Apartment: FOUND!

The search is over!! After a LOT of thinking and reseraching, I decided my priorities were in this order:

1.) Location is in walking distance to both of my schools (after my constant bus mishaps, I hope to have to ride it only sparingly from now on...)

2.) Living conditions are nice (I prefer to not live in a corner next to a exercise machine in the family room, not to  have to stash my clothes in a drawer in the bathroom, which I share with three other people, and to have a shower with walls....and yes, these conditions are normal and have all happened in other places I checked out.)

3.) Price within 300-400 euros total

4.) Live with a french person so I am forced to speak french!!

5.) Furnished


The apartment I decided on is not all of these things perfectly. For example, it costs 390 euros per month but doesn't include internet, and if we go over 40 euros on gas/electric, we pay the rest...so it could cost me up to 450 euros a month, which is WAY more than some places I looked at, but....

It is SOO pretty!! And it is furnished, and decorated in a way that is so me...the colors and the art, it's beautiful. And the kitchen has a giant window that opens out into the street, and has a view of the ocean. The bathroom is modern, the shower has walls! (yay) and we have a washing machine for clothes! And the best part is it is in the center of downtown, right by the most happening streets, (though I use that term loosely, everything closes at like 8pm) and just a 10 min walk to both my schools!!

I'm going to live with an American from D.C., which kind of was sad for my french progression, but she is more fluent than me now and we decided to try to only speak in french and to watch french TV and listen to music all the time :-) and of course make a lot of french friends downtown!

Here are some pics! I'll take better ones when we move in...there is a couple living there now and they are moving out Tuesday morning so we are moving in Tuesday evening!! Can't wait!!

kitchen with super giant window into the street and ocean! 

Foyer

living room/my bed! 

modern bathroom! 

other bed---the bedroom

other side of living room/dining area

The ups and downs.

If you had asked me a couple of days ago how things were going, I think I might have done a little something like burst into tears. I figured it out, though, I'm going through a phase. I've come to believe that moving to a foreign country is a 7 phase process:

Phase 1: When you first decide/find out you're moving, you are nervous and excited. And somewhat numb to it because it seems so far away. You ask yourself: "Am I really going to go through with this? Will it actually happen?!"

Phase 2: The second phase is planning/preparation/STRESS. You are eager to get on the plane and leave it all behind.

Phase 3: The third phase begins when you arrive in country and everything is new and excting. It doesn't even matter if you're jet lagged because you never want to go to sleep anyway since everything is so super-awesome!!

Phase 4: I entered the fourth phase two days ago when I went to a meeting with the head of the schools I will be teaching at. Besides making the horrifying discovery that I actually DON'T know French as well as I thought...(I understood like maybe 10% of what she said...the official vocab and how fast she was talking made it pretty impossible for me...) she made it clear that I was being closely watched, and as they have never had an assistant at their school before, I would be the determining factor as to if she participates in the program ever again. So no pressure.

So phase four is when you go backwards. Everything is scary and all you want to do is lock yourself in a room, listen to english music, and decide that you DON'T want to learn French anymore, that it's basically impossible, and you KNOW because you've been trying to do it for YEARS!!!!! Oh, and because of your newfound lack of confidence, you basically forget all the French you DID know and lose the ability to talk at all.

Phase 5: This is where I am now. Phase 5 is when you go back and forth between optomism and utter defeat. Probably within hours. Since that meeting, I have had very triumphant moments....like when I walked all over downtown Saint-Denis...(the old fashioned way with my adventure bag on my back, my two feet, and a map!) ...and I found these VERY hidden modeling agencies where I conducted my interviews entirely in French. I also had random conversations with people in a pharmacie, the post office, and the bus.

However.

