La Toulousaine

10-25-09
Well, I’m on my way to see Toulouse today! My first vacation (Toussaint) since arriving and starting work here in France. I’ve successfully finished my 1st months of teaching high/middle school, and thus far i’m happy with how things are going.
I expect to do mostly touring/taking pictures today and saving shopping for another time. I’m only there for the day, so I’m going to get the most out of it and see what I can in the 5-6 hours i’ll be there.
Amy is in Bordeaux with her parents for the week. She offered to have me visit a little with the three of them, but I wouldn’t be going until later in the week (Wednesday and Thursday I’ll be in Agen working with Peter, a British colleague of mine). Also, my pay advance is expected to come sometime this week, so having that money available would be ideal before travelling again.
It’s very foggy/misty this morning, hopefully it’ll clear up by the time I arrive in Toulouse! I never wrote about Noelle, the librarian who works at ecole Marcel Pagnol with Amy. She is a sweet lady who had us over for Sunday lunch two weekends ago at her house in Aiguillon. It was a bit of a special occasion for her as her son was in town from Mont-de-Marsan, along with his 4 roommates. They were all very sweet and welcoming (and my age!) and they invited us back to their place later on in the coming months. It sounds like they’re planning a trip to the Pyrenees too- how exciting!
The only other people my age that I’ve met so far are the ones i’ve been working with in Agen. The students are part of a business school called Sud Management, and they’ve all chosen to continue their studies after lycee in order to find a job as a manager, business-person, director, P.R. manager, you name it. Apparently, it is becoming rarer for French students to go to a University after high school- most just end up working right away. What my job is at the school is to assist them in projects, especially with their english (right now they’re working on fundraisers to raise money for a trip to England- last week I heard their ideas and suggested my own for a few groups that haven’t decided yet). It’ll be nice to work around students closer to my age instead of just younger ones!
It looks like the mist is already starting to life. The blue skies are a nice change from the past couple wet, grey days we’ve been having.
Yesterday I walked around Agen a bit and took pictures. There is always something I haven’t seen there before, like last night when I happened upon an old Catholic church called Paroisse Sante-Foy. Mass had just started (3 minutes after the hour) so I hopped on in the pews and took a seat. What a nice surprise- the choir consisted of two younger men singing in harmony, one playing his guitar and the other holding an adorable baby. There were a few volunteer cantors who took part of the ensemble, mostly younger teens. After hearing a few gorgeous songs, I decided i’d try and get some information on joining a church choir in Agen. It turns out there are 4 choirs to choose from, and one of them (thankfully) doesn’t meet too late at night, so it looks like I’d be able to take the train to the rehearsals. I just have to find the church first! (There are tons in Agen- I’m not sure the number exactly but enough to get them easily confused.)
I went to Tonneins again on Saturday to find some info about the theatre and dance workshops they offer at the centre culturel. I’m going into the office tomorrow morning to get prices and see if I can attend the first class for free to get a good idea of how it’s run. The classes aren’t cheap (over 200 Euro if you don’t live in Tonneins) but it might be completely worth it. Aside from working 3 jobs, anything leisurely to occupy my time will be a big relied.

~later~
So I’m now back at the gare, waiting for my train to take me home. I had a great time, did tons of walking all around Centre Ville, and what made everything better- I got my advance! :) So, thanks to that big perk of the day, I treated myself to a long-waited for (and badly needed) haircut. I learned a lot of necessary beauty vocabulary right then and there, while awkwardly trying to explain in Franglais what I wanted done to my hair. Split ends, face frame, hair dye and bangs aren’t all words I use on a day-to-day basis.
I decided to hold off on buying the perishable food gifts until Christmastime when Michelle visits, and she can save me the cost of shipping everything over to the U.S. by packing the gifts in her bag. I think the recipients would rather have fresher items, too!
I noticed in the office du Tourisme that the region seemed to boast about their violets. They had violet-scented everything in the gift shop, which I’m sure smelled great (I was more looking for event information and such). I have a bunch of calendars with events and shows going on here so I can plan a longer stay later in the year, with an actual itinerary to go with it!
I’m on the train now. My legs are only a bit sore from all the walking (I wore my usual favorite boots). I probably could’ve gone with my running shoes and been better off. Oh, well!
I’m on one of those compartment trains where you have 8 seats (4 facing each other) and you can close the door. It definitely feels more old-style in comparison with the modern trains with toilets that probably flush. (Mine on the way here did not.) And of course, after I used the bathroom and sat back in my seat, the cute guy in front of me went right in after me. He probably thinks I’m a sick individual who doesn’t flush. I swear it wasn’t my fault!!
Anywho, I should sleep well tonight. Although I should probably try and have a real dinner (last night I wasn’t too terribly hungry after getting home from Agen- so I sort of went to bed with a rumbly tumbly. But not tonight!)

