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 :)

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 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 as continuing 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 :)

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 :)