Rosetta: The Abridged Version

Hello,
What have I been up to these past couple of days and why haven't I posted for a while? That's a very good question, thank you for asking. Here's why.

As school came to an end for what they call here Christmas Break (and got very confused when I tried to call it Winter Break because they actually have a real 'winter break' in February) the kids began to get more and more antsy in class. As luck would have it, I was to have class on the Friday before break so I showed up at 7:45AM in the teacher's lounge and met up with Elisabeth. While we were sitting around one of her three 8AM students called to tell her that they were going to be late, so finally at 8:20 we all met up in class. Elisabeth had brought us all scones and jam and she went to the teachers lounge and bought us all a coffee. We chatted, mostly in French, for the next 30 minutes and then it was time for the students to leave. I thought it was funny that the reason we were speaking French was because I had asked about French politics and Elisabeth had said 'this will be easier to explain in French' and then she proceeded to explain it. After that we were supposed to have an hour break and then another two hours of class but Elisabeth wasn't sure if we were going to have class today so she went off and asked someone and sure enough all the students had been told they would not need to show up today. So I was free to go. This was convenient for me because it meant that I was up at 9AM on a Friday with the whole day ahead of me to get things done. I made some peanut butter cookies as Christmas presents for my french friends which went over very well and everybody loved (I was especially happy as my recipe was in cups and Fahrenheit and not only do I not have any measuring utensils I also don't have degrees of any kind marked on my oven).

Finally Monday arrived and it was time to head to Paris. Now, I had packed my bag and come to the conclusion that it would be possible to fit my computer in my bag (just barely) however my tiny little laptop has, over the years, seemed to become more and more heavy, especially after the last time I decided to bring it with me on a trip where I had to carry it bodily from train to train. Conveniently, Savannah informed me that she would be bringing her iPad so we would have access to internet for all our planning and possibly emergency needs. On this information I decided reluctantly to leave my computer at home.

I got to Paris around 1:30 and met up with Maria who just happened to be in Paris that day before her flight to the Canary Islands the next day. We went and checked into the hotel and then looked for a restaurant in the area. Unfortunately, all we could find were asian restaurants because apparently we were in the asian part of Paris. We finally settles on a place called Food King and split a 4 cheese pizza. By that time we were very hungry and it tasted delicious.

Savannah arrived at 8:15 the next morning and I had asked the concierge at our hotel how long it would take to get to the airport. He told me it would probably take about 45 minutes so I left a whole hour early the next morning. My trip cost my 12€ and took about an hour and fifteen minutes. By the time I found the arrivals Savannah was very relieved that I was there as she had been waiting about five minutes (I had been hoping to be waiting for her when she got off the plane and I had even brought my book in anticipation of a little wait). We hopped back on the RER and headed back to the hotel. Here's what we did in Paris over the next 4 days:
-Had a Croque Monsieur
-Saw the Catacombs
-Visited the Latin Quarter
-Walked the Champs Elysées
-Saw several Christmas Markets
-Had some chestnuts
-Saw the Arc de Triomphe
-Visited the Pompidou Museum
-Saw the Sacre Coeur
And many more fun and exhausting things.

Our flight to London was the cheapest I could find and this meant it had an 8AM departure time. 8AM minus 2 hours (recommended security check allowance time) equals getting there at 6AM with an hour estimate travel time means getting out of the hotel and being at the bus stop at 5AM. We were a bit stressed because metros do not run that early in the morning so we were scheduled to catch the last night bus and if that didn't work out we would have to wait 45 minutes to catch the first metro and pray that we got to the airport on time. When we got on the night but my first thought was, 'oh good, there are plenty of people onboard, that makes it feel less scary.' However, Savannah's first thought was 'All the people on this bus are very unclean looking men, this could be bad.' Luckily, our bus ride passed without incident and even our transfer went smoother then planned (we had been told to catch the 71 at our transfer by the concierge and after we would have a ten minute walk to the airport. However, once we were at the stop, the bus driver informed us that the 31 would take us straight to the airport. The system our concierge had used to look up our best options had given him the 'quickest' route, which preferred a ten minute walk over a 20 minute wait for the 31 bus. We however, at this point, were definitely more inclined to wait 20 minutes then have no idea which direction to walk to find the airport from the 71 stop). We arrived in plenty of time at the airport and had a very uneventful flight to London were my father was scheduled to meet us at the airport.

We had not written down the address of anywhere we would be staying because dad was supposed to pick us up at the airport and have everything taken care of, and plus, if something went wrong, he had e-mailed me the address of the hotel and so I knew we could find it even without him. However, when we were faced with boarder control they were none too happy that we didn't know where we would be staying. In fact they took it VERY personally and the lady helping me demanded, 'How do you think this looks? You don't even know where you'll be staying.' I tried to explain that I was meeting my dad and trusted those details to him but she angrily informed me that, 'If I tried this in America they would kick me out,' and 'I could send you right back to France for this.' Savannah and I told them that we could step out of line for a minute and find the address of our hotel on her iPad to which they responded, 'You should have done that before,' even though we were the last people off the plane and therefore there was literally no one waiting in line behind us. Finally, the two agents decided to let us pass and gave us one last lecture as they stamped our passports angrily. Later we would find out that my dad had had an even harder time of it since he didn't have a return ticket and apparently England had just had some big flap about boarder security. So we stepped out of our gate and my dad was nowhere to be found. After cooling our heels for a bit we jumped on the DLR to our hotel and as we were checking in dad arrived. He had not slept all night and had decided to go on an early morning walk which had lasted longer than he realized and so he had missed our arrival. Here are some of the things we did in England:
-Crossed the Tower Bridge (four times in a row)
-Saw the Design Museum
-Went to an authentic pub
-Ate fish and chips
-Saw 39 Steps
-Saw Chicago
-Visited Oxford Circus
And many more fun and exhausting things.

We picked up my friend Katie who is another English assistant here in France and we headed to Essex for Christmas as my dad's house. He lived in a very remote town which was difficult to get to but even more difficult to leave two days later after a very enjoyable calm Christmas filled with hot chocolate, yummy food, and a 2000 piece puzzle which we made quite a dent in but were unable to finish. We were trying to travel on December 26th which is known in England as Boxing day and is considered a holiday. We also ran into a train strike and long story short had to call our taxi to come back and give us a ride from the train station he'd just dropped us at to a bus station in a different town. All in all, not the cheapest way I've ever traveled. We spend another day in London, said goodbye to Katie and my dad and caught our flight back to Paris (almost the same exact story with our flight being so early we had to travel on the night bus to make it there in time). We caught a train back to Touquet very near immediately upon our arrival and ended up back home in time to do a little shopping an for me to show at least the main strip of my town to Savannah. Now we are hanging out in my house and calming down after our extremely tiring adventures. We have no plans except for getting Savannah to the train station on Sunday so that she can head home. And there you have it, the abridged version of my Christmas plans.

Meg: Then One Froggy Night...

As previously mentioned, I taught a class the song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," today and it was an eventful time.  More eventful than I would like, but, hey, at least I have an interesting story to tell all of you!

This is another tale of woe from Meg-the-idiotic-teacher, but at least this time, no drugs were involved!  I had two classes today, and the first one was me teaching about Thanksgiving again.  This went pretty smoothly because I've done that lesson a bunch of times now, and I know what words they do and do not know.  (For example, they have no idea what a Pilgrim is or why anyone would pardon a turkey.) It was a fun class, I always enjoy meeting new students that I haven't worked with before.

But onto Rudolph.  I thought it was a good song because it's very American, and fun.  I downloaded a version of the song that I thought would be good and I brought the MP3 with me on my USB key.  However, I failed to remember that France isn't always "tech" friendly, and I had no way to play said song.  So I had to sing it, many times, in front of this class of 6th graders... by the end of my first rendition of the song, I'm sure I was bright red, and I had that I-want-to-sink-into-the-floor feeling again.  But the students were sweet and clapped when I finished, which made me feel slightly better.  After I sang the song and we went through what the song meant, I had a little game for the kids.  The night before I had wrapped a present 14 times (but I failed to count when I was at it) and every time a student got a question right, they got to unwrap a layer of the present.  Whoever got the last question right won the cheap candy bar I had bought at the grocery store the night before.  The quiz was super easy... I asked silly things like, "What color is Rudolph's nose?" Which was good, because the English level of the students wasn't very high.  The tension mounted and mounted as we got down in layers, the students began to be very enthusiastic about answering questions when they thought the next layer would revel the gift.  I think they were a little let down at what it actually was, but in the mean time I think they enjoyed it.  Then we proceeded to sing through the whole song, which required more singing by me, which went alright, although I cracked a couple of times on some notes, and went slightly off pitch some of the time too, which mortified me.  I had the students repeat lines after me for them to get the pronunciation, they did a good job on all but one line. "Then one foggy Christmas Eve, Santa came to say..." They replied, and I didn't quite understand one word so I repeated it, "foggy." They responded, "Froggy" "Foggy!" I said a little more clearly.  "Froggy!" They replied.   I laughed a little and then moved on.  It was pretty funny.

