A friend of my sister had to interview me for her French class. Ooo-ee, I am so important. So I figured I might as well post my answers here as well.

1. What is the primary difference you found when teaching in France?
I've never taught in the US, so I can't be sure of any differences between the two systems. I think that the American system is more coddling, but the French system is less supportive of the students.

2. Where in France did you teach?
I taught in a technical/professional high school in Cusset, a small town just outside of Vichy. Vichy is about the size of Jackson, MI and is located in the political district of Auvergne, in the center of France.

3. Do you think the children were more respectful than American children?
I don't think they were any more or less respectful of me than American students would have been. I do think that the French tend to have more strict school behavior than their American counterparts and would be shocked by the way we (college students, anyway) come to class in our pyjamas and put our feet on the furniture.

4. Do you think the "Système D" or the American education system is better? It's been several years since I took this class, but I seem to remember that the Système D (se débrouiller) was a concept in French culture in general - that you need to learn the way things are done in order to get by. I may be remembering this wrong. So I don't quite see how the two can be compared.

Instead, I would look at the French and American education systems. Again, between these two, I see that the main difference is that the US has a touchy-feely nurturing kind of style, where France's system is more strict. Both have their advantages. France's system isn't tied up in self-esteem issues the wa that America's is, so I imagine they don't have the problems we have with people graduating from high school unable to read. If you don't know it, you don't pass. And if you don't pass, too bad for you. I think that America's system is sometimes too soft on students, but I also see that France's is sometimes too hard.

France's system is focused on passing the Bac, whereas we have no such test in the US. We sometimes compare it to the SAT, but they aren't the same. The Bac is the ultimate test of everything that has been learned in high school. It makes people crazy throughout high school and crushes them if they fail. The SAT is just another aptitude test and is for testing general knowledge. We couldn't have a Bac in the US because we don't have a centralized education system. We couldn't have a centralized education system because we're an enormous, complicated confederation of states rather than a unified, centralized nation. Our political reality affects our educational system which affects our culture.

I think I've gotten way off the point here, but that's because I'm tired.

5. What is your favorite moment or the thing you'll miss most?
In terms of teaching, I was unhappy for the early part of the year because I thought I wasn't being effective and I didn't know what I was doing. By the end, I learned to accept the things I could achieve and the things I couldn't and I was much happier. My favorite moments were at the end, when my students were saying goodbye and had nice things to write in the notebook I passed around.

6. What part of French culture is your favorite?
The food, the language and the music, in that order.

7. What was the most difficult thing to adjust to in France?
I've lived in France twice now, traveled several other times and taken the First-Year Seminar on cross-cultural understandings between France and the United States. I've studied and experienced so much that it's hard to remember now where I had difficulty adjusting. I suppose I've never been quite comfortable with the bise, the double cheek-kiss, just because it's not embedded in my culture. I get annoyed with bureaucracy in France and what I see as not taking professional responsibility for problems. I also find it frustrating sometimes that the French seem to always enjoy a debate, where I'd much rather everyone got along and skirted the hot issues.

The Librarian Hat and Webmaster Beanie are thrown to the wind*. My head, today, is clad in the Peer Advisor Sombrero. I've been enlisted to participate in a Work Abroad information session, representing the France assistantship.

Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? All of this must be summarized in a presentation of less than five minutes. As you may know, when the subject of the assistantship comes up, I am either completely reticent or completely unshutuppable.

I have also been asked to write articles about my experience for the Office. How many do you need? Because I could write about seventy. Right now. Website in need of an update? Library in shambles? The other headgear can wait for now. Bury me in my Peer Advisor Sombrero.

* If you throw something to the wind, isn't it going to come back and hit you in the face? I decommend this strategy and suggest you throw things with the wind instead.

This morning's cheese rant has been published as the first of the Assistant Stories at the brand spanking new Assistants in France website (courtesy of the talented Lee).

Do you have any suggestions for future Assistant Stories? It could be a story I've already posted, something you'd like to know about my time as an assistant, or a short post that needs to be fleshed out into a full story. Let me know if you do. Or if you don't. Inspire me. Or don't.

Before I left for Grenoble, I would tell people I was going to live in France for a year, and they would inform me that I was going to return full of valuable knowledge about wine and cheese.

I did eat some cheese and drink some wine during the year, but not huge amounts of either. I never knew what I was eating or drinking because it was whatever was in the bottle or the cheese box at my host family's house, and it didn't make much difference to me. I found a cheese or two that I liked and stuck with them and refused all of my host family's attempts to get me drunk at family gatherings.

I came back to the United States and was grilled about my wine and cheese experiences by all the people who'd told me I'd be an expert. "I dunno," I'd say, "I like Double Crème. And Boursin. I think I tried some other stuff and it was okay. Wine? I had some rosé once that was okay. I guess I like that." I think they were disappointed.

When I went to Vichy, I assumed it would be the same. Fortunately, I was just on the edge of France's Cheese Plate (sort of like the American Bread Basket... I'm trying to be poetic here. Shut up) and in the company of someone who could teach me how to appreciate that fact: Stefan. Stefan was the German assistant at Presles, and was considered by many - French and foreign - to be more French than the French. He was fiercely regionalistic, believing that you should support your region first, then your country, and then start importing things. If you wanted to drive Stefan nuts, you could search out a bottle of Australian wine to bring to one of the Presles parties.

Upon being assigned to Presles, Stefan adopted l'Auvergne as his own. Stefan loved Auvergne and he loved food and his enthusiasm spread throughout the Vichy assistanat. We learned about all of the major cheeses of the area, as well as some of the minor ones. There was always a bout de St-Nectaire (a semi-hard cheese) in the cheese box for Stefan and we came to love Cantal (a cheddar-like cheese) and Bleu d'Auvergne (a blue cheese) as well.

I think Stefan distrusted me at the beginning of the year because I always refused wine. What kind of weird teetotaling American was I? Really, I didn't like the taste of wine, so I didn't take any. After a while, I realized I should at least try what they were serving, so I would take a little dribble. Stefan still looked askance. By doing this, I learned what I liked and what I didn't and built my way up to a whole glass (although no more, because Stefan would probably look even more askance at a weird American who could get drunk on a glass of wine).

Now that I'm back in the US, I miss having a bottle of wine open at all times. If I want some, I have to open it for myself or polish off a bottle split three ways. I miss Cantal and Bleu d'Auvergne, cheap and easy to find in the French supermarkets but rarer and more expensive here. I miss prepackaged shredded emmental. I'm still no expert, but I'm happy that I can finally enjoy wine and am willing to eat exotic and smelly cheeses. Danke schön, Stefan!

While reading The Professor (thanks for suggesting it, Katie), I was full of fantasies about updating it (à la Pride & Prejudice/Bridget Jones), writing a novel loosely based on it, or bringing it to the big screen. The book is about an Englishman who is unhappy in his work, so he goes off to Belgium and teaches English. I like it despite the protagonist's airs of grandeur, because there are parts that remind me of my experiences as a teaching assistant in France.

No man likes to acknowledge that he has made a mistake in the choice of his profession, and every man, worthy of the name, will row long against wind and tide before he allows himself to cry out, "I am baffled!" and submits to be floated passively back to land. (Chapter 4)

That reminds me of this post about never ever leaving a job.

Belgium! name unromantic and unpoetic, yet name that whenever uttered has in my ear a sound, in my heart an echo, such as no other assemblage of syllables, however sweet or classic, can produce. Belgium! I repeat the word, now as I sit alone near midnight. It stirs my world of the past like a summons to resurrection; the graves unclose, the dead are raised; thoughts, feelings, memories that slept, are seen by me ascending from the clods--haloed most of them--but while I gaze on their vapoury forms, and strive to ascertain definitely their outline, the sound which wakened them dies, and they sink, each and all, like a light wreath of mist, absorbed in the mould, recalled to urns, resealed in monuments. (Chapter 7)

Believe it or not, I do feel that way when I hear "Vichy" or "Grenoble" or sometimes even just "France". Maybe not to that extent, but I'm not a character in a Brontë novel, either.

"Would you object to taking the boys as they are, and testing their proficiency in English?"

The proposal was unexpected. I had thought I should have been allowed at least 3 days to prepare; but it is a bad omen to commence any career by hesitation, so I just stepped to the professor's desk near which we stood, and faced the circle of my pupils. I took a moment to collect my thoughts, and likewise to frame in French the sentence by which I proposed to open business. I made it as short as possible:--

"Messieurs, prenez vos livres de lecture."

"Anglais ou Francais, monsieur?" demanded a thickset, moon-faced young Flamand in a blouse. The answer was fortunately easy:--

"Anglais."

I determined to give myself as little trouble as possible in this lesson; it would not do yet to trust my unpractised tongue with the delivery of explanations; my accent and idiom would be too open to the criticisms of the young gentlemen before me, relative to whom I felt already it would be necessary at once to take up an advantageous position, and I proceeded to employ means accordingly. (Chapter 7)

Thrown into classes and frightened of your French being mocked by your students? Sound familiar?

She liked to learn, but hated to teach; her progress as a pupil depended upon herself, and I saw that on herself she could calculate with certainty; her success as a teacher rested partly, perhaps chiefly, upon the will of others; it cost her a most painful effort to enter into conflict with this foreign will, to endeavour to bend it into subjection to her own; for in what regarded people in general the action of her will was impeded by many scruples; it was as unembarrassed as strong where her own affairs were concerned, and to it she could at any time subject her inclination, if that inclination went counter to her convictions of right; yet when called upon to wrestle with the propensities, the habits, the faults of others, of children especially, who are deaf to reason, and, for the most part, insensate to persuasion, her will sometimes almost refused to act; then came in the sense of duty, and forced the reluctant will into operation. A wasteful expense of energy and labour was frequently the consequence; Frances toiled for and with her pupils like a drudge, but it was long ere her conscientious exertions were rewarded by anything like docility on their part, because they saw that they had power over her, inasmuch as by resisting her painful attempts to convince, persuade, control--by forcing her to the employment of coercive measures--they could inflict upon her exquisite suffering. Human beings--human children especially--seldom deny themselves the pleasure of exercising a power which they are conscious of possessing, even though that power consist only in a capacity to make others wretched; a pupil whose sensations are duller than those of his instructor, while his nerves are tougher and his bodily strength perhaps greater, has an immense advantage over that instructor, and he will generally use it relentlessly, because the very young, very healthy, very thoughtless, know neither how to sympathize nor how to spare. Frances, I fear, suffered much; a continual weight seemed to oppress her spirits[...] (Chapter 16)

Frances, another teacher at the school, takes English lessons with some of her students, just as I did in Spanish at Valéry Larbaud. She likes to learn, doesn't like to teach, and is intimidated by some of her students.

"Confound it! How doggedly self-approving the lad looks! I thought he was fit to die with shame, and there he sits grinning smiles, as good as to say, 'Let the world wag as it will, I've the philosopher's stone in my waist-coat pocket, and the elixir of life in my cupboard; I'm independent of both Fate and Fortune'" (Chapter 22)

Never mind. I'm just a nerd.

It is very comfortable when you can meet with strangers and, within minutes, get into the kind of conversation where you can't finish one thought before you start a new one, so you speak completely in varying layers of parentheses. I, who am often so shy with strangers, was so happy to meet other assistants that I bubbled over and was unshutuppable.

I believe, however, that a good time was had by all.

Upon further reflection, maybe I'm just hitting my normal post-France mal du pays a bit late and being overdramatic.

I feel a bit alone. There is no one I can share it with; there is no one who knows exactly how I'm feeling.

When I left Grenoble, I knew exactly where to find my host family, who were the only people I really knew in France. I knew that we would keep in touch, and I was sure that I would see them again and that they wouldn't forget me.

I have no such guarantees for Vichy, so my heart is broken - 200 times over. I want to cry when I hear about the final exam results. I'm so happy for and proud of them, and I miss them so much. When I get an email from one of my students, it makes me so happy I want to cry. There were so many students who made me miserable, but they're all forgotten, and what I feel now is an overwhelming sadness to knwo that I might never know whether Virginie is going to continue for her maîtrise, where Philippe is going to work, or how Jean-Marie's BTS is going. I didn't get to share in the celebrations when the results were announced, and I will slowly lose touch with the handful of students who have emailed me since school ended.

Teaching is definitely not the career path for me. It hurts too much.

(Except posted on Saturday, because we were having Severe Thunderstorm Warnings and a National Holiday on Friday.)

Bon, ben, voilà, je suis trop paresseuse pour écrire en espagnol, même si j'ai inventé cette semaine pour pratiquer cette langue-là. C'est trop difficile sans dictionnaire, et je n'ai pas très envie de chercher chaque mot sur Babelfish.

Je suis très heureuse d'avoir réçu un mél d'Agnès, qui m'a dit que les résultats des examens finaux au lycée ont été affichés et qu'elle me les a envoyés. En travaillant en France, ça m'a choqué que là-bas, les résultats des examens sont affichés, sont annoncés en classe, et sont publiés dans les journaux. Ici, les notes sont privées, à être partagées par les élèves s'ils veulent.

Bon, comme c'est publié dans les journaux, je peux vous dire que presque tous mes chers THOT ont eu leur bac, mais qu'on attend toujours les résultats des S2OL.

I think that as an assistante, I took more seriously my role as a cultural ambassador than my role as an English language instructor. One of my favorite lessons of the year was the one on Martin Luther King, Jr., where the students watched a video on MLK, and then were supposed to talk in English about their reactions. Sometimes they ended up speaking French instead, but had a good discussion.

I should have made them speak English, but I was happy to be able to share American culture with them and cared more about comprehension than English. I think I would have been happier if I'd either

a) never spoken a word of French and pretended that although I've studied it for half my life, I don't speak a word, or
b) spent the whole year talking to them about American culture in French.

Unfortunately, I tried to do both, and ended up speaking more French than I should, but also explaining difficult foreign concepts like the tradition of Thanksgiving in English.

I dreamt that I was in a parking structure, driving my old car, Roger. Alex was in the passenger seat, and I laughed at him because the attendant was on his side, so he had to pay. I hate paying parking attendants, then quickly trying to get myself together to drive under the bar.

So Alex had to do it, but as soon as we'd left the attendant, we came to a barricade where some kind of agent asked me to shift my weight back and forth from one butt-cheek to the other. When I did it and the car didn't move at all from one side to the other, he decided this was because the car was packed full of drugs. He asked me if the car had enough oil in it or if it was leaking, and I said I hadn't noticed. He thought I was being sassy, so he made me get out of the car.

I must have forgotten to put the brake on, because the car started rolling backwards down the street. I thought it would stop when it got to a hill, but it rolled uphill, too. I set off chasing it with my dad, Sébastien (one of my students), and Sébastien's older brother that I didn't know he had. We chased the car until it rolled into a lake and started sinking. I wasn't really that upset and gave Sébastien and his brother la bise for helping me chase the car, even though we didn't catch it.

Then I caught sight of Carla Bruni's Quelqu'un m'a dit through the back window and realized that all of the CDs I own were in the car. Even when I woke up, I was upset about this and overjoyed to find that it was just a dream.

I have re-discovered the assistants' group and am trying to lend my Great Knowledge and Experience (ha) to next year's crop, including the eleven million of them who are from Ann Arbor. I wish I had my archives in order, but instead I will have to point out the incomplete category archives for the assistantship, Vichy, and France, and let you read more as more posts get sorted into these categories.

Do you really care about whether your glasses match your outfit? It never occurred to me to own more than one pair of glasses at a time, but I knew people in Vichy who would choose their glasses for the day as a fashion accessory. Of course I hung around a lot of opticians, so maybe they could afford to be fashionable like that. I dunno. Glasses are for seeing, and clothes are for being not-naked. Fashion be damned.

I am a bit disappointed all of a sudden because I just realized that I can't remember a single person asking to see my pictures since I've been home. I've foisted them on several people, but I don't remember any requests. No one cares...

I hadn't missed speaking French as much as I thought I would. I hadn't had a nervous breakdown and taken to wearing a tinfoil hat and muttering to myself in the corner. Then I listened to La pêche à la ligne on my headphones.

... C'est à peine l'aurore/ Et je tombe du plume/ Mon amour dort encore/ Du sommeil de l'enclume/ Je la laisse à ses rêves/ Où je n' suis sûrement pas/ Marlon Brando l'enlève,/ Qu'est c' que je foutrais là ?/ Sur un cheval sauvage,/ Ils s'en vont ridicules/ Dehors y a un orage,/ Y sont mouillés c'est nul !...

I love that part. I wanted to play it for all of my friends here at home. 'Isn't it funny?' I would say to them, 'Listen to the lyrics. Can't you see it? Isn't that funny to imagine?' But no. It's not. Because no one I know knows Renaud, which is what makes him and the wild horse and the big romantic scene so funny. And even if they did know Renaud, they don't speak French so they can't understand the lyrics in the first place.

Vous me manquez...

I guess I was mentally prepared from last time for people not to understand me in French. My problem now is that no one understands me in French or in Spanish. It's frustrating when I say "Quiero una zanahoria" and Cheryl doesn't understand that I want a carrot. I am a mutant to come back from France speaking Spanish, but everyone in Vichy spoke some Spanish or could be taught.

Email from students. It's nice to know they haven't forgotten me already.

Five days back in the United States and I'm still not wearing a tinfoil hat. Frankly, I'm disappointed in my adaptability.

I am happy to be home with my family, boyfriend, and computer. In any order in which you prefer to read them.

I can4t type any;ore on these stupid Q;erican keyboqrds.

There is a series of vidéo clips showing on the plane. Jennifer Love Hewitt should not act, let alone sing, and looks disturbingly like Gene Simmons.

What kind of horrible pop music have I missed in the last seven months? How has America changed in my absence?

I was going to cry before we left Paris, but I decided I was too bored to cry. Now, after crossing the Frankfurt airport, which is full of Germans who didn't understand when I spoke French to them, I think it's time for the blubbering to commence.

When I tell people that I'm going to grad school at U-M, they have a tendancy to say "Oh, so you can live at home! Oh... so you'll have to live at home..." as if living at home will be miserable or upsetting. I lived at home during my undergrad summers and had no problem, and when people react in this way, I tend to say that my family's not bad to live with.

But now, 1.5 hours away from landing, it occurs to me that they may have been making those "Well... good luck..." faces not because it will be difficult for me to live with my family, but because it will be hard for them to live with me. After seven months as a lone wolf, I will have to be trained back into society. Please be patient with me.

"Why did you miss your train, srah?"
"Jenny locked me in our hotel room."

Thankfully this scenario was only imagined, but... The door of our hotel has three locks, none of which really work from the inside. But after the receptionist hit on her, Jenny was concerned about being Raped By The Man and tried to lock him out. Which was all very well and good, except that she couldn't get it back open. We had visions of trying to break the key off the rings and slide it under/over the door so Renata could rescue us, but after 5 minutes, Jenny finally got it to spring free. Hooray.

How on Earth am I going to get all the way home? Why on Earth do I have so much luggage? At least Renata, Jennifer and I are all leaving from Paris on Monday so we're making the impossible voyage together.

I feel the need to point out that today, May 4, 2003, I heard the song Last Christmas on Cherie FM-Vichy.

Just when you thought Vichy couldn't get any stranger, along comes the Cusset Star Wars Convention complete with special guest Boba Fett. It's a shame it's coming at a time when I have so much to do, because I would have gone just to experience the weirdness and to say hi to Boba.

This weekend I have worn a turban and a flowered crown. I have been granted a diploma for weirdness. I have witnessed the birth of Shakiro, the Colombian thong-wearing street performer. I have helped to hold down a cat so that it could be given a mohawk haircut. I have learned how to say "take off your pants" in Italian. Just a normal weekend in Aurillac, quoi.

I went to the bank to close my account and they gave me all of my money in cash. I have never seen so much money in one place. The freakazoid teller compained that she hadn't known in advance, when I had made the appointment to fermer mon compte a week ago. Thus she was not prepared and only had one billet de cinq cent, so everything else was in 100s and 50s. I now have this enormous wad of cash and I don't know whether to carry it with me everywhere I go for safekeeping or hide it for safekeeping. I may just put it in my passport pouch, put the pouch around my neck, and hide myself in the wardrobe until the 5th.

Dennis/Christophe just gave me roses as a going-away gift and kissed me on the top of the head. This is a strange place.

You have to keep them on the head.

One year ago today, I was blogging about earwax. And now I am all alone in France with no ears but my own. Plenty of ears turn in my general direction during school hours, but they don't do a lot of listening. More importantly, I don't have any ears to fondle. But the day will come when I will have several pairs of ears at my caressing disposal and I can go back to being the weird ear-fetishist that everyone knows and loves.

Ces connards at the Grenoble train station sold me a ticket for the 25th when I asked for the 27th. For the TGV, it doesn't create any graves problèmes, but for the Thalys to Bruxelles, my billet n'est plus valable. What unbelievable assholerie. I am an idiot myself for not checking the date on the ticket, but I've never had this happen to me before and it never even occurred to me. If they make me pay for a new ticket, I will bite someone.

Spotted today in the Capital of All Things Weird: a car inching (or should I say centimetring?) down the road, a speaker strapped to the top. Unfortunately, they were not advertising a Rhythm and Blues Show, but some kind of reptile extravaganza in Cusset with Real Live Crocodiles From America!

I haven't decided yet why, but it is. It would have made a good tagline, if I'd come up with it more than 12 days before my departure...

I'm off to Grenoble tomorrow, then to Belgium from there, then I'll return around the 29th to close my bank account, and I may be off again on the 30th or 1st to Aurillac, if I'm all packed and ready to go. Don't worry if I'm not posting - I'm sure I'll be writing anyway and you'll get a big glut of posts whenever I get a chance to type!

Another thing that will be difficult to handle is the inevitable question: How was France?

"Good," I will reply. My interlocutor will look at me expectantly.

"Really good," I will add.

On the other hand, I may end up with someone who will press me for more information, and who will unwittingly open up the floodgates of monologue, so that I will talk for hours on end about everything that's happened to me over the past seven months.

I can already envision the difficulty I will have getting people to understand the sheer Stefanocity of Stefan. I don't know if it's possible. You will just have to stand on the Franco-German border and wait for an orange bagnole to pass by in one direction or the other, so that you can experience it for yourself.

LOVE CATS! LOVE! CATS!

Make it stop...

When I lived in Grenoble, I never stopped being amused by France and the French and Europe in general. I think the difference is that I have accepted and adapted to a lot more this time, rather than being amused and staying on the surface.

I lived with things and was amused by them in Grenoble, but went back to my "normal" life in the USA afterwards. Now it feels like this is the normal life and I will actually have to readjust to my own country. My concern is that I will find it boring and bland and will reject it. I have in front of me a box labelled:

sables ronds pur beurre specialité ecossaise/ zandkoekjes met boter schotse specialiteit/ original schottisches buttergebäck/ biscotti rotondi scozzesi di pasta frollo al burro/ rodajas de torta seca de mantequilla original de Escocia.

I know it sounds stupid, but I could probably have a nervous breakdown based on the fact that these cookies would only be labelled as "pure butter shortbread rounds" in the US. I am mentally delicate at the moment. Be kind.

Vichy, as we know, is insane. While everything was unexpectedly open on Easter Sunday, everything was unexpectedly closed on the fake fake holiday of Easter Monday.

We managed, however, to have a visit to our favorite salon de thé (yes, THOTs, we are old ladies), where I nibbled on a Paris-Brest and drank a thé au lait (rather than protein-rich beet juice). There's a joke in there somewhere, but I don't expect you to get it and I'm certainly not going to explain it.

