Un Début et Une Fin (a Beginning and an End)

After four beautiful weeks of family, friends, heat, and English, I went back to France for one more year.

My journey through the airport was tranquil (mostly because I’m a traveling PRO now!). When I found my departing gate, I realized it was the same gate that I left from last year. The reference in my diary proves that I was sitting and waiting in the same place at the same time only 1 year and 3 days before! Here, I took some time to reflect on the past and future before we boarded. This time, I was much less anxious because I knew I’d enjoy the upcoming year. I wasn’t headed to live with strangers and I could understand the language. Whew! That makes things A LOT easier.

We boarded and, magically, I fell asleep almost right away and stayed asleep for the whole flight despite the rough turbulence we felt while flying over Hurricane Irene. This sleep helped me adjust immediately to the time zone. No jetlag what-so-ever!

Max (my boyfrench) was waiting patiently to pick me up at my arrival gate at CDG and then he brought me to Chaumes where my family greeted me happily. The kids showed me their new clothes and we talked about their summer vacation. After dinner, I unpacked and hit the hay. Of course, I was still tired after 15 hours of travelling.

We started business as usual Monday morning. I’ll be keeping the kids all day for a week (God grant me strength!!) until school starts. This year Eliott’s starting middle school and will have to take the bus for an hour to and from school (which means getting up an hour earlier to come back an hour later)! He’ll have a half day on Wednesday instead of a day off like Zoe. What changes! Zoe will be in what we would call the 4^th grade. No big changes for her yet. Per usual, Alain and Caroline keep on trucking with work. Me, too; I’ll be taxi-ing, cooking, washing, and entertaining as usual. I'll continue with french school in October at a new, higher level! Also, this year I’ll be undertaking my PA school applications and potentially a job or volunteer position on the side. Due to the normalcy and boringness of everyday life and the extra work I’ll be doing, I’ve decided not to write the blog anymore. I wanted to do a blog with regular posts that could amuse you all but with this new schedule I just don’t think I’ll have anything amusing to say nor time to say it. However, if you are curious about me or my life, you can still email me (Christy.Cork@gmail.com) or stalk me on facebook! To all my loyal readers, thank you for making me feel special!

Take Care everyone! Keep in touch!

Le 4eme et le 14eme Juillet (The 4th and the 14th of July)

This post will be mostly pictures!
My 4th of July dinner went well.


Hamburgers with the adornment of American flags made by Eliott and I.






Classically, an apple pie. Pretty, huh? It's my first one ever!!







And it looks even better like this!!














Then 10 days later, France held it's "Fête Nationale" or Bastille Day. One big French party all day long. Since we had the day off, my girls and I went to the Champs de Mars to watch the fireworks. It was BEAUTIFUL. We arrived early in order to get a spot. So here are a series of pictures of the Eiffel Tour as the sunsets:

And the fireworks show was simply fantastic. The pictures do no justice to what I saw. Here is the closest I could get.

Fireworks are beautiful in the first place but then when they light up the silhouette of the Eiffel Tour... it's magical.



Here's a video of the finale of the show. Enjoy!

Things I LOVE about America

Well, a little know fact about the fourth of July is that it is only celebrated in the US (shocker). Thus this coming Monday is no holiday for me. I don’t even have any American friends over here to celebrate with on the weekend! However, I plan to have an American dinner with my family: burgers, fries, and apple pie! Mmmmm.

One other thing I want to do for my small celebration of this event, is tell you all my favorite things about our dearest U.S. of A. So here goes:

1) First and foremost, America is my home. Some by chance and some by toil, we came to be born in this privileged place. It is engrained in us and cannot be erased out of our hearts and minds no matter how far we go or how long we stay away.

2) Our history- Yes, we are young in comparison to most, but our history is still very rich. We were born out of the dissenters of popular opinion who were willing to take a risk and today we strive to keep this spirit alive. We rose up to from modest beginnings to do great things like walk on the moon and invention of the internet.

3) Our military- We can debate about it how big or small or where they should go or who can be admitted but the principle is that these people have chosen to serve to protect us. They are the wall that separates us from enduring fear and allows us to live in tranquility.

