Salut! It’s been a ridiculously long time since my last blog post (as ever) but this time I have an excuse, since I’ve spent what must be nearly the entire past six weeks in the CAF office (France's answer to benefits). Oh, and still haven’t received any money, just in case you were wondering. Classic France, at it again.
The job’s still exhausting as ever – turns out the trick is to stop caring and let the ones who want to learn English do so, and let the ones who just want to sing ‘I’m sexy and I know it’ over and over again for an hour get on with it too. Everyone wins. I also only found out the other week that most of my pupils are going out with someone in the same year, which is why there’s constantly so much drama and storming off in my classes. This all became clear last week when one poor boy got dumped by his girlfriend and the other boys started singing ‘Goodbye my lover’ to him throughout the whole class. I also found this more amusing than my worksheets on Fair Trade Coffee, so yet again I left them to it. I think I’m fast becoming one of Nord-Pas-de-Calais’ least professional teachers.
On the upside, in my second week back after Christmas, we had a ‘galette des rois’ party at work, which is where you all have a piece of frangipane tart, and there’s a little toy hidden in one of the pieces and if you have it, you get to wear a crown and feel all proud. I use the term ‘party’ loosely here though, because firstly the tradition states that the youngest person has to call out the names of who gets each piece of pie from under the table, so I spent my party under the table in the staff room. Secondly, one teacher started crying halfway through about her timetable and then the others started complaining about how much of a choking hazard the small toy is, and it all got a bit awkward so I took my cue to leave.
I’m currently writing this blog from my death bed since I’ve had to take another day off work thanks to some grim French virus, and my teachers can’t get their heads around why I insist on doing things the English way – i.e lying on the sofa watching Peep Show and taking paracetamol rather than going to various doctors around the city getting second opinions and filling in bundles of paperwork. This might have something to do with the confusing phone message I left at the school office this morning to say I couldn’t come in. I had it all planned in my head, to explain to the secretary that I’m still taking paracetamol and resting but don’t quite feel right yet, but speaking French on the phone still baffles me a bit and instead what came out in a jumble when she answered was : ‘Hello, I am the English Assistant and I have vomited.’ Lucky woman.
Life outside school, however, is plodding along nicely. On one of our (still rather frequent) trips to McDonalds a few weeks back we decided to get on a train somewhere that night and stay the weekend, and picked Brussels. This was a particularly proud weekend for me, because after the FrenSoc trip last January I somehow still managed to guide everybody around without one single fail – I regularly get lost on Highfield Campus, just to put this miracle into perspective. Highlights of the trip were Harrie screaming for an ambulance for stomach pain as soon as we reached the hostel, but actually settling for a glass of wine five minutes later, my standing on a dead mouse in a Kenyan restaurant and all of us managing to be under 12 years old to get a child’s ticket for the tour bus.
We had our own little Burns night celebrations last week too, where I was quite happily nibbling away at my haggis until Graeme told me it was made of intestines, lungs and heart, and the fun was spoiled. I also ended up standing in a disturbing amount of haggis that had made its way to the floor, but nevertheless, I did get to play with Graeme’s sporran, so the evening was not wasted...
However, the final major incident of the past couple of weeks is one that I fear will never leave me. I still have sleepless nights thinking about the two hours Cathy and I spent in some woman’s attic in the outskirts of Lille, surrounded by moaning men and women who don’t feel the need the shave, having my legs forced behind my head. Never have there been two bigger victims of false advertising than Cathy and I attending this ‘yoga’ class. As if this wasn’t disturbing enough, at the end of the ‘session’, the woman made me lie down and wrapped me up (chipolata in bacon style) in a suspicious looking blanket. Shortly after, a man started wailing and shoved his foot in Cathy’s face, which was almost worth paying the €7.50 for. All in all, this didn’t even come close to a yoga class. It was, in fact, attic abuse, which I was even more bitter about when I couldn't sit down properly and developed a kind of waddle for four days afterwards.
All in all, it’s been a standard few weeks of confusion and awkward misdemeanours, but I reckon you can’t go far wrong in France if you just generally watch where you put your feet, and never let anyone ‘teach’ you anything in their attic. Especially if they’re wearing an embroidered waistcoat.
