Lady'scjonctées 2012

Last Sunday the Dijon Ultimate club, Les Discjonctés hosted an all-women's tournament and four of us from Besançon plus two pick-ups from the Ultimate Troopers (near Nancy), teamed up to form the Free-Bises. The day started off right when upon entering Clémentine's car for the hour-drive to Dijon, Vanessa offered us all a potpourri of morning beverages, including, but not limited to: coffee, cappuccino (in both Milka and Toberlone varieties), hot chocolate, and tea. 

The day only got better from there... the tournament was a lot of fun -- very well-run and a very positive atmosphere. Since it was the tournament's first year there were only four teams (the ladies from Dijon, a high school team, and a middle school team coached by Bruno, the former captain of the Discjontés who is the girls' gym teacher). The set-up was a round robin in the morning, a 25-minute break for lunch, then another round robin in the afternoon. Only the matches against the Lady Discjontés were really challenging, but it was a good opportunity to work on the fundamentals and a good learning session for the two pick-ups, Marie-Eve and Pascale. 

And I had a wonderful time playing with Clémentine, Franzi and Vanessa, who all play for the Friz'Bistonins. It's unusual for us to have more than 2-4 girls total at any given practice (Lucie also comes regularly, and sometimes we have Caroline), so more often than not I'm playing against the only other girl on the opposing team. It was good to play together, since Clémentine is also going to be on the team for the phase retour (round 2) of the regional tournament, the last weekend in February.

For the record, we won all 6 of our matches and ended up also winning the "Spirit of the Game" award (which makes 3 weekends in a row for Friz'Bistonin teams).

Here we are proudly displaying our loot (from left to right): me with a bottle of Arbois, Franzi with the trophy for winning the tournament, Vanessa with a party game which was also part of the prize (?), and Clémentine with the trophy for best spirit, then Pascale and Marie-Eve. This was on top of the goody bag that each player received for attending the tournament (which had various contents including candies, a little toiletries bag, a Discjonctés cup and a small pot of Dijon mustard). We're going to save the bottle for the phase retour, because Pascale and Marie-Eve will be there and we can all enjoy it together then! Overall a really great Sunday!

Les Cowboys Fringants

This past weekend was a very exciting one! On Friday evening I went to a concert in Geneva with a bunch of people from the Ultimate team including: Gaëtan, Fred, Lois, GuiGui, Franzi, and Clément. We weren't the only ones though: lots of people brought along friends and family, and so we were closer to 15 in total. I brought along Kati and she brought along a friend named Ian, who turned out to be an American from Nashville who is doing his third year at UNC-Asheville at the university here in Besançon. The three of us drove down with Fred, plus GuiGui and met up with the group at the venue. The fact that the concert was in Geneva isn't hugely relevant... we really didn't see any of the city besides the inside of the concert venue. We met up with Franzi and her friend Tiny, who was visiting from Germany for the week, Clément and his fiancé, Lois and his girlfriend, Gaetan and his mother, brother, aunt, and cousin. The concert was held at a multi-purpose venue, that was, say, closer in size to the Taft Theatre and than to US Bank Arena (sorry for you non-Cincinnatians). We were in the standing area in front, and I won't bother to estimate the crowd size since I'm horrible with those kinds of estimates.

The group, Les Cowboys Fringants, is from Quebec and was started in the mid-1990s. Their genre is alternative rock-folk-country, although I could classify it as closer to rock than the latter two. The principal band members are, from left to right: bassist, a singer/guitarist, electric violin player (Marie Annick), and keyboardist. Marie-Annick, who also plays the accordian, the mandoline, the piano, and the guitar, totally stole the show.

