October 9, 2005
It’s Sunday morning in France. I was too tired to write this last night like I usually do because I walked so much yesterday, which I guess is ok, but I can’t tell you how much my legs hurt. Breakfast consists of a croissant from the local bakery, a banana, a bowl of honey corn pops and ’11 Fruit’ Juice. The 11 Fruits are: Orange, Apple, pineapple, white grape, apricot, mango, passion fruit, banana, peach, pear, and guava. I’ve finally gotten over my cold, and now I have a simple earache that’s driving me nuts that started yesterday. I went food shopping on Friday and picked up more food so I can snack more often and make dinner in my room. While food shopping, I forgot that you’re supposed to put bar codes on your fruit in the produce department because the ladies at the registers can’t ring them up if they don’t have barcodes on them. Luckily the people waiting behind me weren’t too mad when I had to run my fruit back to produce to get it bar-coded.
I start teaching this week and I know it’s going to be an eye-opening experience. I already know of a few good students. I have one English Drama class and there are two girls in that class, which know English very well. In another class, I have met two complete opposites. I have one student, let’s call her Ann, who needs personal tutoring because she will be going to Cambridge for an interview in the spring. I need to prepare her for any questions she might be asked and help her speak in English with less of a French accent and answer questions with a better response time. Then I have another student, Chris – name changed again – who seems to be a very disruptive student in class, has a blond-dyed Mohawk, when the rest of his hair is brown and dresses in clothes typical to an American high school anti-Abercrombie student, and in class made me think that I probably wouldn’t be able to control the class. After class, Chris came up to me and introduced himself, and told me that he looks forward to the class and that he wanted to study English more and learn more slang words, which made me happy because any interest in language is good. I don’t care if I’m explaining every word in a Missy Elliot song – you know that one Lose Control, it’s constantly on the radio here – as long as the students are interested and responsive I’ll try to come up with good class topics. I do have one student in my drama class who only wears System of a Down sweatshirts. Half of her head is shaved and the other half is bright pink. It is one of the more interesting hair styles I’ve seen since coming to France.
Anyway, I haven’t been doing much other than observing class and filling out paperwork in order to not get deported. Yesterday, I decided that I was going to take a trip to Lyon, the 3rd largest city in France. It was started in the Roman Empire when the Romans were trying to keep a strong hold on France. There isn’t much left from the Roman Empire, but the town is over all a fun place to go and there is enough to occupy most people for a week of sightseeing, but only having 6 hours there, I made sure to wear my sneakers and bring a lot of water. Over 1000 steps and about 10 miles worth of walking, I considered the city conquered and I saw everything I could see. I took a picture of every bridge, because the city had 11 of them; it’s a peninsula formed by two rivers. I went to every church in the main area and saw anything there was to see, including a benefit concert, which donations are given to handicapped people organizations.
Anyway, I’m not doing to write a lot about it. I’m going to try to post the pictures with descriptions. There are about 150 pictures, so I’m going to put them here and on a series of sub links.
