mercredi 3 octobre 2007

day 7/8/9 - this is the first day of my life

man! it doesnt seem like its been 3 days since i last wrote a blog, but i guess that is in fact the case.

before i forget, here are some other things which have stuck out to me about Tours....
the night club down the street from me is called Pimps
michael moore is written into the french curriculum
there are a shit ton of people who take rollerblades around town
i cant get paid until every last TA in my region has opened up a bank account, and there are a lot of us...

I GOT MY FIRST LETTER IN THE MAIL YESTERDAY!!
my buddy shannon from gsu sent me a letter in the mail and i got it when i returned from orleans tuseday evening. i was so happy to get it! it made me do a little dance around my studio ^-^ keep em coming! its very encouraging to know im still being thought of. life goes on, but i keep all you guys on my heart still. with your closest friends you know that no matter how much time goes by that you dont see each other, when you finally meet back up, whether it be weeks, months, or years, you know that not a damn thing will change between you. send me your address and ill write you a letter too!

auroralynn8@aol.com

now lets see, monday, monday... monday morning i awoke around 11am and shortly after i caught the bus towards ballan-mire to pay a visit to my second middle school. to my dismay, there are probably only about 4-5 buses that run from downtown tours to ballan on a daily basis, so i had to catch a bus to joue les tours (where brittany stays), and then i phoned the school letting them know i was trying to get there, but there wasnt another bus for at least another hour, so one of the principals just came and picked me up from in front of a jewelry store.

my second school is MUCH much bigger than the first one. there are only about 250 students in Saint Cyr, and 550 in ballan. and i am the only english TA at both schools... i was lucky enough to be placed at two schools where the secretaries are on top of their shit and i dont have to run around in circles confused. generally, french people are very unorganized and scatterbrained, and dont communicate well amongst themselves. i received my schedules from the two schools. Im only working tuesday, thursday, and friday of the week. tuesdays and fridays i am teaching in saint cyr, and then thursday im at ballan all day. which is convenient, sort of, because ballan is so far away (an hour bus trip). i could take the train there, a 10 minute ride, but ive already bought a bus pass for the month, so i think ill just tough it up and take the bus at 8am. i met my 3 english teachers whom ill be helping there. one lady is british, and one is from new jersey, and i dunno about the 3rd, i dont remember. the american had a crazy story of how shed come here to study i believe and then met a guy, then when she came back a year later to teach english, she was coincidently placed in the same city as his father. they got married and shes been living here for the past 20 years.

i made my way back from ballan after only about an hour of walking around the school, and talking with the principals an such, and when i returned to tours i went straight to the bazar to buy pots and pans and plates and silverware and groceries so that id be able to cook for myself. im running out of money again =/... when i got home around 7, i started cooking for myself, some spaghetti with chunky meat sauce (homemade!!), but i ran out of time to thoroughly enjoy my meal because the language cafe started at 20h30 and i wasnt going to miss that!! but of course, i walked halfway across town to where i THOUGHT it was at, only to realize upon my arrival that it was in fact right in front of my apt building... well hey, i got some exercise. and when i returned, there were at LEAST 50 people sitting outside. as i walked by each table, i noticed different signs in the middle indicating which language was being spoken at that table in particular. there was german, italian, greek, english, french, french sign language, and japanese, but no spanish!! so i told the lady that was in charge that i wanted to speak spanish and she told me to hang out for a minute and more people would come. sure enough this guy francisco showed up and he and i began speaking together. he was from columbia. i told him my neighbor was this columbian named francisco too! how ironic... so more people started showing up, and before long there were about 10 people at the spanish table, but only half of them were speaking spanish because the other half found out i was american and wanted to practice their english with me.... yarrrg... well, after about a couple hours, id met a young french girl named laura who was studying spanish at the university, and older gentleman from Iraq who didnt speak spanish, but he wanted to practice his english, and older french man who was just slightly a pervert (but most old french men are im coming to find out. when i was in orlean earlier that day, another drunk old man approached me and started talking about how young people these days dont have sex for love anymore, its just to hook up. and hed bought a prostitute for 5o0euro, but he couldnt get another wife who actually would love him. a friend of his ordered a mail-order bride for 18000euro, and after she arrived in france she dumped him...)... there were a number of other people from columbia and france at the spanish table as well. francisco had moved to the other end of the table for a moment, but since returning to my end of the table and we started talking again. i asked him where he lived and he told me Rue Charles Gille, and i said, "ME TOO!" yea, turns out HES my neighbor. hah! well, i stayed there until about midnight and then francisco and i returned back to our flat and said our adieux.

the next morning (tuesday, oct 2) i woke up bright and early before the sun broke over the horizon and walked with bryan to the train station to catch the train to Orleans for our TA orientation. there was a small group of about 6 or so other TAs there already. Brittany made it not even 5 minutes before the train left! but i was SO glad she made it. when we got to orleans, (a 1hr train ride) there was a HUGE group of TAs at the station who had come from all over the centre region, and we walked together to the salle eiffel where the meeting was. as it turned out, there were TAs for spanish, german, english, italian, and portuguese there. but there were people representing countries from all over the world... new zealand, south africa, trinidad and tobogo, jamaica, canada, australia, italy, germany, mexico, ireland, scotland, portugal, britain, usa, spain, ummm.... i cant think of anywhere else significant off the top of my head... they fed us some chocolate croissants and oj for breakfast, gave us a presentation, and then we split into groups and went on a small tour of the city of Orleans. Joan of Arc is HUGE here. she lifted the siege at orleans... um, i remember talking about it in french history class, but ya know... its been a while and thats all i remember... it was raining pretty much the whole time we walked around the city, but not too hard. when we returned to the meeting room, they had prepared a niiiice big buffet for us with chicken, beef, ham, wine, bread, cheese... typical french food. there was couscous too, but im not crazy about that. and i could have drank more wine, but i took it in moderation. brittany had a couple glasses though and she was starting to turn a bit red, haha. we also had the privilege to meet to american ambassadors!! they were two women. one was kinda odd looking and she moved like a robot and had a crazy look in her eyes... i met another TA who smokes weed, yay! her name is stephanie and shes from the Bay area of california. go figure she smokes weed. shes quite a rad chick to say the least.

