rambling on and on

It's raining today like crazy and i've got a cold so I've spent my Sunday lounging in pajamas skyping my family and watching movies. What a great day!
This will be a busy week because I have a lot of lessons planned, as well as...drumroll please....THANKSGIVING DINNER! What started out as just a dinner of 10 has turned into a dinner of 18 plus 5 children. I will be doing the turkey, gravy and stuffing a la Martha Stewart...pictures to come.
Otherwise, it's been getting chilly here and even though it stays around 50 degrees, and icy wind picks up and makes everything seem colder. Of course, the weather here never stays the same for long, next week it could be 65 degrees and sunny, so I'm not too upset that I'm freezing!
I can't believe that November is almost over!! This is shocking! I barely saw the time pass by, and if this is any indicator of how the rest of my year will go then I better keep enjoying myself as much as possible. I feel so lucky that I'm able to be here, have the support of my family and friends, learning to teach, and doing something that I never thought I'd be able to do again. Have I said this before? I just can't stop thinking it.
Plans for the next month; looking for an apartment, going to the Alps to visit Martine for Christmas, preparing for Dad to come in January, becoming an awesome English teacher, trying to stay in shape, finishing my book for book club...
oh yeah, i'm in a book club! It's actually one of the most awesome things I've been doing..thought it's only once a month. It's a group of French and British people who come together and chat about a particular book they're all reading in either English or French. They're pretty animated and it's fun to hear their points of view and see how they react to certain things--definitely makes clear different cultural ticks and influences.
Well, that's about all for now. I'll try to add some photos since i finally found my camera!

French movies

Last night I went to see a French film with my french friend and it was absolutely French...
I could barely last through the end, and maybe that was partly because some of the dialogue was hard to follow, but mostly because the movie had all the elements of French culture that I don't really understand! The long idealistic lectures on life, the superfluous show of emotion, the depressing fin...there were some funny parts, but it was "French funny" which is never really that funny to English speakers. Then, in the end...there's a death, and for 20 minutes there is crying, and commenting, and crying again and hugging...quelle horreur...
My buddy, on the other hand, absolutely loved the film. All the parts I thought were horrible and cliche were exactly the parts he loved....In fact, everyone in the theater absolutely loved this film. As they left I heard them saying things like, "oh the end, that was so hard to watch. I was crying all over the place" and "That was one of the funniest films of the year, but wow that ending really got me"
..le sigh
I guess I still have a lot to learn.

Strike

Apologies for not writing earlier, but I wasn't really doing anything particularly interesting this past month...
If you've been following international news, you might have heard that the French are upset again...It seems that when the government rolled back the retirement age a few years ago to 60, they hadn't quite bet on running out of money and having to increase it back again. Well, with a 35 hour work week, and at least 3 days a month of holidays, having to work past 60 was more than any organized worker could handle, and so the French have been doing what the French do best-STRIKE!
Of course, I'm not much affected either way, and wasn't really paying much attention to the hoopla, until I got to school 3 weeks ago and none of my students showed up. No big deal...I walked the 20 minutes home, came back a few hours later to find my classroom once again...empty...The next day, the entrance to the school was blocked off with gates and trash cans, a few revolutionary-esque students with bandannas were manning the gates stopping any student trying to get in, and the rest of the students were grouped on the street, chatting and trying to figure out if they really wanted to go to class that bad. In the Teacher's Lounge it was explained to me that the students had decided to strike for retirement and refused to let anyone but teachers in, naturally. French students have a long history of striking, and actually successfully contributing to the campaigns they take part in...though, truthfully, I'd say about 1% of the students were actually on strike and the other 99% were home sleeping in. Either way, this is something you would never see in the US because an American kid would get his behind kicked if he tried to stop students from going to school. The strike lasted about 2 weeks, until last Friday when our 1 week vacation began...which is why I've worked a total of 4 hours in the past 3 weeks!
While in Tours I got to watch an official manifestation on the streets. I've never seen anything like it...Hundreds of strikers had organized into groups and were parading slowly up the busiest street in Tours, each singing or playing their favorite fighting song. Some stuck to the traditional "we will fight for freedddoooom" while others were more festive with sambistas and drums...This lasted most of the day, and I have to comment (because I always comment) that the French can be amazingly organized when they're against something.