The Married Life

It’s been awhile since my last blog and have been meaning to write for a while. Sometimes it feels like a chore but I know if I skipped writing about this period of my life I’d probably regret it later.

Time flew after coming back from the school trip to France in early April and finishing the school year all in quite a haze. Finishing the tennis season and preparing for the wedding while teaching two preps and finishing the gifted program was stressful. I was super ready to head off to go back to France for Chris and Sarah Gold’s wedding the same day school ended. The French Riveria did not disappoint, nor did the amazingly fun home wedding in the hills. It really is super beautiful there and different than any other part of France I’d been to previously. It was also cool that their wedding flowed so naturally and the dancing didn’t start until almost midnight because they could do whatever they wanted with it being at their home. I wish we had more time to explore the Cote D’Azur but the one full day we had was special. We took a boat with good friend Dave Leiberman and his girl Laini out to St. Tropez and had an amazing gastronomy meal in the evening our Air BnB hosts recommended near Nice. It was an expensive but definitely worthwhile short trip.

After a short day and a half in Montreal it was back to Vermont where we pretty much spent the entire 3.5 days prepping for the wedding. We never did get to the end of the “checklist” and I think people were somewhat right to question the wisdom of going to another wedding the week before our own in Southern France.

The wedding itself was super fun and unlike most people, while I was relieved to be done with the stress of preparing, I wasn’t happy to be done with it. It really is an amazing feeling to have everybody you love in one place for one day, and in our case, our own private funk band. I thought about the whole thing like grabbing 100 friends and taking them all out to a very expensive meal and then picking up the bar tab too. But it’s also hard not being able to take to all of those great friends and family, some of whom have come from very hard, for just those few hours. Overall, it’s crazy to spend so much money in one day but on the other hand I struggle to think of better ways to spend money in my life, especially on any material possessions that won’t mean anything anyways someday when we are all gone from this earth. Jonah argued that you could just use this money to visit all of your friends around the world but I question this logic. Are you really actually going to do this? Getting the time and coordinating to make it work with friends seems like it would impede this from actually happening. Now we can look forward to Manju’s wedding in Chicago and not having to do anything this time. Oh wait, we still have “Thank You’s” and the wedding album to do, ugh…

One last thought about the wedding: Maya and I both realized that we are never probably going to look as good again as we did on our wedding day. While I suppose that's normal, it's kind of a strange thought. My grand father's top hat crushed my ears and probably looked a little stupid but I'm still glad I did it. On other hand, Maya was gorgeous and those hundreds of dollars that she put into to make herself up were worth it.

Lastly, a lot of my friends have asked me “what’s it like being a married man?” now and obviously for anyone who’s been living with the partner for long enough and in a certain routine it’s not much different at all. Just to change things up and keep it interesting I’ve jokingly been saying: “it’s horrible, I made a huge mistake, the commitment is too much.” In all seriousness, the difference has been always wearing this strange gold ring (makes my other fingers look naked) and saying “my wife” as I’m still adjusting to the fact that I have to remember that I actually am married now. The other thing is that I am relieved that I don't actually have to do anything anymore, no flowers or boxes of chocolate or looking nice or wearing deodorant. In all seriousness, I'm just glad I don't have to manage trying to break that glass again in front of 170 people, even with two tries!  

 

Also had my first chance to meet my new nephew Abel! Here we are playing some music for him!

It was jazz fest in Burlington which was quite fun after things calmed down a bit after the wedding

Lots of wedding toasts

Getting ready

It was a bit of a tight squeeze in our makeshift aisle once we had to scramble inside with the heavy rains

A rainy wedding day is said to be good luck but I wonder if that's just to make us feel better about the fact that it's raining on our wedding day?

Could it be the first appearance of Herb to the blog?

Under the hoopah that Sara gave us right after her wedding in Port Grimaud

W/friends in front of Triller slideshow 

Beautiful trip with Dave and co. to St. Tropez

Trip to France

I am just getting home after about 9 days with students in France for an exchange trip to Sarreguemines. Being in France at a French high school gave me flashbacks to 14 years ago when I studied abroad in a Francophone high school. Things have really changed since I went to Belgium in 2012. I am dating myself talking this way but it really was a different type of exchange than what I remembered. Besides the fact that this was obviously different from my trip as it was a short-term group trip through school, there were other big elements of change. The big one was technology as all our students had smart phones and purchased international plans to always be connected. It was amazing to be walking on a several centuries old European fort and hear kids casually talking to their parents back in the U.S. as if they were right next store. There is no longer any separation in global travel and a certain element of surprise, wonder, getting lost, and exploration seems to be loss.