Let les vacances de Toussaint begin!

So, I've had my last class of the week today and now i'm officially free for the next week and a half for Toussaint. God bless France and their long vacations.
Only thing is, I have to wait until I get paid to go anywhere! I should be geting my cash advance within the next week (hopefully even sooner than that) so Bordeaux isn't too far away. I'm going to go back to Agen to work with Peter again in the business school Sud Management (Peter is one of my colleagues who teaches English with a focus on History and Geography). He's asked me and my roomate Amy to tag along with him and help out at the school there, which is for college-aged students who are interested in developing a career in business or management. We'll be helping the students with their English projects, particularly a fundraiser that they have coming up in order to raise money for their trip to England next year. We've already brainstormed ideas with them, and they've thought of everything from hosting a fashion show to presenting an outdoor play/spectacle, and Peter asked me if I could help with the group who is looking to get the play going. Of course I accepted, and will be meeting them this coming Thursday to see what they had in mind.

The dialogues that i'd been using in class went well, but I'm getting the feeling that my Terminales are a bit "over" that sort of thing and they seem almost like they'd rather just do the normal reading documents and responding to them instead of going outside the box. The younger ones were a bit more into it and seemed to really have fun with it, but it's either too early in the morning for the Terminales or they just don't really care enough to dig into their creative energy. I'm going to ask the other English profs what's worked with them for their 18-year olds and hopefully i'll get some ideas. I've already printed out a few current even articles which I plan on copying and bringing to class for them, we'll see how that goes.

I stopped by the marché this morning and I'm always shocked to see how cheap it is for the fresh, delicious food I can buy right in front of my doorstep. Why can't it be like that in Michigan?

Michelle, my sister, and her fiancé Mark are going to be visiting Aiguillon in December, so i'm looking forward to having them as guests! I'll be going back to Paris early December because Mark's uncle has an apartment there where the two of them work together on research projects. I don't know yet whether I'll be staying in the studio when I visit, or another hotel (probably not the same one again, i'd like to have my own toilet and shower where I can stretch my arms out without hitting the wall!) But in any case, i'm looking forward to their visit.

The car search is still on. I've called a new number today about another white manual I saw in front of the grocery store yesterday, which is going for 700. It looks to be about the same age as the one Clare (the former assistant) is selling, so if she successfully sells her car I may call the guy back and ask for more information. The only thing is, I don't know too much about cars (let alone manuals) so I'd be better off finding a French car-savvy friend to bring with me before I make the decision to make sure i'm getting my money's worth.

Until then, it's the train that i'll be using (which really isn't all that bad aside from the lousy schedule and the strikes).

Apartment hunting

So, I've started the phone calls today in search of an apartment in Agen, the closest large city to Aiguillon (15 minutes away on the train). I've been brainstorming the pros and cons of living rent-free in a furnished apartment on the lycee grounds, and I've come up with more cons than pros. Here's what I've got so far:

PROS of staying here:
-free rent.
-free laundry
-proximity to school (about 20 steps from my front door)

CONS of staying here:
-have to take the train to have any sort of life outside of school.
-far from entertainment, shopping, et cetera
-no buses that go north or south (train only goes east and west)
-barely anyone my age (excluding the assistant I already live with)
-no Wifi in my apartment or phone jack to have a modem :(

I've considered pulling a Clare and just buying a cheap used car to use during the year while staying here in Aiguillon, but: 1) I don't have a European license, and 2) I don't know how to drive stick-shift. Nearly all (most, anyway) of the cars here are manual and I don't want to have to pay for classes.
The main thing though is that I'm far from the theatre in Agen, which has several shows going on each month and I can't take any classes here in Aiguillon because they aren't offered here. I would take the train to the classes in Agen, but the last train leaves halfway through the class, so I wouldn't even be able to stay through the whole lesson. It makes more sense to me to just commute to Aiguillon to work during the week, and live in Agen where I'll have a bit more of a life.

