Checking in

Salut!!
How's it going?
I know I haven't written in a while, but I've been busy. I've been working, I found an apartment, moved in and have had some adventures.
First things first: My job. I'm really having fun. I have 14 classes-- some I see once a week and some I see every other week. That's a lot of students I don't see very often, so it's INCREDIBLY difficult to learn names and faces. They're also all over the place in terms of their English abilities so it's been very difficult for me to come up w/ things to do to get everyone in the classes talking.
That said, the students are pretty nice. I mean they are 14-19 years old, so some are pretty snarky. They love to say "Hello!" to me in the hallways, so at least they seem to be mocking me only behind my back.
The teachers all have huge classes, so they send half the students to me for half the class and then we switch. For me, that's a lot of students at once (in some cases 20 students). I think it would def be easier if they were in smaller groups so I can handle them better, but also better for them because then everyone would have more chances to speak. I keep telling them I'm not a teacher so they have to be sympa to me and listen to each other, and that seems to work for the most part.

OK, my new apartment! It's a great place. Ellie and Molly are really great and we're getting along very well. They are like amazing cooks so they make sure I get fed (don't worry mom, I do my part by doing the dishes!). The apratment is actually a house. It has 3 bedrooms, a full kitchen (minus the oven), a living room, a WC (toilet and sink), and salle de bain (bathtub and sink). I did have to rearrange my room a little after a couple of days (moved my bed so it juts out into the middle of the room as opposed to being flat up against the wall cuz I kept elbowing and kicking the wood-paneling during the night. I also moved the bed closer to the radiator and put my desk in front of the french doors, so it gets the wonderful natural light that comes in). My room is the smallest and most awkward of the bedrooms (hello, wood-paneling!) so I pay less rent than the other 2. It just means I spend more time in the living room, which is fine.
Adventures: This Saturday we (Ellie, Molly, and I) went to Chambery, which is a city nearby (about an hour by train). It is a great town w/ lots of shopping (which we didn't do) and touristy goodness (which we did). It's an old town, with tiny, twisty, turny streets. It was fun to wander around and look at the old Cathedral and Chateau. We also walked the 1 km to see the house in which Jean-Jacques Rousseau lived during the 1730s. That was fun and cool. The view from the garden of the town below and more mountains above was amazing!
OK, that's about it for now. Tomorrow I don't work, but I am going back to La Tour to harass the bank (they deserve it) and have lunch w/ Astrid. I promise I will write again soon!
Bisous!