So this is new to me. But having been informed by everybody and their mother that I will forget everything if I don't write it down/in a format where they can read it, here we are. In numerical order.
1) On Sunday, I came back to Angers(where I live- city of about 150,000 in between the regions of the Loire Valley and Brittany) from two weeks of snow in Portland where it never snows and in Angers, it was about 20 degrees fahrenheit and snowed all of Monday afternoon. And supposedly it never snows here either. Which was hilarious because then everyone FREAKED out even though there was about half an inch of snow. Since I live in Angers but work in Beaufort-en-Vallee, which is a town of 6,000 about 45 minutes away, the rest of the week was insane. There wasnt really school on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday since the kids live in really small towns and the buses couldn't get to them. The frustrating thing was that the buses were cancelled but school wasn't (a teacher explained to me that the school has an obligation to stay open, I think for welfare of the kids or something?) so I didn't know if I had to be there or not. I tried to go on Tuesday and then failed, but made it Thursday and had about 5 kids in each class. But today we went with the entire troisieme (the ninth grade) on a field trip to the cinema in town and saw "the darjeeling limited." imagine 150 french 14 year olds and a wes anderson movie. in the first 5 minutes you see natalie portman completely nude. it was uncomfortable.

2) 3 of my favorite students in the europe class (which is the advanced english class) asked if they could "tutoyer" me, which means use the informal form of "you." i informed that of course they could slash i hadn't noticed which one they were using. tu vs. vous (formal you) is a big deal here, kind of like whether you call someone "lydia" or "mrs. anderson" and it is also one of the hardest things to learn. actually, you can't really learn it. you just have to pay a lot of attention to power hierarchies when you address people. so anyways, i said yes to which they seemed quite pleased.

3) in the teachers' room today, there was a note that said "whoever took the scotch that belongs in the teachers' room, please return it." which cracked me up, the fact that the teachers' room has its own whiskey. someone asked what i was laughing about and i explained, to which the entire room of about 20 teachers who were on break started laughing. i had forgotten that scotch can mean the drink but also scotch tape. so despite evidence to the contrary, apparently the teachers have not been drinking in between classes.

4) i went to my classroom to get something yesterday and there were a bunch of boys from one of my ninth grade class outside the room who all started yelling "HELLO, LYDIA" at me. i emerged a second later and they were all flexing their muscles in a competition. it was weird.

that is all for this week. let me know what you think!

ps- the picture is of the maine, the river in angers, from the chateau. pretty sweet, huh?