On leaving

I'm sitting alone in my room in the "Chateau" right now, listening to songs from my childhood and feeling pretty sorry for myself. The past three months have been absolutely amazing- I've made friends in Morteau, gotten closer to other assistants, been to Prague, Paris, Vienna and Bratislava... Is it any wonder that I don't want to leave? The group of friends that I've made in town and the assistants that I've met are a bunch of really great people and I'm afraid that once I leave, we'll lose touch. I know that I, for one, am terrible at keeping in touch with people, even with the wonder of Facebook helping me. The connections you make with people in other countries, when you're the newcomer and they reach out to you, are precious.
I've never been the newcomer by myself before. When I went off to university I was new, yeah, but there were a whole bunch of people who were having the same experience that I was, and it was easy to meet people. In small-town France it hasn't been the same at all, and it was pure chance that I even met the people that I now hang out with regularly. Without them I think I would have struggled to enjoy myself here, what with the solitude, lack of transportation and lack of things to do. I'm so glad that I've had the chance to meet young French people and learn about their lives and philosophies. I've discovered that the French and Canadians really aren't all that different, and I hope that I've managed to give a good impression of Canadians to everyone I've met here.
Living in Morteau has been very challenging at times, but also incredibly rewarding. There are many situations I wish had turned out differently. I wish that I'd been brave enough to ask for help when I needed it, and to share more of myself with people. But over all, I'm happy with how things turned out. I've learned a lot more about myself and matured enormously. There are so many things that used to bother me that I now consider unimportant after having this experience help me realize my real priorities in life. I'll need to think more about these things when I get home of course, because I could easily fall back into my old patterns of thinking if I'm not careful. I like who I've become here, mostly, and I want to keep that feeling and keep being that person once I'm home.
In one week, I will be on the train to London. There will be tears. But I've accepted that, at least. All that's left for me to do is to squeeze as much enjoyment as possible out of these last 6 days. I think that I can do it.

Oops

Wow, I've been terrible, haven't I? The longer I've gone without posting, the harder it is to start again, but here I am. A LOT has happened in the past two months. I've been to Dijon, Dole, Montbéliard, Colmar, Geneva, and some place called Calgary. I've also had a sinus infection, been incredibly sleep-deprived, and had many great moments with friends. Let's begin at the beginning, shall we?

The weekend after my previous post I ended up going to Dijon with Andrea, my friend who works in Besançon. My fantastic proviseur adjointe welcomed us into her home, so we got to spend time with her her family as well as explore the city to our heart's content. Dijon was lovely, a little cold maybe, but after a while that didn't really matter. We saw the main cathedral, the wicked art museum, the medieval district, the Chateau des ducs de Bourgogne, and the farmer's market, where I bought crème de cassis, the liqueur used in kir, my fave cocktail. We also spent at least twenty minutes ogling the wares of a used book stall- so many gorgeous covers, so little money to buy them with....

On November 16th, Felipe and I went into Besac for our visa validation appointments. First, we had to go to a pulmonary specialist's office where we had chest x-rays done, as well as the speediest physical that I've ever experienced. Official x-rays and health certificates in tow, we went to the OFII office where, after a mercifully short wait, we became official temporary residents of France!

Next weekend, I welcomed a bunch of friends from Besac and MontB to Morteau, and we spent Saturday and Sunday hiking and enjoying the unseasonably warm weather. It was seriously warmer that weekend than it had been at the end of October! On Saturday we went to Roche Jeannin, a huge rock formation that emerges from a steep hill overlooking the valley, and saw the Table du roi on the way down (a huge flat rock that was supposedly used for druidic sacrifices!). Sunday morning, I made "Canadian pancakes" and then we hiked up Mont Vouillot for an afternoon picnic. Friends, nature and pancakes, what more can I ask for?

The following Saturday, I went to Dole for American Thanksgiving and a Coeur de pirate concert. Due to the train strike, I ended up arriving several hours later than I'd planned, but still in time for dinner with Jessica, Marie, and more assistants from Dole and Lons-le-Saunier. The dinner was held at the apartment of a french friend of theirs, the only place they had access to that had a full kitchen! It was delicious and I was so glad to be getting my yearly dose of Thanksgiving, albeit a month and a half later than usual. After dinner, we walked across town to the concert hall, where there was a festival celebrating the local artists of the year. The headliner, however, was Coeur de pirate! I really don't know how she ended up performing in Dole, but it was the first date of her European tour and ended up being a great concert. She was a lot smaller in person than I thought she'd be, and a fantastic live singer.

