Tuesday 15 July 2014
Sunday 25 May 2014
I'm trying to think of everything that's been going on over these last two weeks that's made me too busy to sit down and write a blog post! I'll start at the very beginning (a very good place to start).
Way back at the end of my first week here, we had our first all-day excursion. We went to Florence for the day to see just how beautiful Tuscany really is (very beautiful) and to see the famous Duomo. Unfortunately I am a terrible blogger and have no photos to accompany this post as they are all on my camera, but you can take my word for it that it was beautiful. To be brutally honest, I kind of preferred the drive through the countryside to the city itself. It's lovely to see the scenery changing as you drive across the different regions, from the hills of Marche to the mountains of Umbria and the stunning greenness and typical Italianness of Tuscany. Florence wasn't a let down by any means, we had some delicious gelato, looked round some fancy shops, saw the house where Dante lived, and visited the statue of David (not the real one mind you, the queue was a bit ridiculous), I just think I was feeling very tired after a week full of lessons and other activities so the idea of sitting on a coach rolling through the countryside appealed more than walking round sightseeing in the heat.
During the second week, I was busy almost every day with outings. We went to Jesi, a pretty little town near Ancona, and also to Matelica, which is the town where my teacher is from. We were paired off and given a list of things to find out from local people, such as how to say a certain phrase in the local dialect or what they thought about living in the town. Luckily it was market day so there were plenty of people around, and we struck gold with a French stall holder who had a local guide book on him.
On the Wednesday we had an evening of playing 'Chi vuol esser millionario?' (Who wants to be a millionaire). My team was up first, and we did ok to begin with. There was a question about tiramisù so I was very happy, but we fell down when it came to 'Whats the population of Italy?' We guessed 75 million but it was actually 60 million. We still somehow managed to win though and got a free grande gelato!
Then on the Friday the school held an International Dinner, where each nationality represented had to cook a traditional dish from their country. Being the only representative of the UK, I was at a bit of a disadvantage, but did the best I could and attempted a Victoria sponge with no weighing scales, no rolling pin to do the icing, no cake tins and no vanilla essence. It could've tasted a lot better, but I disguised it with a big Union Flag and hoped for the best.
The best bit of the night was getting the chance to taste some Latin American dishes from the other represented countries. The Brazilians did a sort of couscous and tomato starter, the Costa Ricans made marinated aubergines, the Mexicans had a coconut dessert, and the Argentinians did impanadas, which I can only describe as yummy, South American cornish pasties.
During the second week, I was busy almost every day with outings. We went to Jesi, a pretty little town near Ancona, and also to Matelica, which is the town where my teacher is from. We were paired off and given a list of things to find out from local people, such as how to say a certain phrase in the local dialect or what they thought about living in the town. Luckily it was market day so there were plenty of people around, and we struck gold with a French stall holder who had a local guide book on him.
On the Wednesday we had an evening of playing 'Chi vuol esser millionario?' (Who wants to be a millionaire). My team was up first, and we did ok to begin with. There was a question about tiramisù so I was very happy, but we fell down when it came to 'Whats the population of Italy?' We guessed 75 million but it was actually 60 million. We still somehow managed to win though and got a free grande gelato!
Then on the Friday the school held an International Dinner, where each nationality represented had to cook a traditional dish from their country. Being the only representative of the UK, I was at a bit of a disadvantage, but did the best I could and attempted a Victoria sponge with no weighing scales, no rolling pin to do the icing, no cake tins and no vanilla essence. It could've tasted a lot better, but I disguised it with a big Union Flag and hoped for the best.
The best bit of the night was getting the chance to taste some Latin American dishes from the other represented countries. The Brazilians did a sort of couscous and tomato starter, the Costa Ricans made marinated aubergines, the Mexicans had a coconut dessert, and the Argentinians did impanadas, which I can only describe as yummy, South American cornish pasties.
At the end of that week, it was time for, in my opinion, the best excursion of the month: ROMA! I didn't think it would be possible to see all the main touristy bits in just one day, but somehow we managed to see the Colosseum, the Roman forum, Mussolini's palace (it does have another name, but I forget what it is), Piazza Navona, the Spanish Steps, the Trevi fountain, the Pantheon, AND the Vatican, even if it did mean we only had about 15 minutes in each place. It was already noticably busier than when we went in February, but it was also sunnier and I felt like I even knew my way around a little bit. It's such a perfect city for walking around, and is very quickly becoming my favourite capital.
Now onto week three! Something new and wonderful has entered my life this week... cappuccinos. Why I've never discovered the beauty of coffee before, I couldn't tell you, but there is a free coffee machine at the language school and never being one to say no to a bargain, it's my new addiction. They are only to be consumed in the morning though, as we've been told that no matter how well you can speak Italian, if you order a cappuccino in the afternoon, you will always be asked where you're from as Italians would never ever ever drink coffee after breakfast. Being told this was all part of a cultural lesson we had, Italia: Istruzioni per l'uso (Italy: Instructions for use). We learnt about the meaning behind all those hand gestures that they use (I've become convinced that it is impossible to speak Italian without them) and about the five most important things in the lives of Italian men (their mum, their car, food, wine and football. The teacher was very keen to point out that 'wife' wasn't one of them).
Our afternoon excursion this week was to Cingoli, a tiny little town on a mountain top high above the rest of Marche. There was a bellissima view from the top and it was a clear day so we could just about make out the coast of Croatia on the horizon!
Now onto week three! Something new and wonderful has entered my life this week... cappuccinos. Why I've never discovered the beauty of coffee before, I couldn't tell you, but there is a free coffee machine at the language school and never being one to say no to a bargain, it's my new addiction. They are only to be consumed in the morning though, as we've been told that no matter how well you can speak Italian, if you order a cappuccino in the afternoon, you will always be asked where you're from as Italians would never ever ever drink coffee after breakfast. Being told this was all part of a cultural lesson we had, Italia: Istruzioni per l'uso (Italy: Instructions for use). We learnt about the meaning behind all those hand gestures that they use (I've become convinced that it is impossible to speak Italian without them) and about the five most important things in the lives of Italian men (their mum, their car, food, wine and football. The teacher was very keen to point out that 'wife' wasn't one of them).
Our afternoon excursion this week was to Cingoli, a tiny little town on a mountain top high above the rest of Marche. There was a bellissima view from the top and it was a clear day so we could just about make out the coast of Croatia on the horizon!
I've just realised that it must seem like all I'm doing here is going on days out, but that's not the case at all. We have four hours of language lessons every morning and they are challenging to say the least. I still feel like my group is difficult, but if I moved down it would be too comfortable and too similar to what I was doing in second year of university. I think I need to be in the advanced group even if I'm clearly one of the weakest in the group as it's good preparation for fourth year.
This week's evening activity was one I had been dreading since first being handed the month's program back on day one: La Serata Karaoke. Karaoke is the stuff of my worst nightmares as it is, but when there are only four people in your class, you can't hide. To make things worse, first the Spanish speakers did a song, then the Portuguese speakers, until it was my turn. As the only English speaker, thankfully I wasn't made to sing alone, and it ended up being quite fun. We sang 'It's raining man', a strange, nonsensical version of 'It's raining men' which had apparently been transcribed by someone who spoke limited English, and as 99% of people at the school are Latin American or Italian, they like a good party and it went on pretty late. Can't say I'll be rushing to do it again, but it was fun in the end.
I can't believe this is my last weekend here already, and also my last excursion! Yesterday we went to Bologna, in the Emilia Romagna region, and it ended up really surprising me! Bologna is home to the oldest university in the world, so it had a really welcome studenty atmosphere, and of course I couldn't go to Bologna without eating some of their Spaghetti Bolognese. Interestingly, they make it with pork rather than beef, but it definitely lived up to expectations. I also will never stop finding it funny that people from Bologna are called Bolognese.
So that pretty much sums up my last two weeks! It's only now that It's starting to dawn on me that this is the last week of my 'official' year abroad! I don't feel anywhere close to ready to leave Italy yet, and my Italian could still do with some work, but I'm glad that I've ended the year on a high, and all the weeks of hating/loving France have been worth it for this short time in Italy. I won't go on too much though as I'm sure I'll squeeze another post in somewhere between now and when I get home :)
Ciao for now!
