Well, I am back from my weekend in Amiens. The orientation was pretty much a waste of time, but I did like being in Amiens.

Friday night, it took Katie and I forever to find a place where we could eat. There are apparently not many places that serve dinner in Chauny. We finally ended up getting pizza which was good and cheap. So eating out in Chauny appears to be difficult which sucks because we have no kitchen. Oh, and earlier that day we also went to Intermarche that Katie found at the border of town, and I finally managed to find a comforter for my bed.

Saturday, another assistant met us in town and then the three of us went to St Quentin (a bigger city near me) for the morning. I loved it there! It was an actual city! We went to the market and got drinks at a cafe. I'm so jealous of the assistants there! It's so nice, and there is shopping! We then met up with three assistants from town and took a bus to Amiens. We had fun exploring the city. It's large (larger than St Quentin), but not too large that we couldn't walk it. That night we met up with a lot of other assistants. You can imagine how bizarre we looked as 50 English speakers (and a few Spanish) walked though town going to bars. The first place, we took up the entire bar. The next place was larger so we spent most of the night there.

Sunday, we went to the large flea market in town. It pretty much took over the entire center of town! It was crazy! Some things people were selling were rather interesting. I liked looking at the books, but I didn't but anything because I didn't want to lug it around all day. In the evening, we met up with more assistants and then went out to dinner and then for a drink. I also met another assistant in Chauny. He's from New Castle, England and really nice. He's living and working at the other school.

Monday was orientation. So boring! They could have put the important information into an hour, but no, we were there for 8 hours. I also met the Spanish assistant from Columbia on my way back into town. When I returned to Chauny, it was of course past dinner time at school, so I had to buy something. I got a kebab from a little restaurant. The guys there were super nice and gave me free mint tea while I waited for my food to be ready. I'll be going there again.

Let me just say that I am jealous of all of the other assistants' housing. Almost everyone has cooking facilities, even if it's a shared kitchen on their floor. Must be nice. Even the assistants at the other high school in Chauny have a kitchen. Guess, we'll have to become good friends with them and make dinner at their place. It sounds like their rooms are really nice.

The plan for this week is to open a bank account and then hopefully start to figure out this whole carte de sejour and social security stuff.

I should probably go find the English teachers now. It would so help if they set up an actual time and place to meet with me.