My work is actually getting started. Yay!

Tuesday we had to go to Orleans (about 45 minutes northeast of Blois by train) for a training for all of the assistants in the Orleans-Tours academie. We go introduced to the structure of education within the region and had a tour of the town. Because there were German, Italian, and Spanish assistants as well as English ones, all of the training was in French. I was actually able to understand almost everything, so I was pretty impressed with myself. It did make it harder to meet people, though, because it felt awkward to introduce myself in French to people who might be English speakers, but I didn't want to introduce myself in English to people who didn't speak it. The program also wasn't really designed to faciliate people meeting each other. We had a second training in the afternoon, which was only for primary assistants, but it was still only in French. By the end of the day, I was totally exhaused. We did meet some other assistants from Blois (two German and one English) on the train back, though, which was exciting.

Wednesday and Thursday we had training here in Blois, just the six of us who are teaching primary schools (two are in neighboring cities). There was a lot of paperwork to fill out, we got our schedules, and then we got a lot of information about how to teach English, in English, to little kids who don't speak any English. Nancy, the person in charge of us, was really helpful and gave us a lot of ideas. She is American but has lived in France for over 20 years and has taught regular French school, so she knows a lot. Taking care of the assistants is only part of her job, though, so she hasn't been totally on top of things. For example, I still haven't visted the schools where I'm teaching (I'm going to go to at least one later this afternoon) or observed any classes. On the bright side, this leaves me free to go shopping for school supplies (and groceries) and get my cell phone, finally.