Goodbye Tabea :'( (+Rugby and a visit from Vicky)

Things are winding down here in Tergnier. Tabea left last weekend, because the German assistants' contracts only last 6 months, and it was sad to see her go. The apartment doesn't feel the same without her! Thankfully I will see her in a couple weeks in Germany, so we didn't have to say goodbye just yet. In the time before she left we enjoyed two weeks of freakishly beautiful weather, went to a nature reserve/funny little menagerie (à la Little Farm in Tilden) in Saint Quentin, cooked and shared some nice meals, invited friends over for a little aurevoir potluck, and said goodbye to our crazy washing machine. Our neighbors lent La Machine Infernale to us before Christmas, because they had upgraded to a new one-- when we got it, one load of wash took 4 hours. Over the course of the next few months, that cycle time got longer and longer, and by about 2 weeks ago, one load of wash took 13 hours! Finally Tabea did a load and the little machine couldn't take it anymore... it filled to the brim with smelly water, which we had to bail out before disconnecting the machine. We had a little funeral on deconnection day.

Aurevoir potluck-
Animals at the park in Saint Quentin!


My basketball team eating together before a game a couple weeks ago-
Au revoir, machine infernale.
The day Tabea left, the same neighbors who lent La Machine Infernale invited me to go watch a rugby game in Paris with them and their son Edouard, who I work with at Blériot-- he's 5. The match was in the Stade de France, a huge 80,000 spectator stadium built for the World Cup (I think?) when it was in Paris a few years back. My neighbor Philippe explained that the team owner hires a lot of performers for a big show before/after the matches to bring in more fans-- and it certainly was a spectacle! Before the match there were cheerleaders, Irish dancers, an American rock cover band, a parade of bagpipe bands, a bright pink limo that took a drive around the field to drop of a randomly selected fan at field-side seats where he watched the game surrounded by cheerleaders, and a gymnastics routine by Paris' firefighters, a group of extremely attractive, military-trained men (one more reason the French might be right in thinking they're better than us). THEN, the ball used in the game was delivered by 4 men who leapt from a plane flying over the stadium and PARACHUTED onto the field! After the game, there were fireworks (!) (The game itself was much less interesting, but still cool-- Paris v. Toulouse, Toulouse won.)

Gymnastic firefighters!



I was only in the apartment for a few days, because on Wednesday a good friend from Grinnell, Vicky Mercer, arrived for a 12 day visit! Vicky just finished up a year and a half working in Thailand as an English teacher, and is stopping in France on her way back to the US. I'm very happy to have some good catching up time with her, because I haven't seen her in so long-- so far we've done a walking tour of Tergnier, spent one night in Amiens, and the day yesterday visiting a cute little seaside town called St. Valery-sur-mer in the Baie de Somme. We visited the hortillonages (island gardens accessible only by boat!) in Amiens, which is something I've been wanting to do since before I came to France, and in St. Valery we walked along the seaside and ate sea food. In an hour or so we're going to go eat lunch with a teacher from Condren who invited us to her house, and then go with her to see the castle at Pierrefonds in the afternoon.

It's strange that I only have two weeks of work left, it will be quite sad to say goodbye to all the kids and teachers I've been working with. Recently I've been working on animals with the preschoolers at Condren, and I talked about presidential elections with the older kids. At Blériot we did an activity about April Fool's Day last week, which was fun-- I asked the kids to think up a prank they would like to pull on someone. One girl said she'd like to freeze a mosquito in an ice cube and put it in someone's drink, another boy thought of switching salt and sugar at home. My favorite was a boy who said he wanted to open a store, but only for people named Michelle-- he had a good laugh, though no one else did, but I thought it was awesome.

That's all for now, happy Easter to all! And I will post pictures from my time with Vicky soon. Big hugs!