Adieu Moulins...Salut Montpellier

So there it is... almost 10 months of my life spent in a small town in central France. Teaching kids. And tomorrow I will get on a train and as soon as I leave the city limits, it will all just seem like a dream. A memory that gets somehow labeled in the subconscious as a dream. Am I excited to come home? Of course... Am I scared? Definitely. Will I cope with the cultural change? Let's hope so. I worry sometimes about how I will get along with people now that I've opened my mind so much to the world. I know it's only 10 months and I stayed mostly in France, I feel that living in any foreign country gives you a real chance to analyze your own country and culture. I am first and foremost an American and I LOVE my country. This is one of the main things I realized while being here. and France definitely has her share of serious "problèmes sociaux" But just by reading CNN.com and other news sites, I have the feeling that the situation has gotten worse since I've left the US as far as a complete lack of morality, being PC has been taken waaaay too far, and don't even get me started on our foreign policy. I hope I'm proven wrong. I'm not holding my breath. Anyway too all of you out there, I'm looking forward to seeing you all in a dozen days or so. I may or may not have internet in Montpellier so if we don't talk before, expect to hear from me when I arrive home!!

Sorry for the lack of updates lately but there isn't a lot of exciting action to discuss for now. Just been kinda winding down. Anyway I'll post some photos from the past month or so.

Random End of the Year Pics
juin 2007
juin 2007 II

Au revoir mes ch'tits gamins. :*(

I've still got some more to put up, but it'll have to wait for my return to the States!

Weekend à Paris / Gif-sur-Yvette

So I'm not gonna write very much. The description on the photo album explains it all but a couple of weeks back (sorry for the delay!) I went with a colleague of mine from one of my schools to a chic southern suburb of Paris called Gif-sur-Yvette to stay with his family and he had a big family gathering which was nice considering I haven't had a nice family meal in ages. And on Sunday and Monday nights I took the RER line into Paris to visit a bit. Sunday night I was on Place de la Concorde for the presidential elections which was really cool. Monday I borrowed Jean-Phillipe's bike and did some biking around Paris which was really exciting considering I was on the streets with no helmet on a bike in the city which is world-renowned for having the craziest and most aggressive drivers! enjoy the photos!

My Weekend in Paris / Gif-sur-Yvette

Le Puy de Dôme / Last assistant weekend :(

So this weekend was AMAZING but very sad at the same time. Saturday me and my friends walked from the centre of Clermont-Ferrand all the way to the summit of the Puy de Dôme. The Puy de Dôme is the largest of a chain of extinct volcanos on the Massif Central (Click here for a more informative Version Française). The chain is called La Chaîne des Puys and is a natural park and consists of more than 80 puys spanning about 30 km. We bought food for our picnic and left at 10am. I can´t remember what time we arrived at the summit but we didnt get back into Clermont till about 8pm. Its height is 1465 metres and its about 20 km from the centre of Clermont. Meaning that in one day we walked about 40 km (a little less than 25 miles!!!) all of this very steep climbing or descending. Anyway it was amazing! I don't have time to write much right now because my friends are waiting on me. Me and Chris got sunburned pretty bad and Rob royally screwed his ankle up. He's now in a cast for 2 weeks...and somehow has to get all his stuff back to England Wednesday in that condition. Poor guy. At one point climbing Dan, Chris, and I left the path to do a scramble straight up the face. Well, i thought it would just be about 20 meters because the path zigzags but I was wrong. I basically climbed the face of the puy de Dôme from about 1/3 of the way up. I had a mild panic attack when some parts were practically climbing straight up with not a lot of footholds but it was amazing. Anyway I gotta go like NOW! sorry but will write more later. I'll post the photos.

Le Puy de Dôme / Last assistants weekend :( Vol. I

Le Puy de Dôme / Last assistants weekend :( Vol. II

talk to you soon sorry I didn't have time to finish...

Le Printemps!!

