Tuesday, October 30, 2007

vacation part one

hey everyone!! I am writing to you from an internet cafe in toulouse. heidy and I are finishing up the first leg of our journey, now we are just killing time until our train later on today.

toulouse has been a lot of fun, thought it was a lot smaller than I was expecting it to be. Heidy haq a friend here, so when we got here saturday we went to the hotel, walked around a bit, ate, then went out to a bar/club with benji and some of his friends. It was fun, but I was completely exhausted since I had to get up at 5:45 am in order to make all my trains on time. Thankfull around 1 am I convinced Heidy to leave, lol. Sunday we went to the Basilique St Sernin where there was this super huge marche, and inside there were all these holy relics from the middle ages. it was cool, because there was also a statue of st rocco! I forgot that he was from around this area. We checked out the capital building, took naps, and then went out to dinner.

Yesterday we hit up a museum and a church where we saw the tomb of Thomas of Aquinas, then went shopppiiiiiiing. We are planning on going to Monte Carlo, but there is a very strict dress code and all I have with me are jeans, so I bought a cute dress at Etam and found some super cute earrings at Agatha. We had a very cas. dinner and then benji came over for a chat. Around quarter to 11 there was this huge banging on our door and some old guy was like "I paid money to sleep, not to listen to you!" then slammed his door shut. HOW RUDE. AND on top of that he and his wife got up at 7 this morning and were so freaking loud it was ridiculous!!

the weather has been nice so far, though a bit chilly and rainy. We are still a bit inland, though, so hopefully once we get to Marseille it will be fab. I totally brought my bathing suit with me. I am determined to go in the Mediterranean even if it kills me (though not really, but you get the idea).

GO RED SOX. I kept calling home at ungodly hours to find out the game scores. Yesterday I think I called home at 8am east coast time. I believe the conversation went a little like this

Dad: Hello?
Liz: DID WE WIN?
Dad: What?
Liz: Did we win last night? The Red Sox?
Dad: Huh, oh, yeah, we won
Liz: WOOOOOOOO k thanks bye

/end conversation

A classic, if I do say so myself.

I shall bid you all adieu for the moment, hopefully in marseille we will hop on the net at some point and i can keep you updated.

xoxoxo

Friday, October 26, 2007

gone for a while

there is much to update you all about, especially about my free trip to ireland (woooo!!!) but I really need to get to bad. heidy (my bf from college who is also in france) and I are leaving tomorrow for our vacation--we will spend 3 days in toulouse, 3 days in marseille, and 4 in nice with a potential side trip to Monaco. Hope everyone has fun working or studying or whatever it is you people have to do, I'll tell George Clooney ya'll say hi when I see him *WINK*

Thursday, October 25, 2007

wo0t!

So they last two days have been super good. Yesterday I took the bus in to school and worked a bit on my lessons for after the vacation, then it was off to class. Class with Christophe is always fun, and he told me he is going to try to keep me for the rest of the year (we make new schedules in mid January). I very much like that because I learn a lot from him, and I really like my NRC class. He lets me grade the students, lol, and I think I'm getting much better at it (the french grading system is much different--it is out of 20, where 10 is average and 15 is really good).

So I tried to catch the bus home at 11:37 but obviously I missed it seeing as I don't get out of class until 11:35 and the bus waits for no one. So I went back and finished up some of my lessons, then went out to wait for the bus. One of my students warned me about how if you don't make it on the bus before it gets full, they leave you behind...and there is no other bus for 2 hours. I made it on and stood with two of my other students (I dont know their names, lol, but one of them was the girl who likes dirty dancing) and talked to them about the differences between school in france and school in the US. I was asking a question about the bus route when someone behind me asked "Liz, you are going near the SuperU? Follow me" so Some Girl (I have no idea who she is!!) showed me how to switch buses and showed me the bus stop a 3 minute walk from my flat (instead of 20 minutes)!!! She was super nice, apparently lives right around the corner from me.

Yesterday was a nap, obviously, because it was freaking freezing out (not even that cold, just super freezing). Ysmay and I watched "Bride and Prejudice" and then went to bed. I had weird dreams about not getting my laundry done and other general pre-vacation jitters.

