Aix-Marseille-Aix

This will probably be short, since I have a terrible headache and am about to head off to bed.

Today was quite a day! I was invited to sit in on a class at 11:00 this morning and learn how to use the Language Lab. (For a highly entertaining explanation of "Language Lab," check out Eddie Izzard's sketch on it. I would include a link, but alas, the internet problems have not entirely subsided, and I have no youtube access.) It was rather entertaining, actually. This class of 16 and 17 year old French students were researching "Famous Rebels" on Wikipedia (in English, Simple English, and French, but it was supposed to be in English). There were among their subjects such characters as MLK, Jr., Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Gandhi, Jane Fonda, Langston Hughues, and others.

But, we were there to learn how to make the computers work. Having "adults" try to explain computers and computer programs to me is comical, almost one hundred percent of the time. This lady, an English teacher, was trying to tell us how to make the lab program work. She was adamant that, if we didn't take notes, we would have no idea how to make it work when we came back, and that, because there was an IT guy working on some of the other computers in the room, we would need to go back Friday to see the rest of what she had actually already showed us. It is good to know how it all works, though.

After that, Chris and I went and ate at the canteen (cafeteria, whatever!). We're big kids now, so we get to eat in the "Salle à Manger des Profs" or "The Room Where the Profs. Eat." Even after a year, it's weird being on the other side! Chris, who is still a student at University in Bath finds it even odder than I do.

Right after lunch, I was sitting in my bedroom trying to make my internet work (with some success, although not as much as I would like), and I hear a screaming and some other loud non-human noises from outside my window. I looked out, and some kids about my age had dragged all the trash cans in sight out into the middle of the street and a crowd of bystanders were cheering them on. I don't know if they were demonstrating something, or what, but pretty soon, an older man got out of his car and - very patiently in my opinion - moved all of the trash cans back up onto the sidewalk, got back into his car, and drove off. When I left later, there were policemen all around the area. I'd be very interested to know what was going on.

So, after that, I went towards the bus station to meet Michelle. Tonight was a reception for all of the American assistants in the region at the home of the Consulate General in Marseille. The getting there was horrendous! We had high hopes of taking the train. We bought our tickets, sat on the platform for 15-20 minutes, got on the train (which was actually on the other side of the platform, despite what we had been told inside), sat for another 10-15 minutes before a man, I suspect the conductor, came over the intercom to tell us that the train had broken down and it would be an hour and a half before another one came.

So, up we hopped. Rushing back up towards town, we caught a bus, which deposited us in Marseille. It was slightly more expensive than the train, but it got us there in a timely manner. We also, miraculously in my opinion, got refunded for our train tickets.

Once in Marseille, we had quite a hike around the city trying to find the street corner where we were to meet the "Car" (Charter Bus) that would take us to the Consulate General's house. It was quite a trip, but eventually we got there. It's surprisingly easy to find a group of fifty or so Americans loitering on the streets in France.

So, we stood there for about 45 minutes waiting for M. Lopez-Palacios, the man we've been in email contact with for months now, to come and meet us and let us onto the bus. Eventually he did, and he and the two ladies that he was with stood outside in the street and gave us directions in the quiet French manner that none of us could hear. So, after playing telephone up and back through the crowd, we loaded onto the bus and they drove us through town about 15 minutes.

This place was magnificent! I got to see a really cool port, the Mediterranean sea, the Château D'If (although it was from a distance), and some pretty awesome homes built into the sides of the hills in Marseille. Dinner was superb; I ate too much. They even had chicken nuggets, go figure!

I am REALLY glad that I live in Aix en Provence and not Marseille, I must say. Marseille feels dirty and big and unforgiving, while Aix feels homey, sweet, and loving. Tomorrow and Thursday, I go back to Marseille for various things, and perhaps after that I'll have a slightly different report, but we'll see.

You Should, You Know, Send Me Stuff...

My computer is temporarily sort of working on the wifi in the "salle des profs," or teachers' lounge. I thought I'd post my address here so that if you find yourself inclined to send me letters, you'd know where to send them.

My address here is:

Lycees Vauvenargues
WAKEFIELD Lauren
60 Boulevard Carnot
13625 Aix en Provence

Cedex 1
FRANCE

I would love to get mail. I'm still having trouble getting internet, so if things are slow for the next couple of days, that's what's going on. Even the tech guy who spent about an hour trying to figure it out today to no avail. Hopefully things will improve.

I start working at College (Junior High) Campra next Monday, and this week I seem to have classes scheduled for Thursday and Friday at Vauvenargues, but we have meetings and seminar-things in Marseille three of the four days this week, so I'm not sure whether or not I'll be in those classes.

More as this week develops.