So we've finally been having nice weather here in Moulins! And all over for that matter! Everywhere I've been in the past two weeks has been beautiful! Like I said Amsterdam was amazing because the weather was perfect the entire time! It was the perfect temperature where you would wear either pants or shorts and be perfectly comfortable in either one. So has Moulins and Clermont up until this week where we've had a veritable heat wave because today it was 31C (88F) which is obscene for April in this region of France. The high today on the south coast of France in Montpellier was only 22C! After Amsterdam for the second week of vacations me and my mates went to Vichy for a couple of days then down to Ambert where Chris and Lalo live which was great. Its a town of about 1500 people situated in a valley. It's a great historical town which really feels like "France" in that it seems it hasn't changed much over the past couple hundred years. Plus the people there were AMAZING everyone was incredibly nice and Chris and Lalo knew pretty much everyone in the whole city. Coming back to work after the vacances was pretty difficult but I'm getting situated in for the long haul 'til the end. This will be the longest time I've worked since I've been here! I worked 4 weeks at first, then 2 weeks off for Toussaint, 7 or 8 weeks before 2 week Christmas break, 6 weeks to Winter break then 2 weeks for Spring break and now 11 weeks until the end of it all. I'm planning on going down to Montpellier for at least a week to visit the UGA en France group. It's gonna be a bit annoying cause I'm going to miss July 4th in the USA and I'm pretty sure I will miss the French equivalent of July 14th in France as well. Blah.

So anyway this past weekend was Le Printemps de Bourges which means Springtime of Bourges. Bourges is a city of about 100,000 people one hour northeast of Moulins by train. Its another great town that feels very "French" in the architecture and just the general ambiance of the town...Not to mention there were people EVERYWHERE for the festival which basically consists of tons of free music, concerts, and street performers and basically every single hippie in France relocated to one city! What more could you ask for?? well perfect weather would be nice. Oh what? What's that? We get perfect weather too? Great! Basically what it boils down to is one of the best weekends I've spent with my mates in France (Lalo you were deeply missed) which is a good thing since this upcoming weekend in Clermont-Ferrand will be our last weekend together before they all abandon me and head back to England/Mexico/Scotland/Argentina. Anyway I'm posting some pictures of the Printemps de Bourges and I've also added a few new pics to the Amsterdam Round III and France in general also. I'm gonna add another album too as well with just some general springtime pics around Clermont and Moulins.

Le Printemps de Bourges Album 1.

Le Printemps de Bourges Album 2 - Springtime in Moulins/Clermont

I forgot to mention that the Sunday after the night of concerts we hung out with Dan's Sister, Naomi and her friends from Poiters, France and we went and had an amazing picnic by a lake just a bit outside of Bourges where we grilled out and sat around chatting and playing games and stuff. Anyway take it easy folks! You'll hear from me soon!

Springtime in France and Holland!

So yeah.. I like never update this thing... And I'm not really going to right now either... What happened to the great and enthusiastic writer I was growing up?? Anyway for now I'm just going to post pics from Spring Break. And here they are!

Amsterdam in Springtime!

Amsterdam in Springtime Vol. II


Amsterdam 3 and all over

Peace out all! I'll write more soon.

Spring Break

Just a short update for everyone. I'm on spring break and I'm in Vichy, France now with my mates from England and about to leave Tuesday morning for Amsterdam, Holland. I've been pretty busy lately hanging out with my friends here and as all the other assistants only have 7-month contracts they are leaving at the end of April, so I've been trying to spend as much time with them as possible. The German assistants are leaving during this Easter break. Ok I can't write now because my friends are around me being crazy. So Im just gonna post my pics for everyone to see. We'll be in touch after Amsterdam and the rest of Easter break. I may be heading down to south France for the second week but that depends on how much money i've got left...

Five more weeks of "work"

We Live for the Weekends

...almost there...

AMAZING Clermont Weekend

Winter Break Partie Deux; Lyon!

