Today marks my 3 month anniversary of living in La Roche, which sadly means only three months left, time is whizzing by. However as much as I am enjoying life here, I can't wait to head home for a holiday, and some proper British food. As great as French food may well be, I do miss milk that isn't UHT and many other things: pork pies, real sausages, roast potatoes (in fact all potatoes!), mince pies...all things that are unhealthy or that the French just don't cook as they should be cooked ("mashed" potato springs to mind here!).
The temperatures here have suddenly dropped very dramatically, 2 weekends ago we went to the beach for the afternoon and it was really mild, the boys were just wearing t-shirts, but now it is absolutely freezing. Many people seem to be catching colds and flu, although thankfully I seem to be immune thus far. What is amusing is how the French seem to over react to a simple cold, Marion went to the doctor for hers and came back armed with FIVE prescriptions! A throat spray, a nose inhaler, a liquid medicine and 2 types of tablets, all for a cold. And she's not the only one. I now feel very hard done by that when I went to the doctor about my knee I came out with only two types of pill! The family whose house I went to last night even have a bag, in which they keep their daily medicines, hanging on each member of the family's chair at the kitchen table, they're crammed full!
Last weekend all of us assistants had a meal together as some were leaving this week. We realised that we had lots to celebrate so during the course of the evening we progressed through the traditions of all our countries. We started wth Miguel's birthday (next week), followed by Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve finishing up with the 6th of January. We ate food themed for each event in that order, starting with a birthday cake and finishing with a Spanish "King's cake", which had a small toy hidden inside. The best tradition was probably the Spanish New Year's Eve, where we did a countdown and then had to put a grape in our mouth for each month of the coming year for good luck! Very funny! Apparently it makes the kissing of relatives and friends to bid them a happy new year very difficult!
It is always interesting spending time with the assistants and I have come to notice that I seem to have much more in common with the Spaniards and French than the Americans. Living closer geographically seems to have more of a meaning that sharing the same mother tongue. I feel more European than I have ever felt before! On memorable quote from this week was Kendra (an American) who exclaimed "What on earth do they use these miniature wooden goblets for?" while holding an egg cup! We all collapsed with laughter!
At school it's been more of the same, in my IDD class we're certainly running out of ideas for things which are 100% English (ie. not practiced in another country in the world), we've come up with no sports but this week I had the bright idea of getting them to research wassailing! This is the same group of pupils who thought Morris Men were a bit batty and I think they have finally arrived at the conclusion that the English are mad, hanging toast on trees is pushing it a bit, I suppose! What was also quite amusing is that the pupils tend to forget that I speak French, so quite often talk among one another forgetting that I understand, "I think she's got her French wrong, she can't mean toast!" type comments!
Talking of pupils, I am feeling particularly old at the moment, I have come to realise that some of them were born in 1998. That feels like yesterday, I can't quite believe it!
I only have one day left of school this year, yay! Today we had the school Christmas lunch, and later I have the Christmas supper at the foyer, so I think I will be rolling into school tomorrow, feeling very full after a day of stuffing myself with more delicious French food than usual! The school Christmas lunch was particularly merry, wine was in full flow and we had a full cheese platter rather than our usual small selection (by small I mean 4 or 5!). The only thing missing was crackers and poor jokes!
It won't be a good thing if I am still full tomorrow, as in the afternoon we have a staff vs pupils handball match, preceeded by a mini performance by the members of staff, including me. They have chosen that this year's performance is to be circus and acrobatics, I really don't know why, as none of us are really very capable! (Which to be fair makes it all the more funny, the pupils will love it!). So every lunch time this week we've been rehearsing and now have a full act prepared. I'll have to see if I can get someone to film it tomorrow, I can't quite put into words what we're doing, you'll have to ask me about it in person! But it should be good fun though! The teachers keep saying to me that it's an excellent representation of typical French education, I'm not so convinced!
My assistant friend who are still here have been really lucky this week, they all work in lycees (sort of 6th form colleges) and their pupils are all demonstrating against an education reform, so haven't been going to lessons. They're really quite active with their demonstrations, they've fully blockaded the entrances to the lycees. The barricades are pretty impressive, and utterly impassable, I watched one teacher climb a fence further down to try and get in! They have megaphones, banners and have been marching around. Police have even turned up to keep everyone in order, there really are hundreds of them here. The reaction of the teachers at my college (where we're not demonstrating) seems to be mixed, some who have children who should be going to school are not pleased, while the others seem positively proud to see ex-pupils of ours demonstrating and keeping up French traditions! If you ask me it's just an excuse to not go to school for the last week of term and they all look rather cold sitting on the barricade all day!
