As indicated by the "thankfully" I am rather pleased to be on half term, the last few weeks have been pretty busy and the 8 am classes have been taking their toll! But they've been fun too. All the assistants in our town were given free tickets to both the opening and closing ceremonies of the film festival that took place over the last week. So I went along to the opening ceremony with the Columbian, Lorna, who lives with me (in case you were wondering, she's a Spanish assistant). When we got there we met some others, Kendra, an American; Janelle, from Barbados; Iliana, a Mexican and 3 Spaniards: Manu, Miguel and Marta. They were all really nice and one of the Spaniards, Marta, is also a Comenius assistant, so it's great to have someone else who can sympathise with my job! She had a rather eventful application, she'd applied to go to either Great Britain or Ireland as a Spanish assistant, but has ended up in France as an English assistant, and she doesn't speak French! So in fact the only language that we all speak is English, although Spanish is used a lot, so I'm picking up a lot of new words, plus a funny accent! We also went to the closing ceremony the following week and ended up going to the afterparty which was a red carpet affair! We fraternized with the directors and actors and enjoyed an awful lot of free food and wine! Excellent!
Now to explain the title, which really isn't as exciting as it sounds! The day after my last update I was invited by one teacher on the school trip to the courts, which was really good fun. We walked with a group of children to the rather imposing building and went on in. There were lots and lots of cases that afternoon, but interestingly only 2 out of about 15 were women. It was generally exceptionally difficult for me to understand but I was able to read the notes the teacher was taking. The cases ranged from typical speeding fines to two lads who'd stolen some chickens from their next door neighbour! It felt rather like I was in a court room in the 18th century, a really bizarre crime! After the trip I went home by bike and the next day I was approached by the teacher, she wanted to know what sport I took part in to need such an interesting bike!
At school I had a very busy few days, on the Friday before la Semaine de l'Europe I spent the whole day getting things ready. I put up all the flags down the corridor, which had many a funny moment... Along the corridor there are windows up high (no-one can see through them, they're far too high, just small panels running along the top of the classroom wall) and we thought that they'd be a good place to affix the flags, so they wouldn't remove paint when removed. So I took a chair and affixed the flags to the windows, much to the pupils' delight, who'd look up and see me peeping through the window! The teachers, who often couldn't see what on earth the children were looking at, were not so amused by the interruption! On one occasion I was standing on my chair in front of a door, no-one had noticed me, but I could see through the window. Suddenly, before I could react, the teacher needed to leave the room and marched over to open the door. What a shock they all go to see me standing on a chair with my arms in the air about to affix a flag! The pupils were in hysterics and even the teacher found it funny!In order to finish all the flags, I had had the help of what is called SEGPA (I have absolutely no idea what these letters stand for, just like all the other codes the teachers use every day, IDD, UPI, DECOU, EPS...!), they're the pupils who are in a special class, because they're generally too badly behaved to join the others. What I didn't know was that they have their own block of classrooms, so when I put up all the flags I didn't put any up there. Later in the day I got a message to say that the SEGPA were up in arms and extremely angry about this, woops, I had no idea! Not sure that I would like to be chased by angry SEGPA pupils I hastily did a few more and put them up!
So all the preparations were finally over for la Semaine de l'Europe and I had a good weekend generally pottering about town on Saturday and at the beach with Charlotte and her friends from college on Sunday (the weather is STILL great, although I have to say it is getting a bit monotonous having blue sky and sunshine every day, I pine for rain!). On Sunday evening I had my conversation class with Quentin and after supper I was invited to the cinema with him and some friends. The film was really good, an Agatha Christie I believe, called "Le crime est notre affaire" and I could actually follow most of it! Quentin's friends were nice, and one of them is the older brother of one of the girls in my class at school. So of course the next day I had a whole group of them come up to see if I really had gone out with her brother, they couldn't believe it! Such a small town, I can't do anything without bumping into someone! This statement is reiterated again in that when I went to handball on Wednesday one of the men is the dad of another pupil.
