Oh sudoku!

The day after I saw the scary movie, I saw the Brothers Grimm...much better. Anyway, for the rest of my vacation, I did much more interesting things. On a Tuesday-Wednesday, I went to St Brieuc to hang out with Chris for a few days. We made Mexican food, drank Corona, watched a movie, and watched about half a season's worth of the OC. It was really fantastic to just vege. I hadn't sat down to watch a movie since leaving the states, as I have a TV at my apartment,but there are no channels available - just snow. That Thursday, I took the bus to St. Quai/Portriuex to go to the beach, since it's a sandy one instead of rocks. I really lucked out with the weather, and actually laid out in my bathing suit despite the fact that it was the end of October!! On the 2nd Friday of vacation (I really have no concept of time here), I took the train to Nantes (BIG city a few hours away) to meet up with Chris, Elsa, and Kirstin. My train went to Rennes, and from Rennes, I was herded onto a bus to continue to Nantes. The bus was very crowded, and I was really hoping not to have to sit next to someone that would either: A - hit on me and in general not leave me alone B - have a baby sharing their seat C - smell. I took a seat next to a guy close to my age and hoped for the best...there weren't many options anyway. Once the bus left, I got out my book of Sudoku puzzles to pass the time. I looked at a new one for a second, and put a 1 in a box that already had a 1 as my first move. For anyone who does sudoku, that is a very stupid thing to do. As it turns out, this guy was looking over my shoulder, and as soon as I wrote it, he started laughing! I made some lame excuse about having something in my eye, and proceeded on. However, it's really hard to concentrate on a sudoku if you have someone watching your every move, and presumable thinking to himself how slow you are at it, and how you have no stratedy whatsoever, and how he could've finished the whole thing a long time ago. Consequently, I was even worse at the puzzle than usual. After a little while, I got stuck, so I asked him if he had any suggestions. He said yes, and proceeded to help me with the remaining numbers. As it turned out, he was actually really genuinely nice, and we did sudokus together until our eyes started screwing up, and then just talked awhile. Olivier was in the marines, and worked in Brest, but lived near La Rochelle, so he had a long train ride every weekend to get home. We had a very pleasant conversation, that never did deteriorate into him asking for my number and assuring me that he wants to marry an American as so many conversations with French men do. It was certainly a bit nerdy, but I guess it goes to show that people who do sudoku aren't sleezeballs.

Any takers?

This boat is for sale. If anyone is willing to sell their possesions, quit their job/school, move to France, and buy it, I would be more than willing to be your full time translator/cook. Send inquires to comments section.

Seems a little self explanatory...

This is my favorite road sign. Ever.

I can move to a foreign country alone, but heaven help me if I see a scary movie

Well, after all of the hard work I've had to do teaching, I was really ready for the the vaccances de Toussaint. We had 2 weeks off at the end of October through the first few days of November. Anita left straight away on a trip to Lyon with some of her friends, so I had the place to myself for awhile. During my first week of vacation, I went on a few bike rides (magnificent pics on my yahoo page), and spent an evening with Geraldine watching Monty Python sketches and drinking tea (she's an English geek the way I'm a French geek), knit a scarf, became addicted to Sudoku, and took myself on a few dates. One evening, I decided to go out to dinner and a movie toute seule. I sometimes frequent movies alone back home too, so this wasn't too out of the ordinary. The movie that was playing was Entre ses Mains, which means Between his Hands. The summary I read of it made it seem like a bit of a dark comedy. Well, it turns out, it was definately a horror film. The main character falls in love with a veterinarian who seems a little eccentric. Gradually she connects that this same veterinarian is the serial killer that has been in the news as of late. He kills women by slitting their throats with a scalpal after going home with them after going to a nightclub. This was not what I had in mind. When the film was over, I had to walk 15 or 20 minutes home by myself, and it was dark, and misting, and nobody goes anywhere at night in Paimpol, so all I could hear was my own boots clicking on the sidewalk, and I had to walk past a cemetary, as well as many bushes which were probably hiding homicidal veterinarians. When I got back to the apt, I turned on all the lights, locked the doors, and called my mom. Dinner was good.

