First week of school update!

So you may notice that I am making this update on a Thursday night, because I have Fridays off! Tomorrow I'm headed to Bayeux to meet up with another assistant to see the famous tapestry and hangout in a new place with new people. In any case, here's the first week update.

Monday was my first day, though I ended up having practically the whole morning off. All the classes had tests so I basically would walk in, go “Hi, I'm Anna” and leave. I did that about 5 times, which meant 5 trips up and down the 5 flights of stairs to my apartment. I found this would be a repeat occurrence throughout the week. I also found out that I would be part of surprise interviews and dating game type session. Questions included basics such as “Where do live? How many brothers and sisters do you have? What did you study?” this turned into ever more revealing ones like “If you were an animal, what would you be? What is your greatest fear? If you were a country, what would you be? What is your favorite type of music? If you were a city, what would you be?' and so on and so forth. They all seem like great kids so I'm pretty excited to work with them all. Though now I feel like everyone in the school know who I am but I don't have a clue who anyone else is.

The kind of sucky part is that I'm basically left to do what I want, but they are all conversation groups and I have so much freedom that it seems overwhelming. This means figuring out conversation topics for 10 different classes a week, which are usually divided in 2 or 3 groups, which can get rather repetitive.

One of my favorite moments came from a class I sat in on. They were talking about environmental responsibility and the professor asked a student how he contributed. The student's response, “Wheeeeeen I smoke, I pffffftt myyyy cigaaareeeeettes.” (He meant to say that he doesn't leave them on the ground, he throws them away) Hahahaha, they all speak with thick french accents, though they all have good command of the language., though they are timid.

Because there is only one English language assistant and so many students take it, I'm only with the upper level groups, which is why they have so much conversation. I basically only work Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. Wednesday the students have a half days. I have a two hour block reserved for “Concours Lechaptois” which is a recitation competition I'll be in charge of. However, this is just reserved time in my schedule. It doesn't have to happen then, and they said it can take up more time than that during a week, but it's up to me to run it. The competition is named after an retired (passed away?) English professor at the school, and the winner of the competition gets a trip to England (for the weekend? I wasn't sure). I'm to organize the competition, recruit students for it and find potential speeches, monologues, dialogues and the sort.

Sorry, I haven't kept up very well this week, not that there was so much going on, just that I kept forgetting to do it.

I will try to recap my trip on Sunday, but no promises!

Bienvenue à Coutances!

Bonjour Tout le Monde!
I safely arrived yesterday in Coutances. I was dead tired but everything went well. The plane got in early, my bags was one of the first on the carousel, I caught the bus easily, as well as the train. Arriving at the Coutances train station I made a small mistake. I knew from Google maps that the Lycée was only a kilometer away so I firgured that I would rather just walk there than dealing with a taxi. Unfortunately walking meant all uphill on only a vague idea of a sidewalk. I got there fairly quickly and to my room soon after. I thought I would finally get a chance to sleep but no- it was time to overwhelm me with French paperwork! All in all it worked out and things have been moving along fairly well.
My room is fairly simple, but nice enough. There are four individual rooms with a bed, closet, sink, desk and shelf each. The bathroom and kitchen are shared, the kitchen being a bit small, but enough. Coutances is absolutely lovely, with a beautiful cathedral in the center. I've gone on a fair amount of excursions already, including buying a cell phone, heading to the pharmacy for shampoo and other toiletries, to carrefour because I had seen it from my window, a small market for some food yesterday and a walk around town. I got some more paperwork done this morning but there is always more to do.
I think that's about it for now, love and miss you all!
the view from outside the balcony in front of the apartment entrance