Late November happenings

Last Saturday was an interesting day. In the morning I got up and went with Manqi to a careers talk at the university. There were a whole host of talks to choose from and the one she had chosen to go to was about a man who manages film festivals in Brittany, with a particular focus on British films. I thought it sounded quite interesting and would be an opportunity to hear some extra French so went along. He spoke for an hour without a powerpoint or anything, just him and a microphone, then there was a question time and it was interesting to get an insider view into festivals like that.

We then went to the market in the city centre and bought a ‘galette saucisse’ for lunch. I’m afraid I don’t have a picture of it – we gobbled them up before thinking about the camera after waiting in a queue for 20 minutes! It’s a local speciality and is basically a sausage wrapped in a pancake, but it is tasty. They can even cook cheese ham and egg into the pancake and then wrap it around the sausage if you want something more special! We also saw a fun music group all dressed in red playing some lively music outside the metro station, I could’ve stayed for quite a while to enjoy their performance.

After that we wandered through town a bit and bumped into our housemate Andrew. The three of us decided to try out a café called ‘Haricot rouge’ (‘Red bean’ or sometimes translated as ‘Baked bean’!). Manqi had already been with an American friend of ours who raves on about it, because they have many different sorts of hot chocolate and milk shakes. We enjoyed sitting down for a bit having a chat, and a mini brownie came free with my drink which was nice. The prices there are reasonable and you can borrow board games to play if you want, but it wasn’t quite as exciting as it had been made out.

A few times this week I’ve found myself in a big crowd for dinner. Last Saturday there were 9 of us at my house for dinner in the evening, then on Thursday just gone our home group had a Thanksgiving dinner (we were 15-strong) and last night, Manqi had a number of Chinese friends round making spring rolls and things so that was interesting. Tomorrow quite a few of us are going round to the pastor’s house for lunch too. It means that things are quite lively around here, but so many large gatherings in one week gets tiring!

That’ll do for now, I’ve started writing about something else but this post was going to get too long if I included it so I’ll save it for another time!

I hope you’re well.

Fiona x

Fun, a Flanders flower and a faithful God.

Hello!

Last Wednesday I went to my friend Halle’s 27^th birthday party. She had around 20 girls round to her flat for a bring and share meal. There was so much homemade cake! Halle is from the US and works full time as a team member for Agape Campus, a Christian student group here. It was good to chill out, I had been really looking forward to it. When it came to it I was a bit nervous as I didn’t know most of the people that turned up at first, but it was a nice set of girls and we chatted a bit then played a game.

With another American friend, Christy, and my Chinese housemate, Manqi, we have taken to making biscuits (or ‘cookies’ as the Americans say).

So far we have made lime and coconut, peanut butter and chocolate chip, and apple and toffee biscuits (pictured). They have all been rather successful, and I’m impressed at that as foreign recipes aren’t always guaranteed to work. I’m sure we’ve made another type too, but it escapes me.

Last week in class I wore a poppy and asked my classes if they knew what it was about. They didn’t have a clue. Which was fair enough really as they’ve probably never been to Britain in November. However, less excusable was the fact that Remembrance Day is a bank holiday in France, and many of them didn’t even know why they had a day off! It was quite nice to give them a glimpse of something cultural and explain it when none of them knew. Some of them were a picture of ‘I don’t care about this, when are you going to stop talking?’ whereas most were genuinely interested.

Despite going through a tough time here, I’m going to tell you some of the ways in which God has been good to me (thanks for your prayers).

• I am grateful for my timetable in general, and the early morning starts (I never thought I’d say that!). I have to start teaching at 8:15am on 4 out of 5 mornings, which is hard for me as I’m not a morning person! But it does mean that I am able to have a routine and get more done in my day which has been essential for getting lesson preparation done and the suchlike. My timetable has a nice mixture of classes most days except for Tuesdays, but then I just repeat the same 2-hour lesson three times in the same day so I’m well-practised by the end! Also I find that the students are less concentrated in the afternoons, so I’m glad I’ve got a mixture of morning and afternoon classes (though sometimes they seem as though they’re still asleep in the morning!).

• I get along well with my colleague Martin and I think he gets along with me too, which is obviously a good thing. Even though he often annoys me when he chats on all the time about all sorts of things or doesn’t listen to me, he often makes me smile or laugh. There’s a real sense of being in this together. We’ve both been thrown in at the deep end and we both have the same heap of work this semester with teaching and prep and marking. Things here could be a lot worse if I didn’t get along with my colleague or they didn’t get on with me.

