AMSTERDAM!

So. Made it successfully to Amsterdam and am currently peeing my pants in excitement waiting for Steph to get here in, hopefully, t minus half an hour... YAY! Leah, a friend of mine from Carleton (who studied in Paris with me during college) is living in Amsterdam doing a post-doc this year with her boyfriend, Brett, and they have an awesome apartment with a great little futon just for me. :) It was awesome but so randomly surreal to get to Leah's apartment on Wednesday night IN Amsterdam.

Speaking of arriving here, why is it that you can fly from Boston to San Francisco and get MAYBE a bag of peanuts during six hours of flying, but on two barely one-hour flights (Lyon - Zurich and Zurich - Amsterdam) I got offered multiple drinks (including beer), three little Toblerone chocolate bars, and a random bread and cream cheese sandwich. I mean, seriously. I love Europe. Other things that are awesome/hilarious about flying here: the seat cleaning spray in all the bathrooms (maybe that's just Switzerland though...), the smoking rooms in all the airports--every single one has "Tobacco seriously damages health" in big, scary lettering across the entrance, and, of course, flying over the Alps. So incredibly amazing, even from thousands of miles above. Pictures to come.

As far as Amsterdam goes, it's awesome. Not going to go into any real detail now, but it's really such a cool city. Bikers rule the roost here, literally. Cars will stop to let bikers cruise through, and god help you if, as a pedestrian, you get in the way of a biker. There are awesome bike lanes, although they don't have anything like the Velo'v here, which is kind of weird since it would be perfect! But I guess everyone just owns a bike (or 2 or 3). I have yet to ride my own bike (got a ride on the back of Brett's bike home last night, which was exhilaratingly awesome), but it's definitely on the agenda.

I wandered around most of the city yesterday getting lost and loving it, stumbling upon canal after canal and coffee shop after coffee shop. I'm not sure I will ever get used to the smell of weed everywhere all the time and seeing pot growing in store windows. So crazy! Not to mention the whole Red Light District thing. The women seriously just lounge around in their bras and underwear talking on cell phones as if it's totally normal. Which I guess it is here...

Anyway, so yeah. Amsterdam is great!

Boston needs Velo'v!!!

So it's been awhile (again), and I apologize, but things have just been too busy and exciting here. :) The most exciting thing being that I rode my first Velo'v!!!! Velo'v is the bike system here in Lyon, and there are 343 stations around the city where you can get a bike for 30 minutes for 1 euro, which is generally enough time to get anywhere in the city (unless you're trying to bike up the ginormous Fourvière hill). It's incredible how great this system works here! And it was especially nice this past Friday when we were out at a disco until way past the time when the metro stopped running, so we all just swiped our bank cards (the only annoying thing is that you need a French bank card to use the bike stations and you have to have 150 euros in your account...) and got bikes, and I was home in like 10 minutes. It was awesome. I sent in my Velo'v subscription the very next day--it's 15 euros for the whole year, and you can get a bike free for the first hour. Boston needs to get on it in a big way. As does every other major city in the world!

Anyway, let's see, what else have I been up to in the past week? Monday's classes went okay. One of the teachers found me 5 minutes before the class started and thrust a sheet of paper at me that covered superlatives (the smartest, the most intelligent, etc.) and asked me to teach that. Seeing how I don't actually know HOW to teach, particularly the fine points of English grammar that I was never taught myself, I kind of freaked out a little bit. On top of that, I was supposed to have them read aloud a passage from their textbook. I don't actually have a copy of their book, and only one of the six students had his book with him so the seven of us tried to share one book to read a dialogue. Needless to say, it wasn't the most successful lesson. The six kids aren't the most respectful and well-behaved kids either and REALLY aren't impressed with school at all. But I finally cracked their shell a little, first when I made a couple of them move because they were blatantly not paying any attention to me, and second when I saw that they had gotten their class pictures that day (basically exactly the same as class pictures in the U.S.) so I grabbed a class picture and started asking them to describe their classmates: who was the tallest? the most popular? the funniest? Not sure they actually learned how to construct sentences using superlatives, but at least they were paying attention to me for the majority of the class and were (kind of) speaking English. I call that a success!

Tuesday, I hadn't heard from my contact at Collège Jean Perrin so I had e-mailed her saying I wasn't planning on coming unless I heard from her that my classes were organized. She finally e-mailed me back Monday night (after I got

home pretty late from a fun trivia night with a bunch of other assistants at an English pub--we tied with two other teams for first place!) saying that no, I shouldn't come because those classes weren't organized yet. Thanks for the advance warning... So on Tuesday, two assistants met me at the farmer's market near my house and we bought delicious veggies and cheese and random Indian food for a picnic lunch at my apartment. I love the market! I finally found this amazingly smelly cheese that I've been searching for, and on a baguette, it's heaven. :) I have also become obsessed with frying up onions, mushrooms, and zucchini and throwing it into whatever main dish I'm making (pasta, omelette, etc.) so the market provides all the fresh veggies for that that I could ever want.

I decided to stay in on Tuesday night because it was freezing and I was tired, but there was a huge soccer match, Lyon vs. Liverpool, and I hadn't realized that you have to pay for the channel to watch it on TV. I REALLY wanted to see it, and it ended up being an amazing game with Lyon scoring an unbelievable diving header goal in the 93rd minute to beat Liverpool at the Liverpool stadium for the first time ever, I think, and I had to watch it on the equivalent of Game Day on-line. So frustrating. But worse is the fact that Liverpool comes here to play Lyon on Nov. 4th, and the game is completely sold out now! At least I know to go out and watch it at a bar this time...

Wednesday, I actually taught my first "real" classes at Collège Jean Perrin. Kind of exciting. Kind of scary. I had 10 kids at 8am for 55 minutes, and we played Two Truths and A Lie, which they seemed to know and yet they all kept giving two lies and a truth instead. Not sure why, although it IS more fun to make things up... So they had fun with that, but I think it's going to be really hard to come up with things to do with them for FIFTY-FIVE minutes that aren't too challenging for those of them with limited English skills and that are still exciting and engaging AND that are mostly oral activities that don't need too much prep or photocopying, etc. Any and all ideas are welcome!

