we had thanksgiving last night. Alisa was very sad to be away from home, so we decided to have thanksgiving in Dinan! it was lovely. we had a potluck, and we invited our whole Dinan family: David, Diego, George, we three (Sara, Alisa, me), Anita, and then Guy, the plumber, cause he took good care of us when we first moved in, and cause he lives in another apartment in the school all alone. it was everybody's first thanksgiving except for me and Alisa, and it went excellently.

general

Ok, I guess I should introduce things.

I am living in Dinan, which is in Britanny, in teh Northwest of France. I am working at the Lycée Professional la Fontaine des Eaux, which is an enormous high school, of about1500-1800 students. I work for the 'professional' part, which is like the vocational school, i guess. it means my students arent planning on going to university, and that they are receiving more specialized training. ive a group of electricians, for example, and a group of secretaries, and one of accountants. it makes the group composition interesting, as out of 11 classes that i see, 1 is 100% girls, 7 are 100% boys, and only 3 are co-ed. some of the students are only a few years younger than me, too. i know ive got at least two guys who are 20. so thats interesting. i have 12 hours of class a week, and i see half of the class at a time, so i see a particular group of students only once every two weeks.

I live in an apartment provided by the lycée, which is also AT the lycée. myself and two other assistants live there, Sara, who is a spanish assistant, from Spain, at the lycée, and Alisa, from Ohio, who is an assistante in the primary school. there is one other english assistant at the lycée, George, who is from Wales, and a Spanish assistant, Diego, from Argentina, in the primary schools with Alisa. so these five make up my Dinan family - les assistants de Dinan! Nous sommes peu, mais nous sommes forts! I feel incredibly lucky because i ended up with really great people. Alisa, Sara and I, especially, get along exceptionally well. we cook together just about every night, and sit down to eat together, like a real little family. it is really really excellent, and the best that i could have possibly hoped for.

on my way to Dinan i spent a few days in Paris with another Canadian assistant i had contacted by email, Anita. one of these days ill add an entry about Paris, but anyway. Anita is from Montreal, and shes working in Rennes, which is the major city for this region. its about an hour away from Dinan, and a really cheap bus ride. So, again with the really lucky, because Anita is awesome! a really great girl i get along with really well, whos always up for an adventure! we've been spending just about every weekend with her, either in Rennes (its so great to have a place to stay in Rennes!), or in Dinan, or in Saint-Malo. Her Rennes friends that we've met and hung out with are Frankie and Angelie, also really nice people. So, so far, those are the names that Ill probably use fairly often.

Dinan is beautiful medival town of about 15,000. I feel like its really safe here, but apparently after 1 in the morning, its not so much. this weekend apparently there was some kinda gang fight at 3 in the morning that involved setting a car on fire.... so i guess ill be careful not be out that late. other than that, there are lots of artists, which is great, lots of associations. we went to a drama class last night, adn we're going to try rock climbing today. its touristy, which means theres always lots of people around. and its just really pretty. again, ill add pictures soon.

the market

well, it took me over a month, but I finally went to the Dinan market! It was just like you'd imagine - fruits and vegetables, tables and tables galore. There were also lots of booths with clothes, watches, scarves, shoes, everything you could imagine. So incredibly how you imagine europe to be, and I will never buy fruits and vegetables from the supermarket again!

After about a week a chilly temperature, which made me think that perhaps winter had arrived, it is now probably about 13 degrees, or may be even warmer, it feels like I could wander around in my T-shirt comfortably. I love France!

saint-malo and la route du rhum

Ah, what a lovely weekend!
im on vacation from school (already - one month of work and ive got 10 days off.... life is good).
so we decided to go to Mont St. Michel on teh weekend. this involved Sara and i getting up at 6:30 in the morning (after having been on the phone until 3:30, that was fun) to take the bus to Rennes, where we would meet Anita to get another bus to MSM. Well, we arrived in Rennes at 9:00, and the bus to MSM left at 9:35. At 9:10 Anita called: "hi. are you guys here? oh. have you bought the tickets yet? good. cause I slept through my alarm, adn i just got up. but theres another bus at 10:40! so we can take that one!" ok, so we go to Anita's to hang out for a while, and on the way there, we realize that the bus at 10:40 is only on Sundays, and teh next bus we could actually take was at 12. 20 euro for 4 hours in MSM didnt really seem worth it, so we decided to go to Saint-Malo instead. It was a shorter, adn cheaper trip, and definitely well worth it!

