School visit

So the highlight of Saturday was that I got to go visit one of my schools. Ecole Desbordes Valmore. It's the one Sarah works at, so she went over there with me. The commute was about 15-20 minutes. Probably a ten minute metro ride and a five minute walk from there. Not bad at all. The neighborhood is good, but nothing special. The school, however, is so pretty.

There are 15 classrooms and about 300 students. Sarah said it's considered to be a really big school. I also got to meet one of the other French English teachers, Virginie, who invited us back to her apartment for lunch. She was super friendly and she and her boyfriend cooked lunch for us. They were really nice and wanted to practice their English, so we spoke in English. Apparently, it's very French to put honey on chèvre (goat cheese), so they got me to try that and it was actually pretty good. We also had some kind of sweet potato purée which was delicious.

Virginie was performing in the center of the city with her Brazilian drum group and invited me to go watch. I was a little unsure as to what it was going to be like, but it was actually really cool. They did it in one of the big squares in the center of Lille and tons of people stood and watched them. They were sponsored by a local music store, so after the show in the square, they did a smaller show in front of the store. Virginie is the blonde in the middle.

For dinner, Sarah and I went to the bar next door, where her good friend, the owner, was making couscous. He apparently does it once a month for free and feeds anyone who's there. He's Algerian so he for real knows how to make couscous, and it was absolutely delicious. I hadn't had couscous since I visited Laura in Morocco. So great.

I'm really ready to be in our apartment. I'm excited to be able to cook my own food and to be able to get into a routine. Hopefully we'll be in on wednesday at the latest! 

No real plans for today. There's a market outside so I'll probably go walk around that for a bit.

Luv,

Sarah