One thing I will not miss about Vichy is Sunday afternoons. It reminds me of Art Fair in Ann Arbor. Suddenly the town is invaded by hordes of shoppers who descend upon it, much to the chagrin of the natives who can't get anywhere because of the crowds. Strangely enough, both cases involve Andean pipe bands playing on street corners and selling their discs.

Vichy, as a heavily touristic town, is one of the few places in France where shops open on Sundays. Thus people come from all over the region to shop, to see, to be seen, and to walk slowly down the sidewalk, seeing and being seen, while Sarah just wants to get past them, go the ATM and get home.

People threatened me with nervous breakdowns the last time I came home from France, and nothing happened.

I'm afraid it will this time.

And I have nothing to say.

Bye folks. Hope I'll see you again soon. If not, behave yourselves and be wonderful people. Hasta la proxima. Ciao.

And now for the resumé of today's Spanish lessons, just because the THOTs seem to be amused by it. I will talk about my lesson with the 1ASMS, because the mendigo cartoon wasn't very interesting and de toutes les façons, Rémy has already read all of the notes I took during the first hour.

En mi segunda clase de español del dia, vemos un comic que habla de una familia que ve demasiado television. Una noche, la mujer se despierta a las dos y veinte de la mañana. Mira a su marido, que sigue durmiendo. Se levanta y pone una cinta video en la videocamara. La cinta se compone de los recuerdos de vacaciones de la familia, cuando se diverten en la absencia de la television. Por fin, la mujer besa la television, porque tiene una mejor relacion con la television que con su familia, y se acuesta.

Damn, I write a lot. Corrigez away in the blahblahs, hispanophones.

I may keel over dead. Two and a half hours to go. I may also fall asleep in Spanish class. I have just realized that I came completely unprepared for Spanish. Great. Must aller renseigner myself as to what we're doing today.

On the positive side, I finally got my cup of tea and watched opticians playing mini-golf. I feel like the school has gone insane today. Maybe it's me.

Carrément. Ouais. C'est sûr. I felt that had to be said: further proof that it is me. Night night.

Never mind. I'm a dumb ass. Tables and chairs and a sign that says "Tea Room" really should have tipped me off. Must go consume liquids.

It's the day of the Commerce students' big project. They have decorated the school like an English street and brought local merchants in to sell British wares. It's a bit surreal that in addition to the electronic humming bell we usually have, we also have a recording of Big Ben to announce the breaks between classes.

If we are so English today, why can I still not get a cup of tea? Teeeeeeeeeeeeeea.

Went out faising la fête with a mess of opticians last night. Opticians like cookies and Reese's cups, if you are ever interested in buying their affections. They also like to drink alcohol and then speak English... or just drink alcohol. Or just speak English. Would you like some pâté? But of course! And I would like some carrots also! I give you some wine. Yes, I want some wine! We went to Aurélie's for the apéro, out to dinner, to the Fous du Roy, and finally ended up at Le Loft, a newish night club with an excessive number of 40-year-old men. Srah had Malibu-and-pineapple-juice, vin rosé, Malibu-and-pineapple-juice, and whisky-and-orange-juice. Sylvie confirmed my suspicion that men are more aggressive in Vichy than they were in Grenoble, and we had a nice little discussion about France/USA relations, then the club closed and I went to bed at about 4:30am.

Why am I awake and blogging now???? I can't decide if I am drunk or exhausted. Probably a little bit of both. At least I am not as hungover and seriously fucked up as a certain English-babbling Norman(d). Good morning. Good night. How can a girl get a cup of tea in this place?

Agnès and I were talking about my return to the US and she mentioned that my universe will change completely when I return. I've realized she's right. When I was in Grenoble I met people and had experiences, but between classes and family life, things were quite similar to my life aux USA.

Now I will be moving back to an environment completely different from the one I've adjusted to here and there are probably over 300 faces I will never see again. Three hundred people I have met here, who I might never see again, whether they be students, teachers, fellow assistants, friends of friends, or just familiar faces in my daily life. I'm afraid the realization of this enormous number has come as quite a shock to me.

Renata, Jennifer and I made a trip to Thiers this afternoon, to revisit the site of one of our first voyages ensemble, and so that Renata could buy some knives. We had a walk by the river and up and down the hills of the town, enjoying the delapidated romance of the lovely city. We returned to the same pâtisserie we'd loitered in the last time and I had a thiernoise, the local delicacy: layers of meringue and praline cream covered in a chocolate shell. Jehosephat, it was tasty.

We returned to Vichy and - much to the delight of my male readers, I'm sure - the three of us climbed into bed together. Well, technically we all just sort of collapsed on Jenny's bed and didn't move for about an hour, digesting pastry and recovering from hill-climbing. So much for titillation.

It has suddenly struck me that when I go home, the main problem may be boredom. This is completely ridiculous, since I regularly complained of boredom here in Vichy, where I don't have a TV or computer. I think, instead, that I fear monotony. I fear that life won't be as incredibly strange and unpredictable as it has been here in the Epicenter of All Things Weird.

First of all, I am in no way in favor of wearing vomit-stained clothing. In fact, you might go so far as to say I am against this practice.

Second of all, if I was wearing a sweater onto which I had vomited my mom's spaghetti, it would be unspeakably atrocious. I haven't eaten my mom's spaghetti in at least seven months. Can you imagine how that would reek?

So no, I am not wearing a vomit-stained sweater. I just felt I needed a title for this post. So after the long introduction and explanation, I bring you the main idea of this post: The weather is so nice today I could vomit.

The sun is shining, the sky is blue and cloudless, there is a light breeze, but it's still hot. When I say "hot", I don't mean "warmish". I don't mean "pleasantly warm". I mean short-sleeves-and-still-sweating hot. It is beautiful and gorgeous and lovely and I only hope it lasts! It is so wonderful it almost makes me sick. Srah is finished teaching and summer is here!

"So, Sarah, you finish work this week, but you don't leave until May 5. What are you going to do inbetween?"

No idea.

First I have to get through L'homme sans passé, a trip to Thiers, movie night chez Agnès, faising la fête avec les S2OL, la Balade Anglaise, a goodbye party for all of the assistants, shutting off my phone, filling out paperwork, leaving information for the next assistant, and setting up an appointment to close my bank account.

Then, and only then, can I start to think about vacation. So it will be a while. Beurk.

As requested by Katie, here is the suite of the Story Of My Stalking Neighbor. As my loyal readers know, I finally got up the nerve and told him I didn't want to see him.

And now I don't anymore. I am almost disappointed, because it's so anti-climactic. It doesn't give me any fascinating stories to write about in my blog, and thus I forget to inform my readers... because nothing has happened. We still pass each other in the courtyard and I say "Bonjour" because I am civil and American and such, but he has left me alone. So... there.

The S2OLs have invited me out for couscous chez somebody on Thursday night. I will be there with bells on. Figuratively.

More likely with cookies on, I imagine.

I am hiding out in one of the computer rooms, trying to come up with things to do on the computer in order to avoid popping into the salle des profs every two seconds. I have left my cahier de souvenirs in the teachers' lounge for the last hour and a half, in the hopes that at least one teacher will have signed it when I finally emerge and peek. Probably not.

I'm wondering if it would be indiscreet to quote some of the entries left by students (males in particular) in my cahier here in my weblog, just because they make me guffaw. Probably. Sorry. I bet it really sucks that all I blog about is my friggin' notebook and you can't share in the joy. Tant pis.

I'm going to miss these little buggers. Even the ones who never wanted to work. Especially the ones who never wanted to work. There are so many silly things, but also so many lovely things written in my cahier de souvenirs. You make me laugh out loud, and I'm going to go cry now. I'll miss you.

It has suddenly occurred to me that this kind invitation to spend the night may be nothing less than a ruse to keep my cookies hostage in the apartment. We must be on the alert for cookie-rustlers.

My marathon of cookie-baking is finally at an end and I am spending the night in Stefan's bed. Unfortunately (or "fortunately", as it is pronounced in Chilean), Stefan is not in it.

I knew that I had some chocolate chips and I thought I would use them up before I leave, by making cookies for my SMS students' wee party on Tuesday. When I got home and actually looked, I discovered that although I no longer have a four, I had managed to accumulate 1.5 bags of chocolate chips, a bag of peanut butter chips, half a bag of Hershey's Kisses, and a bag of chocolate chip cookie mix. So rather than Cookies For The SMS, I ended up baking Cookies For Everyone In The Entire World. Renata and I hae calculated that I must have made at least 16 dozen, although some were very small and some were very eaten.

I have donated some to my colleagues in informatique, Amandine and Cédric, others to Renata, Andrés and Johanna, and the rest will be dispersed among Everyone I Know. A large amount will be left in the teachers' lounge to entice people to sign my cahier de souvenirs and another large amount will be left in my stomach.

After a visit chez les BTS and a chat with Andrés and Luisa, it was remarked that there is an extra bed here and no need to go home at all hours of the night. So me voilà, taking up residence in the chambre of the absent Stefan, which is full of Brassens lyrics and bottles of Ricard, as the chambre de Stefan ought to be. Night night.

I miss popcorn and toast.

I don't want to leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeave...

Si j'accomplis une chose cette année, je voudrais que vous reteniez ces deux mots et que vous cessiez de dire le mot français avec une prononciation anglaise: interessant interesting et soucis worries. Interessant and soucis do not exist in English, and it is my mission in life to prevent you from using them. Have a good vacation and go sign my guestbook.

When I first arrived at the school, I said that one of my hobbies was making websites, and I wrote the address on the board. Now, at the last session of each class, I write my email address and website address on the board so that my students can keep in touch, and give them a little song and dance about how this is the last time I'm going to see them and if they'd like to keep in contact with me, they can find me there.

"C'est quoi, ça?" they ask.
"Ben... c'est mon adresse de courrier électronique et l'adresse de mon site web."
"Vous avez un site web?"

Why are they still vousvoying me? And more importantly, how much of the other stuff I said during the year completely escaped them? Sigh.

I just found out that both of my Thursday classes are cancelled next week. My Tuesday classes are having parties, so I finish working Monday at 4pm.

It's all happening so suddenly. I want to take pictures of my students, but I'm not going to catch up with everyone. I want to tell everyone to look me up if they come to the States, but I forget when the end of the hour rolls around. I'm still learning people's names. I barely know these kids, and I would have liked to have had the chance to know them better.

I wondered, months ago, how I would feel at the end of this year. The answer: rushed. Nostalgic. Mostly satisfied. Rather sad.

I am off to Aurillac again this evening, to spend some bonding time with my fellow assistants before we are cruelly torn apart by the Fates. Hopefully I will come up with something to do in class on Thursday while I am there. Hopefully I will get some sleep and my cold will get better - or at least not any worse. Hopefully my little friends will all sign my cahier de souvenirs and we will dance and joyously sing. Or something. Goodbye and I'll blog to you on Thursday.

One student. ONE STUDENT! At the last class session before I leave! Cursèd bureaucracy. They could have told us in advance that the students would be doing oral exams today and would miss class.

It is a lot harder to be an assistant if you never have any students to assist.

I have two weeks left teaching. That means I'm going to see some of my students for the last time this week. I ought to do something really special, but I don't know what. I have to take pictures and bake a lot of cookies or banana bread or pumpkin pie. I have to come up with a superfun game to play and remember to give everyone my email address, but I also still have to keep from giving the teachers the impression that I'm slacking off because it's the end of my time here (even if it's true). Ah, the pressure.

Not that I'm counting or anything, but there's one month and one day left...

... until I am at home, smooching the evil dog and kicking the boyfriend. Or vice versa. Or not.
... until I can see the people I haven't seen since September.
... until I am living in a house with a dishwasher.
... until I can drink Vanilla Coke and eat at Arby's.
... until I can watch television, videos, and DVDs in my own home.
... until I can abuse my sister physically, instead of just doing so on the Internet.
... until I am reunited with my beloved computer and can update other parts of my website that desperately need updating.
... until I can be babied and pampered when I have a cold.

Now it is time for me to go home and hack up a lung. I advise you to buy stock in Ricola.

Hoy día en la clase de español hablamos de McDonald's. Mis estudiantes, que son estudiantes de hoteleria, y que deben tener standards, van al McDonald's dos veces por semana.

Might as well use my Spanish, or I'm going to keep forgetting it.

When Sonia asked the students who enjoyed going to McDonald's, the hand of the petite ricaine was one of the few that wasn't raised. I was afraid during the whole class period that I was going to be asked for the American opinion on McDonald's. In Spanish.

I wouldn't say that I don't like fast food - because it is fast and cheap and portable (rapido, barato y portatil?) - but McDonald's is really the dregs. The poor French don't have anything to compare it with, except the Belgian chain Quick, which is almost as bad. I certainly hope that if they had tastier options like Arby's and Burger King they wouldn't continue bouffing the merde that is MacDo.

I never ever ever get to teach on Thursdays. And yet I still have to come in.

I have to come in to discover that there's a transport strike or a teachers' strike or something today. Of course, this is being treated by the students as a students' strike, so I only have two students to teach, so class is cancelled. J'en ai marre! I could be sleeping and nursing my poor sickie self back to health, but I had to get up and come in here.

What's more, my afternoon class seems only to be missing two students, so I can't just go home. I have to hang around and sick up the teachers' lounge until the day is over.

The, Thursday, The.

Sometimes the role of the assistant is one that requires great self-control. For example, when giving mock oral exams to an extremely nervous student who is stuttering and twitching, you must resist the urge to be overwhelmed with maternal instinct and take him in your arms and cuddle him and tell him everything is going to be okay.

Especially if he is 23 years old.

Last night as we ate chez les BTS, there was une guèpe flying around our heads and alighting on the ceiling light fixture. Then Renata, Johanna and I went back to the assistants' apartment to get ready for bowling. I lay on my back on Renata's bed, then felt something on my face.

My blood ran cold. The wasp had somehow followed us through the hallway and was on my face. I reached my hand up... and discovered that the nosepad of my glasses had come unscrewed and had fallen off. I was able to sufficiently remedy the situation with the help of Renata's swiss army knife. This should last me until Thursday or Friday, when I can have my opticians have a go at it with their expertise and teeny tiny tournevis. It is nice to be in a technical school, quand même.

I went bowling tonight with Johanna, Renata, and Amandine, Bernadette and Cédric, three BTS students from Presles who are Renata's neighbors. Johanna brought her digital camera, so I am instantly able to bring you shots from our outing, where I came in fourth with 78 points, having been in first place until the 8th frame. As if you cared.

After bowling, I went back to Johanna's apartment and we looked at the pictures she's taken here, all of which seem to feature me in my Michigan sweatshirt. I swear, I do have other clothing. She let me copy some to disk, so I bring you the oevre of Friedl. I like the last one because I look super-sexy. Or evil.

This meme comes from here. I have chosen to talk about Vichy because I don't know anything about hotels in Ann Arbor.

I'm coming to visit your town. Recommend the following, with reasons why I should go to these places:

The best resturant, the one I have to eat at, at least once, while I'm in your town.
The restaurant gastronomique of the lycée Valéry Larbaud, of course! It is very fancy and elegant and not too expensive for the excellent quality of service and the quality and quantity of the food served there. Only 11€ for lunch, 22€ for dinner - make your reservations today at 04.70.96.54.00. Mwah ha. Advertising.

The best place to relax and take in some people watching. (please don't say the mall!)
The parc de l'Allier. It is prettier than the parc des sources and has fewer scary pooping birds.

The best place to take kids to have some fun.
I don't know. I don't have any kids. I don't know what's considered "fun" these days. Do kids like rivers? Parks? Casinos? Cybercafés? You should put your darned kids in school. See answer number one.

The best nightclub or date place for my hubby and I to have some time alone.
Erm, the Comptoir is our usual bar. Not too loud, nice for talking. If you want to dance, you can go to the Fous du Roy, but it might be a little young. I don't have a husband either, so I don't know what to do with one.

The absolute best hotel to stay in while I'm there!
If you're cost-conscious, I recommend the Hôtel du Cygne. It's nice and basic. One of the fancier ones in town is the Aletti Palace.

Okay. I am officially bored out of my mind. Everyone is still asleep and I am not. I have taken up the hobby of drinking water, which I describe as a hobby because it's all I can do to entertain myself. My eyes are too tired to read, and I can't go for a walk because I don't have keys to the building or to the front gate. So I just sip water and walk back and forth from my chair to the window.

I joked to Pierre earlier that I was almost at the point where I would set off walking to Vichy. Perhaps that's an exaggeration, but if I knew the direction to the train station, I would set out there.

I am in my Spanish class. Considering I am here completely by choice, I should be paying attention. But I went to the staff room during the break and it was Sandrine's 30th birthday, and someone handed me a plastic cup, so I drank the contents, which turned out to be champagne. I am a wee bit happy.

Vichy will be empty and feminine. Our boys are leaving next week. Renata claims they're her boys, but it's so selfish of her to keep them all to herself.

Stefan's and Andrés' contracts are a month shorter than ours, so ils s'en vont at the end of March, taking their pregnant selves (aahhhhh! pregnantmanpregnantmanpregnantman!) with them. Too bad we will miss the accouchement of Andrés' triplets: Viggo, Sporras, and Céline Dion.

If this year has taught me one thing, it is to appreciate people who teach and who teach well. It requires a level of commitment, understanding and - most importantly - patience that I will never have, and so to all of these people, I say "chapeau".

Or is it were digital?

I started my 10:00 class with a whopping four students and was explaining the rules of the game we were going to play, when I was interrupted by an invasion. Hundreds of students from neighboring high schools descended on Valéry Larbaud to encourage them to join in their "strike for peace".

My students watched out the window and we talked about how, de toutes les façons, ça sert à rien to go on a strike for peace in France, which is not even at war. George Bush is not going to suddenly change positions after being passed a notice that high school students in Vichy are on strike. George Bush, I am sure, does not even know that Vichy is a city. I certainly hope he has heard of Vichy France, but I would not bet anything on it.

Anyway, while the foreign bodies were pouring into the lycée, the Intruder alarm started going off. This was the same alarm that was going off last time we lost the Internet, so I have to admit that that was one of my first concerns. My very first, however, was What the heck do I do? There was an alarm going off, so I assumed that meant I had to let the students leave. Did I have to control them and take them outside?

It turned out the Intruder alarm just makes everything explode into chaos, so some teachers let students go and others kept them prisoner. I tried to keep near to mine, but they split up and by the time the alarm stopped and the mob left, I was down to two. The others, I assume, joined the foule because this was a legal, pre-announced grève and they had the right to join it (and therefore get out of class), even if they realized that it was pointless.

TWO!

If it had been one, it would have been illegal for me to continue class (you can't have one student and one teacher alone in a classroom), but instead I had to try to play superfun games with only two participants.

I hope my afternoon classes go on strike...

Another filling meal at the resto gastro of my school. This time, I was showing off the restaurant and my 1AHOTs to the other assistants. On the menu:

Talmouse forestière
Cuisse de volaille poêlée aux artichauts
Pommes noisettes
Assortiment de fromages
Crème brûlée et pain d'épices au miel

I am going to burst.

Things are not going as badly as expected this week. I had some students with earnest questions about the war in Iraq, and I answered them as long as they asked in English, and they seemed satisfied by my answers. The students I was most concerned about didn't have anything to say or ask about the war, but neither did they seem to hold my citizenship against me.

Tomorrow I have the class I cried in front of last week, but I think I'm better prepared than I was then, and I may just have a discussion about the war (in English!) rather than trying to have a hôtellerie lesson when they want to talk about another subject.

Renata, Jennifer and I ran into Rachel in the street last week, and the four of us went to the Juice Café, an oasis of anglophonie in Vichy. The owner is English and the menu features things like nachos, smoothies, and pancakes with maple syrup. We ordered in English, carried on our conversations in English, and watched France carrying on outside the windows.

I will be tough and firm on Monday. I will be well-prepared and have chiffres at my disposal, but I will not put up with any crap or abuse or French. I will be rested and ready, calm and in control. I will be Raymond Ash, minus the wetsuit and spear-gun.

"Naw, Ger, seriously. I don't care how hard you 'hink you are, or how long you've been suspended. I'm warnin' you: do not, under any circumstances, ever ever fuck wi' the new English teacher."
- A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away

I complain a lot, but playing games thought up at the last minute with the 1AHOTs who know and don't mind that they were thought up at the last minute is a good way to spend an afternoon. Thanks, you guys. Even if you are sex-obsessed.

Renata and Jennifer have gone to see the Renaud concert in Chalon sur Saône tonight. I wasn't asked, as I remember, but it doesn't matter because I didn't have any money back when they bought the tickets anyway. The point is, I shall be all alone and bored tonight. Please go ring ring on the tellyphone or I will have to go to the cybercafé and Dennis will think I am in love with him.

Last night as I was leaving the cybercafé I crossed the room to tell Franck that I was ready to leave. He started heading towards the bar/money-paying place, but saw Dennis approaching from the other direction. "Oh," I think he said, "Christophe will take care of you."

Christophe? I think that's what he said. I am so disillusioned to know Dennis' real name and unfortunately, that fits him about as well as Dennis . But Dennis he shall always remain, in blog-land.

How did Could we divide your classes into groups, like I do with all of the other classes, so that I only have half the class at a time? somehow become Can I take all of your classes in their entirety all by myself for several weeks in a row?

Supposedly the classes will be divided into groups beginning next week, but that still makes over a month that this has been going on. I am not a teacher. I am not a substitute teacher. I am an assistant. I am only supposed to have 12 students at a time and if I had a spine, I would tell you that to your face.

I have come close several times. I have wanted to. I have done so just upon leaving a class. But until today, I had never actually cried in front of my students.

I really don't want to be here today. I don't want to talk about the war. I don't want to talk about the United States. I want you to ignore current events and be interested in Jamie Oliver. I want to curl up in bed and hide.

Tout ce dont j'ai envie, c'est de me jeter par terre en pleine milieu du couloir et de rester là jusqu'à la fin de la journée.

Being an M, I have never been concerned with being the first or last in alphabetical order. I was always busy being the shortest - that was my claim to fame. But I find myself wondering if people at the beginning and the end take great pride in being at the beginning and the end. Does Daniel Alfonso curse the day Andrée Aby moved into Abrest? Does Yzeure burn with the resentment Ilya Zilberfarb holds for Maria Zuniga?

I need to get a life. I'm reading the phone book again.

"My name in print!"

Jennifer delivered me one of the two copies of the annuaire de l'Allier (03) that she found outside the door. I am in there, which brings me great joy because I have never had my own name in the phone book and because I have confirmed my suspicion that I am the only "Mc" in Vichy.

In case you were wondering (and I know you were), there is only one Leroy listed for St Yorre and that's a taxi company. If I were, like, the biggest star in France, I would have an unlisted number too, because people like me would be looking her up.

Is it sad that Nolwenn was the next person I thought of, after my fellow assistants and myself? Is it even sadder that I had to go fouilling around for my friends as soon as I had my paws on the phone book?

What am I doing here? Why am I here, doing somethign I am no good at? Why am I wasting my time and theirs, when nothing I do does any good? I don't know if I want to be alone or if I want a hug. I want my mommy. I want my boyfriend. I don't want to be alone and miserable with no one who loves me and be surrounded by people who don't even respect me. Why? Why am I so ineffective? Why am I alone? What am I doing? Is it me? Why can't I do this? Why hasn't it gotten any easier? Why isn't it over yet? When this year is over, will I be able to look back on the good things, or will I always have this feeling of waste and failure and inadequacy? Of loneliness and homesickness? Will I be genuinely able to recommend this to others? Would others suffer the way I'm suffering now, or is it just me? Am I being too hard on myself, or am I really as useless and ineffective as I feel?

