Live from Joan of Arc Street

Good evening ladies and gents,
This edition of "Where in the World is Me" comes from rue Jeanne d'Arc, which translates to Joan of Arc street for all of you uni-lingual English speakers. Rue Jeanne d'Arc is the street that I live on, and I am currently writing from my bed in my studio. Which means, as you may have put two and two together by now, that I finally have internet access here! It is a big moment for my France experience. You see, today is October 13th, and I arrived in France on September 25th; therefore, a little math tells me that I got internet set up in less than 19 days. So I suppose I have to give some credit to the internet company here, SFR, for beating their own deadline and connecting to me the vast world wide web in less than three weeks.

This has been a busy week for me. With the recent wifi addition to my apartment, I have been filling my free time with catching up on missed television shows, surfing the web, and of course, long skype sessions with more than a few friends and family. For those of you that are interested in not only reading my words but hearing my voice, feel free to send me your skype information so we can chat sometime. In addition to all of that, I finally have a fully operational bank account here, complete with debit card and pin number. Those two elements may seem complementary, but I received them separately; this meant that there was an awkward window of a few days where I had a card but no way of actually using it. However, all of that was resolved Tuesday, and now I am the proud owner of a Visa "Carte Bleu".

Most importantly though, this was my first full week of classes. I taught 12 hours, spread out working with 5 different English teachers over 12 different classes. So, as you can imagine, this involved many, many introductions, both on my part as well as the students. I have only come away with a few names memorized; they were either the ones who were particularly interested in English, or the one boy blessed with the same name as me. I am finding that my American accent poses problems for their comprehension, but having a white board on which I can write my words seems to work as a great neutralizer. I worked in small groups with some classes, entertaining questions about America and asking my own questions about Vannes and Brittany. In another class, I played a Phish song for the students, gave them the lyrics and had them fill in the missing words. I also watched a video presentation of the chef Jamie Oliver and had almost as much trouble as the students in deciphering his British accent.

My work week is now finished, as I requested my Fridays off. But for all of you worried about me becoming lazy, rest assured I plan to spend the day taking care of pressing laundry needs, as well as planning a Halloween presentation for next week's classes. So while the morning will certainly be spent underneath the covers with some well-earned sleep, the whole day will not be a wash. I hope to be back soon for another update before I head out for vacation, which starts next Friday for me. Until then, don't miss me too much, and holla at me if you feel an urge to tell me how your life is going.
Tommy