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| At the Sea We had a beautiful day here in Normandy this Sunday. It’s quite a contrast from the rest of the week’s weather (rainy and cold.) My roommate Nephi and I, along with our friend Laetitia, enjoyed an afternoon in Trouville walking, talking, and doing the café thing. Here are some pictures. 
view of trouville from bridge. 
retro bug!  "TROUVILLE!" 
by the seashore. 
shells. 
candid shot - cafe. (don't know these people.) | | |
| London Halloween and Such Having two weeks off for some catholic holiday, (All-Saints? - not sure) I hopped on the first Eurostar headed toward London, (yes, this train goes through an under water tunnel at very high speeds...I try not to think about it.) Anyway, I spent a wonderful two weeks with my dear friend Cecilia in her flat in Hackney. Here are some of my photos and stories: 
Cecilia and me. This is not Halloween, we just like to dress up!   This was at a 24 hour cafe in downtown London. We ended up here after two hours of walking around with Christian and Jonas looking for an inexpensive bar - apparently they don't exist in this part of town. However, we had a wonderful (sober) late night/early morning. We ordered these cute little bagel sandwiches and tea, but to Cecilia's dismay they were out of banoffe pie - the outrage!  
Christian exhausted at the "Dove", a local pub near Cecilia's pad. His exhaustion was likely brought on by the full-English (but vegetarian) breakfast we had just had (around 4 p.m.). Bubble and Squeak, beans on toast , and a suspicious-looking veggie sausage were all to blame.   The Working Man's Club -a real find. At the end of a very unanimated street, hiding in a High Mason's building is likely the coolest club in London. We danced all night to a Jazz/Rock-a-billy band then to a live d.j. who spun 50's and 60's obscurities. Good thing that I took this picture early on in the evening - my make-up had sweated off by the end of the night. I miss it already...
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| My Kids!  This is me and Manon, age 3. I hate to pick favorites, but how can you resist a sweet lil' thing like this? For english class I take half of each class at a time for thirty minutes each. However, Manon likes to go with me everytime and the teacher doesn't really mind. At this rate she'll be speaking English fluently by the time she's six!  This is Louise. She's a troublemaker but she's hillarious. This day, one of the student's father's came to class and prepared all different types of food to indroduce the kids to new and exotic tastes. Of course I tasted everything right along with them, from smoked salmon with lemon to creme caramel. Yum.
 These are the attention seekers in one of my "Grande Section" classes, (age 4-5.) We started our Halloween unit this day and the kids were supposed to be acting out the character who was on their flashcards, (see the witch?) Well, all was lost when I pulled the camera out. Look at these little hams. | | |
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Coco Chaton This is our new kitty. We named her after Coco Chanel who got her start here in Deauville (I've been told.) We found her through an anouncement on the internet and went to Lisieux (a nearby town) to pick her up on Wednsday. She was waiting for us, (with her human, of course) on the front steps of a big Cathedral in downtown Lisieux. She had a tough ride home and hasn't really adjusted yet. She's sweet but skiddish. Her favorite activities are: hiding, kicking all of the litter out of her litter box, and trying to drink our hot tea and wine. She's little, but a spitfire - like her namesake. | | |
| “Salut de Deauville!” or, “Holla from Deauville!” a quaint little Normandy town by the water with plenty of haute couture shopping, beaches, and no lack of annual events like the American Film Festival, which we took full advantage of! That being said, it is a bit, err, “calm” or borderline boring. I hear it will only get worse in the winter months - I’m ecstatic. So far,I’ve moved into my downtown apartment that is quite nice by student standards, pretty nice by French standards, and what could be called “charming” by American standards. (check out the pictures)  I have two roommates from Nashville, Catherine and Nephi – both super cool by anyone’s standards! However, we seem to be the youngest people in town other than our elementary school students -The population mean appears to be around 65. Not much partying yet, not outside of our house anyway. However, we have a neighbor Laetitia who is under 30, which is promising, and a boss, Ivan who is 28. You couldn’t ask for a cooler boss or a funny dude – he’s been pretty cool to hang out with.
Classes started last week. I usually work 9-noon at a kindergarten/early elementary school (ecole maternelle) then the afternoons at an older elementary school. The younger kinds are cute, but some are just little shit-heads. In fact, Friday this one little boy almost killed me! He started pulling on my scarf so hard that I could hardly breathe. I took him back to his classroom where he was lightly reprimanded. But for the most part the kids are somewhat well behaved and fun to teach. The days are long and exhausting, and our lesson plans are based on a National education outline, so we have to be pretty precise in what we teach. However, we all have Wednesdays off, and I have Thursday afternoons off! Yup, a 3 ½ day work week, or 15 ½ hours. Not bad, huh? We also get 4 2-week paid vacations, the first one’s coming up in October. I plan on going to London to visit one of my BFF’s Cecilia (Swedish,) and another friend that I met two years ago in France, Christian (German.) This weekend Catherine’s boyfriend from Aix-en-Provence is here for a visit. We all went out last night (save Nephi who was at his host family’s house in Caen for his b-day) with our neighbor Laetitia to a nice little Cuban bar in Trouville – the neighboring town that is only a 10 minute walk away. Tomorrow the three roomies are off to Paris for our medical visit for our “Carte de Sejour” (so that we’re legal!) and Bavo (the BF) is leaving for Aix. That’s all for now, but hopefully I’ll have some travels to tell you about soon, or at least some exciting stories! XOXO -Polly | | |
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