Moving out, moving on...

My lease is up in two weeks so I have been packing all of my stuff to take home in increments. Packing up my clothes, my books, my scrapbooks, my pictures. Packing up my life to sit and gather dust in my basement while I gallivant around France for a year. Leaving Athens, really brings home the reality of my eminent departure. Probably better than anything else could. It's go time.

My last couple weeks have been the stuff memories are made of--and I'm sure the next two weeks will continue the trend. The only thing I hate is that I seem to be making all these new friends and really getting to know some of the old ones only to leave in a few short weeks. But alas, that's life.

My English class is going fantastically well. I absolutely LOVE my students and am going to miss them so much. They all work so hard and it is the best feeling in the world when they finally get whatever I have been addressing. They are all older women, and I know how hard it is to learn and retain a second language late in life--that makes each small step even sweeter! We've taught each other so much. I really like teaching, and I think I'm rather good at it. We'll see how next year goes, maybe a career change is in the cards for me. Who knows? I meant to take my GREs this summer so that I could go to grad school when I got home, if that's what I decided to do--at least keep that door open, but somehow that didn't happen. It's been such a busy summer I guess I just forgot! Oh well, I'll figure something out. Always do.

Ok, ok...I know you don't want to hear about my boring life, you want to hear about France! Well, here's the news so far:

I wrote to someone from my school last week and finally got a response back. The school that I am going to be teaching in is rather small--700 students. I'm going to be teaching juniors, seniors, and post-bacs (students that failed their bac). I'm going to have approx. 35 students, but I'm going to have them in two classes of 17 or so. I still am not sure what their proficiency level is, that's one of the things I asked François when I wrote him back.

I start on the first of October, and have training on the 10th of October...you know, because it makes sense to have training after you've already been working for a week and a half. The training is in Montpellier, which I think is also, rather conveniently, where I have to go to get my citizenship card. Maybe I'll be able to kill two birds with one stone. And François is going with me, he is one of the teachers running the training, so I won't screw up the train tickets or anything on my first trip. That will be nice. He'll make sure I understand everything and know where I'm going. From his letter he seems like a really nice guy. He's been teaching English at my school for 12 years.

Oh! I almost forgot the best part! Because France is so rural, most of the high schools are set up like semi-boarding schools. That is to say that the students live at the school during the week and go home on the weekends. Fortunately for me, they reserve rooms in the dormitory for the language assistants and it's free! F-R-E-E!!! I've never read a more beautiful sentence. Not having to pay rent will save me so much money and I will be able to travel so much more! He said the room is small and the school is empty and depressing on the weekends. The assistant last year opted to rent a room in Carcassonne on the weekends. Something like that is always an option, but at least I have somewhere to stay when I get there and can worry about those things later.

There isn't a women's rugby team in my city or at my school, but François seemed to be pretty excited that I play.Toulouse (an hour away from me) is like France's rugby capitol, and he said I will make many friends in our area through the game. He also said that the teachers would help me start a team at our school if that was something I wanted to do. Wow. Start my very own rugby team, in France no less! Don't think I'm quite ready for that. Five year olds in France probably know more about rugby than I do. But, I think I'm going to take my boots and shorts just in case!

I think that is all the news for now. I wrote both François and Emily (the assistant from last year) long e-mails with a million more questions and will post again when I hear back from them. Until then I'm going to go home and finish Steph's scrapbook (finally!) with my mom, and then it's birthday time! JZ is coming next weekend, I might be going to Norfolk sometime after that, and then it's Philly for Matt's big 2-1 and to say goodbye to the family. A busy end to a busy summer!

Cheers!
Murph