A month?

So it has been a full month since I arrived in Saint Etienne. Hard to believe for me as I feel like I just arrived. The past few weeks have been very good ones. I work about 11 hours a week, which may seem rough to all of you at home, but I assure you I am just barely getting by. Especially with Mondays and Wednesdays off... :)

Classes are going very well (compared to what I expected) and generally speaking most of the students are very interested in what I have to say. Most of the students I teach are girls (about 60 or 70 percent) so that also helps as I have realized the boys are a little bit more obnoxious. My classes range from groups of 17 to 8 to 3 and mostly I take a different portion of the students from their teacher each week. I am doing this with about 10 English teachers in the school and the students range from 1st years to 3rd years (in French High Schools/Lycées, there are only 3 years: sécondes 2°, prémiers 1°, and terminales...in that order). Basically they are equivalent to our sophomores, juniors, and seniors. Some classes have been very attentive and some students speak great English, whereas some classes (mostly the younger ones) choose to be difficult and/or don't speak that well. As you can imagine, disciplining French high school students is not the easiest thing when French is your 2nd language! That being said, I speak only English in class and I am not afraid to raise my voice... For these reasons I am very glad to only have 11 hours a week.

About two weekends ago I met a few Saint Etienne locals, Nadir and Salah, while watching the Rugby World Cup at a local bar. We ended up hanging out a few more times in the past two weeks, one of which was their Sunday ritual. I should tell you that Sundays in France are much different than in the USA because everything closes. When I say everything, I mean everything...shops, grocery stores, even the small bakery on the corner is closed. People tend to spend their day at the park or on leisurely bike rides. With that being said, Salah and a bunch of his friends usually play soccer at the local park on Sundays. This past Sunday he invited me to play, so I rode my bike to the park only to find out that they were playing 5 on 5 rugby (a tribute game because the French Rugby team lost to England in the semi finals the Saturday night before). So obviously I took off my glasses and joined the fun, playing in my first rugby game ever!

Saint Etienne is a cute little city and luckily very centralised in France, so traveling is quite easy. My friend Autumn from the Paris study abroad in 2005 is coming to visit at the end of October as we have a nice 12 day vacation. From here we are thinking of doing a short trip to the Mediterranean region of France or the French Alps (which are both easily accesible via train for about 30€ or 40 dollars round trip). It takes about 2h and 15 minutes to get to Avignon and Aix-en-Provence and about the same time to get to Grenoble, Annecy, and Chambery which are all possible destinations, the former of which are near the Meditarranean and the latter in the Alps.

Feel free to keep me updated on your exciting lives back home! I would love to hear from all of you.

Lyon and St Etienne

This past Saturday I went to Lyon to watch an Olympique Lyonnais soccer game. They have won the championships in the French league for the past few years so it was really fun to see a good team play. They played RC Lens and won 3-0. Our seats were right behind the goal and we saw OL score 2 goals in the last 10 minutes! It was my second French "football" match but the first one was a 0-0 draw with Paris St Germain and Monaco.
The city of Lyon is extremely beautiful and is known as the gastronomic capital of France. I walked around aimlessly to explore the city streets and Vieux Lyon. For those of you who don't know French, vieux is the word for old and that part of the city has 2 forums/theatres that date back to the Roman era. Its really cool to see the history of the city Lugdunum (the name of Lyon in the Roman empire). The geography of the city is very unique as Vieux Lyon sits on a hill on the west side of the city centre and borders the Saöne River. The Saöne flows into the Rhône River and the land in between them is called Presqu'île (trans. "almost an island") and the city centre is located there. To the east bank of the Rhône is a newer section of the city.
Today I had my first class with students. I will be working primarily with les terminales (last year in high school) and helping them prepare for their English oral exams. For now they have me working with a handful of the English teachers and I will be working with smaller groups of students. I had two different groups of students this morning for 30 minutes each and just introduced myself and asked them some fairly simple questions about their lives (in English of course!).
I am living in a tiny studio apartment at the Facotel which has all accomodations for students and assistants. It is very convenient as it is close to both the city centre and Jean Monnet University in Saint Etienne. I am working at Lycée François Mauriac in Andrézieux-Bouthéon which is about a 45 minute commute. I have to ride the tramway in St Etienne to the train station (about 15 minutes), ride the train from St Etienne to Bouthéon (another 20 minutes), and then walk about 15 minutes from the train stop to the high school.
Everything is working out nicely and the teachers (and students so far!) at the high school are very friendly.