Already April?!?

Bonjour mes amis,

I'm sorry it's been a while since I last posted, but I hope you have all been well since then! I haven't been anywhere since Paris in mid-March (one reason for the lack of timely posts!), but I'm getting really excited about my upcoming trip to Spain - I'm leaving on Wednesday! There was a big grève (strike) 2 weeks ago, so a lot of us had classes canceled, and one of my friends had her school completely closed because all of the teachers were striking. There have been quite a few strikes since I got to France - this is partly because the French just go on strike a lot (it's a pretty integral part of their political system), but it's also because Sarkozy has passed some educational reforms that are doing away with quite a few teaching jobs. For every 2 teachers that retire, only 1 will be hired to replace them. This doesn't seem like a huge deal to me, as there are many teachers who don't even teach close to a full day of classes, but obviously the schools and teachers are very upset about it. Anyways, we had this big strike 2 weeks ago - I read the next day in the news that 30% of French primary school teachers were en grève that day! - so we all had the afternoon free and ended up going for a coffee at Café l'Agricole, our favorite café in Nevers' town center. As we were finishing up our drinks, a big group of strikers marched into the Place Carnot, where the café is. They had big banners representing their unions, a megaphone, road flares, and they were all shouting anti-Sarkozy, anti-reform slogans... Unfortunately we couldn't really understand them, but it was very exciting (and soooo French) to watch! Of course, the minute they finished this march (which probably started at the Préfecture, one of the Education Nationale's main administrative buildings in Nevers), several small groups broke off from the strike and sat down at the café for a drink! We sat and watched them for about 15-20 minutes; what an experience!

You may be aware of how much free time I have here, and my fellow assistants have the same issue. We've all gotten really good at making simple things take much longer than necessary, but we also now have time for all those ridiculous projects one thinks of but never has time to execute. This means that I can now add "Board Game Designer" to my résumé - a couple Wednesdays ago, a few of us had the brilliant idea to make a board game version of our time in Nevers. So many hilarious and slightly absurd things have happened to us here; it really is perfect material for a board game. It's made on the back of an old pizza box (so it has a huge grease/tomato stain on the bottom), but it's actually a really great game! We played it last week, and it works pretty well. Everyone has a game piece and starts at the Gare SNCF de Nevers (Nevers' train station). After rolling the dice, you can land on "good things," "bad things," "locations," "Il Faut Que," or "travel." If you land on a "good thing," it means you've successfully done something necessary to live in Nevers, and you can gain "dignity" or "frequent-flyer s'miles) cards, or you can move ahead spaces. For example, one of the "good things" is: "You successfully opened a bank account! Gain 1 dignity." (Let me remind you again that opening/closing accounts of any type in Frances is VERY complicated and involves tons of paperwork.) If you land on a "bad thing," it means something unfortunate has happened to you, and you either lose a turn or have to give up "dignity" points. For example, if you land on: "Step in merde (dog poop)," you have to give up 1 dignity point. If "You chose SFR as your internet provider," you lose a turn. As the square says, "You'll probably be on the phone for a while." If you land on a "location," it's just a place in Nevers where we've spent a lot of time, and you just pass that turn "having a drink at Café Ag" or "strolling along La Loire." If you land on an "Il Faut Que" card, you have to do what the card says to gain your choice of dignity or frequent-flyer s'miles cards. For example, one "Il Faut Que" card reads: "Put together a full meal for under €5." Another reads: "Put together a spontaneous lesson plan." There are also "travel" squares, where if you land on them you have to give up a certain number of frequent-flyer s'miles cards to get there, depending on how far the destination is from Nevers. For example, if you travel to Orléans, you have to give up 2 frequent-flyer s'miles. I can't really capture the greatness of this game in a blog post, but hopefully you can all see how wonderful this board game is...

Other than making awesome board games, I've also been teaching some, and my classes have been going really well. I had a really great one this past week - I was working on telling time in English with a class of CE2s (they're about 8/9), and they were all really paying attention, participating, and GETTING IT! It was super exciting, and I finally felt useful!

I hope everyone had a good Easter yesterday; I made brunch with 2 friends at one of the other girls' house here in Nevers. It was wonderful - we had biscuits (made by a real Southerner!), scrambled eggs, fruit salad, Easter chocolate, and mimosas! We also hard-boiled and dyed eggs, but all French eggs have brown shells rather than white ones, so the eggs turned out slightly funny colors, but it worked for the most part!

I'm already on vacation AGAIN - it started on Friday afternoon. As I said at the beginning of this post, I'm headed to Spain for 8 days during this break, and I'm leaving on Wednesday. I'm starting with 3 days in Barcelona, then I'll spend 2 days in Valencia, then 3 days in Madrid (one of those days will be a day trip to Toledo). The weather's been pretty grey and VERY rainy here in Nevers, so I'm looking forward to some sunshine! I've wanted to go to Spain for a long time, and I'm really excited for the trip. It's also going to be my first solo trip (other than a few little day trips), so I'm also excited about experiencing that - I'm sure it'll be an adventure, no matter what!

I can't believe it's already April - I only have 2 weeks of work once I return from vacation, then my contract is over and I'll be headed to Reykjavik, then back to the States for the first time in 7.5 MONTHS! Can't wait to see you all!