Chez moi

OK, it’s about time I caught up with everything that’s been happening over the past week…

First big thing is that I moved (!!) to a new house much closer to town. I know I just gushed over the first place I found but this one is really it. It’s in a quartier called St. Cyprien and it is right on the edge of the river (called La Garonne) that runs in the middle of the city. A very pretty spot. When I walk out he front gate I truly feel like I’m living in the center Toulouse. There are lot of markets, parks and museums in this neighborhood (all big pluses for me) and then all you have to do is cross this one bridge (Pont St Pierre) and you are in a very cool area for going out/socializing etc in the center of town ! I am living with a woman named Gisele who is a French professor and one other girl, Gabriella, who is 28, from Venezuela and studying to become a French teacher as well. Gisele has taken in 2 different girls of two different languages each year for the past 23 years and the goal of living with her is to improve your French, not just to rent a room. It’s ALMOST like a host family (like I had in Rennes) but more independent. She says the point of opting into this arrangement is to improve your French and be exposed to French culture every day, but also to live a completely independent life. She said she modeled this arrangement after one she wished she had had when she was a student living abroad. So I thought that was cool. She is very passionate her “project” here with her 2 “students” about language and is currently studying English and Greek.

If you type my street in Googlemaps.com you can see my location: Rue Louis Joseph Gay-Lussac, 31300 Toulouse, France. Une addresse tres français, don't you think? ;)

 Usually we make our own meals every night, have our own plans and lives and what not. Our rooms are private obviously, but the kitchen dining room, and sitting room are all public spaces where you go if you want to hang out and talk. My room (pictures below) is actually a free-standing cabana a few steps from the main house. I like it a lot because it feels very private and I have more than enough space. It’s very charming.

Last night because it was my first night (Gabriella has actually been here for 2 consecutive years already as she is trying to perfect her French to become a teacher in Venezuela), Gisele and Gabriella cooked dinner for me and we all ate together. It was the first real French meal I’ve had so far. We started with a pottage of pureed vegetables – carrots, onions and potatoes with crème fraiche, then we had smoked salmon on slices of bread, then we had a truly fabulous (read smelly) camembert cheese that the moment we took it out the plastic wrap oozed all over the place in gooey deliciousness. For desert we had an apple tart that Gisele made herself. So wonderful. We ate and talked for about 2 hours. It definitely reminded me quite a bit of my first dinner with my host family in Rennes.

I’ve been at my school a lot this week and last week as well. I was told by people who have done this program and also by teachers at my school (Bellevue) that they don’t exactly know what to do with you at first once you get there. The English teacher in charge of me just finalized my schedule today and I will really start next week. Thus far I have been going in around 9 or 10 every morning and sitting in the language teachers lounge and offering to come into the teacher’s classes who I will be working with to introduce and talk about myself to the students and get a feel for what they are working on and what their language level is. It has been nice for me because I am more comfortable and ready for next week and I think the teachers have appreciated me being around as well.

It has been gratifying because there are some advanced classes from which students have the option of coming to voluntary, supplemental conversational classes with me in their off time and the sign up list has increased a lot after I have come in to talk to them. It’s cool to see that they are excited that I am there and are interested in me, so now I just have to think of interesting topics for us to talk about! I will also be working with some less advanced classes (there are three levels: Secondes, Primaires, and Terminales in order of least to most experience) where the teachers will give me more direction of the themes they want me to focus on. I get a little more information and meet more teachers and students everyday, which is enough to make me feel comfortable about starting next week. I am in the classroom 12 hours a week (not including lesson planning) and working for 5 different teachers.

One of the English teacher’s, Martine, who I worked with yesterday has invited me to her country house for the weekend with her 21 year old daughter and her boyfriend which I am very excited about. She says that the house is over 2 centuries old and is by the Pyrenees mountains and the Mediterranean ocean. I’m extremely excited to get to see more of this region and to spend time with a colleague and someone my age.  We leave of Friday after classes at 4pm.

Today I did my first big grocery shopping outing and had a very bizarre experience.  I heard that there is one cheaper grocery store a bit out of the way so I ventured there on the metro today since I had a lot of random things to buy to get started here (shampoo, scissors, olive oil, spices, etc) I thought it was worth it. It turned out to be the biggest grocery store of my life, no joke, bigger than Cosco, I was there for an hour and a half!! It was a great store but I definitely wasn’t ready for it. I thought I had the grocery shopping thing down pat from having an apartment in college but in another language, especially in a country where they eat all kinds of weird products , I felt verrry lost pushing around my little cart in this giant warehouse. But when you can buy a wheel of Camembert cheese for 1.50 euros and a bottle of red wine for 2 life is good.

On the subject of food…the other day I was at an open-air market (right by my new place actually!) just browsing around with my friend Amy and I stopped at this one butcher counter because it had the most enormous heart and liver on display that I have ever seen. We stopped and must have been obviously gawking because the butcher behind the counter chuckled and we started talking, turns out he was a boulanger du cheval…horse butcher. I’ve never seen anything like it – the heart was between the size of a football and basketball the liver was the size of a base. It was nuts. The sizes of the chunks of meat were enormous. Not to be graphic, I had just never seen that. 

Well, I don’t want to leave you on that morbid note. So instead, something I’ve gotten a chuckle out of over here are the ad campaigns and commercials American celebrities do overseas they would never air for in the US…