Kangaroo, Courbevoie and Cubano

Its been a hectic week, to say the least. But a hectic week means a busy week which means like I feel like I'm doing something productive with my life.

Last Wednesday, we had our second assistants' orientation meeting, which basically consisted of us asking questions like "am I covered for health insurance?" and "how do I get my carte de sejour?" and the people who were supposed to be helping us shrugging in a very french manner and saying "really, we don't know. You'll have to take care of that yourself." Yay french bureaucracy.

The one highlight of the day was when we went to the cafeteria for our lunch break and we were served kangaroo.

Surely you jest.

No, I don't jest. It was kangaroo. I somehow thought that it was an endangered species or something. Or as my English friend Nikki said "I thought kangaroos were just meant to jump about and be looked at". Apparently, in France, land of deliciously weird gastronomy like duck and fattened goose liver, kangaroo is eaten. It was not bad. Kind of like pot roast. Probably on the top of my list of weird things I've eaten.

Courbevoie, the little town where I do my teaching, is cute. Its suburb-y and safe feeling. Lots of trees remind that its fall as I walk through avenues of colored leaves every morning. The kids are great too....well most of them are. In general, their level of English is higher than I expected. But their oral comprehension is lacking, so I have to repeat myself like a billion times (and sometimes with a British accent, since they're more accustomed to hearing that than an American one). I've been working with them on introductions i.e. My name is Tessa, I live in Paris, I have brown hair and I'm of medium height etc. Yeah, fascinating, I know. So I have to invent games to keep them interested, but so far its been fun to meet all the kids and I like the profs I work with too.

Cubano refers to the salsa style that people do here. I aparently do Puerto Riqueño style. I went salsa dancing with some friends on friday night and was getting all excited to show my stuff, and we get to the club and I realize that I don't know the steps!!! It turned out all right; cubano is relatively easy to follow and by the end of the night, I was having a really good time. Even though almost all the guys I danced with were like "oh, you don't know Cubano?" And I was like "You know what, I'm from California and we do things a little different there." Good times.