Update: Hiatus

Number of year's I've had this blog: 1
Number of times I've posted on this blog: Not nearly enough.
Number of posts on this blog that I posted because I wanted to and not because I felt obligated to: Also not nearly enough. I think I'm realizing that as much as I love to write, I don't really feel comfortable writing for a large audience.
Number of posts in my drafts that I don't have the courage to hit "publish" on: Too many. Some people are very comfortable with sharing the nitty gritty realness of their lives on the internet, and even though I can pour my heart out for pages on end in a private journal, I'm not comfortable pouring out my heart online.
Will I ever come back to this blog: Probably! But right now, it's not really what I want to be doing. Thanks for following me for the past year. Maybe we'll meet up again down the road.

Playlist: May

So there I was, bopping along and going through life without a care, when I realized that I had not posted the playlist from the month of May. Sorry about that.

Here it is. Have at it. Shuffle and enjoy.

Review: Best Coffee Places in Lille

(This is the street that most of the listed coffee shops are on.)

I've been back in the United States for about two weeks now, so it's time for--you guessed it--nostalgia posting. This was something that I was planning to post when I was still in Lille, but like many things I plan to do, I didn't do it. Well, better late than never. Also, it's a good excuse to relive the days when I used to go camp out in cute coffee shops because I didn't have working wifi at my residence hall.

Playlist: April

Sorry for the incredibly delayed posting of this monthly playlist, which I am sure you were all waiting for with bated breath. 

T.S. Eliot was right--April is the cruelest month. Well, this April was at least. It was one of my best months in France, but for every happy moment there was another cruel reminder that my time in France is almost over. In fact, this time next week I will be back in the United States. 

Wow.

So yeah. That's why this playlist goes from party songs to sappy songs to upbeat feelgood songs to songs one might play on a calm morning. Shuffle and enjoy!

April 1st at a Primary School

Honestly you don't even need to continue reading. This picture tells you all that you need to know.

8:00: I guess you could call any school day a battle. Sometimes the kids are challenging, sometimes they struggle with the material, sometimes they don't like your lesson plan and let you know it,sometimes you don't prepare enough material and have awkward extra time at the end of the class where you don't know what to do so you just play hangman. Fridays make things a little more difficult, because now suddenly you're the only thing standing between the students and two days of freedom. Fridays before breaks are worse, because now you're standing between them and two weeks of freedom. Today is one of those Fridays, a Friday before a break. It's also April 1st.

Today will not just be a battle. Today will be a war. 

If I should fall today, remember me. Know that I fought valiantly. Know that I defended myself and my honor until my final breath. 

But if I make it, I'm totally down to hang out tonight, just text me.

Playlist: March

OK I CAN EXPLAIN: My computer's been at the Apple Store for two weeks getting repaired. That's why I haven't been writing. I'll try to make up for it with an extra long playlist, which apparently consists of basically every song I heard in the month of March. Maybe I went overboard. I don't know. But, as usual, shuffle and enjoy!

Marché de Wazemmes

If you visit Lille, you will end up visiting some sort of open air market. It's Northern France and that's just what's going to happen.

The Braderie de Lille is the largest and most famous of these markets, and it happens once a year, in September. I, of course, arrived in Lille a week after the famous Braderie, so I did not get to experience wonders such as the mountain of mussels.

However, I've still been checking out other markets around the city, like this one. The Marché de Wazemmes is open three times a week, but it's at its biggest and best on Sundays. This place has everything. Seriously. It holds the honor of being the only place in Lille where I've seen a pumpkin.

Playlist: February

I promised to write more this month. That didn't necessarily happen. But then again, I've barely been in Lille this month. After one week of work I had a two-week break, which I kind of extended into a three-week break by taking a trip on my days off last week. And now here we are at Leap Day.

At least all that travel made for an interesting playlist. Here's a mix of songs I heard in Lille, Cassel, Bruges, Paris, Copenhagen, and Oxford. It starts and ends with Zayn, and the artists that appear most often are Simon and Garfunkel, Yann Tiersen, Hozier, and Justin Bieber. I can't think of a better way to sum up my February than that.

Shuffle and enjoy!

