Wow. The stereotype that the French are snooty and rude couldn’t be any more untrue. Here in the south of France, I’ve found the most hospitable people I’ve ever met. Annie and Regis (the main English teacher at the Lycée du Dauphiné and her husband) will literally drop everything they’re doing in order to help me out with whatever I need.
Regis picked me up from the train station and carried my VERY heavy suitcase all the way to the car. Our first stop before going home was a boulangerie (bakery) which you could smell from several hundred feet away. (Or shall I say meters? Stupid metric system I need to get used to.) We walked in and I almost passed out. It smelled sooooooooooo gooooood and I was starving. He asked me what kind I liked and I asked for pain au chocolat avec des aumandes (chocolate croissant topped with almonds). Everything there is so delicately made. Definitely going back there again sometime this week.
On the way home, Regis gave me a little tour of the city, which isn’t as small as I thought. There are about 35,000 inhabitants (yes, UF has almost double the amount of students) but since everything is so close together in Europe, it looks bigger and busier. The town is cute, it has its charm. You can see the Vercors mountains on one side and on the other side, smaller mountains whose name I’ve forgotten.
As I was the first foreign assistant to arrive, I’ve really received star treatment. I’ve eaten at Annie and Regis’ every day, and she cooks yummy yummy food. I slept at her house the first day and met her super cute I-wanna-eat-you-up grand children, Anya (3) and Ludo (6), as well as one of her daughters, who also teaches at the school. Annie took me to this store which would be the equivalent of Walmart to buy things for my place, and Regis has taken me everywhere else-to get a cell phone, to the tourism office to get maps, to visit the other schools I’ll be teaching at and meet the teachers, etc. I love them. It’s like they have no life but to be at my service, which I don’t ask them to do-they just do it because they like to help. And I’m VERY thankful. I feel like I’ve been so blessed to have everything fall perfectly into place.
I was supposed to live in this apartment in the dorms that’s reserved for three assistants but because it was not yet ready when I arrived, they gave the studio apartment on the second floor of the administration building that was reserved for the Italian assistant. Score! My own apartment. J It’s got two closets, a toilet room, a bathroom (which also had that fountain thing to wash your privates that I haven’t seen in years, what’s it called?), and then a big room with a bed, desk and chair, three big windows, little table with another two chairs, refrigerator (a luxury in France, trust me), and a little plug-in burner to cook. And the Mexican assistant that lived here before me left a mountain bike (very handy), a bottle of wine (even more handy), an inflatable bed (wanna visit?), and other miscellaneous things. When I decorate the flat a bit more, I’ll post some pics.
Also, Annie invited me to go to one of her English classes, which had about 10 students. When I told them I was from Miami, they all looked at me wide-eyed as in "then what the heck are you doing HERE?!?" They seemed nice, I hope I get assigned to that class. And they’re my age, too, so I can relate to them and vice versa. I’ll explain later why kids my age are in a high school. But briefly, this school is also a technical school for several subjects so after they finish high school, they can continue studies in whatever field they want to work in but they don’t get a diploma, just the knowledge.
Internet usage is limited for me, but I’m working on possibly getting WiFi installed at my place. It’s not looking too good though so I have to use the school computers, which have a firewall that doesn’t allow me to use msn messenger or its equivalents. L
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