On the same day, I struggled immensely while forming even just basic sentences with my French family, made an idiot out of myself a few times (like when I asked the lady at the gas station how many midnights it would take to get somewhere, instead of minutes.) And had to hold back tears of frustration while engaging in the impossible task of finding an apartment. Sometimes I feel I'm progressing and in control, and sometimes I feel like I'm a total failure and I'm never going to get where I want to. Uggh.

Phases 6 and 7: I don't know what phase 6 is yet because of I haven't gotten there. But I really am hopeful that something better comes after where I am now!!!! Stage 7 is there because I feel like there is probably like a "wrap up" stage where you come full circle and are a better person for going through all the other crap.

So there you have it. The 7 Stages of Moving to a Forgien Country. Am I screaming, or enjoying the ride? Maybe a little of both. I've always been a little indecisive :-)

In hindsight, it was probably a bad idea.

I was supposed to meet these Austrian girls who might need roommates at 11:00 in downtown Saint-Denis at the central bus station. We picked this location because it supposedly would be the easiest place for both of us to get to. The house I am staying at right now is in the city next to Saint-Denis, called La Montagne, appropriately titled because it is on top of a giant mountain. But there is a bus stop close to my house, so all I was supposed to do was hop on the bus and take it down the mountain and just over three more stops to the center of Saint-Denis. This did not happen.

I forgot to get the paper Nathalie printed out for me of the bus schedule, so I figured I'd just read it on the stop when I  got there and wait for the next bus. They come every half hour so I shouldn't have to wait too long. But when I got to the stop, the stupid schedule looked like this:

Not very helpful. as i was trying to read this damn thing, the bus on the other side drove by, which gave me hope. After a few minutes though, I realized it meant that I missed MY bus by probably five minutes.

Ok so that's when i decided it didn't feel like it was a long time when we drove from Saint-Denis to this house my first day here.....I figured it might take me a half hour to walk there...and obviously it was going to take me a half hour to wait for the next bus. So, why not walk if it was the same amount of time? it was a beautiful day...the scenery down the mountain was breathtaking, and I could use some exercise anyway, right?

Wrong.

I started walking down the mountain. At first, I was all happy, and listening to my french music, and thinking about how grand life is while I gazed over the cliff at the beautiful ocean and tiny Saint-Denis.

Saint Denis

Then my little pedestrian side of the sidewalk disappeared, and a lot of cars started coming! At first I rememberd what I was told in cross country--to go AGAINST traffic, so you can see them and they can see you and you won't get hit from behind. But with the steep turns down the mountain, I realized it was worse to go against traffic because you really can't see each other around the bend. I switched sides. Then this weird little trench started to appear so I went down there to get off the street.

weird trench and sword plants

I ran into that little aloe-like bush you see in the picture and thought I could brush it away, but apparently it is made out of little green swords that stab you. They are all over the little trench area, which I assumed was to get water off the streets when it rains. But as it turns out, the trench is also used for smelly garbage and swords plants. Then I passed a sign that said to watch out for falling rocks for the next 2 miles. I looked down and noticed a lot of little boulders in the trench area. I started to think...maybe trench area is to catch all the falling rocks...and that I was definitely going to get hit in the head by a boulder. Even a small boulder would proabably kill me...didn't you ever hear that story about someone being able to throw a penny off the Empire State Building and kill someone? Well...now it was going to be me, with a pebble boulder, in a trench on the side of some mountain in a random island in the Indian Ocean. THAT would be a dumb way to go.

I started to walk a little faster down the mountain.

So all in all it took me an hour and 20 minutes to get to the center of town.

After another hour of not being able to find Eva and her friend Andrea, we met and then I found out both of them are not really looking for roommates but they might be in the future.

Epic fail.

So I get on the bus to go back home, which was a much easier trip, until I discovered the bus does not stop automatically. Apparently there is a secret! If you want to get off at your stop and there is no one there to get on, you have to clap twice.

Bravo.

First Day in Class....

