The Liebster Award

So it’s been a month since my last very brief post about the band photos. I’ve sat down with the blog a couple of times but without any real inspiration for what news to give. That trend seemed ready to continue a while longer until yesterday, when I visited Je Parle Américain’s blog and saw that he’d nominated me, among others, for a blogger award. Thanks for the perfect excuse to write something new.

Part 1: In keeping with the principles of the award, I’ll start by giving eleven facts about myself that hopefully are not too boring.

1. I grew up in Texas and a little (big?) part of my soul will always live there. Nothing about Texas is overrated. I like to think of it as the Brittany of the US, and sometimes explain it to French people that way: If you’re from there, you feel so lucky that you can’t stop bragging about it, and most people hate you for it and even possibly think the place is mostly inhabited by assholes.
2. I started learning French from a Frenchwoman at school when I was six.
3. My brother also speaks French fluently, which is very convenient now I’m practically married to a Frenchman.
4. I started learning to play the violin when I was seven.
5. I started learning to play the banjo two months ago and it is slow going.
6. I originally came to France as a language assistant and planned on returning to the US to try to work in publishing. That plan was put on the back-burner and eventually scrapped altogether when I realized I wanted to a) stay in France and b) teach foreign languages.
7. I’ll apply for French nationality in September 2014.
8. When I was little, I wanted to be a writer, a teacher, an architect, and an astronaut (not all at the same time). The teacher thing was mostly about getting to write on the blackboard, and the astronaut thing was mostly about the movie Apollo 13.

… Okay that’s it, I can’t think of four more interesting things!

Part 2: Next, my answers to the nominator’s questions:

1. What’s the first substantial thing you have a clear memory of writing? This is a tough one, since I used to write all the time when I was little; stories every week in second grade; a newspaper story contest in 6th grade; an embarrassingly long sci-fi story I wrote as a project in 8th grade; a script for an animated tv show with friends in 9th grade.
2. What’s your guilty pleasure? I have so many! Kelly Clarkson, Taylor Swift, Le Bonheur est dans le pré…
3. Sun or moon? I love the moon illusion. When the moon is low on the horizon I also often think of that scene in Moonstruck.
4. Coffee or tea? Coffee, thanks to the machine in the salle des profs. At 35 cents a coffee, and a coffee every other day , how much do I spend in one school year?
5. Who’s your favorite writer (fiction, non-fiction, contemporary, 1000 years old, whatever genre and period you decide)? Just one? I think that’s probably impossible. But if I had to choose just two, I would say Jane Austen and Marilynne Robinson.
6. Your first celebrity crush? I was never really much for celebrity crushes.
7. Have you ever written a book? If so, what is it? If not, and you could do it, what would be the subject? If I could write a book, it would surely be a work of fiction. I think that’ll never happen though.
8. What destination is at the top of your dream vacation list? I’d like to go to Alaska and to Petra, in Jordan.
9. What infuriates you more than anything else? Students thinking I give a damn about what’s going on with their pencil case (so-and-so stole it, knocked it off the desk, tossed it across the room…).
10. What makes you smile more quickly than anything else? Puppies. Or a puppy. One will do.
11. If you had to live during any other period of history, which one would you pick? Every other period of history seems like it was so much harder than ours, that this is hard to choose. I’d probably go with some intellectually stimulating time period, like the Belle Epoque.

Part 3: Finally, my nominees and questions for them. Nominees are supposed to have less than 200 followers, and I’m not sure how to count followers, so I’m just going to assume…

The French Turtle Experience

Académoiselle

Wanderlost

La Nomade Moderne

Kari in France: An American Girl dans le Nord

Here are my questions:

1. What’s your favorite travel destination, of any of the places you’ve ever been to?
2. Do you have a favorite quote?
3. Why do you keep a blog?
4. What’s the best movie you’ve seen recently?
5. How do you most like to spend your time when you’re not working/fulfilling some other obligation?
6. What foreign language(s) do you speak and how did you come to learn them?
7. What is one of your favorite songs?
8. What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?
9. The best?
10. What job did you want to do when you were little?
11. If you won the lottery, what would you do first?

