Je suis Charlie, visitors, and 'fun' days

Today, two weeks after the fatal attacks in Paris, the French flag outside the town hall in Sète was finally unfurled and back in its usual flying state. This just goes to show how deeply the pain of these attacks have been felt across France, even here, at least 4 hours away from the capital, and that's on the fast train. In the week that followed the Charlie Hebdo attacks there was a tangible sombre, almost depressive sense in the air. Just walking through the narrow streets of Sète you would pass 'Je suis Charlie' signs in nearly every shop window, and people seemed to walk in an odd silence, partly out of shock and sadness, but also partly out of fear - everywhere was on high alert, and suddenly normal activities like going shopping in the first weekend of the sales in Montpellier were deemed potentially hazardous - several of the teachers in my school remarked at how unusually quiet the shops were for this time of year. The French are very proud and quite patriotic people, so an attack on their beloved capital city, Paris, and on such a well-known French institution, Charlie Hebdo, almost felt like a personal attack. 

The town hall in Sète claiming that we are Charlie.

The day after the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo offices, a Charlie Hebdo collector handed out old copies for free in the main square in Sète, many of which have ended up being stuck on walls around the town.

Frontignan town hall playing on the patriotic french slogan 'Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité'.

Montpellier remembers. 

In that first week we were watching a French rolling news channel pretty constantly, watching as more horrific events unfurled in what has since been described as 'the three days of terror'. We watched the controversial live reports of the hostage situations in Paris, the speeches made by President, François Hollande, the momentous turning off of the lights on the Eiffel Tower in rememberance of the victims.

 Nothing else was reported on the news for at least a week, which proved to be particularly problematic for us when, on the Friday, just after the hostage situations in Paris had been resolved, one of the assistants who lives in Montpellier posted in our group messages that there had been a bomb scare in the train station in Montpellier, and that now there was a hostage situation in a 'bijouterie' in the city centre. Fortunately, this hostage situation turned out to be a robbery gone wrong, and wasn't related to the events in Paris, which needless to say most people had been assuming. To attempt such a thing on that day was a particularly stupid idea given the high security alert! All was resolved in the early hours of that Saturday morning, and luckily Amy's boyfriend, who was travelling to Sète from New York that Friday evening, was unaffected, and we were able to go into Montpellier that weekend for dinner and to a birthday party of one of the assistants.

On the Sunday there was the huge rally in Paris, and across France, including in Sète, where around 5000 people attended. We went down to see what would happen, and as we came out of our front door we came across streams of people making their way to the nearby square where the 'mairie' is, and where the march was due to start. There was an unexplainable, odd yet beautifully emotional, sombre and reflective atmosphere, as people started to march together. There was a definite sense that people felt that it was their duty to be there; to show solidarity with their fellow citizens. Being in the south of France, there were people from all races, religion and ages, which made for an impressive sight. The importance of unity was highlighted by a man who heard us speaking English, and came over to speak to Amy, saying thank you for joining us and how important it was that people showed peaceful and loving solidarity against terror. It was an honour to be a part of something so memorable in history, and whatever debates there have been, and I am sure will be, about the Je Suis Charlie slogan, I think this show of solidarity was a beautiful moment, and will hopefully be a positive influence on what are already tense relations between the French and their Muslim co-citizens.

Anyway, on to happier things! I had a visit from Elliot, a friend who studies French with me at Warwick, and who is currently studying in the Sorbonne university in Paris for his year abroad (basically the unpaid, actual studying version! But he loves it, so well done him!) We were very lucky with the weather which was seemingly having unusually high temperatures for January, with temperatures up to 19 degrees! We did the usual tour of Montpellier, and also went on a day trip to Carcassonne which was fun. Apparently you can't leave Carcassonne without trying their local dish of 'Cassoulet', which is basically sausage, duck and beans, all in one dish - sounds weird, but was actually quite delicious! 

The old 'cité' was very impressive, and despite most of the shops and cafés being closed due to being out of the tourist season, we were still able to see all the famous tourist attractions, and even managed to get into the Château Comtal for free because we are European students!

