Getting more settled Sept. 28th
Completed a few more tasks
1) I bought my Carte 12-25 at the train station. For those who are not familiar with this, it allows me to buy train tickets at a much reduced price. If you are traveling much in France and other countries it pays for itself after one or two train tickets and is worth purchasing.
2) I bought train tickets to and from Nancy for my orientation on Monday. I will not have to do the trip by myself since Pierre (Francoise’s husband) works there and agreed to leave a little early to accompany me.
3) I now have a French bank account and can receive my pay checks! This also allows me to get a cell phone soon…. I hope…
4) I had dinner with Michael, my contact at the middle school, and Francois. We ate just next to Francoise’s house at a great little restaurant that I will have to visit again. Afterwards, we went to a café where other language teachers joined us in order to meet me. Two of the three English teachers from the high school were there as well as the two English teachers from the middle school. It was nice to get to meet everyone. I am quite excited about the one other teacher who came, one of the German teachers from the middle school. She lives 5 minutes from me and has invited me to go to a dance class with her and promised to take me out to the stables here and get me started riding there. It was a bit of a late night – out till midnight (with breakfast at 7am…).
Classes? Sept. 29th
Today Francoise took me to Metz, one of the main cities of the region about 50 km from here. She particularly took me to the university there so that we could find out if I might be able to take a class there. We found out a lot of information, but I still have to do a lot of research to find out if there is a class for me to take. It looks like I can be allowed the Wednesday of every week off so that I can take a class at the university. It would be nice if this works out because then I might be able to meet a number of French students around my age, but we will see.
Otherwise Francoise showed me a little bit of the town. It isn’t one of the prettiest that I’ve seen, but it isn’t hard on the eyes. She took me to a market there, one of her favorites. We ate at a little café inside and it turns out that the owner is QUITE familiar with Francoise and gave us dessert for free and made sure we were taken care of. It was interesting to really talk with Francoise about the raw meats… I just stood there looking at some with my jaw hanging open! They made me shudder a little.
While we were there, I found a great phone plan that I can have for 8 months – amazing (most are year contracts and cost more than the one I found). There is a flaw though – to purchase the phone and such, I must have my European bank card (which I of course do not have since I just opened the account yesterday) and a scrap of paper that states that I do, in fact, have the said account. Turns out any phone place would need that, so I have to wait…
OH, and it has been about 80 degrees here most of the week – they barely had weather this nice over the summer… Everyone is commenting on my luck. Also, Francoise remarked that I’m the most self-sufficient/managing assistant they’ve had; really that I can figure things out and get by better than most. I really am decently familiar with how to do a lot of things in France – ppl don’t expect that.
No comments:
Post a Comment