Culture Shock

So lets be real. I live in a very interesting part of VA… verrrrrry interesting. Good ole’ Roanoke. And because my life is just nuts, my parents decided to move to Richmond. So that is happening. Actually how I found out about that was pretty funny. I got off the plane, had been traveling for like 14 hours or something and crying for most of that time, and my mom goes “Hey honey!! I’m so glad to see you! We bought a house in Richmond today!” Awesome mom. Thank you for that heads up. So boom double culture shock.

Now pretty much I’ve just been lamping around my parents house, annoying them when realators and stuff come over because I am such a bum. To be fair I have applied for a LOT of jobs, both English and French, but no one has called me. So until I get a job, I’m going to be laying out by the poolio in my backyard, drinking wine, and occasionally going for a run. Oh and listening to obscene amounts of country music.

I have yet to venture down to Walmart, because I’m pretty sure I can’t handle that. However, I did go to a clA$$ic Roanoke event, First Fridays, where most of the great unwashed of the city come out to drink some burrs and hit on lonely women. Ill be honest, I saw groups of 30 something women trolling for husbands. You could see the desperation in their eyes. Anyways there was a band who was pretty good. They were a Journey cover band and I’ll be honest I like Journey so that was coolio, or nickel as French people say.

we’re with the band ya’ll be jelz

hottiez

you aren’t steve perry!!! you impostor!! but check out those groupies!

coattails of awesomness

So that has been my life. Yay America! Good Lord someone get me a plane ticket back to France…

Crocodiles, Beaches, and…?

So update time! I am now done with work (insert sad face here) so I’ve just been chillin’ like a villain… u kno how I do. Ok that was awkward. Anyways so update! I have been actually having a great few weeks! Last weekend I went to a crocodile farm!!!! If your mind is currently being blown by how awesome a crocodile farm is, your brain is totally right. IT WAS AWESOME!!!!! SO. MANY. CROCS. So freaking awesome! I’m not sure why there is a crocodile farm in the middle of France but whatevs, it kicked a$$.

walking in to haunt your dreamz

just letting you think they are lazy, just asking you to come closer…

american alligator… usa! usa! usa!

Then this week I went to the beach in Toulon. Toulon is a port city and has one of France’s naval bases. I visited it for a day in October and I wanted to go back and get  my bronze on. And you better believe I got my bronze on, or should I say burn on. I am fried but in a good way! Except that I couldn’t wear a bra yesterday because my back hurt too much. The price you pay for beauty. Anyways it was beautiful and the food was wonderful. I ate salmon lasagne which was da bomb diggity. I know it sounds weird but it wasn’t it was awesome. I also saw a submarine, and a LOT of naked old grandmas. A lot. Also I spotted an old man playing volleyball in a turquoise speedo, socks, and sneakers. I wish I had taken a picture.

mediteranean coast!!!

check out that submarine yo!! time for france to get her spy on

gettin my bronze on yo

Well on my last days at school, a lot of my kids wrote me letters/cards/etc. and some of them are adorable/funny. Here are some pictures of them:

this girl drew me with a nicki minaj butt… nice

i’m not sure what is going on here but maybe an american disco party? also “amerique” is spelled wrong… amerque what uppp

titanic…why???

french flag, shark fins (requin is shark in french), and virginie (virginia in french)… maybe this is a modernist interpretation of my trip home?

Anyways I’ll be back stateside in 7 days exactly. WIZZEIRD!!! How am I going to continue this blog in the US? Maybe I’ll get clever up in hurr and start talking about food or something. Not that that is super clever but schwatevz. Anyways

I can’t think of a PC title

So because I’m being a lazy crazy girl (do you like that? I just came up with it boom!) I havn’t uploaded any of my pictures from Switzerland and Italy so I’ll try to get around to those posts (too much fun for 1!) Friday or this weekend. Maybe.

So today at school, in the Spandex King’s class we were talking about the US geography and all the neat things we have in there (Mt. Rushmore bitches!) and when we were talking about Washington DC the Spandex King goes (in French), ” I heard there were a lot of blacks there” I guess because I’m socially awkward, I said ” black what? Cars?” To which he laughed and goes “HA no. People. Anyways, the next city we will look at is Miami, which is filled with Cubans.”

I’m never going to work with such unintentionally funny people ever again.

