Photo Post: A Very Spanish Field Trip

This past week, I went on quite possibly the best field trip of my life. There was some stiff competition, since last year I got invited to go with my 15-year-old French students for a day to Jersey, a British island off the coast of France, which was pretty darn cool. But this year, I went on a three-day trip with my 10-year-olds to the school "farm" (in reality more like summer camp). That doesn't sound that cool, I guess, just saying it like that, but it was honestly so nice.

 I think just on the merits of food alone, this year's field trip was the winner by far...not that British food is hard to beat.

My god, look at all that food porn. Seriously, I was served amazing four-course meals made by a Michelin-star-level chef three times a day. I was stuffed until I literally could not move.

Luckily, that was fine, since my duties consisted of nothing more strenuous than taking walks around the camp to see how the kids were doing ziplining and rock climbing with their counselors, talking down a girl who was a little homesick, and dancing like an idiot with my students at the camp "disco."

Working hard holding a bunny for kids to pet...

Checking out a sheep eating some hay off his brother's back...

Other than that, I took naps, read a book for fun, and worked on my thesis. Such a difficult life! But I'd really needed a little time off to get some perspective on the fact that in just over a month, I'll have my master's degree and I'll be unemployed. Until then, it's full steam ahead!

My Lately

I've been super super superrrrrr busy lately. As usual, I guess, but I feel as though my free time has been down to almost zero, what with one thing and another. It's that time of year when everything is beginning to come to a head--my students are about to take their official English exams, my master's thesis is due in less than a month, I'm searching for jobs for next year and doing interviews, and the weather is starting to be nice and I just want to sit around outside!

April flowers bring May...I don't know what!

I also want to make some plans for the future, but that's very difficult to do when I have no idea what the future holds after I graduate and finish my current teaching contract at the end of June. Maybe I'll find another job soon, or maybe I'll have to keep looking for a while. I don't know how many times I've talked about how I'm tired of this uncertainty. I really want some more stability in my life, to not be constantly jumping from one job to another! Still working on making that a reality.

In the meantime, here are some things that have been running through my head and my life lately.

Recently, I've been...

Reading: De tempête et d'espoir: Saint-Malo by Marina Dédéyan, which is a novel in French about the town where I used to live in France and a girl living there in the 1700s. I got it from the English coordinator at the school I used to work at, and I've been trying to finish it since about September. It's really good, but reading in French is so haaard, waaah! It probably didn't help that I took a break to start also reading the After Cilmeri series, by Sarah Woodbury. This series is right up my alley, as it's about some contemporary Americans who time travel back to Wales in the 12th century and end up involved in local politics. I read 6 books in two weeks, I got so hooked!

Listening to: Kendji Girac's Andalouse, which, yes, is awfully mainstream for what my taste usually is, since the singer comes from basically the French equivalent of The Voice. But it's in French AND Spanish, and it just makes me wants to dance! Good danceable music is hard to come by, and I'm not too much of a snob to listen to anything that gets my toes tapping.

Worrying about: Where I will be living and working next year. Applying for jobs is incredibly stressful, and I will be relieved when I have this all figured out! Then I can start planning some more fun stuff in my future, like trips!

Writing: The final draft of my thesis. I just want to finish this and turn it in already. I'm so over dedicating my weekends to writing and editing this one paper!

Trying: To stop drinking coffee and to meditate before bed every night. I recently decided that I wanted to reduce my intake of milk and sugar, as well as caffeine, so during Lent I gave up "necessary" coffee (meaning I only drank it on the weekends, for pure enjoyment, rather than when I was tired during the work week). I noticed that I actually started to feel MORE alert after awhile of reducing my caffeine intake, and so I've developed the theory that caffeine depletes my energy supply even faster because it makes me super energetic for a short time, and then even more tired afterwards. I'm back to drinking coffee occasionally now, but toying with the idea of going back off it again. I've also started meditating before bed every night, which has multiple benefits, like making me think more positively, appreciate the small things around me, imagine a great future, and also relax and fall asleep more easily. The one small glitch with this is that sometimes I fall asleep before I finish the meditation, but at least I'm no longer laying awake at night worrying!

