My weekend in Poitiers (plus a few other things)

I’m really spoiling you all this week with two posts in 6 days! Thought I’d do a post about my weekend in Poitiers and a bit about what I’ve been up to this week before my sister gets here for the weekend and I won’t have time to blog!

So Saturday morning my alarm went off at 6.15am and it was very rainy and still very dark, normally it would have been very difficult to drag myself out of bed but I was excited for my weekend in Poitiers with Harriet so I got up and made my way to the bus station, albeit half-asleep! I arrived at the train station about half an hour before my train and I was surprised to see how busy it was at that time in the morning!

 

La Rochelle train station

 

In France you have to ‘composte’ your ticket before you get on the train, that means you have to put your ticket in one of the various yellow machines which are dotted around the station and it date stamps your ticket, you then have to use your ticket within 24 hours of the date stamped on your ticket. Having done that I still had quite a bit of time left until my train and the platform hadn’t been put up on the board yet so I went to the shop to get the French version of ‘Closer’ magazine to read on the train and a little box of Salted Butter Caramels as a present for Harriet (although I ended up eating half of them with her later that day! They’re sooo good!) After that, the platform was finally up on the board so I made my way there and the train was already there waiting so I got on and found a seat- because it was an off-peak train I hadn’t had to reserve a seat so I didn’t have to worry about walking the length of the (very long) train to find my seat! I was surprised how nice French trains are, at first I thought I might’ve been sat in first class by accident as it was so nice, but a small sign saying 2ème confirmed that I was in fact in second class which left me wondering what first class is like! The journey was about an hour and a half but it went pretty quickly, unfortunately when I got to Poitiers it was still raining and it pretty much rained the whole weekend which was a shame because we were going to go on a walking tour of the town on Saturday but it was just too miserable! So instead we spent a lot of the afternoon sheltering in a Crêperie where I had my first crêpe since I’ve been here- don’t know how I’ve managed to go that long without having one!

 

Me looking pleased with my crêpe!

 

Harriet is also a teaching assistant and we met some of the other assistants that are in Poitiers at the Crêperie and after that we still managed to do a bit of a tour of the town after the rain had died down a bit. They took me to see the Saint-Pierre Cathedral which was very impressive then we went to the Saint-Croix museum and after that we went into the Saint-Jean Baptistère.

 

 Cathédral Saint-Pierre

 

Baptistère Saint-Jean

 

On the way back to Harriet’s we went to Monoprix (swear I spend half my life in that shop!) to get some supplies for dinner and we also bought a kit to make macaroons. Harriet also took me to the 2€ shop which was great! After dinner we watched 101 Dalmatians in French!

The next morning we attempted to make the macaroons, we were in a bit of a rush as we were going out that afternoon, we finished making them and had just enough time to cook them and get them out of the oven before we had to leave. But only when I got them out of the oven a couple of minutes before we had to leave did we realise that we hadn’t turned the oven on properly so instead of them cooking, the neat little circles had slowly spread out in the tray and made a big splodge of chocolatey mixture! Major fail! But we weren’t too disappointed as that afternoon we went to a Chocolate festival in Chatelleraut where there were a lot of macaroons and I imagine they were a lot better than ours would have been!

 

Our failed attempt to make macaroons!

 

Chatelleraut is about 40 minutes from Poitiers so we got a lift there with one of the other language assistants who has a car and we followed another girl who was also driving there, however we weren’t entirely sure that we were following the right car so just before we arrived we were relieved when we got closer to the car and saw that we were in fact following the right people! It was 2,50€ for students to get into the chocolate festival and there were soo many free tasters that it was definitely worth it! It was basically just a big hall full of stalls selling chocolate, macaroons, meringues, nougat, jam, and a variety of other yummy things like that, so we were in heaven! There was also a stand that was making chocolate sculptures which were amazing! Me and Harriet both bought chocolate covered marshmallows which were very yummy, if a bit sickly!

 

 Me and Harriet with a lot of macaroons!

Harriet enjoying her chocolate covered marshmallow!

Chocolate sculptures!

 

I also bought a few things for Christmas presents and a couple of other treats, including a little tub of salted butter caramel sauce (my new favourite!) On the way back we got dropped at the train station and waited for my train, it ended up being about 15 minutes late which marred my previously very positive view of French trains! Because this train was in peak time I had a reserved seat and after almost kicking someone out of a seat that wasn’t actually mine, I managed to find my seat! On the way back a suitcase fell off the luggage rack and hit the woman sitting next to me on the head! I panicked a bit and didn’t know what to do as she started crying and no-one else seemed very bothered about helping! Luckily she was okay and stopped crying soon after, I think it was just a bit of a shock! When I got back to La Rochelle I had just got off the bus and was on the way back to my house when a cyclist who was looking rather lost stopped and asked me ‘parlez-vous anglais?’ (Do you speak English?) so I replied yes I am english! To which he replied (in a Scottish accent) ‘Oh! Alright mate! I’m looking for McDonalds!’ Haha, it turned out he was actually looking for a hotel which was near McDonalds, it was quite far away and I wasn’t sure exactly where, so I gave him some vague instructions and had a bit of chat before finally making my way home after a tiring but lovely weekend.

