Soccer, Ballet, School Craziness--ah, France...

Feeling SOOOOOOOOOOO good right now--I just went for a run outside in shorts because it's finally gorgeous! (It's been painful getting back on the exercise wagon, particularly without an awesome gym and exorbitant membership guilting me into it, but my daily pain au chocolat and mounds of cheese have made it necessary if I don't want to have to buy myself two seats on the plane coming back to the States...) It's been rainy and miserable basically since I got back from Amsterdam so it's nice to see some sun again. I also no longer have the excuse that there's nowhere to run because, even though I'm now too far away from the beautiful park to easily go running there, I'm close enough to Lyon "suburbs" to run down nice residential streets with big sidewalks right from my apartment. :)

Okay, on to more exciting news. Looks like I'm probably not going to be able to average much more than one post a week so you're just going to have to deal with super long posts... I'll do my best to remember and only recount the good stuff.

STARTING WITH the fact that I amazingly and miraculously somehow got tickets to the Lyon-Liverpool Champions League match last Wednesday, the day I got back from Amsterdam. I had been trying to get tickets to go with a bunch of people, but no one got back to me in time so the affordable tickets were sold out. But Damien, the guy that Rachel and I lived with the first couple of weeks here, found two tickets on ebay, I think, that weren't too expensive. I mean, this game was huge. Lyon had just beat Liverpool at their stadium for the first time ever three weeks earlier, and there's a pretty big rivalry between the teams. Plus, it was a Champions League match so it was a big deal. Damien ended up not feeling like going so I went with another assistant, Marissa, who wanted a real French football experience. It was craziness! We weren't in the section that stands up the whole time, but we were in the upper stadium so now I've sat in different sections of the stadium all four times I've gone! The picture shows the beginning of the game when they give differently colored sheets of paper to people sitting in the Lyon fan section (I was in the Liverpool section but was surrounded by Lyon fans) to spell things out--I sat over there my first game at the stadium and had no idea what was going on with the paper. Now I know. :) 

The game itself was kind of boring until the last minute when Lyon scored to tie the game at 1-1. But we made friends with our neighbors, and I knew the words to some of the cheers, and it was definitely worth it.

Going back to teaching on Thursday was a little brutal. I'm still having some classes for the first time, and I had trouble finding a room for one of the classes (so annoying since it's really awkward to be running around the school trying to find an empty classroom without a key to open the room up when and if you find one while you have kids waiting around for you), but I think I finally have most of those little details worked out. A month and a half later. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Had a great weekend, mostly not sleeping. Patrick's Quebecois friend had a huge house party on Friday with people from all over. I spent half of the night somehow chatting with these guys from Spain who I don't think spoke English or French. And they were 21... Then met up with some assistants on Saturday afternoon for delicious crepes at this adorable restaurant--something we are trying to make into a tradition. Yay crepes! In spite of the fact that they have millions of different kinds there, I caved and got my good old banana-nutella fave. Mmmmm. Then we went to Ryan's house where his roommate, Ana, a Spanish assistant, was having a little house party. We ended up playing card games in English (because someone's friends from home were visiting and didn't speak French at all) and French (because Ana doesn't speak English). It was hilarious.

I tried and mostly failed to lesson plan on Sunday. I'm still doing pairs getting to know the kids at College de Vaise, but for my one regular class there on Mondays I tried to do a lesson on vacation (since we'd just come back from one and all) incorporating some music with them having to fill in some of the lyrics and then playing a game. It didn't so much work, but I think they still had fun. Would be really helpful if I knew HOW to lesson plan... Ah, good times. It doesn't help too much either when you plan a lesson for 10-15 kids and end up having 2-3, which is what happened to me in two of my classes on Tuesday. That school, College Jean Perrin, has taken a lot longer to get my schedule organized so it was my first time seeing those kids. Instead of 6 in my first class, I had 3. Still not sure how I managed to drag the lesson out into the full 55 minutes. But the three kids have a pretty high level of English, comparatively, and so I can probably do some fun small group things with them. For my second class, I had 2 kids instead of 10. I just scrapped the lesson and talked to the two girls. They couldn't really speak English at all so we mostly spoke in French and their teacher was next door and came up to me afterwards to tell me she heard some French spoken. Not sure what she really expected me to do with two kids who don't speak English AT ALL, but the girls were adorable and we had a great conversation in Franglais so whatever. At least we were talking about the United States in French--doesn't that count? Kind of? My third class was like 9 kids instead of 7 so we did the real lesson and it went fine for the most part. 

