kids play on the playground, then wandering over to meet diana & wander down the champs elysees. super-random day. thank god for the friends who helped me along the way. my couchsurfing host was at work until 6ish, when diana helped me lug my bags through the metro & across town, where i quickly met him, dropped off my things, and headed off to the fondue meet-up i had arranged for fellow assistants. i wasn't really up to it, but it was fun to meet some others & have a warm meal. i'd say that the fondue party was quite a success for my first attempt at something like this... we had 14 people show up! we went out afterwards (i still can't believe how i was standing at this point), and if i've done my calculations correctly, i was awake for over 37 hours. hell, i tell ya. nico's couch & hospitality were simply amazing... it has never felt so good to lie down & fall asleep.



the next day, though i was exhausted, was much more productive & enjoyable. cousin derek & i sought out train tickets, cartes 12-25 (for amazing discounts), and portables (cell phones)... we met diana for a pique-nique in jardin luxembourg... oh, funness, and the weather was much more agreeable. a stereotypical picnic, but delicious just the same... baguette & camembert, smoked salmon, green grapes, & red wine (without the aid of glasses, that would've been too classy!). yum. i miss those pique-niques in paris.



after lunch, derek & i met up with his couchsurfing host, laurent, and we walked over to jardin des plantes. upon exploring, we found some expos, the menagerie (most of which was interdit... everything in france is either "interdit" or "ferme," right derek?), and the labyrinthe, where none of us had ever visited. it would be difficult to explain here, but to get to the top, there are tons of little tunnels through the hedges on the hill that you have to shimmy your way through... later we discovered that there's a spiral path, but i think the shimmy-ing way was more fun.



anyway, that night, diana & i went to le roi lion. am-a-zing, as usual. this time it was in french, which was kinda fun, too! at intermission, diana & i took a walk to the monoprix for a snack (or some sandwiches), and ran into some prostitutes as we were literally running back to make it back in time. during the curtain call, the audience even stood up (which never happens in france!)... it was that good.



so yeah, that was my stint in paris... hopefully there will be more shortly. got the chance to meet a bunch of people (assistants, couchsurfers, the like), make new friends, and spend some long-overdue q.t. with some others. magnifique!