Travelling to Brussels

My friend Jen and I were bored during the school holidays and decided to book a trip to Brussels for the next day. We travelled via train from Lille Europe and it took around 40 minutes.

Our first impressions were good, although the weather was horrendous, the buildings were all beautiful and our hotel was nice and pretty central.

After it stopped pouring with rain, we headed into the town centre. Grand Place was stunning and as we headed further and further into the town centre, we found streets filled with shops and ended up spending quite a lot of money... Oops!

As we headed back, Grand Place was lit up with red lights and we could see the Hard Rock Cafe, so we decided to go there for tea.

After the Hard Rock Cafe, we wandered the streets for a while to find somewhere to have drinks, but we couldn't find the main night-life areas.

We had heard that Brussels has amazing bars and clubs, but we couldn't find any of those things and not many people were out and about, so we went back to the hotel.

The next morning we woke up and checked out then headed to the Belgian Chocolate shops.

We got a lot of tasters and admired all of the beautiful cakes before having a huge scoop of chocolate mousse with raspberries.

We were heading back to our hotel when we saw the Tin Tin museum! It was so cute and we both bought postcards.

Whilst looking for somewhere to sit and wait for our train, we stumbled upon the Laduree cafe, where we had pink champagne, tea and cakes before we headed back to Lille.

Overall, Brussels was lovely but neither of us thought that it had lived up to expectations. We also found that there were men who kept staring at us and following us which made us feel incredibly unsafe and we have never experienced that before,

If you're thinking of going to Brussels, I would recommend doing your research on where to eat and drink and make sure you go when the weather is nicer. We also only stayed for 2 days and crammed a lot in so maybe if we had longer we would've done more.

Another great trip :)

Thank you for reading, have you been to Brussels? If so, would you recommend doing anything that we didn't do?

Teaching Premiere!

After Christmas, I had to say goodbye to my beloved classes of Secondes (aged 14-15) and I moved on to the Premiere groups (aged 15-16). I was quite nervous because although there was only a year's difference in age, the students looked and acted so much older than my previous groups.



Here are some things that happened while I was teaching them:

• When we came back from the Christmas/ Winter holidays, all of the kids had to tell me about their holidays and when they were describing what they did for new year they all said 'for happy new year I went to...' or 'I stayed at home for happy new year'. They thought that new year was 'happy new year'.

• In my first week after the holidays I didn't realise I would have classes (I thought I was going to be introduced to the new groups) and so for that week me and the students all talked about the Kardashians, One Direction, my dogs, Sunderland and our families. It was fab.

• There were couples in my groups which was strange, as I went to St Anthony's all girls Catholic school where so there wasn't PDA in classrooms like this. It was hard not to tell them to stop when they were holding hands while trying to write and gazing at each other instead of paying attention. Ah, young love.

• Some groups were studying surveillance and so we talked about the phone hacking scandal and Big Brother, all of the students thought that in Britain there are cameras everywhere and that we are constantly watched, like on Big Brother, in our homes and everything.

• One teacher told me his groups were studying heroes and so I prepared lessons with an uplifting video about a man who did small good deeds every day and got nothing in return, which just happened to be a Thai life insurance advert (this is the video if anyone wants to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5UBikauIQM). I didn't want the students to know it was an advert because I wanted them to take it seriously, but in one class I forgot to pause the video before it showed the life insurance logo and these were some of the responses that I got on the worksheets I gave them:

1- The video is about a man who helps everything and everyone who needs some help.

2. I don't really know but I think its too much for a life insurance.

1. - A well-thinker young boy.

2.- It melted my heart, cuz its heartwarming

3. - Most badass hero ever

1. -A nice guy (a little too much...)

2. - It melted my little little heart, BECAUSE IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL!!!

3.- They just presented a nice guy to make people buy their life insurance.

