Life In Blois

I thought maybe I should actually talk about what I'm doing here, since this seems to have turned into just a travel journal.

School is basically the same. I picked up another 1.5 hours of CM2 class at VH, so I have an extra 45 minutes of work now (I dropped the 45 minutes of CM2s I was doing at BA). Its a big class, but they're well-behaved and they've had English all year so we're not struggling the way we would be if we were really starting right at the beginning. They're also really obsessed with getting me to speak French to them. (The teacher they had before, who is pregnant, was a regular French teacher, so she spoke a lot of French in the lessons). Another one of my schools invited me to go on a three-day bike ride with them in May, which would involve seeing some chateaux and spending lots of time with the students (but they're my favorite school), but I have to make sure I can make up the hours I would be missing at my other schools.

I haven't found that many other things to occupy my time, but I'm volunteering at Chato'do whenever I can, and I might take over some volunteer English lessons that another assistant, who is leaving at the beginning of April, is doing. I'm a little worried about how I will pass my time when everyone leaves in April, but one of my best friends here, Claire, has got a bartending job, so she's going to stick around (though whether we'll have any overlapping free time remains to be seen) all summer. Also, the weather is just starting to get nice, and so I have plans to go on random day trips to little towns on the train line, just to check them out, and I'll also start biking more.

Last weekend, Claire, Luisa, and I went to a wine fair (a tasting with people from lots of different wine regions), which was pretty cool. I managed to learn a little bit about wines and what I like, so now I can leave France with some knowledge in that direction. We also got to taste some wines from the Loire Valley, some from right around Blois! Unfortunately, the buses stopped running on the way back, so we had to walk for a while in the wind and rain (and also, we walked 15 minutes in the wrong direction first) through farmland, and by the time we got back we were exhausted.

I also went to the chateau in Blois, finally, last Sunday. It was quite impressive and worth going to (at least once, I'm not sure how many times I'll want to go back), though they were in the middle of filming a movie there, so some of the rooms were not open.

I still haven't heard from the summer camp where I want to work, here in France. My plan remains the same, though (unless, of course, I don't get the job)--work there through August, travel around Europe in September and October (and/ or until my money runs out), and then come back to the states and get a job (though I am going to try to find something before I leave Europe so I have a general idea of where I'm going.)

As for future travels, I'm going to Strasbourg this weekend and then for my next vacation (the 5th through the 20th of April), I'm going to Greece for almost two weeks and then Rome for just a weekend. I've made a list of places in France I want to go to on weekend trips, so (as long as I have money left), I'll be hitting those as much as I can in May and June.

First day!

Today was my first day of work. I taught three classes at the E.Q., one CE2 (the first year most children in France learn a language, usually 8 years old), one CM1 (9 years old), and one CM2 (10 years old). This will be my normal Friday schedule from now on. The CM1 and the CM2 have both had English before, and so they picked up on the things I was saying more quickly, but it is very much like starting from scratch. The trick will be to figure out how to make sure I keep things interesting for them without having to come up with 3 (or 4, because I have one CE1) lesson plans for every class. For the first day, though, it went very smoothly.

I've also observed classes at my two other schools, which are basically opposites in terms of the populations they serve. V.H. is right downtown and the children are almost all white. B.A. is right near me, in the ZUP (Zone à urbaniser en priorité), and the classes are much more diverse, and also much less well-behaved. On the other hand, the standards for children in France is much more strict than that in the US--for example, the kids at E.Q. wouldn't start writing the title page on their notebooks until I told them where to start on the page (all of the paper is like graph paper), and when I gave them stickers, they asked where they should put them. Also, the schools are much smaller than they are in Philadelphia--each school I go to only has one class for each grade (or sometimes two combined classes), and the classes have 25 students in them at most.

So far the teachers have been very friendly to me and have been helping out a lot. This seems very different from what I've heard is the case, with teachers who leave the room during the class or are even disruptive, and act like the assistant is a nuissance for them. Most people so far have at the very least been pleasant, and some of them have seemed genuinely interested in me.

My work is actually getting started. Yay!

Tuesday we had to go to Orleans (about 45 minutes northeast of Blois by train) for a training for all of the assistants in the Orleans-Tours academie. We go introduced to the structure of education within the region and had a tour of the town. Because there were German, Italian, and Spanish assistants as well as English ones, all of the training was in French. I was actually able to understand almost everything, so I was pretty impressed with myself. It did make it harder to meet people, though, because it felt awkward to introduce myself in French to people who might be English speakers, but I didn't want to introduce myself in English to people who didn't speak it. The program also wasn't really designed to faciliate people meeting each other. We had a second training in the afternoon, which was only for primary assistants, but it was still only in French. By the end of the day, I was totally exhaused. We did meet some other assistants from Blois (two German and one English) on the train back, though, which was exciting.

Wednesday and Thursday we had training here in Blois, just the six of us who are teaching primary schools (two are in neighboring cities). There was a lot of paperwork to fill out, we got our schedules, and then we got a lot of information about how to teach English, in English, to little kids who don't speak any English. Nancy, the person in charge of us, was really helpful and gave us a lot of ideas. She is American but has lived in France for over 20 years and has taught regular French school, so she knows a lot. Taking care of the assistants is only part of her job, though, so she hasn't been totally on top of things. For example, I still haven't visted the schools where I'm teaching (I'm going to go to at least one later this afternoon) or observed any classes. On the bright side, this leaves me free to go shopping for school supplies (and groceries) and get my cell phone, finally.