Visiting Sean (and Darth Vader)

On our final week of break, we took the time to explore Lille a little bit more and, most importantly, visit Sean in Amsterdam. I can cover the exploration of Lille mostly through pictures:

Palais des Beaux Arts

Yes. These are boobs. (Okay maybe they don't look very much like boobs BUT
I promise they are because it was a breast cancer exhibit).

Fountain! 

I didn't know flowers like this existed in nature and now I want
to plant them EVERYWHERE

Of course, there were many a panorama taken that day

Carson in his element.

Porte de Paris

The beffroi
(tallest municipal building in France and a UNESCO world heritage site for some reason) 

Carson in his actual element.

Super enthusiastic street band

A man with his which. And a mechanical flower.

It’s hard to capture how pretty some of these places/things are, but I think Carson did a standup job.

One of the best things our exploring led us to is one of the most famous/popular dessert spots in Lille called Aux Merveilleux. There are a couple of these places around France and they make almost exclusively hard meringue (is meringue always hard...?) covered in a type of whipped cream. Adequately describing these little balls of adorable pastry mastery is difficult, but they have 6 different flavors and we have vowed to try them all. This time around we went with Le Magnifique: two meringues bonded and then covered by praline flavored whipped cream, and finally coated in pieces of almond and caramelized hazelnuts. I have no idea how we managed to take a picture before inhaling it in what felt like the span of several seconds.

Pre-inhalation: when the world was still full of wonder and possibilities

Only 45 seconds later, yet the world seemed a sadder place

...I do not find it even remotely sad that this pastry was the obvious highlight of the week.

That night, we had some friends over and they brought along their assistant friends from other parts of France. This was very fun but evidently overshadowed by prior baked good-related events. 

The next morning we went to the Sunday market in our neighborhood, which is always very charming. Though, we might actually have to start buying things because the proprietors are starting to recognize us and will eventually get angry at the fact that we are there solely for the whimsical ambiance.

Market-ing 

Now moving on to Amsterdam...

Carson and I decided to go by bus because it is absurdly cheap and a manageable 5 hour ride. At least, that’s what it advertises. The bus was 20 minutes late getting into Lille, and after our first stop in Ghent, the bus driver announced that the next stop was only 50 minutes away but, you know, sometimes it took 4 hours...

He said this as if 50 minutes versus 4 hours wasn’t a huge and problematic discrepancy.  You see, the best thing about no one having an international phone when traveling is that if you don’t time your meet-ups perfectly, you will never find each other ever again. This meant that if we were 4 hours late, Sean (who kindly offered to meet us at the station) would either have left by then or be very very unhappy.

Luckily, we had the foresight to assume that the bus could (and most likely would be) late and knew exactly where Sean lived in the case that we were 3 to 4 hours late and couldn’t contact him. Oh wait, no. No we didn’t. Because we are dumb.

Despite our lack of foresight, we were only 10 minutes late and Sean somehow immediately found us in the large train station. We then took the metro to the Dutch grocery store chain, Jumbo.

Probably one of my favorite things to do in a different country is go to a grocery store, because every place has one or several things that they randomly sell in abundance and is either adorable or horrifying. In Amsterdam, it’s little waffle chip things (adorable), sauerkraut (adorable to say but horrifying to smell), schnitzel (adorable and delicious), and herring (only horrifying).

After making the weird decision to buy a large package of sauerkraut (I microwaved it too long and it made everything smell weird and...fermented-y...sorry Sean’s roommates!), we went back and met all of Sean’s friends. Most of these friends were also his roommates and came from extremely interesting places around Europe. Their set-up is essentially a giant dorm with one kitchen/bathroom/common room and a bunch of single rooms. This arrangement, as per usual, does not lend itself to cleanliness or sleeping, but is fantastic for parties. We also apparently came at a great time, because for some reason their workload was lighter than usual and it was a Hungarian girl’s birthday week.

It was a great night and we loved hanging out with all of Sean’s new friends. We ended up going to a bar called CoCo’s, which was full-out decorated for Halloween and played awesome music (like “I Want It That Way,” which ALL of the foreigners knew every word to. This was a pretty young/hip bar...so take that high school students...I’m still totally cool.)

