Halfway through the week already!?

It's hard to believe it's Wednesday night!

It's a bad habit I've fallen into skipping posting here. It makes family and friends tell me that I forgot to write anything, and it makes me feel like, later on down the road, I'll be kicking myself for not remembering the fun things that happened on Tuesday, November 12, 2010. Of course, with that mentality, I should be kicking myself for not writing down something in a journal every day since I knew how to write, and I don't really do that, so maybe my current almost-every-day schedule actually works just fine.

Yesterday (Tuesday), I had my first class. I had not met this professor, but I had heard that she had an English class at 14h00, or 2:00 p.m. So, dutifully, I went on over to College Campra, the junior high where 3 of my 12 hours of work are scheduled, and after inquiring at several different offices, I loitered around the doorway to her 2:00 classroom getting all sorts of funny looks from the students until Mme. Renault showed up.

Mme. Renault is a nice lady and an excellent teacher. She seemed glad that I had shown up, which pleased me since I was glad that SHE showed up since there was a general strike in France and all. The class in which I will be working is a "European" class, which is mildly akin to our honors track. These junior high kids attend 2 extra hours a week of class and are expected to pass English proficiency exams before advancing into lycée, or high school. The whole group was very bright, but my unfamiliar presence paired with their instruction to ask me questions made them very, very quiet. I suspect that isn't the actual nature of the class.

One of the students asked me if I had already started working, and I responded with, "I would have started last week, but I was sick, so I couldn't." which turned into a 25 or so minute less on the past perfect tense. During that time, I got to sneak a peek at the English textbook that they use, which is really entertaining to me, since I'm accustomed to seeing similar ones with all of the speech bubbles in simple French and stuff.

After that, Mme. Renault decided to play a game with them. We split the group into two teams and filled a basket up with names of movies that they were familiar with. (On a side note: It's really interesting how many American films they have compared to how many French or generally foreign films we have. I believe that Hollywood produces many MANY more films than any other venue, with the potential exception of Bollywood in India.) After they were split into teams, each team drew a movie, and then they had 5 yes/no questions and 5 "real answer" questions to ask in order to figure out the title of the movie. They were penalized for speaking French or being disruptive, and both teams got several "talking in French" penalties. It was fun, though, and I stayed the whole two hours even though I will usually only stay for one.

I came home around 4 and we ate at the canteen. The food's not horrible, but I would rather pay a few dollars more to get good food instead of not horrible food in town. That said, I prefer to eat with people over eating alone, so I'm happy to go with them.

Once we had finished dinner, we went to Madeline's studio apartment to play Uno. Now, there are people I know who play Uno a lot, who play Uno by the rules, and who completely make up their own rules to Uno. I have never really been solid on the rules, so I read the packet that came in the deck of cards. I'll spare the gory details of the round and suffice it to say that I didn't win, that I can remember. We then played 9 holes of golf, the card game (kind of like "spaceballs, the toilet paper"), and I didn't win it either. It's a great game, though.

I thought that I was going to have to go back to Campra this morning to meet with the class I would have met with on Monday (but missed because of the seminar in Marseille), but I got an email from Mme. Rouny, the teacher, saying to come next Monday prepared to answer questions about myself and to talk about Halloween. If you have anything I should tell them about halloween (in simple English), I would definitely appreciate suggestions!

So I didn't end up getting up really early this morning. I slept in a bit, for which I feel no remorse since I'm still having times when I feel rather sick, and then met Michelle in town for lunch. We stopped at a crêpe stand where we both intended to order our food. She walked across the street to the Casino (which is like a small supermarket) to get two bottles of water and while she was gone I ordered my crêpe and waited for the people in front of me to finish.

Now, if you don't think that we need some germs in our lives, you might not want to read this paragraph. The fairly small, seemingly very young asian woman working at the crêpe stand would have failed a health inspection in the States (or at least in Mississippi). While I was watching her make these crêpes, she dropped a knife/spreader onto the floor behind the counter, picked it up, and used it; she handled money and went back to crêpe making without washing her hands, and she worked on other people's food with no gloves. It was one of those instances where you'd rather just not know what had happened. When Michelle got back, she would have ordered a crêpe, but the lady completely ignored her. It was as if my single crepe was enough to keep her busy until new customers came up. So, I paid my 3€50 (instead of just walking off, which I considered doing), thanked her, and went with Michelle to get "Pâtes à Emporter," or "Pasta to go."

