New Year's Resolutions

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about my trip to Italy; posts and pictures are coming soon.

I'm not the kind of person who makes new year's resolutions, in fact I usually scoff at them as overreaching and unrealistic.  But.  Since I'm living the dream in France this year, and I've been kind of lazy during the first half of my time here, I decided to spend a few minutes thinking about what I've accomplished so far and what I hope to accomplish during the remaining four months here.  So today, December 31st, 2010, is room-cleaning and thinking-about-goals day:

My goals are hanging next to my bed just in case I start to forget about them...

Happy New Year everyone!

Rome and Venice

I somehow lost all of my photos from the last 3 days in Rome, so words will have to suffice.  I flew out of Toulouse on Saturday morning (free from classes at last!) and finally got into the city from the airport about 2pm.  I checked into my hostel and wandered around the neighborhood for the next few hours, enjoying a pizza and all the terrific (free) views I could get of the coliseum and forum.  Since Rome is even further east than Tarbes, it got dark around 4:30 so I started heading back to the hostel kind of early to enjoy a free pasta dinner that they prepare there twice a week.  After that I just hung around the hostel getting to know some of the other guests.  I was super excited to get up early the next morning to go to the airport and meet my parents and sister, so I was extremely disappointed, not to mention confused from being totally asleep, when my mom called at 2am to tell me that they weren’t able to board their flight to Amsterdam because of some problems you’ve probably already heard about, involving Europeans not knowing what to do with snow, and therefore wouldn’t be arriving in Rome the next morning.

I decided to make the most of my extra day alone in Rome, so I still got up relatively early to tag along with a Canadian girl from my hostel to see a 2-mile-long market.  We took an impressively crowded bus where we both had to stare down some creepy pocket-gropers, and finally burst out of the bus at the market to join the crowd.  It was mostly crappy clothes, but it was still cool to see the longest market in Rome.  At the end, we crossed the river to start looking for a metro stop and stumbled upon the Rome farmer’s market and organic farm.  We walked through the market, didn’t buy anything, but got to sample tons of delicious cheese, salami, cookies, and olive oil, then we were finally on our way.  The Canadian, Heather, had to get back to the hostel to collect her things and head off to the train station, but the other guy with us, Sam, said he was heading over to the Vatican to see the pope speak at noon, and I was like “why not?!” so we went and saw the pope.  I don’t understand German, Italian, or Latin, the 3 languages he spoke in, but it was still cool to see him, along with about half of Rome, all crowded into Saint Peter’s square. 

We went back to the hostel so I could skype with my parents about their unfortunate situation, they told me they would probably be getting on a plane that night and arriving in Rome the following night really late.  Then Sam and I collected some of the other guys from the hostel and we headed out again to have a cappuccino and walk around to see more of the sights, including a really cool park across the street from the coliseum that has the ruins of a roman bath.  Then we started touring churches, of which I don’t want to forget the names:
-Santa Maria Maggiore: very large and impressive, with (allegedly) the remains of the holy manger that Jesus was born in, inside a gold and silver urn under the altar
-Basilica Santa Maria degli Angeli: near the Piazza della Repubblica, this church had a lot of astronomical/astrological symbolism, including a really cool floor mosaic of all the different zodiac signs and an incredible stained glass dome right above the entrance with stars in different colors of glass.th
-San Pietro in Vincoli: has the chains that bound Saint Peter under the altar.  There’s some crazy story about a miracle where one church had them, then they were stolen and miraculously reappeared later.  Hmm…

After seeing those churches and taking pictures in front of various monuments which have since been eaten by my computer, we headed back towards the hostel, stopping at a little grocery store on the way to get pasta and wine for dinner.  We cooked and ate together at the hostel, then went to a medieval-themed bar after dinner to have a beer. 

Monday, I slept in then headed out with two boys from the hostel to see Trastevere, a cute neighborhood near the river.  We had awesome slices of pizza, then wandered around a bit, heading north towards the Vatican.  It was almost dark by the time we got there and starting to rain a bit, but there was no line so we went into Saint Peter’s basilica.  I didn’t even bother taking pictures; we just walked around in awe of the hugeness and importance of everything.  Afterwards we made our way back to the metro, and I left them to do more sightseeing while I headed back to the hostel to book a hotel for that night for my parents, who had finally made it to Amsterdam and were waiting to fly to Rome.  I spent the evening hanging out with really cool people at the hostel, making really good pasta, and drinking pretty good wine.  Then around midnight, I finally got the call from my sister at their hotel saying they were there!!!! And it was time for me to go and meet up with them!!!! Finally!!!!!  I practically skipped down the stairs with my backpack and suitcase, power walked over to the hotel, and we all had a giddy reunion and went to bed.

Tuesday morning, we packed up and got on a train from Rome to Venice, where we arrived around 4 in the afternoon.  We’ve spent the last 3 days walking around and getting lost in the city, trying to find alternate routes to avoid the flooded streets (it’s raining a lot. And the canals are in the “acqua alta” or “high water” phase), eating a lot of good food, and generally just enjoying beautiful Venice and each other’s company.  Yesterday we went to the Peggy Guggenheim collection, which is a bunch of really great modern art that she collected, displayed in her former home in Venice, on the grand canal.  Today’s plans are similar: try to see some important things, wander around and inevitably get lost.  Florence tomorrow.

2nd night in Venice--it's AWESOME!

I spent 2 nights in Rome waiting for my family to get there; we're finally together so I won't write a real update--more on Rome and Venice later!

"We're, like, professional eaters" -Sam

One of my favorite French words: bouffer. It basically means "to stuff one's face", i.e. "to eat a lot".  Sam and I decided that Wednesday (our day off) has now become bouffe-ing day, the one day of the week where we eat absolutely as much as we want and it doesn't matter.  It would be embarrassing to list all the things we ate yesterday, so let it suffice to say that we went grocery shopping hungry.  And that was only lunch.

Last week I found out yet another reason why I am totally superfluous in my job.  I was discussing with one of the English teachers what she's doing with her students when they're not with me, and it turns out she has to do something completely unrelated to their lessons, because when I take half of the class, as I usually do, it messes up their schedule so they can't progress with their normal lessons because the half with me would be behind.  So she has to come up with her own dumb filler activities, probably quite similar to the ones they're doing with me.  So my presence is actually more of a burden than a help.  I really hope the French government never finds out that they are actually paying us to be the opposite of helpful and constructive in language classes, I feel like I'm cheating the system...

On a side note, I've already listened to "All I Want for Christmas is You" four times today and I'm still not sick of it... and two more classes in the afternoon equals another four listens... which just proves that this is the best Christmas song ever and you can never get sick of it.

the luxe life

I went here yesterday.  It was the shit.

