I'm at home. And I forgot I had this post waiting to be published. Shhhh.

So I promised myself that I wouldn't be one of those annoying people who says that they will be more regular with their posting, and then only comes up with a post 3 weeks later. I haven't got an excuse to bore you with, so I'll just get on with it :) I'm sorry for my absence, but in 3 days time I'll be home (yaaaaaaaay!) so I can catch up with you all then!

Two weekends ago, I decided I wanted to experience a Christmas market somewhere other than France. Ideally Germany would've been great, being the place where they actually come from, but the train to Freiburg is complicated, so I decided to go to Basel instead and see what the Swiss markets are like!

If I've learnt one thing about myself so far on my year abroad, it's that I'm bad at travelling on my own. I can't read maps, ticket machines hate me, and more often than not I just end up making a massive fool of myself. On the various day trips I've taken alone so far, I've been shouted at in English by an Italian train ticket machine, put pounds into a tram ticket machine that only accepted euros, burst into tears on an airplane because I thought we were running out of runway on take-off (that was a particularly bad day), and knocked over a flowerpot in a train station, amongst other embarrassing things. Basel was no exception. Getting off the train and heading towards customs, I realised that I'd forgotten my passport. Luckily Swiss immigration don't check everybody, only every 4 or 5 people, so I just did my best to look as innocent and Swiss as possible and squeezed through the border. Getting back into France sans passeport is no problem, but I did have issues buying my ticket (it's those pesky machines again). Basically, it would only accept euros, but I only had Swiss francs on me and the cash machine wouldn't let me take out euros, so I resorted to paying with my card. You've guessed it, the card got stuck in the slot and I was causing a backlog of people wanting to use what seemed to be the only machine in the station where you can buy tickets for France, so I waved over a couple of policemen who were walking past. I explained to them in French my problems, thinking they'd understand me because they were hanging around French customs. But no, they only spoke German. So in my non-existent German and their non-existent French I communicated my issue and after giving it a go themselves, my card had to be yanked out of the machine by a handy pair of pliers they just happened to have on them. I paid almost the entire 7 euro fare with a bunch of 5 cent coins that were lurking at the bottom of my bag, then quickly got on the train and tried to avoid eye-contact with all the people who had been behind me in the queue...

Despite my ineptitude at life, I did have a good day in Switzerland. The first place I headed was the Dreiländereck, or Three Countries Corner. It's pretty much what the name suggests- a corner where the borders of France, Germany and Switzerland meet. It's marked by a pole with flags on and you can walk between the three countries freely (luckily for me)! Fraid I can't add on any photos from my camera at the mo because the ipad doesn't have a SD card slot, but I'll do an album and put a link up to it once I'm home.

I then headed back across the Rhine towards the Christmas Market. It was my favourite one I'd been to so far despite being horrendously crowded, and stenching of mulled wine mixed with sauerkraut. This one was more oriented towards crafts and local stallholders than food and drink which made it perfect for Christmas shopping ideas!

You know those annoying people who stop suddenly when you're walking behind them, or who stand in the middle of a busy walkway, usually with a pushchair and looking at you as if to announce that being a parent gives them the right to get in everyone else's way, or looking through a pair of binoculars and holding a lonely planet guidebook? Well those people are annoying at the best of times, but in a Christmas market, it is multiplied by 1000000000000000000, and after half an hour I had to escape to the high-street and duck into H&M for some relative peace and quiet.

All in all though, I love Switzerland, and Basel really shouldn't be overshadowed by Strasbourg as a place to visit at Christmas. Although I've been feeling very settled and happy in France for the last couple of weeks, I definitely feel like I fit in more in Switzerland so it's nice to go there every now and then for a change of scenery.

School has had it's usual ups and downs. I was asked by a teacher at my main school to do a lesson about British food, so thought I'd use the same lesson that I do every week with small groups of trainee chefs at the catering college. What a mistake that was. With the trainee chefs I can unsurprisingly have a really good conversation about food and regional specialities and nutrition, while with the trainee engineers (who are the same age as the chefs) I got told "the strangest thing I have ever eaten is my grandmother" and "curry is from Germany". I think it's safe to say that my lessons at the catering college are much more rewarding. Because they are on such vocational, career-oriented courses, and because they all have to do work placements, they understand how important English is to their futures and more often than not they are really motivated to do the work, and grateful to me for coming here to teach them.

Christmas has landed in Guebwiller, and the place is just as weird as ever. They've put speakers on the shopfronts on the high-street and they blast out Christmas music all day long. It's surreal when you go into town at lunch because everything is closed and deserted, but 'Oh Christmas Tree' plays on a loop repeating the French, German, and occasionally even the English one over and over again. You get a horrible sensation that the creepy music is following you as well because as soon as you get out of earshot of one speaker, you come into range of the next one and you can't escape it!

Guebwiller is growing on me though finally. This week I went to the brand new local cinema to see the Hunger Games! The film was brilliant, and I could tell that they'd quoted the book in the film and translated it directly- a perfect example of how if directors stick to the version of the story in book, the film will always turn out well and please the fans. I think I will make going to the cinema here a regular thing because it was good to have the intensive French listening practice without the  bizarre Alsatian accent causing communication problems, and it was so cheap! The ticket, popcorn and a drink set me back just 11 euros, whereas in Crawley you'd pay that just for the price of the ticket! I also saw Casse-Tête Chinois with my housemates, which is the third in the series that started with L'Auberge Espagnole. It's a French film but set in New York with some British and American actors so the entire thing flits between English and French. It was nice to watch a film with those transitions between the languages and understand conversations where one side is French and the other English. I always think that I'm better at understanding written French than spoken French, but going to the cinema and fairly effortlessly being able to follow most of the goings on is a handy little confidence booster.

You remember last week how I said I'd written a grumpy, moany post after a bad week? Well I decided not to post that because it wouldn't do any good and it was all very subjective. I have been thinking since though that if anyone stumbled across my blog who was thinking of applying to the language assistants program, or who has applied already, they would want an honest opinion of the experience and what to expect from it. So from now on I will be completely honest about the bad, as well as the good sides of a year abroad.

The biggest problem I've been facing is the lack of organisation issue. It's been a theme that has been running through everything I've done since getting to France and is one quirk of the culture that is taking longer to get used to than the others. When I left work on Thursday last week (I had no classes scheduled at that school on Friday), there were no hours written up on my timetable for the following week, and since I wasn't in the next day, I wouldn't be able to check if I had been given any. I emailed the head of English over the weekend to explain the situation and ask for advice and the reply I got was that if no teacher had contacted me yet about what to do in their lesson, I shouldn't have any lessons on Monday. One of the conditions of me having a constantly changing timetable is that the profs have to make sure that they write up the hours they want me for the following week before I leave work for the week. So going by that rule, I shouldn't have had to turn up at all. I wouldn't have felt at all comfortable with that though, hence the email.

All was well on Sunday and the head of English said she would look at my timetable the next day and email it to me. Monday morning, I woke up to find out that one of the teachers had just texted my housemate (not sure why they didn't come straight to me, but whatever), to say that I had a lesson at 2pm. That gave me all of 3 hours to get ready, plan a lesson, find and print resources and  get myself to work which is an hour's walk away and it was icy that day so I couldn't cycle. Safe to say I was not best pleased!

After some exchanging of emails, the head of English must've explained the situation to the teacher in question and my housemate (again, I was sitting refreshing my emails so I don't know what that was about) got a text to say it had been cancelled and I could do it on Tuesday instead. UGGGHHH. I finally ended up with a full week's work, but I'm fed up of being expected to hang around at home waiting to be summoned to work, when if I had a timetable like I should, I could actually go places and practice my French rather than making do with watching French YouTubers on the dodgy internet and enduring listening to some dismal hip-hop music on the radio in order to hear some French chat every now and then.

