Monday, October 17, 2011

It's Adventure Time

So I've been sadly neglecting my blog for the past couple of weeks....This is because nothing much was going on. I've been observing classes, grocery shopping, going on lots of walks, and that's about it. Not having a car makes getting around more difficult, because there are lots of small villages around, but no buses to take us there, which is really too bad because they're mostly just a little too far to walk to. Observing classes is going well, I feel like I'm really getting a handle on the kids' level of English (which is not the best, so I will mainly be working on fluency and pronunciation with them!) Tomorrow will be my first day of classes, so I'm working on last minute prep at the moment.

Anyways, now on to the adventure part of the post. Planning on going into Besançon on Saturday, I put a post up on the Franche-Comté assistants group Facebook wall asking if anyone wanted to join. On Saturday morning I met up with Andrea in Place de la Révolution, and we had tea while waiting to see if anyone else would show up. No one did, but we had a great day wandering around the streets of the city and then walking all the way up the hill to the Citadelle, which is a Vauban-designed fortress built mostly in the 17th century. I believe he also had a hand in designing the Citadelle in Québec city. Now instead of a military installation, it's a UNESCO World Heritage site, home to two museums, an aquarium and a ZOO. It was a little surreal watching baboons climb all over the walls of the dry moat. Andrea and I decided that we were far too tired to go into the museums and enjoy them properly, so we just walked all the way around the ramparts and had gorgeous views of the Doubs/Besançon valley. It was also really nice on Saturday, so we decided to "profiter du beau temps". When it's not as nice outside I can go back up there and go to the museums.

On our way out of the Citadelle, we ran into Jack, an English language assistant from her school, along with five assistants and a friend of theirs in town for the day from Montbéliard. It's a mid-size town an hour north of Besac by train. Most of the assistants are American, but one is English and one is Swedish! I ended up going to the main square and having a drink with them all, and then got invited to come and stay with some of the girls that night at their house in Montbéliard. I had to decide pretty quick, since the last train to Morteau was at 6:30. I didn't have anything with me, just a backpack with a camera, water bottle and train schedule, but I really didn't want to go back. It seemed silly to miss out on a chance to get to know my fellow assistants and see another part of Franche-Comté! So I missed my train and went out for dinner with them instead. After a delicious pasta dinner we said goodbye to the Besac assistants and caught the train to Montbéliard.

I spent the night at the really cute little house that three of the girls rent together. The evening itself involved a lot of wine, meeting more assistants from both Montbé and Vésoul, a lot of conversation, and a short visit to the local Irish pub, where the bartender spoke perfect English. It was excellent. Morteau feels a little bit isolated from the rest of the region, and I really hadn't met a lot of other assistants, so it was nice hanging out with a bunch of really cool, like-minded people. On Sunday, Matt, the British lycée assistant, showed me around town before I had to catch my train. I saw the Rhine-Rhône Canal and a really cool astrological clock. I didn't end up getting home until about 8 last night! They've invited me to come back sometime, and I've invited them to come and hang out in Morteau at some point as well, especially when it snows, because then we can all go skiing together. I'm ridiculously excited for skiing! And also for friends, of course :).

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Administrative Duties

Yesterday, the other assistants and I woke up at 5:30 in the morning to take the train into Besançon to arrive in time for the introductory day for foreign language assistants. It was held at a huge high school in the northwest quarter of Besançon, and almost all of the assistants from across Franche-Comté were there, so about 55-60. The point of the day was to help us out with our numerous papers and forms, and also to explain our duties and what it really means to be an assistant in a French school.

I was put in a group with all the non-EU english-language assistants, most of which are from the States. There was also a girl from India, which I thought was pretty cool. We spent the morning watching presentations about our rights and responsibilities as assistants, as well as information about Social Security, Health and Property Insurance. It was a bit long, and it didn't help that I'd been awake for about 7 hours by the time lunch rolled around! However, it was informative, because I found out that it's really important to have health and property insurance in France, and that there are insurance companies that serve only teachers. The presenters gave us all a bunch of paperwork to fill out and send in once we have our banking info, which I thought was pretty convenient.

After lunch, we did a speed-dating style game with a group of EU assistants that involved them presenting their dream vacation spot to us and then interviewing us to see if we'd be a good travel companion, based on common interests, etc. It was a good way to get to know a large amount of people in a short amount of time, and the French teachers leading the activity also made us speak to each other in French, which I thought was a great idea. We're here to learn, after all! At the end of the activity, I discovered that the entire thing had been a sort of exercise to help us learn how to make a lesson plan. It was like being in an Education Lab course at Fac all over again. I'm glad that they did this with us, because I'm sure that there are many assistants who don't have a background in education like I do and lesson plans are super important. Another thing that reminded me of the Education program at Fac was the head teachers' talk of authenticity. As assistants, we are authentic examples of our respective languages, and we need to make sure that we give the students that authenticity. We have to ensure that our communication is genuine and create organic moments of language expression. To translate the ed-speak, what I mean is that when we're deciding the activities that we want to do with the students, they can't just be rote exercises. They need to be original, interesting, appeal to their interests, and sometimes include aspects of our own culture.

