This morning I finally got to go to Creteil to visit the schools where I'll be working. Creteil's about 25 minutes by metro to the south of Paris, the department is Val de Marne, if anyone's interested. It's a really pretty suburb, there are lots of gardens and interesting construction...unfortunately it's also the most confusing place I've ever been in my life! I was there more than a half hour before my meeting, and I was late...I got so lost, and my map of Paris doesn't have the suburbs, so I couldn't figure out at all where I was until I had walked in about a 20-minute circle! Luckily a nice lady directed me to the right place, oh my goodness, I was getting so worried that I would never make it.
The first meeting was at College Louis Issaurat, with Mme Colette Michel, who is very nice, and she introduced me to two other English teachers as well as a French teacher and probably some other people I'm forgetting. I'm going to go there on Thursday afternoons for 2 hours and then on Fridays for 4 hours. It's a really interesting school because not only is there a lot of diversity among the students, there's also a group of special needs kids, and apparently I'm going to get to work with them once a week, and I think that should be really interesting.
At noon I went over to Victor Hugo, the other College (I got a ride!), and it seems like all the teachers at L.I. look really fondly upon V.H. because it's in the 'center' of Creteil, it's in a sort of historic building, and it's really pretty. I was really early for the meeting, so I got to wander around the 'Creteil Village,' and I really, really like it - it's almost entirely pedestrian streets, it's not huge but there are interesting shops and cafes, just without quite as many people as downtown Paris. :-) I'm definitely looking forward to exploring more there. At V.H. I met all four English teachers, Mme Bluteau, Mme Kerkouri, Mme Kanoute (whose first name is N'Diaye, such a pretty name!), and Mme Tejerina. They were all really nice, and they gave me a pretty detailed schedule about who I'll be working with (6 hours every Tuesday). Then Mme Kerkouri (Amel) gave me a tour of the school, I totally have my own room! It looks like a really nice place. I'm really, really excited to work at both of them!
Afterward I went to Censier to register for some classes, I wanted to get into a Bollywood class there, but apparently that was not possible, so I went and can definitely take 'Histoire de rock,' the lady registering me was so, so nice, and Sebastian from MICEFA was there too and was about as stressed out as I was last Friday...and he's feeling about the same as I do about MICEFA. Anyway I needed to find a course to take the place of the Bollywood one, so hopefully I can take one about European cultural identities at Censier's European Studies department; it wasn't open today so I'm going back tomorrow morning to check it out, and I think I'll go back to ILPGA to see about the Finnish class and the other stuff I want to take there, to see if there's anything I can do before I have my student card. Hopefully it goes well...
Finally, I went to MICEFA to talk about doing an independent study about the job, which I think should be really interesting considering the huge diversity I'll be encountering there among such young kids, and Mme Le Coadic (my French teacher) is going to advise me on that, she was pretty supportive about me doing it 2 semesters. So it seems like most things are falling into place, please keep your fingers crossed for me for tomorrow and the rest of the week! Tomorrow I'm going to get dinner with some other MICEFA kids, and Thursday I'm supposed to do something with Sasha, and there's a TA's meeting, too, in the afternoon. And next week, classes start!!! Yiiiikes!!!!
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