Interesting thing happened here on the French Riviera today. We had a snow day. Now, being from a southern state that gets some snow but not usually a lot I know that unprepared areas get a little skittish with the prospect of snow. Many a northern state folk make fun of us when we get out of a school for a little half inch dusting. However, southern France can beat that. Can you guess what a snow day looks like in Nice?? Rain. Ok, cold rain. That's right folks. Woke this morning to all the buses not running and although I did walk to school in the cold rain this morning, I taught no classes and the whole school was closed by noon. All without a single actual snowflake. Now snow is in the forecast for this afternoon and evening, but I've still only seen rain around here. I have not doubt however that the hills all around Nice are getting a nice dose.
Yesterday, by some luck, I also did not have to work. And instead of laying around the house and doing nothing like I have done today, I decided to take a 2 hour bus up into the hills to St. Etienne just to get some fresh air and enjoy some nice views. Well, I didn't know how nice of a view I had in store. The weather has been terrible all weekend, and so while that has meant nasty rain on the coast, it has meant plentiful amounts of fresh fluffy snow in the mountains. I left the palm trees of Nice just for a few hours to enter a winter wonderland. If I was much of a skier, this would most certainly be the time to go. I do actually hope to go try that sometime in the coming weeks.
Here are couple pics from my brief promenade in the snow.
Sometimes I think I live in paradise. Life here isn't perfect. It wouldn't be anywhere. But it is so beautiful. It has been in the 60's this week. Even here, that is uncharacteristically warm for January. I am training for a half marathon, so this morning I got up relatively early for a saturday morning and ran along the beach bike trail for over 8 miles to a neighboring town. When I finished my run I climbed onto the beach, kicked off my shoes and let cold sea water wash over my slightly blistered feat. Relaxing on the beach, the warm, bright sun drying my legs and feet, I relished in how awesome my body felt, and how awesome the sky and the sun and the sea felt around me. I drank in the accomplishment of my efforts as I admired the view of the snow capped hills and mountains to my left. These can't be seen from Nice, which is nestled too close to the hills to be able to get such a view. So that is the kind of place I live in. You can run past palm trees, then sit on the beach barefoot in a t-shirt and admire the snow in the not so distant distance. Later in the day I was talking with a french family I know, and they were telling me how in the right part of the year it is possible to go skiing in the morning and then go to the beach in the afternoon. Ha! This place is fantastic. The rest of the day included lunch, shoe shopping, promenading on a newly discovered beautiful location, cap d'antibes, which juts out into the mediterranean a bit and offers some more beautiful views and some great rocks to jump off of and swim when it gets a bit warmer, catching a bus back to Nice, then out to coffee and a surprisingly good french movie. Good day in something close to paradise.
Well, it certainly has been a while hasn't it. Oops. I should have known I would stink at updating a blog regularly. Well, so what should I say about the last month?
It has been mostly vacation. Again, one of those wonderful things about France. So over Christmas vacation I did some traveling in France and a tiny bit in Germany. Spent the first part of my trip in Le Havre where John lives. All of Northern France lived up to its reputation by being rainy and cold for the majority of the trip. Met my first hail in a while in Le Havre. But also saw some very cute little towns in the area that had managed to escape destruction during the wars and maintained some of their medieval charm. After Le Havre, we headed all the way west to Germany, where we stayed for a couple nights with a friend of mine that I met here in Nice. This was an awesome experience. At this point we were four Americans (we met up with other Harding grads, Derek and Brittany) proficient in French but hopeless in German. So we had a fun time staying with my friends family and trying to communicate in general. We ate some great bratwursts and Gluwein in the Christmas markets and also got to see some beautiful snowy mornings in our stay in the Black Forest. ( Home of such fairy tales as Hansel and Gretel. Also, the home of the CouCou Clock, which we very much enjoyed listening to in my friend's home. ) After our brief but lovely stay in Germany, we headed to Strasbourg which is kind of like the capital of Christmas in France. The city was beautiful and we enjoyed spending about two days just walking around it, enjoying the lights, markets, and decor and eating the regional specialty Flammekeuche. I prefer the Christmas markets in Germany just because I feel like they are kind of the real deal and France just mimics them. Also, they are more about food, and I love food. But the markets in Strasbourg were plentiful and fun to look at too. We thought about going ice-skating on the outdoor rink one night, but instead we just stood by the rink and did a running commentary on everybody else who was skating. This was a better use of our creativity and while we were totally the weirdos that stood by the rink for far too long, I believe we enjoyed ourselves a good deal more than we would have had we actually skated. After Strasbourg, we went to Derek and Brittany's place in Chaumont, France. A small, mostly uninteresting town, but still a nice place! We spent Christmas there with them. I went to my first ever Christmas mass on Christmas Eve. We had a nice Christmas feast on Christmas day. And then we spent a week being lazy and playing games. Great Christmas vacation. Final stop on the tour was Paris for New Years Eve. Paris is always beautiful and Christmas season is no exception. Rang in 2012 standing near the Eiffel tower and then walking on the Champs-Elysees. Then early morning train back to Nice. And to sunshine. :) And that is how we do Christmas Holiday here in France.
I've been back in Nice for a week now without too much exciting to tell. Back to teaching, and to planning the next adventure. Teaching is something I go back and forth on. I often feel quite convinced it is something I don't want to do, because it can make me nervous in ways that nothing else really can. I hate the responsibility and the need to be constantly prepared. I hate planning and preparing. In some jobs, (or in school, which is what I've done for the majority of my life) you screw up the only person you screw over is yourself. With teaching, you screw up and you screw over a bunch of kids. And more than that, for teaching a language to go well you need the cooperation of others. (Students, for example. Who happen to be moody teenagers. ) Don't get me wrong though, most of my students I like. And sometimes the days I most dread in the morning, are the days I come home the most energized by my classes. Now the reverse happens also. All in all, I'm still very intimidated by the profession, and I'm not sure it is for me. But there are good days that turn my head.
The babble about teaching is at least a bit related to other things that are on my mind. This program is a great experience, but it ends in 4 months and what happens then? Well, I know there will be about 2 months of continued travel after that, but then, once again, my life plans fall off a cliff. This week I took the necessary steps to reapply for the assistantship in France, but I won't find out til mid summer at the earliest if I have a spot. I don't think Europe is quite done with me. I am also considering applying for the same type of program in Spain. We'll see. We'll see. The only other news I think I have is that I have now been to the doctor in France, and it is such a different experience and system here. Cheaper, so that's nice. But less efficient to my American trained eyes, and also a bit more ridiculous. For example, I am running a half marathon in about two months, and before I can do that, I not only had to go get a general examination, but I also have to go visit a cardiologist before I can get a doctor to sign my little paper. What?? Maybe its not a good thing that in the States if you drop dead during a race it is really your own affair, but it is certainly less of a hassle.
