Tuesday 04.10.2011 à Brive-la-Gaillarde

It's 7.20am and the second morning bell has just gone (the first woke me at 6.50am). I can hear whistles upstairs as the dormitory supervisors chase stragglers to the canteen for breakfast. If I peek out my window I can see them all trailing up the cloisters towards the other side of the school. We have a list of internal numbers on a print-out next to the phone, it seems that there are 5 dormitories and that quite a number of staff also live on the premises. The boarders go home at the weekend Boarding school life must be weird! I can't even blog about it, we have internet but they've blocked just about every site that young people want to use.

I'm living in a wee apartment on the 1st floor, south wing of a MASSIVE Napoleonic-style E-shaped building with 3 floors and a garret. I say a wee apartment, but actually it's pretty large. It used to be the nurses residence and is still marked as such on the building plan, there are still a few creepy rooms at the end of the passage which joins to the sitting-room with hospital beds and a dusty décor. Now it's kept for foreign language assistants. Next weekend I'm going to go for an explore and find out what's in the rest of the building.
My Bolivian flatmate is very friendly, chatty like me, he's a photographer when he's not being a Spanish assistant. We seem to have got on really well so far, although he keeps speaking to me in Spanish and I haven't a clue what he's saying.
My room is pretty spacious, with a desk, 2 wooden chairs, a wee wardrobe, a big cupboard, a skinny bed and a weird hospital-esque bedside-table. The room itself is mostly yellow (and man is there a lot of it, the ceilings are like, 5 metres high [edit, 05-10-11: the handyman informs me that the ceilings are 7.5m, the winters will be COLD!!]) with blue under a white border, grey lino floor and VASTLY in need of a rug.

The kids are beginning to gather outside now (class begins at 8am). Then quiet.
…
It's 11.46am and I'm just back from visiting my second school. It's amazing how loooong mornings are when you're up before 7 o'clock! I have so many bits of information vying for space in my head that I have a slight headache.

• Here is my to do list for today:


• introduce myself at 2nd Lycée:
  - Secrétariat
  - (Madame la) Proviseur
  - Prof d'Anglais


• voir Mme R (intendance):
  - reprint of attestation de logement
  - bulbs in hallway (who do we ask to change them?)
  - flat telephone (can we get an outside line? can people phone us on it? Number?)
  - card for the cantine...?
  - internet questions


• RV Mme P, salle des profs


• open bank account: (co-op? Crédit mutuelle? La poste?)


• Secretariat:
  - procès-verbale d'installation
  - RIB
  - convocation


• food shop