Caen, Christmas and 2013

A belated happy new year to you all! May 2013 bring you good health and prosperity.

I was extremely happy to be able to go back to Jersey for Christmas, although I only got home on the 22nd December so I missed a lot of the run up to Christmas. It was so good to see all my friends and family again, and to be in an English speaking country.

The journey from Fauville-en-Caux to St Malo where I get the boat is about 3.5hrs by car so I decided to stop off in Caen along the way. I stayed overnight in the Mercure Centre Port de Plaisance which is a great hotel, highly recommended. I spent the afternoon exploring the town. First I ate alone (sad, isn't it?) but I had some moules frites and a great café gourmande in the best smelling restaurant in the area (I genuinely followed my nose!). I then decided go up to the old castle where they have a Musée de Beaux Arts and a museum about the history of Normande. The castle itself was built by William the Conquerer and there are abbeys in the town dedicated to him and his wife, though I didn't have time to see those. I decided to order myself a pretty cheeseboard and a glass of wine while I watched French TV and relaxed in the evening.

Back in Jersey after Christmas, Alex came to visit for a week and my family celebrated my father's 50th birthday with a dinner at the Somerville Hotel - one of my favourite places to eat out in Jersey! I also had a couple of friends round for New Year's Eve, the theme was 'ugly' knitwear...

Massive thank you to Maisie for the amazing Christmas jumper that she bought me for Christmas this year! 

I was dreading coming back to France, not because I hate it or anything, I quite like it here, but the idea of having to drive 3.5 hours in one go back to Fauville made me want to die. I had a boat to catch at 8am and I arrived back at my place at about 4pm. I was completely exhausted. The novelty of driving has definitely worn off. 

I've settled back into the routine of life in France now. I'm back to teaching and the kids have been mostly great so far (though I have the dreaded 4es coming up). On the weekend I was trying to decide how I can plan a really kickass lesson for them then a small voice in my head said 'It doesn't matter what you plan, they'll just muck about anyway.' Still, I'm determined to try to get them to work and enjoy it, even if some of them try my patience.

At the end of my first week back I went to Paris and do Disneyland with some of my friends from RHUL, Steph and Jenny. I hadn't seen Steph since June and Jenny since August so it was so good to get together again. I was a little worried that perhaps I was too old and the magic wouldn't be there anymore but it was AMAZING. I even stayed for the fireworks at the end; I've never done that before because I was quite young the last few times I went and my parents decided to take us home, or go to dinner at a show. Definitely one of the best days ever! I'm sooooo tempted to go back to the Disneyland in Hong Kong this summer (even though I went last time). The thing I was not prepared for was the extortionate prices int he gift shops! I was expecting expensive but not €6 for a plastic biro! NO ME GUSTA!

In other news, I have a new favourite annoying song...

It's the background music for a lot of videos by a guy on YouTube called haywong709 who does videos in Cantonese (trying to improve my skills, you see). The song gets stuck in your head for hours though.

That's all for now, dears.

ttfn x

Holidays are coming, holidays are coming!

Dear friends,

Christmas is a mere week away and I will finally be home in Jersey with my family on Saturday evening (provided that the end of the world doesn't occur). Today I had a lovely Christmas lunch with the teachers at school. We had some appertifs with some little canapés then a lunch of turkey with roasted potato swirls, fois gras with toasted brioche, fruit, yoghurt and two types of cake (chocolate and fruity mousse). J'adooore!

I also managed to buy a little Christmas tree to spruce up the apartment to make it look a bit more festive. €2 tree, some baubles and a single strand of €1 tinsel? Bargain. I even found some fairy lights that a previous assistant had left behind at some point.


This week I've been doing lots of Christmas themed lessons. I've been teaching the younger ones the song Merry Christmas Everyone by Shakin' Stevens which they've loved. With the older ones I've sort of been showing them some more songs and also some of the Christmas adverts from John Lewis. One of my classes of 3e have completely fallen in love with the idea of the place and are just dying to go. They asked me if there was one in France. Not going to lie, at teacher training there was this awkward moment when we watched some of them together in class and Imogen and I started tearing up a bit. Oh John Lewis :') For those who haven't already seen this year's one, it's call The Journey (see below).

