A quick post to keep up the momentum of blogging before heading to Paris tomorrow- today my flatmate and I headed to the Parc Des Expositons (for those in Glasgow, a bit like the SECC) for a sort of fair thing which was all about one particular topic- chocolate! Heaven, right? It actually cost 5 euros to get in (or 4 euros if you haven't lost the voucher your flatmate gave you, like I did...) which is quite expensive considering it was just a bunch of stalls selling various chocolate based products and something called a 'show' which was in fact an hour long cookery demonstration. It was pretty good in terms of chocolate samples though, and I got to drink hot chocolate made from a real lump of chocolate on a stick. Oh and there was a sample of the 'chocolate tofu' cookies made in the cookery demo which was admittedly devine. I also have the answer to the question, 'can one get sick of eating chocolate at 11.30 in the morning and it's sadly yes.
We also got free entry to the homes exhibition which would have been great if I'd been looking to replace my stained glass or my jacuzzi...
Nevertheless an interesting morning!
Saturday 24 October 2009
Friday 23 October 2009
Teaching
Ok so my internet's kind of slow and it cuts out every two hours but it's free so I can't really complain. I've tried updating my blog a couple of times with pictures but the pictures always take aaaages and the internet cuts out before it's done. So here's a post with no pictures, and rather than trying to update about everything that's happened in the last 4 weeks (which is quite a lot!) I'll just rush up to date to the last two weeks and talk about what's probably the most interesting thing, the teaching.
I'm a 9 month assistant in primary schools and that means I'm effectively the English teacher. I have three schools in three little villages dotted around the Luberon, a Parc Naturel in the midst of Provencal France. As mentioned before I live in Avignon, so I have to get three different buses for each of my schools, and for two of my schools I actually have to get picked up from the bus stop and driven for 10 mins or so to the school itself. I've only been doing it for two weeks and it's okay really. I do spend a lot of time on the buses, probably around 5 hours per week, but the great thing is that I only have to work Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, and Monday is really just a half day. Yup, I'm a slacker. It is hard work teaching the kids though, and I do spend a lot of time preparing- I get kids of every age and level, from the three year old babies who still have dummies to the 10 year olds getting set for college (a.k.a secondary school) next year.
For those unfamiliar with the French school system, it starts at 2 or 3 in what's called the Ecole Maternelle, which is really akin to nursery school or kindergarten. Here's the info off of wiki:
"The ages are divided into Grande section (GS: 5 year olds), Moyenne section (MS: 4 year olds), Petite section (PS: 3 year olds) and Toute petite section (TPS: 2 year olds). It is not comp2ulsory, yet almost 100% of children aged 3 to 5 attend."
I only teach maternelle kids in one school where there is just PS, MS and GS... but let me tell you, teaching 3 year olds is hard enough! They don't even really know French yet and I'm meant to give them English?! Even the 5 year olds were a tough crowd- I tried my self invented 'hello what's your name?' song which worked pretty well with the 6-7 year olds, but with the 5 year olds I just get blank stares. It's hard enough to elicit their name when I ask them in French! On the other hand when I showed the 3 year olds a picture of a dog one of them did tell me in French that his dog had just died... leaving me pretty speechless.
Anyway I only spend 1 hour a week with maternelle, so the other 11ish hours of my time is spent with those in ecole elementaire. In EE there are 5 levels:
CP: 6 year olds
CE1: 7 year olds
CE2: 8 year olds
CM1: 9 year olds
CM2: 10 year olds
At my schools the classes are mostly mixed, so for example I get CP/CE1 or CE1/CE2 or CE2/CM1... at all schools there is a separate CM2 class. There are 5 classes in each school, and in each school I get between 30 minutes and an hour per week with each class. As you can imagine, 30 minutes a week of English is not very much, but then again an hour is really too long for the kids to concentrate on English. Thankfully at the schools the teachers are all lovely and the directors especially are really helpful. In each school the teachers stay in the class while I teach, excepting some teachers who leave the class some of the time. The kids are all really cute, but they do (especially the older ones) tend to talk a lot and it's really difficult to control them if the teacher isn't there. I have some ideas for dealing with this in the future but so far I've just been overwhelmed with the planning and executing of lesson plans and haven't had time for a long-term discipline strategy.