4) Music and entertainment- American music and movies and TV are EVERYWHERE because it’s the best.

5) Spaciousness and Diversity- We are one big nation. To give you an idea, France is about the size of Texas. As a result of this size, we live spaciously. We have large, airy houses with immense, open yards with huge, roomy cars. To go from one side of the country to another takes 5 hours… by airplane… traveling at 500 miles per hour! As due to this separation, we become more and more diverse in each region. When people ask me what it’s like in the States, I tell them what I know about the South because I’m not entirely sure how it is other places. We’re all different but the same.

I’m very curious to hear what it is you love about America, so write a comment!

Finally, my dearest friends and my darling family, I wish you a Happy Fourth of July. Drink a glass for me and stay safe. I’ll be home soon!

(Literal Translation)

French
Avoir le Coeur Au Bord Les Lèvres (Ah vwar luh kur oh boar lay lev ruh)
Literal translation: To have the heart at the side of the lips
Meaning: To be hungover

A toute a l’heure (Ah toot ah luhr)
Literal Translation: To all at the hour
Meaning: See ya later!

Prendre la Tête (Pron drah lah tet)
Literal Translation : To take the head
Meaning: Annoying/ Playing mind games (usually romantically)

Ca veut dire (Sah vuh deer)
Literal Translation: It wants to say
Meaning: It means

Tout le monde (Too luh mond)
Literal Translation: All the world
Meaning: Everybody
Variation: Beaucoup de monde ->Lots of the World -> Crowded

Coup de file (Coo duh feel)
Literal Translation: Cut of line
Meaning: Phone call
Variations: Coup de Main -> Cut of hand -> helping hand
Coup de vent -> …wind -> gust of wind
Coup d’Etat -> …state -> overthrowing the government

English—sometimes when I explain my own language I get confused myself with words like these

Parking Spot
First of all where did we get the word parking from? Like a park? What does that have to do with cars? And then together, spot? Like the dog? Like a small mark on something? What? I propose we call them “temporary car homes” from now on.

Somebody
It’s the “body” part that gets me with this one. For example: “We are looking for somebody.” A body, not a person. I propose to change it to “somehuman”.

O’Clock
“It’s 9 o’clock”. O’ Clock? O’? Of? It’s 9 of clock? What? It’s just nonsense, what we say there. Proposition 3:

Pay Attention
How much do I owe him? Let’s say “focus” instead?

Getting into the habit
Does this mean we are all nuns? I have no proposition for this one.

Ma Famille d'Acceuil (My Host Family)

It’s getting harder to write things. What can I say? Life is normal and we do just about the same thing every day. I thought you might be curious about what my family is like and how everyday life works. So here it is:

Eliott is 10 and Zoé is 8 with parents Alain and Caroline. Eliott is very smart; he loves school and he does well. He also has an aesthetic eye. His room is always clean and arranged just so with his legos posed in various scenes. It cracks me up when he stands in front of the mirror, checking out how he looks before he goes off to school. One time we had guest over, including a young girl about his age. On his way to meet her to play outside, he stopped in front of the mirror and asked “Does this vest look better zipped or unzipped?” Then he decided for himself it would be the unzipped option and ran off with confidence. He is known as the comedian in his group of friends and as much as he says he hates it (only because he doesn’t want to practice) he loves to play guitar and he is pretty good at it, too. Zoe is not like Eliott. Her room is a disaster and luckily for her, her parents do not require that it be kept clean. She is a star. If she I not the center of attention, she is not happy. She will talk to you about anything and everything. Bless her, she is terrible at joke telling but when she really laughs, it is the sound of pure innocence and you can’t help but laugh yourself. I believe that she is as smart as her brother but she just has no interest in those things and so school is a bit of a struggle. I spend much more time with her doing homework and re-explaining English than I do with Eliott. At times she has this air of maturity far beyond her 8 years. And usually this is pretty funny. Yesterday evening, she contemplated out loud her choice of dessert with this particular air: “I’d very much enjoy a Dannette Crusti (chocolate pudding with crispy balls)… but then again…*as she carefully changes her gaze in the direct of the refrigerator then the freezer*… perhaps I’d prefer an ice cream. Hmm, yes, it will be the ice cream I believe.”

