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.