With regard to teaching, there's not that much to say, really. I'm averaging 9 classes a week, because some are being cancelled due to end of term tests and inspections. I don't mind this at all, I'm all for the extra time in bed extra. What isn't funny though is when a teacher has a planned day off, tells the students and the other teachers, but fails to tell me. This happened to me the other Monday morning, I got to the school for quarter to eight in the morning to be told that the teacher was not going to be in that day. I took a deep breath and headed for the staffroom and set myself up on the computer for my (now) 3 hour gap until the next lesson. I only live a 15 minutes walk away from the school, but for those of you who know me, I was too lazy to walk back again.
I found ways to pass the time, which included voluntarily marking some work, and just before 11am, I went to make some photocopies. This is when I bumped into the teacher of the 11am class and I was told that she didn't need me either because the majority of the class had an exam and the three that remained are nowhere to be seen. Another deep breath and a smile through gritted teeth, I volunteered in a random class because I felt like I should do something as I had just spent 3 hours in the school. I helped out in a class of seconde students, had lunch and went home. I never got an apology from the 8am teacher and at one point, I even had to remind her that she wasn't there that day.
The past couple of weekends have been rather busy and social. The first weekend of December, I was invited to a belated Thanksgiving meal with two other assistants and their teachers. It was a lovely evening and started to get me in the festive mood.
Last Saturday, I went to St Brieuc and met up with a few assistants there. We went to the market, had a pub lunch, went back to someone's house for popcorn, cake and coffee and then once I got back to Lannion, I spent the evening with two other assistants, eating pizza and chatting.
This weekend has been amazing, but now, for a reason which I'm not too sure of, I ache. Friday night, we had a party in Perros Guirec, there were 12 of us in the end, I got to meet new people and catch-up with assistants I had already met. After plenty of food and drink, we decided to go for a midnight walk to the beach. We could have walked along the road and down a few steps, but no, for some reason unknown to me, we climbed down the wet, slippery, uneven rocks, with only the light from our phones. I have no idea why. Once we were actually on the beach though, it was lovely and the stars were very bright.
Today, I spent the afternoon volunteering as a Christmas Angel with the LGBT-H association that I've joined. The association has set up a stall at the Christmas market and we're selling teddy bears, candy canes and Christmas hats to raise money so we can then buy toys for the children in the local hospital. I'll be back there on Wednesday too, for the whole day, which should be interesting.
I've just come off Skype with my parents so now I'm really excited for going home. This time in 6 days. I'm jealous of those leaving on Wednesday but I'm sure Saturday will come round soon enough. I'm also really in the festive mood, despite a few issues regarding presents.
(Picture 1: The group of assistants the morning after the party in Perros
Picture 2: Poster advertising the Christmas Angels operation
So, it's less than four weeks until I go home for Christmas, which seems like a long time, but also not, at the same time. This update is going to be focused on non-work stuff, because I'm now back in a routine at the school and the only things to say in addition are that; 4 of my classes have now gone on work experience, which is good because I've got rid of my stressful class, but in return I've been given a class at 8am on a Monday and another one on Tuesday which means I now do 3 hours straight, but that doesn't bother me as much.
On the social side of things, I've got a fair bit to say actually, so let's get started. Two weeks ago, I found myself sitting in on a Saturday with some friends, pizza and knitting. Two friends already knew how to knit, one was just learning and I sat there determined to remember what my Nan had taught me nearly 10 years ago when I wanted to make some mittens for my nephew. (I only succeeded in making one, I gave up after that). After spending ages trying to work out how to cast on, I gave up and got someone to do it for me. It hit me later (after calling Nan) that I don't think I was ever taught to cast on. Well, I knitted a few rows but the whole thing was very tight so gave up. Again.
I'm sure you're wondering how the choir is going (especially those of you in GA back home). It's going well, despite not being able to read music or completely understand what the director is saying. We've started learning Queen's 'The Show Must Go On' which is such an amazing song and I'm glad it's in the repertoire. Being the token English member of the choir, I was asked to help with pronunciation. Scary. But, I bit the bullet, said 'screw you' to anxiety, read out the lyrics, then proceeded to stand at the front so I could hear everyone. As for GA music, I've not even opened the learning tracks or anything, but I will know them for when I return in September.
