Wine Dream Tour

Check out the photos!

Today, after celebrating two Thanksgivings and drinking a lot of wine, Meg & I woke up early to train it over to Villefranche, where we met up with Adan to drink some more wine...but this time, in the vineyards.

Gil, an English teacher-turned tour guide (he teaches at Adan's school), drove us around from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the Burgundy & Beaujolais regions to see the beautiful vineyards and go wine tasting. Meg and I were expecting a brief jaunt to the town of Cluny and a stopover in the Beaujolais on the way home...what we got was better than we could've guessed.

10 a.m. Saint-Gengoux, 2 hours north of Lyon. Gil takes us to winery #1. We taste 5 varieties of wine. Gil smiles giddily like a little boy while he piles one, two, three, four cartons of wine into "the boot of the car" for his family. Megan and I follow suit, purchasing a 2006 Givry 1er Cru Clos Jus (white) and a 2006 Montagny 1er Cru Les Chaniots (red), both from Bourgogne--our first "special occasion wine" to put aside on our nonexistent wine rack.

11:30ish a.m. (time starts to get fuzzy) Gil, Adan, Megan & I eat lunch at a little bistro in the quaint town of Cluny, where sits the ruins of the largest Abbey there ever was...built from 909-1130. nuts.

Afternoon time. Gil drives us through beautiful vineyards, winding through charming French villages with chateaux in the distance. We stop at a chateau, check out the view from Roche de Solutré (ex-French president Francois Mitterand's favorite nature hang-out), hit up another winery--this time, for some Beaujolais.

(photo: Roche de Solutre)

Later. Back in the car, Gil's French voice is smooth but strong, like his broken-in leather jacket. The hum of his Volkswagen lulls me to sleep, I jolt awake when the car stops--at yet another winery.

Sometime later. We hit up one more winery, where we have 1 euro glasses of wine. I love France.

Thank you, Gil, for the best wine tour, ever. C'est la meilleur tour que j'ai jamais fait. :D

I can't believe he actually lives in this region. When I get old and retire, I'm movin' wine country, so I can become an expert du vin and take mesmerized foreign youngsters on tours.

Buy Nothing Day

Buy Everything Day: November 27th. Buy Nothing Day: November 28th.

Two Thanksgivings

This week, I'm celebrating two Thankgsivings. Because when you're an American expat in France, you get to celebrate American holidays more than once. Gravy.

Fitting In

As you can see, my room looks a little more lived-in now (if you wanna make it up on my "closet door of fame," send me pictures).



It's November 20th, and things are starting to fit in.

This week, the night after the random volleyball practice, Megan & I went to dinner with an adorable French couple we met at the laundromat. How filmesque is that? The restaurant was called Le Tibouren, and the chef himself came out to dictate us the menu--in French and English :) New tastes of the evening included pink soup and shark. Delicieuse.

In four days, I will have been here 2 months. What've I learned? Let's see...

1. Subway in France is way better than Subway in America (fresher ingredients).
2. If I plan everything to the minute, I can make it from home to school in 1 hour, 5 min (that includes walking, metro, train and bus).
3. The French love their grocery stores (especially on the weekends, when excited employees announce samples and sales on their bullhorns while standing on boxes).
4. Though they usually act like we have some incurable disease, the French are actually interested in meeting foreigners (interestingly enough, they can't contract the one disease we do have: homesickness--which, btw, can be cured by a glass of wine and a season of downloaded American television).
   
5. Lyon has its warm winter days, too (today its 68 F--woah!).

...more conclusions to come, I'm sure...

French Volleyball

Jeremy: "How is French volleyball different from American volleyball?"

Me: "It's the same, except for you can't understand what they're saying."

Picture this: Old-school gym. 6 sweaty French men. 1 tomboy French woman. Two months into the season. Ear-slapping spikes, serves, and hits. Lots of French.

Add two timid foreigners (an American and a Canadian), whose level of French is almost as bad as their level of volleyball, and you've got tonight's adventure in a nutshell :D

The start of our rendez-vous with the "beginning level intramural" French team in Villeurbanne was so awkward you could bounce a volleyball off the tension in the air. Megan and I kept giving each other big eyes and mouthing, "This is so awkward!" But we stayed, determined to do what we had come for: to play volleyball.

Eric, the player/coach with tight shorts and a beer gut, made us warm up with the most logical drill possible: slamming a ball into the ground as hard a possible. "To work out the arms," he said (in French, of course. This was about the extent of my comprehension for the night).

Okay. Jogging warm-up, ball-slamming, volley-bump passing, spiking, serving done. It's time for an hour-long game. I've never played so much volleyball in my life. Luckily, I had played volleyball before in my life, so I could pretend like I knew what I was doing.

The whole game, the only thing I could understand was "Out!" The rest of the time, I'd smile and nod, occasionally looking over to Megan and laughing at the realization that we were two foreigners, with a bunch of random French people in a gym, playing volleyball. It was awesome.

We managed to get outta there uninjured, minus some sore arms and dampened egos...but it was totally worth it. Who wouldn't want a chance to hang out with some Frenchmen in their 30s who've never heard of deodorant?