Here's where my biggest mistake comes into play.  I didn't think it would be fair to give just one child a present and leave everyone else out, so I had picked up two bags of sweets the night before so that at the end of class everyone would get something little.  What I failed to notice was that the package said, in French, that each candy had a little firecracker in it.  You know the kind you pull, it sparks and makes a loud noise?  Yep, I gave some of those to a bunch of 11 year olds.  The teacher told them to wait until they were outside to play with them, but, of course, they didn't listen, and every time I heard one of them pop, I winced slightly at my own idiocy for bringing them in the first place.  I'm pretty sure in the USA they would have been considered weapons, and I would be fired, or if I was student, expelled.  Gotta love France.  And speaking of, this will be my last post on here for a while, because I'm going home on Thursday for Christmas!  I can hardly wait, so, I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas/ whatever other holiday you celebrate or don't celebrate at this time of year!

Happy Holidays.

Rosetta: I'll Just Swing By England

You know what I love about France? The fact that it is totally normal to 'take a day trip to England' or to 'drive up to Germany for a day or two' or to 'go to Paris for the weekend.' I went to England last weekend with the Amicale (this is the organization at my school for teachers to do things together). The trip was very inexpensive and a good chance to get to England. We left at 5:30AM and arrived at around 10AM after taking a bus all the way there (we left the bus for about an hour and a half on the ferry). We arrived in Canterbury late in the morning and the first thing I noticed was a Prêt à Manger (a chain lunch type food store). Now I remember Prêt à Manger from my Europe trip when I was younger, we noticed that there was one on every street, that or a Starbucks. However, I was disappointed to not be able to find them in France because in my mind I rationalized that Prêt à Manger (ready to eat) was a French chain and not seeing it in France I assumed it had gone out of business. So you can imagine my glee to find one in Canterbury... That and several Starbucks. The trip went well, we saw the Christmas market and went into about a million stores. I found a Christmas present for my dad and then we had lunch and caught our bus back home at 5PM. We didn't make it back home until 9PM so you can imagine how tired I was that night, good thing I caught a couple of winks on the bus.

Last week I caught some sort of 24 hour flu bug and ended up missing some class. I kept asking the teachers when would be a good time to make up those hours with the overall reaction being mostly change of subject, answering of a different question entirely. So I guess I won't have to make up those hours, we will see when I get my paycheck this month if missing hours has any affect. I suspect it will not however, as the secretary at my school is in charge of telling the French government how many hours I've worked and I don't think she is in the loop about me missing class as I just called the teachers directly. I hope this is the case because that takes a lot of the pressure off if I do need to miss class again for any reason.

Today I did role playing with the students for the first time. They have a real desk set-up with telephone and computer complete with a program for taking reservations. I played the customer and was given an 'identity.' I would enter and either check in or make a reservation. They always included some hitch, like my name not being on their reservation list or me showing up a couple of days before my reservation date. It was pretty fun for me because I got to act like I didn't speak French and if they said something confusing like 'there is icing,' I got to say 'what?' instead of trying to explain that is it 'ice skating rink' because they also had their teachers there who were helping them out with those types of things. I also got to come up with problems of my own to ask about, "is there a phone in the room?" "Can I have an extra room key?" etc. I quite enjoyed my time even though it was 3 hours straight.

For my last class today, one of the teachers told me that Marylise had meetings so she wasn't sure if I would have class with her or not. Coincidentally, my earlier classes were right next to the room Marylise was having meetings in so she pulled me aside, gave me her keys, and asked me to start class without her if she wasn't done yet. They are technically not allowed to do this (as they stressed over and over again at our orientation day) but as I don't mind I just agreed and ended up doing the full hour of class without her. She had a couple of activities set up that went really well. The students were nice and didn't cause any problems (she assured me afterwards that she would not have left me alone with any students she new were problematic). I am going to do the same thing tomorrow while she is in meetings with a different class.

When I first came to France I was warned that I would see my share of strikes, as they are the national pass-time here. Thursday is scheduled to be the first strike. I am not quite sure how strikes work here but I have gathered that a teacher who goes on strike loses salary for those hours. I have some other assistant friends who are getting Thursday off from school because their teachers are striking. Every teacher I've asked at my school didn't even know that there was a strike happening and responded that they don't ever participate in the strikes. So much for having time off due to strikes (unless at some point a train is on strike and I am unable to get home in time but that doesn't sound like too much fun to me).

Meg: Always read ALL the lyrics

Ok, I was hesitating all this week, but I decided to go ahead and take the 50th post on this blog... I wish I could say that it was 50/50 who posted what, but I've been a bit quiet here.

Anyway, a couple weeks ago one of the teachers asked me to come up with a song about New York City that was modern and had the names of the monuments in it.  At this point I was rejecting the idea of going with "New York, New York," by Frank Sinatra or the age old Broadway classic because they're kind of old.  (And on a sad side note- the kids in one class didn't even know who Frank Sinatra was!)  So I decided to go with a song that has been on the radio within the last couple of years, "Empire State of Mind," which has a catchy chorus and the "hip" factor I was looking for.  The problem was that I only remembered the chorus and a couple of lines of the actual rap because I never paid that close attention to the song.  Mistake one.  Then, a couple days before I was to do the lesson, I chose to use the Glee version because 1. it's slower and 2. I thought it would be cleaner.  Mistake two.  As I was preparing the night before I glanced over the lyrics, saw that there were some minor parts that wouldn't be easy to explain, but I thought I could come up with an alternative translation that wouldn't be offensive.  The example of this being a line that is "everyone rode her just like a bus route," I thought I could explain away that that meant she was very popular with the boys and had a lot of dates.  I didn't spend too much time looking over the rest of the lyrics.  Mistake three.

After all this, I knew the song would be a little difficult for the kids, but I thought, in the end, that they would enjoy it none-the-less because it's modern and still popular enough in the US.  Many of them actually already knew the chorus of the song, just like I did, and sang along while I played it for them.  By "knew" I mean they knew the general sounds of the words, but not really words themselves.  Fine, all good.  It wasn't until I was standing in front of the class being asked what things meant that I realized what a bad mistake I made.  For one, there is tons of slang in it that I don't even understand which I had to pretend to know and try to explain to the kids.  Here come the troubling phrases.  "Took it to my stash spot," "corners where we selling rocks," and "MDMA got you feeling like a champion," to name a few.  (Side note again- on the website that I just used to look up these lyrics there were some pornographic images... pleasant.)  I was sweating bullets by the end of the class period, hoping that we would run out of time before we got to those specific lyrics.  Thankfully we mostly did, but it was a close one.  Lesson learned: read ALL the lyrics of the song well in advance to the lesson itself.

On a much lighter note, next week I'm going to teach the children to sing Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer- if you can think of any references to drugs or prostitution in that song, please be sure to comment and let me know, I never want to go through a class period like the last one again.    

Meg: Where is Tulle?

My students were very funny today.  I gave them a quiz with questions about the US in multiple choice form, for example, Who was the first President of the United States?  a. George Bush b. George Washington or c. Boy George.  We read all the questions aloud and they did a pretty good job on the quiz in general.  Than I made them write questions about France for Americans (namely me) to answer.  Here are two of the questions that they wrote: 

In case you can't read this, it says: Where is Tulle? a. It's lost b. I don't know or c. doesn't exist.  I thought it was pretty funny that they know just how small their town in.  However, as the class continued the questions began to get sillier and sillier.  And although there were some serious questions like, What is the most famous monument in Paris? and Where does the President of France live? I got a couple other gems out of them.  Not pictured here, one of the students asked: What color is Sarkozy's white horse?  (There had been a questions similar to that on the American quiz.)  But the options were a. green b. black c. pink.  I wisely answers c. pink.  (The class knows that is my favorite color.)  Lastly, I got this gem:   

How tall is M. Sarkozy?  a. 2 meters b. 38.5 centimeters or c. 1.58 meters.  Which I found funny especially because those measurements mean absolutely nothing to me, so I chose 38.5 cm.  Good times.  Basically it was a very good day of teaching for me and I really enjoyed all the students I worked with. We had extra time at the end of class so I had them all play telephone, which didn't really work that well because I gave them sentences that were too easy.  Next time I'll be sure to carry some paper with me so that we can play pictionary telephone, which is far more fun.

Rosetta: Christmas Magic

Le Touquet has now been decked out (as in 'deck the halls'). There is a canopy of lights covering the main street from the entrance of town all the way to the beach. There are white trees on every street, which I first assumed were fake but on closer examination realized were actually real Christmas trees painted white. The big trees that line the main boulevard are speckled with lights in blue and white, some of which are set up to simulate the look of falling snow. The path leading to the entrance of the town hall is bordered with two rows of white Christmas trees and the entrance itself is lit with more lights in pretty blues and whites. And amongst all this beautiful Christmas feeling I can't help but laugh. At the entrance to Le Touquet there is a strip of white light invoking the idea of silhouetted mountains, hung high across several streets (curving slightly with the roundabout). And, on these mountains you can see a big light likeness of Santa on a sled traversing from right to left in stop motion. Of all the decorations this is the one that strikes me as the most touristic, while all the rest are almost breathtakingly wonderful. So, if you happen to come to Le Touquet this holiday season, I suggest you laugh at the silly Santa on your way into town and then ignore him and enjoy the rest of our winter wonderland. Merry Christmas!

