a golden ticket to the préfecture

Have any of you ever felt like you’ve lived out a nightmare you innocently created in your writing and then it came true in some sense? OK, I admit that this question is sort of strange and vague. Here’s an example from a couple of months ago: In the cover letter I sent to G-man’s parents when applying for my anglophone nanny gig, I remember including something a bit exaggerated about how babysitting in the past had taught me “la joie des très jeunes enfants” – the joy of very young children. Oof, stomach-turningly saccharine, I know. Now, G-man is a pretty good kid over all, but we all have our moments (read: tantrums,) and this kid in the beginning really had some big moments. And one day during a moment, a memory of this phrase I’d written popped into my head, a tiny jab of irony from this little phrase I’d thrown into my cover letter as an attempt to seem more appealing.

This bright blue chantier cover at place St. Etienne reminded me of Christo + Jeanne-Claude

I’m not sure if I’ve told any of you that in my senior honors thesis I wrote a bit about what my advisor and I called the “aesthetics of bureaucracy” (and yes, I know how pretentious that sounds.) I used imagery from Kafka’s novel The Castle and the  architectural wrapping projects of Christo and Jeanne-Claude to illustrate this idea (I think adding Kafka into the mix ups the pretension ante a bit, don’t you?) Basically I spent a lot of time reading and meditating on “bureaucracy” in order to write about what it looks like. I think in my thesis this idea came out sounding somewhat clunky, but I still stand by it. Now that I am living in France, I definitely feel the experience of bureaucracy and I’m living out its aesthetics. My writing nightmare is haunting me, and I’ve never so much related to K from The Castle before now. Here, bureaucracy looks like the line for étrangers at the préfecture. It is a huge stack of papers that is actually one application artificially fattened up by three photocopies of everything on the checklist. It is the tracks on a map of me walking from this office to that office and to another just to answer one question – and none of the answers add up.

Business at the préfecture, paperwork hassles, and other administrative adventures are required writing subjects in ex-pats-in-France blogs. There is no way around it, really. It can alter your daily routine (or BE your daily routine sometimes,) its nerve-racking, and you always need to vent about it – which is what the blog is there for in the first place, right?

Yesterday my project was to sort through all my paperwork scattered throughout our living room and to figure out how I’m going to renew my carte de séjour before it expires in November. My visa status has been “student” since I moved to Toulouse last year. In May, I waited in line at the préfecture to ask and be sure that in changing visa status, I would not be required to return to the US; to be certain that renewing and changing my status was possible in France. My answer – yes, should be no problem. In August, I try to get a head start on the paperwork. I go to the préfecture again to get the papers for renouvellement. This simple early bird effort on my behalf led to a slew of misinformation coming from three different bureaux. At first it seemed relatively straight-forward: I needed to fill out an application, get my APT from the department of labor, and make an appointment to have the préfecture review my dossier. Euhh..c’est l’APT? ou la PT? And what does that even stand for? An initial step was deciphering this code word; French administration clearly has a fetish for acronyms.

So, off to the department of labor, to retrieve this APT – which stands for authorisation provisoire de travail, for those of you who are curious. I was naïvely still under the impression that I’d walk in, ask for the slip of paper and leave with a smile on my face. The a bearish man on the other side of the desk managed to confuse and scare me more than help me in the 15 minutes he was in the office with me. This included a stern lecture me about how I must return to the US after this job is over – it is a temporary cultural job, I am not meant to reside in France. Later, he did call the préfecture on my behalf, made an appointment with someone specific for later that day, and wrote me a stamped and signed note on a tiny scrap of paper to admit me to said appointment later that afternoon – my very own golden ticket into the drab steel portal of the préfecture!

