I will start off by complaining: the internet and computers are all screwed up in the professor's lounge. I'm not happy. No graphics, everything looks funny, and formatting of web pages is all wrong - including blogger, which is seriously wasting my writing flavor right now. It isn't enough that the majority of interesting sites are blocked, but now the ones I actually can see aren't working right! The tech guys redid whatever programming with the computers this week and that's what created all these troubles. Aaaand we no longer have Firefox and I don't have the ability to download it. Thumbs down to the tech crew. Couldn't they have at least gotten us wireless while they were messing around with everything?

But I have to quit whining and get used to it, because it looks like I'll be here again next year. They have one small building with six apartments on campus and I asked about getting one of those for the assistants next year, but apparently they are all full. There are many more bonuses to living here than minuses: awesome location (right in centre ville so I can easily get to everything), the bus stop I use for work is two seconds from here, access to the computer lounge until 10:30, a cantine for when I don't want to cook, a small but adequate kitchen (if you don't mind working with one electric burner and a microwave), a big bedroom, elevator for taking my luggage and heavy groceries and laundry upstairs, the laundromat is two minutes away, and the price is right - €70 per month. I'm really lucky to have a great deal like this. I couldn't afford a place in an equally great location, not to mention what a pain it would be to del with electricity, rental laws, etc. So me and my buddies at Lycée Crappy will be hanging out for another year. And by buddies I mean the annoying lycéens who stare at me because I'm American.

Speaking of being American, for the first time today a random stranger called me out on the street as an American for no reason. When I first got here Pantsless Neighbor (remember him?) wrote an article about the assistants for the paper, so a couple people have said something to me, like the lady at the boulangerie and in a context that isn't really weird, you know, "ça fait 88 centimes... and aren't you the American from the newspaper?" But today I was walking down our main drag when one of the guys outside of the Sketchy Café where only sketchy guys go calls out "American! American Pie 3!" Unfortunately I turned my head, so he kept saying things in English in a noncoherent way. At least I think it was English, I really can't be sure. So I kind of half smiled and continued on my merry way. I guess it was going to happen eventually. In a town of 30,000 the dirt gets around.

P.S. I just signed in again to edit some spelling mistakes and suddenly Blogger is normal again. Rnadom unexplained events? Yep, still in France.