vive le vent

Winter is definitely here in the Somme. The snow has stopped falling, but temperatures are still frosty and the pavements still treacherous. This week has been a busy, festive one for me: Hannukah began last Wednesday night, my birthday was on Thursday, and I've been teaching Christmas songs to most of my classes all week in preparation for a soirée at the Centre de Loisirs next Friday night. My birthday fell on a good day - I don't have to be in until 1330 on Thursdays so I spent the morning in bed eating chocolate sent by a friend and watching Eastenders. Once I got to school I got sung to in various degrees of fluency and gifted with a wristful of Silly Bandz, the preferred currency of the primary school.

On Thursday I also had my most challenging class yet. One of the CM1 (9-10yrs) classes had been to the cinema that morning to watch The Snowman, and their teacher had purchased the anniversary DVD which had a documentary about the film that the children wanted to watch - except it was in English without subtitles. On the spot translation turned out not to be too difficult, with the English teacher offering vocabulary where mine was lacking. However, because neither of us had seen it before, we weren't prepared for what one woman said: "We get some odd requests for licensing. I suppose the strangest request I've had [and here I knew what was coming] was for a Snowman condom, where the condom was, well, his body." I looked at the teacher and we tried not to laugh too hard; in the end I said didn't know how to translate it, and she said that she didn't understand it properly. Luckily the attention span of children is such that they soon became interested in the next sequence and forgot about what it was we found so funny... I daren't imagine how long it would have taken us to stop the laughter.

Friday's challenge came in the form of handwriting. The songs we're learning are quite short (Jingle Bells, and We Wish You A Merry Christmas) so I would write them on the board and the kids copy them into their notebooks. I have never had "good" (ie: consistant, always legible) handwriting, but here I really tried to be neat. However, lots of the kids were totally baffled by it. When they start school they learn script (essentially what we in the UK would call calligraphy), which the teachers use to write on the board too, but they read books in regular book print. Anything inbetween is a mystery, as illustrated below. The first "ride" is in script, the bottom one is my regular handwriting.

In one class the kids asked me to try and write in script, so while they were copying the songs down I painstakingly drew an elaborate "Christmas" on the board. After many restarts, my efforts were rewarded with a somewhat patronising round of applause.

Getting old, not growing up:



and a loving Latke:

parfums d'hiver (and silicone bracelets)

The Amiens Christmas Market is in full swing now. A full half of the width of the pedestrian rue Trois Cailloux is taken up by the huts selling various edibles and gifts, making it actually dangerous to cycle down and threatening the already-fraught relationship between cyclists and pedestrians. A couple of fairground-style rides are set up, too, so covered in lights that they make me think of the Trocadero on mushrooms. Similarly surreal are the speakers, running from the station all the way to the Hotel de Ville, piping out the same Christmas music. Disneyland on Valium.

I have to give the toy stand a wide berth; crowds of children after school flock to spend their pocket money on rubber bracelets that come in various shapes. It's a phenomenon that seems to have come to Amiens in the last 2 weeks. Before the vacances I don't think I saw any, but suddenly every other child seems to have a few, more than a few, or two solid armfuls of multicoloured silicone that reform themselves into shapes once removed. Even one of my teachers has a few - every time she catches a kid playing with a bracelet, she confiscates it and wears it herself. I wonder how long until these are banned in schools in the UK... anything popular enough is eventually, right?

le brouillard

Around dusk the birds here start going crazy. As the sun dips low, they swoop down in huge clouds and squabble among their factions for the prime position in the belltower and rafters of the Eglise Saint-Leu. Great ungainly swarms of pigeons clamour with the synchronised fleets of starlings, who retire to the trees next to the church as dusk settles but don't shut up for hours. The odd bat flaps around too, sadly not en masse. I need to stand outside the church with my camera one day.

Yesterday was a wonderful day of eerie freezing fog. I took this picture of workmen putting up the Christmas lights. They're up on the high street, too, and on my road, and there are some snowmen lights ready to be lit up in December outside one of my schools. I can't wait! (Probably because Christmas lights mean my birthday's getting really close...)

