Friday, July 4, 2014
Missing 'Merica
I woke up this morning missing home so much. I don't know if its just because more time has passed since I've been there or because it's the fourth of July. I live in a resort, and I know it sounds crazy, but I can't help but miss Michigan lakes today. I would love to be home on a boat with friends and beer, listening to country music, laying in the sun, and watching fireworks crack over the water. You know what else I miss? Hugs. People here don't hug like they do at home - or I don't hug them like I hug people at home. Feeling nostalgic for Ann Arbor, friends, and family and thinking of my favorite country today. I miss you <3
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
First Days at Fayence
Wow! It has been an awesome first 5 days at Fayence. This weekend was pretty slow. I arrived on Saturday and was told to rest up for the next day when I would start at 9:30. At 9:30 however they changed it to 11:00. At 11:00 they changed it to 5:30 haha! It was a bit frustrating but then I learned that my boss was working a wedding Saturday night until 6:30 am so she wanted to rest up!
Here are some pictures from the train ride to Fayence
Sunday, at 5:30 when I finally worked, we did something called "pot d'acceuil." This is the welcoming for the new guests. Our resort works where most guests arrive Sunday and stay for 1 week. Each Sunday night we welcome them in the bar with free sangria or syrup for the kids (flavored syrup with water - so good!) They introduce the guests to the staff and the "equipe d'animation" of which I am a part (an entertainment team) does a "village dance" for the guests. Then we invite them to join us and they do it with us, it's like zumba. We have practice for about 3 hours a week to learn and practice our dances. It makes me feel at home :) Every day at noon the entertainment team goes to the pool to do one of our dances with the guests and play a game with the kids - so fun!
I finally really started work on Monday with a packed day! This is a picture of my schedule.
We do everything here. We are on the entertainment team so we lead activities for the families, but we also help out in the restaurant, the bar, and other random tasks. For instance, today, the domaine (resort) bought an apartment in the city of Fayence (of which we are a bit removed) for some of their employees to live. Today we have to help them move furniture into it. They bought it because they don't have enough room during the busy season to house all of their employees. Next week begins our busy season here at the resort because all of the children will be done with school this Friday, and France basically shuts down in August (everyone has vacation time and doesn't work) so they come here. For that reason they have more employees coming into help (we really need more help in the bar and restaurant - usually it is only 2 people to serve both at the same time with about 30 guests!
Last night, for example, was a big night for us as it was "moules frites" night which means that the restaurant, for 14 euros, served a bottomless plate of mussels and fries with an included dessert which was a tarte aux pommes (picture below). So many people came that we ran out of fries! I was helping serve the tables, passing out bread to them, clearing plates, etc. Following that was the soccer game which we show in the bar. I walk around and take orders from people then tell them to the bartenders who make them and ring them up. One of the bartenders taught me how to make myself an espresso! (I am drinking so much espresso in the tiny cups that I don't know if I will ever go back to coffee- it seems nuts that we drink them in 20 oz!!) Next I want to learn real drinks! Last night it was a lot of drama because the television station TF1 (like ESPN) changed their schedule at the last minute and didn't air the Belgium-USA match. There are a TON of Belgian people here so they were very upset. We streamed it online and hooked it up to the TV but the connection was very poor and we kept getting popup ads for porn on the TV. It was really funny. The last two nights have been late ones because the games don't start until 10 pm and finish after midnight. Luckily, we don't start each day until 10 or 11.
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| Go France! Working at the France soccer game - note the name tag "Léa" |
This morning we drove around and passed out fliers to business and in people's mailboxes that tell them about our resort and that the outdoor pool is now open to the public (for a cost of course). It is annoying to do for Mathilde because she has done it so many times, but for me it is exciting. I get to speak to strangers in France and it is a bit uncomfortable but it makes me feel better about speaking French to strangers. They tell me I am pretty good!