Dennis was having a conversation with another computer-user about trains between Clermont-Ferrand and Vichy and looked at me, so I piped up.

Me: Il y en a plein. Un... ou deux par heure, je pense.
Dennis: Tu es de Clermont-Ferrand?
I looked at him strangely.
Dennis: Tu es de Vichy?
Me: Ben... pour l'instant...
Dennis: Mais d'origine? Tu viens d'où?
Me: Ann Arbor.
Dennis: Un arbre? Naples?
Me: Ann Arbor.
Dennis: C'est où ça?
Me: Dans le Michigan. (indicating Michigan sweatshirt)
Dennis: Tu es AMERICAINE?!

Dennis, Dennis, Dennis. How long have we known each other?

The Raelians pop up in a news article again!

"Joining them on federal grounds were four women followers of the Raelian sect who stripped down to their thong underwear as a sign of opposition to war. The sect believes life on Earth was created by space aliens and claims to have produced human clones.

"Whenever everybody undresses, the ego goes away and then we can make decisions," said Nadine Gary. "Imagine President Bush nude addressing the state of the union. Imagine Saddam Hussein nude."

Shudder. Thanks for the image, my Raelian amies.

[link via a wolf who sends flowers]

Many of my photos this time around feature lovely lens-spots from rain and/or snow. Sorry 'bout that. Anyway, try to enjoy them despite it!

<-- For previous photos, check out the links in the sidebar.

Christmas Break

Vichy in the snow

Yet more Valéry Larbaud

Dîner des assistants

Super-Besse

Puy de Pariou

Au châlet

I shall take a break here and bring you February vacation photos in another post. G'day.

It looks like since two of my classes are en stage, the Internet is back and I have a photocopier code, the Vie Scolaire has taken it upon themselves to be the bane of my existence.

Apparently Véro is out for the whole week. Which they really could have told me on Monday, when I visited them and they told me she was absent for the day. So I quickly prepared to teach the whole class alone (even though according to my contract I'm not supposed to have more than 15 students), went to class, and no one was there. Because the Vie Scolaire had told the students that their teacher was not there, but not that I was going to be teaching them, so they thought they had the day off. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't the second time this week that it had happened. The Vie Scolaire likes to ask me to teach, then not provide me with any students. I don't know exactly who they think I'll be teaching, but maybe they're hoping to educate the furniture.

Slap me with brie, if you please.

Um, yup.

I was being dragued. Much as I gave Dave the benefit of the doubt, it is quite evident that I was being dragued.

I met him at the mailbox on Saturday. He introduced himself as my new neighbor and we made small talk as best you can when one of you doesn't understand half of what the other is saying. Then today I had the window open in my ground-floor apartment so when he came to get his mail, he started talking to me through it. I was a bit annoyed because I couldn't have privacy and not die from the heat from my unadjustable radiator at the same time.

Later this evening, he rang the doorbell and I answered it. He said he wanted to get to know his new neighbor (or something like that - it sounded like lqjoqiejoinindsomivoisin to me). I said I was just about to make dinner, so I would come over to his apartment when I was done and say hi. I chopped my vegetables and I was just about to start cooking when the doorbell rang again and I had to explain to him that no, I wasn't done with dinner. At this point, I thought he was trying to pick me up or he was just extremely lonely and wanting to meet his neighbors. I am naïve like that.

After dinner, I went over and he had some friends there. Well, I thought, This isn't so bad. He already has friends, but I guess he did just want to meet the neighbors rather than trying to pick me up. After a while, the friends left. We looked at his action-movie collection, then sat down in the kitchen and he started asking me questions.

"Would you ever date a black man?" was the first question. I suppose you can see where this was going, but I was still giving him the benefit of the doubt and wondering if this was some kind of deep anthropological question he wanted to know about Americans.

"Do you have a boyfriend?" was one of the next questions. I answered that I did.

"Do you have anyone on the side yet, for while you're in France?" was the next, at which point all benefit of the doubt flew out the window. I continued to try to be polite, which was insane, but I really didn't know what to do in the situation. He told me that he liked me, but if I just wanted to be friends, that would be fine, but he would always hold out the hope that we would some day be together.

Oh good, friends. That's better. I will try to have a conversation then. So how is Mayotte?

The answer to that question, apparently, is that I am so beautiful (long up/down checking-out gaze). And that he's dreamed of going out with an American for his whole life, and now he's living next door to an American and she's so beautiful, so it's like a gift from God. And that he thinks he's falling in love with me. And that if some day my lips were to touch his lips... blah blah blah something I didn't understand and didn't want to.

Finally I escaped, feeling rather icky and violated, even though he had only touched my hand. I am creeped out and not looking forward to being home in the evenings or to having to walk past his apartment to get to mine. Even though I'm only here for about a month, I don't want to have to put up with a stalker. If it continues beyond tonight, I'm talking to our landlady.

Lost: One entire class of Hôtellerie students, aged about 17 to 21. Answer to the name of THOT.

When I went to the Vie Scolaire at 2pm to ask if Véronique was there, they said she wasn't and asked if I could take the class at 3. I hemmed and hawed and said I would do my best, considering the lack of warning. Only I don't even have the spine to point that out, so I just sort of went, "Non... ben, oui, mais..." So I did my best, and I made a million photocopies, and I took my million photocopies to the classroom and... no one was there. No one was there to hand in their penpal letters, no one was there to learn about Jamie Oliver and his restaurant Fifteen, no one was there to revel in our Véronique-less class time, and no one was there to appreciate all the stress and heartache and hard work I go through for them. Bugger.

AHHHH! Internet! My darling, you have returned!

Don't worry... I will continue to complain about Señor Tails, who vehemently claims he gave me a photocopier code at the beginning of the year, when what he really did was tell me there weren't any left (I refrained from retorting that we did not have 10,000 teachers at the school so something must be left from the permutations of four digits) and I should use those of the other English teachers. MLARGH!

Anyway, here I am. And here I will stay until I rot and/or they throw me out.

I'm not a very good English assistant.

After we went to Super-Besse, Philippe complained to Agnès that I spent all weekend speaking French. Agnès replied that she didn't have any better luck herself - I was always speaking French to her as well.

Yesterday I told the TH2s I wanted to take a picture of them before they left for their stages. They looked at me blankly and I had to repeat in French.

I ought to be refusing to speak French. I ought to be pretending I don't speak French. I ought to have made all the students who've served me in the resto gastro speak English to me. But it's so much easier to drop into French and get my point across instead of repeating myself eleven times to blank stares and lost interest. I am rather selfish and lazy and often more interested in communication than in improving people's English. I wonder if I would even be reaccepted if I applied.

I was a bit concerned about taking The Fam to the restaurant gastronomique yesterday because it is exam period and the students would be graded on their service. I didn't want to make it more difficult or stressful for them, so I considered cancelling our reservation, but their service teacher, M. Merlino, wanted butts in seats, so we came.

Our server was E. I don't know why I feel like I need to protect his anonymity when I never do with any of my other servers in the resto gastro, but voilà. He handed us the menu and I started translating it for my family.

"Gnocchi parisienne... gnocchi is a sort of potato pasta dumpling. Then we have ragoût de lapereau. Ragoût is a stew, lapereau is... uh-oh. Geez, I don't know." I turned to E. "C'est quoi, lapereau?"

"Rabbit," he replied, and continued speaking English throught the meal, asking if we had finished our courses, if we wanted more wine, etc. He even called my father "sir", when we'd had the lesson on the difference between "sir" and "mister" only two weeks before.

I was impressed and proud to find that one of my students could se debrouiller so well in an English-speaking situation - especially one whose voice I never hear in class. Especially when he didn't have to - he could have depended on me to act as translator throughout the meal. I hope he got a good grade on service - I know I'll put in a good word with his English teacher!

Sometimes I suspect that people don't realize that Vichy still exists. The phrase "Vichy France" comes up often enough, but I suspect that people don't realize the regime is named after the town and that the town is still around. They certainly don't realize it's famous for anything else... except maybe the soup. To look at the town, you certainly wouldn't suspect that it was once the capital of France.

There's really no point here, or connection between my sentences. I just felt I had to blog something because I was looking for other blogs in Vichy and all I came up with was a lot of name-calling and finger-pointing. Let's move on.

Je bosse demaing mating pour gagner mon paing quotidieng. And as long as we're at it, I'll have that bread with some ving from St-Pourçaing.

It would have been amusing to have been placed somewhere where people talked like that. In the Bourbonnais, we just have odd expressions like ça neige.

I'm going to graduate school to learn how to make web sites based on the principles of information science. I hope that my sites will be simple yet attractive, practical and easily navigable. The point will be for information to be accessed in the most convenient way possible. In other words, they will be everything that this isn't.

No one told me the school had a website. And it's not the type of thing I could have found out for myself, since there's no text to come up in search engines. I am disappointed that I am not prominently featured - in fact, enseignement générale is pretty well overlooked. You may, however, gaze upon the visages of my students Aude, Haouess and Sylvain. I would link to their individual pages but, as previously mentioned, this site is a mutant and has no pages.

Note: I suggest that you choose the full-screen version (affichage plein écran), because otherwise you will keep hitting the Back key like an idiot and being transported back to the index page. Not that this happened to me personally about a thousand times or anything. To go up one level, click Sommaire. To close the full-screen version, hit Alt+F4.

This is at least the fifteenth time I've seen the same video on Martin Luther King. I think it might be the last, and I am overjoyed. Around the fifth time, I started picking out ways I would have edited it differently. By the ninth time, I finally understood what they were saying when they said "Marlon Brando" with a French accent. By the fifteenth time, I have large chunks of narration memorized. If you have any questions about Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, James Meredith, or Les Cinq de Little Rock, pose-les-moi. If I am not the world's expert on the Civil Rights Movement, I am at least the world's expert on This Particular Video.

My favorite bus of the week is the 8:09 Monday one. The internes all pile onto the bus at the train station, the stop right after mine, and for a few minutes, I am The Most Popular Girl In The Bus. Today I was greeted by every single person who got on at that stop.

I decided that since there was so much alcohol available this weekend, I was going to make a point of trying everything in the chalet, just so I would know what it tastes like. I'm always nervous about ordering alcohol in bars if I've never tried it, because I still have to pay for it even if it's undrinkable.

So last night, I had rum and Coke, three glasses of white wine, whisky, Malibu and pineapple juice, vermouth, a screwdriver, and two mugs of mulled wine. Renata and Jennifer were surprised to see how well I held all of that alcohol, but it's true that I managed to spread the taste-testing efforts out over the whole evening and ate and drank other things while I was at it. They said that they couldn't tell much of a difference from usual. I, unlike certain Nelson people who Nelson will not Nelson be named, did not climb on the table and do a striptease, then end the evening falling on my head and trying to throw myself into the fireplace.

We are in a chalet. It is wooden and spacious and ultra-charming. It is full of alcohol and assistants.

I am the only assistante vichyssoise who tricote pas. There must be something in the water, or it's the influence of being surrounded by mémés for months. I'm beginning to think I'm going to have to take it up, just due to peer pressure.

God only knows what I've just said in Spanish.

I think they've finished the apartment next door, which is rather odd because they'd only been at it two days. It sort of frightens me because I don't see how they could fit the shower in the bathroom without knocking out some walls, so I fear they may have just plonked the it down in the middle of the kitchen.

The plumber asked me last night if I could switch apartments today. Yeah, like it's that simple. And yeah, like I didn't have to work. I'm kind of hoping I won't have to move before February vacation, but at least it would give me an excuse for my room being messy...

Florida seems to be Vichy's collective favorite state. Everyone I meet seems to have a brother or an uncle or a cousin who lives there, which brings us to one of two conclusions: that Vichy is seriously inbred, or that Florida is teeming with Froggies. Judging from the quality of the French PA announcements in the Miami airport, I'm tempted to lean towards the former.

Scattergories did not erupt into chaos with the THOTs, as I suppose it had the potential to do. There was, rather predictably, a fair amount of classmates' names appearing in the categories "something scary", "something very heavy", and "something that makes a loud noise". Luckily I recognized the giggles and realized the maturity level I was working with in time to skip over "something that smells bad".

There were a large number of "Nevada"s when they were asked for a US state, which surprised me because if I were trying to name US states, I think Nevada is one of the last ones I would have remembered.

Although one might grumble occasionally about receiving 750€ after taxes on one's 950€ monthly salary, one learns to accept it. One might apply for aide au logement on a whim to see if one is eligible for anything worthwhile. It is thus quite exciting when one discovers that not only will one receive monthly payments of an amount sufficient to refund all but 9€ of one's rent, but that one will also be reimbursed for all of the months before one got around to applying. One is rich! One may not have to prostitute oneself to pay for grad school after all!

On our walk yesterday, Renata was Brian Fellowe. And the goat was a donkey. If you understand what that means, I salute you.

And now all of a sudden I miss my grandpa, because he would have gotten it too.

I am planning on playing, with the THOTs, a bastardized form of Scattergories, with no specified letter for the words to begin with - just having to find words that fit into categories and getting points for finding words that are not the same answers everyone else gave. In preparation, I shall share with you my own answers.

Something that makes you happy sauerkraut
Something that is scary George W. Bush
Something that is yellow lemon pudding
Something that is very heavy a boat
Something that is found in a kitchen a flour sifter
Something that costs less than one Euro a pain au chocolat
Something that you shouldn't eat if you are on a diet a pain au chocolat
Something that can be found on a table in a restaurant elbows
Something that moves very slowly an hour hand on a clock
Something that you wear on your hands hand lotion
A state in the USA New Mexico (everyone will say Michigan... or I hope so)
Something that tastes bad burnt popcorn
A container salad bowl
Something that people take on vacation family
Something that is orange Dutch soccer jerseys
Something that lives underwater octopus
Something that makes a loud noise kettle drum
Something you can find in the sky cloud
Something you do in your free time blog
Something that won't work without electricity refrigerator
A city in the UK Birmingham
A city in the USA Birmingham, MI
Something you can do to stop a baby from crying blow raspberries at it
Something that is dangerous shark
Something that smells good Alex Patricio Rivera Quezada
Something that represents France cheese
Something that is green dollars
Something that you can buy in a bakery more pain au chocolat
Something that you do in the morning drink tea
Something that smells bad burning hair
A fruit ugli fruit
A vegetable turnip
A meat venison
A spice cumin
A seafood calamari

How about you?

The assistants often talk about how the French never take responsibility for anything. We suspect that their mazes of paperwork and bureaucracy are created for exactly this purpose - so that there's always someone else to blame. They are never wrong themselves - it is either a subject to be discussed rather than a right/wrong situation, or it's someone else's fault altogether.

Tonight we came to the conclusion that Americans are just as bad, but it's a different kind of irresponsibility. While the French refuse to take responsibility for anything professionally, Americans take no personal responsibility. Thus we are the country whose citizens sue McDonald's for making them fat or sue the U-M because their drunk daughter fell out of her dorm window.

Just as bad... just different. More on this later, I should think.

The waitress at Le Comptoir, our "usual" bar, looked at me oddly when I tried to order a milkshake on Friday night. Oops. Cultural differences, evidently. Sorry, lady, I come from Michigan, where we eat ice cream all year long. Oh well, I still managed to be a mutant by ordering a thé au lait while everyone else had beer.

Quite coincidentally, it came out over our beer and tea that Andrés considers Jennifer the most "normal" of the three Americans, and me the most "bizarre". I am flattered and the others are jealous.

I just said out loud to myself, in complete seriousness, "It would probably be best for all humanity on Earth if I had some chocolate right now." In other news, I saw lots of strange lights in the sky last night and decided the Raelians were right and the extra-terrestres were coming for me.

Please push the little buttons and make my phone go "ring ring". I am bored and lonely shut up in my room and it is making me insane. Comme d'hab, quoi.

I have seen twenty of my students for the last time. It occurred to me all of a sudden mid-day on Thursday, so I didn't say goodbye to anyone and I'm sure they didn't realize on their own that it was our last class period together. I wonder if they would care.

These two classes will be doing their stages from the vacances de février until the vacances de Pâques and I'll be gone by the time they get back.

It's hard to believe that I only have eight weeks of teaching left. I don't feel like I've made much of an impact, but I hope I've been adequate...

Yet another Wacky Assistant Adventure has transpired among the assistantes vichyssoises. Although we have been to the Puy de Dôme, there are still hundreds of puys left to be discovered. So today Jennifer, Renata, Johanna and I took off for the Puy de Pariou, a puy with a crater in the middle.

We hesitated last night about whether or not to go, due to the threat of inclement weather, but it wasn't snowing this morning, so we set off.

It wasn't snowing. This morning. In the Allier. At the relatively low altitude of Vichy. The Puy de Pariou, par contre, was a different story.

One we got out of the car, we found ourselves in mid-calf-deep snow and started the trudge. Even hopping into Renata's footprints instead of making my own, I was quickly out of breath. We ran into some more randonneurs who gave us directions to the top, and we followed them up the path, through often thigh-deep snow on a rather steep hill. I was actually find when we got to the top, and it was fun hopping from footprint to footprint and often falling into holes and falling over in the snow.

When we got to the top, there was a great view of the crater so we decided to walk all the way around it, a distance of over a kilometer. As we started out on the crunchy frozen ground it reminded me of a polar expedition. By halfway around, I realized that I never want to go on a polar expedition. We were out of the shelter of the tallest part of the crater's edge, and the wind was whipping snow straight at us, hard enough that I was sure I was going to be blown off the edge into oblivion. Johanna thought I was slipping, but really I was trying to throw myself to the ground to protect myself every time a big gust came along. Meanwhile, I was losing feeling in my fingers.

I was everso pleased when we found the chemin again, and warmed up once we got out of the wind and started tromping down the hill and playing "I'm going on a trip and taking...", making an alphabetical list of trip essentials like Edgar Allan Poe, the town of Orcival, a farting penguin, a big plastic letter X, and a zombie.

It was quite excellent to see the puy and to have a romp in the snow, but I am glad to be home now, warm and dry and sheltered!

I went and asked Señor Tails if I could go online on the computer in the room at the end of the hall. "Sure," he said, as though I had not been begging and bothering him for months about how there was no Internet access in the school, when all along he knew that I could have gotten online here.

So now I am here. I can only use the computer when no one else needs it for grades entry, but I do have some Internet access and can do some more research and not just scrape things out of nowhere and give them to my classes.

The latest batch of posts begins here.

Punaise. Siobhan, the Irish English assistant, has stumbled upon a computer that is connected to the Internet. As I suspected, there is Internet some places in the building, but not in the public labs. My problem is that the computer she has discovered is one of the grading computers, which I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to be using. The Internet, wicked siren that it is, is calling to me with its evil tempting song, but I don't want to get in trouble if I'm not supposed to be using it.

Perhaps I shall ask Señor Tails if I may use it when no one else wants it. And if he says no, I will bite him.

We have - about a million times. Angelique brought along a magazine that had an article about optical illusions, and there was one where you stared at an abstract image for a moment, then if you closed your eyes, you saw Jesus. We learned later that if you looked at a white wall instead of closing your eyes, you saw an enormous Jesus. It was like optician crack, so we just sat around and passed the magazine, screaming when Jesus appeared.

The weather got worse yesterday afternoon, so no one went out skiing in the evening. I briefly considered going along this morning but Philippe, who is a ski instructor, was training and Mathieu, who is another beginner, was nursing a sore knee.

So instead of going out and falling all over with no one to commiserate, I stayed behind and spent the morning with Mat (or Tomate, if you are a pompette joyeuse). We returned his skis, had a walk around the lake and a talk about Thanksgiving and politics, then went back to the apartment and spent the rest of the morning watching various sports reports.

Tonight we're all going to Philippe's apartment in Vichy to make crèpes to celebrate the Chandeleur, a holiday which is celebrated by... making crèpes.

I had a lovely weekend and I would like to say, in the words of Mathieu, "TAHNK yoo very MOOSH!"

The others went skiing, but I am a chicken. I don't like going downhill and the only thing I can think of to make this worse is two big awkward pieces of fiberglass stuck to my feet. No, that's not true - I can think of something worse: having one big awkward piece of fiberglass stuck to my feet, as in snowboarding.

Anyway, I might work up the stupidity courage to do it for an hour this evening, just for the sake of saying I've done it. But at the moment the others are out skiing and I'm not.

Instead, I went for a walk in the snow to the chapel of Notre-Dame de Vassinères. I had fun trying to walk on top of the snow like an elf, but I often fell through it and was buried up to my knees.

I took lots of pictures, as I've never been to a station de ski and the weather is very nice today. I'm sure those will all be online eventually, although I can't say the same for all of the photos from last night. We had a snow fight and Philippe's mom has brand new white carpet in the apartment, so we all had to remove our shoes and pants (!) before entering.

Anyway, now I'm back in the apartment, warming up and waiting for the others to return for lunch.

Srah is not a nerd! Srah is a trend-setter!

I like to wrap a scarf around my head instead of wearing a hat. It doesn't do as horrible things to my hair, and I like to think it makes me look exciting and dramatic like a movie star, when really it makes me look like a mémé. The boys teased me for looking like a grandma, but once everyone's ears were exposed to the cold, the girls realized it was a good idea and were asking for head-wrapping advice.

Renata, Jennifer and I often kid that we fit in in Vichy because we act like old people - it's nice that we can spread it to others as well.

I'm off to Spanish class with the THOTs again, as we're leaving from Valéry Larbaud at 4pm for our weekend of snow and NOT skiing. I shall not allow myself to be convinced to ski. I shall remain stubborn as a mule and keep my limbs intact, thankyouverymuch.

I spent yesterday afternoon and evening running around like a chicken with my head cut off, as the snow began to fall. I had all kinds of errands to get out of the way before the weekend, and meanwhile, we were being dumped on. These were the kind of snowflakes large enough to land on my nose and obstruct my vision for a few seconds before they melted. When I was done running around Vichy, I ran up to Presles, as we were having a big Assistant Potluck. I brought salad with green peppers, carrots, and mushrooms. By the time we left, around 11pm, there was about a foot of snow and all of our efforts to roll up our jeans to keep them dry were completely useless.

Not only did I have class this afternoon, but they tried to get me to take the kids for four hours. I am not a substitute teacher, folks. What's more, they didn't tell me until I stopped by and asked at 12h55 that they wanted me to take the class at 13h. Funny, that.

It snowed last night, so the roads were slippery. Usually when this happens, Veronique doesn't show up, so the first thing I did when I arrived at school was to go to the Vie Scolaire and ask if there were any profs d'anglais absent. They said yes, Veronique would be absent in the morning and maybe in the afternoon as well. I was pleased, as I'd been hurrying this morning to throw something together for the S1HOTs and now I could stop stressing.

So I wandered around for a while, then Victor, head of the Vie Scolaire, found me and told me that Veronique had sent a message that I was to take her class for the two hours. I could only take one, as I had another class the other hour, but as it was more a command than a question, I gave in and rushed off to type up what I'd planned.

I spent my break finishing it, then went to the class, where three élèves were waiting for me, out of a class of 17. We debated what was to be done for a while, then finally decided to have class. We did the lesson I'd planned, then chatted when it was over because you can't do jeux de rôles with three people for fifteen minutes.

Now I am sitting around waiting for someone to tell me if I have class this afternoon or not, as no one seems to know. I am hoping for not, but I'm betting on yes, because that's the way this day has been.

