orientation hell.

today was supposed to be set aside for our program orientation in saint-brieuc... had i known what it turned out to be, i would've stayed in bed.

well, to make a long story short, we were running late, missed our bus because the directions we were given (from the locals, mind you) were wrong, then missed the train (whilst trying to find another bus), and basically were an hour & a half behind schedule. that was the start of the day. after an espresso in the only cafe that was open at 7am, we were at least on the right track to getting to our orientation scheduled for 9am. keep in mind, it takes over an hour by bus to get to saint-brieuc from lannion. by the time we switched busses twice, survived both a rainbow & a hail storm, all within the same ten minutes, and asked even a jardinier (gardener) for directions, we made it, only a little over an hour late.


jacqueline's action shot of la grêle.


the biggest hail i've ever encountered.

while we didn't miss much, i'd be willing to bet that the part that we did miss was the some of the only valuable information we received all day (like how to go about getting our "carte de sejour." we did get to mingle with some other assistants, so that was nice, and we weren't reprimanded at all (which we shouldn't have been, provided we weren't given a map, directions, or anything at all for that matter), and we were at least fed a decent lunch at the cantine.

the latter part of the day was basically wasted with an exercise the french like all too much... place a picture on the overhead in a classroom, cover part of it up, have your students describe the picture (and make up some random story why your description is what it is), and then reveal parts, repeating the previous steps, until the whole picture can be seen, and we can continue to over-evaluate it. i have a personal thing against these exercises, partly because i tell it like it is, and partly because i guess i just have no imagination (or don't really care)... these exercises comprised the only part i performed poorly on when i took the diplome de langue in '06. go figure. anyway, instead of teaching us methods we can use, we spent two hours on these exercises, with the english assistants describing the pictures in french (yawn), and the instructor playing prof. needless to say, i didn't really get a whole lot out of describing the girl in the anti-smoking ad, nor do i think it helped prepare me better for my teaching experience. oh well.


arc-en-ciel. guingamp.

i guess i have to look on the bright side. teaching will start soon enough (i hope!), and everything will eventually fall into place. perhaps the rainbow was just a reminder of all of this. at least i was able to laugh about the whole situation... all day long.