In past few weeks I've been to Rouen and Amiens. Discovered some of the best burgers ever at a place called Holy Cow (Rouen)! Also did some Christmas shopping (mostly for me). Got myself a weekend bag for more weekend excursions for €17,50 in New Look. It even has wheels - though I'm not sure they're going to last long anyway haha. Imogen, Lauren and I had a minor panic for the Amiens trip as we thought there would be buses to take us back from the train station (forgetting that it was a Sunday and there wasn't any). Luckily I put out a plea for help in the staffroom and a very nice French teacher called Martine volunteered to drive us back to Bolbec where my car was parked. We chatted lots in the car, turns out her husband has started a little Australian football club in Breauté - weird but awesome!

I also had an awkward moment when I went to the Mairie (the mayor's office) in town to talk to a woman there about the water purification centre that they've built from my Cultural Report. She basically talked at me in French for 35mins while I frantically scribbled down notes. I mostly had the vocab sorted until she decided to explain to me in detail how the whole thing worked. It all got very technical and I was woefully unprepared with my vocab at this point so I had an awkward moment of panic where my brain just shut down and went 'She's speaking French. I know how to speak French! Words are coming out of her mouth and I have no idea what's happening. Crapcrapcrap!' Thankfully, the woman was very understanding and said that if I ever wanted to know more I was welcome to come by again.

Internet issues
Most of you have probably heard about my massive ordeal trying to sort out internet for my apartment. At present I am using the collège's internet but the signal can be pretty temperamental so I decided to sign up so my own internet connection through SFR. Spoke to the principal to see if that was okay and she said it was fine and even gave me the old number. Went along to SFR to sign up, they couldn't find the old line so they said they'd have to create a new one. Okay, no problem, signed the contract, gave them my RIB, copies of my passport. 'The box will come in one week and we'll contact you then about having an engineer come round' they said.

Two weeks went by and I had no box. I went along to the shop again. Thankfully the same girl served me and the manager came to help out too. They said it was definitely their fault and that I was right to come in. They sorted it all out, said they'd keep an eye on my account to make sure everything was getting done and even set up the engineer appointment for me right there and then. I even got given the under 26 10% discount which they had previously said was no longer available. Bonus!

A week later my box arrived and I was happy and full of hope... until I got a text at 8am the day before my engineer was supposed to come saying that my rendez-vous had been cancelled. No reason. What a sucky way to be woken up on a Wednesday morning! I genuinely screamed into my pillow for a bit and hauled my butt out of bed to call them and ask them to explain themselves. I totally forgot that speaking and listening in French is a million times harder on the telephone but the woman on the line gave me no reason but checked my address with me. For some reason no one can understand that I live at the collège but I think she finally understood when she found my neighbour's place. Then she said goodbye. Still no reason found. Thinking that I needed to be French and assertive to get anything around here I marched back into the SFR store in Bolbec and spoke to the manager again. First thing I said was 'Hello, do you remember me?'. He did. So I explained what happened and he ended up on the phone for half an hour trying to find out what was wrong. He ended up speaking to several different people and telling them my name, spelling it all out and then giving them my phone number. I don't think he'll ever forget me now.

Skip forward a couple of days and I get a phone call where I can arrange my appointment again. In theory it should be on Thursday... sometime between 8am and 10am. Joy. The sad part is that the internet might not actually kickstart properly for a couple of days after the engineer comes, by which time I'll be back in Jersey for a couple of weeks. At least I can hopefully come back for functioning internet!

Yesterday I got a phone call where SFR were asking where exactly I live again (they still don't get it). 'En fait, j'habite au collège' I said. I even explained in detail where it was. This phone call, I hope, is a good thing.

FINGERS CROSSED FOR INTERNET 2013.

Merry Christmas everyone!

PS: Discovered that the other cat's name was actually Loukoum (which means Turkish Delight).

Un chat qui s'appelle Tupac... oui, comme le rappeur

I've met a cat called Tupac. He's a fat ginger cat that belongs to my tutee's family. They also have a very fluffy grey one called 'Loo-Coom' (I don't know how to spell it). He's very friendly and sat on my lap for part of the tutor session and also went for part of my lunch which consisted of pickled cabbage, sausage, ham and potatoes (not my favourite food). I also jokingly told the family that I'd like to put him in my bag and take him home. To my surprise the dad picked up the poor dear, put him in my bag and handed it to me. I let him out and he cowered under a kitchen unit until after I had gone. I felt pretty guilty.

