Photos of the apartment! Finally!

Just going to start right off the bat with photos:

Walking up the street toward my street (which is on the right).

This is my street, with a big fancy sign and everything! They haven't lit up the Christmas lights yet, but they are everywhere and I think the city will be really pretty in a few weeks when they turn them all on. My street is just for pedestrians and is lined with little shops.

The street again. There are tables in the street today because there is a city-wide food festival of some sort for the whole weekend, so people are selling food/goods in the road like a mini-market. Tomorrow will probably be crazy with the real market and the food festival.

The door to my apartment. I'm on the "second floor" (which is third floor in English) - so not the windows that are covered, but the ones above those that you can barely see.

Living room - still in need of a rug! But I'm choosing to wait for my next paycheck before I buy a rug. Bathroom is on the left but it's not exciting enough to take a picture of... There are decorations on the walls to the right and behind me, you just can't see them

Kitchen - tiny washing machine to the right of the sink (which only kind of works), and stove - which I have to light with a lighter.

Bedroom - I hung my scarves on the wall to bring some more color to it. I also only have a twin-sized blanket for the bed, but a teacher at the school is going to let me borrow some linens next week so hopefully I'll have better bed stuff after that.

Two big windows, which are great. There's also a closet that was behind me when I took this picture.

It's a start, the apartment. I want to get a few more things, but a few teachers and the mother of the children I'm tutoring told me that they will let me borrow stuff. So next week I will have a few more things to spruce the place up. It still doesn't feel all that homey, but it's okay. And Marina is only a block or so away, so I can just wander over there.

Speaking of the kids I'm going to tutor, I'm actually tutoring their mother as well. She decided that she wanted English lessons too, and of course I said yes! We did a lesson yesterday; I gave her some exercises from an English book I found and we went through an article from the Washington Post. She said it was exactly what she needed and that she'd like to continue like that. So that's great! She's very nice, and I enjoyed working with her. I'll tutor the kids on Tuesdays - it's her two children and their friends, so I think we'll start by playing some games and next month looking at Christmas carols and stuff. I have a little planning to do for Tuesday, but I have plenty of time this weekend to do so.

Classes at the school went okay this week, too. The first day I didn't have quite enough material and had extra time at the end of the class, but now I just know for the next time to prepare a little more. I did have one class that went really well (it was about French/American stereotypes) and the students were really interested in it. I'm going to use that lesson with some of my other classes next week. With some of the younger students I'm going to talk about Thanksgiving. And one of the classes asked if we could talk about sports for a lesson - I'm definitely game for that! (Pun intended.)

I'm without a phone and internet temporarily...but that is a whole other story. Hopefully I'll get it all worked out soon!

Happy Friday - bon vendredi! 

(And to my Lyon girls: bon vindredi!!)