Une Journée Passée A Privas

Sunday was pretty uneventful, I think I literally sat in room all day besides when I went to eat breakfast and lunch and dinner.  I think dinner was actually more eventful than anything else that happened that day, and then today I went to Privas to take care of a bunch of administrative stuff and to meet the other assistants in my region.  Here's the story:

So last night for dinner we had crêpes.  When most people think of crêpes, ok most Americans, they probably think of something sweet.  Well turns out, the French love to eat crêpes with lots of stuff!  Last night we cut up slices of ham, then put grated cheese and a few drops of crème on ours.  Granted, we also had like four different types of jams and jellies, granulated sugar and, of course, Nutella.  Isabelle had this six-crêpe making griddle and probably cooked up close to 30 crêpes, and we ate just about all of them between the three of us.  It was awesome.  Best meal yet.

Ok, another quick lesson.  First there's my town Davézieux, which is a 'commune' outside of the city Annonay, which is at the very northern border of a region called Ardèche (I would compare it to a county maybe?), which is in the south-eastern part of the 'académie' of Grenoble, which is in the south-east part of France (I would compare it to a state, in proportion to the size of France). SO.

The day after I had crêpes I had to go to over a hundred km (over 60 miles) to a city in the south of my region (Ardèche) called Privas.  I was thankful to be able to make the trip with the other English assistant, Holly, who's from England! She's awesome.  Super open and friendly, and really good at French! She was dropped off at my place and then we got picked up at the post office.

 At first we were going to have to take a really complicated bus route down there and back and it would've taken forever.  But turns out that one of Isabelle's friends who I played pétanque with, named Olivier, was going down to Privas that day, so we were just gonna have to catch a bus to Tournon, the city he lives in, and meet up with him there, then find our way back.  Well it also turns out Isabelle's cousin works in Tournon but lives in Davézieux as well, so she picked us up at the post office and drove us to Tournon, where we switched cars and left with Olivier toward Privas.

Olivier is retired and renting out his deceased parents' apartment in Privas, where he grew up.  He's got quite the story to tell.  He's traveled all over the world and has met so many people, it's crazy.  He hosted this girl from Iceland who didn't speak a word of French, and two months after she got to his house he said she was pretty much fluent.  Now she speaks seven languages fluently (go figure).  Anyway, we just talked about a bunch of stuff like that that helped me to open up out of my quiet, American shell and ask questions and participate in the conversation.  I would say it was a milestone in my adventure so far, because I actually held a legitimate conversation for like an hour!

a long stairwell in Privas

The drive down was beautiful, but I didn't really get any pictures.  It's impossible to catch everything on camera, especially in a car.  You just have to see for yourself!  There's a lot of Roman-Greco architecture down there, like aqueducts and such. Very cool.  We arrived in Privas a little early, so Holly and I walked around a bit before checking into l'inspection.  We met the other six assistants: a guy from Chicago, a girl from Arizona, a girl from Canada, and three other girls from England.  We also met Jean-Noël Breney, who overseas all the assistants in Ardèche.  He's really funny, speaks English pretty well, and has a beautiful home.  After going through a stack of paperwork, the seven other assistants and I went to there for lunch of pasta, sausage, bread, cheese, grapes, and drinks.  He lives on the side of this mountain-ish hill, with pear trees and a giant meadow that goes off into a valley between the mountains in his backyard. It's unbelievably pretty there.

a war memorial in Privas

Another stack of paperwork awaited our return from Monsieur Breney's house, and after we took care of all that we were free to leave.  The last 'turns out!' moment of the day was that Pascaline's friend, a directrice in a school in Vernosc (close to Davézieux), was in Privas and headed back to Davézieux!  It was definitely a day of luck.  Then I found 20 dollars.  I mean Euros.  Not really...but...you know...

So we headed back to Davézieux where Pascaline picked up Holly and I rode the rest of the way with Claudine, Pascaline's friend.  She's way nice, and she likes history. So. There's that.  I was way tired from the day's journey, so I pretty much got home and went to bed.  We ate mashed potatoes for dinner haha.