The next day Sean had class, so Carson, Will, and I went to explore the city. (I might not have mentioned this, but our good assistant friend Will tagged along for the trip). We did all of the Amsterdam activities: canal and park seeing, near death experiencing with bikers, flower market perusing, etc. It is probably the most beautiful city I’ve been to, so here are some pictures:

One of the gazillion canals

I felt like I should include pictures with people in them but now see that the
selection is not exactly great...

...so back to canals

Flower market!

Sign that (for some reason) you have to take a picture with or you actually did not
go to Amsterdam.

Once again making what would have been a beautiful picture somewhat
awkward with our presence. 

Most importantly: SEANNNN

Now for my favorite story... We were in one of the main squares eating lunch when Carson noticed there was a guy dressed as Darth Vader taking pictures with young children. He got it in his head that he had to get a picture of him being force choked by Darth Vader. However, he didn’t just want to be force choked, he needed it to look like he was being force choked in the air. So Carson, who doesn’t like going up to strangers to ask for directions, walks up to Darth Vader and asks him to force choke him in the air. This is a very nice Darth Vader, so he immediately tries to fulfill Carson’s dream by getting off his elevated stand and telling Carson to climb on up. Unfortunately, Carson did not understand that Darth gave him his stand so that we could simply omit his feet from the picture and it would look like he was floating in the air. What followed was the most uncomfortable, hilarious interaction I’ve seen in a while. Carson proceeded to jump up and down on Vader’s stand while Vader just kind of looked around and half-heartedly pretended to force choke Carson. If you thought it was impossible to sense discomfort in someone wearing a full costume and a mask, you would be wrong. This guy does awkward interactions for a living, yet I think that this one will remain in his memory forever.

The best part is, after all of this, Carson still had no idea what had just happened. When he looked at the pictures, he just said “Wait, Will, why didn’t you get my feet in the picture?” After several minutes of explaining that that was the entire point, Carson finally understood. My favorite quote of the trip then came from Will: “Between you and Darth Vader there was just...a huge discrepancy in the amount of effort being put into this picture.”

I really hope this wasn’t a you-had-to-be-there type of story, because it will never stop being hilarious to me. Here is the photo montage:

 

Carson didn't even know what to do with all of his excitement  

This is going to be epic - Carson 

What in the hell is this guy doing - Darth Vader 

Hands down the best of the bunch. 

That night we took it easy because Carson and I both had colds, and just hung out with Sean’s roommates. I’m actually a little jealous of the fact that he gets to live with so many awesome/interesting/nice foreigners. All in all, Amsterdam was wonderful and Sean was the best host imaginable. We’re super excited to return to favor and are making him come to Lille ASAP because one Sean-eunion is not enough.

Now that we’re back, my cold is more or less in full force and Carson is reaching the end of his. Halloween plans might include going out tonight or just making pizzas that look like ghosts and watching Hocus Pocus. There are also a couple of cool things going on during the day. In fact, the place we live above (randomly the most popular candle/soap shop in Lille) is doing some sort of Halloween day. I’m not really sure what a candle shop could offer on Halloween, but I’m interested to find out.

Happy Halloween to all!

Meeting our landlord and other spooky happenings

Meredith just informed me that it’s officially been over a week since the last post. I’d say I’ve been super busy, but in reality I’ve just been super lazy.

This break was much needed after a strenuous 15 hours of work over the span of two weeks, and we’ve been very successful in doing almost nothing. That being said, I suppose there are some things that have happened in the past 10 days.

Things that have happened:

Thing 1:

Carson was taking a shower when I heard a noise that sounded like more water than usual dripping from the second floor into our kitchen. When I looked up toward the noise, I saw that there was indeed a mini waterfall streaming down onto our microwave. Although I am no plumber, I figured that this was probably a bad thing and that we should contact the landlord. Carson, unfortunately, had to go yet another day unshowered.