This week my lessons were on halloween, and involved a mixture of different activities dependant on the level. For the younger kids I had a song about witches and a picture of a skeleton which we used for parts of the body, and after we sang 'head, shoulders, knees and toes'. For the middles, I also taught a few halloween words like 'witch, bat, cat' and then did halloween charades, followed by the skeleton, 'head shoulders knees and toes', then 'simon says' for the parts of the body. For the oldest, we did all the halloween words, the charades game, then some of them got a halloween wordsearch, then we used the skeleton for body parts, revised 'head shoulders knees and toes', then sang 'the hokey cokey', then for some of them I had a dinosaur skeleton worksheet to label, and for those who finished the worksheets early I also had a colouring in sheet which was to colour in the different body parts of halloween creatures (i.e. colour the spider's legs red!). For the first two schools I tried to mark their worksheets as I went along but it was really difficult to do and the pupils whose sheet I wasn't marking got rowdy, so in my third school I asked if I could take them home to mark and they said sure. So I did my first proper bit of marking and put stickers on the ones who got it all correct... I anticipate a bit of a nightmare when I give them back and those who got all but one correct see that they didn't get a sticker, but I had to draw the line somewhere. Also I noticed there are two or three in each class who are waaay behind the others and I'm trying to work out strategies to get them involved without making them feel victimised. Drawing a blank on that one at the moment, let me know if you have any ideas!
Well that's all for just now, it's the Vacances de Toussaint and no more school for nearly two weeks! I'm off to Paris on Sunday and back to Scotland next Thursday so it'll probably be pretty busy. Hope everyone else has a fun holiday!
I'm a 9 month assistant in primary schools and that means I'm effectively the English teacher. I have three schools in three little villages dotted around the Luberon, a Parc Naturel in the midst of Provencal France. As mentioned before I live in Avignon, so I have to get three different buses for each of my schools, and for two of my schools I actually have to get picked up from the bus stop and driven for 10 mins or so to the school itself. I've only been doing it for two weeks and it's okay really. I do spend a lot of time on the buses, probably around 5 hours per week, but the great thing is that I only have to work Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, and Monday is really just a half day. Yup, I'm a slacker. It is hard work teaching the kids though, and I do spend a lot of time preparing- I get kids of every age and level, from the three year old babies who still have dummies to the 10 year olds getting set for college (a.k.a secondary school) next year.
For those unfamiliar with the French school system, it starts at 2 or 3 in what's called the Ecole Maternelle, which is really akin to nursery school or kindergarten. Here's the info off of wiki:
"The ages are divided into Grande section (GS: 5 year olds), Moyenne section (MS: 4 year olds), Petite section (PS: 3 year olds) and Toute petite section (TPS: 2 year olds). It is not comp2ulsory, yet almost 100% of children aged 3 to 5 attend."
I only teach maternelle kids in one school where there is just PS, MS and GS... but let me tell you, teaching 3 year olds is hard enough! They don't even really know French yet and I'm meant to give them English?! Even the 5 year olds were a tough crowd- I tried my self invented 'hello what's your name?' song which worked pretty well with the 6-7 year olds, but with the 5 year olds I just get blank stares. It's hard enough to elicit their name when I ask them in French! On the other hand when I showed the 3 year olds a picture of a dog one of them did tell me in French that his dog had just died... leaving me pretty speechless.
Anyway I only spend 1 hour a week with maternelle, so the other 11ish hours of my time is spent with those in ecole elementaire. In EE there are 5 levels:
CP: 6 year olds
CE1: 7 year olds
CE2: 8 year olds
CM1: 9 year olds
CM2: 10 year olds
At my schools the classes are mostly mixed, so for example I get CP/CE1 or CE1/CE2 or CE2/CM1... at all schools there is a separate CM2 class. There are 5 classes in each school, and in each school I get between 30 minutes and an hour per week with each class. As you can imagine, 30 minutes a week of English is not very much, but then again an hour is really too long for the kids to concentrate on English. Thankfully at the schools the teachers are all lovely and the directors especially are really helpful. In each school the teachers stay in the class while I teach, excepting some teachers who leave the class some of the time. The kids are all really cute, but they do (especially the older ones) tend to talk a lot and it's really difficult to control them if the teacher isn't there. I have some ideas for dealing with this in the future but so far I've just been overwhelmed with the planning and executing of lesson plans and haven't had time for a long-term discipline strategy.
