Venice, Nice, and Ardèche...finally!

So as you probably know, I had an action packed vacation in April and am just now getting around to writing about it. But not for lack of material! I spent a week and a half in (and around) Venice on a beautiful bike and boat trip. Then I spent three days in Nice, checking out the Cote d'Azure (it really is Azure!) and finally I spent the weekend in Ardèche with friends celebrating Rémy and Sushi's 4 year anniversary in a country house in the middle of rolling hills and cow pastures (far enough away to make for a pleasant view without the accompanying not so pleasant smell). So I'll start with Venice.


I met up with my parents in Venice after discovering that in fact all the ferries to our B&B closed before I even got there, and so finally I took a nice night ride in a water taxi and was greeted by a sleepy but very happy Daddy. My mom booked an adorable B&B on the island of Murano, where Venetian glass is made and where the masters work, so we spent the next day wandering around the different glass studios and watching demonstrations (A glass horse is not as hard to make as it seems! Not that I could do it...) In the afternoon, we went on an adventure with all of our luggage to find the boat that would take us allong our bike tour. It was kind of like a treasure hunt! The directions were not at all correct, and after crashing a little Italian child's birthday party, Mom saw with her eagle eyes that our boat was several docs over. So we went in search of said dock, and after one or two mishaps, we wandered into a large boat yard at the end of which was our little Dutch cannal boat waiting to greet us. It's name is Vita Punya, which means "Life is a struggle." How apropro.

We were greeted by our incredible tour leader, Hein, who is Dutch and has lived all over the world. Our whole trip was constantly enlightened by his musings on life (always very apt!) and his consistant and goofy smile. He truly made the tour - he was a ball of fire, full of energy and always ready to chat. And if ever something didn't go according to plan, well, we learned that "that's how life is" and we moved on with it.

The bike trip was 8 days between Venice and Mantova, a city to the west of Venice. We followed the Po river delta, and so we saw a lot of water and farms and beautiful poppies everywhere! Dad was all decked out in his gear, including a fancy rear view miror that clipped onto his sunglasses. Mom and I went more for comfort but still looked pretty good with our bike gloves and diaper biking shorts. There were about 20 of us on the trip, from all over the world. Aside from me and another girl who was traveling with her mother (14) most people were between their late 30s and 70s. This made for wonderful stories, charming personalities, and an inspiring trip! I hope that I am doing bike trips when I'm in my 70s! Each day we biked between 45 and 65 km, usually around 50 km. We always stopped at least once, and often twice for coffee and also for lunch, so we had a very relaxing trip. At night we ate delicious Italian food cooked by a girl my age who learned to cook from her mother. Real home cooking!
Highlights of the trip:
- Standing on a wall down the middle of Lado (I think) and seeing the Sea on both sides! That's how narrow the island is! Incredible!
- Seeing flamingos taking off while biking through a private aquaculture
- Watching the re-assembly of the Captain's room of the Vita Punya
- Wandering around the medieval commerce streets with Mom in Ferrara
- Watching a fellow biker (who was using an electric bike because he had had a stroke) zoom ahead of everyone else as they struggled against the head on wind. He turned around and smiled with such endearing pride!
- Hanging out with Mom and Dad in our itty bitty tiny room on the boat. It was so small that only one person at a time could fit between the two beds that were on either side of the room. MMmm cozy.
- A lesson in coffee - aka the millions of ways to order it - in Italy from the Italian somalier that was biking with us for the week (whose wine we drank all week also - it was wonderful)

So those are some of the highlights from the bike, which was all around beautiful, fun, and rewarding, even (or especially) when it rained!

After the bike trip, Mom, Dad, and I spent three days in Venice. I'll finish this part later.

Tansoleil - or something like that

Feast your eyes! I have been taking an African dance class since I got here, and we finally had a performance! It was a Mali Festival and all the classes from the association had different dances that they did for a wonderfully encouraging audience. Here is a video of my class's performance of one of our dances - tansoleil! (Try and catch the move that I can't figure out how to do for about 20 seconds - it's not that hard to pick out! hahaha!)




Not bad eh?

The CHALLENGE!

Today was a very important day in Monteux (the small town where I work) for the elementary schools. It was the Challenge des Langues Vivantes, Anglais! A day of skits, songs, and games in English and the culminating event of what the kids have been learning all year. (For me it happens to fall two months before the end of the year, but what can you do?) Even though the Mistral was blowing its hardest and I managed to get sun burned, it was a really rewarding day.

