Some pictures!

Here are some pictures from the last couple weeks. :) The weekend before last I met up with an assistant in Saint Quentin who's from Sacramento. We took a mini-road trip to some nearby towns with a French friend of hers, including a little town called Coucy-le-Château, which is home to a castle built in the 10th century! We got to the castle as it was getting dark, and the grounds were closed, but we were able to walk along a path that surrounds the ramparts. At one point we turned a corner and came face to face with a couple of goats! They had very large horns and baa'ed warily at us, so we decided to turn back. This is a creepy picture of one of the goats next to the castle wall.

Some years after WWII, many German and French towns established what's called a "jumellage" in order to strengthen friendships between French and German students to avoid future hostility between the two countries. German and French towns that are paired up send students and teachers to the other country for annual visits. here in Tergnier, a group of German middle school kids studying French comes once a year for a week, and French students studying German from the collège visit Wolfhagen for a week in the spring. The kids stay with host families and attend classes at their sister city's middle school. Two weeks ago was the visit from the German students from Wolfhagen, so Tabea was pretty busy helping with the organization of the visit. Last Saturday, Tabea and I were able to accompany a group of German teachers on a visit of the region; we went to a town called Guise, to Saint Quentin, and to Chauny, where we ate dinner at a really nice Moroccan restaurant.

Guise is known for Le Familistère, a factory that produced beautiful woodstoves, iron pots and pans, stoves, and other lovely things made of metal. The factory's founder, Jean-Baptiste André Godin, was big on French philosopher Fourier's ideas about work and the equal distribution of the profits of an enterprise, and tried to create a community around the factory where all of its workers could live, work, and play. Every factory worker had the option to live at Le Familistère with his family. Everyone who lived at Le Familistère had the same living quarters and could take equal advantage of the theater, stores, pool, and schools that Godin built for his worker community, regardless of that person's status at work in the factory. Interestingly, the factory's output of units/worker increased drastically as more and more factory workers decided to live in Le Familistère, and the number of units overall increased even as the total number of workers employed in the factory decreased. One point for socialism! We took a guided tour, which was funny because the tour guide talked in rapid fire French for all of an hour and a half, and half of the visiting Germans didn't speak French. By the end of it our eyes were drifting in opposite directions, but it was neat to see the buildings and some of the beautiful stoves and knick knacks made in the factory.

I took this picture from an open courtyard in the middle of one of the apartment complexes. The whole building was empty and cold, and Tabea and I spent a lot of this part of the tour giggling at the back of the group. There was really strange ambient music coming up from vents in the floor that sounded like blue whale sounds- the tour guide said it was there to give visitors an idea of what the place might have sounded like back in the day when there was lots of hustle and bustle. And blue whales?

Tabea with some small stoves

Most awesome umbrella stand ever!


Woodstoves!

A view of the Oise river from a bridge near Le Familistère's pool

The pool building

My lamb tajine at the Moroccan restaurant in Chauny :) yummm


Last Tuesday was my second full day at Blériot, and I was lucky enough to be with Maternelle to celebrate two birthdays; a boy named Matteo turned 4, and Lorrine turned 3! Matteo is the boy in the grey turtleneck, and Lorrine is the girl in the white long sleeved shirt. The little boy in the red is Erwan- he's 2, and the youngest kid at the school. He's extremely adorable, and I got to help him learn how to use scissors last week!


These two guys are in the older section of Maternelle at Blériot. They are awesome! They're both really excited to have me around, and are the most enthusiastic of the group when we practice singing 'The Itsy Bitsy Spider'. Last Tuesday I helped them and a few other students make trees out of clay.

Last week I made ratatouille for dinner! yum yum yum :)

This is an add for shaving cream that I saw in Saint Quentin- it's very hilarious (I think), and very French! It's a picture of a clean shaven man with his cheek resting on a pair of anonymous breasts, and the tagline says "taste comfort". Oi.
Happy early Thanksgiving to everyone, I'll be thinking of and missing you all this week!

La vie dure d'une assistante aux écoles primaires

I've gotten requests for more & shorter (fine!!) posts, and I also realize now that I've written absolutely nothing about my actual work, so here goes.

This past week was my first 'normal' week of work, as my schedule was only finalized the week before Toussaints. As it stands, I work for 3 hours on Mondays and Thursdays at a tiny school called Condren, and for 6 hours on Tuesdays at a larger school called Blériot. I was set up in Condren first, so I feel a bit more familiar with the school. It's a 3 room school house, with only 3 full time teachers: la Directrice, Lucille, who works primarily with Cycle 3, who are the older kids; Aurélie, who works with CP, CM1 & CM2, who are between 7-9, and Hélène, who works with Maternelle. Maternelle is the equivalent of pre-school, but French children start as early as 2! So she has kids between 2-6 in her class. Both Mondays and Thursdays I start with an hour of English, on Mondays with Hélène, who works with CE1 and CE2, (ages 7-8) and and on Thursdays with Lucille, who works with Cycle 3, who are a bit more advanced (ages 9-11). This past Monday Hélène worked on colors in her English class. It was the first day back from break so I didn't contribute much, but next Monday I'm going to work with the kids on the song 'Colors of the Rainbow' (shout out to Norah Deming, who taught me that song!) Thursday Lucille was reviewing the parts of the body with Cycle 3, and I played a short game of 'Simon Says' with them, and also worked through Shel Silverstein's poem 'The Acrobats':

