day is a-breakin' in my soul

this is my life. sitting outside at cafes drinking tiny espressos

Another week has flown away since my last entry. Teaching gets a tiny bit easier every time, though many of my students reaaaally try my patience. Also I keep getting mistaken for a high school student. This only happens at Rascol, which I don't understand. For example, yesterday I was dropping of my attendance sheet in the "salle des professors," or teacher's lounge, and two teachers came up to me and were like, "what do you think you're doing in the teacher's room, mademoiselle?" And, since this has happened several times before, I'm pretty sure I gave them quite a steely look and told them that I was the English assistant, to which they apologized and said it's only because "you're just very young." Bah! I guess it's understandable because actually many of the students at Rascol are my age (some are even older) because of the weird French education system. But still, it annoys the heck out of me.

The other night, I went with Brent and his roommates to an "international dinner" at the university here. It was incredibly silly, but really cool because I met a lot of French folks my age, including a girl who plays folk music...I am going to try to twist her arm into trying to play some music with me. Gosh I hope that happens! There was a lot of karaoke (why do French people love karaoke so much?), and I felt pretty overwhelmed and intimidated and like my French wasn't very good, etc etc. But Brent is super at ease socially with French people our age since he spent a year at a French high school in Paris, so he breaks the ice most of the time. He also is always looking for a joke to make, which for some reason makes all of them (especially all the girls) just love him. Haha. I really like his roommates and their friends...Samira, who I told you is from Rennes, wants me to go there with her and meet her family and whatnot. She is a sweetheart!

I have two more classes to teach until vacation! I can't believe we already have a vacation. It is completely absurd. I am going to Spain, to the basque country. So excited! It's been a while since I've traveled like this, so I gotta put on my travelin' boots and try to remember how to thumb my way across Europe.

I am still discovering Albi...I find new sweet things every day. Thank goodness I have a bike...it makes my life so much easier. I love being able to get around on a bike and walk when I feel like walking. Kat and I decided that one day we want to try to walk from one end of Albi to the other...because it is entirely possible to do that. It would take a pretty long time, but it's just funny to me that we would even think of doing that in the first place. My students ask me sometimes if I think Albi is too small, but I really think it's just right for me right now. And we are not far from Toulouse, which is a huge city.

It's cold out today! Yesterday we had our first real rainy day here. I came downstairs wearing a scarf and my rain jacket and Mino (our resident grandma) asked me if it was cold out. I said that I thought so and that also it was raining. She looked outside and said, "oh! ca y est! c'est l'hiver maintenant." Translation: "well, that's it. it's winter now." I thought that was very funny of her to say that. But it was warm and beautiful until two days ago, so I can't complain at all. I've been spending my free time reading, knitting, and writing songs (or at least trying to). At this rate I'll go through a record number of books (for me) by the time I leave here. My brain is just buzzing with new things in French, melodies, and thoughts on spirituality. I wish I had this much time to be introspective in the States...

I have had my fair share of homesickness lately. I miss my beautiful community in Greensboro. (I miss you too, mom ;)  )
I still feel near to them though, even all the way in France. It has been nearly a month since I got here. Wild!

promenading

First real week of work. I still have two more classes to teach tomorrow, and then it will be over. It has been quite an interesting week. Turns out I don't know what I'm doing. Ha. My first day was absolutely ridiculous. I had my first class at Rascol at 8am. I was afraid because the students I had met before from Rascol were really rude etc (as I mentioned before), but this was a different group. They were all about my age and were studying accounting instead of high school...or after. I don't know, the system here is super confusing. Anyway, they were fairly pleasant to teach, so that was a nice surprise. After, I went to Bellevue and waited an hour for my next class, and when I got to the classroom there was no one there. Turns out there was a miscommunication between the teacher, the students, and me. Big surprise. My later students who were supposed to be good at English were very frustrating, lazy, and disrespectful. There were only 6 of them, but they kept just talking amongst themselves in French, and finally I got so frustrated with this one guy that I said, "I can understand you, you know." I think he was thoroughly embarrassed. Well, good. Then my last group of students was a group of girls, and we didn't have a classroom to use (they have changed my rooms about 5 times since I started) so we just had class outside. The next day I got to school and right before my class was supposed to start, I was told that my classroom was occupied, so I couldn't use it. Well, ok. Then there was a fire drill, so that took up about 20 minutes of my class time. And then, since I no longer had a classroom, I had to share with the other English assistant, Stephanie. So we just put our students in the same classroom and did a team class. It was fine, just bizarre. Every day so far has been equally weird. Some of my students are great, and some are extremely difficult. The boys that I wrote about before were actually probably my best group of students so far. They asked questions and participated and seemed genuinely interested, which was just very surprising to me.  In any case, I am going to have to be pretty creative with my students in order to get them to participate.Yesterday afternoon Brent and I went to Toulouse, just because we could. I love doing things like that. It only takes an hour to get there on a train, so we just went to explore.

It was fun, and I bought some cheap hiking shoes so I can do a bit of that on my vacations to come. The only thing about the trip that wasn't great was the fact that our train back was cancelled because of some problem in between Toulouse and Albi. So we had to wait around for two hours, then take a bus which took a lot longer. So I didn't get home til about 1 am. Good thing I didn't have classes to teach this morning.