Birgit suggested we go to Bagnères-de-Bigorre, a town near Tarbes, which is a popular tourist place because of its hot springs and its proximity to ski resorts.  We went to check out the thermal baths (see the link above), and Sam and some French guys we know joined us there.  We paid 16 euros, changed into our bathing suits, and spent the next 2 hours splashing around in hot pools, sweating in steam rooms, and sitting in hot tubs on the roof, looking at the mountains.

Sorry for bragging, i just like to have another thing to throw in people's faces when they say Tarbes is boring...

(will someone in america please verify that this video works in america?)

My students are loving the Mariah Carey-based Chrismas lesson so far.  I'm giving them the lyrics with blank spaces instead of all the "Christmas vocabulary" and they have to fill it in as they listen.  I don't know how this is possible, but most of them have never heard of this song before!!!  Anyway, we're getting along pretty well this week as I've finally given them something fun that they actually find fun (I've thought everything we've done so far was fun, but they have impressively bad attitudes).  I feel like I'm finally figuring out what kinds of things are appropriate for their level; I've done stuff that was way too hard and other stuff that was too easy.  The prepositions worksheet I gave them this week was just right, AND it meant that I can now ask them to find all the prepositions in "All I Want for Christmas is You".

Last night, I went to the university gym to play badminton with some of my new friends.  It was awesome! I played kind of crappily but whatever! I had to play badminton and speak French at the same time!  Oh yeah, so through all our international friends we've finally found some French students who are in the international club, so we can finally speak real french with real french people.  and they have cars and can drive us around!  SO many good things!

blogging from my bed

I now (finally!) have internet in my room, via a super long ethernet cable lent to me by one of the friendly employees who live here, so I will be blogging more often than ever!  From my bed!!

quelle surprise, my room is le bordel a.k.a., a mess

Today was another one of the days where the secondes inexplicably don't have class, so 2 out of my 3 classes were cancelled, and I'm now free until 2pm on Thursday.  The grand plan for tomorrow: lay in bed all day with Sam watching movies and drinking hot chocolate.

In spite of all my free time and sleeping in, today was semi-productive: I filled out and e-mailed the last forms I need to apply to law school.  So really all that remains now is the paying part... couldn't I just give them my soul instead of $600?

Big Fun Day in Toulouse, weekend in Tarbes

These are from a few weeks ago, but just to show how lovely Toulouse is

As much as I love Tarbes, it's definitely nice to get out once in a while and be in a "real" city.  Although Toulouse is the fourth-largest city in France (after Paris, Lyon, and Marseille), its population is roughly the same as Detroit, and the city area is much smaller.  You can pretty much walk from one end to the other in an hour or hour and a half.  Anyway, what I love the most about it is how old it is.  There are some fabulous roman churches in the city (which was an important city in the Roman empire) that were built around 1000 b.c., one of them housing the remains of Saint Thomas of Aquinas!

Hadley and Saint Thomas of Aquinas

Since I only work from 8-9 in the morning on Friday (still slightly less than ideal) Sam, Hadley and I hopped on the train at 10:30 to spend the day in Toulouse.  Since I've already been there so often, there isn't that much of the city I haven't seen yet, but it's so pretty it's just a lovely place to be.  I had just spent a lovely day there with my friend Melina when she came to visit me a couple weeks ago, so Friday we really didn't need to do anything besides eat and shop and sit in lovely cafés.  We were lucky enough to be there while the Christmas Market was open, so the first thing we did when we got into the city was head to the market to see what we could find for lunch.  We got tartiflette, which is a mix of cheese, potatoes, and ham, and it's YUMMY!  We washed it down with some vin chaud, or warm spiced wine, then we all had some shopping to do for the gala on Saturday.  We spent the rest of the day wandering around doing a little shopping and showing Hadley some of the sights, and had coffee and dessert at one of the many adorable cafés in Toulouse.  When we got back to Tarbes at 11 we were all exhausted and went straight home to bed to rest up for Saturday...

Sam, Sam, and Hadley at the Christmas Market

Christmas lights at the Capitole

Saturday was the annual gala of the university in Tarbes, and we were invited by some of the international students we know.  Sam, Charnette, and I got ready at Hadley's apartment, then we went to have a apéro at the home of some students before heading to the gala.  The best part was getting dressed up super classy, and it was also awesome to hang out with French people our age and speak French with them.

classy and international!

Day off in Tarbes

~written Wednesay, December 1, 2010~

So I started out this afternoon by writing a really long rant about how disillusioned I am about my job and the French education system in general, but as I've been complaining about it to my friends all day I decided that no one else really needs to hear (read) that.  Let it suffice to say that I would never put my kids in French public school, and that my job occupies so little of my time here that it really can't get me down.  I actually had some really lovely groups of students this week and we had fun doing Mad Libs together and today I went to a really inefficient meeting about pedagogical methods in primary schools, where my presence literally served no purpose.  Whatever.

I keep forgetting that while I'm not traveling and being fabulous, the point of this blog was to enlighten my readers about day-to-day life in my small French town so I'll just do a "day in the life" entry today to keep everyone updated.  Most of the Tarbes assistants don't work on Wednesdays, so we usually talk about doing really awesome things but end up just hanging around and talking and eating:

This morning, I had to go to that really stupid meeting because I was doing a favor for my friend who was supposed to attend but was out of town.  I had pumpkin soup for lunch (you can find the BEST stuff in French grocery stores!) and then went to (the Spanish assistant) Marta's house to hang out, since Molly was there for the day.  We laid around for a while, then drove out to our friend Birgit's (the German assistant) house in Laloubère, a village just outside of Tarbes.  Laloubère is a really old, charming village, right outside of the comparatively dull and industrial Tarbes, and I had no idea all this time!  I started exclaiming about how adorable it was and how much I love the French countryside (and France in general) and Marta was thoroughly entertained.  We had tea and chatted and Birgit played the guitar for us a little bit, then we all headed back to Tarbes to make dinner at Hadley's, on the way discovering the hugest grocery store I've been in yet and buying a carload of chips.  After gorging ourselves on chips in the car, we arrived at Hadley's and I made soup for us for dinner and we sat around eating and gossiping.  Then Hadley and I went out for a beer at our favorite bar, Le Celtic, which is owned and operated by a man who looks just like Borat but is ten times more awesome.  After two and a half months of steady patronage, Hadley and I finally got our first free beers from Borat yesterday.  How's that for a good day off?