This reminded me of being quite young in elementary school. Receiving a hand-written note permitting me to leave class, to pass a message to Mrs. So-and-so. A note written in cursive, a strange incomprehensible script, the secret language of the powerful elite – adults. Well, this wasn’t exactly like that. I can read cursive now. But the flourish of rubber stamps and signatures on my note allowed me to cut through a long line of people waiting in beige plastic chairs, who were all very suspicious about this white girl with the magic scrap of paper. In the end, I got to the bottom of what I really needed to do. Which was send a letter to l’OFII and wait. Wait for them to contact me, summoning me for a medical exam. My préfecture lady-friend pleasantly assured me that assistants receive preferential treatment in this process, as we are providing the French education system with our invaluable services, and that I should be contacted within 8 days.

Ha! Well, I’m still waiting. No surprise there. But it is starting to get a little close time-wise for the expiration of my current visa. My plan yesterday: contact the administrator in charge of the assistants’ paperwork at the school board. She is wonderful and sweet and was generous with her photocopy machine – I’m easy to please. She writes me back in a timely manner and reassuring tone. She also immediately contacts someone at the préfecture, and by the end of the day I have an appointment to renew my visa, perhaps with no need to repass the medical exam. What an amazing feeling of luck and delight to cut through the red tape and accomplish something in one day I’d anticipated on waiting for weeks to settle! Conversely, the feeling of dismay that it takes insider-administrative buddies to get anything done this quicky. C’est la France!

ovenless dessert lab

After one light first week in the classroom, I’m on vacation. I’m staying in Toulouse for the break and so far my only plans are to fix the old bike I bought last week and experiment a lot in the kitchen. So, probably a lot of cooking posts coming…

This morning I cleaned out our “pantry” cupboards and I am challenging myself to use up the dregs of certain things we’ve been pushing around for a while but aren’t bad enough to throw out. When I was living alone, this game was a test I put myself to before nearly every trip to the grocery. So here’s what we got: one nest of chinese noodles, 1/3 cup of arborio rice,  less than a handful of peanuts and cashews, a 28 ounce can of flageolets that have been moving around with Edd since college, a tin of cuisses de canard et riz de veau, two tiny cans of crème de marron, and a half eaten jar of pâte à tartiner (spread) of speculoos…

I knocked out the chinese noodles and the peanuts at lunch time. The flageolets are on the menu for tonight’s dinner: gigot d’agneau aux flageolets. The next thing I crossed off the list was the rice. Looking at the tiny portion of arborio rice I started thinking about rice pudding. Comparing various recipes online, I figured out we had just enough for two servings and set out to patch together my own creation.

I haven’t mentioned here, but we have a modest kitchen. It is on the small side, but easy enough to work in. We have an electric range and a microwave, a small table that acts as a counter/work space, a great sink and somewhat limited storage space (thus my inspiration to clean things out). One thing we don’t have is an oven. And in the year I’ve lived here, I’ve learned to live without one. It’s fairly painless to live without one, too, I’d say. Though recently, it seems as though I’m running across many recipes for baked, roasted, and broiled foods.

Thus, Edd and I have studied a few convection oven/microwave hybrids around town. I think our verdict is still undecided. I personally have a really hard time making big purchases. I figure, we’ve gone this long with out one and we still eat very well.

So one thing I don’t cook a lot of here is desserts. Before I was a cookie and muffin lover. In France, the bakeries are so wonderful that I haven’t really felt a withdraw from these baked treats. It’s on the way home to pick up a couple pretty and delicious tartlettes or tiny rich cakes. Edd has instilled me in his family’s dessert tradition of eating a yogurt after dinner. And I, in turn, have introduced Edd to my family’s number one dessert addiction: ice cream.