School apart, I've been trying to get in a bit of Christmas shopping, but what with the current value of the euro, shopping in France has become much more expensive. However, on the occasion where I have made it to the till, I have been met with extortionately long waits: many of the French still pay for things by cheque and this takes quite some time, they really do need to get the hang of chip and pin. Then there is the extravagant process of gift wrapping, which is free in all the shops, and involves all sorts of papers, ribbons etc etc!
Our Christmas outing with the foyer was on Tuesday and we went to a laser quest, which was really good fun, and something that I turned out to be rather skilled at, surprisingly! My team won all 3 rounds and I was the top scorer overall, even beating the boss of the laser centre! He was not pleased to be beaten by an English girl! Maybe I was only good because I had my black netball hoodie on, with the hood up, no-one could see me at all in the dark!
Yesterday the classroom helper from the UPI class invited me to her apartment for the afternoon to do some French cooking with her and her sons. This was great fun, we made some iced French biscuits and the boys were really sweet. The little one, Victor, was extremely keen to learn English and dragged me to his room where he had a mini blackboard and sat himself down in front of it very expectantly! I thought I had succeeded in teaching him the colours, but as soon as his Dad asked him them he promptly forgot every single one. Probably a good thing I'm not actually a language assistant, judging by that experience I'm probably not very good! The Dad is a policeman here, so they live in the police headquarters, so I can officially say that I've spent the evening in a French police station!
So there you have it, my last entry in France of 2008. One day of school left, and then it's the Christmas holidays, yipeeeeeeee!!!
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Friday, December 5, 2008
Unwillingly living life at a slower pace
The major event of the last few weeks, which has had impact on everything else, would be the bike accident I had last Wednesday. I was pedalling manically up hill as fast as I possibly could as I was late for a train, when I cycled smack bang into the back of a parked car! Woops, I simply didn't see it, I had my head down and my helmet on (always necessary when cycling abroad!) and the first thing I knew was everything was white. I'd hit a white car and gone over all 6 handlebars that my bike is conveniently equipped with! In doing so I hit my knee on one of them (not difficult when there are so many!) and really hurt it. Fortunately neither the car nor bike was damaged so I pedalled one footed to the station and caught my train. My knee caned but I thought I might have just been overreacting from shock rather than actual pain. Oh no, when I arrived in Les Sables I couldn't walk, so went straight to the doctors. He has given me various medicines but has warned me not to do any handball or cycling for at least 2 weeks. Not that I would be anyway, I could hardly walk all of last week and I still can't manage stairs, or any real bending. He also informed me that I ought to remember that the French drive on the left, what a joker! The knee is a real pain though (in both senses of the word), it's cut my social calendar down rather!
However I was still able to make it in high spirits to our Thanksgiving party last week, which was great fun. Kendra's parents and sister came over from the states, so we (the Spaniards and Claire, an American friend of Kendra's) celebrated together. It was certainly unique: for us, as none of us had celebrated Thanksgiving before; and for them, as I don't think they've ever had a Thanksgiving quite like it...! Between the 7 of us who live in La Roche, we hardly have any possessions, so supper, cooked in a Baby Belling, was served on an ironing board and eaten with the best crockery and finest silverware: paper plates, plastic cutlery and cups, whilst crowded round a make shift table and perched on whatever we could find! It was some picnic and we all really enjoyed ourselves. The best bit was definitely the pumpkin pies for pudding, yum yum, who knew that the inside of a pumpkin is so scrumptious? (Well, Americans, obviously!). We served it with squirty cream, which unfortunately ended up everywhere, and certainly very little in our mouths! A really fun evening!
Staying with the food theme, I genuinely had no idea how mayonnaise was made until recently, it's always just been something in a jar in the fridge. However the Spaniards don't buy mayonnaise, they make it themselves, I've never seen anything like it! And on a less positive note, at supper we all steal the butter to use for our breakfast, as we can't keep a block in our rooms as we have no fridge. I then put mine outside my window on the sill to keep cold, although it has been known to disappear (and get very wet)! Anyway, one day last week, I thought I'd forgotten mine, no big deal. A few days later, I took a load of washing out of the machine only to discover butter everywhere! I must have left it in my pocket! Grrr!
