October break!

Bonjour mes amis!

Well, I made it through my first 2 weeks of work and was rewarded with a 12-day vacation! I don’t have to be back at work until November 5, so I’m taking advantage of the break to go visit one of my cousins for a week in Liverpool, where she’s currently in dental school. I’m not leaving until Tuesday, so until then I’m bumming around Nevers, packing up and cleaning my apartment. Sarah (one of the German assistants) and I are moving into our new apartment on November 3 – the day we get back from break – so I have lots to do before I leave! I lied about being done with French administrative formalities; now that I’m moving, there are tons of things to be signed and taken care of… We’re currently working on getting internet set up for the apartment, so hopefully it will be set up and installed shortly after we move in! As you can imagine, getting internet in France is quite a long and involved process, as are most things. We first had to go to France Telecom to get our phone line opened (I honestly do not understand why this needs to be done), then had to go back to SFR (another phone company) to start the ordeal of ordering our Neufbox, which is basically our internet box/wireless router. It’ll be really nice when it’s all set up, because the Neufbox comes with a phone line, and as part of our €30 monthly fee, we get free calls to landline AND mobile numbers in the US – in addition to wifi, of course! I'm not pleased, however, that I received a text message from SFR this morning saying that our order for internet had been received and is being processed and that the "delai de mise en service est de 21 jours environ" - it could take up to 21 days for our internet to start working!!

Work has been going pretty well, although the kids were pretty wild this week because it was almost break. In almost all of my classes I talked about Halloween and how it’s celebrated in the US – we talked about costumes and trick-or-treating and learned words like “witch,” “ghost,” and “skeleton.” I also got to carve pumpkins the other day in one of my classes! I’m pretty sure it would NEVER be allowed in the US, but the teacher had told the kids to bring in spoons and knives (to empty and then carve the pumpkins, of course) to school. It was a fun Friday afternoon activity, and although I was terrified that someone was going to lose a finger, we managed to successfully carve 2 pumpkins without any injuries!

I’m going to be tutoring a high school student in English while I’m here in Nevers – he’s the son of one of the teachers at one of my écoles primaires. On Thursday night Madame Billot picked me up in town and brought me to her house to meet Guillaume (yes, his name is actually Guillaume) and the rest of the family. They’re really nice, and I’m excited to start working with them after the break (and to start earning a little bit of extra money!).