I know that there are plenty of desserts that require no oven to make. Today, my food experiment was taking my first stab at rice pudding. I’d never really eaten it before working at the bistro a couple of months ago. There, they regularly served a very tasty little cup of riz au lait with caramel for dessert. So I set out to make my own spin of this ovenless dessert – rice pudding with coffee-caramel sauce.

a million tiny bubbles

My first step was to make the caramel sauce. I based the sauce off of Mark Bittman’s recipe but I made mine with a bit of strongly brewed coffee and a splash of Kahlua. I don’t have a thermometer to perfectly gauge the temperature so I used the archaic, drop of hot caramel in a glass of cold water test to determine if I’d reached the correct temperature and thus consistency.

one delicious drip

Then, I moved onto my pudding. My recent forays into risotto making make this recipe feel simple. Lots of stirring, adding liquid, and the result is creamy goodness.

I had just enough pudding for two servings with a couple spoonfuls left over. These spoonfuls thus became my taste-tester. I spooned a bit of caramel on top… and wow! A little too sweet for my taste but definitely not bad for a first try.

foraged in a fall forest

Looking at my coat hook the other day, I realized that I have so many jackets and scarves hung up there that it appears as though there is a hunch-back clinging to our living room wall. Edd’s hook just next to mine resembles an actual coat hook – bearing at most his winter coat, his corduroy blazer and a hoodie. And they hang there slacken, as coats should, not forming some bulbous, human-sized lump. And despite all this, I am thinking about buying a new winter coat.

Last year’s leaves at Versailles

It seems wild to me though, that October is coming to an end. That clear, crisp autumn weather I was crowing about last week has ceded to strings of cloudy rainy days that resemble Toulouse’s winter weather habits. But in fact, I think every year autumn feels all too elusive. In my classes I’m talking a bit about Halloween themes which made me think of all the things associated with fall in general. Pumpkins, apple picking, cider, a carpet of soft dry leaves on the ground. Gourds of all shapes and sizes and tall corn stalks. Between Halloween and Thanksgiving, the US really goes all out on the harvest decoration themes. And without a doubt this has fueled my recent culinary obsessions with winter squash and apples. But also mushrooms, because here, it’s mushroom hunting season!

Photo credit: Ellie

In the doldrums of August I caught a documentary on Arte about mushroom hunters in the Pacific Northwest. There they hunt the matsutake, which is one of the most expensive mushrooms on the world market and very populate in Japanese haute-cuisine. I won’t digress any further, but this documentary definitely piqued my interest. There are also many things on French television that I’ve seen about truffle hunting and I’ve always loved the tradition of using a pig to sniff them out (though more and more, it’s dogs now.) About a month ago, during Ellie and Annika’s visit to Toulouse, a mushroom stand popped up at the marché crystal on the boulevard. We were all charmed by his fall forest scene. Passing one of Toulouse’s fanciest chocolatiers on my way to pick up G-man from school, the fall harvest motif in the window is mouth-wateringly adorable. Chocolate baskets carry perfect chocolate imitations of girolles and cepes. While other chocolatey ‘shrooms are nestled into a chocolate woodland diorama.

Overflowing barquettes of girolles in Dijon

Surrounded by all these beautiful mushrooms I had to have them and cook with them. The recipe I’ve loved the most recently is from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything – which Edd got me for Christmas last year and it’s probably been one of the most used gifts I’ve ever received. The recipe is a risotto made with fresh and dried mushrooms and it’s simply perfect if you ask me. This was my first brush with risotto making and it converted me. Edd and I have made three batches and I believe this one’s going to be a regular. The constant stirring is sort of a pain, but its a good excuse to drink while cooking and to goof off in the kitchen like kids, as we prefer. And in the end, rich, warm, earthy tasting mushroom risotto with a healthy dose of parmesan. The dried mushrooms marinate the rice in shroomy flavor while cooking and the fresh mushrooms give the dish substance. Well that should be enough gushing over mushrooms for now. Blogging seemed a bit tough today, maybe more tomorrow.

field work

This week has been a showy one in terms of strikes in Toulouse. Earlier this week mountains of garbage began piling up in the streets because the garbage collectors strike. A couple of days after they stopped collection, the éboueurs drove around in their trucks overturning the overflowing dumpsters to emphasize their discontent. Result: Trash and papers everywhere!