At school the Comenius project has finally started, two teachers went to a meeting in Italy last week (lucky them!) and were surprised to discover there that the other schools started work in September, so this has knocked us into gear. They couldn't believe that the Italians and Spanish had been organised enough to start before them, I, on the other hand, knowing the disorganisation of the school, was not surprised! La maitrise was there and I think she's expecting me to take part in most things, which is good as I will probably be running out of tasks to do in the library soon, there's only so many displays that can be done, plus the real librarian is returning from maternity leave on Monday, so the one I've been working with is sadly leaving.
Thinking about la Maitrise and also the doctor earlier, an observation that I have made during my time here is how formal the French are. La Maitrise shakes my hand every time I bump into her; the doctor shook my hand on arrival and when I left; and whenever you meet someone in a shop, you greet them formally, for example, "Bonjour Madame/Monsieur". And of course there's the endless kissing!
Back to the topic of school, I had my third newspaper appearance/mention this week, they love dropping in that there's a Comenius assistant at the school, whatever the occasion! I've got a nice little collection of cuttings coming along. Lessons are ticking along fine, although I did have an awful lesson with one of the European groups, we had to listen to one Beatles song ("She's leaving") on repeat for the entire hour so they could write down the lyrics. I'm not adverse to Beatles music, quite the contrary I like quite a bit of it, but this really was not a good choice of song, it was like an hour's torture! Keeping on the music theme, some pupils in my other Euro group were rather confused, they thought Madonna's song "Hung up" was all about a telephone! Oh and that reminds me, I was reading their English magazine, and there was an article on Peter Ash (a boy who I was at school with) and his hamster mobile phone charger. I couldn't believe it when I saw his photo there, such a small world!
There are certainly a couple of downfalls of not being able to cycle, firstly there's the speed, I've been late for school twice this week, completely underestimating how long it takes by foot. Secondly on the times I have been on time, I arrive at the same time as all the pupils and therefore get mixed in with their rabble, I've even been part of a group told off by the lollipop lady, who is usually very friendly towards me! And thirdly, following on from the problems I had when I arrived, I'm always very careful about letting the pupils know where I live, so this means that I have been taking complicated and lengthy detours home! Also, I had a scary walk back from Manu and Marta's the other night. I was walking along the pavement at about 1 am and there was absolutely no-one around (La Roche is dead at 10, let alone 1!) when suddenly I realised that there was a large Alsatian sitting on the verge, eeeek! I made a large circle right round him, luckily he just lifted his head and stared at me and I marched on rather quickly. Absolutely bizarre, I have no idea what he was doing there!
I had a tap at the door the other night from Florien, a German who lives here, he'd heard about my knee and kindly brought me a cream to rub on it. However the cream is meant for horses! How strange! I went to a circus evening on Monday, I spent 2 hours practicing juggling, as I was unable to do any of the activities because of my knee, I can now just about manage 4 balls. Florien also knows how to juggle so he has promised to teach me some tricks, they all look really hard though!
Life at the foyer has been eventful this week, 2 guys have been told to leave over separate incidents, we had a security guard in our corridor consistently all of last night regarding one of them, where the boy 3 doors down from me punched a security guard and smashed up his room and the CCTV camera. I don't think anyone on my corridor got much sleep that night! Otherwise all is well here, we had a yoga session last night which was nice and relaxing and did my knee some good, I hope! It is so frustrating being injured.
Only 2 weeks left of term until Christmas holidays! Things are getting more Christmassy, on the first of December decorations suddenly sprung up everywhere and classes are becoming more relaxed at school, which is nice. Reports of heavy snow in Britain are making me jealous, we've had nothing but rain here (for a change!). Hope you're out enjoying it all on my behalf!
However I was still able to make it in high spirits to our Thanksgiving party last week, which was great fun. Kendra's parents and sister came over from the states, so we (the Spaniards and Claire, an American friend of Kendra's) celebrated together. It was certainly unique: for us, as none of us had celebrated Thanksgiving before; and for them, as I don't think they've ever had a Thanksgiving quite like it...! Between the 7 of us who live in La Roche, we hardly have any possessions, so supper, cooked in a Baby Belling, was served on an ironing board and eaten with the best crockery and finest silverware: paper plates, plastic cutlery and cups, whilst crowded round a make shift table and perched on whatever we could find! It was some picnic and we all really enjoyed ourselves. The best bit was definitely the pumpkin pies for pudding, yum yum, who knew that the inside of a pumpkin is so scrumptious? (Well, Americans, obviously!). We served it with squirty cream, which unfortunately ended up everywhere, and certainly very little in our mouths! A really fun evening!