Alice x
Thursday 8 May 2014
Il Ritorno in Italia
Well I've now waved goodbye to France for the last time on my year abroad and am finishing off the year in style, with a one month stay in San Severino Marche, a piccola città in central Italy. While obviously my aim this whole year has been to learn French and Italian, I've had other jobs to do as well, and language learning is something that has happened as a result of being immersed, rather than me actively studying. All that has changed now though with this latest trip, and it feels more than a little strange to be the student again, and to not be teaching English. I think I mentioned in my last post that I was looking forward to sitting in the place of a pupil rather than a teacher in the classroom, and although I appreciate the change of perspective, I kind of miss being the one in charge and being the one who supposedly has all the knowledge! I'm also finding it harder to sit still and listen for a couple of hours, and I've been getting fidgety as a result of being used to walking around the classroom. This worries me slightly as I've still got another year of listening to lectures at university to go, but I've got some time to get used to the idea.
When I arrived here I was surprised to see that I was the youngest person by quite a few years, and everyone else seemed fluent. I have now managed to find a few other people around the same age as me, although I'm the only one who's come alone. And as for everyone being fluent, I am one of the only students here who's native language is not Spanish or Portuguese, so even when the others speak broken Italian with words from their own language filling the gaps, it sounds impressively flowy (is that a word?). I think there's a trend among us that those who have a romance language as their native tongue, speak with mistakes, but they do it fluently. Whereas me (and I think a lot of other British language learners), won't speak unless we're sure what we're saying is correct. So although we (possibly) make fewer mistakes, we don't sound half as fluent, and the South Americans sound impressively capable in comparison.
It's for that reason that I was more than a little worried when I found out I'd been placed in the most advanced group, along with people who actually teach Italian in their own countries. The grammar is no harder than what we covered last year at university, so I've been able to keep up with that pretty well, but where I'm struggling is vocabulary. I know how to form a sentence with the correct tenses and prepositions etc, to say what I want to say, but I don't know the words to fill that structure and express it. Ironically it's the exact opposite of my problems with French. In French I know a whole bunch of weird and wonderful words, most of which I rarely use, but when it comes to French grammar, I don't have a clue. I know what sounds right, but I couldn't tell you why it's right.
Everyone here is really really lovely though. Italians and South Americans bring me out of my shell because they're so chatty, which is great for me and means I'm speaking nothing but Italian all day long! Although, I have the same issues with the pronunciation of my name as I did last year, and have heard some interesting new versions of it. In the first week, I've been called Alichay, Alexia, Alessia, Alix, Aleesh, and who knows how many other variations, but I can't use the solution I found last year and call myself by my middle name, because there are at least 3 other Marias in our group of about 40. So I'm just learning to listen carefully for any name that might be 'mine'. I told my teacher he could call me Alichay, because that's how the Italians pronounce Alice, but I regret it now because I end up ignoring his questions and looking round the class when he asks 'Alichay' to answer a question, before remembering that's me...
Yesterday I had a weird moment when this woman came up to me after class, and practically pulled her trousers down right in front of me. She started pointing at her underwear and speaking Spanish or Portuguese or something I didn't understand, so I just gave her a funny look until she started making hand gestures and I worked out that she was trying to tell me that someone in my apartment had dropped their knickers over the edge of the railing when they were drying on the terrace. We're on the top floor so this woman had just seen these knickers falling out of the sky and held onto them for 2 days until she found out who lived on the top floor, and I was able to tell her one of my housemates was missing a pair of pants. Then everyone wanted to know what the word for knickers was in English. Oh the joys of language barriers...
Another weird thing is that apparently everyone in my language class thinks I look like Renée Zellweger, and have started calling me Bridget Jones. I don't see the ressemblance, but they're all convinced and several said they noticed it when they first met me, so I've decided to take it as a compliment!
We have a lovely view from our appartment!
We have a lovely view from our appartment!
Not sure how safe that roof is though! The castle you can see in the photo was where we went to for our first escursione and then yesterday we went to a nearby castle called Calderola and a little town called Tolentino which has an important basilica. Also, every castle and basilica here seems to have the body of some saint or another on display. I think it's morbid and impressive in equal measure that the body just lies there, and that there are so many of these important Catholics to go round that seemingly everywhere has one!
I'll leave it there for now, as after a week of ridiculously early mornings, I am molto stanca and need to get up at some horrible hour of the morning tomorrow as well. But we're going to Florence, which makes me enormously happy :)
A presto!
Alice :)
Wednesday 30 April 2014
Au Revoir la France
I think it's a fact of life that you can spend a long time in a place or situation, wishing you were somewhere else, and then as soon as the time comes to leave, you really start to see all the little good things that have been there all the time. I'd never really properly appreciated the beauty of where I live as I felt the mountains and ruralness (rurality?) were like a cage of isolation, but now it's Spring and I've grown to love the countryside, I'm kicking myself for not adjusting sooner. However, I also think that a bit of perspective is needed in these situations, and while I should of course appreciate the feeling of finally feeling settled (nice timing there), I also have to remember that I probably wouldn't be feeling this content at the end, if I'd been content all along. I hate to use clichés that make me sound like I've just rolled off the set of the X factor, but there is no better way to describe my time here than as a rollercoaster of emotions and experiences. And as a result I'm now finding it really hard to articulate how I'm feeling about it all.
So off I go back to a land where water doesn't taste like chlorine, the roads seem frighteningly narrow, and customer service is actually a thing. I think I'll do what I did at the end of my time in Italy and bullet-point the stand-out moments of my time here.
So off I go back to a land where water doesn't taste like chlorine, the roads seem frighteningly narrow, and customer service is actually a thing. I think I'll do what I did at the end of my time in Italy and bullet-point the stand-out moments of my time here.
- Standing in front of a class for the first time: obviously I'd stood in front of a class before, but not as a member of staff in a foreign country. From being asked if British men are bad lovers and asked how many times I've met the Queen, to diffusing arguments and trying to create some sort of motivation amongst my pupils to learn English, it was in equal measure both fun and terrifying.
- Taking a class alone for the first time: one of the most traumatic things I've ever done. It was awful. For a long time afterwards, they were my least favourite class. It wasn't until after Christmas that they started to grow up a bit and redeem themselves, and now I'm actually really sad to be leaving them. It's been a pleasure to watch 2F transform from a nightmare group who wouldn't even sit on chairs, let alone speak a word of English, turn into a group who will sit relatively quietly for an hour working, and then perform conversations in actually pretty decent English.
- InterRailing: Oh, generous French school holidays, how I will miss you. Amy and I had an amazing 10 days travelling about- I had my first dip in the Mediterranean, set foot in Switzerland and Germany for the first time, and discovered some beautiful French cities.
- The Christmas markets: and just Christmas here in general. They do it really well here and the festive mood lasted for months. Performing at the Issenheim Christmas concert was a highlight and made it worth all those late night lesson planning sessions that we were forced to do after spending hours at choir practice.
- Being able to combine my two favourite things in one brilliant job: although I loved both of the schools I worked at, working at the catering college gave me the opportunity to teach about food and hospitality to language students, which suited me so much that I don't think I could've come up with a better job description myself.
So that's it, the end of the French section of my year abroad. Overall, it's been an enjoyable, if at times frustrating learning curve, and although Alsace has grown on me substantially over time, and it's unfair to compare the different parts of this year as they have all been so vastly different, it is fair to say that I will probably always have a slightly stronger pull towards Italy.
Whoops, I've actually been back home for nearly two weeks already, but haven't found the time to publish this. Today is technically the last day of my contract as an assistant though so it's fitting that this should be my last post "from" France. This isn't however, the end of my blog (sorry). I will very soon be resisting the temptation to spend my wages from this year on lying on a beach in Italy for three months (apparently the university allows this!), and instead invest some of it by spending a month at a language school in the Italian region of Le Marche. I must admit that as much as I have enjoyed teaching, it will be a welcome luxury to walk into a classroom and sit at the desks facing the teacher and absorb information, rather than walk up to the whiteboard worrying that my lesson plan won't be interesting or long enough. So prepare for more rambly blog posts about how much better the tomatoes are in Italy and how much I love the sun...
Whoops, I've actually been back home for nearly two weeks already, but haven't found the time to publish this. Today is technically the last day of my contract as an assistant though so it's fitting that this should be my last post "from" France. This isn't however, the end of my blog (sorry). I will very soon be resisting the temptation to spend my wages from this year on lying on a beach in Italy for three months (apparently the university allows this!), and instead invest some of it by spending a month at a language school in the Italian region of Le Marche. I must admit that as much as I have enjoyed teaching, it will be a welcome luxury to walk into a classroom and sit at the desks facing the teacher and absorb information, rather than walk up to the whiteboard worrying that my lesson plan won't be interesting or long enough. So prepare for more rambly blog posts about how much better the tomatoes are in Italy and how much I love the sun...
A presto!