We sat at the crêpe stand and ate our lunch, and after several minutes a man came up to me at said, "Excuse me, but I need to go up there." Mildly bewildered, as there was nowhere to "go up" and nothing to show me (the verbs "monter" = to go up and "montrer" = to show sound very similar), I stood up from my chair and watch, highly entertained, as he scaled the wall behind me by clinging to a couple of pipes. He seemed to be an electrician of sorts, and when Michelle said, "They don't seem to have ladders in France," I laughed.

There were no fatal accidents resulting in the electrician climbing on pipes, although the pipes did not seem to be well bolted in to the walls. One of the two pipes to which he clung seemed to have been pulled out of the wall via much the same kind of force. Michelle and I left before we saw any injuries and went to Florence's apartment where Florence (who's canadian), Sven (who's German), and Courtney (who's American) were waiting for us to go to the bank.

Now, most of us had gotten letters in the mail from our bank, and they told us that our debit cards were available for pickup. Out the 20 minutes from town we drove. We picked up our bank cards without incident and came back home. On that trip, I realized again that France makes me thirsty. I feel like I'm never drinking enough water here and I don't really know why. I go through some massive (1L) bottles.

When we got back to the Rotonde (a cool place to look up on google maps if you haven't already), I decided to head home and get my "attestation de logement" or "proof of lodging" from one of the school secretaries. I got distracted in my normal fashion and wrote out a list of websites that we want unblocked from our internet to take to the proviseur (headmaster). Three of us, Chris, Lucy, and I, went to see the proviseur, but since it was Wednesday afternoon, no one was on campus. No one has school on Wednesday afternoon, so no one was in. That means that I have to get my "attestation de logement" tomorrow morning before I head to Marseille for my medical exam or I'll have to ride back down there again later. Cross your fingers that Mme. Yserte is in her office at 8 tomorrow!

I came back home and fiddled around on the computer for a bit. The opportunities to talk to you people over there are so limited that when I catch someone online, I try to stay around. So I was in the middle of a conversation with Jason, and Chris asked me if I wanted to go find an internet café so that he could download something from a site that was blocked through our school. Assuming I would be able to get right back online, I told Jason that I would be back online as soon as I hooked in to the café's internet.

So we walked down to Eqwi, the internet café we've been frequenting since day one and, needless to say, my computer wouldn't connect AT ALL to their wifi. I have no idea why or what happened or anything, but it would not go. So, I walked across the street to the petit Casino, got ingredients to make Cream of Mushroom soup at Michelle's place, and went toward Cezanne, her lycée.

Michelle, Rougina, and Cecilia (and now a Russian girl named Elvira who was asleep most of the evening and will probably be jet-lagged very badly in the morning, but who seems very sweet) live in Cezanne. Their lodgings are considerably nicer than ours, they have a kitchen and a common room that consists of more than a hallway, they pay about half of what we pay in rent, and they have a washing machine in their apartment. So, I went there to cook. I burned my soup, which distressed me greatly; I haven't done that before, but before I burned my soup we had quite an adventure trying to find flour. I forgot to pick it up from the Casino, and Michelle couldn't find it when she went next door to the Intermarché (supermarket) to get cheese and wine, so we called Chris to see where he was and if he would turn around go get flour. About the same time, I decided to walk back over to the intermarché because surely a supermarket carries flour. They must, right?

So, I got there, found the flour, bought fennel seeds instead of tarragon (I can call that a translation error, right?) and came back home before Chris was able to turn around and make it up to Cezanne. I think he was mildly miffed. And then I burned the soup, which really annoyed me but didn't seem to bother the others all that much. I thought it should have tasted so much better! But the oven was poor and the pot was questionable, and I probably did something wrong (aside from adding fennel instead of terragon).

It was fun to get to hang out with friends, though, and I got told off for trying to do the dishes. I got tired pretty quickly and we came back home around 9:00. Now, I'm up too late again, and I have to get up early to go to Marseille.

I haven't finished getting my assigned classes, but I'll post my weekly class schedule. That'll give you a sense of where I am when you're asleep.

I got a very nice email from Michael updating me about what's going on with him, and I get regular emails from Grandma and Mom. I am interested in what's going on over there, so if you feel like dropping me a line, please feel invited!