Translation

So, here's a look at a 'book' (that's what I'm told it is, but it's awfully short to be a book) on paleontology that our school librarian asked me to look at. As he put it,'Just look over it and tell me if you understand it...'

Funny man...

Sixteen big mammals are present at Vialette. (Here he means 16 different fossilized mammal species) This site has given one of the most important collections of Auvergne tapirs which is a species closely linked to a closed and very wet environment which corresponds to the presence of two mastodons. Some species such as the Borson mastodon and the Auvergne tapir show the presence of scattered forests and when this environment disappeared some hundred thousands years later because of a drop in temperature, they did not survive.

In 1842, the museum was made a dontation by Adolphe Richond des Brus of a hyena skull remains which had been probably been discovered by a farmer. According to Boule (1893), Aymard discovered the skull of Pachycrocuta brevirostris in 1843. The site was searched by Aymard at least during the periods from 1842 to 1846 and 1851-1852, then by Schraub in 1913 and from 1927 to 1928. The last excavations were made by Eugène Bonifay from 1966 to 1973 which revealed lakeside levels containing the fauna already described by Aymard.

The powerful sedimentary series described from Eugène Bonifay's survey would result from the presence of a paleo-lake settled in a volcanic system of the maar kind. From the fluvio-lacustrine sediments in the highest part of the filling we get to real lakeside deposits in the lower part.

A cold and dry climate settled and will alternate with more temperate periods, it is the alteration between glacial periods and interglacials. The mammoth steppe spread over a large part of the territory, leaving the mountain summits to conifer forests. During the glacial periods, the natural relief of the Haute-Loire put up impassable barriers, hence the Loire and Allier were the main areas for passage.

His food was mainly composed of soft plants (leaves, shrubs) as it is suggested by the small heights of his long molars and the few number of its enamel lamels working like planes. He will live in the Haute-Loire towards 700,000-600,000 years. Mammoth's molars are composed of long enamel strips linked together by cement. The first three molars and the three definitive one follow each other in each mandible or maxillary.

So, I don't know if that gives you a good idea that this was really difficult. It was all about paleontology and all of these words are just echnical words that kind of get thrown around. Also, this is supposed to be a book for people with little scientific knowledge. Also, after looking at all this, it's hard to show you all how unclear his writing was. Some of these are just samples which kind of make sense, but the organization was terrible and he would just throw out names, scientific terms, names of towns without explaining anything. So, its entirety, it is next to impossible to learn anything from what was written, much less get a clear idea of what happened.

Anyway, I thought some of those were kind of funny, even if maybe it's not evident here how unclear and difficult it was to correct some of this writing. Actually, he and I communicate by email, so that was the hardest part: to to know what suggestions to suggest to him without talking to him (for example, is 700,000-600,000 700,000-600,000 years ago or between 700,000 and 600,000 B.C., and it was little things like this throughout 15 or so pages single-spaced paper that I had to type all the questions I had for him as well as list all the options I thought possible. Since he was only going to give me the manuscript once, I wanted to give him all my possible knowledge, but to that all in an email takes some major work.

Anywho!!! Everything's going well otherwise. Saw 'Alice in Wonderland' last night, but was not impressed. Has anyone else seen it? Maybe it was a bit better in English.

xoxo

Meg

Catch-up

Okay, so in the last, oh month or so, here's some things that I've been up to:

Last weekend, Julien and I road-tripped it with another couple to a theme park about 5 hours away, near a town called Poitiers, and that was fun. The theme park is called "Futuroscope", and it's a kind of technology-based theme park. (Doesn't that sentence just make you want to go?) Anyway, they used all kinds of sight and touch stuff to simulate different things. Example: car racing: we were in seats that moved and jerked around while the video from the point of view of the driver was projected on the screen in front of us. A lot of the park were different variations of this type of thing. However, they did have a planetarium where they showed a lot of "cosmic collisions" instead of just the night sky. One of the collisions they showed was how the earth and moon were made. Apparently, the moon and the earth collided into each other, and the moon was all in fragments which kept rotating around the earth because of the earth's gravitational pull. And all of these fragments kept colliding into each other and melding together and pretty soon all of these fragments got stuck together, and voilà, moon.