On Monday afternoon my mentor gave the children some time to finish the umbrellas and flowers that I had done with them in art, they (nearly) all turned out really well and I stuck some of them up on the display board outside the classroom. On Tuesday my mentor went to Poland for a meeting and she’s there until tomorrow so I turned up at school on Tuesday morning and the cover teacher was not expecting me, or, in his words ‘I didn’t know you existed!’ and my mentor hadn’t left me anything to do! But she had written on the planning sheet that I was doing an English lesson that afternoon which she hadn’t told me about so I didn’t have anything prepared so I spent the morning planning the lesson. It was the first English lesson I planned and taught all by myself because normally my mentor plans most of the lesson and just tells me what she wants me to do and she leads most of the lessons, but it went quite well! We revised the weather and then I taught them the colours.

 

Worskeet on the colours that I did with the class

 

Yesterday I met up with some of the other teaching assistants for lunch, we went to a Crêperie and the food was so good!

My scrambled egg, asparagus and tomato crepe and 'bowl' of cider

My mum told me that she had sent me a parcel last week and I finally got it today! I love getting post! In the parcel was a bag of percy pigs (yaaay!) and lots of stickers to take to school because I brought a few with me to France and the children love them so they'll be so excited to know I've got more! There was also a card, a little cookbook and a pen :)

 

The contents of my parcel! :)

 

My sister gets here tomorrow so I’ll try and blog about our weekend sometime next week. Although I'm not sure when I'll have time since I think I’m going to Paris on Tuesday afternoon until Wednesday evening for a meeting, but I still don’t know if I sent my reply off in time to say that I was going and I don’t have anywhere to stay yet so we’ll see what happens!

Massive post to make up for the lack of new posts recently!

Firstly I apologise for majorly neglecting my blog for the past couple of weeks, but once again the time seems to have flown by and I haven’t had a chance to write a new post until now! Now to try and remember what I’ve actually been doing…

Maybe first I’ll give you a quick update on a few things I talked about in my last blog, I (eventually) managed to fill in all those horrendous CAF forms and hand them in so my application is complete and hopefully I’ll be seeing some extra money in my bank account, but I’ve heard it can take a pretty long time so I’m not expecting anything soon!

Unfortunately the horrible rainy weather that I mentioned before hung around for about 5 days but then it cleared and made way for lovely blue skies and sunshine again but over the last couple of weeks it seems to have gone in a bit of a cycle like that. It’s funny because when there’s the slightest sign of a cloud in the sky all the locals go around in massive raincoats and some of the children at school turn up in wellies while I’m still wandering around in a cardigan as it’s still about 18ºC here even when it’s cloudy and rainy.

Since the last time I blogged I received my first parcel from home, which is always exciting! But annoyingly I didn’t hear the postman knock so once again I had to venture to the post office to pick up my parcel, it was definitely worth it though because besides all my post from home and some ink cartridges for my printer (which were the main reasons for the parcel) my mum had also put in some Cadburys chocolate fingers, a bar of Cadbury dairy milk bubbly, a bag of Percy Pigs and a bag of Percy Piglets! Safe to say they did not last long!

 

Contents of the parcel from my mum!

My teaching assistantship is still going well and I feel like I’m all settled in now and everyone at school seems to know my name. For the first couple of lessons with each class I gave a Powerpoint presentation all about me, my family and where I live etc which they all seemed fascinated by (?!) and asked lots of (often funny) questions! Last Thursday I gave my first art lesson that I had planned and prepared myself; it was based on the colour wheel, and primary and secondary colours. I was working with half of the class that day and got them to paint the colour wheel in the form of an umbrella then this Thursday I did basically the same lesson with the other half of the class but we did the colour wheel in the form of a flower. The flower was supposed to be easier as that was for younger half of the class but it obviously wasn’t as none of them even came close to finishing! But hopefully they’ll get time to finish them next week. Some of them clearly didn’t understand the colour wheel either and my knowledge of French art/painting vocabulary wasn’t good enough to make it clearer. But they seemed quite content to mix random colours and paint them in whatever order they liked so I left them to it! (Don’t think that’s quite the point of teaching but there we go…)

Colour wheel umbrellas!

Last Wednesday I finally made it back to the swimming pool and this time it was actually open! I was pleasantly surprised to find that wearing a swimming cap was not obligatory at this pool, the water was a bit cold but not unbearable and although there were communal changing rooms there were also individual ones.