Wednesday afternoon, I went with a couple other assistants to the Institut Lumière, which is basically next door to me and is where the first movie was made! (The picture shows what's at my metro stop...and some velo'v bikes!) The museum is in the old Lumière household, and it's a HUGE house with all kinds of crazy movie-making paraphernalia. I'm not sure how much I really learned about making movies, but it was neat to see some of the first ones made. Then, to keep the movie theme going, I went to see Inglorious Basterds, which was amazing. Really hard to watch in some parts but still awesome. And kind of cool to see here because almost half of it was actually in French! The sad part was that I felt like I could understand the German parts at times better than the French... Sigh.

Thursday was my last day of teaching before vacation, and it was relatively uneventful. I'm still meeting with the students two at a time to get to know them a little better. The only problem was that the heat in the school didn't seem to be working, and it was freezing! Came home for a nice, warm nap to celebrate vacation, and then to see Le Petit Nicholas with Marie-Christine after babysitting. It's a movie based on a famous children's book character here, and Phillipe-Emmanuel loaned me the first book. It's hilarious--very french--and I loved the movie. Apparently the books have already been translated into English, but I've never seen any English editions and think Houghton should get on it...

My first day of vacation, I relaxed before going over to see Aurore early. Her mom wants me to come for an extra 2 hours on Fridays before P-E is done with school so I can work with Aurore just on English. In fact, I finally saw the mom on Thursday night and she gave me a 20-minute long lecture on how to teach English grammar. She doesn't actually KNOW any English and apparently doesn't realize that I don't actually KNOW anything about grammar so it was a very interesting (one-sided) discussion. I tried to teach myself English grammar on Friday morning using the one grammar book I bought and brought with me, but when I got to Aurore's house, she called her mom and begged to not have to do that since it was the start of vacation. So instead we basically hung out and played with their guinea pig, who I'm miraculously starting to have a soft spot in my heart for. Who knew? Then I went to get P-E and did a little bit of French homework with him and then we played poker the rest of the time. I love that I get paid 100 euros a week to play poker with a nine-year-old and putz around with a huge, bright orange guinea pig... J'ai la chance, as they say en français (I'm lucky).

Off to meet up with some people to see a bizarre play (saw the same troupe in a play last Friday too--they're hilarious) and then out on the town. As I mentioned, we finally found a disco that was open late and it was awesome. There was a back room playing French techno music (filled with gay frenchmen) and a PACKED front room playing American songs (filled with Americans and Brits). Ah, good times.

Spent most of Saturday sleeping to make up for the late night and didn't really venture back out until going for a run in the park on Sunday. It had been WAY too long since I'd exercised--it felt so good. Must remember that when I'm feeling lazy and bread-and-cheese-filled...

Had a friend for breakfast today and then went to meet the Eléonore, the niece of my host mom when I studied abroad in Paris. I was so nervous about speaking French, but she's SOOOOOO nice and I understood most of what she said and I love her! We had tea at her house and then went for a walk because it was a gorgeous day. We talked (in French!) for three hours about who knows what and even stopped at several bookstores because she loves books and I gave her the names of a bunch of books to read. We talked about my host family, and she invited me to visit her parent's house in Bourgogne for some wine festival in November. Yay!!! French friends!!!

Back home to meet Rachel's mom who is visiting for our break and out for a delicious dinner near our apartment. Getting ready now for a busy day tomorrow before leaving for Amsterdam on Wednesday--YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!

My apartment!!!!

My adorable living room and awesome light fixture (you can sort of see our little balcony too--perfect for eating delicious French breakfasts of croissants and pain au chocolat)

My bedroom, a little messy not gonna lie

Shot #2 of my bedroom with my cute little desk set-up and a plant that Audrey (our landlady) left that I am determined to NOT kill

View from my bedroom window, and yes, the church rings the hours and half hours starting at 9am everyday...

Rachel in her room

Shot #1 of our bathroom

Shot #2 of our bathroom with the amazingly wonderful shower (now hot--turned out I was turning the handle the wrong way, although I SWEAR I tried the other way for like 20 minutes)

The little toilet room/WC (think it's hilarious that our toilet is pink!)

Our kitchen, includes a dishwasher AND a washing machine!!

The view from our kitchen window of the Fourvière and the little Eiffel tower-looking thing that's actually a cell phone tower (classy, eh?)

More strikes, bookstore nerding out, another soccer match, and the coldest picnic ever...

EPIC FAIL, on the keeping this blog up-to-date (to employ a new favorite phrase of mine), I'll try to backtrack and give the highlights since last Tuesday.

Wednesday: Dragged myself out of a bed at 6:30 on a dark, cold wintery morning to go back to the far-away, relatively disorganized school, Jean Perrin, and had a pretty good first session with one group and second session with another (ran into some of the kids in the hall and one of the girls told me that a guy in the class has a crush on me--hilarious). Had a great talk with a physics teacher in the teacher's room who helped me get a key to the classrooms, which was exciting. 

Tried to go see Inglorious Bastards with Patrick, but alas, all of the theaters playing it at a time we could go were on a random strike. Seriously. So random. I understand this is the French way, but a little more warning would be nice... Went to FNAC, this huge Borders-type store, instead where I seriously nerded out in the children's section. Clearly, you can take the girl out of Houghton, but you can't take Houghton of the girl! I spent an hour scoping out new "trends" and checking up on Houghton books here. I found The Way We Work, The Giver, Le Petit Prince Pop-Up, which I'm seriously dying to have. HMH represent! I also found the new Waldo book (Où est Charlie? in french!), a bunch of Maisy and Dora and Geronimo Stilton books, but no Curious George! Apparently, my favorite little monkey doesn't translate well into French culture... :( 

Then I finally satisfied my need to veg out in front of a movie by watching Ne le dis à personne, an amazing French movie adapted from an English book--I highly recommend it.

