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Published: November 6th 2007
Dearest friends,
So this entry is going to be mostly about my recent vacation, but to start off I wanna also fill you in about my life in Avignon since the last time I wrote.... I have finally started teaching, and I'm loving it so far. It's nice to have a job which allows you to actually use your imagination and creativity; it makes going to work kinda fun for a change. Every week I have to plan my lessons for all of the different grade levels that I teach, and it gets a little challenging as most of the students are lacking the motivation for learning, and are having difficulties with the language. So, in order to get them to talk, I have to pick topics which would be of interest to them; last week, for example, I spoke about Halloween with the younger students, and then in more advanced classes, I spoke about gun law controversy in the US, which was nice because they got to debate about it.
Other than teaching, I spend a lot of time with the other assistants (mostly American, but also including British, Italian, Spanish, and German). With the anglophones I
Karaoke Night
Celine, Emily T, Elysia, Emily Fmostly speak in English (which is bad because I have to work on my French), but at the same time, I hang out with the other language assistants a lot, especially those who work in my high school, and we speak in French all the time. We do a bunch of fun activities together - cook dinners, go out to bars/karaoke, take trips, etc. About 2 weeks ago, one of my roommates had a birthday, so we threw her a big party, invited the whole gang, and collected enough money from a bunch of people so that she can buy herself a guitar. It was a very big moment for her, as she started crying out of happiness. Also a couple of weekends ago, a few of us took a day trip to a town called Arles (south of Avignon) and spent the entire day there. Alres has a nice Saturday market, so we went to that, and then we visited all of the Roman ruins. Also, I got to see the hospital where Van Gogh spent his last days, and the street and the cafe which he painted in his famous painting, Late Night (or whatever it's called).
So, about the vacation.... on a Saturday afternoon (Oct. 27th) a group of girls (Amy, Emily and Nicole), and I took a train from Avignon to a town called Tours which is in the Loire valley, in the northwestern part of France. We took the TGV (the fast train) to Lyon, and then 2 hours later, we got onto the slower train from Lyon to Tours, where we finally arrived aroun 8:30 PM. Once we arrived, we got off the train and started wandering the streets with our heavy luggage, not having a clue where we were going as our crappy map wasn't telling us much. We thought that we were in the center of the city, or close to it, as it looked like on the map, but we were actually quite far from the center. After we wandered for some time, we decided to go back to the station and look for buses. Luckly, there was a bus which took us directly to one of the main plazas in the city, near our hotel. The next day, however, we found out that there was another station which, in fact, is located in the city's center, and that the
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Me, Amy, and Nicole in Tours train stops at that station right after the one where we got off at.... oh well.
Since the next day was Sunday, and pretty much everything in France is dead on Sundays, we didn't have much to do. We decided that that day we would stay in Tours and just explore the city a little bit. After we got up, we went downstairs to eat the usual French breakfast (coffee, croissants, jam, butter, oj), which was prepared for us by this cute old man who ran the hotel. After breakfast we went to visit the Beaux Arts museum, and their famous cathedral which looked magnificent. That day was kind of cloudy and gray, but we still managed to take a bunch of great pictures all around the city. After having lunch, walking/taking pictures by the river, and visiting another museum (of modern art), we went to the hotel and pretty much passed out until dinner time. So, dinner was the most interesting part of the day... we wanted to go to this one restaurant that we saw the night before which had a pretty cheap menu and decent food. So, Amy, Emily and I were talking about getting lamb,
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Me in front of the Tours Cathedral and when it was the time to order, they both said that they wanted "agneau" (which means lamb), and I somehow thought that the word for lamb wasn't "agneau," but "andouillete," so when he brought my food it turned out that I had ordered this NASTY sausage cooked in some creamy sauce. I was so mad because I really wanted the lamb, but then I decided that I would eat the sausage anyway because I didn't want to deal with the French waiters. However, when I tasted it, I almost threw up because it was so gross. The only other thing left to do at this moment was to play a dumb American tourist and act all confused so that he would change my order without charging me, which worked out pretty well; surprisingly, he picked up my plate with the nasty sausage and exchanged it with the lamb without arguing, wich was very nice. After a nice dinner and a couple pitchers of wine, we walked around the city a bit more and went back to the hotel to rest up for Monday's chateaux adventures.
