Bienvenue à blogspot, Whitney!

To state the obvious, this is my very first ever blog post. I feel like I have entered a new class of the technologically advanced. I have just become a young, very hip, up to speed, hopefully clearly pretentious, Frenchophiliac, black turtle neck wearing, internet blogger. Following are the contents to an email that I sent to most of you already, but being nervous about this sudden exposure, I am going to make that my introduction here. Please make me feel special and post comments.

So, as much as I wanted to find a place in Aix-en-Provence, I have to admit that that may not happen. I am actually teaching at three schools in a small village outside of Aix called Pertuis (a word for "hole" in French, apparently). It turns out that Aix is the second most expensive city in France, after Paris. I wanted to live in the bigger city, but I am not willing to live a long walk from the bus station in a tiny room in the home of a persnickity old woman who doesn't like people coming in after 9 pm at a cost of 400 euros a month! I am looking in both Aix and Peruis, and hopefully will be able to find a studio, and still have money to pay for the internet AND to travel a little. I hope to have answers to all of this within the next couple of days and I'll keep you posted.

It turns out that there are 284 language assistants in the Aix-Marseilles region alone. 40 of those are Americans. We have been going through some hilarious orientation/French bureaucratic hooplah the last few days. It has given me a chance to get to know some of my fellow assistants, considering that we are all suffering together in a completely illogical world. Let me just say that the word for "stamp" in French is "tampon". Apparently, tampons are very important here, and without particular tampons, one cannot access vital information, nor solve fundamental problems. As you might have guessed, these tampons are very hard to come by, and even the people who are supposed to have them don't know where they are. Someone who is supposed to be helping me navigate my new post here in Pertuis, a woman named Pascale, informed me that she wasn't even supposed to make contact before I was given a stamp from her boss, L'Inspecteur. This tampon, of course, is one that has gone missing, and she broke down and broke the rules this week and contacted me without it.

I'll try and put this in a nutshell: The reason that there is and has been little to no communication between the people who brought us into the French system and the thousands of assistants for all over the world, is because of the fifteen billion layers of French bureaucracy. And I'm talking about no information about housing, salary, paperwork, job expectations, contact info, or schedules. There is a Director of Education in Paris. Below him are directors of each of the 24 (?) French regions. Each region is split into at least two sections, each which has its own director. Each half a region is then split into two or more regions, each of these which has its own Inspector. Each inspector has one to two people who works for him/her who may or may not correspond with the language assistants. The aforementioned Pascale falls into this category. One more thing, it is not only the poor foreign saps like me who have no information whatsoever. The French are equally as clueless about how the system should work, and what is even more illogical is that the people here don't even seem to fight or question it at all. I guess that is where the difference between a French person and a non-French person lies.

I have seen some wonderful sides of the south of France too, of course. I spent an early morning walking through old Avignon with my friend Jen. We walked up to the castle where the pope was situated in the 14th century. He even had his own little vineyard, which still grows grapes today. The 13th century wall that surrounds the old part of the city still stands, and its outer walls are lined with tiny parking lots for the tiny French Citroens and Renaults. It is strange to see busy life as usual against the backdrop of an ancient crumbling wall.

Marseilles was a breathtaking sight. The Consulate General of the US invited the 40 American assistants to dine at her house on Thursday night. If only I had been wearing a gown and some jewels, I would have felt like Grace Kelly. The CG's house is a mansion that sits on the coast of the Meditteranean looking out at the island prison Le Chateau d'If, where the famous tale of The Count of Monte Cristo takes place. We arrived on a charter bus right at sunset, and climbed the hillside staircase to the mansion. The dinner was a multi-course provencal affair, that we ate sitting either in the living room or on the veranda, all the while drinking wine and chatting like true sophisticates. Unfortunately, no one told us that the meal was multi-coursed, so I scarfed down two slices of quiche and a load of cous cous thinking that this would be my last free meal for a year. And I wasn't the only one. We persevered, luckily, and gorged ourselves on the stuffed cabbage, baked meat and tomatoes, foie gras, cheeses, fruit, and then cake. Even a chocolate hazelnut cake.

The CG herself was a very interesting and pleasant woman. She admitted openly to me that she wasn't married and that she'd never met a man who wanted to follow her around the world. Anyway, she said that a husband wasn't important when you could have lovers in every country.

And now it is the weekend, and no one is working, so I can't really look for an apartment. I have done some internet research and made an appointment, and will have to wait until Monday morning to do much more. School doesn't start for another week, luckily.