Thursday: Another early day for me--met two more new classes at my first school, Collège de Vaise. Very cute. Then I discovered this awesome outdoor market next to my apartment with tons of bread and fruit and cheese and clothes and all sorts of things that happens every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday morning all year. No need to miss the Copley Farmer's Market anymore... :) 

Was pretty lazy the rest of the day, and then met up with some other assistants (English and Spanish) after babysitting to get my first chocolat chaud of the season since it's all of a sudden winter here!

Friday: Rachel and I braved the masses to go to Carrefour (kind of like Target) at the big shopping mall at Part Dieu to get some things for the apartment. Was a little overwhelming but very successful. 

Had a pretty intense English tutoring session with Aurore that exhausted and frustrated her, but I think I made her feel better after because I was reading aloud to her from her history book and she was getting a kick out of the fact that I literally CANNOT say certain words in French. She tried to get me to say "rouleau" correctly for like 10 minutes. Yeah, it's never going to happen... 

Met up with Rachel, Patrick, Ben, and another assistant afterwards to see this hilariously crazy play by this slapstick drama group. There are no words for the randomness. There was a loose plot line and a whole lot of partial male nudity interspersed with popular American songs. Because there was a lot of acting out, I actually understood a lot of it, although Ben rained on my parade saying that there were a lot of subtle plays on words and such that we clearly didn't get...

Saturday: Made deviled eggs to bring to a little potluck picnic in the park with several other assistants. Unfortunately, we hadn't counted on the fact that it's WINTER here so we were almost the only ones in the park... But we were all cute and bundled and had a delicious spread including quiche, baguettes, cheese, fruit, brownies, chips, duck liver paté (not my thing it turns out), and it actually got a tiny bit warm in the sun!

Then hurried home and back out to meet up with Patrick and Ben--who officially became my favorite person when he got three VIP tickets to the Lyon-Sochaux soccer game last night and invited me to come! Granted, he moved to Lyon recently and works all the time so doesn't have many friends here, but I still felt honored. I even bought a Lyon OL scarf for the occasion! I figure since I've been to three games in less than a month, I can consider myself a true fan. :)

 Unfortunately, not only was it freezing, but in spite of controlling the ball for most of the game, Lyon ended up losing 0-2 and Sochaux is supposedly a really bad team... I didn't really mind since Ben taught me some soccer terms in French, and I guess half of the team was benched to rest up for a big match against Liverpool on Tuesday. But it was kind of depressing to see them control the game and still not manage to get one shot on goal even! We met up with Greg for some beer after to try to warm up and ended up at a dance party at this bar on a boat on the Rhone, which was predictably hilarious.

Sunday: Had an epic date with the Frenchies today. They had me for lunch (blood sausage, which was surprisingly delicious in spite of looking like a turd log), which is so nice because it gives me a chance to really eat like the French. We always have a salad course and a main course and a cheese and fruit course with bread at all stages, followed by coffee and chocolate. And of course accompanied by wine! :) Then I played Scrabble with Marie-Christine again, which I think was frustrating for her because she's apparently really good in French but hasn't played in English in awhile. I hope she'll play in French with me soon because I'm curious to see if I can even do it! They still only speak in English with me so maybe I'll have to say something about that soon... Then we went to see Julie & Julia, in English with French subtitles, which I had already seen but loved just as much the second time. And both Marie-Christine and Régis loved it too. Have another movie date on Thursday to see Petit Nicholas with Marie-Christine, which is the movie of the book that Phillippe-Emmanuel lent me. Have to buckle down and finish it before then!

Off to bed so I can wake up and plan a bit for my afternoon classes, organize my room some more, and maybe finally get my checkbook... Pictures of my apartment to come soon too!!!

Good news...and bad news

So here in France, good news always seem to come with a little bad news lining. Here are a couple cases in point:

First, and BEST, of all, I moved into my new apartment today--YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's beautiful and sunny and furnished with very good taste. And most importantly, I was able to finally unpack and have my own room and my own space and my own bed. Woo-hoo! :) As soon as I have some time (I know I'm supposedly only working 12 hours a week, but with my babysitting job and traveling to and from my schools and trying to have some sort of social life, I'm finding myself quite busy!), I will take pictures and post them. So yay, I'm in my new apartment and the internet works and the bed is comfy and the building's heat is being turned on on Friday (thank god, because it turned into winter in Lyon today). BUT... Unfortunately and completely randomly, the hot water doesn't seem to work. Which was pretty bad news tonight when I got home from moving the last of my stuff and was freezing and just wanted a nice warm shower, especially since the shower here has an actual shower holder so you don't have to hold the nozzle AND has a shower barrier so the entire room doesn't get wet! I mean, I've been looking forward to this shower for like 2 weeks. Alas, it was probably the coldest, most miserable shower I've ever taken! :( I wouldn't even have bothered once I realized the water wasn't getting any warmer than frigid, but I had my mind set on finally being clean with clean pjs and clean sheets in a brand new bed! So I braved the freezing water and am now wearing approximately 85% of the clothes that I brought to France  in a futile effort to warm up...

Secondly, I was finally able to get my bank card today! (Went yesterday only to find that my branch was closed on Mondays...) This is extremely important because French ATM/debit cards aren't the kind that swipe; they have a little metal block thing on the front that gets inserted into machines. Because of this, certain places (including the 300+ bike rental stations around Lyon that are AWESOME) only accept French cards. So I was really excited to get it. A little card on the front said that the card isn't validated until I put it in an ATM machine and get money out. Small problem: there isn't any money in my account. Zero euros. I don't get paid for another week and a half, and in order to deposit the wad of euros I have stashed away, I need to use my ATM card because the people at the bank apparently can't do it themselves. Catch-22. It ended up not really mattering, right then at least, because the cash deposit machine was broken at that branch. I ended up finding another branch with a machine that worked and that actually accepted my potentially unvalidated card (although it sounded like it was eating it at first and I almost had a heart attack) so I was able to deposit my money and should be able to access it tomorrow. Yay! The bad news in this scenario (yeah, none of that craziness was bad news) was that I had gotten a text message saying that my checkbook was ready too so I don't have to pay my rent in cash again, which is a really weird thing to do just FYI, but when I asked for that at the bank the little man at the counter babbled something about the checkbook being sent to me in the mail at some later date. Not sure that's even really what he said, but he basically "dismissed" me after that so I guess I'll wait to see if I get any more mail from the bank in the next week or so before harassing him again.