Caroline is reserved and quiet. She works the solid 9-6 and doesn’t always get home in time for dinner. Often we talk over tea after dinner. She loves to exercise and does a lot of sports. She is a good teacher for both me and the kids. Alain is very intelligent and runs his own company among other jobs. This allows him to have a flexible schedule and is home much more than Caroline. He loves being outside in his garden and will be out there in the dead of winter. He is a good teacher like Caroline and has taught me how to cook the French way (or at least his way).

Our week is like this: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday I wake up to get the kids up and ready for school. Breakfast is an options for the kids as the philosophy in the house is to only eat when you are hungry. But teeth are brushed by 8:15 and we go to school. I take the train to Paris for my school (to learn French) 3 days a week and I have a free day on Friday. I use my free day to do laundry!! I get back from school a couple of hours before I get the kids, so I use my time to organize dinner or emails or whatever. Each day after school there are different activities: dance, tennis, guitar, piano, music theory, etc… I make dinner and after homework, activities, and showers we eat together. Wednesday is the day the kids don’t have school. They have no idea how good they have it. Every two days you get a break from school. SHEESH! For me, Wednesdays can be awesome or awful. Normally, they sleep in till 10 or so and then watch some TV and invite friends over or go to a friend’s house. Playing with friends takes the pressure off of me and I can do whatever. But if they both have friends or both have nothing to do—that’s when I have to get to work! By Friday we are all happy that it’s the weekend. Usually, I spend most of the weekend in Paris with my girls or Chalifert, a little city not far from my little city, with my boyfrench. Then I come back by Sunday in time for dinner to catch up on the weekend happenings and prepare for the coming week.

All-in-all life is good and I feel lucky to be in such a great situation. Have a good day!

Rome Part 2

The Good
Our first official sight was the coliseum. It’s impressive now-a-days because it’s big and incredibly old. Our handy audio guides told us that in its heyday, it was completed with polished marble. After the empire collapsed, it became a quarry and much of the marble from there ended up in the Vatican Museums and St. Peter’s Cathedral. So in the pictures, it looks lopsided and destroyed thus you have to imagine the benches upon which thousands of Romans sat. In the center you can see the “basement”. This is the place underneath the arena where weapons, gladiators and animals were kept and prepared.

Just next door is the ruins of the Roman Forum. We didn’t have any sort of guide so I am at a loss of fun historical facts for you. You can see columns that still stand as well as their fallen counterparts who are scattered all over. There is a temple for the Roman God or Gods that is also the tomb of Nero. Or at least that’s what I was led to believe. I don’t know because there was no helpful information was written in anything but Italian. (Oops getting too negative! Sorry!) In the same area as the Forum was the Palatine which (again I’m making an educated guess here) is the area of the gardens and homes of the Caesar’s. Like normal, all that is left is bits of wall surrounded by rubble. However! The archeologists had uncovered the house of Caesar Augustus (the Caesar who ruled during the life and death of Jesus). It, too, is mostly rubble but as it was underground, the walls are more complete and you can make out rooms and tile floors. One special annex has some of the original frescoes!

