So, I haven’t written in a while and I thought that I should!

So as the city of Dax prepares for Christmas by hanging up snow flake lights and goblet-looking-type-thing lights and begins playing it’s Christmas and sometimes NOT so Christmas music (i.e. Akon) on loud speakers throughout the city on market days, I can’t help but feel that Christmas is coming. There won’t be any snow down here in Dax but since I will be in Paris for Chrismtas I may just have a white Christmas yet.

I had waited and put off my plans for Christmas and New Years and I’m ending up returning to Belgium and Paris. I’m going to Paris from the 23rd until the 26th and then to Belgium from the 26th to the 1st of January. I found a cheap Ryanair flight for 19,00€ after tax and baggage from Belgium to Pau, here in the south of France. I don’t think I will be seeing any of my host families this time around and I’m going with Will, the American assistant from Hawai’i and his friend who is visiting, Josh. We got a hotel in Brussels.

Nothing much has happened since I last posted. I’ve been teaching of course and I joined the local library and have been studying Basque, Romanian, and Occitan like crazy. I think I FINALLY decided on what I will go into. I plan on doing a Masters in Romance Linguistics at the University of Buffalo and then a PhD in Romance linguistics at the University of Berkeley. I’ll have to work hard in learning Spanish and Catalan (as well as Basque) next year so I will have Minority and Regional Romance language credit when I arrive at Berkeley, which will make me a stronger candidate for their program! I’m looking into doing a Gascon (Occitan) course here in Dax but we will see how that goes. In the future I would love to work with Non Profit Organizations which try to promote and protect minority and regional languages. I’m going to see if maybe I can get an internship with an association/organization here in Europe next year when I will be in Spain!

I’ve started the process of filling out the application to become an assistant in Spain! I’v really had to remember my Spanish and I wish I had kept up on it after all these years of not taking it! Hace casí 3 años!

Well that is all for now! Once I have my new camera I’ll upload a lot more pictures to my posts! Keep on the look out for a new podcast! I’ll eventually start doing them again! I have so much to gripe about here in France! Some possible topics are…

“Dehors! The French System of Discipline”

“Honk Honk! French Men and Their Lack of Respect Towards Women”

“The French Education System”

“The Language Assistant Program”

“Les Bises! A Cultural Minefield!”

This post is stored in the category of Linguistic Post, Made in France, Personal Post and was written by Derron Borders

Tags: Belgium, Berkely, Catalan, Christmas, Dax, Gascon, Made in France, Made in Spain, Occitan, Paris, Romance Linguistics, Romanian, Ryanair, Spanish, University of Buffalo NY, Will Stinton

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Well, I’m not trying to insult anyone’s intelligence when I say that France does NOT celebrate Thanksgiving, but they don’t. The reason that Canada and the US celebrate it is beacause people from Great Britain made a pilgrimage from the British Isles to the Americas. They suffered a great loss in the winter and were helped by the native American people. They, in return, were very thankful to the native Americans and thus that is why we have thanksgiving!

I spent the last two days of the week last week giving my lesson on Thanksgiving and explaining what it was and why we celebrate it. I gave the kids mazes and a turkey to color and they loved it! They behave so well when they don’t actually have to learn and retain anything!

Last Thursday I didn’t do anything for Thanksgiving but instead Diana, my best friend from being an exchange student in Belgium who lives in Bergerac invited me to come there and celebrate it with the assistants of Bergerac. I invited Will, the other American here in Dax to come along as last week was his birthday and I had heard him mention how he wished he could have gone home at least for last week. He and I decided to take a train at 14h19 from Dax to Bordeaux and then take a train in Bordeaux at 16h04 but when we got on our first train in Dax we were told we would be delayed for 40 minutes. After about 40 minutes they canceled the train and we were told to go to a different platform and wait for another train. The train we were orignally going to take was a TER (Slow Regional Train) and the train we ended up taking was a TGV (High Speed Train). We got to sit in first class, which was nice. Once we got to Bordeaux we had to wait for another train and we finally made it into Bergerac at around 7 o’clock! Diana was there to meet us at the train station and we made the short little walk to her amazing house! Hopefully she uploads the pictures soon so I can show you how amazing Bergerac is! It is so much older looking than Dax and so much prettier.

Will and I had brought our pillows and blankets as Diana had nothing and we had to sleep on her floor. It wasn’t too bad but the second night I came down with another cold and supposedly I snored SOOO badly that the both of them couldn’t sleep! Saturday we got up and ran around getting ingredients to make girddle corn bread and sweet potato pie. Diana was a slave driver in the kitchen and is an amazing cook. We headed on over to the American and British girl’s apartment where the other assistants had not yet arrived except for Diana’s roommate, Virgina who had left before us. It was nice meeting other assistants and talking to them! A lot of champagne and wine was drunk and through are tipsyness we came up with a book idea that we are going to write (I think now that I’m the only one serious about writing this book and getting it published).

The book would be titled The French Kiss -A Cultural Mine Field. The book would talk about what the French call “les bises”, which we Americans know as the French air kiss when you go to one person’s side and kiss the air and then alternate sides. It is a very awkward thing for foreigners and there are many unspoken rules. I think it could be a great publish!

Well I’m off to enjoy my books from the library that I got today and plan my life!

This post is stored in the category of Made in France, Personal Post and was written by Derron Borders

Tags: Bergerac, Bordeaux, Canada, Dax, Diana Barger, French Kiss, Great Britain, Les Bises, Made in France, Native Americans, TER, TGV, Turkey, United States, Will Stinton

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