Consequences

So as it turns out, when you've been a vegetarian for 6 years, eating meat isn't such a good idea.  Especially ham, which you didn't eat much before you became a vegetarian.  Last night, I was invited to have dinner with one of the other teachers from work.  I had forgotten to tell her I'm a vegetarian, and didn't think of it until we were at her house and she was putting things together.  Not wanting to cause a scene and make life difficult for her, I decided I would just shut my mouth and deal with it just this once.  She was making quenelles (a very lyonnais sort of dish) that had ham and chicken (or some other sort of fowl) in them.  Quenelles are kind of like giant pasta balls...like giant gnocci in fact, only they have meat mixed into the dough.  Quite often they are made with fish and occasionally you can find them without meat, and they are one of my favorite things ever, but it is not easy to eat around the meat, so I just went for it and figured my conscience could handle it.  Unfortunately, my stomach, not so much.  I was SO queasy in the car on the way back to Lyon and then just kind of felt icky until I fell asleep and then all day today I've been feeling kind of yucky.  A feeling which was worsened by the fact that Florence was cleaning the floors with some harsh chemicals.  Sigh.  

I told myself I was going to run a bunch of errands today, but by the time I finished running, showering, and doing laundry, all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and feel sicky.  So I did that for a while and cleaned and whatnot and before I knew it it was like 5:30.  Then got an email from a friend of Wei-Ching's who wanted me to edit a paper she wrote in english.  I did that right quick because she wanted to come over tonight to go over the revisions with me.  And now that's done and the day is over and my tummy still feels kind of gross and I didn't get my errands done.  Bah.  On the bright side, though, my room is clean for when my good friend Sandwich gets here on Sun night and my clothes are all washed and I'm 21 euro richer.  I guess we take what we can get right?

So to completely change the subject, I just have to say that I really should have sucked it up and talked to the schools I work at sooner.  Suddenly I actually enjoy the job a lot more...just in time for it to be almost over.  In the morning school yesterday, one of the girls gave me flowers, which was sweet.  And then in the afternoon 2 of my classes were on a field trip, so I read some stories to the preschoolers and then had my normal 1/2 grade class and then with the kindergardeners I made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and played duck duck goose.  Which was awesome.  I love working with kids, but the pressure of having to introduce them to a new language with no experience was a stressful thing that made it not fun.  But now that some of the pressure is off, I really like it.  Anyhoo, after school, I hung out while Isabelle (the kindergarden teacher) was in a meeting, and I worked on making menus for an activity for next week, and then Isabelle took me to her house to get ready for dinner.  

We ended up having a decent amount of time before dinner, so we went to Perrouges, which is this little medieval village, and wandering around.  We went in this gallery where there was some hand-made jewelry on display, and the guy who makes it started telling us all about it.  His inspiration for the different pieces was really interesting and it was cool to hear him talk about the stuff.  Plus the necklaces were really cool.  As Isabelle said, "I would have been really happy if they had been just a little bit less expensive."  It was a cool thing, though, and it was nice to take a little walk before dinner.

Dinner was pretty interesting.  Lots of questions about the US and politics and music and all sorts of good things.  Isabelle's husband was really one of the first frenchies, not including my host family, to really interrogate me (not in a bad way) about issues in the US and whatnot.  I always get simple questions, like what's different and whatnot, but I think a lot of times people don't want to put us on the spot, but he had no problem with asking about the tough issues like 9/11 conspiracy theories and other Bush administration business, Katrina, health care, elections, religion, etc.  It was interesting and forced me to think about that stuff in a different way than I usually do.  This was all broken up, of course, with talk of music and more fun things.  Isabelle's daughter is quite infatuated with english and has amazing taste in music and movies.  She was cool and fun to talk to, as well.  Overall, despite my meat/tummy fiasco, it was really interesting and fun to eat with them and discuss things.  My only regret is that I didn't do it sooner.  I feel that that's a line from a song, but I can't think of which one.  

So anyways, before this gets overwhelmingly long, I shall say adieu and get ready for bed methinks.

ps, because I have this lovely countdown on my wall thanks to my dear friend, GG, I would just like to say, 28 days until I go home! AH!!!!

Bisous.

What a lovely long weekend

Ah, this weekend is a long weekend because Thursday there was no school because it was the anniversary of the end of WWII, and tomorrow there is no school because it's Pentecost...I think.  Anyway, a lot of people had Friday off too, because the french like to do this thing called "faire le pont" or "do the bridge," wherein if Tuesday or Thursday are holidays, then you get Monday or Friday off, respectively.  Unfortunately, my teachers decided not to faire le pont, so I had class.  But it wasn't really all that bad because it was capoeira and portuguese.  I thought about just ditching (about half of my portuguese class actually showed up because a lot of people go on vacation), but it was my last capoeira class of the year, which is really sad.  But, because my teacher is awesome, he said we can come take classes at the studio for free until the end of the school year.  Which is definitely a bonus as I was just considering paying to go take some classes there.  And some of us were talking about getting together at the park and doing some capoeira on our own, which would be pretty sweet indeed.

