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...