I am in a funk where I claim to be bored even though there are letters to write, dishes to do, fruit to eat, books to read, and a blog-post beginning to develop in my head. I am tempted to go to sleep and put it all off until tomorrow, but that's been my plan of action all week and the dishes aren't going to do themselves.

There is a strike today, of teachers and surveillants. Some people are striking, others aren't. I love strike days. It's fun to come to work when hardly anyone is here, and find out if any of the students have come to school for me to teach. It's different and adventury. And thankfully it's my half day, so I'm not concerned about the fact that the cafeteria is en grève as well.

I always seem to find myself, when people learn that I've studied French and lived in France, discussing whether the French accent is as sexy as it is reputed to be. The assistants have had the same discussion, and can't really come to a clear conclusion.

It is certainly true that there is nothing remotely sexy or attractive about being the English assistant and hearing a bored 15-year-old French accent say "At the Christmas, I go to buy the jeu vidéo for my bruzzère."

On the other hand, it is always amusing to hear a well-formed sentence, especially from someone you didn't expect to speak English. What's more, the French generally study English in the UK, so when you come across a well-learnèd French person speaking English, there is usually a bit of a British accent under a light French one.

It depends on the voice as well. I have plenty of loud, boisterous students, but I have two in particular who murmur smoothly when they speak English, which - as long as it's clearly spoken and they're murmuring rather than mumbling - is unnervingly attractive. I hope they are not reading this.

So in conclusion, the answer is both yes and no, and it depends on many factors. Fascinating. I'm going to sleep.

Would you hate me if I told you that one of my big problems at the moment seems to be that I've lost weight? I don't remember this happening in Grenoble, but these days my pants seem to hang a bit lower, which means I have to cuff them, then I keep stepping on the cuffs and I have to yank them up so as not to expose my underpants. Whereas other people try diet after diet, I have never had any desire to lose weight, and here I am with what butt I had rapidly disappearing. Thus I bring you...

srah's diet tips

Be easily distracted and get easily bored while eating. Then at some point during dinner you will see something shiny across the room and when you remember what you were doing and come back, your food will be cold and unappetizing.

Live alone. If you're only cooking for yourself, you have no one to impress, so you can make the same really boring stuff night after night.

Be lazy. This ensures that you will probably only have two courses at the most - a main dish followed by a yogurt or fruit or cookies - something that doesn't require work or preparation.

Be poor. If you are trying to make those last 90€ last until you get paid at the end of this week when you will hopefully be paid, you will not be buying yourself exciting, fun new things you've never tried before. You will be eating pasta and salad.

Be forgetful. If you suddenly realize at 11pm that you forgot to eat dinner, it's simply too late and you'll have to wait until breakfast.

Don't eat anywhere comfortable. Although you want to eat in bed where it's nice and warm and comfy, you would spill stuff all over it. Instead, sit in a chair facing the bed, so that while you're eating, all you can think of is how much you would like to be finished with dinner and in your pyjamas.

I still have not recovered from Nicolas' birthday and Moulins. I had to make an effort to stay awake in the dark while the S1OLs watched a video on Martin Luther King, and I still haven't settled on exactly what I'm doing with the THOTs. Perhaps I will teach them how to nap à l'américaine, whatever that means.

On a fait la fête hier soir chez les Moulinoises. There are seven assistantes in Moulins, the prefecture of the Allier, about 45 minutes from Vichy. They were having a party, so we piled into Johanna's car (Stefan's orange bagnole is en panne in Poitiers at the moment) and drove off to their apartment, which is in the premier lycée de France, the lucky ducks.

Food, wine, beer and coca poured in abundance, then we played a game of Mafia full of suicide, German conspiracy, and Renata and Becky refusing to kill me no matter how much I begged. Everyone was asking themselves at this point exactly how much I'd had to drink and while it's true that I'd polished off quite a few glasses, they were all full of Coke and jus d'abricot. I'm just odd like that.

After everyone had had enough of Mafia, we played a drinking game and I drank two entire glasses of white wine during the course of the game, but afterwards felt less silly than when I'd been bourrée on Coke and juice.

Suddenly we realized it was already 3am - when we'd thought it was around midnight - so we got back into the car and came back to Vichy and into bed by 4.

Mr Unnamed Cybercafé Employee kept bowing to me tonight and calling me "your highness". I really don't know what to do with him, so I smile and continue clicking away as he enters and exits the room genuflecting and trying to make me laugh or at least pay attention to him.

It bothers me that I don't know his name, but I don't want to ask him because I think he would take it as a sign of interest and thus increased intimacy, when all I really want to do is surf the net, drink tea, pay, and leave.

So I have decided to make up a name for him. I shall call him Dennis. Not Denis, à la française, but Dennis, because I have decided 'e looks like one.

The party last night was in Nicolas' apartment, which is in the same building as the other apartment I looked at, before choosing my current one. On a failli être voisins, but financially it's probably for the best that we aren't. In addition to the rent being higher, the building is right next-door to the cybercafé. The last thing I need is to be closer, because sometimes even when I give in to the 4€/hour mental protests, the thing that keeps me from spending my whole life there is walking in the cold.

I have been invited to go skiing (or "skying", if you prefer) with the S2OLs next weekend. This sounds like a fun, exciting way to spend a weekend, except for the whole skiing part. I imagine roaring fires, hot tea or chocolate, and perhaps tramping about in the snow a bit, but none of that nasty downhill nonsense, considering I have problems walking downhill or even descending staircases. Up up up for srah, or perhaps over over over, but certainly not down down down. Even better, perhaps, would be staying still still still, considering that I am unathletic and maladroite and I would rather not have seven or eight broken limbs (I will grow new ones just to break them) for the vacances de février.

The Scrabble tournament didn't end up being quite as I'd imagined. Renata, Jennifer, Johanna (the new German assistant) and I were divided up and each put on different teams, thankfully. I say "thankfully" because it would have been very embarassing when we lost. Those kids were doués! They were regular little Scrabble champions, full of strategy and obscure two-letter words, and all around 10 to 12 years old. I think the assistants provided amusement rather than any actual help. My teammates were full of questions about England (it is a peculiarity of French elementary school children not to understand the vast difference between England and the US).

"How old are you?"
"You can't ask her that!"
"Do you speak German?"
"Where do you come from?"
"You can't ask that!"
"Do you know all the words in English?"
"In England, is the television all in English? That must be weird!"
"You know Buffy? You look like her friend."

I had a lovely time, and we will be written up in the newspaper and invited back later in the year.

"It's in the toilet."

The hôtellerie students and their assistant are rather surprised, as up to that point, all of the words they've been trying to guess were related to food preparation and service.

"Paper? Toilet paper?" comes one guess. She is encouraged to guess something else, and luckily comes up with the answer, water, before anyone starts getting rude.

What a creative way of expressing the word, when forbidden to use "drink" or "glass". I appreciate a good dose of imagination and creativity in a student.

Les assistants linguistiques de Vichy-Cusset have been invited to a Scrabble tournament. It is for a Scrabble club made up of young (not sure how young - but no older than middle school, I think) people, and apparently they were looking for competitors who don't have adult vocabularies. We are going to whup some nine-year-old heinie.

I am having a super-secret torrid affair. It is so super-secret that I didn't even realize I was having it until Renata told me.

Apparently one of Andrés' classes today (the THOTs, I believe) told him that they knew about him and me. Renata and I assumed this meant romantic entanglement, but I suppose since I'm getting this third- or fourth-hand, I could be missing something. Maybe we're about to get fired instead.

One of the main problems in my job as an assistant is side conversations going on in French. I have to try to convince the students to stop what they're talking about and to join the rest of us, trying not to lose more students while I'm doing that.

What makes it even more difficult is when I want to join in...

I am such an idiot. I didn't have class until 11:00, but at 10:00, I went looking for Agnès to show her an article I'd found, about schools implementing retinal eye scanning in school cafeterias to identify students and make sure no one was eating anything against their dietary regulations. I showed up and she got half of the class together to go off with me.

"No, I don't have them until 11," I explained, "I just came to show you this article."

She looked puzzled. "No, you have them now." Somehow I had convinced myself that I had class from 11 to 1 today instead of 10 to 12. I was, of course, completely unprepared. My students were happy not to start right away, while I ran away to get my bag and the key to the multimedia cabinet. Meanwhile, Andrés and the THOTs had a good giggle, seeing me running around like a chicken with its head cut off, as I kept going in the wrong direction and scrambling back and forth in front of the windows of their Spanish class.

And I don't have class for another two hours. My students are here in the library with me, but they're being very studious and working, so I don't want to bother them and I wouldn't have anything to say to them even if I did, other than. I may have to start reading the dictionary or - even worse - surfing Encarta and digging up super-neato facts to share with you. Mwah ha! If you want the torture to end, you should write to my school and demand some answers on why there is no Internet. If I've understood correctly, the last I heard was that we're not a very high priority for the Académie de Clermont-Ferrand, and that it's them who have to fix us up, or at least pay to have us fixed up. Eejits.

Why does Sarah come to school over three hours before she actually has to teach anything? And more importantly, why didn't she bring anything to read? And even more importantly, why can't she spend all of this free time surfing the Internet?

I have heard a nasty rumor that the administration (including the dastardly Señor Tails) still have Internet access, while the rest of us suffer without. We must try not to believe such rumors, for to do so might make flames shoot out of our ears and singe the nice students sitting nearby. Mustn't hurt nice studentses. But if that mean tricksy syssssstem adminisssstrator has our preciousssss, we wants it, and we just might have to start chewing fingers off to get it.

Traditional folk songs have stupid lyrics. Are we agreed? No one will argue that Camptown ladies singing this song (doo dah, doo dah) or hats with feathers in them called Macaroni (is the hat or the feather Macaroni?) are lyrical masterpieces, I hope, but I don't think we really think about that while we're singing them.

I've checked out from the library one of the volumes of Canteloube's Chants d'Auvergne, orchestral arrangements of Auvergnat folk songs, sung in the original Auvergnat language by Kiri Te Kanawa. You may know "Baïléro", the most famous of the songs, which is very beautiful and is about (like most of the songs) horny shepherds and shepherdesses calling to each other.

Much to my amusement, there is a lyrics booklet with the Auvergnat lyrics, but also their English, French and German translations. Listening to pretty music and operatic-style singing, you would never really realize that when you heard lines like "Quond onorèn o lo fièïro, ié!", what the lyrics actually meant were:

When we go to the fair, hey!
When we go to the fair, ho!
We shall both go, Anthony,
we shall both go!

We shall buy a cow, hey!
We shall buy a cow, ho!
We shall both buy it, Anthony,
we shall both buy it!

But the cow will be mine, hey!
But the cow will be mine, ho!
The horns will be yours, Anthony,
the horns will be yours!

"It's a bird..."
"Chicken!"
"Duck!"
"Pheasant!"
"Turkey!"
"Cream!"
"Non, mais oh! Cream, c'est pas un bird!"

Never mind, it was funny to me. Funny enough that I kept thinking about it for the rest of class and giggling to myself. It's funny how I will miss some of my students when the year is over.

And yet others, not at all, as the game got a bit too competitive at around this point. So srah stopped giving points and started giving bunnies and ducks and boats and teepees, in the hopes that they would stop berating their teammates and turn their attention instead to their insane English assistant.

Another good one came later, when the student holding the word "tuna" began "It lives in the forest...". Apparently he had not understood exactly what a tuna was. It's not nice to laugh, but sometimes it's unavoidable.

Is it excessively bad to have still not learned some of my students' names... and to have forgotten some of the ones I did know?

I am excessively fascinated with the proximity of the Raelians (or the proximity of their origins, anyway). Now I find myself wondering if the people I see every day are secretly members of the cult.

According to their website, the cult gained popularity quickly in French-speaking countries, which makes complete sense to me. If aliens landed in the US and emerged from their spaceship speaking English, we would think nothing of it. It would be completely natural for them to start speaking English and if they didn't, we might tell them to pack up and get back into outer space where they belong. I can see the French, on the other hand, hearing that aliens landed and being rather uninterested until they learned that the aliens spoke perfect French. At this point, they might start listening, as these aliens were obviously the kind of civilized being that they would want to associate with.

1) It's sales season in Vichy and the streets and stores are packed, which makes me claustrophobic.
2) The price of a demi-baguette has gone up from 30 to 32 cents, making things very uneven and ensuring that I get a handful of nasty little copper coins instead of an even 10 or 20 cent piece.
3) There is a clown playing the trumpet in the Rue de l'Hôtel des Postes. As I walked by, he was attacked by a dog, but unfortunately it was part of his act.

Why did no one tell me about the Raelians?

"One December morning in 1973, journalist Claude Vorilhon was on his way to work in the French provincial town of Clermont-Ferrand. But - according to a book written by Mr Vorilhon, who is now known as Rael - instead of going to the office, on an impulse, he drove to a nearby volcano. There, he says, he was contacted by an extra-terrestrial being who emerged from a flying saucer and told him - in fluent French - that humans were created in laboratories by people from another planet."

These are important things that I should have known! I am so proud to learn that such an exciting even happened so near to me and that they are so closely tied to the famous ClonAid group. Where are they based now? I highly suspect it is my apartment building, because Jennifer and I have already identified it as the Center Of All Things Weird.

I would have made the film differently, but it didn't seem to completely disgust the internes, so I guess I can breathe easier. We shall talk to them about it on Monday.

I don't pay a lot of attention to it, but I think I hardly ever say "hello" in the US. More likely "hi" or "what's up" or "hey there". Here, on the other hand, I walk down the hall, barraged with "hello"s and respond in kind. When the kids come into the classroom, they say "hello". When they leave, they say "goodbye". I parrot back ten or twenty times, which has started to annoy me, so I try to toss in a few "bye"s or "have a good afternoon"s to change things up. Earlier this week, I said, "Have a good afternoon" and received a "Have a good afternoon. See you soon!" from a student who had apparently been burning for something new herself.

Tonight is the first night of Ghost World, the January film for the Club Cinéma. As it is an American film shown VOSTF, Agnès and I managed to convince the Vie Scolaire that it would be mighty educational to bring the kiddies.

Thusly the 37 or so students who board on Friday nights will be going to the movies tonight, to see a movie that Agnès and I recommended despite having never seen it. I am terribly frightened that they will hate the movie and that it will turn them off of subtitled films for the rest of their lives. Ridiculous, I know, but that doesn't make me any more confident.

On the other hand, maybe they will fall in love with it and all go out and get their Club Cinéma membership cards and decide to picket in front of the cinémas of Vichy, demanding more subtitled films.

Um, yeah right.

An impressive number of my students know who Martin Luther King, Jr. was, and some recognized him enough to say "I have a dream" when they saw his name on the board. There were still quite a few classes, however, where I got blank stares or far-out guesses. My favorite was "Didn't he used to be Prime Minister of England?"

"But how am I supposed to teach English As A Foreign Language if I don't speak English as As A Foreign Language? Can't I just take Foreign As An English Language?"
- Smack the Pony

And while we're at it, how about you? (Once again, not you, dear reader). You used to be so nice and well-behaved and participatory and now I don't want to throw you out of class because I'd rather keep you within slapping range. I hope it's just a bad day.

And as long as I'm being mad, I will take some out on you. Yes, you. Not you, the reader, but you the person I'm thinking of, who I don't care to identify at this point. What are you doing there, anyway? What purpose do you serve, sitting there and doing nothing? Am I just there to make life twice as easy for you? If I get stuck with so many more of them than I'm supposed to have, the least you could do is step in and help out when obviously needed.

This is it. This is forking it. My mother sent me two packages on the same day. One, I received the week before Christmas. The other still has not arrived.

Every time I call FORKING EXTAND, I have to pay 1.35€ for the call (even if I get the recorded message "All lines are busy - please call again later") plus 0.35€ per minute, with an average pre-operator-answering wait of two minutes. On my last bill, I was charged over 12€ for these calls.

They told me my package would come on the 24th. I was gone, so I called when I got back. They told me it would arrive last Friday. I was gone, so I called when I got back.

Today, I called and they told me it would be here tomorrow. I work tomorrow, so I will have to PAY TO CALL to have them redeliver. They can't schedule a redelivery until 24 hours after the first try, because they are forkheads. On top of this, I will have to pay a customs duty when it arrives (Jennifer's was 60+€).

On top of THAT, I don't know why I'm being forked around with this forkwit delivery service in the first place when I live about 100m from the post office. When I send a package through the French postal service, it doesn't get delivered to my house by UPS.

I wish I had a free number to call and give them a piece of my mind. JE VOUS EMMERDE!

I can't find anything enticing enough to lure me out into the cold, so here I am, rotting in my apartment, snacking, and reading. I have now finished The Fellowship of the Ring and A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away and have already done the dishes and written a letter to Christopher Brookmyre that I will never send. I am now debating between starting The Two Towers or going stir-crazy and losing my mind. Insanity imminent.

Today is the 12th of January! Do you know what that means, children? Mouse over for the joyous, happy response!

Especially ones about diaries that I can apply to my blog. Before break, I read an English translation (yes, I am lazy) of A.O. Barnabooth: His Diary, one of the best-known works of Valéry Larbaud, namesake of my lycée, vichyssois author but perhaps best known as the translator-to-French of many a famous 20th-century anglophone writer - most notably James Joyce and William Faulkner.

The book is the diary of an invented character named Archibald Barnabooth, a South American millionaire who has inherited his money from his father and wanders around Europe trying to figure out what one should do with such a vast fortune. It's rather amusing, but anyway, the point was to share this quote Barnabooth writes about his diary, which reminds me in many ways of my own blog:

I re-read my Italian diary in the inn at Finja on a rainy day when the tarnished lake was suffering and restless between its mist-drenched banks. It was painful reading and it often made me blush. So many sentences that - already! - I would not write now... Exaggerations, naïvetés, little useless lies, little scraps of malice sewn together with a white thread! And yet I tried not to deceive myself: to see my life directly and not through books I had read: and to leave a matter unexplained rather than admit an explanation drawn from literary memories. Often I have been near to striking out a sentence which did not ring true, a ready-made expression which did not correspond with my real thought. I needed courage not to alter anything and to leave the document intact with all its puerilities, its too intimate confidences, its confessions of weakness: my only consolation has indeed come from it. I was beginning to disown my diary: I saw into it clearly: I criticized it; sham feelings, the last traces of the ungrateful age. I noted all these things and in that way measured the distance I have gone. I was no longer the young man who had written those pages: I had laid all that aside: "a sadder and a wiser man." But how far had I yet to go?

I'm afraid to venture out into the cold and snow and ice. I think I'll just hole up here until spring comes. I have tea a-plenty, so I'll manage to survive.

Speaking of cold, snow and ice, whoever designed Vichy was clearly smoking crack. Here we are with a town full of precisely (I counted) one hillion jillion old people. Instead of having concrete sidewalks, which would give some traction, the whole town is covered in a slick, smooth tile. The ice is better to walk on than the salted parts, because it gives you traction, whereas the tile is flat and wet. Broken hip city!

Jennifer and I have noticed lately that there are an inordinate amount of funeral parlors and opticians in Vichy. We think they must be paying off the city planners and sidewalk shovelers, because even if slipping and falling doesn't kill them, it should at least break their glasses.

"I don't want money. It is only people who pay their bills who want that and I never pay mine."
- Oscar Wilde

I would pay my rent, if my landlady would ever show up! She told Jennifer to pay her rent to my new next-door neighbors and when she did, they came to the door in tighty-whities, so I am not paying them myself unless Mme Messana gives me explicit instructions to do so.

I want the Internet fixed so that I can spend all day long at school and do absolutely nothing productive but read a lot of blogs. I want my Pato to stay here with me and be my pet-slash-gigolo and I will support him on my enormous assistant's salary. I want warm weather and no more snow or ice, or I at least want Vichy to plow the streets and ice the sidewalks. I want my stupid package to be delivered - yes, the one that was supposed to come before Christmas. I want to be suddenly inspired with ideas of what I'm going to do in class tomorrow.

If these demands are not met... I will whine some more.

As usual, I went to school today only to find that Agnès had left me a voice mail that I hadn't checked, telling me the 1ASMSs have a test and I didn't have to come to school at all.

KILL! KILL! KILL!, they scream.

No, Internet has still not been fixed at the lycée.

Once I am in the cybercafé, I never want to leave.

Teenaged boys have invaded my private sanctum with their noisy voices and squeaky tennis shoes. Shite. When I have my official coronation as Queen of the Cybercafé, my first act as reigning monarch will be to build a door to keep them out. Or possibly to declare periodical human sacrifices.

I have been led into the inner sanctum of the cybercafé: past the gangs of screaming teenaged boys and their shooting, mooing computer games, to a large, spacious room with ambient music, soft colors, art on the walls, windows, only two computers, and a few tables and chairs. This is very odd. Very odd indeed. I think I may be The Chosen One, although Chosen for what, I'm not sure.

And yet no one has offered me tea, which I would have accepted this time.

We had our Christmas lunch in the cafeteria today. I had sanglier, wild boar. I felt very much like Asterix and Obelix, minus the wingèd helmet.

The doorbell rings at Villa Montcalm. Srah, living on the rez-de-chaussée and thus being the only one who can hear the doorbell, goes to answer it.

"Good evening," says the man at the door, wearing a fireman's coat, "The firemen have come to present their calendar."

Srah wonders what her reaction should be. "Okay," she replies dumbly.

"Are your parents at home?" asks the fireman.

Srah wonders how much younger her pigtails make her look. "This is an apartment building," she explains, realizing even as she says it that it explains nothing and has nothing to do with anything and that the fireman probably now considers her mentally deficient.

"Is anyone home upstairs?" he asks, presumably looking for more calendar-buying customers, or at least some with the ability to communicate.

"I don't think so," replies srah, who had intended to say, "I don't know."

The fireman looks rather relieved at not having to talk to anyone else in this madhouse and off he goes.

I've decided I don't get nearly enough search requests from people who want to learn about English assistants, or what it's like to be an English assistant, or assistante d'anglais, as I like to call myself. Neither are there searches for my masculine counterparts, the assistants d'anglais. This is the time of year when young men and women's fancy turns to applying for jobs as English assistants in France, so I have decided to pad this blog-post with excessive mentions of English assistants, English language teaching assistants in France, assistants d'anglais and the like, in an attempt to get Google to notice me. Come! Read! Share the experience! Or whatever!

While we're at it, Lycée Valéry Larbaud Cusset Vichy Allier Auvergne. Come discover me.

Am self-diagnosed as having either food poisoning or the Vichy Death Plague. Am proud of myself for going to work this morning, despite feeling weak, exhausted, hot, cold, and nauseous, but also think myself rather insane. Am stuffing self with juice and crackers in effort to restore nutrients. Do not like being sick alone, but think that in some ways, it is better than being sick and needy.

More Vichy and the environs

Thiers

Trip to the Puy-de-Dôme

Les Sables d'Olonne

Beginning next semester, I am going to be preparing the S2OLs for their oral exams at the end of the year, two by two. They will have to do what they would do for the exam and I will grade them and tell them what they have to work on.

I am concerned that I will be biased in my grading for a few reasons:

1) I am American. I don't know how well I'll be able to pay attention to grammar mistakes because as an Anglophone, when I hear English, my goal is comprehension and not listening for correct grammar.

2) I am not an optician. For all I know, they could be making everything up and anglicizing the French terms for all this optical crap.

3) I attended American schools. In France, students are graded on a 0-20 scale and spend all of their time shooting for 10s. Not even God himself could get a 20, they say. I, on the other hand, come from the Land of Nice, where we live by the law of grade inflation. On our 0-4.0 grading scale, people are constantly graduating 25th in their class with a 4.5. I can't imagine giving less than a 10/20 to someone who manages to communicate in English, but I may have to, depending on pronunciation, vocabulary, richness of ideas and grammar.