Anyhoo, besides that little educational detour, it's been a pretty crazy weekend.  Week in general I suppose if you include the fact that we had a Cinco de Mayo dinner fiesta at Silly Thing and Fortune Cookie's house on Monday.  But the fun really started Thursday when those two and I went to this lake called Miribel and had a picnic in the grass and stood in the water a little bit.  That was SO nice and it was amazingly beautiful out and I was so happy.  I had to leave them a little early, tho, to take a train to meet Flo in Bourgoin-Jailleu, which is a town east of Lyon, where nothing but the cafés were open, so we ended up just heading to her house and hanging out listening to music.  And then we had a BBQ and watched some TV/a movie, which pretty much everyone was falling asleep during.  It was so fun to hang out with her and Claudine, a friend of hers who I totally adore (just in case, Flo is the girl I met in the TOEFL class who was hoping to study in Oregon, but instead she's studying in Ontario.  She's and Cladine are also the people I spent New Year's Eve with).  It was really fun to do that and have a girly sleepover and whatnot. 

Friday morning, we hung out and chatted before Flo had to give me a ride to the tram so I could make the trek to school.  That was very long.  Then I had class, bla bla bla, did some grocery shopping, and headed over to ST and FC's house to hang out.  We ended up waiting around quite a while for our other friends to show up and then proceeded to get silly and do things like climb on the neighbor's roof and then have a different neighbor call the cops on us for being too loud.  Who would have thought that 6 people could get that crazy?  Anyhoo, there was some drama and ridiculousness which I shall not go into, but overall the night was a success...I kind of slept through a lot of it because I was really exhausted, though.

Saturday I went home and was lazy for a little while before going to the market (I think I've said this, but I'll say it again: I'm going to miss my Sat morning market SO much) and came home and made fruit salad and lemonade from the tasty things I had bought, and then FC came over after taking an exam and we had lunch and then walked to Place des Terreaux to buy tix for les Nuits Sonores, which I will explain a little later.  There was supposed to be a march/celebration thing of the end of slavery in France, but I realized I had severely misunderstood the time, and about when we were sick of sitting outside, was when it was starting, so FC went home and I headed to where the march was supposed to start.  I feel really strange that I always end up at these kinds of cultural events by myself.  I don't really get the sense that my friends are all that interested in them, but I feel like I'll regret if I don't go.  In the end, I wasn't really alone because all the Senzala (capoeira) people were there and I ended up hanging out with them, but it was still kind of weird to go by myself.  Chao, my teacher, was like, "so where are all the Americans?"  I didn't really know how to respond to that without making it sound like they really just didn't care, which is kind of true, but I feel like it's so stereotypically American.  We ended up deciding that it was because it was too hot for them.   It really was stifling hot, especially as we were marching at like 2 feet an hour and all huddled close together.  But the whole even was pretty cool and it was nice to feel more or less like I was a part of the group and to be able to joke around with everyone.  And lots of bises all around, which, as I have said in the past, is kind of something that makes you feel like you are accepted.  

That went a lot later than I had expected, so I ran home, quickly ate some food, and headed off to meet people for les Nuits Sonores, which is this music festival that has been going on in Lyon for like 7 or 8 years.  It's a lot of elctro/techno-y music, but also indie and rock and other kinds of music.  Last night was the last night, and I went with FC and ST and then our friends, the Sleeper and Touf (a couple of frenchie boys who are friends of Katie's host brother).  Katie was also there with Lauren, another girl from Penn, but they ended up meeting up with some other friends and we got separated from them a lot.  It was a really cool thing to go to, because it was in a slightly fixed up abandoned warehouse with three different areas, each with a different kind of music (Rock, Electro, and Dub).  We kind of wandered in and out of the different rooms for a while.  Unfortunately, we were all really tired from lack of sleep, hangovers, and being out in the sun ALL afternoon (that one was just me), so FC, ST, and I ended up leaving around 1am, which was right around when things were really starting to pick up.  I'm definitely glad I went, though.