Weirdly enough, our landlord was coming to Lille the next day and said he would come over to check out  the tub in the afternoon. I was a bit worried that there was a huge issue with the pipes that would cause us to temporarily move out. Luckily—after some questionable experimenting—I realized the pipes were fine. There were just some tiny holes in the tub’s sealing, and if the showerhead was pointed toward these holes water would leak into the kitchen. That didn’t seem like such a big deal.

As always, something was lost in translation when the landlord arrived, and when I tried to explain that it would be an easy fix, he for some reason decided that there wasn't a problem at all. The conversation went something like:

Me: There are little holes here in the sealing causing the leak, but if the showerhead is pointed the other way, there really isn’t a problem.

Him: *Turning on and off the water, directing the showerhead solely into the drain, ignoring me completely* Yeah, everything seems fine here. I think the sealing is fine. But you know, if you break it at any point, you just need to use caulk and fix it.

Me: No, I mean, it isn’t a big deal, but this leak exists. We did not make up this leak.

Him: Yeah, really all seems fine.

Me: Okay...well, can you get under the tub and I will point the showerhead at the actual holes before you leave?

...Just to make sure, you know, that I didn’t imagine the giant leak that is obviously in our ceiling?

Him: *Gets under tub*

Me: *Sprays the crap out of the tiny holes*

Him: Ah, ah. Yes. Turn that off. Yes, good. TURN IT OFF. Yes, it’s good you showed me this. You see, there are tiny holes here in the sealing.

...Sure, definitely not the first thing I said in this conversation.

Him: Well, I’ll just come on Wednesday and fix it. Until then, you can just shower on this side of the shower. This is safe.

...Once again...I already said...you know what, whatever.

In any case, our shower is now fixed and our landlord is actually a nice guy. It was great to finally meet him (I think I already explained he lives in the south) and confirm that he exists.

Thing 2:

Other than that small almost-disaster, we have been having a great time with our friends just hanging out. We’ve hosted several dinner parties/get-togethers and are going to have some Canadians over tonight. Little do they know, it’s a Halloween party...

Which brings me to the most exciting news of the week: Carson got a Halloween care package from his mom and it is the best thing that has ever happened. We spent a lot of yesterday decorating and here are the results:

Cathy also sent socks with grips on the bottom so that going
up and down our stairs would be slightly less dangerous. Hooray!

Tableau of creating a tableau 

Carson wanted to make the skeletons scarily hang from one of the
trees...kind of went the other way with that one.

RIP reece's cups. Your term here was short but unforgettable.  

The largest spiderweb ever known.

Also, here's a festive dinner I forced Carson and Will to participate in:

Pumpkin peppers!

Stuffed pumpkin peppers! 

They really were good sports about this.

Thing 3:

We found out that we have two mailboxes: one that’s inside the building, which we knew about, and another outside that was unknown to us entirely. As you can probably guess, all of our mail was going to the secret mailbox and we just thought we had been using the wrong address.

Luckily, as we were leaving to go to the market yesterday, the shop owner was coming back from lunch and stopped us to ask if we knew that we had a metric crap ton of mail. He led us outside and opened the box. Sure enough, there were a bunch of important documents from our bank (which we had already told them never arrived), stuff from the OFII office, and Carson’s package slip.

As I seem to be saying in every post, we are dumb. But now, with our shower that doesn’t leak, festively decorated apartment, and ability to receive mail, we feel ready for the inevitable issues that are yet to come.

More on those probably in the next post. 

Realizing Backstreet is not coming back...and it's not alright.

Week two of work is officially almost over and, as expected, I continue to have no idea what my schedule is. I’m not really sure what happens now, because we don’t actually have classes again until November 2^nd. I really really think that it’s reasonable to assume I will know by then, but I have zero expectations.

This week I’ve been half observing/teaching/trying to pretend I’m doing important things. Despite this overall lack of organization, I had a great time interacting with the students. Most professors this week asked me to introduce myself and do a Q&A with the class. They were generally hesitant at first but after some overzealous, persistent prodding, I was able to get them to talk. The questions were pretty standard; I was only stumped when a student asked me if I knew any celebrities.

