To the Sea!

Bonsoir all!  I am beginning to feel more comfortable in my living accommodations again after that terrifying evening, which is AWESOME because I might start sleeping again soon.  Here’s to hoping!

I was here yesterday:

Gwenola’s teacher, Ilka, took us to the seaside town of Saint-Valery-sur-Somme.  It’s at the mouth of the Somme river and has been around since before the 600s(!!) so needless to say it has some cool stuff there- for example it’s medieval ramparts, its abbey, and its gothic church. It has some crazy history!  It was under Roman control for awhile, William the Conqueror assembled his fleet there before sailing over to England and dominating, when Joan of Arc was captured by the English she was detained there before being sent off to Rouen to be burnt at the stake, and at one point Victor Hugo, Degas, and Jules Verne had houses there   It’s also just generally really pretty being on the water facing a small island that serves as a bird sanctuary.  

Bird sanctuary across the way

Tiny house!

We wandered about on the beach a bit, had some tiny coffees, and then wandered through town.  I walked through the original entrance of the town’s walls, the very same entrance Joan of Arc passed through and it was just mind-boggling that this kind of stuff is still around.  In town we looked at some very strange antique shops and then stumbled upon a small, local market.  There was a little bit of everything locally made in Saint-Valery-sur-Somme- some local spice bread, some sausages, wine, cheese, liqueurs, fish, and yes, escargot.  I had wandered off from the group at this point to check out the various colored liqueurs at the next stall over, when I came back though my friends were talking to a very nice lady at the escargot stand.  They had tried the traditional escargot- in its shell with butter, garlic, and parsley.  When I walked up they were getting ready to try the other type of escargot- still with the butter, garlic, and parsley but with the addition of chevre cheese and in a shell-shaped cracker- and I was offered one.  Needless to say I was hesitant, not just because it was a snail, but because Gwenola had had some at her prof’s house a few weeks prior and had been ill the next day because they hadn’t sat well with her.  I was reassured that it was good, just maybe a little rubbery.  They smelled good enough so I gave it a go.  OMG IT WAS SO GOOD!  It was nothing like the typical Hollywood interpretation of the bizarre, chewy, slimy, and too fancy for its own good hors d’oeurves.  There was so much flavor and zero rubbery texture.  I really wanted to buy some after this delicious revelation, but I don’t have a stove for heating them up.  Phooey. 

Portion of a strange antique shop- boar's head anyone?

Escargot!

We rode back to Amiens after the tasting and thanked Ilka for her hospitality.  Then our Halloween festivities began! 

So, Halloween isn’t really celebrated here.  I saw a handful of shop windows decorated and three total people in costume, with one of them being a lady trying to sell candy at a grocery store.  So, it’s basically used as a marketing gimmick with none of the celebrating.  We used it as an excuse though to make a yummy meal of tacos and watch horror films.  The tacos came out perfect!  They really hit the spot too since I have been missing Mexican food here.  We watched Poltergeist, which was less scary than anticipated (this is a movie that would benefit from a remake I think, special effects-wise), and Red Dragon.  We also continued our pig out on popcorn (something that has only caught on recently here and was tres expensive at the store) and candy.

It was really an excellent day.

The Revenge of Cheese Thief

Oh la vache! This week has been hellish to say the least.  It was supposed to be my ten day vacation (that I really needed after a whopping three weeks of work) and laundry and blogging were on my mind.  Alas, all of my valiant attempts to blog about a lot of the nice but slightly boring things about life in Amiens were totally eclipsed by the return of our Camembert eating arch-nemesis, aptly named for this blog “The Cheese Thief.”  Don’t be too overwhelmed with my creativity; it’s a gift I cannot control.

So let’s back it up to Saturday night of last weekend.  My awesomely rad friend Jessica was in town to visit.  We have lived in France before together so we were giddy to catch up and French it out together, American style.  I picked her up at the train station, at some kebabs and reminisced, then returned to chez moi to hang out with the roommates and eat (again).  It was loads of fun!  Jose, another Spanish assistant from Guatemala, came too and we all ate some delicious potatoes and some chicken that totally rocked my socks off.  It could have been because I haven’t eaten chicken in awhile, but it was freaking awesome.  I made some sort of whipped up vegetable mélange because me and Jessica sort of invited ourselves to this dinner and I/we needed to contribute.  It was loverly.

