Friday was a pretty good day. I had two classes (was supposed to have one more, but those terminales were nowhere to be found!). The first one was with a group of Carole's terminales (I should probably say that terminales are what we would call seniors). Only 2 of the 5 showed up and getting them to talk in French was another story. However, they were really nice (even if it was in French), and the one is only 2 years younger than me! So strange! And let's see, his hobbies as he said them to me were: "party, drink, alcohol, and sleep." I don't know why drinking and alcohol had to be separate. After that, I did the whole talk to them like they're friends and not students, and it actually went pretty well. I think they were a little disappointed that they won't be meeting with me again for quite awhile.

The second class, I did a Halloween lesson. It went pretty well, I think. There are some things I'm going to change before I do it again this week. However, I'm realizing that the English levels in my school are far from the normal levels in French high schools. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to deal with this. We're not really supposed to use any French in the classrooms unless it's to get the kids to behave.

Friday night, we celebrated Guy's birthday. Not many people from other towns could come because of the trains still not running normally. Two assistants came from St. Quentin, one English and one German, because the German girl has a car. They were both really nice. We went out to a Chinese restaurant and had what turned out to be a really decent meal. My wild guess of what something was actually turned out to be what I normally eat at Chinese restaurants (only Frenchified). We then went back to the other assistants' apartment for dessert and drinks.

Saturday, I got up early after not much sleep to catch the 8:30 train to Paris. Viany (of course she almost missed the train) came with me. Okay, why do people insist on walking Paris? I'd much rather hop on the metro (unless something is really in easy walking distance or the metro isn't running). It annoys me. Especially when I then hear complaints that we've been walking really far. Anyway, after walking across Paris, I bought a surge protector at Darty. I'm far too nervous to leave my computer plugged in directly to the wall. We then walked up the Rue de Rivoli to the Champs Elysees. We did some shopping. I was good and didn't buy anything besides some candy. I had to talk myself out of buying all the new Eeyore stuffed animals from the Disney Store. He's my favorite!

After lunch, we went to the Arc de Triomphe. I've never actually been up close to it, so that was really cool. Hence, all of the pictures I took. We hung out there for awhile, and then I left Viany (she was meeting a fellow Colombian) and headed off in search of shoes.

I hopped on the metro to go to the neighborhood of the hotel I stayed at last fall. There's an Andre Stock (pretty much an outlet store) near it. Unfortunately, I didn't find anything there that I liked, was in my size, or worth its price. Oh well. It was worth a try, and I'm glad I took the chance, because in that area was a little food market celebrating the cuisine of France. That's what I love about France (and really miss about living in Aix) - randomly running into cool little things like that. There's nothing like that in Chauny. I walked around looking at the cheeses, the foie gras, the wine, and everything else. I bought a very yummy slice of goat cheese pizza before heading back to the train station. The metro was crammed with rugby fans. Seriously, they were so crammed that I could barely breathe. But I made it back to the train station and caught the 7:00 train back to Chauny. Viany, of course, missed it, but I didn't want to wait around for her. I was cold and tired so I just wanted to get back home.

And another thing about Paris yesterday, it was crazily packed! There were so many people from England, South Africa, and other countries for the big final match of the Rugby World Cup between England and South Africa. I think I heard more English in Paris than French. It was crazy, but also a very fun atmosphere.

Today, I finally put pictures on my computer and uploaded them, which took forever!!!! I took the time to actually label most of the photos, so hopefully, people will read the captions!

Pictures
First two weekends in France - Amiens and Paris (La Nuit Blanche)
Chauny
Yesterday (October 20) in Paris