Happy Easter!
It's the most wonderful time of the year! And no I'm not mixing my holidays. Tomorrow is Opening Day for the Cleveland Indians, who will be starting out against the White Sox (just like they seem to every other year) in Chicago. Ladies and Gentleman, get ready for the 162-game marathon that is the Major League Baseball regular season. For now (and possibly the only time this season) the Indians are in first in the AL Central. For some reason every time I try to type something positive about the team, I hear Bitty Schram's kid from A League of Their Own (Stillwell Angel): "You're gonna lose, you're gonna lose, you stink, you're gonna lose..."
You know what I did for Easter? Spring cleaning. Seriously. The German assistant moved out last week (her German university semester starts a week from Monday so she got permission to take off early and she's only got one day of work next week) so she's coming back to teach her last class on Tuesday, but leaving immediately afterward. So, I managed to convince her to leave her vacuum cleaner till then, and so as I started cleaning the floor so that I could vacuum, I just decided to start doing a preliminary packing. My Dad's bringing two suitcases, but only packing enough stuff to fill one, so that when he leaves a week before me, he can take two full ones, and I'll actually have three to work with. The hardest part is trying to figure out what paper-based stuff I want to take with me. While an insurance contract in French is cool, I'm really not going to have any use for it stateside. Also trying to make sure that I leave everything that belongs to the schools, but not stuff that belongs to me. That'd be bad.
Cultural lesson du jour: So the Easter Bunny doesn't bring treats to the good little girls and boys of France. Who does? The church bells. Apparently the explanation goes something like this: from after Good Friday until Easter, the church bells don't ring. Now due to the immense number of Catholic churches, you get used to hearing the church bells every hour on the hour... and when this doesn't happen, well it's weird. So the explanation is that all of the church bells go to Rome and come back on Easter, bringing with them Easter eggs and candy. Except in Alsace. They stuck with the German tradition of the Easter bunny. Go figure.
I mean seriously, Alsace is basically Germany Lite. Don't believe me? Here are some French cities/villages located in Alsace: Molsheim, Rorschwir, Kintzheim, Muttersholtz, Ebersmunster, and Strasbourg. Yeah, those sound French.
Big 3:
Best: Did a giant tour of Alsace. Saw a walled-city (they turned their moat into a garden), a castle and WWII concentration camp, among other things. The concentration camp doesn't fit in the "best" category, but was pretty damn awe inspiring. Visceral reactions to that one (the prison barracks and gas chambers in particular).
Worst: Toss up between having a persistent sore throat for the week, and finding out that Alsatian sauerkraut is, well... how to put this delicately... bland.
Funniest: April 1st. In France it is the day of "Poisson d'avril" or "April Fish Day" (I always have to be careful with that one: two 's's means fish, one means poison. Woohoo. Anyway, the traditional joke is to pin/tape a paper fish to people's backs, as nonchalantly as possible. Apparently, subtlety is lost on my students. As I walk out on recess, I got swarmed by 25-30 students. I just decided to go with it, because I had a hot chocolate, and therefore couldn't actually run to make it any fun. But still, they were thoroughly amused. As was I for that matter.
You know what I did for Easter? Spring cleaning. Seriously. The German assistant moved out last week (her German university semester starts a week from Monday so she got permission to take off early and she's only got one day of work next week) so she's coming back to teach her last class on Tuesday, but leaving immediately afterward. So, I managed to convince her to leave her vacuum cleaner till then, and so as I started cleaning the floor so that I could vacuum, I just decided to start doing a preliminary packing. My Dad's bringing two suitcases, but only packing enough stuff to fill one, so that when he leaves a week before me, he can take two full ones, and I'll actually have three to work with. The hardest part is trying to figure out what paper-based stuff I want to take with me. While an insurance contract in French is cool, I'm really not going to have any use for it stateside. Also trying to make sure that I leave everything that belongs to the schools, but not stuff that belongs to me. That'd be bad.
Cultural lesson du jour: So the Easter Bunny doesn't bring treats to the good little girls and boys of France. Who does? The church bells. Apparently the explanation goes something like this: from after Good Friday until Easter, the church bells don't ring. Now due to the immense number of Catholic churches, you get used to hearing the church bells every hour on the hour... and when this doesn't happen, well it's weird. So the explanation is that all of the church bells go to Rome and come back on Easter, bringing with them Easter eggs and candy. Except in Alsace. They stuck with the German tradition of the Easter bunny. Go figure.
I mean seriously, Alsace is basically Germany Lite. Don't believe me? Here are some French cities/villages located in Alsace: Molsheim, Rorschwir, Kintzheim, Muttersholtz, Ebersmunster, and Strasbourg. Yeah, those sound French.
Big 3:
Best: Did a giant tour of Alsace. Saw a walled-city (they turned their moat into a garden), a castle and WWII concentration camp, among other things. The concentration camp doesn't fit in the "best" category, but was pretty damn awe inspiring. Visceral reactions to that one (the prison barracks and gas chambers in particular).
Worst: Toss up between having a persistent sore throat for the week, and finding out that Alsatian sauerkraut is, well... how to put this delicately... bland.
Funniest: April 1st. In France it is the day of "Poisson d'avril" or "April Fish Day" (I always have to be careful with that one: two 's's means fish, one means poison. Woohoo. Anyway, the traditional joke is to pin/tape a paper fish to people's backs, as nonchalantly as possible. Apparently, subtlety is lost on my students. As I walk out on recess, I got swarmed by 25-30 students. I just decided to go with it, because I had a hot chocolate, and therefore couldn't actually run to make it any fun. But still, they were thoroughly amused. As was I for that matter.