They also had a drummer and a couple of back-up guitar players. I went into the concert having listened to nothing else but their music for the three or so weeks leading up to the concert, but only knew all of the words to a handful of songs. Their songs are very catchy but incredibly fast, so I really could only retain the lyrics if I looked them up online and practiced following along. My personal favorites are Plus Rien, Chêne et Roseau, and Tant qu'on aura de l'amour. They played the first and the third, but not playing all three wasn't for a lack of playing time. The concert started around 8:45pm and didn't finish until nearly midnight!

The part that was sort of surprising for me was that they took a break halfway through. Having an intermission at a rock concert was certainly a new thing for me (not a French thing, but apparently common in Quebec). There was no opening band, just Les Cowboys. They also came back for, wait for it, three encores. Personally I find more than one a little annoying and a little egotistical on the part of the band (I can't help thinking they do it because they like hearing us screaming their name). Each time they played one or two songs... why not just come back once, play four or five more songs, then go home?

It was a really awesome experience though. Their music is the kind that makes you want to jump around and dance, and we definitely did plenty of that. It was Clément's birthday and I had the impression he was pleased to celebrate it with such a great concert. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to bring in cameras, and there was no way I was going to be able to smuggle my Leica in without getting caught. If I find out someone took a picture with their phone though, I'll try to post it.

PS Happy Valentine's Day!

"Ils ont piqués mes deux arrières-pnues!"

Translation of title: "They stole my two back tires!"

This blog entry also happens to be a little bit late... it recounts the events that happened last Thursday evening after the weekly Ultimate session at SUAPS (the something universitaire des activités physiques et sportives) hosted by the equivalent of the Health and Exercise Science department at the University of France Comté in Besançon. The students in this department are required to participate in a certain number of hosted athletic activities per month (or per week, I really don't know), and one of the activities offered is Ultimate, every Thursday night from 8-9:30pm. It's pretty low-key: we throw for the first 30 minutes and then scrimmage for the last hour. Usually a fair percentage of the participants are Friz'Bistonins (the Ultimate team I play for here), and last Thursday was no exception. I think we were 18 or 19 in total, and 16 of us were Friz'Bistonins. We had enough for 3 teams of six players (one sub, since you play with five on the court in indoor).

The evening was pretty standard and without incident, except that we ended up playing a little longer than usual. When all left the gym it was just before 10pm. Someone suggested we go out to Callahan's for a drink, and we agreed to meet up there. Colin was parked in the upper lot, near the track, and when we passed the lower lot, we noticed Lois was standing by the entrance, as if to signal someone. It's a good thing we stopped to see what was up, because it turned out the group wasn't going anywhere soon. Vanessa, who had parked in the lower lot (which during work hours it is reserved for the administration), emerged from the gym to discover someone had stolen the two back tires off of her car! The car was just sitting on the axles (I don't think this is the correct term, hopefully someone will correct me). Although the tires weren't brand new, they were snow tires and less than a year old, which explains why someone took them instead of the tires off of one of the four other cars parked in the lot (all belonging to people on our team). Vanessa called the police, but we had to wait nearly 45 minutes before they arrived!! (It was probably around -5 or -10 Celsius outside, that is approximately 23-14 degrees Fahrenheit). We were pretty annoyed that they took so long, but their visit was amusing because it turns out the officer in charge, Denis, knew one of the players from our team, Fred (who wasn't there). When we found out we were all part of the Ultimate club, he asked "Hey, isn't there an old guy who plays with you?" We thought he was referring to the professor who runs the SUAPS programs, but immediately started laughing when he mentioned Fred's name.

As soon as the police left, we took out Vanessa's spare tire and GuiGui's spare tire (luckily they drive the same car, and GuiGui happened to be there). This required considerable effort, considering GuiGui's tire was frozen into the trunk. Then we used two tire jacks to mount the tires at the same time, and fastened them with two of the bolts off of each of the front tires. It wasn't the most secure set-up, but Vanessa was able to drive home (Gaëtan followed, to make sure she arrived safely) and her parents brought over her summer tires the next morning. She filed a claim with her insurance company and should be reimbursed for the stolen snow tires. She has snow tires on her car because she works in Pontarlier, about an hour south-east of Besançon by car and they get a lot more snow there.