The first weekend of December I went up to stay with my friends in MontB to see their Christmas market and also hopefully go to a Christmas market in Strasbourg or Colmar. Friday night we went to a mom and pop restaurant in the middle of nowhere that served a whole group of us a whole lot of delicious local food. We had Morteau and MontB sausages, hashbrowns, cancoillote (amazing liquid cheese), salad, and bûche de Noël, accompanied by copious amounts of wine. After that, we went to a local bar and then we jetted off to a club called the Moulin Rouge, which didn't remind me at all of Moulin Rouge and more of Union, a frat boy-infested club back in Edmonton. Suffice to say, it was a very late night that left us all pretty useless the next day...
Saturday night we were invited to have raclette at the house of one of the guys who came to the club the previous night. I jumped at the chance, never having eaten raclette before, and didn't regret my choice. Raclette is a typical Savoyard and Swiss dish, involving raclette cheese, potatoes, vegetables, and charcuterie. The cheese is heated in mini pans on a central element that you put in the middle of the table. Once melted, you scrape it onto the potatoes and enjoy. It was absolutely delicious.
The next morning, my friend's boyfriend drove one of his cars and let another assistant drive the other as a group of us went up to Colmar, a city in Alsace about an hour and a half away from MontB. It was absolutely gorgeous. The architecture was very German- all half-timbered and brightly coloured stucco. I felt like I was in Germany again, to be honest. There were also several small canals coursing through the streets, which were all fully decorated for Christmas. The flower planters had pine trees in them, hilariously coated in fake snow- there wasn't actually any real snow! As for the Christmas market, it consisted of quaint wooden stalls spread over several city squares, offering everything from scarves to Christmas ornaments to vin chaud. It was also completely packed! Even though we kind of had to rush back to Montbéliard so I could catch my train, I'm so glad that I got to see a typical Christmas market.

My odyssey back to Canada began on December 17th. A teacher at the school who's actually from Switzerland came to Morteau to pick me up and then drove me to Neuchatel so I could catch my train to Geneva. I figured out the Geneva bus system in the dark and eventually made my way to the hostel, arriving at 8pm. Exhausted, I was in bed by 9:30! The next morning, I was up early to catch my 9am flight. I find it funny that I've now been to Geneva four times (once with the rents when I was 17, three times using the airport) and have barely spent any actual time in the city. Maybe I should rectify this in the next few months.... My flight home was relatively painless: I arrived in sunny Calgary all in one piece with all of my luggage.

Being home was weird. I didn't have to run the shower for 20 minutes for the water to be warm! I had an actual kitchen at my disposal! I could hug my parents and my dog instead of just staring at them on a computer screen! I tried to see as many friends as possible, saw two movies (MI:4, Sherlock Holmes 2) and spent lots of time with family. During Christmas dinner at my aunt's house, I met my cousin's new girlfriend, who was English and had also done the teaching assistant program. We bonded a little over our mutual experiences. My last hurrah was a dinner party with friends on the Friday night before I left, at which I discovered wine + cookie decorating = hummus icing? Ick!

My flight back wasn't so enjoyable, as I was on a plane full of babies. Then I had to wait four hours for my flight to Geneva in the Amsterdam airport, trying to sleep on a bench intersected with armrests. Then there was the two and a half hour train ride to Morteau that I spent nodding off and then waking myself up again in a panic, not wanting to miss my stops where I had to transfer trains. All in all, I was awake for about 26 hours. Thus, my first week back at work was full of bêtises and extreme fatigue. I wasn't completely over my jetlag until about half-way through last week. Add homesickness to that, and you've got the full, miserable picture.