Rosetta: The Christmas Ball

Every year the students put on a Christmas ball. They serve a huge dinner for upwards of 700 people in the town hall and afterwards there is a dance floor available. This years theme was 'Italiano' so I just got back from a very good meal. It was not pasta or pizza like you'd expect but a much fancier imitation of France's Southern neighbor. We started with hors d'oeuvres of course, a small variety plate that was listed as 'modern pizza' but I didn't see much resemblance. After that was a dish of diced scallops served in a log of jelly with slices of orange included (skin and all), this dish was interesting to try but not sensational enough to finish. The main course was a delicious chicken log stuffed with a tomato and mystery filling and covered in some sort of green sauce. This was served with a minced and fried potato triangle much like something you could find at an American diner and kidney beans. Desert was also very good, it was called a 'strawberry mousse' but it was served in the shape of a rectangle cake and had many layers of yummy. And of course, no French meal is complete without the after dinner coffee which in this case came with 'second desert' a shot class filled with a this chocolate mousse and whipped cream. To finish the evening we danced and then walked (and/or ran) home in a perfectly cliché rainstorm, arriving at the house romantically sodden. The whole evening lasted a total of 7 hours and I would award the food an 8 while the music merited something less than a 4.

Rosetta: Chinese Cuisine

In the United States I would always snicker when I saw a sign advertising 'Chinese Cuisine'. I mean the word Cuisine is just French for cooking (slash food, slash kitchen). So I would laugh at the irony of a Chinese restaurant using a French word on their sign. However, Thursday night I literally ate Chinese Cuisine. We have a group of Chinese students come study at our school for one month every year and then sometimes they put together a Chinese Dinner for everyone. It was rather fun and had lots of new things to taste, however none of it made me crave more so I would give the food a 6 (it was well presented at least). It was authentic Chinese because it was made by real Chinese students (plus their Chinese cooking teachers who had come with them). Because I knew who was doing the cooking, I was fairly prepared for all the novelty asian dishes, but the part that caught me off guard was a very familiar tasting bowl of chicken rice soup. I quite enjoyed it, however not many of the others did. The 'cuisine' part happened because it was cooked in a French kitchen with the help of French cooks and French students and the best part, they served the meal with bread rolls on the table because you can't have a meal here without them (even a Chinese meal). It was very quick paced, and the dishes came out staggered so there was always something to eat. I was very amused because the Chinese servers kept switching out our used plates for fresh ones which consternated the French diners because they did not have time to soak up the sauce with a bread roll which is practically compulsory here.

Meg: Thanksgiving Lessons

         Yes, I’m a little late in this post, I’ve been thinking about what to write for a while, without actually writing it down!  The two weeks leading up to the holiday itself, I spent time teaching students at both middle schools about what we do on Thanksgiving and the importance of the holiday.  Which, by the way, didn’t help with the home sickness I was feeling at that point, but it was still fun to share some real American culture with the students.  In the classes I started with a general kind-of-boring sheet explaining what Thanksgiving is, what we do on the day, and why it is so important.  After the first class of teaching about Thanksgiving that way, I decided that that was not interesting enough, so I started coming up with little games to play with the kids.  I don’t know if Rose and Rachelle find this to be true, but I find when I’m teaching the same lesson twice, the second time always goes slightly better.  I need to figure out how to get those results on the first time. 

       Anyway, by far, my favorite game to play with the kids was a word scramble.  I split the class into two groups and wrote T H A N K S G I V I N G   T U R K E Y on the board.  Then I told them they had 10 minutes to come up with as many English words out of those letters as they could, and the group with the most amount of words would win.  They had to discuss what words to use and then send up a team member to run to the board to put the word they came up with before the other team could come up with the same word.  It was super fun to watch them all get very into it.  Of course, they tried to cheat of each other, but it was a friendly competition.  I was very impressed by the number of words/which words they were able to come up with!  Words like Turkish and skiving, that I don’t think I even could have come up with.  A couple times they tried to write French words up on the board, but I informed them that I would take a point AWAY if they did that.  This game is the most successful lesson plan I’ve come up with so far- so I see more games in the future.  The only bad part was that they asked me what they had won and they were not very impressed by my answer of, “my respect and the feeling of accomplishment.”  I might have to get some real prizes one of these days.

        Another thing that I did at the beginning of each lesson about Thanksgiving was asking the students what they already knew about the holiday.  Most of the kids weren’t quite sure what to say, but I got some responses, such as “It’s like Christmas!”  Which, when I thought about it, it is fairly similar to the way they celebrate Christmas here, with family and a big meal together, but I had to explain that we also had Christmas.  My favorite reply was actually an ongoing exchange.  One of the kids said, “It was on the Simpsons.”  Everyone laughed, and I agreed, yes, there were episodes of the Simpsons that featured Thanksgiving.  I then went on to ask them to continue to describe it.  Another student, who normally doesn’t talk much said, “They have yellow skin,”  I was quite confused.  “Who has yellow skin?  The turkey?”  I had no idea what was going on.  “No,” the boy laughed, “The Simpsons.”  I burst out laughing.  Maybe you had to be there, but I thought it was funny that my discussion about Thanksgiving rapidly became a discussion about the Simpsons.

      The other thing I’ve found during these lessons is if I let the kids get away with a little bit of French they are more comfortable.  For example, if they don’t understand what I’m saying, they will ask me, in French, if this-and-this is what I meant, and I can confirm or deny.  They actually ask me lots of questions in French and I always just respond in English.  This was happening with a group of 6^th graders that I had the other day, them asking in French and me answering in English, and at the end of the class, they returned to their favorite question, “Do you speak French?”  Which was particularly funny because it’s obvious that I understand French, but it doesn’t cross their minds that even though I know what they’re saying that I can’t actually form words or sentences, this is one of the reasons I love the 6^th graders the most.  They’re more innocent than the others in a way that I find completely adorable.  If I had to teach middle school for the rest of my life, I would choose to teach 6^th graders.       

Rosetta: A French Thanksgiving (the conclusion)

So yesterday I ran out of cereal so I had some soup for breakfast. Now most of you know already that this is something I do, eat lunch/dinner type foods for breakfast. However, this was my first time doing it here as I was playing normal for my new roommates I have been on a strict cereal for breakfast kick (however I did have eggs for breakfast once which my roommate from the Canary Islands found just as strange as if I'd eaten soup). So I get to school and I tell Laurent that is is Thanksgiving and the first question he asks me is, "so what did you eat for breakfast." I told him honestly that I had had soup. He thought I was kidding. Even after I assured him I was serious. And finally he believed me and thought it was very strange but he relented far enough to admit that it is all in your upbringing what you find normal.

I had told the kids about peanut butter and had had my mom send me some from the United States so I could make them taste it. So I made the class some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that I cut into small bites so they could all try one. I told everyone it was a Thanksgiving present (even though it was just random that it happened on Thanksgiving). I explained that this is what school children eat for lunch, with a glass of milk of course. After everyone had tasted it, and most people liked it except for the one girl who hates jams, I boy raises his hand and announces that he is allergic to peanuts and he wants to go to the nurse. About 20 minutes later he returns to class still looking and acting a little sick but luckily it was not too serious, I totally forgot to ask if anyone had a peanut butter allergy (the teacher assured me that the kid was knew very well what peanut butter was made from and should have known better than to eat it). After that I had just enough left to let everyone in the teacher's lounge taste the sandwiches, I love when I just happen to have the perfect amount.

After class, I rushed home to clean the house for our Thanksgiving dinner. I cleaned up the living room and put some flowers on the living room table and then I started to set the dining room table for dinner. I was looking in our cupboard of things we don't use too often when I noticed we had nice china and tablecloths that we've never used. So I pulled them out and the table ended up looking great, I even put down a lace doily on the living room table and everything looked pretty fancy. Then Florie picked me up and we went to buy the 'Turkey'. Turkey is actually impossible to find here until early December because they only eat it as a Christmas food but we were able to get two smaller birds that were a pretty close approximation. Then we went back to Florie's house, cooked the birds, made some homemade cranberry sauce and backed up all the other foods (including Tiramisu) that she had already made the day before and that morning. We arrived back at my place just on time. Had some before dinner cocktails and then reheated everything and feasted. We even said what we were thankful for in full Thanksgiving tradition. There were 8 people there and I was the only one who had ever celebrated Thanksgiving before. Everyone had a great time. The cranberry sauce was a huge success and it seemed to me like some of them were planning on making it for themselves they liked it so much. After dinner we returned to the living room where we play a bit of Charades and some Taboo and everyone laughed uproariously the whole time. It was the perfect Thanksgiving and was even more special because I had not been expecting to have one this year. Florie was the sole reason it happened and she was super excited the whole time saying how this was her first time cooking for Thanksgiving and it reminded her of Christmas. I know she enjoyed it and I think a part of the reason she did it may have been for me, so I could have a Thanksgiving, which is really sweet and I deeply appreciate it. French Thanksgiving was more than I could've asked for.

