Stage à Grenoble et Autrans

i said i was gonna make some of my mom's
cookies, and i did. they. are. delicious.

LONG POST AHEAD. YOU MIGHT WANT SOME COOKIES FOR THE WAY.

I've been without internet since Sunday evening.  It's been awful!  Also it's been wonderful.  Thankfully I was so busy the whole time that I think even if I had internet access I wouldn't have been on at all. Ok...who am I kidding, I probably would have at some point. I'm an addict. There, ARE YOU HAPPY?! Anyway...here's the story:

Remember that awesome party I was at? Well I got in contact with Morgane, the girl who I met there who told me I could crash at her place Sunday night if I wanted, and her offer was still on the table!  So Isabelle helped me find a ride down to Grenoble there using this site that serves as a ride share throughout the country.

at night, this tower turns on its BLUE
lights! it looks so cool, but I never
managed to get a picture of it, sorry! 

I met Rémy - a twenty-something year old guy who works in Grenoble during the week and comes to the Annonay region to visit his family on the weekends - in Davézieux and he brought me all the way to my friend's place in Grenoble for only 8€, a trip that would normally have costed like 20€ and lots of stress.  He was a really cool guy. We talked about a lot of stuff on the way down, and then he helped me find the tram I needed to take.  I got his phone number in case I'm ever in Grenoble again, and then we shook hands and said goodbye.

I was waiting at the tram for like 15 minutes before my friend showed up, and then we rode it to at stop that's right in front of her apartment building.  Her roommates were really welcoming.  One guy was Spanish and the other guy was Bulgarian I think, and they hooked me up with a blow up mattress and blankets and stuff.  Morgane made me and her a spinach pie thing with goat cheese - SO good.  Then we ate pasta, and we ate cheese and bread and chocolate for dessert.  She's so nice!  They're all students at the university in Grenoble, and she had to be up around 8 and I had to be up around 9 so we both went to bed pretty early.

I woke up the next morning, folded up my mattress and blankets and stuff, wrote Morgane a quick thank you not on a paper towel, and headed out towards my rendez-vous point for the Académie.  I didn't have time to eat breakfast, so I just hopped on the tram (which I didn't know you were supposed to pay for until after I got off and saw the ticket machine) and rode it down to where Morgane told me to get off.  Except I got off a stop too early so I had to walk to the next stop to make my transfer to where the building we were meeting in was.

I had a few minutes before we were officially supposed to start, so I went out looking for food.  I found a supermarket about 29 steps from the tram stop, and because my middle name is Othello I couldn't decide what I wanted to eat for about 10 minutes.  I settled with about a pound of white grapes which have green skins, but are named white because the wine they make is whine, even though it's more of a golden color than anything, and anyway it only cost me like 60 cents. Supply and demand, eh?  The same amount of grapes would've cost me my right hand.  I didn't steal them...we don't live in the Middle Ages, I just mean they'd be expensive.  In case you were confused.

So I brought my green-skinned white grapes back to the meeting place, signed off on my name at a table of English teaching assistants, and checked out where my room would be for the night.  Bellcombe 4, in a room with three other girls. Turns out that my advisor, Jean-Noël, placed me in that room because he thought that I was a girl because my name is Casey.  I don't know how he decided that, but what else is new.  I hoped they wouldn't be too freaked out.

I was just standing around with like 250 other kids in this room while everyone else showed up and signed in when I saw Holly.  A friendly face!  We mingled with some of the other assistants, and I saw some of the others from the Ardèche region (are you starting to remember these names?!).  We met a handful of other people while we were waiting to go into the auditorium.  I ended up sitting in the auditorium with some LDS kids (HOORAY!) I had met on Facebook, and some other girls who they had met before.

We sat through this really long and really boring informational meeting about stuff that everybody already knew.  They let all those who were in the European Union out to lunch so the others could stay and ask questions about financial stuff.  Since I had already taken care of everything like that I decided to opt out of that session with my new friends Trevor and Ashley to go get lunch.  We had an hour and a half to kill, so we walked down a ways to this boulangerie in search of food.  I got a salmon quiche, a diet coke and a strawberry tarte, which I forgot to take a picture of because I was so excited to eat it :(

salmon quiche. try the next time you're in grenoble.