How To: Survive OFII

A long stay in France requires a trip to the Office Français de l'Immigration et de l'Intégration, or OFII. It's a process that we were warned about in our information packets, a process that we received a lecture on during orientation, a process that I believed I should be freaking out about. In reality, though, it's not too scary. It just involves a lot of waiting. Here's how to (barely) survive.

Playlist: January

Here it is: the first playlist of 2016. Inspirations include but are not limited to: open mics, David Bowie, cold weather, nights in with friends, and throwback dance parties. Shuffle and enjoy!

Update: I'm Still Here

Number of New Years Resolutions made: 7
Number of New Years Resolutions kept: I think we're down to like three now.
Was blogging more often one of these resolutions: No
Should it have been: Probably
Excuses for not writing: I'm busy. I have too much other stuff to do. The only warm place in Lille is my bed. This whole business of a website where I just talk about myself feels weird and I'm getting self-conscious. The novelty of France is wearing off and it's finally not feeling like I'm just visiting. It's finally feeling like I live here and I have a job and friends and a life here. It's feeling less like a foreign country and more like home.
But do I want to write: Yes
So am I going to stop making excuses and write: Yes

Expect more posts in February, everyone.

Playlist: December

Happy New Year, everyone!! Here's the last monthly playlist of 2015, inspired by:

- The director of one of my schools saying that he's a huge Bruce Springsteen fan and that he wants to teach the kids The River in choir (all the teachers were like "director no" but I was like "DIRECTOR YES")
- Songs that we hold very specific memories and emotions for everyone who listens to them.
- Finally getting back into the mandolin madness of Judah and the Lion
- New music from The 1975
- Getting introduced to Grimes (thanks Beth!)
- Hearing a surprising amount of Édith Piaf in Paris
- And then just a bunch of Christmas songs I like

Shuffle and enjoy!

Lille Marché de Noël

There are a bunch of different lists that claim to be the "definitive list of Christmas Markets in France." Strasbourg tops every single one of them, partially because it's the oldest, partially because it's one of the largest, partially because it's really close to Germany and therefore has a leg up on everywhere else. But quite a few of these lists also include the Christmas Market here in my home-for-the-year of Lille. Some even rank Lille in the top five. These, my friends, are the lists you should trust.

There's even fake snow!

Lille has everything you want from a good Marché de Noël. It smells like sugar and pine, there are 83 different booths all nestled together in Place Rihour like a cute little village, there's a giant ferris wheel and a giant Christmas tree a few steps away at the Grand Place, and it's a five minute walk from the train station and literally right in front of a metro stop. It's perfect.

Review: Six Disposable Cameras Used in Spain

I like taking photos. I like to think I take good photos. I love to use sites like Instagram and Flickr and this blog to share my photos. It would be terrible for me if, say, I were to accidentally put my photo-taking apparatus, my iPhone, in the washing machine the night before a 10-day trip through Spain. Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened.

A trip that I'd hoped would include some wonderfully Instagrammable moments turned into a foray into the world of disposable cameras. And now, finally, after the three weeks it took for Carrefour to develop the film and the three more weeks I just flat out procrastinated writing this post, I can finally share that foray with you. This post is part "let me review something and help you if you're choosing to buy it" and part "I didn't get to post these on Instagram but I still need to feel validated so I'm posting them on my blog and forcing people to see them that way instead." I'm not even sorry.

I ended up using six different types of disposable cameras on my trip. Here's how they all fared.

Playlist: November

This is a shorter playlist than past months, because unfortunately some of the songs that defined my November (Taylor Swift's song 22 and Adele's entire album 25) are not available on Spotify. But I hope you enjoy the songs that are available! This month's music was inspired by:

- Hearing songs that I had listened to in French class...in real life?
- Finally getting around to listening to Hotline Bling...and then not stopping.
- MADE IN THE A.M. (I like One Direction in case you hadn't noticed)
- Wondering if the All-American Rejects were still together and finding out they released new music LAST MONTH.
- Vitas becoming important in my life again.
- And Braden Holtby.

Shuffle and enjoy!

On the Attacks in Paris

I've been writing a lot over the past few weeks. In my journal. In this app on my phone called Collect. In multiple drafts for this blog. And I'm not going to publish any of it.