Everyone was pretty shocked that her tires were stolen -- the campus is normally very safe and this kind of theft is unusual. I'm glad that we were all there to help her too, because it made putting the tires back on much easier. Hopefully it's an experience I won't get to repeat again!

La Coupe de l'Est

So last weekend was the Coupe de l'Est (Eastern Cup), hosted by the Strasbourg Ultimate club, Sesquidistus. The Besançon club brought two teams for a total of 15 people on Saturday and 17 on Sunday (Lois and Jérémy had to work on Saturday). We made the three-hour drive bright and early on Saturday morning. At one point the car's thermometer read -16 degrees Celsuis (3 degrees Fahrenheit)! We made a pit stop a little over halfway there and stayed outside only long enough to gobble down the croissants that Romain's car brought for everyone. Not my typical pre-tournament food, but yummy.

The tournament was held in a brand-new gym in Strasbourg's equivalent of Planoise (similar neighborhood, but the buildings weren't quite so tall). There were 11 teams there, all from the Eastern region of France: Nancy, Metz, Vesoul, Voujeaucourt, Dijon, Pontarlier, 2 teams from Strasbourg, our two teams, and one more I can't remember.

I played on the second team and we ended up 10th. Our two games on Saturday were both frustrating... a lot of the people on the second team are very new to Ultimate and are still working on the fundamentals. And those of us who have been playing for a while haven't played together as a team very much yet. In practice we usually mix up the teams during the scrimmage (because the first team playing against the second team all the time wouldn't help either team improve) and the second team is composed of different players based on who goes to which tournament.

It didn't help either that our two Saturday games were against formidable opponents, both clearly above our level of play. I was also a bit disappointed to only have two 25-minute games. I'm used to outdoor Ultimate tournaments where we play four or five 90-minute games a day; 100 minutes of Ultimate for a whole tournament day doesn't seem like nearly enough to me. But games on Sunday went much better (a loss to Vesoul and then a win against the Ultimate Troopers, finally). The first team finished third after losing a heart-breaking semifinal against our long-time rivals Everest (who come from Pontarlier and only play indoor; their signature throws are the kind of knifey-blades that are absurd outdoors but work inside where there isn't any wind). In the picture below the second team is warming up before one of our matches... you can see our fancy new jerseys!

Just like the other tournaments I've been to with the team I was really pleased with the whole experience -- the atmosphere was very convivial and the tournament was well-run. Having everyone in an enclosed space like a gym encourages the teams to interact off the court, and at this particular tournament all of the teams are from the same region. Most of the players knew each other and often people have played for more than one team because they moved from one city to another within the region.

I got to see a couple of players from Dijon, including Laurent, who I hadn't seen since 2009 (he recently moved back to Dijon from Spain with his Spanish wife). I also met an American guy named Aaron who went to Rice and is now doing his PhD in Metz. He played Ultimate at Metz and actually knows someone I went to high school with who also played Ultimate at Rice, Neil Narayan. Small world! (In this pic Aaron is on defense and I have the disc).

On Saturday night our whole team slept at the apartment of some of the Strasbourg players (slumber party-style, with all 15 of us on couches or the floor of the living room and kitchen). For dinner on Saturday the Sesquis had rented out most of a restaurant called Caveau Restaurant Gurtlerhof, which faces the Strasbourg cathedral and happens to be one of the restaurants where I ate with the other Wake students when the Dijon program took a weekend trip there at the end of our semester. The food was pretty good and it was fun to have everyone together in one place.

Overall a highly successful weekend, yet again! I almost forgot, the first team beat us (the second team) by 1/2 a point for the Spirit award. The way the award works is each team fills out a form after the match, grading their opponent on knowledge of the rules, comportment during the match, good spirit, etc and the team with the highest average at the end of the weekend wins the Spirit award. Last weekend the Besançon team (a mix of first and second team players) won the Spirit award at Tsunamixte, a co-ed tournament in Nemours. Here Gaël and Lois are proudly displaying the disc and trophy the first tea, won for best Spirit.