When we got off the train in Morteau last night, a woman who'd been sitting a couple of seats down from us with her bicycle came up to us and said hello. It turned out that she was American, formerly from Mississippi, but now living in Morteau with her husband. She gave us her digits in case we wanted to hang out one day. This trip is definitely teaching me how small the world can be. When I first heard about Franche-Comté, it seemed to me like a cozy, small-town sort of place, but I'm finding out that it's a lot more international than I thought. It's a border area that has access to Switzerland, Germany and Italy, and many international students study at the Université de Franche-Comté in Besançon. I like how my perceptions of the world are being challenged all the time: it's one of the reasons why I decided to do this.

To completely change the subject, at the end of the day yesterday, Felipe, Greg and I went to the Centre ville and to the SFR store to organise our internet. In exactly one week, we're getting a box installed that will have cable, telephone and internet! This morning I finally opened a bank account, which took about an hour, but the conseiller was super nice and I'm happy with the bank I chose. This allowed me to finally order a cell phone this afternoon that will arrive in a matter of days. It's such a relief to have those things figured out. Finally, I will no longer be incommunicado!

Monday, October 3, 2011

L'installation

Sorry for the radio silence! I still don't have internet, though hopefully I will have it by the end of the week. I've been relying on the free wifi at La Bousse, a local bar, and a transient signal called NETGEAR that sometimes gives me really slow internet in my own room. At the moment I'm sitting in La Bousse drinking a lemonade and typing this small message to you.

Last week the Spanish assistant, Felipe, arrived on Monday evening. He's from Costa Rica and used to work at Hewlett Packard. The German assistant Greg arrived on Tuesday afternoon and surprise of all surprises, is originally from LEDUC. Yes, Leduc, a small city about 300km north of Calgary, my hometown. He's been in Besançon for the past several months studying French at L'Université de Franche-Comté. German is one of his mother tongues, but he was born and has lived in Canada for most of his life. We were both pretty astonished to be meeting each other here, so far from home.

I spent most of the week either getting to know Morteau or wandering around a little bored, because my procès-verbal d'installation (proof of job) and attestation de logement (proof of housing) weren't ready, preventing me from getting a bank account and cell phone. Fortunately, I have them now and I've set up an appointment to get bank account on Wednesday morning. Morteau is a cute little town, population around 7000, and about 5km from the Swiss border. Therefore, a lot of French people live here but work in Switzerland, and some Swiss as well. They also do their grocery shopping here because prices are higher in Switzerland- there are four full-sized supermarkets: Casino, Intermarché, Carrefour and Netto Hard Discount. One day I'll have to talk about the differences between French and Canadian supermarkets. There are several bars, but the biggest are La Bousse and Le Terminus, and I think that these will be our bars of choice in the future. The bartender at La Bousse already knows our faces pretty well, considering we've been in at least four times in the last week! (Just to use the internet....mostly.....). There are several places to buy clothes and lots of cute little shops, as well as two cinemas. I'm sure that I won't be too bored here, as long I plan things to do on Sundays when almost everything is closed.

All of the English teachers are super nice. They ask me all the time if I'm settling in well and if I need anything. This weekend I might go for a drive around the valley with one of them. This afternoon I started observing the English classes. The first class was on reading comprehension, but the second was supposed to be presentations about new, innovative restaurants. Unfortunately most of the class claimed that they had filmed videos of their presentations, which are due on Wednesday instead of today. So I got to see two presentations on fictional gastropubs, one of which was located on platforms in a swimming pool in New York :). After the presentations, I was helping some students edit their presentation scripts, and discovered that they couldn't understand my accent. I ended up mostly speaking to them in French, which wasn't a big deal, but all the same it was a bit disturbing because I thought that I was going to be teaching them in English..... I will have to work on my speaking skills apparently. I was talking with Felipe later on, and he'd had the same problem. We both decided that we probably speak too fast and need to focus on speaking clearly when using our native languages. It's funny, because I don't really think about it normally. I know that sometimes I speak too quietly in English, but too fast or not clearly enough, not so much.

EDITED TO ADD: This situation shouldn't have been a total surprise to me, really. After all, some of these kids don't have a ton of years of experience with English, and I need to be prepared for that. I will try my best to speak in English with them, but I have to be patient, ask if they understand, rephrase, ask again, ask them to translate what I just said into French, and sometimes explain more complicated things in French. It's actually good practice for teaching in Immersion, apart from the translating and speaking in the native language part.

In any case, it's getting late. I have to wake up at 5:30 tomorrow morning in order to take the 6:50 train to Besançon for our first practical day. We're getting together with all of the language assistants in the region of Franche-Comté in order to learn more about how to do our paperwork and more about our duties. It's gonna be a long day, but I'm excited to meet all of the other assistants!