This week my lessons were on halloween, and involved a mixture of different activities dependant on the level. For the younger kids I had a song about witches and a picture of a skeleton which we used for parts of the body, and after we sang 'head, shoulders, knees and toes'. For the middles, I also taught a few halloween words like 'witch, bat, cat' and then did halloween charades, followed by the skeleton, 'head shoulders knees and toes', then 'simon says' for the parts of the body. For the oldest, we did all the halloween words, the charades game, then some of them got a halloween wordsearch, then we used the skeleton for body parts, revised 'head shoulders knees and toes', then sang 'the hokey cokey', then for some of them I had a dinosaur skeleton worksheet to label, and for those who finished the worksheets early I also had a colouring in sheet which was to colour in the different body parts of halloween creatures (i.e. colour the spider's legs red!). For the first two schools I tried to mark their worksheets as I went along but it was really difficult to do and the pupils whose sheet I wasn't marking got rowdy, so in my third school I asked if I could take them home to mark and they said sure. So I did my first proper bit of marking and put stickers on the ones who got it all correct... I anticipate a bit of a nightmare when I give them back and those who got all but one correct see that they didn't get a sticker, but I had to draw the line somewhere. Also I noticed there are two or three in each class who are waaay behind the others and I'm trying to work out strategies to get them involved without making them feel victimised. Drawing a blank on that one at the moment, let me know if you have any ideas!
Well that's all for just now, it's the Vacances de Toussaint and no more school for nearly two weeks! I'm off to Paris on Sunday and back to Scotland next Thursday so it'll probably be pretty busy. Hope everyone else has a fun holiday!
Sunday 11 October 2009
How Apt!
Ok, quick post to catch up some more then I reaaalllly need to sleep.
So, Tuesday night I went to O' Neills, the Irish Pub on Rue de la Republique, to meet some other assistants. I had been feeling slightly ill (sore throat, cough, blocked nose etc) since Sunday but by the Tuesday I was really feeling very run down, especially with all that running about flathunting, so I didn't stay for long. I did however stay long enough to find my roomate- an Austrian assistant who is tres tres sympa! She mentioned that she was still looking for somewhere and, knowing a room was still free at the house I'd be staying at, I gave her the address and phone number of the place (or so I thought, haha). After about an hour at O'Neills I left to find my parents who were having a drink at a nearby cafe and to go back to the appartment, because I really wasn't feeling fab. Then had an early night, as we had a plan for an early rise to catch the bus to Gordes (the village where one of my schools is) the next day.
Wednesday we got up and ready nice and early and caught the bus to Cavaillon, from whence to go to Gordes. On the bus my aunt called me to say she'd had a call from someone asking about renting a room... it took me a while to realise that I had somehow written my aunt's phone number instead of that of the proprietaire of the house! Had minor freak out and then phoned Stephanie just as I was getting off the bus, to explain my faux pas... only to notice that she was already standing at Cavaillon Gare Routiere right in front of me! Tres bizarre. Anyway she had managed to get an appointment for the room as I had actually written the correct number underneath so it was all cool... but after I said bye to Stephanie we found out that we couldn't go to Gordes because you have to phone to book the bus on a Wednesday... quoi?! So we had to do something else and the eventual choice was Apt, just cause it's easy to get to from Cavaillon.
There's not much to say about our day trip to Apt, but here's some photos to illustrate it:
So, Tuesday night I went to O' Neills, the Irish Pub on Rue de la Republique, to meet some other assistants. I had been feeling slightly ill (sore throat, cough, blocked nose etc) since Sunday but by the Tuesday I was really feeling very run down, especially with all that running about flathunting, so I didn't stay for long. I did however stay long enough to find my roomate- an Austrian assistant who is tres tres sympa! She mentioned that she was still looking for somewhere and, knowing a room was still free at the house I'd be staying at, I gave her the address and phone number of the place (or so I thought, haha). After about an hour at O'Neills I left to find my parents who were having a drink at a nearby cafe and to go back to the appartment, because I really wasn't feeling fab. Then had an early night, as we had a plan for an early rise to catch the bus to Gordes (the village where one of my schools is) the next day.
