It seems like every time my French ex finds me on msn (like, three times per year) I find out something I didn’t want to know. Like that there was a goodbye party for him that I wasn’t invited to. Or that he’s moving in with his girlfriend in a house with a great view in Bretagne and is no longer f-ed up. Or that I can come visit any time I want. Wtf?

This should be ancient history but instead it feels like someone else got my dream. I don’t want to know, I’m not coming to visit, and right now I wish he would just stop trying to be friends and above all telling me how great he’s doing.

I guess that’s all I’m going to say about that.

I got paid, I got my bank card, and I got my checkbook. Unfortunately I do not have my bank card code yet because I didn’t have my name on the mailbox, and front desk bank lady thinks it was probably sent back. So I need to ask her to ask them to resend it. In the meantime I’ll write checks (weird) and buy things online.

I’ve been planning out my classes, especially the 3rd-years where it appears I more or less get to choose which 13 weeks I teach, and it’s a bit disturbing to keep flipping past Dec 4th in my planner. That’s the date my masters report is due and although I have the 25 pages of lit review written, I need to make sure I get the study done in time to write it up AND have a couple weeks’ leeway for my supervisors to read it. Am going to talk to my boss this Thursday about when I can do the study in her classes. Need to not get so sucked up into my French life that I forget about graduating.

But fun things are starting to get planned. I think I’m swinging through Paris for a night before heading down to Avignon for the Toussaint vacation, to foutre le bordel with Zandra. Then the weekend after, Marie and I have bought tickets to see Benabar in Poitiers, and she has been invited by her bank to a tennis match and Superbus concert in Paris the day after so if she gets the places, we’ll go to that. And am trying to see if I can go see Linda in Strasbourg in late November once I don’t work Tuesdays anymore. There is amazingly a direct TGV from Poitiers to Strasbourg that costs, with the 12-25 card, as little as 22 euros one-way.

Marie and I cooked this taco mix last night out of one of her French cookbooks and it was good although not as spicy as American mixes. There were raisins in it, which I liked. Think will add them to chili next time I make it. Bit difficult to make chili the way I like it though without black beans.

Marie and I went to Castorama and I bought an armoire/penderie-type thing and then we put it up in my room (while I forgot to call Anna as I said I would…) and now the room feels like a real chambre. Will take a picture soon.

Am considering stopping in Paris for a day or two before heading down to Avignon for the Toussaint vacation. What’s cool to do in Paris these days? I’ll probably go get felafel in the Marais. But apart from that I’m not sure.

even though I only taught from 8 to 9:10 (yes, I ran short, I always forget how shy they are the first day). But I got lots done (am working on an Onion lesson and is tricky figuring out what questions to ask to lead them to get the jokes…), and talked to the two other English profs, and learned how to use the expensive digital lab system. We used to talk in class at UT about the downsides of technology, among them that some teachers don’t want to use it. And yes, when it’s half set up I can completely understand why. The school spent so much money on this system, but they stopped short (well, it would have cost double I’ve been told) of putting in video screens in the desks. We usually have CNN streaming into the classroom computer but it is not currently working. And as of yet there’s no internet hooked up to the computers in the classrooms. I would so much rather have internet and a projector and sound system that works really well and reliably than be able to intercom privately with each of my students. But I will try to en profiter at some point. Boss says she does pronunciation work with the intercom system.

Speaking of technology, I gave the stud’s their first assignment today which is to create a video self-introduction using a webcam, and I asked them how many of them didn’t have webcams, and no one answered, so I assume it’s fine. They seemed cheerful about it.

And here are some pictures of the coloc house (just the sun room):

Kitchen on left, bedrooms on right, stairway at the end of the hall.