Alice x
Friday 11 April 2014
The Penultimate Week
It feels very strange to be writing my penultimate blog post from France. It's only just started to dawn on me that my year abroad is coming to an end, and although there have been many times during the last 7 months when I've dreamed of this week's arrival, now we're here there's also a larger than expected part of me that is sad to leave.
I haven't felt like I've done very much this week, as I only took 6 classes (half my usual amount) and most of my things to do have been outside work, including cancelling the internet, closing my bank account, responding to a random letter telling me that I'll be entitled to a French pension (!), organising my journey home and of course starting the dreaded task of packing. I have however had some great classes, highlights of which include being told "my boyfriend is a cooker" (she meant chef), and finding out that one of my pupils is an amazing magician! I've been trying to make the most of teaching as up to know I've kind of been taking for granted how much I enjoy it and how much I'll miss it. It feels very strange that I'll be jobless and no longer an assistant in less than a week's time. It also feels odd that my next job will likely be in England, as I've never worked for more than about a month in my own country, and it will be a whole new world of etiquette and expectations to discover.
Anyway, at the risk of getting over-sentimental before I've even started my last week, I'll move onto talking about last weekend. I went to Basel, although this time it felt different as my reason for going wasn't that I felt like I had to have a break from France, or even that I wanted to spend some time in a city, but actually because I had some Swiss francs that I didn't want to bother exchanging back in the UK (I know, I am the epitome of laziness). Basel was fantastic as usual, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I had done previous times, I think partly because the weather was bad, and also because I feel sufficiently happy and comfortable in France now that it felt unnecessary to spend Saturday in Switzerland, rather than making the most of being in Alsace. I've saved this weekend for that though, and tomorrow I'll be paying a visit to "La Montagne des Singes" or "Monkey Mountain"!
A bientôt!
Alice x
I haven't felt like I've done very much this week, as I only took 6 classes (half my usual amount) and most of my things to do have been outside work, including cancelling the internet, closing my bank account, responding to a random letter telling me that I'll be entitled to a French pension (!), organising my journey home and of course starting the dreaded task of packing. I have however had some great classes, highlights of which include being told "my boyfriend is a cooker" (she meant chef), and finding out that one of my pupils is an amazing magician! I've been trying to make the most of teaching as up to know I've kind of been taking for granted how much I enjoy it and how much I'll miss it. It feels very strange that I'll be jobless and no longer an assistant in less than a week's time. It also feels odd that my next job will likely be in England, as I've never worked for more than about a month in my own country, and it will be a whole new world of etiquette and expectations to discover.
Anyway, at the risk of getting over-sentimental before I've even started my last week, I'll move onto talking about last weekend. I went to Basel, although this time it felt different as my reason for going wasn't that I felt like I had to have a break from France, or even that I wanted to spend some time in a city, but actually because I had some Swiss francs that I didn't want to bother exchanging back in the UK (I know, I am the epitome of laziness). Basel was fantastic as usual, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I had done previous times, I think partly because the weather was bad, and also because I feel sufficiently happy and comfortable in France now that it felt unnecessary to spend Saturday in Switzerland, rather than making the most of being in Alsace. I've saved this weekend for that though, and tomorrow I'll be paying a visit to "La Montagne des Singes" or "Monkey Mountain"!
A bientôt!
Alice x
Friday 4 April 2014
This week has honestly been one of the best weeks I've spent here since September. In a dramatic turn of events from last week, I'm loving Alsace and enjoying my surroundings so much that I'm actually getting kind of sad at the thought of leaving. I really do have a very love/hate relationship with France, and while I'm currently having a fantastic time, I'm not forgetting that the majority of my time here has been hard.
So it's with that in mind that I'm making the most of this positive attitude to create some good memories of my last few weeks here. All week I've been doing a lesson on London and Londoners, which has gone down really well with the pupils. Some of the teachers have gone on a trip to Spain so I'm covering their classes and it's really refreshing to have free reign of what I can teach. Normally they give me a topic, but the pupils are bored by it because they do the same thing with their teachers and I'll be honest, there are only so many lessons you can do on climate change before you really start to not care about the 1727473864 different types of pollution. So I came up with a few new activities and had a relaxing week of teaching some of my favourite classes. One of the things I did in my London lesson was show them some pictures of famous Londoners and they had to say who it was and why they are famous before playing the game where you have a celebrity written on your forehead (thank you Amy for the idea!). I was surprised that none of them knew who Stephen Fry was, and I made the mistake of putting Robert Pattinson on there, prompting a heated debate between some of the girls about whether he was better in Harry Potter or Twilight... They recognised Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock but didn't know his name. When I told them it was Benedict they thought it was the funniest thing in the world, because in French, Bénédicte is a girl's name. I also had my first experience of invigilating an exam. It was fine, if a little boring, and I stupidly wore a squeaky pair of boots which made walking around the hall highly embarassing.
On Saturday, Amy came to stay to discover a bit of Issenheim! I was desperate by this point for some interaction with friends so it was perfect to spend a weekend with a few friends, catching up and seeing Colmar. I seem to have a habit of going exploring far and wide, without actually spending much time in the towns closest to me. At home there are some lovely places dotted around not far away, but I stick to Crawley because it's convenient, or Brighton or London for a change of scenery. At university, I know Bath really well, but I never went to Bristol (9 miles down the road) in the entire two years I lived there. So it won't come as much of a surprise that while I've got to know Guebwiller very well, as well as places like Basel and Strasbourg, I'd never actually been into the centre of Colmar until last weekend... Although it would've been sensible to go before, I'm kind of glad I waited until the weather brightened up because it is the kind of place you need to see by walking around it. The area around Petite Venise and the entire centre ville is gorgeous and Alsatian and touristy, but authentic at the same time. I loved it, and it's somewhere I can see myself coming back to in years to come.
On Wednesday, one of the English teachers at the catering college very kindly took me up into the mountains to visit some of the traditional little villages up there. We went to Kaysersberg, Riquewihr, and Ribeauvillé which are all firmly on the tourist track along the Alsace wine route, and rightly so. Although Issenheim and Guebwiller have some pretty areas, these three were stunningly beautiful and very well preserved. It felt like we were on holiday for the day- customer service was better than usual as they have to be nice to the tourists, the shops sold things that were actually interesting and local, and the sun was out all day so being in the mountains was perfect. Although the Vosges are a lot smaller than the Dolomites, I was reminded of the mountains in Italy and how being up there gives you such a nice change of perspective.
In Kaysersberg most of the monuments dated back to the 1500s, in Riquewihr we went to a shop which sells exclusively Christmas decorations all year round, and in Ribeauvillé we went to two different chocolateries to sample their Easter eggs!
On Friday I walked into the classroom to be greeted with the question; "Alice, what do you know about West Side Story?" Cue amazing lesson... The teacher whose class I was taking hadn't been expecting me and there were only about ten pupils. They were going to start watching the film, but as I was there, the teacher devised an activity instead to teach them about the background and context of the film. So I just stood there and talked about West Side Story while they had to listen and take notes. It was awesome.
So yeah, it's been a great week :) And now I only have two weeks left as an assistant! It's really crept up on me and I'm beginning to realise that leaving a place is just as hectic as arriving in terms of closing bank accounts, cancelling the internet, packing etc. So forgive me if my posting is even more sporadic than usual in the coming weeks!
Bisous,
Alice :)
So it's with that in mind that I'm making the most of this positive attitude to create some good memories of my last few weeks here. All week I've been doing a lesson on London and Londoners, which has gone down really well with the pupils. Some of the teachers have gone on a trip to Spain so I'm covering their classes and it's really refreshing to have free reign of what I can teach. Normally they give me a topic, but the pupils are bored by it because they do the same thing with their teachers and I'll be honest, there are only so many lessons you can do on climate change before you really start to not care about the 1727473864 different types of pollution. So I came up with a few new activities and had a relaxing week of teaching some of my favourite classes. One of the things I did in my London lesson was show them some pictures of famous Londoners and they had to say who it was and why they are famous before playing the game where you have a celebrity written on your forehead (thank you Amy for the idea!). I was surprised that none of them knew who Stephen Fry was, and I made the mistake of putting Robert Pattinson on there, prompting a heated debate between some of the girls about whether he was better in Harry Potter or Twilight... They recognised Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock but didn't know his name. When I told them it was Benedict they thought it was the funniest thing in the world, because in French, Bénédicte is a girl's name. I also had my first experience of invigilating an exam. It was fine, if a little boring, and I stupidly wore a squeaky pair of boots which made walking around the hall highly embarassing.
