Goodbyes suck. Sorry, I haven’t got anything more profound or literary to offer than that. Maybe I’ve spent too much time with middle schoolers this year, but even if it’s caused my verbal skills to deteriorate, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. This week put me through the emotional wringer, and made me fully realize how much this experience has fundamentally changed who I am. So basically, it was like college graduation, except this time it meant something. Wednesday, I went for a morning walk to soak in the splendor of the Pyrenees and some of the warm Apr [View Full Entry]

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I promised you all the delicious details of my sordid Spanish sojourn (never let it be said I’m an English major who can’t alliterate), so without further ado, vamos! Before I could leave for my weekend getaway, I had to watch my English Angels present the fruits of their Shakespearean toils. I was so proud of them, I could have burst. Yes, I’m sure a lot of the deeper meaning was lost on them, and that it’s an assignment better suited for an older age group, but they had worked very hard and I can think of at least 4 or [View Full Entry]

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Well, those of you who enjoy stories about my tri-weekly interactions with French adolescents are in for a treat with this update, as I’ve got plenty of funny anecdotes of precocious pre-teens. On Thursday at Clermont, the Shakespeare efforts continued with an introduction to the sonnets, followed by further rehearsal time. I had chosen Sonnet 130, “My Mistresses’ Eyes”, since it’s pretty amusing and I didn’t think it would go over my kids heads. It contains the line “If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun”. So I ask if there are [View Full Entry]

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So “le meteo”, or the weather, gets center stage for this update. I know I’ve mentioned several times before that, in the words of Shakespeare, the skies above Pau often ressemble “a foul bombard that would shed his liquor” (Tempest). This has led the assistants to coin the phrase that it’s “Pauing” instead of pouring. However, this past week has been like nothing I’ve ever seen in my life. The rain did not let up for a single day after Easter. It rained in sheets all through Alla’s visit, right up until Saturday. Then, we had o [View Full Entry]

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Paques it up So this was the weekend of Paques (pronounced “pack”), or Easter, as we know it. The Canterots were kind enough to let me butt in on their celebration, and I got to enjoy a long weekend, since there was no school on Monday. Sadly, the weather here has been miserable lately, which just goes to prove the truth of the Palois proverb “Noel au balcon, Paques au tisane” or “Christmas on the balcony, Paques by the fire”. The week before, however, it was sunny and 75 degrees, as you can see from the lovely pictures I took in [View Full Entry]

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That could refer to the Normandy beaches on June 6th, 1944, or to my parents and brother’s arrival in France on March 3rd, 2008. Either way, the second week of my winter vacation was certainly one to remember. On Sunday morning I caught the metro from Anne’s apartment over to the 7th arrondissment, to meet my beloved family at our hotel just a stone’s throw from the Eiffel tower. I actually arrived with 10 minutes of their cab dropping them off, so everyone was still arranging bags and getting settled in the process of hugging and screaming. Our first stop was [View Full Entry]

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….He is tired of life. So said my longtime idol Samuel Johnson, and as usual, he couldn’t be more right. I spent a wonderful four days in London with Laura Hoyer-Booth and Co. (the Co. being her four roommates: Megan, Amanda, and fellow Furman graduates Simms and Fran), who were nice enough to let me occupy their couch in spite of my frequent coughing and sneezing. I caught my flight from Pau without any problems and arrived at Stansted airport, where I took a coach into the city. I’m ashamed to say it took me a good 30 minutes to realize [View Full Entry]

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Well, I’m almost over my bronchitis and back to teaching at full strength instead of just standing at the front of the room and hacking up a lung. The weather here in Pau has been absolutely gorgeous for the past week (I’m almost afraid to type that…I don’t want to jinx anything!), which has probably helped with my “guerrison”, or healing process. Monday and Tuesday left me feeling pretty wiped out, since it was the first time I’d been on my feet in about a week, but by Wednesday I was starting to feel like my old self again. On Monday, [View Full Entry]

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I know what you’re all thinking—“such a long break between blogs, is Kate dead?”, and the answer is “well, almost.” Unlike Moliere's protagonist, I've been fighting a bona-fide illness for the past few days. Part of the reason for my long absence is that I’ve been hiding under the covers, hoping my blanket fortress and Nyquil bombs would somehow protect me from the non-stop germ assault that was attacking my system with guerilla warfare-like tactics and sending it into shutdown mode. My civilian efforts just weren’t cutting it, though…. [View Full Entry]

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Any Disney fans catch the Hunchback of Notre Dame reference? This weekend, Carnival came to town, working its way up to a fever pitch that will terminate on Tuesday….Mardi Gras. In Pau, it’s the Carnaval Biarnes (Bernaise). Festivities include releasing a flood of pigs through the main drags of the town and crepe parties in Place Clemenceau. Christine and I were at “les Halles”, the market, when a whole Basque band marched through with drums, bagpipes made from sheep bladders, and trumpets. To say the least, it’s an unpredictable event. We also had a little [View Full Entry]

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