Taking It Easy

Greetings, all! I went on a day trip to Beauvais, which lies just to the north of Paris, yesterday with the EAAEE (club for foreign students/teaching assistants), which is why I didn’t write to you as I would have liked to. I know that I’m hopelessly behind in relation to the present day, but I kind of don’t care anymore. The writing process is a purifying one for me, and I think that having accounts for each of these days – some of which are accompanied by photos – will be an invaluable treasure to me in the future, Lord willing, especially because my handwriting in my evening journal is sometimes so illegible that even I have trouble understanding it. Plus, when I return from traveling abroad, the hardest part for me is always making sense of what I've just experienced. Sometimes I feel like I'm just now processing trips that I took two years ago, for example. 

 So I think it will be useful to have another record of what I did with more of an effort than I put into my brief, handwritten, nightly journal entries, even if it takes me a while to get through this process. I’ll try to give you hints about what I’m up to at present in these introductory sections, as in the first sentence of this one. And I’ll also try to prioritize blogging as much as possible, but I’ve got to plan my lessons, obviously, and I’ve got to take advantage of being in France while I’m here. That being said, here’s a look at what I was doing at the beginning of this month. Hope you enjoy the brief stories and the plethora of photos (relative to some of my posts).

Peace and love, Morgann :) 

Hailstorm aftermath near the doors to our garbage storage areas

Thursday, November 1 – Checks? + Hailstorm + Eating “on credit” + Hurricane Sandy

·         Feeling mildly sick so took it easy all day, as indicated by my 3-hour afternoon nap, for example. (Remember: school was not in session this week since today was All Saints’ Day.) I think it was due to the fact that I’d spent the past weekend in freezing Houlgate in Normandy only to return to cold weather in Paris. My body often likes to catch colds with changing seasons. Perfect day for blogging, though.
·         Talked about how checks aren’t popular anymore at breakfast with my German kitchenmate who also works as a teaching assistant but in an elementary school. Apparently they’re almost non-existent in Germany, so she was surprised when we were paid using that method by the school district for our first month.
·         Looked into possibility of attending summer classes at Carver College (formerly Carver Bible College) in Atlanta, which I’ve thought about doing for a long time. I actually got pretty close to registering the summer that my grandmother passed away, which was the summer between high school and college. It would technically be possible for me to complete Summer Session I prior to the start dates of the Master’s programs that I’m applying to (I mean, “to which I’m applying”…I’m an English teacher now!) that begin during the summer (i.e. Stanford and Northwestern).
·         Planning to leave in search of lunch when a crazy hailstorm began. Thankfully, it was brief, as was the one I’d witnessed at Houlgate. Took a photo of the aftermath on my way out of our building complex. That reminded me that I hadn’t really shown you what the courtyard area through which I access our building looks like [SEE ADDITIONAL PHOTOS AT END OF TEXT FOR THIS DAY: It saves me time if I don’t integrate the photos with the text, especially if they don’t have anything to do with what I’m writing about anyway].
·         Walked around for a little while looking for a relatively cheap place to eat that I hadn’t been to before, but the weather and my cold didn’t allow this activity to last very long. Took the relatively empty metro (holiday) 2 stops up the street to a familiar spot where the cook serves Greek sandwiches, burgers, and crêpes in the same restaurant, which is a remarkable combination. He lectured some boys who came in to eat about not disturbing his clients with too much noise. They wanted to know if he would let them eat “on credit” instead of paying as they giggled. Two weeks of vacation from school gave them way too much free time if you ask me.
·         Facebook chat with my brother Michael, who couldn’t go to work because of the so-called Frankenstorm that wreaked havoc on NYC. We compared notes on the subway systems in his city and mine (Yeah, I’ll claim Paris now!). It’s hard to imagine Paris without a functioning subway system as parts of Manhattan found themselves in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. I pray that the people who were displaced or who lost loved ones as a result of this natural disaster will find comfort in these words from Psalm 33:20-22, next to which I wrote in my Bible “God is my happy place” during my trip to Xela, Guatemala in July 2010: “We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name. May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you.” 

Looking out to street from within our building complex courtyard: trash on left, building mailboxes on right (not my individual one, but the residence hall's, for example)

180-degree turn from previous photo, looking up at building that I see upon entering the complex from the street; my actual building is on the other side of an interior courtyard

Pan down from above photo: hail-covered pathway leading to 2nd of 4 doors that I have to go through before I'm actually in my residence hall facility

 

My message and their notes of appreciation

Friday, November 2: No candy corn corrections + Old Man and the Sea challenges + Feeling rich

