Little trombones

"Could you pass me some little trombones?" said one of the teachers in a meeting on Monday. It took me a minute to realize that "trombone" also means paperclip in French (I guess it makes sense if you think about it....). Well, I have needed a lot of "little trombones" for all of the papers I have been receiving for my classes. At this meeting on Monday, I was with 6 other teachers, and we are all teaching the same class. It's weird because the class is already designed, and all of the materials for the classes are already determined. It's strange for me to teach a class with so little freedom, but kind of nice not to have to do much planning. I am planning to go to the class of another teacher who teaches it the day before mine every week so I can see how to manage the class. I've definitely got a lot more responsibility this year than last year...it seems a little bit strange that people who don't even know me are just handing me these big responsibilities.


I met all of the other lecteurs at a meeting yesterday. They all seem nice, and our boss has sort of given us the responsibility of organizing some English activities for the students, which is tough because French students care so little about extra-curricular activities. I also learned some interesting things about the university--for example, the students went on strike last year for an entire month. Yes, of course French students strike a lot, but I know that there was no strike this bad in Metz, which makes me think that French students must be particularly...hmmm I don't know what to say here...particularly grieved? particularly pollitically active? particularly concerned about the proposed reforms to the university system? My boss was telling me that even if he had wanted to teach classes to the students who were still interested in going, it was forbidden by law because strikers must be allowed to make their points.

Ha, and more roommate drama...sort of. You have to understand howestressful finding an apartment was, and how much time I devoted to the search. At one point about a month ago, I talked to a girl who had an apartment who I sounded really interested, but then a few weeks passed, and she didn't email me back...I found out that what happened was one of the other lectrices got the address of the apartment from her, and without getting a real invitation from the girl to take the extra room, just showed up on the doorstep with all of her luggage and said, "I'm here to move in!" So it's her fault I didn't have housing when I arrived (you can see how cutthroat this apartment hunting business can be), but I am pretty sure that I am a lot happier with my apartment than the other lectrice is so it's kind of funny. My room is getting organized. At the flea market I bought a bunch of antique postcards to put in my little nook (surprise, I know...), and everything is startign to shape up. Now I've got to start working on planning my classes...my first one is Friday~'