More pictures....

Another week in France. Brain is severely fried at the end of every day because of having to constantly think about what I am going to say. Basically, I talk a lot less than I normally do because sometimes I just don't know the words I want to say, so..I say nothing. I think there are some people in my life would appreciate if I could figure out how to be like this when speaking English too!

This week, I was kind of a French housewife while I helped Steff. And, I made my first French pastry- FROM SCRATCH! And, ironically, it was an apple pie! I used apples stored from the autumn in the cave under the house and taught Steff how to use her new Cuisinart. J'aime bien "the kweez" as we have always called it at my house.

Laurent's niece and nephew (who are in their 20s) are visiting right now so there is lots of activity in the house! Laurent's niece took me to the coast and also to the big hill nearby called Mont Dol. Not so much a mountain as a big rock but it was a cool view nonetheless.

Thursday, I head back to London for 5 days for the international school job fair. Mama needs a job...I really like traveling by train here so I am really excited for the trip again. However, this time, I won't have to have a huge bag so it will be significantly easier!

View of the countryside from Mont Dol. If you notice that the countryside ends, that is because the ocean is right there. I didn't realize until I could actually see it how close I am to the ocean. No wonder that every morning there are super low clouds and it is kind of foggy.

Also, it doesn't get light here in the morning until about 8:45. I FINALLY figured out why (yes, for a science teacher, I am a total moron). France is one hour later than England but here in Dol, we are practically in England and so it stays dark much later in the morning. It was really weird to open my shutters at 8:30 and it still almost pitch black dark. I thought it was hard to get up early in England...not so much compared to here!

There is a big windmill at the top of Mont Dol. I assume that it likely used to work but don't think it does anymore!

This is Mont St. Michel. It is a castle/abbey/fortified town out in the middle of the water and it is only accessible during low tides. I haven't been yet but you can see it from extremely far away.

Sandy would like to know that I went "birding" with Laurent's niece who has a degree in Environmental Education, like me! We saw only like three birds because they were way too far away where the water was (low tide!). But, we did see one raptor. That was my French word of the day..."rapace." I tried to explain the concept of "Bird Nerd" but it didn't really translate! But, Laurent's niece is also plagued by knowing the Latin names of species, as am I. But, now, being from two different countries, I can see the handiness of a binomial nomenclature! :)

Being a landlubber from Colorado, it sure is fun to be within about 5 minutes of the coast!

Guard dogs at the house on the hill. The house was only accessible by foot and likely only when the tide is out. See picture below.

Not sure I'd want a house that was only accessible when the tide is out. That would be kind of a pain for quick errands....oh that and the fact that you have to climb a huge hill every time to get up to it.

Love the views.

We had total kite failure. So instead, Léo collected about 30 rocks and could barely walk he had so many in his jacket and jeans pockets!

Something actually professionally related...Cool ELL websites

I found the following really cool websites for teaching English/ESL/ELL...thanks to Twitter...which I have begun to use to keep up with the professional world during my massive months of unemployment. Doubt anyone reading this will need these...but just in case...here are a few...

http://www.mingoville.com

http://www. starfall.com

http://www.strivney.com

http://www.digischool.nl/oefenen/hennyjellema/engels/tpr/voorbladtpr.htm

I tried all of these out today by myself and then did the mingoville one with Steven and it was really good for him because there is whole section on colors and clothes which is what he is learning now at school.

There are things as simple as letter recognition, phonemes, sight words, etc. These sites would be great for any beginning reader, not just an ELL. So, I know there are a few SPED or elementary teachers out there reading this...these would be great for your kids (and you probably already know about them!!)!

Getting to be a tourist too!

I wrote more at the end of this entry, but I will just start with some captions. This family is amazingly nice and excited to share their world with me! We will have lots of tourist excursions, I think. We've already have three mini ones and I've only been here for five days! Very different from the people I lived with in Nice when I was 20 (they were 25 and 27 which seemed SO old to me at the time!) who gave me a key and turned me loose.

So, here are some pictures of our mini excursions in the French mini-van!