However, I did find it a bit strange that you had to take your shoes off as soon as you got inside and also the usual French rule of no swimming trunks applied, meaning that men have to wear speedo-type swim shorts, since trunks etc. are deemed to be unhygienic (?!) I was aware of this rule before from previous holidays to France but really nothing quite prepares you for the sight of old men in Speedos :| I  made a bit of a faux-pas because I didn’t realise that you were supposed to take your towel into the pool area and leave it on the side ready for when you get out but by the time I’d realised that, my towel was already securely locked in my locker so I jumped in the pool quick and hoped no-one noticed! But overall it wasn’t too much of an ordeal and I’ve even been again since then and this time made a mental note to ensure I took my towel in with me. I’m thinking of making it a regular thing as I definitely need something to offset the amount of food I’m eating here!
I had a school dinner again the other day, which is always a very typically French, three-course meal and the other teachers still can’t get over the fact that I normally only eat sandwiches for lunch. As well as the massive lunches whenever it’s one of the children’s birthdays they bring in cake, sweets and juice for all the other children in their class and all the teachers in the school so it seems like every other day I get brought a slice of cake! The other day one of the children brought mini éclairs from the local bakery for everyone which must have cost a fortune but they were yummy and I even got second helpings because there were some left over at the end of the day.

 Birthday treats from the children!

A couple of weeks ago some other language assistants arrived in La Rochelle and I met up with some of them and we went for dinner at a lovely restaurant and had a very yummy meal and then we went for a night out, it was really good to meet them all and be able to have decent conversations in English for the first time in faaar too long! I’ve also been on a couple more nights out with some of them since then which were fun too.

 

 Lovely meal at La Boussole

 More nights out

This week has also been the first time I’ve done anything vaguely resembling uni work since about mid-June, for the assessed part of our Year Abroad we have to write posts (in French) every couple of weeks to describe how our language learning is going, some kind of news/event/current affairs topic and a key moment for us in the last couple of weeks and the deadline for the first post to be done is this Sunday. So naturally I left it to the last minute and then proceeded to procrastinate as if my life depended on it but I’m pleased to say I have now finished it and posted it before the deadline- proud moment right there! I’m not convinced it was very good though because I’ve definitely forgotten how to do work since June. But I was determined to get it done before the deadline because I’m off to Poitiers this weekend to stay with my friend who is a teaching assistant there, which I’m really looking forward to.

And I’m also really excited for the weekend after as my sister is coming to visit me so I’m looking forward to showing her around my lovely town and doing some of the touristy things that I haven’t got around to doing yet. And then pretty soon after that I have two weeks off for Toussaint so I’m busy making plans for trips and visits which is exciting too!

As for speaking French and trying to blend in here I can’t say I’m doing too great as everyone I speak to can instantly tell I’m English and consequently tries to practice their English on me. But on the other hand when I went to the market last week one of the traders told me my French was good, but I think he was either just being polite or he was just used to English tourists speaking slowly and loudly in English to him because all I said was four bananas please! But I do think that my French is getting slowly but surely better and I’m learning a lot of new vocabulary including my two new favourite words ‘dacodac’ which is basically ‘okey dokey’ and ‘riquiqui’ which means ridiculously small or poky. Although unfortunately I’m yet to get the latter into a conversation!

However I reckon I must be blending in okay-ish as on Thursday not one, but two people asked me for directions, I took this to mean that they assumed I was a local and knew my way around but I think it was probably rather the fact that in both cases I was the only person near so they thought they might as well try asking me in the vague hope I could tell them where to go.
However one big thing preventing me from blending in better seems to be my hair colour as it seems to be pretty rare to see other ginger people here, and the other day while I was waiting for my bus a random woman came up to me and told me she thought my hair was beautiful, I wasn’t sure whether to be a bit creeped out or flattered, but a compliment is a compliment right? Another thing which is preventing me from appearing like a local is the fact that I still haven’t got used to using Euros because I swear all the coins look the same so whenever I pay for something I have to fumble around in my purse for a good 5 minutes before I find the right change. As a result I resorted to paying for everything in notes for a while but then ironically I ended up with even more change to try and spend, didn’t think that one through!

Anyway I’d better wrap up there as I think I’ve probably rambled on quite enough already! I’ll try not leave it as long as last time to post a new blog, hopefully I’ll have time after the weekend to write a quick post about my trip to Poitiers (but don’t hold your breath!)

I've survived a month in France!

Can’t quite believe I’ve been in France a month today! It’s going so quickly, I’m now a fifth of the way through my time here and it feels like I only just got here! The past week or so has also flown by and I didn’t even realise that it’s been over a week since my last blog post until my mum told me off because she’s been checking it every day for an update! At least I know someone can't wait to read my next post even if it is my mum :P But I’m gonna warn you now, it’s a bit of a long one seeing as I haven’t posted for a while!

Last Sunday I went to the Natural History Museum here in La Rochelle, I failed to realise that it was the weekend of the ‘Journées du Patrimoine’ which meant that it was free for everyone to get in and it was consequently rammed! But at least now I’ve discovered what French people actually do on Sundays, that or sleep! The museum was quite interesting, and as you can imagine it was fairly similar to the Natural History Museum in London, but on a much smaller scale!

 

At the Natural History Museum

On Monday morning I went to the CAF Office with my housemate to get the forms I need for my application, it reminded me of going to Argos because when you go in you have to take a numbered ticket and wait in the waiting area until your number comes up on the screen. Unfortunately it wasn’t quite as good as going to Argos as instead of getting something exciting, I was landed with about 7 pages of forms to decipher and fill in! But hopefully it’ll be worth it if I can get some free money!