The next tournament for the second team is the phrase retour (round two) of the regional competition, which is being held in Vesoul on February 25 and 26.

A Tax on Trash and other Trucs

*Truc is French for "thing" or "stuff." It's the sort of word that causes teachers to wince when it is employed by their students, but is considered a perfectly acceptable catch-all in casual contexts.

First of all, it finally snowed! Okay, so it happened once before, back in December, but it was so fleeting that it seemed like it didn't happen at all. This snow has lasted two full days, so I think it counts. Tuesday morning I woke up to this outside my window:

Tuesday morning was a lazy one; all but one of my classes was canceled due to a big teachers’ strike. A couple of weeks ago, the French government announced it would be eliminating 42 posts in the département du Doubs (equivalent to Doubs county), including one post in each of my two schools. There were protests this past weekend and a big national strike organized for Tuesday. All but three of the teachers at École Champagne participated in the strike. So what happened to the kids whose teachers weren’t at school? Normally the city provides a kind of group day-care at the maisons du quartier (neighborhood community centers, similar to YMCAs). But none was offered this time at the maison du quartier in Planoise, where my schools are located, so parents without cars were in a jam. Presumably they left their kids with friends or family, or stayed home from work. This kind of large-scale hassle is of course the goal of a strike.

On one level, I can sympathize with the teachers because I have seen the law of diminishing returns at work when it comes to overcrowded classrooms, and I know that the removal of another teacher from the schools where I teach will only exacerbate that problem. But it would be interesting to compare the amount of money spent on dealing with the consequences of the strike (such as the price of employing people for daycare) with the amount the government plans to save by eliminating posts throughout the country. Thought for the day: what are the costs and benefits of a system in which strikes are permissible, and their consequences are paid for by the taxpayers?

This is the salle des maîtres (teachers' lounge) at Ecole Champagne... I took advantage of it being empty to snap a pic! 

Now onto this entry’s title: my roommates Steph and Charly announced earlier this week that as of February 1, Besançon will institute a weight-based trash tax. As of now, households pay a flat tax to the city to have their trash collected. Our apartment building’s residents split that tax based on the square footage of each apartment. But starting this week, our building will be taxed based on how many kilograms of refuse are in our trash container.

This concept, of course, presents all kinds of unintended consequences. I suggested people might start throwing their trash in the recycling bins, since there are no fees for recycled material. Steph replied that the plan calls for the trash collectors to check the recycling bins at the same time they collect the trash, and if they see trash inside they will add the entire contents of the recycling bin to that household’s trash count. This creates the desired negative incentive against residents disposing of trash in the recycling bins, although costing the garbage collectors who-knows-how-much time to check each bin. 

Another possible consequence: people will start throwing their trash in their neighbors’ bins. Response: we're getting a lock for ours. Not very charming, but I suppose it will be effective. A third possible consequence: people will start dumping their trash in parks or public places to avoid paying the tax. Not sure how they’re going to avoid this one. I suggested people might also try to dispose of their trash at their workplace, although I can’t say I considered that option for myself (can you imagine me carrying our trash on my 45-minute bus commute to Planoise?) We’ll see if the trash tax lasts...

One more quick thing. I saw a t-shirt in a store window a while ago and have wanted to put it on my blog ever since. Keep in mind this store doesn't seem to sell the classiest garments ever, so I doubt their design team really dedicated a lot of time to their translation. But still... So the shirt features a woman's face, artfully silhouetted and set at an angle across the whole front of the shirt. The material is white and the image and writing are a silvery gray. At the bottom is written: "Yoo're God's great paramour and sweet." Wha??? I have no idea what they meant to say, but whatever it was, they failed.