As for work, it's getting routine now (which I suppose is a good thing?). As long as the kids don't start finding me boring. The Twin Total has gone up to 6 pairs now with the addition of Annalise and Gwendoline to my CP class (seriously, if there ever was a class that could melt an icy heart...) I've even sort-of managed to win over the less cooperative members of my CM2 (10-11yrs) class (hint: anything to do with football gets attention). In the younger classes I sort of play the comic relief foil to the teacher, but it would pretty much be career suicide if I exposed a more human side with the CM2 class.

And everything else? Bike rides, pub, beer, good conversation and friends, which well balance out the missing Bangor and going-back-to-uni-oh-god-i'll-have-forgotten-how-to-study anxiety. I don't think I ever want to leave.

this post is about tea and politics

Dear American "Tea Party Patriots",

This sign at the RTRS sums up how I feel about you, minus the vitriol:

Nina.

déboussolé

So, pretty much as I'd thought would happen, school is out for les vacances des Toussaint and I've fallen into a weird fuzzy sleepy spiral of disorientation and oddness:

I slept through Monday (except for 3 hours in the pub).

I slept through half of Tuesday, before I got the guilt at around 2.30pm and got out of bed to Do Things. It might be the week (and a half) off, but I still have a heap of bureaucratic things to do that I've failed to do so far. As it is, all I managed to do today was go the doctor. I didn't even know if i was in the right waiting room - there was a poster about not touching wild rodents' droppings to avoid catching haemorrhagic fever, so I made an educated guess. It turned out to be the right guess, and within 15 minutes I was in the doctor's office. In France, it appears, you don't need to register - you just show up and wait. You do, however, have to pay (and then send a reimbursement form to Social Security). All I needed today was a prescription for more happy pills, so we had to do the whole damn history, then a physical (at one point, taking my blood pressure, he said "c'est quarante-huit, c'est trop". I have no idea what he was referring to. Possibly my pulse?).

Tomorrow I'll take the prescription to the pharmacy and steel myself to be thoroughly rogered in the bank account department. I haven't yet received my Social Security number - although MGEN (the company) does email me regularly suggesting I pay for their advanced medical plan. Despite the fact I'll have about 6 appointment and the same number of prescriptions while I'm here (not counting any emergencies), I'm pretty sure it'll work out cheaper NOT to pay into an insurance plan.

Also planned for tomorrow - WAKE UP, DO THINGS, DRINK TEA, THINK ABOUT DISSERTATION.

over and out

Halloween classes and observations...

I'm feeling slightly unproductive as the only time I've used a crochet hook since I got here was to extract a shy drawstring from my pyjama trousers. I have found a yarn shop in Centre-ville but I've not passed in optimum not-on-way-to-work conditions and while it was open (most shops here close between 12-2pm). I need to knit something! Anything!

My second week's going pretty well so far (this is a Wednesday evening - French schools have no class on Wednesdays and they no longer have Saturday mornings either). With Hallowe'en coming up during the mid-term break most of my lessons have involved something do to with this - from teaching numbers (one black cat, two ghosts, three witches etc.) to listening comprehension (John Barrowman reading Winnie The Witch on CBeebies!). I've made this for my Thursday and Friday classes so they can design their own pumpkin faces:

Observations on French primary schools that I've collected so far:

* French kids learn handwriting, and by that I mean calligraphy script. When I was in primary school we learnt to make letter shapes into vaguely recognisable forms in the hope that we would end up with legible handwriting, but these kids are being taught what kind of loop to put between each letter etc. I have to spell out what I've written on the board for some classes, and that's even when I'm being extra neat, because all the teachers write in the same style. It's either script or book-style print over here.

* French students have to learn verb endings too, and this makes me happy in a schadenfreude kind of way.

* The teachers seem to be pretty short-tempered with the pupils' minor misbehaviour (I saw some 9yr old boys get thoroughly shouted down for taking blu-tack off the walls and putting it in their pockets).

* It's not just new and exciting teaching assistants that get notes and pictures from their young admirers. The other day the CE2 (8-9yrs) teacher came into the staff room and showed me something a girl had given her - a piece of paper covered in hearts with the words "Madame, je t'aime". French doesn't have really have words that differentiate between love/like immensely/admire; as one of my younger classes were filing out of the classroom on Monday a small girl whispered in my ear "Je pense que tu es magnifique" and then ran out with her friends. I forgot how impressionable small children are - I am careful not to smoke when I'm near the schools!

