alyssa in chauny!

Yesterday, Alyssa was up here in Chauny. Lovely Picardie blessed us with a nice sunny day... and after that hour, it rained the rest of the day. I picked Alyssa up at the train station bright and early and ran into many of my students in the process. We picked up breakfast at a boulangerie and then headed to a cafe. We hung out there for awhile and caught up a bit... I cleared up some "misunderstandings". We saw a bunch of my secondes there as well. Apparently, everyone is out and about early in the morning. I then showed her up to the high school where we dropped off the huge package of goodies she brought me before heading over to the war cemetery. That is just about the only notable site in Chauny. Afterwards, we walked through the park and explored the centre ville. We even walked all the way down to the river! I have decided that it's not very beautiful at all. Thank you factories! We also saw J. (gendarme) in his car, and he waved to us. That guy is so nice!

For lunch, I decided to brave going into my favorite kebab place. I say braved, because while they have good food, we now avoid it like the plague, because every single worker has hit on at least one of us. That's not a good thing, they're all very louche. However, seeing as this was busy lunchtime, I figured it would be okay. It was... though I don't think Alyssa really enjoyed the kebab. We did run into N. and another one of my students there.

After lunch, I caught Alyssa up on some of the (lame) French jokes and of course the hilarious "Where is Bryan?" act and tried to explain the relations of some of the people we know in Chauny. Oh, the small town life! Then, we were going to go to all of my afternoon classes. Of course, it turned out that all but one was canceled because of meetings. But we still went to that one, and Claude let the students question Alyssa in first English and then French. And of course, Claude had a field day with questions as well. He enjoyed having Alyssa in class - he brought her up with the BTSers today and said what a shame it was they didn't have class yesterday with us. One of the students thought it was funny to try to use as many slang words as possible (le francais difficile as he put it) when asking his questions. That student is just a troublemaker, but he's nice.

After class (and a quick run in with the maintenance guy), we went into town for groceries and hung out with some of the others for awhile. Next, we went back to a cafe and chatted for a long while. A guy I know was there, and he paid for our coffees! How sweet! Finally, we enjoyed a nice dinner courtesy of Viany before I put Alyssa back on a train.

I hope she's not too scared of small town French life. She clearly saw how much there isn't to do here. But honestly, it's the people who make the experience. The other assistants here and the people we have met are what made it a good time. I might not have been so lucky if I were in a bigger city.

After Alyssa left, N. stopped by and hung out with us. I was sad that she couldn't stay longer, because I really wanted her to talk with some of our friends, but our friends are pretty much only free in the evenings. We all had a good time though. We hadn't hung out with N. in quite awhile.

Today, I just had my morning class with the BTSers and now I'm free for the day. I think I'm going to try to update my resume. I can't keep pretending that the end of my contract isn't looming in the near future. Hopefully, I will be back here next year, but I do need a backup plan as well as something for the summer.

Oy. The wind here is terrible today. Well, it's been bad since the weekend, but today, it's topping over 30mph and it's constant. Not fun.