Ça commence...

Here I am in Romans, finally starting to get comfortable after a few days.  Most of my time here so far has been sent dealing with French bureaucracy, which of course is thrilling.  But, I now have a place to live, bank account, cell phone, and have signed all of my official work papers.  

Romans is a beautiful city -- the center of town still has a lot of medieval architecture, and the Isère river runs between Romans and Bourg-de-Peage, the town where the middle school I'm teaching at is located.  The size of the city is ideal because it's small enough to be comfortable in and meet people easily, but it's large enough to have almost anything one would need as far as stores and services are concerned.  

One of the English teachers (Annie) and her husband (Régis) have basically adopted myself and the other assistants, which has made the adjustment pretty easy.  They have us over for dinner regularly, helped us setup our bank accounts, drove us around the town, etc.  They also brought me to their chalet in the Vercors (a plateau-type mountain range) last weekend, where I spent time with their daughter, her husband, and their grandchildren, Ludo (7 yrs old) and Anya (4 yrs old).  Not only were the chalet and its surroundings beautiful, but the family was incredible.  I spent Saturday playing darts, chess, and basketball with Ludo, followed by a "nature walk" to a huge cave.  As the day progressed, I realized that French boys become their romantic selves at a young age.  While we played darts and chess, Ludo kept cheating to my advantage.  If I threw a dart and got 20 points, he would immediately walk up to it, move it to the bullseye, and proclaim, "C'est 90!".  Similarly, he would set himself up for failure in chess, showing me exactly how I should move to take his knight or queen.  However, once we began playing basketball, he was relentless.  He began to cheat to his own advantage and impersonated American basketball players (he knows their names and teams much better than I do).   Anyway, on our nature walk, he began to tell me about his love life.  First, he said that he was in love with a Czech girl.  When I asked him later if she knew he loved her, he said, "No, but I have loved her since 2007 when she visited.  I never see her now because she's back in the Czech Republic."  Right away, he added, "But it's ok, because I'm in love with 4 other girls at my school, too."  He proceeded to pick a flower for me, ensuring that I still had it throughout the rest of the day.

We spent the next day exploring the area around the chalet, from a lookout point over "Maleval," a valley below the mountain, to watching rock climbers, to making friends with the neighbors' horses.  As we were walking toward a path, we cut through the horse pasture.  One of the horses immediately began to run toward us, following closely behind Régis and chewing on the bottom of his pant legs.  We confronted a similar situation about an hour later with two donkeys...

Anyway, back in the town, I have been trying to get ready to begin teaching (I am supposed to start tomorrow, Oct 1.)  The age of my students will range from about 13-24 years old, so it should make for an interesting 7 months.  I am excited, though -- it will be a really unique experience, especially since my job is just to talk with the students and teach them about American culture.  

I miss you all, and I will post pictures soon!