When I left the house this morning I might have been a little nervous. Since I don't start teaching until after the first vacation (school started last week and the kids have a vacation from oct 1-17...already love it...) Nathalie took me to her class so I could get an idea of what French classrooms are structured like, and maybe to speak a little English with the class or the professors who teach English who don't get much opportunity to speak it. Ok so a little nervous was what I started out with. When we pulled up to the parking lot, completely terrified is what I turned into.

The school itself was kind of scary looking to me. It is very different. We are used to big buildings with pretty landscaping and a giant playground...classrooms that are closed inside the building with probably a gymnasium and a cafeteria. Well this school was made of bars, the classrooms were on three stories with doors that opened outside, and the playground was just a big open area of cement where the kids were literally running in every possible direction like a billion monkeys fighting over one banana. It sounded like that too. The screaming and laughing and yelling was almost blood curling when I got out of the car.

Anyway, I'm not saying that any of this is bad at all...it was just very different. And I'm sure if I ever decided to visit an elementary school back home at recess, it would be a lot of the same thing. The point is that I was NOT prepared for this!! Then when we walked through the gate, it was like a creepy movie where everyone knew I was new and they all stopped in slow motion in front of me to stare while I passed.

So the kids line up in a formation outside and wait for their teacher. Then they are walked silently upstaris to the classroom and wait until they are told to go inside...then wait again until they are told to sit. Which I thought was pretty impressive. I sat at Nathalie's desk and everyone stared at me while she told them I was from the United States (they all gasped) and that later, they could ask me questions in English (they groaned) and I would answer in English...then they could ask me in French and I would answer in French (then in my head, I groaned. This could be very embarrassing..what if I don't understand what they are saying? What if they speak too fast? What if I understood but couldn't figure out how to answer in French? Plus they are all staring...and a few of them laughed when I said something in French because I obviously have a thick accent...and so on and so forth...)

So I spent the next hour freaking out more along those lines. How can I do this? I have no idea what I'm doing! I've never taught anyone anything before! What kind of teacher I should be when I have my own class? Should I be nice and laid back and happy, or would they walk all over that and just talk the whole time and not pay attention to me?

Somehow I was able to calm myself down. Finally, before recess, the kids were allowed to ask me questions. They didn't know many phrases in English, so they asked me "What's your name?" and "How are you?" THEY were scared of ME! No one else would try to speak in English. Then they asked me questions in French.

This was it.

 I was holding my breath.

They asked me what city I was from, if I had any animals, if I was married, and how old I was!!I breathed a giant sigh of relief. For the next half hour we went through everything they knew in English so I could have a starting point of what to teach in my class. They actually knew a lot; colors, numbers, animals, dates, weather, feelings, senses, Halloween vocab. It was really helpful.

I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to find a roommate!! Still no luck. The search continues tomorrow, I'm venturing in to town on my own to meet up with some other assistants who are looking for rooms. They are Austrian. Hopefully it works out...

Les Faux Pas

There are some things I keep messing up. Like for example, any time I meet someone, I automatically go to shake their hand. I know the French do the kissing cheeks thing, I've known this forever, but for some reason I still instinctively just reach for hands. And...it gets a little awkward. Either everyone in the room silently stares at me, or I'll go for the hand while they lean in to kiss me and I end up kind of punching them in the stomach. Maybe tomorrow I will get this right.

I also confuse the formal and non formal ways to talk to people. In general, I thought that to be polite, you use the formal tense, but really for people you interact with a lot (even if they are new to you, and older than you) you use the informal tense. And lots of times, I have learned a phrase as a whole, instead of in grammatical pieces, and if I learn it the formal way, it comes out the formal way. Even when I talk to an 8 year old kid. oops.

And when I go to public beaches, like today, I cannot seem to stop staring at all the women who are not wearing tops. I was not expecting that for some reason. It doesn't bother me at all (no tan lines!), but wow did I unexpectedly see a lot of breasts today.

Speaking of the beaches....wow.....