In the last few weeks (since my last blog update), not much has happened but there are a few exciting exceptions:
- I became a real (a.k.a. legal) working resident of France
- I met at least twice as many people as I previously knew in Tarbes: we were invited to an international soirée for all the teaching assistants and international students and the university, put on by the Tarbes Rotary Club.  As you may know, all but one of the assistants in Tarbes are girls, and the university is an engineering school, so they are naturally all boys, so as you can imagine we were all quite excited to meet people our age of the opposed sex.  So I am clearly too busy having an actual social life to blog these days... :P
- My French may have improved; I really have no way of gauging that but on Monday I ran into this French girl I had met a few months ago and as soon as I said "Hi how are you" she said "oh, you speak better!"  I have no idea if she could have known that after so few words but hey, I can't complain.  I do feel more comfortable with French so I guess that's a good thing... I basically understand everything, and when I'm speaking with someone one-on-one I can express myself pretty naturally, it's just when there are groups of many French people talking together that I put all my energy into understanding the whole conversation to the point where I can't really add anything.  Especially when it's in the teacher's lounge and they are talking about students I don't know and the digital workspace, things that I care very little about.
- Hadley and I hosted a kick-ass Thanksgiving dinner on Friday night at her apartment.  We invited all the assistants, several of the international students, and any French people we knew.  She doesn't have an oven big enough for a turkey (or a chicken for that matter), so we bought 2 kilos of duck confit basically deep fried duck legs, mmmmm... and I made a ton of my famous minestrone
- I met a 3-year-old french boy yesterday, the son of our favorite bar owner (who looks like Borat).  He is one of the... one French people I know besides the teachers at my school, so I count him among my friends even though we don't really know him that well... Anyway, his son is adorable and looks exactly like his father, sans moustache.  So that was fun.
- Tarbes has its own Christmas market!  Complete with spiced wine and ice skating!

Cologne: beer, rain, and old friends

So you might be wondering, didn't I just come back from a fabulous 7-day trip to Spain?  Well, obviously, the answer is yes.  So why, you might be wondering, have I just come back from a 4-day trip in Cologne? And if you knew that I had only worked 4 days in between these two vacations, you'd be even more incredulous.  Yup, this is what it's like to be employed by the good old French Government.  Last Thursday, 11/11 was Armistice Day, which is means and everything in France is closed (I later found out that this is only France; while the rest of Europe recognizes the end of the first World War, they still go to work on this day).  And since I don't work on Wednesday, and I only have one pesky hour of work on Friday morning, I got the OK from my Friday morning teacher to go ahead and skip town on Tuesday night, planning to make up that hour after coming back...

So.  This is how it happened that after a week-and-a-half break, then four days of work (during which 3 of my classes were cancelled), I was on a train Tuesday afternoon, bound for Paris and then Cologne the next morning.  Well, due to some absurd French train problems that I'd rather forget, I ended up arriving in Paris at 4am instead of 11pm, got from one train station to the other, and by 6:30am was on my train for Cologne.  I arrived there around 10:30, and started doing some of my own sightseeing, mostly just walking around the shopping area near the train station and having a traditional Rhineland lunch of mashed potatoes, applesauce, and blood sausage.  Yeah, I didn't know what it was at the time because the English translation was "black pudding" which I knew sounded like something I probably didn't want to know more about, and since it tasted good I didn't look too hard into it, but I did eventually find out what it was.  Too late--I had already eaten and enjoyed it! (I wouldn't click on the link if you have a weak stomach, I'm actually kind of sad I looked at it)

After some wandering around the city, I met up with Marie (my friend from U of M who's teaching English in Cologne), who had just finished working for the day, and we got coffee and cake at one of her favorite coffee shops.  We had dinner with two of her friends who are also Americans teaching English in Germany; they were really nice and we had a great evening.

November 11 is Karneval, a.k.a. one of the biggest party days in Cologne.  The celebrations are supposed to start at 11:11 am (on 11/11, get it?), and people gather in Heumarkt, one of the main squares in Cologne, to drink beer and party and stuff.  Mostly what I gathered from the day is that as long as you drink beer all day, you're celebrating properly.  The beer they drink there is Kölsch, which is made in that region.  It's pretty light and comes in small glasses so you can drink a lot of it without realizing.

I spent the day with Katrin, who I met in high school when she was a foreign exchange student.  I haven't seen her since she came back to visit the year after she was in school here, so it's been about 5 years--way too long!  Anyway, I went to her apartment in the morning, we had breakfast, and then started drinking beer.  We had beer at her apartment, at her friend's apartment, and then went out to drink more beer in a bar.  I met some of her German friends, and Marie and the other Americans met up with us too.  It was a fun day but there's not much more I can say about it except

So, next day: Friday.  Katrin and I had breakfast (or was it lunch?), then went to the Dom (cathedral).  I had been inside on Wednesday since it's right next to the train station, but didn't climb up into the tower, which is a must-do if you're visiting Cologne for the first time.  It did offer a pretty spectacular view of the city, and was a good workout on top of that...

After climbing the Dom, we were getting hungry so we went grocery shopping then went back to Katrin's apartment to cook dinner together.  We went to a bar to meet up with Katrin's boyfriend and one of their friends to watch a soccer match (Dortmund vs. Hamburg, in case you were wondering) and had some Kölsch (of course).  Then we came home and had girly time--watching Sex and the City in our pajamas and eating chocolate.

Saturday we had planned to have a museum day.  It was pouring rain but that didn't stop us going out on foot--we were on a mission.  We started by going to the Nazi documentation center.  We both agreed that it would probably be depressing but since we were doing museums it was important to learn about Germany's history, both the good and bad parts of it.  The compromise was to do the depressing museum first, and save the fun ones for last.  It was indeed interesting, especially since I consider myself an amateur historian, but I guess there's not much I want to say about it.  The building was the Nazi headquarters in Cologne, so the top floors (where the displays are now) were offices I guess but the basement was a prison, which they have left intact.  We looked at the prison cells but got out of there as fast as we could.  When we left, it was still raining outside, and both of us had cold, wet feet inside of our boots, so we went to a mall and bought new (dry) socks to change into while having a cup of hot chocolate and crêpes.  Refreshed, warm, and dry, we set out again to the Cologne history museum.  Unfortunately, the museum was closed because they were holding a violin auction that day.  They did have a special exhibition that we could see for free, but that turned out to be depressing too--it was about how earlier that year, the building that holds the city's historic archives had collapsed (they still aren't sure why, it may have been because they were building a subway underneath it, but that's not certain).  Many documents were lost and 2 people died.  The exhibit had some of the documents that they were able to save or restore, some restoration materials and tools, and photos of the disaster.  After that, it was definitely time for a happy museum, and what better choice than the chocolate museum?  If you've been reading, you'll remember that I recently went to Barcelona's chocolate museum, so why not another one?  It's actually in a really cool building also, it's right on the river and looks like a boat, and most of the outer walls are glass so it offers great views of both sides of the river.  I've seen several museums and exhibits about the history and production of chocolate, so that isn't too interesting anymore, but it's still fun to be around chocolate!  The museum is sponsored by Lindt, so all the chocolates they displayed were Lindt (as were the free samples!).  We also took the "little train" to and from the chocolate museum, you know which one I'm talking about, the one they have in every touristy city that takes the tourists around and looks totally ridiculous.