 

photo: La Dépêche

Yesterday, the strike was temporarily suspended and collection resumed. As you can see, stopping to clean up after a big city is a pretty effective way of transmitting a message. I certainly starting thinking about how much we consume and thus throw away. And also how much we depend on these workers to help us forget this process. Lots of disgusting garbage all over the place, blocking the walk, papers blowing around in the wind, an unpleasant sink wafting through the crisp autumn air… Not so beautiful. Lots of people were understandably pretty upset about this disruption. Even though I’ve been in France for a while, there is still something a bit exciting to me about the strikes and protests here. It feels like a breath of fresh air compared to the atmosphere of “democracy” I grew up in the US. At home, I only attended one protest – the March for Women’s Lives in Washington D.C. in 2004. What an invigorating experience! But the nature of marches, protests and strikes in the US seems to me to be a sort of all or nothing sort of effort. It’s either a big march of hundreds of thousands of feminists protesting anti-woman government policy in the capital city or a pitiful handful of angry grocery store workers standing outside the parking lot of Biggs fighting to establish rights to organize a union. Thus, here in France, despite the nuisance posed by manifestions, I’m generally glad to see this as a functioning form of political expression on the people’s level.

Today’s grève de paysans is by far the most impressive I’ve seen. Angry farmers – dairy, grain, fruit and vegetable – all over France are demonstrating. In Paris they marched on the Champs-Elysées! In Toulouse, regional farmers trekked into the city via tractor convoy – blocking the routes and main arteries in the city. This morning on the métro I caught a glimpse of the tractors blocking traffic just outside Balma. Then, on my walk back home around noon, I crossed the big beginning of the march on Toulouse. What a sight! So many tractors in the city, not to mention a few stray goats, cows and donkeys. A convivial atmosphere amongst all the farmers, moving in to Toulouse, milling around and munching apples and paté sandwiches with tiny plastic cups of boxed red wine.

Well, enough commentary, here are a few photos I snapped…

I talked to this dairy farmer for a few minutes; he had the thickest accent du midi I’ve ever heard!

Hard to see, but they laid down a lot of stinky hay. Nice touch.

notes on a quarter century

This week the weather is gorgeous in Toulouse! Bright, clear and chilly. Which has sent me foraging through my stockpiles of cold weather clothes to retrieve some sweaters. I’ve been listening to the remastered release of The Feelies’ first album a lot too and it feels perfectly fall. Also, not sure if you all noticed my obsession with butternut squash (all varieties of winter squash!) but I’ve found a new recipe that will be inducted into our fall cycle. Make this recipe, I guarantee you won’t regret it.

I didn’t mention in my last post that I have recently past what some may call a “milestone”;  my 25th birthday was Monday. Coincidentally, the birthday of my man, Edd, falls just three days before my own (Friday, for those of you who aren’t great at math or calendars). So we had a laid-back, celebratory weekend. It was chilly and rainy but didn’t feel gloomy at all. Perfect weather for those wild purple tights I bought during the summer soldes… Saturday we took a drizzly tour of Toulouse’s art festival Printemps de Semptembre, poking our nosing in galleries and art spaces we’d never seen before. Later, celebrated our quarter-centuries cuddled up on our beloved couch with champagne and tiny decadent chocolate cakes. For me, it doesn’t get much better than that.

Not many deep thoughts on turning 25, and when I turn back to old journal entries around this time that seems to be the trend with my past writings too – At the end of a meandering and rather short entry in October 2004 I unremarkably note: “oh yeah, I’m 20 now.” It has never struck me to make a “things to do before I turn ___ [years old]” list. In the same vein, a 5 or 10-year-plan seems wildly impossible to forecast. (And honestly, not so interesting…)  All I can say is that, lying in bed Saturday morning, thinking about my love’s birthday and mine own, I had a surge of emotion and wonder just about being here in France; living a life I never expected, but loving it so fully and simply. And just feeling great, thankful and happy.

