Springtime in the Somme

Today felt like the first real day of spring, it was almost warm (balmy, even, by Picardie standards). Went for a walk in Parc St. Pierre and the cherry trees have blossomed, and there's some bush (musgate or something in French). May 1st is the national worker's holiday...celebrated by not working but by wandering around carrying this flower instead. It made the whole park smell sweet, and as it rained all last night and this morning, everything was in a bit hazy and overwhelmingly green. The Somme might not have many moments, but today was one of them.

Saw Andrew Bird in concert on Friday, after a delicious meal at Tante Jeanne (Aunt Jean) which is a resturant inside a converted old house on the Quai Belue...had grilled fish with cajun rice on top of a delicious dark chewy crepe and all washed down with equally delecious cider from Normandy.

(Speaking of food, strawberries are starting to appear in grocery stores! They're still a bit tart, but maybe it's better that way as slurping up the sugary juice syrup that is left in the bottom of the bowl is one of spring's greatest pleasures, selon moi.)


The concert was also amazing, it's basically a one-man show with the assistance of a drummer/tech guy, just try to imagine Mr. Bird running around in stripey socks throwing down his violin to grab his guitar to throw it behind him to play the glokenschpiel then breaking into a whistling solo, all the while tapping pedals to put riffs into loops and basically creating his songs from the ground up at breakneck speed. Did some Bob Dylan song I didn't know as an encore and it was shiver-inducing.

Had a going away party for the assistants last night in Noyon. Seems that everyone, myself included, is starting to get pretty nostalgic and reluctant to leave France, despite all our previous months of moaning and griping. It's only a month now! Hopefully will get in one more trip out of the country, and a few day trips, before I go. I really feel that I'm only just beginning to get the hang of existing in France now that I'm about to leave. Maybe I'll be back, I've been entertaining the idea of trying to do some graduate school classes here, but so far it's just daydreaming. But sometimes daydreams have a way of working out...

Speaking of finally fitting in, was walking home from the park when I was thwarted while trying to cross a bridge by a puffy white toy dog that was bouncing everywhere on its leash like a yoyo, and making it impossible for me to pass. Finally his slow-moving owner turned to me and explained apologetically while reeling in her puppy, il est juste comme un anglais... "he's just like the english...all you want to do is pass them on the left and they're always in the way!" I just smiled and agreed, knowingly and frenchily.

You know, those english.

Although they're probably more concientous about picking up their dogs' poop...

here comes the sun

Admittedly I haven’t blogged in a while, but the past few months are pretty easily summed up: me, asleep in my sleeping bag, cold and sick and very sick of France. But out of this I’ve become great friends with the general practitioner down the street and after several rounds of antibiotics and several missed days of work and a two week holiday in a slightly warmer climate, I am finally well and spring is slowly but surely arriving in the Somme. And I’m finding frenchiness more bemusing and less aggravating. Some examples:

• They eat their popcorn sugared and not salted. Unless they let their American girlfriend pick out the popcorn and she finds the one tub of salted amongst rows of sugared and doesn’t stop to think that maybe having only one tub of salted is indicative of something, such as always inexplicable French taste. In this case they eat their popcorn salted and make (v. french) faces all the while.

• There are two words for people to use when asking for a drag of someone else’s cigarette, un bouffé is formal and un touffe is informal, which is fine but really, when would you ever ask a formal relation for a drag? But if you ever have to ask the CEO for a puff or Jacques Chirac for that matter, there is a word for you to employ, just in case.

• The neverending “horses are pets” vs. “horses are dinner" debate. One might liken eating a horse to eating a pet dog, but that’s usually met by the rebuttal that hey! dogs probably taste good too. and cats. and cute little songbirds and wee rabbits and probably bambi too, preferably w/a bechamel.
  

Classes are fine, (that is if they aren’t cancelled,) and we had a meeting of ‘harmonization’ the other week in which the Inspection Académique provided us elementary assistants tons of pedagogic material and taught us how to design our lesson plans. Which is great, but it might have been to have done that at the start of the schoolyear, rather than after 6 months of trial-by-fire teaching with only one month left to go.

Will post more about my and Jessie's Italy and Croatia adventure later, but you can view the photos at the links below:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2003972&l=77402&id=136700102
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2003980&l=b44b6&id=136700102

but for now, as the italians love to say, ciao ciao ciao!