I haven't really done that much this month. Felipe had a friend staying with us for the first two weeks, whose name was also Sarah. We went to the local Clock Museum, a Hip Hop Festival, and made tartiflette together. Sadly, she left this Sunday. It was really nice having a girl around. This past Saturday I went into Bezak for girls night with Andrea and Yenny (the only Canadian girl I've met here!) as well as Suzanne and Cari, two assistants from MontB. We went shopping and I ended up finding a few great deals at the soldes (bi-annual sales held all over France). Then we had delicious Italian for dinner. Cari and Suzanne headed back to MontB and the rest of us went to Andrea's apartment, where we met up with a German assistant and played Apples to Apples and watched part of Bridesmaids. It was a good night!

For a conclusion, I have to state that I will never go this long without posting ever again! This took me forever to write, and I had to leave so much out because of expediency. I will post again next week, because I might be doing something exciting this weekend!

Why I'm Here

This Tuesday, I had 5 hours of classes. Every two weeks, I will have SIX hours of classes on Tuesdays. It's a bit long, but also cool, because when I'm actually teaching in Canada I'll have to be at school all day, so it's good to get used to it beforehand. I taught secondes, premieres and BTS. Each group is completely different- the secondes are 14 or 15, and some of them have trouble understanding me when I speak because they're really not used to hearing English. As for the premieres, they're a bit more experienced, but they were really hesitant to speak, even though I knew that some of them are quite good at English (having taught them in a different class). It was a bit frustrating, especially since I was really tired and not in the best mood. I hope that they couldn't tell, because it was the first time I'd taught most of them and I want them to feel comfortable with me, and making a bad first impression really isn't the best way to go about it.... As for the BTS, they're my age, mostly guys, and the majority of them have about the same English skills as the secondes, or even less. I could tell that some of them were embarrassed when asking me to repeat myself, but at least they still asked. I hope that I will manage to make them feel like they shouldn't be embarrassed soon, because really, we're all learning together. Sometimes I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing, but I just have to keep going, fumbling along and hopefully getting it right most of the time. Yesterday wasn't perfect. There were silent moments. I had to let my BTS students out early because one of the websites I wanted to show them wasn't working. The lesson I planned for my secondes took longer than I thought, so I had to give them a small amount of homework. I was totally drained by the end of the day, but also really satisfied, because I tried, because I was challenging myself. The more I teach, the more I learn about my students and about teaching and planning, the better I'll be. That's why I'm here.

Toussaint, or the novel about trains

For the past week and a half, I have been on Toussaint vacation. I know, I know, I barely worked for one week and I've already had vacation! Well, that's France for you. I went to Lyon, Toulouse and Carcassonne, three completely different cities in different regions of France. It was fantastic!

First stop, Lyon. My train was an hour and a half late, so I got into town after the tourist office had closed, separated from my travel companions and with no idea how to get to the hostel. Enter the cell phone, possibly the best invention ever. After a few metro transfers, I met up with Jessica and Marie, two English-language assistants from Dôle, at Place St. Jean, next to the Cathedral. Jessica is from Texas and Marie is from the North of England, and before this trip I'd only briefly met Jessica at our stage days, and Marie not at all. We trudged up the Fourvière Hill to drop off my stuff at the hostel, a cardio workout I wasn't really expecting, and then vacation could really start.

We spent about four days in Lyon and had a blast, walking around the streets of Vieux and moins-vieux Lyon , drinking lots of wine, and doing a bit of shopping. We even managed to fit some culture in with a visit to the Musée de Beaux Arts, one of the best art museums in France. The city is gorgeous. It's situated above and at the confluence of the Rhone and Saone rivers, and the main part of the city is an isthmus separating the two. Despite being a little cold, walking was really enjoyable. On Sunday afternoon we went to Parc de la Tête d'Or, a huge park on the north end of the city that has a lake in the middle, a zoo and a botanical garden. It was absolutely full of people; families, couples and groups of friends out enjoying the last of the nice weather. There were people on bikes, rollerblades, scooters, skateboards.... That morning on the banks of the Saone River, we saw a food market, an artisan market, and a book market, where I managed to score some really cool old postcards.