4) I am the English assistant. I spend all day with students who give me one-word answers, "ch'sais pô"s, or completely ignore me when I ask them questions. To give a student an article and have them expound on it for 20 minutes straight will be a joy. 20s all around, even if you missed the point of the article and summarized the whole thing in the present tense!

I am bubbling over with excitement, because I have just discovered a student who has learned something in the past three months. I have been over these Christmas recipes with five classes now and one student out of these five classes remembered not only what cinnamon is, which no one else has been able to do all week, but also remembered how to say dinde in English.

Yes, it is extremely frustrating that there is only one, but I am happy today because there is one.

Today was a day of halves and not-quites.

I had my visite medicale in Clermont-Ferrand, beginning with the lung x-ray at 2pm. I left Vichy at 12:00 because the next train was at 1:07 and wouldn't get me to Clermont until 1:40. I was concerned that I would not have enough time to find the office if I arrived with twenty minutes to spare.

So I arrived at 12:40 instead, looked at my convocation to see the address of the radiography center, and discovered that my appointment was at 2:30, so I was wandering around Clermont for two hours for nothing. I checked out the marché de Noël and the main shopping area at the Place Jaude but didn't find anything to buy. I went to the Fnac and discovered the manga section and was halfway through the sixth episode of Marmalade Boy when I realized I had better get going to my appointment. So I hiked up and down the hills of Clermont and arrived, had to get half-naked in front of a stranger for the x-ray (at least it was a woman this time), then realized that I had two and a half hours to spare.

Harry Potter happened to be showing just at 3pm, so I bought a ticket. After I sat down in the theater, I realized that the movie is actually 2 hours and 40 minutes long, while I had 2 and a half hours and before my appointment. I also realized that I had no idea where I was supposed to go for this appointment. As I was realizing all this, half an hour passed and they still hadn't started the movie. The lights went down, and they played a million years of commercials (including the stupid naked Italian Néscafé man who is at the beginning of every movie I see and who I would like to strangle with his towel the next time it falls off) and previews. THEN they started the movie. In other words, I was obliged to leave before the movie was over, and did not quite get to finish it. Please do not speak to me about anything that happens after Harry goes "HAAAAAAAAGRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIID!" or I will be very upset.

After this joyous occasion, I exited the mall that the movie theater is in, only to find that it was dark and raining and 5:30pm, when I had to be at the doctor's before 6 at the latest. I thought I might be able to find my way, but I got lost and very luckily found my way back to la gare, where I was able to find a taxi and pay the handsome price of 6,10€. I thought I was pretty clever, getting a ride to this unknown location for 6,10€, until the cab driver gave me a card with the company's number on it, for the ride home. Ah yes, the ride home. Hadn't really thought about that one - I had only thought about the getting-there half.

I went to Dr Suss's office where they pointed out that they had two records for me. They decided to fill out half of them and to let the Office of International Migration worry about it. Then I had my check-up, which was not quite a check-up, but more of a really stupid interview with the half-wit doctor that could have been done over the phone, which would have saved me the 6,10€ on cab fare plus the wasted 8€ for half of Harry Potter. He asked me how tall I was, how much I weigh, whether I wear glasses, and if I had any health problems. That's all. I suppose I had to come in so he could tell if I was telling the truth, but who cares? Were the answers so important that it would have made a difference if you were telling a half-truth? Perhaps if you were missing a few limbs and bleeding all over the floor, he would have deduced that you had been attacked by wolves and that, therefore, you were not in tip-top condition. Apart from that, ça servait à rien.

I decided that I would walk back to the train station, or that I would at least walk halfway there and call a taxi once I didn't know where I was going anymore. Luckily, I paid attention on the way there, so retracing my steps wasn't that difficult. I made it all the way back to the station on foot, thereby only having to pay for half of my aller-retour between the station and the doctor's office. As I walked, I ate half an apple. Then I ate the other half. Now I am just padding the number of times I can say half in this story. Anyway, I got to the station and bought an entire ticket and got on the train and had an entire compartment to myself for the whole trip from Clermont to Vichy, so things obviously were looking up at that point.

I spent yesterday bullying all of my classes about going to see Bowling for Columbine.

"We have too much homework," said the S1OLs.

"Is there a bowling alley in Vichy?" asked the S2OLs.

"If we go, will you come with us?" and "Are you taking us to the movies?" and "Are you going to pay?" asked the THOTs.

I, myself, had not yet resolved whether I wanted to see it again this week or whether, like Il faut sauver le soldat Ryan, it was too stressful to see ever again. I decided to ask Renata and Jennifer if they wanted to go to the movies. If they picked Bowling for Columbine, I would see it again and if they picked Bend It Like Beckham, then that was that. They picked the former, so off I went.

It was much more comforting to see it with other Americans. I didn't have the pressure I rather ridiculously felt the first time, thinking that as soon as the lights went up, the audience would see the hat I was wearing - flashing "AMERICAN" in big light-up neon letters - and would stone me for being The American In The Audience and for living in such a confused, violent, frightened country.

Since I wasn't sobbing my head off, I was much better able to appreciate the humor and to catch little background details, like the fact that the K-Mart woman didn't shake the hand of the boy in the wheelchair, and the fact that at Charlton Heston's Hollywood mansion, full of loaded guns around every corner, there was a children's basketball hoop.

Tra-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.

This is not a good teaching attitude. I hope the students will be rather more interested in Christmas than I am at the moment.

Thankfully, my students were interested in talking about Christmas, right down to leaving carrot sticks for the reindeer and whether or not they had bought a present for their boyfriend's mother.

Though it's been said many times, many ways, Merry Christmas to you, 1ASMS.

I need a hug.

I think one of the worst things about being lonely here is that I realize I haven't been touched in three months. Strangers will invade my personal space to kiss me on the cheek, sometimes briefly touching my shoulder in the process, but I don't have anyone I'm close to in the way I am close to my family and friends in the US. There is no one I feel comfortable hugging, there is no one to caress my hair and no one's hair to be caressed, and perhaps most importantly, there is no one whose earlobes I can fondle.

It is difficult for an American (or this American, anyway, I suppose I shouldn't generalize) to go three months without hugging someone. After a while, they start doing things like leaping towards French friends in Angers and trying to force them into goodbye hugs. The French don't do hugs, and when they are forced, it is weird and unnatural.

Anyway, that's my problem du jour. Fifteen more days till the arrivée du Pato, then let the hugging commence!

Clearly French teenagers do not want to listen to Johnny Mathis, you crackhead.

Went up to school this afternoon for my weekly Spanish class, only to find that my classmates were having their conseil de classe and their class was cancelled.

Walked home in the cold and believe I caught one. Chicken noodle soup and tea for dinner ce soir, then an early bedtime. We can fight this, as we have nothing better to do.

Señor Tails ne sait toujours pas when the Internet will be fixed, even as we approach the one-month mark. If this hadn't been ridiculous for several weeks now, I would make the observation that this is starting to get ridiculous. Perhaps we will have it as a cadeau de Noël when we get back from the break.

Fat lot of good that does me when I can't find the lyrics to Christmas carols or a recipe for (urp!) eggnog.

Here we are at the end of my week, Thursday afternoon. It has been a marked improvement over last week. Part of this is that the students are - for some mysterious reason - behaving better than they did last week. They have been paying better attention and there has been less in common than usual between my stories about my students and Jennifer's about her eight-year-olds.

But I think another important part is that I have realized that I need to chill out and communicate with the other teachers. Sometimes if a student doesn't want to learn, I need to talk to the other teachers and see if they have the same problem with the student and what they do about it. Sometimes people just don't want to learn and there isn't much you can do. Other times, you just have to find a topic that interests them. I feel much more relaxed this week and I barely even wanted to yell at the student I usually want to hit.

Du calme, ma petite. Sois Zen.

Agnès asked me to write an article for the school paper, introducing myself to the school in English. I wrote something that seemed clever in Verdana in Microsoft Word, but seeing it published in the school paper in Comic Sans, it seems extremely dorky to have written it at all, and the things I said seem really dumb. I don't know if it's the font or the fact that I suddenly realized the whole school was reading it.

Anyway, one of the things I said was that people should feel free to say "hi" or "bonjour" to me if they see me in the hall. I just passed someone I don't remember ever seeing before, who said "hello" to me, which means that he somehow recognized me as The English Assistant. He must be from one of the classes I visited at the beginning of the year, before I had my permanent schedule, because I can't imagine that my Monstrously Large Comic Sans English Article was actually read and understood by anyone.

I went to lunch at the resto gastronomique today with Christine, the prof d'allemand who is also new this year. We both have the THOTs in class (I have all of them, she only has the three who have chosen German) and wanted to see them in action.

We didn't know each other well previously, but we had a good time talking about the world and the school. We also had a good time bothering Damien, our waiter and student, by asking him questions in English and German and asking him if he knew the German and English translations for the various foods we were eating, such as:

bisque de crustacés
carré d'agneau persillé
gratin provençal
assortiment de fromage
crème brulée à la lavande

Damien was not too bothered by our linguistic teasing to offer us a tour of the kitchen after our meal was finished. I, camera-laden as always, went around snapping pictures of the kitchen and the waitstaff, because I am a dork.

I am totally going to bring everyone I know there, and tell the waiter they don't speak French - even if they do - so that they have to practice their English serving vocabulary. Mwah ha. Evil assistante.

I was rather disappointed in myself to have hit December and still not know the names of all of my students, but I have just added up my class lists and realized that I have 197 names to memorize. Add to that the fact that I see most of them only every two weeks, and I am actually rather proud of the names and faces I can put together.

When I went for my visite medicale for my carte de séjour two years ago, I was assigned to a Dr Robert and spent the whole time trying not to giggle. I have been assigned another doctor for my visite medicale on the 11th in Clermont-Ferrand, and I suspect I will have much the same problem with Dr Suss.

The only response so far to my request for inspiration comes from Jez, who very sensitively would like to know why I don't have any friends.

Okay, okay, that's not exactly what he suggested. I am to write on the inaccessibility of the French.

Part of the problem here, I will admit, is the inaccessibility of the srah. Srah, being someone rather uninterested in sports or music, does not have many ways to reach out to the French. She can't think of any clubs she'd like to join, as her interests lie in more solitary pursuits such as reading and the Internet. She is also not one to strike up conversations with strangers in the street and prefers sitting in a bar or café and chatting with friends until midnight to going to a boîte at midnight (also known as "bedtime" in srah-land) and getting her groove on.

There is also the fact that she is not alone. She is lucky enough to have two other Americans and the other non-French assistants who are going through many of the same things and so therefore have things in common to discuss. None of them know any French people either, so they all hang together.

This safety net of other assistants, however, is nearly as detrimental as it is helpful. Srah is not forced to meet French people because she already has friends. The other assistants are doing the same thing and are patient with her sometimes incomprehensible French because they have the same problems. With friends like that, who needs the French, who sometimes laugh or don't want to wait for a sentence to slowly form itself is srah's bouche?

Hanging around with other foreigners, even when the common language is French, is comfortable and easy. But what everyone should be doing, especially in a foreign culture, is looking for challenges and not taking the easy way out.

Vichy is a particular case. There is a small university campus in town and I am told that students study there, but they are nowhere to be seen, especially on the weekends when srah and friends do not work and can go French-hunting. They go home for the weekend and we are left with les vieux.

My second-year BTS students invited me out with them once, but I wasn't particularly glowing and charming, so I don't suppose I'll be asked again. It was one of those situations where the conversation moves too fast for me to participate, so I just listen and watch along, as though I were watching a tennis match. As a result, I only spoke when I was spoken to and was not a particularly thrilling companion.

Well, that's about all I can say on that subject. I have come to no conclusion except that EVERYTHING seems to be against me meeting the French and that I should probably spend more time hanging around the school, so that I can have conversations of a professional nature with other teachers, without the pressure of socialization.

It came up in conversation that I might like to sit in on a class while I am here, as I have nothing better to do. I chose Spanish and sat in on Friday. I learned a lot and I think it would be good for me, but it was frustrating because

a) They constructed sentences much better than I can and
b) They were interested and participating.

There is nothing more frustrating than working with students for hours and getting nothing out of them, then seeing them working well and happily in another subject. This is the lot of the English teacher, whose language is mandatory and therefore detested. In elective Spanish and German classes, the students may not pay attention or participate from time to time, but they are there because they chose to be and will at least respond when spoken to.

I envy Stefan and Andrés even more now.

Strangely enough, the vichyssois seem to have the same Christmas-decoration philosophy as Americans. Despite the fact that they don't know when Thanksgiving is, they started with the Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving, just the way we do. Spooky. Perhaps it's a coincidence or their tradition is to wait eight days after the Beaujolais Nouveau. Who knows?

De toutes les façons, Vichy is now full of light structures in the shapes of Père Noël and other tasteful things. The Place de la Poste, just down the street, has been desecrated decorated with some lovely, natural-looking silver-white potted Christmas trees with blue accents that I am forced to lucky enough to walk past several times a day.

Fire drill again!

We lost the Internet last time we had one. I had hoped that it would come back after this one. My hopes were even encouraged by seeing Señor Tails in the CDI when we came inside. Perhaps he was reconfiguring things! Perhaps everything was finally fixed!

Nope.

"Do you know when we'll have Internet again?" I asked him, my eyes full of innocent wonder and nonchalance, as though it wasn't really important and I was just wondering. This is the way you have to approach these Technology Gurus, or whatever his job title is. You mustn't be demanding or accusatory or ask things like "How in God's name does it take three weeks to get a school back online in the twentieth century in a relatively technologically advanced country?" You mustn't look directly at the Guru, but instead cast your eyes downward in a submissive way as you approach, hunched over and ready to bow down on the ground whenever he is ready to pay attention to you. You may be required to offer some kind of gift or sacrifice.

"Internet? Still don't know," he replied. So I shot him.

Our Thanksgiving à la française was surprisingly un-français this year. If it weren't for the dominant language at the table being French, one could have forgotten which side of the Atlantic we were on. We managed to scrounge up enough native American foods to enjoy ourselves and to show our friends from Germany, Colombia and England that la bouffe américaine did not consist completely of deplorable sludge like Macdo.

Cranberries were an especially difficult part of the meal to locate. The French are not particularly familiar with the fruit. When I told a class of Hôtellerie students about Thanksgiving, someone asked me how you say cranberry in French, so I wrote airelle on the board. Then another hand rose and a student asked me, "How do you say airelle in French?"

We ended up buying cranberry preserves and doctoring them with spices. I found them quite tasty. There was also turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, a tomato-corn bread pudding in place of stuffing, squash with curry and raisins, and pumpkin and apple pie for dessert.

Between all of that food and the three bottles of wine, one of cider, and digestif of homemade-by-Stefan's-uncle schnapps that we polished off, we were all quite traditionally sleepy and loath to move after the meal.

I got the afternoon off due to Veronique's absence, so I've popped into the cybercafé. Almost wrote "pooped into the cybercafé", which would be almost as funny as when one of my students said that the most popular Thanksgiving dessert was pooping pie.

I'm feeling better than I was this morning and am having some unpriced milky tea which will probably turn out to be almost as expensive as this overpriced Internet access. Soon I will be off to Renata's to celebrate Thanksgiving à la française with all of the Vichy assistants, if I can convince myself to go back out in the rain.

Today's uploaded posts begin here, for some reason.

This school is spotless and beautiful - full of flowing water and glass and natural light. What it is lacking, however, is places to hide.

I had a bit of a breakdown today. I usually want to cry around 10am on Thursdays, but I suck it up and continue with the day, which usually gets better from there. Usually.

Handily, no one told me that Veronique is absent today until I got to the classroom door. There, one of my students told me. When my students tell me that the teacher is "missing", I don't know whether to believe them or not. Apparently they had been told that I would conduct class all by myself. So I gave it a try.

What finally caused my breakdown was not that the students were particularly difficult. I've seen worse. It wasn't just when one of my students started picking on my French-spelling skills as though he could do better in English. It wasn't just that the roleplays that had worked so well with the level below them were too difficult. It wasn't just the fact that I finally gave up and let them out early because I could see we were getting nowhere.

It was the frustration that I hadn't been prepared for the situation and that no one had told me. So I went to see the vice-principal and asked her to notify me in the future if Veronique was going to be absent, voice cracking all the while. I managed to get up the stairs to the teachers' area and into the teachers' restroom before the waterworks started.

Srah? Deal with a frustrating situation by bursting into tears? Quelle surprise!

I managed to calm myself down a bit, and realized I shouldn't be taking up the staff bathroom, so I took some deep breaths and left, but immediately went to one of the student bathrooms instead, to splash water on my face. I calmed down considerably, but on the way back to the teachers' area I ran into Danièle, who asked me what was wrong. Of course, in explaining it, I got all upset again, but she was happy to give me some time out to collect myself before teaching her class.

So then I had another hourful of monsters who weren't making any effort, but I think I managed to turn my frustration into the air of disgusted superiority typical of French teachers, rather than being the weak little American assistant who bursts out in tears when you don't know what a turkey is.

So I am spending my "Planning Period" (a time when the teachers can come and consult me... cleverly scheduled during a time when all of the English teachers are in class) surfing the Encarta encyclopedia instead. Here are the fascinating things I've found:

I already knew about Iggy Pop, but apparently 1976 Nobel Prize (Physics) winner Samuel Chao Chung Ting was also born in Ann Arbor.

There is a place in Provence (Vaucluse, to be specific) called Le plateau d'Albion, where the French had underground missile silos, but apparently don't anymore. I'm a little disappointed.

The 1990 population of Vichy was 27,714 but the population of the agglomération (including Vichy, Cusset, Bellerive-sur-Allier, etc) was 61,566.

Valéry Larbaud was a writer born in Vichy in 1881. He was also well-known for translating James Joyce, William Faulkner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Walt Whitman into French. He became aphasian in 1935.

The things you learn when THERE'S NO INTERNET!

The teachers have access to two photocopiers and one risograph. Whatever a risograph is. It seems like a photocopier to me, except that you can only copy sheets of paper and not books and things. We are only supposed to use the risograph when we need 30+ copies.

One of the photocopiers is en panne at the moment, so we're down to one. With all the humidity in the air, it is impossible to get more than 5 copies at a time from this one, because the paper sticks together and jams. So into the photocopier I go, while everyone else seems to just abandon their plans and leave the copier flashing SERRAGE. Once again, I seem to be regarded as a techno-whiz.

I keep wanting to tell people I know all about photocopier paper jams because I spent several summers as a photocopieuse, but I hesitate because I suspect that would mean that I was an actual Xerox machine. So I just smile and pick crumpled sheets out of the innards.

Last night I went to Renata's for the Sunday Night Movie but ended up eating Fresh Homemade Spaetzle made by a Real Live German with a Real Live Dead Inanimate Spaetzle Press. I spent the rest of the evening playing Euchre very badly, gorging myself on Halloween candy and chattering away in invented tongues with My Fellow Americans. So no Movie of the Week Review for you. I know you're disappointed.

I have a serious problem with people who are not named Gustav.

When I was in Grenoble, there was a Swede in my class named Gustav, who was very pale and blue-eyed with white-blond hair.

When I met this year's French assistant at Albion, I kept wanting to call him Gustav as well, because in addition to his fair hair and blue eyes, his name is Gauthier. Gustav, Gauthier. Close enough.

Now I have a student with a Scandinavian last name and pale hair and blue eyes, but who insists on being called Guillaume rather than Gustav.

What is with this barrage of G-named blond people? I suspect that they're all Gustavs in disguise, calling themselves by other similar names just to confuse me.

... you have to hold two classes hostage after the bell in order to get everyone to participate in the "What I'm Thankful For" discussion.

I think everyone hates me. At the moment, I couldn't care less.

Well, that was a terrific waste of an hour and a half. How sad that I have nothing better to do.

Three classes in a row. The first one won't behave and this frustrates me and makes me want to cry and depresses me for the rest of the morning, so that I am in a bad mood for the other classes. Although I may not show it - because I'm frustrated when I arrive - I love you, S1HOTs, because you are the pick-me-up that gets me through the morning. If it weren't for you, I would be hiding in a staircase somewhere, crying and babbling in franglais and losing my mind. Thank you for participating.

Today I had lunch with Agnès, Marie-Claude (a math teacher at Valéry Larbaud and friend of Agnès') and Claudine, a friend of theirs who teaches at Presles. This would not have been blog-worthy, except that we ate at the "resto gastro", the fancy restaurant in the school where Valéry Larbaud's hôtellerie sections get to practice their art.

Today it was the Première Adaps' turn to serve, so I was surrounded by the class I met last Thursday, looking serious and professional. How scary.

It was an incredibly enormous meal of:

gnocchi à la Parisienne
truite meunière
pommes à l'anglaise et petits legumes tournés
assortiment de fromage
choux à la crème

not to mention apéritifs, wine and coffee.

Our server was Fabien, who seems to be more mischievous and bavard in class and had an unnervingly professional concentration and reserve... at least until we were the only diners left and he started teasing me for not finishing my cheese.

Everything was delicious and enormous and incredibly fancy, with millions of forks to choose from and Fabien to pour the wine and filet the trout at the table. Very enjoyable. If you find yourself in Vichy, do try the Restaurant Gastronomique du lycée Valéry Larbaud!

During all of the alarm-hullaballoo, j'ai revu the guy who helped me find my missing class last Thursday.

It was my last class of the day, the last class in all of my schedule that I hadn't seen. I hadn't asked Véronique for the room number, but most English classes are in the language area of the school. I wandered up and down the halls, but I couldn't find her. So I went to the acceuil and asked them if they knew where Véronique was at this time. They sent me to Mme Laval, the proviseur adjoint, who looked up Véronique's schedule and discovered that she did not have a room number down for that hour. So she sent me to the vie scolaire, where I met the vie scolaire man, who took me on a grand tour of the lycée, because we couldn't find the class anywhere we would have expected to find it.

As we wandered around the school, Vie Scolaire Man asked me where I was from. I told him I was from Michigan, and he said "Michigan. It's in the North? With the Great Lakes? Oh, and Detroit, too. The car capital. Home of Ford!" I was everso happy. If only my students could retain that much information about Michigan!

Onomatopoeia, here we come.

I was sitting at my computer post in the CDI when my computer - and all those around it - suddenly went *glub*. For some reason the lights in the CDI had been off all afternoon anyway, so we didn't realize that all of the power had gone out. We all looked at each other, confused and accusatory, then looked out the window and noticed what had happened.

Then the delightful sound started. *MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH*, went the alarm. Luckily it was a bit muffled from inside the CDI, but as we sat at our computers, waiting for them to rallumer, people would open and close the doors, trying to see what was going on in the hallway, creating a sort of MEEeeeeeeeeeeeEEEeeeeeeEEEeeeee effect.

No one rushed outside and I later learned that it was because this alarm was not the normal fire drill bell, but one that the students had never heard before - some kind of burglar alarm thing. We sat in the CDI for a while, but when we saw other students filing outside, we... sat in the CDI for a while more. The general feeling I got from my fellow CDIers was Burning up is fine - at least we'd be warmer than those poor suckers out there.

Finally I left, more because I wanted to see what was going on than anything else. I stood around in the cold a while and gravitated towards a group of teachers who I knew from sight but had never talked to. I was thus very happy when I found English teachers, because I actually knew them to talk to.