Saint-Malo is a lovely beach town. And last week, it was a happening place! Sunday was the start of the famous "Route du Rhum" a big sailing race between SM and Guadeloupe that takes place every four years. All the boats were docked at SM, and there was a whole festival happening. So Friday, we just wandered around the town, saw the boats, walked the ramparts (some dating back to the 13th century), and admired the beach. We also knew that some other assistants from our area were in SM the same day, so we got in touch with them, adn met up with Maria, an assistante at the collège in Dinan, la mysterieuse irelandaise, Joanne, also at the collège with Maria, Joanne's boyfriend John, who works in St. Brieuc, and David, who works in Crehen, and who i had heard about, but never yet met. Anyway, it was great fun to hanging out on the beach with them, chatting, making new friends. It was a beautiful sunny day (although it had been foggy all morning in Rennes), adn I was happy to have finally had a glimpse of the atlantic after more than a month here!

At 6 we caught the bus back to Rennes, stopped by Angelie's apartment, which was literally built in the middle ages, then went out to a night of flemenco music and dancing. We started at a concert, which according to Sara, our expert, was decent, though not amazing. Me, i loved it. Ive only ever heard of Flemenco, never really seen anything of it. it is incredibly passionate. the singing, the playing, the dancing, all of it is just pure passion. And I love watching people who are so clearly into what they're doing. Anyway, that was awesome. We went from that concert to another, smaller concert/party where we drank sangria, ate paella (well, anita and angelie at paella, i ate something else. i dont really know what it was, but it was pretty good!) hung out and listened to music. near teh end of the evening, this guy came over and asked if he could sit and talk with us. We said ok, and the next thing we knew, his friends started trickling over, adn we ended up in this giant group. i guess we were a pretty exotic group of females - Spanish Sara, blondish Canadian moi, Chinese-Canadian Anita, and Indian-American Angelie. anyway at the end of the night, we decided to head back for an after party, which was highly amusing, and involved cramming 7 people into a very small car (oh, the foolish things i do) and which took us to 6:30 in the morning.... whoo hoo for 24 hrs without sleep!

So! Saturday, we got a message from David inviting us to meet him back in SM for the fete before the race. Beautiful thing about David is that he has a car, so we wouldnt be forced to leave SM on the last bus at 6 like we were on Friday. So Angelie, Sara and i met david in SM, where we wandered around Saint-Malo in full party swing the night before the big race. We found ourselves at a fantastic soirée Zouk! what is a soirée zouk, you ask? well, im afraid i cant really answer: apparently it is a creole word. all i know is that it involved excellent music, to which you could not resist dancing, sweet guadeloupan rum drinks, and overall good times. it was 10 euro to get in.... but not for us! oh, what a good story that is. we had decided NOT to go to the soiree zouk, cause we were too cheap, so we sat down to some food and drinks just on the other side of the tent where the concert was being held. while there, we ended up talking and sharing chinese beer with some french dudes 'd'un certain age'. id say they were in their 40s or 50s. maybe even 60s. anyway, we could hear the music, cause it was just a piece of canvas between us and it, and we ended up clapping along, cheering after every song, adn eventually dancing in the aisles. then we got kicked out cause the place was closing. it was 1 am, and the zouk ended at 2. we were still too cheap to pay the 10 euros. luckily, so were teh dudes. 'oh non....' they said, 'ça, on ne se fait pas.' so, first we tried to sweet talk our way in. they had us sing 'i wanna be loved by you, boop boop dee doot' to this little old man guarding the door. while we were there singing away, one of the dudes, who was a sailor, apparently, was busy untying th cords holding the tent together. so, after turning away, disappointed, from the door, we discovered that he had created this little hole in the tent! so, one by one, we snuck in through te hole, and found ourselves in la soirée zouk fantastiaque! those guys were awesome.

after an hour of festivities and non-stop dancing, the place closed down, and we sadly left. however, the night was not yet done. David, apparently, cant find himself near a beach without going swimming. luckily, he had forwarned us of this fact, so we had come prepared. so there it was, 3 in the morning, and there we were, swimming in the atlantic ocean. it was excellent.

so we returned to david's, and the next day, we went for a walk along the coast to watch the boats leave. there wasnt much wind, so they were moving kind of slowly... but we watched the start of la route du rhum! not every day you can say that.

so that was the weekend, and the start of my vacation.

The next few days were pretty low key. Just hanging out in Dinan. Alisa was in Spain, so it was just me and Sara. On Wednesday Sara left for Nantes, so i had the appartment to myself for a day, which was kind of nice. Alisa was back on Thursday. And on Friday we went sailing! we went with someone i had met at the soirée zouk, a masters student in environmental studies, actually, and two of his friends. so, sailing on la Rance, on the... estuary? is that the word in english? i dont really know what it is. anyway, where teh river gets really broad before heading into the ocean. oh, and we saw this hydroelectric damn that works on tides, not on current. that was pretty neat. id never been sailing before, and i loved it! i think its definitely something i could get into. theres something really wonderful about moving along the water under the power of the wind.

so, there you go. that was my first vacation! ill add pictures soon.