Stephanie, her boyfriend Jerome, and Jeremy took me to meet up with their friends. The first beach we went to had no lagoon, and went straight into the ocean. Researchers around the area are all trying to figure out why there has been such a dramatic increase in shark attacks on the island, so at this beach, where there were 5 attacks and 2 were deadly, swimming is no longer allowed. This morning at breakfast, Nathalie told me it was kind of eerie...for years people were swimming and surfing from sun up to sun down on the beach and now you don't see a single person in the water.

We didn't stay there long. Instead we went to Coco Beach, where there is a large section of water from the shore on where there are no waves and people can swim. They call it a lagoon. The waves break like a half mile away from the shore. And when I say waves...I mean like WALLS of water. They got so big at one point all the people on the beach crowded to the shore to watch them...and even cheered and applauded as they crashed!

Stephanie had maybe 5 other couples join us, which definitely made me miss Brian. Everyone of course was exceptionally nice to me...speaking English when they could to help me out at my seemingly constant loss for words ( I was still on Texas time last night and slept for like an hour and a half....too tired to speak French all day today!!) For lunch we went to a sandwich shack on the beach and I had some kind of crazy baguette with french cheese and these things they call bouchons...which means cork but also means little chinese noodle meatball things. It was pretty delicious.

So the weirdest thing about today was that I totally fell in love with Jeremy. (They also call him Loulou but I am not sure why). If you know me...you know I am not the biggest fan of children. It's not that I hate them, I just don't have the patience and have been in the presence of some really bratty kids before. Loulou is seriously the coolest kid in the world. He is a really well behaved, chill, just happy and having fun kind of guy. He's also a genious. He reads french, and knows a lot of English and Spanish. Oh and he's 5.

By the end of the day, when we crossed the street, he reached for my hand, which made me smile. And then he asked me to sit next to him on the way home, and the entire way we made animal faces at each other and danced and played cars. It was so funny because we played the whole time with no words...I was super tired and burnt out on french and he had given up trying to slow down his speech for me. haha. it was a good moment. and it gave me hope!! I may make a good maman one day after all :-) Or maybe I just like French kids. Who knows?

Day 2: Wine and Politics

I had a lovely day. Since I was wide awake all night, I slept in until Nathalie woke me at 13:30. Downstairs was PA, his brother and his niece, 8 year old Eliza. She was hilarious and adorable. She knew only a few words in English, like colors and her age, and "How are you?" When I asked her if she knew the song "Old McDonald had a farm" she said no....but she knew of McDonald's the fast restaurant, because there is one in Saint-Denis!! Hahaha. Funny but sad. After we all hung out for a while, we went to PA's  sister's house. They have an amazing garden as well, and she baked a petite cake for us while we drank coffee. They spoke very fast at the table so I was mostly lost. But her children.....one boy, Thomas, and the girl....can't remember her name but she was 3 and probably the most gorgeous little girl I have ever seen. She had big brown eyes and long wavy brown hair and the sweetest little baby french voice. The thing about the people on this island is that everyone is SO mixed...they get the best of every culture. Big dark eyes, tanned skin, dark but fine hair. They are truely all just gorgeous people.

After that, we went to Nathalie's sister's house where her mother, her two sisters, and her nephew were having drinks and snacks. I walked in and they told little Jeremy I was American, since he is studying English in school (he is 5). His eyes got wide when I started speaking french. "Elle parle français!!!!" He was very surprised to hear french come out of my mouth. We all sat down and talked for hours (In french, bien sur!) while we drank wine and played games with Jeremy.

