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Wow, so it's been a super full week, my first full week of teaching, made lots of new friends. Slowly but surely gaining assurance in France and confidence. I don't even know where to start, I've met so many great people, and had such a great time meeting up with all of them; not to mention learning the do's and don'ts of who and who not to give your number to and what that really means in France. (Needless to say I've hit on way too many French people without realizing it).

Classes this week went smoothly, until Thursday. My students in my Wednesday evening class came up to me and asked (since they are in my Friday evening class as well) if I could possibly move the time (since it's at 5.30pm), I was unaware the schedules could move at will, but here apparently they can. So very politely I went to kiss some secretarial ass to see if my class could be moved per the request of the STUDENTS (this is most important since we're still trying not to anger the secretaries). Sure enough they said it could, and that they would email me the changes (since I still don't have online access to my schedule and I can't check it). Sure enough I came in Thursday morning, after having checked my email five times the night and morning before, and my class had been moved, to Thursday morning at 8am (meaning I had missed it completely) since I arrived at university at 11am to teach my 12pm class. Oh france, how I love thee. So now I'm a week behind in one of my phonetics classes and I've had two law, yes as in the US political system and British parliamentary system (which I know nothing about), added to my schedule this week...I need to go study.

This weekend was lovely, although Friday night I learned an excellent lesson, 50cl pints of beer are bigger than 16oz pints in the US, you can not drink as much as you think you can, especially when you make friends with Irish laborers at the local Irish pub. Needless to say I don't remember much about that evening accept for the fact that my friend Jamie told me that he knew I was in trouble when I looked over at them from the bar at quarter to two smiling and cheers'ing them with a full 50cl pint of Paulaner in my hands...that was a rough morning on Saturday, I think my liver was confused by the presence of hops in my system, since it was just getting used to all the distilled fruit:) I've spent the rest of the weekend eating and wandering around with some of my new frenchie friends, chatting about life, love and the ever-important question of what are we going to eat.

It feels so good to finally feel like I'm making headway in my life here. Tomorrow I will have been gone exactly 1 month and it's hard to believe because so much has happened, but it feels like it's also just been the blink of an eye as well. This whole experience has already been such a journey into self exploration. I had such a great epiphany yesterday while walking around a 500 year old cathedral staring at the architecture that not 8 months ago I had to give a presentation on in French class; it's that seeing all these wonderful things, these old buildings and new culture, that's not what changes us, it's the experience and journey of getting there. For instance, to go see said old chateau, you have to buy a ticket online in french, go to the station, validate your card, get the train, meet people, talk in French, get to the city, ask directions, find food, get lost, etc etc, you get the idea. But it's the fact that what is changing me is what it takes for me to be able to do that. When you loose your language, let alone your culture, it's so hard to not feel like you're drowning and to not freak out because you really don't have any control. Every thing that you do every day is a little victory, because every little thing is new and different, and you've never done it before because it's in a different language. You grow, you learn, and you force yourself to just get on with it. It's a very strange thing to be at a point in your life where you can actually sense the change, as if it was something tangible that you can wrap yourself up in. You find ways to take care of yourself that you didn't realize ever before, everything becomes very real, as you find yourself on the path of who you were to who you are becoming.

That being said I'm finally finding new ways to cope, since some days are really hard, lately I've been listening to a lot of (gasp) country music, I find it very amusing and very difficult not to laugh while traversing the streets with dixie chicks blaring in my ears, it feels very wrong, but in a good way that's hilarious if only everyone else knew:) Everyday is so fun because there's always something new to find. Today I found an antique car show of old, OLD cars in the old district. It was being run by a bunch of french people from Bretagne (farthest western point, full of celtic culture and it's down indiscernible dialect). There's just something so fun about sitting in a Citroên 1923 car (this is the french equivalent of the model-T) trying to understand strange dialect while autumn leaves pumps over the sound system (although sung terribly in French) and sausages cook under the tent next door. Sometimes the different way of life here really can just take your breath away.

Last weekend I took a day trip to Amboise (where Davinci) lived the last years of his life and died. Such a really cool place, old chateaus, one of which was actually Davinci's where they have manifested all of his inventions and displayed them throughout the immense gardens. I found myself standing over his grave Sunday morning and traversing his footsteps on Sunday evening. Standing on a spot where history has actually taken place seems to always have some kind of awesome power over me. I've attached some of the photos on the bottom (sorry for the quality, I forgot my camera and had to buy a dinky disposable one and then have the film developed onto a CD...another fun adventure with vocabulary I didn't know). It seems that everyday when I leave the house, depending on my activity planned for the day, I spend a good 10 minutes with my online dictionary learning new words. I also find it very hard now to switch between the two languages (I keep trying to write things in french on this blog:).

I love you, I miss you,

Sarah

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