Tooth drama continues

Yeah, so it was an abscess in addition to the cavity. There's nothing quite like having medical problems 4000 miles from home. I just knew after using almost an entire bottle of advil and barely sleeping for yet another night, it was a bad omen. I soldiered on today, not being able to eat due to the large goiter occupying the majority of the roof of my mouth. Then around 5 pm, before our party with the French Rotary and our dinner with St. Etienne's, I went back to my dentist friend. "Oh yes, yes. This is bad. It was not this bad yesterday. This must have been quite uncomfortable today. How do you say "abscess" in English?" I said, "$1000 of dollars worth of dentist bills...." To sum up, he relieved the pressure, but I'm not even close to being done with dealing with this problem. 6 days of antibiotics and a promise of a dentist retreat upon return to the states await me.... On a happy note--it still hasn't cost me a penny...
Our students went to a concentration camp today, as well as a museum on the relocation of people in France during World War II. I was impressed overall with how somber and reflective our students were as they realized the atrocities of the Holocaust and World War II on Europe. Our kids are awesome and it pleases me greatly to see them soaking up this big world and realizing they're just a small piece of a much bigger puzzle.

Oh my gosh, I forgot to mention...

Today on our school tour, we saw an interesting relic of a saint: his hand. Yeah, there was literally a hand in a glass container on a shelf in the wall surrounding the altar. It's pretty much disgusting.

J'ai vais une carie

When I arrived in France on Saturday, I noticed the beginnings of some tooth pain. Of course, being that I was in another country, I was going to try to suck it up; grin and bear it; shake it off. But, it kept me awake for two nights. After about 50 Advil, this morning I realized it was an unspeakable pain. Also, I noticed a knot in the roof of my mouth. I thought to myself, "This is not good!" So Caroline and Michele got me an appointment with a French dentist. After several hours of pain, I finally had official word: a cavity had grown under a previous filling and was pressing on my nerve. Within 10 minutes, the dentist had drilled the decay and repacked my tooth with a temporary filling. Going to a French dentist was different than my experiences at American dentists. First off, there were only two people in the whole office--the dentist and his assistant. Second, the building was this amazing historic house and his office was in the one room where he had his dentist supplies, chair, x-ray machine, etc... Even better, it didn't cost me a dime to go. I missed the boat tour that the students took today while I was taking care of my periodontal crisis. I did pick back up when we did our tour of the cathedral and of petite france. We ended the day with a cup of cafe au lait at an outside cafe. Did you know that in a French school's cafeteria, the teachers are served wine with their lunches??

A Day of Respite

Today was a low key day. I didn't even get out of my pjs until 1pm--jet lag can be deadly. We walked around a park with a zoo in it. We ate some ice cream. I almost got run over by a crazy Frenchman. C'est la vie.

France, take two

So I'm back again, but this time I have 30 students and 4 other adults. There's nothing to stop your heart quite like getting 30 students through luggage check, security check and boarded on a plane. Even more is when one of the students can't find a passport when you're about to go through customs in Frankfurt. It's very difficult to communicate with German security officials when you only speak English and a little bit of French. Let's just say "Dankeschön" goes a long way. Disaster averted, all is good--the passport was located on the airplane. Everyone made it to France in one piece, though amazingly exhausted. It was tremendous to finally see this part of a global vision come to fruition. The battle to make this happen was uphill all of the way; there were times when my fellow chaperons and I would look at each other and wonder exactly what we had gotten ourselves into. Luckily I had a group of colleagues who believed as strongly as I do that experiences such as these can permanently change a student. Many of our students on this exchange have not ever left the country; some have never even been on an airplane. How much is it going to rock their world to see the Mona Lisa, the Eiffel Tower, different power outlets, and eat fromage blanc? So our sixteen day journey begins--A la vôtre!