Counting the months... and an afternoon in Belgium

Last weekend, I took a little afternoon trip to Tournai,  the oldest city in Belgium. It was hot (73F, which is too hot for this Seattleite), not a cloud in the sky, and only a 20 minute train ride across the border. I strolled around the town for a few hours by myself before sitting down to enjoy a delicious cone of house-made Speculoos ice cream in the La Grand-Place. Aside from the first two trains back to Lille being cancelled, it was a lovely afternoon! 

The Belfry and the Grand-Place 

Notre Dame de Tournai Cathedral

Flags on Cloth Hall (the red, yellow, and black one is the Belgian flag)

Le Pont des Trous on the Scheldt River

I love anything Speculoos... of course I had to try the ice cream! 

Tons of other people had the same idea, since the Glace Speculoos was the most empty of all the flavors!

In other exciting news, I arrived in Amsterdam exactly seven months ago today. That sounds like ages ago! But even more exciting news is that I have my (stand-by) ticket booked home! And the date? July 13th. I find it kind of poetic that I'll spend exactly ten months, to the day, in Europe. Major thanks to my amazing god-dad for hooking both my mom and I up with our stand-by tickets! Milles mercis, Uncle Bruce! It's bittersweet to realize that the end is near... Luckily, as close as it seems, three months is still a long ways away. For assistants on a seven-month contract, this is their last week of teaching and many of them take off soon. I know these next few months are going to fly by... seven have already. 

One more day before vacation! I definitely need it, too!
Bisous,
-kelse

I spent another afternoon at FNAC today with Yannick and my dead hard disk... After I grabbed a service number, another guy called me up to his counter but when Yannick looked up and saw me, he said I was here to see him. When I asked how he was doing, he looked at his watch before looking up at me with a smile and responding "Well, now I'm doing great."Unfortunately, the program we hooked it up to no longer recognized my hard disk. He tried several different things and cords were all over the place but, sadly, had no effect. He downloaded a recovery program specifically for Macs and we found it funny that I had to show him how to drag it into the "applications" folder to finish installing it.We laughed again when he couldn't find it in the application folder, which I was able to point out to him. 

At one point, he said that he was about to try the last thing he'd be able to try before throwing in the towel. But after that, he still tried a few different things. After two-and-a-half hours, he wasn't able to retrieve any of the information from my hard disk. He wished me well and apologized for not being able to help before sending me on my way. Get this - I didn't get charged! Can you believe it? In total, he spent close to 7.5 hours working on my computer and I only paid 15€ for the service. What a steal! All hope isn't lost... it's just not going to come cheap. At least this time I was well prepared for the worst and there wasn't even the slightest threat of a tear. 

Aside from that, this week at work has been insane. On Monday and Tuesday, there were three teachers absent (plus a few striking on Monday) and only ONE substitute. One of the teachers will be out almost until the April vacation but let's hope the other two get better and can come back to school because classes are too full! 

I forgot to mention that Nicolas (le directeur) and I set the date for my final day of work: le 28 juin! I can't believe that I have less than three months left now! My mom, aunt, and I haven't officially nailed down details of their trip to come travel Europe with me but we've tentatively planned to meet in London on June 29th -three months from yesterday! Words to describe how much I miss them are hard to find; I'm super excited to plan our Europe adventure! 

Bisous, 

-kelse

Le directeur/La directrice - the principal

Le 28 juin - June 28th 

Ready for vacation!

I'm mentally ready for my next vacation but have to wait 11 days to leave... I guess I shouldn't complain since you probably have to wait longer until your next vacation and also because I was on vacation just over a month ago. My friend FINALLY booked his flights so I was able to book mine! Tomorrow night I'll book travel for the last part of my trip... so where am I going?

I'll arrive in Paris early morning on the 21st for sightseeing in "the city of light". Then, early morning on the 24th, we're flying from Charles de Gaulle to Edinburgh to see tour a castle, eat porridge, and hang with rugby players. Jesse leaves on the 28th to go home but my trip won't hardly be half over by then. After saying "sayonara" at the airport, I'm headed to London! My Aussie friend Jim is letting me stay with him until the morning of the 5th. After a train ride through the Chunnel, I'll be back home in Lille and looking forward to my next vacation in April! I'm so excited to finally make my way into Britain! :) I do have to admit though, that every time I meet a new British assistant here in France, it takes until the third or fourth time that I see them for me to actually understand a word they say - unless they speak French. 