Saturday night, we had dinner in a traditional German restaurant, and I had no idea what I was ordering upon Katrin's recommendation but it turned out to be this:

Basically just a really big hunk of pig with bones still in and skin still on.  Difficult to pick apart and eat, but delicious!

After that we went back and finished making the "nut corners" a really excellent type of cookie-bar type dessert that Katrin had made once in America long ago when we baked Christmas cookies together, and which I've been thinking about ever since.  I finally know how to make them!  We said good night, and I left early the next morning to catch my train back to Paris.  Once again, huge, annoying train problems that I don't want to think about anymore but the upshot of it was that I was sitting on trains from 7:45am till 10:15pm.  By the time I got back to Tarbes, I was so elated just to be able to walk around and not be wearing the same disgusting clothes I'd been wearing for five days.

So, to wrap up:
In spite of four days of solid rain, and a collective 9 hours of train delay, I enjoyed 4 lovely days with old and new friends, ate a lot of lovely food and drank a lot of lovely beer, and am now happily back in southwest France, where it's sunny and there are palm trees and mountains!

Also, good France-related news:
 I had enough time on the train to plan a kick-ass lesson about Thanksgiving so my students should be thoroughly entertained for the next 2 weeks!  And I came back to find out that I've been given a French social security number, and I'm going to Toulouse tomorrow to get my residence permit, so I'm a totally real and legitimate person in France now!

I know I've been back from Barcelona for a week, but isn't this just the best picture EVER?

Barcelona, in which I become fluent in both Castilian and Catalan

3 days later, I'm finally rested up enough to write about my totally full week in Barcelona! Enjoy!

Sunday: Marta's friend Laura, another spanish assistant who lives in Toulouse, kindly let us stay at her apartment to make it easier to get to the train station in the morning.  We all drove to Toulouse together, had a fun night out, and got up early on

Monday: After a 6-ish hour bus ride, we arrive at the Sants bus station in Barcelona around 4pm.  I thought our hostel was near said bus station, so we walked instead of getting on the metro at the station.  and walked. and walked.  At 5:45, we finally made it to the hostel, checked in, and were immediately informed that we would be taken out to bars and clubs every night by the hostel staff.  Molly and I had dinner around the corner from the hostel and when we came back were greeted by free beer and sangria, to get ready to go out.  We met up with people from a bunch of other hostels at the bar, had a great time meeting other travelers, and then went out dancing.

Tuesday: While deciding what to do, we met Matt, Colleen, and Theresa in the hostel's common room, some other Americans who are studying abroad in Florence and they invited us to come along with them to Parc Güell, the famous park that Gaudi designed.  They warned us that Matt was in charge of getting us there, which would most likely be by the least direct route possible but I, usually the directions freak in any group, happily resigned to relaxing and letting someone else take over.  We did indeed take the least direct route without heading into the Mediterranean, but we had a great time climbing up into the hills and stopping to play on playgrounds and stuff.  The park itself was really cool.  We mostly just saw the free parts, refusing to pay or wait in line to see the Gaudi museum, but everything was beautiful and interesting anyway.  It was hilarious when all 5 of us would take our cameras out at the same time, to take the exact same photo, which happened pretty much ever 30 seconds because there were so many things to photograph, and a great view of the city.  When we finally got back to the hostel, everyone was exhausted so we relaxed and some took naps, while I went the the grocery store with Hernán, who works at the hostel, to get things to make sangria and a tapas dinner.  We made pitcher after pitcher of sangria for everyone at the hostel, and eventually went out again for another night of dancing.

Wednesday: Molly and I headed out on our own, first having coffee in front of the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's famous church which is still under construction and will supposedly be finished in 2020.  We were once again unwilling to pay 12 euros and wait in a line around the block to see the inside, and admired all sides of it from the outside.  After this, we took the metro to the Passeig de Gracia, one of the main streets in BCN, to see the two houses Gaudi designed, took a bunch of pictures, and muttered to ourselves about how embarrassing it was that we didn't actually know anything about Gaudi.  Promised ourselves to Wikipedia him when we got back to the hostel, which we of course forgot to do.  We had decided to have lunch in the Gothic quarter, the old part of the city, so we had to push ourselves to keep walking until we finally got to the Barcelona cathedral and found a nearby Italian restaurant full of tourists and had lunch at 4, a time when actual spaniards eat lunch.  After fortifying ourselves, we walked around La Rambla, a kind of touristy shopping area, then to the old port, and finally to the Arc de Triomf and the park surrounding it. (isn't it cute? they have their own little arc de triomf just like paris!)  We took the metro back to the hostel after a fruitless search for gelato, and I spent 3 hours having Hernán try to teach me how to make tortillas de papas (spanish omelet with potatoes).  Became convinced that I could have made them much more efficiently, but they were delicious anyway.  I went out with the group in spite of my oncoming cold which I knew would be terrible the next day... but when in Barcelona...

Thursday: absolute worst day of my cold.  After sleeping in, Molly and I walked to a café with me sneezing the whole way.  While sitting there I managed to get my jeans stuck in my chair AND nearly knocked the table over when a bug flew at my face.  We discovered that we were both near our hostel and near the Arc de Triomf, making our metro ride the day before slightly silly and pointless.  Nevertheless, we walked to the arc and lay down in the sun under the palm trees to relax.  After that it was only a short walk to the Parc de Ciutadella, which was gorgeous (and coincidentally full of French people).  There is a pond, a huge fountain with gilded sculptures of greek gods, and a giant woolly mammoth sculpture.  After enjoying nature and stuff, we walked around the gothic quarter some more and then headed back to the hostel where we made dinner and I stayed in to recover while the others went out.

Friday: Checked my french bank account as soon as I woke up (which I had been doing every day) and found out that we had finally been paid.  Molly and I decided to celebrate our newfound status of being rich and fabulous by taking Hernán out for brunch.  We ate in a tiny spanish restaurant and ordered one of everything to try all different kinds of spanish food.  Took a nap, then Molly and I went to the biggest mall in Barcelona to blow a large chunk of our paycheck on clothes.  After dinner, I got dressed up and went out while Molly stayed in with the cold I had given her.  We went to a club on the beach (!!!) which was awesome and it was the Florence group's last night in Barcelona.