Right, now that's out, back to happy things. This weekend was the village Church's Christmas concert. We sang in the choir and it was the culmination of all the rehearsing we've done over the last 9 weeks. We sang with the primary school choir and it was a really lovely evening of warbling followed by Pinot and cake.  I managed to embarrass myself and get a reputation as the English idiot among the old folk of the village by spilling half a glass of wine and dropping my cake on the floor at the start of the evening, but they thanked us for singing with them in their speech and although rehearsing standing up for two hours twice a week did start to drag after the first couple of weeks, I'm glad I did it and it has helped my French in a small way. We've also learnt some Alsatian so I feel like we've really been making a good effort to assimilate into the local community. As weird as I think Alsace is sometimes, it has is interesting little quirks and living in a village really gives you a much better insight into the customs and traditional way of life that I wouldn't get if I had been placed in Strasbourg or even Mulhouse or Colmar. Alongside the fact that I'm fairly sure I would've been run over by a tram or bike in Strasbourg by now (I seriously need to learn that bike lanes exist in Europe and not walk into them quite so frequently), I am seeing being put in a small place as a sign that there is more to a year abroad than just learning the language, and I am learning things about French culture and living independently that it wouldn't be impossible to find in a city, but it would be harder to access on a daily basis.

On Saturday Amy and I went to the Christmas market in Strasbourg. Strasbourg gets so much attention as the best Christmas market around so I won't go on and on about it. I would highly recommend going for the Christmas market alone, but it's such a lovely city anyway and touching distance from Germany and all the markets there that it deserves it's self-appointed title of "Capitale de Noël". Even Basel is easily reachable from Strasbourg, and I recommend Basel to absolutely everyone, even if it does have scary ticket machines.

Right, so that's an update of my last couple of weeks. At the moment I'm waiting to check in for my flight home at Basel airport. It's an unusual place because half of the airport is in Switzerland and the other half is in France. It's a tiny little terminal but they manage to make it confusing by putting the easyjet check-in desk in the Swiss side of the airport. Oooooh, a fight just broke out outside the café I'm sitting in and when the waitress tried to call the police she couldn't because she is French and therefore her French phone doesn't work in Switzerland, despite being a mere 20 metres from France.

I'll sign off there so I can go and check-in. I'm only home for a couple of weeks over the holidays so   my next post won't be a long wait away.

Merry Christmas everyone!
Alice

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...... And that I'm a bad blogger.

It was going to happen at some point. I was always going to find myself with writer's block and neglect my blog for a few weeks. In all honesty, the Alsatian countryside hasn't been providing me with much inspiration recently and things have just been trundling along at work without much to report. I did hit the week nine wall last week which resulted in me writing a long, ranty post about how work is rubbish and my town is narrow-minded and chavvy. But I'm past that now and although I'll keep my rant stored on my computer as a reminder that it is therapeutic to get it all out sometimes, I won't put it on here because it would give the impression that I have sunk into a deep pickle and that I'm on the verge on developing dependency problems. Which just to reassure you, isn't the case at all, and without wanting to tempt fate, I've been having a really enjoyable time during the last few weeks!

The week nine blues were always going to rear their ugly head and in hindsight I should've been a lot better prepared. The longest I ever did at university before coming home was eight weeks, after which I was desperate to go back for some home comforts and a change of scenery. In Italy, I was horribly homesick in week nine because I was far enough into my trip that my surroundings were becoming too familiar and no longer exciting, while I was far enough away still from the end of my stay that home felt a long way away. Alas, the same happened here. I shan't dwell though, because now that week nine is over, I feel like I'm on the home straight- only two and a half weeks until I can touch down on English soil :)

We have been spending our weekends browsing art galleries, antique shops and the local pubs, baking brownies (hello, procrastibaking) and doing some arts and crafts to prepare for Christmas! The last three weekends have been fantastic and although we haven't travelled that far, I feel like I'm getting to know my local area much better and discovering what my region itself has to offer, instead of just using it as a base to get to other places. This weekend just passed, I went to Strasbourg to see the Christmas lights being switched on in the self-proclaimed "Capital of Christmas". I joined a few of the other other assistants in the area to watch the show, which featured people dressed as giant marshmallows and some completely un-Christmassy French country music, and have a browse around the first stalls to open in the world-famous Strasbourg Christmas market. We all joined in with the countdown to the lights going on, but everyone was looking towards the giant tree and we completely missed the rest of the lights, which it turns out were actually behind us and the tree was lit up layer on. The tree is apparently the tallest Christmas tree in Europe and when lit up at nighttime is spectacular, if a bit precarious in the wind. Despite the freezing temperatures (it was literally minus 2), and it being the most politicised event I've ever stumbled across (someone important from the Croatian government did a speech thanking the EU for welcoming them into the organisation and they projected the national flags of France and Croatia onto a government building while All You Need is Love played loudly in the square), I couldn't help but feel festive, and thankful that Alsace is arguably one of the very best places in the world to spend the run up to the festive season!

The next day, my housemates and I braced the horrible temperatures again to visit the Mulhouse Christmas market. It was't too crowded so we had a nice walk around and I managed to get a bit of Christmas shopping done while enjoying a mulled cider and a roasted chestnut crêpe!

The next day we continued our tour of the local marchés de Noël with a visit to the Issenheim and Guebwiller offerings. They weren't quite as impressive as Strasbourg and Mulhouse, but it was nice to have a walk around the town and see some of the local Christmas traditions. We followed our four markets in one weekend with a delicious Christmas dinner while watching a festive film and sharing a bottle of Alsatian champagne to finish off a great weekend and celebrate the start of the Christmas countdown!

In terms of work, I'm actually thoroughly enjoying my job. The lack of organisation in the schools and sometimes being treated like supply teachers by the profs isn't ideal, but when I'm in a lesson and can just focus on the teaching, I love it. I really never expected to enjoy teaching as much as I do! It's such a rewarding job, and for every cheeky little kid who messes around in class, there are several of his or her classmates who are genuinely motivated and hardworking. When I see them using something that I have taught them, or when you explain something that they have never understood before and you see the moment of recognition on their faces, it feels really lovely and I do feel so lucky to have a job that I love.

I'll make this a short one because lesson planning awaits. I'm sure that these last few weeks before the holidays will throw up some good blog-writing material as I have trips planned to Strasbourg and possibly Basel or Freiburg for my last two weekends here, and I intend to make all my lessons from next week onwards about Christmas, so pop back soon! And thank you to all of you faithful readers who stick with my blog even when I don't, you're awesome :)

Love to you all, Alice x

9 Days, 3 Countries, and a Whole Lot of Trains

The keen among you will have noticed that my hiatus has been significantly longer than the two weeks that I initially said I would be away for. Long story short, my laptop has been playing up for some time and when I got home from my travels I sat down to try to fix it. I wasn't getting very far anyway (my failing GCSE I.T. was not unjustified unfortunately), but let's just say that while a glass of coke may fuel me, it does not mix so well with electrical goods and my laptop died a sudden, and for now, unfixable death...

Anyway, on to the good bit. It turns out that French schools have a two week half term October holiday, conveniently placed just three weeks after the assistants start work! Obviously I wasn't going to spend all that time hanging around in Guebwiller when such a beautiful thing as the interailing ticket exists in the world, so at a horrible time of the morning I set off for the 5 and a half hour TGV journey which would take me to the south of France. The only thing I have to say about my journey from Mulhouse to Marseille is that it turns out France is a pretty big country. It especially feels like it when you are sitting opposite a man who feels the need to tap out the rhythm of the song he is listening to on the tabletop all the way to Provence and when you sit next to a woman who decides that the best way to practice her English at that particular moment was to blatantly stare at my Good Food magazine over my shoulder while I was trying to read it. Admittedly, the pumpkin pie recipe did look pretty appetising, but it didn't make for the most relaxing journey of my life, and I was happy when we finally pulled into Marseille. At first we went through the banlieues that Marseille is infamous for, and I couldn't help asking myself at this late moment why we'd chosen to start the holiday in what is often perceived to be the most violent city in France. But soon enough, the Mediterranean Sea came into view and I felt like Mr Bean when he finally gets to Cannes and sees the beach and all is well with the world. 