In the back half of last week, I acquired a stalker. I went to the launderette on Wednesday because I was feeling super productive. A guy came in and started talking to me and asked what I was doing when I was finished at the launderette. I explained that I wasn't looking for a boyfriend and would feel that going for a coffee would lead him on. He then asked about going for a coffee just as friends. Because I'm incapable of saying no to people, I agreed to meet him Friday. I never did meet him because in the two days before meeting him, I sensed that he was really clingy and obsessive so called the meeting off. On Friday alone, I received 10 'blocked' calls and 5 blocked messages - blocked because I've downloaded an application to deal with him for me.
On Saturday (November 24th), I went to Rennes for a demonstration in support of equal rights. I was originally going to go alone because I didn't think anyone would want to go with me. I finally decided to post a link in the Facebook group for the assistants in the académie of Rennes and in the end, there were 6 of us at the manifestation. It was a lovely day because as well as being part of a really positive atmosphere, I got to do a tiny bit of shopping too, I bought my Secret Santa present, had a look round the market and ate another one of those lovely galettes (savoury pancake).
You might remember me mentioning an association called &BraiseZ, well I am now officially a member and on Sunday, I went to St. Brieuc for my first AGM. It was rather confusing at times, especially when 20 people decided to all talk at once, but I feel that I understood the most part. I'm also going to be getting involved because I have been asked to do a translation for some correspondence. Yay.
That is pretty much it, I could have written more, but my concentration is dissipating. Plus, I've got to get up early tomorrow for an 8am lesson. Wooo.
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.
I'll start off with some observations/little anecdotes:
(I realise this is quite boring and trivial...) Although food may be more expensive here than what I pay for at home, there is one thing that I am never going to buy the 'Carrefour discount' version of, ever again. Yoghurts. At home, I am more than happy to eat Tesco value yoghurts, no problem. These Carrefour one though, they look like and have the texture of curdled milk. The only thing that is good about the yoghurts, apart from the price, is the 'aromatised' part.
I found a slug in the kitchen sink the other day. What the hell?
Last week was the final week before half-term, or All Saints holiday and there's not that much to say about it, really. Monday was the first time where I had a difficult group to work with; I couldn't get them to listen to me or to speak in English, they always relied on the two British guys to translate for them and didn't really get involved with the activities I set. After the class, I spoke to the teacher and he said he would talk to them. I do believe something will happen; this is the teacher that makes the student wait to be told to sit down. The rest of the week was pretty boring, nothing exciting or unusual to report. Thursday, with one of my favourite classes, I took a lesson on equal rights which went really well, the only downside is that I ran out of time to have a proper debate.
I had no classes on Friday and have since then, been on holiday. I've met up with the other assistants in my town a few times for drinks. On Monday, I went to Morlaix with 2 assistants, stopped on the way to go to the beach and flew a kite, then when we got to Morlaix, we just had drinks and walked round the port because most things were shut.
Tuesday and Wednesday (yesterday) were spent in Rennes. On Tuesday we went to the Jardins de Thabor and had a nice walk round - both days were really sunny so we were really lucky. After visiting the gardens we were given a little tour of the city centre because we had met up with one of my friend's friends, who is French and lives in Rennes. After sitting in yet another café/bar, we then decided it was time to have dinner. Now I'm a fan of pancakes, but there might have been a bit too much that night. For the main meal we had a galette, which is basically a savoury pancake, mine had chicken and cheese in it and an egg on top. Oh and butter. Lots of butter. So much that my plate was still swimming in it after I had eaten the galette. It was sooooo filling and nice though. Normally, I am the first to want a dessert, but that night I could have passed on one... wish I had. For dessert, we all ordered a crepe, a sweet pancake, mine had Nutella in it. I managed t eat it, but oh my, I was full afterwards. Wednesday, we didn't do much. Just went to the local market, walked round, went to another café and to a boulangerie and then made the 2-hour journey back to Lannion.
Today, I'm just staying in and chilling a bit (literally, if you think of how cold my room is). In between relaxing, I've cleaned the kitchen, well almost all of it. I still need to clean the floor and leave passive-aggressive post-it notes for my housemates for when they return. I am not an obsessively clean person, I would like to think that my cleanliness habits are about average, but I could not take it anymore. In the sink were pots that had been left there for about 2 weeks, if not longer, and there was no sign of them getting washed up soon as my housemates have gone (somewhere) for the holidays. So I bought some washing up gloves and got cracking. *shudder* It was vile. Tomorrow I plan to finally make the trek to Leclerc and buy a light bulb to replace the one in the shower room.
