I write this from the SNCF waiting room. I found an outlet to use to charge the phone that one Klare kindly gave to me, though despite my sincerest efforts, none of the wifi networks are working. So I shan’t be able to post this (or notify my parents of my survival) until this evening.
Speaking of time, it is currently 10:48 AM on September 16th, which makes it 3:48 AM on the same day in Chicago. Thankfully it’s sunny in Paris, because if it were even the slightest bit gray my body would probably take that as a sign that it is time to sleep, RIGHT NOW. I actually slept an hour or two on the plane, which never happens, so that’s something. I decided not to get coffee upon arriving at Charles de Gaulle (we’ll see later if that’s a good idea depending on whether or not I sleep through my stop to Rennes) so that when I arrive, I can pass out immediately, sleep the requisite 15 hours, and then be on France time. This worked for me last time, so let’s hope it’ll work again this time. I’m not even going to try and stay up for dinner. Plus my stomach is being nicely predictable in that it refuses to have anything to do with food until I get some sleep. Last time I went to France it took me over a week to actually feel hungry. I’m not going to lie, that would be a nice bonus this time around since I’m responsible for finding my own food and I could stand to save a little money.
You know, there’s something that happens to one’s syntax when one starts to think in another language. Example: One starts to use ‘one’ as a subject way more often than one ever would in normal English syntax. I was reading some of my old blog posts, and it’s the case for those as well. I would talk about frequenting places—clearly my ability to speak English goes down as my ability to speak French increases. Anyway, don’t be surprised if my English starts to sound wackier and wackier as this blog progresses.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Now that I’ve gotten settled a bit and am no longer writing while in the airport as an attempt to keep myself awake, I can complete this disjointed entry and attempt to bring everyone up to speed on my life.
The trip was long, exhausting, and generally not fun. If it weren’t such an unpleasant trip, I’d probably be tempted to go home for Christmas, but I absolutely hate 24 hour trips, and thus I try to avoid them at all costs. England for Christmas it is!
I arrived in Rennes and was picked up at the train station by the ‘proviseur’ of my school (lycée Anita Conti). I’m pretty sure that’s the equivalent of a principal. He was quite nice, though he spoke French quite rapidly (that said, after a 24 hour journey I’m not sure my listening abilities were up to par), and he took me to the place I’ll be living. I’m renting a room, bathroom, and kitchen from a couple in their late 50s. For the next two weeks I’ll be sharing their bathroom and kitchen as their old renter doesn’t leave until the end of September. I’m also using one of their guest rooms until then. It’s a tight squeeze right now, but it’s certainly better than paying for a hostel for two weeks. I’m definitely looking forward to moving into the other room though, so I can unpack a bit, and I seriously can’t wait until I get the renter’s bathroom—it’s way nicer than the one the family uses. I’m also looking forward to being in my own kitchen. I can be a bit of a control freak when it comes to my food, and it’s odd for me not to be in charge of that. Also, I don’t think they keep their fridge cold enough, so I’m excited to be in charge of the fridge temperature. Like I said, I’m a control freak.
The best part about the house is that it has wifi! I can’t get it in the room I’m currently in (the signal doesn’t reach up here), but I’ll be able to get a decent signal in my future room. For now I just go downstairs to use the internet. I’m so excited to actually have internet that I don’t even care!
The couple I’m renting from, Jean-Paul and Denise, have three sons. Two of those sons are married with kids and living on their own now. The youngest, Kevin, is a year younger than me and he’s still living at home. He’s working part time and going to school. His girlfriend is really nice. She came over yesterday and was incredibly friendly. They’re both really into music—apparently the other two sons are musicians, too.
I’m in an area that’s both agricultural and industrial. There are a lot of factories nearby—Jean-Paul works at the Peugeot factory just down the road. But there are also a lot of small farms once you get off the main roads. Jean-Paul and Denise have a HUGE garden, and grow a ton of their own food: green beans, tomatoes (apparently there aren’t any squirrels or rabbits around to eat them like they do in Chicago), onions, pears, apples, peaches, melons, carrots, potatoes. It’s pretty impressive, but when I told them so, they said that this was actually a bad year for the garden. There wasn’t enough rain, so apparently they didn’t have as good of a harvest as they usually have. I just nodded. And I thought the fact that my family grows our own basil was impressive…
There’s a bus that goes both into Rennes and into Bruz (where I’ll be teaching) just outside the house. Denise took the bus with me to Bruz yesterday, and it was a really short ride—six or seven minutes at the most. The exciting news: It maybe be impossible for me to get lost going from home to school and vice versa, because you can see the bus stop from the house and the school from the bus stop I get off at. This is excellent. Don’t worry, I’m sure that if I try and go into Bruz’s town center or into Rennes I’ll manage to get lost plenty. Denise also showed me how to take the bus to a nearby grocery store. It’s pretty decently sized, and has some home appliance things, too. I picked up some food basics (though they didn’t have any fresh spinach…boo) like apples, cereal, bananas, tea, chevre (yay for real goat cheese!) and yogurt. Denise also bought an electric tea kettle that I can use while I’m here—yay!
Now, for the important stuff: The Milk Chronicles, Vol. II. Much to my amazement, the grocery store did have non-UHT milk, which is kind of a miracle. That stuff did not exist in Avignon. However, you can only get that in low-fat (not skim…sigh). It’s also outrageously expensive--2€ for a half liter. SO not cool. The UHT milk is half the price, but as I know from my past time here, it’s disgusting and can only be tolerated with cereal. Plus there’s just something a bit weird about milk that you can leave on the shelf, unrefrigerated, for months at a time. Ugh. Can’t wait to go to England and have real skim milk…
Jean-Paul and Denise are out of town this weekend, which my stomach is happy about because it’s had no interest in eating at all. Sadly, this is the norm when it comes to traveling, but that doesn’t make it any fun. I try to eat what I can during meals, but they still freak out about how I’m not eating enough. This will also give me the chance to go to sleep at a ridiculously early hour. I’m still not really on France time (instead of sleeping for 15 hours my first night here, I slept for two hours, woke up, slept for another two hours, woke up, stayed up for three hours, and then slept for six hours) and all I want to do is crash by 8 PM. Of course, we don’t even eat dinner until 8:30, and when I tried to sneak away at 9:30 last night, they wanted to know why I wasn’t going to watch the end of a movie. So I stayed awake for that, and then promptly conked out. My alarm woke me up at 8:30 this morning, but I was still exhausted. I’m going into Rennes today to meet a former assistant who’s now going to law school here, and then I just plan on going to bed immediately.
That's all for now. I have a quiet day planned for tomorrow, and then on Tuesday I'm hoping to go into my school to meet the teachers I'll be working with.
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