01 February 2008

What a Metz I'm in!

Well, I'm not actually in a mess so it's not a fully accurate pun, but that is how you pronounce the name of the city Metz, which is in the way far east of France. Less than an hour from Luxembourg (where we're going tomorrow) and about as far from Germany. I'm here for the weekend with Kelsey, a fellow Grimmie from Truman.

As usual, whenever I travel something goes wrong (e.g. my bags get lost, my flights get cancelled and I get stranded in other cities, and trains are never late unless I'm on them...). Today, our train out of Angers was half an hour late, which meant that we missed our connection in Paris. We spent the resulting two hour stop in Paris walking around in the rain a bit, going to a book store (where I bought two books that I don't need), and eating lunch. Aside from the constant heavy rain, it was great.

We arrived in Metz without further disaster, and found our hotel without a problem. We're spending only a bit more than a hostel would cost, but have a private room and bathroom and TV, plus free wifi, hence the blog post. It's worth it :)

I'll post pictures tomorrow or Sunday (or Monday perhaps...) but Metz is beautiful. The local stone must be yellow, because all the buildings downtown are a golden amber color. The cathedral, which is a gothic yellow monster, is the third tallest in France and has the world's largest collection of stained glass. The eight hundred year old glass is beautiful, and the several Chagall windows are incredible. It's a wonderful cathedral.

After some shopping and visiting the cathedral, we went to see Sweeny Todd. Very creepy to watch, but beautiful music. I like everything I'd heard by Sondheim. Very well done movie, I recommend it unless you get queasy easily. When we left the theater the rain had turned to... snow! This is the first snow I've seen in France, although it was the horrible kind that turns to slush as it's falling. We bought some food for dinner at a supermarket and headed back to the hotel to buy the new episode of Lost on iTunes and relax.

Rewind to Tuesday and Thursday... my teaching French as a Foreign language class is so much fun!! It's a fascinating subject, and the teachers are really good, and I know I'm going to get a lot out of it. There are three teachers, each with a specialty: culture/civilisation, didactics, and linguistics. So each delivers about a third of the lectures, though we only have one exam (and a midterm). So I'll get a course in how to teach French as a foreign language, along with a course on how to teach foreign languages, and a course on how to teach culture as a part of your foreign language class. It's absolutely perfect.

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