Saturday: After lunch, I went to the Parc del Labirint with Hernán, which he had told me about before and I decided we HAD to go because it had a hedge maze.  Molly doesn't think hedge mazes are as exciting as I do so she stayed at the hostel.  It was hilarious and fun and I beat Hernán out of the maze, then we walked around the park a bit and came back because he had to work.  Molly and I then went to the chocolate museum and due to our apparent confusion, somehow got in for free.  The museum is not very large and consists mostly of chocolate sculptures of really silly things, and some stuff about the history of chocolate, and most importantly, the café/shop.  We made up for the free admission in the shop, and drank the richest hot chocolate I have ever eaten.  Molly bough honey-cheese flavored chocolate (don't ask) and I got salted chocolate.  We then decided to walk to the beach, as we hadn't really been yet, and stopped in a pretty cool church on the way, making it to the beach just after the sun set.  We stayed long enough to get sand in our shoes and accidentally get caught in a wave, then set off to find dinner.  After Chinese dinner, we finally found gelato, and ate it sitting on a bench looking at the Sagrada Familia.  We came back to get ready to go out, the group consisted only of the two of us, Hernán, and a nice Finnish guy.  The club we went to was pretty but super lame and full of super lame Americans that made us embarrassed to be American.

Sunday (last day!): Hernán had told me Saturday that he was taking another hostel guest to a park on a hill that supposedly had the best view of Barcelona, so I went along with Molly, a French guy, and an awesome girl from Quebec who had just arrived.  We hiked up and up and up, complaining the whole way of course (but in my witty and hilarious way of complaining that isn't annoying at all).  When we got to the village at the top of the hill, there was a sign saying "construction site - do not enter" which I read out loud to Hernán in case he couldn't read Catalan, but of course he didn't believe me and kept going anyway.  We had to climb under a fence and pass the construction workers who stared at us like "look at those idiots, can't they read the signs?" but eventually came to a big concrete platform which did indeed offer a 360º view of Barcelona. It was pretty awesome and definitely worth the hike.  We stared at the city and ocean for a few minutes, then proceeded to take hundreds of stupid and hilarious photos, including "jumping photos" where you capture 3 people jumping in mid-air which is impressive enough when you're not on the edge of a cliff with a panoramic view of Barcelona behind you.  On the walk home, I told Flo (french guy) and Marie-Julie (quebecoise girl) that I was in fact serious about needing an ice cold beer upon our return to sea level, so we went into a xureria (Catalan for "churro shop") where we got churros and 70-cent beers!  These two were so cool.  I can't believe I almost missed meeting Marie-Julie--our week-long trips in BCN only overlapped by one day so although it was sad that we only got to spend a day together it was better than not having met at all.  Basically the whole trip was full of meeting really awesome people who I'll probably never see again, which is kind of bittersweet.  Each day, someone would leave and someone else would arrive, which results in making a lot of really cool friends and saying a lot of good-byes.

All in all, I had probably the best week I've had since leaving home, mostly thanks to the excellent people I was with.  I hope every trip is like this although I have a feeling this one will be pretty hard to top.

* * *

PS--As soon as I got back to Tarbes, I realized that I'm going to Cologne in a week to visit Katrin for a long weekend.  Do they really ever expect us to work???  We STILL haven't even started classes again (tomorrow is the first day back after break) so I even got to spend a day in Toulouse with the girls on Tuesday, and Sam and I rented bikes for 1 euro and rode around seeing parks and things all afternoon.

aaaaaand, break!

So after three (not quite) full weeks of teaching, I have a week and a half of break.  Oh, my life is so hard... I should be leaving on Monday to spend a week in Barcelona with Molly.  I say "should be" because although we have already bought bus tickets from Toulouse to Barcelona, you never know what can happen with these French people deciding not to work and not letting people buy gas, etc.  So as the Senegalese say, I'm going to Barcelona, inchallah.

Yesterday, I had a lovely class with my terminales, students in their last year of high school.  Less than half the class showed up because of the strikes, so we stayed in Anne's classroom and had a discussion about strikes and retirement pensions, and differences between France, the US, and England.  I actually learned some interesting things from them (and I hope they learned some from me as well!).  They explained to me how the students actually have meetings, where they discuss and vote on whether they're going to block the doors of the school on a given day.  I thought it was just mob mentality, and things just spiraled out of control like the French Revolution, but in fact it's a democratic process and students are allowed to object, and finally they take a vote.  I in turn explained to them that in the US, if students decided to stand outside of school and block the doors and throw eggs, we would call that a protest, but not a strike, as they call it.  Then we talked about why they're striking (remember the retirement pension thing?) and they were surprisingly familiar with the French retirement system, parliament decisions, etc.  I was kind of embarrassed that I had to keep saying, "Well I'm not sure, but I think it's this way in the US..." I mean, people my age have no hope of retirement, right?  We're all just going to work until we drop dead... Which is why we Americans find it so ridiculous that the French are up in arms about having to work and extra 2 years, until they are 62, which is basically middle-age.  I mean, they barely work when they do work (no more than 35 hrs per week, with no less than 5 weeks vacation) and they stop working when they're 60, and then they complain about the government taking away their precious relaxation time.  I mean, I know Americans work too much and all that, but you have to work sometimes!  It's just a complete difference of attitude towards work.  Americans spend a lot more time worrying about what they're going to do when they grow up, because whatever you choose basically defines who you are, whereas here you have to decide when you're 16 what career path you want to take, so most kids probably just choose at random, but it's not a big deal because they don't define themselves by their work like we do.

Tomorrow is Marta's birthday, and she kind of got carried away planning things so apparently we're having a birthday potluck dinner tonight, going out dancing or somthing, and then having a birthday barbecue lunch tommorrow afternoon.  Then Sunday evening, Marta and I should be driving to Toulouse, so she can spend a few days there and I can get my bus Monday morning.  So convenient!  I don't want to take my computer with me so probably won't write till I get back from Spain, alors, bon weekend à tous, et à la prochaine!

weekend recap

So.  All the Tarbes assistants were planning to go to Toulouse this weekend, but since the strikes are still going on, we decided not to even bother trying to get on a train.  Plus we wanted to save money.  As fun as it would have been to be in the city, it was actually awesome spending the weekend in Tarbes!

Friday I invited myself and Hadley over to Sam's to use her kitchen, so Hadley and I met at the grocery store to get stuff to make a quiche lorraine.  We made the quiche (which was delicious and super easy to make!) and drank a bunch of cheap and delicious french wine, then decided to go out.  Sam lives with Nancy and Marta, the Venezuelan and Spanish girls, in a really big apartment building with a bunch of other people, which is really cool, but unfortunately we couldn't convince the others to go out with us.  Anyway, we went out to the (only) street with bars on it, where all the high school students hang out (that will be pretty awkward once I start seeing my students at bars...) and had a drink at each of the 2 good bars.  At the second one, we found flyers for an 80s night at the club that Céline took me to a couple weeks ago, and we decided to go, because how can you pass up 80s night??  It was excellent--we somehow ended up dancing there till 5am because we were having so much fun.  Whoops!