Of all the students there, 6 of the 8 classes were mine (3 schools total, two of which I teach at). Each class had to prepare a little performance, which meant that I was running around for the first half of the day figuring out cds, singing with the kids, and encouraging them to sing plus fort! plus fort! Everyone did alright, but I was most proud of two of my classes. My youngest class of first and second graders sang the best of any of the students! They sang "I love you" (people don't have the same Barney hang-ups here that we have in the states) and "This Land is Your Land" which is particularly impressive because of its complicated vocabulary (gulf stream waters is not easy to say if you're a French 7 year old). They sang so loud and so well; I was so proud of them! The second class that I was really proud of performed a skit of Go Dog Go. Over the spring vacation, they all made dog ears and props for the skit (to my surprise!) and memorized all of their lines and movements! They looked so adorable with their little cardboard ears! Also when we rehearsed yesterday, I told them to be more enthusiastic because it's more fun to watch, and they actually did it today! They jumped and smiled and hammed it up! It was great! Afterwards a bunch of teachers came up and complimented me on the idea and how well they did. It felt so good because I was not sure we were going to pull it off at all, or that it was worth spending that much time on, but in the end everyone had a really good time doing it! Here they are (I'm on the edge...same size as them!) with their ears on!

They were proud of themselves too. All around a success I would say! The next youngest class did a skit of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? Unfortunately, they were far less prepared and impressive, and it was maybe a little painful to watch for the kids in the audience. They are a cute class but don't pay any attention and goof around all the time. But in the end, I think it was worse for them than for me, and the teacher just shrugged and said something like, what can you expect and we laughed and it was over. (Phew! They are certainly not going to get the big scratch n'Sniff stickers that I'm giving to my Go Dog Go class! Maybe a sparkly insect instead...) Another class sang "It's Raining It's Pouring" and "He's Got the Whole World in his Hands" which they sang very well even though the music didn't work for them. Another fifth grade class sange "If You're Happy and You Know It" and my last class did a little Beatles medly - "Hello, Goodbye" and then "All Together Now." They chickened out on the movements for Hello Goodbye, but they did an excellent job sailing the ship, chopping the tree, and skipping the rope for All Together Now. Then finally the performance part of the day was over and it was on to the relay of games based on English vocab, structures, and culture!

The game I was running was Guess Who, and included people that I certainly didn't know about in Elementary school - Mohamed Ali, Carl Lewis, Andy Warhol. But they did ok - and had fun running around and showing off their American knowledge. They all had teams of 6 or 8 kids, two each from different classes, with a little scoreboard that one team member wore around their neck. At the end, the scores were tallied and there was 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners, and then everyone got a snack before going home. As the kids were getting ready to go home, two of the girls in one of my classes came up to me and thanked me for my excellent English classes that had taught them so much. They were thrilled because they had come in First! It was so cute and I was so touched that they did that! It was really fun for me to see them feeling proud of themselves for the English they knew. I feel like this year has been a good year for them, and there are definitely some kids who really care about learning English now, which is great. A mother of another of my students who was chaperoning told me how much her son loved English. Then she told me how he comes home and tells her about what we do in class every week - and she knew everything we had done! She knew his English name (Steven), about my little powerpoint that I put together after going home for inauguration, about my sister coming to visit, about the Go Dog Go skit (her son had particularly excellent ears). It was so rewarding to hear that he gets excited about what we do in class! It was a day that came at just the right time, when I was not particularly looking forward to teaching for another 2 months. But after doing this day with my students and seeing them have so much fun and feel so good about what they learned, it got me a little excited to play games with them and think of fun lessons to do in these last months of school. Even though I don't want to be a teacher, I think I'm going to miss being Miss Becky when this is all over. It can be lots of fun.

Some Pictures, Barcelona and the Pyrenees

Kasia, Carly and Myrto being the Pyrenees in front of the house where we stayed.

The view from where we were staying. Beautiful and breathtaking.

Kasia and I looking at some mosaic in Park Guell (The park in Barcelona that Gaudi designed).

Laughing and enjoying delicious tapas!

The delicious tapas!

Some Pictures, Barcelona

Carly and Fannie in the metro with their masks

A small street in Barcelona

Les Quatres Gats for my birthday dinner!

Fannie and Carly interpreting Gaudi's La Perrera.

Road Trip! Setting off for Barcelona!

Some pictures, Avignon

Carly and I in front of Palais des Papes, 5:30 am

Steve performing for Jesus and Mary

Bringing my apple pie (for the International dinner with my land lady and her family) to Carly's. She has an oven. I don't!

Tuckered out after an invigorating game of tag.

Delerium - the place to be in Avignon.

Birthday in Barcelona!

For my February vacation, my housemates, Carly, and Fannie (a French friend) decided to take a road trip to Barcelona and the Pyrenees. The five of us piled into Myrto's little two door car, and set off for Spain on Monday morning (March 2). On our drive we stopped in Caraques to see Dali's house (with two egg statues and two cracked head statues on top) and walk around the town's small cobble stone streets.  Then we spent the night in Fugueres, and went to the Dali museum the next day, which was amazing! I have never liked Dali's work before in my life, but the way he presented his work really helped me understand and appreciate it! It was soo cool! It completely changed my perspective by showing me his perspective. If you are ever near Barcelona, I would highly suggest making a detour to see this museum. 

