Annecy!

Before I can move onto the next year of blogging, I needed to share some pictures of my favorite place in France. It's a town called Annecy in the French alps. I was there one other time in 2006. This year I had a choice to go pretty much anywhere in France on a vacation with Thibaut, and I chose to go back to Annecy. Here are some pictures of the trip, I'm sure you'll see why I love it!

Chateaux de la Loire

I've wanted to visit the Loire valley castles since I found out about them in high school. The French kings built many famous castles here, and used them as their vacation homes from their even bigger palace in Paris. They are all extremely over the top and extravagant, and the crazy part is that some of them were never even lived in!

Kristen and I decided to stay in one small town called Amboise (big mistake.. most boring town ever), and do an organized tour to see a couple of castles that were on our must-see list. There aren't any trains to go to these little cities where they are, it's all countryside. We decided to sign up for an organized tour to see the two most beautiful, which are Chenonceau and Chambord. We really lucked out because we ended up being on a small bus, just 4 of us on the tour, and one really cool tour guide. Chenonceau was the first stop. This is a castle that was literally built over the Loire river, and the lower part of it looks like a bridge and the castle is on top. I think the reason we loved this one so much is because our tour guide, she had so many interesting things to tell us about the castle and things to look for. For example there was a room upstairs that was painted entirely in black. This room was for the wife of one of the kings, the king died and left her as a grieving widow. She had her room painted black and spent the rest of her life grieving in it. There were so many stories like this! Everything in Chenonceau looks liek it is fit for a king, all the rooms are well decorated and completely intact from when the cheateau was built hundreds of years ago.

The second chateau was Chambord, which is amazing on the outside but not so impressive on the inside. The function of the castle was for hunting, so it never was decorated as fancy as the others. Our favorite story here was about the famous double helix staircase. There is a double staircase inside the chateau which was constucted by Da Vinci. The stairway is intertwined to form 2 separate spiral staircases that wind around each other. This was built so the kings mistresses wouldn't run into each other on their way in and out of the castle while still staying on the same staircase!

Chambord. Too bad it was pouring rain!

Chenonceau

Cross your fingers for me please :)

So let the job hunt begin. I know I said that this was my last year in France and I wanted to teach in the States next year, but having a French boyfriend seems to have changed my previous short-term goals. I SWEAR this time, only one more year. I promise, Mom.

After looking through some options, I decided that next year the job that is the best for me is to be a TA in a French university. The pay is much better than my job now, it's a year contract, and I think it is a perfect continuation of the job I have now. I would be working in the English section of the Language department in a university. My job would be basically what I am doing now, except its for French students who are in college and need practice speaking ze English. The problem is that I can't just apply through the French government and wait for them to place me like I have done for the past two years. I'm on my own now, like a big girl! The other problem is that most colleges here find their TA's through exchange programs already set up with colleges in England and the States. I read lots of forums online and found out that the only way to find a job is to just send my resumé to all the university language departments I can find. After a lot of hard work on my French resumé (complete with a required senior-pic style photo, barf), writing letters (in french! ugh), and getting letters of recommendation, this week I finally got it together and sent them all out to 10 (yes, TEN) different regions in France. My current total is 28, and still more to come. Phew. I applied to almost every big city in France, including 8 schools in Paris. My top pick for a place to live now would probably be Grenoble or Bordeaux. Grenoble would be nice for skiing, and Bordeaux is on the ocean. Hmm.

Unfortunately I've already had responses from the only two school in Alsace, and they were both negative. So, so sad. I love Alsace so much but it looks like it might be time to discover another region. It seems that the most opportunity is in Paris. Most people would think that it'd be great to live in Paris, but if you look past the Eiffel tower and tourist attractions, you're left with a dirty, expensive city full of crazy people. Believe me, I've seen some weird stuff there. I shouldn't be talking trash about somewhere that could be my future home though, should I?

To conclude, it looks like pretty much wherever I get a job, I will be moving. Hopefully Thibaut will be able to find a job wherever I am too. Of course there always is a plan B, which is doing a Master's in Strasbourg where I am now. Plan B will only be necessary if I do indeed get rejected by ALL 28 universities. I think I need to go breathe into a paper bag now.

Please cross your fingers for me! At least ONE school out of 28 has to need me, right? Lets hope..

Nancy, Paris, Nantes, Dijon, Grenoble, Bordeaux, Toulouse or Montpellier. What's it going to be?