Looking out (it says Bienvenue dans la maison de la glandouille)

I’ve been doing stuff, going to the office, playing farmville, smashing flies with the newspaper. But I’m hardly ever alone in the evenings so that’s why I haven’t been posting much. Arriving with roommates is so different from arriving alone. Someone cooks every night and at least three of us eat together, though it tends to be pretty late, 9 or 9:30. I spend hardly any time in my room, which is good because it needs a number of things before I’ll feel like doing anything in there besides sleeping.

(Seriously though I killed three flies yesterday (definitely getting the hang of it). Does fly paper exist in France? If it does I may need to convince the colocs that we should put some up.)

Tomorrow is my first day of class, 8-9:30 with the first-years. Afterward I’ll wait around for three hours to meet with the other two English profs, so I may actually do a little organizing for my masters report, which I have sort of let fall by the wayside since arriving.

There are lots of things I’ve meant to post over the past few days, but I get home and talk to the colocs and forget about them. However, I will try to bring back a couple:

1) The other new English teacher (there are three of us, one being the head of the department) asked me today what my plans are, if I’ll stay in France or whatnot. So I told her my plan to go back and teach French and my other plan to maybe stay here and pass the CAFEP or something. On the one hand, I should probably stop kidding myself, I’ll almost surely want to stay here another year. But I’m really not sure about after. Part of me feels like my year in Austin never happened, but in reality I know it changed my outlook. It made me feel better about the States and the lifestyle and opportunities there. While I don’t want to live in Austin—I’d like a place with more history—there are definitely places in the U.S. where I’m really interested in living—Boston, of course, Philadelphia, D.C., maybe Houston, even San Antonio. Mostly I just want a place to make a life, and it could be in France or any number of places. So that is what worries me about spending another year at this post. If I don’t meet someone during these two years, I’m not sure there’s any point in staying, and I may in fact rather have just done one and headed west. If I do, then everything will probably be much clearer. I hate to make it sound like my plans evolve around having a boyfriend, but, well, I’m sort of sick of wandering, and I love both of these countries.

2) Poitiers is really nice so far, though I have to say I’ve spent about three hours total in the centre ville. We live at Poitiers Sud, with a fifteen-minute bus ride into town and a 20-minute bus ride after that to the university. Sometimes the commute gets longer because I take some time to wander around downtown, because today and yesterday we’ve had beautiful weather. The city is walled, and there’s some sort of canal or river running around in it (obviously am not too clear on the lay-out here). But it’s really pretty to cross the river/canal on the way to school. The gare, on the other hand, is the first gare I’ve seen in France which is not a classic old-looking building. It’s really pretty modern and not that close to the centre ville, because of the aforementioned wall, and I can’t really figure it out.

And less interesting:

3) The OFII office for the region is literally less than two blocks from my house. And yet I have to pay to send a registered letter there to turn in my papers. The post office is across the street from my house. Seriously this feels like postal service abuse. But it is “la procédure.”

4) DVD player on my computer is pété. Have ordered an external MacBook Air superdrive, though is weird because the drive still reads CDs and software. I feel like at some point though my computer will be mostly external components. External hard drive, external microphone, external DVD player. At least the mother/logic-board still works. I can deal with lots of cords as long as the thing still basically works. (Though I WOULD love one of those new little MacBook Pros.)

Photos of my nouvelle vie were requested, and while I don’t yet have photos of the house, I thought I’d post what I did this weekend.

Roommate Marie’s friends were visiting from Rouen so we went to Chateau-Larcher to the medieval festival.

I told my parents we need to do this with the dogs’ hair post-haircut:

On the drive back we stopped at an abbey.

Pictures of house maybe soon. Pictures of room are sort of pointless since there’s not much in there and honestly, I go there only to sleep.

Will close the old one at whatever point this all gets worked out. Bank lady told me it could take 2-3 months maximum for a transfer. If it does, well, then I’ll have saved 400 euros for 2-3 months. Not the end of the world. Still you would think from one French bank account to another French bank account would not take very long. She said it depends on the bank and how efficient they are.

