Observation and frustration... Followed by fun!

This blog seems to be turning into a daily journal… so don’t feel obligated to read all the mundane details of my life. I think living abroad makes every little problem or success more dramatic by virtue of it being dealt with in French and by myself. So sorry for the silliness I may describe.

Yesterday, I went to school for three hours in the afternoon to sit in on three classes. Once again I had to present myself, answer questions, and talk a little about Tennessee and Knoxville with Google images to aid me. Two of the classes were terminale (last year of high school) comprised of electricians who have just returned from month-long internships in businesses as varied as home electricians to maintenance in hospitals. It was cool to hear their stories of work and see that they do know some English already.

One class was listing what they wanted to discuss with me when I have my own classes, and one guy mentioned basketball. I told them I watch a lot of basketball, so they asked my favorite team—the Lakers! That earned me some grins :)

After the three hours, I was definitely tired from looking attentive and deciphering broken English. I also had to bring financial forms to the secretary to set up my automatic salary payment—I should get 80% of my salary at the end of this month instead to having to wait until the end of November.

Then, I went downtown to drop off PA’s rent check at his agency and stop by my agency to see the status of my apartment. Now that we had a snafu with the last financial guarantor, the agent wanted to talk to them first. I had to convince her that it was all set up and that she should send the paperwork right away. Hopefully, it will all be done by this weekend; I am to await her phone call to get my keys. It was a rather frustrating afternoon.

I met PA back at the apartment and enjoyed a healthy dinner of delivery pizza (ham, egg, potato as toppings!) and brownies that I made from a packet (denser and darker than ones in the US). Around 9:30, I texted some assistants to go to a hookah bar downtown. So me, PA, Seth, Georgia, Caely, and Carolyn (who is placed in St. Malo) enjoyed Melon and Lemon-Mint hookahs and sugary mint tea. I really love this group of assistants—it makes the stresses of work and paperwork easier to bear when I can joke around with them afterwards. Well, and Pierre-Antoine helps a lot too ;)

Also, I finally found some peanut butter here… in the foreign food aisle with burrito kits and teriyaki sauces!

Today, I am going into work for an hour to just hang out with another English teacher, Laetitia, and see some more of the workshops. Catherine is busy the rest of the week, so we’ll see if I have much more to do.

I’ll also put up some photos of the school that I’ve taken! I’m so lazy about doing that :/