Some pictures!

Here are some pictures from the last couple weeks. :) The weekend before last I met up with an assistant in Saint Quentin who's from Sacramento. We took a mini-road trip to some nearby towns with a French friend of hers, including a little town called Coucy-le-Château, which is home to a castle built in the 10th century! We got to the castle as it was getting dark, and the grounds were closed, but we were able to walk along a path that surrounds the ramparts. At one point we turned a corner and came face to face with a couple of goats! They had very large horns and baa'ed warily at us, so we decided to turn back. This is a creepy picture of one of the goats next to the castle wall.

Some years after WWII, many German and French towns established what's called a "jumellage" in order to strengthen friendships between French and German students to avoid future hostility between the two countries. German and French towns that are paired up send students and teachers to the other country for annual visits. here in Tergnier, a group of German middle school kids studying French comes once a year for a week, and French students studying German from the collège visit Wolfhagen for a week in the spring. The kids stay with host families and attend classes at their sister city's middle school. Two weeks ago was the visit from the German students from Wolfhagen, so Tabea was pretty busy helping with the organization of the visit. Last Saturday, Tabea and I were able to accompany a group of German teachers on a visit of the region; we went to a town called Guise, to Saint Quentin, and to Chauny, where we ate dinner at a really nice Moroccan restaurant.

Guise is known for Le Familistère, a factory that produced beautiful woodstoves, iron pots and pans, stoves, and other lovely things made of metal. The factory's founder, Jean-Baptiste André Godin, was big on French philosopher Fourier's ideas about work and the equal distribution of the profits of an enterprise, and tried to create a community around the factory where all of its workers could live, work, and play. Every factory worker had the option to live at Le Familistère with his family. Everyone who lived at Le Familistère had the same living quarters and could take equal advantage of the theater, stores, pool, and schools that Godin built for his worker community, regardless of that person's status at work in the factory. Interestingly, the factory's output of units/worker increased drastically as more and more factory workers decided to live in Le Familistère, and the number of units overall increased even as the total number of workers employed in the factory decreased. One point for socialism! We took a guided tour, which was funny because the tour guide talked in rapid fire French for all of an hour and a half, and half of the visiting Germans didn't speak French. By the end of it our eyes were drifting in opposite directions, but it was neat to see the buildings and some of the beautiful stoves and knick knacks made in the factory.

I took this picture from an open courtyard in the middle of one of the apartment complexes. The whole building was empty and cold, and Tabea and I spent a lot of this part of the tour giggling at the back of the group. There was really strange ambient music coming up from vents in the floor that sounded like blue whale sounds- the tour guide said it was there to give visitors an idea of what the place might have sounded like back in the day when there was lots of hustle and bustle. And blue whales?

Tabea with some small stoves

Most awesome umbrella stand ever!


Woodstoves!

A view of the Oise river from a bridge near Le Familistère's pool

The pool building

My lamb tajine at the Moroccan restaurant in Chauny :) yummm


Last Tuesday was my second full day at Blériot, and I was lucky enough to be with Maternelle to celebrate two birthdays; a boy named Matteo turned 4, and Lorrine turned 3! Matteo is the boy in the grey turtleneck, and Lorrine is the girl in the white long sleeved shirt. The little boy in the red is Erwan- he's 2, and the youngest kid at the school. He's extremely adorable, and I got to help him learn how to use scissors last week!


These two guys are in the older section of Maternelle at Blériot. They are awesome! They're both really excited to have me around, and are the most enthusiastic of the group when we practice singing 'The Itsy Bitsy Spider'. Last Tuesday I helped them and a few other students make trees out of clay.

Last week I made ratatouille for dinner! yum yum yum :)

This is an add for shaving cream that I saw in Saint Quentin- it's very hilarious (I think), and very French! It's a picture of a clean shaven man with his cheek resting on a pair of anonymous breasts, and the tagline says "taste comfort". Oi.
Happy early Thanksgiving to everyone, I'll be thinking of and missing you all this week!