There's a bike race in Charlottesville?!?!?

Apparently there's a bike race  that runs through Charlottesville. For some reason watching the beginning  made me excited and reminded me of when I saw a leg of the Tour De France in Grenoble. Granted, this race isn't nearly as big as that. But I enjoyed the 5 minutes I watched. Will update on a winner, if its even announced anywhere. 

French 24/7, now with internet!

For the past couple of days I have been without internet, something is wrong with the router at my host family's house. But, nonetheless, I had a lovely conversation with last year's English assistant a few days ago (and was going to post yesterday, but alas, no internet). He gave me some pointers and confirmed everything I had thought about Sedan. The kids, who are between 15-18 years old, know about 10 words of English. He said he found it almost impossible to teach them since they didn't really care about learning English and rarely showed up to class. Most of them point blank told him they plan on working in a factory or collecting unemployment after graduation (marvelous, working in a small town with an urban feel). So, he focused more on traveling than teaching. Since I've never met these kids, I'm going to go into this with an open mind, and know that I will have to basically start from the beginning. The main piece of advice he gave me was "get your French level up to fluent because no one in the town speaks English". Great..... :/ this was NOT how I was planning on spending my year in France- in my mind I was supposed to be re-united with the lovely French Alps and Lyon. If I want to make friends with the locals, I better brush up. Today I watched "The Intouchables" on Netflix, without subtitles. I'm quite proud of myself because I understand about 75% of it, the most difficult sections were the ones with Phillipe's daughter (who is 16, awesome.....I couldn't understand the one age group I'm going to NEED to understand if I want to get anything done). Now, it's onto googling popular contemporary French films. In addition, my iphone is chock full of Yelle, ZAZ, Stromae, SMOD, Mitre Gim, Edith Pief (cuz I mean how could I not!), and a few French operas options (for possibly directing one in Sedan).

I'll leave you with a picture that I took yesterday from home.

Putting No Preference On An Application (on the TAPIF application)

Writing (or checking off) the no preference option on the TAPIF application can really test your limits. A person that puts no preference on the TAPIF application, or any application, is probably easy going, adventuresome, and up for anything. I on the other hand wanted some type of "guarantee" that I'd be going to France in the fall. Plus, my friends reassured me that it's rare to get your third choice. So, I took their advice and from September until May I'll be living in Sedan, France where the majority of the population is unemployed and spends their day in a bar. I imagine this town to be the French  equivalent of Chatsworth  (from Shameless). How I'm going to survive 9 months is beyond me. So, a word of advice, never put no preference unless you're 100% ok with living or doing the worst imaginable job/place to live you're applying for. This way, when you get a less than desirable position, you're prepared. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that I'll be spending 9 months in France getting a paid vacation, but this was not anything I planned and comes at quite a shock. As time goes by, I'm sure I'll warm up to Sedan and the unique experience it will provide.

Foreign Banking Part 1

Well today I've given myself the project of figuring out how to transfer money (at the lowest cost) from the U.S. to France. This will be the first of what I imagine to be a multi-part series on banking in France, concluding with closing a French bank account in June (unless I stay for another year).  It's really confusing and several google searches later I still don't know what I'm going to do. Anyone know which banks in France are partners with Chase? Maybe there's no way of avoiding ATM fees or transferring money fees. Perhaps figuring out ATM fees will be saved for Part 2, we'll see. *Sigh* Glad that I have a contact person in Sedan who is on vacation until August 12th.

Day Off, yay!

Today was my day off, and besides doing the usual day off thing of resting, laundry, and sleeping in I went to the Albemarle CiderWorks festival which is going on this weekend. There was live music, food, and plenty of fresh fruit and cider (which was quite delicious). It was a lovely afternoon until the thunderstorm rolled in- why it rains so much in Virginia I will never know. There could be a 10% chance of showers and in the afternoon there will be a torrential downpour. But, I made the most of it and enjoyed what this lovely Cidery has to offer. In Chicago news, Transformers 4 had their open casting call for extras this morning, urg, I was hoping to go since I’ll be in town during shooting, but nope. They’re only doing in-person auditions, nothing via email. Blah. But, on the bright side I can finally cut my hair! Woot! Unless for some reason this other project I worked on before coming here needs me…..but I highly doubt that since they over cast my faction. So, hopefully I can be a Production Assistant on Transformers because they’re going to need a lot of them…… Enjoy the photos!