Staying with the food theme, I genuinely had no idea how mayonnaise was made until recently, it's always just been something in a jar in the fridge. However the Spaniards don't buy mayonnaise, they make it themselves, I've never seen anything like it! And on a less positive note, at supper we all steal the butter to use for our breakfast, as we can't keep a block in our rooms as we have no fridge. I then put mine outside my window on the sill to keep cold, although it has been known to disappear (and get very wet)! Anyway, one day last week, I thought I'd forgotten mine, no big deal. A few days later, I took a load of washing out of the machine only to discover butter everywhere! I must have left it in my pocket! Grrr!
At school the Comenius project has finally started, two teachers went to a meeting in Italy last week (lucky them!) and were surprised to discover there that the other schools started work in September, so this has knocked us into gear. They couldn't believe that the Italians and Spanish had been organised enough to start before them, I, on the other hand, knowing the disorganisation of the school, was not surprised! La maitrise was there and I think she's expecting me to take part in most things, which is good as I will probably be running out of tasks to do in the library soon, there's only so many displays that can be done, plus the real librarian is returning from maternity leave on Monday, so the one I've been working with is sadly leaving.
Thinking about la Maitrise and also the doctor earlier, an observation that I have made during my time here is how formal the French are. La Maitrise shakes my hand every time I bump into her; the doctor shook my hand on arrival and when I left; and whenever you meet someone in a shop, you greet them formally, for example, "Bonjour Madame/Monsieur". And of course there's the endless kissing!
Back to the topic of school, I had my third newspaper appearance/mention this week, they love dropping in that there's a Comenius assistant at the school, whatever the occasion! I've got a nice little collection of cuttings coming along. Lessons are ticking along fine, although I did have an awful lesson with one of the European groups, we had to listen to one Beatles song ("She's leaving") on repeat for the entire hour so they could write down the lyrics. I'm not adverse to Beatles music, quite the contrary I like quite a bit of it, but this really was not a good choice of song, it was like an hour's torture! Keeping on the music theme, some pupils in my other Euro group were rather confused, they thought Madonna's song "Hung up" was all about a telephone! Oh and that reminds me, I was reading their English magazine, and there was an article on Peter Ash (a boy who I was at school with) and his hamster mobile phone charger. I couldn't believe it when I saw his photo there, such a small world!
There are certainly a couple of downfalls of not being able to cycle, firstly there's the speed, I've been late for school twice this week, completely underestimating how long it takes by foot. Secondly on the times I have been on time, I arrive at the same time as all the pupils and therefore get mixed in with their rabble, I've even been part of a group told off by the lollipop lady, who is usually very friendly towards me! And thirdly, following on from the problems I had when I arrived, I'm always very careful about letting the pupils know where I live, so this means that I have been taking complicated and lengthy detours home! Also, I had a scary walk back from Manu and Marta's the other night. I was walking along the pavement at about 1 am and there was absolutely no-one around (La Roche is dead at 10, let alone 1!) when suddenly I realised that there was a large Alsatian sitting on the verge, eeeek! I made a large circle right round him, luckily he just lifted his head and stared at me and I marched on rather quickly. Absolutely bizarre, I have no idea what he was doing there!
I had a tap at the door the other night from Florien, a German who lives here, he'd heard about my knee and kindly brought me a cream to rub on it. However the cream is meant for horses! How strange! I went to a circus evening on Monday, I spent 2 hours practicing juggling, as I was unable to do any of the activities because of my knee, I can now just about manage 4 balls. Florien also knows how to juggle so he has promised to teach me some tricks, they all look really hard though!
Life at the foyer has been eventful this week, 2 guys have been told to leave over separate incidents, we had a security guard in our corridor consistently all of last night regarding one of them, where the boy 3 doors down from me punched a security guard and smashed up his room and the CCTV camera. I don't think anyone on my corridor got much sleep that night! Otherwise all is well here, we had a yoga session last night which was nice and relaxing and did my knee some good, I hope! It is so frustrating being injured.
Only 2 weeks left of term until Christmas holidays! Things are getting more Christmassy, on the first of December decorations suddenly sprung up everywhere and classes are becoming more relaxed at school, which is nice. Reports of heavy snow in Britain are making me jealous, we've had nothing but rain here (for a change!). Hope you're out enjoying it all on my behalf!
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