English Christmas, Swiss New Year

I've been putting off writing this post for a couple days now, because it's kind of intimidating to imagine writing about all of the things that I've done over the last 4-5 weeks. BUT I shall give it a go, and rely mostly on pictures to tell the story. I'll try to keep it short!

This is a shot of the Reims Christmas market, which I visited several weeks before my mom arrived, and again with her while she was here. It was the most beautiful one I saw, with booths winding around the city for blocks and blocks, with vendors selling hot cider, mulled wine, foie gras, crepes and waffles, and various knick knacks, like candles shaped like fruits and vegetables and remote control cars.
This is the basketball team I play with! The teams I play/practice with come from Gauchy, a small town right next to Saint Quentin. I practice with L'Equipe 1, but can't play games with them because I would have to pay 400euro or something ridiculous. So, I play Equipe 2, pictured below! They are a lot of fun, they're all in their 30s and have kids, and have been playing together for 20 some odd years. #6 is Stéfanie, the woman who works in Tergnier and has been so, so nice to me, helping w/ paperwork and getting me set up with the basketball team and all that jazz, and next to her is Fabian, her husband.
This is the Christmas pageant we had at Blériot about 4 weeks ago-- these are the preschoolers, getting ready to sing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" and "If You're Happy and You Know It"! My friend Libby, who visited for a couple days from Spain, was there to take pictures.
Paris' Catacombs, which Libby and I visited. The sign on the entrance read that "children and people of nervous disposition" might want to avoid the visit. It was a morbidly beautiful sight.
Libby & I on boat on the Seine!
Before Christmas at Condren, the preschoolers made sugar cookies-- here they are flattening the dough :)
The older kids at Condren made gingerbreadmen!
The weekend before my mom arrived, I visited some Grinnellians in Paris. On the left is Zoe, who I worked with at the Phoenix Café in Grinnell. On the right is Carla, and next to her is Hannah, who studied abroad in Paris this past semester. Next to Zoe is Thomas, a friend of hers from home. We were at the le Musée de Quai Branly, and saw a great exhibit called "L'Invention du Sauvage".
...We also climbed the Eiffel Tower, the same night as Paris' first snowfall of the year. Romantic, but also extremely cold and windy.
After a couple days with Zoe, Carla, and Hannah, I headed to Gare du Nord (a big train station) in Paris to meet my mom, and after much stress and explosion of bags (I think I wrote about that last time?) we FOUND each other!! We came back to Tergnier and spent a few days doing day trips around Picardie & Champagne-- to Saint Quentin, Amiens, and Reims. This is a picture of a booth at the Amiens Christmas market-- Picardie is famous for its marionettes, and the man who hand makes these has been doing it for several decades.
On Dec. 22, my mom and I took the Eurostar train to London! The train goes about 180mph, and goes under the English Channel. We stayed at the London School of Economics, which kicks most of its students out of the dorms during holiday breaks so as to rent its rooms to people like us! It was nice to be back in an English speaking country. Our first night, we walked down to Trafalgar Square and saw some carolers raising money for a charity. Behind them is a huge Christmas tree given to English by Norway every year.
Caroline's Effluent Services, Ltd truck :)
My favorite place we visited in London was the Tower of London, which we visited on a whirlwind day of museum/monument going, as the 23rd was the only day during our visit that they were open. The Tower of London was built around 1078 by William the Conqueror (right after he invaded and conquered England, like in the Bayeux Tapestry says! remember?), and at the time was the tallest building in Europe at a whopping 4 stories. The Tower has been used as an armory, a mint, a treasury, and a zoo, but is most famous for being a prison, and the site of hundreds of executions, (only 7 within the Tower walls, the rest on a hillside nearby) including the beheading of Ann Boleyn. Many famous people were imprisoned there, like Sir Walter Raleigh, Elizabeth I, and Lady Jane Grey. We had an entertaining tour from a Yeoman Warder (aka Beefeater! They've been the guards of the Tower for more than 500 years). Here he is in the middle of saying that if anyone uses a camera during the tour, he gives us permission to punch them in the kidneys. Oops.