Um, what else...they had a big IMAX screen which not only projected the image in front of your face, but also below your feet (the chairs were on a plexiglass floor), so you had the feeling that you were flying over all of these nature scenes they showed. So that was cool. We saw a 40-minute 3D movie, which I fell asleep in (might I add that we left for Futuroscope at 5 a.m. on Saturday and got there at about 11 a.m.). Um, I didn't know about this movie before I came to France, and it's an American movie, but everybody seems to know about it here, it's called "Arthur and the Minimoys", and it's about this family who has a community of tiny people living in their backyard, and the grandson learns how to shrink himself to save them. So, they fly around in ladybug cars....sooooo, they had this attraction, and we got in "ladybug" cars which moved and everything, and we got 3D glasses, and then the image of the race was projected on the screen in 3D, and then we got blasted with water and air, and got "stung" by bees from the back of our seats. So, that kind of thing. And then there were also huge IMAX dome screens that we saw a movie about the ocean in 3D and then there was another about New Orleans and before and after Katrina and how fragile the bayou ecosystems are there. SO, it was kind of an ecological/technological park. So, it was cool, but it was quite cold and almost all of the waiting lines were out in the cold and were about 30 minutes each.

Then, for St. Patty's Day, a guy that works in the school's library is in an Irish band and they were playing at a local music gig place/restaurant, so a bunch of us assistants went and did some Irish dancing, and it turned out to be a nice night.

Oy. Stages hurt.

Okay, so I agreed to do a 15-hour intensive English workshop (known as "stage" in French, and now I can never think of the word "workshop"). It's three hours every morning for 5 days this week.



2 down, 3 to go.


I have a 23-year-old in my class who is kind of giving me a lot of attitude. He's not horrible, just him and his friend are SUPER chatty and I had to ask them multiple times to be quiet until finally I said "If I have to ask you again, I'll ask you to leave for the day." So, yeah. Then that was okay. But it's freezing in the classroom, and my students seem generally unmotivated. But I don't think unmotivated is the right word. When I asked them to write for 10 minutes about grandparents, they wrote for 10 minutes about their grandparents and did it well. But then when I ask them questions in class, no one responds. I guess it's just an unresponsive class. They will do the work, and they're happy to do it, they're just not chomping at the bit to speak English. Or if they are, I don't know what to do to tap into that.

So, that's been a bit frustrating. Just feeling like a "blah" teacher. So, if anyone has any hints, ideas of things they liked in language class. PLEASE tell me.

That's what's new in my life. Other than I played Taboo yesterday in French!! And didn't do too badly! We didn't win, but we were a team of two English-speakers, so I'm okay with that. And now I'm working on making a Taboo game for the class. :)

That's all for now...off to plan more...

xoxo
Meghan

Interesting Insights

Let's see:

1. French people have NO idea who John Mayer is.

2. But in every one of my classes, there were people who knew who Ben Harper is.

3. I've run out of interesting things....

But!

This week I:

-ate an avocado with vinagrette, just like that, oh and with salt. Turns out, it's delicious.

-started with new students, and it actually went really well! I had a game made up where they have to describe the pictures on the board, and then the rest of the class has to guess which picture they're describing. Oh! And I did Norman Rockwell pictures to insert a bit of American cultures. So, I think it went really well. And I gave out points, and the winner of the game got an American penny...oooooooo exciting ^^

*Interesting Fact #4: French people make smileys like this: ^^ a lot

-went bowling with a French couple, and tried Billiards, god help me...and I survived

*Interesting Fact #5: French people play foosball ALL the time. And they call it "Baby" (pronounced "BABB-ee") which is short for "Baby Foot" (and since they call "soccer" "football" here, it all makes sense)

-Had a game night with the same French couple and we played a Trivial Pursuit-type game, but it's a game that has the answers online and they're updated everyday, questions like "What was the last film to win the Oscar for 'Best Motion Picture'?" And then you go online to the site, type in the question # and it will give you the answer. So that was challenging (and by way, if you were wondering, the answer was 'Slumdog Millionaire'...I said 'The Wrestler'. Oh! And the highest-paid actor right now is 'Will Smith' and I guessed 'Brad Pitt' (or Weell Smeeff as he is known in this country...on a similar note, Julien and I watched "The Ugly Truth" in French, and he can't help but pronounce it "The Ugly Froof" dear god, I die everytime))

-I gave the French couple some Life Savers to try and they LOVED them, so I sent them home with a roll and a half. The French people I've given American food to, Life Savers, popcorn, peanut butter, Reese's, something else....have loved all of it! Hahaha, one for the States!

So, I can't think of anything else, but there's some interesting stuff that I've done/realized.

Bon week-end à tout le monde!

Bisous!

Meg

Fashion!

So, I did some shopping yesterday because the biggest sales of the year in France started yesterday, and I've been wanting to show you all pictures of the boots I bought a long time ago (when it was starting to get cold), so here's my comprehensive blog on all my new fashions! :)

I have no full-length mirror, so here's me in my elevator. Consequently, I was sitting in the elevator taking pictures of myself (gosh, that sounds awful) and the family of the school nurse who lives on the top floor pushed the button to their floor while I was just sitting in the elevator, so I rode to the top and got out on their floor like an idiot in front of both the parents and the kids. Whoops. Anywho.

I bought the checkered dress yesterday. Toot?

