Je suis fatigue

Tomorrow is a big day for us. We will travel to Paris at 5:45 in the morning. I am convinced that everyone in our group should hold hands all day. This way we are assured that we will lose no one. Today, we met up with an old colleague from Murray--Ian Cotton--and had lunch at a cafe. After that, I got to meet my friend from Germany. I went to college with her and haven't see her in years, so that was fun. We drank coffee at a cafe. Then all of us went to one of the French teacher's houses for dinner. We also played ping pong. I don't have pictures yet, I will have to hijack them from someone. So, until then...

Je suis desole

I will post twice today since I didn't post yesterday. Yesterday was the big day of NATO protests because the NATO meeting, and its 60th birthday, were yesterday. I saw a group of protesters dressed as clowns yesterday, firing balloons and riding toy horses through the streets. I really wish I had gotten better pictures of this. But I had a battery crisis and by the time I fixed the batteries, they protesters had moved on. I didn't think it was wise to run after them carrying my camera. They were laughing and smiling, and making horse noises, etc... There was another man staying on the corner dressed as a Charlie Chaplain, or maybe a Hitler figure, singing "Happy Birthday" to NATO in protest. All of the violence and tear gas on t.v. was far removed from me. It was very frustrating the other night when all of the teachers tried to meet up for dinner. Every road we turned down had a police barricade. Every person we talked to told us to go a different way. Wow. Everything is cleared up now since the heads of state have left. Obama is actually in Prague now. So life resumes in Strasbourg. As a note on life in the States, I was up until about 4:00 am watching the UNC final four game...Go Heels!

Bon anniversaire a moi....

I spent my birthday waiting an inordinate amount of time to sit and listen to Obama speak for only about 45 minutes. But then I remembered that this was an opportunity that very few people have--to meet the President. There was this moment when I realized how amazing it was to be sitting in this room with the President only 300 feet from me. I realized the reason he won the election is because many Americans believed he offered change and hope. Then I felt like the moment nearly encapsulated the entire reason why the other teachers and I wanted this trip to happen: there can be change and the change can be good, but it needs to come through the education of our children. We must teach them to be compassionate, generous, intelligent and sensitive beings, and part of this education must come from cross-cultural interactions. While I wish that we could have actually shaken hands with Obama or that he could have signed my book, I am still amazed that we all had this experience. It's the kind of birtday you don't forget: I saw the President of the United States in person, and brought 30 students with me. As a side note: France is quite ready to kick the tail of anyone who wants to threaten the NATO meeting--there are police and military personel everyone. I'm going to try to take a picture of this.

I need my bed

I am extremely tired and tomorrow we have a long day ahead of us. We're suppose to meet Obama tomorrow. It's crazy how they've done security around here. You can only walk in certain areas of the city and you must have your passport and a special card depending on what zone contains your house.
Today, we went to a "reconstructed" medieval castle--it was never entirely clear to me which part of the castle was original to the middle ages. We also went to a typical French grape-growing village and met some assistants to the major. This village was particularly important to us because it's the area where Charles P. Murray fought off the Germans during World War II and won a Medal of Honor. After that, we went to a Brazilian restaurant to celebrate Caroline's and my birthday. Hers is April 1, and mine is April 3.
Well, au revoir and to bed I go...

Jouez au volleyball

Today, we played some sports with the French students. While my volley ball skills may be lacking, they're enough to beat whatever the French students or American students had to offer. After volleyball in the gym, the teachers walked around Strasbourg to eat lunch and look in some stores. It was great! Also, the whole city is gearing up for the NATO summit this weekend. There were lots of helicopters and military vehicles driving around. We all have to have a special card to even leave the houses this weekend. Crazy!!

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!