On Saturday, Amy came to stay to discover a bit of Issenheim! I was desperate by this point for some interaction with friends so it was perfect to spend a weekend with a few friends, catching up and seeing Colmar. I seem to have a habit of going exploring far and wide, without actually spending much time in the towns closest to me. At home there are some lovely places dotted around not far away, but I stick to Crawley because it's convenient, or Brighton or London for a change of scenery. At university, I know Bath really well, but I never went to Bristol (9 miles down the road) in the entire two years I lived there. So it won't come as much of a surprise that while I've got to know Guebwiller very well, as well as places like Basel and Strasbourg, I'd never actually been into the centre of Colmar until last weekend... Although it would've been sensible to go before, I'm kind of glad I waited until the weather brightened up because it is the kind of place you need to see by walking around it. The area around Petite Venise and the entire centre ville is gorgeous and Alsatian and touristy, but authentic at the same time. I loved it, and it's somewhere I can see myself coming back to in years to come.
On Wednesday, one of the English teachers at the catering college very kindly took me up into the mountains to visit some of the traditional little villages up there. We went to Kaysersberg, Riquewihr, and Ribeauvillé which are all firmly on the tourist track along the Alsace wine route, and rightly so. Although Issenheim and Guebwiller have some pretty areas, these three were stunningly beautiful and very well preserved. It felt like we were on holiday for the day- customer service was better than usual as they have to be nice to the tourists, the shops sold things that were actually interesting and local, and the sun was out all day so being in the mountains was perfect. Although the Vosges are a lot smaller than the Dolomites, I was reminded of the mountains in Italy and how being up there gives you such a nice change of perspective.
In Kaysersberg most of the monuments dated back to the 1500s, in Riquewihr we went to a shop which sells exclusively Christmas decorations all year round, and in Ribeauvillé we went to two different chocolateries to sample their Easter eggs!
On Friday I walked into the classroom to be greeted with the question; "Alice, what do you know about West Side Story?" Cue amazing lesson... The teacher whose class I was taking hadn't been expecting me and there were only about ten pupils. They were going to start watching the film, but as I was there, the teacher devised an activity instead to teach them about the background and context of the film. So I just stood there and talked about West Side Story while they had to listen and take notes. It was awesome.
So yeah, it's been a great week :) And now I only have two weeks left as an assistant! It's really crept up on me and I'm beginning to realise that leaving a place is just as hectic as arriving in terms of closing bank accounts, cancelling the internet, packing etc. So forgive me if my posting is even more sporadic than usual in the coming weeks!
Bisous,
Alice :)
Sunday 23 March 2014
The Tuesday of the term
Well not a lot has been going on this week in terms of work (in my boredom I discovered that Nutella spread on mini cheddars with a bit of banana on top is a surprisingly pleasing combination). Most of my weeks pretty much have a similar routine and I've probably squeezed as much writing material as I can out of my job. If I'm honest, I haven't had the best week in terms of feeling settled. You'd think that after living here for 6 months, I would feel a little more at home, but no. I'm confident I'll get over it soon though- the first week after the holidays is always ok because you feel refreshed after having a break, and the last few weeks are ok because you are making the most of it and getting on the next plane is within touching distance. But the second week out of 6? Not so much. It's the Tuesday of the term. The 'ugh last weekend seems like ages away, and next weekend seems like ages away' feeling.
Even if I've settled into a boring but reliable routine, I'm still making an effort to make my weekends awesome. As I mentioned in my last post, I wanted to go to Colmar last Saturday, only for the bus to turn up 15 minutes early, making me miss it. To be honest though, the weather wasn't great anyway so I stayed at home. Sunday was brilliant though. The sun was out and the mountains (I'm still reluctant to call them mountains, they're more like hills, but Alsatians insist they are mountains) looked really beautiful so I took my bike out and cycled through some fields over to the next village and up into the vineyards. It sounds extremely idyllic when I actually write it on paper, and it was admittedly very beautiful. It's nice sometimes to get a new perspective on a place. Just turning in a different direction when you leave the house can make you look at a place completely differently after getting stuck in a rut during the winter, and make you feel like you've seen a new place without even getting on a bus.
Actually I do have a work-related story from this week, not the most exciting one mind you. Apparently sarcasm just washes right over people's heads here. When I was explaining an activity, one of my pupils asked "do we have to do it in English?", to which I replied, "no, Japanese". I'm usually very careful to make things as clear as can be when I'm explaining things so as to avoid speaking French to them because once you do it's a slippery slope and almost impossible to get them to say anything in English afterwards, and part of being clear means I make an effort to not be sarcastic. But it just slipped out! Even if they just looked at me like I was mad, it's reassuring to know that 6 months in France hasn't squashed the sarcasm out of me yet!
There was a teachers' strike on Tuesday. Surprisingly (fuelling those stereotypes) it's the first one I've encountered, and no one even seemed to take the day off anyway. My week is the fullest it's been as I think the teachers are trying to squeeze the most out of me that they can before I leave.
Spring has sprung in Alsace and it's now becoming obvious why they call it the 'pays du florival' (flower country). There are blossom trees everywhere and we seemed to go from needing a winter coat to survive, to being able to walk around in a t-shirt, overnight. Obviously I'm incredibly happy it's Spring, but it also signals the beginning of holiday season, meaning no more €30 airplane tickets to be found :(
It kind of occurred to me this week that while I've never been properly settled here, I've got used to living in such a small, rural place. When I first came here, it was the thing that bothered me the most and we all found it really hard being without a car while living such a distance from a train station, a shopping centre, and anywhere that could provide entertainment to keep us occupied for any longer than a couple of weekends. Now though, I've really got used to the slower pace of life and quite enjoy seeing familiar faces everywhere. It no longer bothers me that there's nowhere to shop and even that the buses are unreliable. At risk of sounding 100 years old, I've learnt to appreciate a quieter way of life :)
Even if I've settled into a boring but reliable routine, I'm still making an effort to make my weekends awesome. As I mentioned in my last post, I wanted to go to Colmar last Saturday, only for the bus to turn up 15 minutes early, making me miss it. To be honest though, the weather wasn't great anyway so I stayed at home. Sunday was brilliant though. The sun was out and the mountains (I'm still reluctant to call them mountains, they're more like hills, but Alsatians insist they are mountains) looked really beautiful so I took my bike out and cycled through some fields over to the next village and up into the vineyards. It sounds extremely idyllic when I actually write it on paper, and it was admittedly very beautiful. It's nice sometimes to get a new perspective on a place. Just turning in a different direction when you leave the house can make you look at a place completely differently after getting stuck in a rut during the winter, and make you feel like you've seen a new place without even getting on a bus.
Actually I do have a work-related story from this week, not the most exciting one mind you. Apparently sarcasm just washes right over people's heads here. When I was explaining an activity, one of my pupils asked "do we have to do it in English?", to which I replied, "no, Japanese". I'm usually very careful to make things as clear as can be when I'm explaining things so as to avoid speaking French to them because once you do it's a slippery slope and almost impossible to get them to say anything in English afterwards, and part of being clear means I make an effort to not be sarcastic. But it just slipped out! Even if they just looked at me like I was mad, it's reassuring to know that 6 months in France hasn't squashed the sarcasm out of me yet!
There was a teachers' strike on Tuesday. Surprisingly (fuelling those stereotypes) it's the first one I've encountered, and no one even seemed to take the day off anyway. My week is the fullest it's been as I think the teachers are trying to squeeze the most out of me that they can before I leave.
Spring has sprung in Alsace and it's now becoming obvious why they call it the 'pays du florival' (flower country). There are blossom trees everywhere and we seemed to go from needing a winter coat to survive, to being able to walk around in a t-shirt, overnight. Obviously I'm incredibly happy it's Spring, but it also signals the beginning of holiday season, meaning no more €30 airplane tickets to be found :(
It kind of occurred to me this week that while I've never been properly settled here, I've got used to living in such a small, rural place. When I first came here, it was the thing that bothered me the most and we all found it really hard being without a car while living such a distance from a train station, a shopping centre, and anywhere that could provide entertainment to keep us occupied for any longer than a couple of weekends. Now though, I've really got used to the slower pace of life and quite enjoy seeing familiar faces everywhere. It no longer bothers me that there's nowhere to shop and even that the buses are unreliable. At risk of sounding 100 years old, I've learnt to appreciate a quieter way of life :)
Saturday 15 March 2014
I've decided to do something a little different this week. It was around this time last year (where has that time gone?) when I found out that I'd been accepted onto the language assistants programme and I was about to discover which region I'd been placed in. So I did what I do best, and I turned to the internet. In my excitement I read a huge amount of blogs and case studies of current and past language assistants to get an idea of what lay in store for me.
