Getting Settled

I'm trying to avoid giving a play-by-play of all the time I have spent NOT updating my blog, but I do have to do a bit of catching up. So the next couple entries will probably be that.

I work at a high school in a little town called Montdidier, deep in the French countryside (finally, the famous campagne from years of French vocabulary lists is relevant). The school had a free room set aside for me right on campus, but the previous assistant (who has been awesomely helpful - thank you, Aoife) had advised had me not to take it and to live in the bigger city of Amiens instead and commute into Montdidier to work. Still, I thought it might be a good idea to live in the room just for a month or two, until I started getting paid and could afford something else. That seemingly solid plan started to crumble almost as soon as I arrived in town. A typical conversation with every teacher I met went something like this:

"Welcome! Where are you living?"
"I'm staying in the free room here at the school."
"Have...have you seen the room?"
"Um, not yet, but it's just for a month or so."
"I see. Well, good luck."

Except, you know, in French. Mostly. And then that teacher and whatever teacher had made the introduction would give each other a look that clearly indicated my plan was not a good one. Which made a lot more sense when I did finally see the room, and when I got to know the town a bit better over the next couple of days.

The room itself was...well, it was clean. It did have that going for it. Other than that, picture a dorm room, but colder and less welcoming, and with plastic and aluminum furniture, and linoleum floors. The "kitchen" downstairs in the building was actually just a hot plate and a microwave. Perhaps the most inconvenient thing, though, was that there was no wifi in the room. There was no accessible wifi anywhere in town, actually, except for in the main school building (which is, of course, closed on nights and weekends), and in the McDonald's, twenty minutes away on foot. I know, I know, I'm probably too dependent on the internet, but internet is the only way that I can conveniently and affordably communicate with my family, not to mention do research for lesson planning, write blog entries, or read emails.

There are also only about 8000 people in the town, and absolutely nothing to do. It's not even easy to get around or leave the town, as there are no buses and the train station is a half hour walk away from the school. I anticipated a very lonely (and incredibly inconvenient) couple of months were I to stay. SO. I actually ended up moving after that first weekend. I now live in Amiens (the "big" city in the area), in the same house where last year's English assistant lived. There are four of us in the house and only one bathroom, but there is wifi, there is a washing machine, and I am only a short bus ride away from the train station, a grocery store, and friends. So I am happy.

And actually, I had a feeling it would all work out when Tom and I went to see the house for the first time. See, for years, Andrew has been "speaking French" with one of the few sentences he could recall from high school. Over and over, for probably seven or eight years, he's been asking me: Où est la bibliothèque? Where is the library? And as we turned onto my new street, the first thing I saw was this sign:

So, Andrew, to finally answer your question, the bibliothèque is here. Or at least a bibliothèque is here. Close enough.

(In case anyone feels like sending me a letter or a postcard, or just spying on my neighborhood via Google Maps, my address is 13 Rue de Mercey, 80090 Amiens.)

When I went back to the school to actually start work on October 1st, all of the teachers asked me how I was faring in my little room in Montdidier. When I told them I'd already moved to Amiens, they all looked relieved and told me that that was probably a wise decision. I tend to agree.

And that's all for now! But I might write another entry immediately after this one.