my IOWA adventure

Haunted Iowa

I would be lying if I said life here was still as uneventful as last month. Everything is still pretty quiet, but I experienced some nice things as well and met great people.

First, right after I wrote my article on September 17, I decided to go to the Kinnick Stadium. There was a football game that day, and I wanted to see how it was around there. I had heard of the concept of “tailgating” but wanted to see it for myself. And I found out: dressed up as Hawkeyes fans, people go from stand to stand eating and drinking as much as they can before the game starts - at 11am! The crowd was impressive. There is no word to describe it.

On Friday 23rd, my roommate and I drove to Kalona, a town just outside Iowa City, to see the Kalona Festival. Situated in Historic Kalona, we saw really nice things there. They restored the village in the 19th century style: the school, the post office, the drugstore, everything there is furnished the way it used to be at that time. Also, Kalona’s inhabitants are Mennonites, so we learned about their way of life, with a nice museum and crafts presentations.

At the beginning of October, I joined a group called Global Buddies. This group pairs international students with American ones, and they organize events. My “buddy” is amazing, I am so glad I joined this group and met her! I can already consider her to be a good friend here. She’s always asking me to come over, she organizes great stuff for me, she’s awesome! Together with her roommate, who’s also a Global Buddy, they decided to invite us every other week or so at their house to have international meals. The first one was Japanese, delicious! For the second one, my buddy prepared a Wisconsin dish very, very tasty. For my French friends reading this, it is a little bit like a “choucroute et saucisse de Strasbourg” with “pommes de terre lardons”. Wisconsin has a lot of German roots, so everything kinda has a German influence there.

Also with Global Buddy members, we went to a Haunted House in Cedar Rapids last week. Halloween approaching, paying a visit to a haunted house is almost as traditional here as saying “trick or treat” on D-day. We had great fun. It was not as scary as I thought it would be, but it was funny to scream with surprise with the girls!

The same day was the Homecoming Parade in Iowa City. Homecoming is an american tradition: Universities and high schools welcome back their alumni and organize events to celebrate it. I managed to get a glimpse of the parade before I rushed to the meeting spot for the Haunted house. And after we came back I went to see the end of the concert that was taking place by the Old Capitol.

This weekend: Halloween time! 2 parties in 2 nights. I’m going as a Flapper. Last night at Cynthia’s was fun, it was so weird to see wearing a costume. Some were really great. Dexter was scarily accurate!

As this month is coming to an end, I am also finalizing my trip plans. In 3 weeks I will be in Boston, following the Freedom Trail with Solène (hopefully the snowstorm will have ended by then!). In January, the Carolinas will be welcoming me for a week, and I will then be able to get away from the snow there - or so I hope! And after that… well, lets keep it a secret for now. I still need to make sure everything will work out. But I am pretty sure it will! :)

Full Student, Busy TA.

I realized I had not written anything here for more than a month. But what was there to say, really?

I am still a very happy TA at the University of Iowa, I enjoy teaching to my students. I really like them, they are interested in French and French culture and want to know as many things as possible life there - things that I am more than happy to share with them.

Two weeks ago was the midterm week, and I kinda lost in for a while. Much more work to do than I had expected: 41 students to meet individually for a 15-minute oral exam that I then have to grade… let’s say it lead to a crazy working week, as it drove me behind schedule with pretty much everything else. But I managed to get it all done, eventually.

I am also finally fully registered to the University of Poitiers as a second year Master’s student. Administration sucks everywhere, I guess. When I did my dossier in June, my teacher told me I would not need to be interviewed as I was leaving for Iowa. But it turned out that I actually needed it done to receive a letter saying I could officially registered for my second year. So here I was, in the middle of September, struggling with that from abroad.

Once the letter received, I had to get registered online… or rather I was supposed to, because I could not do it: it turns out students changing orientation cannot use the online service… Fortunately, a couple of emails later, I was granted the possibility to use the website “as I was not in Poitiers”…

This done, I had to log on another website to request an appointment with the administration so that my boyfriend could give them everything. When I clicked, I discovered I had to put together another dossier… identical to the one I already gave in June. And yet I did have to do it again, say the administration. You can imagine the mess: some documents were here and I had to scan them to my man, others were at my mother’s, etc etc. After I finally put it all together, I tried to get that appointment… and I could not do it. Why? Because we were already October 3rd, and we could only registered until September 30th! When my boyfriend went there the next day, they told him it was “too late”! I had been struggling with all this cr*p for 3 weeks, I had paid the fees, and he was told it was too late. Fortunately, with a little bit of persuasion, he finally had them do it. Tada! I am officially a student again. Better start working on my dissertation now…

The Final Countdown

Ok so here we are.

