I just posted part of the e-mail sent to my family the evening of my first day here. So, hopefully this will be shorter (if you haven’t noticed, I tend to rant).
I just wanted to do a little re-cap of what exactly I did the first day I was in town.
After arriving and meeting the principal at the part under the train tracks at the station, we wheeled my luggage back upstairs to the front door. I remember riding up an escalator and as we came to the top seeing McDonalds come into plain sight. Now that was weird. I don’t really remember seeing any McDonalds the last time I was in Switzerland, so this almost made me laugh.
After wheeling out of the station, we head to a navy blue Volkswagon (Jetta sized) and load up my stuff. We then drive to the school to pick up my keys and some other stuff. I remember being told in one of the interviews that the school was really close to the train station, and let me tell you know, that it’s basically across the street. We just did a little U-turn (I remember the principal saying you weren’t supposed to do this at the spot he did it at) and then drove two seconds to the school. The school was exactly what I’d imagined it to be, from the pictures that I’d seen on the internet, or from pictures that I was shown in interviews.
I met "L", the office guru, and was taken on a little tour of the ... (where offices, the staff room, some staff apartments, meeting rooms and a grand looking, umm, foyer/hall-thing are) and the ... (where the library and classrooms are).
Next we hop back in the car and take a roundabout way to get to my apartment so that I can sort of see where downtown is, the Universities (seems like Neuchâtel’s a school town), the super important skating rink and different parts of the city. We get to the apartment after driving through a very quaint old looking mini-town, up four flights of stairs and voila and huge, clean-lined, fab apartment that’s all mine! I’m given about two hours to settle in and advised to try to stay awake to make my body get used to the time difference (6 hours ahead).
I unpack, explore, clean, stare and think. It still doesn’t really hit me what’s going on.
My phone rings and it’s the principal giving me extra time before I’m to be picked up for the next thing on the list.
I meet "L" in front of my apartment and meet two other new teachers, "S and A" (husband and wife) in the car and head downtown to buy bedding because, well, there was none at my apartment.
EPA is the store of choice, and it’s a mini department store which also has a supermarket, so I’d equal its quality and selection is a miniature Walmart. You can read about my purchases in a previous entry.
I’m dropped off at my apartment with my new goods and then get driven back to school where I hop on the internet to send my first e-mail home.
I then meet the other new staff member and am invited over to his house for dinner (which will be discussed when I post another e-mail). It’s my first ride on the city bus and we chat the whole way, so I did notice a bunch of stuff that was going on around me, but not enough to write them down. "J" is a FAB cook.
He walks me home because it’s my first night there and who knows if I’ll find it (I did have faith in myself – I have an over heightened sense of security – which I don’t think is necessarily good) and then I plop myself on the couch, watch some TV and some time past midnight go to bed.
By the way, it still never really hits me that this is my life.
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