After spending a day with Dali, we piled back into the car and headed to Barcelona. We had slight setbacks meeting up with our couch surfing host, and when we finally did meet up it was about 9pm. We ended up hanging out with his friends for a couple of hours, who were very nice, although having the same conversation over and over due to limited English and non-existent Spanish can get a little tiring. Our host had to do his laundry and we had to wait for him to show us where we could park for free, which meant hanging out for a while. The more we hung out, the more we realized that there was no way we were going to sleep at all if we stayed the night. There were far too many people staying the weekend, and the party had only just begun around 11 or 12 when we finally decided to go park the car ourselves. We made an executive decision and got a hostel instead. By the time we parked the car and got all our luggage back to the area we were staying, we were starving! (We had not eaten dinner and it was already past midnight!) Backpacking packs and all, we headed for the first restaurant we saw, which was a touristy tapas restaurant with a table of rowdy Italian girls who ended up singing me happy birthday in at least 5 different languages. Not a bad start to the trip!

The next day, we did a Gaudi walk and saw his major designs. His architecture is so playful and imaginative! I loved it! I felt like I was in a dream! We saw the house he designed from the outside, and went into La Perrera (whose roof was breathtaking!) and La Sagrada Familia, which is still in the process of being built. Then we went to the Fondacion Miro, and saw a lot of Miro's work from his earliest paintings to latest works. Barcelona is such a cool city with so much art and beautiful architecture everywhere you look! 

After the museum, we went back to the hostel to rest a little and drop off our bags. As I was checking my copious facebook messages (thanks everyone!) the 4 girls I was with came down, took all my stuff and blindfolded me, and walked me outside to a nearby Flamenco bar where they had bought tickets to watch the show for my birthday! The dancers were so serious and intense, and the music was wonderful! It was such a great surprise! Afterwards, we went back and got changed, and went to Les Quatres Gats, the restaurant where Picasso used to hang out all the time. The girls had figured out everything without me knowing and had made a reservation for us. The night just kept getting better and better! We ordered delicous food (the arroz negro, suggested by Steph, was to die for) and yummy Spanish wine and ate so much we could hardly move! The girls bought me The Little Prince in Spanish as a birthday present since I'm learning Spanish, and when I thought the night couldn't get any better, our dessert came with a candle in it and the piano player started playing Happy Birthday.  We all shared the wonderful Creme Catalan and sorbet, and the waiter kissed me on the cheek because it was my birthday before we left. Afterwards, Carly, Kasia, Fannie and I went to a club that was right next to our hostel and danced our pants off for an hour or two before heading back to bed. (We did that thing we used to do at Cornell where each person makes up a dance move and you put them all together! The other people in the club thought it was hilarious!) It was a truly amazing birthday!

The next day, we walked around Barcelona and saw some of the Cathedrals and Churches. We did a little shopping, and had lunch on the beach. It was sunny and warm, and we had a really relaxing day getting lost and finding ourselves again. Then at night we went up one of the hills next to Barcelona and watched the sunset and the lights in the city light up as it got dark. Fannie, Carly and I bought paper kids masks for fun, and wore them on the subway to the fenicular, and then while waiting for Myrto and Kasia to meet us we had way too much fun playing around with the masks and staring at people with them as they got off the subway. It was so silly and so much fun! What was the weirdest thing was that people in the metro didn't even react at all! They acted as if there were always people wearing parrot, tiger, and flower masks on the metro! Only one little girl stared at us with a look of jealousy because our masks were fabulous. After going up the hill/mountain and coming down again, we had an evening of tapas, and went to two pays basque tapas restaurants that were delicous! We had sangria and all the traditional tapas at one, and then at the second had cider and more creative and equally delicious tapas. It was really fun and really filling in the best way! 

The next day, we went to Park Guell (designed by Gaudi) and walked around while Kasia tried to sell the earrings she had made (no success unfortunately) We had a picknick of Spanish ham and cheese that we bought at the main Barcelona market and basked in the sun which finally decided to come out in force. We left in the late afternoon and loaded up the car to go to the Pryrenees, to stay with a friend of Fannie's who has a house in a tiny village. 

The drive was beautiful, and the Pyrenees were striking and gorgeous. The house didn't have heat (they use it as a summer house mostly) and there were between 20 and 30 people there for the weekend! We lit the fireplace and played games until 4 or 5 in the morning before we finally went upstairs to the loft where there were shockingly enough mattresses for everyone to sleep on. Incredible. (My new sleeping bag kept me toasty warm, despite the lack of heat!) On Saturday, we woke up late, and then Fannie, Kasia and I went skiing for the afternoon in a mountain about half an hour from where we were staying. It was so much fun! The snow was powdery and landscape was so striking, I couldn't look away! (This proved to be dangerous while skiing). It was definitely one of the most beautiful sights I have seen. That night we got back and the power went out, so we ate dinner and played games by candle light for the rest of the night before going to sleep. The next day, before piling back into the car to go back to Avignon, we went on a walk around the village and through the fields nearby. It was such an amazing vacation, I never wanted to leave. Work on Monday was hard, man!

And that concludes the tales of my Barcelona/Pyrenees adventure! Signing off, a real grown up 23 year old, Becky