Wednesday, I sat in on a BTS English class. Being in the class with the actual teacher helped to explain why my students can't understand me and have problems stringing together sentences, but I won't go into that here. The reason I came was to help give suggestions on appropriate constructions of sentences and to show that the same thing can be said in more than one way. I'll do the example the teacher used with me for me to understand what was going on. "J'en ai marre" or "J'en ai assez", both mean relatively the same thing. In English, it could mean "I'm fed up", "I've had an enough", "I'm done" (in the context of I'm not going to do/take this anymore", etc. Between the teacher and I, we probably listed ten translations. So basically, that's what we did in the class. The students were working with describing a picture, and I would help them come up with different ways to say the same description or verify that they said everything correctly. It was fun!

Except sometimes, I would get confused. You know how if someone questions you on something, you start to question if you're correct or not? Well, that happened a few times. Plus, it doesn't help that they speak British English, while I speak American. The students couldn't understand why this was happening until the teacher gave an example. While he was in England, a French teacher asked him if it was "Il fait du vent" or "Il y a du vent" for "it's windy", and he couldn't remember which one was really correct once questioned on it. Half the students in this class said one thing, and the others said the other, so they understood the dilemma I was having. I'm allowed to go sit in on the class whenever I want, because it'll help their English and my French (because they do the same thing I was doing in English... saying the same thing in different ways but in French).

Wednesday night, our new "friend" sat with us during dinner. He also introduced us to another guy who works in the surveillant office. I have a feeling that we'll be eating dinner with him the nights he works, which will be good. It also forces us to speak in English.

Thursday, I tested out my Thanksgiving lesson, which included watching an episode of Friends. I was afraid that it would fall flat or the students wouldn't understand it, but it went well. I had a bunch of questions, so I would keep stopping the episode in order to get them to answer the questions/test their comprehension. At first, I would stop the episode after a couple of questions, but I quickly learned that I had to stop it after every single question. I was planning on using this lesson all through next week, but unfortunately, that is not going to work, because instead of only having handful of the students like I usually do, I was given all the rest of the students on Friday that I didn't have Thursday. Guess I have to plan something else now. Also, I'm beginning to hate my favorite Thanksgiving episode of Friends now, because I have watched it so many times these past few days, and I will probably use it for another couple of classes with other groups students. Anyway, the class loved it. They were bragging to their classmates about it after class (which is probably how I ended up with all the rest of them on Friday).

Thursday night, we ate with my students. They're BTS students, so basically my age, but still... my students. Apparently, they invited us to sit down with them while I was getting salad dressing or something, and Katie decided to accept. I mean, it was fine, but of course, it was a group of students I had on Friday. Oh well. That same night, we went out to celebrate the Beaujolais Nouveau. Here's the description of the Beaujolais Nouveau that I had posted last year. All of us went to one bar... the Bavaro to start. We had a couple of bottles of the new wine there until we got sick of hearing Rhianna's "Please Don't Stop the Music" over and over again. Then, we headed down to the karaoke bar... there wasn't many people left there, but we still bought another bottle of Beaujolais, and Katie and Viany sang a few songs. The French people there were still highly interested in and entertained by us.

I think we stayed out a little too late and drank a little too much, because Friday was painful. It also didn't help that Veronique sent me a text message at 7am! But I made it through all of my classes (the ones that showed up anyway), which pretty much involved watching Friends over and over again. Friday night, Viany made us a roasted chicken for dinner. So yummy! We also tried to come up with some plans for Thanksgiving. I have no idea how that's going to pan out, but we'll definitely be making some sort of meal. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, so I definitely can't miss out on it completely!

Also on Friday, the lovely transportation unions decided to extend the train strike. Even though trains were semi running on Friday, they went back to zero trains for the weekend. Got to love France. Faced with the prospect of being stuck in Chauny, I quickly looked up bus schedules to visit Mira in Soissons. Luckily, the Picardie regional buses aren't striking until Tuesday, so I decided to go to Soissons for the day on Saturday. Plus, I love hanging out with Mira.

It was a nice bus ride. Lots of pretty sights. One thing about this area of France is that the auto routes are pretty much what we would consider back country roads or something. We drove through some forests and through some small towns that almost made me glad for Chauny. We also got stuck behind a tractor for awhile. The road was so small that we couldn't get around him until he had a place to pull off the road. It was a cute little old guy.

I absolutely loved Soissons! Though it's still kind of small (30,000 people), it's like a real town! We went to the market, where I found a new purse for 8 euros. We visited the cathedral, which is gorgeous. It's sad to think that it was almost completely destroyed during WWI and had to be rebuilt. And like most old buildings in Soissons, you can see shrapnel marks on it... it was freaky seeing those same marks on nursery schools. We had a wonderful lunch and dessert and then did some shopping. There's a lot of cool stores in Soissons. I loved it! Seriously, the town was great. It was what I pictured for a typical French town... instead, I got Chauny. I was sad to leave, but Mira and I are attempting to plan some weekend trips together. It would have been awesome if the two of us had been placed in the same city.

Today is Sunday, which means most boring day of the week. I hate Sundays in Chauny, but yeah... pretty much trapped here for the time being.

Pictures
Just a few pictures of Soissons from near the cathedral. I really should have taken more of the centre ville, because it's really cute. Next time!