So thank you to my friends and family for sending their love and birthday wishes. Relieved to know everyone is glad of my existence!

report card

Well it’s about time I wrote a bit about school stuff since  I’ve plunged in last week with my visits.

So far, this experience is perhaps comparable to deep-sea diving – I’m in the water now, but being slowly lowered in, deeper and deeper. My instinct for now is that my initial perceptions are valid, but that there’s much more to see once I get to the bottom of things. More details to develop. So, Jess, don’t get comfortable yet.

At orientation we were told to, “surtout, surtout, surtout PAS aller aux écoles” without a member of the administration of the inspection with us to make the first contact. So sitting there, I’m thinking, oh, so this should be interesting… Because, well, our visits – formal presentations – were totally unscheduled with our placements and took the form of guerrilla attacks. Each of us arranged to make the tour of our placements with and administrator. On Thursday, my number was up and I met Karine at the cité administrative to make the mine of my schools in Balma, a wealthy suburb-city to the north-east of Toulouse. Friday morning we met up at my third placement, in Toulouse and easily accessible for me by bus.

The visits Karine and I made last week were very brief encounters with the principals of my schools. After gaining access to the interior of the building, we’d raid the teacher’s lounge and storm through classrooms and offices searching out the unwitting principal. Then we would hijack him/her from a meeting with teachers or playground surveillance, and hammer out a rough plan of hours for me, establish which day of the week I’d spend at this particular school, etc. Karine was essentially my agent, selling me and negotiating my contract. Because for all of my placements, this is the first time they had received any word that they were even getting a language assistant. Elementary schools apply for assistants and intervenants (the upgrade of me, in very truncated terms) in the spring. Thus for the new school year, some make an outline of how they would like to use the assistant if they get one and some completely forget they even applied for one and try to reject us once we arrive, a month after la rentrée, trying to weasel our way into their agenda. And this is why the inspection admins insist we don’t go out there alone, because with our agents there to protect us, they can wave official stamped papers around in people’s faces and insist that, they did indeed apply for an assistant and damn it she will be teaching your students English!

After my flurry of initial contacts, this week I observe. I follow my crude schedule and get a feel for each of my schools. So far, I’ve only been to St. Exupéry in Balma. On my visits, this school was the best organized and most prepared to integrate me into their curriculum. The directrice is sweet and almost jolly. The school is covered in art projects from past interventants in the arts – so local artists who had come in to do art projects with the kids based on the concepts of art history (prehistoric cave art, gargoyles, etc.) I love this school immediately for that. Also, it’s pretty obvious that this is a school with good funding, in an upper-middle class neighborhood… I’m not saying that is the recipe for academic utopia, but it seems like a pretty good learning environment.

Anyhow, yesterday I make my rounds of the 8 classes in the school. My directrice and faculty are amazing and have already devised my emploi du temps. I’m working with all levels from the littlest ones (CP=kindergarten) to the big kids (CM2=5th graders.) My first impression is that not many of them have very strong levels in English, so I made an exception and introduced myself to everyone in French. This was largely cute and fun. The kids asked me many questions about me, how I learned to speak French, and about the United States. The among them all, the strangest or most surprising questions I fielded were: Is everyone in the United States black?  Are the United States bigger than Paris? The more typical: Have you ever been to a rodeo? Is everything cheaper in the United States? Have you ever been on a military base? And, the very most adorable question, posed to me but a little boy who seemed to be the small-for-his-age dopey/sweet kid in his class: Does the US still use the Franc?

