Andrew's here!!

Found him!!

We spent some time in Paris and now we're in Capbreton. It's really nice to have him here. AND he's eaten things. Everything's pretty much been some variety of ham and cheese for him, but hey, he's found something. And the hamburgers are edible!

We got some good pictures in Paris, so he'll be putting those up when he gets home. Yay!

la sncf == sorry andrew

carolyn's train is delayed at list two hours
if you read this, buy a calling card and call me

temps de merde, quoi!

Everybody's been cooped up inside the past couple days as the sky has mercilessly hammered the region with wind and rain. Not a big fan. Andrew is coming soon, and, by the way, eight AM is not a convenient time for me to be in Paris!!!!! I'm thinking I might make him get on a train and meet me in Bordeaux and then we'll have our Paris adventure at the end of the week instead of the beginning. I wonder what he thinks of that....

100 days before the Bac...

This is my last day at school, but it is definately eclipsed by the fact that the seniors are all dressed up....as chickens, Native Americans, candy bars, Robin Hood, n'importe quoi. 100 days from now they will take the big test that determines whether or not they have the future they want or not. It's kind of the equivalent of the ACT/SATs, except everyone takes one form or another of it and it decides whether or not they graduate high school. If they don't pass this test, many of them will come back for a second year senoir year or they will not have the option to pursue certain tracts of higher learning. Sooooo, this is kind of the last day for the next hundred days that they get to play around, supposedly now the studying begins.

I've got to clean the apartment today before 3:30, That's what, a good five and a half hours from now? I should be fine. Maybe.

Last week of classes

As the title of this entry suggests, this is my last week in Aire sur l'Adour! I'm gonna miss the guys, but not so much that I want to stick around and teach for free.....

It was really cute when one of my students offered me bisous on the last day of class, something usually not given to teachers (bisous= those little kisses on the cheek French people use to say hello and goodbye).

What happens on strike days....

Thursday, the students were on strike to protest this whole teacher reduction measure that Sarkozy has taken. The only class where there weren't enough students to hold class was at 8AM. Funny how that works. However, the highschoolers seemed to take this as an opportunity to be hooligans. They smashed in fire alarms and fflipped off the switch for the electricity trying to get everyone to participate. Sigh. My students are in a post-highschool degree program, so for the most part they did not participate in the strike, and they were very annoyed to be disturbed by the younger kids banging on doors in the hallway. These older students only have a few classes left before they take their big exams that will determine whether or not they will get their diplomas.

Lourdes, HEAVY!

This week, I drove down to Lourdes to visit a friend in the hospital there. Seeing as though he was alternating between states of excrutiating pain and disorientation from morphine, I thought it would be highly inappropriate not to commemorate April Fools Day. So, I kept calling him along the way telling him I was getting more and more hopelessly lost making him explain to me what would be the way back to the right roads. I am thoroughly impressed with his knowledge of the region. Walking down his hospital hallway, I told him I was in Tarbes. It was a relief for him when I walked through the door and he didn't have to give me any more directions. Hahahaha.