Rosetta: A French Thanksgiving

Today I had two hours of class in the morning and two hours of class in the afternoon. The two hours in the morning consisted of having 21 students individually spend 5 minutes describing their internships to me. Everyone was pretty much the same and I had already spent quite a deal of time talking to students about this subject so it was very boring. But at least it went quickly. I was in charge of grading the students on a 1-10 scale. The highest score I gave was an 8 and the lowest a 3, I am not sure if that was what the teacher had in mind but she seemed to be in agreement with the scores I gave. My afternoon classes consisted of 4 groups of 4 students for 20 minutes each. The first 3 groups were a struggle. The students would come in and all sit in their chairs quietly in a row. And I had to try really hard to get even a couple of words out of them much less a whole sentence. But the last group came in and one girl sat in a chair at the edge of the room without a desk, and one girl sat ON the desk across from her and the other two students put themselves in a sort of semi-circle with them. So I went ahead and sat on the desk next to the girl and we all just chatted the whole time. We talked about school, movies, weekend plans, they asked me questions about me and I explained certain phrases when they came up (go back versus come back). It was so much fun, we laughed a lot and everyone spoke English. I left school today feeling just so happy. When I got home I did some paper work with the other assistants in order to get money to help pay for rent. It was stressful because it was in French and we didn't know all the right responses. We will see if what we put works out or not. Tomorrow we are celebrating Thanksgiving. This was completely unexpected for me. When my friends asked what I was going to do for Thanksgiving I had always just said, "nothing." But I mentioned that Thursday was Thanksgiving to Florie, the Spanish teacher, and she got super excited and invited herself over to our house for dinner. Then she invited her friends and started planning the meal. Today she bought all the food and made the mashed potatoes and some other Thanksgivingy foods. She is so happy about it and has done pretty much everything already. Tomorrow I am going to her house to cook the birds (they don't have Turkey here until December because it is a Christmas food but she bought a couple smaller birds of some sort), and finish up the cooking. We will bring everything here and eat a real Thanksgiving meal with my new friends. I am pretty happy about it.

Rosetta Shaw: Friday

Yesterday was Thursday. Today is Friday.
I had class at 8AM. And I will be doing that every other Friday from now on. The best part is that I volunteered for it and I am doing it outside my 12 working hours. I volunteered for several reasons, I like the teacher, I like to go above and beyond, I like to be useful, etc. Today in class the teacher, Elisabeth, told me that last year these students didn't have a right to the language assistant because they are doing a program where they only have class every other week and every other week they work. So she is very happy to have me. Which makes me want to help her out even more. So far, she seems like a very good teacher. She has a very good accent and is quite relaxed and sociable in class. The first class I had with her today had only two students and she just wanted them to talk. She wrote helpful words on the board and just let me talk to them. About halfway through she left us to go buy everyone a cup of coffee from the teacher's lounge. I am not sure if she did it so I could have some time alone with the students or if she just thought we would all enjoy a cup of coffee but either way I was tickled she did it. Elisabeth was wearing a small cross on her necklace and I asked her about it, because here they have laws stating that you can't wear any visible sign of religion in schools, crosses, head scarves, etc. She told me it was not allowed but she didn't really care. She is very nice and amusing and she offered to look up the best route for me to get to my doctor's appointment in Lille next week.
Tomorrow is Saturday and Sunday comes afterwards.

Rosetta: What A Day

Wow, so the day before yesterday was the kind of day were everything went a little bit wrong. But today is the kind of day where everything goes a little bit right! I had to wake up early to get to a 9AM class. On my walk to school, "Taylor, the Latte Boy" played on my iPod and put a huge grin on my face because, not only is the song just super funny, but it also reminds me of Savannah. So there I am walking down the street with this big smile and that made everyone I passed smile too. A good way to start the day. Class went fine, I did two more of those preparation oral exams. The first boy was fluent in English and had really prepared and blew me away, the second boy was a boy I knew already from a couple social gatherings and his English was at a very low level. Following the grading rubric Annie had given me I had to give him a very bad grade but I wished I could change it. I had this thought though and the next time I see him I am going to offer him an exchange, I will tutor him in English if he will tutor me in French. So then after class, I went to the teacher's lounge to pick up my stuff before coming home for a couple of hours before my next class. While I was in class I saw Mina, the spanish teacher who had promised to lend us her DVD player. So I asked her how she was and if we could still have the DVD player. She said that she would bring the DVD player tomorrow and then we proceeded to have a 30 minute conversation in which we talked about books, movies, Christmas planes and trains, and she told me my French had improved greatly and that a student had told her how nice the American assistant was! And then as I was walking out of the school, very happy and self-satisfied, I had the song "What a day for a daydream" running through my head, because it is a very upbeat cheerful song that I felt reflected my mood. I put my headphones in and skipped the song I had been listening to before, a techno dance type song, and the first song that came one was "What a day for a daydream"! So here I am at 11AM on my 4 hour lunch break, at noon we are going to hood up the internet box which finally arrived in the mail and today has already been a wonderful day!

Rosetta: Lovely

I had two hours of class today, which happily was interrupted by about an hour of class photo time. So I was in their class photo. I had such great kids today, it was a lot of fun. They were adorable and talkative and ready to participate in English with a smile. I wish all classes were like that. I ended up only being able to see 3 groups of 4 students for 20 minutes each. We talked about the photo the teacher had given them (to practice describing what they see) and after I felt like we had exhausted the subject I let them play the movie guessing game.

I have to go to the doctor next Tuesday morning at 8AM in Lille. This means I have to spend the night there, in a 20€ youth hostel. Talk about expensive. I am waiting to see if a friend of a friend in Lille will let me stay with her instead but on the other hand I guess having at least one youth hostel experience in Lille wouldn't kill me. The good news is that I have Monday off so I have the opportunity to go spend the weekend in Lille if I want. Or I can just spend the day Monday there with a girl I met at our last orientation.

It is getting cold here. Today I wore long-johns under my pants and a long sleeve shirt under my sweater, as well as gloves and a scarf. My face and ears were still pretty chilly on my walk to school, and my breath was visible. I hear that last year they got like 2 feet of snow here. I am excited for the snow. I will enjoy it, at least for a little while. They've started to put up lights and the center round-about has a field of fancy fake white christmas trees in the center. I can't wait for them to light up the town, I hear it is gorgeous.

Rosetta: Random Thoughts

There is a sign on the door of one of the shops here. It says in Egnlish, "If this store is closed please go to the store behind you, it is the same shop." And sure enough, you turn around and across the street is the same store. I'm not sure why.

There is this sign with rainbow block letters that keeps attracting my attention. Every time I see it I think, ooh what is that? It is a poster for the meeting of an Alzheimer's support group. I have been curious about this sing at least three times now, maybe I should go to the meeting.

Today in class a boy asked me i had tried Comté (a french cheese). A girl then informed him that they don't have cheese in America... or mussels.

I was at home alone today so I figured it would be a good time to vacuum and mop. About 10 minutes later both my roommates came home for lunch and our landlady's nephew stopped by (I was of course in my pajamas). Oh, and then the vacuum bag was full so I had to sweep and couldn't vacuum the stairs.

Laurent, my English teacher, was running at dusk and caught a twig to the eye. He came to class with the white of his eye entirely bright red. It looked very bad but he assured the glass that it didn't hurt anymore and didn't affect his vision but that it would stay red for a while... like a bruise.

Not once have I heard, 'this is how we used the English assistant last year.' I'm not sure why but I have heard that they did not have a great experience with their language assistants. I still wonder why everyone is acting like this is the first time they've worked with a language assistant.

I borrowed the film Billy Eliot from the library. I don't think I've seen it since I saw it with my grandparents in the theatre. I was happy because in theatres it was rated PG13 so I got to see it but when it came out on film it was rated R. So I got to see an R rated movie.

Last night I went to volleyball practice with my roommates. It is a community group that has an instructor and is open to the public. Afterwards they were going to go to a bar for a drink so I came home alone. It was 10 o'clock so I put on my pajamas and went downstairs to make dinner (I had not wanted to eat before volleyball but we ended pretty late). As I was headed downstairs my roommate came in, they had decided to have dinner at our house. My two roommates and 4 boys from volleyball. So I hung with them in my pj's and we made pasta, Surprise Soirée.

Mandarin oranges and Petit Écolier cookies (cookies with a layer of chocolate on top) are my new vices.