These days, the Tower houses the Crown Jewels, which are guarded by this guy (and several others like him). I wonder how he feels about his job, because in theory it is quite an important and historically significant one, but it seems like most of what he does is get photographed by tourists like me. (might get annoying after a few years, maybe?) My mom and I got to see the Star of Africa, the largest cut diamond in the world!
The White Tower, built by William the Conqueror. The rest of the castle (other towers & surrounding walls) were built later on. The walls of this bad boy are 15 feet thick at the bottom, and 11 at the top. this used to be the tallest building in Europe!
The Tower was built on top of Roman ruins, which are pictured here in the foreground. The wall on the right is part of the White Tower, and the tall building in the distance, beyond the trees, is The Shark-- 1000 years and about a hundred stories later, it will be the tallest building in Europe when completed in the next year or so.
A lot of historic armor & weapons is displayed in the White Tower-- here is the largest suit of armor in the world (Guiness Book of World Records plaque and all), and one of the smallest.
After the Tower tour, we went to the Tate Modern. This is a shot of St. Paul's Cathedral and the Millenium Bridge from the other side of the Thames.
...After the Tate, we went to the British Museum! By that point we were so tired we only had energy to see the Rosetta Stone, the stone carving from Easter Island, and the mummies, and then made our way out, oohing and aahing at a few other things along the way. Here is the Rosetta Stone!
Hoa Hakananai'a, from Easter IslandOccupy London protesters camped out in front of St. Paul's Cathedral. Their camp was pretty quiet the day we visited the cathedral, and it was hard to imagine what camping out in rainy, soggy, chilly London for months on end would be like. I have felt very removed from the OWS protests (believe it or not, there's no active Occupy Tergnier movement), and wish there had been someone I could have approached to chat with. If anyone knows of Occupy movements in France, give me a shout, I'd be curious to see what it's all about.
On Christmas Eve we went to Oxford St., one of the biggest shopping streets in London. It. Was. A. ZOO. (Apparently Boxing Day, Dec. 26, is the biggest shopping day of the year in London, and this boxing day, someone got stabbed at a Foot Locker on Oxford St. Zoo.) The purple building is Selfridge's, a fancy pants department store where we saw a glasses case for $3000. Best part of experience was bagpiper & calypso Christmas carol band in the street!
Also on Christmas Eve, we went to a beautiful church called St. Martin in the Fields for a Caroling service. The church was full, and we had an hour of beautiful organ and choir music, and also got to sing some familiar carols. Another highlight of the trip for me.
Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day!
Big Ben & the Houses of Parliament, and us on a bridge over the Thames.
The day after Christmas we came back to France. In between our Christmas & New Years' trips, we spent one day in Paris. This is a shot of Ile de la Cité (where Notre Dame and Sainte Chapelle are) and le Pont Neuf (oldest bridge in Paris). All the locks are on another bridge nearby-- I'm not 100% positive, but I think they are "locks of love"-- you can buy one from vendors along the Seine, and each lock comes with two keys, one for you and one for your boo.
Le Sainte Chapelle! Built as a private chapel for the King and his family in 1242. The stained glass was made by the same craftsmen who did the windows at Chartres. The chapel was built to house the relics of the Passion (Jesus' crown of thorns, splinters from the cross), which are now housed in Notre Dame.
Shakespeare & Co. bookstore, near Ile de la Cité
Apartments along the Seine
For New Years', my mom and I took the high speed train (le TGV-- c'est chhhhoooueeettte!) to Geneva, Switzerland. An old friend of my mom's lives their with her husband, their names are Teresa and Tim. They were wonderful hosts, treating us to tours around town and delicious typically French & Swiss meals- we had fondue one day, and on New Years' Eve Day (??) we drove to a ski resort town in France and enjoyed one of the most memorable meals I've ever had.
I started with 6 oysters, which the French apparently love at New Years, then had scallops w/ carmelized endives & a saffron cream sauce, and a Paris-Brest (pastry filled w/ praline cream) for dessert, followed by coffee. The whole meal lasted 3 hours, and was truly an experience! The rest of the visit was relaxing, and we spent a nice New Years' Eve together talking about this and that, drinking some wine, and watching a French cabaret & an English Hootenanny on TV next to a fire in their cozy living room. Pretty ideal.

