Government Shutdown = No Snacks

Avignon has quickly stolen my heart away from Toulouse. It's been such a different experience. In Toulouse I didn't want to waste any time and wanted to see everything as soon as possible. In Avignon there is so much I have yet to see and I've been here for 10 days, but it quickly became home. I was actually a little bummed to go stay in a hotel in Marseille for training because I was enjoying settling in to my new place.

A large information session for all of the language assistants in the Aix-Marseille Academy was held this past Thursday. Many of the assistants were put up in a hotel the night before by the program, and even reimbursed for a meal for that night for up to 15 euros. A couple of the people I've met in Avignon wanted to go early that Wednesday so we could explore Marseille – we walked all around for hours. I've so thankful I wasn't placed in Marseille, it is a huge city compared to Toulouse and while it's extremely beautiful it's definitely somewhere where you need to be on your guard even more than usual.

Marseille is incredible. Right on the coast on the Mediterranean, with several forts to climb around to get a breathtaking view of both the city and the water. After several hours of walking, we settled into a dinner right by the water. We were ready to eat around 6:30pm, but most places don't even open for dinner until 8pm. We talked and ate for hours before returning to the hotel. This has been so different from studying abroad. I did, of course, meet an incredible group of people when I studied abroad. But I've found my new collection of friends in Avignon to be a little different. For one reason or another, we all felt compelled to take another sejour abroad, despite leaving friends, family, school, and other job offers behind. I'm so thankful to meet individuals that are so different from myself but that I feel connected to in our mutual desire to throw ourselves into an uncomfortable situation.

Training in Marseille was less than exciting, although I feel really bad saying that because the guy who ran it was so enthusiastic and had been an assistant back in 2002. We were told that it would start at 8:30am, so naturally we arrived around 8:15am, just to immediately hand in paperwork at have coffee and wait until after 10am for the actual meeting to start. In a run-down amphitheater at a university in Marseille, we listened to a mountain of instructions about how to get through all the paperwork in the coming months before a lunch at the university cafeteria. The afternoon was filled with more waiting. We had an hour and a half for lunch, a thrilling change from the 20 minutes I had while I was teaching. Then a visit at a cultural center before waiting around to go to the American Consulate at 3:30. It took almost 45 minutes for our group of thirty American assistants to get through security, where we proceeded into a small courtyard with about a dozen seats. The government shutdown finally hit me – no snacks or drinks at this reception!!! Just a couple hours of milling about waiting for the Consular General to show up. The best part was that I got to talk to a Foreign Server Office who had previously been stationed in Haiti and went to law school. It was worth all of the waiting around to meet this dynamic woman. I could definitely picture myself where she is in 15 years.

Unfortunately, because everything at the consulate took longer than expected, we got to the train station in Marseille right at rush hour and had to wait 45 minutes in line to buy train tickets to Avignon since none of us have bank cards with the chips in them yet. We sat and talked and lost track of time and almost missed our train and hopped on with a few seconds to spare, and accidentally got onto the first class section. For some reason the train cars weren't all connected on this one so we couldn't just walk through to second class so we figured we'd just hang out in the dining car and have some wine. The SNCF people sniffed us out and told us we'd have to get back in second class at the next stop. Now, TGV trains give you about a minute and thirty seconds to get on/off at stops along the way. We need to get pretty far down, with our glasses of wine! I can't even imagine what we must have looked like sprinting down the platform with our wine, but we just about made it, and got back to Avignon to enjoy a night in.

Next up was some actual training. In Marseille it had been every assistant, about 250 of us working with about a dozen languages. In Avignon I was just with English assistants working at high schools and middle schools in the area, so there were only about 12-14 of us – only two of which were males. The morning session wasn't very exciting, but in the afternoon we played games. I made the mistake of continuously making eye contact with the professors so I kept getting called out. There were a few moments throughout the day where I had to remind myself that I was in France because I felt more like I was in a Harry Potter movie between the British, Scottish, and Irish accents at the table. The session was primarily in English but both of the professors spoke with a British accent. It was a fun experience to meet other assistants but I'm really ready to just settle into my role at my school.

I feel pretty guilty that I haven't taken in a lot of sights to see in Avignon yet, especially because it's already October, but I'm working hard to settle in!