Typing on q French Keyboqrd

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This ,orning; I q, still hqving trouble zith the internet; so I q, in the teqcherùs roo, trying to use this silly French keyboqrd: Severql ) reqd; %,qny% ) of the keys qre in plqces they shouldnùt ,e:

Since I donùt think you zqnt to reqd posts like this; I zill hold off until I hqve internet in ,y roo, qnd cqn return to typing on ,y ozn ,ore nor,ql keyboqrd:

Thqnks for your pqtience:

Have Your Cake and Stuff.

I had the most wonderful meal since I have been in France this evening, and it only cost me 15€. It may, in fact, rival some of those “best I’ve ever had” meals, and it certainly tops most of those in recent memory. We intended to go to this little créperie in town that some of the others went to last weekend, but it was crammed full of people, and the host told us that we could put our names on the list for a table an hour or so later. So, we wandered on.

After passing a Tex-Mex, an Asian, and a Senegalese restaurant, we decided to try this small Provençal restaurant that had a “Menu” of an “Entrée” (or appetizer), a Plat (or entrée), and a Dessert for 15€. There were seven of us, and we got there at just the right time. We were seated, and then Hannah, an English Assistant from Virginia at Lycée Emile Zolà got a text from another assistant and excused herself so that Madeline didn’t have to eat alone.

What a mistake! Four of the six of us that remained ordered the Menu, and the others each had an Entrée (Appetizer) à la Carte. The photos I took of my food don’t even do it justice.

For my entrée, I ordered grilled red peppers with “Brousse Fraiche,” which is a kind of very mild French cheese that reminds me of the point at which heavy cream is just about to become butter. It had a vinegar reduction sauce on it that was perfect. It was certainly not overpowering, and it greatly enhanced the dish.

A thing you may have heard about the French, and this is true, is that meals take at least twice as long on the average as ours at home. It is really quite a treat to go out with friends and be able to spend time between courses chatting, thinking about how good the food we just ate was, and digesting enough to be prepared for the next course.

For my Plat (entrée), I had a duck dish that came with boiled new potatoes, half a grilled tomato with a dab of pesto, and what I’m confident but not positive were mushrooms. Every bite was incredible, and I did eat every bite – even the tomato.

After another fifteen or twenty minutes of digesting, we ordered desserts. The dessert menu was well-stocked with French favorites, and I offered to spilt the Chocolate Fondant (which is much more like mousse than like cake icing) with Crème Anglaise with Chris, the other English assistant at my school. He ordered another “Brosse” dish, and it turned out to be a very similar cheese to the one with which we had started, but instead of a vinegar reduction sauce, it was drizzled with a cherry sauce and covered in dark cherries. They weren’t bitter like some cherries, but they weren’t quite as candy-like as the maraschino cherries that top milkshakes and sundaes. Boy, were they delicious.

When we finally left there, two of the girls that were with us headed home, and the remaining four went to meet back up with Hannah and Madeline. We sat for a while at an outdoor area for a bar and had a drink – I love French cidre – and eventually wandered back home.

There were more things that happened this morning – I met some friends at café Eqwi, I bought a second pillow at le monoprix, I saw a lady in a hammock playing cello (no, I can’t make any more sense out of it than that!) – but really, today was all about the dinner. What an incredible meal. It will really shock (“Choc” in French) me if we don’t eat at that restaurant for several more meals during our stay here in Aix.

Tomorrow, I haven’t a clue what I’ll do. Perhaps I’ll go around taking photos of things, or perhaps I’ll just go around town. Who knows?

Time's Fun When You're Having Flies

[NOTE: This should've gone up yesterday. I don't have internet where I'm staying yet.]

Today was our semi-official first day of work. It’s hard to describe the French method of doing things in any word other than “disorganized.” They seem to lack the need for efficiency that drives the United States, and a schedule tends to mean less concrete things to them than it does to us.

This morning, at Mme. Trotman’s instruction, I walked over to College Campra, stopping to get a (DELICIOUS) pain au chocolate en route. I had a considerably hard time finding the entrance, although I found the school with no problem at all. After walking down the two streets that seemed to have the school buildings facing them and encountering nothing but “Construction Barrier – Do not enter!” walls, I walked across the street and into the “Bureau de Jeunesse.”

I may have already mentioned this place, but it’s the office for the youth in Aix. They have a pretty cool spread of things from dance and art classes for little children to housing opportunities for those of us a bit older than six. We had been by there the other day on our house hunt and the lady at the receptionist’s desk had given us several places to look that we hadn’t had previously. So, I wandered in looking both American and lost (an easy set of things to do together), and asked about where the junior high was. (College is roughly the French equivalent of Junior High school.) The lady pointed me in the right direction, and I found the place within several more minutes of looking.