Then today I slept in a little before meeting up with FC, ST, and the Grim Reaper and going to Ile-de-Barbe, which is this little island in the river on the north side of Lyon.  We had a little picnic there and then chilled enjoying the sun for a while.  Then we walked around a bit, but as it turns out, there really wasn't much to see, so we came home.  And now I'm back feeling sleepy and being sad because I think it might rain.  I've been so enjoying being able to run around and enjoy the sunshine lately.  I hope it is nice at least tomorrow because we were thinking of getting a bigger group together and going back to Miribel, the lake, to enjoy the last day of our long weekend before we have to go back to thinking about school.  Sigh.

Anyway, things are really good right now and I've really been enjoying myself (despite recent tensions among my friends and awkward/dramatic situations that have been coming up a lot).  I have a hard time with things like this because I really try to avoid these kind of dramas, but it's hard when what ends up happening is two of my friends are not getting along.  I don't like to take sides, but sometimes I end up doing just that inadvertently or because I sympathize with one party more than another.  Basically it's just this kind of tension that sometimes hangs in the air, and it's frustrating because I'm more or less outside of the whole thing and, not being involved, can see how ridiculous it all is, but then I can also put my feet in different people's shoes and understand at least a little bit where they are coming from.  Long story short, things are sort of socially weird, but at the same time really good.  It's hard to explain, but let's just say it's not always easy being Switzerland, but that doesn't mean you can't have a good time.

Ok, I think I shall go now.  Sorry I keep writing such long posts.  I go for days and days being too busy to write much, and then I try to recap everything and it's a little overwhelming.

Bisous.

PS.  To my mommy and my grandma, even though I will talk to you later, HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!!!

Relief

After a week of stress and 4 days of work, I am done with my 10 page paper for my Humanitarian aid work class.  Well, basically done.  I still need to reread it and do some editing, but I'm going to do that tomorrow...give my brain a break before I reread it.  

I've also more or less recovered from my little panic attack last week.  Getting this paper out of the way was a big weight off my shoulders, and my teacher in my lit class decided to gice the foreign students an out of class essay instead of an in-class one, which means I don't have a final tomorrow, and I have some time to write the essay (although i would really be a happy camper if he would send us the topic already).  I talked with various people at the schools I've been working at about my issues with the teaching job, and they were surprisingly understanding about it all.  I guess I should have done it sooner.  I think that a lot of the things I was upset about were related to various misunderstandings and lack of comprehension within the system of what my job entailed.  And then I managed to talk the whole death thing out with various people, so while I'm still upset, I'm more ok.  In talking to my mom, she reminded me that I'm going to be pretty vulnerable over the next 6 weeks because I'm emotionally preparing to leave France (AH!).  So I guess maybe I'll have to get used to panicking every once in a while.

On the plus side, the sun has been out for several days now.  I've missed most of it because I've been huddled in my little hole working or in class...and having a nocturnal Friday night and being exhausted all day yesterday...I swear if I wake up tomorrow morning to rain, I very well might cry.  I have time tomorrow to go sit in a park or an outside café (and do reading homework...I guess it's better than my room though) and go running if my foot is done being lame (I think I sprained it or something in capoeira...it hurt like hell to walk yesterday, another reason I stayed in my room mostly).  Things I haven't done in a while.  

It's funny to think that less than a week ago I was such an upset mess.  Right now I'm actually feeling really good.  I mean, I'm still a little stressed, and of course always freaking out a little inside about how much I have to do in 6 weeks, but other than that I really have had a great couple of days.  And I'm feeling good about things.  Especially if I things work out for going to Grenada next weekend.

Some highlights from this week include writing a 4 page (single spaced) paper on Wednesday and celebrating over some Belgian souvenirs and pizza and watching Napoleon Dynamite with my girlies, who we shall call Fortune Cookie and Silly Thing, which was really good.  Then on Friday night the same girls and "the guys," who are Katie's host brother and his friends.  Fortune Cookie and Silly Thing had brought the guys presents from Amsterdam, so we all ended up getting together and hanging out sans dormir until like 7am.  Well...Silly Thing slept a little and Fortune Cookie kept falling asleep in her chair while we waited for the metro to start running again (and then for croissants and pain au chocolat).  Somehow I was wide awake.  I guess that probably has something to do with the fact that all the guys had to drink were energy drinks and then we randomly decided to make coffee at like 3 am.  I was having quite a good time, though, just chatting with the everyone and laughing at their silliness and chillin.  Good times.  And so then yesterday I got home at 7am or so and then tried to work on my paper cuz my head was still awake from the caffeine, but my body wasn't having it, so I slept for maybe two hours and then got up and went to the market.  I haven't gone to my Saturday market in AGES.  I had forgotten how much I like it, and was happy that my vendors hadn't all forgotten me.  I really do love that the neighborhood market is like a community.  People stand around and chat and get to know each other and it's just so great!  I'm really gonna miss that a lot.

Um, I guess that's about it for now.  Life is good.  La vie est belle.