anita

The Christmas holidays zipped by. I escaped Bourges on the 17th (December), hours before a mild snow brought much of France to a screeching halt; this made especially apparent when Loreto made her own sojourn to Paris the next day, and was hours delayed getting in due to the gust of cold air and light flurry-like weather. The three of us went to Versailles on Saturday, and by Sunday Loreto was on the move, continuing on to Switzerland to spend the holidays with family (that she had never met, but family all the same!). Julien and I were left, then, to tranquilly walk through the Christmas markets on the Champs Elysees and at the "Denfense" (the business district) for the rest of the week, in preparation for upcoming holidays.

On the 23rd we received spectacular news that Julien's sister, her husband, and their just three-month-old baby, would be making it to France for Christmas after all, a plan that was well in place for months before bureaucratic humdrum had put a damper on it. Julien's parents drove to Charles de Gaulle airport at 3am Christmas morning and brought back the new family in time for Julien and my 10am wake-up. The holiday, then, was filled with much joy and crying (the crying due to the baby), and we sat down to a typical multi-course French Christmas meal at Julien's aunt-and-uncle's house (which is just behind Julien's parent's house..the distance of about two backyards away). Having completed this two-hour rendez-vous called "eating," and stuffed with good food, good wine, and good cheer, we opened the presents spread across two tables (strangely enough there isn't so much the custom of putting presents under the tree). I had gifted Julien a ukulele, he had given me a guitarlele (it's a small guitar) leaving us quite amused with the similarity in our gift ideas.  Nightfall upon us, we were all of a sudden back to eating soup and different cutlery before heading out, making the 45-second drive back to Julien's house. The next day was a repeat eating-wise as the parents of Julien's sister's husband were coming to meet the baby and have lunch, so Christmas Round Two was had on the 26th. The other grandparents, then, took the travelers back to their house that evening, leaving the house strangely quiet after all the bustle of the previous day.

By the 28th, Julien and I headed back to Montrouge in anticipation of the arrival of four of my friends from Madison (Terri, Shawn Au, Rio, and Abby-girl). On the 29th Julien and I arrived at the airport and were pleasantly shocked to find each of them had brought just one fairly small backpack for their two-week stay. Just a quick overview of what we did: we walked through most of the touristy areas in Paris, spent a day at the Louvre, Eiffel Tower for New Year's (a pickpocket's haven), Montmatre, up Sacre Coeur, more touristy walking around, and before we knew it, Monday was upon us and the friends were off to London for the week and I to Bourges.

Tuesday I made my way back up to Montrouge after class (as I have Wednesdays free) and Julien and I wanted to organize the house a bit, spend some time together...with the idea that I would drive back to Bourges early Thursday morning. Thursday morning we got the car, got gas, I dropped Julien back off at his apartment, and I started off, back to Bourges. It started to snow but I thought "I'm from Wisconsin, this will be no problem."

Wrong.

Though I still maintain that the French are generally weak in the driving department when it comes to snow, I feel slightly more sympathetic having now been faced with what it means for drivers when it snows in France. Traffic on the interstate, usually 110kph, was at a 20kph crawl, and I was among them, not daring to go any faster through the snow that was building up on the roads. "Salage en cours" ("Salting in process") blinked out from all sorts of billboards, but these salt trucks were definitely not passing by my interstate..and where is the plow?  Realizing I wouldn't be in Bourges in time and finding out the school buses had been canceled in Bourges anyway, I made my way back to Montrouge in the continually falling snow. I will just say that it was quite an adventure to get back; I had to pass a semi that had just spun out in front of me ("spinning out" at slow speeds at least), getting off the interstate on barely visible exits, the whole deal, with not a plow in sight. I returned to Julien's apartment, having traveled all of 30km in 2 hours, but also with a new-found sympathy for the winter drivers in France.

The weekend returned, as did the friends, a little more touring and then they were off, back to the States. It was good time and great to have a little bit of home come to visit.

Now that the winter holidays have passed, I'm back to the grind, as they say, helping my students navigate through the confusing avenues of what makes up a short story. This week we've been working on horror/paranormal short stories, as that seems to at least capture their interest. As we read through a story, I write the words up on the board that my students say they don't understand and then we try to figure out how to translate either a)by me acting the verb out, b) me explaining the word or phrase, finding a synonym, etc or even c) finding the French word. It has been quite a game of charades as I act out a whole variety of verbs, my role as teacher having shifted slightly to "theater comic". One may find me crouching next to tables to explain "He caught the edge of the hole in his hands..." or you may perhaps catch me sitting on the floor before jumping up and dashing off, all in an attempt to explain "scrambled". I've had quite a time explaining the difference between "make out the figure in the darkness" and simply "making out"; or explaining the verb "scramble" and then try and think about why we call them "scrambled eggs" (they aren't trying to get anywhere quickly, are they?); or defining the term "pitch black" as "very black", but "remember! 'pitch' by itself does not mean 'very'!" But we have fun and we have a nice exchange of learning French and English words alike :)

Peace,

annemary