It's taken a while for me to write this post because I've been knocked down with another bout of flu. I even opted for a quiet weekend to make sure it was completely gone and I wasn't going to relapse again like last time. Absolute nightmare trying to teach on Monday and I basically was bedridden. Thankfully when I was at my worst I only had to teach one class which was torture but I didn't want to lose out of pay. My neighbour saw me leaving for class looking pathetic and sorry for myself and he kindly offered to take me to the doctor or to the pharmacy, even to offer me some kind of French Lemsip - thankfully I had thought to stock up on the essentials before I came to France, though my paracetamol is running a little low now.

So last weekend I had a pleasure of having my first ever Thanksgiving dinner with some of the American assistants. Tatiana, Nick and Kaylin must have slaved over the meal for hours but it was so delicious. I think my favourite thing was Tatiana's stuffing made with baguette, chicken, chorizo. I also had the infamous pumpkin pie for the first time! It was surprisingly tasty given that pumpkin isn't exactly my favourite vegetable. Later on a couple of actual French people joined us and I ended up chatting to one mostly about music and it was pretty cool being about to apply language to a proper conversation as opposed to just the 'Salut, ça va?'.

So as well as having an awesome Thanksgiving, I found the CUTEST little teashop in Yvetot when we visited Natalie who's from Canada! This teashop had a shop window full of the most amazing Christmas goodies. It was so enticing we actually waited outside the shop until it opened again after their break. We definitely looked like over keen tourists. The lady in the shop was really great and spoke to us in English but we said French was fine, given that we could all speak French (she later jokingly told us off for speaking in English while we were looking around). She opened up this amazing canister of loose leaf 'Christmas tea' and let us smell it. It smelt sooo good like marzipan and spices and I knew I just HAD to try it so we did. It's very cosy and the mugs and teapots are so cutesy. Essentially best place discovered in Upper-Normandy thus far!

The shop of joy!

ttfn x

Pamplemousse, madame?

Salut my little choquettes!

We are speedily heading towards Christmas - hurray! My boat is booked to go home in December and I've booked a hotel in Caen so I can stop off along the way. There's a few things to see there and I'm kinda wishing I had a little more time to wander around.

Last weekend Imogen, Lauren and I went for a little frolic around Fécamp which is on the north coast. We really had no idea what to do when we got there. Lauren had done a little research and she told me there was a fishing museum. As thrilling as that sounds, we didn't even see it. There was a market though and we had a little wander through before having a nose into some shops and buying a few things. We bought lunch from a cute little boulangerie/patisserie and ate it on the church steps. I had my first proper French chouquettes!

Chouquettes!

Unfortunately the weather turned on us after lunch and it started getting pretty windy and rainy! Nevertheless we decided to take some photos by the cliffs with big smiles and they came out rather well. I was quite excited to see that Guy de Maupassant used to live in Fécamp where these apartments now stand by the harbour.

So anyway, I've noticed this trend at the school canteen. The French love their big lunches. Typically you'll have something warm (meat and plenty of vegetables) then you can pick and choose from each section of salad side dishes, yoghurt, dairy, fruit and some kind of dessert. Oh, and pretty much as much baguette as you like; I generally help myself to two slices. So when it comes to fruit it's generally pretty variable in what there is available like bananas, apples, oranges, clementines, grapes. But everyday without fail there are always plenty of half grapefruits available. I actually like grapefruit but can never really be bothered to eat it at home so I've been getting a good dose of vitamin C every time I eat at school. The great thing is that I haven't had anything totally awful yet, though admittedly I'm fairly easy when it comes to food. There was one some kind of meatball and tomato and a sauce served with rice that looked GRIM but it actually tasted great. The other day there was ice cream and this made me a very happy bunny!

As we speedily head towards December I'm really starting to think about what I'm going to write my Cultural Report on. I've now decided on the subject of the planned water purification centre (yawn) and to get some documents I'm going to need to visit the town mayor and maybe even the head of an environmentalist group - luckily I was speaking to a teacher at school about this and she even said she'd come with me which was very kind of her! I felt extremely guilty at that point because, for the life of me, I can't remember her name!!