Other things to mention in this post include:
I found a really cheap return flight from Dinard to East Midlands for Wednesday (31/10) and return on 07/11 but I didn't buy it for two reasons. I was running out of money and I had no idea how to get to the airport and then when I did find a route, it looked rather long-winded and expensive. So, I didn't get to go home during the holidays even though I'm very jealous of all of you who have been able to.
I said that I was running out of money. My money situation has now been resolved. I, surprisingly, got paid on Tuesday, so that's a nice 794€ in the bank. I honestly didn't think I'd be paid on time because of the whole French bureaucracy thing, but also because I thought that my Social Security hadn't been sorted out completely. I must have been wrong. I'm still waiting for my carte vitale though.
More money situation has been sorted, I think Student Finance has finally, that's finally realised, that my parents' income is well within the eligibility area for the maintenance grant. After filling in more forms, sending more letters, photocopies of P60s and getting the Erasmus lady from uni to contact SFE, I think it is sorted. I'm just waiting for the letter to confirm this and for them to tell me how I can get the money I am missing from the first installment. Talking of Erasmus, the first part of that has gone into my bank too. Oooh it's so difficult to not buy ALL the things.
With the rest of the day I plan to buy some birthday presents thanks to good ol' Amazon and snuggle up in bed, keep warm and watch back-to-back episodes of Ellen.
(NB: Captions mess up the layout of the post. The first picture is from Les Jardins De Thabor and the second is the Hôtel de Ville, Rennes).
Some things, with children, are known internationally. I was walking through town yesterday and I saw a child holding hands with both her parents and on the count of three, the little girl was lifted up and swung forward. I remember doing this as a child and I've done this with my nephew and nieces. It really made me smile.
The ready meals in France are of a better quality than at home, as is a lot of food, some would say. Whilst, tonight, I had my second ready meal since I've been here (this might be a huge surprise to some of you), I've already noticed this difference. For the equivalent of about £1.60 (2€), I have just eaten, chicken, couscous and vegetables. The couscous was not all hard and stuck together, the vegetables were still crunchy and the chicken was there in a reasonable portion. At home, you can pay less than £1 for a value brand meal which only suffices as a 'really can't be bothered to cook/don't have the money' meal or for about £2 you can buy a supermarket's own ready meal, but in my opinion, unless this meal is of the Italian pasta variety, the meal isn't that delightful, mainly because of soggy vegetables.
Sometimes, the French and the English have the same attitudes, in particular when it comes to roadworks. I walked past a sign which told me that the (pedestrianised) street I wanted to go down was blocked. As I was about to go a slightly longer way, I witnessed a load of people walking straight down the street, without a care at all. I followed them.
The attitude towards recycling really depends on what you're doing. In the school I work at, many of the students' worksheets are on the back of waste paper. The other extreme, however, was witnessed the other day when I received 3 or 4 separate letters (all in one envelope, to be fair), all of which were about 3 sentences long. Why they couldn't all be merged into one average length letter, I do not know.
The trains over here really are a lot more expensive than I thought. I, wrongly, came over here with the impression that UK trains were the ones with rip-off prices, but no, even with a railcard, I'm looking at 100€ to get to Paris, which is ~4.5 hours away. At home, I could do that (say to Brighton or Portsmouth) for £30-40. The coaches are really well priced though, I'm looking at getting a return coach ticket to Germany for 95€.
I've now been living in my little French town for a month. This was something that crossed my mind when walking back from a bar. Tonight, I had my first almost-proper social time since I've been here. Over the last two weeks I've been meeting people in the académie of Rennes who are also an assistant like I am, and on Tuesday, I met some more people who either live in my town, or very close by.
As I've not updated this blog for a week, and it's now quarter to midnight, I will just give a brief overview of what happened on the days of the week which are worth mentioning. Let's start with last Saturday. This was a day where most of the assistants in the region met up to meet each other and have a good day in the big city. As you could have predicted, it rained ALL day but it didn't stop us from sitting outside at cafés and walking round the streets looking for the best creperie. I spent most of the day talking in English as I was with a group of native English speakers and a token German who could speak English better than she could French, so there was no question about it.