• God has provided me with a few friends who have been forthcoming in inviting me to do things, rather than me having to organise to do things with others. This has been a real blessing as I’ve been able to join in with things without making the effort to organise them. I'm not averse to organising things of course, but this term I’ve been spending so much energy on my job that I just wouldn’t have bothered getting out there and meeting people if they didn’t invite me, so it's helped a lot.

That’s all for now,

Fiona x

La langue anglaise, des toilettes, et un samedi...

The first week back hasn’t been that great. Students and teachers alike didn’t want to be back following the holidays, and I’ve given classes their grades and feedback, which I found hard with the students or classes who have low marks.

Since starting to teach English at a higher level, I’ve been learning just how difficult the English language is. The French students I teach self-confessedly struggle most with pronunciation and understanding different accents. I’ve realised how hard it is for them to imitate or get a feeling for the stress patterns we use when speaking and our intonation. These things can change the meaning of a sentence or word, so they’re quite important sometimes, but even when sitting there imitating someone’s voice and listening back to themselves (in a class which is specifically designed to work on these things) they don’t seem to be able to hear things right and imitate correctly. I’m sure I’d struggle too in French. That’s not to mention the different tenses we use, ‘faux amis’, vocabulary and everything else! I do love my native language though. I was looking through some tourist websites for a student who wants to set sail for Great Britain next year and I really enjoyed seeing the different expressions they use to describe places (albeit a bit flowery and publicity-led).

L building toilets

It is high time I told you about the toilets in the building where I work. I’m sure you’re all aware that France is not renowned for its toilets and the university ones are no exception. (I know there are worse in the world before you start sending me stories of your trips to far off places). There are three sets of toilets within not-many-metres-at-all from my office. Two sets of unisex toilets and one set of women’s toilets. The toilets are not blessed with the luxury of a seat. They have a flush which is weak when pressed once and gives enough to power a white-water rafting experience if pushed again (you avoid splash back if you can). There’s thin toilet paper of course. Pink. Then once you’ve relieved yourself, you go to wash your hands and try and avoid being splashed a second time, except this time it is much harder. Martin aptly nicknamed the sink ‘the trough’ as that is what it looks like. If you give the tap a push, a jet stream comes out and as soon as your hand is under it even a fraction, water sprays everywhere. Sometimes even in your face. So how do I conquer the tap? (After all, it is essential to wash one’s hands). I have to dispense the foamy soap into my hands, then stand to one side and lean on the tap with one hand while putting the other under it, and swapping hands. Even then there’s a risk of getting a puny trickle or pushing too far and getting the jet stream I’m trying to avoid in the first place! It’s always cold water. Not a week has gone by without me getting splashed a few times (if not every day)…of course I then make a brief effort to dry my top under the air dryer as well as my hands. I dread the times that someone lines up to wash their hands next to me in case I splash them too. We found out the other day that there are some staff toilets (9 weeks in) but apparently they’re not so much nicer that it would make them worth walking the extra distance!

Saturday

Last Saturday I allowed myself to go shopping for some clothes as I need some new ones and my favourite shop had a sale on. I came away with some new clothes but none of them sale items! Later on my colleague Martin and I went out for the evening with the English-speaking ‘lecteurs’ (our job title) from the English department on Saturday night and it was good to talk about our job at the university as they’re finding certain things difficult like us. Just to clarify – yes, I’m teaching English, but I’m in the ‘Applied Foreign Languages’ department, not the English department. One guy was a bit of a crazy American and said he’d sometimes used the technique of swearing (which he’s quite a fan of!) to make the students quieten down and listen up – not a technique I’ll be taking on myself!

Until next week,

Fiona x

A good week in my homeland

Dear all,

The week I spent back in England was very enjoyable. I spent some time catching up on sleep but it still seems as though I need another week’s rest, as it went speedily by. I enjoyed browsing English shops and buying some bits and bobs that I needed which are either much easier for me to buy in England or carry a much lower price tag than in France. I met up with a friend for coffee on Tuesday, went to my friend Amy’s flat for a meal on Wednesday and then she also celebrated her birthday with a meal out at a nice pub on Friday, where I enjoyed catching up with some of our other friends too. I enjoyed relaxing with my family as well, it was really good to be with them. One of my aunties paid a visit on Thursday too which was great.

I’m not very happy to be back, the six weeks of teaching and assessment until Christmas seem like a mountain to climb. A few logistical challenges lie ahead, as in some classes there were a few people ill for tests at the end of last half term, and I want to give feedback and move on but will have to teach other things until we’ve found a mutually convenient time for them to catch up. There’re also a few bank holidays thrown in...I risk having all my 14 classes at different points in the teaching programme and losing the plot! Please pray for that!

Fiona x