Watching: Not a whole lot besides rewatching How I Met Your Mother in French, but I'd like to get caught up in Mad Men so I can watch the rest of the final season as it airs!

Eating: Loads of fresh asparagus and strawberries. It's crazy to me that what I consider "early summer" (June) foods are already in season in Spain! Not complaining though, especially at low low Spanish prices!

Craving: A Chicago-style deep-dish pizza. This isn't even something that I eat that often when I'm home, but my GOD do I want one right now, probably simply because I can't. There are tons of types of other pizza, but nothing that compares to a good deep-dish.

Missing: My family. This is constant, of course, but I just saw some lovely pictures of their trip to Florida a few weeks ago, and I really wished I could have been there. And visiting my friend's family in Galicia made me think about how nice it is to see the people you love, and how it's been a really long time since I have!

Wishing: The (free) food at in the school's cafeteria were more varied. I shouldn't bite the hand that feeds me (literally, ha), but I do wish the menu in our school's lunchroom featured more than the same couple of meals repeated over and over ad infinitum.

Feeling: Mostly content, as I try to not get caught up in the little annoyances of life and try to just appreciate the ride.

Grateful: That I just had a visit from a dear friend from Germany. It had been over a year and a half since I'd seen her, and it was great to catch up. Plus we're both kind of in transitional phases of our lives right now, so it was nice to talk about that to someone who totally gets it!

Waiting for: My four-year-olds to finish recording their CDs of the songs we've been practicing all year, so I never have to hear those songs ever again! I'm pretty sure being made to listen to the same ten children's songs in bad English at least 3 times a week for 9 months constitutes psychological torture. They may be forever stuck in my head!

Excited about: The fact that there are only 10 weeks until graduation. Only two more master's classes, handing in our thesis, and that's all she wrote! I'm excited, and of course a bit nervous to see what's next and if I'll be able to apply everything I've learned in the real world.

Loving: My students. I've really loved getting to know them on an individual basis this year, since I've been able to spend so much more time with my classes than I ever had in any of my jobs in the past. I'm so proud of them every time I notice them making progress, and I love that feeling.

Notes like this don't hurt, either!

Wanting: Time to both speed up and slow down at the same time. I can't wait to be done, and yet afterwards there is a big question mark, and that's more than a little terrifying. I know things will work out as they always do, but sometimes I worry anyway.

Hoping: This transitional stage is one of the last major ones I have to go through in the next few years. All the stress is starting to give me wrinkles!

Planning: A trip to Catalunya in a few weeks for my first-ever blogging conference!


What's your lately like?

My Changing Feelings About Spain

I think my feelings about Spain have run the gamut. I've hated it, I've loved it, I've wanted to leave tomorrow and I've wanted to stay forever.

When I first got here, more than anything else I was bewildered. I had no idea what this strange country was that I knew basically nothing about, where I all of a sudden found myself living, out of the weirdness of circumstances. 

Over the course of that first year, I learned more and more about the country, and more than anything else, I compared it with America and found it lacking. The service was slow, the prices were high, and I hated jamón. I was often miserable, homesick and feeling trapped with the host family from hell, who screamed at each other in front of me and criticised my Spanish until I cried.

I was so happy to leave at the end of my two semesters in Bilbao, and having my flight cancelled due to inclement weather and being stuck in airport limbo in Madrid for four days was the cherry on the cake. When I arrived home, I was thrilled to no longer be stuck in Spain.

However, following that was one of the most stressful years of my life thus far, as I was tirelessly writing my thesis, working towards graduating from university, and slowly ending things with my (then) boyfriend of four years. And during all of that, I often found myself daydreaming of Spain.

I saw Spain as the solution to all my problems, the escape to which I could get away when I graduated. I yearned for another opportunity to do a year in Europe (which I'd been dreaming of since I was a preteen) the right way. I craved another chance to realize those childhood dreams, and so I decided to go back when I graduated.

