Starting Teaching...

After my last blog post, it was the school 'half term' which lasted 2 weeks and so, due to lack of money to do anything, I decided to go home. I spent 10 days catching up with friends and family before returning to Lille to begin working properly.

So far, I work around 10 hours a week, the teachers are trying to get me 2 more hours so that I will be doing the full 12 hours that I am allowed to do. I am teaching (assisting) the 'Seconde' classes who are around 15 years old.

Here are some of the main events of the past 2 weeks of teaching:

• Some days, I start work at 8am and so I go for the bus at 25 past 7, so that I can arrive and have plenty of time to climb up all of the stairs to the 4th floor and not be sweating and panting like mad. As I leave this early (and as it is winter time and therefore dark more than it is light), I have seen such beautiful sunrises, it almost makes getting up so early worth it.

• I woke up last Friday to a very annoying buzzing and immediately knew that it was a mosquito. I pulled the duvet up so that just my face was peeking and felt something tickle my face so I smacked it and hurried to turn on the light, only to see that there was a squashed mosquito on my pillow and MY blood that it had been feasting on. I woke up later on with a lovely bite ON MY EYELID and so looked like Quasimodo until I got some cream. -Thankfully it didn't swell up properly until after my classes.

• My first ever lesson, I was given half of the class to go through a sheet about Jamie Oliver, I had no idea what to do and the class were laughing and talking, completely ignoring me. One student started reading out in a silly voice and I was so stressed out I didn't even call him out on it because I was scared he would say it was his real voice.....Since then, it has become a lot easier. I actually enjoy the lessons now that I've stopped taking it personally when they would rather chat to their friend than do the work that I have set them.

• A lot of my classes struggle with my accent, so I end up talking very slow and trying to sound posh, but even then one teacher told me that the students had finished my lesson and been convinced that I was Australian!?!?!

• I was asked to play a game with the students where 2 students were suspects in a murder investigation and had to be each others alibis while the rest of the class were detectives and asked questions, but I got the game wrong and had half the class be detectives asking the other half questions. My 'wrong' version actually worked a lot better than when I tried to play the real game and the students had so much more fun coming up with their own imaginary stories. Their English is amazing, I was walking around each small group to help them with vocabulary and sentence structure and overheard one girl saying 'I was his bodyguard, I heard him shout and so I broke down the door and found him on the floor, he was blue because he wasn't breathing! I hadn't heard anything, but I looked around and couldn't see any evidence of a break in so I felt his pulse and he was dead..'.

• I had a class of 11 students who wanted to move the tables into a U shape so that I could stand at the top and help them with work, but there was one student in my class who is 12 but has been moved up a few grades because he is very intelligent. The class were all picking on him, so he did not want to sit with the rest of the class in the U shape and he sat alone. I tried to compensate for not being good enough at French to tell them to pack it in and so was being overly nice to him for the whole lesson.  Another group of students in this class instead of wanting to talk about their 'ideal school' were cutting up each others pencil cases. Ah, teenagers..

• Whenever I run out of activities, or more often when the class is refusing to take part and I can't think of anything else to do, I turn to tongue twisters. I write something like 'The big bug bit the little beetle but the little beetle bit the big bug back' on the board and each student has a go. They really enjoy it and even after the lessons I hear them telling their friends in the corridor. HOWEVER.. normally the class will then demand that I have a go at a French tongue twister and although I've done the same one several times, I still find it hard: 'Les chaussettes de l'archiduchesse sont-elles sèches?  Archi-sèches ?' 

• Each class that I have for the first time, I ask 'does anyone have any questions for me? About England? Or my life?' and some classes straight away have their hands up 'How long are you in France for?', 'Where are you from?', 'Do you gave a boyfriend?' etc. etc. - although one student said 'a little boy' instead of boyfriend because in French it is 'petit copain' or 'petit ami' which literally translates to little friend. Anyway, the more common response to my question is complete silence, they all stare and shake their heads whispering 'elle a dit quoi?' (what did she say?) , 'je ne comprends rien' (I don't understand) or simply...'Non' (no).