I'm trying very hard to read the local newspapers as much as possible now to get to grips with the local news and also some language. I've been compiling a list of new vocab that I've been picking up here and there. One nice thing that I picked up in Marie Claire was the phrase 'être mort(e) de rire' which is to say 'to die laughing'. Another thing I picked up in class was when I saw a girl in one of my classes bring in a tiny rubber duck; I asked her if it was a lucky charm. She didn't understand so I described it and told the class about traditional British lucky charms. The point was that I learnt that the French for 'lucky charm' is 'porte bonheur'. The thing I like about learning things in situations like that is that I know that it is going to stay in my head and I bet the students love being able to teach me something new too!

ttfn x

'I'm partial to a cheeseboard'

Well, I'm back in Fauville-en-Caux, it's weird how quickly I adjust back to French life. Also, I've finally shaken that pesky flu and cough that I've had for a week or so now.

On Friday I headed back from Egham back to France. The journey there was fine, and getting off the train was fine too. Problems started to arise when the sun went down. In accordance with the law in France I have light converters on my car's headlights (basically stickers blocking the light from going into French drivers' eyes). However, this actually blocks the lights and can make it quite difficult to see the road ahead when driving in the dark. French motorways and major roads aren't lit in the evening, nor do they have helpful little cat's eyes either. Add lots of drivers on the other side of the road (so I can't use full beam) with very bright lights that go in your eyes into the mix and you can probably imagine how difficult it can be just to make sure I stay in lane. Luckily, I developed an idea on the journey that I've dubbed 'The Light Buddy System' where you hopefully find another driver ahead going roughly about the same speed as you, adjust to match it and use the light from their car to help light the way (seriously, this works). Problems with this system arise when they turn off leaving you stuck in almost darkness until another car comes by (roads in France can be fairly empty) and also when they just drive too fast for a car with a 1.3l engine to keep up. I ended up following a big lorry going fairly slowly for a while...

So while I was back in the UK I stocked up on British delights like Robinson's fruit squash, baked beans, bourbon biscuits, chocolate digestives, shortbread, Malteasers, Cadbury's chocolate, fudge, cheddar cheese and plenty of mince pies - they were buy one get one free, okay? I also bought my favourite 'emergency ramen' and some other noodles (the French aren't so keen on Asian cooking... except rice.

I'm back to school now, I only taught on Monday though as I had a teacher training day on Tuesday. I thought I'd put it out here again that Imogen laughed at me for ages about the fact that I said 'I'm partial to a cheeseboard' because she thought that is was 'the most southern thing [she'd] ever heard'. Aside from the constant threat of being mocked in class (thanks, Chris), it was a bit of a nice day off (apart from the getting up at 6am part).

Today I had my first session of tutoring. An art teacher at the school approached me and asked if I would tutor her daughter who's in her last year at school. I followed her in my car to her place and it's the most gorgeous old farm house - the French have such lovely old houses in the countryside! Inside it was very rustic (or as I learnt today, authentique). The interior was amazing too with old wooden floors and shelves full of mismatched jars full of homemade jam, honey, lentils etc. the whole thing was incredibly charming. So I met my new tutee and we basically chatted for an hour. It's such a nice change to speak to a student that that can speak English relatively fluently. She even took it upon herself to independently study Romeo and Juliet (in English!) - I was very impressed.

After the tutoring I went to Bolbec to the SFR to set up internet in my apartment because I'm getting a little bit sick of the iffy stuff I get here. I am PRETTY proud of the fact that I did all of it all by myself and all in French. Then only minor problem was when she started talking about a parabole and she was trying to describe it to me at 'round and white' which didn't really help! Luckily I figured it out that it means 'satellite dish' just as she was scrambling around looking for a pen and paper to dry to draw it! Another hitch was the fact that the apartments aren't numbered so the poor girl had a hard time trying to find my apartment on the system. They tried tracing my line through the old number but that didn't work so there was a little faff around trying to find it. I feel quite sorry for the girl, I'm fairly sure she was pretty new because she had to ask for help quite a lot but excellent customer service, SFR!