On the Friday I also had another 'fun day' in a tiny little town close to Frontignan called Poussan. Two other assistants and I were there to help the teachers and my 'responsable', Vincent, to run the day, which apparently had the theme of 'British towns'. There were Union Jack flags everywhere, much to the dismay of the one American assistant we had with us! However, it seems they had got slightly confused with American and British cultures, as most of the children and teachers were wearing checked shirts, jeans, and cowboy hats as one of the activities was line dancing!

 There's Vincent dancing!

We didn't like to point it out to them, so just went along with it! We rotated around various activities which included snakes and ladders, reading 'We're going on a bear hunt' (again!), and playing with a parachute. All the teachers were really lovely, and very excited to meet me, as clearly Vincent had told them about me!

This week all of our visitors have gone, so it has been a lot quieter, and Amy and I took the chance to go into Montpellier to the CAF office (the lovely people who will hopefully be giving us money towards our rent!) and handed in all our documents, so hopefully that will all be sorted soon, but with French beaurocracy you never know!

This is how happy we felt afterwards!!

In a similar typical French style, two of my classes this week were cancelled but I wasn't informed until the actual time that I was supposed to be in the class, so I had a fair amount of sitting around to do! Fortunately for me, the English lady I met last term, Penny, was kind enough to invite me to her house and gave me lunch in the free time I had! Apart from that, school was fairly normal, and I got given another present by one of my students which was very cute - apparently I spell my name 'Rachelle', and I am her favourite teacher, which is very sweet, especially as I only teach her for 45 minutes each week!

I think that is all I have to report, so I'm going to sign off here! I only have a few more weeks until our 'vacances de février' which is crazy, but nice for me because I get to come home for a bit and see people at uni and in Plymouth, before going to visit my sister in Madrid! So, if you're around and want to see me in the week of 6th Feb, let me know! Next week after my days of work I'll be going to visit Emily in Angoulême, which should also be fun, and I'm sure will provide lots of stories and photos to share!

So, au revoir for now!

J'ai 21 ans! A late blog post

I wrote this blog post two weeks ago on my flight back home for Christmas, but have only just got round to putting it up! As this post is meant to be about my time in France I'm not going to write anything about going home for the holidays or London, but here's a picture of us enjoying London anyway!

Oh, and I got a picture of me next to the British Council offices next to Trafalgar Square - that's relevant right?

Anyway, here is the original blogpost for your perusal:

I am writing this somewhere in the sky between Montpellier and London on my journey home for Christmas, in view of a little girl watching Frozen on her mum's laptop to keep her entertained! 

The last two weeks of term here in Sète have been pretty crazy with Hollie arriving from England on Thursday and having a mini tour of Sète and joining us at a Christmas party with the other language assistants on the Friday evening before we got up early on the morning of my 21st birthday to catch the TGV train to Paris!

Amy, Hollie and I stayed in a little hotel in Paris with Emily, who met us there from Angoulême, and we even had a fruitcake that my mum had sent over with Hollie for my birthday cake. Unfortunately we failed to notice the candles that she had also conveniently packed with the cake, and so tried to use a dodgy candle app on my iPad as a replacement which made for some funny photos! 

After we had eaten as much of the cake as we could manage we met up with Elliot, a French student from Warwick who is studying at the Sorbonne in Paris for his year abroad, and he took us around the sights of Paris, including the Sorbonne itself, le Jardin de Luxembourg, and his very fancy Parisian apartment! 

Later in the evening we went into the Notre Dame, where we met Monique, another French student from Warwick who is doing her year abroad teaching English just outside of Paris. We all very much enjoyed the Shakespeare Company bookshop right next to the Notre Dame, and then we had dinner in a lovely restaurant in the Latin Quarter, which is the oldest part of Paris. 

After we had eaten, we went to le Place de la Concorde and saw the Eiffel Tower from the distance and went to the Marché de Noël on the Champs Élysées, where Hollie and I had a celebratory class of champagne!

Then we walked up to the Arc de Triomphe and also took obligatory Eiffel Tower photos from Concordet, where we could get a beautiful view of the Eiffel Tower all lit up.

The next day we revisited the Eiffel Tower, walking right underneath it, although it was a very cloudy day, so you could only actually see half of it! 