The second year, I was still culture shocked by many of the same things as before, plus being thrown into teaching in the Spanish system with no training whatsoever. I debated for the first half of the year whether I would just go home like I wanted, or whether I would be optimistic and renew for another year and hope things would improve. In short, I was once again pretty unhappy, and felt like it was all Spain's fault.

But the last half of that second year and all of the third one, improve things did. Those were probably the happiest 18 months of my life so far. I felt settled in Vigo, I had stable friends that I cared about, I was speaking Spanish almost all the time, and I had plenty to keep me busy. I was learning to understand my work, I was earning plenty of money, and I was traveling somewhere new almost every weekend. I fell in love with Spain in that time, deeply and unexpectedly. By the end, I had even decided that I could see myself living in Spain forever. I laughed at those small things that had once annoyed me (like Spain's notorious inefficiency), and decided to see them as the price of admission for being in a country where people work to live, where relaxation and being social are celebrated parts of daily life, where wine comes with a tapa, and where I had come to feel at home.

At the end of the third year in Spain, I wanted to stay and keep living that happy stable life, but I also felt like if I didn't take the opportunity being offered to me to realize my preteen dream of living in France, I would forever regret it.

As is common, however, upon finally realizing my 13-year-old wish, I realized that it wasn't going to be all croissants in chic cafés, living the life of Amélie. France wasn't the same in reality as it had been in my dreams, and it took me a long time to adjust to the reality of the country. And during all of those first few difficult months, I clung to Spain like a security blanket. I talked of almost nothing else, to the extent that several people thought for awhile that I was actually Spanish. I fell even deeper in love with Spain, or my rose-colored memories of it, anyway.

I did eventually begin to assimilate to life in France, just in time to have to leave, but I had a plan: get back to Spain, through hell or high water. Spain was where I belonged, I figured, and things would work themselves out if I could make it back. So I accepted a spot in my current Master's program in Alcalá de Henares, and came back.

At first this year, I felt justified in my choice to move back to Spain, what I had been told was "the love of my life thus far." I was once again enjoying all those things that made living here worth it, like tapas and siestas. But as the year has gone on, my feelings have begun to evolve once again, towards negativity. Part of it is probably living in the province of Madrid, which I've never liked as well as Galicia, but I think there are two other factors that play a much larger role.

The first one is spending more time with other English speakers than I have since my study abroad days in Bilbao. This time around, it's not because I don't understand Spanish, but because we work together and we study together, and I haven't had a lot of free time to find quality Spanish friends in Madrid (other than an old Galician one who lives here now). Being around other Anglophones means having people to complain with about those little annoying parts of Spanish life. Every time we're given a random task to complete that seems utterly pointless and yet is required of us in order to stay legal here, every time something seems to have been organized bass ackwards, and every time we disagree with Spanish teaching methods, we have each other to turn to. That is wonderful, and it's a great stress reliever, but it's forcing those small annoyances to the forefront of my mind. Things that I learned to ignore during my 18 happy months in Galicia have begun to bother me again. I've remembered that there IS another way, one that makes logical sense and is efficient. This irritation is compounded by the fact that I'm so busy this year that I don't have the time to take advantage of the best parts of Spain--the food, the people, the sunshine, the cheap flights to interesting European destinations.

That brings me to the second factor in my current negative feelings toward Spain. This year, I'm working full-time as an assistant in a Spanish school. I'm there as much as the regular teachers are, and I share many of their responsibilities. But yes, I am STILL an assistant. This is the fourth year I've worked as an assistant, and some of the realities of the job are starting to make me crazy. I think to myself, if only I had my own classroom, if only I could run things the way I want to, if only I could plan my own classes. I could handle those realities when they came in exchange for a life full of free time, friends, and travel. But now? I work all the time, I get paid half of what a Spanish teacher does, and I have no life, no freedom to enjoy all those things I once loved about Spain. And that's fine for right now, but someday soon I'm going to want something more.