The whole time I've been writing this blog, I've tried to bear in mind that future assistants and other year abroaders might stumble across my ramblings, and therefore I've made an effort to be as honest as possible about what it's like to live abroad and not gloss over the difficult bits, or on the flipside moan too much.
Anyway, this week I thought I'd do a sort of " Week in the life" type thing and do a little diary. It's a typical week- I'm working the average number of hours I do, and I've got a mix of some of my regular classes as well as some new ones, so hopefully for anyone who is soon to start their year abroad it will give a little glimpse of what to expect!
Monday
8am Monday morning, first day back after the holidays, nobody wants to be here. Luckily I'm being eased back in gently and only had one class today. I've had this lot a few times before and they're a typical premier class (16-17 year olds). Their exams are still far enough away that they try to get away with not putting in the maximum amount of effort, but most of them are mature enough to not muck about. When I arrived at school, the printer wasn't working (what else is new?) so I had to improvise and turn a reading activity into a listening one. Then I arrived at the classroom to find that the teacher was doing oral exams and didn't tell me that I needed to take half the class to another classroom. With 10 minutes wasted, I started the lesson and it was going fairly smoothly. My new whiteboard pens wouldn't rub off the board properly though so I was forced to leave a blue cloud on there when a German teacher came in and said she needed the room for oral exams. I told the class that there was another room we could go to to finish the last 15 minutes of the lesson, but 6 or 7 of them mysteriously got lost on the way...
With my work at school finished for the day by 9am, I headed home in the sunshine to plan my lessons for tomorrow and plan out the few remaining weekends I have left here.
Tuesday
My 8am class was cancelled so I went in for 9 and did 4 classes. I did a couple on the subject of the conditional tense which was fun as we just did lots of games. Usually I really don't like teaching grammar, but this was just getting them to speak using this particular tense so we weren't restricted to lots of grammar exercises. Another lesson was on social networks and big brother society. It was a lively group but I've done that lesson countless times before so it was fine. I'd never had a class with them before so they were asking me all these questions about myself and asking how long I'm here for which felt a bit odd considering I've been here since September... My last lesson of the day was about the American Civil Rights Movement and the divided society of America in the 1960s. The temptation to do nothing but watch clips and songs from Hairspray was strong, but the group was 80% boys so instead I got them to write their own versions of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech.
Now I'm having an evening of enjoying the fact that all my lessons are planned for the rest of the week :)
Wednesday
I like Wednesdays. It's the only day of the week that I have set hours, and I have two of my favourite classes (I know i shouldn't have favourites, but when they're as lovely as these two classes I can't help it). One of the groups is in London on a school trip so I only had one class today- the BTSs. I'm sure I've written about them before but they're the post- compulsory education class who have decided to stay on and do a Higher National Diploma, so they're my age. Most of them have done work placements abroad so they know how I feel and they're always asking me how I'm doing and if I like France. They're just a lovely group and I really look forward to teaching them because I do 1to1 conversation practice with each of them for 15 minutes. I've got to know them pretty well and some of them have really impressive English, and amazing ambitions. They all want to own their own restaurants and earn Michelin stars, or be successful YouTubers, or open French pastry shops abroad. I just think it's really cool that they know for sure what they want and how to get it, and that they're so determined, so we have some really good conversations.
Anyway, enough gushing about the BTSs, this evening I walked home in the sun (the thermometer outside the bank said it was 26 degrees but I don't quite believe that, it was beautiful outside though) and tweaked some of my lesson plans for tomorrow.
Thursday
I did my civil rights lesson again today. When I told the class that they could choose any injustice they liked and write their own "I have a dream" speech about it, one group of boys chose to write about discrimination of gingers and that their dream is that one day gingers will be equal with the rest of the world. It was very well written!
Today was the first day of the year I have sat outside in the sun for lunch :) I wanted to get away from the staffroom because some of the teachers were referring to me as "elle, l'assistante" (her, the assistant) instead of calling me by my name when I was right there. They weren't being horrible, the teachers are lovely on the whole, but it just annoyed me a bit and reminded me that there is a definite hierarchy here that is a strange place for an assistant to slip into, so I had a break from the staffroom. As an assistant you're in this weird situation where the pupils see you as a member of staff, but not one who is to be respected as a teacher, and the teachers see you as a member of staff, but one who is only just above the pupils in terms of the school hierarchy. I suppose it's fair really, but it means that you don't really feel comfortable in either category and it makes it really important to talk to other assistants who are in similar positions.
Friday
I was lucky to only have one class today. In the morning I walked into town to meet up with a friend for lunch, before going into the catering college for my lesson. There were only four pupils and they're from a group with ability, but very little motivation. And being Friday afternoon the motivation was almost zero. We got through it though and I think they learnt some new vocab so I think it was as successful as it could've been.
Saturday
I was going to keep this little diary going over the weekend as well, but my Saturday morning has got of to a bad start with the bus not turning up that was supposed to take me to Colmar, so I'm just going to go for a bike ride and work on my Special Study. I know that this post was probably incredibly boring for most people reading it, but if it helps any future assistants to get an idea of what a typical week looks like, then I'll be happy :)
In other news, I've been accepted into language school in Italy! I'll be spending May in the Marche region so if I completely fail at finding a summer job in Italy then at least my Italian should (hopefully) be up to scratch. I'm actually really excited about it (I'm also a little too excited than is socially acceptable that I'll be abroad for Eurovision and will therefore be able to vote for the UK.)
I'll leave it there for this week as I desperately need to get cracking on this essay I have to do for university. I planning on writing it over the summer but the research needs to be done from France, and with only 5 weeks left, I'm cutting it a bit fine. Maybe it was a good thing the bus didn't turn up today after all!
The whole time I've been writing this blog, I've tried to bear in mind that future assistants and other year abroaders might stumble across my ramblings, and therefore I've made an effort to be as honest as possible about what it's like to live abroad and not gloss over the difficult bits, or on the flipside moan too much.
Anyway, this week I thought I'd do a sort of " Week in the life" type thing and do a little diary. It's a typical week- I'm working the average number of hours I do, and I've got a mix of some of my regular classes as well as some new ones, so hopefully for anyone who is soon to start their year abroad it will give a little glimpse of what to expect!
Monday
8am Monday morning, first day back after the holidays, nobody wants to be here. Luckily I'm being eased back in gently and only had one class today. I've had this lot a few times before and they're a typical premier class (16-17 year olds). Their exams are still far enough away that they try to get away with not putting in the maximum amount of effort, but most of them are mature enough to not muck about. When I arrived at school, the printer wasn't working (what else is new?) so I had to improvise and turn a reading activity into a listening one. Then I arrived at the classroom to find that the teacher was doing oral exams and didn't tell me that I needed to take half the class to another classroom. With 10 minutes wasted, I started the lesson and it was going fairly smoothly. My new whiteboard pens wouldn't rub off the board properly though so I was forced to leave a blue cloud on there when a German teacher came in and said she needed the room for oral exams. I told the class that there was another room we could go to to finish the last 15 minutes of the lesson, but 6 or 7 of them mysteriously got lost on the way...
With my work at school finished for the day by 9am, I headed home in the sunshine to plan my lessons for tomorrow and plan out the few remaining weekends I have left here.
Tuesday
My 8am class was cancelled so I went in for 9 and did 4 classes. I did a couple on the subject of the conditional tense which was fun as we just did lots of games. Usually I really don't like teaching grammar, but this was just getting them to speak using this particular tense so we weren't restricted to lots of grammar exercises. Another lesson was on social networks and big brother society. It was a lively group but I've done that lesson countless times before so it was fine. I'd never had a class with them before so they were asking me all these questions about myself and asking how long I'm here for which felt a bit odd considering I've been here since September... My last lesson of the day was about the American Civil Rights Movement and the divided society of America in the 1960s. The temptation to do nothing but watch clips and songs from Hairspray was strong, but the group was 80% boys so instead I got them to write their own versions of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech.
Now I'm having an evening of enjoying the fact that all my lessons are planned for the rest of the week :)
Wednesday
I like Wednesdays. It's the only day of the week that I have set hours, and I have two of my favourite classes (I know i shouldn't have favourites, but when they're as lovely as these two classes I can't help it). One of the groups is in London on a school trip so I only had one class today- the BTSs. I'm sure I've written about them before but they're the post- compulsory education class who have decided to stay on and do a Higher National Diploma, so they're my age. Most of them have done work placements abroad so they know how I feel and they're always asking me how I'm doing and if I like France. They're just a lovely group and I really look forward to teaching them because I do 1to1 conversation practice with each of them for 15 minutes. I've got to know them pretty well and some of them have really impressive English, and amazing ambitions. They all want to own their own restaurants and earn Michelin stars, or be successful YouTubers, or open French pastry shops abroad. I just think it's really cool that they know for sure what they want and how to get it, and that they're so determined, so we have some really good conversations.