The quiche was to die for.  Anything that comes out of your every day, every couple shops down bakery is amazing.  Even the coca-light tasted like diet coke.  I mean, it was diet coke, but sometimes people thing they'd taste different. Nope. Tasted like America.  Look at your hand. Now close your eyes.  Now imagine you have succulent strawberries and crème de la crème sliding down your pallet as you chew on a soft, cookie-esque crust.  Now stop. Close your mouth and open your eyes.  Look back at your hand.  Sadly, you're not actually eating a strawberry tarte, but if you were in France you could have been like me and actually had that experience.  I'm on a couch writing my blog - hooah!

...

We went back to the auditorium for a couple more hours of boring stuff.  This one guy from Spain or Italy stood up and addressed the people who were speaking to us and was like (in French, and not as sarcastically) "Hey just wanted to say thank you for everything, but a few of us were confused because we got a paper that said we were required to come here, but that everything would be free.  Well we had to pay for our train tickets here and then we just had to go out and buy lunch, so we were kindof upset about that." I think the majority of people were pretty shocked, but also it was kindof true.  I got lucky with my ride down, but some people had to pay like 40€ to get down to Grenoble.  I still that it was a little rude, but I also see why he was upset.  Even then, I wouldn't have had the cahones to address these people who were hosting us for the night in front of over 250 people.

After all that, I didn't really walk away from that with anything, except for new friends and a sweet page of doodles.  The six or seven us headed out of the auditorium to the busses that would take us up to Autrans, the little resort town where we were having our training the next day.  The drive up took like 45 minutes, but it was beautiful.  I hated the windows of the bus because they made taking pictures a pain in the beezy.  I wanted to stop the driver every 5 minutes so he could let me out so I could take pictures outside.  Too bad I never act on those impulses.  I'm only impulsive when I want something of little to no value on the internet. It's easy for me to spend my money when I can't see it in my hand.

Anyway...we arrived and checked in to our rooms and had a couple hours before we needed to be back for dinner.  I met the three other girls in my room, one who I already knew from Ardèche, and they weren't weirded out and neither was I!  I guess there were a couple rooms that were co-ed, too.  So Trevor, Ashley, Mia and I split up from the rest of the group and went looking for a hiking trail.  We didn't really find one, so we just climbed up the nearest hill until we had a good view of the town and then we headed back down.

We met up with the other kids we met and sat a table of eight in this big mess hall.  Dinner was bread (obvi) and salad followed by rice and green beans with rolled up fish in this really tasty sauce that I couldn't identify any part of.  It was white and salty.  Does that help?  I didn't think so. For dessert we ate yogurt and grapes.

Our little group met back in a room to play this card game called phase 10.  Before I joined them I ran into an assistant who also lives in Annonay! She teaches in the high school that Anouk goes to, which is why I had never met her.  It would've been great to know there was someone else in my city my age before though, like on my birthday when I walked around in the rain by myself. #selfpity

Her name is Ashley and she's from England as well.  She's way cool!  I guess she goes down to hang out with some of the assistants in Valence on weekends, so hopefully I'll be able to tag along sometime.

After a couple hours of phase 10, we figuratively threw in the towel and went back to our rooms for the night.  The other girls were already asleep when I got in, so I just went straight to bed.  Not straight to sleep, however, because the people next door thought it'd be cool to stay up drinking until all hours of the morn. I think they were the ones who skipped breakfast.

Which, unfortunately, they didn't really miss out on.  They had plenty of bread cut up, and even had corn flakes out accompanied by hot milk.  Here's the thing.  Hot milk + corn flakes = salty mess of not good.  Of course, they took out the cold milk after I already ate a bowl, so I wasn't really feeling another one.  I had a couple slices of bread and butter and what I think was raspberry jam.

Everybody split up into elementary school and middle-high school, and then split up again according to departments.  Along with the other Ardèche people I met in Privas, I went to a room where we met up with the head over the department Drôme, Rosine; the assistants in the region, and Jean-Noël, the head over my department.  We went through like four hours of different workshops on how to better teach the students.  It was fun and repetitive at the same time.