Lyon also marked my first experience with Couchsurfing! On Sunday night, we met up with Jake, an American lecturing in English at a uni in Lyon, at the Gallo-Roman ruins. He led us back to his place where he cooked us supper, an absolutely amazing savoyard dish called tartiflette, which is a bacon, cream, potato and reblochon cheese casserole. Absolutely heavenly. We sat around the coffee table in the middle of his studio apartment in St Georges, and talked about language and travel with him and Lucy, the English translator Couch-surfing with him. To finish off the night, we went to a local pub called the Smoking Dog, where I learned the noble sport of coaster-flipping. That was just a couchsurfing hangout, however. My real couchsurfing happened on Tuesday night. Jessica and Marie left for Dole that afternoon, and afterwards I wandered around Vieux Lyon in the rain, buying a few presents and absorbing the medieval ambiance. At one point, I actually stopped in the public library and read some of a Nick Hornby book (in English, of course) to escape the wet. Then I gathered my suitcase from the hostel and journeyed on three metros to Croix Rousse, an old neighbourhood on a hill overlooking the city. It was a bit of an adventure finding my host's apartment in the dark and the rain, but it didn't take long. Then I got to meet Kevin and Celinève. Celineve restores old books, and Kevin is a web and graphics designer, and that night they had a casual get-together with friends that involved delicious blinis and wine. I got to meet younger French people, exercise my french, which I really haven't been using enough outside of school, and learn a lot about la bise. Apparently, when you're visiting friends, as soon as you enter the house, you have to go around and give la bise and say hello to everyone in the room. The same goes when you leave. The whole experience was pretty cool, to say the least.

The next morning I got up early and walked around Croix Rousse a bit, then left for the train station in time for my 11:27 train. Then I got there, looked at my actual train ticket, and realized that my awesome first class ticket deal had been booked for 9:37, and that I'd been looking at a different ticket in my purse when verifying my departure time. Yes, I arrived at the station a full hour and twenty minutes after my train had left. Instead of having a meltdown, I went immediately to the line for the ticket counter and phoned Matt to tell him my news while I waited. I have to admit I was a little disappointed on missing out on first class, but more because I had to buy a whole new ticket that cost more than my original one, with the added bonus of a way less convenient schedule. I ended up on a train to Montpellier, where I had to wait for four hours for the next train to Toulouse! My original ticket had me arriving around two, and I ended up getting there just before eight! Fortunately, Montpellier was a relatively pleasant stopover. I got to walk around the esplanade without a sweater, eat ice cream, and sit in the grass reading French poetry.

So here continues the pattern of train troubles and arriving in a place after the tourist office closes, with no idea where the hostel is. At least this time I had the number, that Matt had phoned England and gotten his mum to look up, and he waited for me at the station after his train had arrived from Montbéliard so that we weren't separated at any point. On the way over on the train, I'd had a passing thought that perhaps if we were really late, the hostel would have given away our beds or else be otherwise locked up for the night. Visions of sleeping on a park bench began to dance in my head. Luckily, the hostel reception phoned me almost as soon as I arrived at the train station, so I assured them that we were coming and also got directions. Thus began our trudge through nighttime Toulouse. It took us a little longer than we thought to find Petite Auberge de Compostelle, owing to rather vague directions, but we got there just before nine o'clock, when the reception closed. We were so happy to be in Toulouse and to have beds to sleep in that we went out for a celebratory meal of crepes and cider.

Here, owing to a really bad cold and some unfortunate weather, things get a little fuzzy. Toulouse is a really interesting city, completely different from anything that I've seen in France so far- everything is made of red brick, a little gritty, some of it a little rundown, but still amazing. It is full of students and didn't seem to have too many tourists at this time of year, which was nice. We spent a lot of our time just walking around in the streets of the main part of the city, near the uni, the Capitolium (home of the local government) and the main square. We visited the Abbatoirs, a modern art museum in an old abbatoir, and the Fondation Bemberg, a small-scale but quality art museum housed in a former mansion. We also walked along the Garonne River several times, which was oddly shallow considering how high the bridges were and how wide it was. Matt and I spent a lot of time trying to stay out of the rain, unfortunately. We also had to deal with colds and a lack of sleep caused by interesting hostel residents who decided it would be a good idea to play the piano at 4 in the morning. They only did once, thank goodness, or I may have committed verbal assault....

