Bonjour a tous! (Hello, all!)
Finally, I have some time and a cooperative internet to do some blogging, so you all are going to get a two-fer, if not a three-fer. I do apologize, but hopefully doing several posts in one night will make up for my relative silence the past few days. :) Anyways, moving on.
I am glad that I will have a more reliable internet connection soon and a free land line, or at least that's what my lanlord is telling me. He set everything up on Monday, and here it is Friday night and everything is still in the process of registering itself and setting itself up. But when it all gets set up, it will definitely make it easier to stay in touch with friends and family. I must admit, I can't wait for the TV to work, because I am dying to watch some French TV (I think it will be a great learning tool) and also to surprise people with random phone calls. I don't understand how it works, but I will have a land line that can call any number in the U.S., including cell phones, for free. I will also have a number, so that people can call me here, and maybe even leave me messages. But for now, the internet and Skype will do just fine. :)
Finally, I have some time and a cooperative internet to do some blogging, so you all are going to get a two-fer, if not a three-fer. I do apologize, but hopefully doing several posts in one night will make up for my relative silence the past few days. :) Anyways, moving on.
I am glad that I will have a more reliable internet connection soon and a free land line, or at least that's what my lanlord is telling me. He set everything up on Monday, and here it is Friday night and everything is still in the process of registering itself and setting itself up. But when it all gets set up, it will definitely make it easier to stay in touch with friends and family. I must admit, I can't wait for the TV to work, because I am dying to watch some French TV (I think it will be a great learning tool) and also to surprise people with random phone calls. I don't understand how it works, but I will have a land line that can call any number in the U.S., including cell phones, for free. I will also have a number, so that people can call me here, and maybe even leave me messages. But for now, the internet and Skype will do just fine. :)
Anyways, I suppose now is as good a time as any to tell you all about my birthday craziness. Let me just start by saying that I think I have made some friends over here, that's for sure. I will tell you about my class after I tell you about my birthday festivities. After class on Tuesday, I got home about 7pm and took a brief nap, since the night before I didn't sleep very well and got maybe 4 or 5 hours of sleep total. Today (Friday) is the first day that I have been feeling like I have my bearings...people say it usually takes about a week to catch up with your jet lag, and they are telling the truth. Anyways, on Tuesday, I met up with my classmates at 10pm by L'hotel de ville, which is like the French...Ministry of Magic (Harry Potter reference), kind of. Ha! I asked some French kids what it was, and they told me it was the place where the minister works, etc. Does France even have a Minister? I thought they just had a president. Maybe they meant the mayor of Paris, or something. This is probably all information I should know, huh.
Anyway, I met up with 4 of my classmates (Angus, Brian, Sarah, and Helen) and Sarah's boyfriend, who lives in France with her, and we went to a little bar called Stolly (like Stoli) or something like that. It was run by Canadians, who were rather nice. Everyone was buying me drinks, and I only paid for 2 drinks for myself the whole night, I believe. I did kind of drink a lot, but it was my birthday, so I felt it was appropriate, regardless of what day of the week it was. We stayed at Stolly until around 1:30 or so when they were closing, and I unfortunately spent a good deal of the night ignoring the people who had gotten me so knockered in favor of talking to this charming young French couple outside who were very nice and were willing to have a conversation with me and help me practice my French, while I helped them a bit with their English. They were called Claudine and Timothy, and needless to say, I was super excited to finally have a chance to have an extended French conversation with local French people.
The people in Paris aren't really rude, but they don't really spend a lot of time talking to people they don't know. It would be weird, for example, to strike up a conversation with someone randomly while on the Metro...and besides, I would be too self-conscious to do that anyways, since the Metros are always crowded and I don't really want 30 or so French people hearing my shitty French and judging me. I'm sure I will get over this in time, though. I did apologize for ignoring my classmates at the bar, but they were very understanding, saying that it was my birthday and they knew how excited I was to talk to French people. I was drinking everything, though. By the way. Probably 3 or 4 pints of beer total (if not a bit more), 4 shots (including one bought for me by Helen, who told the bartender to make me something dreadful...it was god-awful, and I nicknamed it the "fire breather," because it consisted of Tequila, Tabasco sauce, and Sambuca), and a cocktail called the "Cobain No-brain," which I couldn't resist because of the name, which consisted of vodka and sprite (maybe) and cherry liquor...quite tasty.
