.fr

we have internet at the apartment. seth awoke this morning and poked his head in, interrupting my bath to tell me. he was ecstatic. i think he was jumping up and down. i didn't think the internet would come, but it came like electric binomial fog. i will let him explain the pains we went through to get to this point, but we definitely felt like we achieved some small victory. and now we don't have to read books all the time, or visit historical treasures or museums, or go for long walks and enjoy life's small pleasures. now we can read email.

for the past two days i have been reading what i could about teaching and culling things for a lesson plan. we don't have apartment internet yet, so this involves quick internet cafe searches that yield a handful of starter lessons involving naming english speaking countries on a map and having the kids pick english names.

my first class is at 1:30. before i go i run to the e.lecleric hypermarche to pick up a 300 or so big index cards that the kids can use for name cards and i get myself a small binder to use as a lesson planner. i look around, grab some groceries, and then head the half mile back to our place. but i lost track of time in the supermarket, an all-too-common occurrence for me, and end up pressed for time and rushing through lunch and throwing stuff in a duffle bag and rushing out the door: flashcards, scissors, pens, binder with lesson notes, map of usa, childrens books, stickers.

first class is with the directrice. she's kind of like a principal but she is a teacher as well. i went over a map of english speaking countries and then had them choose names. after i repeated myself several times in english she'd repeat instructions in french for those who haven't yet gotten it. i was super nervous and my throat was dry but i got through it somehow.

next class i started out the same as i did for the first class, but it didn't work. the kids didn't respond to it and they were super loud and would run around the class and the teacher just sat there, relieved for that for a brief time they weren't his problem. i wasn't quite sure what to do, so i quickly wrote a dialog on the board, "what's your name?" and "how are you?" and had pairs come and act it out. the first pair came up but then the rest in the back kept screaming. when the second pair came up i remembered about the stickers in my bag that i'd brought from the us. they say things like, "rad", "good work dude", "hang ten". i put one on each of the kids chests like a badge. and suddenly a whole room of hands shot up. they were crawling on the desks so that they could be higher, waving their hands back and forth, supporting their elbow with the other hand, saying, "oh! oh! pick me!" or some french equivalent. really ridiculous. am not exagerating their sudden, hilarious excitement. observation one: kids love stickers.

next class was easier. first level cm2. the teacher did a nice intro before giving me the floor and then helped with the first half. the kids have had virtually no english. i sang the abc's to them and then gave them a photocopy i made of the abc's with words that begin with that letter, xylophone and such. i told them we were going to make english dictionaries and the rest of the class was all cut and paste in devoted silence.

first had a doctors appointment in the morning that was scheduled by my school. it's needed for social security/immigration stuff. thought it would be for a standard blood pressure, weight, ear/eye/throat check-up, but all that really happened was i took off my shirt so the doctor could take a picture of my chest. okay, it was more like an x-ray. chest x-rays are required because we americans don't get shots for tuberculosis, and the last thing they want is us giving people consumption. again.

next i went around and introduced myself to all my schools. the teachers were all nice enough, but i was surprised to learn that most of the ones i'm going to be working with don't speak english. huh. i should probably hurry up with that learning of french thing.

some of the teachers wanted me to introduce myself to their classes. i wasn't ready for that part at all. but i said okay, and then stood up there in front of everyone and said hello and and counted to ten with the class, and some of them i asked really simple questions like "what's your name?" and i spoke ver-y dis-tinct-ly. these kids, they are super cute. i'm just not used to being around kids, and i don't realize that they are these little cute humans and here they speak french really fast and excitedly. the only thing cuter then the really cute kids, is the ugly kids. yes, the ugly kids are the cutest kids of them all.

got my schedule today:
monday afternoon,
tuesday afternoon,
friday morning and afternoon.
those are my responsiblities. that's it.

just peeked in our wonderfully large bathroom cabinet. how is it that it's nearly full? all my supplements, herbal concoctions and flower essence and homeopathic remedies brought from the states, then the things that we already bought here: aspirin with codeine (yes), mosquito potion, allergy medicine. i was thinking of odd, family quirks that seem encoded in our dna; a fear of flying, a love of baseball, food dislikes. my mother and grandmother have an attachment to vitamins and minerals.

i digress from france. but it is now two weeks since we've been here and i realize that here is starting, just a bit, to feel like a home. we know most of the kebab shops in the walls of avignon and we have our favorite. kebabs, by the way, are the fast food of france. they are also the tacos of france in that they are a tasty import from the south. and they outnumber the crepe shops 2:1. kebabs, by the french definition, are small, thin slices of lamb (or at least i think it's lamb), shaved off a cone of lamb on vertical rotating spit that's about two feet tall and eight inches wide at the base. the shaved meat is placed in a pita with some sauce. you can also get your kebab with salad, french fries, or both. yeah, french fries in the sandwich. i got used to that one real fast.

ah yes, seth walks in now with a thought. i thought i told him to lay off the wine :

do you think all the foods that are available to us now span the range of tastes? that is, are there foods out there, like on other planets, that have tastes we are capable of tasting and haven't yet?

we get the keys! we return to the etap and pack up our bags and prepare for the arduous 8 bag journey but then the cell phone rings and its corrine, "i told you to call me, what's wrong?" now, she had told me to call her at about ten to help move, but i had told her that we could do it alone and and we'd call her afterwards. but i am learning that she does easily permit refusals of her help. a spotty connection forbade any other refusals and she said she would be right over. such was the day of corrine and us, and i kept feeling guilty for keeping her from her family or free time, but she insisted. she drives us from the hotel to our new apartment, helps us move in, and then takes us several places furniture shopping in the morning. then she feeds us a delicious lunch with her family in the afternoon (she has an absolutely stunning place in villanueve, the former home of a popular avignon architect), and then offers us a bureau, refrigerator, kitchen table and chairs. she takes us furniture shopping in the afternoon and when we have everything picked out, takes us to rent a moving truck. after helping us navigate the difficult french formalities involved in that and waiting for a while for us for the next available van to return, she has to leave to go pick up her son from school, and tells us to call when we get home and moved in all the furniture so that she can take us shopping for other household things.

the wait for the truck is two hours long. seth seems very tense. it was a stressful day and the wait is annoying, but there's something else. "provincial drivers are insane," he says. and they are. people turn mad behind the wheel here and there is no reason. they go through red lights often. we've seen it; they don't care about rules. and avignon roads are made for horses, not moving vans. there are smart cars here; they look like sedans cut in half.