I counted 10 different kinds of Coke (vanilla, cherry, zero, light etc) and one Pepsi, but I was unable to find a single Rootbeer.

Rosetta: Last Minute

Okay, so today I arrived about 15 minutes early for my 1:00 class. It was a class with Annie so I was expecting to have a lesson plan all laid out for me like last time and I thought I'd have a couple of minutes to look it over. I waited 15 minutes in the teacher's lounge for Annie to come in and give me the lesson plan (last time it was waiting for me in my box but since it wasn't there this time I figured she'd hand deliver it). At 1 o'clock Annie comes in and says, 'Ah, there you are, the students are waiting.' She then brought me to her class room, handed me a course outline and 5 students and we all went to the classroom next store to work. It turned out the lesson plan she had designed this time was very similar to last time's: review the alphabet, practice some new memorized phrases, and do a role play (this time as someone leaving a message for someone staying at a hotel). The lesson plan lasted almost the entire hour, we had about 5 minutes at the end in which we played hang man (to practice the alphabet of course). The second hour was with 6 students doing the same work. We finished the assigned work in half an hour. I was not going to let the students play hang man for 30 minutes to I made them right their own role play using the phrases they had memorized. That worked well and left us with about 5 minutes at the end for hang man. After that I had another two hours of classes with Annie during which time we watched a 3 minute video as a class. She gave the students 2 minutes for notes and then let them watch the video again. After that she gave them 15 minutes to write up a summary of the video. Than she sent me one at a time to have a dry run of the test they will have on a similar video in 2 months. This is a serious test and I was given a grading criteria sheet, an organized summary of the movie that they should be able to get somewhat close to, and a couple of questions ('ask them questions like these'). I was not allowed to help them during their summary and I was to ask the questions as they were written because they had studied them (even though the grammar was wrong on a couple of them). I was supposed to have each student for 20 minutes. In the end I only talked to 3 students in the 2 hours I was with Annie (all that time watching the video and preparing etc.) I was unable to talk to a student for more than 15 minutes, although for one it was less than 10, because they could not answer the questions in detail and their summaries were short. I was supposed to be able to have a conversation with them for the rest of the 20 minutes about the film but as I could not help them with words and I wasn't supposed to tell them answers, if they got stuck or didn't know, we ran out of things to talk about very quickly. After that I had an hour with Laurent, he was giving a test and had told the students that they could ask me if they had any vocab questions. That was fairly easy except for when I didn't understand the question, their was more than one possible answer, or I couldn't think of a translation. I worked 5 hours today which leaves me only 7 for the rest of the week. However, this week I will only work 10 hours because that is how the schedule worked out. I am halfway done! Laurent asked me to write some transcripts of 5 minute video clips since I have some unaccounted for hours, this sounds like good fun to me and I am excited to get starts.

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I met another American assistant last weekend. She came to my house with the Spanish assistant from the town over to spend the weekend with us (their town is very quiet and boring on the weekends). I was not very interested in meeting her because, as I put it, I have enough American friends already. But I was surprised by how much I liked her and how relieving it was to fall back into my old pattern of banter. It really does change my communication style to be living with people from other countries and I didn't realize it until I met Katie and we struck up an easy relationship because we have such a similar cultural background. And I thought I had it bad with not knowing my lesson plan until right before class but Katie says that she shows up to class now knowing anything and the teachers give her a topic, for example the social security system in America, and then she is expected to talk at the kids on that topic for the whole hour while the teacher watches. It makes my job seem like a piece of cake.

Rosetta: Books Are My Comfort Food

I just got back from a very discouraging two hours. This was my last two classes before the three day weekend and I had already done the whole group thing plenty of times to feel comfortable. I start off with 'Hello, my name is Rosetta and I like chocolate chip cookies. Can you tell me your name and something you like?" I think this is a good way for me to hear their names and learn something about them. Well, all that is well and good but todays students were a lower level and as the teacher had given me the same directions: 'just talk about whatever you want,' I had prepared some topics of conversation as well as a couple of games to get the students talking. However, the students were unable to understand even the most rudimentary phrases and if I asked a student to say something they spent a good amount of time hemming and hawing and je-ne-sais-pas-ing before finally saying one or two key words to try to get their meaning across. All in all there was a lot of silent waiting time and a lot of me saying the phrase to help the student out. To be fair the first three groups weren't terrible, they tried to participate and seemed to enjoy the activities even if they didn't understand everything, but the last group I could barely get to say three words in a row and they would just sit blankly if they didn't understand. Although, I still don't know if the problem was that they didn't understand, that they didn't know what to answer, or if they didn't know how to say their answer in English because they would not talk to me (sometimes they would whisper to each other in French to get help). It was very frustrating, however I kept going for the full 20 minutes. I talked to the teacher afterwards and he explained that these were lower level students and agreed with me that further groups like that would not be helpful to the students. He told me not to worry and that next time he will give me a live of phrases to go over with them. As in make them all repeat the same phrases until they get them right. That sounds very boring to me, however much more useful than them staring at me blankly the whole time. So I was pretty discouraged and worn out from struggling to communicate for two hours because I have to talk to the students in English even if they have difficulty understanding. But luckily I am now done with class for almost 4 whole days (the rest of today, Friday, Saturday, and Monday morning). I went to the library after class to cheer myself up. I got a book in French that seems interesting, a book I have read in English and in French on tape in French (for comprehension) and a movie for tonight with my roommates (in French). So I am feeling reasonably cheered and still motivated to try again with the students so that is good. Oh, and I'm not sure if I've mentioned this but there was a girl at school who would simply say 'Rosetta' every time she saw me. Finally, I asked her was her name was and the next times she said 'Rosetta' I responded, 'Margot' in the same tone. Today for the first time she greeted me with 'Hello'.

Rosetta: First Week of School

Okay, so this is by no means my 'first' week of school, but it definitely feels like that. Up until now my teaching has been sporadic at best but finally I have a real (if somewhat fluid) schedule and this was my first week attempting to do a full 12 hours (although it looks like it will be more like 10 hours this week). Monday was fabulous. I was with Annie and she had a group of 10 students for 2 hours, which she split in half, giving me 6 students for 1 hour and 4 for the other. Annie was very clear that when her students are will me they are to be working! She wrote a lesson plan for me that was three steps: review alphabet by spelling names as if they are working as a receptionist and taking down peoples names, review the phrases the students have memorized regarding the hotel industry, and do a role play whereby one student  'makes a reservation' and the other student 'takes the reservation'. I was very impressed by how this took almost exactly one hour both times. I had the students start by telling me their own names and then spelling them and then I went on to spell a couple of the names Annie had given me as examples and we reviewed the tricky letters (the vowels, g and j, h, x, y, z, and r). After that the phrases went pretty well because the students had mostly already memorized them ("the hotel overlooks the sea" "I am sorry but we have no more vacancies"), I read the phrase in French and they told me the phrase in English. For the role play I had them work in groups and I wrote the pertinent information on the board and had the 'receptionist' sit will their back to the board so they could not see what the other person was telling them. I was very happy with how the classes went and I felt like we made a lot of progress. The next day I only had one class with Marylise and she had me stand at the front of the class with her while she corrected a worksheet she had given the students. My only use here was saying the words again with 'an American accent' because she teaches British English. Today I had another two hours with Annie during which I had 10 and 8 students each for one hour. We talked about their internships (a subject that is now quite boring for me as it is always the same, "I worked during July and August at a hotel/restaurant, as a cook/receptionist") with very little variation. After that we worked on describing pictures ("The plant is in the bottom right-hand corner." "The table is behind the plant.") These students were a bit harder to focus but the class still went fairly well (except for the construction happening in the hall which made it very difficult to hear what the kids were saying). After that I had two hours with Laurent. His goal is to expose the students to conversational English and thus I am given free reign. Having tired of talking ad naseum about the students internships I had prepared games. We played 'Two truths and one lie' wherein the students take turns telling three 'facts' about themselves and the other try to guess the lie. I had also prepared cards with the name of popular movies which I handed out and made the students tell the stories so that the others could guess the name. This worked well and was quite fun for everyone however since Laurent gives me groups for only 20 minutes we do not have time for everyone to talk very much. I have 3 more hours of class tomorrow with Laurent so I am going to try to prepare something that will at least entertain me (and get the students speaking English of course!) So there you have it, my very detailed account of my first week of teaching.

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On an un-teaching related subject, I found out that there was a theatre class for adults so I stopped by yesterday. When they say adults they just mean not the little kids and not the teens because the class consisted of 5 (usually 6 but one was absent) boys ages 19-21 who all had trucked in from the neighboring town where they attend a school for the handicapped. So as you might imagine I was a bit let down by the turnout because I had been hoping to make some fun actor type friends through this class. I had an okay time there, we did some improv games however the teacher set them up so they always ended up with the players arguing. For example there was one game where two people introduce a third person and that person can agree or disagree with any of the facts given about them, however this only led to all three people arguing about 'whether or not Jack likes horses.' All in all, not the best improv class I have ever been to. I might go back because my roommate, Maria, was there and said she might go back. So if she goes, I will probably go to solely because it is good for me to get out of the house in the evening and speak and listen to French, but I do wish the classes had turned out more to my liking.