In short, so far, so good. Next week is my first week “live” in the classroom, teaching. And the following week, a week and a half vacation for Toussaint! God, I love France.

homebody

So, tomorrow is another big day in the life of this English teaching assistant. I’ll be presented to two of my schools and hopefully obtain more of a sense of my job. Friday morning I’ll visit the third school and I believe the following week I’ll be circling my placements observing. Apart from sitting for Gaspard, I’ve been jobless since June. Initially, that was fine – Edd and I went to the US for Laura’s wedding and to hang out in New York for a couple weeks. Then we hosted some friends here in Toulouse early in July and after that, solitude and having nothing to do felt great. It was summer vacation! But during August a cloud of idleness settled in upon me. No more tutoring, Gaspard was in Ariège for a month with his family, my buddies in Toulouse were all gone. Lots of time to wander around the empty summer streets of Toulouse. Also, lots of time to cook and experiment with new recipes at home or to watch 4 or 5 episodes of Mad Men in one day. Time to clean and organize and feel like a good little housewife. Or at least very domestic. There was something stifling about it; I was itching to do things but so unmotivated. At the same time, I was rather complacent too, knowing that in September things slowly would pick back up again.

And here we are. Wheels in motion. My late, lazy mornings and afternoons in the kitchen are endangered by that thing I was once pretty much all about – work! In light of this endangerment, I suddenly find myself threatened to lose my freedom. Thus, I took advantage fully of today’s lack of plans and savored my long and empty day.

Got out of bed with Edd and made my tea and toast. I took my morning internet cruise and listened to NPR. Then changed the seasons in our balcony garden – yanked out the dried up marigolds and finally tended to our sad, “sun-dried” tomato plant, and rearranged everything. Funny, all those drought-hardy plants and cacti I got in July are the only ones that survived the summer on our sun-scorched, blustery balcony…

Then onto the kitchen! Recently, winter squash and mushrooms have been my fetish ingredients. Today I’d planned on making a vegetarian chili recipe that called for butternut squash and swiss chard. The recipe is quite simple but cutting a butternut squash down into 1/2 inch diced is quite a chore. But well worth it. The chili is awesome if I do say so myself. While the chili was bubbling away I put together some oniony, garlicky, and herbal meatballs to eat for dinner tonight. (Even more reason tonight why I’m eagerly awaiting my chéri’s return!)

Then, then, then… well I’ll spare you the rest of the details of my day. It feels a bit boring and narcissistic to recount calling Gorky and painting my toenails a fallish hue of burgundy, among other mundane things. For all interested parties, the chili recipe can be found here: miam!

north

marché des livres at the vieille bourse

This weekend Edd and I took a night train to Lille to attend the crémaillère of some friends. Lille is a bit far from Toulouse, but this house-warming party was more of an occasion for his engineering school crew to reconvene. For me, it was the first time I’d met our hosts, François and Lise, after hearing a lot about them. And on top of it all, Edd promised that the streets are filled with baraque à frites, waffle stands, and that good Belgian beer is easy to come by. Hearing that there is a place in the world that specializes in good beer and delicious french fries is apparently all it takes to win me over.

So Friday at 10:22 pm we hopped on the TGV, ours a snazzy new one with the interior designed by Christian LaCroix. Aesthetically bright and punchy but horribly uncomfortable and constricted. Miraculously, I managed to fall asleep not too long after our departure and continued to rest soundly until our stop at Bordeaux. At this point, the (awake) passengers around us began a giggly slumber party and I became the whiney, goody-two-shoes who wants to go to sleep early and kills the party. Well, in fact they were just jovially commiserating about the economic crisis, scorning rising travel costs, and griping about the impossibility of sleeping in the seats. Normally I adore this sort of situation; strangers coming together to chat with one another. But this case was an exception. The latter topic of conversation was particularly irritating to me at the time, as I had been sleeping more or less successfully before this outburst of conversation. Eventually, Edd realized how annoyed I was and politely asked them to quiet down or to continue their conversation in the talking car at the very least. At which point I felt like a brat who had passive aggressively conned her boyfriend into asking them to shut up (instead of just doing it myself) and also like the odd-girl-out of the slumber party, who falls asleep first and then gets her face drawn on or something else humiliating. In the end, everyone calmed down and I managed to sleep for most of the trip. And I did not revenge my rude awakening later when everyone was peacefully sleeping in various crumpled-up positions.