Tuesday was the stage d'accueil, the training day. I woke up late, but managed to scramble out of bed and walk to the school for just after 8am, to meet Philipp who then drove to the school. The morning was spent listening to men who worked for the local equivalent of the British Council and filling in forms to do with Social Security. This was the moment where I realised I'd made a mistake. I had remembered that I needed to bring my birth certificate with me, but didn't realise that they only wanted a photocopy, along with a copy of my passport and bank details. After a few minutes of panic, it was sorted that I would send the documents the next day. I knew there'd be someone who would forget the documents, but as I am normally a very organised person, I never thought it would have been me. There was one form which made me shake my head, almost in disbelief, but more in a 'this is so typically French' way; it was one form, three pages long, which asked for the same information, three times. If I didn't know my name and address of by heart before that form, I did afterwards. The afternoon was spent with an English teacher who gave us ideas of things we could do with the students. She also showed us some images which may be risky to use as class material; things including anti-smoking ads (above) and anything containing abuse, but at the end she handed out some images which we could take and use for ourselves - one of which showed a man kneeling over a dying/dead child just so he could get a good photo of something else. Right, because THAT makes sense.
************About a week later... ************
Yeah, I'm really sorry for not having updated this sooner, I was either too busy, tired or just couldn't be bothered. You should feel lucky this is getting updated now, I've not touched my French blog since I arrived.
I can't remember what I was going to write for the rest of that week, so it can't have been that important. I'll tell you about this week instead, but include the weekend. On Saturday I met up with a few of the assistants who live in Lannion, or nearby and we went for a drink. It was here that I learnt a new phrase, both the English and the French versions - apparently, it was like we were at a 'Sausage Fest/Fete des saucisses' because for most of the evening, we were the only women in the bar. Sunday wasn't very interesting, I had a lot of lesson preparation to do and other chores, but the highlight of the day was talking to the entire family on Skype via my sister's iPhone - being passed around from pillar to post did give the effect of being on a rocky boat, but it was good - especially seeing my 2-year old niece trying to turn my 9-year old nephew into a frog!
Monday
This was quite a scary day. I doubt that I've already mentioned it here, but I agreed to help a teacher with the oral tests for two of her classes that I don't actually work with. She had asked me if I would do it, and I didn't want to say no and it sounded like a challenge, so why not? Only when I realised that the only suitable times were either Monday at 8am or Tuesday in the between two other lessons did I begin to regret it. Monday morning rolled around, I crawled (not literally, which might surprise some of you) into the staffroom to find the teacher downing a mug of coffee to wake her up - if only I drank coffee too. They all find it really strange that I don't drink coffee, tea, wine or that much in the way of alcohol - it is often the case that exceptions prove the rule or stereotype, though.
Anyway, the oral tests, the first girl I sat down with was very shy and hardly said anything, but I'm also tempted to think she hadn't prepared either. The second girl did really well but by the time she had finished, the teacher was giving a monologue to the class about how she was disappointed that no-one had prepared, that she was sorry for dragging me out of bed and that they would all be penalised for this (I managed to make sure that the second girl I spoke to wouldn't be punished as she had done reasonably well. I'm making it seem as if this teacher is horrible, she's not, she's lovely, to me and also to the students, if they do what they are meant to do, this is the case with a lot of teachers and as I was a 'teacher's pet' at school, I never saw the nasty side of my teachers.
One final note for Monday was that, in the afternoon, I had a class with a trainee teacher, which is fine, nothing wrong with that. We all walked into the classroom and I noticed that the students were taking ages to sit down... but then I realised that they were waiting to be told to sit down. Woah, I felt like I had gone back a few decades or moved to a different culture entirely. This teacher is a young guy, so it was not as if he was being a stickler and all traditional. None of the other classes are like this, the students just walk in and sit down, like we're all used to. After thinking about it a bit later, this class was predominantly boys who are on a vocational course, so maybe the teacher has taken that approach to set some sort of discipline level. I re-introduced myself to the class (saw half of them the week before when the teacher was absent) and got them to ask me some questions. This was the first time that I came across the 'do you have a boyfriend question'. When they realised I was single, one cheeky student asked for my number. I smiled at the teacher as I was SO tempted to make up a random number to see how the students would react, but I didn't and decided to ignore the question altogether.
