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!!!
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