Anyway, enough gushing about the BTSs, this evening I walked home in the sun (the thermometer outside the bank said it was 26 degrees but I don't quite believe that, it was beautiful outside though) and tweaked some of my lesson plans for tomorrow.
Thursday
I did my civil rights lesson again today. When I told the class that they could choose any injustice they liked and write their own "I have a dream" speech about it, one group of boys chose to write about discrimination of gingers and that their dream is that one day gingers will be equal with the rest of the world. It was very well written!
Today was the first day of the year I have sat outside in the sun for lunch :) I wanted to get away from the staffroom because some of the teachers were referring to me as "elle, l'assistante" (her, the assistant) instead of calling me by my name when I was right there. They weren't being horrible, the teachers are lovely on the whole, but it just annoyed me a bit and reminded me that there is a definite hierarchy here that is a strange place for an assistant to slip into, so I had a break from the staffroom. As an assistant you're in this weird situation where the pupils see you as a member of staff, but not one who is to be respected as a teacher, and the teachers see you as a member of staff, but one who is only just above the pupils in terms of the school hierarchy. I suppose it's fair really, but it means that you don't really feel comfortable in either category and it makes it really important to talk to other assistants who are in similar positions.
Friday
I was lucky to only have one class today. In the morning I walked into town to meet up with a friend for lunch, before going into the catering college for my lesson. There were only four pupils and they're from a group with ability, but very little motivation. And being Friday afternoon the motivation was almost zero. We got through it though and I think they learnt some new vocab so I think it was as successful as it could've been.
Saturday
I was going to keep this little diary going over the weekend as well, but my Saturday morning has got of to a bad start with the bus not turning up that was supposed to take me to Colmar, so I'm just going to go for a bike ride and work on my Special Study. I know that this post was probably incredibly boring for most people reading it, but if it helps any future assistants to get an idea of what a typical week looks like, then I'll be happy :)
In other news, I've been accepted into language school in Italy! I'll be spending May in the Marche region so if I completely fail at finding a summer job in Italy then at least my Italian should (hopefully) be up to scratch. I'm actually really excited about it (I'm also a little too excited than is socially acceptable that I'll be abroad for Eurovision and will therefore be able to vote for the UK.)
I'll leave it there for this week as I desperately need to get cracking on this essay I have to do for university. I planning on writing it over the summer but the research needs to be done from France, and with only 5 weeks left, I'm cutting it a bit fine. Maybe it was a good thing the bus didn't turn up today after all!
Saturday 8 March 2014
The Home Run
Hello everyone :) I've just got back to my appartment after a chillaxed couple of weeks in Italy and England, and I'm at a bit of a loose end so thought I'd do a quick little post to mark the beginning of the end of my time in France!
As of today, I have a little under six weeks left in Alsace. While some weeks have dragged and there have been times when I thought the weekend would never come, Easter, and my return to England, is almost here. It's mind-boggling to think that I arrived here at the tail end of summer, on a hot September day, and now it is Spring. During my first couple of weeks, introducing myself to new classes, they all asked me how long I was here for. When I replied "7 months", they were surprised that it was such a long time, and I remember those 7 months looming ahead of me and for the life of me not being able to imagine April. But here we are, almost.
The day I got back here after Christmas, I burst into tears on my way back from the supermarket because I couldn't bear the thought of 4 more months here, I sat in my room feeling desperately homesick and useless for about three days, and the French winter just generally didn't agree with me (or anyone else). However this time round, I've decided to approach things in a more positive way. I'm going to make the most of being here to fine tune those tricky bits of the French language that I haven't got the hang of yet and use the (hopefully) better weather to fill my weekends with trips to local bits and pieces, as well ascontinuing with starting my year abroad essay research.
I really hope I'm not tempting fate with all this positive outlook stuff, and that this motivation actually lasts (I'm currently over tired and running on caffeine) after all I haven't gone back to work yet. But even if work is awful, I've got the weekends to escape :)
Anyway I'll leave it there before I get carried away and actually declare that I love Alsace or something equally as insane. Have a great week everyone!
A bientôt,
Alice :)
As of today, I have a little under six weeks left in Alsace. While some weeks have dragged and there have been times when I thought the weekend would never come, Easter, and my return to England, is almost here. It's mind-boggling to think that I arrived here at the tail end of summer, on a hot September day, and now it is Spring. During my first couple of weeks, introducing myself to new classes, they all asked me how long I was here for. When I replied "7 months", they were surprised that it was such a long time, and I remember those 7 months looming ahead of me and for the life of me not being able to imagine April. But here we are, almost.
The day I got back here after Christmas, I burst into tears on my way back from the supermarket because I couldn't bear the thought of 4 more months here, I sat in my room feeling desperately homesick and useless for about three days, and the French winter just generally didn't agree with me (or anyone else). However this time round, I've decided to approach things in a more positive way. I'm going to make the most of being here to fine tune those tricky bits of the French language that I haven't got the hang of yet and use the (hopefully) better weather to fill my weekends with trips to local bits and pieces, as well as
I really hope I'm not tempting fate with all this positive outlook stuff, and that this motivation actually lasts (I'm currently over tired and running on caffeine) after all I haven't gone back to work yet. But even if work is awful, I've got the weekends to escape :)
Anyway I'll leave it there before I get carried away and actually declare that I love Alsace or something equally as insane. Have a great week everyone!
A bientôt,
Alice :)
Monday 3 March 2014
There's no place like Rome
I know I've raved about the French school holidays before, but they really are great. I am now on my third two week holiday since October, and for this one I decided to go home and get some stuff done, while having a bit of a break from France. But long story short, a selection of different circumstances fell into place and before flying home, I ended up in Rome, spending a weekend soaking up some sun, seeing some ancient stuff, and enjoying exploring a new place while practising my Italian.
Italy for me definitely has a certain feel to it, and as soon as we landed on the tarmac at Fiumicino airport, I felt an overwhelming sense of happiness to be back after 6 months away. Rome is very different to Treviso in many ways. Obviously Rome is a lot bigger and there's more to see. It's also not quite as chilled out as Treviso and Venice, but you'd expect that from a capital city. We did an extreme amount of walking and saw an incredible amount of sights in the three days we were there (I went with three of the other assistants working in Alsace), and it was the perfect way to cheer myself up after a hard few weeks in France (I won't bore you with the details, but gastric flu, getting my bike vandalised, some horrible classes and nasty weather meant I was in need of a holiday!).
We started off in ancient Rome, where unfortunately the Colosseum had scaffolding all over it, so you didn't really get the whole view, but it was still really impressive.
The Roman Forum was incredible, I'm not someone who's usually that interested in History because I find it really hard to imagine these places in the past. But a good chunk of ancient Rome is still intact, which makes it easier for people like me to see how it all fit together to make this incredible place. What struck me was the different layers of history and how they were all there side by side- we were surrounded by ancient, medieval, Renaissance and Baroque buildings and you can see on some builings where over the years it started with this one type of rock and then different layers and columns and facades were added according to the fashions and needs of the time.
What I loved about Rome was how low-rise everything was. It didn't feel like we were in a major city at all because of the lack of skyscrapers and modern architecture. Nothing in the city is allowed to be taller than the St Peter's Basilica, in The Vatican, so ancient Rome feels authentic, and not just like it's lost in a modern city and surrounded by offices or something.
The next day we went on a tour of the city centre. We saw typical touristy things like the Spanish Steps and Trevi fountain, working our way towards The Vatican. My favourite place we passed through was Piazza Navona, it's busy enough to feel interesting, but not heaving with people, and there's a pretty spectacular fountain plonked in the middle. It's the fountain where they filmed the bit in Angels and Demons where a Cardinal is drowning and Tom Hanks comes to the rescue. The fountain is made up of four statues, representing the rivers of four continents that helped the Roman Empire. Or something along those lines anyway. Gelato was in sight by that point so my mind may have wandered from what the tour guide was saying...
A gift of an obelisk from the ancient Egyptians:
And a statue of St Peter on top of a column, pointing towards the Vatican:
The mind-numbingly old (and impressively intact) Pantheon:
And a beautiful piazza designed by Michelangelo:
The tour ended at The Vatican, and we went into the stunningly beautiful Basilica San Pietro. As lovely as the church was, I think we were equally as excited to see a new country, and we really did see the entire country, it being the smallest one in the world. The Vatican is a great place, they have their own currency, and the post office is a static caravan.