 
The waiting room at Marseille St Charles train station is the nicest I have ever had the pleasure of using. There were old suitcases plastered to the walls, a warm mediterranean breeze was wafting in 
through the doors, and it even had it's own library where you could sit and read or take a book in exchange for leaving one behind. All that and it was perfectly suited to people-watching, which made it pretty much my ideal place to wait for a couple of hours, despite some difficulties buying lunch (a French woman tried to explain to me how to form a queue... at least maybe I'm not coming across as so British anymore, if she had been able to figure out my nationality she would have known that I know perfectly well how to form a queue thank you very much). But anyway, nice as it was, I can't 
ever go back there because my stupidly overstuffed rucksack managed to knock over a flowerpot on my way out. It didn't break thankfully, but there was soil all over the floor so I can't see myself being welcomed back with open arms anytime soon unfortunately.

All was well again though when Amy arrived and I no longer had to be solely responsible for navigation. And of course having a proper catch-up for the first time in 4 months was pretty good too! We made our way to the first hostel of the trip, a converted townhouse building between the train station and the seafront. It was a really nice size- big enough that there were always people around but small enough that it didn't feel weird to strike up a conversation with strangers while cooking dinner. The accommodation consisted of small southern-looking buildings with terracotta roofs and we were in a six bed dorm with, coincidently, other English language assistants from Canada and 
Ireland! It was a great place to start the trip and probably the nicest hostel of the entire holiday. We spent the first evening exploring the Vieux Port area of the Marseille waterfront and walked up to
 a fort. Everything seemed so far removed from what I've been getting used to in Alsace that it was hard to believe that I hadn't actually crossed an international border. There was definitely a Spanish 
feel to the architecture and an unfamiliar twang to the accent that sounded almost like a dialect when compared to the Alsatian way of speaking that I've been dealing with.

Our full day in Marseille involved climbing a hill. Yes, we did actually exercise on holiday believe it or not! As murderous as the last few flights of steps were, the Notre Dame de la Garde cathedral at the top was absolutely incredible and despite nearly being blown off the top, the views were stunning too. 

 



Next up, was the beach! Being on the beach in 27°C heat at the end of October is not something we had been expecting, and as a result looked a bit silly- me in my jeans, Amy in her walking boots- trudging towards the sea. I had my first ever dip in the Mediterranean though, and even if my clothes were covered in sand for the rest of the holiday and the sea air turned my hair a horrible crusty texture for at least 3 days afterwards, it was so worth catching those last few sun rays of the year. It felt very strange to be back in summer, when just a week earlier I'd been wrapped up in a scarf and wearing gloves and a wooly hat to survive the cycle to work, but it was much appreciated. 

Obviously, when we passed a merry-go-round on the walk back, it was too much of a temptation to resist...



Next up, was Aix-en-Provence! As the twin town of my favourite city of them all, I was really looking forward to seeing how similar Aix really is to Bath. Unfortunately we only got to spend a few hours there, but I really liked the café-culture feel of it and the familiar studenty yet classy-ness. Put you hand up if it reminds you of somewhere...



The third city we visited was Grenoble, and we didn't really know what to expect. I think in all honesty we chose to spend a couple of days there for it's convenient location between Marseille and Geneva. I vaguely remembered something about Grenoble having skiing, but I wasn't really sure and neither of us had done any research beforehand. However, as the main city in the Rhone-Alpes region, we expected at least some hills.
 
The train ride from Lyon to Grenoble revealed pretty flat scenery and even over halfway into the 
journey, the hills weren't getting any bigger. It got dark pretty quickly and then the train suddenly came to a standstill between stations. Nobody knew what was going on, there was a thunderstorm raging outside, and we couldn't understand what the lady on the speaker system was saying due to her heavy southern accent and stressed out tone. I suspected dementors, but it turns out that it was nothing so exciting and French trains are just too pathetic to run when there is lightning in the vicinity. I know that British trains are useless in the snow, but a thunderstorm? Really, France?
 
Anyway, we finally reached Grenoble in the dark and took the tram to the hotel. Still unsure as to whether the city was actually famous for it's mountains, or if we'd ended up in the back of beyond, we ended the day deciding just to try to find a tourist information centre to look for something to do in the morning.
 
By now you are all probably yelling at your computer screens and asking how we could be so ignorant because it turns out that, yes, Grenoble has mountains. Pretty big ones! And it is also in the middle of France's number one area for skiing in the winter. I'm glad in a way though that we had no clue though because it meant a lovely surprise when I opened the curtains the next morning to find a huge mountain, and my first ever glimpse of the Alps.

The tram ride back into the city confirmed that Grenoble is absolutely beautiful, and it was appreciated even more because we hadn't expected it. The accent was really easy to understand, at least compared to Marseille and Alsace. Nobody heard our accents and insisted on speaking English, everybody was happy to let us practise and make an effort which was much appreciated. There was 
just a really laid-back atmosphere and a big student population, while at the same time the whole city was incredibly family friendly, which gave it a really homely feeling. I even found myself having a peek at the estate agents advertising boards to see what apartments here are like- definitely a good sign of a place worth going back to! 

 
There is something strange about having palm trees and mountains in the same place...



On the advice of the lovely people at the tourist information office, we headed towards the "telepherique" (apologies for the lack of accents on the e, if anyone can let me know how to get French symbols on an iPad, it would be much appreciated!) Basically, the telepherique is a cable car that resembles a series of poke balls which shuttle you up and down the side of a mountain. We bought aller simples, deciding that climbing up another hill was pushing it for one holiday, but resolved that we would walk down. The journey itself is much like any other cable car journey you might take, but it's when you reach the top that you are rewarded with the most insanely beautiful views. We were extremely lucky that the weather was perfect, and a clear blue sky punctuated with the dark silhouettes of the Alps in the distance with the city stretching out from below made for some excited photo-taking and bewilderment at how we could have ever thought that Grenoble wouldn't be anything more than a convenient place to have a look round. I think we both agreed that it was our favourite city we visited, and if you ever have the chance to see it for yourself, there telepherique is a great place to start.

We decided in the evening that we'd earned a decent meal, and that it would be a good idea to sample some local dishes. I have to say that Amy was brave and got the regional dish but I chickened
out and stuck with what I know by having pizza. Although the piazza we sat in was gorgeous and there was a great atmosphere, the cook had for some unknown reason decided that it is healthy to eat raw eggs. My pizza arrived with an egg cracked over the top of it, presumably because the heat of the pizza would cook it, but the pizza wasn't nearly hot enough for that and I ended up with a raw egg plonked randomly on top of my dinner. If that wasn't bad enough, we kept getting stared at for being the only ones eating dinner at 6pm. The staff had to set the table especially for us because no one else started eating until we had finished. We didn't really care though, not even raw food and being judged for our eating habits could spoil our image of Grenoble as a really quite amazing place.