Lots of lovely forms!

On Monday afternoon my mentor and I started English lessons with the equivalent of the Year 5 class and I was pleasantly surprised at their level of English! Most of the lesson was spent by them asking me questions in English that they had already learnt for a bit of revision. One of the children asked me what languages I speak and when I told him English, French, Spanish and Portuguese his response was ‘Oh you’re not like most other English people that only speak English then’! Good to know what our reputation is like!

On Tuesday afternoon my mentor and I started English lessons with the equivalent of the Year 6 class, I had a cold and was feeling pretty rubbish but I was somewhat cheered up by some of the funny things the children came out with. For example, when I asked how he was one of the students proudly came out with ‘I’m red’ when in fact he meant to say I’m tired! Then we got onto the topic of the Olympic Games and it turns out that they all actually believed that the Queen had parachuted into the opening ceremony, unfortunately I had to break the news to them that it was in fact a joke as the Queen is 86 and probably wouldn’t be up to parachuting!

This week in La Rochelle there has been a big international boat show and if you live in the area you could get a free ticket from the Town Hall to go to it on Wednesday afternoon. One of the teachers at school got me a ticket so although I’m not particularly interested in boats/watersports and I definitely can’t afford to buy a boat I thought I’d go along and see what it was all about, that and I was also secretly hoping to meet a nice, French guy that would take me out on his boat, but alas that plan failed. The show was in Minimes which is over the other side of the harbour from where I live so I was planning on getting the ‘bus de mer’ which takes you across there. I had to go to the bank first and I wasn’t sure how long it would take, especially as my knowledge of banking terms in French is definitely not great, so I left with plenty of time to spare before getting the Sea Bus. However, I was somewhat relieved when the advisor I spoke to in the bank spoke fluent English, although I was also a little disappointed as I went in ready to speak to him in French and he immediately spoke to me in English! Anyway, the bank took less time than I was expecting and I had a bit of time before the next Sea Bus was due to leave so I decided to do a bit of shopping. Since my last fruitless trip to the out of town shopping centre I had discovered that there are actually a few decent shops in the town centre but had not yet had time to explore them. I ended up only going in one shop, I think I was so happy to find clothes that I liked that I got a little carried away and blew nearly my weekly budget in one shop, oops! I also got a little carried away time-wise as by the time I was finished in the shop I realised the next Sea Bus was supposed to have left 5 minutes beforehand and I was still a 5/10 minute walk from where it leaves from! However I decided to walk there anyway and when I got there I found that everyone else had obviously decided to get the Sea Bus there too and there was a rather long queue so even if I had been on time for the previous boat I wouldn’t have made it on anyway! I reluctantly joined the back of the queue wondering whether the boat show was really worth it but I decided that it’s quite an important event in La Rochelle and it only happens once a year so I should still go. I ended up queuing to get the boat for nearly an hour! But it was a nice little 20 minute trip over there and once again it is included on my bus pass so I can’t complain too much!

The show itself was fairly interesting, basically there were just a lot, a lot of boats, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many boats in one place before! But aside from that, there was also a big marquee all about Brazil, as that was the guest country this year, which was interesting and some other marquees with shopping stalls. All in all I think I spent more time queuing for the Sea Bus there and back than I did at the show, but I did have a pretty yummy ice cream while I was there so I reckon that makes it slightly more worthwhile, and also the weather was lovely so it was nice to spend the afternoon in the sun!  

 Entrance to the Grand Pavois

 Brazil marquee

Sooo many boats!

On Thursday I had my first school dinner, it’s taken me a while to get round to it because I’m only at school at the start of lunch (when they serve dinner) on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I don’t eat red meat and the French are big meat lovers so until Thursday there hadn’t been a day that there was a meal that I would eat! But on Thursday the menu was cucumber salad, turkey breast in a creamy sauce with mixed vegetables and bread, laughing cow cheese and a kiwi fruit so I decided to give it a try. I have to say I was fairly impressed with the standard, definitely wouldn’t get that in a school in England (at least not when I was younger, but I guess things may have changed since the whole Jamie Oliver thing)! On Thursday afternoon I was told they were doing the class photos that day, so I was expecting a professional photographer to turn up but it turned out that it would be me taking the photos with my mentor’s daughter’s camera! I felt rather responsible and I hope I took some okay photos, but there’s always bound to be one child with their eyes shut! After the class photos we did art and I helped half the class do ink paintings- they dropped different coloured inks onto the page and then blew it across the page with a straw, it looked really cool but it was very messy! Unfortunately I ended up missing half of the art lesson as I had to go back outside to re-take one of the class photos as the teacher had realised he’d missed someone out of the photo!!

