(picture update)

Anne and me at Sanssouci. This and the next couple of pictures are from a bit earlier, from Anne's camera. Thus, I am in them, and decided they merit posting.

On top of the Dom (cathedral) in Greifswald.

We found a real, live hedgehog in Anne's yard one night on our way home!

Something I've done a good bit of, lately--sleeping on trains.

Hannah, Eric (The friends who showed up in Berlin and surprised me!), and I visiting the East Side Gallery in Berlin--basically a long stretch of the old Wall full of art and graffiti.

Hannah, ever the patriot, at Dunkin' Donuts in Potsdamer Platz (Berlin).

Hannah and Eric in the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe.

Standing in East and West Berlin, looking short!

This is a Döner. It is one of the best inventions of all time.

See how happy it makes me?

This picture makes me giggle. Seriously, check out the faces.

Everyone seemed amused that I was the perfect height to blend in with the mini-bears of many nations.

Anne and I saw the Blue Man Group! It's a really incredible show.

The last after-school coffee with the Kutzners for a while. Really a very nice time of day.

After a flight from Berlin to Paris, and a night spent with my old host family, I set off for Rodez on an 8-hour train ride. I was prepared for the trip with the essentials: a window seat, music, pen, paper, and sudoku.

I also took pictures out the window on occasion to keep myself occupied.

My first jambon beurre since being back in France! Basically one of the most delicious sandwiches around--ham, butter, baguette. I had this one at the train station in Brive la Gaillarde, where I changed train stations via bus.

One of the little villages we drove through on the 30-minute bus ride. It was seriously a very picturesque day, in general.

The "giant" train station that the bus delivered us to. This is where we boarded the ONE CAR train that would carry me the last three hours to Rodez.

The parts of my life that I lugged around...and lugged around some more. And don't be deceived--they may be different sizes, but because of the weight limits on the flight from Berlin, they weigh pretty much the same. Around 20 kilos each...or 44 pounds. I was proud of myself for handling them up and down stairs, lifting them onto trains, into the luggage compartment on the plane, etc.

The train ride continued to provide me with beautiful views as I traveled farther south.

See?

My first picture of my new home! This was on my way to dinner from the foyer where I'm currently staying.

The view from my room is also not too shabby! You can see the valley/hills just beyond the rooftops.

The street near my foyer. You can see the tower of the cathedral as you walk towards the center of town. And yes, most streets look like this.

This is a picture of the cafe with wifi that I have been frequenting. It's where I am if I'm emailing, blog posting, browsing, searching for apartments, etc. It's where I am RIGHT NOW, actually.

A park I found on my first day of exploring.

More exploration.

I also found a lookout point (Rodez is on a big hill, if you hadn't figured that out yet) not far from my foyer.

Trying to get acquainted with my new home!

Groceries! I love eating in France. Wine is good and cheap, figs are big and yummy, clementines are everywhere, etc.

I hope you feel a little updated, now! I'll hopefully post something written soon, as there's plenty to tell! But for now, try to content yourselves with the pictures, ok?

(planes, trains, and automobiles + my feet)

Just a short update from a French café. 

I have finally arrived in Rodez, France, where I will be living for the next year or so. During the span of my approximately 24-hour trip, I was in Berlin, Paris, and Rodez--and I used all of the methods mentioned in the title of this post to get there. Anne dropped me off at Schönefeld, I flew to Paris and spent the night with my old host family, then I hopped a train to Rodez which arrived after 8 hours of beautiful countryside. 

I'm tired, but pleased to be here. I already have a few good stories to share, but those will have to wait for another time in the very near future. I'm going to walk to the foyer de jeunes travailleurs (like a boarding house for young people), go to bed, and wake up ready to find out where I'm teaching, get my phone working, and find a place to live. A full day's work, most likely! 

So here's to moving to strange places! I have a feeling it's going to be a great year. 

So. Until later. Bis später. A bientôt. Hasta luego. That's all I've got. 

(überraschung!)

The word in the title is a new one I learned this week--and just in time, too. It's German for "surprise," which is exactly what I got on Thursday when Hannah (a friend from College) and her boyfriend Eric showed up in Berlin! There was a lot of good secret-keeping going on the last month, it seems.

It's been really great to spend time with them--sightseeing in Berlin, so far--which we'll be continuing today!

Genuine happy surprises are seriously awesome.

