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Bus fare for the day=2 euros

After another long hard week, Thursday rolled around. Round 2 with the language class, and earlier in the week, I decided that I would meet with Lauren and her English assistant friends for lunch during my break. Jacques still wasn't back Thursday morning, so I had to rush a little to get all  my stuff together and get the kids ready and to the neighbors (I'm still not driving them to school and I don't think I will be for a while. I'd like to say that is by choice.) and then down to the bus stop. Lovely little ride into Drag, got to class right on time. The teachers decided to move me to another section. At first I thought it was a higher section, but after the first exercise (matching phrases to images), I was sadly mistaken. I ended up spending the morning helping everyone (1 Tunisian, 2 Moroccans, 1 Turk, and 1 Chinese-- all female recent immigrants) with their exercises. By break time, I was starving for both food and a common language. I wasn't quite sure how to get to the restaurant where I was meeting the English assistants so I went across the street to Aureline's store, L'Entrepot to ask for directions. It turned out to be right around the corner! Once I found it I felt a little silly asking for directions, but it was still nice to see Aureline and I probably earned mega-points in some aspect of this au pair thing by going to see her and asking for directions en francais. Le Bar le Commerce, the restaurant, was a lot bigger on the inside than it looked from the outside. Upon entering, a waitress immediately ushered me into the back room where I stumbled upon my new friends

FL-RB: Natasha, Joanne, Me, Vanessa, Anthony, Valentina, and Lauren

 The restaurant served mostly Italian food. I ordered a pizza, Marguerite of course. It was delicious. But I enjoyed the conversation the most. Finally having people my age to talk to was a a positive all by itself. Plus, with three Americans, two Brits, one French guy and an Italian girl, the language flying back and forth across the table was a wonderful melange of American English, British English, a lot of French, and some basic Italian. We exchanged phone numbers and are now all friends on facebook. I look forward to seeing them all again soon. Anthony is trying to plan a "booty shaking" night for February 5, I'll have to see if Jacques will let me go. Unfortunately lunch had to come to an end. My new friends had to go back to work and I had to go back to class.
For the afternoon, my teacher decided to give me something "more difficult"-- translating textbook passages from present tense to futur proche, passe compose and imparfait. Still too easy. Towards the end, he asked me to explain to everyone what a day is like as an au pair. I started off explaining what an au pair was exactly (again, no one knew). But this section didn't speak enough French to even understand what I was talking about anyways. I ended up having to stop after every phrase and explain what that meant, in French. I know it was probably a good exercise both for me and for the other students, but it was so bloody frustrating. And just thinking about what I had to go back to after class really brought me down from my lunchtime high. By the time I was finished, I felt and probably looked like I was ready to jump out the window. I was grateful that the teacher handed me an exercise about streets and directions as "something light". When I finished, it was 3:55 and I had to run to catch the 4:05 bus back to Trans.

Jacques got back last night, and compared to the rest of the week, today was a breeze. Now that the vacuum works, I finished my Friday chores by 10:30 and had the rest of the day to myself. I went on another run, this time the route that I had originally planned. When I got home, Jacques was making lunch and going through the US Polo Association collection that arrived today. I stretched and showered and joined him in a watered-down aperitif. Fish and salad for lunch. After I cleaned up, I went to my room and slept until the kids got home. Hopefully that won't affect my sleep too much tonight. Alexis had soccer, but I opted to stay home with Maxime and draw pictures. Below is a collaborative piece about dinosaurs.