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.