Full shot of the ensemble

Boots!! I love these; I bought these for 20 euro? At our outdoor market we have every Saturday morning. Num.

Zee front shot.

These ones for 15 euro at our market. :) They're like 3/4 of the way up to my knees or something, while the others are like 1/4 of the way up.

From the front

Other cool boots. Steph and I got these together on a buy 1, get 1 for 1 euro deal. They were originally 50, but since we split the cost in the end, got them for 25. Not bad, mah-tad.

And from the side (they're slouchy ankle boots, btw, if you can't tell)

And these are my most sensible pair. They're synthetic so good for snow (no suede or anything). And! Even though I don't like the round toe SO much, I like the little sock that's sewn inside: keeps the cold air from gettin' in duh boots.

Ok, clothes I bought yesterday on sale (everything was about 10 euros, except for this number and the dress, which were a little under 20)

Yup, sweater...

Oh! I like this one! I'm gonna take it back today, to see if they have another one in this size; when I got it home, I realized that one of the top buttons was missing in the back. There's only three buttons at the top of the back, though, so if they don't have another one, I'm just gonna keep it and find some buttons, I like it so much.

BERETS!!!!!!

Yes, it's true. After about 2 months of living in France, I purchased berets. Well, a beret. The coolest thing is that Stephanie, my bestie assistant friend, 's mom made me this one!!!! How cool is that!?!?!?!??!?!?! It's SO CUTE, TOO!!! Oh my lord. And I don't think I've ever owned anything that's been hand-knitted before (well, except for maybe a baby blanket I had, come to think of it). The story is that we were going out to our usual bar, and that night they had like a "hat night" where everyone was supposed to have hats. I thought I had brought my Royals cap, but no. So I raided Steph's hat stash and wore her black beret which is exactly like this one. I liked it and keep telling her, so she told her mom, and her mom decided to make me and send me one! Just like that! How NICE IS THAT??? So, that's like the sweetest/nicest thing that's happened to me here, and I LOVE this beret. Check it out...

It's so cute, iddnt it?

And then this is the one I bought for myself before Steph gave me the one from her mom. And also, it's grey, so it goes with all my non-black outfits. :)

Oh yeah! I forgot about this. So, I bought this top. And I have 7 days to return it if I want. I really liked it in the store, and I still really like it! I think the pattern is GORGEOUS, and I like the cut and all, but it's not QUITE perfect. Do you see how the collar pulls a little at the top? And even though it's tight at the top, the top part of it doesn't lay completely flat on my shoulders and sometimes looks like little wings. Also, it's a bubble top, so it's got like the tight band around the bottom, and since it's so tight on top and loose on bottom, I feel like it kind of gives the illusion that I get blobby as you go down. Now. It was about 9 euros. Do I keep it? I really really like it, but it's not perfect...What do you think?

Oh yeah, and I like the back, too.

Okay, so I feel like MAYBE that's the shallowest thing I've ever written, but I think it was fun. Yeah?? Anywho, I like my new clothes. Lemme know what you think!! Miss you guys! Wish you were here!

Soldes!!!

Get excited!! The sales in all the clothing stores started today. Hehe....pictures to come... >:-)

OH MY GOSH

Okay, so it's been awhile, But! my New Year's resolution is to update my blog more often, so here goes: (and what's more, I'm dying to vent to somebody about this)

If people from other countries hate Americans, I can understand why. They teach them just n'importe quoi, just whatever whatever they feel like about the United States. I just sat through a class where the teacher made me stand up and say the pledge of allegiance. Which! I can understand, to those who don't do it in this countries, this is a very strange cultural phenomenon, and merits discussion, and what's more, I'm sure it's interesting for students to see that on command, I can stand up and say this pledge by heart. Okay, so that's fine.

But then!! This teacher turns and twists everything about the United States! She sees the pledge of allegiance as this militaristic thing, and she kept saying how the United States thinks sees it's mission as one where they have to save everybody and make every other country democratic! And she kept talking about God and Manifest Destiny because she picked the "Self-Reliance" text written by Emerson, which has a lot of biblical references. Because of this, she has decided that all the Americans are crazy, militant, religious nutters who feel it's their duty to convert everyone else. That we supposedly all think (as she said, it runs in our blood), that we each have a divine destiny and that we're going to convert everybody to Christianity and democracy. She took the self-reliance, like, listen to yourself, you know what's best for yourself, trust your intuition, and made the conclusion that that meant: I'm only going to listen to me because I know best and I know better than everyone else!!

BAH!!

Anyway, I'm getting a headache thinking about all this/hunger is setting in....so lemme know what you think about this, because, I dunno about you all, but I just thought it was all a bunch of backwards, uninformed crazy talk.

pffffffffffffff...

But don't worry; everything else is going well!!!!!