I'm going to see the first apartment on Thursday. I've called about two others, but I won't be seeing them until later in the week. I don't get my first paycheck until the end of October, but that should give me enough time to look around and weigh my options. I'm trying not to spend over 350 Euro/month if I can, including gas/electricity, so I can have enough left over for food and such....the ideal position to be in would be to live in a famille d'acceuil so I'd be paying less and speaking French a lot more, but finding a family would be the first thing to do. Someone mentioned that I should speak with the Proviseur of the lycee here and ask him about finding one in Agen (as that's where he's from) so i'll probably go to him if the apartment options fall through.

Amy seems relatively happy in the apartment here (she's from an even smaller town in England) so she probably will end up just staying in Aiguillon. I told her if she changes her mind she's welcome to go in on the apartment with me, but it's looking like she's prefering the free apartment over paying for one in a bigger city. Who knows though, maybe things will change in a few weeks.

Br-r-r-r!

16.10.09

It’s a very chilly morning here in Aiguillon as I update my blog. It’s Friday, i’ve only had one class (very early this morning- 8:15 to 9:10) and I’ve done my grocery shopping. Before a lunch of a ham and egg sandwich on a freshly baked baguette, I’ve decided to heed to my sister’s request and give you all another friendly French update from le Sud-Ouest de la France.
I’m easing slowly into my classes and I’ve finally had two rooms assigned to me so I don’t have to keep running around to the Vie Scolaire at the last minute before the class starts asking someone which rooms will be available. I have one room in the collège and one in the lycée. It’s nice to be able to have only ½ the class, instead of taking on anywhere from 20-35 students at a time (what a hassle!) But I think the longer I teach the easier handling bigger groups will get. Some of my sections are as small as 6 students, some as large as 15. Yesterday I had two new classes, one 4ème and one 2ème. (The school system here goes a bit backwards- collège, or middle school in American, goes from 6ème me up to 3ème, and lycée or high school, from 2ème to 1ère to Terminale). Terminales, however, aren’t necessarily more advanced as I mistakenly thought in the beginning- just because they are older, that doesn’t mean their oral English is more advanced. They are the ones preparing for the BAC (a big oral exam they take at the end of the year that our job as assistants helps them prepare for.) I’ve been trying to find lessons to fit each age group, but due to this initial confusion I have to get a better feel for my classes before I can do any sort of real mapping out for the entire school year. Right now the most energetic, talkative students are my 4èmes, who are mostly 14 & 15, and they seem genuinely very interested in where I come from and what the American culture is like. As soon as you get to the lycéens, however, you get into passive teenager territory and you start getting blank, uninterested, glazed-over stares and lots of side conversations in French. However, I plan on countering this by finding interesting games that will really involve them and get them going instead of sitting and being bored beyond belief. I plan on doing at least one photo-lesson (where I show them a political cartoon or advert and they have to respond to it) every class period, followed by a game of some sort to get them talking. I haven’t had to really discipline anyone yet (hoping that this will be the case for the length of the school year) but in case there are a few delinquents, I have a few different strategies up my sleeve.
Firstly, each student is required at all times to have with them their carnet de correspondance with them- it’s a little booklet where teachers can write down notes about the behavior of the students, and it gets shown to the student’s parents when they’ve done something or behaved inappropriately. Some other assistants have used the “pull out your carnets and have them on your desk!” tactic before, and it seems to have worked- so if worst comes to worst, i’ll do the same.
Secondly, if they get way out of hand, I can request not to have the same students again, and they’ll just stay with their normal english prof while I take my normal sections without them. But I think that would be saved for the more severe cases- so far most of my students are pretty chill and haven’t given me any cause to worry.
I’ve been printing out lots of different role playing activities and dialogues that I want to incorporate with each level of my students. This weekend i’m going to separate the harder ones that require a bit more vocabulary knowledge from the easier ones that have some vocab already given. I have all day tomorrow (Saturday) to plan, after Amy and I get back from Agen. We’ll be going to the big bookstore downtown and I’m going to buy a US map as well as see if I can find any good plays in the English section to use for monologue presentations and the like.
Now to head to the lycée- the fun part about my apartment is that I don’t have Wifi installed here, so I get to take my laptop with me to the school every time I want to update my blog! (cries)


post script- the pictures you've been seeing are only a small sample of those i've been taking during my stay here. Check out the rest of the album on my Flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/22880874@N05/?saved=1

October 'n' stuff.