This was a true adventure! So it wasn't the whole Fab Five. More like the Terrific Three lol. Me, Rob, Lalo, and a friend of Rob's, Joe, headed out for 4 days of mayhem in Lyon, France's 2nd biggest city (though some claim Marseilles.) I fell in love immediately. Such a clean beautiful city! I'm not gonna go into huge detail about it right now (its getting late here, I'll write more later, hopefully before another month passes) other than just to say that we decided on purpose not to book anything in advance and to just "wing it" because I always hear about people doing that in Europe. Well it worked PERFECTLY. We bought our train tickets that day, and though we did miss a connection in St. Etienne, the train ride through the mountains was beautiful and we didn't arrive in Lyon until around 930pm I think but we found a hostel immediately that was only around 16 euros a night!! AND it was in the Old Town on top of a hill overlooking the entire city of Lyon! We just sat out on the terrace each morning (And night) talking about life. Legend! Anyway I'll post the photos now but I'll go into more detail about the trip later, ok?

Lyon Photos!!

An Update...finally

So I'm finally gonna update this thing. Sorry guys I really don't have an excuse once again. Just been too busy living I guess. Anyway things have been going pretty well, I've been spending a lot of time with the "Fabulous Five" which consist of my British friends Rob, Dan, Chris, and Eduardo "Lalo" Gutierrez (A living legend) from Mexico. So anyway my Winter Break was absolutely amazing (other than the actually transportation, bleg). So the 10th of February I get up at 7:30 am to take a bus to Nevers (one hour). Then I wait about 30 minutes in Nevers for my train to Paris (2 more hours) then I think I had 5 hours to get from Paris Gare de Lyon (train station) to Charles de Gaulle Internation Airport. One hour flight to Prague, Czech Republic. Then 3 hours in Prague, before a 2 hour flight to Tallinn, Estonia. Finally arriving in Estonia around 10:30pm Estonian time. (+one hour) So pretty much just went to bed Saturday night. Went to this one club which was worthless. Anyway, I spent the rest of the weekend in Tallinn with Helen and her family which was nice. I never thought I'd say it but it felt SOOO GOOD just to get out of France for 10 days. I love it here but it just gets old after 5 straight months with no break. And of course practically everyone in Estonia speaks English (except Helen's parents lol.) Anyway then we went to Tartu for the rest of the week where Helen is at university and also the second biggest city in Estonia. I absolutely loved this city! It's like the Athens, GA of Estonia. Anyway we hung out there and Wednesday night went to this club to see the number one rock band in Estonia which was actually pretty impressive. I pretty much just relaxed and slept all day while helen went to class in Tartu and enjoyed my time off from work, but also walked around and took some photos. Long story short, I had a great time hanging out with her and her roommate, Liis. I actually met another one of Helen's friends, Liisi, who had spent a summer in Griffin, GA selling books. She had also spent a good bit of time in Macon!! I couldn't believe it, such a small world. She had a bumper sticker that said "Georgia on my Mind" It was great!! Took lots of photos, and ate a lot of really really good food. Took a bus back into Tallinn for the weekend where I took a city tour by bus with Helen and her family. Then went to Rakvere that night to meet Karin Kallam, another Estonian who was at my highschool in 2001. She now has a 2 year old son (!!). Saturday night Helen and I went to an authentic Russian restaurant where during the middle of our meal these people run out and start doing russian folk dancing with a full band! Great atmosphere! And then back to France! The trip back was even longer than the trip there because of a 4 hour layover in Prague. But I had plenty of time in Paris so I checked my luggage into a locker and set out for a nice 3 1/2 hour walk through downtown Paris. I made it as far as Notre Dame before I had to turn back for the Train station. But the weather was great and everyone was happy and you could smell spring time in the air and it truly restored my faith in Paris as I was in an incredibly good mood for the rest of the day. After that I took a train straight to Clermont-Ferrand to meet Rob and Joe, his friend from uni who is an assistant in south France. The next day we took a train to Lyon which leads me to part two of my Winter Break...

Photos:
Winter Break in Estonia Volume I

Winter Break in Estonia Volume II

Also, Fabulous Five Photos
Volume One
Volume Two

snow!