...Certainly I knew one celebrity, but I drew a blank. This made me feel like I wasn’t fulfilling my American duty for whatever reason, until I later had the realization that I had just met the Backstreet Boys this summer. (Okay, so it was two Backstreet Boys, but I’m willing to bet that’s significantly more than these kids have met).  I was kicking myself all day... this was my in. Think of how incredibly cool I would seem if they knew that my boyfriend played with the legendary Backstreet Boys and I witnessed it all! The French love 90s American music... surely the Backstreet Boys are an equally huge deal over here. 

Luckily, this is apparently a very common question, because later that day a student asked me the same exact thing.

Cue redemption time!

“Great question!” I responded, “It just so happens that I recently met... pause for effect...the Backstreet Boys.”

They were so amazed by their newly discovered second degree of separation that they fell silent. Or that’s initially what I thought. I then realized they were just staring blankly.

“You know.. the Backstreet Boys.. the 90s boy band..”

Silence.

“They were like, THE BIGGEST deal in the 90s. Super famous. They more or less defined my generation... so, kind of your generation too?”

Silence.

The teacher tried to help me out by showing a picture of the band... which did not help at all. The class immediately started cracking up. It dawned on me that these kids were born in the 2000s and had never heard of nor seen the overly-groomed, middle aged men on the screen.  The teacher leaned over to me and said, “probably a little dated for this group.”

Bottom line is I am old. 

Anyway, teaching  has been a lot of fun and French kids automatically think Americans are cool, so it turns out I didn’t really need to pull the Backstreet Boy card (admittedly not even my card to pull).

Speaking of... Carson’s been having a good time at his school as well and even got a job on the side tutoring. It’s looking like he has several prospective students and I am very proud of his go-getterness. To celebrate his successful endeavor, I decided to revive our old tradition of taking each other on small dates to places the other person has never been. I chose (I think) the perfect Carson date location: a beer cave. The name is L'Abbaye des Saveurs and it’s probably the most beloved beer cave in Lille. It’s also on the most adorable street on the planet (pictured below) and about two feet from our house. They had pretty much everything there, even IPAs, and certainly lived up to its hype.

 

The tiny flags almost take the whimsy too far

In other news, it is now cold. All our friends agree that in the past two days, it randomly became fall. Carson and I felt the dramatic change in the apartment; our giant windows are whimsical and all... but regrettably not great for insulation. However, we decided on Tuesday night to hold out on turning on the heat because we are hardcore (and cheap). It took until about Wednesday morning for us to abandon entirely our noble attempt.

Since we have this week off, we’re just going to hang around Lille (in our now warm apartment) and do a bit of travel planning. We’re probably going to go to Amsterdam for Halloween weekend with one of our teaching assistant friends to visit one of our most beloved mutual friends, the beautiful Sean Cheatle. The bus ride there is short and cheap and since we can stay with Sean for free, we’d basically be wasting money by not going.

More updates to come and happy almost weekend to all!

(Also, Carson insisted this picture of glorious pastries and awkward me be shared)

High school is hard.

This week of observing was enlightening and educative and all of those things that I’m supposed to say. However, my main take away is that I would not relive high school for any sum of money or genie wish imaginable. As I sat through 6 hours of classes and watched teachers instill the fear of god in their students by reminding them about this test and that presentation and success and etc., I wondered how I did that nearly every day for four years. Even I had to make a concerted effort to seem professional and not doodle/zone out toward the end of the day, and I’m (sort of) an adult. Six hours is just... too many. No one should be expected to pay attention to anything for six hours. Also, I’m a huge wimp because these kids sometimes have class from 8:00am-6:00pm and I was only there from 9:00am-4:00pm.

Anyway, the classes I sat in on were overall interesting, but not at all what I expected. For instance, that biology class I mentioned was actually about geology. I mean.... potayto, potahto? I don’t know much about science, but I guess that isn’t too far off. Of course, then the American economics course covered the British rule in India and Ghandi. Something was certainly lost in translation there. In any case, this particular class was taught in English and the teacher was hilarious. Before we went in the classroom, she requested that I introduce myself in English; I asked if she just wanted a quick summary of what I studied and why I’m here. She misunderstood, responding with: “oh sure you can tell them to shut up, stand up, sit down; whatever you want!”

