Spring has Sprung!!!

Le 21 mars 2005.

ARRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!! It’s spring!!!! It’s so fabulous! It’s been gorgeous for the last week now and I’m in love with it all! Two Fridays ago the weather has quite disagreeable, all cold and wet, and even still on Monday it wasn’t exactly great, but I wasn’t complaining with 30 degrees F. Yet on Tuesday it was suddenly 50 degrees and I was thrilled, and then on Wednesday it was excitingly 70 degrees—and quite honestly I was in heaven! Anna and I took advantage by going for a two and a half hour hike through Metz, out past Technopole to Grange aux bois, and it was so nice just to get out and go for such a long walk.

Then on Thursday I took off for the south! J’adore le Sud! It was so crazy, the further south I went, the more I felt like I was going home. Truly Toulouse is my first French love! The only problem with the trip to St. Julien (en-Genevois) was that we were delayed outside of Chalon-sur-Saone for about 45 minutes, and they said that we were going to be about that late… sadness as I had two more connections to make. But they pushed the train into Lyon and then had held the train there for Bellegarde. So I didn’t have to worry about getting stuck in Lyon for the night. The conductors went around on the train then to ask if anyone had connections at Bellegarde, so they also held the train for St. Julien too! I was certainly thrilled as I didn’t know how else to get from Bellegarde to St. Jul. So they kept pushing the trains, and I ended up in St. Jul less than half an hour late, and worked out perfectly as Kim was finishing up laundry anyway.

ARRRRRR!!! I was so excited to see Kim! We had a fabulous weekend! It was so refreshing for me to get away from Metz. We, as expected, chatted non-stop throughout the weekend; about Toulouse, this year, our students, the differences between elementary and middle-school, the fabulous weather (!), her trip to Morocco, and everything else under the sun. I met the other assistant in St. Jul- Hannah, also American, who’s working in the high school.

Then seeing as St. Jul is pretty small but a bedroom community for Geneva (Switzerland), we spent Saturday in town. The bus ride is only about 30 minutes and just gorgeous, as you ride into town through the huge valley that Geneva and St. Jul are in. And Saturday was glorious weather again! The sun was shining and the sky was bright blue and a slight breeze to keep us comfortable as we hiked all over town. We went to a kebab shop for lunch and I finally got my falafels which I’ve been missing! We walked through the flea market, went passed Kim’s tango studio and favorite café, hiked up through Old City (where I saw the cutest hat and regret I didn’t buy it) and visited the Little Prince Shop (mostly baby clothes), and wandered around on top of the hill. There was a kid’s fest going on in a little overlook park, and hot air balloons were lifting off from all over Geneva. So we watched the one from in front of the Cathedral St. Pierre. Then we hiked to the top of the towers- we even did both of the towers even though I was feeling the adrenaline rush from my fear of heights the whole time! I thought my legs were going to give out on me!
At little out of order, but Friday was great too! I went with Kim to her afternoon class to see how teaching English in elementary worked. She’s a fabulously amazing teacher by the way! Her CE 2 class reminds me of my 6ieme’s, which isn’t surprising given they’re an age apart. Though they were definitely more rambunctious, though my sixieme’s can be as bad some days. Later that night after some great potato chowder, we went with Hannah into Geneva to go to a café or a bar, depending on what interested us and it was also the experimental run for taking the night bus! Oh, what an experience! We unfortunately missed the one at about 1:45am, so our next try wasn’t until about 3am (also our last chance!). Then it turns out that all the small restos have to close at 2am (though the strange thing is that they can reopen at 4am for when the clubs close at 5am). So we couldn’t go sit inside somewhere and eat fries, so we walked around the bus stop for about half an hour and bought candy bars. The new Mars bar with almonds was yummy but the original is still best, as it offers more caramel (though the Mars dark is fabou!). We then just waited inside the entrance to the mall under the train station till our bus arrived. Then we were the only ones still on when we left the Geneva suburbs, and we only found out after our bus passed the turn off for our stop that we had to ask for that particular stop! But the driver was nice and turned around (as it was just us on the bus) and let us off where we wanted. The final part of our evening though as a scary walk from this little town on the Swiss side through a little wood to St. Jul on the French side, involving crossing the border where there are signs saying you’re not suppose to cross there! But all in all, it was a good test run and a great story! We were literally freaked out crossing through there as it was super dark (great for viewing the stars though). Later we realized that we could have just walked up to the main road and gone through the border crossing there and then cut back through the apartment housings on the St. Jul side. But now the story’s good for a laugh!

We were going to get some great photos too of funny things in Geneva, but we ran out of time. But for your information, one was to be of Kim next to some graffetti stating similar though more vulgar sentiments towards cars! And the other was to be of a jewelry store called Schmuck! Hehehe! I’ve yet to understand the naming of jewelry stores in Europe…

Well to those three people who do read this, I don’t want to bore you, but I had a fabou weekend in the Alps! Tomorrow I’m going with the middle school to Verdun, should be interesting! And here’s to crossing the border at illegal crossings! Don’t forget to check out the photos!
Ps. I crossed the Rhone in the same spot that Julius Cesar did on his way back from his campaign against the Gauls (the original French people).