Today I got up at the asscrack of dawn (aka 6:30) and headed off to school. It was still pitch black when I got on the bus at 8:00. Thats how depressing mornings are in France. Apparently I made a social nono at the bus stop, because I sat on the bench where all the *gasp* BLACK students sit. All the white kids gave me funny looks, but everyone at the bench was very nice to me. Dumb racist fucks.

My lesson today went very well. Probably because I gave them all candy, lol, but everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. I let them choose what we are going to do for the next lesson, since vacation ends on a wednesday so we just have thursday and friday, then the weekend, and I like to have a theme for each weeks lessons. We are going to play a getting to know you game, talk about our favorite vacation, then they are going to bring some french music for me, and I'm bringing some american music for them. In the second class (where I have a different group every other week) I'll just substitute talking about vacation into a writing exercise and give them pictures and make them imagine a little story around it. Then I have almost everything done for the lessons after that, I just have to make a word search (which I have no idea how to do on the computer, so I shall do it by hand)

So really I'm on a roll. From now on I'll be doing some of my lessons in class with Claire, but thats fine with me because they were giving me such problems.

I don't have class until 1:30 so I am off to work on my lessons a bit more.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

theres nothing like a fire to make class interesting

Because you know you can't get enough of me

So class today was interesting. Its the same group that gave me much trouble last week aka makes me wish I drank during the day. So I was talking and no one was paying attention, you know it was all going nicely. I made them try to write mini ghost stories. So I'm standing there talking to one student and we hear this loud POP and I look back and there was SMOKE COMING OUT OF ONE OF THE COMPUTERS. Etienne, one of the students, was playing with the wires, and SETTHEFUCKINGCOMPUTERONFIRE. Or rather I think he blew a chip. But still. SMOKE. And the french apparently don't believe in fire, because if we have a smoke detector in our flat damned if I know where it is. So obviously i told Claire, their professor, and from now on we're keeping the class together.

I love all my other students, though. I saw my NRC class (they're kids who have already graduated high school but aren't going to University, so they are studying to go into sales, etc) today in the halls and they were all excited to say hi, and one of the girls told me she thought I looked like Jennifer Grey from Dirty Dancing which was cool because it's her favorite movie. LOVESTHEKIDS. Its just nice to know that some of my students like me, lol.

In other news I emailed Sylvie Gouchet, who is in charge of all the english language assistants in my region, and told her what was going on with Veronique, and just asked her if anyone said anything to her could she please mention that I had previously spoken to her about it or to let me know who I could write a letter to. She told me she would call Veronique and see what is going on, so hopefully everything will straighten itself out.

I would like to dedicate this post to KMOY because I totally missed her phonecall because my phone hates me (aka I had probably left it on vibrate), but it also doesn't tell me when I have a voicemail. I think by the end of this experience I will have become a major conspiracy theorist person thing.

its a giant conspiracy

I tried to right in this early but the computer here at the lycee wouldn't let me open the right page. Its obviously a french conspiracy to prevent me from revealing the TRUTH about the land of the frog.

I don't really have much to say except to add a bit of gossip about the ongoing drama that is Veronique Brouchard. Claire (one of my professors), being the doll that she is, picked me up today for school and in the car she asked me if I knew that someone wanted to sue some of the Spanish teachers. Guess who! THATS right its Veronique, who has accussed Anne of KIDNAPPING me and breaking all sorts of school policies. She and her husband threatened to call the inspecteur and the syndicat (the education bosses) and tell them everything that happened, and then take legal action. HAHAHAHAHA why, so she can be yelled at for neglect? What the hell would they sue for? These french people are freakin crazy man.

In other news my villagers are duing well (I've been playing virtual villagers, a fantastically crappy sim game), though last night they bred like rabbits. Only 4 have died so far, and all were over 60 years old, which is a good sign. I need to figure out what the puzzle I missed was so I can get them all done before too long. I really want to download seasons 7 and 8 of SVU from itunes because I can't get the NBC website to work. Obviously there is not enough sex (crimes) in my life. At least I have Degrassi, and by the time I get back from vacation maybe I will have gotten my first paycheck. YAAAY MONEY.

Speaking of, I need to book the tickets for the second leg of my journey. ooops?

