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).
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