Peace Corps, Paris or BUST: Where in the World Is Maya B. Washington

I started writing this entry weeks ago…sorry for the delay but I don’t get much time for typing these days…

From SFO to JFK to LHR to CDG to a shuttle (cause there was no way I was taking the metro from CDG to the hotel) to the shower (cause MAN after 17 hours of traveling I was sure one stinky girl.

After arriving at my hotel and washing the stink away I met two of the people that I would be working with at American Village and we went to check out my new apartment. Which is soooooo cool, by the way. If you’ll be visiting me during my stay you will definitely have a place to sleep (apartment location has changed since I’ve been here but it’s still cool and there is still lots of room for visitors).

After a very long walk to the apartment (kinda got lost) my new friends and I met up with Marc and Shanta. How, you might ask did I have the energy to go see my apartment and have dinner with Marc & Shanta right after all that fun travelin?! I haven’t the tiniest wee clue, but I did it!

Marc did his research as usual and found some restaurants near my new place. Unfortunately the one we picked out had changed its’ name so we spent a good half hour or more walking around in circles looking for it. We did finally find the place and had a very nice din din.

The next day it was back to traveling!! We left the hotel at 8AM…(again, not quite sure how my body woke up early enough for this) and we got on the Metro to Montparnasse Train station, spent another 6 hours on one train and then another couple of hours on another train to a town called Montrejeau. There we found lots of other counselors to meet and chat with, which was nice because we had to wait another couple of hours for our bus and a few more counselors to arrive. So, I took a few pics while waiting…

Finally we arrived at the Thébe camp site which is absolutely gorgeous!!

I spent a little less than two weeks there doing BAFA training. You’re required to have this training if you want to work with kids in France. The first couple of days of training were a complete nightmare. Everything had to be translated from French to English and vice versa and lots of stuff was getting lost in translation. It was pretty insane to say the least but after a few days and some well thought out “point de stage” or what we liked to call bitch sessions we all starting to communicate better and ended up having a pretty good time all around and learning quite a bit.

After BAFA training some of us decided to leave a early to spend a day in Toulouse. It was very nice. We went to a little outdoor market dealie got to see some cool dancing and this fellow with his puppets…

After watching one of the world cup games in a British Pub we went to dinner. I wanted Steak and chips so we ended up at this restaurant that looked suspiciously to me like TGI Fridays. It was called “LA BOUCHERIE” I pulled a Jen and took some pictures, though I really wish I would have taken one of the Giant Cow that they had at the entrance.