The childrens' artwork

On Friday morning before I went to school I decided to go and buy some macaroons as I hadn’t tried them before and a lot of other Year Abroaders have been raving about them so I thought I’d see what all the hype was about! There was quite a big range of flavours and I’m not the most decisive person so after a lot of umming and erring I finally decided on a nutella one and a white chocolate one. I thought they would be put in a little box or something but I was just given them in a little plastic bag so I carefully placed them in the top of my bag to eat when I got to school. However, unfortunately by the time I got to school they had managed to work their way to the bottom of my bag underneath all my other stuff and consequently get squished. But they still tasted pretty damn good so it’s okay, and I think it’s safe to say I’ll be back to buy more macaroons (despite the fact that they probably cost more per gram than gold!! Slight exaggeration!)

 

My squished macaroons!

On Saturday morning I decided that after three weeks in this house without a toaster I couldn’t take it much longer and ventured out to the HyperU again to buy a toaster! This may seem a bit random/irrelevant but I love peanut butter on toast, so it's a big deal for me :P

My 9,90€ toaster!

On Saturday night there was something called the ‘Voiles de Nuit’ which was part of the Grand Pavois, I went along with one of my housemates and a couple of her friends. It was a big fireworks/light/boat/music show in front of the old port, it took ages to get going but when it did, it was amazing! I got a bit snap happy and took a silly amount of photos but the fireworks were so good that I couldn’t help myself! The end of the show was pretty chaotic as around 50,000 people were all trying to get across a tiny pedestrian bridge back across to the other side of the harbour to the main town. We decided to just wait it out instead of getting crushed trying to get across the bridge and after a while the road bridge which had been raised for the show was lowered again and we made our way across there, which is actually a shortcut so it paid off to wait! After that we met up with some of my housemate’s other friends for a night out. Once again there was a lot of cheesy, old music and French music that I didn’t know but it was a good night!

Fireworks at the Voiles de Nuit

On Sunday morning (actually I lie, by the time I woke up it was already the afternoon) I finally got my toaster out of the box and had peanut butter on toast for breakfast, yay!

And today, just in case I was feeling homesick after being here a month, the weather has decided to be like English weather to make me feel more at home, it’s been the first properly rainy day since I got here. By that I mean that this morning (luckily before I had to leave the house!) it absolutely poured down, it’s been raining on and off all day, it’s very windy and apparently in the early hours of this morning it was stormy! Although it’s still a bit better than English weather as despite all that, it’s still not that cold. I hope it doesn’t stay like this for too long because the weather has been lovely here so far!

A bit of a general update

 

My assistantship is still going well, on Monday we practiced ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’ again and they’re pretty good at it now, it’s so cute! I’m still a bit of a novelty around school and I get a warm welcome every day when I turn up. But I was a little confused the other day when I got to school and walked into the classroom and one of the children shouted ‘Malcolm’ at me! But then one of the others said to him ‘it’s not Malcolm, it’s welcome’ and I had to try very hard not to laugh because I didn’t want to put him off speaking English!

We’ve had a few colder, cloudy days this week and all the children (and most of the teachers) turned up in their raincoats and I was there in a skirt and t-shirt! At break time one day it was very grey and threatening to rain and one of the teachers joked that it was like being in England, which all the other teachers thought was hilarious! Then as it began spitting one little 4-year old came up to his teacher and said ‘what’s happening?!’ obviously not accustomed to rain! Meanwhile another little girl was running around the playground warning everyone ‘It’s going to rain! It’s going to rain!’ It then proceeded to rain for about 5 minutes before the sun came back out.

Yesterday was the first time that I taught a group of children completely on my own, I took a group of 12 children out at a time to do PE. It was a bit scary to have so much responsibility but it seemed to go well, apart from one child that I had to send back inside for messing around!

The english textbook!

As well as teaching I’ve also just been doing odd jobs that need doing, so for example I’ve been typing up key points from the class grammar textbook which has actually quite useful as a bit of basic revision for me! But I have to say the French keyboard is pretty confusing to get to grips with and it’s so badly designed, why would you make it so that you have to press the shift key every time you want to put a full stop or a number?! And yet you don’t have to press the shift key for an exclamation mark, a colon or other even less commonly used things! I’ve also spent quite a bit of time laminating things which you would think would be fairly boring, but being a bit of a simpleton I found it quite fun!

Yesterday I took down an old display and put a new one up which doesn’t sound too bad but unfortunately it was rather high up and therefore it involved the use of a ladder. I don’t like heights and I’m a little clumsy, so me and ladders really shouldn’t mix, it was at that point I found myself wondering if falling off a ladder would be included in my year abroad insurance or if that’s classed as some kind of extreme activity! But luckily I didn’t have to find out as I managed to do it without injuring myself (or anyone else for that matter)!

One lunchtime one of the other teachers brought some figs in from her friend’s fig tree and she let me have one as I hadn’t tried a fig before. I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t like it but have to be polite and eat it all anyway, but it was quite nice, but very messy!

On the bus on the way to school everyday I go past a bakery which has a drive-through like at McDonalds! I took a quick snap on my phone on the way past the other morning because I thought it was quite funny!

Asides from school, I've been doing a bit of wandering around the town shopping because I'm good at that! And I’ve also spent quite a bit of time Skyping various people to make up for lost time when my microphone wasn’t working!