And the problem with Spain is, it can't offer me that. I can probably find a way to stay here indefinitely, yes. As an assistant. Moving regions every year or two. But can I ever have stability, a decent salary, and enjoyable working conditions? No, no and no.

Spain for me is starting to become like that boyfriend you have when you're young, who you love so much and you think you'll be with forever, until you realize he can't offer you any stability.

And so what happens? You break up. I'm starting to wonder if a breakup between me and Spain is in the near future. I've had so many ups and downs with Spain and still stuck with it that I really did think it was true love...but I'm starting to grow up now. I'm starting to want to put my things away and not have to worry about packing them into a suitcase again 9 months later, and that's how things will always be for me in Spain, I think.

My emotional journey with Spain isn't quite over yet, but this is the direction it's headed in for now, and although that makes me sort of nostalgic and sad for days gone by, I think it's what's right.

So I'm probably going to be in the market for a new country to fall in love with soon, and hopefully it will be THE ONE, and not just another ex-love writing sweet nothings in my passport. Any ideas?

Happy Carnaval!

Today is Ash Wednesday, which means several things: 

1) My (non-Catholic) school held a mass in the basement all morning, and so somewhere between a quarter and a half of my students were missing. 

2) This mass exodus caused the remaining students in one of my ESO (secondary) classes to ask "Hey, what religion are you?" And that prompted a twenty minute discussion of how I was raised, and a brief summary of the life of Martin Luther (the second I said his name, they said "King?" Adorable). I very much admire the fact that such a discussion is possible in Spain without really hurting the feelings of anyone, although I am aware it is due to a lack of diversity in religion in the country. 

3) Most importantly (and fun!) of all, the last few days all over Spain have been Carnaval, or what Americans know as Mardi Gras. Although I'm rather disappointed with Madrid's (dearth of) festivities compared to Galician entroido (which involved almost city-wide costumes and a week-long dress up competition in my old school), I will take any opportunity that comes my way to get dressed up in a funny outfit.

And so on Monday, knowing that 90% of my preschool girls would be dressed as Elsa or Anna from Frozen, I stuck on a false nose, put sticks in my hair, stuffed scarves down my shirt, and became their friendly summer-loving pal, Olaf the Snowman. The kids seemed pretty impressed. Plus, to Spanish four-year-olds, "Hola Olaf" (words which sound basically identical) is a never-endingly hilarious joke, so that was fortunate. Less awesome was the fact that they, being curious and precocious four-year-olds, started patting my stuffed belly going "There's a baby in there!"

Glad I've worked with children long enough now to be beyond all embarrassment. "Nope!" I chirped, and quickly changed the subject to how adorable each separate Elsa was.

I hope your Mardi Gras involved less invasive questioning on sensitive topics than mine did! Lots of warm hugs to you all.

Source

What do you think? Did I hold a candle to the real Olaf??

Thesis, theses...

Am I the only person in the world who hates that the plural of thesis is theses? Sounds too much like a funny word...

Anyway!

I'm supposed to be writing my Master's thesis right now. Clearly, that's going really well, since you're currently reading these words on my blog post ABOUT my thesis which does not in any way help me get said thesis finished.

If you're curious why I might be writing a Master's thesis when you all just thought I was doing another year as an auxiliar de conversación in Spain, well, that's a story for a different day.

But struggling to write this thesis inevitably reminds me of another time and another thesis, when I was sitting angrily in front of my computer screen willing myself to just write actual words already. That was, of course, four years ago (has it really been that long??), when I was writing my undergraduate honors thesis.

At the time, I was struggling with the choice between taking a "year off" (ha) to teach abroad or going to graduate school for literary translation. Fittingly for the latter, my thesis was a translation of the poetry of one of my professors in Bilbao.

So day after day I would sit on the futon in my sad, tiny, freezing little all-brown student apartment, and try to get to work. I would tell myself, "Just translate one sentence. Just one. Go on, do it!"

The weather out my window quite often looked something like this (when people ask me what it was like to study in Maine, this is inevitably what comes to mind...this is also the type of scene that comes to mind when people try to complain about "cold weather" in Spain, and then I start to laugh). 