Backtracking to the basics - I live with three people. Two girls, one boy. Their names are Mathilde, Tatiyana, et Jason. Mathilde and Jason are both French and Tatiyana is Belgian but has lived in France for 3 years. Tatiyana works in the restaurant and bar and Mathilde and Jason are the other members of the entertainment team with me. I share a room with Tatiyana. Sadly, she is leaving in one week. She is moving back to where she lives normally (southwest France) because she misses her boyfriend a lot. Too bad it's not that easy for me :p. I think I will get a new roommate in a week but I am not sure because of the apartments they bought.
Communicating here is getting MUCH easier, I get better every day. Also, there are many people here from England or Holland who don't speak French so I get to help them a lot. Every day at the pool when we make announcements about what will happen at night the leader of our team says it in French and I translate it in English on the microphone. My roommate Mathilde doesn't know English very well so she helps me with French and I help her with English. A guy who works in the bar, Thibault (tee-bow, yes like tim), lived in Virginia for a while so he loves speaking English with me to practice.
I am off of work all day Friday, half a day Saturday, and most of Sunday (except pot d'acceuil). I don't know what I will do. Mostly in my free time I have been reading a lot - I finished Divergent and A Fault in Our Stars. I am now reading a book by CS Lewis and I got the second in the Divergent series. Sadly, Netflix doesn't work here but I found out how to watch the first Divergent movie on another site ;p. I think this weekend we will go into the city of Fayence to eat some ice cream and so Mathilde can show me around. Next week will be different because Kid's Club (where I will be primarily working) will start. The kids all officially end school by this Friday so that is why it hasn't started yet. I will have to write when I know more about it. It seems like we work all day here but there are many breaks that last about an hour so it is really nice.
Here are some pictures from the train ride to Fayence |
| This is the view out my bedroom window - Those are the mountains that come right before the Alps |
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| This is a picture of the pool and the overlooking mountains |
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| This is a picture of the pool and the overlooking mountains |
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| The villas at the resort |
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| Another view out my bedroom window |
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| The village of Fayence |
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| I thought this little waterfall was pretty when I was distributing flyers |
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| View from the bar at our resort |
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| Our Living Room |
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| Living room/kitchen |
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| My bedroom (mine is blue) |
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| My bathroom |
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| No shower curtain!!! |
I've started a google doc of all of the new words I've learned. It is available here if you want to see it - I will continue to add to it as I want to remember all of the words! :)
I hope you are having a good summer so far and thanks for reading. I altered the settings on the comments so hopefully now you will be able to comment if you were not able to before. :)
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Paris Adventures
Bonjour! If you are reading this I assume you know I am in France for the summer and I will be living and working here for two months. I came here with my very good friend Lauren King who I knew from undergrad in the French program at U of M. We spent our first four days in Paris together and this post will recount all of the ridiculous things that happened since we took off.
I've embedded links to websites and pictures throughout if you click on them!
Wednesday:
We got ourselves to our gate and onto our plane - so excited because we had two extra seats next to us. The pilot said they were having some technical difficulties making the AC unable to work so we should wait while they try to fix it. 2 hours later, covered in sweat and extremely hungry, the pilot deplaned everyone because they couldn't seem to fix the problem. Finally on our new plane hours later, we took off. The rest of the flight was swell.
We then took the RER, which is a train, from the airport into Paris. On this RER, we saw people rolling weed into joints, and selling it to other passengers. That was interesting. Then we got on the subway incorrectly three times and took it (finally) to what we thought was the stop right next to our hotel, Place d'italie. It turns out Place d'Italie is the furthest stop away from our hotel (Look onthe right until you see an orange line with the number 5 on it and follow it all the way to bottom until you see place d'italie). We read the website wrong (the one we looked at originally was in French) and saw that we were supposed to take line 5 which runs from Bobigny to Place d'Italie but that we were supposed to take it towards Bobigny.... Anyway after we finally figured this out, and got lunch to feed ourselves and take a break from what was the monotonous work of dragging our >50 lb suitcases up and down multiple flights of stairs, we figured out how to get "home." Our hotel was right on top of the Porte de Pantin stop, as it said it would be, and we went in. Our room was perfect.