We left for Carcassonne on Saturday morning, a mercifully short journey. Unfortunately, once there we had to walk for half an hour across town with our bags in order to get to our hotel, which pretty much destroyed any energy I had for the day. Sunday was better- the sun was shining and we walked all around the old, walled city. It was a ruin for a long time, but got redone in the 1800s, and it is absolutely amazing. It's super touristy, full of little over-priced boutiques and restaurants, but the actual place, the buildings, the chateau, the basilica, the twisting cobbled streets, the ramparts and the battlements, is incredibly cool. My favourite part was walking around in the morning, before the hordes of tourists choked the streets with their dogs and their voices, and it was quiet and peaceful and I could get more of a feel for the place. We visited the chateau (you had to pay to get in) and the Basilica, and it was really unfortunate how loud the tourists were in a place of worship (it is an actual consecrated Basilica)- I found it pretty disrespectful how they walked all over the sanctuary and took pictures with the flash on. The chateau was really interesting- I found out there that the City has been added to so many times over the centuries that they're not really sure what it originally looked like, and how its present incarnation isn't quite accurate, owing to the artistic license of the architect who oversaw the reno.

We also walked around in the lower city, which was built when the walled city fell into disrepute. It was a bit run down, and some of the architecture reminded me of what I'd seen in Cuba, kind of colonial Spanish. We planned to go for a bike ride next to the Canal du Midi that runs right past Carcassonne, but unfortunately Monday, the day we picked, was windy and cloudy and it seemed like it could rain at any moment. Fortunately we were able to walk along it for a while on Sunday afternoon. The Canal was gorgeous, lined with some kind of gum tree on one side, and then forest on the other. River cruises and house boats passed us a few times, and there were lots of people biking on the path as well. I definitely want to go back to Carcassonne in summer, or spring, when I actually have money to rent a car and stay in a guest house in the country. There are loads of vineyards and little villages around the city, and there's actually an airport as well!

We left Carcassonne yesterday, and spent about 8 hours each on trains getting back to our respective homes. First, we spent just under six hours getting to Dijon on the TGV. Despite the fact that it was pouring rain most of the time, watching the countryside and architecture change every twenty minutes or so was absolutely fascinating. We also read a lot of magazines and newspapers, however! Then, we spent an hour in Dijon waiting for our train to Besançon, buying our tickets while we waited- I had to choose a TER to Morteau that left only five minutes after my other train arrived, or else wait and hour and a half until the 8pm train. When I got to Besançon I had to sprint to the main part of the station to check which platform the TER was on, because the TVs with the platform listings in the tunnel were all turned off. Then I had to run back down the stairs, through the tunnel, up more stairs to the platform and onto the train, all with my suitcase and backpack! I made it, completely out of breath, just before they closed the doors.

This vacation taught me a lot: Check your train times. Then check them again, and make sure you're looking at the right ticket! Bring lots of things to do on the train, because it will be boring. Pack light (I'm getting pretty good at it at this point). Stay calm, and retain your sense of humour. Make sure you know the address, directions and phone number of the place you're staying before you get there. Bring Cold FX. Everything is going to be okay.

It's Adventure Time

So I've been sadly neglecting my blog for the past couple of weeks....This is because nothing much was going on. I've been observing classes, grocery shopping, going on lots of walks, and that's about it. Not having a car makes getting around more difficult, because there are lots of small villages around, but no buses to take us there, which is really too bad because they're mostly just a little too far to walk to. Observing classes is going well, I feel like I'm really getting a handle on the kids' level of English (which is not the best, so I will mainly be working on fluency and pronunciation with them!) Tomorrow will be my first day of classes, so I'm working on last minute prep at the moment.

Anyways, now on to the adventure part of the post. Planning on going into Besançon on Saturday, I put a post up on the Franche-Comté assistants group Facebook wall asking if anyone wanted to join. On Saturday morning I met up with Andrea in Place de la Révolution, and we had tea while waiting to see if anyone else would show up. No one did, but we had a great day wandering around the streets of the city and then walking all the way up the hill to the Citadelle, which is a Vauban-designed fortress built mostly in the 17th century. I believe he also had a hand in designing the Citadelle in Québec city. Now instead of a military installation, it's a UNESCO World Heritage site, home to two museums, an aquarium and a ZOO. It was a little surreal watching baboons climb all over the walls of the dry moat. Andrea and I decided that we were far too tired to go into the museums and enjoy them properly, so we just walked all the way around the ramparts and had gorgeous views of the Doubs/Besançon valley. It was also really nice on Saturday, so we decided to "profiter du beau temps". When it's not as nice outside I can go back up there and go to the museums.

