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.