Other than teaching, I haven't been up to much, I've been attending a group called 'Franglish' each Tuesday, where you sit and talk to a French partner for 7 minutes in English and 7 minutes in French and then swap partners. It is interesting, but I find myself having the same conversations over and over in terrible French until I've had a couple of drinks...

The Christmas market is finally being set up and so I'm very excited for that opening very soon! Only 6 weeks to go till Christmas!

Greetings from Lille!

I have finally started my year abroad! Well actually I started 3 weeks ago, but we just got WIFI on Tuesday and I had a lot of TV to catch up on...

I am living in Lille, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France, for the next 7/8 months and am working as an English Assistant in a French Lycée, which is a public French secondary school where the students are between the ages of 15 & 18.

So I arrived in Lille, by the Eurostar, on the 25th September. I had never been before and had no idea what to expect, although I was told that the weather would be terrible (like at home in the North East..) and that French people weren't friendly but people in Lille were friendlier..

Place du théatre

Flace du Général de Gaulle

Walkway to Rihour

Vieux Lille (Old Lille)

  

The weather was beautiful when I arrived and stayed gorgeous up until this week, when all of a sudden it turned absolutely freezing almost overnight and has rained quite a lot. The people, mostly, have exceeded expectation and all been very welcoming and friendly and always speak to me in French even if they can speak English and cannot understand a word I'm trying to say, they always help out and really appreciate my efforts.

I am living just outside of the city centre next to the Bois du Boulogne, its a quiet area but the public transport is great in Lille so I can get into the city by bus or by metro in 15 mins. I'm living in a shared house alongside 2 Russian Assistants and a German Assistant, all are very nice.

This took absolutely ages and keeps falling down during the night and giving me the shock of my life, 

I'm hoping I've secured it now,,

My Bedroom

View from my bedroom

We have a simple kitchen (with no bloody oven) and a shower room, which always has hot water so that's great but,..

The toilet is outside?!?!?!?!!?

Its enclosed which is good (but doesn't lock..) and actually doesn't cause as much of a problem as I had thought it would...BUT now that its freezing on a night, I have to force myself to go twice and not drink anything after half 9 so that I won't have to get up and go.

Anyway, so that is where I'm living and all about Lille itself so far...

Now I'm going to give some brief details of my time observing classes in the Lycée (I don't start teaching till after the school holidays)...

- So far the most popular question when the students have to 'quiz' me has been 'Do you like French people?'- obviously I'm not going to say no am I?!

- The weirdest and most random questions that I have been asked are: 'Matt Smith or Peter Capaldi?', 'Is it true that English people stop everything at 5pm to drink tea?' and 'Is it true that every English person has read Wooster and Jeeves?'

- French school days are loooooooong.. 8am-6pm with a 2 hour lunch and some students come in on Saturdays too!!

-My school has 4 floors and no lift, each floor takes 2 flights of stairs to get to... it took me most of the lessons to recover when I was on floor 4.

- French school lunches generally consist of 1 main meal such as pizza and mash (what the hell) and vegetables if you want, 3 'sides' like salads and things, a cheese (of course), some bread and then a dessert........How they can then continue with another 4 or 5 hours of school after this is beyond me.

-I cannot count the times I have been mistaken for a student by staff and by students until I manage to blurt out 'JE SUIS L'ASSISTANTE D'ANGLAIS' and they laugh and tell me I'm small.

-All French classrooms,the staff room and even the staff toilets are locked (at least they are in my school) and I don't have any keys yet, so until I found the student toilets I would hold it all day and I creepily hang about outside the staff room until someone goes somewhere and I can sneak in (They got sick of me knocking all the time).

-The French students are cheeky but also hilarious, e.g. In one class they were doing a listening exercise about Oprah Winfrey and how she managed to go from 'poverty to celebrity' (the phrase they used) and one boy at the side just randomly came out with 'started from za bottom now we're here' in the most monotone voice I've ever heard. Another example was when the class were fascinated with a stretchy rubber mouse while their English teacher was desperately trying to get them to answer questions, they were throwing it to each other sneakily and stretching it and sticking it to the window until it was confiscated.

