I don't remember how to blog

After being thoroughly confused by Blogger's new and "improved" settings, I've figured out how to reincarnate last summer's blog - with new colors and fonts! It may, however, take considerably longer before I remember what exactly I'm supposed to write about while blogging. I need to get readjusted to this concept of writing a summary of my current life and then shooting said summary out into cyberspace. Luckily, I have a jumping off point.

For those of you who don't know, on Wednesday, AKA today, I'll be moving to Périgueux, France (that's waaay down in the southwest of France, close to Bordeaux) for the next seven months to teach English/American culture in a French high school. I'm doing this program through the French government; basically the French Ministry of Education hires young people from the US, Spain, Germany, Italy, Australia, [insert country here] to come and work as assistant teachers in public schools all over France, both at the secondary level and the primary level. From here on out, I'll refer to it as TAPIF, the Teaching Assistant Program in France. (Didn't make that up - it came with that name.) We work alongside teachers of our respective languages to give a perspective on the cultures of our countries. It's a pretty sweet gig: 12 hours of work a week, a decent monthly stipend, vacation whenever the schools are off, and (in my case) free housing.

Now you know about as much about my job as I do, but after I start next Monday (and have orientation next Wednesday) I'll hopefully be able to tell you a heck of a lot more.

This link might also be useful for anyone who doesn't speak French - and even for people who do, because "Périgueux" is not the simplest word in the French language. And here's the link to the Wikipedia article itself. Hopefully that will tide everyone over until I get there myself and can go exploring. Assuming that I have better internet connection than I did in the Villemanzy last summer, the blog will actually include pictures this time around.

I fly from DC to Paris Wednesday evening with my friend from UVA, Karen, who is also doing TAPIF. She's in an even more French-sounding town, Villefranche-de-Rouergue, about two hours southeast(ish) of me. From there I'll hop on a train to Bordeaux and then transfer to one to Périgueux. Except I won't be hopping, I'll be lugging. It's not easy to cram seven months worth of stuff into three suitcases, something I've been learning over the last few days of packing. One suitcase is weighing in at a risky 49 lbs, a fact I know thanks to the luggage scale I've been searching for for a week and which, thanks to some karma gods smiling down on me for some reason, I found in a bag at the eleventh hour of my packing stress fest. I'd add a picture here to prove how efficiently I've packed but A. the suitcase that is still open would be putting my undergarments on display and B. my camera is packed in the depths of one of the three bags, so digging it out would ruin the efficient packing and defeat the whole point.

And, to be clear, it's more like two-and-a-half suitcases. Cause I'm just not going to count the small one as a full bag. It's not willingly that I'm not taking a single pair of high heels with me.