Life in France: Week Two

Here's an update for my second week in France [Oct 5 - 11]

TL;DR Version:

W 5 Oct // Day 8 : Good day. Half day at work. Missed my family!

Th 6 Oct // Day 9 : Pretty good day. Felt a little depressed about emergency drill at school. Rest of the day was uneventful.

F 7 Oct // Day 10 : Long and boring day at orientation.

Sat 8 Oct // Day 11 : Very social day. Had a lot of fun. Met lots of new people.

Sun 9 Oct // Day 12 : Lazy day, danced around my room, toured my new place on Snapchat (video coming soon)

M 10 Oct // Day 13 : Went out for lunch with my colleagues! Had an even more depressing moment from conversation about Guns in America / mass shootings.

T 11 Oct // Day 14 : Worked at home. Went bowling. Skyped my friend.

Detailed Version:

W 5 Oct // Day 8 - I can’t really remember what I did Wednesday. It is worth knowing that Wednesday is a half day for a lot of schools in France. So I worked a little bit but was able to go home at noon! Obviously I felt pretty happy about that ;) Missed my family a lot too!!

Th 6 Oct // Day 9 - During my first class of the day (Alexandra’s class), I observed students debate the right to bear arms in the U.S. The class was split into two groups and it was interesting to see everyone’s point of view, or at least the point of view they were forced to defend... Ironically, during this class, the school had an emergency drill. So the alarm sounded and we barricaded the door, turned off the lights, and had to lie down on the floor, away from the windows, until the drill was over.

Honestly it made me really sad to think that even France now has to worry about mass shootings and terrorist attacks so much that they’re having students do drills. It’s sad enough that we have to do it in the U.S. or that any country anywhere has this fear and has to take this precaution. I didn’t grow up with this fear (until after 9/11 I guess, but everything is completely different now) and I really hate to think of the effect that this is having on today’s kids. Anyway Thursday was a great day despite the depressing thoughts of that morning.

[Side note: The drill might have been on Wednesday, but I can’t remember!]

Wearing my new necklace that Jen helped me pick out 

F 7 Oct // Day 10 - Assistant orientation day! The first time I went to orientation for the 2015-2016 school year, I was bored out of my mind. The second time around it was even worse… but it’s an important day because we’re able to turn in all of our documents and meet new people! I met a few new assistants who are teaching both in and around my town. Later that night I stayed at the house and watched TV with my Australian roommate (Elle - pronounced Ellie).

Me & Elle heading out for tea on Saturday

Sat 8 Oct // Day 11 - My Saturday was very busy in a good way! I was out of the house / in centre-ville from 2PM until late that night… First I went out for coffee/tea with both of my roommates and some of their friends. We saw a “Flash Mob” in the Place Gambetta and some of them went out and danced along. It was cool! Then we went to another place and had a drink with different friends of theirs. Then I left to go hang out with two assistants I had met the day before. We went to St. Leu for Happy Hour and we just sat and talked for a few hours. Then I met back up with my roommate Michelle and different friends of hers (she has a lot of friends :D ) for tapas and sangria at El Tablao. Finally ending the evening at Delirium Café. I’m truly an introvert, so Saturday was really fun but also exhausting for me.

Flash Mob in Place Gambetta by "Amiens for Youth"

Sun 9 Oct // Day 12 - SO on Sunday I decided to have a lazy day. I stayed home and worked on my computer & organized some lessons / important documents. I also attempted to clean my room but that didn’t work out because I put music on and just ended up dancing around and not actually cleaning ;) I think on Sunday I also gave Snapchat a tour of my new place - I’ll upload that video so you all can see it as well :) Sometimes that’s just the kind of day that we need though. I felt relaxed & happy to be back in France.

M 10 Oct // Day 13 - Today was Edith’s birthday, she’s one of the English teachers on the ‘Dream Team’ at my school ;) I’ve said before how much I love my colleagues and how crazy & fun they are! Anyway, we went out for our lunch break at a restaurant in town called Le Relais de Risquetout and had a nice time. Sometimes my colleagues speak really quickly and I get lost in the conversation, but it’s fun to watch them laugh and have fun even if I don’t understand. It’s difficult to explain how I could enjoy things when I don’t understand, but it just happens. I think everyone who speaks other languages feels this way sometimes. Instead of sitting there bored I still try to listen and comprehend what I can. You can always feel the emotion from other people even when you have no clue what is going on. 