On Saturday night, Amiens hosted La Nuit Blanche (coming to Brighton on the 30th of this month). It's a city-wide contemporary arts festival so we found modern art in public squares, DJs in small bars, photography exhibitions in our local pub, musicians in the streets... and The Bobby McGees! (domestic violence and ukuleles):

Me and Rob, who's here on ERASMUS at the university:

and in other news? Finances are awful (I can't afford this month's rent so need to get hold of my dad and eat humble pie for a loan), and paperwork bureaucracy is giving me headaches and anxiety (need to send numerous forms/find other ones that have gone missing in the post) and probably not helping my neverending cold, but look what I found in the supermarket!:

and finally, as an extra special treat, here are my knees last Sunday morning, the day after I fell over in public. The right one still hurts when I have been cycling for ages:

I just doubleposted and I don't know how to fix it D:

My first week at school (by Nina aged 24 and 10 months)

I have now taught in all but 2 of the classes I am supposed to (one class's teacher was on strike on Tuesday along with a lot of France and another was the victim of an error on the timetable I was sent). Having now spent approximately 10 hours in the classroom with kids between the ages of 5 and 10 I can safely say I love my job. It's not just the cute kids (oh but some of them are just presh), but the way they're excited by learning things. At 12 I was definitely not excited about French lessons, but these children really enjoy the novelty of learning another language. Let's hope it lasts...

So far I've been doing the same exercises with most classes - Hello, Where Are You From?, What's Your Name?- but expanding with the older classes into things like colours, school objects (rulers, pencils, bags etc), parts of the body, questions (how many, which one, where is etc.) and time and date. I've also been given the task of trying to find some things about Halloween to show most of my classes this week coming (it's not really celebrated in France) so I'm trying to find things that are fun for the kids but not too scary! ESL websites are rife, luckily, most with downloadable flashcards. One or two of the classes use a coursebook called I-SPY where the main characters are monsters anyway, so they should be pretty much unfazed:

Going back the "absolutely precious" subject, here are some things I was given this week:

The flag was given to me by a girl in one of my CE2 classes (age 7-8) on Monday as a welcome present, and on Friday a little girl in the same class came up to me after lunch and gave me the drawing of the flowers. It's got my name on the back and everything.

This afternoon, a Sunday, I finally did my bike trip up to Camon. On Wednesday I found that my cold of the previous week had come back for seconds, no doubt helped by a little too much to drink the previous night, so I thought it would be wiser to wait. It only took me 18 minutes to reach my first school from the Gare du Nord, 8 between schools (including getting-lost time) and 20 to get back to the station from the second school. M. Hoppy is going to make that €10 a month go far!

first day of school

I didn't have a reputation, but a mythical one seemed to preceed me. I hadn't even set foot inside the playground of École Ed. Marquis yesterday, before a voice cried C'est Nina!. Then there were more: Nina! Nina! Hello! How are you? How are you? Hello! A crowd of children followed me through into the school and to the safety of the staffroom. Apparently I had been anticipated. All I could think of is was how glad I was that I am the first English assistant that this school has had - that way they can't be let down too badly when I fail to be anything short of amazing. With just 5 teachers, it's not that surprising that a new face is such a big deal to the pupils of this school, but I was utterly bemused nonetheless. While I was waiting in the classroom for the CE2 (8-9yrs) class to file in after lunch, little heads would poke round the door to say hello or just giggle and run away. It's safe to say that my first day at Ed. Marquis went pretty well.

Today was my first day at École Paul Langevin. It happens to be the day of a general strike, but the teacher of the CP class wasn't participating so I went in just for that one - luckily the buses were not affected. CP, cours primaire, do not usually learn English as they are only just learning to read and write their native language, so this is quite an unusual situation. Over my first two days I've taught kids from 5-9 years old. I'm mostly dreading CM2, the 10-11 class (can we say "I was bullied in middle school?")... but I'm sure it'll be fine.

Both schools have very friendly staff; I've been made coffees and teas and told I am free to use the staffroom kitchen for lunch. Perhaps it's just as much of a novelty to the staff as the students to have me there; more than once I've been "practised" on.

