The Worst Weather Since 1989!

It's been, as ever, a busy few days and I can't believe it's only 5 days since my last post, many goings-on to recount!

Thursday was a busy day at school, but not in the way it should have been. I turned up at school at break time to find quite a hubbub in the staff room. There was a great debate circling around one teacher who was in tears, I had absolutely no idea at all what was going on and couldn't make out a word, lots of very rapid French speech early in the morning is never good! After the bell had gone for the end of break and the crowd dispersed, fortunately one teacher explained (slowly!) what had happened. As it turned out, one if the English teachers had been hit by a pupil and been knocked over. In falling she'd hit herself against something and had a really large gash on her hip, she then had to go to the doctors. Incidents like that at school are far from common (although it's not the first dramatics), but I can't say that I was oversurprised, there are some rough pupils here. Anyway, the silver lining of the matter was that my classes for the morning were cancelled!

Thursday's events didn't end there however! As usual, Thursday is the day of my English club. I had told the vie scolaire (the people who organise things like extra curricular activities) that there was to be a limit of 15 pupils allowed to the club, and so last week it was full. This week however, 24 turned up! Despite being very pleased that it's popularity has grown, coping with all these pupils was an absolute nightmare!!! I had an activity prepared, which they ended up doing principally in French (I gave up trying to enforce English!) and they finished it a bit early so took to drawing all over the board with the markers. It was 45 minutes of absolute bedlam and I think that the fact that it was a wet break and they were all highly charged with energy helped to lead to absolute chaos! I just do not know how teachers cope with a class full of 30. I think the main problem I have, is the complete lack of any authority. However I think that I would rather a riotous club (having fun, all be it not in English!) than me being strict and a group of diligent silent pupils turning up, like I had the first week. Anyway it was a stressful hour and I think this week I will go for a level of energy in between the two extremes!

On Thursday afternoon I had one of the lessons with pupils doing their Comenius guide to the stones of the town. It was an amusing hour, from my point of view, possibly not from that of the teacher, who wanted the work finished by the end of the hour, which it was not. The pupils were in a funny mood, again I'm blaming the wet break for this! Firstly they all find the work pretty dull, (possibly quite rightly!) and can't believe that the Italian and Spanish pupils will be interested in the history of stone in our town. Secondly, some of them spent a lot of the afternoon pretending not to understand a word I told them, a classic joke, which incidentally I'm pretty sure I used myself at school, so I still find this more funny than frustrating!

On Thursday evening Marta, Miguel, Manu and I went to a student event in La Roche. It was a really fun night, there must have been several thousand students there and the music was very good, not too much of the usual dodgy French stuff!!! I think what made it such a success was that for the French students, it was a really special event. Unlike at British universities, here in La Roche, they don't seem to have organised events every week so this one was the only time they all come together. I do feel sorry for them not having the weekly Wednesday night fun that we do, they are truly missing out. In fact on the whole, from talking to students here, the French student experience is totally different to ours. Most seem to have lessons from 9 until 6 every day and shed loads of work on top of that, unimaginable!

The final event of Thursday was once I'd got back to the foyer in the early hours of the morning (remembering here that European nightlife doesn't begin until midnight!). There was not one, but two fire alarms, talk about a bad end to an eventful day! It was raining and we had to stand outside for 20 minutes each time, I think after the second one it was about 6am, classes starting at 8am, not good at all!

Fortunately I only had one class in the morning as afterwards I'd arranged to go on a school trip to a concert with the youngest year group. I was expecting to be listening to a visiting African group and following on from such a bad night's sleep I thought it might wake me up a bit. Imagine my surprise to find myself at a concert of Schuburt and Bach! Either I completely misunderstood, or we went to the wrong concert! Unfortunately I think the former is the case, and the teacher must have thought my questions relating to African music very strange!

The morning was even more eventful, as it turned out that we were being filmed for a broadcast on Canal 15, a TV station here. However this does mean that I spent the latter half of the concert trying to shush pupils who were bored of Schubert and making so much noise that the TV team were worried that it would ruin the quality of the sound. The first time that they asked us to be quiet, a man came over and addressed my group, I'm pretty sure he thought that I was an oversized pupil as some of his words were addressed directly at me!! I then took a more proactive role in the shushing of pupils, but every time I got out of my seat to creep down the aisle, I forgot that the seats were the sort that jump up, so it made a bit of a crash every time! Oh dear!

After that eventful end to the week I was really looking forward to the weekend away that we had planned. Iliana, Manu, Marta, Miguel and I had booked to go to Poitiers and Niort for the weekend. We feel like we've pretty much exhausted all that La Roche has to offer, so time to venture away. The weekend before I rang up to book the hostel in Poitiers. We decided to book it in my name, as although not the most simple, it's far shorter than that of the others who all seem to have about 4 surnames! However, my name is not simple from a French point of view and the man couldn't for the life of him understand what I was getting at! When we arrived it turned out that we were booked under Laure Longwoat!