we finally left the meeting and by this point, id met some other TAs who were living in Tours. Aine (pronouned Oh-Neh) from ireland (this is my new favorite name ever ^_^), and ashley from new orleans. so me, brittany, aine, and ashley walked around a minute in the mall area and got some smoothies while we waited for our train to go back to tours and chatted it up. we found an H&M!! and it turns out there isnt one in Tours. this one is the closest to us, so we ladies might be taking some train trips here. or what the hell, we'll just go to paris instead for 40euro round trip.

i didnt get back to tours until around 5pm and i went right to mac D's to do the internet thing since id lost my free signal at my spot. it goes in and out from day to day. i found out that my cousin is going to be a father!! and he and his baby mama are going to get married in december!! but i wont be there for it =(... it came as a big shock to me. i havent spoken with him in a while, but i knew he was doing well as a manager of a couple coffee shops in tampa and was dating her.

when i got back to my spot, francisco, me and another one of our neighbors, Elodi, who i just met as i was going to the toilet (one of the 2 french girls on our floor) came to the agreement that we'd share the wireless connection between the three of us - 10euro a piece/month. which is pretty damn good. francisco and i stayed up until about 2am chattin it up. i had a couple glasses of wine and my french became a lot easier. or maybe i just got more relaxed and lost my inhibition. we talked about anything and everything. life, languages, love, the world, religion, good night clubs to hit up, ect. and the whole time we kept going between english, french, and spanish. it was quite awesome!

after i walked back to my room around 2, i stayed up ANOTHER 2 hours fooling around uploading pics online to my ringo site. (all my pics are there if you guys care to check them out)

http://www.ringo.com/photos/recent.html?memberId=131833298

consequently, i woke up late today for my second TA meeting at 9am. i awoke at 915... hah, check this, so id bought a new alarm clock since the one i bought in the states got demagnitized or somethin in airport security. but it doesnt have a snooze. so when i woke up this morning, i turned it off and for some reason placed it right next to my face on my pillow, as if it would go off again, and i passed out. i was about 35 minutes late to the meeting =x my bad. but they didnt say anything, and later i talked to bryan and he said he was 20 minutes late himself.

the meeting yesterday was somewhat informative, but i think i left a bit more confused, and a bit upset that i still had so much more federal stuff to complete before i could sit back and relax. i have to get the extension on my visa, a doctors visit to make sure im in good health - which i have to wait for THEM to send me an apt and then go BACK to Orleans for the visit. something about i cant travel until i get all that done, but our first vacation is at the end of oct until nov 8, and im going to want to go somewhere these 8 days. i have to apply for some govt aid too. but ill get an additional 140euro a month which is sweet. thats extra travel money for sure!

the meeting today however was where i learned my shit. it turns out i AM going to have to prepare some lesson plans (weeeeeird!). i learned what level of english my students will be at, and what all ill be able to teach them, and then we divided up into groups of 3/4 to make sample lesson plans. ours was pretty good. we made a family tree and incorporated a number of grammatical elements into it, as well as vocabulary, and discussions, and individual work. i was paired with a canadian and a texan, they were both very energetic. the problem lies in what all we can and cant talk to the class about. some kids have lost their parents. and what is the "nuclear" family of 2007? we couldnt get too much into "typical" families, because they dont exist, but we kept it very general while managing to incorporate cultural aspects of our own country.

we ate in the high school cafeteria that afternoon... there were bottles of wine on the tables, and i totally thought they were bottles of oil/vinegar... man... but s'cool. s'not like wine is expensive around here or nothin. after we finished up our meeting around 16h, we went on a small tour of Tours, but id seen it all by getting myself lost and finding my way around. so when our guide left, me and my ladies (aine, brittany, ashley) walked down rue national towards place jean jaures. ashley needed to buy a hair dryer, brittany needed to buy a bus card, and i needed to make an apt to open a bank account (no, i still dont have one). today was Aine's 23 birthday in fact! but she had to return home by 19h for dinner with her host mother. shes trying to move closer to the city for convenience sake, but the older lady she stays with is totally bummed out she wants to leave. i think she really enjoys the company.

when i finally said goodbye to everyone, i went home and made some dinner, then francisco and his girlfriend alexandra came home, and the greek girl from cyprus, Eleni, whom we'd met at the langauge cafe came by and we all hung out at franciscos and chatted it up. i showed them where id lived downtown on the google satellite, and eleni showed us her town in cyprus. alexandra is studying law at the university and she actually lives in Chinon. i told her im going to come stay a couple days with her so i can visit all the chateaux there. and there are a TOOOOON!!

siiiiigh, and now, its 130am, and i have to wake up in 5 1/2 hours to go to ballan. its almost the weekend already!! i have class tomorrow and friday, and on saturday a bunch of us are going to the movies in the afternoon and then out for drinks. that should be quite fun. tomorrow night, im going to PIMPS!! with francisco, alexandra, eleni, and maybe some others. pimps is my new MJQ... maybe, we'll see. if the music is decent. they have two rooms as well, but i want to say they play rock and maybe salsa?? but i should be able to get in free cause im a girl, francisco says. or maybe its free before midnight. dunno. ill write allll about it next time. take care everyone!
all my love
bear

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