Monday, October 22, 2007

flyball

So obviously it being my room, my room attracts all manner of living things, none of which I particularly wish to share my room with. I was just getting ready to go to bed (because yes I am that cool kid who goes to bed at 1030) when this giant mutherfucking submarine of a fly starts buzzing around my room. Obviously I called upon Manuel, my personal Spanish Fly Killer, to come to my aid. He tries but has no luck, so he leaves and comes back with a giant plastic bottle. "Baseball!" he declares in his limited english. While I hide in the hallway Manuel gets to work, then declares that it is dead. Yes, but dead SOMEWHERE INMYROOM. We go to look for it and think we can't find it anywhere, then I move my blanket and a GIANTMOTHERFUCKINGKILLERFLYISINMYBED. Obviously I did what any sensible girl my age would do--I shrieked like a little girl, broke into Ysmays room, and jumped into bed with her, in hysterics. The giant mutatofly has been removed from my room but I fear I will have nightmares tonight. I guess its a good thing I plan on doing laundry soon, since it INFECTEDMYTHINGS with its CORPSE.

lazy monday

Hello world, I am super excited because my packages from home came just in time!!! I am starting my lessons on halloween TOMORROW and without all the super awesome stuff mom has sent me, what would I do??? I was going to do laundry today but I have yet to buy detergent, and its monday so nothing is open until this afternoon, so I will wait.

This weekend was crazy!! We woke up and headed off to the weekly marche. This week is a kind of gourmand week in montargis, so on saturday there was a huge market all up and down the main shopping street. I bought some gorgeous brioche and freshly pressed apple juice. they had the giant machine there and you could watch them do it, it was super cool. I also went to the bookstore and bought the next two books in the series I'm reading.

We just chilled for the day, probably I took a nap or soemthing. NO WAIT. OK this is what we did. We went to the store to figure out why the internet wasn't working, and they told us all we had to do now was to install the cd and it would work. So after much fussing it worked--on everyones computer but mine. WTF. So I got super depressed, so Ysmay walked back to the store with me, where I fought on the phone with some stupid tech guy. He told me the problem was with my computer so for a simple 49 euro (about $75 us) a tech guy could come out in 2 weeks in fix it. BITCH WHAT?? I said no fucking way, then left.

So back home I manage to get the internet to work when its plugged in, but the wifi refused to work. so I looked up the number for mac support in france and called. 10 minutes later my wifi worked. BITCHINFUCKYOUORANGE. So obviously since then I have been online as much as possible.

Yesterday I installed skype and spoke to Mike for a bit, which was beyond fab. He's in China for the year. Then last night after dinner Ysmay and I watched the last three hours of Pride and Prejudice, and now we both have Mr Darcy wallpapers, lol.

Today my packages from home are here, so I need to pick them up at 3. I just got off of Skype with Heidy, arranging things for vacation. We leave this weekend, I'm super excited!! Sanchez is really good at finding cheap accomodations, so its going to be fun. We may do a day trip into Monaco if we have the time for it so we can feel really guilty for being really poor, haha.

If you're reading this Joe and/or Mary, tell the 'rents I say hi and let them know that the packages got here. Hope ya'll are having fun in Florida!!!!

Friday, October 19, 2007

you all suck

dear friends and family. everyone in the flat is getting mail except for MEEEEEEE. It makes me sad, because mail is way cool. So here is my address, and if you don't go and write to me right now I will send you lots of bad karma. LOTS.

Elizabeth Favorito
Logement de fonctions
Ecole Jean Moulin
Rue Jean Moulin
45200 Montargis
France

In other news I've had a killer headache so I went to bed super early last night. it was yum. I only had one class today which is a pain in the butt, and I'm sad because my ride home has gone MIA. WTF JeanDo.

Hurrah for the weekend!! Hopefully all of our travel plans will get worked out soon. I think I'm going to have to feed Heidy my credit card numbers over the phone to get it all done, but maybe a miracle will occur and we will have internet this afternoon.

Yay my ride is here now so peace out bitches

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

because I'm cold and bored

My last class was hilarious. It is with Christophe Bureau, and with him I just stay in the class and help out. This class is a Bac+2, which means all the students (and by students I mean hot boys) are around my age and are all studying to go into sales. So today we got to role play and I was pretending to by a car. They all failed horribly, except for Antonio (who is a whizz at english). They all got flustered and when I would try to help them out, they would be like "Yes, yes, that is so" without having any idea what I was saying. Oh silly children.