We spent the Saturday sight seeing in Poitiers, on possibly the wettest, windiest day of the year! By 10am we were already soaked to the skin, but we didn't let that deter our fun! Poitiers is really good for tourists (although the tourist information office was absolutely useless!), as there are lines painted on the pavement and you follow them round and are shown all the main sights. So we did this, and I have to say that I have never ever visited so many churches. I haven't counted them yet, but from the ones that I can remember I think that we saw at least 11! Needless to say, we were feeling very spiritual by the end of the weekend, but also grateful to the churches as they were the best shelter from the elements! The rain and wind absolutely lashed down all day, our photos are pretty grey. Marta had to buy an umbrella but by the end of the weekend it was in such a state, 3 broken metal sticks and permanently inside out, we had to throw it away.

On Sunday morning we took a train to another town called Niort, which, like every town in France, was dead to the world on a Sunday morning. So we pottered around, chiefly looking at more churches! Eventually we stumbled upon the market...and people! The market was packed and typically French, lots of delicious smelling cheeses and hams, fresh vegetables, wines and of course the token accordion player playing French music! We then visited the museums, one of which was really extensive, with everything from modern photos, to a display on the 20th century French school (which was really interesting) to 3 rooms full of stuffed birds, not my cup of tea at all!!!

Once we'd exhausted all photo opportunities of this small town we returned to the station, only to be greeted by signs saying things like "warning do not attempt to travel today" and "most trains cancelled or severely delayed". We were utterly bemused by this and wondered what on earth was going on. When we got to the desk to enquire about our tickets and what had happened the women just looked at us incredulously and I think the conversation went along the lines of:
Us: What's happened?
Lady at desk: Have you not seen the news in the last 24 hours?!
Us: Er no, we've been travelling.
Lady at desk: Well have you not even been outside today?!
The lady then informed us that there had been hurricane force winds, 3 deaths and the trainlines were completely impassable. She then preceeded to tell us, accompanied by nods from the people around us, that France hadn't had winds this bad since 1989. There were many murmurs and nods of agreement to this! "1989, oh that awful weather"! It reminded me distinctly of a Vicar of Dibley episode where they all harp on about the "Great Flood of 1992" or something! So admittedly we had realised that the weather had been really bad, but not quite to such an extent! The annoying thing was that there were limited train services, it took us about 4 hours longer than it should have done to get home, much waiting around at the station.

However despite all the mishaps it was a fun weekend. I think my Spanish has come on in leaps and bounds, spending a weekend with 4 native Spanish speakers is certainly a way to learn a language, even if it did mean that for many chunks of the day I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about! I also think that my English is becoming slightly tainted, I'm picking up all sorts of funny grammar structures from them, they do speak English very well but some times their choice of verb or adjective is just a bit off the mark, it makes me chuckle! Thinking of choice of words, in the Comenius language guide we have here at school, "cheerio" is written as the number one form of saying goodbye in English, I think I will really crack up if all the Italians and Spaniards say that to me when they come on the visit!

Am back at school today and have just been accosted by 2 teachers who were very keen for me to log into facebook so that they could have a look at the profiles of the English pupils who are coming next week! Fortunately I can't access their accounts. They were interested because they've received the sheets on each pupil and judging by the photos, they're quite a funny bunch! Let's just say a lot of bleached blonde hair, pink clothes and big hooped earrings! The English girls have also written lots of really funny things on their forms, such as "I shower every day without fail", I wonder what on earth they're getting at with that one! Maybe they've heard some myth about the French not being very clean!!!

Today is the start of the Chinese New Year, and as ever, the lunch at the canteen was themed. Yet the teachers did seem rather unimpressed with the Chinese cuisine and many jokes that their cuisine is far superior were cracked! What was also funny was hearing them trying to speak the few Chinese words they know, listening to Chinese in a thick French accent is absolute comedy. I'm not an expert, but even I can tell that that was bad!

The other main conversation at lunch today was interesting, I think it started with the claim that all French pupils who are called Kevin or Jason are naughty, there are 3 or 4 here at school, and it's quite true. They then came to the conclusion that anyone with an British or American sounding name must be bad, the logic behind this is that the mothers spend too much time watching imported TV and are therefore uneducated! A bit of a far fetched conclusion if you ask me but amusing none the less!

Just a few other observations which I've noted of late and that I'll leave you with, before I finish this outrageously long post!

All the French people that I know who have been to Britain lately love Primark. And with the current exchange rate is cheaper than ever for them.

There are some French words that, however hard I try, I will never ever be able to successfully pronounce, aout (French for August) being one of them. This is particularly problematic as it is of course my month of birth, how mean of them to choose such a difficult word!

Many Europeans don't own a kettle. Seriously! Several French people and nearly all the Spaniards don't have one, they either put water on the stove to boil (on the rare opportunity that they want a cup of tea), or use their fancy coffee machine. Marta couldn't even think of the word to translate it into Spanish for me!

Americans really do know nothing about football, or rather soccer. We were all astounded that Clare didn't know who Ronaldinho is, and when playing a celebrity game persistently called him Ron Eisenhower!

So that's life in La Roche up to date, thank you for reading, until next time, cheerio!!!