More from the first two weeks

Okay, so, I’m in France, and I’ve found an apartment. What else did I do here in my first two weeks?? Let’s see… Made friends, worked, ate and drank delicious French food and wine, and did some exploring!

The Chateau des Ducs de Bretagne, downtown Nantes.

I arrived in Nantes on a Sunday (9/23), and generally, on Sundays in France, there is not much open and not much to do.  One thing that is open all week, however, is the movie theater! My first night in town, I took myself to see “The Bourne Legacy”. I’m a sucker for the “Bourne” movies and had to check out the fourth installment. Luckily, they had a showing of the film in the evening in English with French subtitles. It was a good action flick!

On the social side of things, I was fortunate to meet several other assistants pretty early on in the week after I arrived in Nantes, thanks to Facebook. We ladies were glad to find each other and get along really well, so we were wandering around and grabbing lunch or dinner together most of the week. We even had a French-style potluck dinner at one of the gal’s apartments one night before we met up with some other assistants for drinks. It was great!

Needless to say, all of the assistants in Nantes and the region are eager to meet people and get to know each other here at the beginning of our year in France, so we’ve already had four or five organized outings in the past two weeks. All of the other assistants who I’ve met have been really nice! I hope we can all continue to meet up on a semi-regular basis to become better friends and share stories about teaching.

I’m really glad that I lived in Nantes before and am quite familiar with the city and life here. So many people were feeling rather lost and confused their first week here, so when we met up, I was happy to be a ‘tour guide’ of sorts and give people advice about places to go and things to see and do. Nantes is such an awesome city; I’m SO glad I decided to list the region as my first choice and that I wound up being placed in the city! I was extremely lucky.

In France, it's not 'Mister Clean', it's 'Monsieur Propre'.

On the work side of things, I checked into my school on Monday, October 1^st and had a great day! I’ll be working 12 hours a week at Lycee Carcouet here in Nantes (it’s in the Beausejour neighborhood in the NW part of the city). It’s kind of funny, because the school is being completely renovated, so there’s occasionally random construction noise during the day. My apartment building is also under construction, and there is a TON of construction going on in downtown Nantes to update things and make it more bike/bus/pedestrian friendly. I guess I’m meant to be surrounding by renovation this year. Maybe construction and rebuilding is a good metaphor for me preparing to ‘construct my future’ with grad school next year? I might be reaching with that one, though. :) Anyway, the English professors, and all of the professors I’ve met at the school, are beyond kind and are going to be great to work with. I am so excited to get to know them all and to practice my French with them and help them practice their English!

The students I’ll be teaching are going to be fun as well. I’m mostly working with the older high school kiddos (Seconde, Terminale, BTS), so they’re anywhere from 16-22 years old, depending on the class. They speak English very well, but are quite shy about speaking out loud, so my big goal is to get them to be more confident in themselves and in their abilities with the language. They all have to take ridiculously scary exams at the end of the year where part of what they’re expected to do is speak English continually for five minutes, so one of the main things I’ll be doing with them is practicing speaking as often as possible. I think I will be learning as much from them as they will (hopefully) be learning from me!

All of the assistants in the Nantes region had an all-day training session on Wednesday, 10/3, and it was nice to meet people in other cities and chat with them and get some ideas flowing about creating lesson plans and whatnot. We received a lot of information during the day, and unfortunately, I think most, if not all, of us left a little more confused than when we arrived that morning. French immigration policy is super complicated, and living in France in general requires lots of paperwork, regardless of whether you’re native or not.

First, we have to submit forms to the Immigration Office in order to legitimize our French work visa, and that requires us to go to the doctor for a check-up. The time and date of this check-up is dictated to us by the Immigration Office, and we can’t change it if it doesn’t work for our schedule (i.e., the appointment they give you will work for your schedule-or else!). It’s also required that we participate in the French universal health care system, Securite Sociale, which means submitting paperwork, getting a letter back by mail confirming our inscription, and only once we receive that letter can we get paid by our school. YIKES! We must also have secondary French insurance, and the company we have to subscribe to is determined by our job, kind of like a union, so that means more paperwork for them as well. Then, of course, we have to have a bank account in order to do all of the initial paperwork for the other required things and then ultimately get paid, and of course, you need to submit paperwork in order to make a bank account. Finally, after all this has been taken care of, we’ll need to submit even more paperwork if, 1) we want to be reimbursed 50% for commuting expenses (i.e., my school will pay for half of my monthly tram pass, since I take the tram to get to work every day) and 2) if we want to receive a housing stipend from the government (I can get up to 200-250 euros per month to help me pay for my apartment!).

Universal health care, having a fully legalized work visa, getting help to pay for housing and commuting: these are all amazing things and are some of the best benefits of a socialist society, but JEEZE! How many photocopies must I submit to every branch of the government before they’ll admit that I’m a real person?! Even the French people who were providing us with all of these details at the training session were joking about French bureaucracy and how much they love paperwork, so you know it’s kind of a broken system in that regard. I just hope all of my documents go through all right and I don’t have to re-submit anything! Wow.

Outside of all of that, I have been having a fantastic time wandering around Nantes, re-discovering my favorite places from 2009 and exploring new areas of town for the first time! Three of the other assistant gals and I went to the beach at La Baule the Sunday before we started work. I had been there with a friend when I was in Nantes before, so it was fun to take these girls there for their first time. La Baule is a swanky resort town right on the Atlantic, but luckily it was nice and relaxed, since late September isn’t around peak season. It was a beautiful sunny day, albeit a tad chilly, but we enjoyed sunbathing and digging our toes into the sand for a few hours. Three of us actually jumped into the Atlantic Ocean, too! It was pretty darn cold, but I got in all the way up to my neck and swam around for a few minutes. Success!

La Baule!

I also hosted a French-style potluck at my new apartment last Friday night, less than 24 hours after moving in! Three of the girls came over and we enjoyed a big salad, a couscous and sautéed veggie salad, cheese, bread, cold cuts, plenty of wine, and a homemade tart for dessert! I wound up snagging an oven for free this week (along with an iron, ironing board, laundry detergent, and a hot plate- thanks, former students and assistants in Nantes!), so one of the gals put a tart together and we baked it up fresh. It was a wonderful evening! I’m looking forward to many more dinner parties, at my place and elsewhere, over the course of the year. You can’t go wrong with good food, cheap, tasty French wine, and good friends; that was the perfect way to christen my new place!

Me, "Hugo le Husky", and a delicious home-made tart
at my first dinner party chez moi.

I’m now just starting my fourth week in France. There will be more updates to (finally) get us up to the present moment in the next post. :)