It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

Hello everybody! I hope everyone is doing well, and getting ready for the holidays. I miss the hustle and bustle of the holiday season. Here it’s definitely more crowded, and places are actually open on Sunday, but it’s still not the same. However, there is a sweet little Christmas Market in downtown Nice. They set up a skating rink and a ferris wheel, and there are a bunch of different little covered kiosks with vendors selling all sorts of things as well as games and stuff for the kiddies. It looks pretty lively and it definitely jazzes up the normally ugly and construction-filled landscape.

The weather here is also getting temperamental. Last night may have been the coldest I have been in Nice. But yesterday during the day I had to take off my jacket while walking around cause I was so hot. It’s sort of nuts, in fact.

So I just saw another cockroach. In my room. Which is going to make it sort of rough going to sleep tonight. So now instead of just ruining my eating experience by imagining cockroaches laying eggs inside every box of cereal I own, I now have to picture them crawling all over my face in the middle of the night. But I couldn’t even take it out on said cockroach. Although I did yell at it and called it stupid when I tried to trap it to put it outside. I hate this not being able to kill bugs thing I am infected with.

Speaking of infections….I visited my first doctor here in Nice. I have been feeling sort of crappy for about a month now, and I figured at this point I probably needed antibiotics since I tried all other over the counter options already. She was really pleasant, and it was pretty much the same thing as I’m used to, except she actually spent more than 3 minutes with me, and she only charged me 20 euros. But she gave me a prescription (which is actually just a piece of paper with her name on it and the meds I need) for an antibiotic as well as an herbal supplement with Echinacea in it. It is the most vile thing in the world. The pharmacy had to prepare it for me (and it cost a whopping 60 euros!) but it is this brown and thick goo, and it tastes like what I would imagine liquefied tree bark would taste like. But, on the flip side, I am already feeling better.

There are a couple stories I have been meaning to send you. So here goes.

The Market Misidentification
So I was in the local grocery store here picking up a few things, namely chicken for dinner, and so I was in the cold food aisle with a basket in hand. Next thing I know, this guy comes up to me and mumbles something about the chicken, and then he takes cheese that he had in his hand and he throws it into my basket. So, here I am, realllly confused and unsure what to say or do. I thought he was being too lazy to put it back or something and wanted me to. Frankly, I had no idea. But then he looks at me again, and this time a really confused look appears on his face. And then he goes “Oh, you’re not my wife!” and then he embarrassedly removed his cheese and proceeded to move by his wife’s side, who was now also looking suspiciously at me.

He did mumble an apology before leaving, but I think I made him feel worse about the situation because I could not hold back my laughter. And there was a lot of laughter to get out of my system. So somehow I then became the weird one looking at chicken and laughing loudly to myself. Oh well.

The School Stories
There are just two stories I can think of from work that I wanted to mention. One was about my phone number. So we were doing numbers, and I thought a good exercise would be to do a number dictation with them, where I just tell them a number and then they write it down. But then I thought it would be cooler to make it more ‘real world’ relatable, so I told them my phone number as practice. But the French Fries thought that it was the most classified information in the world that I was offering to them. They got super excited and scrambled to write it down, and then a handful of them proceeded to write down their phone numbers and give it to me. But they really expected me to call them! I was settling down for lunch after one of the classes and they saw me, so a couple of my students were like “Are you going to call us tonight?” What do you say to that? I went with the safe “maybe.” It was weirdly cute, and weirdly freaktastic at the same time.

Then the other day I started teaching them clothing. And so I packed a backpack with some of my clothing, and told them I was going on a camping trip and let’s look at what I brought. So I pulled out my shoes, which was funny for them for whatever reason, and then my socks, which were hilarious for them. But then in one class I pulled out a skirt that has a little belt attached to it. And then they were looking at it stupefied asking me what it was. And then one of the boys yelled out “Isn’t that what you wear to do cooking in?” So to them skirt equates cooking. HAHA. It doesn’t get more chauvinistic than that, huh? But I found this extremely funny for some reason, and could not stop laughing. Their normal teacher then started laughing because I was laughing, and then that got the French Fries laughing, too. So my classroom turned into a mess of laughter. So at that point my lesson was shot to hell, but I think it was worthwhile.

Those are the only stories I can think of right now. Just winding down over here, getting ready for my holiday vacation. Their vacation here starts on the 23rd and doesn’t end until the 8th of January. The kids here never seem to go to school it appears. And then they have a Mardi Gras break from February to March.  I’m looking forward to that one!

Anyway, that’s all I got for now. I am getting tired. I think that Echinacea goop is getting to my head. I hope you are all doing well!! I miss you all so very much! And by the way, I now have internet at my apartment, which doesn’t work so well right now, but hopefully the situation will be rectified and then I can bless you all with more e-mails. Woohoo!

Miss you!!
XOXOX
Dina

P.S. HAPPY BIRTHDAY ‘OLD MAN’ DREW!!!!!