Here's a shot of Teresa, Tim & my mom, with Lake Geneva and the Swiss Alps in the background.

The cemetery where Teresa's parents are buried. Teresa's father Joachim was my mom's father's best friend.
Geneva is home to THE LONGEST BENCH IN THE WORLDDD (ooooo)
Pretty green shutters in the Old Town
And there you have it! I am extremely grateful to have seen and done so much over the past few weeks, and so thankful for such a long, wonderful visit with my mom. We said goodbye Friday morning, and I was very sad to see her go.

Now I am back in Tergnier for a bit, settling back into work. I went to a professional basketball game the other night in Saint Quentin, which was enjoyable most of all because of the utterly unenthusiastic mascots, who would come onto the court at halftime and slowly walk in circles with their arms swinging by their sides until the game started up again, and spent the rest of the game leaning up against a wall with their costume heads under their arms, chatting up their girlfriends. Also funny because the team's mascot is the white fox, but one costume was a grey squirrel and the other a brown chipmunk. This afternoon I have a basketball game of my own! And next week, my college roommate Brita is coming to visit for a weekend from Germany, where she spent the holidays with her brother and the rest of her family!

Lastly, my computer charger came way earlier than expected (A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE), so I will try to post shorter things more often. Love to you all, happy New Year and late Christmas, vous me manquez beaucoup!

So much to write about, and so many technical problems!!!
This will be short, as I'm writing from the médiathèque de tergnier, because at the moment my laptop charger is broken, so I cant use my computer. I ordered another one, but it might not arrive for a month :( I'll be praying that it arrives sooner, because that's a long time to go without skype and blog and modern family. I did find the first twilight book in french yesterday, which has been very entertaining so far. Should broaden my vampire-werewolf vocab significantly!
A lot of really awesome things have happened in the past few weeks, and a lot of them happened with awesome grinnellians. Two weekends ago my friend Libby came to tergnier for one night from Santander, Spain, where she is living for a year as a fulbright fellow. The night she arrived Tabea and I threw a small xmas party, and invited our friends from Chauny, coworkers, and neighbors- Tabea made mulled wine, I made egg nog, and people brought wonderful French speciqlties like tarte aux maroilles and the 13 traditional desserts of xmas. The night ended with a Claude François dance party- Libby introduced me to CloClo, who you should check out on youtube if you don't know him already. Two of my favorites are 'Belles, Belles, Belles' and 'Alexandra, Alexandrie'. The next day Libby and I went to Paris and saw the catacombs, took a boat trip on the Seine, and met up with a friend of hers for coffee (pictures when my charger arrives!!) I was sad to bid adieu to Libby, it was so nice to spend time with a Grinnellian who was as excited as I was to walk around a maze of underground tunnels filled with human bones stacked to eye-level (catacombs!! awesome!)

On Thursday of this past week, I made my way into Paris again to meet up with 3 more grinnellians from the class of 2013- Zoe, who I waitressed with at the phoenix, and Hannah and Carla, two frisbee players who I had never met before but am very happy to know now. Hannah is finishing up a semester abroad in Paris, so she graciously hosted us all and showed us around- Zoe and Carla had just gotten off a plane from Tanzania when I met up with the group on Thurs- they studied abroad there last semester, and were tanned and full of parasites (literally). I stayed with them for 2 nights, in which time we saw a photo exhibition, the xmas market on the champs-elysee, saw a fantastic exhibition called 'the invention of the savage' at a museum near la tour eiffel, climbed the eiffel tower, saw the louvre, and went dancing til 4am. phew! Was sad to say goodbye so soon to such great people, but I hope our paths will cross again soon.

On Saturday morning, I went to Gare du Nord to meet up with my mom; (!!!) we had made a pretty straight forward plan, which was to meet at a certain platform at a certain time, and which, unfortunately, went wrong. My moms flight was late 2 hours and she was 3 hours late meeting me, and had no way to contact me, nor I her. Long story short, I spent several hours frantically trying to figure out what the deal was with her plane (didnt know airline or flight info), and started crying after armed guards roped off half the train station because someone left a suitcase unattended, which they BLEW UP after about 20 minutes (I had no clue what was going on), and then miraculously! my mom appeared! and now we are together, making our plans to spend christmas in london and new years in geneva. Looking back over the past few weeks and forward to the holidays, I am overwhelmed with THANKS for the good fortune I have to be here and have the opportunity to see so much (and so grateful that I found my mom. good grief.)

Oh yes, and the last few weeks of work were great as well, high points being a christmas pageant at bleriot where the preschoolers I work with sang 'we wish you a merry christmas' and 'if you're happy and you know it', and making gingerbreadmen at condren.