I bumped into my chere Gardenia, who yelled at me for not dressing warm enough. It was freaking gorgeous out yesterday, who knew it was going to rain today?? I will have to treat weather here like weather in New England--aka be prepared for anything at anytime.

I am currently sitting waiting to get picked up in an hour, because like I said it is raining and I don't yet have a bike, though considering yesterdays disaster I dont know if I want one. Lets just paint this picture--in France, bikes drive on the streets with the cars, as a member of traffic. Picture me, stopped at a red light, cars behind me, and a shoe thats a bit too big. YEAH EXACTLY theres nothing like stopping traffic so you can pick up your shoe to start a day off beautifully. Not to mention I couldnt figure out how to use the speeds so it was impossible going uphill. I may have been the talk of the town yesterday. "hey theres that crazy american on the bike who lost her shoe....is she having a heart attack? should we stop? oh wait thats right, we are french so we stop for no one. Lets go smoke".

let me also apologize for any future strange spelling mistakes and lack of punctuation. the french use an azerty keyboard, and most punctuation (apostrophes and such) are located in the number row aka its a pain in the ass to use them. As it is you have to SHIFT to get a freaking PERIOD. Thats right my friends, the french decided that the colon was more important than the freaking period, which is exactly the reason why I hate french literature.

part two

So lets talk about my flat, and how its a piece of shit, lol. No, not really, but its owned by town hall and they're tearing it down in may so they didnt find the need to fix it up at all for us, plus the assistants last year totally trashed it. The wallpaper is falling down and there are water stains on the wall, but its large and super cheap. Between all of our bills for rent, heat, electricity, insurance, internet, etc I'm still paying less than 200 euro a month (about 300 us) so WHATEVS lol.

The other assistants:
Manuel is a quiet little heavy metal spanish boy. He is very nice and cleans up, but has random little quirks which drive me crazy. He smokes, and when he uses the frying pan he puts like an inch of oil in it, then leaves the oil there to use the next day. I'm sorry but I don't use no ones dirty oil. He was also into that weird euro thing where at night you follow the yellow mellow rule (for those of you not familiar with it, it regards the toilet. if its yellow let it mellow, if its brown flush it down) but I'm totally not cool with that because our toilet is this tiny little room with no ventilation, so it reaks like piss. Thankfully he has caught on about that one
Tinette is sitting right next to me, lol. No, she is super nice. SHe is german but speaks english very well, so I try to refuse to speak english with her, haha. She is a bit older than the rest of us, so she now lives in her own flat.
Ysmay is my dearest. We were facebook friends over the summer, so it was nice to already now her. Bitch is 6'1. Shes super clean, which I love, though hopefully she will soon learn to stop leaving the lights on in her room, lol. Electricity is expensive in france, yo. She's very much a mother hen, which is nice because then I dont have to take on that role all the time.

Last week we just observed classes, and as much as I love the sound of my own voice I'm sick of telling everyone that I'm 22 and single, lol. Last weekend we went to the local marche and then Anne took us out touristing. We also met the coolest man ever, JeanDo. He is an economics teacher we bumped into one day in the staff room. He told us how he never meets the assistants, and then offered us a ride home. We've been bff ever since. We saw him at the marche, and we see him all the time now. He calls us "les jolies filles" (the pretty girls) and even sent us a postcard from his minivacation this weekend. He's going to take me and Ysmay out for a daytrip to some local vineyards, woooo.

This past weekend I went to Rennes. It was a looooong stressful journey. Its a half hour walk to the train station, an hour to Paris, then two trains to get to the right train station, then two plus hours to Rennes. All in all it takes about 6 hours. And considering the fact that I forgot my cell, it was 6 hours of stress. All in all it was a fun weekend, even though moronuglyface Heidy wasnt there. I spent Sunday/Sunday night with my host family, which was the best thing ever. I stuffed my face like no ones business. It was so strange to be back there, because everything was the same even though at the same time it wasnt.