View of Monmartre and Sacre Coeur

Edinburgh Castle

Palace of Westminster

On top of actually pulling together vacation plans for this trip, I got some other exciting news this week. One of my favorite people in the world - the amazing roommate who put up with all my crazy nonsense senior year in college and still asked me to be in her wedding two years ago - had her baby! Congratulations Erica! Thanks to facebook, I was that she a perdu les eaux a week earlier than her Valentine's due date. Through reading congratulatory comments, I garnered the fact that her name is Everly. Everly Aljets. And she's quite a beauty from the pictures her proud father, Josh, posted. Félicitations, Josh and Erica! You're going to be fabulous parents! I can't believe I have to wait until she's five months old to see her in person! I'm a proud Auntie Kelsey already! 

For more icing on the cake, today is my half birthday! Happy half birthday to me! : ) Six months left until I hit the quarter-century mark. Twenty-five actually sounds nice to me but I'm not done living up twenty-four. Anyways, I need to stop procrastinating and do a little lesson planning... Even though there is a strike tomorrow, only two of my teachers will be MIA. At least I get to show up 45 minutes later than usual!

Bisous,
-kelse

Elle a perdu les eaux. - Her water broke. (But the literal translation is "lost the water.")
Félicitations! - Congratulations! 

A vacation well earned

This week has been rough. As young students, I don't think most of us thought about how exhausting we could be on our teachers - especially while in elementary school. Even with my Aunt Tracy, an elementary school teacher, as one of my biggest role models growing up, it still never really crossed my mind. In this week alone, my respect for teachers has grown tenfold. I may only work twelve hours a week but after this hellish week, my Christmas is well earned. I don't know if I've ever been more ready for a break... 

The excitement of the school's Marché de Noël, school movie day, receiving their bulletins, predicted snow, impending vacation... oh yeah, and Christmas were way too much for the kids to handle calmly. Their behavior was intolerable and already on Monday afternoon the other teachers were dreaming about Friday.  Students wouldn't listen... kept getting out of their chairs... talked over each other... and gave me the worst headaches ever. I have never yelled this much at other people in my life... I don't know what happened to my voice after high school... I was a really LOUD cheerleader but since those days, I cannot yell loudly. And I apparently cannot yell over my class in French or even English. And I seriously wanted to slap a few kids upside the head... okay, that's a lie - more than just a few - A LOT of kids... or most of them.

Let's just say that I couldn't be happier to have over two weeks without kids running up to shout every English word they know at me, chalk dust all over my clothes, or waking up at 6h00. In that two weeks, I couldn't be happier to be with family!! We'll leave the apartment at 6h00 Sunday morning to head to Bruxelles for my 11h20 flight. After an hour and twenty-minute layover in Frankfurt, I'll arrive in Tallinn Sunday evening for an 10-night, 11-day stay in Estonia! I only have a faint idea of what's in store for me and already know I'll have a few fun Christmas traditions to share. You and I both (well, especially me) can look forward to:

Blood Sausage - because it couldn't be Christmas in Estonia without it!

Sauna - because it is Estonia, after all!

Beautiful scenery but COVERED IN WHITE!

And AMAZING people! 

Vive les vacances! 

Bisous, 

-kelse

Les bulletins - report cards 

Airfare is booked!

I like things to have structure... I need a plan - my version of a "rough plan" is more organized than most people's more structured plans. That being said, because the beginning of my trip is so flexible, I've had a hard time pinning down my travel and have hesitated to book airfare because, frankly, it intimidates me! But today I did it! I booked my ticket into Estonia. So here's my plan, which I hope goes through as such:

12 Sept.: depart Seattle @ 12:35 pm (I hear the song "I'm leavin' on a jet plane".... don't you?)

13 Sept.: arrive in Amsterdam @ 7:40 am to spend the day/night exploring (hopefully not sleeping)

14 Sept.: depart Amsterdam for Riga, Latvia, in order to transfer to Tallinn, Estonia! 

Whoa! That means I have a month and a week before I'm gone!

Living situation isn't completely settled but I do know that I will be living with two wonderful gay men, one américain, one français. With the three of us, we should be able to get a house for cheaper than an apartment! Plus, it'll satisfy my desire to live with someone French! It'll be great - he's already living in Lille so he knows the area, my American roommate has met him a few times, and he'll have friends to introduce us to! (Fingers crossed for some cute, straight men with manners!)

Bisous,
-kelse


un américain / une américaine - an American male / an American female
un français / une française - a Frenchman / a Frenchwoman