London Town

Last weekend I took a few days off work and went to London. Thibaut wanted to go there because he used to live there, and I'm pretty sure he's getting sick of hearing my American accent everyday and needed some British english in his life. We took the chunnel over on Friday to hang out with some Brits for the weekend. It was so nice to be able to speak ENGLISH everywhere! People actually understood my language (kinda)! I had to be careful though, since I have picked up the bad habit of talking about people when they're right in front of me, always assuming that they don't understand English. For example, I started talking about a weird smelly guy in the subway, and soon after was reminded that he COULD understand every word I was saying. Oops. I need to learn to shut my mouth. Also it was amazing that Thibaut could understand British people better than me.. I am a native English speaker and can't even understand my own language. Sometimes I swear they are just making weird sounds to mess with me. It's actually hard not to laugh sometimes.

We spent three nights there, we had a nice hotel in the city center with a buffet breakfast everyday! Sausage, bacon and eggs. Yes please! This doesn't happen in Franceland.. and when it does it's just not the same. We lucked out with the weather too, since usually it is raining all the time in London. It only rained one day that we were there. Friday night when we arrived we went out to a club, that had different indie rock bands playing. It was a huge concert hall in an old theater that they took the seats out of. It's so funny because everyone there looks so stereotypically british! It's such a change from France. All the girls in France always look perfectly dressed and put together, and in London they wear almost no clothes, and get so sloppily drunk. Being out in London was worse than being in Athens, Ohio on a Saturday night. These girls are serious lushes! It was amazing people watching anyway. Watching drunk people go from fighting to crying to hugging is always good entertainment. Oh and a twelve year old asked me to open his beer for him in the street. I of course asked him to hold my beer, and opened his with my lighter while lecturing him that he should not be drinking and smoking at such a young age. As I left he said "thanks a lot MOM (or as the brits say 'mum')." I think I'm getting old.

As for the touristy stuff, we did a lot, but kind of took our time. We went to the Natural History Museum, which was my favorite. They had a really cool dinosaur exhibit and lots of naturey stuff, like rooms about trees, the human body, and other random things. My favorite thing was a real moving T-Rex that was made to look like the real thing. I know I'm like a 10 year old boy, but it was really cool! It was like I was in Jurassic Park. T-Rex's little arms kinda creeped me out though. We also went to the British Museum, which has artifacts from every continent and every era. It is so huge I could never have seen it all! My favorite was the Egyptian rooms, which had all the embalmed mummies and stuff that they took out of the pyramids. We also saw the necessary London sights, like Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, the Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace, the parks, and the London Eye (the biggest ferris wheel in the world).

After visiting London three times, I still don't feel like I've made a dent in that city. There's so much to see! Another plus about England is that they have a lot of different brands than they don't sell in France. For example they have Vitamin Water, my favorite, which is not available in France! They also sell US weekly in stores.. I almost cried I was so happy! I miss the clean streets of London and the friendly English speakers already, I think I need to go back sometime soon :)

T-Rex! look at his teeny weeny arms..

Thumbs up for natural history!

Westminster Abbey

T-bone needs to work on perfecting his "american smile"

Big Ben and the London Eye

Hanging with the mums in the British museum

Outside the British Museum

Biggest Department store ever.. thankfully for my bank acct it was closed when we went!

Window displays at Harrod's

Piccadilly Circus- the Times Square of London

The Tower Bridge and the Thames river

guards at Buckingham.. might be the most boring job of all time

Venice

I definitely forgot that I never posted a blog about Venice! My bad. From Cinque Terre, we headed to Venice, and met up with another one of our friends from Strasbourg there. When we originally booked the trip we forgot one minor detail.. it was mardi gras. In Europe, the biggest mardi gras celebration happens to be held in Venice. Turns out we were there exactly on fat tuesday! I swear this was not on purpose, believe me, I think I'd have rather gone when it was a little bit more calm.

The town of Venice is beautiful, it's so crazy there there isn't one car anywhere, since the entire city is made up of islands. If you want to take a cab or public transportation, the only option is to take a boat. Lucky for us, we stayed on an island near everything, so we never had to use the boats. I'm sure they're fun, but it's not cheap!

During the day, we walked around, fought the crowds, and checked out all of the amazing costumes. People dress up in these costumes you will see in my pictures, and they are completely in character. They never speak, they walk really slowly, and they just stand in different positions to pose for everyones pictures. It was cool, but real, real creepy. The couples were ok but the people that were by themselves were just straight up weirdos. Anyway people had really beautiful and elaborate costumes!

