Choose my career (now with added interaction potential!) vote on 0901…

Hi there, long-lost blog readers

You may be wondering why I haven’t been able to sustain this whole blogging thing for more than a week at a time. Or you may not. Anyhow, the reason is because I usually find what I’ve written to be horribly cringeworthily embarrassing and devoid of any potential to be of interest to anyone. (See below). I gaze in wonder at the blog posts of my friends, asking myself how they are simultaneously funny, thought-provoking, and don’t leave me thinking ‘ahahaha, my cat could’ve written something better than that’. For an example of a blog done well, follow this link: www.hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com

Now, I can’t boast hilarious paint drawings, or witty dialogue to accompany them. I can however write something topical about any one of the following subjects: The X Factor, I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, Misfits, snow, student protests and spending time in laundrettes. And also possibly the fact that I have no idea what to do with my life after June of next year. So, blog readers, in a Jungle Factor/I’m a Moron style vote, you are cordially invited to help me pick the correct career path. Aren’t you lucky!

Here are the options, as far as I can see:

(don’t worry, it’s anonymous and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be horribly offended anyway)

First option: bit of a difficult one. I would get to argue for a living, and ‘make a difference’. However, massive cuts to legal aid = bad times, and the cost of a GDL and LPC mean that’s only really an option if I turned out to be really good at it, which is hard to know in advance. Hate the recession.

Second option: I could do this, I think. If you can survive teaching English as a foreign language on your own at the age of 20, I’m pretty sure the profession cannot reject you. Plus nice long holidays. And the kids might get you presents at the end of term. On the other hand, you could turn out to be one of those embittered teachers who see their students realising the potential they never did and hate them for it.

Third option: I don’t think I’m cut out for sleeping at the office (I’d miss X Factor), or doing crazy 7pm to 7am shifts. When Aldi give you that car for their grad scheme, it’s your own blood they expect you to put into the tank.

Fourth option: You may be wondering why option 4 is there, well; I told the careers advisor at my school that I was considering Waste Management – because it was the most hilarious thing on the careers literature – and was subsequently given a variety of pamphlets recommending it to me as a rewarding and fulfilling profession. Which I’m sure it is. If you like waste.

Fifth option: is, frankly, looking to be the most desirable at the moment. In fact that strategy would be to pretty much carry on what I’m doing now – no work and extended periods of sitting down. However doing that probably leads to a shorter than average life expectancy and lower than average salary.

Option 1 or 2 it is, then. I can be option 5 at the weekend, and maybe I can do option 4 if I get really desperate.

To conclude, and on a completely unrelated note, here is a cool video:

Is that the light at the end of the..? No, it’s a TGV.

So here I am, in the last week of my year abroad. I can’t quite believe it’s gone so quickly – well at least upon reaching this point it feels like it’s gone quickly. I am all too aware of the times in between where I didn’t think it would ever end.

It gives rise to a variety of emotions, I think. I’ll be sad to leave the kids and the familiarity of somewhere I’ve got to know quite well and doesn’t, in some ways, feel foreign any more. It never fails to make me happy when they jump up at the teacher’s suggestion and yell “I WANT TO GO WITH EMMA!” (that is until they realise your lesson plan is horrible and they don’t understand a word you say).

Running with the dog theme that seems to have cropped up in this blog, today I was working with some 5emes, which roughly correlates to Year 8, and playing a game whereby one kid comes up to the front and mimes an action, and the other kids have to use the “he/she is (verb) +ing” construction. Cue many funny examples of dancing, singing, swimming etc. Then one of the kids suggested in French to another one that he should “faire le chien” – pretend to be a dog. So the kid obligingly went up to the front, got down on all fours and crawled about making woofing noises. Cue lots of laughter. Then, one little boy yells “he is DOGSING! Non! DOGGING, HE IS DOGGING!” Despite the fact that they did not know what this meant, and if he was trying to mime dogging then he needs to check out a few car parks around the Bangor area (the one in Northern Ireland, I am reliably told), I found this pretty hilarious which led to them finding me hilarious, and it took a minute or so for the fact that I just heard a 12 year old child say the word dogging in a completely innocent context to subside. As it was my last lesson with them, I also brought some Cadbury’s funsize chocolates over in my suitcase to give to them – they found the Caramel messy and confusing, and the Crunchie they referred to as a “chinese sweet”. Most perplexing. Shows just how much they need REAL SWEETS in France and not just piggy trotter Haribo.