One of my favorite classes I observed was a post-baccalaureate philosophy course with older, VERY advanced students. The teacher couldn’t show up due to car issues so I just helped them practice their English for an hour. Some of them were basically fluent, and they helped me understand the French education system slightly better.

From my understanding, this is a chart of how general (so, not including professional and technical) high school works:

Grade name	Description	Amount they care about school
Deuxième	First year students (15-16ish)	Spend about ~0-5% of their time caring and ~95-100% trying to look awesome in front of their classmates. Can’t really blame them; high schoolers are generally merciless.
Première	Second year students	Exponentially more engaged for whatever reason.
Terminale	This is the last year of high school. At this point the kids have chosen a certain track. In a general school they can choose science, literature, or... economics? Something like that. Maybe they choose their track before this. I don’t really know. But I do know it is the last year.	Well, considering they are consistently reminded that the baccalaureate is darkly looming in their future and if they don’t succeed they will be inevitably, for lack of a better term, screwed, this is where the panic really sets in. ALL of the cares.
Post-Baccalaureate	I had a hard time getting this one.  It’s usually two years long, but can be more depending on if you succeed or not, and happens after you take the bac,.. but it’s totally optional. From what I gathered, this is for the super smart kids who want to go to the really good universities, or “grands écoles.” I think each good university—not sure how they determine level of “good”—has their own exam. Two years of brutal, weekendless, post-bac schooling supposedly prepares them for these tests. I don’t get this. They prepare all of high school for the bac specifically so they can go to college. But then, even if they do super well, they are only able to go to a mediocre school if they don’t then take ANOTHER school-specific exam that is allegedly impossible to pass without going back to high school for two years?	Far too much. Imagine me in college times a million.
Unknown	I would not be surprised if there was something beyond even post-bac that I have yet to learn about. Maybe post-bac but with an added ninja component.	Would commit any number of murders to go to the university of their choice (presumably through their new, surprisingly useful, ninja competencies).

Anyway, the French method of teaching is obviously extremely varied but there are two across the board consistencies: an unending mentioning of the baccalaureate and an almost sadistic embracement of public criticism/shaming.

If everything goes to plan, today I will be making my actual work schedule. It’ll be nice to have a solid idea of what my weeks will look like from here on out and I’m excited to have a bit more stability.

Other than school things, we’ve continued to enjoy hanging out with the other assistants and doing our normal Carson-Rachel thing. Yesterday I tried to make soy sauce because it’s obscenely expensive here. It seemed to turn out... less than well... but I’m hoping that has to do more with the fact that I tried it when boiling hot than with the actual taste. That’s about it though. Sorry for another post without pictures—we’ll try to be better about it so that my endless rambling actually has some payoff. 

First day on the job

On Monday, I went to my school for the very first time. I was told to wait at the main entrance for my mentor professor, who would then show me around and make introductions. I arrived a bit early and sat down near the entrance. Several minutes later, an extremely loud bell started going off. I watched as everyone slowly exited the building and wondered if I should follow along. However, the woman at the front desk just smiled at me and said: “don’t worry,” so I continued sitting dumbly, trying to finish my sudoku. When front desk woman also eventually walked outside, I became increasingly concerned. I really wanted to avoid any awkward interactions/situations on my first day, but I had a feeling that dream wasn’t going to play out. I remained sitting, pretending like I was totally cool and couldn’t even hear the deafeningly loud alarm.

At some point, a very tall, well-dressed woman happened to walk by who seemed overall confused by my presence. She gestured for me to come with her and led me through the building and outside, where we stood in a circle with other teachers who continued to ignore my existence and not offer any explanation at all.

(Side note: through talking to other assistants, I learned that uncomfortably standing in a circle and being ignored while the other teachers gossip about students is pretty standard daily fare).