I probably am focusing on the negative with this but it also seemed like students very little French with this connectivity factor. Most of the students spoke to their host French family’s in English because 1)Most of their French isn’t that good and their hosts speak better English 2) (similar to 1) Communicating a point is much easier and faster for everyone in English 3)English surrounds daily life in France in a way that French does not in the U.S. If anything since I lived in Belgium the influence of the U.S. and the Anglophone world at large has only increased. More economic activity, art, government, and entertainment is conducted in English than ever before and therefore the French have much more of an impetus to learn another language than we do. When you miss all of the pins at the French bowling alley it say’s “gutterball” just like it does back home. 4)Language programs start earlier in France when it’s easier to learn and students can benefit in high school from an exchange in which they have more experience with the language under the belt. They also just seem to take language learning more seriously in Europe.

I don’t know that my expectations were so high for this trip as far as learning French and exchanging cultures but it seems very challenging as a group to have a truly authentic immersion experience. There is too much of a temptation to do what’s comfortable and not stretch yourself to meet new people, speak the local language, and push yourself to challenging things (like ask for a recommendation for a good restaurant to a stranger on the street). 

Another thing about the trip was that it was also a bit lonely being there with just one other teacher and my own host family who while very welcoming and amazing to me, was much older. It’s amazing how as you age you become so uncool so quickly. Becoming a parent or teacher also especially makes you an authority figure and automatically uncool. I don’t want to be friends with my students but I also don’t want to be awkward with them. On a trip outside of school it’s kind of hard not to be though as there are more intimate situations and you have a different relationship with students. 

All in all the trip was good but exhausting. Being around 19 teens every day almost all day long is tiring even if they are good kids. There was very little downtime and I think everybody wished we visited one less museum or historic place. I’d do this again, especially as the trip is paid for, but tough giving up a vacation for it. I needed this time to take a break and recharge and I didn’t really get that.

Just before take off @ Hartsfield Jackson

Colder Weather in France

Day trip to Paris

Students pose at the European Union in Strasbourg, France

Strasbourg was just like I remembered it from 14 years ago, beautiful town in Alsace

My host Mr. Marc Seray in France

Europa Park me and Jennifer Ouanzin on a roller coaster, I look a bit screwed up

The Citadel in Biche

Winter 2016

Maya on a very cold day at Beech Mountain

Our ski cabin 

Cone

It “snowed” recently in Atlanta. Students were incredibly distracted by the flurries and kept asking if it was still snowing as they tried to peak through the window blinds in the class. It was very hard to get everyone to sit down and continue with the lesson. Coming from Vermont this was crazy to me as it flurries all the time and while yes it’s pretty to look at snow, it’s nothing that really we would think twice about.

This experience reminded me of being in Uganda and working at Fenix out of the Kampala office where our office compound frequently received monkey visitors. Any time a monkey came (and usually it was monkeys, a whole troop of them) I had to drop everything to watch these fascinating creatures interact. The African co-workers though, like me in my Atlanta classroom when it snows, had zero interest. If anything they found the monkeys to be a nuisance and tried to shoe them away. I guess whatever you are used to makes these types of experience more or less special.

We are well into our 2^nd semester and it’s been a busy, I would say even busier, semester than last. Between the gifted program, wedding planning, the Strolling Bones (my band), and having two preps. for the first time in my teaching career (French 1 & 3) my hands are pretty full. But the work is good and mostly interesting and I prefer being busy. In addition, a few weeks ago I became the JV boy’s tennis coach when the local pro. fell through last minute. It’s been a lot of fun but also a big time commitment. I think I was more nervous than the kids were for our first match but we fortunately we just squeaked out a win and came out on top 3-2. The level of tennis is also soooo much higher than what it was at CVU. These guys could definitely have taken on our varsity team back home. We didn’t have a JV team and I had to cut over 10 players which was very hard. ATL is a big tennis city and all of the parents also place. As with everything these days I seem to be learning how to do things on the run. But the difference this year continues to be so huge that I can barely remember trying to start (and then failing) the Hapeville soccer teams, and in the end, clubs. The Booster club for tennis has amazing parents that cook, carpool, provide me DHS tennis clothing, coordinate communication, and even book the local tennis courts where we play. Plus, I get a decent chunk of change for a pretty short season. It’s not a bad deal.

We finally made it to our winter break, which has been pretty cool since last year in Fulton County we didn’t even get this break (or maybe got one day?). A few of my new friends from the Dunwoody teaching domain came with us (see pics below). I didn’t even know there was skiing in the South until moving down here. It was no Vermont skiing but it wasn’t horrible. It was a step up from Wachusett in Massachusetts and maybe a step down from Bolton Valley in Vermont.  

A pensive pose at the ski cabin

Time Square before Book of Mormon February '16

Happy New Year!

Just before Xmas we volunteered with Concrete Jungle, a great local organization. Here's to a New Year and good things to come. It's going to be a big one. This time next year I'll be a married men. I might even have a mini-me, scary thought.