So next up was not just a new city, but a new country as well! We were really excited getting into Geneva, being for both of us our first time in Switzerland, and overall it really didn't disappoint. I was surprised at how different things seemed from France from the moment we stepped off the train. I expected that the French speaking area would be just like France, but there were definite differences in the accent and the language, and just the general feel of the place. Our hostel here was very big, more like a hotel really and the stereotype of the Swiss being overly paranoid manifested itself in the way we had key cards for everything from the front door to the loos, and we were given these industrial-looking lockers in which to leave our stuff during the day- a stark contrast from Marseille where the attitude hade been more laid back and trusting. On our way out that first evening, we noticed a school group outside. It had never really crossed our minds before that schools might use youth hostels for accommodation, and they even turned out to be British! I admit that I quite enjoyed having other British people around, and while not as much as a novelty as it had been in Italy, hearing English being spoken by natives is a lovely thing when you're far from home. Something that really struck me about the hostels we stayed in was that the language automatically opted for was English. Even though we were in predominantly French-speaking areas, you were more likely to meet English speakers in the hostels. It was quite nice to chat to people in English for a change and being as we were on holiday, I didn't feel too guilty for not taking up every opportunity to speak French

The reason that we were surrounded by A Level physics groups was that Geneva is the location of CERN, where they built the Large Hadron Collider- something that both of us had completely forgotten about, but which we ended up visiting during our one full day there. We had planned on going to the UN headquarters, as being Languages and European Studies students we had more hope of understanding a bit of what was going on there, and we wanted to check out the interpreting labs to see what working there would be like. After somehow gaining a following of several dozen Chinese tourists, we headed towards where the tours started from, only to find the place empty. After wandering round for a while, we managed to set of a security alarm and get sent off by a gun wielding security officer. He was lovely though and immediately started talking to us in English so we really must have been giving off lost tourist vibes!

So we ended up at the hadron collider, where we really had no clue what was going on. I tried to recall some information from GCSE physics, but that was difficult enough in English so in Swiss French I had even less of an idea as to what was occurring. Despite not really understanding anything, we actually had a lot of fun reading about quantum foam, singing the Big Bang Theory theme song, and annoying members of a Czech astronomy society by clogging up the gift shop with my big rucksack. Here is me sitting in a particle, as you do...



I came out of the museum feeling as though I'd actually learnt something, and if my absolutely non-sciency brain managed to absorb some information, then it must have been a good place. I'd definitely recommend popping over there if you're ever in Geneva, although to see the actual machine and go underground you have to be with an organised group and book ages in advance. We just went to the museum and gift shop. It doesn't just have stuff about the hadron collider though- we saw the server on which the internet was invented and found out that I share a name with part of the LHC!



Geneva itself is a lovely place. I struggled to picture in my head what a Swiss city would be like before we got there because I always imagine Switzerland in my head as full of mountains and cheese. My first impressions of Geneva were that it was horrendously expensive, there were sports cars and super cars everywhere, even in the hostel car park! And that Lake Geneva, or Lac Leman as they call it, is huge and beautiful. It felt like we were at the coast and the waterfront area has a great atmosphere. If you stand in the right place, you can even see Mont Blanc from the lakeside! A view of the biggest mountain and the biggest lake in Europe at the same time is always going to be a great thing to see, as long as you can dodge the city's main attraction which is hard to avoid wherever you are lakeside. I am talking about this...



No, it's not a burst water pipe, it is the Jet d'Eau, one of the city's main landmarks. I am undecided on it's purpose and can't help thinking that they could've come up with a better way of drawing visitors to the place. But there you go, the Swiss seem to think this is what people want to see on their holidays...

After CERN, we headed towards the old town area. It felt much more like France than what we had seen up until that point with the pretty European buildings and plentiful supply of continental-style cafes, and we visited the Sainte-Pierre cathedral, the Ile-Rousseau, and the red light district. The last one accidentally of course.

On our last evening in Switzerland, we'd had enough of food being expensive and waiting for restaurants to open at times that didn't suit our eating habits as English people, so we took the easy way out and ate in the hostel canteen with the British school kids and two ladies who were in the city for a university reunion. The food consisted of a regional speciality. Now we hadn't had much luck with regional specialities thus far, so when they rolled out a cheese fondue I was pleasantly surprised. Even if it did stink like death, and wasn't as inexpensive as we'd hoped, I was glad we had the opportunity to eat like the Swiss do!

The next day was the day on which we had the most trains to catch. In order to get from Geneva to Saarbrucken and cover three countries in the space of seven hours, we had to get three trains with not a great deal of time between each one. I was slightly worried because so far, every single French train we'd caught had been delayed in some way, and the day started off with a bad omen when it tipped down with rain as we were walking to the station, meaning a long day of sitting in wet jeans loomed. Everything went according to plan from there on though and we finally arrived in Germany. It was my first time in the country and Amy and I had a great couple of days recovering from moving around so much and going shopping! I got a bit overexcited because there is nothing that could be accurately described as a shopping centre in Guebwiller, and it was my first time indulging in a bit of retail therapy since leaving England! I don't know if it's just the shops around Guebwiller, but I have found that French clothes shops are a lot more expensive than I was expecting and there doesn't seem to be a lot of choice. So you can imagine my glee at having a three storey Primark, Forever 21, H&M, and a shop that strongly resembled Boots, at my disposal!

Anyway, that pretty much concludes our interailing (I'm still not actually sure how to spell this word, if I've been doing it wrong and it has been annoying you for the duration of this post, I apologise) adventures. For now anyway. I definitely caught the travel bug and getting a little taste of what it would be like to travel for an extended period of time has further strengthened my desire to have the gap year that I was never able to have. There is nothing that excites me more than the thought that I could just set off somewhere after university and see a new country every few weeks! For now though, I'm back at work solidly until Christmas. I won't bore you with any of the details from the last two weeks, it has pretty much been more of me being left to my own devices when it comes to lesson planning and teaching. I think I am definitely settling into some sort of routine now and I'm learning who's who in my classes and learning about what they do and don't respond well to, although  I don't think I will ever get my head round their names. They all seem to be called Florian, and they call me Aleeeeese. At least we've moved on from Aleechay.

If you've made it this far, you are brilliant, I hope it was 15 minutes well spent.
Until next week!
Aleeese.

Thankfully this week it has warmed up slightly so I no longer have to write while wearing gloves, but I am using a French keyboard. I’ve got used to the placement of the letters now, but you have to do weird things for punctuation like hold down the shift key for full stops and numbers so this post will only last as long as my patience does!

This week I finally started work properly at my second school. They have been very confusing with my hours and kept giving me times that clashed with my main school. When I did turn up, they gave me a group of pupils and told me to take them to my classroom for conversation classes. Except that I don’t have my own classroom yet seeing as it was only my second day there… Nobody seems to be taking responsibility for finding me a room and everyone I ask sends me to somebody else. I must have met every administration person in the school by now. 

In the end, despite being plonked in a room with no resources, not even a whiteboard, I actually really enjoyed my day at the catering school. The pupils’ level of English varies massively within each class- while some can have a conversation at an almost fluent pace, others struggle to understand simple words such as ‘friend’. I definitely prefer working with smaller groups because you can make sure that everyone gets a chance to talk and you can fit more activities into the hour. Big classes can be good too, but it’s easy for the quiet ones and the naughty ones to get away without saying anything. At school, I always wondered why the teachers were always trying to get me to talk more. I assumed that a class full of quiet people would be a teachers dream. But I get it now. As long as they listen when I’m talking, it’s much easier to teach a class of people who are keen to answer questions and read things out than a class full of well-behaved but quiet pupils. Especially when the main reason I’m here is to help them with their spoken English.

