A new blog!!!!!!!!

Another trip to France, another excuse for a blog! I figure that this will be the best way to keep everyone updated :)

For starters, I AM NOT IN PARIS! I am in Rennes, the capital of the Brittany region of northwest France. Wikipedia it for more info. It has England-ish weather, and I'm already so cold! Pierre-Antoine says it won't get cold enough to snow at least. I will be working as an English language assistant in a technical high school under nine English professors. I should be meeting with them all this week on Thursday to find out more details. I will do mostly oral classes and probably mini-lessons on American culture.

At the moment, I am living with PA and his two roommates, Wajd and Alexandre, both students at the dentistry school. PA is doing a masters program in American Studies and working for a study abroad program at his university helping foreign students learn French, so I spend a lot of time in the apartment watching dubbed sitcoms (Friends is on now) and running errands in the neighborhood--which by the way has a mall named Kennedy, as in JFK ;) When my job actually starts October 1st, I'm sure my life will be a lot less pathetic.

My main concern at the moment is finding an apartment, which is more difficult than I thought :/ My tutrice (the prof that I am working under) has been super helpful, which is overwhelming sometimes because she wants to get everything done at once. But things are coming together nicely, so I'm grateful. I'm looking at some on Wednesday with her.

There have been a few parties at the apartment, so I've been able to meet some other French students and friends of PA. All-French-lauguage parties can be super itimidating, let me tell you. Sometimes I will sit for half an hour and have no idea what anyone has said :/ But we played a game Thursday night and that helped break the ice a bit (when there weren't obscure French cultural references that went over my head). American music also helps because dancing is universal ;) And since three boys live here, there is a lot of video game playing; happily, I was told that I'm good at Mariokart "for a girl." (Though I'm pretty sure that saying was deemed un-PC after the 50s, I'll take it as a compliment.)

I also went to the hometown of PA the past two weekends, the cute medieval town of Vitré. His mom is super nice, and it's comforting to have a French family watching my back and helping me stock up on necessities for my apartment. It has been more difficult adjusting to this time abroad (as opposed to my Furman study abroad programs) since I'm not with a group of American/Furman students and profs who can sympathize with what I'm doing. Not that PA and my tutrice aren't super-helpful... it's just that they aren't experiencing the same things as me. But soon other assisstants will arrive, and we can have fun together!

Please, comment on the blog or email me with any questions, and I'll try to respond ASAP. I'm going to plan on doing an update at least every Sunday with maybe more posts in between. I'll also try to take some photos soon!

Bisous (kisses)!
L