Randomness

Good Old French Frustrations of the Week:

When I got back from England, it was about time to do laundry. The bad news is that there is one laundry mat in this town, and it’s about a mile and half away from our flat. That’s an easy enough walk on its own, but with laundry in tow it’s a little tougher. Add that to the simple fact that laundry mats in France charge an arm and a leg and you can see what choice I’m left with. It was time to fill up the tub with some hot water and soap and do some good old hand-washing. Ha! That’s fairly easy, right? You just fill up the tub, throw some clothes in, and they get clean… No. They don’t. It was a nightmare. My first mistake was waiting so long to do laundry in the first place. My second mistake was thinking I could still do it all in one swoop. My next mistake was thinking that the water couldn’t possibly be hot enough to need to separate lights and darks. Let’s just say that I had a tub full of purplish/black water after a few minutes and I frantically searched for my whites to save them from the evil dark dyes. Once I pulled out all the light clothes, my job should have been fairly straight forward. No. How do you get socks and stuff clean? I scrubbed them by hand with soap, but I guess my hands have nothing on the agitation cycle of a washing machine. They would not get clean. The shirts and stuff, fine, they weren’t even dirty really. But seriously, I think I needed one of those old scrub boards or something. It was a pain. My clothes also took about 2 days to dry because I hung them up on our rack outside, but it was friggin’ cold here and I think they froze more than they dried. I would have brought the rack inside, but I thought they’d be better off in the sun (for the few hours it showed its face around here). Let’s just say I’m taking some stuff to the laundry mat next time. I’m not going to even bother doing sheets myself; they’ll never dry. Lesson learned: I would *never* want to be a housewife before washers and dryers were invented. You spend half your days washing clothes (and I only had to do my own, not a whole family’s!). I guess that’s misleading though, because I wouldn’t want to be a housewife *now*. But you know what I mean.

Yesterday some men came in to get the computers out of my room. Yay! I asked if they were taking all of them and they said they were and that I should have my room back that night. So I skipped off to class and hoped they’d be finished when I returned. You can imagine my disappointment when Rachel told me that they only took ONE computer and never came back. And they locked the door again. Liars. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice having a bed in the living room. It’s more comfy when we hang out and watch movies. But, it’s cold here. They just switched on the heating in this building, and as you can probably guess the radiator in the living room does not work. Rachel’s room is cozy. The WC is toasty. But the living room is Antarctica. Well, that’s not true. My clock says it only gets down to about 57 degrees F. But that’s cold for being indoors. I sleep with two scratchy wool blankets and my Wisconsin sweats. It works, sort of, but if I move then I wake up because it’s freezing in here at night. Brrrr. And don’t even say I’m from Wisconsin so I shouldn’t mind the cold. Even Wisconsinites go home to warm cozy houses. I don’t mind it outside, it’s when it’s cold inside that I dont like it. At least Ive found the best way to warm up: hot chocolate. I use the French semi-ecreme milk (50%, they don’t do skim, and to be honest I think it’s better) and some cheap bars of dark chocolate. I throw the milk on a burner and bring the milk and chocolate to a boil. Soooo good. Oh and you have to add some sugar (well, a lot of sugar), but it’s wonderful. I average 2 cups a day to get warm. There’s no better way. It makes you think of Christmas.

Monday was pretty interesting. It was supposed to be my first day really teaching (it’s only taken 3 weeks). I didn’t have much prepared, to be honest. Well I went to my class with Liliane, and almost all of the kids were ones who went on the trip. It was great, because when I do the debates on Mondays I can make them talk because we’re already friends. They won’t be embarrassed to speak English with me there, because they’ve gotten used to me already. And I know their names! I also saw Bene and Camille in the hallway and they ran up to me and started gabbing away. I asked if they’d be interested in an English club of sorts and they said they’d definitely like something like that (otherwise I won’t see many of them anymore). So that was the good part. Then I had my BTS classes (20-something tech school kids- accounting, computers, etc), well I was supposed to have them. I went to B101 and no one was there. I waited awhile because the French are notoriously late, and still no one showed. Uh oh. I went up to B201 and B301 and checked the wings to see if I could find my class. Nothing. So I went to the staff room and hung out alone. When I caught the teacher I asked her where the room was supposed to be, and I guess I was in the right room she had just told the kids the wrong room (yay, not my fault). Oh and I had another class after that, but that teacher forgot to tell the kids that it started that day so no one showed. I guess I won’t see those kids until after vacation. Rachel swears that we’re actually here to bring some organization to these French teachers.

Highlights:
I’ve joined the swim team! Today I went to my first ‘trial’ practice, and it was wonderful. I’m not joking, it was glorious. By that I mean, I suck at swimming. I’m super out of shape, and my strokes are all wrong, but I don’t care. The first lap felt great, and after that my body ached. It hadn’t moved like that in a long time. The coach guy was really nice. I was there early so I had my own lane for warm up (about 900 meters, felt like the main set, esp the butterfly). He gave me stroke tips for fly/breast which he said slowly because he wasn’t sure if I’d understand. Little did he know that I knew exactly what he was trying to say because I could feel it myself when I swam. I was a coach too, after all. I need to stretch out my strokes and ‘profiter’ from my kicks with longer glides. Anyway, it felt amazing, and I even saw a student I had in class yesterday (one of the sophomores). She even recognized me, and seemed genuinely happy to see me there. I only stayed for an hour, because I wanted to start off slowly. I did about 2100 meters, which is a lot for not swimming in forever, but that only really amounted to a warm up and kick/swim set. The only down side was that about half way through more people came so I was with the 14-16 year olds who were just starting the work out from the beginning. I felt too old to be swimming with them, but the only ‘adults’ were the old ladies doing aqua aerobics. I guess there’s not many people my age around here (except my obnoxious BTS students). After practice, I felt wonderful, and tomorrow I go back again!

And in case you were worried that I'd lose my Americanness after being surronding by so many frenchies and brits, dont be. I showed Rachel one episode of American Dreams because I have the 1st season here (the show is about a family in the 60s stuggling with pretty much everything that happened back then). She loved it and we've gone on to watch the first 3 disks in 3 days. She's becoming an American; I'm so proud. She said the characters have become like a part of her family, cause she finds herself rooting for them. I love it. Just when you thought I came over here to get some culture...

Oh and vacation is coming up, so I may be out of touch for the next week or so (though I can still get phonecalls! sunday... hint hint). I just started and I have a 10 day vacation. I love France. This weekend I’m going to Montpellier to see Elodie for a few days (and I’ll just miss the other Monty girls I think, which is sad). After that I’m training up to Paris and maybe spending a few days there with Irene who has yet to properly see the city. And after that maybe we’ll go to Caen for kicks. Who knows? The great part is I should get paid on the 28th (hopefully), which is kind of like a really generous 22nd birthday present from the French government. The timing is beautiful. If I don’t get paid, it'll be a bday downer cause I’ll be broke and may have to nix some of the travel plans… So here’s to hoping the paperwork went through…