We woke up to a rainy day on Monday, which was kind of
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Emily, me, Amy... and pretty fall colors disappointing because we had planned on taking a day trip to a near by town called Amboise, famous for its royal chateau and the Leonardo Da Vinci museum. The rain, however, did not stop us; we ended up catching a train to Amboise, and then a taxi from the train station to the chateau. Chateau looked amazing! I of course took many pictures, even though it was raining and I had to hold the umbrella in one hand. We took a tour of the inside and outside of the chateau and were just overwhelmed by its beauty. The outside chapel, however, had Leonardo Da Vinci's tomb which is pretty neat to see. After the visit to the chateau, we bought some post cards and went into a cafe, before heading to the Da Vinci museum, or the house where he actually lived and worked. That museum also looked amazing. We got to see many of Da Vinci's works, such as paintings, and other machinery which he created. After we toured the house, we went into his gardens which were huge and breathtaking, especially with all of the pretty fall colors. It had finally stopped raining, so we were able to
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Emily and me in front of this cool bridge in Tours take more outside photos, which was nice.
On Tuesday, Nicole and I went on another tour of 2 chateaux, leaving Amy and Emily in Tours to pick up another Emily from the train station who was coming to meet us that day. We first stopped at a chateau called Villandry, which is a privately owned chateau, right outside of Tours. This chateau has the most amazing gardens I have ever seen. We didn't want to pay to go inside of this chateau, so we just toured the grounds. We first went on a short walk in the woods just above the chateau, and then we came town to the gardens which still had many flowers and veggetables growing. Then again, we took a billion pictures with all of the pretty flowers and the chateau in the background - AMAZING! After our visit to Villandry, we went to another smaller chateau, Azay, which is surrounded by the water. Yet again, we took many pictures and took a tour inside and outside of the chateau. Later on, we went back to Tours to meet the other girls and head to more famous chateau, Chanenceau. By the time we got to this
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girls night out! :-) chateau, it had cleared up so we had a perfect weather for photos. Even though Chanenceau is very beautiful, I enjoyed this visit less than the visits to the previous 2 chateaux. Some of the reasons are: it was way too crowded, so it was more difficult to take pictures, and we weren't able to peacefully enjoy the beauty of the place; also, our group got even bigger, and everyone started getting cranky, so I felt like I was in a constant rush, which was pretty annoying. However, we made it through the visit and ended up with some pretty photos, and then we went and sat at a cafe before our train arrived. As we were walking to the train station, we saw a train coming so we ran accross the tracks, thinking that we were going to miss it, but it turned out that it was a different train which didn't even stop, so we got a little embarrassed as a bunch of people at the stop were staring at us.
Wednesday was pretty much the same. Some of the girls decided that they weren't willing to spend anymore money on chateaux visits, but I really wanted
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Leonardo Da Vinci's tomb to see the most famous royal chateau in that area, Chambord, so I went with Emily and Amy while the other 2 stayed in Tours. Since it was a holiday, buses weren't running on time, and we were worried about how to get there. Then, we decided to take a train to another small town Blois, and we found out that there's one bus that goes to Chambord, so we got on that bus, and ordered a taxi back from Chambord to Blois. Chambord was indeed the most beautiful chateau I've seen; many great French kings lived in it, like Francoise I and Louis XIV. When we arrived, it was a bit crowded, but not as much as the previous day at Chenanceau, and again, the sky was super clear, which made me happy. So after we bought our tickets and started walking toward the castle, I was pulling my camera out of my pocket and my ticket somehow fell out and got lost, which made me freak out. As I was getting ready to go back to the receptionist and argue with her to issue me another ticket, I saw a guy picking up the trash and he picked
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The chateau! up something that looked like my ticket, so I rushed toward him, and I reached into the trashbag and pulled out my ticket.... yeah, I know it's pretty nasty, but I wasn't going to pay another 7 euros for a new ticket! LOL! This visit was also amazing; I was so overwhelmed with the history and the amazing arcitechture of this place.
