Blogs from Lille, Nord-Pas de Calais, France, Europe - page 8

Maman sent me an Advent calendar at my request. I have one every year, and have for as long as I can remember. It’s always something that I look forward to and helps me pace out the month before Christmas. Usually behind each little door is something like a quote or fact about Christmas, or a picture of something vaguely or cheesily Christmasy. When I received my Advent calendar this year, it was a 3D gingerbread house that I had to put together myself. I finally figured it out and sat the little guy on my shelf, waiting impatiently for the first of December (sorry this is out of order; haven’t had much time to write lately). Finally, the first of December came. I should mention that I was sick as a dog when it arrived ... read more

I have been instructed to do a Christmas unit with my students, so we have been working on very simple vocabulary - stocking, Santa Claus, present, ornament, Christmas card, Christmas tree, candy cane - and talking a bit about the difference in Christmas (slash holiday) traditions between France, the United States, and Britain. I will get into the details about the differences once I feel like I have a bit better of a handle on them, but for the moment, I have found something else to be extremely interesting. Despite the differences in tradition and even in religion between people in France and elsewhere, Christmas is something that is now common to almost everyone. Even for my Muslim students, for whom Christmas means nothing in terms of religious (or even cultural, originally) significance, Christmas has become ... read more

After visiting London's Natural History Museum with my friends, I went to Lille for a short day-trip. I made my way to St Pancras station to catch my train to Lille. I was supposed to go to Lille 2 weeks ago but the trip was postponed due to the French transport strike. Actually the strike was a blessing in disguise, because there's a Christmas market in Lille and it only started one week ago. If I went to Lille 2 weeks ago, I wouldn't have seen the Christmas market. The Christmas market was indeed fun and pretty. There was a giant ferris wheel in the middle of Grand Place and there were many nice little wooden stalls in Place Rihour. However, thanks to the market, the streets were clogged with a massive human traffic jam. In ... read more

The other night, I was eating dinner with a group of French friends. About halfway through dinner, for some reason we were talking about animal noises and the differences between them in English and French. It was late, we were quite tired, and it was positively hysterical. I had tears streaming down my face as my friends, who are all quite intelligent people, competed for who could make the best sheep/goat/cow/horse/chicken noise. All of us were fighting stomach cramps and gasping for breath from laughing so hard. Then we switched to talking about the verbs used to describe the noises instead of the noises themselves (bleat, whinny, moo, bark, etc.), and we got into a fight about one somehow. From there, an entire discussion came up about the subjunctive tense. We talked (and argued) about verb ... read more

I would like to apologize for the lack of entries and for the inferior quality of the past few entries in this blog. I really have been extremely ill for the past several weeks, and it just got a lot worse three weeks ago and FINALLY started going back up here last week. I went to a free clinic and got some medicine. I didn’t know that there was a free clinic in Lille. It isn’t like in the States, where poor people cannot afford insurance and, therefore, don’t have it. If you’re a French citizen, you have insurance, and almost everything is paid for, so it’s different. So who goes to the free clinics? Yours truly - immigrants, whether temporary or permanent. They still suck - it takes forever, it’s crowded… some things are universal. ... read more