I'm really starting to feel like I'm getting the hang of French now. A month ago I would NEVER have dared to go and sort out internet myself and I can have pretty long conversations with French people about lots of things now which is amazing! But the best part today was when my tutee today said that I have 'a cute French accent'. WIN. 

Off to make some marrons glacés now!

ttfn x

PS: You know a letter is from Jenny when the addressee on the envelope looks like this:

'Do you like One Direction/Justin Bieber/Gangnam Style?'

Although this is rather late, I thought I ought to report my findings from my two weeks of teaching. Right now, I'm back in Englefield Green for my Touissaint holidays with a good cup of tea. So far I've been completely stuffing myself with good old British fare and playing lots of Assassin's Creed on Alex's PS3 (also bought the new one - booyah!).

Perhaps you are wondering how I travelled from Fauville-en-Caux to dear old Egham? I drove nearly 400km in total. I drove to Calais, hopped on the Eurotunnel and then up from Folkestone to the Green. BTW I've never driven for more than an hour and a half before and never driven in England let alone on a motorway after driving in France for over a month! FML! Happily, the drive to Calais was absolutely fine. Roads in France are typically fairly clear except during rush hour but the most cars that I ever had around me on the motorways was about four. I used my trusty Tom-Tom to get me to the Eurotunnel and it took me to the freight place full of massive lorries. I was not impressed. Thankfully I had left plenty of time ahead for me to faff around and get lost but I eventually made it to the Eurotunnel terminal and actually managed to hop on an earlier train.

I had a little nose around in the shops in the Eurotunnel terminal and was horrified to find that it sold Jacob's Creek, Echo Falls, Hardys, Gallo Family next to the amazing French wine. SERIOUSLY?! WHO COMES TO FRANCE TO BUY THAT CRAP?! So I got my car onto the train no problem and it set off. I read War Horse on my Nexus 7 as we went along but then the train stops early and a message goes out saying that there's a 'technical problem'. I pretend to calmly carry on reading but my head is just going 'OMG I'm actually going to DIE here. In this random tunnel under the sea. omgomgomg it can't end this way.' We were delayed for half an hour but I obviously made it here unscathed.

I got to the UK and got onto the M20 and my first thought was 'Why does everyone drive so slowly here?!' (Obvious sign that I'm becoming French). My second thought was 'It's SO. BUSY. HERE.' Still I soldiered on and nothing went wrong until the M25 where I was stuck for an hour in heavy traffic; I was not impressed. Took a wrong turn coming off the M25 and accidentally went to Staines (URGH!) but I made it to the Green safely with my precious cargo of French wine and cheese which I was sorry to say was ponging a bit after sitting in my car for seven hours!

So anyway my first couple of weeks of teaching have gone quite smoothly. I already identified 4e (Year 9) to be the troublesome age group in my school. There are some massive pains in the class; when I speak to the staff about certain kids even the nicest of them struggle to find clean language to describe them). Side note: found it childishly hilarious that one of these awful children is called 'Gaylord', and that's genuinely his first name. Poor kid.

Generally I find that 6e and 5e (Years 7 and 8) are quite eager to learn and love playing little games whereas 3e (Year 10) are a lot more serious. In France they do their brevet (GCSE equivalent) at the end of 3e and then do their bac (A-Levels) for three years instead. It is fairly common in France for kids to re-take years so a lot of people are older than eighteen when they leave school.

So teaching 6e, 5e and 3e went really without a hitch. They were generally responsive and some classes are an absolute dream to teach. There's one class that I like to privately refer to as 'The Angel Faced Class'. It's a class of kids that pretty much all have the most adorable innocent faces and they're all very eager and a general joy. LOVE THEM.

Back to 4e. Not all of them are bad, there are some really sweet ones that really genuinely want to learn and are constantly raising their hands but some just are so completely insolent! shoghaskhtktfit - I don't even have the words to describe how frustrating they can be. There are kids that are brazen enough to throw things at one another right in front of me when I'm speaking to the class. So out of nowhere this amazing teacher voice comes out and starts letting rip and yelling at the class. The stunned looks on their faces are pretty hilarious. It's so obvious that their first impressions were 'Right, she's young, she might not even speak French, and she's a short girl. We're going to completely take the piss with her and she probably won't be able to control us HEHEHE'. After the shouting at the class they were more like 'Okay, maybe we should behave a bit better.' Ten minutes later and they're chatting again. *rolls eyes*. It's quite bizarre really being back in a noisy school after being at university where lectures and seminars are basically silent.