·         Started looking into possible cities in France to visit during the latter half of my vacation. Why did I wait until this moment to begin planning a trip for the following week? Primarily because I’m a procrastinator. But also because I ain’t have no money to be traveling until I got my school district check on the 31^st. At this point, I realized that I could actually go somewhere!
·         Speaking of the 31^st, part of the care package that my family had sent me a few days in advance included several packets of candy corn for Halloween (which we don’t really celebrate, but my mom just likes sending me candy in care packages). So on Halloween I put the extra packets that I didn’t want on the kitchen table and left a note on the whiteboard as an explanation. It basically said: “My mom sent me some traditional candies (candy corn) from the United States. They’re in the pink freezer bag on the table. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough individual packets for everyone, but feel free to taste them at least!”
o   I took a picture on this day to show you that my kitchenmates appreciated the gesture, as indicated by their expressions of thanks in French and English using markers and magnets (Thanks, Mom!). Some of them had never eaten candy corn before.
o   Also, two of the French ones commented that I didn’t make any grammatical errors in my written note at all even though they had searched for some (LOL). And they definitely aren’t afraid to correct you if you write something on the board in French that is incorrect. I’ve seen it happen.
o   Used this occasion to take a lot more kitchen photos since I still haven’t managed to upload photos successfully to this platform, and I’ve only shown you one view of the table up until now. [SEE ADDITIONAL PHOTOS AT END OF TEXT FOR THIS DAY.]
·         Tutored the 12^th grader from the Baptist church that I attend in English again. This time I was a little early, and she was a little late, so I looked at the bilingual section of the library where we meet and chose a few books/short story collections that she and I might want to look at together. We ended up reading/discussing 2 pages of The Old Man and the Sea in an hour.
o   She asked lots of questions about vocabulary, which sometimes required a dictionary since my brain couldn’t always come up with translations quickly enough or at all (how exactly do you say “skiff” instead of just “boat” in French?)
o   I also stopped after every paragraph to see if she knew what was going on, which she often didn’t. But I helped her see how to figure out what was happening using the words that she knew and putting the pieces together. So she got it by the end.
o   I think I read this book in 8^th grade in America, so perhaps it was a stretch to include within the books that I presented as possibilities for us to work on since this is a foreign language for her. But it was certainly a challenging mental exercise.
·         Today I did go to a different place for what was supposed to be my “third meal” as per my normal four-meals-a-day routine, but I ended up being too full to eat a real dinner later. It was an Asian buffet restaurant right by the metro stop that I often use, including today when I returned from tutoring.
o   Like yesterday, it was striking that there were kids present during what would normally be school hours, but this time I’m pretty sure they were the children of the owners rather than potential “clients,” so they just read and played handheld video games quietly unless one of the clients (a regular?) spoke to them.
o   Meal + dessert for €5.50 isn’t bad at all. I fell into the trap of adding a drink because I almost always drink water and wanted something different, so that brought my total to €6.90. Still, it would be easy to pay two or three times that for lunch in a sit-down (full-service) restaurant at many places. [Stay tuned for my trip to Bordeaux.]
·         Stopped at Office Depot to buy a file folder to organize some of the papers that were starting to pile up on my desk, chest, and floor. Also got an agenda, which I’d been meaning to get for a while since I don’t have a smartphone in which to store important dates.
·         Went to the ATM and wasn’t given the option of choosing the denominations I wanted, for once, so I ended up with a €50 note instead of the €10 and €20 ones that I normally prefer because I tend to spend very small amounts of money at once. Took a photo when I got back to my room just to feel like I was rich and decided to share it with you in case you didn’t know what euros look like. But for anyone who’s reading this and wanting to mug me, you typically won’t find me roaming around Paris with even this much cash on me.
·          Stayed up late, but only because I took a nap pretty late in the evening and then wanted to blog. So no all-night parties for me. For now, I was still nursing myself back to good health. All in good time. [Stay tuned for U.S. Election night/morning in Paris.]
 

All of our cooking appliances are in this photo - stove, microwave, toaster, toaster oven; the only oven for the whole building of 90 women is in the common room downstairs; by contrast, 13 of us share this kitchen with no problems

My cubby that locks with a key

My shelf (middle) in the pantry that doesn't lock

Pantry next to other fridge (not mine) that leaks

Showing you the individual fridge system

Looking out the window by the table

Note the radio and reading materials

There was a phase when everyone tried to translate phrases into as many languages as possible for about a week

Most of the rooms in the building have icons to let you know what they are

Asian food for lunch; seed-covered dessert was interesting

 

 

Saturday, November 3 – “Decorative paper” + Studying labels + Skype with birthday girl + Mid-blog dessert craving

·         First things first: wrote on my sister Mallory’s wall for her birthday right after my morning devotion.
·         Unsuccessful effort to find stationary to write to my pen pal (you know who you are!) in the “corner stores” (« bazars ») near me. Kept asking for “decorative paper for writing letters” since I wasn’t sure of the right word to use, but all the store owners shook their heads. The nicer places that I thought might actually have had stationary were closed because of the holiday. But I at least found a place that had a rack of birthday cards in French for just about every specific age, so I decided that that would be fun to send. (She’s already received it, by the way, so I’m not spoiling any surprises here.)
·         Long grocery store outing, especially because I wanted to buy some household items to clean the sink area in my room and had to study the labels carefully to make sure I didn’t buy the wrong thing and get charged for messing up what doesn’t belong to me as a tenant in the residence hall. French is everywhere!
·         Went to the common room to look in-depth at possible train itineraries to some of the cities in France I was considering visiting the following week, before…
·         Skype session with the family, especially the birthday girl. She had already received my flowers even though it was still relatively early in the day their time. I was happy to be able to witness her excitement for myself, although the actual card and gift that I’d sent her from France wouldn’t arrive until Monday, one postal business day in excess of my two-weeks-in-advance window. Also glad to see that she was the same old Mallory even though she’s getting older.
·         Blogged after dinner, as usual. Had a craving for dessert crêpe, though, so I interrupted my typically-calm evening routine to return to the place around the corner from me that I’d found on 10/19 where I knew that I could get this classic French item during the evening hours. And, as one of my co-workers at the McCleskey-East Cobb YMCA summer 2008 basketball camp exclaimed after eating some fast-food that a friend brought him during lunch: “That hit the SPOT!”