Frenchifying

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I ate a third of a wheel of camembert today. The other day I ate TV-dinner-style microwavable confit de canard (it was pretty good), and noticed the box had wine pairing instructions. I'm getting used to the smell of cigarette smoke. I bought full-fat butter. I see several people daily carrying around baguettes. My (economy) hotel room came with a wine opener. Every 13 year-old girl I've seen so far dresses better than I do. Yes, it would appear that I am in France.

The biggest news is that I have a roof over my head, finally. A girl I met through facebook found out about a deal where we can live for free at a Jesuit boarding school as long as we agree to teach there for free once a week. How could I say no to that? The people here are insanely nice, and very accommodating. Also, I have two suitemates Meghan and Alexandra (Meghan is from Chicago and Alexandra is from Vienna), who are great. The place itself is... well, old. We live in the top story of what was once an old house. The other floors are administrative offices. Our floor is one bedroom for each of us (plus several other empty ones), a kitchenette/dining room/lounge, and a bathroom with two showers, two toilets, and a washing machine. My room is rather quaint, very old fashioned-looking. I have a sink, ample closet/armoire space, a fireplace (which I doubt is usable), a table and two chairs, a cabinet, some shelves, and a little, rather hard, bed. And a radiator that doesn't work. I really hope they fix that soon because I am COLD. I'll try to remember to ask about it tomorrow. I bought my own pillow (I found a decent-ish one finally, thank god), because the one they gave me suuuucks. They gave me tons of old worn wool blankets so I am warm at night, but we're planning a trip to Ikea this weekend to get something a little less...eh, rustic. The kitechenette has a sink, a microwave, a toaster, two hot plates, a table, a pantry, a mini fridge (for three people!), a TV and an iron/ironing board. We also have free Wifi (which hasn't been overly dependable thus far, unfortunately). The only parts that bug me so far are a) the cold, b) the iffy WiFi, and c) the bathroom. The bathroom is significantly worse than the bathroom I had in the UCLA dorms. Significantly. Although, I imagine it must be cleaner, since there are three people using it, not 90. The toilets have no seats. Not like they're missing, like they never had them. Like there is no where to put one even if you wanted to. The showers have one fixed temp setting. Fortunately Meghan had them crank it up before I moved in so it's nice and hot. The fixtures are all very old and worn. And, this is the clincher, the showers only stay on for about 45 seconds at a time. You hit the button and you get water, then it shuts off like a sink in a public restroom, and you have to hit the button again. I suppose it's to conserve water. I hear a lot of Europeans turn the water off intermittently when they shower. It's going to take some getting used to, nevertheless.

I start teaching next week, so no real news on that yet. I finally have my schedule, roughly, though. I'll be teaching at the private school (Tivoli) on Mondays, the middle school (St Andre) on Tuesdays, and the high school (Camille Jullian) on Thursdays and Fridays. That means I have Wednesdays off. Not the ideal day to have off, but ah well. There are a couple other assistants that have Wednesdays off too, so it could be pretty good actually.

Speaking of the other assistants, thank god for facebook. Without it I would have met none of them yet (and therefore would be horribly lonely and still be frantically looking for place to to live) except the two other girls that work at Camille Jullian. So far I've met people from all over the US including Chicago, New York, Seattle, Hawaii, and San Jose, and two people from Madrid and one from Chile (Spanish teachers, obviously), and my roommate from Austria (a German teacher), and one girl from Canada (the other foreign English teacher at Camille Jullian). Oh and so far once French guy through the girl from Hawaii. We've mostly just been getting dinner and/or drinks, though last night we went to some bars. France recently changed the law so you can't smoke inside restaurants and bars. Thank god. Also, the school where I live is non-smoking, so that's good.

Mostly I've been busying myself with administrative struggles. This program is completely disorganized. Half of the people don't know when orientation is, no one knows when they're supposed to have their paperwork in, the teachers we're working with are so nice but know nothing about the program that recruited us. I have to have my residency card to do a number of things, but that won't happen for a while yet, my employers needed me to have a bank account to get hired, but the bank needed a work contract to give me an account, the bank wants you to have proof of residency, but the school couldn't give me a letter proving it until I'd been officially hired, and the principal wasn't around to sign stuff today, AND my hiring stuff at Camille Jullian was due today, and I needed a bank account for that. Argh. Basically, it's a mess. And I haven't even started trying to get health insurance or a residency card yet. That will likely commence next week. And somewhere in here I'm supposed to come up with lesson plans with next to no direction. AAACK! I totally knew this was coming though, so I just have to keep my chin up and ride it out. Thank god I'm saving a ridiculous amount of money on rent, so at least I shouldn't have to worry about running out of money, at least for a while.

My adventure for the day was opening a bank account. In French. Some of you may not be entirely aware of how having three years of French instruction in a US university does pretty much nothing to help you with practical things. Turns out I know pretty much no financial vocabulary. I hope I didn't sign away my first born child or anything. The guys that helped me at the bank though we soooo nice and patient. Everything you've heard about French people being snobby jerks, not true. So far pretty much everyone has been insanely understanding and patient with my crappy broken French and my general bewilderment in situations that are so normal to them. They even told me that I could bring a copy of my work contract in later and they'd let me open an account now anyway. They were friendly too and joked with me a bit which made me feel a lot more at ease. It probably helps that I'm young and female, too.

Well, I'm supposed to go make dinner with Meghan and Alexandra, so I better sign off. Sorry about the lack of pictures this time, I've just been so busy. I promise once things even out more, there will be more than you can handle.

Bonsoir a tous,

-Lisa

PS. One of the teachers at Camille Jullian spent a year living in the US. Guess where? DANVILLE!! Whoa, what are the odds???

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Comments

[Annie]

Danville? Crazy pants. That's so cool that you have a place to live for free. I can't really believe it. As crazy as things are, it sounds like things are falling into place rather nicely. I want to eat a third of a wheel of Camembert and then lose weight.... I guess I need to move to a foreign country.