It is so lovely here! The sun is still out, which surprises me, because this is France. But it is the south of France :)   Autumn is going to be just wonderful. It's not fall in North Carolina, but I guess it will do.

a little rugby with my coffee

Sorry I haven't been writing much, it's just hard for me to be motivated to post when I can't show pictures. Soon!
This morning at 9:30 I went to a local Irish pub (O'Sullivan's) to watch the France v. England rugby match. In case you didn't know, this is the rugby world cup. It's being held in New Zealand, which is why we had to watch it early in the morning. Not that I really know anything about rugby. But I probably should start learning. Anyway this match was a pretty big deal, and France kicked England's butt, and the entire pub sang the French national anthem at the end of the game. Our friend Neill, who is English, was not too pleased and spent most of the match with his mouth shut. Haha.

Yesterday Brent moved into his house finally, so I got to meet his roommates. He lives with two French girls who are also new to Albi because they just started a masters program here. They are both super nice...one of them is from Rennes (well actually she's from Morocco, but she grew up in Rennes), so we spent some time talking about that. Then she told me that she studied abroad in Oklahoma (random) but that she had wanted to do an exchange at UNCG. Too weird! Thennn she freaked out when I told her I'm from Charleston because she went there during her study abroad to do some volunteer work and she fell in love with it. Anyway, it was really nice to meet some French folks my age. And his other roommate, Dominique, came with us to the rugby game and then we all went to the market together afterward.

There is too much paperwork in France. I can't keep track of it all. I have paperwork coming out of my ears. You have to fill out a thousand forms to do anything here. I just went through the process of opening a French bank account and....let me just say, it wasn't fun. I have visa paperwork, paperwork for each of my schools, paperwork for everything. Oh lordy.

 I'm starting to get nervous about work this week. The teachers have not been the best about communicating with me (well, some have and some haven't). I just got my schedule from Rascol yesterday, and now the head of the English department is telling me that I'm basically subbing for him on Tuesday because he won't be there. This is absurd for several reasons. One: it's my first day. Two: I'm technically not supposed to have to deal with a class that big...normally we would at least split the class in half (there are about 30 of them). Three: they are all teenage boys who couldn't care less about English. I'm kind of pissed about it, but I guess the worst thing that could happen is that I don't succeed at teaching them anything, which wouldn't be my fault. Also, originally I was told that I wouldn't have any classes on Wednesdays or Thursdays, which is sweet, but now I have one class on Wednesday in the middle of the day, which makes it impossible to do anything. You probably think it's absurd that I'm complaining about this considering I still have Thursdays off, but a lot of people don't work on Wednesdays because elementary school kids don't have school on Wednesdays and high school kids don't have classes on Wednesday afternoon. But it's fine. I will have plenty of weekend adventures.

For now I am very much enjoying myself. The first week of work will be stressful, but once I get into the routine I think things will be just great. I'm starting to love Albi, and I have so many opportunities to travel that I don't think I will ever get too bored. And speaking French every day is always an adventure, of course. Let the adventures begin!

hard at work

Still unable to upload pictures. Sorry! Soon there will just be an abundance of them for ya. So today was my first day of work. Well, "work." It lasted about 45 minutes. I've been trying to email anybody and everybody to figure out what my schedule is, and received nothing until yesterday, when I got an email from one teacher telling me to be at Bellevue at 12:30 today to meet with her. So I did that, and found out some useful and interesting information. She is a very tiny, somewhat scatterbrained lady who didn't seem to really know what was going on either because apparently they change classrooms every day. EVERY SINGLE DAY. Goodness gracious, why would anyone think that is a good idea??? Anyway, the more important things I learned: First thing: everyone except me has my schedule. The directrice "forgot" to send it to me. Great. Still don't have it! Whatever. Second thing: the teacher was expecting someone from England, so I think she was kinda disappointed that she got stuck with an American. Well, tant pis, madame! Can't help it.

The other things I learned were significantly more positive. I know that at least with her students, I will be leading discussion with small groups of 5 or 6 students at a time in a separate classroom. Half of the students are in terminal, that is they are in their last year of high school, and they are pretty good at English, so discussion I think will be pretty interesting with them. The other half are post-bac, have already graduated, and are taking intensive courses for two years. They are not as good at English as they are supposed to be, but they are super motivated apparently. This is great news to me because it means I have mostly older students, at least at Bellevue.

So then I met one of the groups of students (there are about 30 of them) and they asked me questions about where I'm from, etc. They're kinda shy, and more than half of them showed up late, but they're in high school, so that's to be expected.

So I have no idea what the rest of my week will look like, aside from the fact that I'm going to Toulouse on Wednesday for an orientation day. I can't let the French way of organizing things get to me already. Gotta just take it in stride.

Last night I made dinner for the family, and one of the other assistants, Brent, came over and we all ate together and had good discussion of the differences between our two languages. It's a good thing the French are all language nerds, because I love talking about it. We keep a giant French dictionary and thesaurus on our kitchen counter at all times. And Micka references it at least twice a day. It's great.

We have Australians staying in the house right now, so I've been somewhat of a translator the past couple of days. For the first two days they were here, they thought I was Micka and Corrinne's daughter and just happened to speak excellent English. Funny.

Anyway. I'm going to start planning my first vacation because believe it or not, it's coming up. Haha. So ridiculous.

a plus !