Between the hours of workshops we went to lunch.  I lost a lot of my group, so I ended up sitting with some random people and one girl from my group, but we had a good time!  We ate chicken in a curry sauce with a salad and steamed carrots and potatoes. There were little yogurt cups and cheese for dessert.

After lunch the directeur had everybody sit on the steps of the welcome building for a picture and then then thanked us for being awesome, and then mentioned that there was a bus leaving early for those who lived in Ardèche, which meant me! Hooray!  My friend Stephanie had already bought a train ticket back, but she lives close to Jean-Noël so he just let her ride with him (he's just a swell guy, I'm telling you), so she gave me her train ticket! So many nice people here.  I caught the first bus out of camp, got to the train station and followed Holly, my friend Beccy, who teaches in Tournon (near Valence, about 20 minutes away), and my friend Ashley from Montana (who teaches in a tiny town WAY away from everyone else, I feel real bad for her) to our next train, which had about 3 minutes to catch.

Frodo must be on another adventure, because he didn't
answer the door...

Stephanie's ticket was for 8:30, but it was like 5 so I needed to exchange my ticket.  I had to pay 3€ to have it moved up a couple hours, but I thought that was still a pretty good deal for a ticket home!  Well we barely caught the train because I was taking forever, but finally we were on.  When the conductor was taking my ticket, he asked for my train card that I used to buy the ticket.  Well I didn't buy the ticket, Stephanie did, so I didn't have it...so I ended up having to pay him seven more euros.  But still, 10€ for a train ticket wasn't too bad.

We said goodbye to Ashley in Valence, and then Holly, Beccy and I headed off to our next train, which I still needed to buy my ticket for.  I couldn't use my debit card in the machines in the station because it's a different set up, so Beccy had to buy my ticket and then I had to pay her with cash.  We barely made that train too!  Holly and I said bye to Beccy at her stop, and then the two of us headed to Péage de Roussillon to catch a bus to Félines, where Isabelle would pick us up.  The bus driver in Péage was waiting on a train to get in, which was late, so we left about ten minutes later than we had expected.

Funny story.  On the way to Félines, we talked a little bit with this Catholic guy who got on the bus and sat in front of us.  He needed to use my phone, but because I only had like a minute's worth of credit left on my card I told him sorry but I needed it to talk with Isabelle.  So Holly let him use hers, and he was on the phone saying that it was Brother Somethingoranother, and so when he was off the phone I just asked him what religion he was, in the small chance that maybe he was LDS.  He said he Catholic, and then invited us to something that was happening the next day in this church that is supposed to be really pretty and one of three of its kind.

Well anyway Holly and I got to talking about religion a little bit, and I was starting to explain about being LDS as we were getting off the bus when I realized I had left my phone on board.  The bus was long gone.  So we were gonna call Holly's host mom, but then Holly's phone died.  So we went looking for a payphone, but you need a specific card to call with it.  We didn't know if we were in the right spot, or when Isabelle would get there, and suddenly everything that we thought could've gone wrong might go wrong.  We freaked out a little bit, but then 15 minutes later or so Isabelle rolled up and took us all home.

After we dropped off Holly we went to check the bus station to see if the bus would be there, but it wasn't, so we just went home.  We were planning on coming back the next morning, but then Isabelle got a call from my phone, from the bus driver! He found it, and happened to call the right person.  He had just called her and gotten across where we should meet tomorrow and at what time when the phone he hung up on Isabelle for some reason...I know it was because the phone was out of credit, because when I got it back today I had a text that said "you ran out of credit!"  Good thing I didn't give it to the nice man on the bus!

Holy cow, if you're still reading this...I appreciate it.  Maybe you just came for the pictures.  That's ok, too.

if it looks like i photoshopped a lightpost out of this...it's
because i did.

Today it rained, but I went and picked up my bank card and came home and bought a new phone plan that will allow me to use my phone from America, so I'll have unlimited internet and texts, and 2 hours of call time for only 20€ a month! It's pretty sweet. I also bought Skyrim.  11.11.11. Why aren't you here now?!

I'm trying to figure out what to do for the next two weeks, because it's all saints vacation.  Italy?  Switzerland? I guess you'll find out in the next post!