I feel somewhat obligated to post about the terrorist attacks in Paris. I mean, I'm supposed to be posting about my time in France, right? Well, this has really impacted my time here. Long after this program is over, I will remember where I was and what I was doing the night of Friday, November 13th, 2015. I will always remember how even with heightened security in the days following the attacks, I still felt the need to be more cautious than ever. I will always remember how I was still going to work and going about my daily life while just an hour north of me, Brussels was on lockdown.

But the truth is, I'm not ready. I don't want to just write verbatim what I was doing that night. Most of my night was spent around people who were distraught and terrified and heartbroken. I will be part of their memories of what happened that night just as they will be part of mine. Those emotions still feel so raw that I'm not ready to write it all down in an organized, reader-friendly format.

Maybe on an anniversary of the attacks I'll share more of the story. But for now, just know that I am okay, and Lille is okay, and I certainly had a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.

I'll leave you with a few articles I've seen or had shared with me over the past couple of weeks that I thought were interesting, and with something that one of my nine-year-old students said after mentioning the Charlie Hebdo attacks earlier this year: "I hope next year isn't going to be like this."

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/11/paris-beirut-terrorism-empathy-gap/416121/

http://www.vox.com/2015/11/16/9744640/paris-beirut-media

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/paris-attacks-why-the-rapid-sharing-of-anything-vaguely-inspirational-after-a-tragedy-is-so-a6735891.html

http://conversations.e-flux.com/t/judith-butler-precariousness-and-grievability-when-is-life-grievable/2826

Playlist: October

Hi everyone! As per usual, here's an end-of-the-month playlist so you can listen to what my October was like. It's weird--on the one hand it feels like I've been in Europe for a really long time, but on the other it feels like time is passing really fast. (Halloween is TODAY??? I'm turning 22 in FIVE DAYS??? WHAT.) But anyway, here's the mix of the month, inspired by:

- Songs that I heard in stores everywhere (yes, including the Madelyn Bailey cover of Titanium, which is strangely popular over here from what I've seen)
- NEW ONE DIRECTION
- The one English-language song performed at an open mic I stumbled into earlier in the month
- My "going to work" playlist which was mostly just Walk The Moon's newest album
- Watching Arrested Development alone on a Friday and feeling inspired by Lucille
- Being reminded of the existence of Naughty Boy
- Favorites off of Josh Ritter's new album Sermon on the Rocks
- Listening to a record of Paul Simon's Graceland at the AirBnB in Granada
- Much-awaited new music from Adele
- And selections from possibly the strangest mix of songs ever heard on Halloween.

Shuffle and enjoy!

Update: I'm Going to Spain

This isn't Spain. This is still Lille. Just to clarify.

Weeks "on the job" so far: Two
Weeks I now have off for vacation: Two
Where I'm going: Seville, Granada and Madrid
How long I'll be gone for: A little over a week
Chances that I'll be posting during that time: Slim
Number of days I was sick with a cold (yes, Mom, even though I am taking all my vitamins): Three
Blog posts that I've been wanting to write but haven't gotten around to: Four
Times the fire alarm has gone off in my building since I've moved in: Five
Times I've played One Direction's latest single "Perfect": More than I care to admit

Saint Maurice

They say the best adventures usually happen close to home. Actually, that might be what they say about car accidents. Either way, I found an adventure close to home in one of my first days here by going to Église Saint Maurice. 

It's a church that's really close to where I'm staying here in Lille. I can actually see it from my window. And if you think the outside is beautiful, check out the inside. 

TAPIF: Week One

I didn't know what to use for a photo so here's a map of the town where I teach, Loos. 

I'm done with my first week as a teaching assistant, although I didn't actually assist with teaching anything. TAPIF has us do two weeks of observation at the schools we've been assigned to before we get into full gear.

My schools have taken this as a chance for me to learn about the French school system. I haven't necessarily been observing English classes, but I've gotten a chance to sit in on a class in every primary school level: CP, CE1, CE2, CM1 and CM2. I'll mostly be working with CM1 and CM2 kids. I've gotten to see pretty much every subject, too, from math to geography to gym and art (where I learned that if you have twenty two students doing a project involving mixing paint, there will be at least one spill).