On our way out of the Citadelle, we ran into Jack, an English language assistant from her school, along with five assistants and a friend of theirs in town for the day from Montbéliard. It's a mid-size town an hour north of Besac by train. Most of the assistants are American, but one is English and one is Swedish! I ended up going to the main square and having a drink with them all, and then got invited to come and stay with some of the girls that night at their house in Montbéliard. I had to decide pretty quick, since the last train to Morteau was at 6:30. I didn't have anything with me, just a backpack with a camera, water bottle and train schedule, but I really didn't want to go back. It seemed silly to miss out on a chance to get to know my fellow assistants and see another part of Franche-Comté! So I missed my train and went out for dinner with them instead. After a delicious pasta dinner we said goodbye to the Besac assistants and caught the train to Montbéliard.

I spent the night at the really cute little house that three of the girls rent together. The evening itself involved a lot of wine, meeting more assistants from both Montbé and Vésoul, a lot of conversation, and a short visit to the local Irish pub, where the bartender spoke perfect English. It was excellent. Morteau feels a little bit isolated from the rest of the region, and I really hadn't met a lot of other assistants, so it was nice hanging out with a bunch of really cool, like-minded people. On Sunday, Matt, the British lycée assistant, showed me around town before I had to catch my train. I saw the Rhine-Rhône Canal and a really cool astrological clock. I didn't end up getting home until about 8 last night! They've invited me to come back sometime, and I've invited them to come and hang out in Morteau at some point as well, especially when it snows, because then we can all go skiing together. I'm ridiculously excited for skiing! And also for friends, of course :).

Administrative Duties

Yesterday, the other assistants and I woke up at 5:30 in the morning to take the train into Besançon to arrive in time for the introductory day for foreign language assistants. It was held at a huge high school in the northwest quarter of Besançon, and almost all of the assistants from across Franche-Comté were there, so about 55-60. The point of the day was to help us out with our numerous papers and forms, and also to explain our duties and what it really means to be an assistant in a French school.

I was put in a group with all the non-EU english-language assistants, most of which are from the States. There was also a girl from India, which I thought was pretty cool. We spent the morning watching presentations about our rights and responsibilities as assistants, as well as information about Social Security, Health and Property Insurance. It was a bit long, and it didn't help that I'd been awake for about 7 hours by the time lunch rolled around! However, it was informative, because I found out that it's really important to have health and property insurance in France, and that there are insurance companies that serve only teachers. The presenters gave us all a bunch of paperwork to fill out and send in once we have our banking info, which I thought was pretty convenient.

After lunch, we did a speed-dating style game with a group of EU assistants that involved them presenting their dream vacation spot to us and then interviewing us to see if we'd be a good travel companion, based on common interests, etc. It was a good way to get to know a large amount of people in a short amount of time, and the French teachers leading the activity also made us speak to each other in French, which I thought was a great idea. We're here to learn, after all! At the end of the activity, I discovered that the entire thing had been a sort of exercise to help us learn how to make a lesson plan. It was like being in an Education Lab course at Fac all over again. I'm glad that they did this with us, because I'm sure that there are many assistants who don't have a background in education like I do and lesson plans are super important. Another thing that reminded me of the Education program at Fac was the head teachers' talk of authenticity. As assistants, we are authentic examples of our respective languages, and we need to make sure that we give the students that authenticity. We have to ensure that our communication is genuine and create organic moments of language expression. To translate the ed-speak, what I mean is that when we're deciding the activities that we want to do with the students, they can't just be rote exercises. They need to be original, interesting, appeal to their interests, and sometimes include aspects of our own culture.

When we got off the train in Morteau last night, a woman who'd been sitting a couple of seats down from us with her bicycle came up to us and said hello. It turned out that she was American, formerly from Mississippi, but now living in Morteau with her husband. She gave us her digits in case we wanted to hang out one day. This trip is definitely teaching me how small the world can be. When I first heard about Franche-Comté, it seemed to me like a cozy, small-town sort of place, but I'm finding out that it's a lot more international than I thought. It's a border area that has access to Switzerland, Germany and Italy, and many international students study at the Université de Franche-Comté in Besançon. I like how my perceptions of the world are being challenged all the time: it's one of the reasons why I decided to do this.