Roommate Marie’s amis are here this weekend and it is the jours du patrimoine or whatever it’s called, so tomorrow we may go a-castling, if it’s not raining too hard. They are currently in the kitchen making a raviole, which I have never eaten.

I guess I haven’t yet explained what the coloc house is like. I like it a lot. There are three bedrooms + bathroom upstairs, toilet on the way downstairs (but v. close to my bedroom, is excellent), two bedrooms downstairs (one is used for guests I’ll explain in a sec) along with the kitchen. Past the kitchen and the guest room is where the house used to end. But there’s a sun room extension that is the living/dining room. Only, the original external wall wasn’t redone so it still looks like the outside of a house–there’s a window into the kitchen (excellent for passing things through and talking to people) and the guest room from the sunroom, and there’s a door where the front door used to be, into the hallway. I think it’s really charming. And obviously no one permanent wanted to sleep in the room with the window into the living room. So we have a squatter (friend of one of the coloc’s) who stays there once a month while he’s on alternance, but otherwise it’s empty for guests and hanging of laundry. So normally there will be four of us. Everyone is very sympa.

My shoes are giving me grief and I en have marre. (Sorry, I’ll stop the franglish now). When I bought the shoes at DSW back in July, instead of buying shoes where I could take out the insoles and replace them with my orthotics, I bought shoes a size up. Which means that they are a tad too long but also too short from bottom to top. So I keep wearing these waiting for them to stretch, and they have, not quite enough yet, but the muscles running up from my ankles to my shins are now sore. I don’t know why. It is a mystery. I would like some custom-made shoes.

I went into the school today for the first time and met my colleagues. They are super nice, and we share an office, where I have a desk, and a computer (!!!). But the computer runs on Windows 2000 so I don’t think it’s going to be super useful for anything but printing. For copies we have to hand stuff to a secretary to do it in time to have it for class, which will take some discipline on my part (i.e. no planning the night before). The school also is about twice the size of my last school, in terms of numbers of students. They have five different options for specializations and there are some doctorate students.

The chick who had my job last year did some serious syllabi and very kindly left them for me. I’ve looked over them and I think I’ll use a few of the articles she used and possibly one of the projects she did, but otherwise I don’t think it’s much my style. She gave her classes actual titles. I think if I titled mine it would be “Crap Eileen Likes.” (Well no not really, of course I could come up with something, probably about culture and writing, but still.)

Also I found out that my contract is renewable (1 time). And they need to know by Christmas. Eek. I guess I’ll probably know by then if I want to do another year. Right now I have no idea.

I also found out how I got my job. Apparently the school has always done an exchange with Illinois Champaign-Urbana and this year it fell through, so the English profs went over to the fac des lettres (across the street) and looked through their pile of CVs. With my last job it sounded like an exchange fell through as well, so generally I think there’s a good deal of luck in getting these positions. I did have an answer from Le Havre but they wanted to know when I could come in for an interview so I don’t think that one would really have happened. Otherwise, this is the only offer I got this year, so hurrah that it worked out.

Lots of my friends have come back to France in other places. I’ll have to meet up with American J at some point as she’s in Evreux. And I need to get back to Nancy and see Linda in Strasbourg as well as Zandra in Avignon and Francesca in Barcelona. Traveling may be limited to crashing at friends’ this year.

Well I thought I had more to say. In any case I’m excited to start work.

I swear it wasn’t as tiring the last time. This time I think I even slept for 3.5 hours due to 1) taking benadryl (thanks for the tip mom) and 2) being bullied by the flight attendant into switching with some old lady so she could sit with her friend but I ended up at the window seat. But more surfaces to lean on turned out to be better.

Had some real trouble staying awake on the train though. Not sure generally how I feel about being back, actually. Poitiers is very pretty (and a little rainy) so far. Roommate M picked me up and took me to centre ville to get a bank appointment and a cell phone. Tomorrow I think I’ll buy some real pillows and maybe some other crap. Brain is not really functioning right, maybe will do some real thinking tomorrow.