Hopefully I’ll stop having mental breakdowns about my life this week and update on my vacations which were super! Also if you have a chance and want to watch a really weird French movie, watch “Perfume: the Story of a Murderer” I watched it last night with my boyfriend and it was super weird, the ending especially. ::Shiver:: but it was French so you know it was good. Also Snape is in it sooo… get on it!

 

Vacay oh hay!

Hello! Well sorry long time no update! I have been internet-less chez-moi in France which makes it fairly difficult to update a blog. Sometimes I can steal it from the free public wifi but that is only sometimes if my computer is positioned jussssst right and even then it’s only a baby bit of internet. So there you go. Explanation. Boom.

Well America! That was fun! My trip started off with me almost missing my flight because I am a trainwreck. I read my ticket before I went to Barcelona and was like oh I leave in the afternoon coolio that gives me time to sleep in, organize myself, and not be a walking disaster. So fast forward to Wednesday morning when I’m just not really doing anything particular and decide to check my ticket to realize that HOLY CRAP my flight leaves at 1pm. It was 9am and if you know Paris, you know you are not getting to the airport in less than an hour/hour ½ so yeah. I start freaking out and my cousin is like WE HAVE TO GET YOU OUT THE DOOR NOW AHHHH!!!!! Then there is me like “WHERE ARE MY THINGS AHHHH I AM NOT DRESSED [insert string of explicatives here]” generally freaking out. Then to compound it all, my cousin’s husband was late for work and was running around like a crazy person, and her children had no idea what was going on and were like “auntie Meaghan can I tell you about Valentines Day at my school?” I am a bad auntie and have no idea what they were saying, but hey in my defense I was in full disaster mode. So fast forward, make it to the bus no prob, make it to the train station no prob, get on the train whew calm ensues. Then I realize, I have no idea what terminal I’m in but I always fly into T2 so I just go there and then realize that is not right so then I have to take the shuttle to T1. This sounds like nothing but really it took me like 45 min (CDG is confusing) and once again I was sprinting around like a chicken with its head cut off.

FINALLY I make it to the US Air counter, check in, and then had to go pay for my bag being overweight (obesity!) which took forever. Here is where my rant against idiot American travelers commences. There were these two girls who wanted to upgrade to business class and in order to do that there was a tax they had to pay. However there was no guarantee if they upgraded that they would actually get a seat in business class, so essentially they argued with the lady for 20 minutes over whether or not to pay the tax. Then their credit cards didn’t work so it ended up not mattering, except that they wasted A LOT of my time. Foreigners complain a lot about Americans and a lot of it is unfounded, just like how we complain about foreigners; it’s a vicious cycle. However there are times when I am like, “really people? You need to argue over this?” or when I’ve overheard people complain about the food in a place… like why would you travel here if you don’t like the food? It’s called research people, do it. Anyways sorry… back to my travels…

Moral of the story is that I finally made my flight, which was smooth and easy and made it back no problemo. I spent 7 days back home, 2 of them at airports so really 5 days with family and friends. It was super nice. I ate a LOT of Mexican food (ole!) and drank margaritas and listened to a lot of country music and drank Bud Light. America YEE HAW! It was awesome. I spent the weekend in Greensboro hanging out with Erin and going to see Eric Church in concert, which was by far the most American thing I could have possibly done. I think every redneck in the state of North Carolina was there. People’s accents were so thick I couldn’t understand them. It was pretty bad ass. It was a really great concert though because he really is a stage performer and puts on a good show. This was the third time I’ve seen him live so I knew I’d be in for a good show.

sista sista!

Irish time!

we are so smart and serious, pondering the questions of life

the was the only good picture i took out of like 25 sooo... yay?

Also it snowed a LOT in Virginia while I was there. It was craycray!

my mom's dogs have snow jackets...

NEIGE

But all good things come to an end and I was back in a flash in France. My flight back was pretty empty so I had two seats to myself to sleep on. I did talk to a guy for a bit who was sitting on my left and I felt really sorry for him, he didn’t speak any English and had been in the US for a week and was just like, “ I am SO ready to get back to France this was a really hard trip” and I was like yeah I mean I know how you feel… except that I speak two of the most popular world languages so really everywhere I go I can communicate easily. This dude was under the assumption that everyone in New Orleans speaks French and so he went there during Mardi Gras not realizing that it was going to be completely insane and full of drunk people. Once again, people need to research where they are going before they go there haha, it makes life soooo much easier.