Also, I went out last night with one of my housemates and some of her friends in La Rochelle which was good fun! Given how cheap alcohol is here in the supermarkets I thought it would be similar in bars and pubs but it was actually quite expensive! (5 or 6 euros for a malibu and coke!) I found it quite funny that the second bar we went in, which was called 'Bad Boys' (in French), liked to play a lot of cheesy, old, English music! The third bar we went in was closing as we got there and the fourth was an Australian themed pub but they mainly played French music that I didn't know!

Me, my housemate and her friend

I was planning on having a nice lie-in this morning but annoyingly I woke up at 10am and couldn’t get back to sleep, and although 10am sounds like a lie-in, given that we didn’t get home until 4.30am, it felt pretty early! So I dragged myself out of bed feeling a little less than perky and was glad to see that it was lovely and sunny. Besides the obvious benefits of nice weather it also meant that I could wear my biggest sunglasses to disguise the fact that I was hanging a bit and looking pretty rough, even though I’d hardly even been tipsy last night, definitely getting old! So I ventured off to the Post Office to collect my recorded delivery letter which had annoyingly been delivered the other day while I was in the house but either the postman didn’t bother to knock or I didn’t hear the door. I was a little anxious about going to the post office as I’d heard a lot of stories about how complicated and unhelpful they can be and I wasn’t really feeling up to much conversation this morning, especially technical jargon in French so I was relieved when I handed over my card and showed my driving licence and then simply had to sign a piece of paper before being given my letter.

The post office in the town centre

Having tackled stage one of the French bureaucracy system fairly easily I’m feeling a little more positive about the next stage for me which is the CAF office, probably on Monday morning. (CAF is a French housing benefit that you can claim to help pay your rent, I’ve heard it’s a pretty long, paperwork-heavy process but you can get up to 40% of your rent paid so I reckon it’s worth it!) 

That’s about it for now as I’m being very boring and going to bed to catch up from my lack of sleep last night!

But on a side note, French people really need to learn that double denim is very rarely okay!

The Past Few Days

Thursday and Friday passed pretty swiftly and as I’m still mostly observing at school I didn’t do that much! On Thursday I taught the children the days, months, seasons and weather using a calendar wall hanging that my mum (who is a Primary school teacher) lent me. I’m going to use the calendar every day with them and choose a different child to change the labels each day. When I arrived at lunch time on Friday three of the children came running across the playground to give me a kiss which I thought was rather sweet! In the afternoon I attempted to teach the children ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’ which was fairly successful but we’re going to try and perfect it on Monday.

 

The calendar wall hanging

On Saturday I decided to go to the beach, for a couple of reasons- A) it was about 30ºC and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky so it seemed like a crime not to and B) I’d had far too many comments during the week about how white I am! Including my mentor telling me ‘go to the beach this weekend, you need some colour!’ and a little white-blonde-haired girl coming up to me, looking me up and down and announcing ‘you’re all white, like me!’

So I set off through the park down to the beach, however after one too many judgemental looks and a wolf-whistle I concluded that wearing short shorts to walk to the beach in 30ºC heat is obviously not the done thing here! Oops. However, once at the beach I felt rather conservative as pretty much anything goes, that is as long as you’re wearing some kind of bottoms. Even if they are way too small Speedos like I unfortunately witnessed on a slightly obese guy! I stayed at the beach for a while writing in my journal and sunbathing before deciding that my pale skin probably couldn’t take much more and headed home for lunch where I met one of the other students that’s moved back in after the summer.

Walking through the park

On the beach

After a lunch of yummy fresh French bread bought from the boulangerie round the corner it hit me that I’ve been in France for over 2 weeks and I haven’t done any proper shopping yet and I think I was starting to get withdrawal symptoms so I decided to go and get the bus to the big shopping centre just outside the town centre. Bad idea. The bus was packed and I had to stand up most of the way there and endure the delightful aroma of sweaty people for 20 minutes! And to top it off when I got there I was less than impressed with the French clothes shops, they were either pretty expensive or a bit rubbish, or both. So I didn’t end up buying anything. (I think going shopping and not buying anything may be a first for me!) I’m going to be in need of major retail therapy by the time I get back to England! But it wasn’t a wasted journey as I was running out of food so I went to the HyperU. Those of you that are familiar with French supermarkets will know that they tend to be pretty huge, and this one was no exception! I wandered around for what must’ve been at least an hour looking for everything I wanted and of course; being a Saturday it was also pretty packed. But in the end I left feeling triumphant as I had eventually managed to find pretty much everything I set out to buy, including some more clothes hangers and a new microphone for my laptop as the built-in one has decided to stop working just as I want to Skype everyone! Luckily there was a bus 10 minutes after I’d finished in the supermarket so I went to wait at the bus stop to make sure I got a seat as I was feeling somewhat like a pack horse with all my shopping!