Agnès has fully moved into her new place, a very nice house with very nice girls. She should feel pretty good here.

We managed to see a little bit of the city, and I took nice pictures – those of you who have me as a friend on Facebook can see most of them. The mean, dishonest person I am even managed to befriend a few people last week, how silly of them [private joker here].

On Friday last week, there was something called Sand In The City happening on Iowa Avenue. We went there and saw all those hard-working people building sand figures. We asked a lady about that event, cause we didn’t have a clue what it was for. It is actually a national project started several years ago by a nice man, to raise money for charity. This very nice lady, Lisa, told us everything and chatted with us for quite a while. And then… we were invited for diner ! So there we were, at 6:30pm, taking a taxi to Lisa’s house. What a good time we had with everyone ! First night out in Iowa City, we loved every minute of it !

This week, tadaaa ! Meeting week !

We met everyone on Monday, teachers and TAs, and we started talking about our program. It turned out I’ll finally be teaching French Conversation instead, but nevermind, it was nice meeting everyone. I feel very confortable with everyone in the department, they all seem very happy to help us if we need anything. So it’s pretty positive stuff. I will be teaching on Tuesdays and Thursdays, office hours the same days. And this semester, we also have our compulsory course to take, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 11:30am. We’ll be busy, but we will deal with it.

My roommate also came back ! She’s just so nice, I’m delighted to have her as a roommate and a friend. She brought all her stuff from home, and tried to get the internet sorted at the apartment. Funny thing (I’m being ironic there), there is a problem with the line, and a technician is coming… next Friday ! GD !

The week ended yesterday with a nice barbecue night at Cynthia’s, a good way to learn about each other. We had great food, great wine, and great fun ! A good way to end the week and enter the next chapter : teaching week !

Sorry for the lack of updates. Right now, with no internet at home, it’s kinda hard to post often.

Food hunt / Apartment hunt too!

After five days at the hospital, Agnes was finally released into the outside world. However, things weren’t over yet, would you believe that!

First things first, we started dealing with the important matters: we went to the Social Security Administration to get a number and a card, we opened a bank account (at the MidwestOne Bank, very friendly staff!) - and we found THE Starbucks. We also went looking for a place to buy fresh food, as produce here seems impossible to buy. To complete the little, not too varied fruit and veggies department of Wal-Mart, we found a nice little organic store downtown called The Bread Garden.

But all that stuff is very little compared to what we REALLY had to deal with for the last four days : we had to find Agnes another place to live in.

It turned out her flat looked more like a big scam rather than like the “lovely, wonderful, you-won’t-find-a-better-place-to-live-in” apartment. She received lovely pictures of the place, really beautiful pictures of a nice, new white kitchen and a lovely living room. What a shock to arrive in a green and yellow dirty kitchen and an even dirtier living room. Add to this the fact that she bought furniture from the last tenant; half of what she bought will end in the trash. The carpets are dirty, the duvet is NOT clean (oh my god, we don’t even want to know what those white stains are!)… Anyway, by the end of the day, we started looking for another apartment.

And what did we find! No less than 15 ads for cute little places downtown looking for a roommate! We visited one on Tuesday evening, just one block north of where she is: a perfect, recently remodeled house to share between four girls. Agnes would have her own bedroom and bathroom, and will share a wonderful kitchen and living room with the rest of the girls. And it’s cheaper than that outdated flat she’s renting…

Problem solved. After a day, Agnes decided to take that room! The problem now was to talk to the landlord. Where to begin… I won’t talk too much about that, but let’s say that apparently SHE was the one to blame because she wanted to live like a princess… You can say what you want, she’s moving out tomorrow!

I’m adding below a few pictures of the flat she was renting. See it for yourself…

bathroom!

On a lighter note: we found a Farmers’ Market yesterday. Brilliant stuff. Lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, all organic and delicious. Lots of wine tasting - and buying, Agnes bought a bottle of Cranberry Wine, yummy!. And we were delighted to meet an Amish man selling pies and bread. I bought a strawberry and rhubarb pie and a cinnamon bread, which is actually the equivalent of a “brioche à la cannelle” for French people. So good!