As the snow swirled outside for months on end and I drank a probably unhealthy number of cups of tea, little by little, poem by poem, snowday by snowday, I made progress on my thesis, until finally the day came when I defended it in front of 5 professors, who said I could go really far in the field of translation if I wanted, and I felt on top of the world.

Just a few days after that, I decided to take a position to teach English in A Cañiza, Spain.

Why do that if I could have been so great at translation and didn't want to be a teacher?

Well, the experience of writing that thesis had taught me that I had no desire to be self-employed and have to set my own deadlines. The idea of spending my future going through that struggle of self-revilement, procrastinating and feeling bad about it every single day, sounded like honest-to-god torture.

In the end, my "year off" to find myself turned into four, and find my profession I did. I ate my words about not wanting to be a teacher, since here I am, doing just that and loving this dynamic job that is different every day and does not require me to muster enormous amounts of self-discipline about writing long essays.

But as a cruel twist of fate, studying to become more qualified to teach leaves me right here right now, staring at my computer screen, fighting the exact same battle as four years ago. "Just write one sentence. Just one. Come on, do it!" Except now, I've been out of practice for four years, and my skills are a bit rusty. "Is that how you spell that word? Does that word even exist in English, or is it Spanglish? Does that sentence sound right? How do people say that in America? Is that British English or American?"

The battle to write just one sentence is up an even steeper hill than it was four years ago, and I am absolutely floundering. However, having done this once already, I do know that I can, and that helps immensely.

More importantly, it also reinforces my plan to continue in this profession and not switch over to higher education or back to translation! I can fight this battle from time to time, but I still say: every day, no frigging way. Give me teaching or give me death!

On Negativity in the Classroom

Something that occasionally annoys me about some (usually older) Spaniards is that they complain all the time. I'm no saint in this area myself, but I do feel that it's a problem and it's something I'm working on. In English, we have a saying: "No one likes a Negative Nancy."

I'm actually not sure if there's an equivalent in Spanish, but I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't.

Spaniards have a habit of being very direct--it's almost embedded into their language, and most definitely into their culture. For example, it isn't seen as at all rude here to comment on someone's weight or appearance. Over the years, I've been told I'm looking fat, that I'm looking too thin, that I look tired, that I look really sick...all serious no-no's in English.

What do you MEAN, I look fat today??

...Now that we've established that sometimes Spaniards like to tell me I look like crap, where was I going with this...?

Ah, yes. So Spaniards tell it like it is. When I say "We're past the winter solstice, from here on out, the days are getting longer! Spring is coming!" they look at me darkly and say "The worst of the cold is yet to come, you'll see," all sinister-like, as though there were no point in looking forward to spring.

Um, OK, great, thanks, guys... That makes me feel so much better...

"The sun will come out tomorrow?" More like, you will never see the sun EVER AGAIN! BWAHAHAHA!

That sounds trite, but their defeatism really frustrates me when we're talking about more serious things than the weather. For example, the students at the schools I've worked at. Occasionally, when certain students or classes really misbehave, I will hear teachers make comments like "They're all going to end up in jail one day," as though that were a fact, and all we have to do is put up with them until they day they can be safely locked away.

Another gem I've heard, in reference to students from different backgrounds who are far behind their classmates and really struggling, is "That student can't learn. [He/She] is lazy, because [he/she] is from (such and such foreign country)." So that takes any responsibility away from the teacher in needing to help them. It's a lost cause, so why try?

Aside from being really shockingly racist, this upsets me because if the teacher is instilling in the kids the idea that they are bad and can do no better than they are right now, why would they try to improve?

Maybe I'm just a naïve young teacher, but I think we shouldn't be saying such negative things to or about young people, especially within their earshot. I really prefer to think that there is hope for everyone, and perhaps instead of just constantly complaining about how "impossible" some of our students are, we should instead recognize that they are the ones who need our help the most.