Next Thursday I'll be leading the class in the song 'Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes' and playing some more 'Simon Says'. When I'm not doing English at Condren, I help Hélène with Maternelle, or do the equivalent of a P.E. class with Lucille. The kids in Maternelle are too little to learn English, but Hélène has me do little things with them anyway just for fun; my first day we tried to sing 'If You're Happy and You Know It' together, and this past week I did a very short finger puppet show in English. During P.E. with Lucille on Thursday, the kids had a race, and on the way back into the school yard, Lucille had me explain what to do before you cross the street in English ("look to the left... look to the right... is there a car? Yes? What color is it?")

This past Tuesday was my first real day at Blériot. Blériot is a bit bigger than Condren, with 7 full time teachers, including the Directrice, Madame Blondi (who is, in fact, blonde,) as well as visiting English and German teachers. Tuesday mornings I'll be with Maternelle- at Blériot la Maternelle is divided into two classes; les petits (ages 2-3) et les grands (4-6). I'll spend half of the morning with les petits, and half with les grands. This past Tuesday I spent my time with les petits helping some little ones practice using scissors, and with les grands I sang 'The Itsy Bitsy Spider'. In the afternoon I'll help out in two English classes; last Tuesday's classes were dedicated to learning the months of the year and discussing Halloween.

As you can see, I have an extremely stressful job and I need every one of the remaining 26 hours of the work week for diligent preparation and rest. Believe it or not, I've found time to play basketball two times per week, and this past week started tutoring two girls from the Czech Republic in French! One of the girls, Lucie, plays on the basketball team as well; her husband is a professional volleyball player who moved to Saint Quentin to play volleyball a couple months ago. Lucie came to join him a month ago, and speaks no French and very limited English. She has a friend named Bara who is in the same position; her boyfriend plays on the Saint Quentin basketball team, and she moved here with him. I'll be tutoring them in French for 2 hours/week each- this week we had our first tutoring sessions, and they went quite well. Lucie and I worked on conjugating verbs in the present tense, and Bara and I worked on the future tense and introduced ourselves. Lucie and Bara are both very sweet, and I'm looking forward to getting to know them better and hopefully helping them with French!

That's all for now, bonne dimanche à tous! I'm taking my camera to school with me next week, so pictures of school/cute French children/basketball to follow.

Toussaints Holiday

The past week and a half was a school holiday called Toussaints, or All Saints'. My vacation was pretty travel/action packed, so I'll keep the writing brief and let my photos do most of the 'splainin. Tabea took a bus back to Germany to stay with her boyfriend early on the 21st of October, so I was alone in the apartment for several days before I left for Bayeux. I occupied myself with re-learning how to knit, (there's an awesome store right around the corner from our apartment that sells a hodgepodge of goods, like fake flower arrangements in the shape of crosses right next to prescription eye glasses next to kitchen ware next to picture frames and makeup and bedside lamps. They had some yarn on sale for 0,50euro/skein!) listening to podcasts and watching a lot of 'How I Met Your Mother'.

Besides all that fun stuff, I also went to Paris for a day! The assistants from Chauny (Kathryn from England, Maxi from Agentina, and Theresa from Germany,) invited me along with them. A Spanish teacher who works with Maxi had offered to show them around, and she brought her sister and a friend, so we were a big group. Sandra, the teacher from Chauny, was very nice and knew her way around the city, which meant we saw a lot more in a day than we would have been able to navigating the métro by ourselves. We started of in Montmartre, where we visited Sacre Coeur, the famous basilica built in 1873, when French Catholics expected invasion from Germany and set out to make sure their German conquerors knew just how Catholic they were.

The crew - Theresa on the steps of Sacre Coeur.

Next we walked through la Pigalle, a quartier (neighborhood) chock full of sex shops, cabarets, and even a Museum of Eroticism. We saw the Moulin Rouge, then hopped on the métro and got off on the Champs-Elysée! We climbed the Arc de Triomphe, and had a good look around from the top.


The sign says, "This national monument is under the protection of its visitors. It is recommended that all inscription and degradation of the walls be avoided." lol

Next we had lunch at a really great restaurant called Chartier- my guidebook recommended the sheep's head, but I stuck with the chicken- I did enjoy my accidental encounter with sheep's head in Senegal, but I couldn't bring myself to order it. Next time! After lunch we took the métro to la Tour Eiffel! It's much bigger in real life than I had imagined, which was exciting.

Some break dancers performing with la Tour in the background!

From la Tour we walked across the Seine and saw Notre Dame. We didn't go inside because the line was ridiculously long- another thing I'll have to go back for.

The last thing on our agenda was shopping, of course; or, in my case, longingly stroking clothes I can't afford while looking thoroughly unfashionable in a crowd of extremely beautiful and well dressed Parisians. A humbling experience, for sure. After our epic day, we took a train back North and I slept for about 16 hours.