I was sad to leave Italy after only such a short time being back, but the end of my time in France is coming scarily and unsettling quickly (not going to lie though, in some ways it's a bit of a relief), which means that my return to Italy is also coming quickly and as of yet, I have organised nothing... Hopefully by my next post I'll have put some plans in place!
Until next time amigos,
Alice :)
Italy for me definitely has a certain feel to it, and as soon as we landed on the tarmac at Fiumicino airport, I felt an overwhelming sense of happiness to be back after 6 months away. Rome is very different to Treviso in many ways. Obviously Rome is a lot bigger and there's more to see. It's also not quite as chilled out as Treviso and Venice, but you'd expect that from a capital city. We did an extreme amount of walking and saw an incredible amount of sights in the three days we were there (I went with three of the other assistants working in Alsace), and it was the perfect way to cheer myself up after a hard few weeks in France (I won't bore you with the details, but gastric flu, getting my bike vandalised, some horrible classes and nasty weather meant I was in need of a holiday!).
We started off in ancient Rome, where unfortunately the Colosseum had scaffolding all over it, so you didn't really get the whole view, but it was still really impressive.
The Roman Forum was incredible, I'm not someone who's usually that interested in History because I find it really hard to imagine these places in the past. But a good chunk of ancient Rome is still intact, which makes it easier for people like me to see how it all fit together to make this incredible place. What struck me was the different layers of history and how they were all there side by side- we were surrounded by ancient, medieval, Renaissance and Baroque buildings and you can see on some builings where over the years it started with this one type of rock and then different layers and columns and facades were added according to the fashions and needs of the time.
A gift of an obelisk from the ancient Egyptians:
And a statue of St Peter on top of a column, pointing towards the Vatican:
Until next time amigos,
Alice :)
Saturday 25 January 2014
"Yes that's it! Said the Hatter with a sigh, it's always tea time."-Alice in Wonderland
Hello there everyone! Just a quick little weekly update for you :) I spent a good hour and a half last weekend writing out a long and at times philosophical blogpost when all I really wanted to do was watch YouTube in bed and eat ice cream, only to have it wiped from the internet when I exited the blogger app to add a picture. I was enraged for a while, hence no post last week, sorry. But now I'm in a much better frame of mind. So we'll try this again and I'm seeing it as a blessing in disguise to hopefully make it a tad more cheerful than take one was! I've put this one in bullet points to make it more digestible because lots of different stuff has been going on and my 11pm brain isn't good at linking stuff together.
-My exciting news of the week is that I've got myself a little second job! I know a lot of people take on tutoring or babystitting while they're doing assistantships, but I'm doing something a little different. Basically, a teacher at one of the schools I work at is translating a book for a friend who's in the French air force. This guy is writing a book about the history of French aviation and the publisher wants to include an English translation. The teacher translating it isn't a native English speaker, which technically to translate something, you should be, but that's where I come in. My job is to edit his translation and tweak it so that it sounds as if it's been written by a native speaker. It's hard work but I'm actually really enjoying it! It's hard to tread the line between wanting to provide an honest translation that would seem fluent and readable to a native speaker, whilst trying not to change the original too much as I'm not the actual translator after all, but it's a great way to fill my free time and I should even get to see my work published at the end of it!
-The Christmas decorations in Guebwiller are still up. This annoys me greatly, it's FEBRUARY!!! A house down the road has a plastic snowman in the garden, the town centre lights are still strung up despite not being switched on anymore, and there are mini Christmas trees in the shop window of a place in the centre ville. Sort it out Guebwiller. That's the only problem with living somewhere that does Christmas brilliantly- they hold onto it for far too long afterwards. Maybe it's because of the lack of snow. Usually, Alsatian winters are bitterly cold and by this time of year the ski schools up the mountain are doing a roaring trade. But this January has been unseasonably mild and wet, and my landlady keeps telling me stories about winter 1956, when January was wet and warm "just like this one", and then February saw things plummet to -25C. Brrrr.
-It amazes me how up and down my time here is, and how quickly a day can go from bad to amazing and vice versa. Our job is so dependent on the pupils and how their day is going, and what kind of mood they're in and how much or little sugar they consumed at lunch, that it sometimes feels like I am not in control of how my day at work pans out. In an office job you'd obviously expect hiccups, but generally if you go into work in a good mood, you have a good day, and if you go into work in a bad mood, you have a not so good day. One minute I'm on cloud nine after a usually cheeky kid makes an effort in my class and then compliments my French, then merely one hour later I want to get on the next flight to England (or at least just go home and sulk) after someone in a shop is rude, or a member of staff laughs at my accent, or I trip over the damn cobbles in the street outside school. Life...
-I was invited by the head of English at my second school to go round her house for lunch last week, which was exactly what I needed. I had been getting pangs of homesickness, but being in a homely environment and being given a homecooked meal was just what I needed :) The teachers at that school really are so so lovely, and it was lovely to be able to chat to them outside of work. We spoke about so much stuff, all in French and it was such a confidence booster to have a whole day of that. It was a bit of a lightbulb moment, and I realised that although I slip into English mode very easily at the weekends when I spend time with English-speaking freinds, I CAN actually speak French after all :)
-Right, so in reference to the title of this post, I'm sure many of you will be interested/ shocked/ delighted to discover that I am now a proper tea drinker. Yes, I have come over to the dark side. I resisted it for as long as possible but my New Year's resolution to drink less Diet Coke has meant that I have to get my caffeine from other sources, and tea it is. I'm also told that French tea with UHT milk is disgusting to Brits, so if I start off my tea drinking career here, it can only get better once I'm home.
I'm not really sure what else to write about! I sat down to write this thinking I'd have loads to say as I feel like I've been really busy since I last wrote a post, but honestly it's been pretty mundane, or it's planning for exciting stuff that I'm saving for future posts (ooh spoilers). So I guess I'll end it there!
Have a great week everyone :)
Ailce x
P.S. I found myself purchasing this beast at the supermarché. I'm becoming increasingly French, send help.
Thursday 16 January 2014
Avoir le cul bordé de nouilles
This week I was asked by two teachers to do some classes on roleplays. Almost all my hours this week were with the secondes (14/15 year olds), who I have decided are my favourite age group. When I was in Sixth Form I always thought that if I was ever crazy enough to become a teacher, I would prefer the older classes, but the great thing about the secondes is that they're old enough to be slightly mature, but they're the youngest in the lycee so they're usually not too big for their boots yet. Seconde classes tend to be nice and chilled out because their main exams are still more than two years away, so there's less pressure to test them all of the time. Anyway, they had to do roleplays between a parent and child, pretending that the child has decided to walk across France and must convince the parent that it's a good idea. I don't know why I've never thought of doing a full lesson on roleplays before, but it was brilliant! They had the whole lesson to be creative and use me to help them in whatever way they needed, rather than me just feeling like I was lecturing them the whole time. The more advanced classes used the time to to come up with some really sophisticated conversations, and the lower levels liked having the freedom to work at their own pace. Even my Thursday afternoon class who are usually a right cheeky bunch, loved being able to be creative. I turned the tables by asking them to come up to the front of the class at the end of the lesson to present their roleplay. I never thought I'd see that group nervous, but apparently they took it really quite seriously because they went all shy when they had to perform. It really paid off to give them that freedom because it made me see that group in a completely new light, and some of the stuff they came out with really took me by surprise. It put the quiet ones on an even level with the rowdy ones who make up the vast majority of the class and have a tendency to overshadow.
I'm seeing more and more that the activities I hated at school (things like roleplays, group work and anything that involved me getting out of my chair- I was a lazy bum), are now the exact activities that I enjoy teaching the most. Plonking an long text like a newspaper article in front of a class and getting them to read and answer questions is easy, but so so dull, for me as well as them. I never would have imagined, even six months ago, that I'd ever be the type to stand up in front of a group, waving my arms about and leading speaking activities that involve movement around the classroom and encourage loudness. I will always have a part of me that is introverted and reserved, but I definitely made the right decision by becoming a language assistant because I no longer feel like it's the first thing that people notice about me or the main characteristic that pops into peoples' heads when they meet me. Alsace is like a pile of vegetables- some bits are ugly, some bits are beautiful, sometimes you feel like you've bitten off more than you can chew, but ultimately it's doing you good. Yup, I need to work on my metaphors...