Finally, we walked back into the school. I deduced, with my profound intelligence, that it was just a fire drill and planned to go back to my spot and wait for my professor. Out of nowhere, the tall woman turned to me and told me to go into an office to fill out some paperwork. I knew that I was supposed to do something like that on my first day, so I followed her in. I learned that she was the secretary, which I probably should have realized due to her ridiculous cat-eye shaped glasses. I had to fill out a bunch of documents to ensure that I receive insurance and my first paycheck—both kind of important things. Of course, the secretary had conflicting information from what we were told at the orientation and I’m pretty sure my health insurance form is only half-complete. I guess we will know soon enough. Regardless, the secretary turned out to be very nice and eventually my mentor professor found me and toured me around the school. She quickly introduced me to everyone and I immediately retained no names.

Damn it, me. Remembering one name, just one, might have made uncomfortable talk in a circle time slightly less uncomfortable.

Anyway, I sat in on one of my professor’s English classes. I also went to a Spanish class because there are some ridiculous, arbitrary rules about an observation period that aren’t worth getting in to. I tried to seem as engaged as possible in a foreign language class taught in yet another foreign language.

That afternoon, I took the train back. The ride is an easy 45 minutes, which gives me just enough time to catch up on important French news. For instance, while reading the paper on Monday, I came across a particularly newsworthy article about an American man who was fired due to uncontrollable flatulence. Why this was in Le Monde... I do not know.

After work, I figured that I would go ahead and turn in my OFII paperwork (basically a work permit/visa thing). The office is without exaggeration 4 feet away from my house, so it was an easy way to make me feel like I accomplished something that day. When I told my friend of my big plans, she informed me that there was a horrible woman at the front desk who would make me feel like an idiot and make me send my paperwork through the mail.

...So, I’m going to walk a block down the street to the post office just to essentially mail my paperwork back across the street? Not this time, France. Not this time.

When I walked into the office, it was pretty obvious that it was the same woman my friend described. She instantly denied me, stating loudly that it was impossible to take my paperwork and that I had to go to the post office. I tried my hardest to charm her and said something like: well, I live about two feet from here, so maybe we could work something out or... make an exception...

I essentially did everything but wink and covertly slide her a twenty. This did not go as planned; she was neither charmed nor fazed. I begrudgingly took my paperwork to the post office. This caused my soul to die just a little but at least that paperwork is now forever out of my life.

That night we had over some friends for make your own pasta night and it was awesome, as pasta always is. Also in food related news: Carson and I bought a 12 pack of pelforth blonde and a bottle of peach syrup so that we can make our own bière pêche. If our math is correct (which is rarely is) we paid the same price for 6 pints that we would have for one at a bar and it tastes just as good. We now feel like budgeting experts.. though I guess it could be argued that the beer was not a necessity in the first place.

All in all, our first week of observing classes (there are two) has been great so far and I’m pretty sure Carson and I were both put in pretty high quality schools. The teachers and students are super nice/welcoming and I’ve been able to sit in on some interesting classes. Yesterday, I observed a baroque music course (whose curriculum I’m pretty sure only covers Lully and Rameau and ignores all other relevant composers who are not French) and today I’m going to biology, American economics (should be interesting), French economics, and math of some sort.

Well.. I guess that’s about it. Sorry this post is kind of choppy; it was initially written in bullet points on a very, very early train ride. Hope everyone’s having a great week!

Finally settling in (in the most unsettling way possible)

I’ve been horrible about communication recently (we will pretend this is different from usual) because everyday we’ve had to deal with some sort of weirdly specific and frustrating issue pertaining to moving into our apartment.

There were various steps we had to accomplish before moving in on October 2nd, and in list form they are seemingly easy.

1.     Get a bank account

2.     Sign the lease

3.     Send a money transfer

4.     Get housing insurance

Of course, they were not and I’m going to explain them dramatically and probably with too much detail because I’m still not over it.

September 29^th: 3 DAYS BEFORE

We were sent over the lease (finally) and quickly signed it and sent it back over.