That is just one of numerous funny incidents that I wish I’d written down this year, as put together they would probably fill out one of those “[French] Kids Say The Funniest Things” programs. It also seems a shame to leave something like this once I’ve just started to get a handle on how to teach, and just as my confidence in French is growing ever so slightly. But on the other hand, it isn’t something I’d want to do forever, and I think I am ready to head home now and get back to some kind of normal routine. It just sucks that this routine will probably involve some mindnumbing job which will be wayyy less well paid than teaching and much harder work. On the plus side, I get to leave behind some of the really annoying teachers and never speak to them again! Result.

I will try to take some more photos before I leave, especially as it’s nice and summery now (20c today!), but here are a couple I took right at the beginning of my year here:

My Lycée

In other news, May 6th is going to be an exciting day for me – it’s the day I leave France for good and also Election Day – the first General Election I will be eligible to vote in. I have rather over-romanticised the dash it will be to get from Portsmouth where our ferry docks at 6pm, to my Village Hall in Cambridgeshire by 10pm when polls close. Apart from the fact that I will probably be tired and moody, rather than fresh-faced and excited by political change, I still haven’t decided who to vote for. This may result in a poll booth panic where I accidentally vote BNP (I have actually daydreamed this scenario).

Something that may leave you thinking of me between the hours of 9.15-11.30 and 16.05 – 18.00 tomorrow is the thought that I have decided to show the 2emes (Year 11 equivalent) the Gruffalo TV adaptation on my laptop. Imagine a class full of adolescent boys watching that whilst eating “chinese sweets” and you will be some way to imagining my penultimate day of teaching…

Music for this week is not new because Dave hasn’t been online enough and so hasn’t passed on the latest inside tip, but I am quite enjoying Joanna Newsom’s new album: Have One On Me (favourite tracks include Easy, Have One On Me and, in my opinion the best, Good Intentions Paving Company)

Crouching Frenchman, Sh**ting Dog

Today was never going to go well.

Apart from the enormous dog turd right outside my front door this morning that involved acrobatics the likes of which my body has never seen to avoid it, it was really cold and depressing (as most of the world, save the Bahamas possibly, is at 6.30am). I’m going to take you through my morning commute in a series of words and pictures, partly because I’m lazy and partly because I like the colours.

I walk down here:

It’s a nice road, we have a horrifically overpriced but friendly corner shop run by a Chinese couple, and which is the only grocery shop I’ve ever been in my life to be filled with a constant smokey haze of some indiscernible incense (a cross between parma violents and burnt toast). It’s always smouldering away in a big, wooden, elephant-shaped holder right next to the crisps. As you do. If you ask me there just isn’t enough incense in British shops.

Then at the bottom of the road I take one of these:

Bet you’re jealous now. I get to ride on TRAMS. Daily. Go forth and weep at how pathetic and lame your car is. I am joking, of course. The tram experience, and particularly the French tram experience, is a whole other blog entry, and one that will have to wait.

Then I get on one of these:

The bus from Nantes to the town where my schools are takes about an hour so perfect napping opportunity. Or frantic lesson prep if I forgot/procrastinated the night before.

So there you go. We have arrived at school. So I do my lessons, most of which were like getting blood from a particularly anaemic stone. It doesn’t help that I see each group every other week – groups that were created based on their English results. And this week it’s… not the good groups. If I have to talk about Alice in Wonderland, or draw a caterpillar on the board, or hear a French child say ”ed-ge-’og’ one more time, there might be some unpleasant consequences. The group from 5-6pm were particularly fun, within minutes of being in the classroom, one of the boys had thrown his and another boy’s rucksack halfway across the classroom and thumped himself down into a chair on the other side of the classroom.

Anyway once all that was done, I left for the last bus, which is at quarter past six. I let the kids go five minutes early because a) this makes them love you and b) you also get to leave early. Sneaky eh? Also today I wanted to squeeze a visit in to an amazing bakery which was completely transformed into an Easter chocolate shop of wonders to see if they had any post-Easter bargains going on.

So off I set, all pleased with myself (the walk from school to the bus stop takes about 15 minutes) and suddenly what I momentarily thought was a giant black rat jumped over the gate of the house I was passing and ran off down the road. I realised it was actually a convincingly rat-like poodle, such as this one, much favoured by French people everywhere:

(I wish to point out that the dog on Google images that resembled the real life dog more was in fact a rescue case, so I would’ve felt a bit bad about using it for the lols. This is the same dog once it was all healthy again.)