• This same group there were two boys in the front who read the questions aloud then started singing 'AND I KNOW WHYYYYY... BECAUSE I GOT HIGH, BECAUSE I GOT HIGH, BECAUSE I GOT HIGH'. It was very hard not to laugh.

• Since Adele brought out 'Hello', whenever the students enter the class they go 'hello its me' in a monotone voice or the teacher will say hello to them and they all echo 'ITS ME'. This isn't reserved to Premiere, all of the classes do it.

• I played a game with one of my classes and brought sweets as prizes for the winning team. When I gave them out a student came up to me and said 'its illegal what you're doing you know' so I panicked and asked what he meant and he said 'I'm joking, but we all have to sit here and watch them eating sweets, its not fair!!!!!'

• For another group, we had to read a text about segregation during the 1960's in America and the students were very bored. One of them was staring at the wall and whispering to their friend and pointing so I automatically assumed there was a spider and starting going 'What? What is it? Where?' which they found hilarious and every few minutes afterwards they would gasp and go 'A spider!! A spider!!' to scare me.

So those were a few things that happened while I was teaching the groups of Premieres. Although obviously not all of my classes went smoothly, I had a great time. Whenever we pass each other in the corridors they ask me why I'm not with them any more and it makes me so sad.

If anyone has any questions about lessons, teaching, life in France in general or anything, feel free to ask!

Thankyou for reading :)

Travelling to Bruges!

After Christmas, I was really feeling the back to work blues and so my friend, Jen, and I immediately booked a weekend away in Bruges.

We went from Lille Europe via train to Bruges. We had to stop at Courtrai but overall the journey was not a problem, taking around 2 hours.

As soon as we arrived we had lunch, which of course included some Belgian beer...

It was cherry flavoured.

...And then we went sight seeing, meaning we walked around aimlessly all day and ended up in Zara.

The canal

Me and Jen in front of a random canal

The 'Grand Place'

Another view of 'Grand Place'

After the travelling and walking we headed back to our Hotel which was literally a 2 second walk from Grand Place, down a street. I knew I would need a lie down so I attempted to have a nap but I couldn't and we decided to get ready to go out.

By the time we were ready (Literally 10:00pm) we had to run all over the city centre to find a cash-point and a restaurant that was a) open b) looked appetising c) would let us come in. We eventually found one and they quickly seated us and took our orders.

Escargots

Half a Lobster in garlic butter

I tried escargot for the first time for my starter, they weren't in their shells and so I thought the waiter had given me the wrong thing, but as it turned out, the black mushroom looking things were the snails. I was grossed out but they literally just tasted of garlic.

After that we came upon a very loud bar/ club and unintentionally ended up staying until 4am because the music was too good.

Me and Jen in the bar/club toilets

The next morning/ afternoon, we got up and checked out before walking all around Bruges again. We finally had a Belgian waffle for breakfast and it was insanely delicious but very very sickly.

Belgian waffle with nutella

The rest of the day we spent walking around Bruges, the sky was blue and beautiful, we were so lucky. Then, we got the train back to Courtrai and then Lille at around 4pm, which was again, a smooth journey.

There were beautiful monuments scattered all over the city

INFO FOR IF YOU'RE THINKING OF GOING TO BRUGES:

-We definitely went for the perfect amount of time, any more than 2-3 days may get boring as Bruges is quite small.

-The weather can be a bit crazy at times, one second the sky was blue and the next it started hail stoning and they were like golf balls.

-As expected, food and drinks were generally pretty expensive so don't go thinking you'll not spend a lot.

-Everywhere we went they spoke French and English as well as many others- for those who worry about languages.

-There was a small street just off Grand Place, next to the post office that had lots of chocolate shops, I would strongly suggest going because we got tasters!!

-There are not a lot of cash machines around, we managed to find a BNP Paribas that was open late close to Grand Place, but be aware.

- The horse and carriages literally do not care where you are, we were nearly ran over many many times.

-Bruges is a beautiful place, if you're considering going I would say GO FOR IT!!