Thanksgiving, Concerts and Jobs, OH MY!

I know it's a little late to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving, but I would like to do so anyway, seeing as I am currently on a different continent than the people I usually spend the holidays with. I hope that everyone had an enjoyable Thanksgiving dinner, and an even more satisfying after-dinner nap. After a filling thanksgiving dinner, it is practically a tradition for me to literally fall off my chair and sleep where I land, but unfortunately my dorm has tile floors so had I attempted that ritual this year, I probably would have ended up with a bruised face.

Jenn working her culinary magic while Ariel keeps her eyes on the stuffing in the mini-oven.

I attempted to help and do my part, but really all I did was cut pistachios into small pieces to go with the brussel sprouts.

It's good that there is a large group of Americans over here at the moment, because we can all relate, since I think that for most of us, this has been our first thanksgiving away from home. We all banded together in an attempt to make the holidays less lonely, and I think that it was quite successful. In fact, instead of having one Thanksgiving dinner, I actually had two this year. On the night of Thanksgiving, Jenn and Caitlin, two other UW students here in Nantes, combined their culinary forces to make a huge and delicious feast. Since they are both vegetarians, it was sans turkey, but satisfying nonetheless. As a matter of fact, I have a giant Tupperware container full of stuffing calling my name from my fridge as I type this. We had a mountain of mashed potatoes, brussel sprouts and citrus carrots and corn, and we topped it all off with an apple and berry pie.

The end result: a delicious feast.

I think the main ingredient in Jenn's stuffing is magic.

Our feast actually lasted a little longer than we had anticipated, and we had plans to catch the Ratatat concert downtown afterwards, so we all quickly cleaned up and headed off to catch the tram. We ended up getting to the venue at around 10:30, which we thought would be no problem since Ratatat would surely be headlining, and headlining bands always go last. However, upon entering, we heard Ratatat already on stage, so we ran in and pushed our way as far forward as we could go. After they finished up the song they had been playing when we came in, they said "Thank you, we have one more song." Turns out that they were not, in fact, headlining. So we had come in basically at the end of their set. I did, however, manage to capture most of their last song on video, which you can watch below:


Gettysburg - Ratatat from Katina Mathieson on Vimeo.


Despite missing most of their concert, Ciara and I talked to the guy who was selling merchandise for Ratatat, and after telling him of our plight, he kindly looked up the rest of the tour dates for us and expressed his hopes that we could catch them in another city during our winter vacation. We'll have to ponder this a bit since by the time we're out of school, I think they'll already be in Copenhagen or possibly somewhere in Iceland. But who knows, I personally think it's worth it to try to follow them somewhere since just the few songs that we heard were amazing.

Ratatat guitarist Mike Stroud gettin' his jam on. The smoke machines were a nice touch.

Documenting our little group and the short amount of time we spent at the concert.

The next day, apart from having to turn in an essay for my writing class and give a presentation on Alexandre Dumas for my literature class, I had a job interview of all things. Believe me, as lazy as I am, I'm probably one of the last people who would have expected me to have found a job opening and gotten an interview within such a limited amount of time. I have to give all the credit here to Ciara who found out about this place first and then clued me in on it. It's called Ramses, and it is a school for languages. They have positions available for British and American students to teach their maternal language, namely: English. I got the phone number from Ciara and talked to a man who scheduled an interview for Friday after my class. So on Friday, after putzing around downtown in the Christmas market for a bit, I found the surprisingly small school and had an interview with a man whose name, I've just realized, I still do not know.

After an odd fifteen minutes or so of stumbling my way towards answering his questions in French, he inquired about my availability and told me how much the job would pay, asking if "it was convenient" for me. He never officially said "Yes, you have a job. Come back at such and such a time." he just made sure to take down my phone number and that was basically it. After discussing with Ciara, however, she said that he was equally vague with her and she was teaching a class two days after her interview. I haven't yet heard from the nameless man (who I've decided should be referred to as Ramses), but that's probably because it's the weekend. I have a sneaking suspicion that my phone will be ringing sometime early in the week and I'll be stressed out and trying to make a lesson plan within the next few days. Luckily the classes are conducted entirely in English so I will hopefully have less of a chance of completely ruining someone's understanding and marring their comprehension of English beyond repair.

After the awkward interview which I have been feeling alternately confident and completely mortified by, I had a few hours to replay the whole thing in my head before joining up with the others from the group and heading back downtown for the big Thanksgiving dinner designed to welcome students from America. (They're a few months late, but it's a very nice gesture on their part anyway.) We failed in the objective of mingling with French people, as most of the french people there were twice our age. The dinner was in what we've been told was a high school cafeteria, though it's much different than any cafeteria I've ever been in, not to mention that it was situated in a mysteriously large building hidden down a secret driveway. They had set up four long banquet tables, and on either end were smaller tables with food and drinks on them. One of the main obstacles, however, was that there was a jazz fusion band set up in between where you were sitting and where the snacks were, so you had to kind of walk around the band to grab a handful of pretzels and a plastic cup of champagne. Throughout the entire dinner, they had two bands that played. The first was the aforementioned jazz fusion band, which comprised of french tweens, ranging from probably 13 to 17 in age. The second band was two awkwardly middle-aged men from Idaho, who made jokes that none of the French people understood and none of the American people cared to laugh at. They also requested that everyone sing and dance to songs that were slow and completely un-singable and un-danceable.

The dinner was pretty good, though. It kept with what has become a pattern of French meals being longer than we had ever expected. At first we went up to the buffet style counter and scooped up a bunch of strange anonymous dishes, and devoured them, only to find out that there was another course afterward. It turns out that they actually did serve turkey, and they brought out a few little cups of what were probably not cranberries, though i decided that the "these are really sour" face that everyone made while eating them was enough warning not to try them. The turkey was not, in fact, just turkey. It a mixture of turkey and what we decided was pate, and it was served with a baked potato and a some paste that was supposedly carrots and peas, though I never really agreed with either of those guesstimates.

Part-way through the dinner, I was startled when our coordinator, Anne-Marie came up behind me and clapped her hands on my shoulders asking me if I was staying the whole year and if I would be interested in having a sort of 'host family' to hang out with on Sundays. She then introduced me to the lady who apparently I'm going to be semi-adopted by, which I'm actually kindof excited about, though I don't really have any idea what to expect. I talked a little bit to the lady whose name is Sylvie and we agreed that we would have lunch next Sunday. She told me that she has two little kids, but then I could have swore she said something about her son picking me up in their 'beat up little car' so... I'm not sure that they're quite so little. Then again, I could have just confused what she said. So after a few months of being here, I'm going to have a petite famille française to hang out with, though I suppose if I don't make a good impression, we won't be hanging out all that much.

Another announcement that was made during this big Thanksgiving dinner was that the group of students from Washington will be going to town hall to meet the mayor on Tuesday, apparently in a gesture of welcome. This is ironic not only because we have been here for almost three months, but also because the majority of the group is leaving in about two weeks. It's bound to be interesting, however.

And finally, to tie up this entry, I thought it should be announced that I have finally finished reading my first Harry Potter book in French. I finished "Harry Potter a l'ecole des sorciers" last night, and luckily I thought ahead enough to go and buy the second book yesterday since the bookstore is closed on Sunday. So I will probably start reading "Harry Potter et la chambre des secrets" later on tonight. As for right now, I think I am going to clean up my room and maybe watch a movie. Thanks again for stopping by, and feel free to leave comments and questions if you want! A bientôt!