:)

(change of plans and pictures)

First order of business: I'm not going to Villefranche-de-Rouergue after all. Rather, I found out today that I'll be working in the much more pronounceable town of Rodez, in the same area. Seems that it's a good thing I couldn't make any plans ahead of time, or else this switch might have been pretty inconvenient. As it stands now, however, the only changes I'll need to make are the ones of my vague mental picture of how my life will be. Rodez is larger than the teensy V-de-R, lines of transportation are a bit more direct, and it seems that I might even be able to stay in an apartment at one of the high schools for the year (ie, cheaply, I hope).

Another positive aspect of this change is that I won't be the only assistant in town. I feel like I just barely dodged an isolation-loneliness bullet, and am happy to have been in contact with two girls who are already living at the Lycee Foch (the aforementioned high school). They seem open and sweet, and I'm looking forward to meeting them. Additionally, they've assured me that Rodez is great, and that people there have been quite welcoming. I'll arrive there next Wednesday, the 24th.

In other news, I think it's time I finally rewarded my faithful readership with the ability to be my faithful viewership, too. So without further ado, PICTURES!

Watch out--there are lots!

*I can't seem to upload pictures to this post and keep the text normal--so I've posted the pics in a second post, which you will find below.

(pictures)

And finally, some pictures:

A friend of my dad's was sweet enough to give me one of his buddy passes for my flight to Berlin. This makes the flight much cheaper, though you have to fly standby. This means that in exchange for a cheap ticket, you have a little anxiety in your life about making connections. Everything worked out for me, though I was amused (and anxious) when I took this picture of NYC as I flew over it to Providence, RI in order to fly BACK to NYC in time to catch my flight to Berlin. It was totally worth the extra leg of the journey, though, once I found out I was flying in an extra first class seat!

There's a new soft drink here in Germany, called "The Spirit of Georgia." Anne had a couple of them waiting for me when I got to their house from the Airport. They're yummy, but don't particularly taste like home. The Dr. Peppers that I brought Anne, however, do taste like life in Georgia, so we just put the Spirit of Georgia label on the Dr. Pepper bottle to get things right.

Anne's mom is really sweet, and has been taking great care of me. One day she brought me this little book to help me learn more German. It's called "Grover can be super nice." It's all about good manners--and, of course, when Anne found out her mom got me a book about manners, she gave me quite a hard time ;)

We went to Sanssouci! It's an old Prussian Palace that was Friedrich the Great's summer home. It's especially awesome because Rufus Wainwright sings about it.

This is Friedrich the Great's grave at Sanssouci. Why are there potatoes on it, you may ask? Why, it's because he introduced the staple to Germany! What a legacy.

This flower at Sanssouci will eventually turn into a pomegranate!

Ice cream in Potsdam after the pottery market, and despite the icky weather. Enjoying ice cream on a day like that is really more an act of defiance against nature than anything.

Later on in the week, however, the sun came back for a short visit. This is by the Teltow Kanal, where I went on a bike ride one day while Anne was working at her internship.

Another Anne! Try not to get too confused. This is Anne Graupner, Anne Kutzner's best friend. She lives in Pankow, which is an area in northern Berlin.

This is a pedestrian traffic light with one of the two Ampelmänchen ("little lamp-men") illuminated. You can tell you're in the former GDR (East Berlin) by these guys wearing hats on the lamps instead of more normal stick figures.

The first afternoon we were in Pankow with Anne G., we made a delicious pizza! There's even tuna on it--which is apparently par for the pizza course in Germany.

No surprise here--we play a lot of Uno (one of the "international" games I can play without speaking much German). Even though the games are easy for me to understand, I usually still lose.

Cookout in the Kutzners' back yard! The fire in the foreground was for warmth, since it is far from summery here.

The fancy new central train station of Berlin. This was part of our journey to Greifswald, where Anne studies. It's in the North, right next to the Baltic Sea.

I finally got to meet Anne's roommates! This is Antje, who is (if you can believe it) a little shorter than me! She's quite sweet, as you can tell. I only met the other roommate, Franka, for two minutes or so, at the train platform where we were arriving and from whence she was departing.

On Saturday we went to Bintz--a retiree beach town on the island of Rügen. We completely lucked out with the weather--we managed to catch the sunny hour or two of the day. The weather changes constantly with the strong winds from the sea.