This is Saint Malo, about 20 kilometers from here. (Yeah, I can't tell you that in miles, sorry...you'll have to do the math.) This is a picture looking down the city walls.

Saint Malo is a fortified village next to the sea. This means that the old city has walls built around it- ramparts, I believe they are called.

Outside the city of walls of Saint Malo there is a harbor with all kinds of boats- didn't see any yachts but Saint Malo is a ferry port for ferries arriving from England.

The streets inside the city walls are labyrinthine, you might say. They are also quite narrow and it is not possible to drive on many of them.

This is me with the boys! The tide goes out really really far here and everyone walks on the beach on Sundays if it is nice. Apparently, this is a hot tourist spot in the summer but I guess when you have to wear a hat and gloves on the beach, it tends to keep people away. (Although, I guess people go to the beach all bundled up in Oregon- when I was there we almost blew away on the beach- I believe Katie and Dawn actually became human kites temporarily!)

More views of the beach in Saint Malo.

This is my town, Dol-de-Bretagne. It is pretty darn cute, I must say. In case I go crazy and have to have a People magazine, I found a store that has them. But, who wants a People without a pedicure???

Yesterday, we went to Vitré to see some friends of my French family. It also has a fortified old city with walls build around it. (There was a lot of attacking going on, apparently!) I thought this house TRULY looked like it belongs in Diagon Alley from Harry Potter.

The castle in Vitré. Apparently, there was one made of wood but the English burned it down so they had to build another bigger one out of stone! Not to give a history lesson or anything (and I think I learned this in high school) but Bretagne (Brittany) was its own country separate from France. There is even a separate language that is still spoken by some old people and they still have a very strong identity with being Britons. (Kinda like Texas???)

Part of the "new" castle in Vitré.

Inside the city walls in Vitré. It was very charming and the friends of my French family were very knowledgeable about everything and narrated our tour through the town in nice, slow French so I could understand everything!

This was taken out my bedroom window. It is a view of the Dol cathedral. Pretty cool.

This is the cathedral from close up. We didn't go in because it was Sunday and they still have mass there every week. Steven goes to a school directly across the street from the cathedral and gets to look at this out his classroom windows. I'd still rather see mountains, but this would do!

I have gotten to be a tourist this weekend while my brain is still close to exploding from trying to process French all of the time! We went to lunch at some people's house yesterday and trying to follow the conversation at the table was utterly exhausting! I get the general topic but the details escape me completely! But, even after just 5 days, I feel some improvement! That, to me, is a good sign that these few months will make a difference and I will graduate from being a French-speaking chimpanzee to maybe like...a human infant...maybe even a toddler! YAY!

The boys are hilarious and the younger one, Léo, is a full-on ball of energy. As soon as the car door opens, he just jumps out and starts running everywhere in a disjointed zig-zag pattern! He just runs and runs! Today he made a sand ball and carried it around for like 2 hours until it was just a tiny little ball. And, we had some hilarity when he was trying to say "I am asleep" but he was actually saying "I am a sheep!" Oh it is the little things, I tell you!

Steven is learning English at school every day and so I will be helping him with his homework. It is a real test of my French speaking to still be a teacher and not give the answer but give helpful clues and suggestions and try to make him figure out the answers without me. But, not surprisingly, my Mr. Sketch markers have been a huge hit for use on homework! Everyone loves Mr. Sketch markers!

We are trying to use as much English as possible at the dinner table and I made little cards with dining phrases like "Please pass the water." and "Thank you." and "Please put your dishes in the dishwasher before you leave the kitchen." Laurent, the dad, is so busy that it is hard for him to sit down and find the time to have lessons, per se, so we will be using meal times to have extra English lessons. Also, I have to think that they really need to learn British English vocabulary as their bed and breakfast guests are much more likely to be English than American. Good thing I've lived there so that I know trash can = bin and that trousers = pants and pants = underwear and other such translations! I get made fun of constantly in England for my word choices but it is hard to suddenly speak YOUR OWN language with different words, not to mention the spelling. When I was teaching genetics and doing Punnett Squares, the kids would always yell at me because I would write Mom instead of Mum on the side of the square.

