Catching up

I know I’ve been shirking the blog posts, but I finally have a form of wifi that I can use, so I'll try to be better now!

The most important thing to share is that I’m pretty sure I’ve found an apartment. I say “pretty sure” because I’m afraid to declare that I have and that have something go wrong. Again. The apartment that Marina and I desperately wanted is a no-go. The agency where we went did exactly nothing for a full week, finally called the owner of the apartment after we hassled them, only to tell us that the owner wants to sell the place so he doesn’t need renters. We searched like crazy for another furnished apartment with two bedrooms – but couldn’t find anything. We ended up looking at one bedrooms and studios and, lo and behold, we managed to find a few. We snatched up the first two we visited because they’re in the center of town and are decently-sized and -priced. This afternoon I’m meeting the owner to sign papers.

The only reason I don’t sound overly-excited is because I’m trying to be cautious – just in case something goes wrong. There should be no reason that it does, but I don’t want to get excited until I’ve signed me name and paid a security deposit. The owner is very nice, however, and didn’t get frustrated when he called my cell number and I asked if I could pass him over to Marina because she’s better at French than me (I still have a hard time with people over the phone) and then when he told us we could definitely take it she handed the phone back to me so I could confirm that I wanted the place and set up a time to go meet him and. There is a tenant in the apartment now, but he is supposed to be out by the end of the month, and there’s a chance he’ll move before then. It would definitely be preferable if I could get out of my room at the school before the end of the month! Marina confirmed her place as well, a few blocks from mine, and she will probably be able to move this weekend.

This is all good news – which I will celebrate more after I sign papers!

Oh – except one of the best things about the apartment is that it has a washing machine. Huge relief there. Did some laundry at a laundromat the other day and it stunk. The washing machine wouldn’t let me select cold water and the door locked on the machine so I couldn’t pull stuff out – and some kind of dye ran in the steaming hot water and ruined a bunch of my light-colored tops. May not sound too horrible, but it made me angry and wasn’t great on top of not feeling very happy. Plus it’s 4.50€ to use a washer, and 1€ for the dryer to work for seven minutes. (Note to France: seven minutes will not dry your jeans.) It will be nice to not pay that much for laundry, and to be able to hang my clothes in an apartment to dry.

I’m still adjusting to being here, and I’m definitely still in culture shock. I miss, well, pretty much everything about home. (Sundays are so horribly quiet and boring in this town; it’s quieter than most towns, according to French people we’ve talked to, because people all leave and go into the country. I’m also struggling without football. And I’m bummed I’m not getting to watch the Nats in the playoffs.) Moving to France is a totally different beast than taking a vacation to France. However I’m hoping once I get into an apartment and feel more settled in classes I’ll be able to appreciate it more.

Speaking of classes: I’m still observing classes and haven’t been required to come up with lessons yet. I don’t think I’ll ever feel prepared to do that, so one day I’ll just have to plan a lesson and go with it. But for now I still have time. There’s a wide variety of English levels amongst the students, so it won’t be a piece of cake trying to figure out what to do with them. I’m also not impressed with the way they behave in class; some classes (not all, but most) have kids in them that talk to one another throughout the entire class. The teachers have said that this is a huge problem, but that it’s a problem in French high schools, not just this one. It drives me insane! But I already know that I’m not here to change anyone’s life or force people to love learning English, so I’m just going to plan the most interesting lessons that I can and focus on the people who actually pay attention.

That’s hypothetical though. We’ll see how I actually do/how I actually feel the first week that I have to work with small groups and plan lessons.

I’ve been meaning to put up pictures of the school, so here are a few that I took the other day while everyone was in class. (I don’t want to be known as the weird language assistant who walks around with a camera.)

This is the outside of the main building.

This is the courtyard of the main building - pretty snazzy, eh?

There are several other buildings (I think five in total) so it's more like a campus than just a high school as you would think of it in America.

And here's my room - which I will hopefully be getting out of soon!

Next post will probably include pictures from this weekend's trip!! I'm so excited to do some traveling - and these dunes look really cool.

I just realized that I didn't mention this trip earlier. (I wrote most of this blog in a word document and then copied and pasted, so I don't really remember what I wrote. Plus I write lots of e-mails to people, so I can never remember who hears what.) I'm going to Bordeaux for the weekend (leaving tomorrow) with Katie, an American assistant in Perigueux. We're going to go out to these dunes on the coast of France during the day on Saturday, and then explore Bordeaux some Saturday night and Sunday. We are both itching to do something, so this will be a fun adventure for the weekend!