Today (Tuesday), I went to school for the first time!  It was so much fun.  I was pretty nervous about meeting everybody, mostly cause of the language thing, but everything went better than I expected.  There's four other teacher's at Vissenty (the school Isabelle works at): Dominique, who teaches K-1st grade, Isabelle, who teaches 1st and second, Jean-Luc, who teaches 3rd and 4th grade, and Denis, who teaches 5th grade.  When I say they teach two different grades, I mean they do it simultaneously, in the same classroom.  They'll set one side up with an activity to do, and then teach the other side.  Classes look just like they do back home too, for the most part.

cool tree at Jean Noël's

So I started off in Isabelle's class, who actually had a music class with the music teacher, Christophe.  He's really funny too!  Their teaching method's are so old-school, too. Maybe it's just because they're more rural, but the teachers are lot more strict on the students than in the States.  As in, they'll grab them by the arm and yank them around or give them a light smack on the head or what seems to be verbally humiliating them in front of the class, but I think that's just a culture thing.  The kids don't seem to mind be handled at all, and the verbal stuff they shake off like nothing, and the other kids don't tease them or anything afterwards.  I feel like that's how it used to be in the States before we started babying all our kids.  ANYway.

another cool tree...

I went to Denis's class next, and that was a big change.  His kids are older and more mature, and they were really excited to meet me.  The first thing they wanted me to do was just speak English.  I spoke kinda slowly and started with basic stuff like "my name is Casey, I'm from Washington State, I'm here for seven months, etc." and they didn't understand much of it haha.  So we did a sort of session in English and then the teacher would ask what they understood and then translate.  He understands pretty well from what I understood of his translations.  So that class is fun, and I'll probably get the furthest with them as far as actually teaching English goes.

They have recess like four times a day, on top of an an hour and a half of a sports-directed session.  I followed Dominique's class out to this high school where they met up with a gym teacher there and worked on this séance's (session's) theme: athleticism.  So for an hour and a half these kids just ran around a square, and then threw a maybe 2 pound rubber ball as far as they could haha.

I went back and hung out with Jean-Luc's class, and they were the most funny of any of the classes.  There's this kid in there, Alexandre, who loves me.  He and this other kid ask me questions about everything in America (in French, though).  Here are some of the questions I got :  "Are there glasses in America? Contacts? Do Americans drink alcohol? Are there volcanoes? Do you have cell phones? Do Americans play video games?  Is the weather nice in America?  Do they play sports?"  It was really hard to respond seriously, and I'm not quick enough with my French to joke around yet.  That's why I wanted to teach in a high school, but oh well.  This is better for my French anyway.

That class is pretty great too, I'm excited to work with them.  Jean-Luc has a guitar he says I'm free to use whenever as well, so that will be perfect! I hadn't thought about how I was gonna transport my guitar to my schools if I needed to, but now I don't need to worry about it.  At least not at Vissenty...anyway, class was out at 4h30, and then I headed back to Isabelle's for a while before we went to play pétanque again.  I think we play every week!  Same thing as last time - play a game, then eat and drink. Repeat.

my pétanque friends, from left to right - Françoise,
Isabelle (also my host mom), Gislin, Thierry, Pédro, et Alex

me playing pétanque!

so the idea is to get your balls closest
to the little green ball. this is a picture
of me winning the round :)

Tomorrow I go to the bank to open up an account and to get a credit card, and then I go to the inspection in Annonay to send off about a million papers. Then I go to my other schools on Thursday to get to know teachers and students a little bit, and then I only work Mondays and Tuesdays, three hours in one school in the morning and then three hours in the afternoon in another school.  Then I have Wednesday through Sunday off. EVERY WEEK. woop woop!





Geeze, long post.  Sorry! That's what happens when I don't update this daily...


Travelin' Man might quit with the 3rd person sign off.  It's kindof tacky and I'm running out of things to say haha.

OK BYE.