[On a side note, P. Langevin is situated next to a school of music. I must go in there sometime and see if they have a practise room I can use. I haven't played the piano since July, it's terrible!]

On the way home, after the bus dropped me at the Gare du Nord from Camon, I went and rented myself a bicycle. His name is Monsieur le Hoppy-Frog because he's green like the rest of the Busyclette rental bikes (very popular scheme). I need to find something to tie onto the little wire basket so I can find him easily in a crowd... for once I seem to be lacking in useless trinkets. And zip ties. Tomorrow I'm going to take the bike up to Camon, and work out the best route to the schools, and the quickest way to get between the two of them... and remember to ride on the RIGHT hand side of the road...

dignity fail.

Amiens has a craft market on the Rue Trois Caillons on Saturdays. Among other things on my way to meet friends for the start of an evening's excesses at Au Bureau, I saw lace, sculpture and paintings. My advice to anyone who intends to take in the crafty sights while they're wandering the town, is to watch where they're walking - I cannot stress this enough - as failure to pay attention to the proximity of the kerb may result in a hilarious but dignity-shattering tumble. After gabbling out the appropriate French for the occassion to concerned passers-by ("C'est pas grave..") I managed to hobble the rest of the way to the Hotel de Ville, but after sitting down at the café for 30 minutes I found that my knees had swollen to somewhat epic proportions and I couldn't get up without extreme difficulty: the left one with a lovely swollen nub of bone below the kneecap, and the right extremely tender on the inside of the knee. Two differing kinds of injury make for an extremely interesting limp; as the evening progressed, I had to resort to being piggybacked up stairs, and helped between pubs.

Sunday was a different kind of suffering entirely. At least I can say for alcohol that it's a very effective painkiller - but the day after might include a very sore head as well as knees.

Mostly I'm just very impressed that my tights didn't rip, and glad that I don't wear high heels.

le sneeze

I got a cold on Wednesday night, and when I woke up on Thursday morning I felt like le mort rechauffé. My first two days of work, therefore, have been days of quaffing orange juice and tea and sneezing - and not in a classroom sharing antibodies with small people. Despite the sick days, it's the mildest cold I've had in a good few years, which doesn't speak wonders for my immune system but I'm pleased nonetheless. I predict all systems go by Monday.

On Friday morning I remembered that I was meant to hand an RIB into the Inspection Académique, so fuzzy as I was I went for a wander in the morning and on the way back I managed to find the biggest supermarket I've seen here so far. I still haven't really gotten the hang of grocery shopping here (where is the vegetarian food? what can I buy that doesn't involve saucepans? why can't I find baking potatoes?), so I must have looked somewhat suspicious staggering around bleary-eyed and pale with a basket full of various odds and ends (biscuits, coat hangers, iced tea, tangerines and a pack of 100 envelopes). Impressively, I only got lost once on the way back to the résidence (and once on the way to the I.A.). I'm getting the hang of it, slowly.

My Amiens geography might be on the up, but the apartment hunt isn't going too well. I've had a browse on appartager.fr, and most things on offer are, I suspect, out of my price range. I haven't exactly worked out a budget but I think spending more than 1/3 of my monthly income on rent would be pushing it. Right now I'm paying something like €175 per month which is pretty incredible, but I feel like I might lose it with this place sooner rather than later - especially if whoever keeps throwing up in the toilets keeps not flushing. Excluded housemate criteria: junkies, kitchen fascists, and now bulimics.

Also, my dad has now made THREE references to "Foxy Knoxy" and the Meredith Kercher case in regards to my search for accommodation. It's getting somewhat unnerving.

There's a bar in Soho called Garlic & Shots, whose speciality is a "Bloodshot" - which consists of vodka, tomato juice, garlic and chillis. I have been craving one for a while now, I suspect it would really clear my head up... I might have to make do with brandy.

the other side of the glass.

On Monday my conseilleur at the Inspection Académique took me to the two schools I'll be working in. They are both situated in Camon, which is a small commune a few kilometres outside of the city. To get there it's a bus ride which takes me through les hortillonnages, the beautiful riverside gardens:

Apparently one can kayak along the river, so I'll have to look into renting one at some point.

