Things seem to be advancing, remaining positive. A few other assistants and I decided to meet up at the new Starbucks to talk teaching. We chose Starbucks because it's a bit of a cultural event to some of us. Even though we all seem to have reservations about its appereance on the French caf� circuit, we can't help but want to give it a whirl anyway. As The Girl From Minnesota said, "I was never a fan of Starbucks at home, but I'm sure I'll go there all the time in Paris." Maybe it's something about the word Frappacino that gets me. I've personally only been in two Starbucks in my life, but I was interested to check out the Parisian one.
Apparently, we were not the only ones. TGFM got their first, and had to tell ten people that the seat across the table from her was taken. After waiting a few minutes, she called me to find out how much longer she'd have to fight. When I finally showed, I just started laughing: the line for coffee was at least twenty people long, and in France that means at least 20 minutes, too. More like 40. So we wisely decided that, you know what, Starbucks can wait another day.
Instead, we went to a typical French cafe where the waiter was an asshole and there was too much smoke in our faces. It was great - once everyone arrived, we managed to get down to business after talking for over an hour. We shared some great lesson plans, and I'm so happy to have some new ideas/possibilities for the classroom. I'm that big of a dork.
And, of course, it's also just nice to meet up with other young Americans (who are working the same job as I am) for story-swapping and the like. They're all great (there were four of us total), and I'm glad that two of them are sticking around next year as well. I wish the forth member of our quartet was too, but she's got some exciting projects on the horizon so I can see why she would pass up a low-wage job in France to move on to greener pastures.
Anyway, a good day, all in all, considering I woke up slightly hungover from a relatively mild night at the bar yesterday. I don't even think I had four drinks. I'm not quite sure why I had such a headache this morning.
Now tonight it's off to the restaurant with The Boy, whom I have been neglecting far too much in the last week. He's been a grumpy asshole for the last two days, but I think it's because he was just fed up with my going out all the time (The Cowgirl and I hit the town quite a bit) while he stayed at home. He's back to his regular old self, now, and I'm happy about that. It's never easy to live with an asshole.
All in all, a good day Saturday. And tomorrow I get to sleep in one more day before the madness begins all over again on Monday. A whole new semester! I still don't feel I've had a true vacation!
No worries: I leave for Senegal in twelve days.
All sounds good to me.. out of interest, how old are the kids you teach?
They range in age from 15 to 25. Average age is probably 17 or 18, with only a few students over 20.