Here’s hoping everyone can find the time to respond! And maybe I’ll post something else one of these days…

Facebook is bleeding pictures of us.

The band I play with has done a number of concerts lately and not-so-lately, and we have a bunch coming up. The internet appears to be hemorrhaging pictures of us right now.

I don’t know how many of these links will really work since there are facebook privacy settings involved, but here goes:

Louise Petits Pois at Trouver Sonnette à son Pied

Festi On Air

Festi On Air, different photographer

Pont in Périgord

This weekend was a five-day weekend, so I left from Wednesday to Friday with friends to the Périgord.

We booked the Formula 1 hotel in Périgueux and soon discovered that Périgord was in fact sort of confusing.

As you can see, depending where you are, Périgord can be green (vert), white (blanc), black (noir) or purple (pourpre). Périgueux itself is in the departement of Dordogne, which is part of the region of Aquitaine, but we did cross over in the Le Lot, which is part of the Midi-Pyrénées region. In short we were in Périgord Blanc and Périgord Noir, which are administratively in different regions of France.

After a stop in Cognac (not in the Périgord at all), we made our way down to Périgueux Wednesday and walked around town a little. I didn’t have my camera for this part, but Périgueux seemed to be a pretty city with a medieval area and a Roman ruins area.

Thursday morning we had planned on going to the caves at Lascaux. Unfortunately because it was a national holiday, everyone and their dog appeared to have had the same idea. To go to Lascaux in the off season, you have to buy your tickets in Montignac at the tourist office. Once we were in town we realized that simply finding a parking spot to go to the tourist office was going to take us forty minutes, so we drove on through and left Lascaux for some other time.

We went instead to Sarlat, in the Périgord Noir, which is a really beautiful little village.

Then we drove on to Rocamadour, which is not even in the Périgord, just to confuse things. It’s an old village/abbey built into the cliff face. We parked at the château and paid 2 euros to walk around the ramparts, where you can easily get dizzy looking down on the village below.

After that we walked down to the sanctuary, which is a pilgrimage site.

Looking up

On the walk down

From the chapel area

We think we’ll return at some point, and probably sleep at a hotel in Montignac to avoid the parking situation for Lascaux. I’d also like to go to the Gouffre de Padirac at some point, which is out near Rocamadour. I had never set foot in Dordogne before, and even though I was driving most of the time, I did get to see some of the natural beauty of the region. Hopefully it won’t take me too long to get my butt back over there.

All the photos I took are on my flickr photostream. Friends are supposed to post theirs soon so maybe I will be able to add some of Périgueux in a few days.

Peaux sèches à très sèches

I’ve always had a tendency toward dry skin, but in the past few years it’s gotten worse. Even in Minnesotan winters I made do pretty well with Pond’s rich dry skin cream, regular old St Ives body lotion, and the occasional moisturizing shower gel.

But for some reason, since coming to France, I’ve found that normal old cosmetic creams do nothing for me. I tried to make do for a while with the free products from my old packaging students, but eventually I had to bite the bullet and go looking for something more to spend my money on. Basically, if a product doesn’t have “peaux très sèches” written on it, it’s not worth buying for my face. I’ve grown wary of regular old “hydratant” lotions and go straight for the heavy duty.

The worst times for dry skin, for me, are after my visits to the United States. I don’t know if it’s like this for the rest of you, but for weeks after I get off the plane, I battle with weird skin. This time it was worse than usual. I was already fighting dryness before leaving for Texas, but wearing sun screen and spending time in the desert did a big number on my face, and it’s still recovering. Just three weeks ago (six weeks after our return from the States!), when I went to the doctor for something else entirely, she immediately noticed my messed up skin.

I’ve decided, rather than complaining about the money this requires me to spend, to enjoy the adventure in French skin products, because there are some really nice things here.

So here are some of the ones I like to varying degrees.