8.10.09

So I’m remembering now all too clearly the way the system works here in France. Everything (from doing your laundry to putting up tutoring ads) must go through the heirarchy before anything can get done. There are so many mindless “required” steps one must take before getting to the desired finish line. And even when you get there, there is no way for sure everything will come out clear in the end. It may be warped, it may have a few stains on it here and there, it may be completely backwards when it’s finally returned to you. But hey, just give it all a nice big shrug, and you’re good to go in France.
Prime example: I’ve submitted some handmade posters that I’d intended to put around Aiguillon advertising my tutoring services (teaching English). Before putting them up, I had to okay them with the secretary to the “Proviseur” or school principal, basically, who had to okay the posters. Good, fine. Whatever. So I gave the secretary the posters a few weeks ado (needing money pretty badly I set in right away on a task to earn some extra dough on the side) and waited & waited for her to get back to me and tell me that they were good to put out. But I heard nothing until tonight when some random lady who works in the collège calls me and asks for tutoring for her sons! I said yes but I charge 15 Euro/half hour and 20 Euro/the hour. She said: “Well it says on your poster that you charge 15 E/half hour and 20E/for an hour and a half!” :-O <-- (my face after hearing this.) So apparently my posters were okayed but only after being modified (without my knowledge) and sent out to various persons instead of being sent back to me, where they originally came from. What can I do but go with it? I told the caller that I’d give her what the poster said because of a ‘malentendu’, but she assured me that ‘ça va aller’ and I should fix the price on the poster. Well, I wouldn’t have anything to fix if It weren’t adjusted in the first place!!
So after that big SIGH of the evening, I am left to tinker around with my lesson plans and maybe watch some ‘telly’ (as Amy calls it) before bed. Goodnight for now!

Getting used to this high-school thing.

Well it's been a few weeks so far and I've been well acquainted with the lycée and collège classes, with only one more English professor left to meet. Today, a Wednesday, the students only have half a school day (as it always is). So i'm using salle 9, the computer room, and planning my next lessons for the rest of the week!


My schedule is relatively bunched together- I asked for Monday or Friday off, but as I couldn't get it completely free I have an afternoon class (around 2 p.m.) on Mondays and an early (8:15) class on Friday, and then the rest of the weekend is mine! I haven't planned any trips yet outside of Aiguillon but first on the list of places to go is Bordeaux. It's the closest metropolis to Aiguillon and definitely worth going for a week-long vacation, from what I hear!



We had the meeting for the assistants in the Lot-et-Garonne region yesterday in Agen. It lasted from 9 to a little before 5 (long day to sit in a muggy classroom and listen to a Frenchman drone on about health insurance for hours! :-/ ) Anyway, it was necessary information that we probably would've missed otherwise, so at least now we're informed.



We met the other assistants in the area, and I recognized a few from the website i've been frequenting (assistantsinfrance.com) and the e-mails we'd been exchanging before arriving in France. Everyone seems just about as excited as I am to be in a foreign country and sharing their culture with French kids. It really is a neat thing, being an assistant, because you only have half the class (which is a little more intimately sized and you can work a little closer with each student individually on his or her progress and help them better). The younger students seem to have (as well as more energy) a lot of excitement about learning english and are certainly more prone to speaking up, as the older students seem a bit more restrictive and shy (their speaking level isn't necessarily higher just because they are older, something I had to take into account after seeing lots of "deer in headlight" looks after explaining where Novi was on my left hand.




I've also been taking some time getting to show Amy around (the primaire assistant who teaches at Marcel Pagnol) and introduce her to the hierarchy of the high school. I'm still trying to get used to the whole French System (System D) of going to 5 people just to get my laundry washed or use the copy machine, et cetera. It's a process that takes longer to get things done but so be it :insert French shrug here:.

First day of teaching: check!

Well, I don't have my timetable just yet (will get it on Monday), but I already started teaching! I had two 2eme classes today, most of my students were 15 years old (some 14). The first class was relatively lively and not too hard to get to speak, but the second was a little more difficult- they seemed a bit shy and hesitant. I feel like the hours both went by pretty quickly, although a lot of the time the second class just gave me wide eyes like I was speaking in an alien tongue (which, okay, I probably am, but whatever). I am about to research some other activities that will involve them more and maybe pique their interest so that they'll be more responsive, and maybe level-specific activities that won't be too advanced for their age level.

The primary level British assistant moved in yesterday! She's very sweet, and I haven't heard so far from her how her first day went (seems she's been there from 8:30 a.m. this morning- I haven't seen her since my classes ended!) But we're going to talk about our day over a glass of wine tonight and hopefully hers went as well as mine.

I'm hoping the printer is going to be fixed relatively soon so I can print out some more worksheets! Anywho, on to my lesson planning. Yay for my first day!
:D