To completely change the subject, at the end of the day yesterday, Felipe, Greg and I went to the Centre ville and to the SFR store to organise our internet. In exactly one week, we're getting a box installed that will have cable, telephone and internet! This morning I finally opened a bank account, which took about an hour, but the conseiller was super nice and I'm happy with the bank I chose. This allowed me to finally order a cell phone this afternoon that will arrive in a matter of days. It's such a relief to have those things figured out. Finally, I will no longer be incommunicado!

L'installation

Sorry for the radio silence! I still don't have internet, though hopefully I will have it by the end of the week. I've been relying on the free wifi at La Bousse, a local bar, and a transient signal called NETGEAR that sometimes gives me really slow internet in my own room. At the moment I'm sitting in La Bousse drinking a lemonade and typing this small message to you.

Last week the Spanish assistant, Felipe, arrived on Monday evening. He's from Costa Rica and used to work at Hewlett Packard. The German assistant Greg arrived on Tuesday afternoon and surprise of all surprises, is originally from LEDUC. Yes, Leduc, a small city about 300km north of Calgary, my hometown. He's been in Besançon for the past several months studying French at L'Université de Franche-Comté. German is one of his mother tongues, but he was born and has lived in Canada for most of his life. We were both pretty astonished to be meeting each other here, so far from home.

I spent most of the week either getting to know Morteau or wandering around a little bored, because my procès-verbal d'installation (proof of job) and attestation de logement (proof of housing) weren't ready, preventing me from getting a bank account and cell phone. Fortunately, I have them now and I've set up an appointment to get bank account on Wednesday morning. Morteau is a cute little town, population around 7000, and about 5km from the Swiss border. Therefore, a lot of French people live here but work in Switzerland, and some Swiss as well. They also do their grocery shopping here because prices are higher in Switzerland- there are four full-sized supermarkets: Casino, Intermarché, Carrefour and Netto Hard Discount. One day I'll have to talk about the differences between French and Canadian supermarkets. There are several bars, but the biggest are La Bousse and Le Terminus, and I think that these will be our bars of choice in the future. The bartender at La Bousse already knows our faces pretty well, considering we've been in at least four times in the last week! (Just to use the internet....mostly.....). There are several places to buy clothes and lots of cute little shops, as well as two cinemas. I'm sure that I won't be too bored here, as long I plan things to do on Sundays when almost everything is closed.

All of the English teachers are super nice. They ask me all the time if I'm settling in well and if I need anything. This weekend I might go for a drive around the valley with one of them. This afternoon I started observing the English classes. The first class was on reading comprehension, but the second was supposed to be presentations about new, innovative restaurants. Unfortunately most of the class claimed that they had filmed videos of their presentations, which are due on Wednesday instead of today. So I got to see two presentations on fictional gastropubs, one of which was located on platforms in a swimming pool in New York :). After the presentations, I was helping some students edit their presentation scripts, and discovered that they couldn't understand my accent. I ended up mostly speaking to them in French, which wasn't a big deal, but all the same it was a bit disturbing because I thought that I was going to be teaching them in English..... I will have to work on my speaking skills apparently. I was talking with Felipe later on, and he'd had the same problem. We both decided that we probably speak too fast and need to focus on speaking clearly when using our native languages. It's funny, because I don't really think about it normally. I know that sometimes I speak too quietly in English, but too fast or not clearly enough, not so much.

EDITED TO ADD: This situation shouldn't have been a total surprise to me, really. After all, some of these kids don't have a ton of years of experience with English, and I need to be prepared for that. I will try my best to speak in English with them, but I have to be patient, ask if they understand, rephrase, ask again, ask them to translate what I just said into French, and sometimes explain more complicated things in French. It's actually good practice for teaching in Immersion, apart from the translating and speaking in the native language part.

In any case, it's getting late. I have to wake up at 5:30 tomorrow morning in order to take the 6:50 train to Besançon for our first practical day. We're getting together with all of the language assistants in the region of Franche-Comté in order to learn more about how to do our paperwork and more about our duties. It's gonna be a long day, but I'm excited to meet all of the other assistants!