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!

Today just has not been my day.

I found out that one of the MCAT prep books I brought with me didn't transfer properly, discovered that I had somehow managed to misplace my bus pass 40 minutes before my dentist appointment, was consequently late to said appointment, couldn't communicate (aka speak French) with the dentist because of the frazzled state I was in, got a fb message from a stranger named Mohamed requesting an English-French tandem, and received a message from a couchsurfer in senegal who prefers to host women, specifies in his couch information section that he is "celibataire, pas d'enfant," and considers a traffic accident in which a baby that was only a few days old died to be one amazing thing he's seen. 

Just....Why.

Oh, and in case it's unclear why the fb message would faze me, let's just say that I met a guy named Mohamed a few months back who followed me around a grocery store, wouldn't accept that I didn't want to see him again and that I needed to go, and followed me as I started walking back home. At a distance. And without my knowledge. Luckily I realized about halfway through and he split.

Soooo yes, not exactly the best day I've had here. (On the upside, I don't have any cavities!)

But this is France, where the wine flows freely and at least one bakery can be found per tiny European block, so to improve my mood I downed one of these.

Tarte Crumble aux Mirabelles

And then I felt a little bit better.

Amsterdam

I'm starting the med school application process and it turns out I'm already (slightly) behind. HA. Why does this take 18 months?!

So in between the studying and writing and interviews and who knows what else I have to do, I thought I'd add more pictures to this thing. So here are some photos from my day trip (yes, you read that right) to Amsterdam in late January. We left on a bus at 4-5am, got to Amsterdam at around 10-11 (behind schedule, as per usual in France), spent the day walking around a wonderfully fascinating and beautiful city before getting back on the bus for the return trip at 8pm.

One of the many canals in Amsterdam

 

The tram. I hope it works better than the one here.

More canals

We started by walking to the Anne Frank House on the Prinsengracht canal, the place where Anne, her family, and four others lived in hiding for over two years. The house has been turned into a museum, where you can see Anne's diaries, where they lived, and the work Otto Frank, Anne's father, has done since being released from captivity, among other things. Seeing the annex was so incredibly sad - imagine being forced to stay in small, cramped rooms with thick black shades over the windows at all times, and for so long at such a young age. But the hardest part for me was watching the videos of Otto, the only survivor among the eight, speaking about his experiences and his emotions upon finding and reading his daughter's diary. It was so heartbreaking to watch him say that he thinks parents can never fully know their children as he visibly fought back tears.

The entrance to the Anne Frank House, where she and her family lived in hiding until they were betrayed.

The Anne Frank House. Such a sobering experience.

Afterwards, we had lunch then caught the bus that would take us to Zaanse Schans, which, according to wikipedia, is "a neighborhood of Zaandam, near Zaandijk in the municipality of Zaanstad in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland." So to paraphrase, it's a place outside of Amsterdam with a lot of windmills, old houses, and cute museums (cheesemaking, bakery museum, etc.).

Reserved seats on the bus.

Someone's a little bit behind.

Zaanse Schans

Because I am (still) a child.

In the wooden clog museum.

Windmills!

This one is called De Kat.

On the roof of De Kat.

Such a cute and charming place. I can only imagine with it looks like in the spring/summer.  

Once we got back to Amsterdam, we walked around the red light district for the rest of the time, looking at highly unconventional window displays and having the lifeblood scared out of me by what turned out to be a prostitute I saw moving out of the corner of my eye.

Amsterdam at night.

Part of the red light district.

Despite the severe time constraints, it was definitely worth the trip. Amsterdam/The Netherlands is a fascinating place.