End of January, Excitement Awaits!

So this is the last post of January, a month which has passed incredibly quickly. Not that that's a bad thing, February is sure to be an exciting month. Today I am currently killing time before greeting the English exchange who arrive today, our pupils are simply bouncing off the walls with excitement! The English seem to be briging nice weather with them, as our skies have returned to blue. This is excellent news as I don't fancy another weekend quite as wet as the last one! Tomorrow we (all the assistants of La Roche) are off on a tour of Brittany with Helene Crepeau (I just love her surname!), the organiser of twinnings here and a work experience boy called Marc, we think! The travelling is kindly financed by the mayor, very kind of him!

Unfortunately we didn't do so well in choosing the dates, as it appears that the winner of the Vendee Globe (the sailing race whose start I went to back in November) is anticipated on Saturay night/Sunday morning. It's a great shame to be missing it as it's apparently the best street party in the region, especially as he is so conveniently arriving at the weekend, all the more people will be going. Again they are expecting several hundred thousand people to descend on this tiny town. I am feeling especially close to the race as I have written my French essay on the subject and feel like I have followed it all along, right from day one. It's coincidental that he's arriving the same week as I finish my essay, I sent it on Thursday, wooooo, work finished!

I was watching a television broadcast from one of the sailors the other night, and the token American, Rich Wilson, was being interviewed. It was especially funny as he was replying in French, yet the TV channel subtitled it (in French) because he had such a strong American accent! I feel very much the same sometimes, my accent has hardly improved and even when I know I'm speaking perfect French they can't understand me! To be fair though, it's also the same with my pupils, whose English I can't always grasp, the teacher often has to repeat to me what's been said.

This week at school I feel as though I have been an "IT assistant" rather than "Comenius assistant". I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it before, but technology really is not one of the French's strong points. I spent one lesson working as printer repair girl, spending nearly the whole hour collecting spools of paper, as pupils continually pressed print even though it wasn't working. Admittedly even the printer instructions are in English, so they had no chance at sorting it out. It is funny the English they have successfully picked up courtesy of the printer, they all know the words "toner" and "cartridge" now! They are also oblivious as to how to do simple tasks such as formatting pictures and setting headers and footers, I wonder what on earth they do do in the IT classes (which are few and far between). I have also spent many hours this week typing up the Comenius guide to our town, to be sent to the schools in Spain and Italy who are part of the project. I fear my eyes are becoming rather square!

Yesterday was a major day of strikes in France, they have nicknamed it "Black Thursday", which I suppose makes reference to the really bad situation and that everything shut down for the day. As I am technically not allowed to strike, I had to go to school anyway, and continue typing the Comenius project. But my other 2 classes were cancelled ad I cancelled the English club, due to lack of pupils. School was really eerie, there were only 8 teachers who showed up (out of around 60) and I think about 10% of the pupils were there, I imagine the rest couldn't get in as there were no busses or they knew that all their teachers were going to be absent. It was so strange walking round an empty school, it had a sort of sad feel to it, it is never ever that quiet. Lunch was particularly funny, the canteen were also very understaffed, so lunch was basic at best, the few teachers who had come in were not impressed at all!!!

I suppose what made this strike different to the others was a) the sheer number of people who went on strike, last time I think only about half the teachers did and b) that this time it wasn't just teachers, it was people from all the public domains, the lack of transport was particularly noticeable. I'm disappointed that I did make it out to see the actual demonstration, but they say that if nothing changes (which they don't think it will) there will be another one soon!

My favourite quote of this week comes from Cecile, who was running a scrapbook making workshop one evening. Apparently there is no French translation for "scrap" so they have turned it into a French verb, "Je vais scrapper"! It sounds utterly ridiculous! There are many Anglicisms I hear everyday, "le meeting", "le blog" and of course "le weekend", but this one is really taking it too far! Tu aimes scrapper?! Other things which amuse me too are when words have slightly diferent meanings between the two languages, lately I have noticed them saying "impeccable" a lot, which translates as "perfect" but the thought of someone relying "impecable" in English to a suggestion is quite funny.

Well that's the lot for now, I'm sure there'll be an update on Monday following on from this weekend of excitemet! I'm off now, ready to welcome the English and start February with a bang with our road trip up to Brittany, let's hope that she doesn't live up to her reputation of being very wet!