pumpkin bootie

happy halloween!!!

birthday weekend!

Wow its been a busy weekend! But I had the best time celebrating my birthday for three full days :-) On Friday Mystery Guest and I kidnapped Sarah and Natalie and took them out to la Manche. Everyone had me surprised though when we took a different exit than usual and treated me to a fantastic pre-birthday dinner of galettes and crepes! The restaurant is fantastic, its an old mill and all of the crooked old beams and stone walls date back to ... well, they're old :-)

We continued on to Mystery Guest's parent's house where we crashed for the night. Up and out the door at the crack of dawn (according to Sarah) we headed out to Saint Vaast to wander through the marche and this wonderful little store they have there.

The rest of the day was spent picnicing and visiting lots of different places. The weather couldn't have been better for the end of October!

We dropped the girls off in Cherbourg at the end of the day and headed off for a birthday dinner of sushi!! I love love love the restaurant in Cherbourg, its the best sushi I've had in France :-)

Sunday it rained which was fine with me, I just wanted to veg and hang out inside, which is exactly what we did. Of course we had to celebrate my birthday again (Yeah, its hard isn't it??) so Mystery Guest's mom made a fantastic Sunday lunch and I blew out the candles on the chocolate-coconut cake and managed to blow bits of coconut all over the room!

I had a great weekend, it was the perfect way to celebrate my birthday :-) Thanks guys!!

DONE DONE DONE!!!!!

Look! Here it is!! All printed out and beautiful :-)

My memoire for the 1st year of my masters. I have to defend it probably in 10 days or so (my prof has yet to fix a date) and as long as I pass I'll go into the 2nd year of the program (I already started the classes but am not officially enrolled).

DONE DONE DONE!!! I put it in my prof's box and the other member of the jury about 1 hour ago and now it is time to RELAX! I'm leaving tonight for the weekend to celebrate my birthday on Saturday with some fab friends and I can't wait to get away from it all and not think about this anymore :-)

Now I'm gonna go veg... Don't forget to "fall" back on Saturday night for daylight savings.

les dieux

This picture has a story - as they all do!

I tutor 2 people during the school year, a French woman and a Russian man. They have almost become friends, especially the woman. She's great, she invited me out to her house this summer for lunch and since the "class" is conversation and she's already fluent in English we just chat for an hour every week.

She knew my birthday was coming up so yesterday she showed up with a birthday present! It was very sweet, I opened it up and she gave me the Dieux de Stade calender !! We howeled with laughter as we went through the photos one by one...

I remember when the first calender came out and the photos were quite tasteful and black & white. This year I swear its more gay porn than anything else.. so cheezy! Of course it will have to be displayed... ;-)

(If you want some pictures, type dieux de stade in Google Images)

fall ... falling

The weather here has been stunning the last few days, those crispt fall days :-) It's nice to see the sun before it goes away for the winter!

To take advantage of this beautiful weather I'm off with some friends for a bike ride to the beach - photos to come!

Random question, does anyone know why England keeps singing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" at their rugby games??? So weird... Hello!!! Not English!

manif

If you only look at recent blog enteries between mp3 players and bike tires I guess you could say my life is fairly boring right now! But to be honest not too much is going on these days... I'm trying like a madwoman to finish my thesis by Monday to get it off and printed and in between that I'm planning lessons and getting interupted by protests ;-)

I was sitting at my desk yesterday when I hear a manif going on in the street below... I was surprised because today is supposed to be the big strike. When I looked out the window I realized it was the med students who were striking. According to the med students I know they are protesting new plans that would force young doctors to work at least a year or two in the countryside where doctors are scarce these days. I can see where the government is coming from, most civil servants don't get to chose where they are placed their first few years (teachers can be sent anywhere in the country when they've passed their teaching exam) and fewer and fewer doctors are in the countryside which is hurting the village populations... Plus it isn't such a bad thing for young doctors to have the experience of working in a small town situation, that's a whole different kind of medicine than working in Paris or other big cities...

Anyway back to the thesis... anyone want to write my conclusion for me?? :-)

ups and downs

Well the down is ... remember my beautiful fixed bike tire? Yeah, I went to go take my bike to the pool the other day and it was flat again... I guess my bike fixing skills are not nearly as amazing as one would guess! Stick that back on my todo list!

But the up is that I've been to the pool twice this week with my new -straight - from - America toy! I ordered this waterproof MP3 player to swim laps with. I was really curious to see how it would work, if you could actually hear the music while underwater, its great!! I swear I swim twice as fast with a little Paul Simon Concert in the Park pumping in the background :-)

Otherwise not much is new around here... lots of work. I started teaching classes last week, I've arranged my schedule to teach all my hours Monday/Tuesday so that I can go to my masters classes Wednesday/Thursday and have Friday free for the library (read 3-day weekends hehe). I always think I'll have something interesting to blog about but all that's exciting today is that I'm going to the market to get a pumpkin for pumpkin soup :-) Enough to make this girl happy!

I rock!

Before I went to the states I noticed that my bike had a flat tire... :-( I didn't have time to try to fix it (read: con someone into fixing it...) before my flight so I just left it.

When I got home I decided to go up to Decathlon to get a bike repair kit and finally today I had some time to try it out. I realized that if I put it off any longer I just wouldn't ride my bike all winter, and that my friends is sad!

So I off I went. Let me tell you - that is a PAIN!!! I know people complain about it all the time, but oh my GOD what a pain!! I finally (after about 20 min!) wrangled the tire off so I could get started. Fixing the inner tube was the easy part, it was all the other mess that was annoying: taking off the brakes, getting the outer tube off but worst of all once it was all patched and the tire finally back on the rim the stupid thing wouldn't inflate! It must have had a kink somewhere so I had to take it off - again! Once I got everything back in place and inflated it was a royal pain getting the brakes back on...

But hey! Now I've done it! Whoooo!!! Bike meet your master! :-)

rugby

Who needs a TV to find out sports news? Just live in town and you can hear the result, if you need help I'll give you a hint:
1. Calm late in the evening = France lost.
2. Horns honking, people screaming, firecrackers going off = France won.

So when I heard latter going on a few minutes ago I didn't even need to check the websites/tv to confirm what I suspected - France beat the All Blacks (apparently the best rugby team).

Not much going on in other news, its just a crazy busy month that has started and other than lots of work not much to post about... but I'm around :-)

California #2

I've spent the last couple days at my grandparents. It's been really fun to see them and spend a relaxing few days. My aunt and uncle were up Friday night and then left Saturday after lunch, but it was great to see them and my little cousin is getting so big! He's already 9 years old and since the last time I saw them was 2 years ago the change is really striking! My dad and step-mom stayed through brunch today and we all went out for a nice eggs benedict ;-)

Lots of short visits but lots of fun. Since then we haven't been doing too much since my grandma hurt her foot a little and so she's trying to get it better by staying off of it. This afternoon we sat outside on the patio enjoying the 80F temps!! It will be hard to go from this weather back to France! Then this evening we watched Mystic River - it was excellent! I've got all day tomorrow (Monday) and then fly back to France Tuesday. I'm all ready for my flight, tons of books and I just need to make sure that my computer and ipod are all charged ;-) Not looking forward to dragging my very full suitcases around the airport and into Paris to get to the train station though! I wish they'd start a train service directly from the airport out to Caen like they do to other cities... that would be so nice!

Other than that not much new, it has been a great break and I think my batteries are mostly recharged to start up the semester!