The people in Paris aren't really rude, but they don't really spend a lot of time talking to people they don't know. It would be weird, for example, to strike up a conversation with someone randomly while on the Metro...and besides, I would be too self-conscious to do that anyways, since the Metros are always crowded and I don't really want 30 or so French people hearing my shitty French and judging me. I'm sure I will get over this in time, though. I did apologize for ignoring my classmates at the bar, but they were very understanding, saying that it was my birthday and they knew how excited I was to talk to French people. I was drinking everything, though. By the way. Probably 3 or 4 pints of beer total (if not a bit more), 4 shots (including one bought for me by Helen, who told the bartender to make me something dreadful...it was god-awful, and I nicknamed it the "fire breather," because it consisted of Tequila, Tabasco sauce, and Sambuca), and a cocktail called the "Cobain No-brain," which I couldn't resist because of the name, which consisted of vodka and sprite (maybe) and cherry liquor...quite tasty.
2 of the shots were bought for me by the bartender, who was very cool...actually, only one of them was for me, but he put out 6 shots and said they were for me for my birthday, and I drunkenly thought they were all for me. I did two of them right in a row before he stopped me to tell me the rest were for my friends. But he got a good kick out of that, said he liked my style, and even told the other bartenders about it, who also got a kick out of it. By the time the bar was nearing closing time, I was completely amped up, and Angus made jokes the next day in class about how before we left the bar, I just looked at him and pointed at him and then back at me and said something like "You and me, we're going to the club." Like THE club, like there's only one. Haha! Speaking of the club, we are all going to a club tomorrow night called Batofar, which is apparently on a boat somewhere in Paris, which sounds pretty epic to me. :D
I wish I could tell you night ended here, but it did not. After the bar closed, we passed a Quick, which is like Belgian fast food, and I ate my first fast food abroad, which I regretted all day the following day. It was good at the time, but I have had acid reflux all day because of it (or maybe it was that "fire breather" shot I did), and France is really weird because you need a prescription for stuff like antacids...you can't get any of that over-the-counter...so I just drank a bunch of water and some milk Wednesday and tried to feel better, though it didn't really work, and I only just tonight (Friday) started feeling better, for whatever reason. I think it was partially due to dehydration. Anyways, another source of amusement to Angus was that apparently my French was tapped out for the night by the time we got to Quick, since I had spent so long speaking in French at the bar, and I ordered a (in a very American accent) " 'hamburger' avec cheese." I was honestly sort of browning out by this point, so I don't really remember saying that, but I don't put it past myself. What I do remember is that I was in great spirits, and seemed to be thoroughly entertaining the people around me, which by this point included another girl, Lara, a friend of Sarah's from Holland or somewhere. After that, we went back to Sarah and her boyfriend's place and watched you tube music videos for a bit, since the Metro had stopped running and Angus and I wanted to sober up a bit before heading back to our respective places. We left Sarah's around 3, and Angus and I split a cab for about 10 euro apiece, which was WAY cheaper than the cab I got at the airport. I had an interesting conversation with the cab driver, who was from the Cote d'Ivoire and spoke very little English, about how America is more interested in starting 100 wars than taking care of it's own problems, etc. At this point, even with a big effort, my French was still very broken, but I got my point across, and was able to understand him fairly well, despite my condition. Quelle miracle!
I wish I could tell you night ended here, but it did not. After the bar closed, we passed a Quick, which is like Belgian fast food, and I ate my first fast food abroad, which I regretted all day the following day. It was good at the time, but I have had acid reflux all day because of it (or maybe it was that "fire breather" shot I did), and France is really weird because you need a prescription for stuff like antacids...you can't get any of that over-the-counter...so I just drank a bunch of water and some milk Wednesday and tried to feel better, though it didn't really work, and I only just tonight (Friday) started feeling better, for whatever reason. I think it was partially due to dehydration. Anyways, another source of amusement to Angus was that apparently my French was tapped out for the night by the time we got to Quick, since I had spent so long speaking in French at the bar, and I ordered a (in a very American accent) " 'hamburger' avec cheese." I was honestly sort of browning out by this point, so I don't really remember saying that, but I don't put it past myself. What I do remember is that I was in great spirits, and seemed to be thoroughly entertaining the people around me, which by this point included another girl, Lara, a friend of Sarah's from Holland or somewhere. After that, we went back to Sarah and her boyfriend's place and watched you tube music videos for a bit, since the Metro had stopped running and Angus and I wanted to sober up a bit before heading back to our respective places. We left Sarah's around 3, and Angus and I split a cab for about 10 euro apiece, which was WAY cheaper than the cab I got at the airport. I had an interesting conversation with the cab driver, who was from the Cote d'Ivoire and spoke very little English, about how America is more interested in starting 100 wars than taking care of it's own problems, etc. At this point, even with a big effort, my French was still very broken, but I got my point across, and was able to understand him fairly well, despite my condition. Quelle miracle!
