First Week of My Contract

From how much I've been updating this week you can tell that I finally got Internet at my apartment, right? Hah, it's funny that now that I have almost unlimited access to the Internet I haven't been posting as many updates. I'll contribute part of that though to the fact that I was in and out of my school this week, gathering paperwork to send off to various places, spending time with people and still trying to get a bike.

We'll start with work. This was the first official week of my contract, so I only really observed classes. Over the course of the week I attended a variety of classes, with younger and older students, students who take more hours of English, others who take fewer, etc. I'm teaching at a "lycée général et technologique," which is a high school where students are pursuing studies in science and technology. Because of this, some students who have more tech heavy schedules take less foreign language classes than other students. In all of the classes I went to, the teacher had the students try to get to know me by asking me questions. Some of my favorite/the most popular questions were:

1)Why did you come to Pau?
2)Do you speak French really well?
3) What do Americans think of French people?
4) How do you make pancakes?
5)What is the toughest thing to get used to here in France?
6)Were you disappointed when you came to France for the first time?


It's a bit confusing, but I'm going to try to summarize how my job will work. All of the English teachers have a maximum of 30 students in their classes. During select hours during a week I'll take half of a particular teacher's class and then the following week take the other half of the class. Some classes I'll see less of because during a certain hour I'll have a different teacher's class depending on the week. Confusing, right? So basically, I'll be seeing a lot of different students during the course of a week or even a few weeks. When it comes to planning activities for the classes I have a feeling it might be a little confusing at first, but hopefully it should work out okay. I'll be doing my first solo classes tomorrow, so I'm excited (but a little nervous) to start!

On Tuesday there was an all-day meeting for all of the teaching assistants (for English, German, Spanish and Russian) in my area. Before going I heard that the purpose of the meeting was for us to meet other assistants in our area, though I must admit that it was a bit difficult because of how the activities and everything were organized. Still, the meeting was pretty useful for ideas in the classroom and help with sorting out paperwork. Bureaucracy is a nightmare in France and so it was good to have some clear instructions on what we should get together and send off to validate our "carte de séjour" and enroll in the healthcare program.

I'm still continuing my quest for a bike. My roommate, another assistant and I went out to the boonies to search for bikes at what I would describe as a flea market influenced by solidarity and the idea of social responsibility. From what I understand people donate items to this organization/people come with old used items and sell them to the community for lower prices. The bikes we saw were all in pretty rough shape so we left empty-handed. We did however see a colorfully decorated combination clothes washer/bike. Sorry I forgot to take a picture of that one!

I've been seeing from Facebook that the weather has been getting cooler in Florida. Unfortunately it's the case here too, though it's been much colder than Florida temperatures. Seriously, one day it was sunny and warm and the next it was overcast and rainy. I don't know what happened! Hopefully we'll have a few sunny days this week. Locals tell me that it rains quite a bit here and that days are either beautiful or gray and wet. We'll see!

I can't end this post talking about something as dull as the weather, so other than what I mentioned it's been a good week spending time with some of the other assistants. Last night one of the English language assistants invited us to her house for a housewarming party. Since she has four French roommates it was a good opportunity to meet some French people closer to our age and mingle for a bit. It was a good time, though as a foreigner it's always hard to strike up conversation with and meet people who are willing and interested in talking with you, especially among the young adult crowd. Still I had some good conversation with a few people and I'm hoping to have a lot more opportunities like this in the future.

*Oh, one last thing. Warm goat cheese and honey on toasted bread is quite possible one of the most divine combinations I've tasted. That is all.