Left to Right: Vincent, Lars, Bénédicte, Edith, Me
Alexandra is holding the camera :/

Later that afternoon I had a really interesting “interview session” with Lars’ class. Once again the topic was Guns in America. So he let the students ask me anything about the subject, especially on my experience / opinion as an American. I tried to be as prepared as possible to answer any question that might come my way AND to also remind the students that this is just my personal experience. It can be hard for anyone not to generalize another culture. It all actually went pretty well. 

One kid even asked me "Can you explain, in simple terms, how a pistol works?" I was laughing so hard! I did my best to explain what I knew, but I am no gun expert! The first time I ever held a gun or was even around them I was 20 years old. It is just not something I grew up with. Dwight is the opposite to me so anything I know & any exposure to guns that I have is through him. It was good for the students to see that I have conflicting feelings about guns and that the way I was raised is different from what I do today. Of course they expected stereotypical answers from me.

My terrible, possibly inaccurate, drawing of a pistol on the white board

I became depressed again though when a student asked me “Which mass shooting in the U.S. affected you the most?”

[[ Side Note: The strange thing was that my first instinct was to say 9/11 even though it wasn’t an actual answer to the question. Because I was young when it happened and because it was a massive event, I have stronger emotions about it. ]]

Immediately my heart sank as my mind raced through possible answers and I felt the flood of emotion from each event at all once. How on earth was I supposed to choose between tons of terrible and senseless attacks? They all are horrible in their own way and there isn’t one that can be considered worse than another… I stood there for a moment and everyone quietly waited for me to respond, carefully observing my reaction.

I started by saying that any shooting of . . .

- any type of person

- any number of people

- anywhere

is wrong, sad, and senseless. Nobody should have their lives taken away by another person. I explained to them that there was no way for me to choose. I then told them that the Sandy Hook shooting shocked me the most because children are so innocent and have their entire lives ahead of them. That I couldn’t imagine what sort of monster could do that… I then told them that the Aurora movie theater shooting was one that I let scare me the most. While I knew that we should never let any sort of attack make us afraid to live our lives normally, I remember being genuinely afraid to go to the movies for a while. I hated how dark it was and even when I started going to the movie theater again I wasn’t able to enjoy the movie because I was too busy watching for suspicious people. Eventually I got over that but I still know people today who are afraid to go… even when, as we know, an attack like that can happen anywhere and it has.

I thought about all of this over and over for the rest of the day. I even had a lengthy and in depth conversation on my car ride home about 9/11. Needless to say my spirit was a little crushed from thinking of all of the negative things in our world. I prayed even harder that night…

T 11 Oct // Day 14 - Tuesday was pretty uneventful but I cheered up and “got over” the previous day’s thoughts. We had people come out to install a new heater / hot water heater. We’ve been having a few problems and we were happy to have some of them fixed. I spent the afternoon working at home and typing up questions that I need to answer for a class I’m helping with next week. They’re learning about Immigration & I get to talk about my family history! Yay! My Uncle Bill & cousin Billy have agreed to help me since they’re the experts here. I’ll post more about it next week!

Tuesday night I went bowling with with Michelle and lot of her students for an “English Night.” Two games of bowling and unlimited pizza. I’m a terrible bowler though and I got gutter balls 50% of the time (literally). Game one - 81 & Game two - 57. Didn’t even make progress! LOL. It was a lot of fun though. Afterwards I came home and Skyped my friends Jackie, and her cat too ;)

Jackie's Cat - Didn't get a good screen shot of Jackie because I always caught her mid-sentence ;)

Boom. There you have it. Week One’s update was much more brief than week two. We’ll see how eventful Week Three is!

[P.s. I did not proof read this at all, crossing my fingers that I didn’t make too many mistakes]