Tuesday and Wednesday
Tuesday was rather normal, except I had the other lot of oral tests, but these went much better than Monday's. Although it made me smile when the students tried to argue about the score I had given them, because they didn't understand my English accent. I told them that my accent was not that strong and that I knew they had understood me as they tried to reply but couldn't. Wednesday was normal, but went for drinks in the evening, this time I pushed the boat out and had an apple juice. Oh yeah.
Thursday
This was the longest working day I've had so far. I finally got to meet one of my classes. I hadn't seen them before due to them having exams or elections for the délégués, the class representative. Another gem came from a question which one of the students asked me; 'Do you have a French origin?' I replied that no, I didn't, all my family were born in either England or Ireland, I just happen to have a French name. It was at this point that the teacher added 'but you never know, maybe the next generation will be born in France, it often happens with language assistants'. Fantastic.
I should have had 4 lessons that day, but the third one ended up being cancelled because the teacher was absent and by the time I had gone to the Vie Scolaire office and returned to the classroom, all the students had disappeared. This was okay though as I spent what was now my two-hour gap, preparing a game for the final lesson of the day. On small pieces of paper I wrote the names of people, places or animals, some turned out to be rather challenging, and the game would require students to ask questions to find out who or what was on the piece of paper. It went well, despite the students not putting their hands up and getting rather excited - but it got the students to practice questions which is exactly what the teacher wanted. For this class, I work with the teacher, which is more than fine by me because I have back-up support and because she's lovely (same one who suggested I might have children in France).
At half 4, my teaching day finished, but I couldn't go home. I decided to finally throw myself into joining the college choir. The choir sessions are an hour and a half long, but by the time everyone is settled and had the cigarette break at half time, there is only about a hour of singing time. There is more of a language barrier than I thought there would be, but I like a challenge and I am sure that I will pick the terminology up quickly - unlike the choreography. For those of you in the choir back in Leeds, you will know this, but for anyone else, I do not have much co-ordination to be able to sing and dance. The choir is currently learning three songs; May It Be by Enya, an African song called Amavolovolo, and Dextera Domini, which I believe to be a religious psalm. Have a look at a video which shows an example of the singing and dancing routine that I will be learning.
That's about all for now. Not currently got any plans for the weekend, but I'm sure something will crop up. I'd like to take this opportunity to apologise for the lack of photos, my camera appears to have died... I am so annoyed about this, but will look into buying another one along with boring things such as a railcard and wellies. Next week is the last week before a two-week holiday, and I would love to go travelling in that time, but it'll be such a shame to be camera-less.
As I've not posted here for a few days, I have quite a bit to write about, especially as I can now say that I've made it through my first week of teaching! (*^_^*). I've decided to reduce to bullet points half of the things I want to say and they can come first.
In the past 3 weeks, I've seen a couple of dogs which I believe to be stray, no possible owners were anywhere to be seen. I know the English are stereotyped by the French to love pets, possibly more than children, but I wasn't expecting to see abandoned dogs. I'm hoping there's some decent explanation for this and that I've got it all wrong, because it's quite disheartening as I don't know what I could do to help - without knowing for sure if they were stray.
I tried caramel tea on Wednesday. I'm not a tea/coffee drinker at all, but I thought, it can't be too bad can it? After adding 3 sugar cubes, I still couldn't drink it. It smelt of caramel but certainly didn't taste of it.
Remind me to never again live with guys, unless I already know them. The two guys I'm living with a really messy. They've not done the washing up for days, I'm not an obsessively clean person, but my, they are stretching my limits.
As bureaucracy goes, I've come across the first situation where France is just being slow. I am still without a password for the school network and I still don't know how to print or photocopy. Apparently, they'll 'keep me up-to-date' and put the password etc in my pigeonhole... Next week I'll attack the nightmare that is social security.
Wednesday evening, I finally made it to the launderette. After spending a total of 6,50€, I managed to wash a few tops, 2 pairs of jeans, a towel and some underwear. Jeez, I'm going to spend so much on washing. Moreover, as I walked into the launderette, I realised I had company. A man started talking to me but I couldn't quite understand him. After I started loading the machine, I realise that he wasn't actually washing anything himself, he was just using the place as a shelter while he got off his face by downing many beers. Thinking about it, I'm not actually sure if he sensed I was there, he was too busy talking to himself and his chérie.