Meg: What's Your Sign?

That's right... I'm back teaching!  Today was my first day back after the break, although I was supposed to start again yesterday.  My train in Nice got cancelled due to bad weather, however, and I couldn't get home until yesterday, far after when I was supposed to teach my class.  Thankfully though the teacher was super understanding and not upset with me, which was great, because I was super nervous about going back today after be absent for three whole days.  (I skipped Thursday and Friday to stay in Nice with my friends.)

Anyway, the order of business for the day was to use horoscopes to teach the children how to describe their personalities, something I thought was quite clever and fun.  I had some teen magazines that I brought with my from the US that happened to have horoscopes in them, so I brought them along, although, as it turned out, I didn't really need them.  The teacher gave me a piece of paper with instructions on how the students should get into pairs and practice having a dialogue about their horoscopes.  I didn't realize that they already had some in their books, so I had everyone in the class tell me their signs and then had each sign's horoscope read out loud by someone in the class.  It was pretty funny, actually, because, of course, they didn't know all the words, so I had to come up with some creative ways to rephrase what the horoscopes said.  My favorite was teaching them what a crush is.  Since I don't know the word for crush in French (I purposely didn't look words up before the lesson so that I might be able to break my habit of translating for the students) I had to explain what it meant in simple English.  This is harder than you would think!  Seriously, right now, pretend that you have to explain to someone what a crush is with a very limited vocabulary, and then pretend that it's a group of giggly middle schoolers.  Yeah, not easy, but pretty entertaining.  I ended up (after having failed a couple of times) using celebrities to describe crushes.  Zac Efron, to be exact, because I figured the kids knew who he was, and there was a picture of him on the horoscope page, so I thought of him first.  It was pretty funny and I think the kids enjoy my silly animated attempts to make them understand.  I'm still not quite sure they got the concept, but I hope they did, and if not, at least I provided them with some entertainment for the day.

After giving the students a couple minutes to practice talking to each other about dialogues I had them stand in front of the class as do it.  (As the teacher told me I should.)  I was actually very impressed at how well they did, I only had to correct a few mispronunciations and a few sentence structures.  (Not Ju-lee, July ect,)
I really enjoyed today, which was a great way to start back on the job.  I only have one other hour of teaching this week to do, partially because Friday is another day off.  It's slightly frustrating, but I think I'm going to ask to sit in on classes, and hopefully that will up my hours of not sitting at home on my computer.  In fact, the observing I've done has already helped because today the teacher was able to tell me to do the assignment the way she had done during a class I sat in on.  Hopefully more teachers will allow me to sit in and watch because I think I will learn a lot that way!




        

Rosetta: "No tips needed"

The Bibliotèque Media (library) is located right behind my bank/post office, that is to say about a five minute walk from my house. It is a cute building with all the books and movies I'll need to keep me occupied during all the time I will have not working. It also has a small section of audio books of which I plan to take full advantage. Listening to a book on tape is one of my favorite ways to practice my comprehension (other than meeting some awesome people who want to talk to me in French but that will come too I am sure). The door to get into the library is easy to close from the outside but a bit harder to close from the inside because it has one of those push bars to open and so to close it from the inside you have to sort of slam it past the 'cobalt' (the little device that keeps the door closed but move out of the way when you turn the doorknob). Because of this, when I am leaving the library I always hold the door open for people entering so that I can close the door from the outside for them (where there is a proper handle so you don't have to slam the door). This ends up being a tad bit awkward however if the people are a couple steps from the door because then I end up holding the door very conspicuously (especially if they walk slowly as a lot of the older population here does). So the other day I was holding the door very awkwardly as this old couple walked up to the door and the women went in the man held out his hand to me. I realized too late that he was pretend offering me tip. I wish I had been quicker on the uptake so I could've said something clever along the lines of I don't need a tip. But by the time I figured out why he'd done that he was already inside and I was closing the door for them. Oh well, next time I will know what is going on.

Rosetta: Work Not Play

I got my 'official' schedule. I will have Fridays off! Sometimes. If I ended being needed on the occasional Friday I will work but in most cases I will have a three day weekend. Thursday was my first day back after break and I had three hours of class. One hour with a part time English teacher, Anne-Marguerite, and two hours with my English teacher, Laurent. Anne-Marguerite had requested me because she was holding a special one hour session in addition to her normal class time because her students are going to have a month of to do an internship and then a couple of months later they have there big exams. So she had asked if they'd be interested in an extra class and they'd agreed. She invited me along so the student could practice explaining what menu items were to me in English (a task that will be required of them on their exam). This was a good idea in principle but in reality was a huge waste of time. Five of the ten students were absent and the rest were unresponsive and unprepared. Granted, it was 9 in the morning the day after a two week vacation, but having me there would've been a lot more beneficial if they'd known any of the dishes they were meant to explain. These kids didn't even know how to explain the dished in French much less English. We spend the hour with me selecting one kid after another and asking, 'can you tell me what the quiche lorraine is?' or whatever dish I happened to pick from the list. And then the kid would struggle vainly to answer, sometimes the other kids would through out words like 'eggs' or 'butter' but in the end the teacher ended up telling me what the dish was. I think if I had been in charge of the class and they had acted like that I would've given them a couple of minutes to prepare an explanation for each dish (even if they were supposed to have already done that it was obviously necessary). And, since they were supposed to comport themselves as if they were waiters and I was the customer, I think it would've helped if we'd made them stand next to me while I sat instead of the other way around. My two hours with Laurent went a bit better. He gave me groups of 3 students for 20 minutes at a time to talk to in English about whatever we wanted. I took some time to prepare the classroom and wrote 'helpful phrases' on the board such as 'what does that mean?' 'Can you repeat that?' 'I don't understand.' Because I had had difficulty with getting my groups to express these ideas in English in my prior experiences. But in fact, the groups I ended up with all spoke English very well and had little difficulty understanding me. We talked about vacation and internships and future goals and the 20 minutes went by quickly. The only down side was that I ended up with 4 groups over the 2 hours I was with Laurent and I tired of asking the same questions over and over, I even forgot at one point if I'd already posed 'that' question to 'this' group or not. But one of the things I learned at orientation was, if nothing else, make sure the kids leave the room with a smile on there faces. I think I accomplished that, especially with the last group which was a bit rowdy and laughing a lot of the time, but I know that they enjoyed themselves and they did participate and speak English so my job there was done. Next week I will have class with Annie, another full-time English teacher, and she had meticulously planned everything I will do, and unlike Laurent, she wants her students to see my sessions as work not play.

Rosetta: La Nausée (Sartre Joke)

I woke up this morning feeling very light headed and nauseous. The nausea stuck with me the rest of day. However, I still ventured out of the house for the planned lunch with Laurent. He picked me up in front of the school because he didn't know where I lived and he drove me to Berck (the neighboring town) where we walked along the beach and through the small town. Then we went to his house in Verton and had lunch with his wife, Cecil, and son, Benoît. Cecil was very nice and easy to talk to. She had lost of pertinent and interesting questions to ask me and so she kept the conversation going very well. Benoît (20) spoke only when spoken to and generally was very quiet. We had a 'typic french' lunch consisting of a sliced tomato and sliced ham sausage for the 'entrée' (in this case meaning the entrance to the meal or in English hors d'oeuvre), the main course was a 'poupiette' which was some kind of meat hash wrapped in a beef filet wrapped with a strip of fat and all tied up in a string, this was accompanied by a vegetable mush that was pretty decent. After of course we had a cheese plate and then dessert which was baked apples and was very good. After that we had coffee and the Ferrero Rochers which a brought them. When I presented them with the Ferrero Rochers they had teasingly responded by saying that they didn't like chocolate. But again, they seemed to have been the perfect choice. If you ever are wondering what will go over well I recommend little chocolates of some sort since there will most likely be a coffee after dinner and this will present the perfect opportunity to eat your chocolates (or cookies would probably be good too). During coffee there was a knock on the door and Laurent answered to two little kids who said 'un bonbon ou un sort' (a candy or a spell) so he gave them some typical Halloween candy. I was glad to see this tradition respected even in France however it seem to be only little kids and only during the afternoon.

Rosetta: Lunch at Madame Deloffre's House

I just got back from Madame Deloffre's house. I ended up staying for lunch too 'since I would be alone if I went home'. It was actually very nice. Madame Deloffre was there as well as her son and his fiancé, her sister and husband and her sister's two kids and two granddaughters who were 8 and 6 years old. So it was quite a crowd but I was happy to not be alone all day. As much as I like to have the house to myself for a while it is quite nice to have some conversation in a day. The Ferrero Rochers I brought went over quite well and not just with the kiddos, I made the right choice (even though it was slightly more expensive than the cookies I was also considering).