What was I to do? It was rush hour as schools and work generally finishes at 6 in France, so there was schoolbus after schoolbus thundering up the road right next to the Rat. Despite my overwhelming desire not to speak French unnecessarily, I thought I’d probably feel a bit bad if it got squashed in front of me. So when I saw a woman who presumably lived in the house next door go in her front gate, I called a very polite, not-too-English “Excusez-moi?” which was COMPLETELY ignored, so I called again. Nothing. She carried on walking up her front garden path without even turning around. Now unless she’s deaf, that’s preeeeetty damn rude, and my Rage began to build nicely. I was also too hot due to the enormous coat I was wearing ’cause it was cold in the morning, and hungry. So I just thought stuff the dog, and carried on walking towards the bus stop and wondrous supplies of chocolate. But midway down the road I got an attack of conscience, and walked back to knock on the front door of the house where I’d seen it jump over the fence. By now, all hope of going to the chocolate shop of wonder had evaporated, along with the last vestiges of my care and respect for animals when the Rat suddenly showed up having somehow sneaked all the way back behind me in what must have been an elaborate “What’s The Time, Mr. Wolf?” act on its part.

Faced now with the prospect of potentially missing the last bus home as a result of the Wild Rat Chase, I hoped some of my former good humour could be restored by raging against the machine that is the Loire-Atlantique public transport system and using an out of date bus pass. Only to turn the corner and see that the driver was the only one out of the 10+ different drivers who is meticulous about checking every single ticket and pass to pass through the door. I was consumed with an unnatural urge to punch the side of the bus and run away laughing maniacally, possibly giving the dog a good kick on the way by if it was within booting distance.

Now I know this story appears to be me self indulgently ranting at a series of fundamentally only slightly annoying circumstances, but I felt the need to commit my experiences to blog just to show that it’s completely fine (normal even(!)) to get the Rage at what may appear to other people to be mild inconveniences, but to you is the most infuriating thing since passive aggression. Oh wait that last part’s just me…

The Political Side of Ashes to Ashes

I’ve got to admit, I’ve got a bit of a guilty pleasure. Sometimes I get up early in the morning to squeeze it in before I leave for school. Sometimes I manage to seize the opportunity at school when none of the teachers are looking. And best of all in the evenings I can do it pretty much all night long, if I wanted to. I’m talking about spending time on the Daily Mail website, of course! You filthy minded creep, you.

Well anyway today, I woke up eager to get onto BBC iPlayer to catch up with last night’s first episode of the third and final series of Ashes to Ashes, one of my favourite programs ever. I have nice friends you see, and thanks to them despite being in France I can catch up with all the wonders of British TV by conning iPlayer into thinking I’m in the UK. The first episode is great, completely screws with your head about the possible ending of the whole program. Here is a suitably 80s shot of Gene Hunt, one of the main characters, looking manly and brooding whilst sitting on the hood of his also suitably 80s Audi Quattro:

Well what better way to spend a lazy morning (ok, early afternoon) before you get out of bed by indulging in a bit of DM-surfing? Apart from the usual “Don’t judge me for my slutty past, ’cause I’m an independent woman trying to make something of myself now. Come, adore me“, and “Look at my <insert food product here> that’s still in its original packaging! The mind boggles! (56th in a Mail series)“, I came across a brilliant article, combining my love of Ashes to Ashes with political point scoring. I’m not sure whether it was genius to come up with this poster, or total stupidity given that any number of fantastic ripostes were so easily available:

I’m sorry, how brilliant is that? You can just see the advertising execs with furrowed brows thinking vaguely of a way to relate the Conservatives to past British failure and lo, putting the face of David Cameron on an incredibly popular TV character whom many people relate to as an anti-PC (and by extension anti-Labour) crusader sprang to mind. Where’s Don Draper when you need him?

How could anyone not see that coming? David Cameron’s response was, ‘I think there will be thousands of people, millions of people, in the country who wish it was the 1980s and that police were out there feeling collars and nicking people instead of filling in forms.’ This was practically a gift to the Tories to prove their Common Sense and Traditional British Morality to the raging hoardes.

There’s something I really enjoy about these ads, and I’m not sure what it is. I think it’s probably a combination of the idiocy of the original spoof and the fact that it involves Gene Hunt. That and the fact that I’m a bit overexcited about the whole Ashes to Ashes deal at the moment anyway…

In other news, this week I want to see How to Train Your Dragon more than is normal for a 20 year old. There are probably better things to do in Paris than get excited every time you see an advert for the film on the Metro. Alice in Wonderland is worth seeing – I still don’t enjoy 3D though, it’s a bit like watching through rainbow-coloured oily film. But maybe that’s just me. The Bandersnatch is officially the best imaginary animal ever, it has a ridiculously oversized tail and healing spit – what more could you want? Oh and it looks hilarious when it runs. Stephen Fry steals the show as the Cheshire Cat but Johnny Depp’s alternating accents between lisping goofy child and depressed and slightly malicious Glaswegian are a bit offputting. Oh and Anne Hathaway’s take on the White Queen is fantastic, you’ll see what I mean when you watch it.

Music of the week as introduced to me by Dave: Freelance Whales (particularly good are Location, Kilojoules, Broken Horse and Great Estates)