More craziness

Hello everyone! A bit overdue for an update, I know, I hope people weren't too worried or desperate for reading material. I have plenty of stories, though! First off, they found my backpack! I couldn't believe it, but it was eleven days without clothes! But at least it is here. Coincidentally, they found it right when Janet called and harassed them, but supposedly they had already found it in Boston underneath one of the belts. Hmmm.

This week I started observing classes, although I still had to introduce myself and answer all sorts of questions. "Do you have a husband?" "Do you have a boyfriend?" "Do you have children?" (and in that order, too!) They also asked me if I liked President Bush, what I thought about Sarkozy's election, and whether I liked French men. They are quite the inquisitive group of kids! I got my tentative schedule, which has two alternating weeks. One week I will have Tuesday and Thursday off, the other week I get to go in much later on Friday. It's not really balanced at all, and I have a single one-hour class every Wednesday, essentially ruining an extra long break every second week, but I like everyone I am working with. I am working primarily with students in their last two years of high school, and just a few who are sophomore age, and one class of post-grad business students. It should be interesting!

I also met many more language assistants this week. There is a guy Brady who is from Arizona, who I had talked online about the trip before I even left. He and I went out with a few of the girls I live with, and he has introduced us to other people in the program too. After dinner together that first night, the other girls went home very early, so Brady and I grabbed a drink at an Irish bar. This girl overheard us talking English in the bar, and it turns out that she was also an English assistant in Nancy! (This has happened to us so many times, because people get very excited to hear English in a sea of French.) Her name was Pamela, and she kept saying that I looked familiar, but I get that a lot, and she's from Ohio so it seemed unlikely. The very next day, we had another English assistant move in... and it was her! So we were telling everyone about our coincidental meeting, but the story actually got even better.

We were talking for a while about our colleges, and what study abroad programs we had done, and we realized we both had done the Quebec summer program at Laval. So I showed her some pictures on my computer, and the very first one I pull up, she is IN IT. We were in the same exact class!!! Only she had long hair two years ago, and now it is very short, so I didn't recognize her. Yeah, we spent five weeks in Canada in the same classroom together. How crazy is that?! So now people have heard us tell the story to everyone we meet, and they keep rolling their eyes at us.

I also met a crazy drunk woman from Ohio, and her friend Cesar, when we were talking English at another restaurant. She seemed cool, but then she was wasted an hour later, and was being the stereotypical obnoxious American in Europe. She kept saying "good evening" to our waitress over and over, and the woman had no idea what to do. Then the other night, we bumped into a bunch of guys from England who are here working for a few months. When we walked by, they actually said "Bonjour, Madame" to each of us, which was strange because everyone in France has been calling us Mademoiselle. So I thought that some French guy thought I looked like an older married woman. Turns out, they were just British and spoke literally no French. So we hung out with them since no French people will talk with us (I can't imagine why), and we all decided to meet the next day. For whatever reason, everyone kept backing out one by one, so it ended up that it was just me and Charlie, one of the British guys. Some of the other assistants stayed with me for a little bit in case he suddenly seemed dangerous or something, but then he and I walked around to find someplace for dinner. We ended up at some Italian place, and it was really weird because it felt so much like a date, even though it wasn't supposed to be a date. It was a little awkward, but he is super nice and super British. Today, we bumped into them in another Irish restaurant, while trying to meet up with yet another assistant. Either there are a lot of English people here, or Nancy is a really small city.

Well, that's not even the half of it really, but I will have to give more specific stories about the students and the other assistants and teachers later. I'm still alive though, and promise I'll be better at updating. Also! I won't be putting any more pictures on this site because it is too annoying. I have been using Shutterfly, but I can't figure out how other people look at it yet. I will post the link with my next update. Have a good couple of days everyone!