After realising at some point last week that my French hadn’t really improved at all since coming here, and despite choosing not to do Erasmus based on the fact that I thought I wouldn’t have enough interactions in French, I found myself in an English speaking bubble. I spent the whole weekend avoiding speaking French because I had a cold and even opted to use the self-service checkout at Leclerc. I think we realised that this wasn’t the best way to be going about things so now we have started speaking French at home for a few days a week and are making more of an effort to take part in local events. On Tuesday, the school hosted a ‘vin nouveau’ evening. It was basically a cheese and wine evening and involved tasting the ‘slightly fermented’ grape juice from the newly harvested grapes. It was delicious, if slightly more alcoholic than I was expecting. We spoke lots of French and got to meet some of the teachers from other departments within the school who we usually wouldn't see, so that was a good opportunity. And we found that after a glass of wine, speaking French comes a whole lot more naturally!

On Wednesday, we accompanied our landlady to the village choir (which may or may not have come about after the wine evening caused us to come home singing)! They seemed very keen to have us join in and we brought the average age of the choir members down by about 40 years. We sang lots of French Christmas songs and although I’m not sure my voice is an asset to the choir, we have been invited back after the holidays.

Speaking of which, I am now beginning my first two-week holiday of the year! We are given two weeks in October, two weeks at Christmas (in which I'm coming home, you lucky people ;)), two weeks in February and two weeks at Easter. I decided not to go home for this one because I’ve only been away for a few weeks, and if I went home at this point, despite now feeling pretty settled here, I would probably find it very difficult to come back.

Ooh I’ve just been given a free croissant! There are representatives from a bank in the staff room who are giving out pastries.

I was highly amused when I went to the school secretary to ask her to stamp my Erasmus grant form which confirms that I have turned up for work. The French word for an ink stamp is 'un tampon', so you can see why I had to stifle my giggles. Oh why am I so immature in these situations, I don't know who decided it was a good idea to let me become an adult, let alone teach classes...

Overall, my classes this week have been lovely and the pupils really are sweet. In the catering school, one of the girls in my post-A level group who is about my age was asking me about what it's like to be away from home in a strange country. She concerned herself with asking me how I was doing and if France was treating me well enough, which I thought was very thoughtful of her :) On the whole, they are really quite well motivated and as long as it's not an 8am class or a 5pm class, they are keen to listen and willing to work hard. For most of my lessons in the last few days, I have been doing a class based around the topic of social networking. I found an article about the oldest person ever to use Facebook and gave it to my classes to read. The woman who the article follows was called Ivy Bean and she was 102 years old when she joined Facebook, so the text mostly referred to her as "Mrs. Bean". Once we'd finished reading, I asked the pupils who Ivy Bean was and to give a summary of why she was famous. In almost every class, the answers were "acteur", "comedien" and "humoriste." Apparently Mr Bean is quite a popular character among English teachers to use in classes! When I then explained that the text talked about Mrs Bean, the responses I got were "Mr Bean has a wife who is old and uses Facebook?" Next time I will change the name to Smith or something else that won't cause confusion.

Another problem I've been having is the mixing up of languages. In Alsace, pupils start learning German when they're in primary school and only start English when they're eleven years old. The effect this seems to have is that their minds automatically jump to German when they go into foreign language mode. I've been told that someone's sister was born in the year "zwei thousand" and when I asked a question to which the answer was "number six", one boy shouted out what sounded like "sex! sex!" Turns out he had a moment of linguistic confusion and was actually saying "sechs, sechs" the German word for "six". 

My French cultural insight this week is about queueing. It is often said that the British love to queue, and the rest of the world doesn't, but what I've realised this week is that although queueing isn't done the same here, there is still a strict social etiquette surrounding it. At the supermarket, people mill around waiting for a checkout to become available without forming a definite queue, but when one does open up, whoever started milling around first, is the first to get served and everyone else steps aside. I noticed a similar thing at the bank. As I walked in, people were just standing round in no particular line, but as soon as a woman walked in and stepped up to the counter without joining the group of loiterers, everyone started tutting and saying (yes, out loud) how rude she was for jumping the queue! It seems that when you walk into a shop, you have to memerise everyone else in the shop so as to keep a mental note as to which people must get served before you and when someone new walks in, you have to keep an eye on them so you know when your time has come to step up to the guichet. It all seems very unnecessary to me. Why people can't just form a queue, I have no idea.

This is rapidly turning into a longer than anticipated post, but keep reading, there are pretty pictures coming up!

Today, one of the teachers at my second school offered to take the three of us who are working as assistants in the town to the "ecomusée". Basically, it's a piece of land that the locals have turned into a typical Alsatian village. I couldn't work out if they had physically moved the buildings from their original locations in order to better preserve them in this new place, or if they'd built these places from scratch in the style of the middle ages and using the traditional methods. I think it was probably the second, as you are allowed to walk around the houses and the village to see the traditional Alsatian set-up.

It's a really interesting place, and they do put a lot of effort into making it realistic- there are farmyard animals roaming about and people dressed in traditional clothing riding their old-fashioned bikes around the place. We also happened to be there on a day when they were shooting a film! Some bits of the village were cornered off and were functioning as the set for a German film. We went on a horse-drawn hayride through the fields which surround the village with a German tour group, and as we passed part of the film set which was in the woods, they all started crazily waving and shouting to a couple of the actors who were milling around there. So we think we may have ended up accidently spotting a German celebrity in the woods while on a hayride with his fan club... Only in Alsace...

Here are some snaps for you

Well amigos, that's it for this week. I'm off interailling for 9 days or so, so pop back soon for lots more photos and for more of me rambling on about France, plus a couple of new countries next week!

Alice x

Unrequited Love

Hello there dear readers, you join me on an unseasonably frosty evening in Eastern France, so frosty in fact that I have resorted to wearing gloves to type this. I will apologise in advance for any typos my frozen fingers may make. Apparently choosing to live in a region based in part on the fact that it is the driest and one of the warmest in France, was a mis-informed decision and the autumns here are actually colder than the ones back at home.

Well I am now over two weeks into my time in l'Hexagone, and I suppose it's being going fairly smoothly. Aside from the whole 3 degree centigrade thing of course. I have been settling into my new job and despite still using English more than French at the weekends and while teaching, I have been managing to speak a decent amount of French to my colleagues to sort out problems and make sure that I'm doing the right thing.

At the training day in Strasbourg, we were told that our schools should be giving us 10-15 days to observe classes before actually being put in front of them alone and told to educate them. Considering the lack of training we've had, I felt that even just a week of observations would do me the world of good. I would then be able to find out which topics the different classes are covering, their level of English and what I was actually expected to do with them. So I decided that these observation days weren't just going to be offered to me and I'd have to ask for them. I was going to have to be assertive. So basically I went to the head of English and told her what I'd been told in Strasbourg and emphasised that it would really benefit me and make my lesson plans a whole lot more effective and interesting if I could spend just a week learning the ropes. I was met with a reply of "well THAT'S new, we don't usually do things like that here." I'll take that as a no then... It's so easy in this kind of situation to think that that would never happen back home, and if it did I'm sure the parents would have something to say about the fact that the teachers are effectively using us as a babysitter for half the class so they can focus on a smaller number of kids at a time.

You're probably wondering what the title of this post refers to. Truth be told, I feel like France doesn't like me yet as much as I like France. Yes, I like croissants and croissants aren't good for me, but it's more than that. I feel like it's going to take me slightly longer to feel properly settled here than it did in Italy. It's not a bad thing, just something unexpected. I've begun to have a theory as to why I've experienced more feelings of culture shock here in my first 2 weeks, than I ever did in Italy. It wasn't so much that I didn't experience feelings of alienation and homesickness in Italy, in fact I was almost always craving a bit of "me" time with nothing but an episode of The Great British Bake Off and a slice of Victoria Sandwich to keep me company. But I think that is to be expected when au pairing. You are so completely immersed into your host culture that wanting to escape it occasionally is inevitable. The majority of the differences I found between the UK and Italy were positive ones: the weather was infinitely more cheerful, the food could put even the grumpiest of year abroaders in a good mood, and the lifestyle suited me perfectly. So although I was "culture-shocked", it was almost always in a positive, managable way.

