Success!

Adoring public (mom) have no fear! The man can't hold me down any longer! I found an internet café in town and am no longer restrained by the high school's internet filter. Who knows, maybe I'll even try to bring my picture card here tomorrow; I see a USB port!

OK so I have a lot of stories about St. Brieuc. I hope I can remember them all.

When I got off the train in St. Brieuc my responsable picked me up at the train station. Her English is almost perfect and even her accent is really good (although its a British one not an American one). We ate lunch together at the school cafeteria and she told me a little about the school. For one thing, I found out why we assistants only work 12 hours a week; it's because the "full-time" teachers only work 18 hours a week!! In fact my responsable was saying how she only works 15 hours a week. I had to bite my tongue when she complained about teaching for 7 hours every Monday. American teachers work at LEAST that much every day!

After lunch we got some men to help us take my suitcases up to my little dorm room on the 4th floor. The dorm room is fine. It came with sheets/blankets and there's a sink in the room which is nice. The bathroom and the "kitchen" are close by. The kitchen just has a mini fridge and a microwave. It will certainly be fine to live there until I can work something else out. The weird thing about the room is that there is only one electrical outlet. So I can only plug in one thing at a time. I brought a power strip with me so I could plug more than one thing in at a time so my first night there I put the adaptor on the power strip and tried to plug it in. When I flipped the switch on the power strip the electricty went out for the whole floor!! It was around 11 so I figured people were probably mostly done using electricty any way and the maintenance men were definitely not around so I decided to wait until morning to deal with it. Someone noticed before I woke up, however, and the electricians knocked on my door to fix it the next morning. I'm probably not the most popular resident of the dorms . . .

Speaking of the other residents of the dorms . . .I know there are lots of them. I know this because I can hear them. One has a dog and at least a few of them like to get their exercise by running up and down the stairs and rearranging their furniture at 10pm. But, apart from the man who lives directly across the hall from me, I never see anyone!! It's like the building is haunted. Two nights ago I heard them pounding up and down the stairs so I decided to walk down to the kitchen to try to catch a glimpse but the staircase was deserted. It's really a mystery!

Another mystery: I walked down the street to the supermarket the other day to get some food I could eat in my room. I was looking around, trying to kill time (there isn't a lot to do until the other assistants get here) and I noticed an international aisle! It was a pleasant surprise to find that they sell some Asian and Mexican ingrediants but, and here's the mysterious part, why was peanut butter in with the Mexican foods? I guess all North American countries are the same over here. Also, FYI, they were selling a half-sized jar of Skippy for 3.58 EUROS. That's closing in on $5!! I didn't buy any.

Yesterday was my first journey into the town center tout seule and I completed a successful transation at the Orange store and got a French SIM card. This means it no longer costs €1/minute on my cell phone! Let me know if you need my number. Incoming calls/texts are free for me so call away!

The town is really cute but I have been a little bored with the lack of other assistants/people my own age to hang out with. It's so different from the beginning of the trip when Sophia and I were always together! This is all about to change, however! I'm meeting some people to play pool tonight and tomorrow, one of the other assistants, Jessica, is visiting from Rennes. After that, Jessica and another assistant move in on Sunday and a former assistant is coming back for a visit on Sunday so my social life seems to be perking up!

More Later!

Sarah

P.S. the dorms don't have heat yet . . .