Mes premiers jours dans mes écoles

Alors, I have now finished my first term of teaching! Yep, that's right, my term consisted of only two days of actual teaching!!

After a lovely weekend of shopping, preparation for my lessons, and meeting up with some other assistants in Montpellier, I had my first day of official teaching in my first two schools on Monday, and then my first day in my third school on Tuesday, which was quite daunting as I didn't know which classes I was meant to be in and when, but I somehow managed to navigate the days successfully thanks to the help of a few very helpful and kind French teachers!

On Monday I taught 4 one hour lessons to mainly year 6 equivalent age classes, and some year 5s, so their English was not too bad! I did the basic 'my name is...' at first, and managed to get every child to tell me their name in English, and then I showed them photos of my family, and we went through 'brother', 'sister' etc. They were particularly excited by the photo of our cat, Archie, although none of them could pronounce his name! Then I had some pictures of things in Plymouth and they learnt the words in English for a lighthouse, a swimming pool (Tinside Lido!), boat, countryside (Dartmoor), shopping centre (Drake Circus), and fireworks (I had a picture from the national firework competition!). Overall, they were pretty good at learning this vocab, and I got them to draw pictures in their books and label them in English, which they loved doing. Their French accents made words like lighthouse and countryside quite difficult to say, but we managed it in the end!! The schools on Monday not only had their two hour lunch break, but also had two half hour break times, one in the morning, and one in the afternoon, which I couldn't believe! So that meant that although I was there for seven hours, I was only teaching for four of them!

The school I went to on Tuesday only had two 15 minute break times in addition to the usual two hour lunch break, so that was much better! I taught seven classes in this school of about 45 minutes, although a couple of my lessons were only half an hour with some of the youngest children in the school, who were 6-7 years old, and very cute! Obviously their English was practically zilch, so I had to simplify my lesson a lot for them! We had some great games of guess the missing picture though, and some of them were actually quite good at remembering the English words so I was very impressed! The school was having their school photos done that day, so there was some interruption to the day with various classes having to go and have their photos done - it's obviously a big thing in France, because they were all taking it very seriously! 

Anyway after these two days, I was very happy to come home to my bed, as it was pretty stressful and tiring! But now I know what I am doing and where I am supposed to be, so that will make things a lot easier when I go back after the holidays.

So now I'm officially on holiday!! Woop! I have some visitors coming - Emily, and then my mum and dad, so that will be fun, and nice to see them, and apart from that I am basically planning on being a tourist in my own town and exploring everything that the local area has to offer! Can't wait!

From Whitefields to Terres Blanches

After two weeks of being here in France, I have finally been into my schools and met the teachers that I will be working with, as well as some of the children!

As English language primary school assistants, we had our final training day on Tuesday which involved a parachute, some strange storybooks, nursery rhymes and some very competitive English assistants! It was a long day, although it was good to get some ideas to help us with our teaching.

On Thursday I had a very early start to meet my 'reférent' Vincent at the train station in Sète so he could drive me to my schools in Frontignan. Fortunately my earlier French lessons of years 7 and 8 came handy during this car journey, as I was able to tell Vincent all about where I live and about my family! He was excited that I was studying at the University of Warwick because he knew where Coventry was!

When we got to Frontignan, he showed me where the train station was, and how to get to my schools from there - they are so close to the train station that it's much easier for me to get the train from Sète to Frontignan on the days that I am teaching rather than the bus, which is great news for me because the bus takes about half an hour whereas the train only takes 5 minutes!

Then he took me into my first two schools to meet the head teachers and some of the staff. Bizarrely, these two schools are basically on opposite sides of the same building with a nursery in the middle, but they are still seen as two separate schools! The headteacher in the first school was particularly friendly and I could even understand almost everything she was saying so I think I'm going to like my Monday afternoons in that school!