Our next big sight was the Vatican! On our way there, we were stopped by people selling tours. Our experience at the Roman Forum taught us that tours are worth their price, plus we would get a student discount! Little did we know that this was the beginning of a fiasco. The woman was selling tours in English and her particular company couldn’t offer tours in Spanish or French but another just around the corner could. This company had a tour in Spanish and in order to catch my tour at the other company I left Sara there to handle that. The tours would begin at the same time, so we figured they would end at the same time, too. Here’s where the fiasco begins. The end of the tours would be in the Sistine Chapel. Ok, we’d meet there. Super. I run off to catch my tour in time and enjoy an informative tour on the Vatican Museums and the Sistine chapel. They explain Michelangelo’s most famous painting well outside of the Sistine Chapel because, what I didn’t realize and part of the demise of our genius plan to meet in the Chapel, is that it is PACKED with people. PACKED!! My tour group arrived there and I saw the crowds and started to panic. ‘How will I find Sara in all this mess? Will they kick me out after a certain amount of time?’ On top of that, the doors to the basilica had opened allowing only tours in. My tour went in but without me because I stayed to wait for Sara. I waited for over an hour to no avail. Meanwhile, Sara had had an issue with her credit card and missed her tour entirely. After she ran halfway around the city trying to find a working ATM, she thought ‘it’s not such a big deal, I’ll head over to the chapel, and meet Christy there without doing a tour.’ Not so, young lady. To get to the chapel you must go through all of the museums. To go through the museums without a tour, you must wait in a 2 hour line and pay 18 euros THEN find your own way to the chapel from inside. She started to panic, too. Trying to find a better way to do that, she talked to some policemen outside. Because she’s beautiful, one police officer gave her a free ticket and brought her in the special way so that she didn’t have to wait in line (this comes up to help us the next day, too). When she finally got in, I was not there. We figure that about the same time she was entering the chapel, I was leaving it. You see, all of this could have been avoided if I had brought my cell phone that day. Thinking we wouldn’t be apart, I thought I wouldn’t need it and it would only waste space. So after an hour of waiting, I left to go back to the hostel to get it to send Sara a message to tell her where I was. She received the message but didn’t see it for an hour. But finally, she knew and headed back. Fiasco ended. All in all it’s not so bad to be waiting for hours in the Sistine Chapel. I mean, I can think of worse places. However, you’re not allowed to take photos as it’s copyrighted by the company who restored it in the ‘80’s. Yet, there are still the idiot tourists who ignore the signs written in every language (the only one in all of Rome) that say NO PHOTO and blatantly raise the camera to their faces and, clickety-click, take a picture with a flash no less. So while in the chapel, you hear loud, angry guards yelling “NO PHOTO!!!!!!!!!!!” about a thousand times. Of course, I couldn’t leave without a photo, so I took one but I did it secretly and stealthily. It’s not very good but, never-the-less, it’s proof that I was there. We met up later that afternoon and laughed about the whole thing.

That evening we met up with a friend of mine from Scotland, Massimo. As much as I was frustrated by the stranger-Italians on the streets, all of my Italian friends are very polite and hospitable. Massimo is no exception. We met in the most fun, lively square and he took us on a night tour to the lesser known parts of the city and took us to the best pizza place and a great bar, too. He helped us plan the remainder of our trip and advised me on Pompeii. He was a fabulous guide and showed us a lovely evening. The next evening we went to a restaurant that he suggested and it was DELICIOUS and really cool. Thanks Massimo!!

I had thought about going to Pompeii the next day but then, after Massimo’s advice, decided there were more things to do in Rome. Plus I wanted to sleep in and not catch an early train (it was my vacation, after all)! We headed back to the Vatican, this time determined to stick together, WITH cell phones to take a tour of St. Peter’s Basilica. The man who had helped Sara the day before bumped into us there. We asked about the Easter Mass and how that works so he let us in and gave us invitations to the mass then led us past security and straight up to the Basilica! YEAY!!! We missed 2 hours of waiting in line AND got a golden ticket (literally) into Easter Mass with the POPE! The Basilica is rather impressive. Just after the entrance is Michelangelo’s Pieta, a marvelous work done when he was only 20-something. The Basilica was built on the graves of Christian martyrs as well as the supposed grave of St. Peter. In the center of the basilica is his tomb or at least monument. All around are statues that mark the tombs of many Popes. If you do one thing in Rome, I suggest that you take a tour of the museums, Sistine Chapel, and the Basilica!