Saturday, after sleeping in until 12:30 the three of us got lunch at the kebab place across the street from my school, and ate sandwiches in the park.  We wandered around town a bit, and something really loud was going on so we had to check it out.  It was a bunch of guys break-dancing on a stage.  Go figure!

After an exhausting half hour spent watching other people exercise, we decided we needed coffee and pastries so we went to this cute organic bakery we had been admiring in town.

After that we decided to go to this sports store to look for bikes, since they were having a sale.  It was much further away than we thought but we managed to walk there anyway, then took the bus back.  We went to Hadley's to have dinner and then went out again, this time keeping it tame by only going to 1 bar.  We called it a night early, since we were still tired from Friday night.

Pictures from our long walk

Hadley and Jessica in front of the Rex hotel, which has really cool lights at night

Today, after laying around in my room all morning, I met up with the other assistants for coffee.  There were the 3 americans, Nancy and Marta, and the German assistant, Birgit.  It's great to have met all the assistants in town, and since we're not all English assistants we have to speak French with each other (I'm actually pretty sure they all speak english really well too, but we pretend our only language in common is French since we all want to practice).  There was a fair today, for the fête de Sainte-Térèse, not really sure what the holiday is but anyway the Place Marcadieu has been overtaken by carnival rides and food stands for the past week.

(Please note the woman in the hairy coat)

We got crêpes and french fries (yummm) and then Sam, Hadley and Jessica came back to watch The Holiday in my room :)

pays des grèves

-written on Thursday, October 14, 2010-

You may have heard about the recent strikes in France.  Apparently the government is talking about changing the retirement age from 60 to 62, so people (teachers, transportation workers, etc) are going on strike to protest this change (making it very difficult to plan trips by train).  Apparently high school students care about this as well, because today my students went wild.  In the morning, they blocked the main doors of the school with trash bins from up and down the street, and after my class at 10, they took to the streets, shouting and blowing whistles and generally creating havoc for cars and passersby.  Of course, their march took the route I wanted to take to the market, so I was forced to take a detour.  As annoying as this was, I must admit I'm pretty impressed by this amount activism in a high school population.  When my students told me about the protest this morning, I was skeptical and asked if they really cared about their retirement pensions at the age of 17, or if they just wanted to skip class, but they assured me no, it's their future too.  Upon further discussion on the matter with Sam, she pointed to me that additionally, if people are forced to work longer before retirement, there are fewer jobs available when these kids graduate in, oh, about 7 months.  Well that would piss me off, too!  It just seems weird to me since I didn't grow up in a place where strikes are the norm.  Marta, my spanish friend said that they refer to France as "le pays des grèves" or "the country of strikes" and I have also heard strikes referred to as France's "national sport".

I eventually managed to get out of the line of fire and made it to the market to meet up with Hadley and Jessica, and after perusing the market for a while we headed back towards the main square to have lunch.  We decided to go into this really fancy chocolate shop to treat ourselves to truffles after lunch, and I couldn't resist trying the tomato-basil chocolate, which was actually quite good, despite tasting exactly like tomato, basil, and chocolate...

I finally got around to taking some photos of my school's courtyard on Wednesday, when the students have the afternoon off

a most excellent conversation

Last night, I went out for a beer with Molly, Hadley, Sam, Nancy, and Marta, and the following conversation happened (I'm paraphrasing because it was in french):

Nancy: wait, I want to ask you guys about something, does this happen in your country?

Marta: (laughing) oh yeah, we talked about this yesterday.

Nancy: whatever. ok.  when you send a letter, do you have to buy a stamp to put on it?

Americans: yes.

Nancy: so, like, you put it all in an envelope, then you stick a stamp on it?

Americans: yes.

Nancy: that is so weird, because--

Marta: yeah, we talked about this for like 3 hours yesterday.

Nancy: no, for like 15 minutes.  well anyway, in Venezuela, you just bring your letter to the post office and buy an envelope and then they mail it for you.

Marta: yeah, but the envelope must have a stamp on it already.

Nancy: no, you don't put anything on it.  There's no stamp.

Marta: yeah but that's just because you've never looked at it.  There must be either a stamp or some kind of built-in stamp on the envelope, or else they put it on after you leave.

Nancy: I don't think so.

Americans: yeah but there must be some kind of indication on there that you've paid the postage...

Nancy: I don't know...

So this conversation went in circles for about 45 minutes, and we ended up agreeing to disagree.  We couldn't believe a silly little thing like sending a letter could be so different

My second day of having my own classes went much better than the first.  I was ready for the wall of silent angst, and prepared something much easier this time (as in, I didn't really prepare anything).  Instead of trying to have a serious discussion I decided to play getting-to-know-you games, otherwise known as ice breakers.  After doing the "two truths and a lie" game, where each person says 3 things about themselves and the others have to guess which one isn't true, I basically thought of as many "If you could have one... what would it be?" types of ice breakers as would take up the rest of the hour.  They seemed to like that a lot more than having actual discussions, so I'm thinking most of the activities I'm going to do this year will end up being games.

Other than my four hours of class, I had lunch outside in the Place de Verdun with Sam and Hadley, the two other American assistants in Tarbes, and Sam and I had coffee in the afternoon after all our classes were done.  I have to say, I just LOVE cafés.  Especially in France.  Because you always sit outside, and there are always tons of people there, even when you think everyone should be at work, and they always give you a little piece of chocolate with your coffee and everyone is always just sitting around enjoying life.  Basically I just love the way the French don't rush anything, and they actually take the time to do nothing sometimes.  The other day I was walking around and sat down in the park and I thought, Oh I should get a book out and read so I'm not just sitting.  Then I looked around and everyone else around me was actually just sitting.  Sitting and watching the cars and people go by.  Not doing anything.  Personally, I love doing nothing, but in America it always seems like if you have time to just sit around you should be doing something.  Like, we don't have time to just sit around.  I always read things in magazines about how mentally and emotionally it's good to do nothing sometimes and I'm like See? I was right!  But no one ever seems to think it's appropriate to spend time doing nothing.  Until I met the French!  In Senegal, I was always annoyed by how slowly people moved and how unmotivated they were to do anything, but here they seem to have found the right balance between being productive but also taking the time to relax and recharge.  They do work during the week, but the weekend is a time for relaxing and spending time with one's family, not working from home or running around doing tons of projects or anything.  At Gisele's house, the only work to do on the weekend was to prepare some awesome meals to enjoy en famille.  I mean, don't get me wrong, I do get annoyed that everything is closed on Sunday, when I've waited until Sunday to do all my errands, but I appreciate the idea that you're forced to stay home and enjoy the weekend.  However, being forced to enjoy a two-hour lunch break during which you also can't do any errands seems a bit like overkill.