Well now I am back and I was just informed by my friend Eleslie/Leslie (I still don’t know…) that apparently there are monthly meetings we are required to attend living here and that I never go to, which I know. I make a point of being busy on those nights, which sounds awful but seriously this is like a crappy  dorm and I already did that for 3 years at college soo… Anyways she goes, “yeah they don’t mind that you don’t come because they think that you don’t understand but I know that you do. You are such a rebel!” bahaha this made me laugh yay for being a rebel American?

Anyways found out that I now live near a nudist colony. I’ll leave you with that image in your heads… a bunch of old, naked, French people.

Meaghan

Oh Punaise!

French people love American music. It is all over the radio here, playing in cafés, the public transportation… you can’t escape it. My favorite is when it’s all old stuff from the 70s and 80s. Well I have just come home from our weekly market and while I was there browsing through the used book stand I realized the song that was playing in one of the stands nearby was, “Take Me Home Country Roads” by John Denver. The conclusion I’ve drawn is that French people love this song. Remember when i couch surfed in Grenoble and the guy I stayed with insisted on playing it on his guitar repeatedly? Yeah…that happened. I just think it’s kind of a strange song because its so America-centric, I mean you can’t have more pride than “Almost Heaven, West Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains Shenandoah Valley… West Virginia mountain mama…”  I feel like this is just another example of how random people in France are haha.

Well in other news the lice outbreak has continued to BOTH of my schools now. I’m living in constant fear that I will unfortunately contract it. I’m trying to keep the children at more than an arm’s length. However this has been going on for almost two weeks so, I think I’ve got pretty good chances. I’m still mildly concerned that no one told me at either school. If theres some weird infectious disease outbreak at my schools will they tell me then? Probably not, they’ll probably just let me get turned into  a zombie with the rest of them. I have decided that in the event of a zombie outbreak while I’m in France, I’m going into hiding at the high school here. It looks like a prison and is surrounded by olive fields. I think I’d have some pretty good odds there. You can never be too prepared.

(I’d like to embed a video or picture of the lice check scene in Billy Madison, but unfortunately the internet failed me)

So at one of my schools (the one I don’t like) there is a teacher I’ll call Mrs. Anger Management. She is really nice to me, but in a sort of backhanded way. I make posters for her every week and shes says things like “oh this looks nice, but the corners on three pictures aren’t fully glued down so it is kind of sloppy. don’t they teach you how to glue in America?” Or my favorite comment was “oh you don’t look as nice as you did yesterday.” Like did she really need to say that? It’s not like I looked like a hobo, one day I wore a dress and the other day I wore pants… Anyways she FLIPS OUT on the students all the time, I mean like 0-60 in .003 seconds. On Tuesday we were working on the parts of the body with some drawings and she looks at one kid’s paper and was like “WHAT ARE YOU DOING? DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING? NO APPARENTLY YOU DON’T!!!!” grabbed his paper and ripped it in half!!!!!! I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to react to that but I’m pretty sure I was just standing there with my mouth open. Not very professional haha.

I feel like this could happen any day now…

In exciting, non-school related news… I AM GOING TO BARCELONA!!!!!!! I can’t wait!!! I’m going the Feb 11-14, then America 15-22 and Greensboro the 17-19 where I will see ERIC CHURCH in concert YESSS, cannot WAIT

No need to complicate he's a simple man...

OH can’t believe I forgot to mention this story… well for this whole medical exam thing we have to get X-rays done to check and see if we have TB (although considering I’ve been here for almost 5 months I think it’d be a little late if I did have it…). As you know, pregnant women can’t have X-rays done. Well at the office the woman looks at me and goes, “are you pregnant [in French]” and I respond, in French, “no I am not” and she looks me up and down and says “are you sure? you know pregnant… a baby inside you” and I was like “yes I understand and no there is no baby inside me” and then she says in English, “baby yes pregnant yes.” Apparently to this woman I looked pregnant, which I don’t get because I’m actually the thinnest I’ve been in a year. Maybe she just thinks American girls are slutty… who knows but I was wearing a turtleneck and sweater soooo that would be the opposite of that… anyways it is a mystery. Also she didn’t ask my two friends if they were pregnant, just me. Awesome.

My xray is in the center... No TB here bitches!

Mego