La Roche-Posay Nutritic Intense Riche: Back when I finally came to terms with the fact that supermarket grade lotions wouldn’t do the trick for me, I headed into the pharmacy to search out something more expensive. To my surprise, lotions from the pharmacy are not that expensive, especially the ones in a plain container without a fancy scent. This new one from La Roche Posay costs about 20 euros, which is not particularly cheap, but still better than the fancier stuff being sold by the make-up companies (e.g. Clinique). La Roche Posay sells lotions for less, but they no longer manage to penetrate the wall of dry on my face (you’re welcome for that image!). So far, this one (for “peaux sèches et sensibles”) works fairly well. Having lathered it on my face morning and night for six weeks, my face has finally stopped peeling.

Garnier Crème Bienfaisante Moisture Match: This one I confess I was drawn to by the new ads running on French television. They have four different kinds of lotions, not just for dry skin, (all in different colors!) but of course my criterion was the all-important “très sèches” label. This one runs in the range of 6-8 euros if I remember correctly, but I don’t rely on it entirely.

Neutrogena Clear Face Liquid-lotion Sunscreen SPF 55: One of the most irritating things about my experience in the West Texas desert was that part of what destroyed my skin was the sun screen that I put on it to protect it! I can’t NOT wear sunscreen with my un-tannable Irish skin. But I was determined not to suffer through the same adverse effects again, so before leaving the States, at my annual pharmacy stock-up, I bought this face sunscreen. I’ve only used it once so I can’t really report back on it, but with the sun having made its return to Poitiers, hopefully I’ll know soon if it lives up to its claims. It’s $9.50 for the 3 ounce airplane-friendly bottle, which is not much more expensive than any old sunscreen in France. (Seriously, what is up with sunscreen prices here?)

Nuxe Crème Fraiche de Beauté: My friends in France don’t seem to have massive dry skin problems, so when I wanted to try someone else’s advice, I took advantage of Zhu’s article on Correr Es Mi Destino and bought this product from Nuxe. I got the smaller bottle that costs 16.90 (because let’s face it, I maybe don’t need 50 mls of five different face lotions) and so far I love this one mostly because it smells like roses.

Nuxe Eau Démaquillante Micellaire: Recently I also read that washing your face with water can be bad for dry skin, especially since in Poitiers we have water with an awful lot of lime in it. So rather than trying to wash my face with bottled water, I cracked and also went for this water-less make-up remover that also smells like roses.

As for body lotions, it’s not as pressing a need for me (people can’t actually see the skin peeling off my legs as they can my face), but I have discovered Vichy’s Nutriextra Cream and it is luxurious. Also it smells good.

Finally, when exzema rather than plain old dry skin is the problem, I still turn to my yearly US drug store visits and load up on hydrocortisone cream. As far as I can tell, it’s not over the counter in France.

In short, my criteria for face lotions in France are,

1. Does it say peaux très sèches?
2. Does it smell good or come in a pretty color?
3. Does it cost less than 30 euros, and preferably less than 20?

Does anyone else out there have any favorite skin products to share? Or ever been to a dermatologist in France? I’m open to almost everything at this point.

Getting Glasses in France

I have pretty terrible eyes, and my glasses prescription, even though I only wear them at night or in allergy season, has not been up to snuff in a while. I got the glasses redone, with new frames, in 2006 before coming to France as an assistant, and haven’t messed with them since. I hate wearing my glasses. I can’t see as well, and I feel like I have a metal and glass apparatus separating me from the world (which I guess I do…).

I recently realized I shouldn’t even be driving in these things, since reading signs was difficult. So last summer I decided to bite the bullet and do yet another new medical thing in my adopted country rather than clinging to American ways. I’d already done it for the allergist, for foot surgery, for prescription drugs in general, so what was I waiting for?

