Ahhh.... Vacation

Oh vacation, how I love thee.  Days at a time to sit on my butt and do nothing but read.  Deep down, I think this may have been one of the subconscious things influencing my choice to go into education... you know, besides the children, of course!

The vacation house that we stayed at belongs to the grandparents.  It was awesome!  It was spacious and had two bedrooms upstairs which meant that I got my own room most of the time.  That was pretty sweet and helped me to get over the jet lag in two days.  Not too shabby!

Alexandra and I shared a room for a few nights when Caroline’s parents came to visit.  Alexandra warned me “If you hear a sound in the middle of the night that sounds inhuman and terrifying, don’t worry.  It’s just my grandfather snoring.  He’s not dying or anything.  It’s just how he sounds.” I laughed until I cried.  Then I heard the snoring and I understood.  I’m pretty sure that the neighbors three miles down the road heard it, too.

I went to a lot of little markets that had touristy stuff for sale and some that were like flea markets with things that people had made or wanted to get rid of for sale.  I got some cute little souvenir things that are typical of Bretagne – a bowl with a Breton couple in the middle and my name on the side, a cider cup (they drink hard cider out of big teacups), and some caramel made with salted butter.  YUM.

I visited the salt marshes where they actually go out every night and rake the salt off of the top of the water.  I bought some fleur du sel which is the fine salt that comes off of the top of the water.  Caroline bought some gros sel which is salt that’s raked from the water just above the bottom.

We ate some gallettes, which are salted crepes, with chopped ham, gruyere, and an egg.  They were super tasty.  Then we ate some crepes (which are sugary) with Nutella.  OMG.  How has this not caught on in the US?!  A warm, sugary crepe with melted Nutella in the middle?  To die for!

Caroline’s parents joined us for a few days and I rode with them and Alexandra to a market.  Caroline and Olivier drove separately because the cars here are super small.  When we were done with the market, I had seen something that I wanted to get, so I stopped with Caroline and Olivier.  Caroline’s dad is very impatient, so he wanted the house key so that he, Caroline’s mom, and Alexandra could head out.  Caroline, Olivier, and I got what I wanted, then we drove the 25 minutes back to the house to find that no one was there.  Caroline’s dad hadn’t paid attention to where they had parked the car and they were still looking for it!  I had paid attention and told them where it was, but no one believed me until I showed them the picture I had taken in the area that just happened to have the street sign in the background.  Oh hey, it turns out I was right after all.  They were so late getting back that Caroline, Olivier, and I had time to go to the next town, have a diable au grenadine (fizzy lemonade and grenadine, but their grenadine is more mixed berry than cherry) and a Coke, and go to the beach to take some pictures before they got back.  That was a really long way to explain that I had my first French café experience.  It was pretty awesome.  You sit and chill and the waitress comes and takes your order while you relax under a nice umbrella on the patio.  Ahhh... wonderful!

Now we're back from vacation and I'll be heading to Paris for the first time tomorrow!  Stay tuned for more Frenchtastic adventures!

:) Sarah

Whoopie, I made it to France!

Well hello there!

I’m finally back in Internet land after an awesome week spent at the beach on vacation!  I thought it was time for an update, but it’s going to come in parts so it’s not super long!  Since it’s been a while, I’m going to break this down into sections and bullet my thoughts rather than write them all out in paragraph form.

Getting Here:

• I didn’t have to check a second bag because the lady at the American Airlines terminal said that the flights weren’t super full, so I could bring my enormous duffel bag on as my carry on and my huge backpack as my personal item.  WIN!
• I went to my gate immediately upon arriving in Chicago for my connecting flight just to make sure I knew where it was.  There was a huge group of people there who were going to be boarding an Air Iberia flight to Madrid.  This meant lots of Spanish speaking Spaniards.  OMG, HOT STUFF.  I was sitting there husband shopping… so much eye candy!
• Boarded my half empty flight to Paris and I almost had my own seat.  Then my seatmate got there.  She was late, she was crying, and they held the plane 10 minutes for her.  She was 20 and was so excited to be going abroad for a year in France and London.  The thing she was most excited for: the drinking age is 18.  Really, that’s all you’re excited about?  As the French would say: « Ça m’énerve! » which is a strong way of saying that something annoys the crap out of you.
• Got to Paris just fine, then had to sit and wait for 3 hours for my train.  It was the longest 3 hours ever!  Then I got on my train and all I could hear in my head was Caroline saying “Sarah, you moost not fall ahhh-slip on ze tren!” (Sarah, you must not fall asleep on the train!) because apparently they’ll just leave you on there and then make you pay for the difference between where your stop was and where you woke up.  I head bobbed like a champ, but I stayed awake.  Turns out my stop was the end of the line, so they would have made me get off anyways.  Oh well… good intentions and all.
• We arrived 10 minutes late because there was an accident de personne, which I thought meant that someone got something stuck in the door or something.  Nope, Caroline informed me that it means that someone jumped in front of the train and committed suicide.  Only 10 minutes late after that happened?  Not sure how I feel about that… She was very nonchalant about telling me what happened – apparently it happens a lot.  

More on what's been happening here later!  Now, I'm going to go sit on the couch and melt because while it's only 82 here today, it's disgustingly humid.  We're looking at 100+ on Friday.  And no pool, air conditioning, or fans.  Wish me luck!

Much love,

Sarah

Best Summer EVER!

Oh hey there!  It would appear that you've found my blog.  I'm going to try to post in here every other day, or at least three times a week so that I document how awesome this summer is.

Why is this summer awesome you might ask?  Because I'm visiting EVERYWHERE!!  Below is my itinerary:

June 18-21 - Quebec with the French kids
July 3-14 - Spain, Italy, and Vatican City with the Spanish kids
July 18-August 22 - France with my host family again

Seriously, I'm so freaking lucky, I can't stand it.  I don't know what kind of divine intervention happened that allowed all of this to happen, but I am SO GRATEFUL!!  I've had some absolutely incredible opportunities and you can bet that I'm making the most of them!

I'll be posting more on Spain and Italy later, but for now I'm going to focus on France.  I leave tomorrow.  I'm packed - I have half a suitcase worth of stuff - like enough to fit in a carry on, and I'm off for 35 days.  Leaving stuff behind will be an adventure, because if I have to get something in France, it will mean I will have to go to the store.  Which will inevitably lead to 3 hours of fascinated wandering and picture taking while my host mom shakes her head and explains to everyone staring at me that I'm an American.  This seems to work, as they all give her a knowing look and move on with their lives like that is something to be expected from an américaine. 

Anyways, I hope you enjoy this blog!  Hopefully this is my least entertaining post and from now on you'll be very entertained by my ridiculousness!

À bientôt!
Bisous, 
Sarah