It's Nice in Nice!

Bonjour!

I hope all is well back home. And if it's not, then you are in luck, cause it's about to get better upon reading my third e-mail. Duh duh duh duh...

So where to start? I guess I will begin by talking about my first observation at one of the primary schools here. I was really nervous about it, for some reason. And for whatever reason, they are making me do my observations at schools other than the one I will be working at. So I arrived at St. Roch 1, the school I was observing in, and I guess the children were in recess cause all i saw was a whole big mess of little Frenchies. They were very cute though,. which made me a little less nervous.

Soon after, I was in my first class. That teacher offered to have the children introduce themselves to me, and then ask me questions. The questions started out really sweet and innocent like 'how do you like America', 'how long are you here?', 'do you have family here?', etc. But then they took a turn for the weird with 'Have you ever been arrested?', and 'Have you ever killed anyone?'. I guess their perceptions of Americans are a little skewed. When I think of France, I just think of Grey Goose and surrendering. Not that they are trouble making murderers. But hey, to each his own. Anyway, at that point the teacher nervous giggled and just asked me to sit in the back of the room to observe. A few minutes later this girl in the front told her teacher she had something to tell me. So she makes her way to the back of the room and says "Eexcuuse mee miss, you are verry beeutiful. You are zee angel." It was really really cute.

Then I went to my next class, where the teacher was the opposite of the first one. She was like the English teaching Nazi. But you could tell the kids were going to learn much more English from her, than from the previous teacher. So it was bittersweet for those students. Afterwards, I was very proud of myself, cause I found my way home from some random place in Nice. So i rewarded myself with some ice cream. I seem to do that a lot here.

Yesterday night a bunch of the assistants were told to meet up at the beach...I could not believe that the beach could look any more beautiful, but at night it just takes on a whole new level of beauty. We met up with the others, and just sat and drank some wine on the beach for a little while, and then the group split up, and went their separate ways. I went out with a couple of the girls that i went out with on Tuesday. We went to a bar called Waynes, and there was a British cover band playing there. They were pretty good, just hard to dance to, cause they played things like the Beatles and CCR. But I still had a good time, nevertheless.

Which brings me to today. The weather was perfect again, so I went to the beach with Alix. It was sooo nice layiong out on the beach. And the water was a little chilly, but so clear today. That is until I noticed some weird brown plant floating towards me. Which was fine....until I noticed they weren't plants. They weren't living things at all. However, they once did belong to a living thing. Yeah, they were floaters, but in a giant toilet known as the Mediterranean Sea. So that put a damper on my beach day for about a minute...until I redirected them towards some other unsuspecting swimmer. Enter evil laugh.

So now I am in my usual bar, where the workers all roll their eyes when I walk in, knowing full well that they are going to have to see me for the next couple of hours plugging away a the keys, and laughing to myself when I read my funny conversations. Oh well. They love me, they just don't know it yet.

I will try to e-mail you all again soon! I still miss peanut butter, but I miss you all more!

XOXO

Au revoir!
Dina