Then on Thursday, we got up early, and I mean REALLY early to catch a 7 o'clock train to Paris. Surprisingly though, we all seemed happy at 5:30 AM and were cracking jokes, but then we crashed on our way to Paris and were half dead by the time we got there. Our plan was to leave our stuff at the hotel and run out to find a Starbucks - yes, I know what you are thinking now, but when you pay 3 euros for a tiny French coffee, you would want Starbucks too! As we were searhing for it, and we weren't finding it, the girls started saying how they refuse to ask someone where the Starbucks is because it looks so "touristy," but I didn't care, so I asked the first person I saw, and
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Another view of the chateau our mission was accomplished. After the Starbucks hunt, we went to Sacre Cour and walked around the northern part of the city where all of the artists are located.
Friday was pretty much spent the same ... we got up and walked around the city, revisiting all of the great monuments, like the Eiffel Tower, the area outside of Louvre, Notre Dame, etc. Then, that evening, I went to Lyon to visit my cousin and her son who live there. I have seen this cousin of mine when I was about 10 years old, and I have never seen her son, so it was a bit awekward for me, but still, I was excited to meet them. Stefan (my cousin's son) came to pick me up at the station. I was a bit nervous when I got off the train because I had no idea how he looked like, and there was about a million people at the station. I was hoping to recognize an Eastern European face, and as I was still looking around, he ended up somehow recognizing me from a picture he had. He then told me that we were going to his mom's house who
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View of Amboise from the chateau lives in the suburbs of Lyon, and we had to take a bus which was going to leave any second, so we pretty much ran to catch this bus; as you can imagine, running with my huge suitcase was not fun! When we got off the bus, we still had to walk up and down this hill to get to their house, so that was a good exercise for me. Meeting my cousin went really well. We spoke in Serbian at the beginning, but since they speak mostly French in the house, we all spoke French together which was amazing for me.
The next day I went to the market with my cousin and then we prepared a 4 course French meal, which was delicious! They gave me a martini to drink at noon, and then I had couple of glasses of wine with lunch, so I was a bit tipsy, as you may imagine. After lunch which lasted for about 2 hours, Stefan, his cousin Nicolas, and I went to explore the city; they took me all over Lyon, and I got to see the Roman theater, the famous cathedral, and the old part of the town, which
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Le Clos Luce - Leonardo Da Vinci's house was amazing. Then, later on that night, we went to a restaurant whose owner is a Serbian guy (born in France), and we had a pretty nice meal there. After the dinner, Stefan, Nicolas and I went to some bar to meet some of Nicolas' friends; it was nice to meet younger French people and speak French with them. Stefan and I spoke in all 3 languages; I asked him to speak French to me, so we spoke in French for some time, and then he asked me to speak in English since he's trying to improve his English, and then our most common language was still Serbian.
Sunday I went to the Russian church with my cousins, and spent the rest of the afternoon eating and chilling at the house, talking, watching French TV. I also got to meet more Serbs who have been in France for a long time, so they speak French with a heavy Serbian accent, which is very cute.
Then, on Monday afternoon (today), I finally came back to Avignon. It feels kinda weird being back here, but at the same time, I'm glad I'm back because after a while traveling gets very
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View of the Da Vinci's park from the house tiring.
Anyway, I hope you have all read most of what I've written here... I know, and I'm sorry that it's so long, but I just had to describe my amazing journey in a great detail. I miss all of you very much. Please write to me when you get a chance.
Love,
Darija
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Miruna
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When I went to France, I didn't like the food because it was so sauce heavy. I'm glad you got to go to Blois! Sounds like you're having a fabulous time. I'm so glad to hear that you like teaching! I love reading your journal, so keep it up. Miss ya!