After walking right down the Champs de Mars (and avoiding all the Eiffel Tower keyring sellers and the dodgy magic trick people) we took Emily to her train station, and then went to my favourite part of Paris - the Jardin de Tuileries and the Louvre museum with the Palais de Louvre. It turns out that students from the European Union can get into the Louvre for free, so we went in and saw the famous Venus de Milo statue and of course the Mona Lisa, which turned out not to be as disappointing as people had always told me!

Then we went to a crêperie opposite the Hôtel de Ville, where we ate a traditional Parisian galette with egg, cheese and ham, followed by a crêpe sucré which also very yummy!

By this time it was time to catch our train back to Sète, which only took three and a half hours thanks to the wonders of the fast TGV train! The most shocking thing was the change in temperature - when we left Paris at 19.15 it was 4 degrees celsius, but the time we got into Sète at 23.00 it was 13 degrees celsius! I definitely understand now why the French love 'le Sud' so much, and why most Southerners will shudder at the though of going to 'le Nord'!

The next two days I had my last days of term in each of my schools, so I introduced my classes to the very traditional English concept of crackers, and helped them to make them out of paper, string, sweets and christmas stickers. It was quite a challenge to fit it in to the hour/45 minute lessons I had with each class, but we managed it, and the children loved it! One of teachers actually took a photo of his class with their crackers and made a Christmas card with the photo, getting everyone in the class to sign it, and gave it to me at the end of the day which was very cute!

On the Tuesday Hollie met me in Frontignan for lunch with Penny and some of her family, and then a small tour of Frontignan whilst I finished off my afternoon classes. In the evening we went into Montpellier to go to a Provençal and British Christmas performance by the junior Opera society in La Théâtre de la Comédie. A lot of the Provençal songs involved a man playing a recorder which was very funny to watch, so we spent a lot of the time desperately trying not to laugh out loud! Sadly we didn't know any of the British songs, but it was cute to hear French children singing in English.

The next day I took Hollie into Montpellier and we did all the usual tourist sights of Montpellier, including  the Arc de Triomphe and La Place de La Comédie. We also went into la chapelle des Pénitents blancs to see their crèche Provençale, which was interesting because Provençal nativities don't just have the typical nativity characters that we are used to seeing, but are also surrounded by lots of different figures representing different jobs in Provence, such as a farmer, a baker, and a milkmaid. 

We also went to the Christmas market and bought a 'chocolat chaud', which is much thicker than British hot chocolate, and some churros which was very yummy!

We continued our touristy sightseeing the next day by walking up Mont St. Clair, on which Sète is built, up to la Croix St. Clair where we had a picnic and looked inside La Chapelle de Notre Dame de la Salette. 

Instead of taking the conventional route back down the hill to the centre of town, we went on a windy route so that we could get a better view of the lovely millionaire houses bult on the hill, which have beautiful views over Sète and the Mediterranean Sea! We ended up down on the beach whilst the sun was setting which provided us with some amazing views of the deep red clouds, and meant that both Hollie and I proceeded to spend the next twenty minutes trying to accurately capture the beautiful sky on our phone cameras!

At the last minute I was asked to take part in a 'fun day' in a primary school in Sète on Friday which was for Christmas, and involved the children learning about things from Anglophone countries such as learning Christmas songs, the Haka, tasting marmite, lemon curd and peanut butter! I was in charge of indoor games in the morning which was basically bingo with Christmas words and other words they knew, and then I was reading a book from my childhood, 'We’re Going on a Bear Hunt', to them in the afternoon, which was fun with all the dramatic actions I got the children to do!

Yesterday the three of us were invited to a Christmas lunch in Frontignan with Penny and her family, which was really nice, and was a good introduction to an English style Christmas for Amy, complete with crackers, stuffing, brussel sprouts and homemade mince pies! We played lots of games too which were fun, although we did manage to get chocolate all over our faces trying to play the After Eight game!

Anyway, I think that's all for now, and apparently we're about to arrive in Gatwick, so I'd better get ready for landing! It will be really nice to be in England for the next two weeks (and hopefully I'll get to see a lot of you who are reading this!!), and it will also be fun to introduce England to Amy for the first time - we're going to be doing a whistlestop tour of London, Christmas in Plymouth, visiting Cornwall, and a Shakespeare play in Stratford on New Year's Day! I think it's safe to say Amy is very excited!

So for now, goodbye until my new term starts - Joyeux Noël et Bonne Année!