From magic to mayhem!

Christmas greetings!

I’m sorry this post is quite long, but you have my permission to skip some or all of the Eurostar part if you want!

Magic show

So when Christmas comes around, that gives rise to different things happening in schools. I had the pleasure of not teaching for an afternoon and accompanying pupils to a magic show in Armentieres. It was very enjoyable and fascinating. The magician turned silk handkerchiefs into long sticks, doves into cats and put lots of separate pieces of sharp metal into his mouth for them to come out on a string! But my favourite trick was when his beautiful assistant was all tied up (neck, hands tied twice behind her back and legs too) and the magician got a teacher up onto the stage. There was a curtain on a frame which came round in a box shape and the assistant went in and so did the teacher, but his head had to poke out from the curtains, then after three seconds she was wearing his jacket, inside the tied ropes!! Amazing, and the teacher on stage couldn’t believe it either! Sorry I probably haven’t described it adequately…it’s hard to describe.

Christmas party

I had my little Christmas party with my English club on the last Friday of term after school. We pushed tables together and firstly opened crackers, which they loved. Then I gave them a taste of cheddar cheese on a cracker (the edible variety). After that I started playing Christmas music and set them to work on a Christmas word search and picture crossword to give me a chance to cut up mince pies. Half of them gave mince pies a try and then I showed them a chocolate orange (which I have discovered is very novel in France!) and gave them a piece each. They gave cheddar 10/10 and also said the chocolate orange is very good, but weren’t so keen on mince pies! Then I got them to pack up and gave them a Christmas card and further chocolate treat on the way out. I found it hard controlling so many excitable French schoolchildren, but I think it was a big success.

Eurostar chaos

As many of you know I was one of the thousands of travellers who got caught up in the Eurostar disruptions. Thankfully I was not in any of the trains that broke down. I was supposed to travel home on Saturday in the early evening. On Saturday morning I spent a couple of hours at Lille Europe station trying to work out how to print my ticket and what was going on and what I should do as I’d heard there were disruptions. When I got there they had decided no Saturday trains were running and were putting people in hotels overnight. I knew from my Dad that it wasn’t worth trying to go to Calais for the Eurotunnel or ferry at that point because there was chaos there too. By the Eurostar desk, I met and chatted briefly to two British middle-aged ladies, and just after I said goodbye to them and wished them well on their journey home I thought ‘Maybe I should swap phone numbers with them; I might be able to give them updates’ as I had access to the Internet and they didn’t (and Eurostar said they were putting information up online). So I turned back and they were happy to swap numbers.

I was disappointed but I decided to hold out for Monday, hoping things would blow over by then as I didn’t want to wait in large queues of people in a freezing cold station on Sunday for hours on end, so I got my ticket stamped for travel on Monday. It got to Saturday evening and I knew Eurostar was cancelling all trains for Sunday too. I went to Church on Sunday evening and people were discussing Eurostar and it became apparent that the whole thing was bigger than I thought it would be. I was not the only one there that was hoping to go home by Eurostar. Some said they didn’t think it looked hopeful for getting home for Christmas and it might be worth getting a ferry.

On Sunday after church I rang home and Mum told me that Eurostar had just released the information online that no trains would be running on Monday either! At this point I started to get a bit more stressed out. We decided that the best thing to do was to ring the ferry company when their lines opened in the morning (9am) and check they were taking foot passengers who hadn’t pre-booked, and try and go home via ferry and trains.

On Monday morning at 6.43am I got a text message which woke me up. It was from one of the ladies I’d met on Saturday at the station, saying Eurostar were laying on a train at 8.22am and I should try and get to the station for 8am. I was lying in bed and really wanted to stay there but I thought to myself ‘What have I got to lose?’ so I sprang into action (actually…’crawled into action’ would be more appropriate!) and got myself and my case to the station just in time for 8am.

The train went to Calais, then we got on a coach through thick, thick snow to the ferry port (Praise God for the French drivers who were willing to do that!). We got on the ferry and found out that trains weren’t running from Dover to London so we had to take a coach the other side, so we took a coach which got stuck in a huge traffic jam and eventually made it to Victoria where Dad surprised me and came home on the tube with me. Then a final walk through the snow and into the family home, 14 hours later than I’d set off from my flat, and exhausted but with a smile on my face.

The two ladies I’d met on Saturday became my travel buddies (one of whom is a Christian I discovered on the way), as well as a 65 year-old French lady we met on Monday (who I was able to help out with translation sometimes). One of my friends from church also travelled with us some of the way. The two ladies had originally only come away for a one night break, but it turned into 4 days! There was so much uncertainty along the journey. I’m very glad to have made it home this Christmas time.

