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!!!!