Tuesday, October 6, 2009

October 5, 2009

Today is Monday in france and like Sunday nothing is open. At least all the banks, little stores and most bakeries are closed. The big stores like Carrefour and ED are still open. It’s frustrating for me because I try to spread out my tasks throughout the week but I can’t really because things are truly only open Tuesday to Friday. In addition, everything pretty much shuts down between 12 and 2, sometimes even 3! I get used to it again but for now I’m still thinking American- life of the 24 hour store.

Classes are great. I have 9 out of the 12 hours I’m supposed to work all settled. I’m still waiting for M. C to get his act together. So far he hasn’t really impressed me so as far as I’m concerned I don’t really care to go the extra mile for him. (I do a lot of extra stuff for all my teachers like getting penpals for the U.S together for two classes, I’m tutoring one of the high school teachers with Beatrice, and I plan to do whatever they ask me to!) I met M. C once and he was very rude. He was making copies and Mme H introduced me to him and he acted like we were ruining his day. You’d think he’d be excited to have a natural English speaker for his students (as I would be of a french speaker) but he clearly was not. (Insert mean word).

The smell is gone in the apartment! One of the workers for the lycée came today to fix the awful smell and it was gone within the hour. Yay for M. mysterious-worker-who-comes-to-fix-the-apartment!

Today was a gorgeous day again. I think I brought the sun with me (I’m serious) because when I was in Toronto we have 20+ days of no rain and then I came to the U.S. right before I left and there was no rain and now there is no rain here. (Although it rained one day so far at night only.) Amazing! Quelle chance!!!

In case you were wondering about the sick feelings I had – they no longer exist. I’m 100% better. I think it was the stress of the traveling and moving to another country again. Or it could have been the peanuts. Lmao. I’ll have to keep those things in mind for the wedding/honeymoon so I don’t get a flare-up then.

Speaking of the wedding planning. Boo. This is so hard to do from here! At least most of the big things are done. I been looking and looking for my bridesmaid’s gifts here because I want it to be something cool from Europe but alas the lozere region pretty much sucks. I’m going to look in Belgium when I’m there for La Toussaint (end of oct break).

I’m excited for the assistant’s meeting on Friday. I get to go to Montpellier (the only place I don’t have a postcard from that I’ve been to already) and I get to meet all 170 other English assistants in my academie.That doesn’t mean I’ll ever see them again because the academie of Montpellier is actually pretty large in comparison to others like lille or rouen. There are only three assistants like me in the lozere department and St. Chely is actually the northern most city in the department of the lozere being the northern most department in the academie. Basically that means I’m in the boondocks. It’s a lot like Michigan here so I can relate. The only thing that is different is that I’m at about 1000 meters above sea level maybe more. The trees are relatively the same and the air feels clean like when I’m camping with my parents. One can really breathe here. There are farms and cows everywhere though. I got within 10 feet of a huge heard of cows yesterday at Mme H’s house. SO COOL! They were wild/grazing unlike the corporate farms of America so it was way different and I didn’t want to get too close.

I miss you all! Have the people from Clarkston gotten their postcards yet? I have yet to send the Ann Arbor ones…..the post office is open at weird times and I ran out of stamps!

A la prochaine mes amis!

2 comments:

  1. Kyle and I have both gotten our postcards! How do you phonetically pronounce the city you are in? lol I try to tell people when they ask...but do not know where to begin... How many times are you going to Belgium?

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  2. I saw a purple dress in the window display of Manoukian while I was in Metz yesterday and thought of your wedding planning-ness. lol.

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