Yes, I've been at the end of my rope just like everyone else; I've had those frustrating days where I'm at my wits' end and feel like I will never get through to such and such kid or class. I've often felt like I really don't know what I'm doing. But I still want to, have to, think that there is hope for everyone. If not, why are we even teaching? Just to get a paycheck? That seems like truly the wrong reason to be molding young minds, if you ask me.

I'm not saying that all Spaniards are like this, and I'm certainly not saying that American teachers are necessarily better. I'm just saying that right now, today, this fatalistic mindset is really bugging me, and I want to tell every single Spanish teacher, from every school I've worked in, to take those minutes they usually spend moaning about how little José (for example) is impossible to deal with and instead use them trying to think of ways to give him extra attention.

He's not a lost cause until you make him believe he is.

2014 in Pictures--Part 1: France

2014 was quite the rollercoaster ride for me! There were a lot of good parts, also some bad ones, and in general I'm happy to see it go and excited to find out what's next. But first...let me remember all the fun adventures I got up to!

January

I started out 2014 visiting some of my best friends from Vigo. I enjoyed seeing them again, as well as revisiting all my favorite spots in the city, like O Castro (the park on top of the hill in the downtown, with the BEST views).

Next up was my birthday! I celebrated a few times, first in Vigo and then in France, where I had a 1960's-themed birthday party! (Thanks for the picture, A)

After all the excitement of the holidays was over, I was feeling a little bummed, so I tried to really appreciate the beauty in my everyday surroundings in order to cheer myself up. This photo is of the area of town I where I used to live in St. Malo, and this walk was one I took quite frequently, as it was the way to get to Intra-Muros, or the walled city, where all the exciting things happened!

Still appreciating the beauty of the ordinary, one day I took a daytrip to a town nearby called Cancale, where they have the best oysters. They also have those typical Breton buildings with the colorful entrances that I love so much! 

February

February started out with a bang, as we watched the grandes vagues (big waves) come into St. Malo. This only happens once every few months, where the tides and the moon cycles coincide to bring huge waves crashing against the sides of buildings. It was really impressive, and I loved it until a big wave hit me and I got totally soaked!

As I was learning about Breton culture, I (obviously) also heard a lot about their food. The most famous (and arguably the best) food that comes from this region is crêpes and galettes (salty crêpes). But the Bretons, they are obsessed with (salty) butter. So, the sign says: J'aime la galette...savez-vous comment...? Quand elle est bien faite...avec du beurre dedans! (I love galettes...do you know how? When they're well-made...with some butter inside!)

I took a few daytrips in February to combat my continuing moodiness, and one of them was to Dinan with my roommates. It was a beautiful day with some of my favorite girls, and I absolutely adored the town. A lot of the reason had to do with the colorful buildings. I'm obsessed! 

Next up was a daytrip to Rennes, the capital of Brittany. Some of my favorite-ever and most-photographed colorful wooden buildings are there, so I'm always pleased to make a visit to them!

On this particular daytrip, we also visited a French market, which is something else I love...fresh food all put out for display (and sometimes taste-testing!)...such a wonderful concept. And everyone knows how the French love their cheese...well, I love getting to try all the different types!

March

In the beginning of March, we had 2 weeks of vacation (because French schools give you 2 weeks off for every 6 weeks worked...so lux!). However, I decided to get some extra cash by working at an English camp in Rennes for the first week. I hated the commute, but I loved getting to explore more of a city I love so well! And yes, more wooden buildings!

A friend of mine had recently gotten a cool fancy camera, so in March he let me play a little with it and I started learning how to take interesting pictures, which was awesome. Except now I want my own expensive fun camera, waaah. 

Another day trip was next up, this time to Perros-Guirec on the northern coast of Brittany. This place is famous for its pink granite rocks, which we took a nice walk along. (Thanks F for the picture!)

Towards the end of March, one of my seconde classes at the high school I was working in took a field trip to Jersey, a British island off the coast of France, and I got invited along! That was a cool trip because I had to partially work as translator while we visited their parliament, and also we visited this super interesting cave hospital from WWII that explained all about the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands during the war (betcha didn't know that a small part of Britain had been taken over by Nazis, didja?).

