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!