I finally had a crepe today, and it was a bit heavenly. A crepe with Nutella. Mmmmmmm. And the other day, I bought a Frasier from the bakery. It’s some sort of crème cake with strawberries and I don’t know what else except for a lot of sugar. But it was quite awesome. I love the food here.

The last week seems so far away. I had another half day of training, and met a really nice lady, Sandrine. She has been super, and I guess you could say she has taken me under her wing. She is the one who is responsible for coordinating the adult programs, but she has gone far above and beyond helping me with that, and I am so grateful for her.

She went with me on Friday morning to the school I will be teaching at, and helped me with getting my schedule set. There are some problems with the schedule that has been give to me, and she has helped me through my frustrations.

On Saturday morning, she offered to meet with me to get my first lesson plans started, and help me with ideas for activities and other lessons.

This whole teaching thing seems a little overwhelming to me right now, it is a bit more than I bargained for. But once things get going, that’s when I will really know. All I know right now is how things seem. And it seems like a lot.

It is a nice change of pace to go to work in the suburbs. The commute is a pain in my ass, and something that I am still a little upset about, I mean I will be traveling one hour each way, but there isn’t anything I can do about it, so I have to look to the bright side. (Thank goodness for iPods.)

The lifestyle is so different, and the cityscape is so different. It’s very quiet. But apparently the area I will be teaching in is an affluent suburb, and the parents are quite picky, and a little too over-involved in things. Sounds like my experience working at the Y in Alta Loma. And the parents there loved me, so hopefully things will be familiar.

I start teaching Monday morning, and as it stands, I will have 2 classes of 8 year olds who have never had any English classes, 2 classes of 9 year olds (who have had one year), and 2 classes of 10 year olds (two years of English). And then I will have one hour of an American culture driven conversation class for teachers on Fridays. I will be teaching Monday and Tuesday mornings, and all day Fridays. That is if they decide not to give me to more classes on Thursday mornings in an attempt to drive me insane.

Speaking of things that are crazy, Saturday was the Nuit Blanche (White Night, which cracked me up to no end). The premise of it was that Museums and churches were going to be open all night from 7pm to 7am, with different art displays, and it was going to be coordinated by quarter. So the plan was going to be to meet up at Sylvana and Amanda’s, drink a little, then head out to the Marais, because it appeared they had the most going on.

Hahaha.
We started out at Sylvana and Amanda’s. It was really cool, there was a little fair type thing that was going on around the Sacre Coeur, where they had different booths set up where they were selling wines and breads and cheeses and things from different regions in France. We checked that out a bit, bought some bread, and then went back to their apartment, and had some wine.

Amanda’s boyfriend and his cousin came over, and we hung out. And time kept passing. Supposedly we were going to meet some of Alex’s friends in the Marais at about 10:30. 10 came around, and nobody had an inclination of going anywhere. So Sylvana and I decided to go.

We started in the Marais, near the Centre Pompidou. The line was sooo long to get in, so we decided that we would pass. We went to a church that was nearby. It was interesting to say the least.


After we left the church, a guy Sylvana knew said he was in the 5th, and wanted to meet up. So we said that we would meet with them at the Fountain at Saint Michel. Silly us thought they meant they would be there. We waited about an hour for them. I think Sylvana felt bad about just leaving without them, and after miscommunications, they finally showed up. Drunk, and with beer in hand. And the mission to find more alcohol.

I got bitchy. We waited an hour for them. And they were being rude. So I said we were going to go. And they could call us. We never heard from them.

And the art displays we saw just weren’t that interesting. It was three in the morning, and my Nuit Blanche had been a letdown, so we headed back to my apartment.


We made the decision that events like this were small groups, with like minded people. The more people involved, the more complicated, and ultimately, disappointing.

Sunday morning I slept, and then met up with Rachael (the assistant that graduated from CSUF and who knows my friend). We met near the Eiffel Tower, which was actually the first time this trip that I have gone near there.


We went over our lesson plans, and shared ideas that had been given to us by different people. She is having a hard time because she doesn’t speak French very well, and so she is being overwhelmed in that sense. I told her that any time she needed help to call me. We are going to work together probably every week on our lesson plans. It has always seemed to me that creativity inspires creativity, and if two of us are working together, we could probably come up with some good stuff.

And Rachael is really cool, so yay, I have another friend in Paris.

The weather here is now cold. I don’t know temperatures, but it is cold. I bought a scarf. I have never before worn a scarf. I made fun of emo kids in California for wearing scarves, because come on now, is it ever that cold?

But here it is. And the winds are chilly. So scarf it is. It has rained a bit. Where I live the wind doesn’t blow too hard, but up on the hill where Sylvana and Amanda live, it blows hard. At least it didn’t rain on the Nuit Blanche.

I’ve been reading Les Misérables (but in English). I bought the book back in January I think, and had started reading it, and the first 75 pages were incredibly difficult to get through, and the story just didn’t seem to move. So I had given up on it. When I went back home with the whole visa fiasco, I decided to bring the book back with me. I mean, I did go to the Victor Hugo house, I might as well start reading more of the Parisian hero.

And I have really gotten into the book now. It is awesome. It is long, but good. The stories are intricate and well fleshed out. I really have grown to appreciate Victor Hugo’s way of storytelling, interjecting his opinions of life, spirituality and politics. And his humor. Indeed, in his book, Victor Hugo says “To err is human. To loaf is Parisian.” I spent 5 minutes laughing.