Croissants and Kalashnikovs: 2013

Thursday 28 November 2013

A Week in the Life

Hello! For my third video blog I have made a 'Week in the Life' video diary, hoping to give you an insight into my life here in Oyonnax as an English language assistant.

à bientôt!

Wednesday 20 November 2013

Paris, Granada and Monsieur le Président

Hello! I haven't written anything on here for a long time and I don't really have an excuse, but to make up for it here's a photo-heavy post about my holiday to Paris and Granada and a brief encounter with François Hollande . I've also started filming a 'week in the life' video so you've all got that to look forward to... lucky you!

So my two week school holiday actually started with three days of extra work at school. It was really well paid so I thought it would be a good way to earn my trip to Paris and Spain and I worked with the same group of 10 students for three hours each morning which was good fun and hopefully really useful for their English too.

On the Thursday I had a great journey to Paris on a snazzy double decker train and arrived in the afternoon with my hands thrust firmly in my pockets due to a severe case of pick-pocket paranoia that was largely brought on by the numerous warnings I had been given from teachers and friends here in Oyonnax. I had been to Paris once before on a school trip when I was 12 but I didn't remember much so I was looking forward to being a top tourist with Lizzie.

le louvre + baguette = earning some top tourist points

art in le jardin des tuileries

eiffel tower

lizzie loving life as a parisienne

the best photo we've got from what was a very wet and windy evening at the top of l'arc de triomphe

traditional french indian cuisine

an amazing meal in for two

me, lizzie and lara - nottingham reunion at my first night out since being in france

squinting at la bastille looking happy about having my first crêpe

the view from the pompidou centre

looking cultured at a photography exhibition

continuing the cultured look at the pompidou centre

After a fantastic five days in Paris I had a rather long and hectic journey to Granada. After flying to Malaga, I had planned to take a late night bus into Granada, which I knew was always going to be a risk seeing as I didn't have much time to find the last bus of the day and I don't speak any Spanish. Our flight was late and I missed the bus, but I plucked up the courage to ask another passenger for help and ended up getting a free car ride all the way into Granada with the kindest couple ever and the lead violinist for the Granada orchestra. It was completely surreal and I had an hour and a half of talking in French about classical music and listening to lots of Spanish as well as getting regular updates from a live marriage proposal over the phone! Anyway... I made it, and I spent the next five days falling in love with Granada.

me and ro outside granada cathedral

cerveza, sangria and tapas

blinded by the spanish sun

some amazing tapas

guacamole tostada - best hangover food

late night view over Granada

me, nav and the alhambra

mango mojito - the most amazing cocktail

churros con chocolate

halloween

me and ro on halloween

My journey back from Granada was also a bit of a nightmare, but the worst bit of it all was that I went to the ladies' toilets in the airport and didn't realise until I walked out and got some pretty dirty looks. But I got on the plane on time and I spent another lovely night and morning in Paris before getting the train all the way back to Oyonnax. I want to say another massive thank you to Lizzie, Ro and Nav; getting a little taste of other people's years abroad is amazing and it doesn't make me want to change what I'm doing now, but it definitely makes me wish I had an infinite number of years abroad with a different experience each time!

Since being back in Oyonnax I've been working hard planning and teaching lessons, and I'm still really loving the work. I've also started at my second school and I'm getting to know all of the pupils better and discovering what does and doesn't work in class.

The most exciting thing that's happened since I've been back was on the 11th November when François Hollande, the president of France, came to visit Oyonnax. To cut a lot of history short, Oyonnax is famous for its part in the French resistance during WWII. On the 11th November 1943, when all commemoration services were banned in occupied France, a secretly planned march took place through the streets of Oyonnax and this act became one of the strongest symbols of the French resistance. This year was the 70th anniversary, and so to mark this historic event there was an amazing re-enactment of the march with around 700 actors, and the president made a speech and laid a wreath. I thought the whole event was brilliant and very moving and I was lucky to be standing right next to the choir as they sang a rousing rendition of the French national anthem. However, the atmosphere wasn't quite what you would expect as it seemed that most of the people were more concerned with complaining about Hollande and expressing their anger at him being here in Oyonnax. I have never seen such a strong and united dislike against one man and it seemed a shame that his incredible unpopularity overshadowed the event itself.

the sun was shining as everyone sat and waited

the re-enactment of the march was shown live on big screens

here he is, le grand fromage himself - i wasn't actually that far away from him but he was so surrounded that it was better to watch it on the screen

A month today I'm flying home for Christmas and I can't wait, but although I really miss home, I'm still looking forward to the month ahead! As I said, I'm making my next video blog at the moment and I'll have it edited and uploaded as soon as possible so that you can see what a week as a language assistant in Oyonnax is really like!

also today I had my first full day of Snow in Oyonnax - I'm going to need to get used to it because apparently it will be like this until March...

à bientôt!

Sunday 20 October 2013

'Sortir!'

So it's been one month since I arrived here in Oyonnax, and I thought it would be a perfect time to write another update filling you in on what I've been up to over the past week.

