Royal Wedding!

Today I saw the royal families and heads of state from Denmark, Norway, Jordan, Luxembourg, and Belgium because I visited Luxembourg today--which was the wedding day of Prince Guillaume of Luxembourg to Countess Stephanie of Belgium (now Princess Stephanie)!

This was my first time seeing royalty--and it was quite the experience!  We waited outside the Cathedral for a while, waiting for the ceremony to end--the civil ceremony was yesterday, and because the Grand Ducal family of Luxembourg is Catholic, they had a religious ceremony today.

I wasn't in a good place for getting pictures (I did get a picture of the bride, but from far away with a car door across her face) so here are some from the internet:

(Can you believe I was just across the street?)

I did, however, get some pictures of the other royal guests, as well as a ton from the army as they paraded past--quite impressive!

Here are some photos of the beautiful little country of Luxembourg--I shall definitely be coming back!!

 Every little shop and restaurant had a picture of the newlyweds with flowers and congratulations!  It was so charming!  Everyone seemed genuinely happy--without all the media hype!  Apparently the Grand Duke takes walks around town and talks to his subjects--I'm so glad to have been a part of this glorious day!

Teaching!

Bonjour!

Yes, I know it's been far too long, my friends!  I've been so busy this week, I hardly had time to breathe--ok, maybe not, but you get the idea :)

I have 14 classes each week, which means a lot of preparation, and a lot of energy.  Did I mention it's thoroughly rewarding?  The kids love me--before school starts, I hang out in the school yard and usually a group forms around where I'm standing, and they all begin to pester me with questions and correct my grammar :)

Today I taught "les petits"--a group of the youngest (probably 1st grade by American comparison).  I gave them American flags to color and they kept asking me what color stripe came next, red or white, or if they could color the stars green and yellow.  They didn't know much about geography or even about France--but at least they knew that les Etats-Unis is really far away :)

As much as I love working with kids, the one drawback is that they are always sick.  Now, me too.  I think I've been staying up too late doing lesson plans...and whatever...I knew I was going to get sick.  It's inevitable.  One lesson I learned from Study Abroad is that everyone gets sick--better get it over with quickly before it mutates into the Black Death.  I don't begrudge the kids though--it's kinda cute to see about half the class get up every five minutes for a tissue at one end of the room and clamber over backpacks to throw it in the trash at the other side of the room until la maîtresse starts yelling at them--yep, they yell over here.  At first I was surprised, but the kids don't seem to mind--so I guess they've become used to it.

For now I'm just going to lay low, get better, and starting thinking about what I'm teaching next week.  I'm hoping I'll start a rhythm and a pattern for re-using some of the materials (did I neglect to mention that each class is DIFFERENT?)  So far, so good.

By the way, I saw a film recently: Asterix et Obélix--a traditional French comic turned into a live-action film.  Totally hilarious and I was able to understand big chunks of it (not perfectly, by any means). 

Ok, back to my tea!

Cheers!

What a week!

Bonjour!

This past week was orientation (as you can probably tell from my last post!)

Wednesdays, for some reason, no one has school--I'm beginning to think that's going to be my laundry day :)

Thursday, I visited my schools (in all four different locations!)  In the last school, I was standing in the office as all the kids were coming in from recess.  One of the little girls crept up to the door, peered in and said "Bonjour?" so I said a bonjour back.  She scuttled back to her line crying "Elle est là! Elle est là!" (she is there!) Super cute--I'm a celebrity, I guess.  A teacher promptly came over and closed the door.

Friday was more orientation stuff and we had several presentations on how to do "visioconferences" via skype--it's a program for rural schools that don't have reliable public transportation for the assistants to visit them in person.  I've got three schools.

All in all, I think I'll be working with about 12 different teachers... who all use different methods...

Then, after orientation was over, I ran over to the train station to go to Verdun to visit Mary!  It rained all day Saturday, so we sat around playing cards, watching movies, talking, and playing darts.  But here's a couple of cool pictures:

Just another day in Nancy...

I applaud people who can cook on a hot plate.  It's definitely not easy if you want to do something other than boil water.  I tried doing a variation on fried rice--sounds easy right?  Not when you can't control the temperature.  Still, it tastes great.

This week began orientation for the assistants--I finally got to meet all of the primary assistants around Nancy (quite an awesome group, if I do say so myself!)  Long story short, I'm getting one of the German assistants as my flatmate--the only language we speak in common is French, though she's excited to learn a bit more English, and I might pick up some German :)

Mary's visit was fun and interesting--we explored a bunch of parks around Nancy.  One of them actually had a free zoo in it.  Orientation yesterday took us all over the city, and at the end, Mme bought us all some croissants--because she thought we all looked nervous.  Seriously, the administrative people are super nice!

Notes of Interest:
--I've stocked some Mirabelle jam...will let you know the details when I try it :)
--Internet here is a battle all it's own...for now, I'm winning...
--The pile of paperwork is slowly becoming manageable with the magnificent help of the administrative people around here (everyone has a title, and if I could remember them all, I'd tell you)
--I received a fountain pen as a gift, minus the ink, of course (as well as a ruler with only centimeters on one side...though it wouldn't have killed them to also print inches...)
--I also received a note pad--a map of France covering every single page...not quite sure if it was vanity or not...major cities and rivers are marked.
--Trying to branch out and explore more cheeses...I'll let you know how that goes...
--If I didn't tell you before, baguettes are AMAZING

Cheers!
~Laura