Christmas Markets

I got a letter last week from the nice train people in Marseille. They thanked me for my refund request of a while ago and are assuring me they're looking into the problem. It's taken long enough!

Yesterday I went on a trip with the other English assistant to Colmar and Kaysersberg in Alsace. We set off early in the morning catching the train to Colmar, hoping to get to Kaysersberg early enough to spend the morning there. Unfortunately, there was a lack of buses between 8 and 11am, meaning that we ended up starting our day in Colmar instead. We had a quick look around the markets, and did some souvenir shopping.

We got the bus to Kaysersberg at about 11, reaching Kaysersberg half an hour later, after a nice trip though the vineyards of the Lower Vosges. Kaysersberg is a beautiful little place, full of gingerbread houses and meandering streets. The atmosphere was amazing, with everyone wandering around wearing santa hats and clutching mugs of steaming mulled wine. Someone even had a bubblemaker spitting soapbubbles into the streets. There was a lot of street entertainment too, ranging from a white Charlie Chaplin style living statue, who enchanted all the passing children, to the obligatory old lady playing the accordion.

The cold added to the general festivity, as everyone huddled together around the market stalls or tried to jam into the already-full restaurants. We needed the hot wine to keep us feeling warm in the street, the only heat coming from the occasional shop we went into, mostly for the heat, too. I came across a shop selling minatures of every liqueur imaginable, including one made from spiced bread - an Alsace tradition - and found some good Christmas gifts.

On the way back from Kaysersberg we bumped into three of the other assistants on their way to Colmar too, so we all wandered around together, taking in most of the markets. As everyone knows, the best thing about Christmas markets is the food, so we made the most of the free samples and got some hotdogs with sauerkraut.

The place was packed, and as the Christmas lights came on we headed home again, to get warm!

This Friday was the Christmas meal for all the teachers working with the assistants. We went to a Moroccan restaurant...for five hours. This is pretty short for French meal standards, and we had a good time chatting. I had meatballs and couscous, followed by ice cream. Not the most Moroccan thing I could have chosen, but very nice all the same. The meal was accompanied by delicious Moroccan bread, which reminded me somewhat of the stotties back home, but darker in colour and slightly spicy.

The terminales and I are getting on quite well now, and they worked hard on their presentations, so we're having a fun week this week, with minimal writing down of things. I asked each Thursday class what they wanted to do, and they all agreed to learn some Scottish country dancing from me, which I'm hardly qualified to teach, but at least they'll be bouncing about in the right general direction to some music they've not heard before. I'm really looking forward to Thursday!

Assistants on Ice - Again

The weekend before last was good fun. Three of us went to the ice rink and stayed for the full three hours. Suitably exhausted we came home and they cooked Indian food for me. They were covered in bruises by the end of the skating, but I escaped with only a giant blister on the back of my heel. Last Tuesday, after discovering my Russian class wasn't where it was supposed to be (again) I bought some plasters for the blister on the way home. These are the most confusing plasters in the world, as they are one side adhesive, one side non-adhesive. I'm supposed to put glue on open wounds or glue the plaster to my sock? That's five Euros I'm not going to see again.

Last Tuesday wasn't a good day. Before the Russian and plaster silliness, I endured teaching a class about the UK - while being corrected by the teacher. Except what she was saying wasn't right. This happens every so often to most of the assistants, and it's very frustrating. It doesn't make any sense to hire someone from a place for their cultural input and then refute half of what they say. But there it is, it happens to everyone.

On Wednesday things improved considerably as I went to the Christmas Market in a town close by. It was fantastic! All the little huts were all over the town square and down the streets leading from it. Even better, most of the food stalls had free samples. I just wanted to walk round and round tasting everything for free, but I did end up buying some Guignolet which is a very sweet wild cherry drink, totally delicious.