So how have my classes gone in the last few days? Pretty damn well, I believe.
Wednesday: I just had one class as one teacher was off ill. The lesson I did have was spent in a computer room, where the students insisted that the internet wasn't working, but they did manage to create an orchestral atmosphere by repeatedly causing the computer to play the 'error' sound. I knew what they were doing, they knew that I knew that, but we both knew that the teacher was rather clueless.
At the end, she told me that she sensed that the students could have done work if they wanted to, but they chose not to, now they have to do the work at home, their problem. I remember the times when I couldn't be bothered to work whilst in class and as a result I had to finish it in my spare time, but now I look back and I can't think why I thought it was a good idea. This teacher also asked me to help with the upcoming oral examinations which I happily agreed to, then regretted it, when the only time which was suitable was Monday at 8am (and another one, but I'm needed for both).. Urggghhh.
Thursday: Normally, I will have 4 lessons on a Thursday, but this week I only had 1 as I wasn't need in the rest. The lesson I did have was the most challenging so far. The teacher had told me earlier in the week that I would be working with a small group of students and discussing the US Elections. Perfect. Cue me doing some panic-research into US politics, before grabbing several satirical cartoons. The lesson was slow to start as I ended up confusing them and it took a while for them to settle and listen to me, but afterwards I feel it went okay. I was certainly relieved when it was over, but I felt I did well. Not sure what the students thought, but, hey ho.
Today (Friday): Every other week, I have 1 lesson on a Friday which is slightly irritating, but at least it's not horrifically early, 11am and it's not every week. When I introduced myself this time, the teacher made sure that some students asked me some questions and I got questions such as; 'Do you like France?' and 'Why are you here?' For the rest of the lesson I just observed whilst the worked in groups to study an American TV commerical (read: advert). Yes, the students are, of course, learning American English. This first struck me when I watched the teacher spell words with missing 'U's and substituting 'S's with a 'Z'. This could be interesting, but hey, at least I'll get to teach the students British vocabulary and pronunciation.
After the lesson, I had a brief chat with the teacher, who is really lovely, she said she felt bad for me having to come in on a Friday, especially for her lesson as she's sure I'll 'get better examples from other teachers'. I told her to not be so hard on herself and that I didn't mind coming in.
What's funny though, is that before meeting each new teacher, I'll have an image in my head of what I think they'll look like, which is created purely on the basis of their name (usually surname only). The teacher today was the biggest contrast I've ever been faced with. I had imagined her to be a well-built, middle-aged woman with greyish hair and glasses. Well, the glasses were right...
Other things that I feel I should mention include the successes and failures I've had today. I have ordered a French SIM card. Yes, finally, I know. The part where I failed though is that, due to attempting to get this card, I now have a blocked debit card for websites which use Verified by Visa and to sort it out I have to call an 09 number... great. Not looking forward to that. I believe it would have happened, even if I had been filling in the form myself because having a quick look around on the good ol' internet, I'm not the only one it's happened to. However, I feel that my friend Kirsty needs a mention here because without her, I still might not have a SIM (okay, I'd have gone to SFR and got a less good deal) and I'd still be without Norton Security. So, yes, thank-you, again. :)
I also managed to send a letter to my grandparents today. Not exactly a big feat, but I was served by a really friendly woman in the post office who talked me through the whole process. There is a sponge which you press your stamps onto so you don't have to lick them. That's cool. Well, it was once I realised what i had to do with it... She also told me that it is an absolute must to visit Brest. Yes, Madame, I'll be doing that.
Also, on Wednesday, I finally met up with Philipp, the German assistant and we went for a coffee to get to know each other a little more. Other bizarre and interesting experiences I had that afternoon include; being interviewed by Pauline, a student journalist, going to the beach in the rain and having a photo shoot by said journalist and meeting Albert, a rabbit who thinks he's a dog.
I think this post is long enough now, so I'm going to end it here. Tomorrow I am going to Rennes to meet up with all the other assistants (and I've saved money again on train tickets because Philipp is going to drive there). I will let you know how that goes.