Here, it's different. It's not that I don't like France, on the contrary it's one of my favourite places I've been to (I would never have chosen to spend 7 months of my life here otherwise!), but having been here before and having studied French for many more years than Italian, I sort of had a better idea of what to expect from my experience here. At least the lifestyle side if not so much the teaching side of things. I expected that this would have set me up nicely and I'd bumble along just fine, however instead I've been experiencing a completely unforeseen combination of emotions. First of all, going somewhere knowing what to expect and it being exactly as you imagined it, while seeming like an ideal situation, is not nearly as adventurous or comforting as I'd hoped. In fact, at times I have even been disappointed that I was experiencing the same sort of things from French culture that I'd experienced before on holiday here. This made me think "what am I actually doing living here if I can find out everything I want to know about a place from just going on holiday or by sitting in a lecture theatre in the comforts of university?" Whereas there have been other times (usually job related), when things are just so so different to how I'd expected that it has moved beyond adventurous and is just plain frustrating. When you walk into a school for the first time and are immediately thrust into a classroom with a group of 15+ lively, occasionally rude, almost always uninterested teenagers and told to educate them for an hour with no topic, no guidance, and no resources beyond a whiteboard pen to work with, you start to have thoughts that "this would never happen back home".

What I'm starting to realise though is that while that may be true, and Britain may do things differently, I'm not here to have an experience identical to the one I would have at home. I'm here to experience a different culture and see the ways other groups of people around the world approach things. While to begin with I may not like the way things are done here, at least I'll have a ton of funny stories to come home with and if anything I will go home with a new-found appreciation for British life. As long as I don't let my expectations and experiences make me see France as somewhere any less amazing than I know it really is, I don't think that can be a bad thing.

Anyway, rant over. Sorry about that. I shall move on to happier musings...

This week I started at my second school. I'm only there for 3 hours a week, but it's nice to have a change of scenery and it's walking distance from my appartment. This one is slightly different in that it's a professional school where they teach things like catering, marketing and management. I was warned by the teachers at my main school that this was the "chavvy" one, and the previous assistant who I had been in contact with thought it was a good thing that I wasn't spending all of my time there... So I went in there expecting the worst. But the day I spent there turned out to be the best of my week! The "kids" there are slightly older, some of them are actually a year or two older than me. I'm not teaching whole classes there though, only doing one-to-one conversation classes so hopefully the age issue won't cause any problems. In my main school, they've told the students that I don't speak any French, the idea being that they are encouraged to only speak to me in English, but the teachers in this school seem a lot more willing to let me use French. In a way I like this because pretending not to speak a language is harder to keep up than it sounds, but I do think that they would improve a lot quicker if they had a native speaker only using English. I suppose it's just about getting the right balance.

Starting at the new school meant standing through yet more class introductions. I know what kind of questions to expect from them now, but they still make me laugh. In my first two hours there I got asked for my number twice by 16/17 year old boys, and invited to go to Oktoberfest with them. Inappropriate, but hilarious.

I would say it has been a successful first full week for me in the world of work! My only embarrassing moment came when I opened the staff room door and made a teacher jump, resulting in him spilling coffee all over the floor. But we'll pretend that never happened and that I blend in... I don't really in the slightest. It was raining the other day so I wore my hair up, not something I usually do because it makes me look like a 10 year old boy, and not something I shall be doing again in a hurry because I was questioned by an unidentified colleague as to why I was using the staff loos and not the student ones, then proceeded to get told off by the cleaning lady for "hanging about in the corridors", when I was early for a class. To add insult to injury one pupil's reaction at being told by his teacher that I was paid to speak English to him was, "But she's so young! Can I get paid to speak French to her?" I need a way to make myself look more sophisticated and French. Haha not going to happen, as the employed, adult member of French society that I now am, I spent part of my first pay cheque on a onesie. In fact my two housemates and I got matching ones...

It feels very surreal sometimes to be in the staff room hearing all the gossip about the students when I only left school myself two and a half years ago. As an assistant you're in a strange limbo world between the pupils and the teachers- closer in age to the kids, but working as a member of staff. I have felt more settled into the life of a teacher this week though- I am now the proud owner of my own set of whiteboard pens, one teacher is making me responsible for grading his class and giving them their termly conversation mark, and I even got offered a glass of wine at lunch in the staff room! Well, if it gets you through the day...

As I mentioned earlier, it's got properly chilly the last couple of nights but our landlady has yet to switch on the heating. We thought that we were lucky having an older couple in charge of the heating because they would feel the cold more and put it on early, but as yet, no such luck. We got around it last night by going out to a hotel bar where one of the teachers was playing a gig with his band. It was nice to go out and try some of the local food (I had tarte flambée, it's like pizza, only better. A crispy base, cream instead of cheese, and topped with onions and bacon), although the band's lyrics were un peu bizarre. My favourite line was "Baby, I wish I had a dishwasher because I spent so long washing up that you cheated on me." They were singing in English and we seemed to be the only ones there who understood the hilarity so we had fun being the only ones uncontrollably laughing to ourselves. The other people there were just nodding along, as far as they knew, they were listening to a sophisticated English-speaking band whose music was totally serious.

I'll leave it there for now because the internet has decided that now would be a good time to hate me and slow right down, but I'll be back in a week or so with my last update before the holidays. Thank you all so much for continuing to take the time to read about what I'm up to!

Until next time amigos :)

I'm Back!

You can breathe a sigh of relief, your lives are once again complete now that you have my blog back in your weekly routine. Ok, I exaggerate. But I am back and if you've stuck around this far, then welcome back, and thank you for taking an interest in what I'm up to once again :)

Almost two weeks ago, I embarked on the journey to my placement in France which will make up the main chunk of my year abroad. I am located in a little town in southern Alsace to be precise, not far from the German and Swiss borders, which will be my home for the next 7 months. I thought that I wouldn't mind being rural, that I'd get used to being in a little authentic French village. I'm sure I will eventually, but for now it's a bit of a shock having a serious lack of shops/ buses/ train station/ people around. This video portrays it perfectly. We even have sheep.

I should really explain why, 10 days in, I'm only just now producing my first blog post. First of all, I wanted to spare you all the horror of reading something that I'd written in a mess of culture shock and one too many remedial croissants. Anything I wrote while feeling a mixture of flaky pastry-induced happiness crossed with stress-induced annoyance at my school/ town/ toothpaste bottle would've been a terrifying thing to behold, and ruining your day is not something I wish to do! The second reason is quite simply that I have not had the time. Strangely enough, moving abroad does not just involve booking a flight and checking that your EHIC card is in date, and to my horror I have had to set up a bank account, apply for a social security number, buy a French SIM, set up an internet connection, sign a mountain of paperwork, plan lessons, and settle into a new apartment, all while starting a new job which requires me to teach a bunch of often reluctant teenagers on a daily basis. Feeling sorry for me yet? Don't worry, I'm actually having a really great time and have met lots of lovely people, spoken lots of French and eaten many a croissant. Culture shock has surprisingly been more of an issue here than in Italy and I feel like I have very much fallen down the rabbit hole, but at least here I have a fairly consistent routine to settle into and plenty of English speakers around to make sure I don't actually forget how to speak my own language again (in my first week at home after Italy, I said "grazie" to the self-service checkout at Tesco...). My apartment is lovely and my room is at least twice the size of my one in Bath, although this does mean that after unpacking all 20.1kg of my stuff (shoutout to easyJet for letting me on the plane with extra luggage free of charge!) I have many walls to fill. So if anybody would like to send me postcards/ random photos to stick up, please do!