New Post, Chez "Undecided"

"First she made a decision. Then she wondered what on earth she was thinking when she made it. Now she’s living the life — and learning to love the unpredictability of it all. In today’s guest post, a newly minted college grad — who teaches English to French teenagers, fights off the advances of train conductors, and like the rest of us, is petrified of growing up — muses about how the reality of the adult life has suddenly crept up behind her and taken her by surprise. Baguette in hand, she stands ready to battle it back into oblivion..."

Read more about my guest post, "La Vie est Belle," on my journalism's professor's blog, Barbara Kelley's "Undecided," here!

I think I know

It's a gloomy, windy day in Lyon today. The weather is strangely warm, however, and it's still holding out for the rain. It feels as if everything's waiting for something. It's November 14^th, the end of fall and the beginning of winter, and yet the sky cannot decide which to be. I cannot decide which to be: homesick, or happy to be in my new home. I am happy to be experiencing such a crazy life change, because after all, who ever gets to do this?

It all kind of happened randomly, I feel, this move to Lyon. I applied four months too late, and they still accepted me. I couldn't get any other job back in the States. Nick still had a year of university left, but I wasn't about to stay in Santa Clara, CA, anyway. So I just went. And now I'm here.

Sure, I've second-guessed coming, as it's been a helluva stresser. But, I know it'll be worth it in the long run. Don't ask me how, I just know. Or at least, I think I know.

Realizations

Today, I finally grasped how, despite the expenses and difficulties of living in France, despite the endless paperwork and homesickness and lack of French and the unappreciative high school students--despite all this, living in Lyon, France, for 7 months really is a truly wonderful, beautiful, crazily fantastic dream that I've been living...for 7 weeks now.

Dancin'

Meg & I went to see Mikhail Baryshnikov, one of the best ballet dancers of all time (he's 61 and still amazing) perform at the Opera de Lyon tonight :)


..After the show, we did a little dancin' ourselves...

South of France, Monaco, & Geneva!

Hello friends. I've returned from my first of four 2-week vacations that the French school system so generously offers :D

Instead of boring you with excruciating jealousy-invoking details of our beautiful summer-like five days in the south of France, a day in Monaco, and our random adventure to Geneva, I'll let the pictures do most of the work.

Let's start with Marseille. Click here to see photos of Marseille. You'll see the view from the Hotel St. Louis (where we somehow managed to get two rooms for the price of one, including the honeymoon suite); then, you'll see photos of the Vieux Port (old port) of Marseille; the view from Basilique Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde; inside the basilica; and, a random carnival with a large cathedral backdrop. Only in France.



Next, check out the photos from Cassis, Les Calanques. Cassis, a small fishing port just east of Marseille, has Beauty-and-the-Beast charm and some fantastic port-side cafes; from here, we took a boat out to tour Les Calanques, where hundreds-of-feet-high white limestone cliffs tower over transparent turquoise water. Paradise? Yes. Just see the pictures.


After a day in Marseille & a day in Cassis, we spent Wednesday morning touring Chateau D'If, the island which provides the setting for The Count of Montre Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. It's old. and rocky. and prison-like. Not a place I'd want to go more than once, but it has great views of the port of Marseille, so again, check out les photos :)


Wednesday afternoon, we trained it over to Nice, where we ended up staying in the #1 hostel in all of France for 2009: Villa St. Exupery. Clearly the best hostel I've ever stayed in, its large lounge, bar, and kitchen area served well to the several young travelers staying there. For 6.50 euros, we feasted on gourmet coucous & lamb, or chicken & potatoes, or for 5.50 euros, gourmet pizza. And for 1 euro? A beer, or a glass of wine. You can't beat that.

At the villa, we met Jillian, a Bostonian from Coolidge Corner (where I lived this past summer) who was on week 5 backpacking Europe, set to return home the following week from Geneva, Switzerland. We also met Andrew, a Texan with an indefinite plan for a return to the states. With these two added to our group of three (Megan, Isabelle, & I), we were five, and we were ready to explore Nice. If only I hadn't worn my patent leather shoes.


The next day, after I bought some awful Birkenstock-imitation sandals (the only shoes in France that'll fit my feet), we took a 20 min train to Monaco, home of the famous Monte Carlo Casino, really ridiculously expensive yachts, and apparently, a sweet cactus. It was so nice, I almost moved in that very day (almost).



As you might have guessed, our trip to Geneva happened thanks to Jillian, our newfound favorite traveling companion. Her enthusiasm kept me going when my newly acquired head cold coaxed me to stay curled up under my covers. Another clean and quiet city (like Monaco, but with a lake instead of a beach and the UN instead of a casino), I really liked how we could sit in a cafe and hear German, Italian, French, and English conversations going on around us all at the same time.

The vacation ended just in time for my head cold to force me to stay in bed and our Internet, TV, AND phone to cut out (until next Tuesday night, when the French technician can so efficiently come over to fix it). Go France. Woo.

--Check out my roommate's blog, too! www.megenfrance.blogspot.com (she has more details on the trip).