Nathalie's sisters with Jeremy, Nathalie up top, her mother, and PA at the end :-)

There was a point later, after we named every American singer we loved, every French singer we loved, and every classic American film...that Nathalie's mother asked what I thought about Obama. I just wrote out a three paragraph essay about my thoughts on politics...but instead of that...since my blog is new and I am a little sensitive about it still and I would not like my first blog comments to be angry people yelling at me about politics....I will just say that I was caught off guard!! Haha. I stumbled through VERY bad french, saying something along the lines that I really don't have a political affiliation...that socially, I believe people should be free to do what they want as long as they don't hurt another person, and that fiscally, I kind of wish I could afford healthcare but I don't know what the right answer for that is either. I'm not sure how that was taken...because she said she agreed, and then it grew quiet and we talked about singers a lot more after that. This means one of three things: 1.) she really did agree with me and we had no argument, 2.) she could tell that I did not really care about politics, or she just thought i was not knowledgeable enough to carry on a conversation about it, or 3.) my political french was so bad that she had no idea what i was trying to say!!

Anyway, it blew over really fast and we were all back to laughing about everything else. They were very sweet to me, and Stephanie, the mother of Jeremy, offered to take me to the beach tomorrow, so we have a date!! I can't wait :-) 

All in all, a good night in La Réunion.

Je Suis Ici!

  

I flew straight from Dallas to Paris, where I had to get off, get all my bags, and transfer to Australian Air. That's where I met Eric, a French guy from Normandie, who became my first friend of the trip! He travels from Normandie to Reunion to Madagascar for work fairly often. And he does not speak English. I was so happy!! Finding myself in a situation where I was forced to communicate in whatever French possible (meaning like gramatically correct or not) to get my ideas across was exactly what I needed to jump start back into the language. We talked for the five hours in Paris while waiting for the Reunion flight...about French poets, Texas, traveling, and I was even able to joke a little in French!! (about the sharks, haha.) After the flight, he even helped me get all my bags and make sure I found my contact, PA, who was waiting for me outside. It was a very good start to my adventure :-)

me and Eric!

Here are today's newspapers from the island: maybe i'll stay out of the water for a while....

PA has been amazing. From the airport, he took me all over the city to help me get important things done that I was planning on having to do on my own. We met the head of the school and signed in, got a french phone and set up a bank account. Then he took me to his giant two story home in the mountains where he lives with his girlfriend Nathalie (they have the bottom house) and his mother (who has the top house, but she is in France right now so it is where I stay). Here is my room and the view outside:

For lunch, PA cooked and then took me around his amazing garden: He grows bananas, oranges, lemons, all different kinds of spices...and honey. We ate bananas and fresh honey straight off the honeycomb. I had no idea honeycombs were all just wax! I feel like I'm in a dream.

Now on to the next adventure....finding a roommate and a permanent place to stay!!!

La Réunion: A Good Journey answers questions you didn't know to ask.

So the countdown is at 11 days. Here is what I know about my future in Réunion so far...it is a tiny island off the coast of Madagascar. The flight there is 20 hours long... I'm teaching English to French elementary school children in the capital, Saint-Denis. I have a ride from the airport and a place to stay for the first week or so until I can find something to rent. And that's about it.

Oh, and the island is beautiful...

So why am I completely terrified all of a sudden? I have picked up and moved across the world multiple other times, but I have not been this scared before. Is it because I am starting to have a life here in Texas, and it's not as easy to just pick up and catch the next plane out of here? Is it because I have no guarantee of a future past May 2012? Is it because my life here suddenly fell apart in the last week...my dog is staying with this friend, and my furniture is staying with this friend, and do I sell my car or leave it with that friend...and pow! just like that...i'm homeless! Or maybe am I just getting to the point in my life where I am ready to settle down in one place...have a career and a family...and move on to the next chapter? 

Regardless, this trip is a required stepping stone for anything I want for my future. I need to live over there in order to become completely fluent and confident in my ability to speak French...which is necessary to have any kind of job using the language back here in the States. And plus...maybe it is a good time to take a little pause from the way things are right now. To gain new perspective and focus... to identify what is real and what really matters to me.

So. Everything is going to be okay. I just gotta get through the next 11 days of packing and organizing and planning and saying goodbye...