Musician Land

So, my friend that I've been staying with is an actual, real life, professional musician. All of his friends are musicians, too. I've been hanging out with the first violin for the National Orchestra in Lorraine, the featured cello soloist for a the Elysée Parisian Concert hall, instructors from the Music Conservatory in Lyon, etc. I feel a little out of my league!!! Meanwhile, my friend (Charles) has been practicing for the opera he plays piano for in Saint Etienne. He memorized his pieces after practicing for two hours....

Last night Charles and I were invited to the home of one of his students for dinner. They are American ex-pats who have been here for 10 years. It was kind of like being in a movie with those ivy league families who wear turtlenecks and offer you scotch, brandy, or cognac in front of their marble fireplace before serving you a 5 course meal. Oh, wait, that's exactly what it was. They were wonderful people with a love for music, and they were so welcoming! After they put the two youngest children to bed, the dad said to me, "If you ever wanted to be a nanny, Clemence (the 7 year old daughter) wants you to be her nanny really badly!" I think he was kidding, but it did kind of make me start thinking about what I'm going to do come May when I'm unemployed...

Tonight I'm meeting up with some English assistants in Lyon as Charles rehearses with the opera, so this will be the first night where I'll have to navigate the bus system...I'm a little nervous!!! If you don't hear from me again, you can assume I'm riding endless circles on the public transportation system in Lyon!

I'm in Lyon

Happy All Saints everybody! For a secular country, they sure do like to take long religious vacations! Right now, I'm in the middle of a 12 day break so I've taken off to my old stomping grounds in Lyon. I'm staying with a friend I've kept in contact with, but I'll probably be meeting up with some other assistants in the area and possibly seeing one of my SAI sisters who is living in SE Germany. Yay!

Thursday night, I went bowling with one of my classes, and it turns out I'm bad at it here, too. I got a 58 I think.....

This is Bordeaux! Isn't it pretty? The guy in the picture is Laurent, his family was nice enough to let me stay with them for free this weekend. No cause for alarm Mom, I'm not finding a French husband, please don't ask. And Sheryl, I promise he is not sinister! The fountain has been tainted pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the other things are a small sampling of how Bordeaux looks EVERYWHERE, and the last picture is of two other language assistants, Shannon and Ciera, who I hung out with for most of the weekend.

Bordeaux again

This weekend I got toted to Bordeaux and I stayed with a French family. It is so nice! the dinner was yummy as usual, and I got to meet up with other assistants in the city. I went around taking pictures yesterday, I'll get them up one of these days. At night, we watched the Rugby World Cup Final. It is a game I really do not understand, but French people sure do love it in the Southwest!

My friend who brought me here has a hockey game today, so I'll go to that today, which is another game I will not understand!

More teaching

Yesterday, I had my first classes that didn't go so well. They were a group of gentlmen who really, really did not understand a single word I said. I must admit it was a little discouraging, and it made for a long hour!

Fortunately, today went much better as my class was very responsive and it was a good time again! Today, they gave me all their nicknames...some were perhaps better left to themselves...I don't think they realized certain terms were nearly the same in English.

There is a foreign exchange student here from Arizona, and I have heard that she is very discouraged because she barely speaks any French. I had a class with her the other day, so it was nice to have a default person who could speak when the rest of the class didn't understand something, and I think she appreciated having an American around, too!

Pictures!

The house belongs to Christine, the English teacher who takes care of me. The picture with the sky is over looking the town of Aire sur L'Adour, and the building on the right side of this photo is where I live. You can see the big wooden doors that open into a courtyard which is the next picture, taken from my room.

Above is a picture of the Corses Landaises (not sure of this spelling, I've only heard it pronounced) that I saw on Saturday. It is NOT bullfighting, but rather a sport where the bulls charge one man at a time, and he gets points for letting the bull come as close as possible. To the right, is a picture of me in my new barret that one of the English teachers gave me on Saturday!

Teach, teach, teach

Yesterday I had my first time in front of the classroom by myself. It was a class entirely composed of 20ish year old boys who don't care at all about English, so you could say I was nervous! I had a lesson plan, but my biggest strategy was simply to not let them smell my fear! It actually went well and I had a lot of fun with them.