Camon has a population of around 4,500, and I'm going to be working in 4 classes per school so it stands to reason that I'll be teaching the majority of its under-12s. Thierry, the manager at My Goodness, jokes that within two weeks I'll be a local celebrity as neither primary school has had an English assistant before. It certainly seemed like I was something of a novelty when I went into the classroom in the first school to discuss timetabling with the teacher - 20 kids turned around to gawp, giggle, point and whisper. I had a momentary flash of paranoia (oh god what's on my face?) before I remembered that to 9-year-olds, everything new is exciting and funny - especially when this strange new woman has a Miffy lunchbox for a handbag.

I start properly in about 9 hours. My conseilleur has not emailed me the timetable as she said she would have done by now, so I don't know which school to go to first or which class. I think I'll have to get up early and go to her office to pick a copy up...

success!

Wireless network successfully configured.

Internet in my room is GO!

settling in

The longer I spend in these halls (and it's been 5 nights now), the more I find them really creepy. I left at midnight on Friday to meet some friends in My Goodness (the local Irish pub; I've already started a tab). At this time, there were one or two girls talking on the stairs, but no noise, music, conversation could be heard from any bedroom. When I returned around 3, the only sign of life in the whole building was the night porter, who grudgingly let me inside when I showed my ID card. When I went downstairs to microwave some chips (the extent of my culinary ventures so far), I felt both very alone, and rather guilty - as if creeping around the building at this time of night were not allowed. At least in Bangor's quietest halls one had the chance of running into another person in the kitchen making hot chocolate at stupid o' clock in the morning.

The Irish pub has quickly become my venue du choix. It's just across the road from the prison/nunnery, the staff are friendly, and the music is excellent. The selection of beer isn't amazing (Stella being their premium lager), but I'm willing to forgive that for the general awesomeness of the place. I first went there on Wednesday, to meet another assistant that I'd spoken to on Facebook, and some ERASMUS friends of his. We've been in there four nights in a row now and the bar staff already know us by name. When he left on Tuesday afternoon, my dad gave his usual "don't spend all your time talking to your friends at home on the internet"/ "make sure you make actual real life friends" spiel; he needn't have worried. Lacking in internet in my room so far, my Wifi spot of choice is in Café Bissap, a West African rum bar. Right now, at 9.30 pm, the cross rhythm reggae is going, and the locals are dancing.... and someone's just left a pile of walnuts by my laptop as a present...

We had our formation on Friday for the language assistantship placements. The first half of the day was information about how the French school system worked, and lots of vital but overly complicated things like social security and CAF (essentially rent reimbursement) forms. I understood the vast majority of it, but if they told us anything like which of the many forms we were meant to fill in first, and who to give them to and when, I missed it. Luckily I've enlisted the help of Simon, who will help me with them tomorrow night in exchange for me cooking him dinner (at his of course, because there's only so much I can do with a microwave, and he wouldn't be allowed in here anyway), and hopefully tell me any good websites to find local houseshares on.

les premiers jours

[[I wrote this on Wednesday, but I don't have internet in my room yet and have only just gotten around to taking the laptop over the road to "Café Bissap", an African rum bar that also does amazing green mint tea and has Wifi.]]

Avant d'arriver

The journey got off to a good start; when Dad had parked the car in the Eurotunnel shuttle, the SatNav woke up and told us to "turn around as soon as possible". As soon as we were off the train, it decided we weren't in France yet and recommended we "drive 80 yards and take the ferry". It also made us drive in circles for 45 minutes, confused by Amiens' one way system, before I finally spotted our hotel sign down a road we kept being told NOT to go down.

In the hotel: Blything, nap.

We wandered around the city a bit at night after supper. The cathedral is truly spectacular - the biggest in France by volume. In the summer, and also for the month of December, the facade of intricately carved saints is lit up by coloured lights. Dad saw it last month, but I will have to wait until my birthday. We ventured into Monoprix (supermarket chain), whose name is misleading; the prices are varied, but mostly they are more Waitrose than ASDA price.