The boys really want me to play Wii with them but I have a hard time explaining that I am useless at all video games because I was deprived of them as a child...thanks Mom and Dad....gosh, you made me read, take before school French and piano lessons instead, you horrible parents.

Anyway, I hope everyone has a great week. For those in Colorado, I am jealous of your giant snowfall and I have my fingers crossed for a snow day for you! I will continue to be a French chimp and if anyone knows any good websites with games for really basic English, send them my way. I found a few on scholastic but can always use more as I think these are great and we had "dueling laptops" with English games a few times this weekend.

À la prochaine...

A house as a classroom...

Obviously, I have a bit of free time while the kids are at school...I will be occupying that free time with some more exciting things very soon. But, it is fun that Léo comes home from school in the middle of the day. Today, after a lunch that contained crazily delicious French cheese, Léo trekked me through the mud to meet the donkey next door, Peggy. I like her bangs (that's fringe for any English people reading this!). They are cut around her eyes. She seems a bit lonely (she can probably see the two ponies and feels sad that she is all alone) and makes lots of donkey noises for much of the day.

For anyone who has ever seen my science classroom in Colorado, you know that I have words covering everything by the end of the year...as did/do the rest of Tigers- in fact we got made fun of for it regularly. So, I am slowly turning La Crochardière into a classroom. One of the tricks I learned about teaching a language from a variety of brilliant language teachers, is to label things. We started last night...I modeled one and had the boys do the rest.





Then, we decided to hang all the prepositions on the fireplace. We are referring to it as "La Cheminée des Prepositions" and we have been practicing them at mealtimes since this fireplace is in the dining room. We are naming the food at the table and learning to say please and thank you in English as well. I feel that after two months, they should have learned some English!

The kids are just so incredibly sweet and excited to have me here and so far it has been really fun. I have full-on black out shutters in my room and am definitely going to have to leave them open as it seems to be the middle of the night when I wake up when in fact, it is morning and it makes me feel like a giant slacker loser.

Tomorrow we will go to a medieval village called Vitré and then Sunday, if it is sunny, the family will take me to Saint Malo, a larger town on the coast. It is also a series of fortified medieval villages. It is totally normal for Europeans to live in such historical places (like when I went to a 900 year old pub for lunch in England!) but for me, it is nuts to think that Dol has been continuously inhabited for a few thousand years, at least. There are pagan monolithic stones that have been uncovered here as well as some Roman ruins and various remnants of several Viking invasions. Really cool. In Fort Collins, I can go to the Avery House, it was built in like 1880. :) Not that I don't LOVE LOVE LOVE Colorado, but old buildings just have a different meaning in Europe. It is difficult to wrap my head around that!

Some pictures while I work on my English lessons for the family...I am making lists of questions and hotel related vocabulary words to practice saying with Steff & Laurent (the parents.) With everyone, we will work on household words and question words first. For myself, I am studying my French verb conjugations as I am a moron and have forgotten most of them except for, as I said before, present or immediate past tense. So, hopefully, I won't sound so dumb. I say stuff like, "Yesterday, I am going to the store." Must fix that. Mrs. Duling, my French teacher for two years in high school, would shudder!

Went to the store with Steff (had to get my diet coke (Coca Light) fix so I didn't die) and just had to show that Justin is popular the world over with kids! Steven, the oldest here, even has the "Beiber Swirl!"

The original front door. I LOVE things with faded paint!

Looking down the driveway toward the main road.

Dol, the town, is walking distance and Steff and I are going to walk there tomorrow so I can learn the way and go into town. There is a huge cathedral which I can see out our back windows. Dol has about 5,000 people and is apparently, the birthplace of the The Stuarts, the people who came to rule Scotland eons ago. It has a long history of Celts, Saxons, Catholics (hence the giant cathedral), etc.

Apache (pronounced Ah-pash in French). He bit Steff's arm this morning and gave her a really good bruise. Little shit. He is only 9 months old.

Apache's mother...Madone....or Madonna as I will be calling her.

She is a bit nicer than Apache.