That's about it for the birthday, though...got home at about 4, messed around for about 30 minutes before bed, and slept for about 4 hours before getting up and showering and putting on some nice clothes and going to school. Apparently Helen and I had made an agreement when we were all making plans after class that we were going to dress up and kill it on Tuesday night, and I instead opted for my Deathly Hallows t-shirt and a pair of shorts (which I regretted anyways, since it was colder than I expected it to be), so I promised I would dress up the following day...luckily, I did much better than I thought I was going to do on Wednesday, and was very alert until the end of class. It took 2 coffees (the school has this little coffee machine that dispenses 4 ounce cups of very strong coffee for only 50 Euro cents), a Kit Kat, a TON of water, and a Coke, but I stayed awake and alert all day, and today actually went by fairly quickly.
I suppose I should tell you about my class, now, so you know what's going on and everything, and who all of those people are that I just told you all about for several paragraphs. The class is just me and 8 other people, mostly younger than me, but a few who are a bit older. There are 3 other Americans: Brian, who is 33 and married to a Swiss woman and has 2 children and is kind of like me except a bit more relaxed and scholarly...he even looks a bit like me. I sometimes find him interesting, but in class, I sometimes find him a bit annoying since he likes to digress a lot, though I can tell we are going to be good friends, and he reminds me of my friend Dave, because he's very much a know-it-all kind of guy, but in a harmless sort of way. :) Then there is a middle-aged guy who's name I can't remember who is from West Virginia, and a girl named Stephanie from Minnesota who is 23 years old and extremely shy. After that, there is Angus, who will probably be one of my best guy friends in class if I don't annoy him too much...Angus is my sister Liz's age, and from Australia...I seem to amuse him, and he has said he enjoys my sense of humor, which can apparently sometimes greatly rememble British humor, like on Wednesday when Brian stopped the teacher and said he disagreed or something and I just looked over at Angus and said "shocking," in a very British accent. Haha! After that, there is Sophie, a British girl who is 21, Helen, an Irish girl who is also 21, Nori, a married Japanese guy who is 31, and Sarah, a girl of Belgian origin (I think) who is about 25 and who will probably be my best female friend. She's super laid-back and easy going, and is definitely not a girly girl, which is nice. She's actually the one who suggested we hit up Batofar this weekend, and she also is nearly fluent in French, so I can use her as a resource if I need to. Now that you all know all about the people in my class, maybe I should say something about the class itself.
It's not too bad...semi-intense, but we take lots of breaks. This week, we went for 6 hours on Monday, 7 hours on Tuesday, and 8 hours Wednesday and Thursday, but Fridays will be a breeze, as we only have class from 10am-1pm, I believe. Hooray for starting the weekend early! Unfortunately, starting next week, it starts to get super intense, and we will all be going to class for 9 hours Monday and Wednesday, and for 11 hours Tuesday and Thursday, and it will stay this way until the end of the course. But at least Fridays will remain short, from only 10am-1pm, so that’s a bit of a blessing. As far as the course work itself, it is all basically just a review for me…we have had handouts to read this week about lesson planning, classroom management, what makes a good teacher, various teaching methodology etc. Even some the subject matter, like Grammar and Phonetics, are little more than a review for me, and since I love Grammar and Phonetics and language and everything, all of the information about Grammar and Phonetics that I have learned over the years has basically remained in my head. I feel have a lot of useful stuff to add to the class, since I have real experience with teaching and most of these people don’t, and I feel really valued as a student, so that’s cool.