After meeting the teachers in my first two schools, Vincent took me to my third school (which funnily enough is called Terres Blanches - which translates as White Fields in English, the same name as my first year accommodation!). This school is right next to his office, which is handy for me, as if I have any problems I can pop over next door! I met all the teachers in this school too, and as by this time they were teaching, I met some of classes too, and the children were very cute and shouted 'goodbye' in heavy french accents as I left the room! In this school one of the teachers ran me through the book that she wants me to do with some of the older classes which is a children's book based on Gulliver's Travels. It looks quite complicated, but she seemed to think that they would love it, so we'll see!

Afterwards, Vincent took me back to my first school and I sat in on a maths lesson, after first introducing myself in English. The teacher asked me to help some of the children who were struggling with their maths questions, which was a test of my language skills - especially when I couldn't think of the word for subtraction/minus in French!

Then, in keeping with French tradition, the class broke up for their two hour lunch break (yes, two whole hours!!) and I found myself sat in the middle of a group of very loud, fast talking French primary school teachers, eating my lunch. Needless to say keeping up with them was a challenge, but fortunately they didn't ask me too many questions, so I was able to just listen and try and understand what they were talking about - which was very varied! The conversation went from discussing the type of anti-mosquito product they used, to young people's smoking habits, to the forecasted storms this weekend! They were very nice to me though and made me a coffee (the French usually have it without milk, which is something I'm having to get used to!) and gave me chocolate and a local delicacy that I don't know the name of, but is basically a sweet ball of croissant with sugar on it - it was very yummy!

After lunch I was told to wait in the staff room, and then the teacher would send one of his students to come and get me as a surprise for the class. They had been told to prepare some questions in English for a visitor, and then they had to ask me them in as good English as possible. I had all the obvious questions, such as what is your name? And how old are you? But I also had some more unusual ones including what is your favourite day? And do you like hamsters?! The children were all very sweet and very excited to meet an English person, so that was good for me!

After that busy day of meeting lots of new people, Amy and I also attempted to visit the local hypermarché, which meant we had to get the bus and then walk a fair way with all our heavy shopping! It was worth it though, because now we have lots of lovely food stored in our kitchen, rather than the depressingly empty state it was in before! 

We also bought a map of France which we've put up in our apartment, and we're going to pin on places we're going to visit in the next seven months.

I also finally manage to work out the French post system, and collected my parcel from my mum with a phone in it for me to use - so I can finally use my French number which is great!

I was also very excited because I was able to watch the Great British Bakeoff Final which was a nice taste of home (sorry about the pun!). Amy watched it with me, and it was very funny to see the show through the eyes of an American, as it really is so British, and it felt odd saying that it really was one of the biggest shows in the UK right now!

We were hoping to go on a day trip to Avignon with some other language assistants tomorrow, but Hérault (our region) has been put under orange storm warnings again(!!) so we couldn't really risk it, as nobody wants to be stranded in Avignon! So it looks like we'll have to stick to Sète so that we can definitely get home!

My first 'official' days of teaching are on Monday and Tuesday, and then the two week holiday is upon us, so I'll have to do some more exploring of the area then! Emily (my friend from university who also does French, and is currently living in Angoulême) is going to come down and stay with us in the first week of the holidays, so that should be fun.

Anyway, I will write again soon!

A bientôt!

Allons à la plage!

In true British fashion I had to make the most of the hot sunny weather here in Montpellier, so I pretty much spent my whole weekend at the beach! On Saturday I went to the beach by the Etang de Pérols with a group of English language assistants which was fun, and nice to be able to speak English for a bit! 

On Sunday I went to the beach in Sète with my flatmate/roommate (apparently it depends if you're English or American how you say this!), Amy, and two Spanish language assistants and an Italian language assistant from Amy's secondary school that she is teaching in. It was slightly tricky trying to have conversations in French when none of us spoke it as our first language, but we managed to get by and had some funny experiences including a French man talking to us about selfies. Yep, apparently the selfie craze has hit France too. We later went back into the centre of Sète and shared some tapas, although it wasn't quite up to the Spanish assistants' standards!