Jessica was trying to get to Amsterdam to NOT partake of particular substances that are legal there, but to see the Anne Frank house.  She was going to go a la hitchhiking (with the help of a website that helps you find a ride to your destination) and staying with couchsurfer hosts, so she needed a moment with my computer to organize everything.  I bid her adieu for the evening and promptly began to pass out.  

I was in my room for about fifteen minutes or so, quietly making my way to the land of nod, when their was an ear-piercing scream from across the hall in the room Jessica was staying in.  My roommates and I have been totally creeped out by our dorm apartment and have thought that it might just be haunted for how ill at east we all of been since we got here.  So, that’s immediately what I thought.  Fucking ghosts.

Jessica bounded into my room and jumped on my bed and I basically caught her in a hug.  Confused and half awake, I asked her what was wrong.  She exclaimed, “There were two guys who came up to the window!  They were looking in and knocked on my window!”  Our dorm is kind of crappy and only select rooms have curtains, Jessica’s not being one of them because no one regularly lives in there.  Our apartment is also on the first floor, so anyone walking by can look in.  However, to actually come up to the window and make a point of pestering the occupants?  That is unnerving and annoying.

Jessica was very upset.  She pulled one of the mattresses into my room and slept at the foot of my bed.  I wasn’t all that worried at first.  We’re on a high school campus, and yes it’s a holiday so most of the students aren’t presently on campus every night, but most of them live locally so I just figured it was someone just passing through looking for mischief to cause at their school.  Our school is also poorly secured on the weekends.  The arm is down at the gates on the weekends, but the actual gate remains open and there is no guard when they’re not children present, so it reasonably could have been some other unrelated young people who were traipsing through and saw the light on in Jessica’s room.  They had run away and weren’t a problem for the rest of the night.  Jessica left the day after next on Monday and I resumed my lazy vacation.  

Until Thursday.

Wednesday night started off pretty normal.  I ate some quinoa and drank some tea.  I surfed the internet for a few hours.  Ok, several hours.  At 1am on technically Thursday morning whilst surfing my little heart out, probably reading a cake blog or that one that has animals talking in all caps, there was a loud and violent bang on my window.  Shit. My blood ran cold.  These fuckers were back!  Now I was scared.  This was something that was planned.  There was no way that in such a short period of time that two different groups of douchebag guys decided that our apartment needed pestering.  I got up and got Gwenola and Marilyn. As we were standing in Marilyn’s room (she took a bit more rousing to get up since she didn’t feel well) there were several more bangs on her window.  These weren’t knocks either.  They were loud and violent bangs that made the glass shake.

We were not playing now.  There was something going on and it was very intentional to come and bother us in particular.  We called the neighbor on my phone.  I of course ran out of credit while we were leaving a voicemail.  Marilyn didn’t have any credit and my American phone that has an “Emergency Call” number didn’t recognize an international emergency number.  Luckily Gwenola had her German phone, but she had the same problem trying to phone the police directly.  We did have the number of another woman that lived on campus (lots of the faculty actually live here).  She called the police for us and all we had to do was wait.

When everyone was up we did a sweep of the apartment to make sure everything was closed and locked up tight.  We turned off all of the lights so we could see outside. Gwenola and I stood in the doorway of the kitchen (which faces the parking lot and is the front of the building) watching to see if we saw anything.  Sure enough, two shadows emerged from the wooded area on the other side of the parking lot.  They didn’t directly cross the parking lot either.  They walked all the way to the edge of the building and crept up against the wall.  This did not feel just like normal stupid kid pestering to get a rise out of someone.  They seemed to have a plan.

We watched them do this and we waited.  We then watched as this dude’s fucking face appeared in the corner of our window. We both screamed.  We called the lady back to report that they were still menacing us.  She was still waiting on the cops.  We sat in our hallway where they couldn’t see us and listened to them continue to bang on our windows.  

Nearly an hour goes by after we first called the lady who called the cops.  Finally we saw some lights.  There was a car driving around, but no cops had come by yet.  We called the lady again.  She said that they were here but that she was trying to get them to leave their car and look.  What?  Excuse me?  We have some dudes harassing us and trying to break our windows and they don’t even want to get out of their cars?  To look for them?  To check on us?  To get our story?  Nothing?

The lady does eventually convince the cops that they should probably give the place a once over.  We see lights again and instead of them being headlights it’s the cops, the woman, and the woman’s daughter checking the property.  They stopped by our window and talked to us.  Again they were not helpful.  They basically told us that they had looked around and didn’t see anyone and that we were being overreacting dumb girls.  Oh goody.  I’m glad that sexist stereotype exists here too.  We told them that the banging stopped barely ten minutes ago and that we were sure that they were still here. Gwenola was pissed that they were being total tools.  She muttered under her breath “Of course.  It’s France.”  The policeman heard this and was not pleased and told her she couldn’t say stuff like that because she’s not French.  (Which she totally is- dual German/French citizenship!)