YAY!! IT SNOWED!! so yeah im a loser but im from georgia so just let me be excited. it actually was a huge pain in the @$$ because the buses werent running this morning and i had to WALK to Yzeure for class..took me like an hour..needless to say i was late and SOAKED when i got there thanks to the cars going by sloshing dirty wet snow all over me...anyway heres about 3 billion unnecessary pictures that i took today. enjoy

SNOW SNOW SNOW NEIGE NIEVA SCHNEE!

New Year's in Paris

So yeah....this is almost a month late...but hey, as they say, better late than never right? So anyway, I'm not gonna complain too much but I won't sugarcoat it either...New Year's in Paris was pretty disappointing. Basically the city of Paris did NOTHING for New Year's. No Fireworks, no countdown, no music or concert or anything. Nothing. Zip. Nada. Rien. I paid more for my hotel and train tickets for nothing. All those years back home watching the Eiffel Tower explode on TV for the 31st and the one time I'm there..yeah. So me and Sandie were there in front of the eiffel tower with a few hundred thousand other people...11:55...waiting... midnight....ummmm happy new year. People started getting agitated around 12:10. Everyone started filing out angry and disappointed. Good thing we got out quick I heard there was some low-level rioting on the Champ de Mars after we left. So off to the champs elysées to find somewhere to party. Yeah...either 30 euros or so entry or just flat out refusal. Ok so maybe we're aiming too high. of course the champs elysées is where some of the most chic clubs in the world are found. Not to mention the fact that there were 400,000 people on the champs elysées, drunk nasty people everywhere, and you literally couldn't step without touching broken glass...Fights everywhere. Not at all the party spirit. People were either sad or pissed off. So we head to another quarter St. Germain-des-prés. at this point we just wanted to find a nice quiet bar to have a drink and mainly just to get off our feet. We´d been walking all day... but no most bars were closed because they didn't want to have to deal with the drunk obnoxious new year's crowd. So back to the hotel to sleep. Blah. Also the museums were closed the 31st and the 1st, and then the 2nd (tuesday) was the normal closing day for all the museums (other than orsay) ANYWAY the rest of the trip went well except for the horrid weather. (cold and rainy). Day two was Musée d'Orsay which is mostly impressionism and other art (mostly French) from 1848 to 1914. I love this museum. Impressionism is one of the only forms of art that i "get." lol. that night we went up the Arc de Triomphe. Day 3 was getting up super early to go to the eiffel tower to beat the crowds. Worked well, we were in the first group up. We went to the first and second levels by stairs then to the sommet in elevator. After that, we went over to the latin quarter to lunch on a kebab, then to the Musée national du Moyen Âge de Cluny which is the Museum of the Middle Ages...Wow so firefox just crashed and i lost half the post...lets see...where was i. I appreciate that...So I love this museum because i love middle age culture. There are also some Roman baths from the Roman Empire days. After that it was deep deep down into the Earth to the catacombs! I don't know if you've ever seen pictures but I had and I knew what to expect but apparently Sandie didn't know what to expect...she wigged out. She was expecting some walls with a couple of skulls embedded here and there. Not 5 kilometres of walls MADE out of the skeletons of millions of parisiens. Basically during the late 18th century, paris was really running short on space so they took the bodies that were already improperly buried in mass graves and put them deep under the earth. The tour is only a part of whats really down there but even then, it took 45 minutes to walk through a 2km section open to tourists. really amazing stuff. That night we went to l'Hôtel de Ville to see a free exhibit of the French photographer Robert Doisneau. He took all his pictures in black and white and only in Paris between the 30's and the 80's (I think. not sure about when he stopped) a lot of them a pretty well known such as The Kiss by l'Hôtel de ville. pretty cool since the exhibit was in the hotel de ville. Just look up Doisneau on google images. there's tons. The last day we just did some shopping in Les Halls which is the big commercial quarter of Paris. You could spend months in there! Anyway in the end we caught up pretty good I believe considering it was kinda lame at first. Here are my photos for those who haven't yet seen them:

Paris I; Le Jour de l'an

Paris II; Musée d'Orsay, Arc de Triomphe, La Tour Eiffel

Paris III; Bateau-Bus, Musée du Moyen Âge, Catacombs, Doisneau

peace out talk to ya soon!