French 24/7, now with internet!

For the past couple of days I have been without internet, something is wrong with the router at my host family's house. But, nonetheless, I had a lovely conversation with last year's English assistant a few days ago (and was going to post yesterday, but alas, no internet). He gave me some pointers and confirmed everything I had thought about Sedan. The kids, who are between 15-18 years old, know about 10 words of English. He said he found it almost impossible to teach them since they didn't really care about learning English and rarely showed up to class. Most of them point blank told him they plan on working in a factory or collecting unemployment after graduation (marvelous, working in a small town with an urban feel). So, he focused more on traveling than teaching. Since I've never met these kids, I'm going to go into this with an open mind, and know that I will have to basically start from the beginning. The main piece of advice he gave me was "get your French level up to fluent because no one in the town speaks English". Great..... :/ this was NOT how I was planning on spending my year in France- in my mind I was supposed to be re-united with the lovely French Alps and Lyon. If I want to make friends with the locals, I better brush up. Today I watched "The Intouchables" on Netflix, without subtitles. I'm quite proud of myself because I understand about 75% of it, the most difficult sections were the ones with Phillipe's daughter (who is 16, awesome.....I couldn't understand the one age group I'm going to NEED to understand if I want to get anything done). Now, it's onto googling popular contemporary French films. In addition, my iphone is chock full of Yelle, ZAZ, Stromae, SMOD, Mitre Gim, Edith Pief (cuz I mean how could I not!), and a few French operas options (for possibly directing one in Sedan).

I'll leave you with a picture that I took yesterday from home.