Anyway, after hanging out with Sam I got some groceries from Monoprix (the best store ever after Target) and then came back to do some internetting.  When I was getting ready to bring my bread and cheese into the kitchen for dinner, Madame Chazottes came back and we ate dinner together and talked about our lives.  She's the CPE at school, I have no idea what it stands for but she's basically in charge of student affairs/well-being and she has to sleep here 2 nights a week to be responsible for the students who board here.  She's lovely and it's great to have someone to chat with occasionally as I'm alone in my wing of the building most of the time.

Friends! and a good weekend.

So.  My day got a lot better after I blogged about my frustrating bank experience on Friday.  One of the English teachers accompanied me to the bank that afternoon, and when the lady refused to accept the fact that I would not share my parents' tax returns with her, we closed the account and went to another bank, where the only documentation they needed was my passport and proof of residence in Tarbes.  Whew.  As soon as we were done setting up my bank account, Katia, the english teacher, dropped me off at the train station to meet Molly, who came to stay for the weekend.  We wandered around Tarbes for a while, got some bread, wine, and cheese, and eventually met up with Sam.  We were sitting in the Place de Verdun, the central square in Tarbes, and we ran into 3 spanish assistants (2 from Venezuela and one from Spain) who already knew Sam, and who were also looking for something to do.  We decided to all go out to a bar together, where the 7 of us got everyone else in the bar dancing, and the bartender proceeded to give us several free drinks for being the most fun people in the bar (at least that's why i think she liked us).

Saturday, Molly and I had a leisurely morning of sleeping in and eating bread and jam and drinking coffee. We eventually wandered off to the train station to spend the rest of the day in Pau.  As soon as we got there we were hungry again, so we sat down in a little italian restaurant and had pizza, coffee, and some fabulous raspberry cream dessert.  We then did a little walking tour of the city and its university, finally coming back to a pretty square and sitting down under an awning (it was starting to rain) to have a beer.  We slowly made our way back to the train station, noting all of the shopping we want to come back and do once we get paid.  The city of Pau is built up the side of a hill, which is really nice for looking out onto the valley below and mountains across from it.  However, the train station is at the very bottom of the hill.  When we got there we were good and walked all the way up the hill, but on the way back down we decided to take this thing called a "funiculaire" in french which is basically a tiny free train that takes you up and down the hill.  It seemed so stupid we just had to do it.

When we got back to Tarbes, we were hungry (again) but all of the restaurants that looked good were way out of budget, so we went to the kebab place across from my school and had sandwiches and fries.  We went to a bar in the Place de Verdun to wait for our friends, who ended up decided it was raining too much to go out.  We made a night of it anyway, having an overpriced drink and then heading back to my room with a bottle of wine to watch Dick, the best movie ever which Molly hadn't seen.

Today, we woke up late and spent the whole morning and most of the afternoon laying in bed and chatting.  It's so nice to finally have someone to hang out with, after spending the last two weeks basically by myself all the time.  The teachers have been really nice about talking to me and stuff, but it's not the same as having friends your age.  And now that I know most of the assistants in town, I'll have people my age to hang out with anytime.

So.  It was a good weekend, and I'm looking forward to next week, although I didn't realize quite how much effort it was going to take to get a single word out of my students.  I was totally unprepared for their sullen silence on Friday, and I don't think knowing to expect that will make it any easier.  It's amazing how the entire french youth is supposedly obsessed with America and American culture and yet they can't think of anything they want to ask me about it, except whether I know Eminem.  As much as I appreciate how painfully awkward high school can be and how they would be so shy to speak up in class, it's so so frustrating for me to be standing there with everyone gaping at me, while I struggle to think of other questions to spark their interest, after they have totally dismissed the lesson I had planned for that day and which I thought would have inspired an hour-long discussion.

Has it ever taken anyone longer than 10 minutes to open a bank account in America?  Yeah, I didn't think so.  I opened an account at Chase this summer and they were like, "What's your name? Oh OK, no, you don't have to prove it or anything but do you want a credit card to go with that too?"

I have now spent over a week trying to open my French bank account.  When I first went into the bank, the lady told me I needed, among other things, proof of residence in France, work contract, my parents' identification, and proof of their residence in the US.  When I had finally gathered all of these papers (as if my mother doesn't have anything better to do than sit around scanning unnecessary documents to send me in France), I went back for my meeting today.  In the process of opening my account, she asked me for all kinds of stupid information like how much I'm earning here and how much the school is charging me for rent.  I was like "Well, isn't someone nosy?"  So she finally opened my account, but said "oh, you didn't bring me your avis d'imposition, you'll have to send me that ASAP.  Well that's basically a tax/earnings statement, and there is absolutely no reason that I would have one, since I've never worked in France before.  But she was like "it's ok if you don't have it you can bring me your parents' tax returns".  Well. THAT was the last straw.  I said I'd see what I can do and left.  I really really wanted to try do do things on my own, but I finally decided to ask the english teachers for help, because the 3 other assistants I know were given bank accounts with no problem, and didn't have to bring any of the ridiculous shit that I was asked for.  The teachers were equally outraged, and offered to go to the bank with me this afternoon, which is super nice of them, but I'm still SO frustrated that I have to deal with this.  It's absolutely ridiculous.  And to top it all off, I had my first group of students on my own this morning, and they basically stared at me for the entire hour of class, despite my pestering them with question after question.  ARRGGHHHH.

I will now attempt list some good/funny things to try to counteract my frustrating morning.

•  Molly is coming to spend the weekend with me, and we're going to beautiful Pau on Saturday.

• When high school students are not in class, they are either outside smoking, or lurking in corners making out with each other.
• 2€ wine.
• It is still really warm and sunny here, in the middle of October.

Yeah, can't really think of that many good things right now, but at least it feels good to rant about stuff, even if only in cyberspace.  Sorry if this is depressing, I'm hoping it will eventually be funny...