Yesterday was my first day teaching, and it was hell. Ehran wouldnt stop talking and wouldnt pay attention, so I spent half the time yelling at him. The students all seemed bored and wouldnt stop chatting. By the time it came to play the game I told Ehran that he had to sit out because I wasnt there to discipline him, I was there to teach. I got home and called mom and cried, lol, but I feel a lot better now. I think I need to expect a little more out of my students, even though every one told us that pretty much none of them could speak english.

Next week will be good though, because I'm just going to spend the whole week talking about halloween, lol. Hopefully my package full of halloween goodies will arrive before then!!!

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

wow so here we go

this is going to be one long mo-fo of a post, just a warning mes petites.

I will start at the beginning of my life in france, so sit back and relax, maybe take a pee break, because this is probably going to take a while.

Mom and dad dropped me off at the airport, and it was all good. I felt a little lonely, seeing as I forgot to pack a bear, so I went to a giftshop and bought myself a teddy bear wearing a boston tshirt. His name was Bruno, but after I met a man named Bruno who I really didnt like, I changed his name to BoBo. Waiting was boring, as usual, but randomly enough I knew someone on my flight to Iceland!! His name is Tim and we trained and worked together at the BandN in Braintree.

It was a typical flight, layover in Iceland, yadda yadda.

I arrived in Montargis on Monday and was picked up by the head of the English Department, Chantal Levy. She brought me to the lycee (french for high school), showed me around a bit, then brought me to a room. I was living in the teachers dorm. On the fourth floor. By myself. In a mostly empty building. I KNOW I said the same thing. I ate at the dining hall and it felt like the first day of high school all over again, but worse because there was only like 150 kids there.

Tuesday I met my contact, Veronique, who is very disappointing (and not only because she is quite ugly). She gave me a list of the things that needed to get done--open a bank account, sign my contract at town hall, go to the prefecture, and buy insurance for the flat. She assured me it would take less than two hours, then she drove me to town hall....and kicked me out the door. So I tried to take care of housing but they told me I needed a bank account. So I went to the bank and they told me I needed proof of housing, so I made an appointment, walked the forty minutes back to school, and cried. HA. I called Vero that night for help, but she was no good. I at least had a cell phone though, ha!

Wednesday I took care of my bank account and insurance and all that, and around dinner time I bumped into Manuel the spanish assistant and his contact, Anne. Anne asked me what I had been doing and I told her how I did it all by myself and was eating by myself and all that. She gave me her phone number.

On thursday I had a meeting with Vero to move into the flat, but Anne called me in the morning to tell me it wouldnt be ready until friday. I said ok then asked her where I could buy toiletries and such, so she came and picked me up and I spent a few hours with her and Manuel. SHe showed us around and such. We got back to school and everyone was like "oh you're the missing american we thought you were dead!! they broke into your room to make sure you weren't sick" UH ok. The headmaster laughed about it, But Chantal Levy ripped Anne a new one while everyone was looking. I felt really guilty--Here I was, a new person in a new country leaving a horrible impression on all my colleagues. Anne noticed and said "its okay, you're coming to eat at my house and we'll find you a place to sleep" So it was off to Annes, which was awesome because she lives in an old school farm house. Another Spanish proff, Gardenia, came over for dinner;

So then the drama begins. Anne called Veronique to say she was sorry she took me out when we had a meeting, but that she figured since the appartment wasnt ready there was no reason to get together. Vero acted all cool, then called me all pissed off. "I was so worried, blahblahblah" When I asked her why she didnt call my cell she told me she didnt have my number, which was a HORRIBLE LIE. So then she asked me where I was, and since everyone was already mad at Anne I told her I was at Gardenias. She then insisted to talk to Gardenia.

In the car on the way to Gardenias (where I was spending the night) my cell didnt stop ringing, but I refused to answer it. Once we got to her house she made me a hot cocoa, and then the phone rang. It was Bruno, Veros HUSBAND wondering why we had upset her and just screaming at Gar. It turned into world world 3. Then I checked my voice mail and it was Vero sobbing and saying who knows what. So then Vero calls and yells at Gardenia about how inappropriate it was that i was at her house and all this other stupid stuff.

The next day Vero refused to look at me, then lectured me in the car about how shes so busy and shes not a bad person no matter what Anne may say.

well I'm actually headed off to lunch now , not that anyone cares because no one has the link for this, HA; oh shit I also have class in an hour, so I'ma peace out.