Also had a hot chocolate from this stallholder. The photo doesn't show how delicious everything looked, but it gives you an idea. The fondues on the right reminded me of Chocolate Soup in Edinburgh, and you can imagine how good the place smelt. One of the best things about France is that you can find good chocolate everywhere, and if you're lucky, a jolly bearded man (not Santa) to serve it to you. This guy was all too happy to let me photograph his stall, as long as he could take centre stage. The hat says it all, really. Along with the "I've got a chocolate shop, aren't I lucky?" grin.

As far as teaching is concerned, the terminales are really starting to pick up. Last Thursday and today were the days of preparation for their presentations, and they all seemed to be working really hard on them, asking me lots of questions about grammar and vocabulary. I'm really looking forward to this Thursday when we'll watch their presentations and evaluate them.

Last weekend was cinema - one free entry to the film festival to see "On appelle ça... le printemps" introduced by the director. We'd got the ticket having no idea what the film would be about, but it turned out to be not too bad at all, though I only understood some of the jokes.

On Saturday we went bowling and took lots of silly action shot pictures, and on the way home spotted a 3 for 2 offer in a patisserie....who can resist that? Especially when they're in a group of three. So we all ate a little Forêt Noire
which was delicious!

It has been a good week for post, too. So far I've had two postcards from friends and a wonderful parcel from home containing Cheddar (hooray! real cheese!) and my advent calendar. All I'm waiting for now are my bills...

The First of the Season

The First of the Season
Originally uploaded by Frogzone1

I thought I'd better post some proof of the temperature here at the moment, so here's something I found at the castle on Friday. It's still freezing, too. The snow still hasn't melted from last week. The upside of this is that the building's heating is still on.

I seem to be making some headway with the students, finally. On my way out of the school some of them stopped me to ask if I'd like to play cards and asked me how me day had gone, mocking each others' English the whole time. With a younger class I did a quiz on Australia, which got the class really wound up and competitive - it's nice to have a class who actually want to speak, rather than having to pull teeth just to get a "good morning". Most of these pupils are in the chemistry class I work with are in that class, so I'm starting to get to know them a bit better. It's really horrible not knowing anyone's names.

Tomorrow, as announced, everyone employed by the government - librarians, teachers, civil servants, train drivers, etc. are going on strike.


...so I'm not going to work tomorrow. I might go along to the "manifestation", if I don't sleep through my alarm. After asking a teacher if she was indeed striking in the morning, she said yes, and that we didn't have class together. Then, she said "See you tomorrow!", which I assume means at the demonstration. It's at 9am though. If you're going to go on strike you might as well take the opportunity to lie in.

After school I went to the post office, and walked past a shop full of interesting-looking things, some of them being Matryoshka. Then I looked closer. All the products were labelled in Cyrillic. In Russian. I went inside. It's a little corner of Russia in this small town. The shop owner came over and chatted with me about the products I was looking at, and said she'd love to speak some Russian with me in my free hours if I would also speak some French with her. In the shop I found dill, kvass, kasha and sushka, amongst a million other Russian products I didn't recognise. This place is amazing.

She also didn't let me out of the shop before she'd offered me everything else she had to taste, which included sugary things that were a bit like Wotsits but without the cheese, and also some neon spun sugar which was so sweet it hurt. I was also very lucky to manage to buy kvass, which I was reminded numerous time was "not like any French drinks, you know...". I only convinced her when I said I wasn't French either and I wanted to try it. It's like a cross between lager and cola, but is made from fermented bread. Weird.

Finally, I had Chinese class today, which is still pretty interesting from the Chinese-French front. I'm also getting a very different language-learning experience because the other people in the class are not used to studying languages, and they're generally older than me. As such, it's taking quite a lot of time to get through things, but I think the pace is going to pick up as the teacher seems quite impatient too!

That's all for now, I have to be up early in the morning so I can be on time for the mouvement sociale...

Quick, HELP! - Engrish

Quick, HELP!
Originally uploaded by Frogzone1

The thing is, if you say "HELP!" in French, they'll know what you mean. Are they telling us to help by not littering and then thanking us in French and Dutch? Or didn't they know the translation for "merci" is "thank you"? Opinions?