Missing you all, much love to you at the end of the year! will post pictures asap when charger arrives (unless world ends jan 2012; hope not INSHALLAH)

Compiègne, Thanksgiving, et les Souris Vertes

Some cool things have happened over the past week and a half!

1) I visited Compiègne twice, two Satudays in a row. Compiègne is a city about 45 minutes from Tergnier on the train, on the way to Paris. For my first visit, I met up with Alejandra and Kiersten, two assistants from Noyon, a town 20 minutes from Tergnier, and Corinne, who is living in Compiègne. In the morning, we walked around the Christmas market and the farmer's market. One wonderful thing about this time of year is Christmas markets- in most of Europe, moderately sized towns set up Christmas markets as early as late November. The markets feature knick knacks you can buy as gifts, sometimes carousels and ice skating, and of course special Christmas food and drink, like roasted chestnuts (tried those for the first time in Compiègne!), vin chaud (mulled wine), mousse filled chocolates, waffles with all sorts of toppings, cakes, and special meats... YUMMMM! After the markets, we visited Compiègne's royal palace! Louis XIV once said of the château de Compiègne: "At Versailles, I am lodged like a king; at Fontainebleau, like a prince; and at Compiègne, like a peasant." Le pauvre!! It was really fun to walk around les Grands Apartements (malheureusement no pictures allowed!) and imagine Marie Antoinette or Napoleon Bonaparte or various Louis walking the same hallways, sitting in the beautifully upholstered chairs or sleeping in the extravagant beds. The palace also has huge gardens, and the day I visited it was clear and beautiful!

L'Hôtel de Ville de Compiègne, and the Christmas market
Christmas market meats

Le palais!
Corinne & I on the stairs that lead to the Queen's apartments

The palace grounds

Compiègne's cathedral
Alejandra & Kiersten in front of "the oldest known example of a circular tower", constructed in the 12th century. This tower was the spot where Jeanne d'Arc was captured in 1430!
A view from my bedroom window in Tergnier the other day. Beautiful sunsets, but it's getting dark here just before 5pm! :(
2. Thanksgiving!! A very kind English teacher at the collège here in Tergnier invited me to his place for Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday Nov. 27. I had a bit of trouble getting there, as the train Tabea and I were planning on taking back to Tergnier was cancelled after we spent a second day in Compiègne last weekend. I ended up having to take a bus straight from Compiègne to Saint Quentin, which meant that I wasn't able to bring the casserole of candied sweet potatoes I made for the occasion. (Tabea doesn't like sweet potatoes, and I think was scared by the marshmallows, so this means I've been working on finishing the entire pan of candied sweet potatoes solo this past week. They make a good breakfast, kinda.) I also had to go to the bathroom so badly on the bus ride that I had to ask the bus driver to stop the mostly full bus by the side of the road, which was embarrassing. But! I did make it to Thanksgiving in Saint Quentin eventually, and though much of the conversation was very fast and about video games (beyond my comprehension on two counts) I did add some important words to my vocabulary, like "grateful" and "urinary tract infection" (we discussed the merits of cranberries over dinner- they're pretty much unknown here in France). And the food was great. :) Pascal, our host, made the turkey, stuffing, corn, gravy, and cranberry(ish) sauce himself, and friends brought mashed sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie. I was very reconnaissante (grateful) to have Thanksgiving here in France!

Turkey = la dinde, en français. C'est la dinde de Pascal.
Franksgiving! Pascal is the guy in green on the right.
Eliza carving la dinde, Camille supervising. These two are also teachers at the collège in Tergnier.
Thanksgiving also meant that I spent most of my English classes last week explaining the holiday. At Condren, la Directrice Lucille suggested we make a pumpkin pie with the kids! It was pretty chaotic, but really fun, and though I was worried I got some of the conversions from cups to grams wrong, the pies turned out great.

Mixing les ingrédients. The lady with the red heart shirt is la Directrice, Lucille.
WAAAAH PUMPKIN PIE!!!!!!!!
3. Adorable French children, take II. At both schools where I work, Blériot and Condren, children in Maternelle have been working on various projects about les Souris Vertes (Green Mice). La Souris Verte is a classic French children's book and song. Here's a link to the song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hyPpfzm84I&feature=related
Roughly translated, the song goes "A little green mouse, running through the grass/I catch him by the tail/I show it to some men/ These men tell me, dip it in oil, dip it in water/ It will make a hot little snail!/ I put it in my drawer, it says 'it's too dark!'/I put it in my hat, it says 'it's too hot!'/ I put it in my drawer, it leaves me three little poops." (It's waaaay better in French.) This week the kids in Maternelle at Condren finished up their Souris Verte masks and took pictures!


