brrr....

hello again folks....
so today is the first day that i'm starting to feel homesick/culture shock...it's cloudy and cold and my room in the apt doesn't feel personalized yet. gotta get a plant or two and put some pics up.
i've been having dreams about rico and all my stuff in the storage unit. funny huh?
also - there's no heat! i found out that most of france is in a collective and noone gets heat til the middle of october. so - it's sleeping in lots of clothes for me! not a big deal, just not used to it coming from the sunny south....
i think i'm doing pretty good though, considering.
opened my bank account today with bnp paribas, started the process of getting my carte de sejour (gives me permission to be here after my visa runs out) at the prefecture (the first appointment available was for december if you can believe that!) and spent about an hour wandering the local supermarket in an attempt at learning what they sell and for how much.
i found honey nut cheerios - word! i'm trying to keep things on the cheap because europe really is unbelievably expensive. i had no idea how much more things would cost here. i came to mcdonald's today to use the wifi (i swear - that's the only reason!) and my happy meal cost over $6!





other than continuing to orient myself, i've been making friends with a couple of the other assistants - one is from the US, the other from uruguay, both of whom are my age, which is cool.
here's a couple pics from the picnic we foreign assistants had on sunday to meet and greet - it was a really pretty day!











i had an initial meeting at the school to which i am 'adminstratively attached' with my contact and two other assistants. at that meeting i found out the names of the two schools where i will work and how many hours at each. it totals 10.5 hours - that's it!!! i'm going to have to find another job or i will be totally bored. it's hard to do lots of fun stuff without $$. supposedly we (foreigners) can work up to 20 hours a week without a work permit. gotta find out the veracity of that statement....i still am not clear as to when exactly i start teaching. there's nothing but a meeting this week. perhaps they'll tell me then.


i have an administrative type supervisor (brigitte) and i also have a mentor type person (pascale - she's a fifth grade teacher i think) - both of whom are very nice. i feel confident that they will take good care of me. pascale did let me know that the schools where i'll work will be composed of poorer, immigrant children and she seemed anxious to let me know that the kids would be tough. coming from burton, i'm pretty sure i'll be ok and after so many months away from school i'm feeling up to the challenge! we shall see!



been drinking lots of delicious loire wine - which, ironically enough, is dirt cheap. bottles start at about 3 euros! of course you can pay a lot more for wine if you want to but wines at the low end are perfectly tasty.

on a different note - my folks have been trying to get in touch with me via phone and have been unsuccessful so far. if we get it figured out - i will post it here. til then, email me and i realized i should give y'all my snail mail in case you want to send me anything. ;-)

6 rue de la Hunaudais
44100 Nantes FRANCE



a la prochaine! til next time!

moving to nantes

i feel incredibly lucky to be here....nantes is an amazing city - not too big or too small, mixture of old and new buildings, beautiful castle right in the middle of town, gorgeous churches, tons of cute places to eat, drink, shop, etc, and great public transportation. i'm 5 stops away from downtown on the train and the stop is a three minute walk from the apartment.....THE APARTMENT! i feel equally lucky to have gotten such a great place to stay - my roommate (whom i've not yet met) is away 2 weeks per month (!) so right now i'm there by myself. the couple from whom i'm renting live downstairs (i have a seperate entrance) and they are super nice! i had hardly been there five minutes before they were serving me coffee, showing me to the nearest market and carrying my bags upstairs!! check it out....

kitchen

my room


the view from my window
toilet
bathroom (note the bidet so i can wash my butt!)

there's an enclosed garden behind the building complete with gorgeous flowers and 2 turtles!

i hope to have pics of it up soon....right now though, i'm off to meet another of the foreign assistants to wander around and learn the city better.....more tomorrow!

paris!!

so the flight was easy enough (thank god for ambien...way better than alcohol for sleeping) and my parisian friends were kind enough to pick me up and let me stay for a couple days so i could get acclimated before taking off to nantes, which is 2.5 hours west by train. it was good to sleep and get into the right biorhythm and equally good to warm up my french with people with whom i was already comfortable and not feel like too much of an ass.

my first day in paris i got to see two french elementary schools which was super cool! (my friend's mom is a sort of counselor who does interventions and therapy, essentially, with troubled children, so she works at a couple different schools.) so much is the just the same....schedules, teaching methods, etc. but there are plenty of things that are different. for example, most kids go home for lunch (they have 2 hours) and then they have to stay til about 5pm. also, they don't go to school wednesdays and it used to be that they went to school on saturdays but that seems to be a thing of the past now. don't ask me why...i don't know yet....

after lunch evelyne turned me loose on the city since she had meetings the rest of the day. i was a bit apprehensive at first but after an hour or so bouncing around on the metro (which is pretty damn easy i have to say....maybe easier for me coming from nyc a couple days before) i felt pretty comfortable.

so off i went to the musee d'orsay and saw all the wonderful things there...monet, gaugin, lalique, matisse, seurat, toulouse lautrec. if you don't already know, the museum used to be a train station and it is GORGEOUS. forget the art - it was damned cool just to walk around! so that was about it for the first day...besides eating of course! the pics are just a sample of the good stuff evelyne fed me, which she did every chance she got!

next day i got practical - got a new cord with the right plug for my computer so i don't set france on fire, got a train ticket and a cell phone. and i *think* that my incoming calls are free so if you're feeling adventurous and want to call me here's the # 06 67 54 49 97

france's country code is 33 and there may be something else you have to add...check before you dial. and remember that i'm 6 hours ahead of you - no midnight calls you slap monkeys! ;-)

that night the whole family got together for dinner - including julien's new kitten. made me miss rico something fierce! drank some wonderful rose (pronounce rosay - i can't put the accent on, stupid internet explorer) wine from the south, (a 'gris de gris' for you wine freaks) evelyne made raclette - a traditional savoy dish - and there was also this great berry tart for dessert! boy howdy did i eat! none of us could eat anything more than the requisite croissant for breakfast the next morning....

and speaking of the next morning - that's when i left for nantes!

the move

so....rico has been incredibly tolerant of all the nonsense i've been putting him through lately: bringing boxes & crap into the apt, moving stuff out, 8 hour car ride (during which he did not make a sound!!!!) and of course, relocating to a basement apartment in the bowery, nyc, with two new humans and two new cats. so many new smells and spaces and sounds! poor guy had quite the day yesterday.

my bro and sis-in-law have an adult male and a brand new kitten. needless to say, the kitten is way in charge. we think it's because the adult cats fail to realize that kittens do indeed belong to their species. you can see how the first meeting went. we've been laughing like crazy over their antics although i anticipate that there will be a serious rumble in the jungle soon enough....