First Impressions

The TGV from Paris to Rennes was super easy, and then I took a cab to my high school where I was supposed to meet one of the English teachers. I felt a bit awkward sitting outside the school for a half hour with all of my bags, but that pretty much describes all of my initial encounters at the school! The English teachers are all really nice and spent the afternoon showing me around the school’s campus; there are 3 or 4 main buildings in addition to what look like temporary classrooms, almost like sheds. I think there are about 1,000 students at the school, and there are dorms for some of the boarding students. In the dorm, myself and the other assistants (7 of us total) live in one corridor by ourselves; we each have private bedrooms with bed/sink/closet/wardrobe, and then we share a kitchen, 2 showers, and 2 toilets. It is very modest, but we have no complaints since it’s free! In the kitchen we have a microwave, 2 small fridges, and one stove burner that works, no oven … food choices will be interesting based on what we have to cook with. The only problem is that the heat will (potentially) not be turned on until the end of October, and it has gotten pretty cold at night; after two nights of sleeping in all of my heaviest clothes, I bought a huge comforter which will hopefully help. Oh, and the other problem is Internet … at this point it looks like we won’t be able to get access in our rooms, even though we all have laptops here, but we might be able to work something out. Will keep you posted! However, I can’t justify too many complaints since my accommodation is free. I lived in the hall by myself for the first few days, not very exciting, but the others finally arrived a few days after me. Ah, now onto the other assistants … I am so excited about all of them and think they’ll be an awesome group of people to share this experience with! So I’m living with an English girl (Vicky, student at Oxford), Italian guy (Simoné, student from Milan), Chilean girl (Andrea, student), Portugese girl (Sarah, already graduated, professor), and Spanish girl (Maria, used to teach Spanish at Penn State). There is a Russian guy who still hasn’t arrived, but he will round out the mix! And it’s great because we all primarily speak French together, as it’s the most fluent/common language among us. I think their French is all better than mine (particularly the native Romance-language speakers), but they say that I’m not bad. Anyway, it’s good practice because I shouldn’t be intimidated to try saying anything around non-native French speakers, right?? We still haven’t hung out tons since they all just got here, but we’re going to go grocery shopping/cook dinner/explore Rennes together this weekend. If you’ve seen the movie l’Auberge Espangole (random group of Erasmus students living together in Barcelona) … that’s kindof the atmosphere around here, which is awesome! We’ve already had several conversations about language, European history, impressions of each other’s countries, etc etc … needless to say, I’m going to learn a lot from them!