The first night we were there, we randomly stumbled upon this huge party in the middle of a square near the touristy area. It ended up being so much fun, the music was great, we met some really nice people, and ended up dancing all night. It was cool because it was like going to a club.. except it was in the middle of a historical square in Venice. Amazing! The next night we tried to have a repeat of our fun night out.. but it was fat tuesday, and everyone in the town of Venice was a drunk mess. We went out for about 20 minutes, got completely fed up with how disgustingly drunk everyone was and headed right back home! Does this mean that I am getting old? I think it might..

All in all Venice was a beautiful city and I did enjoy our stay.. but I was more than ready to leave after 3 days of dealing with pushing crowds and tourists everywhere! I need to go back one day when it's not Carnival so I can see what the city is really like.

Cinque Terre

View from our room in Vernazza

Manarola.. my favorite!

Hey guys!

This is possibly the most beautiful place I have ever been! The Cinque Terre is on the west coast of Italy, on the Ligurian Sea. The name means "The Five Lands" in Italian and is made up of 5 villages, all on the coast. The five villages are called Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso. We stayed in the fourth village, called Vernazza. Kristen booked our hotel for 2 nights, and a few days after our booking we got an email from the owner. They said that our room was already booked, but they could put us up at another one of their rooms. We ended up staying in a room that was wayy nicer and paid less than half of what the rate normally is. It was still really small.. and we had to climb about 100 stairs to get to it.. and there was no heat.. but once we saw how pretty the town was we didn't even care! We had the most horrible trip there, that I won't even go into detail about, but once we arrived we were so happy to see that we made a great choice on a place to visit. And wow I almost left out the best part.. Cinque Terre is the birthplace of PESTO. OMG. I think you can guess what I spent my 3 days eating..

The main thing to do in the Cinque Terre is to hike all the 5 villages. The hike is about 5 hours, it's a bit difficult, but according to my old pal Rick Steves it is well worth it for the amazing scenery. Rick is the man, and he was totally right. We woke up early the next morning, put on the closest thing we had to "hiking gear" and headed out. Thankfully it was the nicest, sunniest, warmest day we had the whole time we were in Italy. When we arrived at the train station, we saw a huge sign that said TRAILS CLOSED TODAY. WHAT? We came here to do this hike.. you have got to be kidding me. Luckily we got the inside scoop from a lovely lady in a local boutique, who spoke with the thickest Italian accent I've ever heard. I wish I could type out how she sounded but it just doesn't work as well as ze french accent when written. Anyway she said that they just say that the trail is "closed," in theory, but in reality there aren't any gates or anything to stop people from hiking it. So of course, being the rebels that we are, we decided to venture on for our hike.

You start at the first town of Riomaggiore and work your way up, and as you get to each town the hike gets steeper and more difficult. The first hike was a breeze.. it was a hike down "lover's lane" on valentine's day. It is literally called that. This specific trail was open just for Valentine's day. Many couples thought it'd be a nice idea to get intimate on the way of the hike.. how romantic. Anyway I was having a big problem with my ankles for some reason, so I appreciated this leisure stroll while it lasted. During the last hike that small knot in my ankle turned into agonizing pain in both of my ankles.. but that's another story! As we continued through the villages things started to change.. the trails got a lot narrower, rockier, and steeper. There was never a point where I didn't want to continue though, everything was so pretty it was completely worth it. We stopped in the middle for our picnic lunches (obviously another pesto-based meal), we "accidentally" trespassed into a local vineyard and had our lunch there. As we were eating we found out quickly that there is a very big problem with stray cats around these parts.. I have never been so creeped out in my life.

Eventually we escaped the stray cats, and the actual hike time ended up taking about 5 hours in total. We got to the last town just in time to see the sun setting. Needless to say we got a really good nights sleep this night.. minus the fact that our room was NO JOKE about 30 degrees! Oh and also.. I'm so glad that we put on our hiking gear, because I think that every other woman that we saw on the trails was wearing high-heeled boots. Italian chicks are crazy. I still can't figure out how they did it! More to come on VENICE the next stop on our little Italian holiday :) Ciao for now!

Manarola.. 2 towns down, 3 more to go! We still look so peppy..

Lover's lane.. couples lock the locks together and throw the key in the sea. Kristen and I skipped that part..

Quick trespassing for an afternoon picnic. I guess we were into the thumbs up on this day.

Manarola got smaller and smaller as we headed to Corniglia

If you look closely you can see the first town in the distance too

The trail gets a bit more difficult and deserted

Made it to Vernazza, the village where we stayed

The trail gets a bit narrower.. yes those small rocks are the actual "trail" and at one point there was definitely a cliff on one side of us.

The sunset! and this rock reminds me of the Little Mermaid!

Last view of Cinque Terre. Next morning it's off to Venice bright and early!