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!