Funny Car Stories

First: I saw a car driving really slowly and wondered what it could possibly be doing. When it turned the corner right in front of me I saw it was dragging a sheet that was tied to the bumper of the car... the other end of the sheet was tied to a car which was being dragged by the first car. Someone was in the car being dragged and turning the wheel so it stayed on the road properly, but it was the funniest thing I've seen in a while.

Second: A woman was driving along and when she made a left hand turn her passenger side door flew open. She pulled over and tried to lean across the seat to shut it but could not. A man drove right up to her car, stopped his car in the middle of the road, hung out of his window and shut the door for her. How nice!

All girls!

Today I brought my high school yearbook in to school to show my classes. On the first page of the book is a picture of the 35 girls in my graduating class.

It takes a few minutes for the kids to start asking where all the boys are, but they always do. My favorite reaction was one boy's take on single sex education: "What!?! That's simply NOT DONE in France."

Quiche

Yeah, we made some. Barely.

Personal Questions

My favorite way to pass the time at the end of an English lesson is to ask my students to write down one question to ask me. It can be about anything - me, my family, the US, etc.

One kid today asked me if it could be a personal question... my standard answer to this is yes, but I might not answer it. When it was his turn to ask, I braced myself for the worst.

He ended up asking me if I had a daughter! Why he was interested in that is beyond me. In the end, I answered the question. Simply put, absolutely not. ;-)

Check out Stephen Kellogg and The Sixers. They're mellow, but good. Plus I literally just found out (when I was looking for that link to their website) that they formed their group while at UMASS and performed all over Northampton when they were trying to "make it". Whoah! Don't believe me? Check out their bio. A+

Drawing and Broken Glass

I broke a plate.

I also have been honing my sketching abilities.

The Muppets

Here is a video of the Muppets in French... their voices sound a bit different, especially Miss Piggy's.

Ma Vie en Rose

Imagine this... you're sitting in a classroom waiting for class to start. There's a knock at the door and in enter 2 guys, both look bulked up and ready to kick some you know what on some sports team. One of them seems to be almost glowing, and then you realize that this surreal glow can only be attributed to the fact that he is wearing a NEON pink*, shiny, fitted soccer shirt.

This is my life. It's hard not to laugh sometimes.

To add to the strangeness, I had them read an article about construction. There was a soccer picture at the top, and the article was about having your construction company perform at their top capabilities. Well this poor guy seems to have soccer on the brain so he somehow missed that the article was about construction, not soccer. He was genuinely shocked when I broke the news to him ("Vraiment? Oh, putain! C'est pas possible..."), and the clincher was when I asked if he thought the article was a good one, and he said clearly not when they use pictures that have nothing to do with the article. I guess he's not an abstract thinker.

*I don't have a problem with guys wearing pink... and this is no exception! It's just a little bit of a "hello"/whiplash/smack in the face to have the neon/shiny/fitted attributes added to the mix first thing in the morning.

For laughs...

Ok, I stole this from some other random person's blog but I'd have to agree that this is one of the funniest wikipedia entries I've ever seen. Any other nominees for best entry of all time?

A Life in the Day of Me

I don't really feel like writing a ton, so here are some pictures. Enjoy!


From Place Catalogne looking towards the train station.


Another of the same...


A street in Perpignan at dusk.


Hannah and Amanda saying "hi" to half-beard, our friendly neighborhood cat.


The food we had for the party before people arrived.


The food table after the party...


More of the wreckage. A bonus video of the wreckage, plus you can see Amanda introduce herself!


Playing beer pong, from left, Casey, Some Italian Girl, Ben, Catherine, Darlene, and from the left with backs to camera are Hannah and Jenny.


From Left: Italian Girl (B), Orsi, Amanda, Jenny, Hannah.


From left: Duncan, Casey, English Dude, Italian Girl (no worries here... this picture looks a little precarious but it's not), Ben, Darlene.


Our chocolate breakfast! This included pain au chocolat, chocolate milk, hot chocolate, crepes with nutella, chocolate chip pancake, chocolate breakfast bars, chocolate and oatmeal cake, two kinds of chocolate cereal... celery.


Amanda and Hannah preparing chocolate breakfast.


Hannah, Amanda and Orsi eating chocolate breakfast.


Place Catalogne facing away from the FNAC.


A picture of the FNAC and Place Catalogne.


A picture of some clouds on my road that I took with my phone on my way home one day.

Lots of Perpignan Pictures

Perpignan is beautiful as ever! Here is a picture of the quai with my roommate, Amanda. As you can see, the weather has gotten a whole lot colder as she is wearing a sweater and a scarf. By a whole lot colder, I mean it is 55 or 60 degrees in the shade now. Hey, don't laugh! It feels really cold when the temperature drops 20 degrees in one day!