Yesterday morning we went straight to the CROUS offices to sort out housing. I thought they hadn't received my forms because I've had no communication from them, but it appears they were just waiting for me to turn up on the date I'd put on the form. After 40 minutes of waiting to talk to someone, then a bit more waiting in the résidence itself, I had somewhere to live. It was deceptively simple, considering how ridiculous the forms were. I'm going to be honest, it's not brilliant. Actually, to the American assistants I've spoken to, it's known as "The Nunnery". I talked to two other girls on their ERASMUS year on the stairs yesterday evening and they were similarly unimpressed - or maybe a bit more than I was; one said "I feel it's like a prison". I wouldn't go that far, but it's definitely making me appreciate the halls I had at Bangor. Even Reichel, the oldest building with shared bathrooms, is better equipped.

Accommodation critique

Good things:

Location (5 minutes walk from the cathedral, pretty much bang in the centre of town).

Lots and lots of shelving/cupboards in the dorm rooms - books (and indeed Blythes) can all be de-bagged.

The fridge in my room is a good size - the same as we had in our house in Bangor, but this time it's all mine (and no one is going to put meat in it)!

Security in the lobby 24/7.

Not good things:

The entire résidence is female-only. It wouldn't be a problem, but male visitors are not allowed AT ALL (and female visitors aren't allowed between 2300-0600).

The world's saggiest mattresses. I'm shocked each bedroom doesn't come with a panic button in case you find you can't dig yourself out in the morning.

The bedroom floors are cold tile, like you get in classrooms, and the radiator is roughly the size of a standard pillow. It's going to get cold in here.

Shared bathrooms are sometimes pretty decent. This one isn't - it's more like what you'd find at a swimming pool - 4 toilet cubicles, and a row of showers cordonned off with curtains. (There are also two defunct urinals with a sign translated into wonderfully wrong English.) I can honestly say that the only place I've ever "lived" with worse bathroom facilities is the halfway house B&B. Oh, plus you have to buy your own toilet paper.

The kitchen. "Kitchen". It's a complete travesty. After talking to ERASMUS friends who were already in their logements I knew I wouldn't be bringing along my baking box, but this takes the piss. On my floor there are about 30 rooms, and one kitchen. This "kitchen" contains two hot plates and a plug-in electric oven. There are two microwaves in the kitchen downstairs. I suspect that the losing-my-lazy-summer-weight diet might be going into effect quite soon whether I want it to or not. It's also locked at 2300, as is the computer room.

All in all, the kitchen and bathroom (but mostly the kitchen) situation cancels out the plentiful shelving joy. I have to give a month's notice before I move out, so I'm going to start looking around for anyone looking for a roommate, or studio apartments to rent. I came here with that plan already formulated, so it's not too much of a bummer. However, it really makes you wonder how dire the conditions must have been in uni dorms in 1968 for the French university students to protest the way they did, if this is the standard they were striving for!

-shelving space!

- dinosaur covers!

- corridors that make me wish I didn't watch so many horror movies

- urgh

Reflexive verb translation fail

An evening with people from the internet

(Well, person really.) A bloke called Simon messaged me on Couchsurfing last week after I posted asking about hostels in the town (there are none). As it turns out I didn't need his couch - even though it may well have turned out comfier than this bed. We met up yesterday evening and he took me to his friends' apartment for food and beer. Jenny is Scottish, which meant that there was already a "fish out of water" conversation point, although her spoken French outstrips mine by miles. There was fruit beer sampling, kitten teasing (Pomme, Olive and Smeghead), and the admiration of photographs of fungus. Simon's friends were really nice and it was great to jump right in and speak French, however garbled and clumsy I may have been.

Things I have learnt so far

The words for hallway, kettle, pillow, duvet (hands up if you thought that word was French), launderette (again, hands up).

Amiens has a brilliant bicycle shop, that rents out bicycles for €50 PER YEAR.

The French don't really "do" fresh milk (the mission continues took me to the yogurt section of the supermarché, where I found 2 options. UHT is rife).

Conversation tutoring is a lucrative business and I should advertise my services.

You will be able to find an Irish pub, with real Irish bar staff, in any city in the world.

France has university Fraternities/Sororities. Even the members themselves can't explain why.

Amiens has nice things, like this huge cathedral and weird clock thing:

On arrive!

The Hello Kitty mug and I, we are in France now.

I just bought another mug (this one is Hello Kitty).

I think my tea-receptacle acquisition is getting out of hand.