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.