The story continues...

Catching up
This week I had a great time catching up with both my uni friends, Alison (who is living in Lille, studying at the University here) and Kiki, who I met up with in Paris at the weekend (she is an Assistante like me in Nantes).

A little more about school
I’m contracted to do 12 hours of face-to-face teaching, which I have discovered is actually two thirds of what a normal teacher does. The teachers seem to want to share me round a lot so I’ve been given a 3 week timetable and it could get quite confusing, especially with names!! Plus I’m going to be doing an after school club at one of the schools which is an extra hour. I thought this was going to be the most enjoyable hour of them all, but I have to balance students of all levels (and they’re mainly the youngest ones who don’t know much English) and the club is at 4.30-5.30 on a Friday, after the children have already had 7 hours of lessons, since 8am in the morning! I was in a lesson from 3.35-4.30 last Friday and it was very hard for them to concentrate at that point - never mind an hour afterwards! We shall see…
I’ve started to teach but haven’t done as much as I thought I would have to just yet, which is nice, easing into it. It’s been going well so far. I’ll talk more about this in future posts.

Humour – a hard thing when you’re new or foreign
I have realised that in England I have a number of friends with whom I can have a good laugh and I know that they accept me for who I am. Here, I have to start afresh with meeting people (not forgetting my other friends!), both English and French speakers. It’s hard, especially with the French, as my capacity to say what I want is somewhat reduced, so I can't have a laugh with them that easily and I also miss out on many of their jokes because I haven't understood! I’m sure it will get better.

Carrot cake
I’ve met a lovely Canadian-American girl called Frances who had a meal for her birthday at her flat last night. I went along and it was a great evening. There were about 10 of us in total and Frances had made a carrot cake for pudding, but not the icing. Knowing I also knew about carrot cake, being a fellow “Anglo-Saxon”, she enlisted my help in making the icing. The only problem being that in France, you can’t get the kind of ‘soft cheese’ (like Philadelphia) which goes into the icing and things like cheesecakes. Now Frances, had bought something similar to ‘The Laughing Cow’ cheese, in triangles, (having successfully managed to make a cheesecake with it last Saturday), for us to make this icing with. We tried… and it failed! The icing was fine on first taste, but there was an undeniable cheesy aftertaste which was no good. So we ate the carrot cake by itself or with condensed milk (actually very nice!) or whippy cream!

French pedestrian crossings
There is no need to press a button in Lille for pedestrian crossings; they simply give you a red man or green man. ‘Okay’, you say, ‘what’s so interesting about that?!’ Well, there are some crossings where it says a pedestrian is green to go, but in actual fact it is quite okay for a driver to drive across the crossing too! This is very confusing and means you have to pay lots of attention. I suppose the pedestrian has right of way when it’s green and cars should be looking out for you, but it's a bit unnerving stepping out with cars coming towards you and it can be dangerous where French drivers are concerned!

Fiona x

P.S. I have now got Internet in my flat which is great.