Anyways, I am now worried that they are going to do an even shittier job of looking for the guys since they now feel insulted.  I write a frantic email to all of my teachers asking for a place to stay for the following night(s) until I can find somewhere else to live because I am totally over living here.  I felt uneasy before there were dudes harassing us!

The lady then calls us back and says that they found the guys right after they left us.  Wanna know how?  Not because of excellent detective work by our douchey police friends, no, the little girl saw them running off while the police were talking to the woman, again trying to get out of doing their job.  They caught one of them I am sure about this.  I have a conflicting story about the other one.  One teacher of mine told me that they caught the second on shortly after, but another teacher said that they only had one and that they could only hope that he would give up his accomplice. 

What do the cops do?  Come back and let us know what happened to the jerks?  Nope.  They just leave and we have to find out through several different sources about what happened.

So at first we thought that they were both arrested.  Then we were told that they were immediately let go.  Then I heard that it was only one guy they had.  Then I heard that we would be called in.  How?  The cops didn’t even talk to us.  We went to the school and gave our statements to the principal.  He gave us some more keys so we could go through the classroom on the other side of our foyer so that we could have a lit entrance.  They were making us go around to the back entrance that is pitch-black at night.  That’s it.  That is what was officially done in reference to us.  No statement given directly to the police and no line up to identify the trespassers.  

That day was spent with my favorite teacher, Christiane.  She is super funny and has been terribly nice to me since I got here.  Marilyn and I have lunch with her and she contacts some friends who may have know someone who has a room for me.  We also decide that we should go to the police ourselves and give official statement- which is exactly what we tried to do the following day.  Of course, we are thwarted again by our illustrious police department in Amiens.

Gwenola and I go on Friday to the police department.  Marilyn and Christiane were on an adventure of their own.  Marilyn turned out to be quite sick an ended up spending Thursday night in the hospital with a kidney infection and on Friday she was released and got her medication and set up a nurse to come to our place so she could administer the medicine since it’s by injection.  So this took all day and Lola and I were on our own.  We find what we think is the main police department, but it is not the branch (? I guess?) that takes statements or files complaints so we go down the road to the other one.  The guy at the front desk is nice enough, but totally does not want to deal with us.  He told us that since the school filed a complaint that nothing else needed to be done.  We tried to tell him that we wanted to, that no one had our information, that it would be hard to prosecute these guys without a testimony or a line up or something.  He read us what was down for that evening, which of course totally played down the situation.  The cops made it sound like they were just some guys who found an opportunity to be assholes and nothing about how we now thought it was the Cheese Thief and his revenge.  We tried to tell this to the desk guy who thought we were just upset about our stolen cheese.  “THAT IS NOT THE POINT. THE POINT IS THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME WE HAVE BEEN HARASSED,” Gwenola kept saying.  He finally begrudgingly took our story about the cheese and tacked it onto the file he had read us.  Yeah, thanks.  Now they think we care about our stolen Camembert.

We had more luck the following day when all three of us went back with a teacher.  The guy yesterday was super nice and did not fight us at all about making a formal complaint.  A nice lady cop came and took all of our statements individually and I was so PROUD that my French is good enough to make a statement about hooligans trying to break in.  Oh yeah, the day after the incident one of our neighbors saw them trying to get in our door.  Yeah we are totally being whiny babies about attempted breaking and entering.  Ugh.  Anyways, our complaints have been filed and they have our information (although not thanks to astute police work but civilian persistence) and we are supposed to go back sometime next week to look at pictures.  Whee! Justice! 

I am still moderately worried that they will come back and better prepared with more than a plan of just bang on the windows until we come out, especially since they barely held them at all after the arrest.  So, we are waiting.  In the meantime, we had the other American assistant, Mike, move in with us to be tall, male, and Midwestern-ly intimidating to any future assailants.  I am also still contemplating moving.  I like my roommates though and my dorm seems far less supernaturally scary in comparison to Cheese Thief & Co, so, I am just feeling out the situation still.

Framboise was scared too.  I was getting ready to put her out the window right before all of the shenanigans! 