So what am I actually doing here I hear you cry? Why subject myself to the torture of teaching classes of 15 year-olds on my own and living a significant bus journey away from the closest train station and shopping centre? Well, unlike the majority of year abroaders, I decided not to do a university exchange. When the time came to make a decision about my year abroad, it really didn't appeal to me and I knew that being the perfect description of an introvert, I would end up in a bit of a bubble, probably only making friends with other English speakers and being limited by a student loan as to how much tiramisu and croissants I could buy. And this way, I can dodge exams for the next 1.5 years. Winning.

My first week here was a blur of settling into French life, meeting teachers and introducing myself to classes. I am working in two lycees (the equivalent of British school years 11-13), one of which is a general secondary school in which they mainly do science courses, the other is a professional school in which they offer courses in hotel management and catering amongst other things. Introducing myself consisted of me standing in front of fascinated teenagers and being bombarded by questions. Some of them were quite imaginative to say the least. I was asked "Who's your favourite member of One Direction? Why do British women drink so much? and Is it true that British men are bad lovers?" I don't know whether to laugh or cry about what might come my way next...

I realised what the point of the weird pre-toasted bread they sell here is for. It doesn't go bad because it's pretty bad already so it's good for keeping at the back of the cupboard for the Sundays (and lunchtimes, and Mondays, and sometimes Tuesdays) when the shops are closed and you've forgotten to stock up on the proper stuff. There is no such thing here as popping to the shops at lunchtime, and everything from taking the bus to a trip to the corner shop has to be pre-planned. I think I would be in a pickle by now if it wasn't for the plentiful supply of people here in the same situation as me. In our house we have English, Welsh and Canadian assistants, with the French landlord and lady living downstairs, and at my training day in Strasbourg on Wednesday I was fortunate enough to meet plenty of others assistants placed in the neighbouring towns who are from as far away as America and Canada, and from as close as 15 minutes away from home!

Strasbourg is a fantastic and beautiful city, and although I haven't had a chance to take any photos yet, I have a feeling I shall be spending a good amount of time there and we all know that I go a bit over the top when there is a photo opportunity (the result of three months in Italy was about 850 photos...) so I can assure you that there will be photographic evidence of my adventures soon!

I will leave it there for now because I need to go and fill in some more forms (I think France are single-handedly destroying the world's rainforests with the amount of paperwork they demand for the simplest of tasks), but I will be back with another post very soon and I should have lots of stuff to write about because I start work at my second school this week, and then I'm off interailling during the October Toussaint holiday! Yes you read that right, a two week holiday after just 2.5 weeks of work. Maybe the French administration system isn't so bad after all.

A bientôt!

Goodbye Italy, Hello Home :)

So my time in Italy this summer has sadly come to an end and I'm faced with once again getting on that terrifying tin can of the skies. Since I arrived 11 weeks ago, the news has been filled with plane crashes and faulty airplanes which hasn't been good for my confidence. Believe me when I say I have looked into every possible way of getting home which doesn't require me to leave terra firma, but I don't really fancy a 40+ hour coach journey across Europe, so flying it is.

As I've got closer to flying, I've been having weird dreams about it. According to my nightmares, I will miss my flight due to taking too much time to decide which meal deal to get at Boots, then they'll tell me that I'm the only person booked on to the flight so they've scheduled a tiny little propeller thing to transport me to a heliport on top of the County Mall where I will be welcomed back to England by Boris Johnson and be asked to turn on the Crawley Christmas lights with Peter Andre. I think the coffee from all the tiramisu I've been eating has done something to my unconsciousness...

I've obviously had to pack up all my belongings again which has been interesting considering all the stuff I have acquired in the last 11 weeks. Somehow I don't think this is will make it into the hand luggage, not sure what airport security would have to say about it!!

I was a bit of a plonker when booking my flight. So I'd remember where I am sitting I booked seat 19A. 19 for my age and A for Alice. Silly me forgot I had a birthday in August in which I turned 20 :)

I can't say I'm glad that this part of my year abroad is over. I have had the most amazing time and seen some truly wonderful places. Italy has surpassed all of my expectations in every way and I feel like I have only scratched the surface so literally can't wait to come back next year to see more of this extraordinary place. Having said that though, I am so excited to be going home and can't wait to spend a few weeks indulging in being British as much as I can before heading off to France at the end of September. 

So I suppose this is the part where I'm supposed to write a long and sentimental piece about how I've changed as a person since going overseas and how living here has had a profound and everlasting effect on my worldview. That sounds incredibly boring and pretentious though (and I don't think I've changed that much anyway) so instead I shall do what I do best and sum up my time here by writing lists.

My Favourite Adventures:

• The Post Office- this was the first time I went out on my own with the intention of solving a problem. I can't explain how nervous I was about this, but really it wasn't a big deal at all and the lady behind the counter there was so sweet and patient that she made it really easy to say what I wanted to without mixing up my words. I was keen to avoid any type confrontation with the Italian administration system but I'm glad this challenge came up because otherwise I'd still be terrified about dealing with official stuff that isn't in English.
• Venice on my own. This was my first time dealing with public transport other than buses on my own abroad. Just like the Post Office, it showed me that the best confidence boosts come after you succeed at something you think you're going to be terrible at. Barely a word of English was spoken that day, and it made me really happy to see the locals' reactions to a British person having a go at their language when it would have been so easy to slip into English in such a touristy spot. Even if you can only say "ciao" and ask how much something costs, they will praise you so much you will feel like you're fluent and they will appreciate it so much more than we do in England when foreign tourists make an effort.

Top Places I've been:

• Venice. Obviously. Love this place to bits, and so much more than I expected to. Despite the rumours, it doesn't smell one bit (unless you're at a pizzeria, then it smells beautiful), it doesn't have to be massively expensive if you're careful about where you eat and what transport you use, and while it is crowded there are plenty of places to get away from the crowds. The lack of tall buildings and plentiful supply of wide open piazzas and canal-side spots make it easy to escape the holidaymakers. I went on the ferr'agosto holiday which is like the Italian equivalent of the August bank holiday and the busiest weekend of the year, but there were still plenty of park benches to go around and I didn't have to queue for my gelato fragola :)
• Treviso. My adopted hometown for the last 3 months. I'm sad that I didn't get to see more of it and I never actually went into town on my own, but the bits I did see were lovely :) I spent most of my free days at the park and walking along the canal enjoying the sun rather than going into town where I knew I would find myself lost and sunburned and buying things which would make my excess luggage charge pretty hefty on the way home...
• The Park. I ended up spending quite a bit of time here people watching and fuelling my hayfever. It was worth it though because it gave me a chance to compare it to British public spaces and made me realise that there are some fairly drastic differences in attitude between the two countries. One of the obvious differences is that here, PDAs in the park are totally normal and acceptable and every other bench is taken up by a canoodling couple. However, as soon as a girl wearing shorts walks in to the place she is stared at like she is committing some awful crime of indecency. 
• The Dolomites. My first ever trip to a mountain range didn't disappoint in the slightest, and although I was incredibly homesick that week, I appreciated the experience and the surroundings very much and would definitely go back.

Best things about living in Italy:

• The people are the loveliest. I can honestly say that everyone here that I've met has been absolutely wonderful. They are genuinely interested in learning about where I've come from and are so so welcoming and encouraging about putting up with my far less than perfect Italian.
• Tiramisu
• The culture and way of life are impossible to dislike. I've forgotton what a cloudy day looks like, I've eaten pasta almost every day and the beach and mountains are both less than an hour away- no wonder they're a happy bunch of people here!
• Tiramisu

Things I've missed the most about England (despite the obvious family and friends):

• The 10 o'clock news. I miss Huw Edwards updating me on the world's goings on every night. When I hear this music, I'll know I'm home.

