week one: fin

Today is day 10 for me in France and also ends my first full week of having to be places and do things concerning my job as a teacher at the lycee. I can't believe how much I have done/has happened in only 10 days. Just getting settled and learning my way around is such a task that I feel like I have been here 2 or 3 weeks already.

Anyway, I think things are going pretty well though some things that have happened just should not have been issues I had to deal with.

Example:

On Wednesday and Thursday of this week I was required to report to teacher training in Nice from 9am to 5 pm (with a 2 hour lunch break, bien sur). My first day in France I had been given the address, name of the professor teaching the training session, and a map of Nice with the place of the training session circled. At orientation the assistants d'anglais were told that the address in our orientation packets was wrong and we would be emailed with updated information soon.

Tuesday night came around and no email from our academie organizer. I called my lycee supervisor, who had heard nothing about the issue at all but instructed me to just go to the address I had and hope for the best. If it was wrong at least I would have an excuse for my lateness.

Wednesday morning I wake up really early and start walking into town around 6:30am. After a 25 minute power walk to the bus station I had a 1 hour bus ride (bad move on my part) I arrive in Nice and start wandering around. About 30+ minutes later I had walked from downtown Nice UPHILL for over a mile and FINALLY found the teacher's training institution where I was supposed to have my class. It was roughly 9:05am. There I am told (in French, because the people at the college only knew the words "hello," "goodbye" and "strike"- I'm not making this up) that the correct location is ALL THE WAY BACK DOWNTOWN, but luckily (I was told, in French) it's downhill so it's not so bad.

*ugh* I walked all the way back down and found the new location. Luckily I ran into my Canadian counterpart who was equally lost and fed up and we decided to take our time and sort of say "fuck it" to the whole affair. We arrived at the training session at 10:30am, an hour and a half late and 4 hours after I had left the house that morning. All of which could have been avoided if the academie coordinator could have been bothered to send around an email with the correct address.

Luckily most people were late for the same reason, but I was still royally pissed off by the whole thing. At a certain point I remembered that some members of my law school class were currently having their services billed out to clients at $150/hour, so my time is worth at least a little something at this point in my life.

Things have been going much better at my actual lycee, which is what counts the most. I have most of my paperwork done for the time being (no small matter if you consider the French system) and I really like all of the English teachers I'm assigned to work with. The lycee itself is one of the best schools in France, so it's really quite an honor to be entrusted with certain aspects of my students' educations. I start teaching actual lessons next week and I also get to help out with a stage production that is being done by an English class I'm not teaching (my Canadian counterpart is teaching that group of students, but I am helping a bit here and there with the play they're doing just for fun).

This afternoon three of my classes were cancelled because the teachers were on an overnight fieldtrip so I headed back toward Antibes, stopping off a few times to search out a bathing suit. I wound up in Juan les Pins, a resort community about a mile or so west of Antibes, and found a designer bathing suit shop having a great sale. It was a tiny shop with a little French lady running it. I picked up a few things and she took them from me gently saying, "no, these are too small. They're Italian sizes, let me help you." Good thing she did too, because I can barely figure out my American size, let alone my French, Italian, etc. The suits were all around 30 euros, which is a lot for me, but they were marked down from 120+ euros so I started calling it an "investment" to rationalize the purchase in my head.

I wound up buying a light green 2 piece suit that covers my prudish self but will still allow me to get tan. Tomorrow I will hit the beach for the first time, lay on the sand with a book, and allow the Mediterranean sun to reflect off my frighteningly pale Alaska/Buffalo skin for a few hours. Hopefully I will brown up soon so the locals will stop asking me if I'm English.