No other hugely noteworthy events. Some interesting tidbits:

- went to my disorganized school today and was supposed to observe some classes but none of the teachers seemed to know I was coming... I did get to meet the Spanish assistant at the school and she's AWESOME. We talked in French for 45 minutes (sooooooooo impressed with myself) and are both at the school on Thursdays and have planned to eat lunch together next week.

- did end up going to one class with Paul, an English teacher I met last week. It was supposedly a "rough" class for the equivalent of vocational students, but I loved them! I won't be seeing them once my real schedule starts (if it ever does), but Paul asked me to come back tomorrow because they were so excited about having me there.

- played "Guess Who?" with Aurore today in English and then played with Phillippe-Emmanuel (turns out I was spelling his name wrong that whole time) in French. Such a good game for practicing another language!

I think that's it... Snuggling into my cozy bed now since I have to get up at the crack of dawn to trek to my school by 8 tomorrow. Awesome. :)

Oops...

Well, I did warn you that the blog posts would drop off... The past three days have been a little crazy, not gonna lie. Not that that's an excuse. :)

Anyway, so Friday was the orientation ("le stage" en français) for the English teaching assistants at a high school in the 4th arrondissement. Forgetting momentarily that the 4th, 5th, and 9th are a conglomeration of a million mini mountains, Rachel and I got off at the metro stop down the hill from the school and had to hike up to it. You could tell who made the same mistake by whoever entered the room sweating and breathing ridiculously hard. Ah, good times. During the morning session, the man in charge of the assistant program went through some of the crazy paperwork we all have to do. Unfortunately, he wasn't quite as helpful as I think most of us had hoped. Either he didn't really understand our questions (in spite of the efforts of some to ask him questions in French, he persisted in speaking in heavily accented English) or he doesn't really know the answers to most of our questions because he contradicted himself every 5 minutes. But there was some good info. in there, and it was nice to be able to meet many of the other English assistants in Lyon.

After a free lunch at the school cafeteria (which aside from the cheese hors d'oeuvre was surprisingly boringly similar to U.S. school cafeteria food), they split us into groups according to what level we are teaching. There were about 10 of us only teaching at the collège (middle school) level so we went with a French teacher who let us talk about some issues we were facing and gave us some helpful websites for lesson planning. Out by 3:30 and off to The Wallace, a Scottish pub right near the school. Bonded with some people, including a girl who graduated from Carleton last year! Apparently she worked reunion, which made me feel anciently old... Then I had to leave to babysit. Good times with Philip and Aurore again. I helped Aurore memorize her English script--I REALLY hope she does well with it today because I'm afraid her mom is going to think I'm useless unless she starts making some progress in English class... Played Uno with Philip. I let him win once and then beat him once. Very cute.

Home for a quick bite and talked to my mom and Miss Nancy (!) before going back to The Wallace where people were still hanging out. The rest of the night was hilarious and included

getting caught in a torrential downpour after the bars had closed and a sleepover of five of us assistants at Patrick's French friend Ben's apartment. Needless to say I spent most of Saturday sleeping. :) I did manage to get out and about to get 5 free copies of this cool guide to Lyon called Le Petit Paumé that covers basically everything in Lyon: places to eat, bars, housing guides, gyms, etc. Then off to Hotel de Ville, the town hall building, that was open to the public just on Saturday for the entire year. Ended up meeting the mayor of Lyon (I think) while waiting in line! There were some very impressive chandeliers, and the mayor's office was definitely nice.

The rest of the day was pretty low-key. Saw a movie since it was rainy and gross (Funny People, in English--don't think it would have translated very well into French...)

, had a delicious dinner (tomato-mozzarella app., pesto-zucchini pasta, chocolate mousse dessert, good wine), and ran into some crazy (and possibly seriously drunk) old man at this little bar who went to school at one of the places I'm teaching and kept repeating himself over and over, in French, about how he went there and his parents lived right next to it. It was really funny. I also just about died when I ordered a beer and it came in the most ginormous glass I've ever seen. It was just a normal pint of beer, but the glass was seriously bigger than my head.

Then, for the highlight of my weekend, I semi-organized a gathering of some assistants and others at the Parc de le Tête d'Or yesterday afternoon, and one of them had a soccer ball. In spite of it being kind of flat, we played for a bit and got recruited into playing a pick-up game with some other guys at the park! So finally, after over two months without soccer because of my stupid broken toe, I got to play again!!! We just played 4 v. 4, but it was awesome and I scored twice and my toe was only mildly sore after! :) It was actually kind of funny because I didn't realize until we'd been playing for like half an hour that most of the guys we were playing with were Brits. Here, I'd been struggling to yell things out in French and then I randomly heard one of them swear in English about not scoring a goal. Good times.

Relaxed afterwards with some other assistants, and then four of us went out for a delicious pizza dinner. Now I'm off to my school for a couple hours, then to babysitting, and then to sign the lease and bring over the first installment of my bags to my new apartment--yay!!!!

In love...

I know I already posted today and am in danger of breaking some sort of blog record for posting too often (I swear I'm doing things other than writing on here!!! I also want to just warn all you loyal followers--all 10 of you--that at some point this incessant posting is probably going to drop off in a big way so enjoy it now...), but I just got back from babysitting Aurore and Philip-Emmanuel and I am seriously in love with them. They might be my favorite part of Lyon so far. Well, not really. But almost... After helping Aurore memorize part of a script in English for school (speaking of, I've decided that my new calling in life might be to re-write the scripts in textbooks for English language learners--they're horrendous!), she said she had to practice a dance for her music class and needed some rock music. We proceeded to ransack her parent's CD collection, which was basically only classical music. What else would I expect from such uptight parents... But I managed to spot a burned copy of ABBA's Greatest Hits, which definitely did the trick. The three of us ended up dancing around the kitchen singing to "Mamma Mia" and it was hilarious.