My favorite part of the day was learning to fly Anne's steering kite. It has two strings so that once you get it airborne (and learn how), you can make the kite do spinny-exciting maneuvers. It was definitely the perfect day for kite-flying.

Just because we were at the beach doesn't mean that it was warm! We saw a few dedicated people wading in the waves while all bundled up on the top half!

Naturally, we had to stop for some Apple Strudel and a coffee! It was completely yummy.

This is part of Greifswald, during our Sunday stroll. That's a church spire in the background, and in the foreground are some non-tradtional (for Germany) buildings. Anne informed me that they look that way because they were build when Greifswald belonged to Sweden, between the 17th and 18th centuries.

When we got to the top of the church spire, this is what we could see--downtown Greifswald, in all it's orange glory. You can see the Marienkirche in the back, which you can see from Anne's balcony.

Not to be outdone by the bears in Berlin, Greifswald has fish scattered throughout the town.

We found a hedgehog last night on our way in from Pankow! He was terribly cute and quite scared of us. Apparently, you have to watch out that they won't make a mess of your outside trash.

(my name is king boy!) or, (me talk pretty one day)

My first afternoon here in Kleinmachnow, Anne and I went on a pleasant walk around the neighborhood. It didn't take us long to find a woody area, where Anne explained that the Berlin city limit was. So we stepped right over into Berlin proper, and proceeded to a playground busy with after-school activity. Naturally, we made a beeline for the swing set, shoved our adult-sized hips into the rigid child-sized seats, and started pumping as we talked. Our exotic-sounding English soon drew a small crowd of little boys. They were bold in their anything-but-discreet fascination, and it wasn't long before one of them (Dennis) finally plucked up the courage to make contact with these linguistic aliens. "What's your name!" It was more declaration than inquiry, but we answered and thus broke the spell of silent interest that had captivated our audience. For the next few moments, a chorus of "What's your name"s filled the air as the other boys followed Dennis' lead and tried their tongues at the bizarre sounds they had been learning in English class.  Anne and I interrupted them with our own questions every so often, which is how I know that the first boy was Dennis. This encouraged them to try out "My name is" combined with a few more familiar phrases that had made enough of an impression on the boys to stick: 

"My name is KING BOY!"

(pleased snickers all around)

"My name is Castle king!"

(more giggling)

"My name is Cowboy!"

Etc. 

Since then, I've thought often of the boys and their unmitigated amazement and enthusiasm upon realizing that silly sounds learned in a classroom could actually mean something to someone from far away. That feeling doesn't get old, and it's not just for kids--it's a unique experience that figures heavily in my own interest in the study and "mastery" foreign languages. 

In my four days here, surrounded by German and Germans, I have had the opportunity to be reminded just how much I have in common with Dennis and the gang at the playground. It's why, despite knowing how slowly I speak with a heavy accent after only two semesters of beginning German, I feel totally in my element contributing my own "What's your name"s and the like into the conversations around me. 

"Can you me please give the potatoes?"

"I have two suitcase. One suitcase came with me but one suitcase went to Dublin."

"We went to the airport but not a person was there for help us."

"Can I look the bottle, please?"

I like to think that my German hosts are as pleased to hear me enjoy trying to speak their language as I was to speak with the boys at the park. I suppose (at least with German), cuteness is a better fate than inertness--even though I know if I got better, I would soon begin to hate being seen as "cute"--the same way I hate it now when I'm speaking French, and Anne hates it when she's speaking English ;) 

(air chance and haribo)

Well, they have found my missing bag--naturally, it's sitting in a Dublin airport! But it will arrive by tomorrow and Anne and I can have a driving adventure to go and fetch it. When I told Frau Kutzner I was missing a bag, she helped me at the luggage lost and found desk, and commented that they had lost bags several times, and always with Air France. Which, of course, is the Delta partner I flew over with. It's not nicknamed Air Chance for nothing! 

Now that my brief golden nap is over, my bag is located, and I've divvied out hugs, I'm going to go (continue) enjoy coffee on the balcony on a nice summer day. (They say it's summery, but I think it's more fallish ;) We'll see how much of the German conversation I can follow. 

On another note, Frau Kutzner brought us Haribo from the grocery! I'm so pumped about rediscovering the parts of Europe that I had forgotten I missed!  

(arrival)

I'm here (in Kleinmachnow, that is)! Safe and sound, freshly showered, on my way to a nap and hoping to hear soon that they found my lost bag! That's all for now, but more to come, for sure.