-Most of the students don't want to ask me questions when they are supposed to and so when they have to do work they whisper something random like 'psst.. miss...do you like Arctic Monkeys?' then they squeal and whisper in French when I say yes.

All in all, its been an eventful few weeks and I've really enjoyed being at the school so far. The food has been amazing (except certain school meals) and I'm finally starting to feel more settled and can feel my French starting to progress veeeeery slowly.

Thankyou if you're still reading, the rest of my posts won't be as long- I hope!!!

Florida! - Week 3 in Key West

So this post will conclude my holiday in Florida and for our final week we were in Key West, relaxing and baking ourselves in the hot sun.

Here are some of the photos I took:

The Key West peel-n-eat shrimp is very famous! They literally just boil it and it doesn't have any seasoning because it is so tasty! This was a starter portion so I had it as a main meal and it was incredibly filling.

Mile 0, we went on a bus tour around the island and this is one of the most photographed sights.

This is the view from the top of 'Hemingway's Lighthouse'. It was only 88 steps up to the top but there was no handrail and nowhere to stop, so we were all terrified and had legs like jelly at the bottom.

We went on a sunset cruise on a glass-bottom boat for our final night, we saw turtles and jellyfish and all sorts swimming over the coral reef aaaand...

 

...My Mam's boyfriend proposed to her! My step-sister was being sea-sick over the side of the boat while it happened, poor thing.

As it was the start of lobster season, I finally got to try some! It was so delicious, I had a mixed grill of lobster, shrimp and scallops.

So that concludes my holiday to Florida! We had an amazing time!

Thanks for reading and if anyone is planning a trip to Florida and would like to ask any questions then do not hesitate to ask!

:)

Florida! Week two- Universal

I haven't posted for ages, once again, as I have been in Barcelona! I will be posting about that trip in the near future.

BUT for now I am going to talk more about Florida!

Week two:

We drove from our villa in Windsor Hills to stay at the Portofino Hotel in Universal Studios.

Its done out like a little Italian village! Its so beautiful!

Staying on the Universal resort meant that we had transport directly to the park every day and could go as much as we wanted, we also had passes which meant that we could jump straight to the head of every queue!

You can buy these 'express passes' in the park, but it is cheaper to book them in advance, I would recommend them because although you pay more money, the day is so much more enjoyable without the hassle of hour long queues.

The best part of Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure for me is without a doubt the Harry Potter world! I love being able to go to all of the shops and see inside the castle!

Towards the end of the week we travelled to Port St Lucie, where my Auntie lives. We had a great weekend chilling by the pool and soaking up the sun after a busy couple of weeks!

I will be posting about our third and final week in Key West very soon!!

Thankyou for reading and thankyou for all of the comments people leave :)

If anyone has any questions do not hesitate to ask!!

Florida! Week One- Orlando

Hi!!

I haven't blogged for such a long time... but this was because I had literally no way of posting due to being in Florida on a family holiday for 3 weeks!

I'm going to post briefly about each week because if I blogged about each day I would go on forever...

Without further ado, I will start with week one.

So our first week, we were in Orlando visiting the Disney parks. We stayed in Windsor Hills resort in a villa. As unfortunately I am not yet 21, I could only enjoy home-made mojitos by the pool in the villa :(

One evening, we went to Downtown Disney, it is soon going to be transformed into a more family-orientated place for a night. I loved Lady and the Tramp as a child so I was over the moon to see some bushes shaped like them!

Typhoon Lagoon is our favourite waterpark, I am not a huge fan of waterslides, but I love the lazy river and the wave pol! The waves can get up to 6 foot and knock everyone all over.

We went to the Rainforest Cafe in Animal Kingdom, this is my favourite Disney park as it is so chilled out and I love seeing all of the animals. I had a shrimp platter at the Rainforest Cafe, this incluede coconut shrimp, garlic and chilli shrimp and shrimp wrapped in mozzarella and bacon with a side of Caribbean rice.

Disney's Hollywood studios was so fun! I love the Hollywood Tower Hotel (the twilight zone) it is so creepy but so crazy, you are dropped in a lift down several stories... several times! So crazy.

