Plans

Oh, how slowly this has seemed to crawl up on me. Suddenly, every day seems to go by at increasing speed as the day of my departure approaches! I've cleaned my room (though it could use another purge before I pack). I need to find cardboard boxes to pack my life into while I am away.

I've been trying to search for a studio or a small apartment in Chartres, France, where I will be living and teaching for the next 9 months. It's too hard online, and it seems I will have to just believe with all my might that showing up and staying in the local youth hostel until I can snag a permanent place to live is going to work out.

There are so many things to think about! I will qualify for a few different social programs to help me with an apartment. First, there is a program called LOCA-PASS, which enables me to borrow the money for a deposit on an apartment, interest free. The people that organize this also act as gaurantors for my rental agreement, basically stating that if I can't pay my rent, they will. The second program is through the French Government, and it's called the CAF. It's basically a housing subsidy. From their aid calculator online, it looks like I will be eligible for about 200+ euros of government aid each month. This is good news. It means I will be able to save some of my money, I hope!

I have to find a studio fairly fast, in order to get a bank account. If I have a bank account and fill out the appropriate paperwork with my elementary school by October 10th, I should get a pay advance of my first months salary. Which I will need sorely!

I have started talking with a few of the other Teaching Assistants in Chartres online the past days and weeks, and I think we all are antsy about not knowing where we are living.

In any case, I am excited about this new adventure! I can't believe I am headed back to France to spend another year over there. Today I read something on a friend's blog that made me tear up a little. She wrote that when she was in France on her Rotary Youth Exchange, she did everything on auto-pilot. She made friends, went to school, went to coffee, etc etc etc. But since her return, she has lost touch with most of her French contacts, including her host families, and her school friends. I think she and I both feel that the first time around, we didn't really take full advantage of our situation. We were living in EUROPE! And we just lived our every day lives as if nothing was different.

"I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life...to put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." ~Henry David Thoreau