When I got home I set about making dinner, which is not as easy as you would first think. The owner of my house lives here too and he provides all the dishes etc and washes them up afterwards as there’s no sink in the students’ living room, and we’re not allowed in his kitchen. That all sounded pretty ideal to me when I moved in, but, he was away for the first few days that I was living here so I slowly ran out of cutlery, bowls and saucepans, making cooking a meal rather difficult! Now that he’s back the cupboard is slowly being re-stocked but the only two saucepans that were in the cupboard before now seem to have disappeared so it’s pretty much microwave or nothing at the moment. Needless to say I am becoming a master at microwave cooking, although I’m not really sure that’s something to be proud of! Anyway I finally managed to scrape together an acceptable meal and while I was eating it the other student that's moved back in arrived home, so I’ve met them both now.

One of the meals I've managed to scrape together using the microwave!

There’s not a lot to do in France on a Sunday but I found out that the local swimming pool is open until 12.30pm and it’s only a 5/10 minute walk from my house. I’d been thinking about going all week so I finally persuaded myself to go and give it a try despite hearing some things about French swimming pools that had rather put me off going! To name just a few- communal mixed-sex changing rooms, cold pools, strict lifeguards and the fact that in a lot of them you have to wear swim caps! But after psyching myself up I got there to find out it was shut this weekend for training, could have said that on the website! So I returned home wishing I’d just stayed in bed! I’ve spent the rest of the day doing some lesson planning and finding some resources ready for my return to school tomorrow.

Being a Tourist on my Day Off

I’m pleased to report that my first day with the children at school went pretty well yesterday. I was introduced to the children and they all seemed excited to meet a real-life English person! I’m mostly just observing for the moment so my day wasn’t particularly eventful, in the morning I sat at the back of the class and finished off covering the books in sticky-back plastic (yawn!) and was a little creeped out by a girl that was turned around watching me intently the whole time! Am I really that fascinating?

At break time one of the other teachers brought a leaflet out to the playground about some sort of exhibition to do with the anniversary of the Port being open and said that all the members of staff could get free tickets from the Town Hall in the village. One of the teachers said she would get my ticket for me if I wanted one, I’m trying to do a kind of Yes Man thing so I said yes but I’m not exactly sure what I’ve agreed to do! We’ll see!

 

The classroom I'll mainly be working in

After the break I did more book-covering and observed for a while. It didn’t seem to be long before we stopped for another break, this time lunch, which is 11.30am-1.30pm!! Most of the teachers go home at lunch time but two of them stay so I ate lunch with them, they seemed to find it quite funny/strange that I eat sandwiches for lunch! In the afternoon I taught the class how to say ‘Hello, my name is’ and got all the children to say it one at a time so I could get to know their names (forgotten them all already). One thing I learnt from the day is that they like long breaks as there was yet another half an hour break before finishing at 4.30pm and there is no school at all on Wednesdays! I don’t think my brain has quite changed time zone yet because for some reason when school finished I thought it was 3.30pm so I rushed off to get my bus at 3.50pm. When it got to 3.55pm and the bus was still not there I looked at my phone and realised that it was in fact 4.55pm and the next bus wasn’t until 5.15pm! The school is a 5 minute walk from the bus stop so I didn’t really think it was worth going back so I sat on a nearby bench reading my French gossip magazine and taking some photos until the bus finally arrived!

The church in the village

I was a bit miffed when I woke up excited for my day off today and looked out the window to see that it was cloudy. But by the time I was ready to leave the house the sun had come back out and it turned out to be another glorious day so I spent a good ten minutes plastering on the sun cream before I left the house, it’s a hard life being ginger!

I ambled along through the le Parc Charruyer, which is a massive park near my house that has a little animal park in! Then I carried on down to walk along the beach, it wasn’t exactly the prettiest beach I’ve ever seen, but it is a beach nonetheless and it’s only a 10 minute walk from my house.

 

Le Parc Charruyer



Plage de la Concurrence

 

I then headed for the Old Port where I caught the ‘passeur électrique’ which is a little solar-powered boat which takes you across the harbour to save you having to walk all the way around and it’s included on my bus pass so I thought I’d make the most of it!

 

On board the 'Passeur Électrique'

 

I made my way to the Médiathèque (big library and exhibition centre) where there was a photography exhibition I wanted to see but as I was almost there I remembered that it shuts between 12pm and 1pm and it was indeed 12.40pm so to save myself sitting around waiting on a bench again I looked around for something else to fill the time. Just across the road was the La Rochelle Maritime Museum which is onboard an old boat in the port. Now I wouldn’t say that I’m really interested in boats but it was only 4€ for students and I thought it would give me something to do, so I decided to see what it was all about. I’m afraid I can’t tell you that it was particularly thrilling and obviously everyone else thinks the same because I only saw one other person in the whole museum. That is apart from in the bar/café at the end, which was rather busy! But I think that may have been something to do with the fact that it was rather difficult to find the way off the boat, I seemed to go round in circles in the maze-like corridors and I’m pretty sure I went through a door I wasn’t supposed to but I finally managed to get off the boat and make my way to the Médiathèque! The photo exhibition was a collection of photos by Jean Gaillard, who took black and white photos of everyday life in the La Rochelle area in the 1950s and 60s, it was really interesting! (If you're interested you can see some of his photos here: http://www.agglo-larochelle.fr/diaporama.php?diap=73)

 

Maritime Museum

 

 After that I made my way to one of the three Towers in La Rochelle- the St.Nicholas Tower. After my experience of going up the Lantern tower last week (think narrow, spiral staircases with tiny, slippery steps, very high up, almost getting blown over by the wind, and very low/non-existent walls) I wasn’t too sure that I wanted to go up the St.Nicholas Tower but it’s free for under 25s and I’m a sucker for free things! Thankfully this was a much better experience than last week and I took some photos looking over the town before heading back down again. After that I was considering going to the shopping centre on the bus or going to the local swimming pool but by this time I’d been walking almost non-stop for 3 hours in the sun so I just walked back home to have a nice cold drink and a sit down!