Another linguistic truc: I have a little "1 Minute a Day for Correct French" calendar made by the "For Dummies" people and it recently featured the word antonomase, whose English equivalent is "antonomasia." Still lost? It's the term for a proper noun which becomes so fully integrated into a language that it becomes a common noun. Think "Kleenex" or "Wellingtons." The examples my little calendar sheet gave me were les poubelles (apparently Mr. Poubelle, the prefect of Paris at the time, required garbage cans to be placed in the city streets in 1884 and they were named after him) and la silhouette (Mr. Silhouette, the Finance minister under Louis XV wanted to raise taxes on the rich and took a leave of absence after doing so, lending his name to the nebulous outline of an image). The term in English can also be used to describe a phrase which becomes inextricably linked with a personage (think "The Bard" for William Shakespeare or "The Gipper" for Ronald Reagan). 

So there's your French/English lesson for the day. Hope you're all well!

The Recipe for a Great Weekend: Friends and (host) Family

Since arriving in Besançon last September I have been invited to numerous raclettes and have wanted to host one myself. As soirée concepts go, this one is pretty basic. Myriam, one of the teachers at Ecole Champagne put it this way: "If your raclette isn't a success, you've got some issues" (my rough translation of her French). For the food, all that's required is to purchase the cheese, assorted hams and sausages and bread and to cook the potatoes beforehand. I wanted to go a little bit beyond, so I decided to bake some savory madeleines (similar to the texture of muffins) to go with the aperitif and also bake brownies for dessert.

Steph and Charly went to Steph's family's house for the weekend, so I had the apartment to myself. I spent all afternoon Saturday cleaning and getting ready for when Candice, Laurie, Kati, Justine, Franzi, GuiGui and Colin would arrive at 8pm. I wouldn't call my apartment big, but I'm glad it's not any bigger or I'm not sure I would have gotten everything finished in time!

But it worked out just fine and (don't worry Myriam), the raclette was a success. Franzi brought a bottle of Porto to share for the aperitif. I have seen port wine on menus before but never tried it. It's usually a sweet red wine (although apparently there are some white port wines and dry port wines) and it comes from the Douro Valley in the northern provinces of Portugal. It was quite tasty and went well with my sesame and Coppa-and-olive madeleines (see a picture of the sesame ones below).

Before I go any further, I have a confession: I didn't take any pictures during the raclette. I don't even have the excuse that my camera battery is dead... the charger arrived on Friday afternoon. I had my camera out and everything, but I forgot to designate someone to take pictures early in the evening, and I was just too busy being the hostess/trying not to be the busy hostess to take any. I'm very sorry. The only picture I have is this one of me, which Colin took while I was getting dinner ready (and yes, he did help in addition to taking this picture).

So all in all the party went really well. We had way to much food (read: I will be eating raclette for at least the next week), which is always better than the opposite scenario. Toward the end of the evening GuiGui played DJ and introduced me to a group called The Baseballs (irony?) who take obnoxious pop songs and remake them in the style of early rock n' roll (as in Elvis-era). Check out their version of Rihanna's Umbrella (the video is good too). If you like that song, check out Bleeding Love, it will make you think the song was written to be sung this way. I'm in love with this group! Their music is the kind that just makes me want to dance, and I almost forget how inane the original songs' lyrics are in the process -- success! I think I might have been born in the wrong era...

Sunday morning I had to wake up bright and early to catch a train to Dijon to see my host family!! Finally! I'm really sorry we didn't find a way to meet up sooner because it was so absolutely wonderful to see them again. It was a little strange to be back in Dijon. It looked exactly the same, except for there are purple barriers everywhere for the tram construction. They were just starting the tram when I studied there in the fall of 2009 and it's supposed to be finished by the end of this year; the area around the train station and Place d'Arcy is still a mess though. My host family actually moved from the house where they lived in 2009 to an apartment just off Place d'Arcy (about a 5-8 minute walk from their old house). Now they're even closer to the train station and the center of the centre-ville.