We also tried to get a bank account that day. We walked into town and straight to a BNP. They denied us because we were only living in France for 7 months, yet we knew that this exact branch had already allowed several other assistants to open accounts. Whatever. We moved on and accepted our lot in French bank account roulette. Next we tried another large bank, Société Générale, and a super nice man scheduled us an appointment for the next day. We felt very accomplished with our signing and scheduling and rewarded ourselves with a bière pêche.

September 30^th: 2 DAYS BEFORE

We forgot to sign the bottom of each page of the lease. They waited until the next day to tell us for some reason. Finally, we signed the (whole) lease and got the go ahead to transfer them the rent. For some reason Bank of America didn’t recognize their bank account information for 2 hours. I once again theorized that these people are ghosts. Somehow, after several hours, it randomly ended up clearing. The ghost theory was temporarily thrown out.

Later that day we headed to our bank appointment. It was imperative for this appointment to happen because without a French bank account it is impossible to get housing insurance, which was the last item the landlord needed. We arrived at the bank to find the same super nice man from the day before. However, the super nice man didn’t actually schedule us an appointment.

Henh? Somehow, it was just... lost? Instead, he took our paperwork and vaguely suggested that he would call us the next day. We were not pleased but had to accept the horrible process of everything ever in France.

October 1^st: 1 DAY BEFORE

We had our work orientation all day on October 1^st from 9:30-4:30, which reminded me how much I despise required events. We did get an awesome free lunch and met a lot of the other assistants. Otherwise, there isn’t much to say about it. They essentially told us what we already knew over the span of 8 hours.  My favorite part was that they gave us a document that we needed in order to get our fist paycheck in advance. No one understood what it was or what to do with it. Chaos ensued as other assistants posted pictures of the document on our group that night with captions such as “Wait... WHAT IS THIS? WHAT DO I DO WITH THIS? AM I NOT GOING TO GET PAID IF I DON’T KNOW WHAT THIS IS?” Turns out that it was just an example of a document that the secretary of our school is going to fill out for us. This, of course, makes absolutely no sense. TAPIF has officially figured out the most effective and elaborate way to confuse a large group of people.

After the orientation, we decide to go to the bank immediately (the guy never called) and demand a bank account. Once again, we were greeted by the same man who was evolving from a nice, helpful man of the people into my worst enemy. He told us that we could finalize everything the next day at 9:30 and would even do our housing insurance for us. I was skeptical, but we once again had no choice but to accept. I wondered how this situation would play out in America if we encountered the same problems... Carson’s mom would probably bust up in the bank and have us an account plus a complementary fruit basket in five minutes flat. Yes, in America this simply would not fly... but I digress.

Although I still was very concerned that we wouldn’t be able to move in on time and yet another inconvenience would arise, we still went to meet the other assistants for a drink at a nearby pub. We had already hung out with several of the other assistants before and it was a great time. We have started to create our friend brain trust circle.

October 2: THE DAY OF

We went to the bank at 9:30 and to our extreme surprise, everything went according to plan. We got our accounts and our insurance, which we immediately scanned and sent to our landlords. All that was left to do was wait for them to tell us where the keys were! Huzzah! We planned on picking up the keys and then returning to our Air B&B to get our stuff together. While awaiting their response, we lingered at a coffee shop very close to the apartment.

An hour passed by. I called them on the phone; there was no response. We decided not to panic—these people were often slow with communication—and to head back to our Air B&B to make sure our suitcases were totally packed and ready.

At about noon, I received an email from the landlord. They didn’t get the wire transfer and asked if we had inadvertently sent it by mail.

I’m not really sure how you send a wire transfer through the mail, but I assured them that this was not the case and that it should be in their account in the next few hours if it wasn’t already. I received, once again, no response for several hours.

We started to prepare for our night sleeping on a sidewalk when they called and said the transfer was good and that the keys were under the doormat. Ah yes, under the doormat, a very clever and sneaky location that we surely never could have figured out on our own.

Anyway, this might have been very irrelevant information. I just wanted to remember all of the absurd complications. I’m also now realizing that there were about a million other small issues that came up during this time period, but I’m just going to let those be forgotten because otherwise I might never come back to this country.