Snow and Strikes

I haven't updated in a while so this one is going to be a long one.

When I was in Marseille I tried a few new foods; pomegranates and crepes being the more successful ones. At least I know I still don't like olives, and I'm definitely not keen on walnuts either. So, when I got back here I fancied making some crepes, using this recipe, the same one we'd used in Marseille. Being lazy and distracted I didn't get around to it for a week, but when I did, they turned out not too badly.

A lot of us assistants went ice skating one day, when it was freezing and raining on top of old snow. Two of us tried to get there on the bus from the residence, but it turns out when the bus says it stops somewhere,that the stop name has noting to do with the name of the place you're trying to get to. That's really handy. So we got lost in a park and had to stop runners to ask the way, who then caught us up again and told us we were still going the wrong way. Very helpful of them, though.

When we did finally get there we found ourselves mostly outclassed by the French teenagers, who've clearly got nothing better to do than to ice skate. The ice rink was a little strange, as it had a video projector playing kids' music. So whipping round the rink to the tune of the ABC song were all the highly skilled too-cool-for-school teens, cutting up beginners and spraying each other with ice. It was a nice afternoon out though.

The big news here was that it snowed last Saturday. Proper snow. Not rubbish wet snow like it had before, but proper big flakes, going-to-go-on-all-day type snow. Except it didn't, and by the time I went to collect my boyfriend from the train station it had gone away again, leaving only pathetic piles of slush here and there. The kids were really excited about it at school though, and the headlines of all the papers were proclaiming the opening of the local pistes.

I was really happy that the strikes hadn't affected travel from Paris. The only slight inconvenience being that there are no buses after 7pm in this place, so we walked the 40 minutes home.

At school I spent the week mostly teaching terminales as usual, we did a listening exercise with John Lennon's "Imagine" which got some of them singing along. I think I'm starting to make some headway with these three classes, although a lot of them still just look at me like I'm some kind of nutter.

I also supervised a test which took a text about "Bend It Like Beckham" for some comprehension exercises. Throughout, the class asked me for answers which I kept saying I couldn't give them. I've also been pretending not to know how to spell things. I was encouraging them to speak English if they wanted to ask me something and one student who kept saying "merde!" changed to saying "shit!" all of the time. I suppose that's progress.

The above picture is from an attempted train journey a while ago coming home from the assistants' training day.

Yesterday my boyfriend went home. He made it, just. The flight was in the afternoon from Paris, so I'd booked an early train for him when we arranged the visit. Unfortunately, the train drivers were having another "mouvement social" and there were no trains at all to Paris from the local train station. We waited in the 30 minute queue to try and sort out the problem, and were given an exchange for a train from a town about an hour away by car. We were asked if we could drive there. What were we doing in a train station if we could just drive there?

So, we took the ticket, which gave us 1h40 to get to the train station. Thankfully my responsable was very understanding and drove us to the station (in between taking her coat off on the motorway and turning around to talk to us while driving at 100kph). So he made it! She was pretty familiar with the problem herself, as she's been travelling a lot for her job recently, and has been left stuck numerous times, and was really nice about helping us out. She's been talking a lot about the strikes recently, and claims that public opinion is now against the strikers, though that doesn't always help end them. I found a useful guide to French strike vocabulary, which I think I'm going to be needing soon as on Tuesday the civil service and the teachers are joining in. The writer's attitude seems to be on a par with most of the public's at the moment. I'm just glad I'm not in Paris.

One of the things I was told before coming out here was that I was lucky to be living in France at such an interesting time. Wasn't "May you have an interesting life." supposed to be a curse?

Back home and freezing

So I'm back home after five hours on the train and a week in Marseille. In the last few days in Marseille we went to Aix-en-Provence, which is a lovely town with a wonderful atmosphere. The French say that you can find some of the most beautiful, well-dressed, well-educated people in Aix. It seemed true to me. Everything was so perfect, like a cross between St Andrews and York. The side-streets were actually interesting, not scary, and full of bookshops and bakeries. One bookshop was far bigger on the inside than seemed possible on the outside, and sold beautiful postcards.

