Yesterday, I finally received my arrêté de nomination, a.k.a my contract, which is my official ticket to France, well in addition to my visa of course. It tells me what schools I will be teaching in and what city. I have been placed in a high school and a middle school in Laval, France. A smaller city of about 52,000, it’s not exactly what I wanted, but I’m grateful. After the initial acceptance that I received back in April, I realized that I would rather be in a city that is not Nantes where I studied abroad. Though I love Nantes and though I will always consider it one of my homes, I decided that I wanted to have a different experience this time in France. I want to experience a different city and its people. I don’t want to recreate the experience I had in Nantes. I want to create a new one. Besides, Nantes will just be a train ride away.

Most of my time will be spent teaching in the high school, which I’m excited about because I prefer high schoolers to middle schoolers. I’ve also gotten into contact with some of the other assistants placed in my city, and they seem to be really cool people that I will enjoy getting to know. Though it seems that I’m the only assistant placed in secondary, at least for the time being. It’s very possible that the other secondary assistants just haven’t received their contracts yet. I’ve emailed my contact person for my school, so I’m hoping that I hear from him soon, especially because there is a great possibility of housing for the assistants to be available on or near the campus, which would be fantastic and would reduce the stress of having to find housing.

I do have to be honest though. I don’t really know anything about Laval, France. However, it’s on my list (my very massive list) of things to do now that I have my contract: find out more about Laval. I am now in hyper vigilance mode because I have so much to accomplish in the next month and a half while I’m preparing everything that I need to before I leave. First thing is first though: my visa appointment is this upcoming Friday, August 7th. I’m so thankful that I do not have to cancel it like I originally thought I was going to have to. I was quite stressed about that whole situation because the next available appointment wasn’t until September, which was just too close to comfort to my departure date. So, once that is out of the way, I can breathe slightly easier. I still am working on my savings goal (of which I am 2/3 of the way. I’m still raising money through my Go Fund Me campaign if you are willing and able to help a girl achieve her dreams and pursue her career abroad! here: http://www.gofundme.com/tmj8n4). I’m also still trying to find a temporary foster home for my kitty kitty, which is a little stressful and overwhelming, and I’m getting all of the last minute details and necessary documents together.

I’m also mostly done with my first graduate school application though, which isn’t related to this but is something that is going well. So many things seem to be coming together, and I feel so overjoyed, blessed, and thankful! I feel that I can breathe. Hopefully soon I will be able to post more about Laval and found out what it’s like there. For now, I just wanted to say, I got my contract! Only a month and a half left to go. Where did the time go? It felt like 5 months to go yesterday.

A plus mes amis!