Cheese Thief

            So Amiens is a pretty cool place.  I adore food shopping here.  There is a supermarket within walking distance I did eventually find, no less than three “Bio” grocery stores (biologique=organic), a large, local market called Les Halles downtown that is even open on Sundays (that is a huge deal because only Mickey D’s and kebab shops are typically open on Sunday), and there is even a bio co-op!  My little hippy heart is all a-flutter!

            Oh sweet baby Jesus, the food.  Not only can I get my hippy-dippy stuff I’m used to (quinoa!) but now there is ever-plenty, deliciously produced, French style dairy products.  It’s not just the cheese people!  The butter, the milk, and oh god, the yogurt!  It’s like they’ve been brought down from on high by bovine angels.  My vanilla yogurt has real vanilla in it-little delicious flecks throughout that not too thick, not too thin work of dairy art.  The wine is also dirt cheap.  You can get a decent bottle of table wine for a euro.  A euro.  Are you listening?  That’s less than two bucks!

            Anyways, I have had to put off buying things that spoil because of my lack of fridge situation.  But we’re in France and my roommates and I want to eat all of the delicious goodies that France has to offer us.  Our solution?  Well, since it has cooled off here significantly recently, we decided to leave some cheese and yogurt on the windowsill in a feeble attempt to keep things cool.  For about a week this worked.  We are on the first floor and when this first started happening I just knew that some punk high school kid would find it funny to steal it or chuck it a his friend, or something.  I wasn’t entirely wrong, but what actually happened was scarier.

            I was reading in my room minding my own business when Gwenola comes bursting in all of a sudden, flustered, saying that there was a man who was stealing our food. I got up and followed her into the kitchen.  There was, in fact, a young man just munching on our camembert just outside of the window.  We opened up the window and asked, “Why are you eating our food?”  He replied, ever so nonchalantly, “Oh this is your food?  M’excuse.”  To our disbelief he continued to eat the cheese.  We were utterly confused.  It wasn’t even the fact that he was stealing, but that he was so friggin’ cool about it.  Well that and also he was essentially eating a strange bit of cheese found on a windowsill.  Gwenola, puzzled, asked again, “Well yes, but why are you eating our food?”  And what did this young man do, ladies and gentleman?  Come to his senses, apologize profusely and offer to replace the cheese? No.  He threw the cheese at us and said “If you are going to talk to me like a dog, you can have your ***** cheese back and if I ever see you outside I will punch you in the throats!”  You know, a normal response when caught pilfering from others. 

          We called security and they just told us to call the police if we saw him again.  I wasn't too rattled as he looked like he was probably on drugs and just wandering through campus on the weekend, but Gwenola and Marilyn were concerned.  We used this in our favor though.

After already having had to wait about two weeks for a fridge, after this incident, we demanded and received our fridge over the next few days.  Victory is ours!

Maps- They're Useful!

            WOW I HAVE ZERO ATTENTION SPAN.  I totally gave up/forgot I was writing in that last post.  I thought about putting on a nice little ending there and pretending like I had completed it, but that would be dishonest (and require more writing than I already have to do!).  Anyways, I keep putting off blogging because I have so much to blog about now, not having internet and all for the first two weeks I have been here.  What happens when you put off blogging?  More shit happens and then you have to write more.  That habit is stopping now, thank you very much!

            So as many of you know, the French are funny people- at least to Anglophones (people who natively speak English y’all).  They are really lovely people.  They will be your friends forever and give you little air cheek kisses and make you crepes and junk.  They may however at the same time drive you stark-raving mad.  For instance, after my arrival Martine, my coordinatrice, picked me up from the train station which was awesome since I don’t really know where I am or where I should be going.  This was super nice of her. She also brought me some stuff, yay!  However, a map of the town or my giant campus were not what was a part of my welcome package nor considered the most important things I would need in my first few days here. To get me through my first few days in Amiens I received: a comforter and sheet (super necessary since I am living in the dorms), biscuits (I count these as necessary because I was friggin’ starving when I got here), an electric tea kettle (eh, ok, nice to have), coffee and tea (again nice to have but not necessary in my transitioning to Amiens).  To reiterate, I DO NOT HAVE A MAP.  I am also super dazed from traveling.  Martine seems eager to leave and after showing me where I live and getting keys for me, she asks if I need anything else.  I ask her where I can find a supermarket.  Martine speaks really fast in both English and in French and if I take more than a millisecond to process what she’s saying she’s already trying to clarify for me or is asking if I understand while looking at me like I’m a lost puppy.  Her directions went something like this “Go out the other entrance and go the opposite direction we came in at.  It’s on the corner.”  Ok cool.  I don’t ask for further clarification because I figure I am a smart person and I can find it.  I just want her to stop looking at me like I ride the short bus. 

