Les Actualites

So the big news this week is that I finally met up with the directors of the school where I'll be teaching English. Since I never received my documents from the ministry of education, I had no idea where I was I was teaching or how to get in contact with anyone. After prodding the people at MICEFA for a few weeks, they contacted the school and the director emailed me. We set up a meeting for Tuesday at 2:30. I rushed home from class that day, shoveled in some food, and off I went on the train. I took the RER there, which is essentially the BART to the metro's muni. Anyway, it's about an hour away, but that is sort of preferable here because it is past the suburbs and into a rich little town with a pretty castle. In France, the center of the city is the richest, and the farther away you get from there, the more ghetto things are. So in France, a suburb is basically the projects. Anyway, I met with two directors who picked me up at the train station and drove me to the school. One was wearing bright purple mascara with matching eyeshadow and the other bright blue. Silly townspeople. So they jabbered for forever, but we ended up picking my work schedule (8:30 to 4 Monday and Thursday --- good christ) and they printed out all of the train and bus schedules and showed me the fastest ways to get there. Very accommodating, which is rare among the French or so I've been told.

The rest of the week has been business as usual. Class in the morning, then some food shopping. We have a group trip to Fontainebleu tomorrow, so a few of us decided to have a picnic. I bought myself some turkey and a baguette to make a sandwich (sidebar: here in France, I am not considered a freak if I slap some butter and turkey on a baguette and call it a sandwich. That is what a French sandwich consists of). I also picked up two huge boxes of tiny strawberries for 5 euro as my contribution to the picnic. Few things make me feel more French than walking back to my apartment with a baguette under my arm. Later I'm heading to MICEFA to figure out my residency card crap and start my enrollment in Paris 10. Let me regale you with what I have to present for my residency card:

• passport
  
• six ID photos
  
• copy of my lease
  
• copy of my landlord's residency card
  
• copy of my most recent electricity bill (which has to be faxed to me from New York because I don't pay it)
  
• proof of my French health insurance
  
• a copy of my financial aid statement
  

Needless to say I will be pro skills at French printing and xeroxing at the imprimerie.