On Tuesday, I took a train to Bayeux, which is in Normandy (I think I said I was going to Brittany in my last post, but that was faux). My cousin Hannah's college roommate from UVM, Hilary, lives there with her French husband and their 12 year old son in a beautiful 16th century barn-turned-house+rentals. (Shameless plug: they are currently working on finishing up a couple of apartments which they'll rent out for vacationers year round. The biggest apartment can sleep 6-7 people and would only be about 700euro/week! So if you want to see some beautiful Atlantic coast and really interesting WWII history, that's the place to stay.) Hilary met me at the train station in Bayeux and drove me to Saint-Pierre-du-Mont, the small town where her family lives. They are about a 10 minute walk from cliffs that overlook the Atlantic, and about a 10 minute drive to Omaha Beach, one of 5 spots where Allied troops landed on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Hilary's husband was out of town on business, but Hilary was a very gracious hostess, taking me around to see some of the most important WWII sites and war memorials, as well as some cool medieval history in nearby Caen and Bayeux.

My first day we went into Grand Camp to a fish market. The Norman coast is big time fishing country, and it was amazing to see so much delicious fresh fish for sale. Hilary bought some ray, and the woman at the stand actually told her to let it sit for a couple days because it was TOO fresh. Never heard that before.


Later that day we went to Caen, where Hilary dropped me off at the ruins of a castle built by William the Conqueror around 1060! (old!!!) The castles was used as barracks by German soldiers during WWII, and was bombed by the Allies in 1944. A lot of it was destroyed, but the foundation and some of the ramparts remain, which you can walk around on. Many towns in Normandy were heavily bombed when the Allies landed after D-Day, and a lot of old buildings and cathedrals were destroyed. Sad but necessary, I suppose.


View of a café through a window in the ramparts

An art museum was built within the ramparts, and these are some interesting statues in front of one of the castle walls.

View of a church steeple in Caen with wind turbines in the background :)

Later that same day, we went to Bayeux and Hilary dropped me off at a museum to see the Bayeux Tapestry. The Bayeux Tapestry is an embroidered cloth 70 meters long (!!!really long!!!) that was commissioned in the 1070s (!!!!really old!!!!!) by Bishop Odo, William the Conqueror's half brother. It tells the Norman perspective on the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings: according to the tapestry, King Edward (I'm 80% sure that's his name), who was the king of England at the time, decided that William the Bastard of Normandy would be the next king of England after he died. William sent Harold, Edward's brother-in-law, to England to tell Edward that he had received the news that he would be the next King. Harold arrived just after Edward had died, and decided to claim the throne for himself. William & the Normans met Harold & the English at the Battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066, and after Edward got an arrow to the eye, William became the king of England as well as the Duke of Normandy.

Harold getting poked in the eye!
(Done with the medieval history bit, for those who skimmed through that :)

Bayeux cathedral

The next day, I biked from Hilary's place to Pointe du Hoc, which is a narrow spit of land that sticks out into the Atlantic between Omaha and Utah beaches. The Germans kept some heavy artillery there during WWII, because Pointe du Hoc is protected from the beaches by steep cliffs, and from that point the Germans could fire on any enemies that landed on Omaha or Utah beach. On D-Day, American troops landed close to Pointe du Hoc and managed to scale the cliffs, drive the Germans back and capture their artillery after 2 days of fighting. More than half of the American troops died on the mission. Pointe du Hoc is now a war memorial, dotted with damaged remains of bunkers and craters where grenades exploded. It's a sobering spot.


Hilary also took me to a German military cemetery, and the American WWII cemetery.

The German WWII cemetery



The American WWII Cemetery

On Saturday I left Bayeux and took a long ride up to Dunkerque, which is in the very northernmost part of France, right on the Atlantic and about 30 min from the Belgian border. I stayed with Rachel, a girl I studied abroad in Senegal with, who is also an English assistant! While I was in Dunkerque we walked along a beach near her house and checked out the architecture- DK was 99% destroyed during WWII, so it's missing the old Gothic/medieval architecture of other French towns, but has an interesting look all its own.


We ate fresh mussels at a great restaurant by the beach!

We also visited sand dunes on the Belgian border, where we walked along the beach and probably crossed the border- now I've (probably) been in 7 countries!



Dunkerque has a lot of language assistants from all over the world, and Rachel took me out to meet some of them on Halloween- ours was the only costumed group, but it was great to celebrate.

On Tuesday, Rachel, her roommate, and two other Dunkerque assistants took a train into Lille to see the YELLE concert! My friend Zac from college also joined us, which was great fun. I got to dance and jump around, an activity I've missed since being here. Yelle was a great performer, and also really nice! Zac and I scavenged a couple of posters, and she signed them and chatted with us for a couple minutes! Very exciting stuff, that was certainly one of the most fun nights since I arrived. :)
Sorry this post wasn't as brief as I promised! I made it back to Tergnier Wednesday, and have been resting since then. Tonight I have a basketball game in St. Quentin, and I'm leading my first French "class"- I'll be teaching a girl on the basketball team and several of her friends, who are all from the Czech Republic, what I know about French. Should be interesting! Bisous xo