More to come...

There is much more to come, so for those of you reading please stay tuned and know how appreciative I am that you have taken the time to keep up with my adventures over here.

Wine Tasting

After our adventurous day of getting the Petit Paume successfully we were headed to the Salon du Vin for an afternoon of wine tasting.  Two friends of mine, other English assistants, had been staying with a teacher from their school who had give them free tickets.  We walked in, handed in our tickets, were given a glass, and headed into this big room lined with wine vendors.  They were from all over france selling every different type of wine…and champagne of course.  There was a man with a dried fruit display, people selling cheese, salami, sausage, chocolate…etc.  It was incredible.  We tasted all different types of wine and tried to strike up a conversation with each person because we felt bad that we weren’t going to buy any of the bottles (although there were some pretty good deals).  Oh, did I mention there was Froie Gras too?  Delish!  

PETIT PAUME

This is the “Life Guide” to Lyon.  It is a book given out for free, only a couple times a year.  The 2010 version was released mid-October and there was a whole day of celebration and entertainment that came with it.  It took place at Place Bellecour.  Even the mayor was present.  This year’s theme is Rock and Roll so they had people dressed up as Elvis and Marilyn Monroe.  They had different stands that had cotton candy and other themed activities.  There was a countdown and everything for the actual distribution of the books.  So I met up with three friends to pick up our Petit Paume and fine out what this whole day was about.  We arrived early (the give-away was schedule for 1:30).  Of course, this being France and all, they didn’t end up started the countdown until around 2pm.  We had a pretty good spot in the crowd (we were all surrounding a type of stage where volunteers were standing in front of a HUGE pile of the books.  The countdown began, we got ready, and the frenzy began!  People were reaching up, pushing, yelling, screaming, it was insanity!  Each person was allowed max 5.  I wanted to get some for my flatmates so I squeezed my way to the front after my friend had gotten their books.  I was reaching up with my fingers spread signally FIVE as I yelled out CINQ,CINQ, CINQ!!!  All of a sudden I feel a pretty hard kick.  I thought nothing of it because there were so many people but it happened TWO MORE TIMES!  I was getting abused while trying to get five of these little books.  I went to look and see who it was and there was this creepy older man who caught my gave but turned away quickly after (I’m pretty sure it was him).  So I got my five books, pushed my way out of the crowd, and met my friends on the periphery of the crowd.  My legs was covered in sand and they were all confused as to what happened.  Between my expression and my filthy leg we all started laughing.  It turns out not 20 minutes later there were a ton of books left and now crowd around them…Totally could have waited but then we wouldn’t have gotten that rush.  What a ridiculous experience.

Life UPDATE…cause it has certainly been a while…

Good Morning!  It is November 4, 2009 today, whatsup!?!  I realized I’m on vacation, with nothing planned and know that my updates on this site haven’t really happened for a while so what I am going to do it give, or attempt to give some sort of summary of the past couple weeks.  To start with, I am a total full fledged assistant, bank account, address, flatmates, debit card, social security number (well, that’s in the works), and my first months pay!  Legit, right?  So I am currently sitting in my room at Place Jean Mace looking out onto my wonderful Marche that takes place every Wednesday and Saturday morning.  I now have my specific vegetable man I go to, and most recently he has inquired how much I charge for private English lessons…I said I would reflect on that…I’m still reflecting.  Anyway, he is a nice enough guy and I have now made a promise to myself that as long as this marche continues I will only buy my vegetables there.  Listen to this: a large crown of broccoli, a zuchini and about 8 sizeable carrots for all less than a euro.  Its magical.  So needless to say, its Wednesday and I’ll be heading overthere withing the next couple hours.  Alright so Place Jean Mace.  My hood.  It’s a great little place with the metro, bus, tram and train all around me.  Its perfect for getting around, especially when it is foul weather.  My commute to school is about 30 minutes (including the 10 minute walk from the metro stop in Vennisieux to the actual high school).  So who do I live with?  Great question.  I live with two awesome flatmates both enrolled in a business management program here.  Their names, Margaux and Jacques-Francois (I know, so French!).  They are awesome.  Also, they talk quite swiftly and sometimes laugh mid-sentence muffling their words, I’ve gotten by and they don’t mind when I ask them to repeat what they have said.  For a while (in fact, until last week) Clement, Margaux’s boyfriend was living with us while he searched for a job.  You’d think that would be weird, or maybe a bit crowded in our three bedroom apartment…but it worked out great, I was hardly working and Clement was unemployed so we really held it down during the day.  He would always joke that while I was going to work the next day, Margaux and Jacques were going to class, he would be home ‘exercising his fingers’ with the remote control for the television, also refered to as the “zapette” in our apartment.  So as it goes, our living situation is very nice, and I feel very comfortable saying so far so good.

ORIENTATION

So now I’m supposed to know what I’m doing?  Think again.  On October 9^th there was  an all day orientation for all of the English assistants teaching college and lycee (middle and high school).  It started at 9am and was scheduled to run until 5pm.  We were supposed to get a better handle on what exactly our responsibilities are, who we can contact for advice and help, and what it means to be a French citizen.  As me what, who, or how…and I couldn’t give you an answer!  It was great to meet a bunch more assistants because I had, as it turned out, only met a handful.  There was even a girl who went to Riverdale high school who knew a bunch of the same people.  We spent the morning going through topics such as social security, salary, health care, finding an apartment, paying rent, opening up a bank account…etc.  Important topics but unfortunately the questions and the explanations began to contradict themselves and the whole morning became quite confusing.  We broke for lunch around noon and it was free for us.  We ate in the canteen of the high school where we had our meeting (an experience I don’t necessarily need to do again).  It was one of those grab a tray, glass, and silverware and chose one from each section – yogurt, pasta or salad, mystery meet and fries.  During the afternoon we were split into groups specific to our job assignments and started the afternoon learning about the school system we were going to be a part of.  To my knowledge we were supposed to be learning about how to structure our classes and how to go about working with the kids however the guy who we were working with just decided to explain the system (that was actually in a book that we were given) and he spent and hr and 45 minutes doing so.  He then said that the internet is the best resource for anything that we would need and he suggested to go look anything up on google like icebreakers or games.  Humorous.  Good news is we got out quite early, bad news is that it was quite entirely pointless except for the opportunity to meet some other awesome assistants.