Wednesday we got up and ready nice and early and caught the bus to Cavaillon, from whence to go to Gordes. On the bus my aunt called me to say she'd had a call from someone asking about renting a room... it took me a while to realise that I had somehow written my aunt's phone number instead of that of the proprietaire of the house! Had minor freak out and then phoned Stephanie just as I was getting off the bus, to explain my faux pas... only to notice that she was already standing at Cavaillon Gare Routiere right in front of me! Tres bizarre. Anyway she had managed to get an appointment for the room as I had actually written the correct number underneath so it was all cool... but after I said bye to Stephanie we found out that we couldn't go to Gordes because you have to phone to book the bus on a Wednesday... quoi?! So we had to do something else and the eventual choice was Apt, just cause it's easy to get to from Cavaillon.
There's not much to say about our day trip to Apt, but here's some photos to illustrate it:
Saturday 10 October 2009
Concise summaries aren't really my thing...
Well I've been here two weeks now and haven't gotten past blogging about like the first 4 days so I really need to speed this thing up! So Monday was when I visited my school and Tuesday was mega mad stressful day where I finally found a place to live, huzzah. We visited a studio in the morning, and were almost going to just take it as the stress of not having somewhere was starting to freak me out, but really I had to admit to myself that I did not want to live alone in a tiny studio barely furnished and with no guarantee of internet. So, after that we went to the Espace Des Jeunes and I really started phoning people and organising flat visits. I really hate making phone calls in French, it's so much harder to communicate over the phone than face to face, but somehow I managed to drum up two rendez-vous at colocations, which I could add to the one that I had arranged (or rather my aunt arranged for me!) via appartager.com. So with three rendez vous to do that day (besides the studio) I was feeling a bit better. We went for a coffee, then waited for like an hour at the Phone House trying to buy a phone with them taking sooooo loooong about it that in the end we had to leave without one. The first flat rendez vous was on Rue De Vieux Sextier which was a really beautiful street, very central with lots of pretty boutiques. The flat itself was really nice, and would be shared with two girls who were both assistants. Me, parents and aunt were all really keen but unfortunately there was also another girl at the rendez vous who wanted it and she ended up getting it, leavng us all feeling really deflated.
The next rendez vous was in a tiny side street, something du Pont Martin I think. The street looked a bit dodgy and we just weren't really feeling it after seeing the last flat. In the end the guy who was meant to show us the flat never turned up, so it was on to our third and final rendez vous of the day. This was in a totally different location, near to the train and bus station but 'extra muros' (lit. 'outside the walls', as there are ramparts surrounding 'central Avignon' and then greater Avignon is outside the ramparts.) It's still only 10 minutes walk to the centre though. We found the place without much bother even though I wasn't that sure of the name and just knew the name of the larger street and that it was 'the first little street on the left'. We found the street and it was in fact very close to the station, and the house and garden looked huge! After pressing the buzzer we were greeted by the Madame of the house, and I got my first look at one of the little tortoises in the garden!
The arrangement concerning the house is that it is split into different appartments, 4 in all- one for Madame herself, one upstairs two bedroom appartment, one downstairs two bedroom appartment and one downstairs one bedroom appartment. There is a strict rule that only one person stays in each room, and no boys (although in fact the downstairs single person appartment is lived in by a man!). I was shown the two rooms of the currently unoccupied upstairs appartment- one was a smallish single room and the other a larger double, both featuring a bed, a tv, a wardrobe, a desk and a chair, the larger also has a bookcase. There is a shared bathroom (very small) and kitchen (fair size, with oven, hob, micro, frigo, freezer, bin, worktops, cupboards, plates, cutlery etc and table and chairs) for the two people in those two bedrooms. After discussing the particulars- was it possible to get CAF? (Yes) Could friends visiting from Scotland stay? (Yes) Was the rent all inclusive? (Yes) Could I pay in cash? (Yes) Could I get internet? (Probably) I decided to take it!
So this is my pad:
There is a short story about how I got my roomate but I'll save that for next time!
The next rendez vous was in a tiny side street, something du Pont Martin I think. The street looked a bit dodgy and we just weren't really feeling it after seeing the last flat. In the end the guy who was meant to show us the flat never turned up, so it was on to our third and final rendez vous of the day. This was in a totally different location, near to the train and bus station but 'extra muros' (lit. 'outside the walls', as there are ramparts surrounding 'central Avignon' and then greater Avignon is outside the ramparts.) It's still only 10 minutes walk to the centre though. We found the place without much bother even though I wasn't that sure of the name and just knew the name of the larger street and that it was 'the first little street on the left'. We found the street and it was in fact very close to the station, and the house and garden looked huge! After pressing the buzzer we were greeted by the Madame of the house, and I got my first look at one of the little tortoises in the garden!
