As I was finishing my breakfast, I heard Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” come on in the living room. Since Catherine and I were the only people at home, she decided to put on some of her favorite cds. We listened to some Johnny Cash and then she put on The Dubliners, which is an Irish group (obviously) that plays traditional Irish songs. They were great! I showed her a video from one of our Christmas Balls of us dancing to similar music (the reel, the polka, etc.) and she thought that was pretty cool. It made me think about how I’m not going to be home for the ball this year—and that’s going to be really hard. Ah, well. Nothing I can do about it!
At 11:30am, I headed over to the school for my meeting. It was rather chaotic because everyone has different schedules and they had to fit English and Spanish in, without having my (or Pablo’s) time overlap with other teachers. It took a whole hour to figure out a schedule that worked for everyone. However, the teachers all freaked out when he suggested we start on Monday—they all said that they needed more time. So, unfortunately, I don’t start teaching until Monday the 17th! Urgh. I’m not sure yet what I’ll be doing next week (preparing for classes? Meeting with the English teachers?), but I refuse to spend it observing again! Another thing I found out is that I will be teaching two hours each week at the other elementary school in town. It is about 3 miles (?) away, so I hope to ride my bike. That might get tricky if it’s pouring rain, but both Bruno and Franck (the director of the other school) have offered to give me a ride when it’s raining.
After the meeting, I went with Franck to visit the other elementary school. It was during lunchtime, so I met the teachers (there aren’t as many because it’s a smaller school—and newer, it’s just 2 years old!), who were friendly and rather funny. It was a very relaxed atmosphere (they were all joking around constantly…that might have been because they had had a bottle of wine at lunch…). I got a tour of the school and Franck gave me a packet of materials that they have found to be really excellent for teaching English. I am borrowing to see how I like it—and if I do, I will use that curriculum all year! Very helpful!
This afternoon I was researching plane/train schedules for my October break (Oct 23-Nov 3), when Mark came on to skype! It was awesome to get to talk and my host mom even got to meet him! Since Mark will be coming to visit for 2 weeks in February, he will actually get to hang out with my host family! While we were skyping, the internet at my house came back!! Super! Catherine was beyond happy about it and so am I. :)
Hugo and Lucas came home from school today (for the weekend) and my host family decided to get take-out from “mac-do” (McDonalds) for dinner. The only time I have ever eaten food from McDonalds was when I was about 8 years old and I attended a birthday party there for a friend. So, I wasn’t too keen on getting anything for myself, but I went along with Ralf and Margot to see what their menu had to offer. It was very different from the US. For one, the food wasn’t very cheap. The meals (a burger, fries, and a drink) were around 7€ ($9) and they didn’t have any vegetarian options. No gardenburgers—even their salads had meat on them! I know that I could have asked for them to make me a salad without meat and I could have eaten French fries, but I preferred to just eat the rice and beans leftover from lunch. Today for lunch I had a big bowl of rice and beans with some cheese and an entire tomato on top—it was deeeeelicious! So, I came home and warmed up the leftovers for dinner and sat down with them while they ate their burgers. I think my happy meal was happier.
This evening we watched a show on TV about women who carry babies for couples who cannot have children. The strange thing is, it’s illegal here! So, since they cannot implant the mother’s egg and the father’s sperm directly into the woman who will carry the baby (because you’d need to have an operation to get the egg out), they just use the sperm. So, really, the woman carrying the baby is the actual mother. It’s very illegal, though, and there are huge fines if you’re caught. Some French couples go to Greece (or other countries) where it is legal and they can use both the mother’s egg and father’s sperm—that way the baby is genetically theirs. I’m really not sure why it is illegal in France.
After everyone else went to bed, Catherine and I stayed up talking until after midnight. We discussed lots of different subjects (family, politics, plans for Christmas vacation, medical problems—Ralf has been really ill for months, he is just getting better). I enjoyed our conversation.
It’s been very gray and rainy all day. I think it smells like Halloween and I enjoy bundling up a bit! The only scary part is if you get caught outside when it decides to pour!
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