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 :)