My last sixteen months have been pretty whirlwind, from UVA to Roanoke to Alaska to DC to Portland and back - and now, to France. I didn't fully realize until I spent the past few weeks at home how terrible I really have been about keeping in touch during that time (I heard a few variations of "Wait, you were in Portland?"), so here's an attempt to do something about that.

The Plan: Starting at the beginning of October, I'm going to be teaching English to middle school kids in Lyon at two different schools. Technically I'm a teacher's assistant, but there's no real way to know until I hear more from my schools (which might not be until orientation). Some assistants teach completely alone (mostly the ones with primary school kids), and some are essentially tutors for kids who are having a hard time (mostly high school), but there's a lot of flexibility within that and from what I can tell, schools do pretty much what they want. What I do know is that I shouldn't be working much more than twelve (as yet unspecified) hours a week, which leaves me free for things like learning French, exploring, getting a side job and generally making the most of being in a beautiful city.

So! Adventure, day 1. I flew into Paris this morning on a no-sleep red-eye, and after a few hazy hours alternately wandering around the train station and napping on my luggage, I'm writing on the train to Lyon. I'm not sure when I'll post this, since free wireless seems not to exist here as a concept - probably later tonight. Anyway, the kind I'm on is called the TGV, which translates to "Train of Great Speed." that makes me laugh, it sounds so pleased with itself. It's true, though - when I was here a couple years ago it was the world's fastest passenger train, and I think there might be one in Japan that's a little faster now, but it's still pretty sweet. It takes you from Paris to Lyon in two hours flat, which is hard to argue with.

While I apartment-hunt I'm staying with my friend François, who I met when he did an exchange year at UVA. He'll be at work when I get in, so his little sister Anaïs is picking me up at the station. That's both good and bad - I really like her and I'm excited to see her again, but unless things have changed in two years, she isn't any more excited about the idea of speaking English than I am about speaking French jet-lagged and two years out of practice. So in other words, her picking me up lowers my odds of being babied. Which I really can't complain about, since that's pretty much why I'm here.

So, the state of my French on day 1:
- I can read without much trouble. I don't get every word, but I almost always understand what's going on.
- I can write, mostly, although accents will still trip me up. (I can usually remember when there is one, but not always which it is.)
- I can understand what people say if they either slow down for me (hasn't happened today; airport workers are bilingual and prefer switching to English to using baby French) or if context gives me a good idea of what to listen for. Buying things tends to be a fairly scripted encounter ("what do you want? What kind? Okay, that's €__") so I do okay with it. What I'm not up to: Any spontaneous interaction of any kind, or any answer to a question that isn't one of the two or three I'm expecting and listening for.

So today I've mostly been thinking about the two things I know about language barriers, which are:
1) First it will be awful;
2) And then it will be fine.
I have at least two weeks of what I'm thinking of as disposable interactions - talking to people on the street or in shops who I'll most likely never see again, so I don't need to waste time caring if they think I'm an idiot for mangling things. Hopefully two weeks will be long enough for my ear to kick in, if not my vocab, and once that happens things should basically be fine.


Things on my short-term to do list:
- [Find out how, and] get a French cell phone
- [Find out how, and] get a French bank account
- Get in touch with someone who works in at least one of my schools, preferably before I show up for orientation
- Start looking around for longer-term housing
- And last on the list but probably (hopefully!) first to get done, buy one or more outlet converters.

That's it for now - laptop is low on juice and so am I.