Here is the quai looking the other direction towards Place Arago (north, as opposed to the south). This is near a very pretty group of shopping streets and open air markets, not to mention a really nice public park. The funny thing about this canal that you see in the pictures is that it looks so pretty and groomed, but nobody is allowed down by the water because it is actually (essentially) sewage. Lovely. You needed to know that. Moving on.

Next is a picture of the crazy amount of birds that seem to have manifested on just about every street in Perpignan. There are hundreds and hundreds of birds that fly all around in the trees that line the streets. BE WARY of these birds! They are worse than dogs and have made walking the tree-lined streets an adventure of sorts, that's for sure. We are pretty sure that they are migrating and are leaving soon... let's hope! In the mean time they make loud chirping noises and look cool on power lines.

This picture was taken this past Saturday. Jenny, Hannah, Amanda and I had been to the market and then went wandering around (where we just happened to find the perfect bakery to stop and have a pain au chocolat... pure coincidence, of course) when we ran into Catalina. She told us that there was this little Catalan fair in Place Catalogne, and being the curious culture vultures that we are, we of course needed to check it out (it did not hurt that it was only about 100 yards away). It turns out that people had made all these Catalan structures that were games, sort of. They had moving parts, balls, loops, etc., and people were playing with them and making them work. They were all really brightly painted, and here in this picture you can see some people trying out the gadgets. They were a lot of fun! Here's a video of the gadgets in motion.

The day of the fair was actually pretty eventful! Hannah, Amanda and I went to the Auchon and then we went for dinner at an Indian restaurant which was -so- good. Afterwards we went to Jenny's house to drink some wine. She just took a tour of the vineyards in the area and came back with bottles and bottles. Hannah and I particularly liked this one white wine - it was really sweet and tastes like peaches - and you can see me eagerly pointing at it here (that's Jenny and Amanda, too).

Last of all, I'll leave you with this picture of Hannah and her ginormous banana chip. When we went to the Auchon we found that you could buy banana chips in huge boxes for 1.30, and Hannah and I have been celebrating ever since. Two days later and we need to replenish our supply. Luckily I have Tuesdays off, so that's what I'm doing tomorrow.

Today was my first day back at school, and it went really well. I had to give a presentation on NYC, and I had the kids tell me what they thought of NY. I gave them the basic facts, and then showed them video footage I had taken of NY as well as some photos (the gasps I got when I whipped out a Mac were really delightful). Last off, I had found a list of shows that are taped live in NY and had them each choose a show and present it, meaning what the show was, what the age restrictions were, how you got tickets, etc. It does not sound that great, but the students were -really- into it, so I had fun.

Halloween / The Format

Halloween: Last night was Halloween in France, too! The thing is, people here don't really celebrate Halloween here like they do in the US. Luckily for me, they do celebrate Halloween in the UK and Hannah knows tons of exchange students from the UK, so we went to their house last night for a "fancy dress"/costume party.

Since there are three of us Amanda, Hannad and I had been investigating three person costume ideas. The two that were at the top of our list were Rock, Paper, Scissors or the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Sadly Amanda "ditched" us for a 6-day hike in the Pyrenese, so we were missing our third person. Hannah and I decided to go with the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe idea anyhow. I was the witch, Hannah was the lion, and we took pictures of the wardrobe in our living room and printed them off.

As we walked in to town we expected to meet a few people who were in costume, but we saw NOBODY which really made us stand out (no matter). The house we went to was actually an old hotel that had been converted into a boarding house, so there were 16 people from everywhere living there. This made introducing yourself interesting as you needed to ascertain whether you were speaking to an anglophone or someone from France.

The party on a whole was a decent time. Good music, nice people, etc. Hannah knew a lot of people vaguely from her classes and it was fun to meet them all. The problem was most everyone there were old friends from back when, so it was a bit tough to break into conversations. We ended up leaving sort of early and taking a cab back to our apartment for the first time, ever. We are definitely hooked on the cab idea and will do it in the future.

The Format: Today I have done nothing but sit around the house, really. About 1 o'clock today I got a random melody stuck in my head. Normally I would try and let it pass, but not only was the melody persistant, it was also really good! I tried to google the three words I could remember in the hopes of turning up the artist, but I had no luck. Still, I was not discouraged and so I started to listen to every song on my computer. After about 268 songs I finally found the one that had randomly popped into my head and it turns out the group is called "The Format". If you have not heard of them, I *highly* recommend their music (which I have been further researching this afternoon) and in particular this one song called "The First Single (You Know Me)" (which I have listened to 23 times today... and it is only 4!). You can hear the song for free here. A+