Ces bottes sont faites pour marcher...

OCTOBER 3

What a difference a day makes. Twenty-four little hours. Today started off like a dream. I woke up at 6:30 am without an alarm, had freshly cleaned clothes, and was ready to trot off to Limoges for orientation to my job. And then, upon arriving to the station a few minutes late, I was relieved to see that our train was late too! An hour later, the loudspeaker announced that we had arrived in Chateauroux, a town one hour in the wrong direction from Limoges. Shhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.

The next train didn't come for another hour and would take an hour and a half and then another half hour on a bus, getting us to our meeting at noon, just in time to sign some papers, get really confused, and go to lunch. The better part of the afternoon was dedicated to other assistants who needed to figure out their schedules and an introduction to lesson planning (which we had already done a few times this week). So, our trip to Limoges was worthwhile for about 15 minutes and then it was time to get the hell out of there and attempt to have a better day.

I'm spending the weekend with Kendra, who has an apartment as enormous as mine in the middle school in La Souterraine. We moved her in today and then went to a restaurant for dinner. We found the most adorable lovely delicious inviting "créperie," with about 7 tables and many families dining together. I had an admirer from across the room all night; a 4 year old Italian boy making eyes and funny faces at me to the point of incontrollable giggles. I think I might have pissed his dad off after a while because I was provoking such impolite table manners, but I didn't care, we were in love!

The food was, of course, amazing. Buckwheat crêpes called "galettes," cooked on a pan with lots of butter, filled with house made andouille sausage, fried onions, and emmental. A carafe of house wine and we were rosy cheeked American girls with nothing to do but enjoy! We spent the remainder of our waking hours speaking in French, looking up words that we felt were pertinent to know: gate, fence, slippery hill, climbing, jumping, tripping, falling. Needless to say our trek home was quite the adventure!