I did receive sort of a bit of disappointing news on my first day of class,when my teacher said it may be very difficult to remain anywhere in France to teach when my class is over due to certain Visa issues and stuff, but I wrote a pretty angry e-mail to on of the coordinators over here, and she basically told me that with persistence, anything is possible, so I'm not really worried about it. Since I want it so badly, I know I will do what it takes to make it happen. :) Also, about midway through the week, our teacher, Sanja, sat Brian and I down after a break and basically told us that she is happy that we both know so much about the subject matter, but that we should actually try to participate in class a little less, since she feels like the others were getting a bit lazy and no longer thinking for themselves. She just said that if we gave others a chance to speak and offer their opinions, they would get more out of the class. Gotta love being told that you know so much and are so vocal that it's actually detrimental to the class! Haha! :)
But anyways, one thing we were doing this week that was totally foreign to me was learning Croatian, which we are doing more to teach us the methods we will be using to teach English to non-English speakers than to actually learn it. Since most of our students will speak almost no English, they will feel like we did when we were learning Croatian this week, since our teacher wouldn’t speak in English for that hour or so we were learning Croatian. And surprisingly, this method proved to be rather effective, at least for me. At first, it was little more than frustrating, like playing Charades in a foreign language, but as the days went by (we were only doing it this week, Monday through Wednesday), I found myself retaining more, being more engaged, and being able to understand more and more of her explanations, which were only done in Croatian. I told her on Wednesday that I almost wish we could keep learning it, since it sounds so cool and is so different than anything I have done before. But that’s about it as far as class goes so far…Thursday we observed a real life English Language learner being taught by someone at our school, and I also did my own lesson on Thursday, which I had time to prepare for in class, and even though I winged it by looking up a lesson in class and copying it all down and printing out the necessary materials on the spot, Sanja still said it was very good, so I think I'm on the right track. The class does seem pretty intense, but I definitely like the challenge.
I have been eating very French this first week, by the way. This is something that I aim to curtail though, since I spent a lot of money on food in the first week of being here. I plan on doing this by cooking in and going grocery shopping, which I did tonight. Although I spent like 50$ on food at the Monoprix, I got enough to last me for probably the rest of the week, and will only have to buy more food minimally, or when I just can't resist. Tonight I made my first genuine self-cooked meal at my apartment, and it consisted of pasta shells left over from the previous tenant cooked up with some store brand, bottled bolognese sauce, a little bit of store brand hamburger, and some shredded Emmenthaler cheese, completed by a baguette, a small salad, and some diet peach tea. I don't know why I feel like telling you all about what I've been eating, but I do, so here goes. For lunch on the first day of class, Brian and I split a loaf of Stollen (sweet bread), a small package of turkey (4 slices), and some little baby bella cheeses that were sort of like provolone…I don’t know what they actually were, but they were soft and flavorful. We also both got a beer, and all of this ran us about 3.50 apiece.
On Tuesday, a bunch of us went to a Vietnamese restaurant down the street for a birthday treat, and I got lemon grass chicken, which was pretty good, and at only 8 Euro, not too bad on price. Wednesday, I splurged a little, too. Got a delicious pastry for about 1.50 Euros that I ate on the metro ride to school, then got an awesome hot dog (translation: “hot-dog”) and stinky cheese Panini on my breakfast break and just had a soda and a kit kat on my lunch break. For dinner, I had a meatball foot long from Subway.Thursday and Friday, I had Beignets on the way to school (chocolate on Thursday, Apple today), and on Thursday I had a baguette, split some cheese and turkey again with Brian, and had another beer for lunch. For dinner, I made grilled cheeses with Emmenthaler, tomatoes, lettuce, and mayonnaise with those Monster Munch chips, and for lunch today, we went to an Italian place, where I got this thing that was like an eggplant wrap with ham and cheese and marinara all over it, for only like 4 Euro. Tonight, I had the delicious pasta dish. So now you all know what I've been eating for the past week. I hope you didn't find that to be too boring. :)
Well, that's about it for this one, and even though it's almost 2 in the morning here, I don't have anything to do tomorrow, and think I might be able to write one more tonight, if my internet connection will allow it, about what I did today after class (hint: the Louvre is involved). I hope you all have been enjoying reading this! Grosses bises a tous! A bientot!
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