Also at Condren last week, I worked with older kids on colors. I would say a color in English and they would try to spell it out on their whiteboards; la maîtresse Hélène and I were pretty amused by some original spellings, including oued (red), iélo (yellow), and gouene (green). :) The next few weeks will be pretty busy, as well- this weekend I'm heading to Reims for a day, and to Soissons for a basketball game, the two weekends after that I'll be in Paris, and my mom arrives Dec. 17! hurrah!

Happy late Thanksgiving to everyone again, I miss you all very much! It was very nice to skype with the Demings and the Lincolns and the Pattersons on Thanksgiving, and with my mom and Sylvia the night before. Sending much love to everyone reading this!

Some pictures!

Here are some pictures from the last couple weeks. :) The weekend before last I met up with an assistant in Saint Quentin who's from Sacramento. We took a mini-road trip to some nearby towns with a French friend of hers, including a little town called Coucy-le-Château, which is home to a castle built in the 10th century! We got to the castle as it was getting dark, and the grounds were closed, but we were able to walk along a path that surrounds the ramparts. At one point we turned a corner and came face to face with a couple of goats! They had very large horns and baa'ed warily at us, so we decided to turn back. This is a creepy picture of one of the goats next to the castle wall.

Some years after WWII, many German and French towns established what's called a "jumellage" in order to strengthen friendships between French and German students to avoid future hostility between the two countries. German and French towns that are paired up send students and teachers to the other country for annual visits. here in Tergnier, a group of German middle school kids studying French comes once a year for a week, and French students studying German from the collège visit Wolfhagen for a week in the spring. The kids stay with host families and attend classes at their sister city's middle school. Two weeks ago was the visit from the German students from Wolfhagen, so Tabea was pretty busy helping with the organization of the visit. Last Saturday, Tabea and I were able to accompany a group of German teachers on a visit of the region; we went to a town called Guise, to Saint Quentin, and to Chauny, where we ate dinner at a really nice Moroccan restaurant.

Guise is known for Le Familistère, a factory that produced beautiful woodstoves, iron pots and pans, stoves, and other lovely things made of metal. The factory's founder, Jean-Baptiste André Godin, was big on French philosopher Fourier's ideas about work and the equal distribution of the profits of an enterprise, and tried to create a community around the factory where all of its workers could live, work, and play. Every factory worker had the option to live at Le Familistère with his family. Everyone who lived at Le Familistère had the same living quarters and could take equal advantage of the theater, stores, pool, and schools that Godin built for his worker community, regardless of that person's status at work in the factory. Interestingly, the factory's output of units/worker increased drastically as more and more factory workers decided to live in Le Familistère, and the number of units overall increased even as the total number of workers employed in the factory decreased. One point for socialism! We took a guided tour, which was funny because the tour guide talked in rapid fire French for all of an hour and a half, and half of the visiting Germans didn't speak French. By the end of it our eyes were drifting in opposite directions, but it was neat to see the buildings and some of the beautiful stoves and knick knacks made in the factory.

I took this picture from an open courtyard in the middle of one of the apartment complexes. The whole building was empty and cold, and Tabea and I spent a lot of this part of the tour giggling at the back of the group. There was really strange ambient music coming up from vents in the floor that sounded like blue whale sounds- the tour guide said it was there to give visitors an idea of what the place might have sounded like back in the day when there was lots of hustle and bustle. And blue whales?

Tabea with some small stoves

Most awesome umbrella stand ever!


Woodstoves!

A view of the Oise river from a bridge near Le Familistère's pool

The pool building

My lamb tajine at the Moroccan restaurant in Chauny :) yummm


Last Tuesday was my second full day at Blériot, and I was lucky enough to be with Maternelle to celebrate two birthdays; a boy named Matteo turned 4, and Lorrine turned 3! Matteo is the boy in the grey turtleneck, and Lorrine is the girl in the white long sleeved shirt. The little boy in the red is Erwan- he's 2, and the youngest kid at the school. He's extremely adorable, and I got to help him learn how to use scissors last week!