After a nap, we finished our day drinking beers in front of the Eiffel Tower at midnight. We turned the corner right at 12:00 and as the tower flashes its lights only during the first five minutes of every hour, we got very lucky. We spent a little over an hour there, then headed back to the metro. Which turned out to be closed. Crap. The nice man that worked there printed us out directions for how to take buses home... but that would take 1.5 hours. We tried to catch a cab, but really needed les toilettes. We couldn't find any public ones, and the nice metro man also let us use the metro workers' private bathroom. We then hailed taxis to no avail in downtown paris for over an hour before I basically ran in the street to get the only one with a green light to take us home. And what do you know? He was playing Hunter Haye's most recent CD. Good end to the night.
Thursday:
We woke up to an extremely loud and violent banging on our door at 11 am. The maids were supposed to clean our room and wanted us out! We told them we would be in that same room tonight and we could skip the cleaning becsuse we didn't know about it in advance. They shamed us for not having read the signs and said okay after they confirmed with the front desk that we would indeed be in that room again.
Finally, when we actually woke up and got ready at 1 pm (jetlag) we knew we wanted our first stop to be a Boulangerie - a place that sells breakfast items like croissants, pain au chocolate, etc. We found one down the street and purchased our 1 euro breakfasts.
We turn the metro to the closest stop near versailles (versailles is not in paris and the metro runs primarily in paris) and tried to walk to the versailles palace. Half an hour later, maps said it would still take us half an hour to walk there and we gave us (as we should have before we started). We thought the RER was out of the question as our RER tickets from the airport were 10+ euros and the metro ones are only 1. Then, we made the shocking discovery that if you RER within Paris, you can use the metro tickets - and heaven's gates opened. We took the tram and the RER to get to Versailles and boy was it worth it!
Once in Versailles we got Starbucks - which if you know anything about me and then think about jetlagged me, you can imagine how absolutely incredible this is. We walked around, and the highlight of our day was renting a canoe, and canoeing in the chateau de versailles for an hour. WHO DOES THAT? We canoed in King Louis' (all of them) lake. AWESOME! We got out and inquired about renting segways to segway around the gardens, but the shop who rents them was closed. We were very tired and began our long journey home.
For dinner we went down the street to a schwarma place, and immediately became friends with the two men working there. They were so nice and complemented our French. We left and went home to get ready to go out. We looked up dance bars and took the metro to one of them. When we got off, we we in the scariest part of town I had EVER seen. We were above ground fro about 60 seconds before we said we gotta get OUT of here. We took the metro home and tried a different bar. That adventure ended the exact same way - two girls on dark streets at midnight is not a good call. So we were going home but we stopped at our schwarma place who gave us some tips on good, safe bars in the area.
That night we couldn't sleep because so many cars were honking. We saw and heard them while walking around but we didn't know why everyone was going nuts. Everyone was screaming and honking and yelling with flags flying out of their windows. We also didn't know what types of flags they were. Finally a nice woman let us know that Algeria won it's first game in the world cup in 33 years. That night, this was enough to qualify them for the top 16. Algeria used to be considered a part of France, so there are a LOT of Algerians living in France, and one can imagine how crazy this was.
Friday:
We woke up and again visited our Boulangerie. We made sure we were up and out before the maids came. We went right to Sacre Coeur - a very famous church in Paris. We walked up all of the steps (there are so many, there is a ski-lift type thing available for those who aren't able or don't want to walk). We sat and listened to a man play the harp on the steps up to the church, while we overlooked nearly the entirety of Paris. The sounds of Time to Say Goodbye and Avé Maria drifting from his harp and the view behind and in front of us was really too beautiful. We went in and were shocked to find out there was mass going on. We sat and participated in it for the duration of the service and it was SO COOL to attend a service inside of Sacre Coeur!!! Once in a lifetime experience! We walked all the way back down, after a little Sacre Coeur tour, and got bak on the metro. We went downtown (near the eiffel tower and all of the stuff most people think of when they think about Paris) and had lunch in the Latin Quarter. This is a part of Paris known for giving out cheap meals - ours was 3 courses for 12 euros. All of my courses were crepes (or galettes which are basically the same thing) haha. Very repetitive for me. We went to the lock bridge, bought locks, locked away our eternal love and threw the keys in the Seine River. We then got a tour from Pont Neuf (a famous bridge) all the way down the Seine and found out that basically the only reason why Paris has any monuments is because of World Fairs and the only reason that every bridge was built as a gift, a payment, or a monument. We then went to the Tuileries, where I thought I had never been, only to find out it was RIGHT by where my hotel was last time I stayed in Paris. However, at that time, I didn't know what the Tuileries were! They are the gardens that We sat by a large fountain inside the tuileries for a while deciding what to do. Though we had our hearts set on climbing the Arc de Triomphe, we were just too tired and had to go for a nap. We then went to, surprise surprise, the schwarma place for dinner. We sat outside and had the most amazing time talking and laughing. The men at the place gave us mint tea for free which came in a glass no larger than a shot glass - no joke. But it was delicious. We stayed up late that night and packed our suitcases for our journeys the next day.
