Chaumont: The Land of Dreamers

We are back in Chaumont! Which means, we are back to the blog and to uploading more pictures! We were in Paris for the past week, but we will get to that in the next post. For now, we shall return to where we left off.

Once we returned from Reims, we started at our schools the very next day. For the rest of the week, we met (most of) the classes that we will be teaching. The following two weeks we were actually in the classroom with our students. Derek has a room at the school where he meets with his students, usually about 10, sometimes more sometimes less. Brittany, however, is sometimes teaching by herself but is often teaching alongside the teacher.

The English lessons are difficult to plan because each class is at a different level, and each student in each class is at a different level. Because of this, Derek plans one lesson and uses it for every class despite their differences, and Brittany adapts her lessons for each class.

Derek works twelve hours each week. Brittany works 10 hours on "A" weeks and 14 hours on "B" weeks. Understandably, we are much happier during "A" weeks. Although 12 hours does not seem like a lot of time per week, there's also the time that we use to plan the lessons (well, the time Brittany spends planning, anyways). Lesson planning is our lot as teachers, so it is nice to have only 12 hours of classes a week compared to the 30-35 hours of classes the real teachers have. As for Derek, he spends his extra time on the bus. The bus ride itself is not very long, but it is about a 10 minute walk to the bus stop from our apartment, and he usually has to leave about an hour early. On the days when his schedule is split between the morning and afternoon, he is traveling for about 2-3 hours a day when the school is less than a 10 minute drive from our apartment. Welcome to the life of public transportation.

That's enough about work! After all, it's not the real reason we are in France! On our first Sunday in town we woke up and went to church. In France, they are very skeptical about protestant churches, so (we think) the "approved church" is called the Église Reformé de France (The reformed church of France). Anyways, in each town, the ERF meets at the Temple (it's not really a temple, but it is called the temple). So we show up and guess who we meet?! A young french couple that just spent three years in Montreal with a community that explores the question "What is the church". Also, they love Settlers of Catan (Last friday we were up till three playing with Thomas). The husband is a funny guy and the wife is super sweet. Basically, they are easy to get along with, they are really similar to us, they have the same interests as us (environmentalism, eating seasonally, etc.), and they, too, are stuck in Chaumont for about nine months. Thomas was stationed here because he is working as a missionary, kinda. All in all, we are incredibly lucky to have them and are really excited to get to know them better.

At Brit's school, there is a young French teacher who is dating an American who used to be an assistant in Chaumont. For about three weeks we have been planning to get coffee with her, because she is really nice and easy to talk to, but just haven't done it. BUT, she and her boyfriend took us to the market in Chaumont which is awesome! It's not huge, but it's about 4 times bigger than the Searcy market AND they have cheese :-D

And there is one more friend we made (that's four and counting!)... Another teacher at Brit's school, who is probably in her forties with two children, has been very welcoming and friendly.  One Sunday, she invited us over to have lunch with her and her kids.  It was all in French, so it was kind of difficult to follow the conversation at times (French young people are so hard to understand!), but she treated us to a full-fledged French meal.  We started with the "apératif," which can be any sort of alcoholic drink/cocktail-type thing, and then came the "hors-d'oeuvres," just chips and nuts in this case.  After we finished the apératif, we accepted the wine she offered to go with our meal (although that much alcohol for a Sunday lunch was a little hard to handle, we didn't want to be rude!) We then had a salad, complete with raw meat on it (probably ham)--French people love their raw meats on salads!  Next were the potatoes "au gratin" which were AMAZING, accompanied with a beautiful meat creation that we can't remember exactly.  It was some kind of meat wrapped in another kind of meat and held together by a string...and DELICIOUS!  She then served the traditional "fromage" platter with several cheese options along with bread.  And finally, "café" with the dessert of an apple tart.  Needless to say, we didn't eat any dinner that night!

Another exciting thing we did: the Theatre! Well, not the real theatre. There is an amateur theatre group which performs in Chaumont a few times a year and we were lucky enough to see their 30 year anniversary show. Unfortunately, this show was written specifically for the occasion and the only things we understood were the swearing and the sexual innuendos. I'm sure there was a plot, but we missed it. Oh yes, the best part about the show was to see Derek's supervising teacher (the president of the amateur theatre group) on stage wearing tighty-whities, and only tighty-whities.

Outside of working, making a few friends, and attending really great theatre, there is only one thing left to do in Chaumont: Eat! We plan to experiment/expand our cooking style/repertoire while in France. 

Okay, okay. With these chocolate-chip pancakes, we did not really experiment (although we did invent our own baking powder), but sometimes you just gotta have a little taste from home, ya know? But this second picture, it was DA BOMB DOT COM! Seriously, it may have not tasted anything like French Cordon Bleu, but it was absolutely fantastic, and we will be making it again. Can you imagine Emmantal cheese and ham wrapped in chicken breast, breaded, fried and smothered with a delicious white wine sauce? I can, and that is why we will cook this next one on a regular basis!

So that is what we have been doing for the past month. Tune in next time to read about our trip to Paris!

Okay, one last thing before I let you get back to something hopefully more interesting than this blog post that is way too long: Derek is officially addicted to a Japanese comic book series called Fullmetal Alchemist, which he reads in French. (And Brittany is stuck trying to decode Molière's "Le Tartuffe," which is not going very well...)