Still alive and kickin'

The worst part about falling off the wagon with this blog is that it is so hard to get back into keeping it going... So many amazing and, let's face it, a few irritating things have happened since I last posted that I honestly don't even know where to start now. Grr. After so many technology problems, I finally borrowed a computer from the school which I will have to return very shortly. While I do have internet access, however, I would like to keep this blog going and hopefully I can motivate myself to make it a priority.

Teaching has actually been going better than I had expected; yes, of course I have had rough patches and a rather long learning curve since I came into this thing hoping that charisma and actual teaching experience are more or less synonymous and that I can get away with having one and not the other. Despite my natural discomfort and lack of in-born talent when it comes to public speaking, for some reason I have been more at ease with these kids than is generally the case and have been able to avoid my natural deer in the headlights reaction.I think that coming into this thing slightly terrified and expecting the worst actually saved me since it really hasn't been as horrible as I expected.Of course I am burdened with the typical stereotypical adolscent, who just sits there looking bored or pretends to be way too cool to broaden his horizons and learn about another culture, but I also have some great kids who are well behaved and actually interested. All in all this has been a really good experience and I have even sent in the paperwork to stay another year. We shall see how this goes.

I think that I will  post my other adventures separately so that I can get into at least a little detail. It's been so long now that that may not be the simplest thing to do, but it's all good in the end.

An American Cabaret in France?

A few weeks ago (I really have no sense of time anymore so this is just an approximate guess), the other assistants and myself were invited to go to the cabaret. Since I had never been previously, I figured why not. Turns out the entire thing was in English and the performers were actually American. Apparently, they were trying to promote a more... voluptuous female body image, which don't get me wrong I am all for. I am so so tired of the being told that the ideal modern woman has the body of a 12 year old boy. Women are curvy end of story. In my opinion health is the greatest beauty of all-neither too fat nor too thin. But I digress. So this was an American cabaret and some of the performers were rather overweight, that combined with an act centered around KFC was not exactly what I had been hoping for as probably the only American in the crowd. The thing about living abroad is that you want to present the good parts of your culture to the world and the thing about being American is that, unfortunately, the most widely circulated cultural tender is printed on bills a bit unflattering. This being pretty much the only view that the French (and probably most of the world) see of us, I have to be a bit critical and wish that Americans show a different view of our culture to the rest of the world. Sure American pop culture is horrible and this country has done some dispicable things, none of that should be excused, but those should not be the ONLY things exported. The US has a lot of great things about it and I think a more balanced view should be presented to the world. That's all.

Cursed?

I have run into a long string of events that have served to convince me that I have run out of luck. Suffice it to say that for the moment my computer is completely dead and since I had to buy new glasses it will be a while until I can buy a new one. I will hopefully one day be able to catch up with this blog since so many lovely things have happened, but it might not be for a while. Who knows, perhaps sooner than later.

The Weirder Side of Adventuring

In some ways I still have the immortality complex that kept me company the greater part of my teenage years. Fortunately, I also generally have incredibly good luck, which makes for some pretty fantastic adventures that you should not try at home and from which I will probably eventually die.

Being the bibliophile that I am, one of the first things I did when getting to know this town was check out the bookstores. Now things here close pretty balls ass early, which you'd think I'd be used to given my previous habitat, but alas in some ways I am not. So I was doing my usual wandering looking for all that is awesome when I saw a bookstore that was still open or so I thought. Inside a couple people were drinking wine together and since I am still not quite used to only speaking French, I tried to avoid having too much conversation with them. That doesn't fly so high in this country since apparently I am a fabulously interesting and exotic person. So we all got to talking and drinking wine and trying to choose which books to buy and in the end they offered to drive me home, so I figured fuck it why not. Well, the drive home turned into dinner. I loooove French dinners; it's not just the food either but the conversation tends toward a more intellectual bent that suits my fancy perfectly and this one was no exception given that 3 of the 5 people there had their doctorate in some interesting field. Although they did tend to have some preconceptions about Americans, I think I proved to them at least in some small way that we don't all fit the stereotypes. I am glad to be here to share the good parts of my culture with these folks. Unfortunately, the wine kept flowing and I was soo drunk by the end that I was speaking some gibberish language neither French nor English and am really surprised that anyone understood me at all, I pretty much had to be supported to get down the stairs, and with the tortuous roads, my not all that sober driver, and the speed at which he was driving I had to do my best not to be sick in the car. When we finally got back to my place  after dropping off the others, I think the poor bastard thought I had lost my wits completely and would take him to bed for the night since he kept trying to kiss me in a very un-bise-like way. Fortunately, I am an expert at man-repelling and managed to squeeze inside alone, puke a whole lot and pass out.