I am really loving this job, as I'm getting paid to talk my 'peers' (even though I'm their teacher) in France. How much better can it get?

Last night one of my neighbors came over for a chat. He wanted to speak English, so a conversation that would have lasted about an hour between native speakers turned into about 3 hours. You could say I'm learning patience. It was nice to have a visitor.

All evening long, there was a lot of ruckus in the hallway, being Thursday night and all. But around midnight, there was a commotion outside my door, and I could hear "Don't wake up Caroline!" I wasn't sleeping, so I went out to see what was going on, and apparently one of my neighbors from the floor below had decided to return to his room by pushing himself on his back down the hallway and had bumped his head on my door frame. He had a couple of his friends kinda kicking at him trying to get him to stand up. Ahhhh, college.

Today the students asked me how my Thursday night was, so I'm guessing they've heard about it. *sigh*

Oh, those crazy French!

This weekend included the town prostitute, being homeless, and being transported to a 3rd world country. Ask me about it if you want to know more...

Hard labor in France

Right now, I'm scheduled for 9 hours of work per week. I've got it tough.

I love socialism

On Monday, a nice teacher gave me a tv. This was great, but what was probably the most exciting thing about this was that he told me about free French as a Second Language classes, and they meet right across from where I live. Parfait! Since I don't have a roomate to speak with, this will really help me. Just think, I spent thousands of dollars to learn French at school, and it seems all I had to do was move to France and they'd teach it to me for free!

I have also been thinking about how good to me people have been to me so far. I realized that since I've been here, I haven't spent more than two consecutive nights in one place. This is because there have been various people putting me up and feeding me. This is how it's been so far:
Sept 20: Crappy hotel which had torn out the hotel listings in the yellow pagers in burb of Bordeaux
Sept 21-22: Hotel IBIS in Bordeaux Centre
Sept 23: Stay for free with one of the assistants in Bordeaux, he feeds me
Sept 24-25: Stay for free with Christine, one of the English teachers. She feeds me.
Sept 26-27: Move in with the boys at the dorm. I feed me. Poorly.
Sept 28-29: Stay with Christine again. She feeds me and takes me for an afternoon in Pau
Sept 30-Oct 1: Stay in my cell (which I rather like)
Oct 2-3: Stay with a teacher named Lucrèce in Pau so I could go to Dax for orientation on Wednesay
October: Today. Wow, that was nearly two weeks heavily sprinkled with free lodging and French cooking. Happy, happy, happy!

Going to Dax was nice. The meetings were boring, but we got our universay healthcare taken care of :-) and I got to meet a lot of the other assistants in the area. However, for the way back, the SNCF (trains) went on a surprise strike. Welcome to France. But, once again, I was fortunate to benefit from the benevolence of another assistant. This time it was the Portuguese language assistant who is French but of Portuguese heritage who was conveniently driving back to Pau. So, despite France's best effort to keep me stranded in Dax, I got a ride home(ish)!

Hopefully pretty soon my housing allowance will go through. Ahhh, welcome to France.

Life at the zoo...

This last weekend was quite a pleasant one. I spent it with Christine who is kind of in charge of me. On Saturday we went down to Pau where the Pyrenees seem to be a stone throw's away. Christine's got two boys of her own- one is 11 and the other is 19, and then she's got a gentleman friend who has twin 6 year old daughters. I must say, the twins were so cute! They would babble on in French (of course) and at first I couldn't make out half of what they said, but I would say "ohhhh," or "ah ha" and smile and nod and that was enough for them!

One observation I made is that 6 year old girls are kind of like squirrels. They run around with no apparent destination and jump out in front of cars. The main difference is that little girls have adults who keep them safe, where as squirrels have really reached the end of the line.

Yesterday I went for a run around the soccer fields near my dorm, and a young boy decided it would be fun to take occasional breaks from the skate park and ride his bike alongside me and yell, "Allez! Allez! Vite, vite!" (Let's go, let's go! Faster, faster!) Thanks Pierre, like I need someone telling me I run slowly! I already know that!