Mme. Trotman told me this morning that the team at College Campra is very well organized and very good. I was pleased to hear this, and I was pleased to hear that, and I was also very pleased to meet the English teacher there who very nicely gave me her phone number in case I was still lacking somewhere to live. She hadn’t been expecting me, however, and told me to meet her Monday at 5, when I would, we assume, know my schedule for my 9 hours a week at Vauvenargues.

From there, I headed over to Vauvenargues where I spoke with one of the secretaries who handles our paperwork. She helped me out, told me that I needed to go back and get all of my paperwork, fill it out and bring it to her. So, I said I would, and I went back up to Mme. Trotman’s to get all of my things. I spent several minutes making up a French birth certificate in Microsoft Word, since we were required to have one in translation (If you want to see my fairly good translation, send me a message or leave a comment and I’ll e-mail it to you.)

I put it on my jump-drive, filled out all the blanks I was positive about, shoved everything into my accordion folder, and went back to Vauvenargues.

I’m walking all the time; my heels hurt. It’s about a 15-minute walk from Mme. Trotman’s house to Vauvenargues, which is good, but I’m always thirsty when I show up at school.

So, I went back and met with the secretary, who informed me that I had missed a schedule email and that I had an appointment with the other Aix assistants at 1:30 at a bank branch out from town to open my bank account. I mused this over for a bit, debating what I should do about a 1:30 bank appointment and a 2:00 p.m. apartment rendezvous (rdv for short– the French LOVE acronyms). I walked down to café Eqwi for lack of something else to do, and ran into a handful of us assistants about to go in for lunch. It’s good to have a base.

We went in and I had a sandwich and some pasta salad. The man who works there daily is beginning to recognize us, which I suspect has some advantages. After sitting for a while, I called the lady (Mme. Tei, we wondered for a bit how to pronounce such a name and decided on “Teh-ee,” but subtly). She said that she could move the meeting to 18h00, or 6:00 p.m., which seemed fine with me. So, we rescheduled.

So something that happens when you’re not on a day-of-the-week-specific schedule is that you lose track of when it is. It is the case that those who work at Vauvenargues leave around 5:00 p.m., and I had been promised a room today in the case that an apartment didn’t work out. While I’m sure that with some reflection you would be able to see the problem here, I’ll come right out and say it: If I don’t want the apartment that I go to see at 6:00 p.m., it will be Monday before I am able to move into Vauvenargues because all of the people who work at the school will be gone at 5. But, it’s absolutely necessary that I open my bank account at 1:30, since that’s when the meeting is scheduled.

So, I stew around about it for a bit and we hop on a bus en masse to go down to the bank. I was among the first few to open my account, and standing around afterwards, it was suggested that I call Mme. Tei back and ask her if the studio had an oven, which was the main reason for wanting a studio instead of a school apartment in the first place.

Yes, I’m willing to pay almost twice as much to be able to cook at home.

So, I walked outside of the bank and called Mme. Tei again. It took less than a minute to learn that the apartment did not, in fact, have an oven, although it did have two stove eyes, which would be nice, but you can buy an electric stove eye pretty cheaply if need be. I told her that without an oven I would not be able to rent it, and cancelled our meeting.

After that, I called the lady who had been rather rude to the exhausted version of me on Tuesday (with some hesitation, I might add), and she said to come by her office before 5 and she would give me my keys. So, I deposited some money into the bank – now I have a French account with Euros in it, although it will take 10-15 days to get a debit card – and went back to town.

It was a short walk back across town to Vauvenargues, and quite an experience watching this lady waddle around with her keys and locks trying to decide which room was vacant. I’ve ended up in room number 15, which faces the street and gets direct sunlight in the afternoon. I suppose that means it faces west-ish. She changed the locks and got me to go deal with some money-related things like rent and how much they charge for meals at the cafeteria (2€20 each – REALLY cheap!)

After that, I went back up to Mme. Trotman’s to get my bags. Michelle and Chris very kindly came and helped me carry them across town (again), and I unpacked a few things like my sheets into my bedroom. We hung around for a bit and then went over to the cafeteria to eat dinner. It was really not bad, and it was certainly not something you could complain about for having only payed 2€20.

So, I have a room in the school and I’m really glad to be living with people nearby. I suspect that tomorrow I will go to the store – le Monoprix, perhaps – and get a handful of essentials that I need for functioning in a bedroom like this. I’ll post pictures when I get it all fixed up.

We went from dinner out to a party that one of the assistants’ friends was having. It was a costume party, although everyone wasn’t told that, so we showed up in our normal clothing (which was fine, about half the people there were in street clothes). It was fun, but by the time they decided to leave the apartment and go into town, I was pretty much over it. Not too terribly much later, three of us returned to Lycee Vauvenargues where bedtime cannot come soon enough.