To be clear, Americans get their glasses mostly in the following way: You call the optometrist and make an appointment for a few weeks later (correct me if I’m wrong on that). You go in the day of the appointment and spend about an hour doing different tests, as in, the optometrist says, “Which one is clearer? The first one … or the second?” about a hundred times. Maybe this is one of those things, like American dentistry, where we’re all reassured by it taking an incredibly long time. You may have your eyes dilated if needed, and you order your lenses and choose your frames. I’ve never paid for my own lenses but I think it can get pretty expensive.

In France, you have to get your appointment sometimes up to a year in advance, because you have to actually go to the ophthalmologist (though people tell me more and more opticians will do testing), and they are in ridiculously high demand. So I called in July 2012 for an appointment in March 2013. As a teacher, that’s sort of a big bet—who knows if you’ll have class during the time you got your appointment a year ago.

Finally the appointment rolled around and it took about twenty minutes. I called ahead of time to find out if my eyes would be dilated, and the answer was no, which was good because I had a conseil de classe just afterward. I took out my contacts in the ophthalmo’s office, sat in her chair, did the eye puff test, read a few letters (badly), and was done. I felt as though something important hadn’t happened. But she told me she was giving me a stronger prescription for my glasses, so I guess she saw what she needed to. I also got a prescription for hydrating eye drops, which are completely covered by the sécu.

Since it’s vacation now, I finally got around going to the optician today with my prescription. She took my insurance info, my prescription info, and my old glasses to re-use the frames. She tried to calculate how much it would cost according to my mutuelle, and came up with the 298 euros. I have fairly terrible eyes, with 8 and 8.5 diopters’ correction as well as bad astigmatism, which means that anti-glare and extra-light lenses are a must. But fortunately I just got a phone call saying that, after contacting my mutuelle, I’ll only be paying 120 euros. I’m not sure how much it would cost if I’d gotten new frames, since that depends on the frames, but they’re not very well covered (somewhere in the range of 60 euros).

I recently considered switching my mutuelle, since I’m still with the MGEN. But after doing a lot of different “devis” ordered online, I couldn’t find anything that covered glasses quite as well. Has anyone else out there tried getting French glasses?

Oof

Well, the trip to London was very stressful. Here’s a succinct and censored list of some of the problems:

1. Our driver spoke neither French nor English and didn’t know where to park in London. It was time to break out our rusty Spanish. (Las calles son pequeñas! No es possible aqui! Podemos caminar!)
2. The driver didn’t know London very well period, leading us to spend three hours one evening driving back and forth across London trying to get back to the host families. It was super fun.
3. One of the students managed to flood the host family’s bathroom causing a leak into the kitchen. No one quite understands how it was possible but we have to file an insurance claim this week.
4. The students would NOT SHUT UP, even on the night ride back home.
5. The flight of stairs up to the entrance to Madame Tussaud’s cannot possibly be up to fire code when there are hundreds of young people standing in it. Claustrophobes like me did not appreciate it.

Nevertheless, in spite of some general ass-hattery, I think the students all had a great time. On the itinerary was:

1. The Science Museum
2. The London Transport Museum and Covent Garden
3. The British Museum, where I bought this USB drive in the shape of the Rosetta Stone
4. A cruise along the Thames
5. Mme Tussaud’s
6. The Tower of London, where I completed my Royal Palaces mug series (see above)
7. The Channel shuttle
8. An afternoon in Canterbury

Here’s a sampling of pictures, though I didn’t take too many, since this was my 6th or 7th trip to London.

A coach ahead of us getting into the shuttle

Inside the shuttle. (Once we load, they shut the individual walls to create smaller compartments.)

The view from the coach in London

In the London Transport Museum

London Transport Museum

London Transport Museum

The British Museum

The rest of the pictures are on Flickr (see feed in the sidebar). The interesting ones are the pictures of the old Underground posters at the London Transport Museum.

Off to London

with the wee ones tomorrow morning.

By “wee ones” I mean the 13-year-olds, so they’re not so wee, but some of them were still shocked to learn that they wouldn’t be able to pay for things in euros.

Hopefully it’ll be adorable and not too stressful.