Au boulot!

Back to work for me! After a nice, relaxing two weeks it's time to return to reality and start teaching those youngsters some more English. But first, a rundown on my vacation in France...

During the vacation, I went on lots of day trips to places like Dreux, Paris, Chartres, and Tours.

Dinner party in Dreux with some other assistants. This is a "banlieu" of Paris, noted for its racial tensions and its former glory of being a classy, rich place to live. However, the centre ville is still really cute with lots of cafes and bakeries and shops, while the assistant there warned us against venturing farther outside of the center for fear of being "pebbled" (seriously...)

Paris is, of course, beautiful just to spend a day there and walk around, absorbing the people, language and culture. I spend a great day there, walking around Le Quartier Latin and seeing the sites a bit also. The real adventure begins once we miss the last train back home, and get the joy of spending the whole night in Paris. Luckily, there was a restaurant open 24h (rare in France) and since it was a Monday night, this was basically the only thing open. So after a "nuit blanche" in Paris, I caught up on sleep and relaxed in Nogent the next day.

I also traveled to Tours, a really cool university town about 3hr away from Nogent. The main attraction was Place Plumereau, the city's center square with tons of cafes and restaurants, and looks like a medieval town square. The cathedral was also amazing, as usual. We saw some university students dressed up for Halloween and selling clementines to raise money for something, so of course, we supported them. Speaking of Halloween, it's not really celebrated in France, but I did see a couple groups of kids going door to door as witches, ghosts, and skeletons at around 5pm (why so early?!) However, one old man at the door had no idea what they were doing and was like "non, I don't have any candy." So poor little kids had to keep on moving, in search of les bonbons.

I also spent a lot of time in Chartres over vacation, since that's where several other assistants are placed and there's a lot more to do in Chartres than Nogent. It's cathedral is also amazingly beautiful and the cafe scene is excellent as well. I seem to drink a lot of coffee here... oh well.

I also met my contact person's family and they were awesome! They invited me to lunch, and then insisted that I stay and go to Paris with them the next day. So we went to Paris and visited the Centre Pompidou to see some modern art then walked around Paris and Les Halles a little bit more. It was really fun, and her kids are super cute- the littlest one, who is 10, was really excited to meet an American and discuss "Friends" with me and to see if that's really what life is like in the US. I said, yes exactly. hah :)

Then after such a lovely, relaxing time, it was back to lesson planning and teaching, which is going pretty well right now. Hopefully, that'll continue!