They are working on getting the house on the historic register. A "gite" is a cottage. I had to look it up. There are streets signs in the town of Dol directing people to La Crochardière so obviously it is a well-known place in the town, at least.

The main house.

There are about 4 houses actually on the property in various states of disrepair. Steff told me that when they bought it last May, the property had been abandoned for at least six years. I'd say they've done some amazing work since then! There is a totally modern kitchen, several bathrooms, and at least 5 modern bedrooms, living room, etc. in the main house. There is still more of it to do, but it is coming along. There is another little house next to it that is almost completely renovated and this will be used for a vacation rental.

Les Poules

Side view of the main house. Under all the stucco, (or whatever that is) there is stone! My window is the top right one, I think. I am in the really old part of the house that has a separate windy wood/stone staircase up to it.

Apache ran over to me, probably to bite me.

All over the property, there are huge granite planters. Can't imagine they are very mobile!

The old fireplace with a new wood burning stove inside of it. Huge granite mantle.

This is another house/barn/building? on the property behind the main house. Obviously, it needs a little work since it has plants growing out of the roof.

Léo with Apache. He loves the ponies! Elementary school kids often come home for lunch. He is a really cute little guy and really hyper!

One of the sweet little kitties. They fight constantly with the dog.

So, today I am just kind of getting my bearings and doing a lot of French studying in between making huge amounts of t-charts with French/English vocabulary to start working on pronunciation and speaking with everyone tomorrow.

Here's what's hard: when I "speak" French with Mike in England, if I don't know a word, I either just say it in English or ask him the word. Doesn't work when you are with people who don't speak English. I've been carrying around a dictionary. French word I learned today: congeler- to freeze.

Will post pictures of the town tomorrow. Oh if it would be sunny! It is even more grey than England so far!

My French Manoir...

I'm here! It was a really silly and comedic trek through England and France today with my giant rolly bag. I only had one but it is not exactly conducive (as proven by Courtney's and my trip to Amsterdam) to stairs. The Paris Metro (that's metr-A for Natalie) does not have any escalators and it was a constant upstairs/downstairs trek to get from the Gare du Nord where I arrived from London to the Gare de Montparnasse where I got my French train to Dol. And, lugging a giant bag up and down the train stairs with a gap between the train and the platform is always a bit sketchy. It gives ''mind the gap'' a whole new meaning!!

(Note: My brain is working OVERTIME to speak French and I keep almost typing the words in French- I forgot how exhausting it is to try to speak in another language all the time and I've only been here a few hours! If you want to have conversations in the present tense or the immediate past tense...I'm your gal, but other than that...I'm like a chimp!)

Besides the giant bag, the trip was fine and I really like traveling by train. I just can't get over how cool it is that you can take a train under the English Channel between London and Paris. The Louaisil Family met me at the train station in Dol and they are totally cute. The boys are named Steven (12) and Leo (9) and they are really excited to have me here and are showing me everything in their rooms. They have two really sweet kitties, a little ragamuffin-looks like a mop- dog named Biscuit, and the two ponies...Apache and Madonna. They also have six chickens but apparently it is too cold for them to do much egg-laying at the moment.

They have a mini-van and it was extremely weird to sit on the right side as the passenger. I kept internally freaking out that they were turning down the wrong side of the road. I realize that I just went to France recently, but I didn't ride in a car and I especially didn't ride in the front seat. I think I am used to England...I should have capitalized on that and driven more while I was there...when I get back, I'll have to but by then, I will be used to France again! My friend Nicola can just go back and forth without giving it much thought, I think that it pretty impressive!

So, we drove through the adorable town of Dol, pictures as soon as it is light, I promise...and then up to the house. The house is actually named La Crochardière! The main house is an 18th century manor house and they are in the process of redoing it and then it will be partially their house and partially a bed and breakfast. There is also another smaller house next to the main house, which they offered for me to live in but it seems that it would be a little bit lonely to be there by myself, the boys really wanted me in the main house, and there isn't internet over there, so I was pretty much sold on being in the main house. It is a huge old manor house and I will post pictures ASAP! They have only been living in it since September and spent the summer restoring it, as they have only owned the property since May. Laurent, the dad, has a contracting business and so they are currently working on restoring La Crochardière and all of its outbuildings. When it all gets finished, I highly recommend planning a trip to Dol-de-Bretagne, France. Adorable. Their property is huge and the house is very nicely redone and, in fact, my bathroom is getting a new shower tomorrow. I have my own bathroom attached to my room ('en suite' it is called in England so I assume that would be from the French!) and a large room with a double bed. It is all recently completely redone...still smells of fresh paint!