During one of my hour breaks (I have four on Tuesdays--just short enough so I have to stay at the school basically the entire day even though I only teach three classes), I sat in on a planning period with two of the English teachers, which was really helpful getting to see what and how they're learning in their real classes. And also hearing that the actual teachers struggle with the same behavior issues. Then I went to eat lunch in the cafeteria with the teachers, and the food was surprisingly good! I still don't have my own card to swipe there because the person who gives the cards out doesn't seem to ever WORK. But one of the other teachers paid for me, so that was nice.

We had Wednesday off for Armistice Day and about 15 of us got together for an amazingly delicious American brunch. Because I babysat Tuesday night and then went out for dinner, I didn't have time to make anything so I brought mimosas. It's not a brunch without those! :) We all ended up hanging out for like 5 hours brainstorming lesson plans and cracking up about our teaching experiences. And then one of the other assistants mentioned that she was going to the Opera to see Baryshnikov dance. I had seen posters of him all over Lyon but didn't really believe that HE was actually coming to perform. For those non-ballet-obsessed people, Mikhail Baryshnikov is basically a god in the ballet world, but he's 61 years old and doesn't really perform much anymore. He was, in fact, coming to dance two solos and two duets with an even older ballerina, and I freaked out and made the entire group come to the Opera with me to see if they still had tickets. They did (and cheap!) so a bunch of us ended up buying tickets and going last night, and it was amazing.

 I mean, he didn't exactly leap everywhere or do his incredible pirouettes, but the four pieces were extremely moving and I just couldn't believe that I was actually seeing HIM. I did tour jetés down into the metro on the way home. :)

I think I'm successfully caught up now. What am I forgetting? Oh! So not sure I ever wrote it in here, but right before vacation my bed broke. Get your minds out of the gutter, people--I literally just sat down on it and the middle plank splintered. Clearly, this was yet another sign that I needed to start exercising again. Also, further proof that IKEA products are kind of crappy, even in Europe. So I just put my mattress on the floor and have been sleeping on it like that. But the new bedframe was delivered yesterday afternoon so now I have a bedframe again. Although, due to a miscommunication between IKEA and my landlady and the fact that I don't speak French well enough to argue, the IKEA guys took the old bed without leaving the posts that I guess I needed for the new frame, so the frame is fine and all, but it's still just on the ground and not actually raised up at all. My landlady keeps calling me about it, but it's perfectly comfortable and I'm so tired of dealing with it that I'm ignoring her. Is that bad? :)

What else? Aurore and Phillipe-Emmanuel continue to be the cutest kids ever. I love them. I might steal them at the end of the year. I doubt their parents will even notice since they are NEVER home. Have yet to meet the dad and have still only seen the mom twice, including the first time I met her. I brought manegtic word poetry in English over for Aurore, and she loves it. And I introduced them to Reese's peanut butter cups, which they also loved. Feel free to send packages of those to me--they don't have them over here... PE continues to cheat and beat me at every game we play, but it's hilarious. He and I had an intense conversation last night about Judaism because I guess he has a friend who told him that Jews aren't allowed to say the name of God. Took awhile for me to explain that there are different levels of Judaism and I'm not so much that kind of Jew... It was entertaining for me.

Off to eat and shower!