Leith (in English)

After spending a week cut-off from all civil forms of communication while trapped in the snow with a bunch of French sixth-graders, I returned this week to the land where my love of travel and life abroad all began: England. 

For the holidays, I'm spending a full two weeks with an absolutely lovely family who's become closer than family to me over the past few years.  With my sister in tow, we're all planning on spending the next few cold, snowy, holiday cheer-filled days exploring the beautiful English Dales and stuffing our mouths with chips and wine until I have to waddle back over the French border come January.

Granted, I love France and am even growing used to French culture, but there's something about spending time with something a bit more familiar and comfortable over the holidays...  Of course, given that my own family and boyfriend are 6,000 expensive miles across the map, my surrogate English family is a comforting memory of when I first fell in love with living life on the other side of the Atlantic. 

As an added bonus, for the first time in three months I can greet people on the street in English, crack jokes and actually be understood, and just sit back and relax by the Christmas tree as the snow drifts by the window.   But nothing could possibly top the feeling of watching the made-for-t.v. movie on the telly about England's Fattest Man and his alcoholic nurse, con-artist manager and pregnant runaway friend who force-feeds him healthy food to make him lose weight (and thereby his only means of making money).  No one does heartwarming Christmas programming like the English. 

Man, it's good to be home away from home.

Parlez-vous anglais?

Part of the job description of being an English assistant in France, it seems, is being laughed at when I speak French (because of my accent), laughed at when I speak English (because of my accent), and laughed at when I talk about Ameircan Christmas traditions (still can't figure out why this is deserving of laughter, but whatever).  So, cette semaine (set suh-mene: this week), I decided to give my students a taste of their own médicament (meh-dee-ka-mehn: medicine): chants de Noël (shant duh no-ell: Christmas carols) sung together in chorus and original Christmas stories using brand-new English vocab.  The result?  My ultimate form of revenge: a chance to laugh at them for once.  On the inside, of course.

Here is one of my favorite Christmas stories, written by a group of three 17 year-old boys:

"Once upon a time, Santa Claus was distributing gifts for children with his reindeers.  He stopted in a pub and he can't leave because he was too drunked.  Elves helpt him to continue and he managed to finish the distibuting."

Doesn't that story just make you all warm and fuzzy inside?  After all the stress I've experienced these past few weeks between moving, Christmas shopping, and preparing for this week's week-long séminaire anglais (sem-een-ar ahn-glay: English Retreat) with a group of 50 sixth-graders in the mountains, something about this story has just inspired in me the true meaning of Christmas: Santa in a bar getting drunk with his elves.  If Santa did exist, I'm pretty sure that this is a more realistic version of how Christmas would réussir (ray-oo-seer: pan out).  Needless to say, these students definitely got an A+ for effort.

Grenoble

You can't say I didn't try.  I gave it two months and a lot of hope, but last week I finally decided I'd had enough of small town living.  I'm a city girl at heart, and after spending an amazing weekend with Andrew exploring Lyon and Grenoble, I decided to move into a quaint and quirky French apartment near the Stade des Alpes in the center of Grenoble, and along with it a big cut in my spending money.  Mais tant pis, c'est la vie en la belle France (may tahn-t pee, say lah vee on leh bell Frahn-s: But too bad, that's life in beautiful France).

The truth was, I was afraid that if I didn't move soon no one would ever want to talk to me again.  Life in La Côte Saint André brought out a whole new breed of pessimist in me that I didn't even know existed. So, I'm really thinking of my relocation as a mental health investment.  Don't get me wrong: La Côte is just as full of friendly people and pretty rolling hills as it ever was.  But I've spent my entire life in small towns.  I needed a change of pace.  I'm one of those people who gets a secret thrill out of over-crowded shops, busy traffic, and strangers walking down the street who never wave or say hi.  Unfortunately, this sort of high-quality lifestyle is usually reserved for high-population areas, and definitely doesn't exist in small-town France.



This sort of urban gruffness does exist in Grenoble, however.  In fact, Grenoble is one of those rare cities that makes up for in character what it lacks in size.  The entire city is surrounded by desolate mountain ranges that, at this time of year, are covered in neige (neh-j: snow).  Luckily this makes for amazing views out your window no matter how crappy the rest of your apartment might be.  The ancient stone cathedrals, Drac and Isère rivers, and la Bastille (lah bahst-eel) guarding over the city are all within (reasonable) walking distance, and no matter which street corner you're standing on, you're never far away from a glass of wine or cup of coffee in a toasty warm café (kaf-eh) offering reprieve from the frigid cold.


My own personal favorite part of being a new resident of Grenoble?  In a matter of the three days I've been living here, I've managed to get all my Christmas shopping done at Victor Hugo Square's fabulous marché de Noël (marsh-ay duh no-ell: Christmas market), which is basically a crowded smorgasbord of Alsace-inspired wooden looking vendor's booths selling random knickknacks and, more importantly, mulled wine.


Of course, as any true dorky francophile would, I also christened my new place with a bottle of cheap champagne I bought at the local Casino supermarket down the street.  And you know what I realized as I toasted to my own smart thinking at becoming a Grenoblois (gr-uh-nob-lwa: inhabitant of Grenoble)?  Drinking a glass of champagne in my apartment while listening to drunken teenagers stumble down the street and grumpy French drivers crash into each other never tasted so good.  Vive la France (veev lah Frahn-s: long live France)!