• Duvets. It's far too hot for them here, but a good night's sleep is not the same without them.
• Breakfast cereal. No-one eats it here and breakfasts just aren't the same :(
• Sandwiches. I love and miss sandwiches.

And on that note, I'll say goodbye for now. I may squeeze in another post once I'm back in England about coming home and whatnot, but I'll be back to regular posting once I'm in France and on the main part of my year abroad, which will be from the end of September :) Thank you to all of you who have followed my blog this far, and I'll see you all soon :)

Alice x

Venezia 2.0

I went back to Venice! I couldn't resist going again with it being so close by and train tickets costing 5 euros for a return journey half an hour each way (take note Gatwick Express). I've had a niggling feeling the last few weeks that I just had to go back to Venice and experience more of it before I leave. I'm very glad I was able to go with my host family the first time to get a feel for the place, but this time I was determined to do it alone and prove to myself that I can actually speak enough Italian to have a day out!

It turned out to be my best day off since I've been here and was a great confidence booster. I used 3 different types of public transport (bus, train and water bus), translated a few sentences for a British family on the train who were being spoken to by a group of French people, and somehow found my way from the station to all the main sights without asking anyone for directions (although I did take some wrong turns, but in Venice there are no wrong turns as you usually end up seeing something even prettier than you would have had you taken the main route!) Thankfully, it all went pretty smoothly.

In Piazza San Marco, I went up the bell tower to see the amazing views from the top. It was well worth the 8 euro ticket, but not one to do if you are scared of lifts or are claustrophobic as they pack you in like sardines.

I also went to the Basilica San Marco (which is free, Italians are horrified by the idea that in England you have to pay to get into some churches, even if they are main tourist attractions), and despite queuing for half an hour in the sun and being spoken to in Russian (that's a new one for me, they usually think I'm German if they don't pick up on my Englishness) it was definitely worth it. It's very dark and Gothic and Catholic inside and not as crowded full of tourists as the queue outside suggests. Definitely worth going into if you ever find yourself in Piazza San Marco, although it doesn't really take more than 15 minutes to see the free (you have to pay to see the "treasure" whatever that is) and open to the public bits despite looking absolutely huge from the outside.

Using foreign public transport for the first time on my own was surprisingly easy. Apart from one small mishap. At the train station in Treviso I thought I'd make life easier for myself and use the self-service ticket machine which had an English option. Fate obviously had other ideas though because there was an error with my bank card and I had this machine shouting "Error, error, please remove your card" over and over again, alerting half the town to my foreignness and making me miss my train. Lesson learnt, next time I will have more faith in myself and go straight to the human being who understood me perfectly.

On the train, I couldn't help noticing that there were many signs warning of the consequences of travelling with a faulty or out of date ticket... all in English. I don't know what they're implying about the honesty of British travellers!

Unfortunately I won't fit into the category of being a British traveller for much longer, but I really am looking forward to going home on Friday, and I will squeeze in one more post before I leave :)

Alice :)

Buon Appetito

I feel that it would be a crime to come all the way to Italy and not do a post on the food. It really deserves a whole blog dedicated to it, but I haven't got time for that so I'll give you a sneak peek at my Italian culinary adventures in this post :)

It didn't take me long to adjust to Italian life. After a week I felt pretty settled and after 5 it felt like a home away from home. In fact, it would be difficult to find someone who the Italian way of life doesn't suit. It is really easy to get used to, and the food is a big part of this.

First of all, it goes without saying that Italian food is among the best in the world by anyone's standards, and it is very very true. They have set mealtimes and never snack except on the occasional piece of fruit and everything is cooked from scratch. Although this can become annoying. Trying to find a pre-packaged sandwich in the supermarket to take to the park with me in my first week was impossible and I ended up buying and carrying round with me an entire pack of rice cakes all afternoon. Now I realise that people rarely eat in public here. Snacking on the street is considered slobby from what I've picked up on and you very rarely see food being consumed outside the house unless it's a proper sit-down picnic at lunchtime. I have barely drunk anything but water and peach juice since I got here, which for me is a big achievement (EDIT: this makes me sound like an alcoholic haha, I am referring to my Diet Coke and orange squash addiction!)

McDonald's Happy Meals here don't come with ketchup, instead they give you a little pack of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese! The kids here have very sophisticated taste...

You never ever see signs outside restaurants saying "Children Welcome". It is a foreign and unnatural concept to the Italians that the children wouldn't go out to dinner with the parents. Everything here revolves around the family.

In 10 weeks, there have been only 6 days in which I haven't eaten pasta. I've been keeping count. Sometimes we even have pasta for both lunch and dinner so it works out that I've eaten pasta more times than days I've been here!

There is a strange obsession with pistachios here. I'm not sure if it's just the Italians or a Europe-wide thing as I've noticed it in France as well. Everything that can be flavoured has a pistachio option. Pistachio jelly anyone? For a place that's known for it's amazing food, that is not something I thought I would encounter!

Probably my favourite Italian food item is tiramisu. It is coffee scented, creamy, spongy deliciousness and I will miss it. That brings me on to the coffee consumption habits here. Having friends round for a 9pm espresso is considered normal and a completely reasonable way to consume caffeine. This confuses me.
Seems like I'm not the only one...

In other news...

I had a hilarious/ disheartening moment this week when I logged onto Duolingo to do some language practice. It's this free website where you can practice your languages or learn new ones from scratch. I was doing quite well on the Italian and had leveled up so decided to see what my French is like after 10 weeks in Italy. I tried to skip a few stages thinking that after 9 years of learning, I'd be a bit beyond the beginners' level. How wrong was I! After taking a skills test in listening and translating, the smug little owl who is the website's mascot told me I was not worthy of skipping even the first stage. Hmmm, my brain is firmly parked in Italian mode for now, and this week I have to send formal emails to France. Bleugh. Maybe I should spend my evenings reading and listening to French instead of watching penguin videos...

Unfortunately, my Italian hasn't improved much with the demise of my French. Mistake of the week goes like this. The Italian word for "eyebrows" is "sopracciglia" ("sopra" means "over" and "ciglia" are eyelashes). I went and got "ciglia" muddled with "ciliegia" which means "cherry". So basically I ended up saying something like "uppercherry."

This week the girls seem to have developed a habit of burning things. The 7 year old managed to put her shoe next to the insence which burns in the garden to warn off mosquitoes, resulting in a blackened flip flop. Her response was “I like it. It makes my flip flops look older, like they are from the second world war 300 years ago.” On the same day, I came out of the loo to be greeted by a burning smell coming from the kitchen. I thought what on Earth could they have done in the 2 minutes I was in there that could produce such a smell? Turns out the 11 year old was trying to defrost a bread roll on a plastic plate in the microwave. The plate got a hole burnt through it and the bread roll was welded to the plate. I think she was pretty embarrassed and determined that her parents wouldn't find out so she took it upstairs. When I asked her what she’d done with it she said she’d “hidden” it. Remembering what it was like to be an 11 year old, I guessed it was lingering at the back of her wardrobe somewhere, so I had to have words to make sure it was put in the bin. She assured me it was “got rid of” but wouldn't bring it downstairs so who knows if it actually is in the upstairs bin or not...

It's tipping down with rain at the moment. It is strange to see this place in the rain and I'm annoyed because I was planning to go back to Venice this week but won't be able to if it's like this :( We made the most of it though and embraced the rain to have a proper English afternoon! We made English tea and watched Harry Potter with the shutters closed and it was wonderful :) It's strange that living abroad has turned me into a tea drinker! I don't think it went down too well with everyone else though. Mixing milk and hot water was just too much of a weird idea for them to handle!

I've only got little over a week left here before I return to England, but I'll fit in another post before I go :)

Until next week chums!
Alice :)