The very lovely thing is that I know I could have invited myself to at least 3 homes for Christmas had I been stuck in Lille on my own, even though I’ve only lived there for 3 months…isn’t God good?

Fiona x

Off home...

I'm back home tomorrow in the evening, travelling by Eurostar for the first time. I can't wait to be home, and in particular I'm looking forward to seeing Katie, but I think it will be strange to be back...we'll see!
(FYI - I will update my blog at least once over the holidays).

Fiona x

‘It’s a hard life…’

I mean that in both the real and the flippant sense. Friday is my most difficult day of the week as I teach 7 hours (with lunch and two breaks in the middle), normally 14 different groups (as I take half classes). Standing on my feet most of the day and still not getting to grips with many names, trying to keep the enthusiasm up for what I’m doing with the kids and keeping up the concentration to understand what they’re saying to me (when they speak in French or English!), etc is hard. I’m sure there are days at work in many professions which are just as long and tough in different ways.

Now in the other sense…I’ve decided to get myself a little treat from the bakery after school on Fridays...oh what a chore! I love the French bakeries (who doesn’t?!) and it’s great as they’re open until late (one near here is open until 9pm!). These last two Fridays I’ve seized the opportunity to buy a little “bûchette de Noël” (a little Christmas log) as they’re not going to be around all year and there is a selection to choose from! They are pictured here. Mmm... :)









I don’t want you to think that all I do is teach songs and make boys cry at school do I? So what else have I been up to with the kids?...I’ve talked about Bonfire night, made imaginary towns on blackboards (yes, blackboards…everywhere, with only the occasional whiteboard!), got them to introduce themselves, played blind date, played secret Santa, and lots more! Some things go down better than others of course, but I love it how language learning can involve so many different types of activities. Next Friday after school I’m having a little Christmas party with my English club and I’m really looking forward to it, I hope it goes well as I’ve been planning it for a while.

There’s going to be a nativity play and carols at Christchurch tonight, which I’m looking forward to, all the more because I’m taking part in the nativity (even though I’ve only got a small part – Herod’s advisor)! The play has been written by someone at church and it’s a very good script.

Yours-looking-forward-to-Christmas-ly,
Fiona x

Quoi de neuf? (What’s new?/What have you got to tell me?)

I went to see Riverdance at the arena here in Lille last Wednesday with my Scottish friend Nicola and it was amazing! I very much enjoyed a bit of Irish culture in France. I couldn’t get over the fact that they didn’t put a foot wrong! Brilliant dancing and brilliant music.

I made a child cry at school! Yes…you think I don’t have it in me but it happened. Though of course it wasn’t on purpose and I felt very bad afterwards, but he had been warned! There were four pupils messing around in one of my singing classes and I’d already moved them to the front of the room as soon as they stepped in the door because I remembered they’d been chatty last lesson. They were reluctant to move but realised I wasn’t budging on the matter. They were messing around so I said if they carried on I’d take their ‘carnets’ (A carnet is a little book with their timetable on the back and space to write between teachers and parents inside). Taking a carnet means a child is in danger of an ‘observation’ being written in for their parents to acknowledge. They carried on so I took all four, and said that if I move their book from the edge of the table to the middle, it was being written in. The boy (the other three were girls) was playing with glue and got it on his neighbour’s trousers…I hadn’t seen everything but I had testimony/complaint from five girls nearby so decided enough was enough. He was grumpy for the rest of the lesson, and I decided that I had to carry through with my word and write otherwise they’ll think they can get away with anything. So I wrote and he didn’t read it but went out of the classroom crying. It was the first time I’d had the courage to write in a carnet so it wasn’t nice for me…but sometimes these things are for the best!

On Sunday I went to Rochester for the day. I enjoyed myself very much there, visiting with the Frenchies (three teachers and one of their husbands). We went to the Dickensian Christmas festival, and there were many town folk and shopkeepers dressed up in Victorian-style clothes, most of them taking on the particular dress of a Dickens character. We were supposed to cross paths with other teachers from school, but managed not to see them despite the small size of the town. We wandered round shops, ate well, saw performances and parades and went to a carol service in the Cathedral. It was so lovely and the weather held out well. I found some mince pies to bring back for my pupils to try (only the ones in my English club because you’d have to have the money and the means to bring back mince pies for an army for all the children at my two schools!!) so it will be interesting to see if they like them or not.