These two guys are in the older section of Maternelle at Blériot. They are awesome! They're both really excited to have me around, and are the most enthusiastic of the group when we practice singing 'The Itsy Bitsy Spider'. Last Tuesday I helped them and a few other students make trees out of clay.

Last week I made ratatouille for dinner! yum yum yum :)

This is an add for shaving cream that I saw in Saint Quentin- it's very hilarious (I think), and very French! It's a picture of a clean shaven man with his cheek resting on a pair of anonymous breasts, and the tagline says "taste comfort". Oi.
Happy early Thanksgiving to everyone, I'll be thinking of and missing you all this week!

La vie dure d'une assistante aux écoles primaires

I've gotten requests for more & shorter (fine!!) posts, and I also realize now that I've written absolutely nothing about my actual work, so here goes.

This past week was my first 'normal' week of work, as my schedule was only finalized the week before Toussaints. As it stands, I work for 3 hours on Mondays and Thursdays at a tiny school called Condren, and for 6 hours on Tuesdays at a larger school called Blériot. I was set up in Condren first, so I feel a bit more familiar with the school. It's a 3 room school house, with only 3 full time teachers: la Directrice, Lucille, who works primarily with Cycle 3, who are the older kids; Aurélie, who works with CP, CM1 & CM2, who are between 7-9, and Hélène, who works with Maternelle. Maternelle is the equivalent of pre-school, but French children start as early as 2! So she has kids between 2-6 in her class. Both Mondays and Thursdays I start with an hour of English, on Mondays with Hélène, who works with CE1 and CE2, (ages 7-8) and and on Thursdays with Lucille, who works with Cycle 3, who are a bit more advanced (ages 9-11). This past Monday Hélène worked on colors in her English class. It was the first day back from break so I didn't contribute much, but next Monday I'm going to work with the kids on the song 'Colors of the Rainbow' (shout out to Norah Deming, who taught me that song!) Thursday Lucille was reviewing the parts of the body with Cycle 3, and I played a short game of 'Simon Says' with them, and also worked through Shel Silverstein's poem 'The Acrobats':

Next Thursday I'll be leading the class in the song 'Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes' and playing some more 'Simon Says'. When I'm not doing English at Condren, I help Hélène with Maternelle, or do the equivalent of a P.E. class with Lucille. The kids in Maternelle are too little to learn English, but Hélène has me do little things with them anyway just for fun; my first day we tried to sing 'If You're Happy and You Know It' together, and this past week I did a very short finger puppet show in English. During P.E. with Lucille on Thursday, the kids had a race, and on the way back into the school yard, Lucille had me explain what to do before you cross the street in English ("look to the left... look to the right... is there a car? Yes? What color is it?")

This past Tuesday was my first real day at Blériot. Blériot is a bit bigger than Condren, with 7 full time teachers, including the Directrice, Madame Blondi (who is, in fact, blonde,) as well as visiting English and German teachers. Tuesday mornings I'll be with Maternelle- at Blériot la Maternelle is divided into two classes; les petits (ages 2-3) et les grands (4-6). I'll spend half of the morning with les petits, and half with les grands. This past Tuesday I spent my time with les petits helping some little ones practice using scissors, and with les grands I sang 'The Itsy Bitsy Spider'. In the afternoon I'll help out in two English classes; last Tuesday's classes were dedicated to learning the months of the year and discussing Halloween.

As you can see, I have an extremely stressful job and I need every one of the remaining 26 hours of the work week for diligent preparation and rest. Believe it or not, I've found time to play basketball two times per week, and this past week started tutoring two girls from the Czech Republic in French! One of the girls, Lucie, plays on the basketball team as well; her husband is a professional volleyball player who moved to Saint Quentin to play volleyball a couple months ago. Lucie came to join him a month ago, and speaks no French and very limited English. She has a friend named Bara who is in the same position; her boyfriend plays on the Saint Quentin basketball team, and she moved here with him. I'll be tutoring them in French for 2 hours/week each- this week we had our first tutoring sessions, and they went quite well. Lucie and I worked on conjugating verbs in the present tense, and Bara and I worked on the future tense and introduced ourselves. Lucie and Bara are both very sweet, and I'm looking forward to getting to know them better and hopefully helping them with French!

That's all for now, bonne dimanche à tous! I'm taking my camera to school with me next week, so pictures of school/cute French children/basketball to follow.