Luneville, France

I went to Luneville a while back (before I left for the winter break), to see the Chateau de Luneville, which is also known as the petit Versailles. The pictures aren't very good - I think my poor small camera's dying - but here's what it looks like under the fog.

Le Chateau de Luneville

Chalk drawing.

Le Petit Versailles - the right side is much lighter than the rest because part of the castle burned down and was restored a few years ago.

Inside.

Still inside.

Results of the post-fire restoration.

In the garden.

Garden.

Eglise St. Jacques de Luneville

l'Interieur

Rococo style church

Et voila. I'll try to add pictures of Portugal, Spain, Morocco, Metz, and springtime Nancy before I leave for my next trip!

"Where are you from?"

I get asked this question a lot. Usually people just think I'm Chinese, but I've gotten a fairly wide range of other, often hilarious guesses. For example.

Chinese/Japanese. The usual. They never guess Korean though.

Vietnamese. Still sort of acceptable.

  

Thai.

Filipina.

 

Cambodian.

And Malaysian/Indonesian/whatever other people they can think of from an Asian country of course. Which, for some people, comprises a rather surprisingly long list. Then we leave the continent and have...

  

Spanish. I don't quite see it.

Malagasy (Madagascar). Really don't see it.

And my personal favorite:

Pocahontas. Yes, really.

Apparently the combination of my facial features, hair, skin tone, and language abilities is extremely confusing for the French.

Bienvenue Chez Les Allemands

One of the German teachers at the school (who also happens to be the father of one of my students) decided to show me around the smaller villages near here and take me to some of the artisanat things this Sunday. Strangely enough, he's one of the friendliest teachers (to me anyway) I've met here, even though we don't work together or even see each other very often. Don't get me wrong, the other teachers are nice to be sure. But our relationships are, for the most part, strictly professional, and our interactions are limited to the times that we run into each other in the staffroom.

So on Sunday, Michael picked me up from the lycee and drove me to Sorneville where he and his family live, showing me some of the other small villages on the way. I met his wife, who kind of intimidated me at first but is a total sweetheart and is extremely skilled at making things from precious metals and stones. We went to another nearby village to check out some of the other exhibitions (embroidery, furniture restoration, ceramics, glass blowing, etc.) then went back to Sorneville so Kathrin could show people her work, picked up Simon and went to go visit a potter friend of Kathrin's.

One of the villages, where we visited a potter and saw her workshop.

 

View from her backyard.

After talking to her and seeing her workshop and kiln, we went back to Sorneville, where I met their younger son, had a delicious lunch, and played with their dog & cats before getting to know Michael and Kathrin better. They're super cool people - he has three degrees and is a forest scientist but is currently working as a German teacher, she's a goldsmith, they traveled together in Asia for 6 months when they were younger, and their dog is one that they adopted after it had been abandoned. How could you not like them?  Then another one of my students and a kid I don't know ended up coming over, so I walked around outside with them after being told by random kid's mother that I speak French with an impeccable accent. Yay. My time here has not gone to waste!

A dog directing people to the exhibition.

Sorneville, France

Sorneville, Population: 350.

Mairie de Sorneville

stop pub SVP !!

One of my students being silly.

Sorneville

Spring is (finally) here!

Afterward there was more socializing with people, punctured by my helping my students with their math homework then entertaining them with my origami skills. Michael drove me back pretty soon after but showed me around Amance a little bit first. It's a small village perched on a hill, where houses apparently cost a small fortune because of the view you get.

Amance

It's strange how much the the villages, despite their small populations, feel and look quite a bit like suburbs in the US. Whenever the students told me that they lived in villages, I pictured something not at all like what I saw. But I suppose one of the best things about traveling is rethinking previous conceptions and learning new things.

And before I left, Simon and Kathrin had cut some flowers for me from their garden, so I set those up in a nice old pasta jar once I got back.

A jarful  of happiness.

Being in France has started a rather unexpected love affair with Germans/Germany. Good thing I'm going there in a few weeks!