I’ve survived a full week of work. Actually, I worked 4 days last week instead of the normal 3 since I didn’t work at all the first week of October. Teaching is easy and the students are fine, except for a few particular bad ones at the middle school… The only thing I don’t like is the commute and the waiting. Waiting for the train. Riding the train. Waiting for class. Waiting for lunch. Waiting for the train again. Riding the train again. I get home at 7 pm everyday, and I’m so exhausted afterwards that I just eat dinner and go to bed.
I’m more than determined to buy an automatic car as soon as possible. It will take me months to learn how to drive a manual at the rate I’m going (one lesson in two weeks because David & I can’t find the time), plus a second car would be handy. I will be so happy the day that I can leave Cluses right when I finish work instead of waiting nearly 2 hours for the train.
At least I don’t have to spend much time planning lessons. I can use my lessons from last year for my seconde classes (all day Tuesday) and for the première/terminale classes (all day Friday), I just need to bring in some documents for them to describe. And usually the middle school teachers already have an activity planned, so I just follow their directions. You’d think I’d have more free time this year thanks to not wasting every waking moment on lesson planning; but no, now I’m wasting every waking moment on waiting for class or lunch or the train. I just can’t force myself to read/study/do anything productive during my down time.
I’m definitely seeing how lucky I was to be placed in Annecy last year, close to so many other English assistants. If I had been placed in the mountains last year I would have lived at the school and probably not really known any of the other English assistants or had any real friends. It would have been a long and depressing 7 months.
I’ll be gone almost 14 hours tomorrow (yippee.), and then I have all day Wednesday to pack. I leave Thursday morning for Michigan, but there’s this little problem of the nation-wide public transportation strike, so I’m not sure yet how I’m going to get from Annecy to the airport in Geneva.
I’m so tired!