The handball situation is still not resolved! Following the two trips to get the certificate (and a wait of over 2 hours in the waiting room!) I was finally able to go to the leisure club on Wednesday. This was not as successful as had been hoped for two reasons! Firstly, they had a match so I wasn't actually able to take part this week and secondly, every member is male and over 40! How very surprised they were when I turned up! They have said that I can come back next week, and if I'm good enough I'll be allowed to train with the women's team, if not, I'll have to stick with this group! Ho hum!
The Semaine de l'Europe was pretty successful, I think, although I am now going to have to find new things to do to fill up the time. I'm thinking maybe I'll set up an English club or something, all ideas for activities welcome! As part of the Semaine de l'Europe the librarian and I went to Nantes together on some trip for teachers, we met up with about 30 teachers from around the region. I have no idea why we went! The morning was good fun, it was a tour around the city and all the interesting sights were pointed out, I think it is so that teachers can then organise a trip there for their pupils. Of course neither the librarian nor I will ever be organising such a visit! One very funny moment was when our group was stopped by several students, they were on a challenge and one of their tasks was to take a photo of a group of 15 strangers together. Of course we were absolutely ideal for them and they couldn't believe their luck when we dutifully lined up. However we were then stopped by several more groups throughout the course of the trip, we were not as friendly with these and flatly refused!
We had a yummy lunch together and then in the afternoon we had to go to a workshop on how to present a project. We were asked to introduce ourselves and talk about the project we had in mind for our children! I, of course, have no such project going on, so had to bluff something about thinking that it would be an excellent idea to gain ideas from others in the profession to introduce to my pupils! It went down surprisingly well!!! Afterwards we had to have our photo taken for the local paper! A great shame that I don't live in the area and can't buy it! Maybe I'll try googling it! Anyway it was a fun day, I absolutely loved Nantes and will definitely be returning.
On returning from Nantes that evening I had to pack, as on Thursday Marta and I were to go to Bordeaux. We had a meeting for Comenius assistants on Friday, but needed to go down the night before as we couldn't get there early enough the next day. Luckily it was an all expenses paid trip so we could book ourselves into a nice hotel! We had a wonderful time. Bordeaux is absolutely beautiful and there is currently a big fair there, so we spent the evening looking round. We had a go on a very scary (but absolutely brilliant!) ride and ate some gaufres (I got absolutely covered in chocolate!). We then explored the city a bit by night, it's just stunning, and somewhere else I'll have to visit again!
The next day we went to the meeting, which was really useful, I had been beginning to wonder if I ought to be doing more language work and if the disorganisation of the school meant that I wasn't fulfilling my contract. But in fact, according to the chap running the meeting I can do whatever I like at school, as long as they're happy, so that's a relief! I was the only British person there but we met another nice Spaniard and a Portuguese girl. There were assistants from all over Europe and it really was funny to see just how well people fitted the stereotypes, the Germans really did start to work as soon as the task was set (while the rest of us milled around drinking coffee and chatting) and there was an Italian girl who spoke and spoke and spoke, with many flying arms! After the meeting we had time to do a bit more sight seeing and so we revisited the sights we'd seen by night. Then it was time to catch a train back, our flying visit over. The train journey was really interesting, Marta and I chatted to a Bulgarian woman who was an opera singer who'd travelled all over Europe and can speak 8 European languages! Just incredible!
I will leave you with a couple of random other observations/anecdotes. Firstly, the bridge to the train station has been shut until April, which is really annoying as it means we have to walk an extra 20 minutes to get into town or to the railway station. I have decided that I seem to attract closed bridges following on from the closure of Goodricke bridge last year, this is 5 times more annoying! Secondly, I have noted that French names are either typically French (we all know about Jean and Pierre) or something I didn't know, some are also extremely old fashioned, I have a Maude in one of my classes! I have christened my bike Maude following on from this observation! The final anecdote comes from my special needs class where the children were using a code breaker to work out words associated with Halloween. One of the children was very excited at having cracked the first word and gleefully shouted out "bitch!" at the teacher, he'd mistaken the w for a b, woops! He was blissfully unaware of what he'd said but I had to stifle a giggle!
And just something to end on, did anyone realise that I accidentally uploaded the wrong picture for Aikido? It's not actually me that I've labelled! Will do my best to upload the right one (and some of Bordeaux) soon!
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