We did a lot more than just visit these parks but unfortunately we did not have a good day at the Magic Kingdom.

The 'fast pass' system in Disney has been changed so that you must pre-book any fast passes, which we did not know.

I would urge anyone who is planning on visiting any Disney Resort to look into this as it really ruined our day, we couldn't get on any rides. However.. after this day, we managed to book our fast passes for other attractions at other parks in advance and had a much better time :)

Thank you for reading, if anyone has any questions do not hesitate to ask!

Lunch and cocktails in Newcastle

So yesterday I met up with some friends to catch up over lunch and cocktails in Newcastle.

We went to Lola Jeans, a bar and restaurant, it was the first time that I'd ever been but I'd heard great things about it and it did not disappoint!

I decided to go with a healthier option, although the burgers and everything looked INSANE, I got a steak salad.

The steak was rare, which I had never tried before, but it was soooo tasty and tender! It also had tiny fried pieces of shallot in which I wasn't sure of but they were amazing too. 

To finish off, we had cocktails, we all had a rose petal cocktail each which came in tea cups and were soooo delicious!

If anyone is ever in Newcastle I would definitely recommend going to Lola Jeans!

You can find their menu and things on their Facebook page or on their website:

https://www.facebook.com/lolajeansncl

http://lolajeans.co.uk/

Thanks for reading :)

Paris: Day 2- Disneyland

Today I'm going to blog about my second day in Paris, we went to Disneyland! I'd never been to Euro-Disney before, only Florida and we had such an amazing day!

Getting tickets

About a month and a half before we went to Paris, my boyfriend and I had been looking at tickets online, so that we could try to get them cheaper than at the gate. Eventually my boyfriend found some tickets for £44 each, just after searching 'Disneyland Paris tickets 2 parks 1 day' a few times on Google.

 We decided that this was a great price for both parks and booked them. They arrived about a week later so that was fab.

Getting there

To get to Disneyland, we had to use the RER A train in the direction: Marne-la-Valée- Chessy.

There are several stations in Paris where you can get the RER A including: Charles de Gaulle Étoile, Chatelet-les Halles, Auber, Gare de Lyon and Nation. These are all accessible by metro.

Whatever you do, no matter how tired you are... ARRIVE EARLY!!!! 

We arrived at about 10:45 and then spent the next 45 minutes queuing to just get our bags checked before we went in, which was incredibly irritating because it was very hot, but this was all our fault for being lazy.

During the day

We knew from experience that food and drink would be very expensive inside Disneyland, so we made some sandwiches before we went and brought our own water. However, since it was a very hot day, we had to buy bottles of water throughout the day to stay hydrated.

I will post some photos but I don't want to go on and on because the day really was great...

Excuse how pale I am.. I chose to wear a vest (Dorothy Perkins) and some white trousers (Sainsburys TU) to keep cool, I also wore an over the shoulder bag (Dorothy Perkins) as I had heard (and kinda knew) that wearing a 'bumbag' literally screams 'TOURISTS' and this bag fit on all the rides anyway.

The Buzz Lightyear ride was so fun!! They have this in Florida too, you get a photo taken which is always hilarious.

Star Wars Simulator ride

Walt Disney Studios Park

The Best Rides*

Obviously this won't apply to everyone as my boyfriend and I like the big rides like rollercoasters and big thrills, but we also enjoyed the smaller rides too!

• Buzz Lightyear 
• Star Tours
• Pinocchio - we genuinely enjoyed this even though its really for little kids
• Aerosmith - my boyfriend said this was the best ride he's ever been on (This is also in Florida, but I found the one in Paris was much crazier)
• Armageddon
• Studio Backlot tour
• The Phantom Manor

*A lot of the rides had insanely long queues with it being a busy day but also because the 'Fast Pass' machines were off, so we couldn't go on everything that we wanted to.

So that was our day 2! We really did have a great day, despite the long queues and baking hot weather.

 As I said, if you ever go its important to get down early to avoid queuing and make the most of your day, but realistically it didn't spoil our time too much!

If anyone has any questions, do not hesitate to ask! I will post later about the evening of our day 2, where we ate and drank etc.

Thankyou for reading :)