Yesterday in many respects went surprisingly well in spite of the strikes...why you may ask? Well, the sun came out! If anything I think they chose the right day for it! The same can be said for today, I am sat in a t-shirt in January (a phrase that you would NEVER hear in England!), it is pinch-yourself time I think! Oh dear...I have just realised I am being typically English again and talking about the weather...hmmm, I am totally living up to the stereotype (well, apart from the fact I don't live on tea as people believe we do!).
Anyway, back to yesterday, alarm went off at 7 as per and thus began my walk to work as wasn't sure whether there'd be a bus or not and couldn't be bothered waiting just to find out that I'd wasted my time- to be fair the amount of people I saw on my trek I think there may have been a fair few people who had had the same idea! As expected there weren't too many people in the first 2 classes although 12 in my 9-10 was impressive! We watched a clip of Waterloo Road which was great as I usually watch it at home and haven't seen it for ages! Been talking about the Education System in England so it was good for the students to see a typical school and the day-to-day happenings (albeit a lot of it is dramatised given that teachers don't randomly have affairs in real life like on the TV!) Having said that seeing big classes in the lycée is strange given that when I was at college in England, the most I had in a class I think was 12 and the least being 2. Having said that numbers vary every year depending on the amount of people who choose the subject.(if any at all...). After that the students all wrote a letter that I am going to send to contacts I have in England (one being my Auntie and the others being my former teachers/Heads of Department).
Had 3 hours to kill between classes, so for part of my break I sat in a rather vacant staffroom chatting to my mate in Paris on the computer, then went out for a walk where I saw the protesters marching through the street and the police cordons, got lunch and then consquently returned to my place in front of the computer and carried on chatting to my mate who had the luxury of the strike being on his day off otherwise he would have had major issues trying to get to work...so could well have been off anyway! Some people are so jammy, haha!
At 1 I went to see if any of my students would turn up and 2 did...just to tell me that as there were so few of them who had come the teacher wanted to keep them all as it would be pointless to split them up. I then went back to the staffroom and you guessed it...went back on the computer until I had another class at 2 (well, not exactly my class, Blake has gone off to Sweden for the weekend so I stood in for him voluntarily) where we did the same lessons as we had previously done in the morning although we also talked about the differences between the French and English education systems (of which there are numerous).
Upon finishing work I went for a swift coffee with the teacher I had worked with for all the 3 classes I had had before heading home. Was able to take the bus home, though ended up waiting around 40 minutes for it...if I hadn't had my i-pod I think I'd had walked, although having said that my bag was full to bursting with shopping, so in hindsight the bus was the better option.
I know the effects of the stike yesterday were felt all over Europe as when I was looking on the website for our local newspaper in England I saw that it got a mention, which in a way I found amusing.
Anyhow, by all accounts it has been a rather eventful week in South-West France!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment