Seth and Claire

On Tuesday I said my goodbyes to Grenoble and came to Winterthur to join Seth. His last day of work is today, and we are going to head to Turkey on Monday, and then back to Vancouver on June 16th.

Even though I am looking forward to both Turkey and going back to Canada, it was extremely difficult to say goodbye to France. Despite all my efforts to NOT put down roots, over the course of 8 months I established some really strong and special ties. For me, no matter where I am in the world, it is the people who make it feel like home. As I was leaving Grenoble on Tuesday, I realized that I was saying goodbye to a home that I won’t soon forget. The following photos and descriptions summarize the incredible memories I have forged over the last 2 months.

In April, I was invited by a friend, Claire, to stay with her family for a few days in a small village outside of Nîmes. I jumped at the chance, and was warmly welcomed into her family, where we spent 4 sunny days BBQing, chatting with the neighbours, suntanning, and reading. I really appreciated how her family made me feel so at home. They took some time to teach me some cooking, as well, and I learned how to make a chocolate fondant (chocolate cake that is warm and runny in the middle) and a blackberry charlotte (a dessert named for it’s shape). Her family had built their house, and had an ingenious, although slightly precarious, method for storing their dry goods – they bolted the lids to the ceiling!

The rest of April and May was spent finishing up work at the high school and fooling around with my roommates. We did lots of hiking, and even planned one epic trip into the mountains for a big weekend of climbing. Sadly, it was aborted at the last moment due to bad weather. However, to make the best of a disappointing situation, we decided to all ‘camp’ in the living room, which was thankfully big enough for all 6 of us. We ate camping food (sardines and bread) and put up a sort of sheet-tent. It was really fun. I really lucked out finding those roommates, because they were creative and always up for adventure. The final art project we did together was a really amazing and huge painting, (2 by 2.5 metres) which was a metro plan, which each roommate designing their own metro line. We named the stops for important moments in our lives, or things we really liked or that had influenced us, and when we had something in common, the metro lines crossed. We all, of course, crossed at 3 rue lesdiguières. I took a picture but seem to have lost it, so will post it later when I get ahold of a copy.

The last 10 days in France were some of the most special. My good friend Sarah invited me to go on a roadtrip with her and her cousin (yet another Claire!) to visit all of her aunts, uncles, and cousins in Normandy and Bretagne, and then to stay for the weekend with her mother in the Bay of Arcachon, near Bordeaux. We spent 9 days traveling around and visiting family, which gave me the chance to see so much of France that was new to me.
NORMANDY
Our first stop was Sarah’s uncle in Verneuil. He was a farmer and made his own apple cider and honey. Everything that came from his garden and farm was so delicious, and I think we spent an average of 3 hours eating each meal. We had fresh egg omelettes with chives from the garden, roasted duck, and fresh sausages. If there is a heaven, I am almost sure that it is exactly like that farm. When we weren’t checking out the big tractors, he showed us around the region to see the birthplace of Laval, an important figure in the history of Canada, and some really beautiful chateaus. We had fun picking out the one we would buy if we were multi-millionaires!

Next stop was cousin Armelle and her 2 impish daughters, who live in Corneuil. I was greeted at the door by Maiwan, age 7, and her dog. I said, ‘Bonjour, j’aime ton chienne.’ (hi, i like your dog) She replied directly, ‘Ca n’est pas une chienne. C’est un chien.’ (It’s not a ‘chienne, it’s a chien). I had, actually, meant to say ‘chien’, the masculine version of the word, but I still make lots of pronunciation errors, and had said the feminine version. That started a beautiful relationship between me, the student, and her, the teacher. She thought it was hilarious when I talked, and treated it like her personal duty to correct me every time I made a mistake. Thankfully, both girls were really sweet, and we spent lots of time in the backyard playing games. You can see one of the games in the photo, a brilliant concept where you fish for objects in the whale’s mouth, and if you are too clumsy the whale squirts you with water. However, as fun as the kids were, I think the highlight was the dinner of galettes (crepes made with buckwheat flour) that Armelle made for us, using the crepe machine that her grandmother had used. They were light, crispy, and so delicious.

BRETAGNE
Next we headed to Bretagne to stay with Sarah’s other cousin Lena, her husband Fred, and her 3 little boys. We stayed there for 3 days and were EXHAUSTED when it was time to go. The boys ranged from 14 months to 7 years, and had so much energy. I was really impressed by the calm, laid-back way the parents ran the household. Lena and Fred worked during the days, so Claire, Sarah, and myself had lots of time to explore the coast of Bretagne. The sun shone on us for 3 days straight, which is apparently a record for rainy Bretagne. The thing that was the most impressive, I think, was our boat trip out to an island literally covered in a kind of bird called Faux Bassan. Apparently they only like to nest in very particular places, and they really liked this rocky island. We hung out there for about an hour, amusing ourselves by watching them come in for a landing, which was not easy seeing as each bird had a space of about 10cm squared. An interesting thing about this bird that I learned is that they catch fish by diving headfirst into the water at a speed of about 110km per hour, to a depth of 40m. Not all babies learn the good angle of entry right away, and after their first 2 years, 70% of the birds have injured a wing and died. Nature can be really cruel.

In this last picture of Bretagne, see if you can see my napping spot.

We finished this wonderful trip by a few days in the Bay of Arcachon, near Bordeaux. We stayed with Sarah’s mom and her boyfriend, who treated us to walks on the sand dunes, swimming, boating, and a day trip to Bordeaux. Again, the weather was great and the food was wonderful. The highlight of this part of the world was an ice cream shop that we visited after dinner every single night we were there, because it had 80 flavours of delicious ice cream to try. I even found the flavor ‘popcorn’, which would have been better without the soggy popcorn pieces that they put in there. In fact, by the end of the trip Sarah found out that she had gained about 2.5 kg, but happily, that knowledge didn’t bother us. It is not every day that you get the chance to taste so many amazing foods!

One of the photos below is of a cool art installation in the centre of Bordeaux. It is a flat surface that they spray water onto every 10 minutes, and in the summer it is really refreshing and fun for the kids, but is also really beautiful because the surface reflects the beautiful, old buildings around it.

It was hard to come back to Grenoble, knowing that it was all coming to an end. And after a week of giggling with Sarah, I realize that I am really going to miss that girl! We do hope to see each other before too long, because she just finished a bike trip from France to Turkey, and has the next one planned from Alaska down the coast to South America. Hopefully we will be able to join her and her boyfriend on at least part of it.

As things come to an end, Seth and I are both starting to get really excited about seeing all our friends, family, and the dog again. We are looking forward to bringing the best of all we have experienced culinary-wise in Europe and have lots of delicious dinner parties back in Canada!

This Friday evening is the first time in as long as I can remember that I have my apartment here in Grenoble to myself. The silence is lovely. I decided to take advantage of it by going for a swim at the pool and then coming back for some dinner and a movie. But just now I decided to organize all my recent photos, and got inspired to update the blog. So I sad down with a pot of fresh mint tea and some dark chocolate, and am ready to share some photos and memories from our recent cycle trip through Switzerland and Germany.

Seth and I have been wanting to explore the region by bike for awhile, and as ski season finally wrapped up, we decided to take 9 days in April to head out, starting from Winterthur, where Seth lives, and just going as far as we could along the Rhine River. We started from Seth’s front door, and made it all the way to Freiburg, Germany! We were hosted along the way by friends, colleagues, and even a really cool Australian lady who we found through Warmshowers.org, which is a kind of couch surfing for bike tourists. Our route took us northeast to meet up with beautiful Lake Konstanz and one of Seth’s colleagues, Maria, and from there we pretty much followed the Rhine all the way to Freiburg. It was such a wonderful route, almost completely car and hill free. (our biggest hill day was a 100m climb…) We rode through forests, fields, industrial sites, and all kinds of towns and cities, and met interesting people along the way. (thank goodness for Seth’s German!) We liked it so much that we are sure we will be hopping on our bikes again as soon as possible, although it will be hard to measure up to this rainless, flat, gorgeous, beer and sausage filled adventure! What follows is some of the highlights.

The pictures above show us leaving from Seth’s house, and encountering our first baby animals a few hours later. Against all dire weather forecasts, the sun was shining and we were feeling good. We made sure to keep our energy levels up by frequent stops for coffee, beer, or ice cream, and we soon learned that with all the lovely cafés and sunny terraces, our smushy brown bananas would NEVER win the battle for the most appetizing snack. I think the photo below summarizes the tempting assortments…

For the next few days we followed the river, crossing the border between Switzerland and Germany frequently. The border doesn’t follow the river exactly, so some days we would end up crossing the border 4 or 5 times. But the picture here shows how relaxed it was!
The scenery was really beautiful, and we really liked all the quaint little German towns that we stopped in.


We made a 2 night stop in Basel, a really cool town that is actually located in Swizerland, Germany, AND, France. It was here that we met our Australian host Biff – she was so laid-back that she sent us an email, never having met us, giving us her address and telling us where her hidden key was in case we arrived before she did. She hosted both us and another couple at the same time, an american guy and a french girl, and we made dinner together and relaxed in her apartment. The city of Basel was really cool too, and I got the chance to see it from the water, because Biff was, in fact, a champion dragon boater, and invited me to head out with her team for a practice. Unfortunately one of the team members was away, and in order to ‘balance the boat’ they made me paddle. With all the former Olympians and such, it was obviously useless to even have me try, but I did my best!
The end of the road for us was Freiburg, where we stayed with a friend of mine Franzi, who was also a language assistant with me in Grenoble. We stayed for 2 nights and really liked the feel of the town. With all the university students and the old center, it was a lot like Grenoble, but with cheaper beer!

One thing about this trip that was really interesting for me, was that it made me realize I had some random prejudices against Germany. I don’t know if it was due to the emphasis on WWII in my history classes, or the rampant stereotypes of beer and sausages being the only consumable items in Germany, but I definitely didn’t think I would love Germany as much as I did. The people were so nice, the food was diverse and delicious, and the scenery was really beautiful. I will just finish with our last photo, which does not in any way summarize our adventure, but more shows all the maturity and wisdom we have acquired so far on our European adventure.

Hello!
So after a rigorous 6 weeks of work, I am now on the first of my 2 14-day holidays this spring. (I really am spoiled working in the school systems in France – compared to Seth’s Swiss 40 hour work week and regular holidays, it is starting to make me feel a bit guilty!) But it is also a great opportunity for me to spend some time with Seth, and see some more of Europe. I spent the first week of my holiday skiing with some of my roommates and friends in Grenoble. The second week, I went on a road trip to Italy with my roommates, then picked up Seth in Switzerland and we went on to visit Elaine and Patrick in Amsterdam. Below are some of the pictures from this wonderful holiday. Tomorrow, Seth unfortunately has to go back home, but I am going to make a brief stop in Brussels on my way back to Grenoble to visit my cousin Kate who lives there. She tells me there are over 3,000 different kinds of beer there, so I am not sure if 24 hours will be enough time…

The first is a picture of my beautiful bedroom in Grenoble, and the second is the group of kidsthat I get to teach snowboarding to each Wednesday. The photo is taken on a warm, sunny Wednesday – one of those days where being paid to be there feels a bit unreal. On the snowy, windy, freezing days, it is a little bit harder to feel quite so lucky!

These pictures are from the week of my holidays I spent in Grenoble. Two of my roommates were on their last weeks of being unemployed (both have recently found jobs), so we found time during the week to make delicious lunches and do some snowshoeing and skiing. My favorite outing was a warm sunny day where we snowshoed up a mountain, but brought sleds for the ride down!

For the second week of holidays, all 5 of my roommates, myself, 2 guitars, and a hookah piled into a rental van and drove down to Florence to visit a friend and spend a few days in Italy. Loic, a friend from Grenoble who is doing part of his doctorate in Florence, was a wonderful host, showing us the local markets and cultural sights. However, we were horrified at some of the things we could buy at the market – things like testicles and noses. In the end, being French, we ended up with croissants and cheese…not very adventurous! Olivier and Jeremy tried out their guitar skills in front of the Duomo, surprising everyone by making enough money to buy us all lunch!

That is all I have for now, I am going to wait for Seth to upload some of his pictures from our time in Switzerland and the Netherlands. We have spent a really great time together here in the Netherlands, and I will be sad to see him go tomorrow and return to a normal life of work (for the next 6 weeks).

We have both been keeping busy with work since Christmas, but have also been doing our best to maximize our weekends to explore the majestic mountains in the area. We are currently hanging out together in Saas Fee, which is a beautiful town in the south of Switzerland surrounded by 18 or so 4,000 metre peaks. We have decided that it is the Swiss equivalent of Aspen, Colorado, and have been enjoying exploring the town deciding who has the most skintight ski bunny suit! We wanted to upload some of the pictures we have from the last few weeks of mountain adventures, both separately and together. Here in Saas Fee, we rented an apartment for the weekend, with the intentions of exploring the over 200 km. of pistes in the ski area, but when we arrived and saw the temperature forecast (-48 with windchill!!!!) we quickly revised our plan and spent the time cross country skiing on the valley floor, walking around and looking at the views, and cooking delicious meals. It has been a really wonderful weekend, but we are looking forward to skiing together in March, when the temperatures will be more humane.
The updated weather report showing only -41C

Claire on the balcony of our room.

Some photos from around Saas Fee

Breakfast.  That’s fresh squeezed blood orang juice!

A panorama of the end of the Saas Fee Valley

Claire on the cross-country ski track

Seth here, I have spent the last couple of weekends checking out the skiing in eastern Alps, spending one day in Davos at Persenn and one day with friends in Lichtenstein at Malbun. Below are some photos from those trips

My friends Lucy and Daniel at Malbun

A view from the lift at Parsenn.

The longest gondola EVER at Parsenn. The ride was more than 20 min!

And now it’s Claire, and I am sharing some pictures I have from exploring some of the local Grenoble massifs with two of my roommates. I have moved into a new apartment with 5 French people, and have been really enjoying learning french cooking with them (we all cook and eat together most nights, around 10pm or later!). Luckily, they all like to ski, and Oliver 1, Olivier 2, and me explored an area in the Belledonne range. We hiked up the mountain, took the skins off our skis, and then proceeded to have one of the funniest descents I have ever experienced. It came to light at the top that while one of the Oliviers loved the mountains and was an avid snowshoer, he had only ever skied once. Needless to say, the descent was slow and comical, as he tried to learn to snowplow for the first time in knee-deep power.

I find that the regular routine always starts up again so sharply after Christmas break. One minute you are stuffing yourself with delicious pie, sleeping in every day, and seeing friends and family, and the next moment you find yourself with a full inbox and late for work. This first week back for me was a little hectic as I started a new tutoring position, worked my first afternoon as a snowboard instructor (which I realize now is just a glorified name for professional nose-wiper and mitten-finder) and resumed my hours at the high school. It is nice to be back, but Seth and I sure had a wonderful two weeks of holiday together.

First Seth returned to Grenoble, where we spent Christmas in my new apartment. We made a wonderful Christmas dinner that included an apple pie made with a cream-red wine caramel sauce (all my favorite things in the same sauce!) and a whole trout, which Seth lovingly plucked the bones out of.

We also had the chance to go for a hike, because the weather was unseasonably warm and lovely. We started by checking out the excellent map so we wouldn’t get lost, and then started on our way. Almost immediately we found a little dog who appeared to be starving, and called the number on its collar. It was so cute that we ended up giving it a good portion of our lunch before the owners arrived, and were quite surprised to find out that he had not been lost for long. We were very concerned by the number of his ribs we could see, but in the end we were told that he is a hunting dog and just runs a lot. I still think he could use some more food. We did feel a little bit uneasy after that moment, since his owners were hunting wild boar in the same forest that we were hiking, and we were dressed completely in boarish-brown and taupe colours!

We also got the chance to check out one of the ski stations nearby, Deux Alpes, and had a truly excellent day ranging from sun and powder to ice and sleet in our faces.

For New Years we were able to meet up with our friends Patrick and Elaine in Marseille, where we spent 4 days being tourists, walking around checking stuff out and going for a hike along the ocean.

We celebrated New Years in our hostel, on the streets, and in a pub, and you can track how much fun we were having by the state of the ‘flare’ on my head…

With the wonders of the French school system, I now have 5 weeks left of work before my next 2 week break, where Seth will be taking some time off of work and we plan on going to Holland and doing some more skiing together in Switzerland.

Well it feels like Christmas has arrived in Grenoble all of a sudden, with an amazing (pre)Christmas dinner and a lot of snow!

I have decided to move apartments over Christmas, because although the family I am currently living with is really nice, I miss living with people the same age as me. I was lucky enough to have some of the French people I know here offer up a room in their lovely, huge, 6-bedroom apartment in the center of town, and of course I said yes. It is really neat, because it is the same apartment that my friend Kristin lived in when she was here a couple of years ago, with even a few of the same people. I really appreciate her introducing me to them, because they are really nice and, as I found out last night, excellent cooks!

They invited me over for a Christmas dinner to celebrate the beginning of the holidays, and that day it began to snow. By the time I was walking over to their apartment, there were several inches! It was really lovely to sit inside the living room, listening to them play some Christmas carols on the guitar, and watch big flakes of snow drift down past the window.

The evening was certainly one to remember. We started eating at 9pm, and we finished the last dessert (yes, that means there was more than one) at 2:54am. When I arrived the kitchen was bustling just like you see in a restaurant during the peak hours, with people running around and things sizzling. I retired to the living room to listen to the music and keep out of the way, and soon everything was ready. We all sat around the dinner table, and then proceeded to eat, talk, and sing our way through the next 8 courses, and 6 hours. We did take a short ‘snowball fight’ break, but it literally did go on for that long.

The Menu…truly magnificent!
Entrèes
Un purèe aux carottes, avec coriandre et crème fraiche
Un pot de crème, melangè avec les tomates seches et du jambon cru A little pot with cream, sundried tomatoes, and proscuitto
(Served with a sparkling white wine)

More Entrèes
Les huitres, cru, du pain avec du beurre salé huitres are oysters. cru is raw. I was not a fan…
(served with Gevertzraminner – not sure how to spell that…)

Plat Principal
Les St. Jacques, avec les poireax à crème et du pain Scallops fried with onions and herbs, and leeks cooked with cream. And bread.
(served with un bordeaux)

Plat Principal #2 (this one took me by surprise because I thought we were done…)
Un ragoût du sanglier, avec du chou et les pommes cuit Wild boar and potato stew, with stewed cabbage
(served with some other kind of red wine…I kind of lost track by this point)

Du pain et fromage, fait à la main Bread and homemade cheeses

Digestif
Sorbet aux citrons verts avec vodka Homemade lime sorbet with a shot of vodka poured over it

Dessert
La bûche de Noel The traditional French Christmas cake, shaped like a log, covered in chocolate cream. Delicious.

I think the funniest part of the evening was when we tried to go retrieve the Christmas cake, which had been chilling on the balcony, and realized that it was completely buried under the snow.

Seth will be coming to join me here on Thursday, and we will be hanging out in Grenoble for Christmas, hoping to do some skiing, sleeping in, and hopefully, more good eating!

So I am still pretty much in love with this city. And over the last few weekends, I have been thrilled to be able to share some adventures here with some visitors!

First Seth made the trek here from Switzerland, and we had a wonderful weekend of activities, most of which consisted of either hiking or eating. First we went shopping at the markets, which is always hard because everything looks so good and there is so much choice. Within 5 minutes walk of my house here, there are 4 big markets. After we had bought fresh chestnuts to roast, a whole chicken, homemade yogurt with fresh fruit, and all kinds of other delicacies, Seth seemed to think we would never be able to eat it all. (of course, as usual, we managed!).
The next day we met up with our friends Kate and Ken, who are here from Vancouver for work for 7 weeks, and took their rental car on an adventure. We tried to find a hike that I had heard about, but seeing as we had sketchy written directions in French and no map, the day did not start out well. After driving for over 2 hours on twisty mountain roads (which was awful considering how much wine we had all drunk the previous evening) we ended up not at a trailhead, but in another big city called Chambery, far away from where we had intended to go. We reassessed the plan while picnicking in the parking lot of a gas station, all feeling quite depressed, but decided despite our raging headaches to have another attempt. After finally buying a map, we located a different hike on the way home, and hiked up to a beautiful lookout. We saw mountain goats and tramped in the snow, and figured that after a shaky start, it ended up being a wonderful day.

The following weekend I joined a weekend hiking trip with the international student’s club at the university. At least, I thought it would be a hiking trip. I should have known…international students always tend to be a bit more serious about partying than studying! We took a crazy road up into the mountains – look closely and you can see the little tunnel where the road goes! –
and ended up at a little refuge in the mountains. We did some hiking, although not as much as I would have liked, because everyone seemed to be intent on returning to the refuge so they could start drinking. Well, I am usually not the life of the party, but I can generally hold my own. Here, I was definitely outclassed. They had brought a huge dinner for everyone and a DJ for after, and I danced until after 3am, which I thought was pretty good for my old age. However, I realized how much of a grandmother I was when I got up at 11am, and some drunk guy stumbled past me mumbling in french about how it was time to go to bed! As much fun as it was to explore some new regions, I don’t think that is really my scene…

Finally, this last weekend my friend Reike, an assistant working in a town a couple of hours away, visited me. We were blessed with warm, summer-like weather, and made the most of it by walking, shopping in the markets, and exploring the town on foot. Yesterday afternoon we were invited over to the apartment of an American friend of mine here, who had for some strange reason decided to take it upon herself to cook Thanksgiving dinner for 20 people. She did a wonderful job, and we all ate so much delicious pumpkin pie, pecan pic, stuffing, and mashed potatoes that all I had for dinner last night was popcorn! It was neat to see the reactions of all the french people there, because apart from myself and 3 others, everyone was French and it was their first taste of things like ‘stuffing’ and ‘pumpkin pie’. The pumpkin pie was especially surprising as here in France they make something similar, but it is not sweet at all and is eaten as part of a dinner.

This morning I slept in, and am having a lazy Sunday with coffee and an omelette, resting up before another week begins!

Events over the past few weeks have been truly remarkable. I have had an amazing string of luck, and I am not sure how I managed to get it. I am not even Irish! I wonder if it was those weird gnomes in Winterthur….

After sadly leaving Seth in Winterthur, I went to visit another language assistant, Reika, who is placed in a small town in the mountains near Grenoble. We both enjoy hiking, however, after several hours of searching for a way to get from her village to a trailhead for a hike, we felt quite frustrated. During the winter there is lots of public transport so that people can go skiing, but because we were there in the ‘off-season’, there wasn’t really anything practical. We sadly decided we would have to find less adventurous things to do and started looking for a little path next to the river to walk along. Well even that proved difficult to find, and finally out of frustration we stopped an older woman and asked her if she knew about it. That was the beginning of an amazing new friendship, and by the end of the evening we had taken tea with Odile and her husband, had been invited for dinner, AND been offered their car for the next few days. Yep, that is right. Some random woman just gave us the keys to her car. I am not sure if I would do the same thing in her place, but it was certainly an incredibly trusting and welcoming gesture, and we were able to thoroughly explore the countryside and do some wonderful hiking. We called the car ‘Flocon de neige’ and she served us well!

Next I stopped by Grenoble for a few days before taking of to visit Talia and Steph in Paris, and in the space of 24 hours found a posting for a job and managed to talk them into hiring me. Again with the luck – I was searching for something else online and came across a posting for a snowboard instructor. I called up the number, arranged an interview for that same day, and was offered the job pretty much on the spot when the guy found out I was from Vancouver. Whistler is pretty well known around here, and I think simply the fact that I live within 200 km. of the mountain was all he needed to hear. Of course, he did look at my other experience with kids, but I do think it was mainly the fact that I was Canadian that got me in. Starting after Christmas, I will be taking up less advantaged kids to the slopes on Wednesday afternoons, and I am really happy to be able to do that, both for the extra money and to be able to get outside a bit more.

Well, to complete my week of luckiness, I found a free bike and also found out my friends, Kate and Ken, from Vancouver, are moving 100 metres from my house here in Grenoble for 7 weeks for Ken’s work. We are now living closer together than we were in Vancouver! It will be nice to see some familiar faces around for the next little while.

I ended my holidays with a trip to see Talia and Steph in Paris, where we had a thoroughly girly time going to the Turkish baths, trying on ugly wedding dresses, and making crepes. I am now back to the ‘grind’ (okay, not so much of a grind…) and am looking foward to having Seth come visit Grenoble this weekend!

Last weekend I had my first chance to really see the mountains around Grenoble. I have been doing some wonderful hikes around Grenoble, which are accessed by public transit, but I decided to also join a club so I could go a bit further afield, I found a small hiking and skiing club that has been around since WWI, and they still have an archaic method in place where after a new member tags along for a few adventures, the president and board have a closed meeting where they either vote you in or give you the boot. Apparently it is almost always an affirmative, so thankfully I didn’t feel like I was on a hiking edition of Survivor. Last Sunday, we headed south of Grenoble and climbed up to the top of one of the ‘Two Sisters’. (Apparently we climbed Sophie – she looked a lot gentler than her sister!) It was a lovely day of sun, high above the clouds, and we even saw some of the local wildlife – the big mountain goat-like animals they call Bouqetain. I was very impressed by the lunch that people brought, which was every kind of cheese and sausage I could imagine, with fresh bread, wine, and even a ‘digestif’ of some kind of liquor made from 145 plants. It did taste quite earthy, and made hiking down quite fun.

In other news, I have been really loving working at the school, and this week I did a really fun activity called ‘story in a bag’, where I collected lots of odds and ends and costume pieces from my house here, and put about 4-5 objects in each bag, and then each group of 3-4 students made up and performed a skit using all the objects. It was pretty hilarious, especially the group that received a toilet paper roll with no toilet paper left…. (I am sharing my blog with the students and asked their permission to be on it). I think next week I am going to do a lesson on the song, ‘If I Had a Million Dollars’ by the Barenaked Ladies, because not only does it do a good job of demonstrating the second conditional (okay I am an grammar nerd) and also starting up a lively conversation of what the students would do with that much money.

It has also been a noisy week at school, as they demolished the old school and are starting to build the students a new one. As you can see, the building they are using in the meantime is not very inspiring. It doesn’t help that the heating seems to be broken (we are told it will be fixed within the month) and the temperature has been just above freezing in the mornings here.

Finally, I wanted to post a funny picture showing the dog parks here. Dogs are allowed in most public spaces here, but in very congested neighbourhoods there is not much green space, so they have made little fenced off dirt-pits for the dogs to do their business. Instead of a simple sign that says something like ‘dog area’, they decided to show a very excited dog saying, roughly, ‘Here, I can do whatever I want!’. (I am not sure what else a dog might want to do in the 3 foot square patch of dirt besides pee….)

That is all for now, I am really looking forward to visiting Seth in Winterthur this weekend and doing some hiking in the mountains there.

I took some photos of my new apartment today and wanted to post them up, and I will let Seth write about our rendez-vous in Geneva this last weekend…

I moved into a new apartment yesterday, sadly saying goodbye to the three lovely students who had been letting me stay with them until I could find a permanent place. From greeting me at the door with a hug, to making me a special birthday dinner of crêpes and sparkling wine, their hospitality made my first week here very special. I am sure that I will continue to see them, but am quite excited because I am now living in the old city center of Grenoble, around the corner from an ancient cathedral and within 100 metres of 3 different bakeries. I am living with a university prof and her daughter, who is 15, which is great because it gives me the chance to share my meals with a family, and practice my French, but at the same time not be responsible for any babysitting. I haven’t really gotten the chance to get to know them well yet, but they seem really interesting and are certainly very welcoming. Now at last I can unpack my bags and officially ‘move in’! My room is lovely because it has a big window to an outside courtyard, which lets in the morning sun.

Other than moving, I have been starting to do some actual teaching at the high school, which is really exciting and a bit intimidating at the same time. It seems that my ‘teacher voice’ doesn’t quite work the same with 18 year olds as it did for 10 year olds! That said, they are funny and witty and I think it is going to keep me on my toes trying to keep them entertained and learning at the same time. I think that next week I am going to introduce them to Michael Franti, and then use that to segue into the way the French view America’s position in the Iraq war. Some of my groups of students are very politically oriented, and I think it will be a good chance to learn more myself.

Also in these next few weeks, I look forward to finding a bike, joining the outdoors club at the university, and taking my first trip to Winterthur to see Seth!