We started in the sitting room with hors d'oeuvres: bread spread with fois gras and a cherry tomato on top and bread spread with butter covered in smoked salmon with a mini slice of lemon on top. Very fancy. Oh, and champaign to go with that. Then we moved to the table and hat boiled potatoes, salmon, and rice with a delicious white sauce over everything. And of course white wine to go with the fish. After that there was a cheese course with a choice of five different cheeses and bread. And a red wine. Then there was the pear pie and 'tart au sucre' a regional specialty. And after that we had coffee and the Ferrero Rochers. So you know, just a normal lunch in France. It all lasted about 3 hours. Everyone was very nice except they kept being very stern with the two kids which surprised me and probably would have made me cry at that age (or even now if someone used that tone with me) but the two girls practically ignored them. I offered to take the kids of their hands for an evening if they were interested and the grandma was very intrigued by this idea but the mom seemed to be uninterested so we'll see. For now, I am back at home about to curl up in bed and read some more, at this rate I should finish my book before school starts back up, but don't worry I have another one waiting for me when I'm done (not to mention a whole library full of fun and exciting books down the street).

Rosetta: Guest Etiquette

You know what I miss? That thing in the bathroom that holds the toilet paper for you while you unroll it. Here, in my new house, we don't have one of those.

Charlotte tells me that it is illegal to sell Stevia as a sweetener in Germany. What? Isn't Stevia supposed to be even healthier than sugar? Why would it be banned? Her response: it would put the sugar companies out of business. There you have it, they can buy Stevia in small quantities very expensively for uses other than as a sweetener.

I was invited to tea today at my landlady's house (the house that is right next store... or rather, the other half of our house, where she stays sometimes). Her son will be there. She already mentioned 'discreetly' that her nephew, who helped us set up our internet, is single. Good thing her son is engaged or I might suspect that this was a set-up. As it is, I think it is simply a nice gesture. I don't particularly want to go but I think it will be a nice gesture in return to go... Maybe I should bring something for her: Chocolate? Wine? Tea biscuits? I really have no idea what would be appropriate. I guess you can't really go wrong with chocolate (although it is pretty expensive here).

Tomorrow I am going to lunch with my English teacher and his family. I should probably bring something for them too. I'm headed shopping now so I think I'll pick up something suitable while I'm out. And a movie. I am going to pick up a movie while I am out too.

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I picked up some Ferrero Rocher chocolates. You can't really go wrong with those.

Rosetta: ORganic

I arrived home safely yesterday around 2:30 in the afternoon. I was traveling for about 6 and a half hours total but it didn't seem like very long because I had to change trains so many times it seemed like I was always doing something. When I got home Charlotte and I walked up to the library to borrow a movie for the night. After we picked out a film (the 6th Harry Potter) we walked to the grocery store. Along the way we stopped in a little boutique that reminded me so much of home. It had all kinds of organic and health products that I recognized, it would have fit right in Ashland if everything hadn't been in French. And, true to form, everything was super expensive. I think I might end up getting my cereal there anyway though because I have the hardest time finding cereal here, all the cereal I find seems to be packed full of chocolate or to be the junk food brands you find in the USA, in any case, not the sort of thing I feel okay having for breakfast... Dessert maybe, but not breakfast. There were a couple choices of healthy cereal in the boutique but they were over 4€ for one small box. For now I am sticking with Quaker Oats for breakfast but I am considering my other cereal options. The organic boutique made me homesick with how much it reminded me of Ashland and my mom. I wanted to buy a couple of the things I saw to send home to her so she could try them because I think she would like them.

Today I planned on having a lazy day and not doing anything special. However, our landlady had told us she was coming at 11 this morning to work out the internet crisis (that is the fact that my roomies don't have internet access in the house yet). I ended up waking up to Charlotte telling me we had about 10 minutes until Madame Deloffre arrived, so I hopped out of bed and went to have breakfast. Madame Deloffre (and her nephew) showed up a little early and I ended up not having time to eat first. About an hour later with the internet situation on the path to be fixed everyone left to drive to the store to buy a phone for our house (Madame Deloffre said she would buy it for us and so Charlotte hopped in her car to take her up on the offer). I then had breakfast and did my laundry. After that Charlotte and I walked to the library to exchange our movie and then I picked up my new book from the post office (it was able to find me even though I was required to put a number in the address line on Amazon.fr) and then I went shopping for groceries. After that, Charlotte and I rode our bikes by the beach. This would have been a much lovelier experience but the bike I had borrowed from Maria had a problem with the tire. After riding for about 20 minutes it deformed just enough that every time it went around there was a bump that pressed against the break pad. I rode it about halfway home and then the problem got worse so I got off and walked it the rest of the way home. It was a very annoying walk as every time the wheel got to that point in the cycle the bike would try to stop as if I'd put on the breaks. But I made it home, had dinner, and watched a film. After that I even finished my monthly paper for my internship and mailed it in. All-in-all it was pretty productive for a do-nothing day. I think I will try again tomorrow (perhaps with a bit more success as I think it will be raining and I know have two different books I want to read - one that came in the mail today and the other that I picked up from the library).

Meg: The Job

The term "teaching assistant" is quite vague.  Even in French "assistante de langue" confuses people, or, at least a assume it does, because whenever I tell anyone that is what my job is they give me a blank stare.  Quite frankly, before I started I didn't know what it meant either.  Ok, fine, I'm still not quite sure what it means, but this is a post about what it has been so far.  And by so far I mean the whole week and a half that I did anything before an awesome two-week vacation.  (On the side-- I've decided to use French Coins as a forum to discuss my job and my other blog, meginfrancetaketwo to talk about more personal adventures.)

My first classes were the easiest, and so far, the most fun.  They generally involved a sort of question and answer session where I got to talk about myself and answer some very interesting questions. (No, I'm not married, nor do I have children, I prefer 90's alternative rock, and I've never had the chance to meet Barack Obama.)  Then I pulled out my map and impressed the class by showing them how many states I've lived in and Texas- which is about the same size of France.  They're little eyes got wide and generally I felt liked and cool.  It was a nice introduction into French classrooms, however, I had yet to be left alone with them.

As it turns out, the children are not as interested when their teacher is not in the room.  And by not as interested I mean they generally become uncontrollable, talkative and a little mean (at times).  I think part of the problem is not only that I have no training what-so-ever on how to control a class, but the methods that my teachers may have used on me when I was in school are culturally irrelevant.  Because I'm not a full teacher, I don't have (and nor do I think I should) the right to punish the children for talking when someone else is talking or for general misbehavior.  To make things even more difficult in trying to make the children be quiet, some of the teachers have requested that I don't make it known that I speak French as well as I do so that they speak to me only in English.  This is hard for me for a number of reasons.  First of all, the town we live in (the students and I) is not that large and sooner or later their going to figure out that I must speak French in order to get by in daily life.  Secondly, the children oftentimes simply don't understand what I'm asking them to do in English and sometimes rephrasing does not work.  Thirdly, I hate the idea that the students think that I'm one of those people who visits a foreign country and expects everyone to speak English to me.  I don't.

Since I teach at two different schools, I've had a chance to experiment a bit with the language that I use in class.  Only one school has requested that I pretend so, for the first time the other day, I spoke in French to a classroom of students.  It made quite a big difference!  First of all it shocked the students when I switched, shocked them enough for them to stop chatting.  I saw several of them go grey when they realized that not only had a heard the conversation they were having about me to each other, but I understood them without a problem.  Actually, that moment was pretty fun, I enjoyed it.  For the rest of the class time they were better behaved and I gave them candy at the end, which seemed to make them happy.  (I was teaching about Halloween and so I made them all come up to my desk and "trick-or-treat.")  I think some (not all) of the chatting has been because they've been trying (with each other) to understand what I wanted them to do.  Which, leads me to another trouble of the teaching situation.

I really have zero qualifications for this job.  I'm happy to have it, but really, I think the French are a bit insane to hire thousands of recent college graduates with little to no teaching experience to teach their children.  I planned a lesson for the first time the other day, and it wasn't until I was in front of the class that I realized that I had no idea how to go about it.  It was awkward and I'm sure my nervousness showed to the students.  This was my Halloween lesson plan, so I found this activity on-line where the students would have to interview each other to find out if their partner was a werewolf.  I thought it was cute and kind of funny, but, I had no idea what their vocabulary level was, so I spent a great deal of the class time translating for them, which is something I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to do.  I should have something so that they can figure out what the words mean themselves so that they actually LEARN not just translate.  Secondly, I had a word search that was a little too dumbed down I think, and again, there should have been something they actually learned from it, instead of just playing a silly game.  I talked briefly about Halloween in the the United States and asked them questions about how they celebrated in France, but I needed to have prepared the speech ahead of time instead of just talking candidly so that I could have planned what words to write on the board so that they would understand me better.