On an unrelated side-note: Are these or are these not some of the most adorable shoes EVER?

Two soccer games in two weeks and more cute students

Definitely shouldn't have been worried about the game last night selling out... Ha! Just like at Gillette Stadium when the Revs play there the Stade de Gerland closed basically all the sections except for three, which is maybe why I was having trouble buying tickets online. Not to worry. They were practically GIVING tickets away--we (me, Patrick, and Greg, a guy from the UK who isn't an assistant but hangs out with our group) bought tickets for 4 euros each from some guy on the street. There were like 25 people in the stadium. Well, not that few, but it was COMPLETELY different from the men's game and this was a champion's league play-off game for the women! No one was standing or singing during the game. There was a lone guy playing some huge drum and trying to get people to chant without much success. They didn't even have the beer and food stands open! Greg and I ended up trekking all the way almost back to where we had to enter the stadium to buy the worst sandwiches I have ever eaten. Ever. Sigh. The Boston Breakers women's soccer team has more of a following than the Lyon women's team... But it was still fun to see them, and they're really good! Or Serbia, who they were playing, is exceedingly bad. After a scoreless first half during which Lyon completely controlled the ball, we (yes, WE) ended up annihilating Serbia 5-0. I made Patrick and Greg promise that they would come back for a men's match because it's just such a different atmosphere. Still glad I went though! But is the fact that I've been to the Stade de Gerland twice in the two weeks I've been in Lyon pathetic or awesome? Or does it simply mean that I'm French? :)

Anyway, since women clearly have to go to bed early to get their beauty sleep, the women's game started early and ended early so even in spite of a post-game walk by the river in the gorgeous blustery fall weather, I made it to bed relatively early. Which was good since I had to get up at 6:45 this morning (basically three hours earlier than I've gotten up since I got here--lucky me!) to be at my school before 8. Had a class with my favorite teacher so far at Collège de Vaise who I'm developing a bit of a crush on in that I want to BE her. She's a fantastic teacher, from what I can see, is super nice, speaks English with almost no accent (and is obviously fluent in French and gods knows what other 8 million languages), and is fashionable without being annoying about it. Plus she's the only teacher who I really seem to connect with on more of a friend level. Yep, my new goal is to be her best friend by the end of the year... Anyway, her class this morning was awesome. They asked me a million questions--some of the same but some new--and kept asking them even after the bell rang! They were just so engaged and excited and respectful, and this was at 8am! Plus, the majority of the kids in the class asked questions instead of just one or two students. So cool.

Then I had two periods off and braved the torrential downpour (although hallelujah! after like 10 years of owning raincoats that promise to be waterproof and are just vaguely water-resistant--NOT the same thing--my new Goretex raincoat from L.L. Bean has proved to be worth the money and actually keeps me dry!) to find the most amazing boulangerie near my school where I got the best pain au chocolat I've had since I got here. I'm pretty sure that will become a Thursday break ritual. Met a German assistant who works at both schools I do who seems really nice--found out from her that my other school does, in fact, provide housing, although she works at the high school there and not the middle school so maybe that's why I never heard about the housing... Anyway, I wouldn't want to live way out in the boonies anyway! Also, cleared up some confusion with my secretary about paperwork and such and got myself set up with an account so I can use the school printer and hopefully the copy machine. Then I had a class at 11 that was night and day from the earlier class. The kids were a serious handful, but luckily the teacher just had me take them one by one to another room to interview me. I only worked with three of them for 15 minutes each and they're in their first or second year of English so it was pretty basic English, but they were very earnest and cute away from the class craziness.

Came home to make soup and cuddle in dry clothes and buy my ticket to Amsterdam for my first school vacation, which is amazingly in two weeks!!! So excited!!!!

Miscommunication...in English

Managed to rouse myself before my usual wake-up time of 10:00 this morning because I was supposed to go to my second school to observe a class. They haven't given me a schedule yet, but because they're the more disorganized school and I think they'll probably just going to throw me into the mix, I e-mailed my contact there and asked if I could come observe some classes just to get a feel for the English level and how discipline is dealt with, etc. My contact teacher has been e-mailing me in English for the most part (she told her students that I don't speak French AT ALL so maybe she's just trying to be consistent) so I thought everything was going to be fine to meet up with her. Trekked out to the middle of nowhere--although it's much easier now that the buses are working--and managed to miraculously find the teacher's room in the ginormous castle of a school after only having to ask two people! She had said to meet her there at 10:55 so I was a little early, but 10:55 came and went and there were only a couple teachers in the teacher's room, none of whom were English teachers. I waited until 11:15 and then gave up. There was no way I was going to be able to find her classroom, and I didn't want to interrupt her anyway. I e-mailed her later, and it turns out that her break was at 9:55 and that's when she meant for me to come. Riiiiiiiiiight. Oops. I just think it's hilarious that in spite of making plans in English, I still managed to somehow get it wrong! Well, it WAS her fault, but I thought the break was at 10 and not 11 and probably should have questioned it.

Anyway, it meant that I was free to make it to a meet-up of other assistants for lunch, which was nice in the glorious 80 degree sunshine. Then we tried to go to the WWII French Resistance Museum, only to get there and find out that it's closed just for today due to some random strike. Kind of ironic and hilarious when the resistance museum is closed 

because of civil "resistance"... Ended up getting coffee instead and then the group went off to the Musée des Beaux Arts and I came home to go for a run. It was so beautiful and the next couple of days are supposed to be gross and rainy so I wanted to take advantage before it gets colder and before I move away from my favorite park.

Now I'm off to see if I can convince anyone to come with me to see the women's champion's league soccer playoff game tonight at the Stade de Gerland. The tickets seem to be sold out on-line, but with the reaction that I keep getting to women's soccer here, I can't imagine that's ACTUALLY the case...

Adorable students!

