½ weeks, and I miss the shit out of every single one of you. One of my dearest friends, whom I love incredibly, just had her first child, my community is finding new places to voice its artistic expressions, my mother is substitute teaching almost every day (I am so proud of her!) and not to mention, revolution is sparking across my country.
Things are going well here, but, to answer the above question: No. That's just about all I don't do here. I've had a lot of trouble deciding how to word this blog post in order to prevent it from coming out like some sort of pity-party, yet still convey what is "real" for me right now.
I "officially" started work on 3 October. My first two weeks are an obligatory observation period. Essentially, I spent most of last week sitting in on high school classes, and am doing just about the same this week, too. While slightly boring at times, it's proving to be a great opportunity to get to work with professors I would otherwise have absolutely no contact with. I've been to communications, philosophy, French literature, French history, American history (in French!), and Spanish classes. I'm lucky to be so proficient in French; I understand about 95% of what's going on in any given class, and after each class I stay and chat with the professor for anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes.
Some of it has been loads of fun, like when I went rock climbing (for the first time in my life!) last week while observing a class of "terminales". Other bits of it are more mundane, such as the 2 hours I spent being passed off from person to person at "la vie scolaire" (roughly the equivalent of an American "guidance counselor's office"), and the 90 minutes of watching 3 secretaries type away while I silently sipped coffee during my "observation" of the "secrétariat".
The students are anywhere from 15 to 20 years old. I'm still trying to establish boundaries, especially with students that I'll be teaching. Some of them (the younger ones, "secondes", mostly) spend the entire class staring at me, then quickly looking away and whispering to their friends when I look their direction. This afternoon during the pause in French literature some of the "secondes" asked me about Justin Beiber. After 5 minutes of chattering on about American pop culture (which I am learning about more here than I ever did at home...) one of them accidentally "tutoyer-ed" me, or addressed me informally. She quickly corrected herself, but I told her it was cool, they could all "tutoyer" me. Giggles and laughter ensued, and the atmosphere became comfortably relaxed.
The professors and staff are anywhere from 10 to 30 years my senior. They have spouses and children to go home to at the end of the day, and family vacations planned for all the "vacances scolaires" this school year. Across the board, they're all incredibly welcoming. A few have asked me if I'd be interested in coming over for dinner sometime, and a couple others who live in Dieppe have said I can stay with them some weekend if I'd like.
Overall, I know it's going to be a lot of work to not "se déprimer" while I'm here. I live in a tiny, lost, redneck town in rural France. There are only two or three bars, and pretty much everything shuts down by 8pm. That said... I've already read a couple of books; I bought a 12-speed Peugeot and it takes me 10 minutes to bike to the coast; I have a google voice phone number, so I can call anyone I want (time differences do suck, though); and, last but not least, I knew before I applied for this post that it would be lonely at times, and after a year of more love and joy than some people know in their lifetime, I decided to take on the challenge of moving here, to Eu.
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