People started gravitating back indoors, even though the alarm was still going off. I found another group of teachers and administrators I sort of knew and stood around and listened while they talked. Finally the lights came on and I decided I might as well go back to the CDI.

So here I am. What a great story. The network is back up, but I can't get anywhere on the Internet. La la. This would be a good time to write a grad school essay if one were motivated to do such a thing.

I have been something of a bulimic sleeper of late.

Ew. I just pictured that and feel the need to clarify that I have not been forcing myself to throw up in my sleep. Ew.

Anyway, my point was that I have been binging and purging on sleep - getting lots one night and little the next. For example, I went to Renata's Sunday night to watch Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves dubbed into French on TV, then we talked and giggled until after midnight. Then when I got home, my family called, so I talked to them until after 2am. Then I read for a while, and I finally got to sleep sometime closer to 3:00.

I was awakened the next morning at 8am when Alex called me and I decided not to go back to sleep because I had groceries to buy. Then Renata, Jennifer and I went for another epic hike (to St-Germain des Fossées) of at least 24km, and by the time I got back, I barely had time to make dinner before I collapsed. So last night, I slept from 8pm to 7am. It would be healthy to have a regular sleep routine. Alas, I havnae got a regular work schedule and I have all of these stupid holidays thrown in everywhere, so this is not likely.

The more I hang around the teachers here and listen to them talk and complain about the students, the more I wonder what my high school teachers had to say about me.

Probably not much - I don't think I was very remarkable or memorable. At one point during high school I went back to Scarlett with Robin to visit teachers and my 8th grade US History teacher asked Robin who her friend was.

"For every person who wants to teach there are approximately thirty people who don't want to learn--much."
- W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman

Or at least two.

... Beware of... THE BIRDS!

Around dusk, Vichy turns eerily Hitchcockian as swarms of birds take to the sky and the trees in the Parc des Sources. From far away, when you see them flying around and swarming in formations, it looks like a grey-on-blue lava lamp. Fascinated, we were drawn to them and walked in that direction, but as we got closer the sheer numbers of birds frightened us, between the deafening squawking and the threat of being shat upon. Suddenly we realized why the park's walkways are covered...

Hello to any of my students that may be visiting. Translate it if you must, and tell me you've been here. Please?

For some reason, the filters here seem to think that writing a novel is cihpargonrop, so I can't see my last post.

Speaking of school and the title of my cihpargonrop post, is anyone at this school not named Romain or Aurélie? Anyone? Bueller?

If I had a computer here to myself, to use when I wasn't at school, I would write a novel this month. I really think I would. It would be fun and time-consuming. It would be very long and very bad, with little or no plot.

Unfortunately, I am a big whiner who hasn't written anything on paper in years and who can type for days on end but whose writing hand cramps up after an hour or so. So no novel this month. I guess my adoring fans will have to hope I have a computer and no life come next November.

What does it take to lift my spirits?

A new class of yet-unseen students and "Do you have a boyfriend?" "Do you have a sister?".

The same old questions, every time. I am flattered and it makes me giggle.

For the most part, I feel better than I did last night, if only because I have lessons to give to the students. They are learning about American coffee houses today, whether they like it or not. They are doing word searches even though they are 20 years old and it doesn't make them construct their own English sentences. Too bad. I am sleep-deprived.

I did have one class this morning that really frustrated me, though, and made the sleep-deprived American consider crying when it was all over (but she had to go to another class, so there was no time for these conneries). And when I say one class that frustrated me, I mean one side of the class. And when I say one side of the class, I mean one student.

I always laughed in the orientation meetings when they told us we were strictly forbidden to hit students. Hmm.

It's dark. Time to go home, especially since I wasn't technically at work today.

I got nothing accomplished, as usual, except for all the fruitless searches, as Peter Gabriel would say.

Except I don't think PG was looking for coffee shop vocabulary on the Internet.

According to my landlady, the long-awaited sale of my building from the Mysterious Old Owner Who I Have Never Met to the Potential New Owner Who Signed My Contract should go through Friday, leading to a washer/dryer being installed in the building, the mystery of Why My Oven Doesn't Work being solved, an oven rack to go with the solution to the mystery, perhaps a new refrigerator door handle, a new desk for Jennifer, and all-around satisfaction for all.

I am not holding my breath.

The Allier river

The Spas

Le Parc des Sources

Seeing Becky in Grenoble

Someone just came into the CDI and snapped a picture of everyone sitting around the computers. I am right in the middle, lucky me. So I will be figuring prominently in the January edition of the bulletin municipal de Cusset, whatever that is. Yeah me.

Today I did a lesson on smoking for my TV2s and THOTs. It's funny how I can take the exact same text and it will turn out a completely different lesson between the different classes I use it on. The TV2s got into the text (on a Florida amendment to ban smoking in public places) and what every phrase meant, while the THOTs were much more into discussing who smoked and why they had started, and things like that. It seemed to work pretty well in both classes and made them talk, but there's really no predicting what will interest people and what won't.

Other bakery employees are falling under my spell. It was very busy tonight when I went to buy my baguette and the two salespeople finished with their customers at the same time and both turned to me. I asked the girl for a baguette and she and the boy both went to get it and playfully pushed each other in an attempt to get there first. Luckily it happened that the monsieur behind me in line wanted one too. Mwah ha ha.

It probably has more to do with intra-boulangerie sexual tension being worked out than with a particular desire to serve me, but I have chosen to be flattered. Recognizing my "usual", then fighting to give it to me. It's fun to be a regular.

I'm not quite sure what my goal was in checking out this Pocket Auvergnat phrasebook, but it dos have some interesting information on the region. For example, Mentre tres annadas terriblas, la "Bèstia" devoriguèt dròlles e dròllas dins lo caire de Saug means, for all you Pacte des loups fans, "For three terrible years, the Gévaudan Beast devoured boys and girls in the area of Saugue."

I have also learned that lai a mai de vint vialas d'aigas en Auvèrnhe and the ever useful Podria 'nar gitar las vachas ame vosautres?

These are all lovely phrases, but I'm not sure that I'd find anyone to use them on, even if I could handle the prononciation. Vichy, although now in the Auvergne political region, is far enough north that it was originally inside the former region of Bourbonnais rather than the traditional Auvergne boundary. It may be possible to scrape up an old guy playing pétanque in southern Auvergne who can still spak a bit and there's an immersion school in Aurillac, I believe, but a vichyssois on the street would probably run away if I asked them Parlatz auvernhat?

Yesterday Renata, Jennifer, Rachel (the English assistant) and I rented a car to see The Bits of Auvergne You Can't See By Train. Our destination was the Puy-de-Dôme, one of Auvergne's inactive volcanoes, but we took the scenic route and stopped at many other out-of-the-way places while we were at it.

Our first brief stop was at St-Nectaire, home of the cheese of the same name, which is one of the cheeses of Auvergne (along with Cantal and Bleu d'Auvergne) and is Stefan's personal favorite. St-Nectaire is another spa town which, despite being hors saison, was quite touristy-looking.

We pushed on and stopped at the Lac Chambon. It makes me laugh a bit to see French lakes and compare them with lakes in Michigan, but I think there is something pretty and comforting about being able to see from one side to the other. I quacked at the ducks, our cameras went *snap snap*, and we got back into the car.

We were easily distracted along our route, so when we saw signs for the Château de Murol, we turned off to have a look. We walked up to the castle, which was not yet open, as we'd left Vichy at a little after 6:00 am. But we did see their "mini-park" of animals, including black sheep, deer, a rather territorial Shetland pony, and a Scottish Highland cow. The castle was on top of a big hill, so there were nice views of the valleys and the far-off puys.

We drove throught the valleys and the town of Mont-Dore, another spa town that didn't impress us much, and stopped at one point to see a waterfall, the cascade de Saux. From there we went back uphill and found ourselves with a great view of the Roche Tuilière and the Roche Salavoire, two craggy mountain peaks.

We went to Orcival more to find a café where we could use the bathroom (and thus avoid any public toilets that involved squatting...) than with any real interest in the town, but we had a nice wander around Orcival and into the Basilique Notre-Dame, a 12th-century church which is a site of pilgrimage for reasons I couldn't pick up anywhere. After Orcival, we decided we had better hoof it to the Puy-de-Dôme, but we did stop to get a better look at the château de Cordès, which was unfortunately closed.

We continued to the puys and parked at the bottom of the Col de Ceyssat. It was a very steep 45-minute hike to the top, which we managed to do in 35 minutes. Once my out-of-shape body recovered and I was reasonably sure that my heart wouldn't explode, the view was quite impressive. We sat on benches in the observation area and looked out onto the chaîne des puys from a height of 1465m. When we were done eating, the weather started turning for the worse. While we'd climbed up in t-shirts, we had to put our sweaters on and began to wish we hadn't left our jackets in the car. We went into the bar to have a coffee/tea/hot chocolate and wait out the weather, but it didn't improve much. By the time we climbed to the Roman temple ruins at the very top, the mountain was surrounded by thick clouds, so that it looked like the world ended there, and that everything below had disappeared. It was very impressive.

Time was ticking and we had to have the rental car back by 6:30, so we started the trek down the mountain which, at such a steep grade, was almost as difficult as going up and definitely harder on the knees;

After a discussion on such differing American/British terms as biscuits and pants while stretching back at the Col de Ceyssat, we got back into the car and attempted to find a more direct route home. We drove through many villages and small towns and were delighted and confused to see little French children in costume and, apparently, trick-or-treating. This is a relatively new event in France and I hadn't realized its popularity had spread to such an extent.

We got the car back at 6:40 but the person who was waiting for it, being a 20-something male, was not too disappointed at being kept waiting by four 20-something females.

While the train system in France is very good, there was something nice about being able to choose our own route and stop when and where we wanted, and to see the little Auvergnat villages we saw. I personally woudl not feel comfortable driving in France, but Renata seemed to have a good time behind the wheel.

In all my whinging about how I don't know how to cook (I really don't - I had to call my mom for help with hard-boiled and scrambled eggs), I forgot that there is one thing I know how to do, thanks to Baldwin: stir-fry.

So I went out and bought veggies and sauces and spices, and have come to one certain conclusion: I am - to paraphrase Ana Gasteyer as Celine Dion - the best cook... in the whole world!

No, seriously, I am very happy to have put in all of the chopping and frying effort and to have come up with something I was proud of. I decided I wanted to use curry, so I went around the kitchen alternately sniffing the curry and my other spices and sauces and often cringing, but I ended up using onion, curry, chickpeas, mushrooms, soy sauce, lemon juice, a bit of vinegar, carrots, and green peppers. I highly recommend the curry-lemon juice combination.

Mouse over for captions, if you please.

Sophie's braids, as done in Mali (and as undone in Grenoble)

Y a quoi à Vichy? (to be continued...)

School sweet school

Trip to la Grande Chartreuse

Assistants' Meeting in Clermont-Ferrand

At the library today, I borrowed a book-and-tape set for continued Spanish study, a book-free Russian tape set, a book on conversational Italian, and L'Auvergnat de poche, a recently published book of words and phrases from the native language of Auvergne. If I tried to learn them all, I would get terribly confused and my head would explode, but it's mostly just to stick my toe in a few new languages and to learn some rules for each one.

The tapes are rather old and stretched, so I may have to pick another language where they have CDs, which would be clearer and easier to understand. It's hard enough to learn Russian with nothing written down, but garbly tapes certainly aren'tt going to make it any easier.

I have been offered at least five cups of coffee/tea by at least three people since 3:30, when I sat down at this computer. I still don't know if they're trying to hit on me or make up for me having to wait. NO TEA PLEASE!

I knew I would not make it through the week without Internet access and that the reserve-in-advance free access at the library would not cut it because they have a cracked-out system that resets itself to the home page if you don't wiggle the mouse every few minutes, so that you can be typing a blog-post about Persuasion, for example, when all of a sudden you find yourself at the library home page.

Needless to say, that will not do. (And yet I said it, even thought it was needless!) So I was forced to go to Echapp, also known as Chez Nerd. I walked in and the place was packed. I took a look around and asked if there were any free computers. The guy said no and suggested that I try again in half an hour. As I turned around to leave, I heard a voice suggest "Vous voulez pas un petit café en attendant?" I went out the door and one guy who works there leaned out and repeated the offer, which I politely declined, mumbling that I had to go home or something, because I don't like coffee, I didn't want to be surrounded by nerds, and I wasn't sure of the implications of his offer. I'm not sure if he was suggesting it because I was a girl or because I was a potential customer...

When I first moved into my apartment, I realized that I was going to have to find somewhere to buy my daily bread. My first baguette vichyssoise was from Casino and was rather disappointing. The next day I went to La Mie Câline and found a baguette that was softer and less crumbly - much more to my liking.

Once I found one baguette I liked, I stopped looking, so I've been buying my baguettes there for almost a month. Today I showed up and the woman looked at me and said "Une baguette?" I have been recognized! I am a regular!

It's always been a dream of mine to be a regular somewhere - the Cheers phenomenon, where you want to go where everyone knows your name. Or at least your "usual".

In addition to being recognized, the baguette she sold me was just out of the oven and still warm. Mmmmmmmmmmmm. If I could shrink myself down, I would live inside this baguette - that is how good it is.

Last night when we parted, Jennifer, Renata and I decided we should do "something" today - a "something" that might include travelling "somewhere".

When we met at the train station this morning, we deliberated on a destination and finally settled on Thiers, a 45-minute bus ride away in the Puy-de-Dôme department (63).

On a side note, I only just realized that the last two digits on French license plates refer to the department the car is from - thus cars from Vichy have a 03 for Allier. Now I like to look out for cars from other departments and am hunting for 38s (Isère, Grenoble's department). Now back to the topic at hand...

So we took the bus to Thiers. Along the way we saw corn, cows, and the cute little town of St-Yorre. We arrived at the bus/train station of Thiers, which seems to be famous for three things: being medieval, being built on a hill, and knives.

Being medieval was interesting because there were narrow streets and old buildings with big beams on the outside. Do not ask me what that architectural style is called - I am very likely to describe it as "old, with big beams on the outside." So I hope you can picture it. There were narrow streets with tall buildings on either side, little tunnels and staircases all over, and it was very old and quaint.

Being built on a hill meant that we did a lot of climbing and descending. Climbing sounded like this: ergh ugh hmph. Descending sounded like this: thump thump thump, as we stomped down the street. We went up and down and up and down, not only in the old medieval part of the city, but down to the river, across the bridge, and up the other side a few times. There were some lovely views to be seen and photographed.

Then we come to knives. Thiers' claim to fame is their knife factories, which all seem to be deserted. But there are still plenty of knives made somewhere around, because there are precisely one billion knife stores in Thiers. All of this made me think, all day long, of the great thespian Rob Schneider, when in that great dramatic work Surf Ninjas, he participated in the following exchange:

"We are looking for something money can't buy. The Knives of Kwan Su."

"Knives? Money can't buy knives? So, I walk into a knife store and I tell the clerk, 'Here's a million dollars, can I buy a knife?' and the clerk says, 'NO! Money can't buy knives.'"

Renata bought some knives (who says money can't buy knives) and the chatty knife-selling man talked to us and asked us what we were doing here and all. He thought I was French at first, but later precised that I had *presque* pas d'accent, accenting the presque. Oh well, it's a compliment anyway.

Perhaps more adventures in Auvergne shall follow later in the week.

Renata, Jennifer and I went out last night. First we roamed the streets for a while, trying to find somewhere new to go. We didn't find anything open because, after all, it was Saturday night. So we ended up back at Le Comptoir, where we always end up when we can't find anywhere else to go.

Conversation, as usual, turned to Reasons Why We Are Going To Be Deported and Dressing The Boys In Women's Clothing, which both led to hysterical laughter. We will soon be known all over Vichy as the girls who sit down, order one drink, and spend hours speaking English and laughing loudly and hysterically.

Reasons We Are Going To Be Deported began when we went to the crèperie and, after hours of deliberation, Renata only ordered a tea. We decided that the crèperie would start a campaign to have her banned from all fo the restaurants in Vichy and eventually deported. Now every time we do something ridiculously American, or anything to annoy waitstaff, we suspect that the Deportation Police are after us.

In Dressing The Boys In Women's Clothing, The Boys refers to Renata's housemates. She lives in an apartment at her lycée with the German and Spanish assistants - a sort of cross between an auberge espagnole and Three's Company. The Boys don't know it yet, but whenever the topic of Halloween (or St Patrick's Day, or April Fool's Day, or Arbor Day...) comes up, we try to come up with ways to get dresses on them.

We retired to Renata's apartment, where I got to meet the elusive Stefan and imagine him in a skirt, and giggled we hysterically well into the night.

I went out to faire la fête with my 2nd year BTS Optics students tonight. First we went to Sylvie's apartment to make crèpes and play with her cat. Sylvie is from Vizille, one of the suburbs of Grenoble, and offered me a ride there when I need one. Her cat is an enormous, long-haired show cat named Riki-Tiki-Tavi. Marion spent all evening pointing out reasons why Riki-Tiki-Tavi is con. After crèpes, most of the class showed up and we went to Les Fous du Roy, a local night club.

It was pretty quiet when we got there, but after a while, they played music from The Full Monty and these three guys got up on the bar and stripped. Three nasty scary guys. We thought they whould stop when they took their shirts off. We thought they would stop when they took their pants off. We thought they would at least stay turned around when they pulled their underwear down. It felt like that song would never end.

Our group started dancing, but I didn't know any of the music and it takes an effort to make me dance in public even if I do know it. Finally Patrick pulled me out onto the floor to dance to the frighteningly Axé Bahia-like song that is all the rage in France at the moment. I stayed out there for a good part of the night, despite the nasty 30-year-old men from the country who had apparently come into town for a little vichyssoise action. They would dance with you whether you wanted to or not, and when our group was dancing in a circle, they would invade it. Then the rather drunk Patrick would stand in front of them and try to back them out of the circle. One of them came up to Marion when we were sitting down and started talking to her and trying to get her to come out and dance with him. I told her I was glad he'd picked her instead of me because I wouldn't have known what to say or how to refuse him - I would have just started yelling "I DON'T SPEAK FRENCH. GO AWAY, SCARY FRENCH MAN." Another member of our group was dancing with one of them, who got too close. She pushed him away and another one arrived. Finally she just yelled that she'd had enough of them and left the floor altogether.

All of this was very offensive to my American personal-space bubble. It may be because my public-dancing experience is limited to high school dances and Albion frat parties, where everyone knew each other, but touching strangers is a no-no in my book. I think, from the other students' reactions, this degree of closeness wasn't completely normal in a French discothèque either, but French men are much more aggressive to start with and the French have smaller space-bubbles than I do.

I love Jane Austen. I love Persuasion. I love sitting at home all by myself on the first day of vacation and reading Persua... wait, no.

In the cafeteria the other day, Agnès and I sat with some of the Optics students and Agnès asked them if they were having any parties to celebrate the half-term. One of them said that they were going to to something and Agnès said that they should invite me. I just sat there like the loser that I am, who has to be pushed on people because she has no friends of her own. But I tried to be positive and think they did want me, because some of them had mentioned before that I should go out with them "some time". So I gave me phone number to Aurélie at the end of class on Monday.

Now it is Wednesday, the day of la fête, and I have heard nothing. I haven't completely given up hope, but I did go out to buy bread before the boulangerie closed, which I had put off in hopes of being invited out for crèpes instead.

Maybe they'll still call. Maybe I wrote my number wrong. Maybe she lost it. Maybe the soirée crèpes was cancelled and they forgot to tell me.

Or maybe they just don't want me. I'm lonely.

Okie dokie. I'll see you after the Toussaint holiday.

Ha ha! I type that, knowing full-well that I will break down and spend the 4€ an hour at Echapp or move into the library and glom onto their computers. So see you when I have my breakdown. Leave me lots of fun comments to read when I get back!

I talked to the THOTs about Halloween today and gave them a Halloween wordsearch to do. As I made the wordsearch at the last minute today, I thought 'This is so demeaning, giving them a wordsearch. This is so second grade. They are going to be insulted.' Instead, they seemed to enjoy it quite a lot, it took the whole hour, I think they learned things, and it seemed to be a success. I really have no idea what I'm doing here.

The buses here can be significantly early, significantly late, or on time. And if they only stop at your stop once every half-hour, you never know if it's not there because it's late or because it's already come and gone early and there won't be another one for a half an hour. In other words, you never know if it's worth waiting. Grrrrr.

"What type of music do you like?" my students have asked me.

"I like lots of different kinds," I usually answer.

Which is true, as evidenced by my choices at the library's discothèque: Satie's Oeuvres pour piano, Vanessa Paradis' Bliss, Echoes of Chile, and The Marx Brothers Sing and Play.

My book selection ranged from Persuasion to A Clockwork Orange, so that's not much better.

Today is the 19th, so I've been in France for one month now. I would say it doesn't feel like a month, but it does, so I won't.

What a fascinating post.

What are my hobbies? Why thank you for asking. I enjoy sitting in the dark and watching movies, sitting in front of a computer screen and typing, or sitting down and reading a book. Anything that doesn't involve too much movement or socialization is ideal, thank you.

So remind me, why am I bored and lonely?

This morning, I caught myself telling my class that my sister has 18 years old. Their literally-translated-from-French English is affecting me too. I'm pretty sure there's no hope for me and I will come back in April unable to communicate in my native language. Or French, for that matter.

The Toussaint vacation is approaching (much more quickly than I'd realized, actually) and Jennifer is making amazing, fantastic, 700€ plans to travel around Spain. Much as I would have loved to accompany her, I don't want to spend 700€ on a trip before I even get my first 700€ paycheck (à la Spain was good, but now I have to starve for a month). Plus, I really don't feel like going anywhere. I know I'll regret it when I have no classes to go to, no Internet access, and everyone's gone, but staying home is so cheap and comfortable. I am a big lazy-ass.

I heard the announcement for the train to Paris as I was waiting for my train to Lyon, in Vichy. The announcement was in French, then repeated in English and in German. What a cosmopolitan little station! I was everso proud.

Speaking of train announcements, why does it seem to be the same voice in every station in France? I can't imagine it's a recording, because there are so many variations on what she has to say - train numbers, which one's late and by how much, etc. I've decided to imagine that the woman sits in SNCF headquarters in Paris and receives messages from the individual stations. Then she presses the "Vichy" button and says whatever the gare de Vichy told her to say. The problem with this theory is that she would never have time to eat or sleep.

My weekend this week begins now, at lunchtime on Thursday. Lucky girl! I'm sure I'll have loads to blog on Monday, after my adventures with the Freshies in Grenoble. I'm planning on indirectly telling them they're a bunch of alcoholics. Ha ha. This weekend is also when I'll be seeing the first film from the Club Cinéma, of which I am now a card-carrying member.

I went to the public library yesterday to get a card and feed my voracious hunger for the written word. I am out of control. I will eat read two a night. I need to get started on French ones, because that will slow me down. So I have Foreign Exchanges in honor of me, Northanger Abbey in honor of Becky, and The Pyramid in honor of Piggy and his ass-mar.

It's strangely deserted at school today. This was not expected to be a big strike, and it isn't as big here as in other schools, but there are still quite a few profs who aren't here, including two of the three I have classes with today. Then all of the students have stayed at home, "in sympathy for the teachers" but probably really to have a day off of school.

I've decided I like it. It's different from the everyday grind - an adventure. The cafeteria staff are en grève too, so we have to fend for ourselves. And, as an added advantage, I don't have to go to any of my classes this afternoon, so I can leave early for Grenoble to see Becky and the other Freshies.

"Why yes," said the woman at France Télécom, "Your phone is possessed by Satan."