The boys have school tomorrow and I am going to go with Steff to the grocery store and then my plan is to walk around Dol and La Crochardière and take lots of pictures. Steff liked my idea of having the boys help me create labels for things around the house so I think that might be where we begin our English lessons. Steff and Laurent know some English but none of us speak each other's language well enough to translate "how do I get onto your network?" I do know now that the word for network is réseau but it took like an hour and a few skype calls to their brother-in-law for me to get on the réseau.

I will post more tomorrow when I've taken pictures. I think that the next house I live in, I am just going to name it.

Mon cerveau est cuit....My brain is cooked!

Bonne nuit!

Allons-y!!

Tomorrow is the big day and I leave for France! I feel like since I decided to put my house on the market last March, I have been in a constant state of packing or unpacking and this experience will be no different! I am only taking one bag with me this time and leaving my other 5 bags in England! Funny that I spent all summer shopping for dress clothes and now I am pretty much only taking non-dress clothes to France. As I will be teaching English 15 hours per week, I have put together a VERY small collection of resources to bring with me as I plan to use my head, stuff in their house, and the good 'ole internet.

Four Cans of Baked Beans- a little heavy...

The family I am to live with is opening a bed and breakfast. I figure that since it is just across the English Channel from England, it might attract some English tourists...what do English tourists want when they go abroad (I just spent a week with them in Val d'Isère and saw that this was a choice for every breakfast)?? Baked beans for breakfast. So, this will be my first welcome gift- four cans of baked beans!

My one purchased resource....

In terms of planning for the family's lessons, I haven't really been able to do much quite yet. I feel like I must assess their current levels before I dive right in. And, my mom reminded me today that I used to work at a hotel (obviously, it had a huge impact on me since I didn't even remember until she said it!) and so I am hoping to have some good ideas about important English phrases and information to know for their bed and breakfast.

My French reading level is just lower than that of about a 12-year-old!

This book "Panther" by Carl Hiaasen was purchased at a bookstore in Val. He does write for adults, but this is not one of them. It has relatively simple vocabulary and as Mike said, pretty much lacks long passages of description and just focuses on action. Perfect for someone with a limited vocabulary! Maybe one of the kids will want to read it too? The mom of the family did say that the 12-year-old is a big reader! Maybe we can be in a book club of two!

Like I would go into any teaching situation without a set of Mr. Sketch markers!

The one idea I do have already is to label everything in the house with French/English labels, if the family will let me, that is. I think that while I am there, it would be really helpful for everyone if we got to see those labels every day!

Ah, Harry Potter. Fun to read in any language.

Maybe this could be another choice for our two person book club! I have learned (through inferring, I must say) that the word for owls in French is "les hiboux" which I did not know before reading this...it had never really come up in any of my French studies before. Weird.

French Screwball Ski Comedy from the 1970s

My English French teacher, Mike, got this for me for Christmas. It was filmed in Val d'Isère in the late 1970s (maybe my parents will be in the background from their trip) and it is just silly. Who doesn't love silly 70s ski movies? I'm taking it with me, because, why not?!?

So, I will post again when I get to France and get settled. I have a long journey tomorrow which I will repeat in two weeks time when I come back to Chesham/London for the international school job fair. Mama needs a job....I've spent the last week revising my resume and rewriting an old CBMS unit plan to reflect the principles of IB (that's International Baccalaureate for those out of the educational world) in hopes of selling myself to the prospective schools! Pretty much every single school coming to the fair uses an IB curriculum and so I have to prove that even though I've not taught an IB school before, I know what's up.

Au revoir, mes amis! À bientôt!