Suzanne à Grenoble

J'ai l'envie d'écrire en français, mais...
Got into Grenoble Monday afternoon after a painful journey with my insanely overpacked bags from Paris and before that, London. Spent the night with Lauren in Paris and we hung out with some ultra-cool Anglophone ex-pats in a bar called "the Beaver" (believe me, the jokes have already been made), on the Ile de France, or Ile de St-Louis, or one of those îles...

Just got back from my "stage" (orientation) at a little boy's camp in Autrans (the little boys weren't there, don't worry), up in the mountains above Grenoble. All of the assistants in the Grenoble region met each other and went to boring information sessions for 2 days. It was fun to meet everybody, though, and I'm very glad I went. There are assistants from the U.S., U.K., Australia, Italy, Spain, and Germany. It felt like a college orientation, going around and introducing yourself to everybody and remembering nobody's name. But fun. And it made me excited for the coming year. All of the assistants teaching primaire in the mini-region of Isère (Grenoble city and surrounding area) are having a special week of teacher training starting monday, which is kind of cool. I was not really ready to start in my school(s) so soon anyways. I'm going to visit my schools tomorrow and introduce myself. I hope they are expecting me. I have a feeling they're not.

Housing in Grenoble is very competetive, and a bit daunting. I'm going to look starting tomorrow with 2 other assistants and hope for the best...

P.S. Sitting in a cybercafé, listening to french students talking smack about americans, even after I switched places with them to accomodate their group... Oh la la...

Today was my last day at T.A. I have to admit, it was pretty hard to leave. Especially when I left my wallet, then my keys in the office in separate instances, causing me to go back, not once, but twice, and then ended up staying until about 11 pm helping Annie out with a volunteer mailing party. Man, there were some weird volunteers in our office tonight. I could have sworn there was a full moon. But, they were there to help do menial tasks, so I can't really complain.

I cannot figure out how to put Photos up on this site and it's driving me maaaad. The "hello" software doesn't seem to work with macs, and there isn't another feasible way to do it. I think it's a conspiracy. It's fun to blame all my problems on conspiracies. Makes the world seem a lot more managable.

Okay never mind I just figured it out!

Here's the whole gang a couple of days before the NYC Century Bike Tour outside the "Good Morning America" studio. We had about 5 seconds of airtime, but it was quality time. Go Team Century!

In case you wanted to see who I am. Can't really figure out how to put this on my main page.

This is from the surprise goodbye lunch. That's me on the far left.

I am leaving for Europe on Saturday and my room looks like Hurricaine Ivan made his way up north. It's going to be a crazy couple of days--what, with finishing my job, packing my shit, finding a place to store the leftover stuff because god knows when I'm coming back, getting all the proper pills and paperwork, applying for an absentee ballot... It's a wonder I'm not running around like a headless chicken. Or a headless Pekow, as someone told me tonight that my last name sounded like some kind of foreign chicken. But I'm strangely calm. I guess it's because I have been abroad many times before, and I've moved many times before, and I've sold my soul to the devil many times before... wait, what? It's late and the prose just flows.
Tonight I talked to an old friend who just started an internship at NPR. Sounds like they're already treating her like an old pro. Good for her. I love that my friends are constantly surprising and inspiring me.

So I can't figure out how to put photos up on this blog. I tried to go to the links provided by Blogger, but they make you download some file sharing program that's incompatible with macs. What do I do? Not that ANYONE is readint this right now, but perhaps someone just stumbles upon this page unintentionally, notices how forlorn and cute I sound, and wants to help me out...? In the meantime, I'll just be anonymous Suzy, sitting out here in cyber space with no picture to put a face to my name.

I never thought I'd be the kind of person to think my thoughts were important enough to publish on the internet. It seems so self-indulgent, so pathetically hopeful, so... geeky. But now that I'm heading off to France to make my fortune as an English teaching assistant in Grenoble, I decided that maybe I should find an easy way for my friends and parents to keep up with me, without having to waste many euros and hours on the phone. Plus, I always think of myself as a writer, but haven't been doing much of it lately. So I think I'll put my money where my mouth is and start writing journal entries as though someone were reading them--in the hopes that someday soon, someone will.