The next day I left Paris for Fayence where I will be for the rest of the summer. I am living and working at the Domaine de Fayence, a resort and spa type vacation home. Yesterday (Saturday) I got a tour of the facilities, unpacked and was told to rest up well. Today, I begin work!
I will continue to write to update you about my French adventures, though most will not be as detailed as those days in Paris. I am not sure if life will become more monotonous with a work schedule. Loving my time in the Blue, White and Red but really missing my life, family, and friends in the Red, White and Blue. Thanks for reading :)
I've embedded links to websites and pictures throughout if you click on them!
Wednesday:
We got ourselves to our gate and onto our plane - so excited because we had two extra seats next to us. The pilot said they were having some technical difficulties making the AC unable to work so we should wait while they try to fix it. 2 hours later, covered in sweat and extremely hungry, the pilot deplaned everyone because they couldn't seem to fix the problem. Finally on our new plane hours later, we took off. The rest of the flight was swell.
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| On the first plane - pre-sweat |
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| On the second plane - not too happy |
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| our first lunch |
We then took the RER, which is a train, from the airport into Paris. On this RER, we saw people rolling weed into joints, and selling it to other passengers. That was interesting. Then we got on the subway incorrectly three times and took it (finally) to what we thought was the stop right next to our hotel, Place d'italie. It turns out Place d'Italie is the furthest stop away from our hotel (Look onthe right until you see an orange line with the number 5 on it and follow it all the way to bottom until you see place d'italie). We read the website wrong (the one we looked at originally was in French) and saw that we were supposed to take line 5 which runs from Bobigny to Place d'Italie but that we were supposed to take it towards Bobigny.... Anyway after we finally figured this out, and got lunch to feed ourselves and take a break from what was the monotonous work of dragging our >50 lb suitcases up and down multiple flights of stairs, we figured out how to get "home." Our hotel was right on top of the Porte de Pantin stop, as it said it would be, and we went in. Our room was perfect.
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| finally at the correct stop |
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| the 5 minute lights |
Thursday:
We woke up to an extremely loud and violent banging on our door at 11 am. The maids were supposed to clean our room and wanted us out! We told them we would be in that same room tonight and we could skip the cleaning becsuse we didn't know about it in advance. They shamed us for not having read the signs and said okay after they confirmed with the front desk that we would indeed be in that room again.
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| at the boulangerie with my pain au chocolat |
Finally, when we actually woke up and got ready at 1 pm (jetlag) we knew we wanted our first stop to be a Boulangerie - a place that sells breakfast items like croissants, pain au chocolate, etc. We found one down the street and purchased our 1 euro breakfasts.
We turn the metro to the closest stop near versailles (versailles is not in paris and the metro runs primarily in paris) and tried to walk to the versailles palace. Half an hour later, maps said it would still take us half an hour to walk there and we gave us (as we should have before we started). We thought the RER was out of the question as our RER tickets from the airport were 10+ euros and the metro ones are only 1. Then, we made the shocking discovery that if you RER within Paris, you can use the metro tickets - and heaven's gates opened. We took the tram and the RER to get to Versailles and boy was it worth it!