a mannequin covered in francs across from the chamber of commerce

Visiting Lille was a lot of fun though. François and Lise were really organized and had figured out how to fit 7 guests comfortably in their new place. I was jealous of their big kitchen and tidy habits. i’m finally getting to know Edd’s other friends better as well, making it a lot more comfortable to just hang out. We spent quite a bit of time at their apartment eating and playing games (François is a passionnate collector of jeux de société and bandes-dessinées. Impressive displays of these passions included; their apartment had a charming bookstore feeling to it.)

Other times we were out and about in the city. I loved the contrast of Lille in comparison to Toulouse. The Flemish architecture, the cold grey weather, the local food traditions. A lot of people in the South shudder when you tell them you are heading north in France, but Lille seemed like a pretty cool city. Lots of great looking restaurants, bars, book shops, game stores, and delicious treats. I found myself weaving some sort of explanation in my head that when you live somewhere cold and rainy, you’re more likely to want a great place to hole up and read/drink a beer/play a game/nibble a waffle. Our walks around the vieille ville were too fast paced and too short for me to snap many pictures, but the one above was taken at the book market in the court-yard of the old stock exchange. Also, I just felt like my little point-and-shoot was not doing the Flemmish architecture the justice it deserved. And finally, I was the only one on our walking tour slow-poking to look at all the little details.

Ok, enough excuses. It was a fun trip. I’m always glad to see a new region of France. But now I think we are both ready for a lazy weekend at home. Just yesterday, upon arriving in Toulouse, I was overjoyed to be back in my sunny, warm city in brick. Back in my jean shorts and moccasins. Mm.. Yes, it is better in the south!

some new light shed…

Day one of our orientation meetings for the assistants placed in primaire. Should I be surprised that the convocation claimed our day would last 7 hours and that after barely two hours we were dismissed? No, not at all! Not too far into the first introduction of one of the other assistants I realized that the administrators in the inspection really didn’t have a lot of material for this meeting. It was a nice meeting though. Ample introductions, some convoluted explanations of how to get our carte de séjour. A mix of newbies and returning assistants. The administrators seem warm and willing to help us do our best in our schools.

The big news is my placements, of course! Two schools in Balma (a suburb of Toulouse) and one in Toulouse proper, but just barely. To get to my schools in Balma, there will be complicated commuting – a mix of métro and bus. They are a bit further away than I was hoping for. In my incredibly unrealistic dreams I was imagining the school right across the street from our apartment, another in the Carmes maybe and the school next to G’s maternelle. Ha! Well, I knew it would never work out that way.

Knowing my placements solves one mystery. How things will unfold is another altogether.

As this assistantship finally kicks into gear, I’m meeting more and more new faces, and getting to know better ones I met a week or two ago. Last night, a small apéro picnic on the Garonne. After about a year with hardly a trickle of new people or friendships, this flurry of activity is pretty exciting for me. Lots of interesting people descending into the area! I love exchanging with those who are taking in France for a first or second time. Their fresh eyes on this city and this culture remind me of my own experience in Dijon two years ago and reinforce so much what I like about living abroad. (Not to sound jaded – in fact its something more, refreshing and inspiring.) Also, I must admit how good it feels to be able to pass on some of the knowledge about Toulouse I’ve gained in the past year or so – be it navigating bureaucratic pathways, recommending a great bar for Belgian beers or gushing about my favorite papeterie.

And on the otherhand, meeting assistants that have been in France or Europe for a while already is wonderful too. Many of whom are in mixed couples to boot… It’s sort of a revelation to realize how un-unique I am. I started getting a sense of this in August. When, bored out of my mind, and curious about the assistantship, I started reading the blogs of past assistants. Relief and a renewed sense of hope. It isn’t futile staying here! I can and will find my way.