Today Amy and I finally made our trip to IKEA which we were very excited about - Amy had never been to an IKEA before, so I had to try and explain how it works, which is more difficult than it should be! 

It was in a very smart shopping complex which had loads of shops, including many that we would find at home, so I reckon we'll be back there soon!! We both managed to get everything we needed for our apartment, and Amy had some complicated construction to do when she got home!

We also had another heavy rain shower as we were coming back home from IKEA and got completely soaked - it seems that the weather only goes to extreme opposites in Montpellier! Fortunately we managed to share a taxi ride home with a very cute 4 year old French girl and her mum, who was very excited that we were English!

Tomorrow I have my final teacher training day in Montpellier and I think Amy and I are going to try and find the nearest big supermarché, which is apparently half an hour on the bus, so we've got to work that all out!

Au revoir!

Beaucoup beaucoup de pluie et un appartement!

The last few days have been so hectic, I hardly know where to start! I don't know if anything was shown on international news, but France's headline news story on Monday and Tuesday were 'les inondations' (floods) of Montpellier. After two days of glorious sunshine, I woke up to pouring rain, which being from south-west England didn't faze me, so I carried on out and caught the train to Sète to meet Amy (my now roommate) to look at some apartments together. We saw two apartments which were perfect for what we wanted, and so eventually made the choice of one which is right next to a beautiful church building, and is very French!

Here it is:

Anyway, during the day we got pretty soaked and had to shelter from the massive outpours of rain like this: 

Apparently 252ml of rain fell in just 3 hours, and the river Lez in Montpellier burst its banks, completely flooding huge parts of the city, so much so that people were canoeing down the streets and people were stranded, having to sleep in their offices and in schools because they couldn't even leave their buildings to get home!

Unfortunately that meant I was also stranded as I couldn't get back to my hotel because all the trains, trams and roads were shut! Fortunately Amy's contact teacher who she was staying with invited me back to her flat and gave me dinner and rang up loads of people to see if there was any way of getting home. I ended up staying overnight and sleeping on her sofa, and the next morning the teacher took me back to the train station in Sète to wait for the first train back to Montpellier so I could collect my suitcases and come back ready to move into our apartment that evening. After waiting for about 4 hours a train finally came that took me to Montpellier and I was able to get back to my hotel.

However, it seemed that the day was just not going to be a good one for me, as when I got back to the hotel, my code to get back into my room wouldn't work, and as it was before 5pm there was no one on reception so I had about 45 minutes of desperately trying to get into my room and running around the hotel to see if there was anyone who could help me! Eventually I found a man who told me that the hotel changed the room codes every Monday even if you were staying there before that, and kindly found me my new code so I could get back into my room!

By the I was in a massive rush to get back to Sète on time with my stuff to move into the apartment and sign the contract, not helped by the fact that the trains still hadn't been completely sorted and so my train was running almost an hour late! In the end I had to take an expensive taxi journey to Sète, which got me to the apartment just in time!

The next day, Wednesday, I had my first training day back in Montpellier, which was basically a day of paperwork and meeting my 'reférent', Vincent, who is the teacher in charge of the area where my schools are: Frontignan. He was very nice and gave me my timetable which says I'm only going to be working on Mondays and Tuesdays!! He is going to take me to visit my schools and meet the teachers I will be working with next Thursday, after I have two more training days tomorrow (Friday) and next Tuesday.

So, my next main things to do are to open a French bank account and sort out all the various bits of paperwork that I need for various different things (the French like to make their administration as complicated as possible it seems!).

I think Amy and I are going to go to IKEA this weekend (yes, Montpellier has an IKEA!!) to get some bits for our apartment, which should be fun. We have been having fun living together so far, and have come across many different phrases that we use - it's like I'm learning to speak French and American!!

Anyway I should probably go and try and work out my paperwork, so I'll write again soon!

Au revoir!

P.S if you want my new address, feel free to email me and I'll send it to you!