So my first "official" day teaching (last week's random classroom visits don't really count) went really well. I met the other three teachers I will be working with at Collège de Vaise, and they're awesome. They all spoke French really quickly basically at the same time so I didn't catch everything, but one of them is 28 and just had her first child and another one looks about my age too. The other teacher and my contact teacher are a little older, but they all seem very organized and friendly and really excited to have me here. I guess the past two English assistants at their school were from England and they were told I was too so they're all super excited that I'm from the U.S.

The first class I went to only had 9 students, but the teacher said it was a challenging class because there are two very distinct levels. I ended up sitting with students two at a time so they could "interview" me while the teacher taught the rest of the class. They were pretty shy and generally did have a hard time phrasing questions and understanding my answers, but I think they're a little bit younger and haven't taken English for very long... The second class was older and more lively. Three or four kids asked most of the questions, but they were all really interested in everything. At one point, one of the girls asked the teacher if she could have me say something in French so the girl had me say "I am American, and I would like to speak French very well." I freaked out a little but managed to say something passable because they gave me a huge round of applause, which was hilarious. Of course, later I kept obsessing about what I'd said and if it was grammatically correct--I don't think it was, but maybe that's better. If they hear me make ridiculous mistakes maybe they'll be more comfortable making mistakes in English... Anyway, the third class was my contact teacher's class and they were my favorite class so far. They were cute and polite and engaged and excited and asked some really hard questions! I mean, I had to answer all the usual questions about where I was from and what my hobbies were and what I like about France, but one of them asked me what my dream was, just in general. I also got asked what I wanted to do when I grow up (thank god apparently I'm not there yet!) and what city I wanted to live in. It was kind of intense for someone who hasn't quite figured all that out yet... But I think I managed to fake my way through pretty well. :) I got some points for liking House and CSI: Vegas, although I think I lost some points when I said I'd never seen a wrestling match--who knew the French cared about wrestling?!?! I also think they were a little disappointed that I hadn't ever been to Beverly Hills or met a celebrity--Bill Clinton didn't so much count... Maybe I should have mentioned Curious George! Although I don't think my favorite little monkey is as popular here in France as I had assumed he would be. I generally get blank looks from the French when I bring him up. :(

So that was a pretty good start, although it was atypical, I think. I will probably be doing more small group work once things get going. I definitely have another three classes on Thursday morning who will grill me about the same things. I mean, I love talking about myself and all, but there's only so many times I can list my hobbies and explain where Boston is and where Minnesota is and where Maine is and where Wisconsin is and why I'm from so many different places... And all cold! But since I don't have to do any planning or prep for it, I'm not going to complain.

Aurore and Philip-Emmanuel were cute, as always, last night and tonight, although their mom the drill sergeant got home last night and, when she found out that Philip-Emmanuel hadn't done any homework because he had finished everything for Tuesday, she launched into this lecture (apparently for my benefit AND his) about how he should be getting ahead with his work because later on he will get tons of homework all due on the same day so he needs to start learning how to work ahead and should have finished his work for Thursday. I mean, as someone who was known to maybe, sometimes, write papers on Friday nights in college even when they weren't due for a week, I definitely understand the value of working ahead. But good lord, the kid is NINE. He's in school from 8-5 and then is expected to do homework for two hours straight when he gets home?!??! Do they even give that much homework to 9-year-olds?!?! But she's the mom, so I'm just going to have to figure out some way to get him to do enough work to keep his mom satisfied without completely killing his childhood... Today he was being a little devil (albeit a cute one!) so I did make him sit down and do homework for Thursday without much time for fun. We did share a moment when I started reading a book of his, and he ended up calling his mom at work to ask her if he could lend it to me, which was really cute. I was a little embarrassed though since his mom already thinks I'm a moron and now here I am borrowing books to read from her 9-year-old... Awesome. Here's hoping that sometime before the end of the year my French miraculously flourishes and I can redeem myself!

Anyway, other than seeing the kids, I didn't do much today. Had an unsuccessful trip to the bank this morning to get my bank card because I got something in the mail from them but apparently they need to send me something else. Or I think that's what the guy said... And a British friend of mine moved into an apartment right nearby so a couple of us went over to check out his new place this afternoon. I'm getting kind of sad that I have to leave this area because I have my little favorite boulangerie and a good supermarket and it's near the park and so close to the kids I'm babysitting for. Sigh. But the 8th will be a good neighborhood too and closer to both my schools AND, more importantly, I'll have my own room not in someone else's apartment where I can finally unpack!!!! Yay!

And one not so good story :(

Missed another day yesterday, but I have a good excuse. I ended up getting some sort of stomach bug on Saturday night. I'll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that instead of spending my second Saturday night in France out celebrating a friend's birthday, I spent it "cleansing my system." Not fun. So I spent most of yesterday sleeping and trying to figure out what might be safe for me to eat, which was made a bit more difficult by the fact that basically NOTHING is open on Sundays in France. I thought it was just because people wanted the day off, but apparently it's actually illegal for stores to be open on Sundays unless they have specific permission (i.e. are in a tourist area). Who knew? I did manage to find one little mom-and-pop store that was open and miraculously had applesauce, which was perfect. Although this little bug better move along soon--I'm in France and REFUSE to stay on an applesauce diet! 

I did rally to meet up with some people for dinner last night for said friend's birthday, but since I wasn't really eating, I had to just sit there and watch. Kind of brutal. Especially since the restaurant (on rue Mercière--an awesome little pedestrian-only street with a TON of restaurants) had some sort of puffed pastry escargot thing that I will need to go back and order sometime in the very near future. :)

Off to eat some more applesauce (woo-hoo!) and then to my school to teach from 2-5!

Some good stories...