Once in Versailles we got Starbucks - which if you know anything about me and then think about jetlagged me, you can imagine how absolutely incredible this is. We walked around, and the highlight of our day was renting a canoe, and canoeing in the chateau de versailles for an hour. WHO DOES THAT? We canoed in King Louis' (all of them) lake. AWESOME! We got out and inquired about renting segways to segway around the gardens, but the shop who rents them was closed. We were very tired and began our long journey home.
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| gardens at versailles |
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| The window at starbucks - much different than US! |
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| gardens at versailles |
For dinner we went down the street to a schwarma place, and immediately became friends with the two men working there. They were so nice and complemented our French. We left and went home to get ready to go out. We looked up dance bars and took the metro to one of them. When we got off, we we in the scariest part of town I had EVER seen. We were above ground fro about 60 seconds before we said we gotta get OUT of here. We took the metro home and tried a different bar. That adventure ended the exact same way - two girls on dark streets at midnight is not a good call. So we were going home but we stopped at our schwarma place who gave us some tips on good, safe bars in the area.
That night we couldn't sleep because so many cars were honking. We saw and heard them while walking around but we didn't know why everyone was going nuts. Everyone was screaming and honking and yelling with flags flying out of their windows. We also didn't know what types of flags they were. Finally a nice woman let us know that Algeria won it's first game in the world cup in 33 years. That night, this was enough to qualify them for the top 16. Algeria used to be considered a part of France, so there are a LOT of Algerians living in France, and one can imagine how crazy this was.
Friday:
We woke up and again visited our Boulangerie. We made sure we were up and out before the maids came. We went right to Sacre Coeur - a very famous church in Paris. We walked up all of the steps (there are so many, there is a ski-lift type thing available for those who aren't able or don't want to walk). We sat and listened to a man play the harp on the steps up to the church, while we overlooked nearly the entirety of Paris. The sounds of Time to Say Goodbye and Avé Maria drifting from his harp and the view behind and in front of us was really too beautiful. We went in and were shocked to find out there was mass going on. We sat and participated in it for the duration of the service and it was SO COOL to attend a service inside of Sacre Coeur!!! Once in a lifetime experience! We walked all the way back down, after a little Sacre Coeur tour, and got bak on the metro. We went downtown (near the eiffel tower and all of the stuff most people think of when they think about Paris) and had lunch in the Latin Quarter. This is a part of Paris known for giving out cheap meals - ours was 3 courses for 12 euros. All of my courses were crepes (or galettes which are basically the same thing) haha. Very repetitive for me. We went to the lock bridge, bought locks, locked away our eternal love and threw the keys in the Seine River. We then got a tour from Pont Neuf (a famous bridge) all the way down the Seine and found out that basically the only reason why Paris has any monuments is because of World Fairs and the only reason that every bridge was built as a gift, a payment, or a monument. We then went to the Tuileries, where I thought I had never been, only to find out it was RIGHT by where my hotel was last time I stayed in Paris. However, at that time, I didn't know what the Tuileries were! They are the gardens that We sat by a large fountain inside the tuileries for a while deciding what to do. Though we had our hearts set on climbing the Arc de Triomphe, we were just too tired and had to go for a nap. We then went to, surprise surprise, the schwarma place for dinner. We sat outside and had the most amazing time talking and laughing. The men at the place gave us mint tea for free which came in a glass no larger than a shot glass - no joke. But it was delicious. We stayed up late that night and packed our suitcases for our journeys the next day.
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| view of paris from sacre coeur |
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| harpist at sacre coeur |
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| sacre coeur from the front |
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| locking away our love :) <3 |
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| the lock bridge |
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| tea served in a glass the size of my pinky! |
The next day I left Paris for Fayence where I will be for the rest of the summer. I am living and working at the Domaine de Fayence, a resort and spa type vacation home. Yesterday (Saturday) I got a tour of the facilities, unpacked and was told to rest up well. Today, I begin work!
I will continue to write to update you about my French adventures, though most will not be as detailed as those days in Paris. I am not sure if life will become more monotonous with a work schedule. Loving my time in the Blue, White and Red but really missing my life, family, and friends in the Red, White and Blue. Thanks for reading :)
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