We were to leave Sunday afternoon and by Saturday we had just a few “must-dos” left on our list. In the morning, Sara went to re-do taking a tour at the Vatican. I spent the morning relaxing, packing some, journaling about the trip, and making a picnic lunch. We met in a piazza that afternoon and dined in the gardens of the Medici’s. We went to see Piazza D’Espagne which is like Montmartre because of hordes of tourists lounging on the stairs. The piazza guides you to THE street in Rome for the rich and famous. All of the fabulous brands are there. The brands that young au pairs only dream of! We went to the Pantheon which is also a very impressive structure. For being over 3000 years old, it is very well preserved and rather impressive in its size and design. The dome covering the building is still the original stone! It also houses the resting place of Raphael, not the ninja turtle but the renaissance artist. There’s a 360 video in the pictures, if you want a little tour.
By far the coolest day of the trip was Sunday. I am not catholic but Sara is so she was the one who suggest going to Easter mass Sunday morning. I thought it would be cool, too so we both went. In order to get good seats, we arrived at the Vatican at 7 AM. We waited in line till 8:30 when they opened the gates. 8:30 was almost 2 hours early for the mass. We got some pretty sweet seats. We knew that the Pope would drive through a certain path so we picked out seats close to there. The process started at 10:15 and eventually the Pope rode by and was not more than 2.5 meters from us! He’s very old... The mass was read mostly in Italian but certain readings were done in all different languages. The pope wished the world “Happy Easter” in 60 different languages and I caught his English and French versions on video (although you can’t actually understand what he says). So we left after, grabbed our bags and headed to the airport to catch our plane to Paris.

We had such a lovely trip, but we were ready to head back to a country where we understand the language and customs. Luckily enough, my boyfrench came to the airport to pick me up and take me home (the French one)! So here I am, back in my little city with my family and all goes well. Till next time!!

Pictures here:

Rome

Rome Part 1

I like to judge cities on how much I want to live there. Paris, for example, I liked so much I came back to stay for a couple years. Yet, for Rome, I probably won’t be returning any time soon. Or ever. Don’t get me wrong, though! Sara and I saw and experienced things that are once in a lifetime if you are lucky! We took away happy memories overall from our trip. But as much as I avoid being negative in my blog, I am going to be honest and tell the good AND the bad of Rome.

We’ll start with the bad and then end on the good.

The Bad
In general, the city and its people seem to detest the tourists who are in fact the large majority of financial benefactors to the city. The organization of the city is for the Romans and not for the tourists. Basically this means that if you don’t already know what to do and you can’t read Italian, then you’re screwed. You are left with no other choice but to ask someone to help you. This person will most likely a) not speak English, b) want to sell you something, c) want to hit on you, or d) be annoyed that you don’t already know and project that they think you are a waste of time and space. For example, when we first arrived in Rome we wanted to go straight to the tourist information office as it was sure to be in the train station and we needed maps and suggestions and other things like that. We began, logically, by following the signs posted throughout the train station. This led us literally in circles and nowhere near the office. A man approached us asking if we were looking for information. As this is a city dominated by tourists, I believed it was possible that the office sent out satellite helpers to reduce the line in the office and catch the tourists lost in the train station. During our conversation, it quickly became apparent that he wanted to sell us tours. We didn’t need a tour. We didn’t want a tour. We just wanted to go to the flippin’ tourist office but when we asked for directions he said it was far and refused to tell us how to get there and kept selling his tour until we simply walked away. Ugh. Ok, take two with the signs. Nowhere to be found. Mind you, we are carrying all of our things and it was our past dinner time. After a good 20 minutes, we stopped in a store to ask where in GOD’S NAME is the Tourists Information Office. In a tone of voice that suggested he believed us to be simpleton’s, he told us it was on platform 25. First of all, why is it on a platform? Secondly, why couldn’t the signs have pointed us in that direction???? THEN! On platform 25, it was still difficult to find, and there is no clear sign to say “ INFORMATION HERE!!!” but by the grace of God we find the tiny little office tucked away in a place that a tourist would otherwise never find. We waited in line and talked to the girl at the counter who really had better things to do than to talk to us. UGH!!!!

But this is where I stop with negativity. I won’t tell you about the other experiences similar to the one above that occurred in restaurants and tour offices. We won’t go into how everyone on the street approaches you to sell you something, steal something, or give you the up and down with a ever so creepy “ciao bella” (or variation of that). We won’t tell you the crazy stories about our ill-managed hostel. Instead, I’m going to take a deep, calming breath and recount the fabulous things we saw and did.

(I made a second post because the Good half is rather lengthy!)
Pictures Here:

Rome