Outside of the Ciderworks 

Picture of the apple trees. 

Up close shot of one of the apple trees. 

Carpe Donuts stand, delicious peach melba donuts and ice cream! 

Schedule 

It really is! 

Peach melba donut, so good! 

Picture of the band before it started raining 

Cider tasting! Personal favorite Pomme Mary followed by Royal Pippin 

Just another day before a performance

Before performance number three of La Bohème, I decided to venture into downtownsince I had a little extra time than usual and I found an adorable basement wine shop called Market Street Wine Shop. I highly recommend stopping by if you’re ever in the Charlottesville area. Every Friday night they have a wine tasting from 5:00pm-7:30pm, unfortunately I’m always prepping for a performance so I’ll never be able to take part but it seems really fun! On a totally unrelated note, I just booked my one way ticket to Paris last night. Countdown to France: 58 days.

Look at all the local wines!

Looking forward to hitting up all the champagne cellars in my region.

Debated about buying this champagne, but I think I'll wait until I'm there

This rosé was on sale and has “hints of strawberry and watermelon.” Can’t wait to try some later!

Switching Over

Back when I created this blog, I was debating between Blogger and Wordpress, and after a couple of weeks on Wordpress, I've decided to come back to Blogger. More posts will arrive shortly as I switch everything over. Meanwhile, enjoy this cute photo I took while at Bargain Days in downtown Charlottesville.

What I've been doing

I’ve been neglectful of this blog for weeks and I need to prepare myself to make weekly (at least!) posts when I’m in France for my upcoming crazy 9 month adventure abroad. So, I’m going to take it slow, as is customary here in the South and do a blog post whenever something interesting is going on in my life. On my last free day, a few of us decided to check out some local wineries and a cidery. Charlottesville is full of so many wineries- it’s apparently Virginia’s wine capital. There’s even a micro brewery downtown that I’m determined to check out one day! In actual work related news, Bohème opened last week to positive reviews and rehearsals for Carousel are going strong. Why someone chose these two shows for a summer season is beyond me. This company is not one that I’m accustomed to working for and things definitely have to change for their to be any real progress, but I’m not going to talk about that here. I’ve decided that this blog is not for that, so if you came to read about the latest gossip in the Charlottesville opera world, you came to the wrong blog. I came for the sights, the chance to work on a Bohème, and to prepare myself to live in a small town with no skyscrapers. My posts will be about that sprinkled in with a bit of opera. It’s only been 4 and half weeks since I’ve left that most amazing city which is Chicago and I already miss it terribly. It’s funny because there’s a few of us from Chicago and it seems that no matter what, no one can go a full week without mentioning something that reminds them of the city. So it’s nice to know that I’m not the only who talks about it constantly. 10 months away is going to be a very long time, and quite frankly I think afterwards I’m not going to want to leave the glorious city ever again. We have everything, including that Midwestern charm. It’s nice to explore the world every once and awhile but it’s equally as nice to come home to the city where you can get a doughnut at 2am. Tonight I make my visa appointment for August…..dun, dun, dun. Evidently you need your passport number to secure your appointment, which is why it hasn’t gotten done sooner. Not really looking forward to the appointment, which will be entirely in French. Let’s hope it goes better than last time, where they forgot to call my name so I sat in the consulate visa appointment room for about 45 minutes before they asked me if I’ve been assisted. So glad to be getting home before the sunsets, especially with this 90+ degree heatwave. Sunsets in Virginia are gorgeous and I’m hoping to capture one where the sun isn’t glaring directly into my camera. How google images brings up these gorgeous mountain sunset pictures is beyond me. Here’s the best one I’ve been able to take thus far. Enjoy!