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 :)

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 :)