Just when I begin to fear I'm running out of interesting things to report, a new host of topics crop up! Yesterday was the English Language Assistants' orientation for the Loire département of the Lyon académie in St-Etienne, a city I'd only passed through before. To the left is one of the oldest buildings in the city (my picture doesn't really do it justice...bad lighting!) that has been transformed into a drug store (la Droguerie).
But before I launch into the tale of the longer-than-intended day (and night) in St-Etienne, I must first report on one of the favorite national pastimes in France... la grève: going on strike. There's a huge ongoing debate in France right now about raising the retirement age by two years in order to help save the French government some money, and of course those who reside in the land of the 35-hour work week are loathe to extend their careers. There was a big organized teacher's strike on September 23rd that I just barely missed, but I was quite surprised upon walking out my front door yesterday morning to find all of the students milling about outside the school gates after 8:00am, when classes were supposed to already be in session. Since it was the day of my orientation in St-Etienne, I didn't have any classes scheduled but still needed to go inside to check my mail and see if the translation of my birth certificate had arrived yet.
You learn something new every day in France... apparently students can go on strike too! Apparently they do it a few times a year, and this one was supposedly in support of maintaining the retirement age (suuuure, 16-year-olds care about retirement...). In any case, they'd all taped big X's across their clothes and linked arms to bar the entrances to the school to any fellow student who would be so dastardly as to break the strike, but professors were still free to go in and out. I really wish I had had time to take a picture, but as it was I had to hurry to check the mail and was afraid I'd have to run by the post office and be in risk of missing my train to St-Etienne. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that the students mistook me for one of them, and it took several explanations for me to make the girls I was trying to break through realize that I was in fact a teacher. Oh, how quickly they went from snotty to mortified! I've got to hand it to the students here, they are very respectful and deferential to professors... when they recognize them, that is.
Okay, back to the main topic for today: St-Etienne. I did wind up having to run (literally) by the post office in Feurs before sprinting to the other end of town to make my train, but I made it in time. The 50-minute train ride was followed by a 40-minute walk to the high school that was hosting the orientation, which sits at the very top of one of St-Etienne's infamous seven hills. Between the morning dash and the cross-city hike, I was feeling glad I hadn't bothered to wake up early to go run.
The morning section of the orientation was filled with administrative information, and during those few hours I realized that despite its somewhat less than prime location, I'm actually very lucky to be in Feurs. I was the only assistant in the whole region who had already taken care of everything: securing housing, opening a bank account, beginning classes, and enrolling in social security; and it's all because the people at my school are so organized and helpful. There are some assistants who still haven't found a place to live, and so far no one who is teaching at the elementary school level even knows what schools they've been placed in yet. Actually, I don't feel so bad for the primary school people; despite the inconvenience of not knowing where they'll be working, they're basically on paid vacation and will only start observations right before the fall vacation. A month of being paid to meet people, stay out late, and explore St-Etienne? Yeah, I wouldn't complain.
After lunch in the school cafeteria (definitely a notch or twelve above American school lunches), the focus switched more to the educational side and discussions of potential lesson topics, which was very helpful for me but probably would be quite dull for whoever's reading this, so I'm going to gloss over it :)
One of the English teachers at my school, Claire, lives in St-Etienne, so she met me and a few others from the orientation at a café/bar called Midi-Minuit in the Place Jean Juarès, a very cool plaza where half of the numerous cafés' seating areas are across the street with little awnings to point out which seats belong to which cafés. As the group slowly dwindled down with evening approaching, those of us who remained decided to strike out in search of food. After a quick pedestrian tour of cool places to hang out in St-Etienne by night, we picked a fondue restaurant called Chez les Fondues and all four of us (in addition to me and Claire, there were two other assistants, Tyler and Katherine, who were feeling culinarily adventurous) ordered the raclette fondue to share, which is not quite your typical "dip the bread in the pot of molten cheese" kind of fondue.
The pictures above show a before and after of our raclette, which is heated from above and melts down. Ohh, so yummy. It's best over potatoes (in the wooden tub behind the cheese lamp) and bread, but is also served with a jar of pickles (which made it into the picture of me to the left), salad, and a charcuterie plate that rivals Farm 255. We also got a small pitcher of very smooth local red wine for only about 10 €... I really can't get over how reasonably priced wine is here. But who am I to question it!
It was getting close to 9:00 when we left the restaurant, and Katherine and I knew we had to be sure to catch our trains out of St-Etienne on time, mine being the earlier one at 9:55. Yet an hour is a long time for two young women to wait at an empty train station at night, so we decided to grab a quick drink before catching the tram to Chateaucreux. Seemingly 10 minutes later, I look down at my watch to see that it is in fact 9:35 and I've got 20 minutes to get across town to make the last train back to Feurs, and my second cross-city sprint of the day commenced. Well actually just a dash to the tram stop, a very frustrating five minute wait for the next tram to arrive, and then a dead sprint (loaded down with all my paperwork from that morning) from the train station's stop into the train station. We got there at 9:57, and the train was long gone. Missed the damn thing by two minutes... They say here that trains never arrive on time, but always leave early. So far, this is true.
At least Katherine managed to make her train, but consequentially I now found myself alone at the desolate train station. Thankfully Claire had anticipated that I was probably going to miss my train and offered to let me crash on her couch for the night, and then I'd catch a train the following morning in order to make it back for my morning class in Feurs. On the bright side, by missing my train, I no longer had a 9:55 curfew! Claire picked me up at the train station and dropped me off back in town to meet up with some of the other assistants who were out that night (mostly the primary school assistants who don't have classes yet and thus have been able to stay out late whenever they want... jealous much? Yep) while she met up with some of her friends for a while. I found the other assistants at an Irish pub, Saint Patrick, that I'm going to let slide as being authentic because they served Strongbow on tap. There were five of us still out at that point, Tyler from Tennessee, Andrenne from Virginia, and Amanda and Mirren from Canada as well as me. Since all of the Americans present were from the south, much of the evening was spent trying to teach the Canadians how to do a Southern accent (this mostly consisted of inserting "real" -- aka, "rull" -- in front of adjectives, as in "Hey y'all, I'm rull hungry").
However, knowing I had to catch an 8:00am train was quite a deterrent to having too much fun (not to mention the drink prices), so after a while Claire caught up with me and we headed back to her house, an awesome modernized old house divided into apartments, one of which she and her boyfriend own. Both the bedroom and the living room are lofted on opposite sides above the office and kitchen, so it turns what otherwise might be a one or two room place into something much bigger. It was really lovely of her to put me up at the last minute for the night; everyone here has been incredibly nice and generous, almost to the point of putting the reputation of American Southern hospitality to shame (no snarky little "bless your heart" comments here... but also no sweet tea!).
Fanny had her orientation in Lyon today, so she's staying there with friends for the weekend, which leaves me in Feurs on my own. But just because I'm here doesn't mean I have to stay! A train ticket to St-Etienne is only 3.70 €, and I think further exploring the city would be a great way to pass Saturday afternoon. It's now Saturday morning as I'm wrapping this up -- I got cut off before I could finish the blog last night at 7:00pm -- so it's time to get out and about before I squander the whole morning away putzing around the internet before it shuts off again. To those in Athens, I hope the Epic Proportions opening was a resounding success and that the show has a great run!
No comments:
Post a Comment