The first good story I have to share is a little sad at first. I got to the house where I'm tutoring and Aurore (the 13-year-old) seemed really sad. I asked her if she was okay, and she told me her great-grandmother had passed away the night before, and her mom had just called to tell her. I'm not that good at moments like those as it is, but I felt so inadequate trying to console this adorable girl who I can't communicate with that well and who I don't really know that well and who maybe never really has had to deal with death before. I gave her a hug (which I realized too late the French don't really do--oops), and then she got out some pictures of her great-grandmother to show me. The woman had just celebrated her 106th birthday on Thursday and seems like she was an amazing lady. We ended up finding pictures of Aurore and Philip-Emmanuel as babies, which were really cute, so both of the kids started laughing and seemed to be doing better. Their mom called and told them they didn't need to do homework (thank god--their great-grandmother just died, plus it was FRIDAY night!) so we ended up playing Monopoly, the Lyon edition. They had a couple really fun rules that were new to me. For example: if you don't want to buy a property you land on, you can establish a base price and the other players get to bid for it--so cool! Maybe that's a normal rule, but I had never played that way and maybe would have enjoyed Monopoly more back in the day if I had... I'm really just NOT good at Monopoly, but it was cute playing with them. Aurore had turned the radio on and whenever a song that she liked came on, she would pause the game and dance around the room singing. I seriously love her. Then at one point, she started rattling off all of these words, and the only way I knew that they were bad words was that Philip-Emmanuel kept freaking out and gasping. Then she asked if we had bad words in English and wanted me to teach her some... Riiiiiiight. Definitely don't need to get on her mom's bad side this early on. The game kind of descended into chaos and giggles after that, and unfortunately that was the point at which their mom came home. I didn't know how to politely and coherently say sorry for her loss so it was all very awkward. Then she asked if we had spoken English at all and if Aurore had shown me her English homework yet, which she hadn't, so she said we should do that for sure on Monday. I mean, I have no problem speaking English with her, but I would kind of like to establish some sort of trust and friendship first so Aurore feels more comfortable with me. I think that will be more helpful in the long run anyway than if I just jump in and be a drill sergeant right from the beginning. That woman REALLY needs to loosen up a bit.

Second good story was more of an observation. After leaving the kids, I went to this huge meet-up with a ton of the other assistants here in Lyon and its suburbs. There were probably at least 50 of us who met up and went to this brasserie in Vieux Lyon for drinks. It was kind of intense and overwhelming trying to meet and actually connect with anyone in such a big group, but everyone seems nice and it sounds like we're all in basically the same boat with finding housing and figuring everything out at our schools and all. The majority of people were American, but there was representation from the UK, New Zealand, Palestine, Germany, Austria, Australia, and other places I'm sure. Paying the bill was a nightmare, and then groups sort of split off. I ended up at this bar called The Rambler with a couple other people, and it was hilarious. They kept playing the most RANDOM songs. We were there for a couple hours and heard Thriller, Cotton-eyed Joe, Material Girl, YMCA, If You Seek Amy, some French techno; I mean, it was all over the map. And some of the French guys were really getting into it, which was hilarious. I tried to take some covert pictures and failed so you'll have to wait for those.

Third good story just happened this afternoon. I went to the big park nearby to read and soak up the sun since it's such a beautiful day. I was reading and minding my own business (well, for the most part; I was stalking adorable small French children behind my sunglasses--see picture below) when this older guy who was playing soccer with a younger boy came over and asked me for a light for his cigarette. Clearly, I don't have one since I don't smoke (and I wouldn't have given him one if I'd had one since that's generally a sketchy pick-up line here) so he went away. Five minutes later he came back and asked, well mimed, if he could sit down. I felt awkward and really just wanted to read, but it's not MY park and plus, I thought that maybe I could use him to practice some French before running far, far away. Turns out he's from Bulgaria and didn't speak French OR English. Suffice it to say, we had a really great conversation... He did manage to ask me to go for coffee. Yeah, right. Finally, he asked his friend to come over who sort of spoke French. We chatted a bit (after finding out my age, he said he was 28, which was a BLATANT lie), and he kept asking me if I wanted to go get a coffee with his friend. I think at one point, he even asked if his friend could come to my house. Awkward! They were totally harmless and kind of amusing--the one who actually sort of spoke French kept trying to sell me on the merits of Bulgaria... But I got over it pretty quickly and said I had to leave to meet a friend. Ah, France. Figures that the first guy who hits on me here doesn't actually speak French. Awesome.

Anyway, so here's a picture of one of the adorably cute French children I stalked in the park today. The little guy here was playing golf with his dad and wearing the most amazing little hat! He kept getting frustrated when he couldn't hit the ball and at one point threw down his club in disgust--at three-years-old, he already has the makings of a pro! Note the grass in the foreground, which was me trying to be subtle and discrete and keep my camera hidden...

Stealing French children...

So, as many of you know, I have kind of a problem with wanting to steal small children. I mean, I don't REALLY want to steal them, but I tend to stare and be a little creepy when I come across an especially adorable small child. This affliction has followed me to France and is threatening to become a serious issue... The children here are just soooooooooo incredibly cute! First of all, they're dressed to the nines usually with little European shoes and the cutest little hairstyles. And second, when they open their mouths out comes FRENCH! Not sure that will ever cease to charm and amaze me! Although maybe part of the charm is that I don't understand everything they say... Anyway, just wanted to make sure you all know that I've been restraining myself from becoming an international criminal wanted for stealing the cutest children ever. It was especially hard walking to the park this morning to go running because I was behind a gym teacher taking a class of 6 and 7-year-olds to the park to hula hoop, and they were just being ridiculously adorable.

All right, enough of that nonsense. Not much to add today. My first night of babysitting/tutoring went well. The kids are so well-behaved and cute. I'm really not sure how much help I'll be as a tutor though... The 10-year-old boy wanted me to quiz him on the properties of volcanoes, but I couldn't read his handwriting to check it against what he was saying back to me and I'm not sure if it would have helped any if I could have... Ah, well, he's a smart kid. I'm sure he knows it. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight. I was even more useless with Aurore, the 13-year-old. She needed help with physics (properties of open and closed electrical circuits) and geometry (if-then statements about shapes and angles and lines). Even in English, those are things I haven't studied or thought about in a MILLION years. In French, it was impossible. But she ended up putting something down for her homework so maybe she figured it out in the end... Ack! We did have a hilarious time when they tried to explain the plot of Ice Age 1 and 2 to me. There was a lot of Franglais (French and English together) and gesturing and laughing. They definitely convinced me that I have to see the movies so I call that a success!