The arrangement concerning the house is that it is split into different appartments, 4 in all- one for Madame herself, one upstairs two bedroom appartment, one downstairs two bedroom appartment and one downstairs one bedroom appartment. There is a strict rule that only one person stays in each room, and no boys (although in fact the downstairs single person appartment is lived in by a man!). I was shown the two rooms of the currently unoccupied upstairs appartment- one was a smallish single room and the other a larger double, both featuring a bed, a tv, a wardrobe, a desk and a chair, the larger also has a bookcase. There is a shared bathroom (very small) and kitchen (fair size, with oven, hob, micro, frigo, freezer, bin, worktops, cupboards, plates, cutlery etc and table and chairs) for the two people in those two bedrooms. After discussing the particulars- was it possible to get CAF? (Yes) Could friends visiting from Scotland stay? (Yes) Was the rent all inclusive? (Yes) Could I pay in cash? (Yes) Could I get internet? (Probably) I decided to take it!
So this is my pad:
There is a short story about how I got my roomate but I'll save that for next time!
Sunday 4 October 2009
Ah tishoo ah tishoo we all fall down...
Well, hello world! I am writing this blog after a whirlwind week of settling in to my new life in France, during which time my access to the internet has been rare and whenever I did get it I spent most of the time sending emails in French, which still does not come quickly for me! Lots has happened of course since I last blogged, including a lot of stress but overall a pretty good first week.
So the first day was spent just doing a bit of shopping at Leclerc supermarché and then taking a walk into the centre ville, and really not taking it all in properly at all. So much of my first days here were spent feeling too stressed and overwhelmed to really look at anything. After having a drink in a café, I went to a phonebooth to phone a few numbers I had and arrange some viewings of flats, and ended up idiotically phoning one guy, getting all the details and setting up a meeting, then two minutes later phoning another guy who happened to be the friend of the first guy and who had already rented his place, but who gave me all his friend’s details- meaning that I arranged the same visit twice! It took me ages on the phone and my Mum got mad at me, so there was fight number two. I phoned Chris for 10 minutes, then we went back to the appartment to sleep. Things got better on the Sunday, when ma tante Donna arrived from Nice to sort us all out!! We picked her up at the station around 11am, took her back to drop off her bags, had some lunch, then it was all go again because we had a rendez-vous for a studio appartment. The studio was near the station and it was in a nice house but we weren't sure about it because the bedroom was quite small and dark and I would have no colocs. In the end a Senegalese student took it instead. After that we went to the tourist info and asked where were the best places to find out about appartments- because it was a Sunday, not a lot was open, but the tourist info guy said there were annonces up at a place called Cinema Utopia, so off we went to find it. I got some photos of the Palais des Papes on the way.
We got some numbers and had a drink at the cinema, and that was pretty much that day over, but we made plans to go to Cavaillon and Taillades the next day, Monday, to visit my school. I stopped at a café with internet access to email my directeur and let him know.
Monday was a really tough day. We left for Cavaillon quite early, and when we arrived it was market day so really busy. After having a look at the town we concluded that it might be better for me to live there, to be close to my schools. It seemed quite big, with some shops and bars, a train station, a bus station, two supermarkets and a cinema. We went to the tourist info to ask about Taillades and got excited when we were told there was a bus… only to feel dejected on discovering that it barely ran at all, with no buses at all that day. There was no other option. We had to walk.
By the time we stopped to drink a café and eat a croissant (at Loch Ness café no less) and then checked for location ads at Super-U, it was midday, and we had a long walk ahead of us. It was really hot, and we were all in pretty unsuitable shoes for the hour-long trek along the road side with about 10cm of pavement (where there was any at all) and cars rushing by. We finally arrived in Taillades and found the school like an hour and a half later, and met my headteacher and some of the pupils and found out that I will be driven to my schools from Cavaillon, so I decided to live in Avignon, I also discovered my other schools are in petit villages called Lagne and Gordes.
Anyway I know this is a totally lame way to end a blog post but I'm really tired and a bit ill :( and I have to get up early for the Stage d'Accueil tomorrow at Marseille, so I'm going to bed. I'll post again soon with more longwinded banter from France!!
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