April

April was absolutely full of daytrips. During a visit to the Forest of Brocéliande, where Merlin supposedly lived and King Arthur may have pulled his sword out of a lake, I was very impressed with all the rapeseed fields in bloom, which made huge patches of the countryside yellow!

The next trip was to Carnac, to see the menhirs left behind by prehistoric people thousands of years ago. I was so amazed by this place, with hundreds of giant boulders lined up for miles. I can't begin to imagine how much work that must have taken for these ancient people. And I also love pondering the mystery of why...

April was also a bit strange because it was already time to start saying goodbye to people. My work contract finished at the end of the month, and so we had various meetings on the beach to celebrate and see people one last time before they started taking off! This is from one such celebration, in front of the marine swimming pool in St. Malo.

I also tried to spend some time really exploring St. Malo better, because I knew that it would soon be time for my departure as well. So I walked out to the nearby islands one day when the tide was low, I explored the Cité d'Alet (the first place settled in the area), and I generally just tried to take it all in. I was mostly pleased to be finished working at my technical high school, not because it was the worst job in the world, but because I am well aware that it was not the best fit for me professionally! So getting to the end of April was kind of a relief for me in at least one way.

May

As soon as May came, I was off on a 3-week vacation with my parents! I met them in London, and we explored such historic sites as Canturbury, the destination of the famous pilgrimage that brought us Chaucer's Canterbury Tales!

You can't take a bookworm to London without stopping at Platform 9 3/4!

Then we were off to Scotland, where my nerdy self was thrilled to see actual blue police boxes that look exactly like the TARDIS...

We did a highland tour, and were amused by some hairy highland coos (cows, for all of you non-Scottish burr speakers out there).

In Liverpool, we took a Beatles taxi tour, which was well-worth our money, as we got a full history of each of the Beatles' lives and landmarks in Liverpool, as well as a picture in front of every single one! I'm obsessed with the Beatles, and this was really a thrill for me. Here's Strawberry Field orphanage, like from the (Lennon) song Strawberry Fields Forever...

When we took the ferry back to France, our first stop was in Normandy, to see the American cemetery and the beaches where so many men gave their lives during D-Day. As we were there just before the 70th anniversary celebrations, many of the towns were totally decked out!

On the way back to St. Malo, just before (or just after, depending on who you ask!) crossing the border back into Brittany, we stopped by Mont Saint Michel. Although it was as full of tourists as ever, the beauty of a church like this out on an island in the ocean is undeniable! 

I fully enjoyed showing my parents around the town where I'd been living for the past 8 months, and I think they got a kick out of St. Malo as well, particularly the parts of it associated with World War II (my dad is obsessed)! 

June

After I'd sent my parents back off to the States at the end of May, June was a much calmer month. I went bowling with some French friends (which is ridiculously expensive by the way, serves me right I guess for trying to do American things in Europe!).

I had a beach bonfire with some friends, which honestly felt like something out of a movie to me!

I visited Brest and the small towns nearby, where there were some sea caves with really gorgeous colored rocks!

I spent several hours watching FIFA World Cup games and supporting les bleus win against Switzerland. Allez!

And then, sadly, it was time for me to say au revoir to St. Malo. It wasn't easy leaving a place I'd come to care about and feel at home in, where I had good friends (it never is). But St. Malo gave me a beautiful sendoff, as we went to a final beach bonfire to celebrate the summer solstice, and saw a gorgeous sunset for our trouble.

When I got home to America, I thankfully had fresh sugar snap peas from my mom's garden (my favorite food in the world) waiting to greet me. That helped stem the tide of my sadness at least a little!

I ended the first half of the year in the best way possible, meeting my newest nephew! He's absolutely adorable, basically the Gerber baby, and the happiest little guy I've ever met, so it was a big thrill to finally get to see him in person!

The first half of the year was busy, but mostly good, with some very difficult moments thrown in just to keep things interesting! Stay tuned for the second half in the next few days...