Am going to Conforama and But on Monday to look at couches and these are the ones I’ve found online:

from But

I can’t decide if it’s cute or ugly. I need a second opinion. What do you think?

from Conforama

Otherwise there’s this.

I’m getting the keys Monday! The landlady called this morning. I went to the bank this afternoon and they squeezed me in for an appointment Monday morning. Actually they more or less created an appointment for me when there were none. All branches of the Banque Populaire that I’ve ever worked with have been incredibly nice and helpful.

Alexis (roommate) is on board to help me move next Friday and I need to talk to Julien (roommate). I think I’m going to rent a camion since it looks like it’ll only be around 50 euros (hurrah for being 25, for once) and will save us all the aller-retours and figuring out how to mount the sommier on the top of someone’s car.

On another note, there is no edible cheese in the house. Sometimes I think my roommates are not actually French.

on using internet research in the foreign language classroom? Am thinking of whipping up something to submit for that conference about internet research using my Texas project and my current U.S. college project where the students are using the internet to decide on hypothetical schools to apply to and then write a college essay. Normal brainstorming buddy Anna is all the way in Houston!

Just a reminder

Am working on thinking up something to submit.

Vacation was awesome. Zandra met my awesome ex-students, we played lots of poker, we went into much too expensive stores near our rented apartment, we saw the Chinese New Year parade, and worlds in general collided in awesomeness. Unfortunately we did both get enrhumée which was a bit of a drag. In terms of tourism, we went back to the Orsay and the Pompidou with our prof cards that got us in free, and to the Gustave Moreau museum (not free but reduced) which was sort of interesting but not fantastic. But I wanted to see something new. I introduced Zandra to felafel in the Marais, where we met Shannon. Then Sunday I went down to spend two days with Nicknameless Boy, where he let me talk about teaching all I wanted. And now I’m back home. I’m hoping to get the keys to the new apartment early next week and then move next Friday. Fingers crossed the proprios come back from the Pyrenees in time to do that. In an ideal world the move would go this way:

Monday (or Saturday): 1) Sign contract, get copy of contract, keys, name of last renter 2) Call EDF 3) Go to Bouygues to order internet
Tuesday: Go to Troc to order furniture (small dining room table, coffee table, bedside table, chairs), buy household items (mop, broom, dish soap, dishes, pots & pans, bathmat)
Wednesday/Thursday pm: Have Troc furniture delivered
Friday afternoon/evening: Get roommate A and friends to help me move, then compensate them with aperos
Some day in the future: Order a couch, probably from 3suisses

Crossing fingers so hard I don’t have to wait any longer than that. My parents come the weekend after that one so it certainly won’t be happening then. I would like them to see the new place when they come.

Otherwise, I just posted 3 ads on the internet for cours particuliers. We’ll see ce que ça donne. Am going to try to start working hard on turning my masters report into a paper, and have started working on the poster for the Turkey conference, but I need to go to the copy place to find out what size poster they can print off. It is France, after all. You never know what kind of technology they have. Awesome 3-ring binders, bad computers (for instance mine at the school—which runs on WIndows 2000—wouldn’t turn on this morning).

I’d like to submit something to this but I don’t know what…

I’m so excited! It’s so cute! I took some crummy, dim pictures:

The little bedroom. (The owners asked me what I thought of the wallpaper and I said I thought it was cute, and since I don’t have any posters, they might as well not take it down. So it’s staying).

The séjour. That window looks out onto the rue pietonne and to the right you can see the Eglise Notre Dame (which is where the market is).

The other side of the séjour. That’s the kitchenette there. There will be a little shelf behind it. And that’s the front door. To the right of the front door as you walk in is the salle de bains. There’s also a closet and then another closet in the bedroom. Downstairs is a doctor’s office so it should be a quiet building. I really like the exposed beams.

Here it is from the outside. It’s on the middle floor there.

And here is what you see when you walk out the front door and turn to the right.

I am SO excited. I’m 90% sure I’ve found a replacement for myself at the coloc and she’s going to try to come down to meet everyone next week (when I won’t be here). I’ll have this apartment March 1st! Though I’ll probably take a week or two to move in. I want to set up internet before I move everything in. They’re currently repainting everything so it should look all new and redone when I get in. I can’t wait!!

Today is my last day of second-year soutien classes since they all take the TOEIC next week.
It’ll really free up my Thursdays—I’ll have more than fifteen minutes to eat lunch! (That’s really my fault since I had to move the class earlier due to my violin lesson). But I enjoy my second-year soutien. Teaching to the TOEIC is really not so bad. We do vocabulary, we do reading and listening techniques, we talk about and complain about the test, not to mention, I have a book to use as a references. In first-year soutien, all we do is grammar. It’s all they want. Maybe it’s because it’s my native language but I struggle to give explanations that I’m satisfied with. Also every class takes the form: give a review sheet, explain it, give exercises, watch them complete them, then go over them. Once 2A soutien is over maybe I’ll at least have more time to think about how to spruce it up.

It’s interesting though because these are very analytical classes, and they are with the weakest students. Some of these students can’t speak English well at all, yet surprise me by understanding an abstract grammar explanation immediately. It confuses me that this hasn’t helped them more in learning English.

I’ll be happy when my Thursdays are less stressful. In late March I stop giving 1A soutien. My third years will also be gone, and my second-year classes will consist mostly of presentations. So while I’m happy it’ll be less hectic, I’m also wondering what on earth I’ll do with myself once the work lets up.

We put the coloc back up on appartager last night. I hope we find someone awesome fast so that I can find my dream apartment. I was thinking about going through an agency but not that it comes down to it, I’m not sure I can afford the fees.

Just an update to let everyone know I’m alive. I told the school last week that I’ll stay for another year. Things are going a lot better for the moment than they were at the beginning of January. I spent a week in Avignon, a weekend watching les garçons + their amis compete at escalade, and just spent a weekend driving up to Nancy, down to Auxerre, and back. I *heart* the Place Stan. It was very snowy and I really had to pee so I didn’t really have time to relish being back, and I couldn’t remember how to find the Ch’timi, so we went to Cafe des Artistes, which was okay. I finally got home yesterday and now have to seriously bosse for the rest of the week.

This past weekend was a result of this post. I ended up taking a chance and it seems to be paying off—we’ll see. I’ve tried describing the situation to Zandra who often has trouble retaining names and identities of people so we’ve been searching in vain for a nickname for this guy, only to end up with Nameless Boy. Anyway, since Nameless Boy is also a teacher, and I told him I have no clue what to do in class tomorrow, he ended up deciding for me that I should do a lesson on music “engagé,” which is to say, Ani DiFranco, specifically, her long “Self-Evident” rant. So I’m going to figure out how to do that today, and how to grade 40+ copies and 12 remaining 2nd-year papers so that I can wrap up my second-year grades. I think I’ll be done working just in time to go to bed. But, I had a really fun weekend, so, whatever.