Actually, she didn't say that because I didn't offer my theory on the situation. But it was the phone that was the problem (this time) so they replaced it and I'm all set. Woot, as all those crazy Internet kids say.

Question: Does it make more sense to wait 30 minutes for the bus or to walk home in 25?

Answer: Depends on your shoes and whether or not you have a life.

I think I have convinced an entire class of future hotel/restaurant managers that one of my grandmothers was a spy when the Americans fought the Soviets in WWII, and the other was born in the Netherlands and founded the War Brides Association. Oops.

I was sitting here, looking over students' papers when all of a sudden, my supposedly-not-working phone started wildly beeping. I can't find any way to stop it, short of unplugging it from the line, so I eventually had to do that. I think it is possessed by the devil, and that is exactly what I'm going to say to France Télécom when I go for my daily visit to their office. I went outside to see if someone was working on the line and that's why it suddenly came to life, but no one was there. They're heeeeeeeeeeere...

I actually get to observe a class! I am sitting in on the first-year BTS Optique class, trying to learn names and faces. One of the faces is called Romain, just like three of the students in the Terminale BEP Ventes class I had at 9:00.

I found Danièle at 9:00 and she sent me to another room with half of the class, the Groupe N° 1. Luckily I had come up with a list of questions to ask in case I was abandoned with a group of students and had nothing prepared. Which I was.

I had two students who wanted to answer all of the questions, one falling asleep, several who would answer if directly asked, and two who I suspected all hour were making fun of me. I got a bit scared at the end that I would run out of questions, but I got sidetracked on teaching the English names for astrological signs and managed to last until the end.

I had never even met anyone named Romain, but that group alone had three, plus two Pierres! As long as they don't move, I may be able to remember some names. But I'm sure the classes I have at the end of the week won't be so lucky.

The repairman finally showed up at two and took a look at the wires, which are a complete mess and will have to be redone. But the people who do that don't work on Saturdays, so France Télécom will call me to set up a time when they can come.

Isn't that charming? I do so love it when my chums from France Télécom come to visit. Perhaps I'll have to bake them some muffins.

Dear France Télécom,

I hate you with all of my heart and soul. You told me my land line would work on Tuesday and gave me a number to call if it didn't, which made me suspect that it wouldn't. And, of course, it didn't. I called the number on Tuesday and you told me to stay home Friday afternoon between 3:30 and 5:00 because someone would come by to look at it.

I came home at 3:00 on Friday to find that you'd left a card, saying that you'd been there Thursday at 4:30 and - surprise! - no one was there. I called the number on the card, but it didn't work. Of course, because it would be too difficult for the phone company to have a phone number that worked.

So I had to go to the France Télécom office and wait in line for an hour, with a stupid old man cutting in line in front of me (but of course I couldn't dash in front of him because he was old). Then I talked to the conseillière, who told me that someone would come by late Saturday morning.

I have been trapped in my apartment all morning, waiting for you to come, France Télécom. I am afraid that if I go out and buy bread, you will come while I'm gone and I will miss you again. I can't call and see when you're coming because the number I was given only works from a France Télécom phone and mine doesn't work, which is why you're coming in the first place.

So despite the fact that it is 12:20 and technically no longer the morning and you are probably on your lunch break, I will just sit here, hungry and bored, and wait for you to arrive. Thank you. It's been a pleasure doing business with you.

I was volunteered as a cobaye to the BTS Optique students who are in an alternating work/study program. They have all of the equipment in the school, so they gave me an eye test.

I started out trying to answer in English, but I gave up when I was reading the eye-chart letters too fast for them to translate. All in all, it was the most amusing eye test I've ever had, because the five students testing me would argue over which step came next and what the various results meant. I, meanwhile, was trapped behind the enormous goggle-machine and couldn't see anything because the eyeholes were closed. Then they would shoot eye-related questions at me in French and I would understand nothing. They're a fun bunch, but I hope they'll have some more training before they're let loose as opticians!

My freshman year, our First Year Seminar took a trip to France as part of our studies on cultural understanding and the relationship between Albion and France. Ours was the first year, but now my sister is in the same First Year Seminar and is on her way to France as I write this.

No one from Albion is studying abroad in France this year. It probably has something to do with Dianne and Emmanuel's back-to-back sabbatical years, so there was no one to encourage this year's group to go there. Because Albion has no students studying abroad in France, I am the designated visitee, but I have to go to Paris or Grenoble to be visited. I'm fine with that, if they'll take me out to dinner! I was visited in 2000, too, while studying in Grenoble, so I just have to repeat my role and tell them about differences I've found between France and the U.S., all of which I've lifted from French or Foe? (shhh... don't tell). I am looking forward to seeing Becky and the other happy shiny freshmen. I hope they have fun.

I've decided I'm coming down with something and I fear it may be la crève, which has been going around school all week. So I will just hole up and nap and have hot tea and clementines all day so I can be healthy for my first day of Real Classes.

On a positive note, while waiting for dinner time to roll around, I finally got bored enough to sit down and sort out my graduate school applications. Half of it will be off to Rackham as soon as I get to La Poste, and all that's left to do is the essay.

Thankfully Mr Colas, the harried Technology Maestro at the school, says he'll be setting me up a user ID next week. Then I'll have access to the school's intranet diskspace, so I won't have to do the whole thing in one sitting.

I start my official schedule on Monday at 9am with Danièle and the TV2s (17-year-old Sales students). I haven't been able to find Danièle since I got my schedule, so I hope I'm not supposed to prepare anything.

I would explain the different groups to you, but despite the explanations of Annie and Agnès, I'm not sure I get it myself. As I've understood it, first there are the BEP students, who are in a two-year program. They can stop there and work, or they can do a one-year Adaptation class followed by the BAC Terminale class, so that they will have the ever-coveted baccalauréat (high school diploma). Then I think they can go to the university or can do a BTS, a two-year technical degree. I have students in Terminale BEP, Adaptation, Terminale BAC, and both years of BTS. I am so confused, but I guess as long as I'm teaching them English, it doesn't really matter whether I know where they came from or where they're going.

One of my BTS Optique students just sat down next to me here in the library computer lab and we had a conversation in English. He thinks it will be very interesting to learn English from a native English speaker. It makes me happy when people are interested in learning.

I keep speaking to students in French when they come into the library computer lab. Bad srah. I am not supposed to be able to speak French. Why don't they just hire people who actually don't?

I have to go home and eat lunch. Perhaps I'll come back and bother you some more in the afternoon, if I feel like hoofing it back up here in this crappy weather. If you find articles or ads in English related to the fields of optics, healthcare, hospitality, or restaurants, let me know, because those are the groups I've been assigned to.

There may or may not be a teachers' strike on the 17th. I may or may not work. The school may or may not be closed. I know none of this right now. Sigh. The bus strike continues...

Especially after watching La Memoire dans la peau, this just seems like a movie to me. But it must be very scary for the people there.

As I walked home from the movie last night, I felt super-aware of my surroundings, afraid that CIA agents were going to jump out and grab me or just take sniper shots at me from the roof. Yes, because of course, I am a supersecret spy and the CIA is going to take an interest in me.

What I should be more concerned about is normal criminals, I guess. Vichy, as you may have heard, is full of old people. Old people like to get their rest. So Vichy shuts down in the evenings and goes to sleep. Walking home from the movies, the streets are sometimes deserted - or almost deserted with a few suspicious-looking (everyone looks suspicious in the dark) men wandering around. So I hurried home, watching the rooftops and dark doorways, and had Renata and Rachel call me to make sure they got home alright.

On another supersecret spy note, last night we saw a preview for Sorry, You're Not Supposed to Die Until Tomorrow or whatever the new James Bond flick is. Pierce Brosnan looks really old. It's time for him to be replaced by the lovely Clive Owen.

Renata and Rachel tell me that they spent their first week observing as the teachers taught, so that they knew the students' level of English and what they're studying in class. Now today they have their first lesson, where they will introduce themselves to the class.

My school seems to have it all backwards. I've already introduced myself and they're going to let me loose on Monday with no idea what the students are supposed to be learning about...

I HATE DUBBED MOVIES.

That said, there isn't much else to do around here. Tuesday night I saw Le Pianiste with Agnès and Sigrid and last night I was La Memoire dans la peau with Renata and Rachel.

Le Pianiste was good, in a touching-war-movie sort of way. True stories often seem more fake to me than fiction does and there were a lot of violent scenes with people getting shot in the head. But I suppose it did add something to the genre and it was rather beautiful with the music and all, so I enjoyed it. There were times, however, when I found myself reading the characters' lips and getting sidetracked by trying to figure out what they were saying in the original English language track.

La Memoire dans la peau was better than I expected. There was a lot of fighting and action, but there was a lot of travelling, so there was some nice European scenery. During the car chase in Paris, I found myself more concerned for the other drivers than for Bourne. I didn't want him to accidentally kill French people.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but one of the things I find interesting about le lycée Valéry Larbaud is that it has some boarding students. I don't know what the percentage is, but there are quite a few of them. They arrive with their enormous duffel bags on Monday and stay in the boarding area at the back of the school until Friday, when they take the bus or the train back home again. I didn't even know that this existed in France before I came here. So you see, at least this year will be an educational experience for me, if not for the students.

This past weekend, Jennifer, Renata and I were talking about people's reactions when we told them we were going to Vichy. If people had heard of it at all, it was because of its World War II history. But even then, I got an email from an assistant in the Nancy-Metz académie, saying how we must be right near each other because he was teaching in Forbach, on the French-German border.

What do you know about Vichy?

Agnès and I went this afternoon to LeClerc, the big Meijers-style supermarket in Bellerive. She noticed that in the yogurt aisle, they were carrying cottage cheese (marketed under the very French name of "cottage cheese") and said that it was the first time she had seen it in France. Now we just need to get fromage blanc going in the other direction.

Have I told you I love Petits Suisses?

Any recipes or cooking advice for a beginner in the world of the culinary arts can be sent here. Nothing fancy, please - I've only just mastered boiling pasta.

The word "culinary" reminds me that in the staff list of the handbook that I got from Valéry Larbaud, the yet unnamed Hôtellerie et Technologie Culinaire teacher was referred to as Mr X HOT CUL. I giggled.

My life is so rich and full of excitement. I am actually rather pleased about the construction that is going on at Monoprix, my local supermarket. They are redoing everything, it seems, because every time I go there (which is every day - I have a rich and exciting life and nothing better to do than go to Monoprix every day), everything has moved. It's actually rather impressive how impossible they've made it to find things from one day to the next. Yesterday I was lucky enough to be blocked in while they were dragging a whole shelf to a new location.

It may sound like I'm complaining here, but I'm not. The more time it takes me to do my grocery shopping, the less time I have to fill. I am BORED.

Just a few days ago, I was saying that I had quite enough to do and my days were full enough that I didn't get bored and didn't need to look for new activities. That was because I had been at the lycée all day long and had come home to do my errands in the evening. Now I'm running out of errands, running out of money (so shopping isn't an option and neither is surfing the Internet, at 4€/hour at Echapp), and the lycée told me that since I've already observed for four days, I didn't need to come in again until my regular schedule starts on Monday. I've been away from the school for six hours now and I'm already bored. Tomorrow, even though I'm not working, I'm going to go to school to use the computers and talk to the teachers. I need something to do...

Seen on the streets of Vichy: a street performer/mime-type-thingy-person performing to the theme music from Yogi Bear an act which had absolutely nothing to do with Yogi Bear.

Ineffective yhpargonrop filters.

This school has some kind of idiotic filters set up, which tell me that the JohnHannah.net Career page and the Television Without Pity MDs recap have yhpargonrop on them, so I can't see them. On the other hand, I sat down at a computer yesterday with a folder called ""tludA" with an icon of a dekan woman. Lovely.

Sometimes when we have the personal introduction period in class here, I find myself babbling about things no one cares about, or about things they didn't need to know. I really don't know where these things come from. I have classes that think I'm obsessed with Petits Suisses (I am, but why did I need to share?) and mustard (ditto - I swear, I don't just eat it out of the jar), or who I told that if you are speeding in Ohio with Michigan license plates, you're more likely to be pulled over than an Ohioan.

Then there are classes who, through some mistake or omission, think that I am a teetotaler and that I come from Detroit.

Babble babble babble. Maybe when I'm comfortable with them, I can relax and try to sound like the normal person I'm not.

I get mostly the same questions over and over again as I introduce myself to my classes, so I've had some practice answering those... it's the new ones that throw me out of whack. Do I like waterpolo? I certainly wasn't expecting that!

No, actually, my feet are a little better today. 6€ better, but better. I woke up at 7:44 this morning. For my 8:00 class. I got dressed in five minutes and took a taxi to school and was still almost 10 minutes late so I arrived huffing and puffing and sweating and unshowered, then realized I had forgotten to put my contacts in and was wearing my glasses. So I survived the 2POLs, who didn't have as many questions as I would have liked, then I got a free hour to comb my hair, put in contacts, and blog. Especially blog. Hello. The beep is beeping (they have an electronic bell here) so I should go to my next class. Bye bye.

I have just read in my guidebook that the country of Andorra is 25km from north to south. We could have walked across a whole country yesterday! I am fascinated.

One of the students asked me today if I was going to celebrate Halloween with the other American assistants. I think they have an overblown image of the importance of Halloween here. When I was in Grenoble, Halloween came and went and I thought 'I suppose I should have made an effort'. For me, Halloween can be passed over if you're not in the homeland. Halloween is really all about costumes and trick-or-treating, both of which are hard to incorporate into an adopted culture.

What will be difficult for me is missing out on Thanksgiving. Even in Grenoble, we had a makeshift Thanksgiving à la française. I don't know about any grande echelle Thanksgiving plans for assistants, so I guess I'll have to buy some smoked turkey slices and try to find some yams to put Chamallows on. Yum.

French handwriting, even at its neatest, can still be a bit difficult for me to decipher. Which explains why, while reading paragraphs written by Danièle's class about my self-introduction, I thought someone said I had lice.

The classes are starting to melt together. It will probably be better once I have my schedule and I know which classes will be "mine", and once I start to actually learn people's names. For now, I can't tell the difference between THOT, S2HOT and 1AHOT or between 1SMS and 1ASMS or 2POL and S2OL. Maybe no one knows the difference. Maybe I will never know. For now I just spend the days completely confused, waiting for people to tell me where to go and what to say to the class. I hope I get some more guidance before they let me loose.

I'm not a Good American. I'm sorry. I'm not going to take the easy way out, and I'm not going to wave my little flag. I'm going to tell the truth, even when trying to explain, slowly and clearly, to my students. In the end, I sound negative and like I have nothing to do but complain about my country, but I think they should know the real me, and not the easier-to-explain version of the world.

I don't like Señor Arbusto, I don't think we should go to war, I think the United States did not react in the way I'd hoped after September 11, I don't agree with the ages we have set for things like drivers' licenses, alcohol, cigarettes, and voting, and I like the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel. So I'm not going to take the easy way out and pretend any differently just because it's easier to explain.

So there. That said, I sort of wish I could just agree, because I tend to rant and ramble and get a lot of blank stares.

When I woke up this morning, my first thought was not Hmmm, how about I walk until my feet fall off? And yet I did. I will miss those feet, as I've had them for quite a while and have grown rather attached.

Jennifer suggested last night that we go for a bike ride or a walk around the area, so we met up at 10am today. Finding no bike rental shops open, we set off on foot. We walked through Cusset and out the other side, throught a mountainous forest area that reminded me of Le pacte des loups. Every time a twig snapped, I thought it was a horrible wolf-beast coming to get me. But other than the terror and all, it was very pretty, because the road we were on (or were jumping off of, when cars came by) followed the river.

We kept on that road, waiting to come to a town where we could eat, but after 12 kilometers, it was looking pretty desolate. Finally we decided to walk 3 more kilometers to Molles, which - judging from the road signs - seemed to be a town where we could find somewhere to sit down and buy drinks to go with the sandwiches we'd brought. The other advantage was that unlike La Chapelle, which was 3.5km away, Molles was downhill. So we set off.

Yes, it was downhill. For about 1km. Then we got to climb uphill the rest of the way, tired and hungry. All of this wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't started to rain. We arrived in Molles, and then it was a question of finding somewhere, in this small town, that was open on a Sunday afternoon. We ducked into a bar and had coffee and Coke and squatted there until the rain stopped. They were quite interested to find out that three Americans had come to Molles and even moreso to learn that we had walked the 15km from Vichy to get there.

To get back, we took a more direct 10km route on bigger roads. There were more cars to dodge, but there were more cows to moo at, too. Although we've never seen it, the cows and rolling hills reminded us of our mental image of the English countryside. One of the girls remarked that we should have been wearing Jane-Austen-era clothes as we traipsed across the countryside. I thought Becky would have liked that.

I came home and had dinner and put my feet up. Ouch!

What a linguistic mess. I am absolutely forbidden to speak French in class, which is not easy when you go to class directly from the teacher's lounge, where you've been talking to the teachers in French during the recrée and the rest of the morning. My brain hurts.

I "observed" four classes today. I thought that "observing" would mean that I would "observe" classes and not be involved. Silly girl. In most of the classes, we spent a big chunk of time with me standing in front of the class and answering and asking questions.

Terminale Sciènces Médico-Sociales (TSMS): The class was very heavily female, very seventeen, and was more interested in carrying on private conversations in French than in learning about the new American assistante. So we only did the Q&A for the first ten minutes, and then they went back to their regularly scheduled studies on immigration to the US.

Seconde Sciènces Médico-Sociales (2SMS): The class was very heavily female, but was full of students in their first year of high school, who were still interested and full of questions - not old and jaded like the TSMSs. I liked them and found that with one class under my belt, I wasn't as nervous, so I could slow down my talking to make sure everyone understood. They begged me to tell them that American boys were better-looking than French ones, as they'd obviously given up on the boys at home and were looking for something better. One student asked me how I felt about September 11th, which led to me blabbering a long, complicated answer that I'm sure no one understood.

Terminale Hôtelerie (THOT): Véronique had scared me a bit, by telling me that her next class was one girl and twenty seventeen year old boys. Heh heh. She said I could run away if I wanted to, but I enjoyed it. They were a bit more excited to see the assistante than the TSMSs. When they were whispering amongst themselves at the beginning, the teacher said "She has a boyfriend", which made me giggle. They were funny and entertaining and told me about their favorite hangouts in Vichy and want to teach me to cook and want me to teach them how to bake cookies. I think that at that age, boys are more pleasant than girls. High school girls have a tendancy to be hypocritical and catty, and boys have a franchise that I appreciate.

Terminale Professionnel Commerce (TPC): Rather than introducing myself to the class, I sat in on the presentation of their year-long project: the planning of an English Day at the school, including advertising, inviting local stores to sell English products, the creation of an English menu in the school cafeteria, etc. I apologized for being American.

Or whatever.

I met with Mmes. Alléas and Messana, the outgoing concierge and incoming owner, respectively, of the building I'm living in, yesterday afternoon. Mme. Messana is still in the process of buying it, and the process is going longer than originally expected. We signed a new contract, since the one we'd signed before had the wrong address on it, which has led to no end of ennuis for me personally, since I gave the wrong address out to everyone I know and had to knock on the very scary, beware-of-dog-marked door of 35, avenue Paul Doumer, and try to explain to them what had happened and ask if they had received any of my mail.

Anyway, the mesdames filled out all kinds of forms and contracts and receipts and dated everything rather creatively so as to get me the best deal, tax- and refund-wise. They're very entertaining, even if Mme. Alléas kept repeating how lucky I was because if she'd known the deal wouldn't go through right away, she wouldn't have taken me on because she was tired of renters, and especially students, etc.

The big event, in my mind, anyway, was when Mme. Alléas went to show me the refrigerator and the handle came off in her hand. I was very glad it was her, and not me as soon as she left. They tell me Xavier (Mme Messana's son) will bring me another frigo from another one of the empty apparts soon.

So I paid, they gave me the keys, and they left. Srah was all alone.

It was very strange to be in this new, empty place all by myself. I moved my stuff over from Agnès' place in about an hour, then went grocery shopping. I am going to save the receipt from my first Big Girl Shopping Experience because I am a Big Nerd.

I went to dinner chez Agnès, visited Jennifer and Renata for a moment, then went back to my studio.

It will take some getting used to, and I will have to get into a routine before I really feel comfortable. I kept waking up in the middle of the night because I was worried that my alarm wouldn't be loud enough. But eventually I'll get settled in. Come and visit! I only know how to make soup and pasta, but there's seating for three, placemats for two, and silverware for five chez srah!

We had our orientation session this week in Clermont-Ferrand, 40 minutes from Vichy. They brought together all of the language assistantes in Auvergne to give us information about how to teach, what forms to fill out, and how to deal with difficult situations. They also expected us to socialize with our fellow assistants.

For some reason, les vichyssoises-américaines had a big problem with the socializing aspect. We had already met each other, and didn't really have much interest in bonding with people we would never see again, so we mostly hung together. We did adopt a fourth member into our clique, however, as we found Rachel, an english assistant from Birmingham, England, who is also working at the mammoth 2500-student Lycée de Presles in Cusset.

While others were bonding amongst themselves and going to the bar, we did sight-seeing and had ice cream. Just my style.

Vichy's one-and-only (that I've found, anyway) Internet café is running over with nerdtosterone. That's the only way I can think of to describe it. Upon entering their dark, dank lair, I immediately feel out of place, as I am almost always a) the only female and b) the only one not playing computer games.

The residents of Echapp sit there for hours at a time (which I know because I myself am there for hours at a time), spending Euro after Euro (the place is rather expensive), playing violent computer games. One of the games involves shooting people on a farm or something. I sit there, surfing away, surrounded by mooing and gunshots and the defeated screams of the players who have accidentally shotten each other.

Today I was wasting time before my train by wandering around the pedestrianiwed shopping area of Vichy and heard English. I hid on the other side of the postcard rack and listened, but they weren't talking anymore. I followed them down the street and I think I freaked them out by the way I was staring. I finally approached them (I wasn't going to, but I thought I should explain why I was being so creepy) and found out that they were Irish, Swedish, German, etc., that they were (for reasons I didn't ask about) staying in a castle in the middle of nowhere, and that they had come to Vichy for a visit to the Big City. I thought that was amusing because most of the vichyssois I've met leave Vichy for a taste of city-living.

My work schedule has yet to be worked out, but I know that it will be twelve hours a week, which they will try to fit into three days a week. Thus, I have 156 hours a week left to fill. If you want une carte postale vichyssoise, email me your address. I imagine I will be doing a lot of writing.

Yesterday I went to a meeting of the Club Cinéma with Agnès. At one point, when they were talking about recruiting young people from the Pôle Lardy and the CAVILAM, Agnès pointed out that une assistante américaine had come to the meeting of her own free will, and there must be other young people who would be interested.

So after the meeting, hordes of people came up to talk to me and find out where I was from and what I was doing in Vichy. Americans are much rarer here than in Grenoble. The Vice-President of the club, who is very entertaining, said I had almost no accent. This was reassuring, because I've been feeling like a stumbling beginner ever since I got here, spitting out horribly accented, grammatically incorrect sentence fragments. However, I must admit that he was basing this on the phrase I've had plenty of experience with, because I've so often had to explain my status in France: "Je suis assistante d'anglais au lycée Valery Larbaud à Cusset." I have gotten very good at parroting this out to people.

Today I opened a bank account, had lunch with Renata, applied for my carte de sejour, and bought socks (I have way too many, but with the whole thinking-I'd-be-wearing-skirts thing, I didn't bring enough. If I can go a while longer without doing laundry, that's good, because I don't have time right now).

