Summer, summer, summer

Well, let me start by saying Happy Summer now that it's officially l'été. And thankfully, summer has finally shown up in France. After weeks and weeks of sweater and coat weather, we finally hit mid-20°C weather this week.
Literacy classes ended yesterday which was a bit sad. We didn't have classes for our final day, but rather made up tea and snacks and just chatted for about an hour or so. The ladies are all pretty singularly focused. They all leave for Morocco in the coming weeks and are all talking about what to bring with them and what to buy once they get there. It's fun to see how excited they are.
Also, the prospect of heading home has them even more jolly than ever. They're always trying to find spouses for their children, so they often encourage us to marry their sons. We, in turn, reject them, and it's become an ongoing joke. Yesterday, one of the ladies started trying to pawn off her son on one of us. She started first on my soon-to-be-40 colleague who said, "Well, I don't know your son, and in my culture, we don't marry people we don't know."
This particular mother is one of my students, and she's a real joker, this one. We'd had a conversation lesson the other day, and I'd asked her to describe her daughter. She told me that her daughter has 4 eyes and 2 noses and sleeps in the back of a truck. So, later, when she insisted that I marry her 34 year old son, I said, "No thanks. Sounds like your kids have some problems. I don't think I'll be able to marry someone with extra noses and such."
She laughed about this for a while and then moved on to tell some of the interns working with us that one of them should marry her son. The girls don't speak French yet, so they sat there, wide eyed and confused. My colleague explained that the girls couldn't marry her son either, because they don't speak French. Another one of the ladies said, "Perfect! That's even better....then they can't argue!"
They also were consistently watching how luch food they ate. I asked one why whe was so partcularly concerned about her eating, and she patted her belly and said, "Régime." (Diet) She explained that she's headed to Morocco and to the beach, and while she'll still be wearing her ankle length dress and scarf in her hair, every women has to be thin at the beach. This made me laugh. The image seems so incongruous.
Anyway, it was sad to see them all go. They've promised to be back next year, but they probably will show up late--around October maybe-- and I leave in December. My time here is winding down, and it's bittersweet. I miss home, but I will always love these ladies.

A Saturday Away...

So, this past weekend, my housemates, my boyfriend, and I headed off to Holland for the day. We wanted to get to Edam, a city of about 7,000 residents known for its cheese. There isn't a lot to see in Edam, but Wikipedia (yes, yes, I know...) said that it was a great place to see "Old Holland" with its windmills and canals. (And I was hoping, little girls in pigtails and wooden shoes.) From what we understood, it should take about five hours to arrive in Edam.

However, 6 hours after leaving the Paris area, we were still weaving our way through traffic jams and driving around construction sites. After about 6 and a half hours (also including a brief site-seeing trip to Gent, Belgium), we arrived in Amsterdam. None of us had really wanted to see Amsterdam, considering all the less-than-positive commentary I've heard on the city. Red Light district? No thanks. Drug capital? Again, not so much.

But upon arriving in Amsterdam, the four of us were exhausted and agreed that we should stay in the city and not try to venture any farther.

And Amsterdam very pleasantly surprised us. With its canals, its sun-soaked streets, its bicycles and gorgeous fashion, we were all wowed.

One of the most surreal moments, however, came only about an hour before we had to head back to Paris. One of my housemates, Corrie, had found a tourist map on the group, and when she opened it, we found a conversation bubble pointing to a street saying, "Where the Frank family hid during World War II." So, the four of us plotted a way to get to this place, and off we went.

How strange seeing Anne Frank's Secret Annexe. It was a place I'd read about since I was about 14. We saw the attic room with the window where Anne and Peter would go in the mornings to see the sun. We saw the office room where the annexe's 8 inhabitants sneaked down that night. We saw the board game Peter received for his birthday. And then, we saw Anne's diary--Kitty--and the composition books she used after the diary was filled. We saw the postcards and pictures of actresses and royalty she'd pasted on her wall. And we cried our way through the museum. It was absolutely heart-wrenching. And yet, what an incredible experience.

Some things are hard to see. But some things really have to be seen.

Summer's Coming...

It's incredibly clear to me that summer is rapidly approaching. I wouldn't necessarily be getting this idea from the weather (cold, rain, cloudy skies...), but I can tell from the way that the women in my class stare out the windows. I can tell from the way that they rattle on in Berber, and the only word I understand is "Morocco". I can tell from the way that no one listens to lessons anymore; they only prop their feet up on chairs and dream about vacation.
And it's okay. I don't have it in me to find this frustrating. I just talk until I feel hoarse, and then sit down, and think, "If I were headed home to Morocco in a few weeks, I'd be distracted too."
So, problem solved: we've decided to move up our end-of-the-year party two weeks. We'll eat our Tagine, dance, and speculate as to who might be getting pregnant soon, and then, we'll be, as the French like to say, tranquilles. We've decided to continue with "half classes" until the end of the year--June 24th. We'll do our daily stories, but coupled with conversation groups. And I feel relieved, because to tell you the truth, lesson plans and I are not on friendly terms.
So, conversation groups: here I come!