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.

• 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...

A presto!

Alice x

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

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 :)