View from up the tower

Sorry I rambled on a bit, well done if you made it this far! I'll try and post again at the weekend unless anything really exciting happens before then!

My First Day as a Comenius Assistant

Today was my first day as a teaching assistant in a Primary School, I got a bit tipsy and kissed the Headmaster! But it’s not what it sounds like! I’ll explain all…

My first challenge was getting the bus to school, actually having said that my first challenge was probably trying to drag myself out of bed at 6.45am, I can’t remember the last time I had to do that! I miss student life already! Anyway, back to the point, I finally managed to get out of bed and stumble to the bus stop half awake. I was glad that what they say about French public transport hardly ever being late turned out to be true in this case and my bus actually arrived a bit early, so I hopped on board armed with my newly acquired bus pass. Unfortunately, although I was armed with my bus pass, I had no idea what to do with it and attempted to hand it to the bus driver, who looked at me a bit puzzled and pointed at a machine by the door of the bus. It turns out my bus pass is a bit like an Oyster card and after attempting to swipe it first in the wrong place on the machine and then back to front I finally managed to swipe onto the bus and take my seat, albeit a little red-faced! The bus journey took about 25 minutes and for the last ten minutes or so I was the only person on the bus (apart from the driver, obviously!). My mentor said she would be waiting for me at the bus stop so I got off the bus and greeted the only person in sight with a kiss*, only then did it occur to me to check that she was in fact my mentor and not some poor unsuspecting person, thankfully it was! *(For those of you that aren’t accustomed to French ways, I’d better explain...In France the way of greeting each other is to kiss each other on the cheek, hence why I also kissed the Headmaster when I met him! The number of times you kiss varies region by region but here it’s one on each cheek.)

It was a PD Day today so I got to know my way around the school and meet all the staff (and the chickens!!) before the children arrive tomorrow! First of all I sat in on a meeting between all the teachers in the main school, which I didn’t really understand a lot of because they spoke too quickly! Then I helped my mentor rearrange her classroom ready for ‘la rentrée’ (the start of term) before discussing my timetable and what I’m going to be doing at the school. I only have to work 12-16 hours a week so I was hoping to have either Monday or Friday off so I can travel around at the weekends but it turns out she wants me at school every afternoon, as well as two mornings a week. Luckily I’m not being thrown into the deep end tooo much as I’m only going to be observing lessons for the next two weeks to get to know how things work in the school. After that I’m going to be helping my mentor teach English in her class (Year 4) and two other classes, as well as teaching P.E and Art in small groups, all in English. Neither P.E nor Art is exactly my strong point, but I’m sure it’ll be fine! (there goes that phrase again!)

After that my mentor informed me that they have a tradition to go for ‘apéritifs’ with the Headmaster and the other teachers on the day before ‘la rentrée’. So we gathered in one of the classrooms, I was handed half a plastic cup-full of ‘Pineau’ which is a fortified wine made locally and I proceeded to sip at it warily, it turned out that it was actually quite nice! I was a little bit worried that given that it was only midday, I hadn’t eaten since 7am, the Pineau was 17% alcohol and I’ve only drunk once before in the last 3 months or so, that I wouldn’t make it through the rest of the day! But I didn’t want to seem ungrateful so I finished it and hoped that the impending lunch hour would make me slightly less wobbly! The headmaster also provided some nibbles, including some Wotsit type crisps that were peanut flavoured, amazing! Why do we not have these in England?! I added a big box of Marks and Spencers chocolates and caramels to the mix and they seemed to go down well!

My mentor’s husband is also a teacher in the school and at lunchtime we went to their house in the village where we had lunch and I met their son and daughter. After a nice, relaxing hour-long lunch in the sun we returned to school. My afternoon was a lot less eventful as I spent the whole 3 hours covering books with sticky-back plastic; I got through a huge stack and am now a master at it! My mentor told me that she had to go into town for something after school so she could drop me off so I didn’t have to get the bus, she gave me a little tour of La Rochelle on the way which was nice of her. By the time I got home it was about 5pm but most of the shops here are open until 6pm so I went for a little wander in town, I walked past some very yummy looking pastries and decided to treat myself to my favourite- a ‘mille feuille’ after my long first day at work and returned home to devour it!

 

 My Mille Feuille wrapped up all prettily!

Yum yum!

 

I’m a bit nervous about my first day with the children at school tomorrow, but I think the children’s French will be more my level, so that’s a bonus!

À bientôt!