More than likely everyone just wants to see pictures of the apartment.. so.. here are way too many of them:

 

Bathroom/washing machine 

Living room

Lofted kitchen

Another kitchen shot.

Terrace! 

Tiny stairs that we have already nearly died on several times.

Terrifying but whimsical.

Kandid Kebab

The equally small/terrifying staircase that leads to our apartment .

Bedroom!

Other side of the bathroom! 

I think we took this to show off our sweet lanterns. And the fact that we have two whole friends.

Fancy champagne

Fancy champagne+me

Same as above+a Carson

Tagine! 

The only thing the apartment didn’t have that I thought we needed was a closet.. so I found some random things and tried to make one. It turned out shockingly well all things considered.

More living room!

All of the pictures! (Sorry this is probably getting a little indulgent)

Huzzah!

Everything is absolutely perfect and we could not be more pleased. The landlord was not lying when she said that we could just put down our suitcases and be done. In fact, the list of things that were left to our disposal becomes increasingly more ridiculous: trash bags, cleaning supplies, two sets of dry cleaned sheets, an American power adaptor, hifi, a Panini press, a nespresso machine with tiny little coffee cups and a stock of pods, about 8 containers of foie gras, a package of smoked salmon, and... a bottle of champagne?

By the end of this list we were wondering if perhaps the previous tenant had not finished moving out. I reasoned that it was a housewarming gift that they simply never mentioned and decided that we should open it. Immediately. I got two flutes and went out on the terrace. Carson, in his unending southern courtesy, suggested we find out how much it costs before opening it just incase we misinterpreted the gesture and had to buy a new one later. We had yet to figure out how to get on the Internet, (instead of their network being the one that is exactly their name, it’s the other network that’s just a random string of numbers. Very intuitive.) so we called our friend and asked him to look it up. I already had taken off the foil when we learned that it was a 40 euro bottle of champagne. This was indeed somewhat out of our 3 euro bottle of wine price range. I half-assedly tried to mold the foil back onto the cork.

Fortunately, when we talked to the landlords later, we learned that the champagne in fact was a housewarming gift, but for the tenant before us. Not us. They were just confused as to why he didn’t drink it. I later noted that the prior tenant left behind an array of leather shoe polishing tools and artisanal jams that he allowed to expire. If this is any indicator, 40 euro champagne was probably too plebian for his taste.

Anyway, we decided to save it for a special occasion (read: the next night because I had already bought a much cheaper bottle of champagne).

We had a party that night with a group of our new friends on the terrace, which was a ton of fun. They were extremely jealous of our apartment, a sentiment probably best expressed by Will, who said “Honestly, I’m not even happy for you guys. I just hate you.”

The next day we ran errands and cleaned. I also finally lived my dream of running in the gigantic park that houses the citadelle and the zoo near our place. It is encircled by a river and was as magical as I imagined... minus the tiny yorkie that rabidly chased me and attempted to bite my ankles for several minutes (I could have probably punted him but valiantly decided to sprint away from the small animal) and all of the dog poop that forever covers the entirety of France.

That night we did our favorite thing in the world: cooked tagine (they don’t sell butternut squash in chunks here so I had to peel an entire squash. Never has there been a more dangerous cooking related labor of love), listened to some music, and watched Netflix. We also drank that bottle of champagne. It was extremely good and hopefully not wasted on us .

Tomorrow I have my first day of work at my school and I’m very excited to meet everyone. Carson starts on Tuesday and both of our English professors we will be working with have been incredibly helpful and nice.

Other than TAPIF/apartment things, we’ve really just been meeting people, picnicking, and exploring. One super great thing we did was check out the free zoo, which was tiny and about what you would expect a free zoo to be but enjoyable nonetheless. I imagine we’ll be better about updating now that we’ve settled in. Until then, here are more pictures:

 

Pre-zoo picnic. 

Lemur!

Creepy owl.

Actual owl.

Giant storks 

Rhinos!

Tapir with tongue out. 

Zebras who refused to show us their faces