In Aix we also found the most French cafe ever, where I had dark chocolate crepes with whipped cream. How come French people aren't fat? I never see anywhere selling beautifully presented salads, it's only ever ice cream or pastry.

Upon returning home, I managed to sign up for language classes. When I walked in to speak to the woman behind the desk and said I wanted to enroll classes to learn...erm... she immediately cut in with "French?!" So much for progress. However, once she learned that I actually could speak some French she was very helpful in finding Russian and Mandarin classes for me, so I'll be doing those on Mondays and Tuesdays. The Mandarin classes have already started and there's one tonight. I'm really looking forward to it, but at the same time it's a bit intimidating - will I manage to improve my Russian and Mandarin from French?

Marseille

Holidays =travelling = good.

Marseille seems like a pretty nice place, the architecture is really pretty here. Most of the streets in the centre of town are lined with tall buildings with shuttered windows and over the top iron railings. It's all very French, and a bit Italian at the same time.

Yesterday we went to Monaco, which has to be seen to be believed. It really is tiny, but is totally jam packed with tall 70s apartment blocks, clustered around a few ports equally crammed with expensive private yachts. The shopping streets had citrus fruit trees, which seemed pretty strange to me. They also had public lifts and escalators all over the place. The shops themselves were interesting too, all selling mostly highly decorative things, most of which were useless. We did come across a shop selling lots of very unusual and decorative kitchen stuff, which was all very colourful and expensive. There's a similar shop in York called Octopus, as far as I can remember.

Monaco is very difficult to navigate, despite the size. Firstly because of the different levels and secondly because of the amount of space. Pedestrians aren't really that welcome. When you leave the station you are left wondering how to get onto the path. And while I'm thinking about leaving the station...the first thing we saw was an incredibly polished ice cream shop. The place was beautiful, selling ice cream and frozen yogurt in transparent plastic cones, topped with fruit. Irresistable. So we didn't.

I had a great time walking around the grand prix circuit and getting enthusiastic about red and white kerbstones, and I was alone in this. Nevertheless, it was a lot of fun to see those famous places, to walk round THAT hairpin and walk through THAT tunnel.

In Marseille so far I've seen the old port, the Quick (which isn't half bad) and the Palais du Pharo, which offers a lovely view of the town. Also visited the touristy sweet shop - again beautiful - and a nice market by the port. I have also spent a while negotiating the public transport system. On my first day, I bought a transport ticket, which didn't work. So, we went to the office - on Monday as it was shut before that - to get a refund. This involved filling out a form, when we eventually convinced the person working there that we deserved a refund. This is pretty amazing for just a refund for ten Euros. Also spent an hour in a queue trying to buy a train ticket. Monaco was worth seeing when we eventually got there, though!

Holidays

Today is the start of the school holidays for me, and that means lots of time to go travelling. So in about an hour's time I'm going to set off for Marseille for a week.

The last week has been in interesting one. I'm still waiting for NeoServices to sort me out with a phone, it has been weeks now. At least the internet works. The temperature plummeted this week, but according to the weather forecast it'll improve when I'm not here. Great. I've been told that it starts snowing in mid-November, and the temperature certainly seems to reflect that.

Teaching this week was a bit of a mixed bag. I had some terminales on Monday, the ones that watch me teach like I'm TV. I even resorted to telling them to put one hand up if they did understand, and the other hand up if they didn't. I got two hands, and then one of the pupils looked around, saw that he was in the minority, and quickly put his hand back down.

On the other side, there have been some great classes, where the students just wouldn't stop talking. This is the kind of stuff we need as assistants! It tends to be the younger classes too. The science classes are also really talkative.

Four Weeks Later

It's exactly four weeks since I moved to France, and it's beginning to feel like home.