            After my much needed shower (which is impossible to temperature control- there is only ONE button you keep pressing until it’s kind of warm and it runs for about 20 seconds each time it’s pressed) I am off on my first adventure en France.  I have my book bag (no store-supplied shopping bags here!), my walking shoes, and vague instructions- I’m off!  I go out the only entrance I know, and walk away from the direction we drove up in.  I walk for about 15 minutes and I have no luck.  I walk back.  I walk down a road I happen see a billboard at the end of. What luck!  It’s says something about the market I am looking for.  I start to follow where the arrow is pointing…. and there are no more arrows after that!  (Apparently in France when they are directing you, they only again vaguely point you in the direction you want to go, no further instruction should be necessary.) I walk back up to make sure I hadn’t in my jet-lagged stupor wandered down the wrong road.  Alas, I had been on the supposedly right road.  I wander up and across the main road that the school is on because I see a Carrefour sign (which is essentially French Wal-Mart- I was desperate!) and start walking that way.  Signs here tell you in minutes how long it is to drive there and/or kilometers (obviously).  Neither of which are really helpful to me because I am on foot and the American educational system is really lax on kids knowing metric.  That evening I erred on “cities are more walk-able here!” side and kept on trucking.  But again, there were no further signs of instruction after the first one.  I walk back.  I head down the road with the billboard again and keep going, and going, and going.  I was like the little determined Energizer bunny.  I remember that it’s supposed to be at a place called the “Vallee des Vignes” or something and I start seeing medical buildings with that on them.  I follow those.  I end up wandering through a medical park.  STILL NO GROCERY STORE.  At this point I had been wandering over two hours looking for a grocery store that is supposed to be ten minutes from my school.  I give up.  I wander back towards a pizza place I saw across from my school.  Yup, the first night I was in France, I had pizza. 

            Now, I am not great at French, and I will admit that.  I have however mastered a few things, with ordering food being one of them.  This however made zero difference at “Allo Mario’s!”  I walked in and it was busy and there were giant stacks of pizza boxes covering just about half of this tiny take-out restaurant, and two other couples waiting on pizza.  There is a big lit up sign with their specialités, and hot-dog!  They have paninis, and they’re cheap, perfect!  But wait, you might say, didn’t you have pizza?  Yes, yes I did have pizza, I am getting to that.  I walked up to the sweaty, bald man at the counter furiously taking phone orders and waited for a break in the calls to place my own.  He looked up at me and in perfect French I said “Je voudrais le Chicken Panini” (I said “chicken” because that’s what it was called on the menu- I’m not that bad at French!)  He looked at me like I had grown a second head.  “Comment?” My flabby, French pizza cashier asked.  “I would like a Chicken Panini,” I said, again, in French.  “Le poulet?” “Oui, je veux le poulet, s’il vous plait,” (Yes, I want the chicken, please).  He then points to the three different sized pizza boxes he has stacked on the counter.  I knew this was going awry.  He tells me that the middle one is cheaper and I am so hungry and tired I just agree.  Ten minutes later out came my chicken pizza.  I tried to tell him I had asked for the sandwich (which is just goddamned “le sandwich” in French, this vocabulary was not difficult) and finally dough-making/tossing dude beside him tells me they only do that at lunch.  Super-duper.  I would have asked for the vegetarian had I known I was ordering pizza!  I sigh and take my pizza home. It was pretty good, although it had crème-fraiche on it and that was kind of weird.  I had to throw most of it out too due to my lack of frigo situation.

So yeah, I really needed a map- but I had my caffeine in the morning!

I'm in France!!!

            So this is literally the first moment that I have had a break since I got here!  This last week has really been hectic.  From the moment I got off the plane last Wednesday I have just been rushing to something or other. 

            The trip to Amiens from Paris got me back into the swing of things transit-wise here which can be confusing for foreigners.  I had to buy a train ticket from the airport to get to Amiens, which involved me standing in the wrong line at first, but I met two other assistants that were working in different cities so I got to chat with them and have some people with whom to navigate Charles de Gaulle (and get in the correct line!). My train departure time quickly approached so after making a quick call to my contact person, Martine, about when I should be in Amiens, I was heading down to the voies (platforms) to catch my train. 

