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.