Strikes

Today was a reasonably good day. I did two lessons with the terminales 2 and 3 - the ones who are going to take their exam this year. The lesson was about how to work with a printed document, of the type they'll be given in their exam. It wasn't the most exciting lesson in the world, but I hope it has laid the groundwork for the more interesting stuff to come.

With class 4 of terminales, I chatted to one pupil at a time about whatever came to their minds. Now I've met all of them, tomorrow the teacher and I are going to split them into groups and have them do a talk show style debate, with their roles randomly distributed. This is something that I know makes you talk, because it was something my teachers made me do!

Today there were national transport strikes in France, over pensions. Some of the buses were still running here. Some of the teachers were striking in support, but may also be striking separately. Szarko hasn't really helped the issue with his "Lettre aux Educateurs", which is linked from the Ministry of Education website. Everyone I try to engage in conversation about it and pulls a face muttering about propaganda.


The best thing about today has to be the fact that I found a juggling club ten minutes walk away from my school, and I can join it! There were a couple of people there from my building, and everyone was really friendly.

Finally, I discovered a news website for English speakers living in France. Here is their report on today's strikes.

Finally...

I have finally managed to get internet access in my flat! The process was long, and absurdly complicated but we got there in the end. The last thing I'm waiting for is my bank in England transferring my money over here, but at least I'm going to get paid...in November. Tonight is the welcome party for the people who live in my building, so hopefully should meet some people my own age who live around here. Yesterday there was a guy in the common room with a devil stick, so I got to chatting with him and found out there's a juggling club at the university here. They meet on Thursdays, but there's a bus strike this Thursday...vive la France.

Accommodation

I recently got another nice email from my head of English, offering me a place in some student halls of residence. Apparently after Christmas, when I get a social security number, I'll be able to get something called an "allocation logement", which is essentially funds helping to pay for my accommodation from the French Government. The rent is not unreasonable.

The head of English has also given me the email addresses of the previous English assistants, so I hope to hear back from them soon. It will be good to speak to someone with a different perspective on the school - especially someone who has already done the job I'm heading for. I've been promised a little more information in the post about the school itself, so I'm looking forward to getting that and learning more about where I'll be working.

The admin begins...

It has been a very busy weekend for me. First of all my first information pack arrived from my Académie in France (which corresponds roughly to our Local Education Authorities), along with a few forms to be filled in. In addition, the British Council sent a lot of stuff through for me to read, and finally, the head of English in my French school sent me a lovely email.

The stuff from the Académie was very simple, there was one form to return, a "coupon réponse", confirming my intent to take up my post on the first of October. They also included a lot of helpful reading material, which gives details of the average school week in France, the scheduling of their school holidays and other useful information. I also had to return a form (in English this time) to the British Council, to the same effect as the French one.

I think I've been very lucky to be placed in this Académie, as they have been very quick off the mark with letting me know my exact post, and getting in contact. As far as I know none of my friends in other regions have been quite so lucky.

Finally, I was advised by the British Council to write to my head of school (le Proviseur for a Lycée) and also the head of English there, who had already emailed me, so all that admin will be sent off tomorrow.

A Blog is Born

As this is my first post I should probably explain what this blog will be about. Chances are if you've found this then it's because I sent you a link, but just in case, I'm a second year student in university and in December I applied to be an English Language Assistant in France through the British Council in the coming academic year. Since then it's been a long wait until finding out more details about my placement, but finally...

Two days ago I got a phone call from a fellow ELA-in-France hopeful, Rachel, telling me that she'd finally found out which region she was going to be in. Having been waiting since December to find out, we were both pretty excited to know that the places were being allocated. Happily, I later got a phone call from home telling me that I'd got my placement too, so I know which region I will be placed in.

The letter, which was read out to me over the phone, listed a few helpful things for me to do next, such as checking out the British Council website again and looking around the stuff for foreign language assistants, but having read it it seems there's not much more for me to do now than sit tight and wait for contact from my school...