COFFEE! MEXICAN FLU!

Firsts first: I got a coffeemaker. It's beautiful.

It's nice to be settling into my new residence. Living out of my suitcase for a week and a half was a little uncomfortable. Finally, I can hang up my giant American flag! With sticky tack, because the rules for the room said no tape - but if that doesn't work, of course, well - the flag must fly somehow.

In buying items for my room I decided to spend a little extra for the pink rolls of toilet paper that are popular in French bathrooms. First of all, I think they are hilarious. Additionally, I just wouldn't want to miss out on that cultural experience.

I got to watch a few classes at the junior high where I'll be teaching four one-hour classes per week. Here's what I observed in the first class I watched:

At the beginning of class, a student was made to stand in front of the class and ask questions in English. The young boy executed this daily task with an odd courteousness and an interestingly affected voice.

To one student.
"What is your name please."
[mumble mumble]
"How is the weather please."
[mumble mumble]
"How are you please."
"Fine, thank you."
"What about you Slimane."
"Fine, thank you."

Catch it! Bin it! Kill it!
In the next class, the English teacher had a slide printed off from an annual British awareness campaign for the flu: "Catch it! Bin it! Kill it!" After a little preliminary discussion about some of the words on the poster and the layout of the poster, she asked an open question to the class: "What do you know about the flu?"

I was somewhat surprised by how eager the French children were to demonstrate their knowledge of the flu:
-It is a virus.
-It comes from Mexico.
Good!

Speaking of sickness, I learned yesterday that as a worker in France I am entitled (starting four months from now) to one month of paid sickness and one month of sick days paid at 50%. Pretty cool, huh? Oh wait... the catch being, when you're taking a sick day, you can only leave your house for two hours, and they will CHECK your home to make sure you haven't left. If you have, you're in serious trouble with the government.

France is a little bit different from the States.

I wrote a diary entry his morning on my way to Nantes for an English teaching assistantship meeting. Here it is:

October 5, 2009
Dear Diary,

Today I got on the 7h05 train to Nantes with Kelly. We almost missed our bus - we walked outside just in time to run it down! All thanks to our very hot instant coffee with no milk to cool it down. At the train station, Kelly bought us breakfast while I went in line to buy the tickets. Apparently (she told me this while we waited on the bench for our TER train), the lady at the counter gave her a lot of trouble while she was ordering. She wouldn't let her buy jam with her croissants + pastry order -- the jam comes "only with the bread!" That's a rather different mentality than in the US, where at least if you offer to pay you can usually get anything behind the counter.

Here's a sketch of what I see out the train's window:
It's still dark outside.