may all your Christmases be white

What I wouldn't give to be sitting in my parents' living room watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas (animated 1960s version only) with a bowl of homemade chex mix right now. It's not that I'm homesick or missing home particularly, it's just that it's Christmas time and this is the second year I've gone without the comforts of home. I have all my favorite Christmas TV shows downloaded onto my computer (Mickey's Christmas Carol, the Grinch, the Santa Clause, etc) but it's not quite the same. Maybe next year I'll finally be able to start Christmas traditions over again.

On Friday, I headed off to Brugge (aka Bruges/Bruge) in Belgium for the ice sculpture festival. It was cold and they made us change trains? I just followed the other French people who were changing trains and nothing particularly bad or interesting happened.

Brugge is a quaint little town about 2 hours from where I live by train, probably extremely touristy in the spring and summertime. But this is winter so it's appeal was brought down a little by the grey, murky clouds and nipping chill at your fingertips. But it was cute and with a little editing, my pictures look very nice.

The actual Ice Scuplture festival was interesting. The theme was "Around the World" which basically means that the sculpture were all of landmarks, for instance America had the statue of Liberty, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis. France had the Arc de Triumphe, etc. The sculptures themselves were really cool, but I wish it had been a different theme seeing as I've already seen a lot of those in real life - the arc, the great wall of china, xi'an terracotta warriors, Japanese temples, Big Ben, etc.

But! There was an ice slide. The Great Wall of China was made into an ice slide that you could slide down, and of course I had to do it, whether or not I would look like an idiot doing it alone. But hey, such is the life of a lonesome traveler. I've learned to deal with it, and I still don't understand why some people just won't travel alone.

Christmas break is coming up in less than a week and I have absolutely no plans aside from eating too much chocolate. I guess what they say about New Year's is exactly right: where you start, you will end. Last year I spent New Years Eve watching Pride & Prejudice with Jesse and Lucy and trying to figure out Chinese monopoly. I remember eating McDonalds after unsatisfactory "Coffee Bar" food. If you ever go to China, do not eat at "coffee bars." Food is much better in the random, hole-in-the-wall places, cheaper too. Of course, that New Years was made up by the fact that I went to Beijing the next week. Maybe I'll go to Athens in January... There's a flight special! ;] I'm having far too much fun today planning out Christmas videos to show one of my classes. I'm thinking Pluto's Christmas Tree and Animals Singing Deck the Halls. :]

si on veut connaître les papillons

When I worked at a preschool the summer after my freshman year in college, there was this kid who, although he was already five years old, didn't have the best grasp of the English language. He used to say things like, "I go ride bikes now." - now, that sounds like a statement, yes? Wrong. It would be a question, so when you answered, "Yes," as in, "Yes, soon you will," it was really a "Yes, you can," or at least that's how he took it because it was a question to him.

The above story demonstrates perfectly how I feel every time some little kid talks to me in French. There's a terrifying moment where you say oui and hope it wasn't somehow a question that you weren't supposed to agree to. Of course, these kids mumble and half the time they're just telling you things for the hell of it, so the logical answer is oui and it always seems to appease them. But I just know that someday I'm not going to hear the entire sentence, say yes, and the kid will run off and do something they shouldn't. Maybe I should try to pay more attention or tell them to parler plus fort.

I also for the life of me can't figure out the deal with some of the teachers at my school. Some of them are subs, I get that, but some of them are there every day for the same teachers. I didn't even meet one teacher for three weeks before I started teaching with her, and she's been gone the past two weeks again. And one teacher never comes on Thursdays? I just don't understand what they're doing. Oh, sure I could ask, but imagine trying to formulate that question... "Pourquoi Mme ____ ne vient jamais à l'école? Elle travaille deux jours par semaine? Je ne comprends pas. Pourquoi son nom est à la porte quand elle n'est jamais là?" Yeah, that would not be awkward or intrusive at all.

Whatever. Some things are best left unknown.

Tomorrow I'm headed off to Bruges for the Ice Sculpture festival. Yay Belgium again! Maybe I'll get another gouffre (waffle ;]). I've been dreaming about them since Brussels the first time.

it appears to me the pen is overanalyzed again

I'm really not good at writing blog entries; I never know what spin to put on it. In that measure,

On Tuesday, I headed off to jolly old... Belgium, for a bit of chocolate, waffles, and beer. What I love most about Europe is that all it takes to go anywhere I want is to walk into a train station and buy a ticket. It's not like China, where my method involved carefully copied Chinese characters and train numbers on a paper slipped through the glass. It's also not like China in that in order to get to another country, it's only thirty minutes.

The entire trip can probably be summed up in this sentence: "Ow, my whole body hurts."

Of course, that's (almost) entirely in a good way. We did so much walking and climbing and staring and eating. We ate waffles topped with enough whipped cream and strawberries to reach the top of the Eiffel Tower. We were mistaken for English. We stared at paintings of slightly vulgar faces and men with bowler hats (thank you, Museum Magritte). We were asked directions and (hopefully) didn't get them lost, but who knows. The directions were in French.

We molested Jesus. Now, that's not as bad as it sounds. It's like in China when everyone touches the gold knobs on doors for good luck. Well, in the Grand'Place, there is a Jesus incarnation on a wall and he's rubbed gold where everyone has touched him, from head to toe. We thought it only fitting to follow the tradition.

We saw the Manneken Pis, which, let me tell you, is not quite what you expect. You walk around a corner to find this tiny little statue and you think, "that's it?" It's very small. I would like to think it's a sort of euphemism about men and the way they view themselves - you know, how they like to talk themselves up? But in the end, that's all it is.

Brussels is over and done, and it was enjoyed aside from the remnants of pain. I shall be updating my "travel places" tab from now on to reflect places I want to go/have already been.