            Oh, the trains in France.  So the way you are supposed to take the train is that you buy your ticket (duh) but then you have to “composter” your ticket before you get on which means that you have to have this little machine punch a hole in it (and I totally forgot to do this in my rush), then you have to find this lit up picture of the train on the voie to figure out about where your car will stop so you can get on the train in the right place.  I sort of remembered how to do this from when I studied abroad here four years ago but it was pretty fuzzy so I was kind of nervous and it didn’t help that I gave myself a whopping 10 minutes to remember what to do on the voie.  However I found a very nice Belgian girl who helped me out.  Well she didn’t know where to stand either, but she alleviated my fear about getting on in the wrong place, which I still managed to do somehow after being told by her mom about where I should be (I was overly concerned about how to get my bags on since they were huge).  I ended up walking back through a few cars to my seat which ended up being next to the Belgian girl again.  Her name was Alexandra and she was really nice and we talked about where we were coming from since we were both coming from the airport.  I told her about my assistant job and living in France again and she said she was coming back from Cuba from an internship.  Her internship had to be cut short though because she was sick and they put her in the hospital for two weeks and wouldn’t let her out (!!).  She wasn’t sure why they wouldn’t release her because her Spanish isn’t that great and they wouldn’t tell her Cuban fiancé what was wrong either because he technically wasn’t her husband.  Her parents ended up having to come and get her and the hospital finally released her to them. I was pretty shocked by this story and she then relayed that was why she was engaged so young- so that her fiancé could leave Cuba.  I wanted to chat more with her but my stop arrived in a scant thirty minutes but she invited me to come visit her in Bruges and in Brussels so I can’t wait to have some free time to see her and Belgium.

            After the train which had taken 20 minutes to go twice as far as the bus needed to go, I was on a bus for an hour from Picardie to Amiens.  Well it was an hour after we  I am not sure why I had to do this because there is a train station in Amiens, but my general motto in France is “pourquoi pas” or “why not”.  Often I don’t know why things are done the way they are done and they tend to be counterintuitive to my American sensibilities, but I have learned to accept that that’s just they way it’s going to happen and “pourquoi pas”- things can be done in other ways even if they don’t make total sense.  I also met another assistant on the bus to Amiens.  His name was José and he was going to be a Spanish assistant at another school in Amiens.  It was nice to have a fellow foreigner to hang out with and assuage my anxiety about not knowing what exactly to expect when I got here. 

            Martine was gracious enough to meet me at the bus stop and take me back to the school.  As we drove to school I realized how adorable Amiens is.  The city buildings are monstrous and stately while the houses are candy-colored, tiny, and lined up along cobblestone roads along the Somme river that sleepily flows through Amiens.  Across the river is the St. Leu quarter- the oldest part of town.  You can also see the Le Notre Dame Cathedral d’Amiens from just about any point in centre ville- it’s apparently the largest in the world!

            Arriving at school I was stunned to see such a large campus.  There are actually three schools on my campus- Edouard Gand, Edouard Branly, and my school, Louis-Thuillier.  It’s as big as a college campus.  I had a hard time finding my way to and from my dorm that first night.  Ah!  Martine told me when I arrived that I had dorm accommodations and I was thrilled to know that I wouldn’t have to traipse around Amiens looking for an apartment and then attempt to rent one with my barely passable français.  The accommodations are hardly anything to brag about though.  They are in one of the buildings that has yet to see the reconstruction being done currently everywhere else on campus, the furthest from both entrances, and no kitchen or internet.  I have a bed, desk, sink, and wardrobe in my room and down the hall there are showers and toilets.  I live with two other assistants- Gwenola (Guh-ven-oh-lah), the German assistant, and Marilyn, the Spanish assistant from Costa Rica.  They are both very sweet.  It is all French all the time just about in my little dorm set up- Gwenola knows some English and Marilyn knows none, so it is excellent practice for my French, but it is also nice that if I am really lost usually Gwenola can explain pretty well in English.  We live in a six bedroom hall and we are only using three rooms so we turned the other rooms into a laundry room (I can’t find a dryer on campus so we hang our wet laundry up here), a kitchen as we have been promised a frigo (fridge) and a micro-onde (microwave), and a common room- which I need to have the cleaning ladies unlock again because we were also promised a TV and would like to put it in there.  Right now though our kitchen only consists of an electric kettle, an extra desk being used as the table, and a wardrobe as a pantry.  I need to find out who I bug for the frigo and micro-onde- I am really tired of eating overly processed (but shelf stable) food!