Les Silhouettes de Sophie

Hello world.

So I thought I would do a post on teaching, seeing as that is what I am doing in France and you're probably wondering what it is how I actually live and make money. So I am going to do a little FAQ of things people have asked me because I'm tired of writing paragraphs.

Q: What age group do you teach?
A: I teach in collège which is the U.S. equivalent of middle school or junior high. In France, le collège consists of four grades, sixième, cinquième, quatrième, and troisième (6ème, 5ème, 4ème, 3ème) which are the U.S. equivalent of 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th grades. In France, they down to graduation, while we count up. 10th, 11th, and 12th grades are 2nde (seconde), 1ère (première), and terminale (terminal or last year). I teach in a lot of different classrooms and get to interact with all the levels in middle school.

Q: What do you teach?
A: I am an English language assistant so I assist the English language teachers in my two middle schools.

Q: What do you actually do as an assistant?
A: It depends on the teacher and the school and the day. With some teachers, I merely assist them throughout class, walking around and giving extra help. With others, I do a Powerpoint presentation about something from my culture (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, fashion, American high school, to name a few) and maybe end with a game. In other classes, I take half the class into another room and do the same activities their teacher is doing. In others, I work with even smaller groups of 2-4 and just try and get them to speak English. It's always different which makes it challenging to prepare for but exciting everyday.

Q: Are middle schoolers difficult?
A: I was worried about doing middle school before I came to France, because it is such a notorious age. But my dear friend Karen was talking about how this is such a cool period because everyone is learning and growing so much, physically, mentally and emotionally. I really do like this age group. They can be really frustrating at times, but that makes it all the more rewarding when something goes right.

Q: How much and when do you work?
A: I only work 12 hours a week. You're probably thinking it's crazy but that is what the program entails. They pay us enough to live only but we don't have to work too much. I've never had so much free time in a long time. The first month or so was hard for me, because I like to be busy. But now, I've learned to really appreciate this extra time. (Well, sometimes).

Q: How do you travel then?
A: I am looking to do some private English lessons and I already work one hour a week doing that. Other assistants have found babysitting jobs or other tutoring jobs. Plus, I saved a lot last summer, working for my dad.

Heads up: if you want to do TAPIF and you want to be able to travel at all or you want to go home for one of the vacations, you NEED to save up money at least the summer before, if not a year before.

Q: Do you enjoy it?
A: Yes, I really do. Although my schedule can be extremely all-over-the-place as I work at two different schools and with eight different teachers and I tend to have large holes where all I can do is read in the teacher's lounge, I love the kids. I love feeling like a celebrity because I am from California and speak English with an "accent américain." I love helping them understand something. I especially like doing Powerpoints on American culture. It can be really challenging sometimes, though. When I only see a class once a week or even less, it makes it hard to learn remember their names and I don't really have a hand in their everyday learning. So for some classes, I have to do more miming than others, or certain things work better than others. In any case, I am learning a lot and still have a lot to learn. And if you know me at all, you know learning is one of my favorite things so I can't really complain.

Q: How are your relationships with the other teachers?
A: I think I got very lucky, once again, with my teachers. I have heard some horror stories about some other assistants who aren't very well-liked by the teachers. Some teachers don't want to have assistants or don't treat them as equals like they are supposed to. I, however, have teachers that give me a lot of freedom in the classroom and who trust me with their classes. I am closer to some more than others, but I get along well with all of them. I have been really fortunate to have teachers who welcome me into their homes and invite me to dinners frequently. This has given me an invaluable peek at French culture. I also eat lunch in the cafeteria at one of my schools three times a week. This allows me to become friends with all the teachers at this school, not just the English ones. We had Christmas parties in both of my schools which was nice. There are also a handful of teachers in their 20s and early 30s who I hang out with outside of school. Some of them even came to our Thanksgiving!

Q: How often do you have time off so you can take more than a week-end away?
A: I get two weeks vacation every 7 or so weeks. So although I work here for 7 months, I get four 2-week vacations. One at the end of October, one for Christmas, one coming up in February and one in April. It's a little insane. The French love their vacations, and, in my opinion, are much better at relaxing than Americans are.

Q: Where will you be traveling next and what are your plans/thoughts for travel after that?
A: I will be traveling to a variety of places for my next break in February: Montpellier, Carcassonne, Toulouse (all in France), Heidelburg (Germany) and then to Prague (Czech Republic). I am excited to add two new countries to my list and to see two countries where my family comes from! For the future, who knows?! Barcelona, Madrid northern Italy (Milan, Venice), Geneva, the Loire Valley, Berlin, Dublin, and more of France are all on my lists. But Barcelona is happening, for sure, before I leave.

Post any more questions about my job in the comments and I will add to this post. Happy Monday to everyone :).

Last set of travels during my Toussaint trip was to Bordeaux to visit Amber, the dear friend that I met studying abroad in Lyon. She is also doing the program in Bordeaux and it's so nice to have someone who went through France with me once before, to go visit and talk about life in France again.

So, the one terrible thing about this trip was that I had the worst travel issues of all time. I booked two trains to travel to Bordeaux. I thought it would be easier to take the train, rather than a Blablacar, because it cost close to the same and was the same time-wise, so being alone I would rather be on a train than in a car with a stranger (although I do believe Blablacar is really safe). However, this decision was a poor one. Hindsight is 20/20. I booked an INTERCITÉ which is basically a slower train that connects big cities together that don't have TGV lines between them (TGV stands for train à grande vitesse or high speed trains). For whatever reason, Marseille and Bordeaux have no train line connecting them together. If you take the TGV, you have to go up through Paris and then back down. I had no idea that, although you can (mostly) count on TGV trains, you can hardly count on Intercité trains. My first train was delayed 2-3 hours, then because there were issues on the train line, we had to get off at Toulouse and take a bus for 3 more hours after I had already been traveling for about 4 hours. I was set to arrive at 9pm and ended up arriving at 2 am. Then, on the way back, my train at 10 am was cancelled because they were missing a train carriage. So I had to wait three hours for the next one, which was delayed by 30 minutes and then almost two hours because there was an accident involving "persons." It was really sad, but also really scary because everyone was freaking out about getting home to Marseille. People were crying and people got off the train and took taxis. Finally, we made it to Marseille and, luckily, they added an extra train that took me back to Toulon. So needless to say, the travels of this trip sucked a lot and that was why I was so content not to travel anymore. Traveling makes me nervous and I hate layovers. Instead of waiting patiently, I always feel like I'm waiting anxiously just in case I miss my train or plane or whatever. I've gotten better about it but it's still frustrating.

BUT now onto the good stuff, which was literally everything else about this trip. I loved seeing Amber and her boyfriend, David. I loved Bordeaux and just hanging out there. I would love to go back. I was there for the end of the second week, Wednesday through Sunday. I spent Halloween there, which was fun. Here are some pictures of things we did.

We went to a wine museum and had a wine tasting. (Bordeaux is famous for wine!)
We ate Fufu (japanese ramen) in the Jardin Public.
We had a Halloween party where we carved pumplins and watched Halloweentown 2.
We got dressed up on Halloween and went out to a really fun pub that was super decorated and had a costume contest!
We walked around Rue Sainte-Cathérine and Place des Quinconces.
It was a lovely time!