So I feel like I should update this blog. At the end of my last post, I had just come back from spending a day in Rennes and meeting friends and of a friend. The rest of the holidays were spent going to drinks, going to the cinema and the market and just generally chilling with the other assistants in the town.
Brief film review: I went to see the film 'Amour' which is about a couple in the eighties and the film shows their everyday life as the wife's health deteriorates. As a non-native speaker, I can say that the film was easy to follow and the story flowed well. I was able to predict the ending but it doesn't mean that I don't think the film was really well made. If you have a spare 2 hours and 5,50€ (depending on where you are in France), I suggest you go to see it and if you're like me, take some tissues. I have a feeling that I'll spend a decent amount of my spare time in the cinema; it's good practice for my French, but also, the seats are amazing.
That's pretty much all I can say about the holidays, they were very chilled and well needed, but I am quite glad that I am (almost) back in a routine with working at the college again. I say almost, I unexpectedly got a day off today, for which I did a massive cheer (my lessons would have been at 8 and 9am), one class was cancelled earlier in the week because the students have a mock exam. I only realised yesterday, however, that the second class was cancelled. I received a flyer in my pigeonhole which told me about a protest/demonstration type thing that would be happening today and thinking ahead, I decided to go and ask the teacher, L, if she still needed me or if she would be going to the protest. As soon as we saw each other, I knew I had a day off. Both of us starting a conversation at the same time, we worked out what was going on.
Plus, starting the last week of November, I no longer have any of my lycée professionnel classes (including the really stressful class). Win. Having said that, L said that we could look at my timetable to see if I could work with other classes, presumably lower years.
There are a few things to mention from working these past two days. On Monday, I worked with 4 students on an activity which required them to imagine that they were very rich and that they lived in the year 2037. All of them got really into it, which was encouraging for me, that was until a girl wanted a translation for something specific from Harry Potter. I felt myself cringe inside. I wasn't really wanting to admit that I haven't followed the whole Harry Potter craze, but I didn't know what the girl was on about. I think I got out of the situation relatively unscathed. At the end of the lesson, we played a memory game which required them to name countries and each turn, someone would add another country. I was a great feeling to see the students in the corridor a bit later on and they were still playing the game.
For every positive aspect of the day, it is likely there'll be something to counteract it. Tuesday was a day where I wished I knew how to say 'it's just one of those days' in French. At the beginning of my first lesson of the day, I met the teacher and she said that she would send the students up to my classroom and that I didn't have to go to her classroom to collect them. So I headed up to my classroom to find that it was occupied by exams. Returning to the teacher's classroom, I found that my students had already been sent to find me. I had no students and no classroom. I went to the Vie Scolaire office where a nice lady found a room that was vacant and also sent a message out over the speaker system in which I was called 'Madame Wightman', it felt weird. After 10 more minutes or so, I still had no students. I had (wrongly) presumed that they had bunked off, but decided to check the initial classroom first. Back up to level four I went, to find 16 students waiting for me outside my classroom. The exam lady nowhere to be seen. Still, I took the students back down into our temporary classroom, to find that it was really small, the students didn't seem to mind about having to sit on the radiators though...
Tomorrow is my two month-anniversary in France and I would say it has gone relatively quickly. When I compare these two months to the Summer I spent in France in 2011, it feels like the most recent two months have flown by. However, it wouldn't be fair to make that comparison, a lot of things are different now. As I said earlier, I had a day off today. Originally, I was going to spend my extra time going to Leclerc, I know, I lead an exciting life. Instead, I had an epically long lie-in, then went for a walk around town, exploring and taking pictures. Here are some of them:
Hotel de Ville
(Flags of Brittany, France and Cotes d'Armor)
Quai d'Aiguillon
Some buildings in Parc Ste Anne
Oh, I forgot to mention two things. I came across an article earlier that my friend wrote, so I thought I would share it. It's particularly interesting for those on their Year Abroad or those who are planning one.
Also, observation #754: Dear France, you would do really well if you decided to make railcards and train tickets the size of a credit card, instead of their current size of a large block of chocolate. It would be so much more convenient.
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