Anyways, despite the back tyre of my bike getting mangled and burst by a pesky rock on my way to work on Thursday morning, I've had an awesome week. I finally got down to work on my special study (the extended essay I have to write for university while I'm abroad), and sent out some emails in the hope of finding something to do in Italy this summer. It feels good to focus working on something different, and writing emails in English and Italian has been a novelty after months of dealing with French email etiquette (even the most well-intended message can seem rude, and often I write a huge long email, only to be responded to with a two line long reply, or even just an "ok". I won't ruin this happy post with another rant against the French though, their ways are growing on me rather than getting to me, and disregarding the odd hiccup here and there, I'm sensing that I've finally started to settle. I even felt a bit sad this week when the catering college gave me my schedule right up until Easter, when I leave :( And, would you believe it, I even found myself referring to myself as "Aleese" - a true sign of integration if ever there was one! And then to top off a great week, I got an extra chicken nugget in my box from the supermarché (it's the little things), my last lesson of the week was cancelled, the head of English said that she'd noticed a big improvement in her pupils' English accent since I've been helping them, and one of my more challenging classes made me smile by first of all bursting into a rendition of Adele's Someone Like You mid-class (I let them get away with it because they sang it in perfect English) and then they told me that I speak really good French. Happy days :)
Mission: Learn French isn't feeling so much like Mission: Impossible anymore. I'm making an effort to speak at every opportunity, I've switched from reading BBC News to "Le Monde" when I'm eating my breakfast, and I got out my french grammar notebook! Didn't open it yet, but it's a start!
I hope you're having an equally fabulous week wherever in the world you are. I'll leave it there becuase the man sitting next to me in the patisserie where I am writing this has started to crack his knuckles, eewww.
Bon weekend tout le monde!
Bisous,
Alice
P.S. I'm really sorry about the lack of pictures recently. I know that a block of text like this is dull, and it's frustrating because my camera is full of photos, but I am suffering from a lack of an SD card slot and USB port in my life. Also there are just too many photos to share on here anyway so I'm thinking of starting to use Flickr. Anyone know if it's good/ easy to use?
P.P.S. The title of this post is a French idiom I stumbled across this week meaning 'too be lucky". I thought it was appropriate seeing as I've been lucky to have my favourite classes this week, and of course that extra chicken nugget... Literally translated "avoir le cul bordé de nouilles" means "to have an ass full of noodles". I like to reward anyone who makes it right to the bottom (excuse the pun) of my posts with this information :)
Monday 13 January 2014
So, after a lovely holiday making the most of being back in England and spending time with everyone I've been missing, I'm back. It's been interesting coming back to France after spending a holiday in England, as if this were home. It's still not feeling that way, and I'm not going to pretend it was easy coming back- not made any easier by my landlady who lives downstairs who it turns out is a compulsive neat freak. 10 minutes after I walked through the door and without so much as a "Happy New Year", she came in and launched into a rant about how we hadn't lined up the towels impeccably enough in the bathroom cupboard, there was a tea stain on a mug in the kitchen and how dare my housemate leave a sock behind in her room after she moved out! All this from the people who haven't yet taken down the Christmas decorations despite it being the 14th January tomorrow and the snow already melting on top of the mountains. I think we've made up now, but it will be interesting to see what the next few months bring as I'll be living here on my own from now on.
I was slightly nervous about living on my own, but for fear of talking too soon, it's actually not going badly. So far it's just resulted in me teaching myself how to ride my bike with no hands due to excessive amounts of free time. Obviously I would prefer to have housemates, but not having them means that I plan my free time more wisely and make sure I can tailor it towards getting out the house and immersing myself some more. I have a feeling that my options of things to do in Guebwiller are going to be exhausted soon- there are only so many times a person can go to the piscine, or have the same conversation with the person at the cinema box office before they really crave that meaningful face to face French conversation. My day-to-day French is still not up there with my Italian, but my written and academic French is hanging on in there I think. I just need to find more ways to chat with French people outside of work. I was lucky today in that I had a class of only two students who had specifically asked for extra grammar help. As it was more tutoring than teaching, and grammar- rather than conversation-focused, it was a good opportunity to do the whole lesson in French. I'm useless at English grammar at the best of times so explaining the passive voice in French was a nice challenge, and it was admittedly quite rewarding to see them noticeably improving.
Work has started back ok, there are still all the usual shenanigans with them springing lessons on me a few hours in advance and cancelling them at the last minute without thinking that I might like to be told if I didn't have to come in. There are still only two classrooms in the entire school that I can reserve, so I feel like the Pied Piper of Hamlin leading the pupils through the school to find a room all the time, but I'm trying to have an open mind about it, and although I don't think it's something I can get used to, I'm coming to accept that that's just the way things work here, and at least I'm getting a very immersive insight into this culture.
On a cheerfuller note, I've booked a spontaneous trip to Rome! I was looking at flights back home for the February holiday, but even with the most budget of budget airlines they seemed unnecessarily expensive. So I had a browse of other places that I could fly to, and bizarrely it turns out that it is cheaper to fly Basel to Rome, then Rome to London, then London back to Basel, than it is to just fly Basel to London and back. So basically I'm saving money by going on holiday, couldn't really say no could I? It's only for three nights, but I am ridiculously excited to go back to Italy again :) I also found out that I'm finishing here earlier than I first thought! My contract ends on the 30th April but I always knew that I wouldn't be staying that long due to the Easter holidays cutting into that time. What I hadn't worked out was that because of all the bank holidays around that time, after the February holidays there are only five and a half weeks until this whole French part of my year abroad is over! Good Friday is a normal working day in every region of France except Alsace, and we get the day off (feeling very smug about this, thank you Alsace!) As hard as it's been at times, the whole thing is going ridiculously quickly and I think I'm finally moving past the tricky culture shock and entering the phase of knowing that my time here will be over in just a few months and however happy or sad I'm going to be when that day comes, I need to make the most of the few months I have left here to really work on my French.
I will end my first post of the New Year on that optimistic note, have a great week everyone and Bonne Année tout le monde :)
I was slightly nervous about living on my own, but for fear of talking too soon, it's actually not going badly. So far it's just resulted in me teaching myself how to ride my bike with no hands due to excessive amounts of free time. Obviously I would prefer to have housemates, but not having them means that I plan my free time more wisely and make sure I can tailor it towards getting out the house and immersing myself some more. I have a feeling that my options of things to do in Guebwiller are going to be exhausted soon- there are only so many times a person can go to the piscine, or have the same conversation with the person at the cinema box office before they really crave that meaningful face to face French conversation. My day-to-day French is still not up there with my Italian, but my written and academic French is hanging on in there I think. I just need to find more ways to chat with French people outside of work. I was lucky today in that I had a class of only two students who had specifically asked for extra grammar help. As it was more tutoring than teaching, and grammar- rather than conversation-focused, it was a good opportunity to do the whole lesson in French. I'm useless at English grammar at the best of times so explaining the passive voice in French was a nice challenge, and it was admittedly quite rewarding to see them noticeably improving.
Work has started back ok, there are still all the usual shenanigans with them springing lessons on me a few hours in advance and cancelling them at the last minute without thinking that I might like to be told if I didn't have to come in. There are still only two classrooms in the entire school that I can reserve, so I feel like the Pied Piper of Hamlin leading the pupils through the school to find a room all the time, but I'm trying to have an open mind about it, and although I don't think it's something I can get used to, I'm coming to accept that that's just the way things work here, and at least I'm getting a very immersive insight into this culture.
On a cheerfuller note, I've booked a spontaneous trip to Rome! I was looking at flights back home for the February holiday, but even with the most budget of budget airlines they seemed unnecessarily expensive. So I had a browse of other places that I could fly to, and bizarrely it turns out that it is cheaper to fly Basel to Rome, then Rome to London, then London back to Basel, than it is to just fly Basel to London and back. So basically I'm saving money by going on holiday, couldn't really say no could I? It's only for three nights, but I am ridiculously excited to go back to Italy again :) I also found out that I'm finishing here earlier than I first thought! My contract ends on the 30th April but I always knew that I wouldn't be staying that long due to the Easter holidays cutting into that time. What I hadn't worked out was that because of all the bank holidays around that time, after the February holidays there are only five and a half weeks until this whole French part of my year abroad is over! Good Friday is a normal working day in every region of France except Alsace, and we get the day off (feeling very smug about this, thank you Alsace!) As hard as it's been at times, the whole thing is going ridiculously quickly and I think I'm finally moving past the tricky culture shock and entering the phase of knowing that my time here will be over in just a few months and however happy or sad I'm going to be when that day comes, I need to make the most of the few months I have left here to really work on my French.
I will end my first post of the New Year on that optimistic note, have a great week everyone and Bonne Année tout le monde :)
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