Welcome to French High School

Whoa.  WHOA.  I never realized how great and organized my high school was.  I mean, I know a lot of high schools in america are underfunded, disorganized, etc, but leave it to the French not to organize ANYTHING.  Monday's 4 classes went very well.  The students asked me questions about myself, I asked them what there is to do in town, they all laughed.  Tuesday, I was supposed to have 3 classes, starting at 8am.  I went to the room the teacher had told me his class was in, only to find it empty and locked.  I went downstairs to ask the building coordinator what the deal was, she said yes, that was the correct classroom.  I went to the receptionist and she said yes, she had seen the teacher come in that morning so he wasn't out sick.  I then went to the library, computer lab, vie scolaire (sort of like student advisors) and everyone confirmed that the teacher was there and the class should be in one of 2 classrooms.  I walked around the whole school (twice) and looked in every single classroom (of which there aren't many) and every single room had a class in it that wasn't mine.  I finally went back to the building coordinator, reported on my (lack of) progress, and she said "Oh, maybe he cancelled the class and forgot to tell you! The first-year classes get a day off every six weeks!"  At 9, I found the teacher in the teacher's lounge, and he confirmed "oh, i'm so sorry, I forgot to tell you we didn't have class!  Well, at least you get the day off, since my afternoon class is cancelled too!"  And my 3rd class of the day was cancelled due to Anne having a meeting.  So the upshot of this is that I will basically only work a sixth of the hours I am supposed to work.  If that.  I really don't expect that I will ever work all 12 hours in a week.  And I guess I don't expect any of the teachers to tell me ahead of time if we will have class that day.

Yesterday (wednesday) I went to Toulouse all day for the teaching assistants orientation.  All the language assistants for the whole Academie de Toulouse (the Midi-Pyrenees region) had the same orientation, so I took the train at 6:17 am with 2 other english assistants, (one american and one jamaican) the spanish assistant from panama, and the german assistant.  The morning was spent with the school administration personnel introducing themselves for about 3 hours.  We had lunch, then in the afternoon we were given a presentation about the French education system, then finally, FINALLY split up into groups by language to learn some teaching methods.  Of a day-long teaching orientation, 2 hours were spent learning how to teach.  They really can't expect that much of us.  We were let out an hour early, so I spent an hour and a half wandering around Toulouse with Molly, Hadley, and Nandini, 3 other english assistants, and then Molly Hadley and I got back on the train to head back to Tarbes.  

This morning, I had another great experience with the incredibly organized high school I work in (not).  I showed up in the proper classroom for my 9:00 english class, where the teacher decided to split the class up into 2 groups, and I was supposed to take my group to another classroom.  This will eventually be happening in all my classes, where I alternate groups each week because the classes are too large (30-35 students) for me to take them all on my own.  Well, I didn't know where I was supposed to take them, given that last time I asked the building coordinator she had said there weren't enough classrooms in this school.  I went to see her again, and she told me room 106 was open, so I led me students up there.  Well actually they led me, since I couldn't find it.  It turns out that rooms 106 and 107 are one room, with a divider in between that the teacher in 107 told me I couldn't close so basically room 106 was already occupied.  In short, we ended up spending the next 20 minutes wandering around the building, with various people sending us to various places that were also unavailable.  Finally, we had to kick 2 girls out of the study lounge and use that room.  And this will probably happen every time I have class, so 12 times a week.  Awesome.

In spite of all the administrative problems, I do actually really like my classes so far.  It's a bit difficult to get the students to talk, since they're not used to having to speak out loud in class, but I think I will manage to get some oral work out of them and I have some ideas of fun lessons I can do with them.  The other plus is that I only take half of each class at a time, so any ideas I do think of will last me 2 weeks, as I obviously plan on using the same lessons for every class.  If anyone has any ideas of fun discussions we can have about american culture, don't hesitate to comment! 

Also, in case you haven't heard, the french are AWESOME at burocracy.  Yesterday they were telling us about all of the things we need to do and papers we need to fill out in order to be allowed to live here, get a bank account, get paid, get social security, etc etc, and it reminded me of this:

Oh yeah, I almost forgot.  As if it wasn't embarrassing enough that my students had to experience me being totally lost and unprepared this morning, I thought one of the girls in my class was a BOY.  omg.

Toulouse

I finally made it to Toulouse today and it was jawesome.  I was supposed to go there to meet up with a bunch of other teaching assistants, so I bought my ticket so that I would be there from noon to 5, only to check my email today and see that the meet-up was supposed to happen at 6:30.  Great.  Well anyway, I found the number of a girl I had been e-mailing with, Sam, who is placed in Tarbes but staying in Toulouse for the next few days.  I called her as soon as I got off the train and she came and met me where I was and proceeded to spend the next 4 hours hanging out with me and showing me around the city, which was super nice since I just called her out of the blue, not know whether she may have had plans for the day or whatever.  It turns out that she studied abroad in Toulouse 2 years ago, so she knows the city really well and was happy to show me all the cool things we could see in an afternoon, and tomorrow she's coming here to get oriented at her school and then I'm going to show her around Tarbes, which should take all of about 40 minutes ;)

I was going to put up photos but at the rate they were loading it would have taken about 40 minutes per photo... maybe I'll add them next time.

Anyway, Toulouse is really big (compared to Tarbes), beautiful, and vibrant, full of pretty shops and people and things.  Unlike other french cities like Paris and Bordeaux, which are basically all white, everything in Toulouse is made out of brick, giving it the nickname la ville rose or the pink city.  It was originally part of the Roman empire, so the architecture of the churches is roman and it's full of tiny narrow curvy streets and tons of places or squares.  There are a lot of immigrants there, especially north and west african which are the most prevalent in France in general, and I definitely heard people speaking wolof and saw others that were probably Senegalese although they didn't open their mouths so I couldn't tell for sure.  I thought it would be kind of stupid to only be there for 5 hours but it turned out to be perfect because I didn't see the other assistants, and I figured Sam probably had other things she wanted to do before she moves to Tarbes.  And since it's so easy to get there I can go as often as I want, to discover the rest of the city.  In fact, I'm going next week for the regional teaching assistants' orientation, so I will be there all day and meet all the other assistants but will probably not have much time to explore.  However, one of the Spanish teachers in my school just started teaching this year, so she's only 1 year older than me and went to university in Toulouse and goes back there virtually every weekend, and she invited me to go with her anytime I want to meet her friends and go out in the city.

Tomorrow I go back to Jacque, the tiny village where Anne and Jean Paul live, to hang out with them and start learning how to make quilts from Anne.

High school, round 2

I met some of my students for the first time yesterday in the cafeteria at dinner.  Did I mention that I'm slightly afraid of high school students? especially girl ones? especially french ones??  Anyway, I was so nervous and flustered about the idea of going to the caf by myself with a bunch of french high school students that I got there after they stopped serving dinner and ended up eating one of the leftover plates that they save for students who do after-school sports.  There were 3 boys there (almost as scary as girls) and I managed to eek out my end of the conversation in mediocre french, resulting in them thinking that I had come there to learn french, not perfect mine after 8 years of study.  The situation was slightly helped by the fact that they knew I was their English assistant, so I was slightly impressive.  In fact, the students actually call me "vous" instead of "tu" which is weird, and the teachers tell me to call them "tu" instead of vous, which is weirder.  In order to avoid being rude, I have basically always called everyone "vous", especially especially teachers.  Also, I'm allowed to hang around in the teacher's lounge.  Being at high school is weeeeird.