I’ve been in Nantes for a week now. My enormous room isn’t so bad, and after I finally accepted that this is where I’m going to be living and unpacked, it looks a lot better. I didn’t do a lot last week, just a TON of paperwork (French bureaucracy is to be avoided at all costs) and an orientation at which I met some other assistants. I’m teaching elementary level, for which there are only about 20 assistants in the Nantes region, because we all teach at three schools (there are maybe 60 in the highschool level). Of the 20 only maybe 5 are American, which came as a big surprise to me. I figure there are a lot more of us in the world, so you’d think there’d be more of us here, but I guess the French don’t like our accents so much (or so I thought – I’ll return to this point later). The highschool orientation was the day before mine, and Annika came down to stay the night on my wooden bedframe with hardly any blanket…. I also met another American staying in the foyer, Celeste, who is teaching highschool along with Annika, so they found the orientation together. My orientation was pretty standard, I met Cecilia who lives in my Foyer and is from Lake of the Ozarks, weirdest coincidence ever, as well as 6 or 7 others who’s numbers I procured. We went out for a drink after and had some interesting conversation about the faults of our respective countries (America’s being treatment of non-straight people and lack of jobs), and afterward Cecilia and I returned to the Foyer for Yoga. Now, when I think of yoga I think of downward dog and sun salutation, but this woman had us sitting on chairs and rolling tennis balls under our feet. It was weird. The next day (Friday), about 12 of us went out to dinner at an Italian place downtown, which was delicious (gorgonzola ravioli? Yes please), and after were invited to a house party of another assistant. So we found the only store in the entirety of France open after 8 pm and bought some drinks, caught the tram out to the boonies, and found this house. At midnight, after my three alarms on my phone had gone off to remind me, we gathered up the troops and headed back to the tram line to catch the last tram into town (yes, Friday night and the tram stops at 12:30 – what?). We then met up with some other friends at a bar across from the castle, and a very friendly French man named Isaac chatted up Cecilia and me for a good twenty minutes. He informed us that we were actually at a Gay bar, that he thinks American accents are really cute, and that our French was pretty good, despite our cute accents. We also met his boyfriend, and they seemed like the happiest couple I’ve ever seen. We stayed until 2 or so, and after promising Isaac that I would come back someday, Celeste, Cecilia and I walked the 40 minutes along the tram line back to the foyer. Before we left the bar, another assistant Charlie invited us to a party at his house on Saturday night.
Saturday I spent all morning cleaning and decorating, and around 3pm 4 girls from Willamette who are studying in Angers arrived to hang out with me and check out Nantes. We went into the city and found the Island of Nantes, where we were looking for ‘le Grand Eléphant.’ We found the museum where he lives but he wasn’t in, so we sat in the café for a bit but after not being served decided to leave. Just as we were exiting he was finishing his walk around the island, so we got to see him arrive and even got sprayed a bit from his trunk.
After seeing the elephant we went back downtown and toured around a bit, seeing Place Royale (which wasn’t filled with pandas), le Passage Pommeraye (a huge shopping center), and the Basilique Saint Nicolas, before having dinner and a nice Indian restaurant. Thanks to Claire, Rachel, Lyndsey, and Casey for paying for mine! We then revisited the open late store of the night before to pick up some wine, came back to my place to change, and took the tram out the Charlie’s place. I guess he invited way more people than he intended too, because we couldn’t all fit in one part of the apartment and had to split into two groups. I left the WU girls with some French people who were coincidentally from Angers and joined the assistants in the other room. All of us Americans rather enjoyed when the British assistants would talk to Charlie (who’s also British) because of a certain famous youtube video. We played some games and had a grand ol time before heading out around 2 to catch the last tram home (on Saturday at least the tram runs late).
Sunday the girls and I searched out an open bakery and actually found one, before taking the tram into town. At a stop on the way to town, however, there was a flea market, so I suggested we check it out. It is my new favorite place. I bought a nice tweed coat for a mere 10 euro, as well as similarly priced cot, painting, dress, necklace, blanket that I’m using as a rug, and hangey think to put in the doorway. Because of this heavy load, I sent the girls ahead of me and returned to my place to drop it all off. We met up back at Place Royale for a café, then headed over to the castle where we strolled around the moat. Finally we made our way to the Cathédrale Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul, which was stunning. Turns out they’re having some kind of call for singers, so who knows, maybe I’ll be in the cathedral choir next time I update! After all this we found our way back to the tram only to run into a huge freaking marathon – there were at least 2000 people running in it. I was a little concerned about the trams running because the marathon cut across one of the lines, but we made it back. I invited Cecilia to return to the flea market with me, so after the girls gathered their things we tramed with them to the market and sent them off to the gare. I bought about 10 more things and we came back and invited Celeste up for dinner. I also met my neighbor across the hall who is a French boy from Nantes and friends with Cecilia. After a long and busy weekend, I got to skype with my parents for a good while and then collapse into bed with an episode of Desperate housewives. Overall a good first week, I’d say.
Where's this flea market?!
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