On Monday, a very strange thing happened to me. I was coming home from work and got off the train, parted ways with my colleague/friend and then a French girl a couple of years older than me approached me and asked me (in French) if I was English. So I said 'yes' wondering what was coming next. She asked me if I was a languages assistant, so again I said yes. She added that she'd heard me speaking English on the train and that she had been a language assistant in England a few years ago! Her name is Stéphanie, and we chatted for a while and exchanged numbers…it was such a random meeting, but hopefully it becomes fruitful! Just one of those things where you wonder if God has a plan because it was so at chance!

I must pay tribute to Alene Baldock, a wonderful lady who I knew from church, who died on Monday 30th November. I didn’t imagine that I’d come away this term not to see her at Christmas time. She was such an inspiration to me and will continue to be. She has now gone to Heaven to be with her saviour Jesus, in a place of no more suffering :) but I and many many others will miss her dearly :(

Fiona x

P.S. Sorry about the dodgy alignment of the photos...they change position from draft to preview to publish!

'Christmas show'

Hi everyone!

I hope you're well and trying to stay flu-free! I’m back, just over a week after my previous post, and I promised long-overdue news about school, so here we go…

I’m settling in to school life now and I have to keep reminding myself of what level the kids are at in their learning and try not to be too ambitious with them. But some expectation for them to do things a little bit above what they think they’re capable of is not always a bad thing because some of them might step up to the mark and surprise themselves. Above all (we were told in training) it is important to try and prepare lessons so that there is maximum student involvement and the activity interests them. Easier said than done!

In one school I was told to sing Christmas songs with the sixièmes (Year 7s) and I would take up to 18 of them at a time for an hour. Christmas songs…we think of them as easy songs that everyone knows the words to and are nice to sing…but looking through Christmas songs to sing with 11 year old French pupils is another thing all together! The majority are fast, or they are religious (excluded by the law in schools) or they are just plain complicated! ‘Silent Night’ is your ideal Christmas song for them because it is slow, but no can do! What’s more, we had to practice these songs for a ‘Christmas show’ in front of parents on a Saturday morning, practicing only two hours with each group! Pressure… And I started to panic because although I’ve been in many choirs over my time, I haven’t taught a song.

So I tried teaching ‘The twelve days of Christmas’ to two classes, and although I had complaints about it being difficult and had a bit of trouble explaining the progression of the song, we persevered and managed it when I split them up into 3 groups to do different lines. With a third class I did ‘I’m dreaming of a white Christmas’ and I attempted ‘Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer’ with the final class…but ‘It’s too hard Miss!’ so I switched to ‘I’m dreaming of a white Christmas’ and that went better but they weren’t very engaged with that. I also taught them all ‘We wish you a merry Christmas’ because it’s easy and some of them knew it already, the teacher and I thought it could be good for them all to sing that at the end of the show.

Roll forward to ‘show day’…everything was becoming a bit clearer. In fact it was not really a ‘Christmas show’, but a school open morning for parents of primary school children. The kids had to volunteer to come into school on Saturday to sing and act in sketches (what the other teachers had worked on at the same time) in a classroom (to my relief not a stage!) and I wondered how many of my singers would turn up because I knew that we were not fully prepared with the songs so they perhaps didn’t have the confidence to sing them in front of people. I very much enjoyed the sketches that the other children were doing, but when I got there I realised (as I’d feared) that there were not many singers! So in a whole morning of 3 hours (excluding travel time!) I sung ‘We wish you a merry Christmas’ twice with a group of kids. It was pretty disappointing. One girl came bouncing up to me and said ‘I’ve learnt the twelve days of Christmas off by heart!’ I said ‘Thank you! Fantastic! But I’m afraid we can’t sing it because there are only three of us here that know it!’ She said ‘Oh yeah…I don’t want to sing on my own’. Ho hum…at least I was there to support them. What I was most annoyed at is that the sketches were nothing to do with Christmas, so in fact I could’ve chosen a non-Christmas song which was easier and more enjoyable to do instead!!

I’m running out of time while writing this, as I’m going to the Christmas market this afternoon with a few friends and then later I’m going round to a lady’s house to eat and stay the night because tomorrow I’m going to Rochester to the Christmas market there with a group of teachers from one of my schools. The reason I’m staying the night is that the trains don’t start early enough in the morning to get to where the lady is setting off from! I’m really looking forward to going back to England for a day but it’ll be weird to not see anyone I know! I’ll be back soon as I’m aware I’ve not actually told you much!

Bon weekend!
Fiona x

P.S. Happy Birthday Jon!