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!
No comments:
Post a Comment