Voyageant, Travaillant, Mangeant OR Travelling, Working, Eating!!

Wow, I've gotten a tad behind, so I'll start from the most recent events and work my way back!

This morning Kathrin and I made a Verrry successful run to Emmaus, France's equivalent to salvation army. We bought a pair of unbelievably ugly, yet fabulous, armchairs, the kind they don't make anymore--these are the cadillacs of armchairs, and they are surprisingly well preserved given their age. We also bought a mirror that is basically a door, complete with old-fashioned key (I'm totally taking the key with me when I move back!) and another chair. All for 20 euros. And had them delivered by some very nice guys. YAY! It feels much more like a house here now, especially since I finally put up some curtains the teachers had donated.

We had our Toussaints break until this Thursday, and so I taught my first solo lessons Thursday and Friday. Things went pretty well, all things considered. The activities I had planned with all of my groups took waaaaay longer than I had anticipated--I realized it takes until about halfway through the class for the kids to finally understand the instructions I give them (apparently this is fairly normal. The French teachers often give instructions in French, just to save time, but everyone has requested that I speak exclusively in English with the kids--its kind of hampering me now, but I hope that in a few weeks, they'll be more used to my accent and it won't take so long!!). Most of the groups were excited and cooperative. Only one group was not great and they are the seniors whose concentration is in Literature!!! Theoretically, they should have the best English level in all the high school, but they had no energy, didn't want to talk or participate, and were generally Debbie Downers. I had the feeling that I was alone in the room with a bunch of mental vegetables.... It was pretty eerie, especially since I was doing my best to be warm, encouraging, and charming. I tried several different strategies to get/force them to talk, but I am starting to think it is just their class's atmosphere--I get a very teen-angsty, 'too cool for school' vibe with them. I've already seen their group with two other English teachers and its the same....they seem to be used to more lecture-style lessons, and I think they hate their teachers....boo hiss. We'll see.
My favorite group was the last class on Friday afternoon, from 5pm to 6pm (honestly, who wants to be there at that time?!). This is my BTS group, students from 18-32 who are earning their technical certificates, a post-high school degree. Their English varies dramatically from "Quoi? Qu'est-ce qu'elle a dit?" [Huh? What'd she say?] to almost conversational. But they were jovial and chatty and even though we did a listening comprehension exercise that was pretty difficult for them, they were game enough to try.

I'm looking forward to next week, where I'll have several classes all to myself for the whole hour, but I'm nervous, too! It puts a lot of pressure on me to be Super Prepared, and since I have 12 different groups, this could easily become a full-time job, planning and teaching, way beyond the 12 hours I am required to be at the school.

I did get to travel a fair amount during the Toussaints break, which was great! I was in Besancon for four days, then in Vesoul for three by myself (it was soooooo glorious to be able to take a normal-length shower with hot water, do laundry, and cook in the kitchen without tripping over someone else--I did miss my roomies, though!). I was invited to spend one of my days back in Vesoul with Angela's family (she's one of my English teachers at the high school, and the only one who's a native english speaker. She hails from Great Britain.).
She has two awesome kids and we got to go see La Chapelle de Ronchamps, a very famous chapel that was rebuilt by Le Corbusier in the 1950's after the town's church was destroyed in WWII. I must say, this was the weirdest church I had ever seen, a very modern structure, but there was something organic enough about it to keep it appealing. I especially like the interior wall that was studded with many small, irregularly-shaped windows, all filled with different colored glass, some painted with words, "Mairie" or "brilliant as the sun" or simple flower or sun designs.

I also travelled to Dole, about a half an hour on the other side of Besancon, to stay with the english assistants there. Dole is only a little bit bigger than Vesoul in terms of population, but it has a lot more cultural stuff going on, and the old town is just gorgeous, very mideval, with a 500 year old cathedral, a river running through the town, and a tree-lined canal off the river.

I arrived on the 31ist, so Brandon, the American assistant, and I bought a pumpkin and a gourd to carve. We took them back to their apartment in the school's dormitory and helped Kheba, the english assistant from Trinidad, carve her first pumpkin, YAY! I did the gourd, and man, it was much tougher than I had thought! Later, we went out to a couple of different bars where we drank some ridiculously expensive and not very good drinks ($11 for a crappy beer???) and danced a little bit. We also snagged some glow-stick glasses and a glow-stick ball....that was kind of the highlight....

On Sunday we took a four or five hour walk along the canal--that was gorgeous, the sunlight and the fall color in the trees were extraordinary.  I went to Dijon on Monday and, since the weather was gloomy and wet, spent quite a while at the Musée des Beaux-Arts--also in part because I couldn't find my way out of the three story, labyrinthine building (all the impressionists were stuck in a garret with terrible lighting, while some terrible modern paintings had an entire floor to themselves...?). The museum's collection was quite diverse, and it was really like a treasure hunt, finding the good stuff and trying to sift through the not-so-good. I ate by myself at a cafe, which was surprisingly pleasant, browsed the shops a bit and headed for the train back to Dole. I really liked what I saw of Dijon, though, a lot of life, wonderful & varied architecture. Will have to go back.