My first classes were all really focused on introducing myself to the kids, for the younger ones it was on a more basic level like my name, age, nationality, number of pets etc. but for the older ones I had prepared a presentation. I found that I connected with the kids when I talked about films I liked like The Avengers and Despicable Me which I learnt is called Moi, moche et méchant in France. I also took questions. They all like asking about Gangnam Style, One Direction and Justin Bieber; I was not impressed. -_- One sweet 6e boy wanted to ask whether I had a boyfriend but didn't have the vocabulary for it and ended up saying 'Do you have a man of your life?' which I thought was so adorable!

Generally they're good kids who want to learn and I'm excited about teaching them. A couple of the teachers have observed my classes and say that I'd make a good teacher - eek! For the rest of my time in the UK I'll continue to relax, eat and play Assassin's Creed before I head back to dear old Fauville-en-Caux for a good boulangerie baguette (man, I miss those things).

TTFN!

Life in Upper Normandy

It rains a lot here - it's literally like being in England.

One thing that kind of bothers me is the way everyone in retail likes to make you wait. There were five people in front of me in 'MacDo' the other day and I had to wait half an hour to be served. I was like 'ARE YOU ACTUALLY BEING SERIOUS.' And there was the time I wanted to just buy a sim card and I waited for ages in Orange shop which only had two people working in there and they were doing something lengthy so I was like 'Er, going to another shop now SEE YA'. It was the same in the next two places I went. Bizarro...

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting another English Language Assistant that lives in the next town of Bolbec. Her name is Imogen and we get on rather nicely. We went shopping for some bits and pieces for our apartments in GiFi (which was described as France's answer to IKEA - not true, some real bargains in there but lots of overpriced tat!) and also a little trip to 'Macdo' and Carrefour.

What a difference a little sprucing up can do! I've pinned up a couple of posters in my living/dining room which brightens up the place a lot! Also the table and seat covers were all bought as well!

This is actually where I spend most of my time in the apartment as this is where I get the best internet connection. I should probably add that the internet connection I am using is that of the school where I am living so it's not actually based in my apartment -_-

I've ventured out for a little jog around the area a couple of times and took some photos - rural France is so charming!

Look at the cute houses with the pretty trees!

I've ventured into town a few times too. I kept hearing music and I thought that maybe someone was playing music in in their house above the shop loudly with the window open or something then I realised there were speakers all over town pumping out music all over town, it really brightened up the town - such a cool idea! Speaking of music, they're pretty big fans of English music here. I've lost count of the amount of times I've heard Payphone and Call Me Maybe! 

Yesterday I went to one of the many boulangerie/pâtisseries in town and bought a baguette and a tarte aux framboises. The wonderful thing about it was that the nice lady didn't wrap the baguette in paper or put it in a silly plastic sleeve but you take it just as it is. The tarte was neatly folded into a little paper pyramid. I felt rather French walking through town carrying them!

Anyway, I've been observing classes for the past few days and have made a couple of random observations. First, in one of the classes there was a row of about four or five girls who were wearing matching tracksuit type tops with three pink stripes on the arms, one had gold stripes. It reminded me so much of Mean Girls I had a private laughing fit in my head. In another class there was a girl with a pencil case with the Union Flag on it. I'm not sure I'd love another country enough to have a pencil case with its flag on it. Weirdly, it seems to be a massive trend at the moment. When I was in GiFi there was a section with 'British' stuff in it - why a French person would want to buy cushions of the Union Flag is beyond me! 

I decided to sit in on a choir rehearsal today and I got a bit carried away and I've pretty much joined up haha! They're doing this big festival at the end of the school year where they'll sing with nineteen other school as a big choir with an orchestra. Sadly I won't be here for that. I miss music and I don't have any instruments with me. The music teacher offered to lend me a guitar if I wanted. I declined at the time but I might use my spare time to actually learn. Anyway, this is the song we learnt today, it's so catchy I've been humming it since! 

Enjoy!