I thought it would take more than one evening, but I typed up all of the posts I had written down in my notebook in my hotel room. Hurrah. And it's a good day, for many reasons.

1) I have an apartment. I had called Mme Alléas, who had Mme Massena call me, and I really had no idea what was going on. But I had a meeting with Mme Massena today and she showed me one of 15 apartments she has to rent in the Villa Montcalm, which she just bought from Mme Alléas, I guess. It's cheaper than the other one, the utilities are included in the price, and it has an oven, so that's good enough for me! I move in next week and Agnès is letting me store my suitcases in her apartment until then.

2) I found the other Americans. I checked my voicemail this morning and had three messages: two from Jennifer and one from Renata. Just yesterday I had despaired of ever finding them, and here I am, getting in touch with them both on the same day. I spent a few hours with Jennifer this afternoon and am having lunch with the two of them tomorrow.

3) I found an Internet café. Actually, Jennifer found it. Hooray! No one I had talked to knew anything about a cybercafé in Vichy, but here it is, with its ten posts (nothing, compared to Neptune!)

4) I might be able to take Spanish classes. Jennifer and I went to the CAVILAM, a language institute in Vichy. They specialize in teaching French to foreigners, then in teaching English to the French, but they do have a few classes in other languages. I have until the week of the 7th to figure out if I want to spend 211€ on intermediate Spanish lessons.

5) I feel somewhat settled. Now I just have to get a bank account, get my carte de séjour, do my paperwork at the school, and move in. I feel like things are starting to fall into place. Whereas yesterday I was calling my mommy and sobbing in a cabine téléphonique, today I am plutôt contente de la vie.

Come to France, bored and lonely, if you're looking to lose a few pounds. Or a few inches of shoe leather for that matter. I have nothing to do so I just walk around downtown, searching the feet of passers-by for American-looking shoes.

Do you know Max? Never mind.

Another delicious gastronomic specialty of the Auvergne is... beef tongue. I am in a "Tex-Mex/Français" restaurant where that is the plat du jour. I am having a steak-frites instead.

I finally got to visit an apartment today. This one was through an agency, Immo Vichy. The Immo Vichy woman showed me the apartment, which was a delightful studio (read: kitchen in the bedroom) with construction work going on outside, no closet space, no linens, and no oven, all for the delightful price of 250€, which of course does not include tax or utilities. I told her I'd call her.

I got an email from one of the other American assistants in the Vichy agglomeration, telling me her phone number and address and saying she was lonely and had an apartment. Unfortunately, it's too good to be true, as the number she gave me doesn't work and the buzzer outside the place she gave me the address of doesn't have her name on it yet, so I don't know which buzzer is hers.

I'll try again tomorrow, but it's very frustrating. I'm cold and tired and very very lonely (despite Agnès, one of the English profs, who makes an effort to take me out and invite me over). I want my own place and an oven and a real telephone line I can call to the US on. I want to know if I'm going to be living on my own and need to be frugal or if I can share with Jennifer and not worry about it so much. I want an address so I can get a bank account so I can get a carte de séjour so I can get paid. I want to pass one day where I don't burst out sobbing at some point from the stress and frustration and loneliness. HELP ME.

I finally got to visit an apartment today. This one was through an agency, Immo Vichy. The Immo Vichy woman showed me the apartment, which was a delightful studio (read: kitchen in the bedroom) with construction work going on outside, no closet space, no linens, and no oven, all for the delightful price of 250€, which of course does not include tax or utilities. I told her I'd call her.

I got an email from one of the other American assistants in the Vichy agglomeration, telling me her phone number and address and saying she was lonely and had an apartment. Unfortunately, it's too good to be true, as the number she gave me doesn't work and the buzzer outside the place she gave me the address of doesn't have her name on it yet, so I don't know which buzzer is hers.

I'll try again tomorrow, but it's very frustrating. I'm cold and tired and very very lonely (despite Agnès, one of the English profs, who makes an effort to take me out and invite me over). I want my own place and an oven and a real telephone line I can call to the US on. I want to know if I'm going to be living on my own and need to be frugal or if I can share with Jennifer and not worry about it so much. I want an address so I can get a bank account so I can get a carte de séjour so I can get paid. I want to pass one day where I don't burst out sobbing at some point from the stress and frustration and loneliness. HELP ME.

Saw La Callas tonight with profs from V. Larbaud. Don't know English title. Music v. good. Film dragged when there was no music. On the whole recommended, as is soundtrack.

Saw preview for I'm With Lucy (dubbed).

Everything is taken or the contact number is wrong. Or it's too far away on the wrong side of town. I give up. I'm moving into the basement of l'Opéra. You can hear me play the organ and whine about Christine.

On a more serious note, I do get to visit one (overpriced, one-person) apartment tomorrow afternoon. It is supposed to have an oven. So maybe even if I'm a masked recluse, I can bake cookies. Odd mental picture, that.

Srah's big purchases of the day: a portable and new shoes. The shoes were for the feet that were tired of high-heeled boots and too cold for sandals. The phone was for contacting prospective apartment-renters. -Rentees? -Loaners?

The phone is red and has many features, including an alarm clock (very useful). The shoes are black bowling-style shoes and have many features, including laces (also very useful). The end.

I went to my school today to meet people and find out where it is. I walked, regretted it, and later bought new shoes. It's a very nice, modern building, built in 1997. It's full of glass and fountains and light. Do they have tornadoes in France? And more importantly, nicetomeetyoucanIuseyourcomputers?

Robin and Cheryl jokingly asked if I would get to take on a French name while I was here, the way we did in middle school language classes. Well, I'm giving it serious thought. People have a real problem with putting a C right after an M in my name. I can see why: McN doesn't seem quite pronounceable. But there is so much time-wasting and confusion, and so much attention brought to me and my name, that I give up.

Following the spelling disaster, there is the standard "C'est ecossais, non?", which often leads to the misunderstanding that I myself am Scottish. I usually just let people think that. I think my hotel owners do. But then that can lead to more problems, like the German money exchange man who saw that my middle name was Abigail. He said "That's a German name," and I replied that it was English as well. "And Spanish," I added, as an afterthought. Then he started asking his colleague if she spoke Spanish so we could speak to each other in Spanish.

I arrived, set off on the wrong street, got lost. Pulled out my bulky guidebook (the one with I AM A TOURIST written all over it in bright orange flashing letters), got to the hotel, pulled on the door, and it was locked. Why was it locked at 6:30pm? I tried again. I looked around for a doorbell for a while and thus was just standing outside the hotel when the manager came up to the door and pushed it open. Do you see our little problem there? There's really nothing to say in these situations, in English or in French.

I got my room, went upstairs and unloaded some of my crap, and started exploring, by which I mean getting lost. It was exploring until it started to rain and then it was being lost. I found my way back to the hotel, got my raincoat, and set off again, this time in search of a public telephone and some dinner.

Vichy, you are sorely lacking in three things. One is a cybercafé. Two is pedestrian crossing signals. And three is public telephones. I wandered all over, getting as lost as the last time, but finally found two. I will never be able to find my way back, however.

Then I went in search of dinner. I wanted something more than a sandwich, but that necessitated a horrible event: Dining Alone.

I don't mind dining alone as much in the US. Or I guess I don't, because I don't remember ever doing it. What makes it difficult in France is that a meal is so long (especially if you are an imbecile like moi and order a four-course menu). If you grab a sandwich, you are Girl on the Run, too busy to stop. If you sit down, you can feel the gaze of the other diners, wondering what this girl is doing, eating all alone. Or, in my case, you can hear the other diners. I only caught snippets, but I'm pretty sure the people at the next table were speculating about me.

Despite the loneliness and the stares, dinner was good. I had forgotten how much I liked fromage blanc, a cheese with a taste/texture sort of like cream cheese mixed with sour cream. You add sugar, stir, and enjoy the calcium seeping into your brittle little bones. Or at least I do.

In closing, I leave you with a somewhat altered Monty Python quote: "The town is full of French people... some of whom... are very old."

I've never rented an apartment or looked for an apartment or moved for that matter. I think I will survive, though, as long qs all of the apartments haven't been taken already.

Now I'm wondering about all of the other things I have to do. There's so much bureaucracy and red tape (I can't remember the French word - is it paperasse?) to get through and there's a specific order to the steps, because one must have tel document before one can acquire tel document, which one must have before one can do suchandsuch. This wouldn't be so bad if everything didn't contradict itself. Ah, la France.

Yay. Millions of posts to follow.

Hello, I'm alive. I'm in Vichy and looking for apartments. I'm using the computer at the home of one of the English teachers, so... more when I have more time. Bye!

Or the slow kind, actually. I'm off to Vichy tomorrow, to get my bearings, meet people at my school, and look around for an apartment, as if I know how to do such a thing. AAAAAAAH! Stress time again.

With 22 years of English, 10 years of French, 1 year of Spanish, and 1 semester of Mandarin Chinese, my mind is a big linguistic muddle sometimes. I was showing my Chile pictures to Françoise last night and would switch to Spanish whenever I said a Spanish place-name, although I pronounced the Spanish place-name à la française. When I was talking to the other Srah and other Morins would enter the room, I would try to speak to them in English. When I took Chinese and didn't know the Chinese word, it would come out in English. When I'm on the phone in one language and surrounded by the other, no one understands what's going on.

What I find most interesting in this post by Meg is that my brain seems to have the same distinction between two language areas that hers does: English and "foreign". Just read it. It's funny and very true, if you've ever studied another language or travelled abroad.

Françoise's brother Michel and his wife, Brigitte, came for lunch yesterday. It was nice to see them again and they recognized me from the last time. When I told them what I was doing in France and told them I was going to be near Vichy, their reaction was Oh là là, c'est pas un peu humide là-bas? Lovely.

When I told Antoine I was going to be somewhere in Auvergne, he told me it was the coldest region in France.

Cold and wet. So of course now I've been here two days and am wondering what idiot packed my bags. At the time, skirts seemed like a practical idea for a teaching assistant. Now they just look cold. And remind me again why I brought one pair of comfortable walking shoes?

It only took me two hours in France to start seeing people who aren't there. Not in a Sixth Sense "I see dead people" kind of way, but in the way where I look at people and think they're people I know. I think I'm lonely.

My dad helped me out by dragging my enormous suitcase through the airport while I pulled my carry-on and carried my purse. For a moment, I caught a glimpse of my reflection with my sensible bag and high-heeled boots and thought, There is a business professional, travelling off somewhere with her sensible luggage. I looked back at my dad, lugging a monster of a bag through the airport and thought, There's someone who packed waaaaaaaaaay too much stuff.

The horrible thing is that I was the bad packer, with the savvy traveller on top. Boo packing. If I get to Grenoble, it will be a miracle.

I was a bundle of nerves as I prepared to leave for France. That morning, I had finally decided to be nervous, and nervous I was. Even more so after my bags were packed and I was foreseeing carrying that mammoth suitcase all over France, when I could barely lift it at all.

Where earlier I had been envisioning comical scenarios in the Franquefort airport, trying to learn German, all I cared about was getting to Grenoble with my horrible valises maladroites.

I've arrived in Grenoble, where I'm spending the weekend and typing up all thirteen or so of the posts I wrote down on the trip here. I hqd forgotten hoz ,uch I hqted French keyboqrqds:::

All week For months, I've been rather bored and aloof about going to France. Well this morning, I woke up and I am now scared out of my mind. So I guess I'm human after all.

Drat. There go my mutant super-powers.

A plus, tout le monde! The WeatherPixie is now set for Vichy. Be sure to update your browsers so that you can see title tags like this (mouseover "this" to see if you can), because I'm sure I'll be blogging away in French/Franglais once I get there and you'll want to read the translations.

Becky and Alex came to Ann Arbor today to say goodbye to me before I left and to distract me from the packing I was supposed to be doing. It's weird not having Becky come to the airport to see me off, for the first time in my long traveling experience.

Another lovely thing about Auvergne, Let's Go points out, is their regional delicacies, including tripoux, which is sheep's feet stuffed with sheep's stomach. Sounds almost as appetizing as haggis!

I always meant to post, and I think I never did, about the sources de Vichy, the mineral springs in and near the town, that are supposed to cure all kinds of ills and attract people from all over the world to drink them. My 2000 Let's Go guide describes the various types of water as: disgusting, nauseating, lukewarm, carbonate-charged, powerful, flat, chock-full of sulphur, rotten-egg smell, vile, hard-hitting, and lingering.

I hope the tap water's okay...

My lycée sent me a packet with a big picture of the school on the front. It looks very lovely. It was only built in 1997. Inside, the packet has details about each of the fields of study (it's all Greek to me - I can't tell the difference between a BEP carrières sanitaires et sociales and a BAC sciences médico-sociales) and, more importantly, leads on accomodations. So I should be pretty set by the time I get there. Now all I have to worry about it how to lug my millions of pairs of shoes (that's what's going to weigh down the suitcase) all over France. Glorious.

The other day, one of the English teachers emailed me and mentioned that she'd visited my site and that they'd have to recruit me to use my web-skills, too. As Mr Burns would say, eeeeexcellennnnnnnt. I hope they would pay me extra. That would probably look good on, say, a graduate school application.

AAAAAAAH! Why didn't I start packing earlier? Why didn't I clean my room faster? I leave tomorrow. There is way too much to do. But the Pato is coming to visit me and to say goodbye. We shall have to put him to work.

My two-word reaction to this article: ho hum. My three-word reaction: back to normal.

When I am in France, I will not expect to be treated specially because I'm an American. I didn't expect it in 2000-01 and I won't expect it this year. Just because your country exports low-quality hamburgers and an annoying squeaky cartoon mouse, that doesn't mean that you deserve special treatment. Just because your country was attacked over a year ago, that doesn't mean that you deserve special treatment.

More likely than being treated specially, I will be expecting some abuse for my citizenship. Americans will not be very popular, especially if Señor Arbusto goes to war with Iraq against everyone else's judgment. It's hard to represent your country, especially if you don't agree with and don't want to defend the things that it does. You have to develop a thicker skin than the people in this article.

10 days until I leave. Extent of my packing? A few things tossed towards a suitcase. Hmmm.

One of the hardest things about packing is going to be deciding which CDs to bring and which to leave behind. I am a very picky kind of person who can't listen to the same CD two days in a row, except maybe these two. Maybe I should just take nothing and buy all-new CDs at the Fnac in Vichy... oh wait, there isn't one.

I always thought my CD collection was pretty small, but that's because I lived with Roommate, who has the largest CD collection on earth. Mine, apparently, pales only in comparison with hers. People would come to our room, look around, and gasp.

So I can't take all of them. Which shall it be? What CDs couldn't you live without for seven months?

I have been making some efforts (although clearly I'm not at the moment, because I'm sitting at the computer, typing) to clean my room. Apparently there is carpet on the floor in my room. I can almost see it. Mommy would be proud. How can someone who is so obsessed with dusting between the keyboard keys live in such clutter? Maybe I see the keyboard as something I can handle, whereas the room is completely out of control.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! How am I going to get this room clean before I leave? Any volunteers to clean it for me? I haven't cleaned under my bed in at least five years, I'm sure.

When I opened up my email tonight, I had 26 new messages. Rather impressively, it wasn't all spam. Along with the barrage of emails from my fellow France-assistants, I have one from Sophie, who's back from Mali, and another from an English teacher at le Lycée V. Larbaud. Another message talks about my new web hosting plan and domain name (changeover to come soon, I hope!). In addition to all that, I have email from friends. Hooray!

One of the things I miss when I'm away from the United States is driving. Not the driving itself, mind you, because I hate that. But the being locked up in an enclosed space all alone. The freedom to talk or sing to yourself without inflicting it on others or being judged by them.

I love to turn a song waaaaaaay up and sing along in the car. You're enclosed with the music, you don't have to worry about bothering family members or neighbors, and you can really get into it... unless you're stopped at a light and people are staring and pointing. My favorite singing-in-the-car song is "Karma Police" by Radiohead.

Sometimes I carry on imaginary conversations in my head. Often it's when I'm trying to figure out how I'll phrase something or otherwise preparing for something. These conversations usually stay in my head, but today as I drove home from the doctor's office, I found myself talking out loud in French to an imaginary Spanish language assistant at le Lycée V. Larbaud about how I often pronounce Spanish words in a French way - especially words that also exist in French or those that end in "-on".

I'll just pretend I was talking on a hands-free car phone. The other drivers will never know.

It appears that there is no Fnac in Vichy. No Fnac in Vichy, in Cusset, in Bellerive-sur-Allier. From what I can tell, the nearest one is in Clermont-Ferrand. This will be sad for me, or it may be a good thing. Fnac-addict that I am, I don't know what I'll do with my free time, if not browsing at the Fnac. But at least I'll save money if I'm not impulse-buying Jacques Higelin CDs *shudder*.

I found another site about le lycée Valery Larbaud. Pickshers an' everthing. This one's my favorite.

Last week when I bought my ticket to France, I asked the travel agent if I could have an e-ticket. I've never had one before, so I thought it would be cool and harder to lose. Unfortunately, they told me that Lufthansa doesn't do e-tickets, and I would have to pick up my paper ticket on Friday.

I forgot on Friday, so I came in on Monday to pick up my ticket. They looked it up in the computer and said apparently I had an e-ticket. All of the other travel agents gathered around and said that they had never heard of Lufthansa offering e-tickets and it must be something they just started.

Great. I should have asked for a paper ticket. At least then you have the impression of something real and concrete and you know you have a ticket. You don't have to live in the fear that you have become a computer glitch.

I went out last night with a couple of fellow assistants from Ann Arbor. On the way there, I was telling myself not to be nervous and not to be that shy little person I sometimes am. I think I went in the wrong direction, though...

I don't know if they noticed or if it was just me being paranoid, but I felt like I talked all the time and wouldn't stop talking about myself. And I just talked and talked without thinking, so and idea would come out of my mouth and I had no idea where it came from or why I decided to say it in the first place. There was no organization or structure to my speech and I was getting off the subject mid-sentence. I felt like I was being very negative but I couldn't stop.

Oh well. If they think I'm a dumbass, they'll think I'm a dumbass. I sort of am.

A new guide to learning Auvergnat, the regional language of Auvergne (a variation of Occitan, one of the ancient forms of French) has just been published in France. Apparently there's a movement to revive the language. There is an immersion school at Aurillac (how cool would that be? Why didn't I go to an immersion school?) and you can study it at the university at Clermont-Ferrand. I'll have to buy the book and try to learn some while I'm in Cusset.

I finally got around to buying my ticket (still haven't finished the visa application - so much to do, so much TV being watched). I'm flying Lufthansa (which has the stupidest online flight tracker in the world) on the 18th of September, arriving on the 19th. I've never flown Lufthansa before, but American, which was slightly cheaper, doesn't share mileage-plans with Northwest or United, so I would have had to apply for yet another frequent flyer plan. Now I can add my France-miles to my Chile-miles and get... I don't know what I can get, but I will have something like 9,000 miles on my little card and that will make me happy.

Sophie also flew Lufthansa when she came to visit, but she flew out of Lyon. Flying Lufthansa means I get to stop in Franquefort (I like the French spelling better than Frankfurt) and be in Germany (sort of) for the first time in my life. And an advantage over my Detroit-Amsterdam-Lyon flight of two years ago is that when I did that, I didn't have any Dutch money (what is that called?), so I sat in the airport, bored and hungry. Now there's the Euro (however shall I adjust?), so I can find some crisp apple struedel or schnitzel with noodles to nibble on (preferably no doorbells or sleighbells, though).

Flying is so expensive. What am I going to do when I'm no longer eligible for student discounts? I will have to stagnate here, I guess.

Hooray! Cusset seems to be served by the réseau de buses vichyssois! Bus good. Walking bad, even if it is only 2km between Cusset and Vichy. I need a good map.

I feel funny saying "vichyssois(e)". Makes me think of the soup. But then, many things about Vichy make me feel funny. Ahem.

When we got back from our trip, there was a little pink slip in our mail, saying that I had a registered letter from a foreign destination to pick up. Well, I picked it up.

Before I knew my region, I said to myself, "Well, I know people in Grenoble, so that would be a good place to be placed. I know Antoine in Nantes, so that would be good. Savoie would be fine, because I know Pénélope there. If I were placed in Lille, I could go up to Belgium and see Christianna. I like Strasbourg, and I like Provence, and I'd like to be in Bretagne to learn about all of their Celtic stuff. John Hannah and Ian Rankin have summer homes in the south-west, so that could be interesting, too. Or I could be placed near the Spanish border and maybe I'd have a chance to practice. Of course, with my luck, I'll probably be right in the middle, in Clermont-Ferrand, where there's nothing." Ta da.

Before I knew my city, I looked at the map of Clermont-Ferrand. "Boy," I giggled to myself, "Vichy is in this region. Maybe I'll be there." Now I find myself assistanteing in a lycée in a little town just outside Vichy.

I'm not complaining, really. I know anywhere I'm placed it will be fine and it will be an adventure, but why do I keep predicting the future like this? Aaaaah!

The only website I could find on the school says (translated by yours truly):

Open since the beginning of the 1999 school year, Lycée Valery Larbaud welcomes 632 students onsite at Vichy-Cusset. Entirely financed by the Regional Council of Auvergne, the region used some of the most modern pedagogical tools in France. With a particularly interesting architecture, the building makes use of green spaces, light, and water. Together, the lively style follows the architectural spirit of the hot springs of the region.

From an educational point of view, one can note - alongside our main studies in commerce, service, hotelery, restaurants, and health and beauty - a unique-to-the-region degree in optometry (a pilot program at the national level) and a career path in thermalism.

In terms of equipment, the Lycée Valery Larbaud is at the top of scholastic establishments. Three learning kitchens and three learning restaurants, two cooking demonstration rooms, an optometry laboratory, a computer lab with 357 computers, four multimedia laboratories, and complete equipment for optometry and glasses-making. All of this for a cost of 30 million francs.

What a weird school. It's like 37 specialized technical schools in one.

I have just realized that I have little or no patience with stupid people, or people who don't apply themselves. Well, I didn't just realize that... I've always known that, but I just realized how it will pertain to my life. What kind of an assistante am I going to be? Those kids had better try to learn some English. Patience, srah, patience.

Somewhere in the school district of Clermont-Ferrand.

Hooray for me!

Okay, I'll talk about it now. I've looked it over and maybe I'm not quite as stupid as I thought. Still stupid, but not as stupid.

All this time, when I've looked at the webpage for the assistantship position, I have been reading the second part, where it says

Remuneration
The gross remuneration of foreign assistants is 890 Euros, minus approximately 60 € for Social Security (medical insurance).

Now, is it just me, or does gross remuneration sound like that's all you get? 830€ converts to about $718. So I have been thinking, ever since I applied, that I am going to have to work my butt off this summer in order to fund the seven months that I will be making less money than it will cost to feed and house me and, in essence, be paying to work. I can't go to Europe over Spring Break or Chile during the summer because I will have to save my money to live on.

Now look a little higher. Yeah, right there. The part that says

Monthly Stipend
890 € (Euros)

Monthly. Ahem. La la, I am stupid. It has been there all along, and there I was, panicking about how I was going to live for seven months on $700.

$700 a month? That's $15 an hour! Oh my god! I'm rich!

Everything is sent. Everything is finished. Only two classes and ISU tomorrow. Breathing now.

Yay, comments are back.

Must now go find somewhere that takes passport-style pictures for teaching assistant application, which has to be mailed tomorrow. Crap crap crap.