l'automne

Salut!

Here in Issoudun, we are all waiting for the ball to drop.  It has been sunny here the past few days, but apparently November is a very rainy month in this part of France.  It has now been 4 days of November and thus far the most we have gotten is a few misty moments; however, the weather forecast for the next few days is not looking very sunny….

It is officially fall here.  I think I expected the leaves to change color a lot faster than they actually did, but right now it is the peak of fall.  I have some pictures here to show of the fall colors:

The house covered in ivy is finally totally red.  So pretty!

An old train that sits at the train station just happened to be surrounded by color

The trees in centre ville are turning a burnt yellow color

The Musee St. Roch is surrounded by bright yellow trees

The flowers throughout the city were recently changed.  C'est sympa.

Second sign that it is fall: we “celebrated” Halloween here.  I was expecting for it to be a rather big deal here since the students and teachers all told me that Halloween is celebrated in France.  I’m still trying to figure out how it is celebrated here.  I saw no apparent decorations, trick or treaters, or excess amounts of candy.  However, when I pointed this out, everyone continued to insist that they celebrate Halloween.  I’m both seriously confused and starting to believe that this is a mystery that will never be solved.

But, happily, Laura did carve a pumpkin and she and I made Halloween cupcakes.  Here are some pictures:

Red is for blood (yes, it melted on one of them...more realistic that way?)

Blue is for brains

Orange is for traditional halloween

If you look closely, the bottom row, third from the left is Micky's hat (it's upside down).

My personal favorite cupcake :)

Look at how their pumpkins are different from ours!

It ends up that a third way to tell it is fall is that the birds are migrating south.  This isn't like the geese flying in a V.  Rather, there are hundreds of birds that look like sparrows and they are all collecting together around Issoudun, and then they will fly south to Africa.  So right now they are all swooping around in the sky together and they make quite a ruckus.  It is just like living in one of the National Geographic magazines!

Anyway, this week started classes back up after a nice long break.  Needless to say, the kids were anything but quiet.  They were giggly, loud, chatty, and all around rather frustrating.  So rather than try to teach them anything, I decided that they could teach me.  So I embraced the noise and in most of my classes we had “discussions” on what they did for their Toussaint break.  Not much English was spoken because the kids couldn’t put together a real English sentence if they wanted to.  English can wait until next week.

Keep in touch!