Brehat encore

A week and a half after my orientation, Chris, Elsa, and Kirstin came to Paimpol for the weekend to visit. Anita ( my roomate) and I have a mansion of an apartment compared to most assistants, as we have an extra bedroom as well as a pull out couch. The first evening, we ate at my favorite creperie, Creperie Morel, and didn't stay up too late in order to facilitate getting up early the next day to go to l'Ile de Brehat again. We brought a picnic of bread, butter, cheese, wine, chocolate, and hummous, and it was sunny again, as well as unseasonably warm. Chris and I climbed one of the big rock formations, and were a good 100 feet in the air hanging our feet off the side. It was truly magnificent. That evening, I had my most successful dinner party to date. I made lasagna and garlic bread, with guacamole as an appetizer, as well as numerous aperitifs from our continuously growing bar. After dinner, we went into town to see if there was anybody at the few bars. We went to one called the Pub, and it was not terribly exciting, but there was an old man who wanted to waltz with all of us girls. I faked a sprained ankle and limped out of the bar to show Chris to an ATM and let the girls get rid of him. Elsa told him we were all lawyers working for the European union, and by the time I got back, the aforementioned old man was terribly confused, and we decided to leave. We spent Sunday lazing around and doing lesson plans.

Those crazy French - always on strike

On October 5, I had an orientation meeting in St Brieuc (pronounced sant bree-yuh), which is a bigger town about 45 minutes from here. On October 4, there was a big protest in the same town, and Geraldine, the teacher with whom I work the most often, invited me to go with her, since I seemed like the type who would appreciated a good uprising now and again. The general idea of the demonstration (manifestation) was that the people were asking the government to quit worrying about making money, and worry about the citizens themselves. In other words, they don't want the government to start taking away social services in general. There were quite a few teachers from Lycee Kerraoul there, and they all got a kick out of it that the Americaine wanted to come along. The demonstration itself lasted a few hours. After everybody gathered in the main square, we all marched through the streets of most of the city. Some were holding signs, some were chanting, but all was calm. The general esprit was very calm and organized. I had lunch with a few teachers, and then I stayed in St Brieuc since my orientation was there the next morning anyway. I had already sent an email to one of the English assistants in St Brieuc, Kirstin (also from MI), so I had a place to stay. That night I met Kirstin, Elsa (British), and Chris (also British), and we all became fast friends. I was told that at the Edinburg(where Chris goes to school) zoo, once a day they let the penguins out to walk around!!! Edinburg is now on my travel list!

Ah yes, I will in fact become the crazy cat lady

Well, at school my blog seems to be blocked. They have all these restrictions to what the students can look at, so anything with blog in the title is filtered out. Consequently, I have to go to an internet cafe in order to work on it all. In the last month, I've really become accustomed to life in Paimpol. For the most part, I feel like a local. If I'm walking through town, and pass a cafe where people are sitting outside, it's nearly inevitable that someone I know sees me and says hello. I've never lived in a town quite as small as this, but in general I like it. One of the first few weekends I was here, my neighbor, Patricia (who also works at the high school) invited me to l'Ile de Brehat with her and her husband and 2 other parent aged couples. L'ile de Brehat is an island about 5 miles from Paimpol that is comparable to Macinac Island. It's not quite as touristy, but there's a little town area, and then you can hike around the island. We hiked out to a lighthouse, where they recounted the following legend: Beneath the lighthouse, there is a giant rock shaped a little bit like a heart. Young unmarried women must throw a small rock down at said big rock, and the number of times it bounces before falling into the sea (or onto another rock) is the number of years before the young women in question gets married. I tried my best to avoid the whole thing, but they all insisted that it would be fun, and talked me into picking out a rock to throw. Much to the dismay of my eager crowd, the rock I threw smashed into a million pieces upon landing on the heart shaped one. Much laughter ensued as to the possible connotations of such a bad omen, and they made me throw another one, which only bounced once. (but probably only the first one counted) Anyway, it was a beautiful day, and we walked for most of the day. All in all, a wonderful day trip. There are pictures on my yahoo photo album.