I think when I get back (I'm in Nice now... yay!) I'm going to have to insist on a couple of things with the teachers.  1. I need to be able to observe some more classes without participating so that I can see how French teachers keep discipline in the classroom.  2.  I need to simply ask some questions about what to do when students are misbehaving, recently I've just been reporting them to their teachers, which works to some extent, but I think they need to view me as an authority figure in order to realize that class with me doesn't mean play time.  3.  I need to get the text books they use off the teachers so that I have a better understanding of their language level so that I can better prepare for the classes.  If anyone (including you Rose) has any advice for anything, I will take it.  I really want to do a good job, I don't want to half-ass lesson plans, it's really not fair to the students to have an unprepared teacher, even if I am only an assistant.  Hopefully I will figure out my place soon and am able to suck less at my job!

     

Rosetta: Day to Myself

            Today, as Charlotte had left and Muriel had work and Kenza had school, I had the day to do with as I liked. So, after sleeping in, doing my laundry, and showering, I headed out to explore Louvain-la-Neuve.  I found the main strip of entertainment/shops and went to see what movie I’d enjoy watching. I decided on Identité Secrète the new Taylor Lautner movie, in French. I still had some time before the movie started so I looked for the theatre so I could buy a play ticket for tonight. I found the theatre with a sign saying that the ticket office was open from 10:30-6:30 and as it was 2:00 I tried to enter the building. However, the building I was at was not the ticket office, it was just the theatre. So I decided to find the ticket office after the movie.

            At the cinema, I bought my ticket at the student price even though I hadn’t brought any proof that I was a student and I went into the completely empty theatre to await the film. About 5 minutes before the film was to start two other couples entered. All the films at this cinema start at the same time, so there is a 2:30 showing a 4:45 showing then some evening showings but you can get there at any of these times and then decide between all the films which one you’d like to see. 2:30 came and went and I was left wondering how come the movie hadn’t started yet. I convinced myself that it would start any minute and that this was probably normal. I was mustering courage to ask the people behind me if the film should’ve started already when a lady walked in to check on us and realized the film had not started yet.

            By this time is was 3:00 and she informed us that she was sorry but it was too late to start the film and all the other films we could’ve watched were already half and hour in. We were all reimbursed with two free movie tickets (even though I explained that I did not live in town and would probably not have time to use the tickets). I loitered outside the movie theatre and looked at my map because in fact the theatre I had tried to buy play tickets at was just one of two in walking distance so I thought I’d head to the other theatre and see if I could buy the ticket there.

            While I was looking at the map, two girls about my age came to see the movie times right next to me. I offered to sell them my two tickets for 10€ (a tidy profit of 3€ for me) and they seemed genuinely interested. However, neither of them had cash on them so it didn’t work out.

            I found the other theatre quite easily as there were signs posted all over pointing to the spots of interest, one of which was the theatre. The ticket office was indeed in the second theatre so I went in to ask about tickets. Unfortunately, they were sold out but I left feeling happy because the conversation had gone very well in French and gave me a sense of accomplishment even though I had been unable to buy a ticket.

            After that, I found the FNAC (the big chain book and appliance store) and entertained myself browsing books and movies. By the time I’d had enough I figured Kenza would be home from school and she was. She has some homework to do before we hang out but she promised me that it wouldn’t take too long and then she would have the rest of the evening to spend some time with me.

            I had a great day, I love being able to go at my own pace and enjoy getting lost or turned around when I am by myself listening to music and don’t have other people to worry about. Tomorrow I am going with Kenza and Patrick to a 24H bike something or another. I am not entirely sure what this entails except that Patrick’s son is playing music at some point and that it will take up most of the afternoon. I am excited to see what it will be. 

Rosetta: Belgium - Brussels and Ghent

            My first view of Brussels was from the train window looking out on the cityscape. Tall buildings, shops, and some graffiti were all I saw on the train towards Muriel’s house as the sun set and Charlotte and I sat on our third train and last leg of the day’s journey. We arrived at the Ottignies train stop just shortly after nightfall and found our way to the exit where Muriel and Kenza were waiting to give us a ride to their house.  After a quick discussion I convinced them that I did indeed want to speak French with them. Speaking English to students and English teachers all day, as well as my stint in Helen’s house, had left me feeling a bit lacking in the French-speaking department. I had a fabulous dinner of chicken soup, watched a bit of Harry Potter (in French), and went to bed under one of my grandma’s homemade quilts that Muriel provided to make me feel more at home.

            The next morning we watched a little more of the Harry Potter film and then we walked around Louvain-la-Neuve, went to the pharmacy, scoped out the movies at the cinema, and walked along the campus. Kenza had girl scouts at 1:00 so Muriel gave us a ride to Brussels and Charlotte and I spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Brussels with the help of the directions Muriel had given us earlier and a city map. My favorite part of the Brussels excursion was in fact the Belgium Waffle. We had a nice walk around two of the different areas in Belgium and saw some big buildings, then we stopped for lunch at a Greek restaurant and each had a Pita. After lunch we found a kiosk selling waffles. Some people had waffles on plates covered in melted chocolate and powdered sugar but we decided to just go for a plain old waffle in our hand that we could eat as we walked. It turns out that there was no need for chocolate or sugar on the waffle. It was already very sweet and warm and delicious. I don’t think they use the same batter for waffles here as in the States, in fact once it had cooled a bit, it seemed more like the texture of a croissant than of a waffle. It was so good I had trouble walking and eating it at the same time because all of my attention was on the delicious waffle I was eating.

            The next day we had decided to go to Ghent. Muriel stayed home so she could take care of some things, so it was just Charlotte, Kenza, and I for the trip. Muriel had made us a very specific list of trains we’d need to take to get to Ghent as well as walking us into the train station and buying our tickets for us. Kenza, being under 12 rode free. Everything was super clear and easy and after helping Kenza with part of her math homework on the train we arrived in Ghent a little over an hour later.

            Brussels was nice in a big city sort of way but Ghent was just gorgeous. I am not often impressed by old towns because I was exposed to a lot of things at a young age and now when I see old towns I sort of just think, ‘yep, that’s old alright.’ But Ghent was really wonderful.  When we got off the train, we pulled out our map and picked the nearest park and headed towards it. The first thing I noticed outside the train station was that if I wanted to steal a bike, this would probably be a good place to do it. There were literally thousands of bikes left outside the train station most of them not even chained up. They were all leaning one on the other and they circled the entire roundabout (I didn’t know at the time but on the platform waiting for our train on the way back we would see a parking lot in the back of the station that was solely for bikes and was packed full of row upon row of them).

We never did end up finding that park even after asking three different people for directions (none of them had the slightest idea because they were all just visiting Ghent like we were).  Finally we ended up taking a trolley to the center of town. Up until then, Ghent had seemed pretty normal (aside from the bikes) but as soon as we stepped off the trolley in the center of town all that changed. The street was cobblestoned and the square was surrounded by old buildings. There was a church on our right, a bell tower just in front of us, and off to our left a ways a cathedral known as the cathedral of counts.

We spent some time trying to find the information office so we could have a good detailed map of the area and ask what we should see while we were there. On our search for the tourist office we stepped into a church because it was pretty and impressive. It was the Church of Sint-Niklaas. I have been in a lot of churches and seen a lot of statues but this one amused me immensely. The statues of saints were all in a monotone light gray and were fairly normal and what you’d expect save for that each one had in his hand an item in bright gold. There were saints with swords of course and crosses and a chalice and a book but the one that really made me smile was the one that was holding a very big, gold, saw. I also saw one that was holding what appeared to be a golden square (you know, that instrument you use in carpentry that looks like a big ‘L’ and you use it to make sure that what you’re building has a 90˚ angle).

We finally found the tourist office. Muriel had given me a tourist guidebook for the town but the map was a bit small which was why were looking for the tourist office in the first place. According to my small map it looked like the office should’ve been right behind this tall bell tower. We asked several people where it was and got different and confusing answers. The best one was when I was standing just in front of the bell tower and Charlotte and Kenza had stepped inside to see if the office was inside, and I asked a passerby where the tourist office was. She told me it was ‘just in that building’ pointing to the bell tower right next to us, then she chuckled with her friend and walked off. I went up the stairs to find Charlotte and Kenza walking out of the tower because that was not were the office was. We all went back in anyhow and asked the man behind the desk and he explained to us very nicely that the tourist office was in the same building but around back. So we exited, circled around, and finally got a map and a good walking route to follow.

Our route ended up taking us over the river that flows through Ghent and as Kenza pointed out, it is reminiscent of Venice because the houses butt right up against the water. It was absolutely gorgeous and the weather could not have been better. We walked for a bit and then stopped for a bite to eat. That was about all we had time for since it was Sunday and if we didn’t catch the 4:30 train we would have to wait for the 6:30 train and that wouldn’t get us home until after 8. We ended up getting home around 7 anyway though because our first train was late which meant we missed our second train and had to wait for the next one half an hour later and then that train was delayed while we were on it. But we did finally make it back home, all in all it was a quite a good day.