La Premiere Semaine

I have officially finished my first full week of teaching. Things went pretty well overall I think. I do have some revelations however...

1) I have a newfound respect for teachers. I plan 6 45 minute lessons per week and after planning them and teaching them I am exhausted. People who do this full-time are amazing or are taking some kind of energy drink that I need to become aware of.

2) The difference between my two schools is really amazing. The kids are good at both and really excited about learning English, but the school in the center of town, where rent is more expensive and the lawyers and doctors live, has smarter kids. So all that stuff you hear about socio-economics and intelligence? It appears to be true unfortunately.

3) My brain hurts. Try teaching your native language when you're constantly working overtime to live in a foreign language and see how many times you screw up.

dance=danse blue=bleu hello=bonjour

I can't even say "ok" without a French accent on it anymore. My brain is going to shutdown from overload one of these days.

4) Chartres is really hilly. Ok, I realize that for the majority of the past four years of my life I have lived in Ada, OH which makes the fields of Kansas look hilly, but this is ridiculous. I'm too poor to take the bus unless I really have to, which means walking to my schools. My legs have rebelled by attacking me with charley horses in the middle of the night. They're either going to shut down (along with my brain), or I'm gonna have some hot looking legs at the end of this.

5) Winter is going to suck here. It's already cold, but the schools are heated to the point where it's almost uncomfortable sometimes. So dressing in layers is going to become a necessity.

Sorry for the lack of eloquence in this post, but I have a headache unlike anything I've ever experienced. So here's some totally random pictures from the past week.

We (Danielle, Lisa (my next door neighbor and fellow assistant) and Deborah (another assistant)) bought escargot at the market last weekend and cooked them up. Yes, those are snails with pesto sauce and a load of butter.

Here's Lisa demonstrating how to eat them. We used toothpicks because it's not like we were going to buy the fancy little forks for one tasting... Anyway, stab it, pull it out, dip it down in the sauce and butter, and then...

Here I go...

Still not sure about it. The flavor was good. But I think that's because it was pesto. The texture... not so much. And if you think about the fact that you're eating snails? No way. But overall I think I'd give them a B-. I think that face says "B-", no?

Chartres has a walkway of heroes, or something like that. It starts out a bit with the big War Memorial. It was built after WWI, but names have been added. Then you walk towards town and there's a memorial for victims of the concentration camps, civilian victims, those who died as part of the Resistance, to the Resistance in general, and then it all culminates at this (above). It's a memorial to Jean Moulin. You can read about him at that link, or the short version is that he was like the mayor-ish person for the Eure-et-Loir department (where Chartres is) and he was BIG TIME in the Resistance during WWII.

More to come! Stay tuned...