Guess who's back, back again.

Bonjour and welcome to my resurrected year abroad blog! I trailed off a bit towards the end of last year when I was at language school in Italy, and could never really bring myself to write "my last blog post" so I plonked a picture of Poppy on here to entertain whoever might find themselves in this
obscure corner of the internet (notably a flurry of Russians and Moldovans apparently, привет and alo to you) while I was tackling the mountain of work and responsibility that was my final year of university, and leave it open to the possibility that I might do another year away at some point that would allow me to carry on rambling on here for another year or two.

As it happens, I have found myself doing another year abroad! Due do a convenient link between Bath and Aix-en-Provence, the two universities run an exchange of sorts where a graduate from each university goes to teach for a year at the other. I applied after my personal tutor said she thought I would enjoy it and find the students more receptive than those I taught at the secondary schools in Alsace, and because I realised that I don't particularly fancy finding a graduate scheme job in the UK just yet (or ever?). The options were Aix, Paris and Strasbourg. Knowing that living in capital cities isn't my cup of tea, and despite having a soft spot for Alsace knowing that I didn't want to repeat my time in that region and instead wanted to experience a completely different part of the country, I was over the moon when they offered me the job in Aix :) As a lectrice my job is to conduct English language lessons for groups of university students for 12 hours a week, plus lesson planning and marking and exam invigilating and the like. So it's not that different to what I ended up doing in Alsace last year, except the students are a few years older and wiser, my job is actually to teach this time, rather than to be a teacher under the disguise of a classroom assistant, and I'm situated in the Provence region, right down in the south surrounded by the Mediterranean on one side and the Alps on the other. The city is also incidentally twinned with Bath so as you can imagine I'm well happy to have ended up here :) I'm living with a host family of sorts for the year, renting a room from a family who near the centre-ville and university. I decided that this was the best option after looking at living with students and soon realising that in many cases that would mean paying a deposit and finding a French guarantor, as well as there being a high possibility that I would end up teaching one of my housemates, which would be beyond awkward...

Anyway, I thought that a good focus for my first blog post of the year would be to list some things that I'd like to see and do during the year before my departure, or as I like to call it, my Aixet from the region (sorry...). Obviously the main reason I am going is to hopefully make some French teenagers want to learn more about the British culture and the English language, but aside from that there are lots of cultural things I would love to explore and I feel it would be a real shame not to.

• Les Calanques and Cassis. Being a bit of a beach bum, I do like a good sandy cove to spend an afternoon reading in and these Calanques look like just my cup of tea. They are rock formations to the east of Marseille and look absolutely beautiful. Cassis is a little port town nearby which from what I can work out serves as the base for exploring the Calanques. 
• Visit Monaco and the Cote D'Azur. Monaco to cross another country off my list of European countries to visit (is there any other reason to go to Monaco if you're not a multi-millionaire?), and the Cote D'Azur to simultaneously satisfy my beach bum and culture vulture sides.
• Kayaking at Lac de Sainte-Croix. Kayaking on this lake on a sunny day looks like it could be my happy place. Google it. 
• Climb the Montagne Sainte-Victoire. I suppose I should factor in some exercise somewhere, and it looks like the views from the top of this mountain that sits behind Aix will be rewarding enough to motivate me to get out of a patisserie and actually do something active. 
• Learn how to cook something local. I am a food enthusiast who is not blessed with the gift of cooking edible things so if I can master just one local dish I will be happy. 

So in terms of how similar the blog will be to last year, I will try to continue my routine of posting every week, and failing that every fortnight. From what I can tell from the highly confusing calendar of term dates I have been sent, the university holidays surprisingly don't appear to be quite as generous as the school holidays which I very much enjoyed and took advantage of last year. But I'm sure I will take advantage of them nonetheless and I'm planning to make lots of cheeky trips over into Italy during the year, and possibly even further afield next summer, so I imagine I will continue with my trademark blogging style of posting selfies of my face obscuring various famous landmarks, moaning about French teenagers and making countless Sound of Music references...

Also, I will add that if anyone finds themselves in the South of France at any point, come visit me! I know from experience that it is always so nice to have visitors from home when you're far away, and Aix is a lovely place for a holiday, so venez nombreux!!

A bientot!

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.

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! 

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

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!

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 :)

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 :)