The next day I met the other assistants who work here-great people! I really do adore them. Then I had dinner with some assistants who also live in Besançon but don't teach here at my lycée. Apart from a terrible time trying to figure out how we should split our bill and the realization that math is one of the things quickly forgotten after finishing school, the dinner was not all that eventful though it was nice to meet other assistants here and share those awkward expat moments. Now anyone who knows me knows that I am  profoundly directionally challenged and could get lost in my own backyard, so what did I do coming back from dinner but get terribly terribly turned around. As I was wandering the streets near the witching hour, I found a really amazing graveyard whose creaky gate just happened to be unlocked. It was just much too tempting to avoid so I wandered around the mausoleums and monuments to the departed. I wish it hadn't been so dark so that I could read the gravestones but beggars can't be choosers and graveyards during the day and when you actually know where you are situated on this earth just don't have the same mystical aura to them at all. One of the most unpleasant things about being lost is that you lose many of the creature comforts  to which you are used and have, for example, to piss in some random woods that may or may not be someone's yard (not that I am speaking from example or anything...;)  ). Eventually, I did get home and realize that traipsing around for miles and miles in the middle of the night is a great cure for jet lag.

N.B. I am still trying to get caught up with this blog so these events are bit old in the telling, but nothing I can do about that.

Recap of first few days in Besançon

Hello lovely lovely people! I finally have a somewhat reliable internet connection in my room thanks to the best neighbor I have ever had who is sharing his with me. I feel like so much has happened since I last wrote that I don't know how I shall I record it all and I may have to chop this into several separate blogs so as not to be too overwhelming.

The journey here was absolutely exhausting and involved almost every mode of human transportation possible. I ended up having to leave CA at about 3am to drive 3 hrs to Sacramento to catch my flight, then it was on to Seattle, then Iceland, then Paris, which I didn't get to see at all, and then a harrowing and incredibly exhausting train ride to Besançon where one of the teachers picked me up and took me to his house for a quick late night omelette. Needless to say I was closer to the dead than the living the first few days here. At this particular lycée, they've decided for some ungodly reason to teach subjects other than language in languages other than the students' mother tongue, which given the level of English I have seen these students speaking, seems like a really awful idea, but whatevs. The next day was spent with one of these teachers. She is a math teachers who teaches in English and she is absolutely gorgeous in that French-I-don't-need-to-own-a-hairbrush-to-be-stunning kind of way. Well she took me around for my first view of Besançon and many of its sites. Absolutely charming town! Afterwards we had lunch chez elle surrounded by her 4 small children (I have rather a penchant for French children) and her equally handsome "compagnon" (which translated to super-sexy-guy-I-live-and-make-tons-of-babies-with. Yes, it does don't argue with me) She let me use her computer so that I could contact my family for the first time since I've been here and then, since the rules of her house are to relax completely Sunday afternoons, I took a nice long rest in her hammock as the sun shone down on my through all kinds of verdant goodness. Lovely! Afterwards, we headed to her mom's house for one of the best inventions on the face of the planet CRÊPESSSSS. Her mom apparently is a playwrite or some shit like that and is a very charismatic personality whose company I very much enjoyed AND her grandmother is the cutest little old lady I think I have ever seen. Bless her heart she thought I was French.

So, in a very quick nutshell those were my first few days here.

Made It!

Well I made it to France safe and sound and once I get internet of my own and don't have to use that in the teachers' lounge I will update on everything that has happened. Until then, France is amazing and I am trying to get all this paperwork sorted out.

Here We Go!

In just a few hours I will be on a plane to France. It's really hard to believe. Since J is going out of state the same day I leave, we are driving down to Sacramento together and then just flying out of there. We just got back from dropping the dog off at the kennel; call me a sap but it was really sad to say goodbye to that little thing. She has just had so many owners that I always feel bad putting her in a situation where she may feel abandoned again. All in all though everything is going well. I just found out that the room at my school has both a kitchen and bathroom in it (and is free) so you can all feel free to be jealous. I am sure it's super tiny, but hey I am happy as a clam and don't need much to survive. My plans on arrival are to buy my 12-25 card (justttt made the cut off for that one, Whew), exchange my dollars for euros, and things like that. Then I am going to call my contact at the school and he is going to come and pick me up. Thus far, he seems like a really cool person and I feel lucky to have such a friendly and thoughtful person in France to get me. He invited me over to have dinner with his wife and kids that night to stave off the loneliness. I am excited and worried and freaked out and plagued by all kinds of emotions, but over all this just feels right and though endings are always a bit sad, beginnings are amazing. This will be a great beginning .