Other than that I just completed my bank account stuff (should get my cards and checkbook hopefully next week) so now I can get paid. Very exciting! And now I'm off to be a useless tutor again before meeting up with a bunch of other assistants tonight to celebrate some birthdays--apparently like half the group has a birthday at the end of September or the beginning of October. Crazy!

Beaucoup de choses!

Ah! I missed a day... And I was doing so well! C'est la vie. Lots to catch up on!!! Met a bunch of other assistants yesterday--six of us wandered around Vieux Lyon yesterday afternoon being totally blown away by the view of the city from the Fourvière, which is a huge old church that looks out over the whole city from atop a GIGANTIC mountain of a hill. (We took the funiculaire up so we wouldn't die from the heat and walked down.) Lyon is just soooooo beautiful, and I still can't believe I'm actually LIVING here. Here's my attempt at a panoramic shot of the city with my camera...

We got some delicious lunch, although I can't say the same of the dessert. Patrick, another assistant, and I were feeling adventurous and ordered l'île flottante (floating island), described to us by the waitress--well, translated via Patrick--as whipped egg whites in sweet cream. Um, suffice it to say, it was basically a floating marshmallow chunk in a yellow-ish sauce. Not my favorite French dessert and one I'm going to steer clear of in the future but hilarious all the same. :)

Some people came; some people left; a few of us went out for a delicious pizza dinner and then got beers (only one euro!) and went to sit down by the river. Apparently it's legal to just walk around with open bottles here--ah, Europe! I have to admit that we mostly spoke in English, but here's hoping that will change as more of us get comfortable speaking in French... Made it home without once consulting my map, which was good since it's basically falling apart at the seams!

I went off to my school this morning to officially sign in, but I didn't end up being able to meet up with my teacher. I did get complimented on my French by the school disciplinarian who thought I was from London! So I was feeling confident and ended up just walking into a BNP bank near my school and opening a bank account with very little trouble!!! Well, there was something going wrong with their computer system so I couldn't sign up for my bank cards or a checkbook yet, but I'm going back tomorrow to do that and to get my relevé d'identité bancaires, which I need to get paid and to set up my account to pay rent and to basically do anything at all with my money. But otherwise, it was really easy and the guy who helped me was super nice!

Zipped home for lunch since most of the metro lines are working now and cancelled my bank appointment at the branch near here for tomorrow. Also popped in at the grocery store to get some bread and found this amazing juice that's a mixture of raspberries and grapefruit! For those of you who don't know, those are basically my two favorite foods so it was kind of amazing to find them in a juice together! Never heard of anything like that before. The jury's still out on whether I like it or not--tastes a little different. Had a delicious lunch and ran into Damien before I had to leave again. He had gotten the mail and I received my results from the written French test I took at the university last week (in case I want to take French classes, which it turns out I can't since I'm babysitting every night). I was all nervous that it was going to come back with me at a basic beginner level, which would be really sad and pathetic after taking 8 years of French and studying in Paris. But never fear--I got a ranking of C2, which is "Experienced Autonomy", the the second highest out of the six levels!!! I'm sure it would have been different if there had been any oral component or listening comprehension, but it's still nice to know that I can read and write French at a relatively high level!

Then I trekked back out to my second school, which is out in the middle of NOWHERE. Literally. It's not even on my map. I took one of the metro lines to the bitter end north of Lyon and then, because of the strike, had to walk through this random suburb/forest area for 45 minutes. Thankfully there were signs for the school or I would have been completely lost. It took me longer than I thought so I ended up being a little late meeting the teacher. And apparently on the phone earlier this week the secretary had told me to meet a different teacher at 10 this morning. Riiiiiight. Clearly not what I heard/understood. Although, honestly, I really don't think she told me that--she just kept shuttling me to different people and the teacher I finally did talk to definitely said 1:30... Anyway, whatever. It was fine. Some random woman (didn't catch her name or her job title) took me to the teacher's room. On the way, she ALSO complimented me on my French (woo-hoo!).

A male teacher, Paul something or other (I'm such a visual person, even in English, that's it's impossible to catch all these names when they just mention them once off-handedly), talked to me for a bit. He also thought I was from London--not sure why. Maybe it's a good thing that I don't have an American accent when I speak French? Who knows. I think that's what I'll go with... Then he asked if I wouldn't mind coming to his class to meet the kids. I freaked out a little but went with him, and the kids were hilarious. He had them ask me some questions, mostly along the lines of where I was from, what my hobbies were, why I was in France, etc. A couple of them are really good at English, but they're so shy and self-conscious! Ah, middle school. Don't really miss that... I did decide that I don't think I'm quite "cool" enough. They kept asking who my favorite bands were and my favorite songs and movies, and I realized that everything I was saying was SOOOOO ten years ago. Sigh. I also need to do some research on French music and movies and pop icons because I'm sadly completely ignorant in that area...

Another teacher, Andrée Roussillat (she wrote her name down for me because I think she's the English department head there and will be my contact for that school), stole me for a bit and I went through sort of the same intro. business with her kids. She seems a little stricter and also told them that I didn't know ANY French. None of them bought it, I don't think, but they did keep asking if I knew even just a little bit... Very cute. She took me back down to the teacher's room after class and said she wasn't sure when I would be able to start because they have to see what my schedule is at the other school and see what kids have free periods to meet with me. They seem a little more disorganized there, but then that school is double the size of my main school and is HUGE. I got totally lost trying to get out. I literally couldn't find an exit and ended up going through the cafeteria trying to look like I knew where the hell I was going. Finally made it out and back to the metro. I think I walked maybe 5 miles today--no need to go running! Maybe I even earned another crepe... Mmmmmm.

Now off to my first night of babysitting/tutoring for a 10-year-old boy, Philip-Emmanuel, and a 13-year-old girl, Aurore. They're adorable but completely over-programmed by their way too organized mom. She has my two hours a night with them scheduled down to the minute. Good lord.