The move was precipitated by their purchase of a moulin (mill). Let me explain: their friend Dominique owns a 17th-century stone farmhouse and the surrounding property, about 50km from Dijon and my host family loves to go there and take long walks on sunny Sunday afternoons. I went with them to the farm twice and what we did there can only be described as frolicking: walking, hiking, picnicking, enjoying nature. Last year, while they were celebrating Orane's 16th birthday with a party at the moulin (mill) which is part of the farm property, Dominique offered to sell it to them. Joseph and Noëlle, who prefer either the music and culture of Paris or the absolute silence of the country (and who didn't plan to live in Dijon forever), jumped at the chance. 

So they sold their house, moved into the apartment, and started planning for the refurbishment of the moulin, which right now resembles a ruin more than somewhere you would want to live. Before I talked to them this weekend, I knew that they had bought a moulin and even seen pictures, but I thought it was a fix-'er-up project for a vacation cottage; I didn't realize their plan was to retire there. Although it is in the middle of the country, apparently there is a train stop not too far away, which means it's only 1.5 hours from Paris. 

So you can probably tell from the pictures that we went to see the site after lunch. It was pretty cold, and as gray a day as they come, but I found the area just beautiful. There was something entirely serene about it, and I could imagine perfectly how magical it would be in the summer, with all of the trees and plants in bloom. The little creek you can see in the background is the river Seine, which at one point was the water which turned the mill wheel. 

On the way to see the moulin we stopped at la Source de la Seine (the source of the River Seine, the one that divides Paris in half). It's pretty comical to see how small the Seine is at its origin... I've seen bigger streams in the gutter at the end of our driveway at home after a big storm! But as it flows towards Paris this little trickle is joined by thousands of tiny tributaries until it becomes the massive river which empties into the English Channel at Le Havre.

Before we went to see the moulin I caught up with Noëlle and Joseph and we had a delicious and enormous lunch: beef in stewed tomatoes with mashed potatoes, bread and cheese, a fruit tart, coffee, and a kugelhopf which Noëlle had made that afternoon. As usual, it was all delicious! By the time we got back from the moulin Orane was home and I got to chat with her. She interviewed me for her bac project: The Portrayal of Women in American Film. I got back home around 10:30pm on Sunday night after a gloriously relaxing day. Noëlle invited me to come back for Easter weekend, when their whole family will be home, plus Ginou -- the Chinese student who lived with them for a little while and who has become their adopted nephew. I met him when he came to visit while I was living in Dijon. I was thrilled to be invited, I love spending time with them. Overall, another great weekend! I hope yours was just as good!

The Price of Progress

There has been lots of construction going on in Besançon relating to the tramway project, and yesterday evening I was shocked to discover that all but a handful of the 85 gorgeous old platanes (sycamore trees) that line the Battant-neighborhood side of the Doubs (not the centre-ville side) had been cut down. I was on my way to a doctor's appointment to get a medical certificate signed for Ultimate and another one for the marathon and I was totally caught off guard by the giant uprooted trunks strewn pell-mell across the quai. The tramway could end up being a really good thing for Besançon (making it easier for people to circulate around the city, better integrating the people who live in Planoise, limiting the car traffic, etc), but I still felt depressed seeing all of those felled trees. Or, at least, made me reflect a bit on the relationship of progress and what we sacrifice in order to achieve that progress. I noticed too that the faces of everyone I saw in the vicinity reflected the same shock that I felt. Apparently the fact that they were going to tear down the trees was announced quite a while ago, but it came as a surprise to me. They didn't appear to have made much progress in removing the debris when I walked by again around noon today (to get another form signed by the doctor). They've planned to replace the trees once the construction is over, but of course it's going to take a long time for them to grow back to the same splendor of the previous ones.

Check out this link to a local news report.