Since coming here I have made the decision to become very cultured. Partly because that is one of the only things you can do here in Oyonnax but also because I figure it's a good way to immerse myself into the French way of life. So each week in Oyonnax there is a little guide called 'Sortir!' that shows the cinema listings and also information about the week's cultural events, and my aim is to do something from this guide every week - and so far I've been doing okay!

my collection of 'Sortir!' so far

My first choice from 'Sortir!' was a concert in the Cultural Centre (what better place to start my cultural adventure) last Friday night by 'Théodore, Paul & Gabriel', described on Wikipedia as "un groupe pop rock folk de Paris".

Théodore, Paul & Gabriel

I like pop and I like rock and I don't mind listening to folk - but the genre 'pop rock folk' was something completely new and very French. Ironically, in a little interview in the programme, the group compare French rock to English wine - saying that they aim to revitalise and bring back French rock- yet all of their songs are in English, almost a must for any group that want to be succesful around Europe and overseas. However, regardless of the language, these girls are really talented - they played a brilliant set to a lively full house and I had a really great evening and perhaps an easy introduction to my new French cultured life. 'Silent Veil' is one a good one to listen to if you also want to experience some 'French pop rock folk', and here is a little video of them covering 'Should I Stay or Should I Go' http://instagram.com/p/fV9Td5P1G2/#

Last weekend I also attempted to make a cheesecake which went surprisingly well given the lack of ingredients and cooking equipment. Four of us had planned a meal together and I offered to make a lemon cheescake (one of the best desserts you can make without an oven) to follow Shana's amazing chicken curry. My first obstacle was no Philadelphia or any other cream cheese in the supermarket (I bought mascarpone instead) and then the actual preparation of the cheesecake involved a lot of improvisation - such as a wine bottle replacing a rolling pin, a tiny fork replacing a whisk and my saucepan replacing any sort of mixing bowl which meant that my cheesecake was speckled with what looked like fresh vanilla seeds but was actually little bits of the non-stick coating that had been scraped of with my fork. However, all in all it was a success and here is another little instagram video of me making the cheesecake http://instagram.com/p/fXjLzxv1CW/#

lemon cheesecake ingredients: cream, mascarpone, lemons, biscuits, butter, honey

my ingenious buscuit crushing method

a half eaten cheesecake

On Sunday a few of us from the residence went along to the Fête Foraine (basically a funfair) that had been hiding behind the Cultural Centre all week. Unfortunately when we arrived it was completely dead - the few rides that were there were being taking taken down and the whole place looked like the set of an abandoned theme park in a horror movie, so we took a few photos and left. After my dreams of some dodgems and a crêpe were crushed, we went in search of a restaurant, only to soon realise that this wasn't going to be easy on a sunday night in Oyonnax. We eventually found what seemed to be the only place open and as I looked at the menu my eyes lit up and it felt like luck had finally come my way. This restaurant was a cous cous restaurant. Yes. Everything was cous cous. And I love cous cous. Anyway, the waiter was a little odd but the food was delicious - a big bowl of cous cous for everyone to share along with a vegetable soup and some spicy sausages.

the empty fête foraine

shana, me, marlowe and betlem

marlowe, betlem and the cous cous

I'm still only working 8 hours a week and so my working week started with no work, but instead I spent Monday preparing for my classes (I have a lot of respect for teachers right now, knowing how much effort is put into each lesson for it to often be torn apart by at least one group of uninterested students) and I also had a interview for the school newspaper! A small group of students from one of my best classes had asked if they could write an article about me and it was really nice to see how much effort they had put into the questions (they held the whole interview in English to then be translated into French) - and I'm sure I'll put a photo up when the article is published. In fact today I have just had my second interview, this time for the regional newspaper 'Voix de l'Ain', as one of the English teachers at my school writes a weekly column about differences between the culture here and around the world. Two newspaper interviews in one month isn't bad.

in all my classes this week we played a halloween game (it seems early i know but schools have just broken up for a two week half term) where i would give each team a word which they had to use to create a sentence - here is my favourite sentence by far

The highlight of my week was probably my day trip to Lyon on Wednesday. My trip was nearly ruined before it had even started thanks to some very stereotypical French train strikes, but after a replacement bus service and a 2 hour train journey where no one was quite sure if the train was really going to take us to Lyon or not, I made it! My phone also decided not to properly charge itself the night before so unfortunately I don't have any photos (the ones below are from the internet) - but I met up with some other English assistants and had a great day of speaking English (it had been a while), eating an amazing three course lunch and visiting some more Lyon tourist hotspots.

basilica of notre-dame de fourvière

the inside was one of the most beautiful things i've ever seen - and it had a crypt just below and just as incredible

the ancient theatre of fourvière

the acoustics on stage were amazing - clever romans

My week ended with two more cultural activities taken from 'Sortir!'. The first was on Thursday night as I went back to the Cultural Centre with Sophia, the German assistant in Oyonnax, to watch the film 'La Vie d'Adèle'.

The film has had a lot of media coverage, having won the Palme d'Or this year at Cannes and due to it's extremely graphic sex scenes. In brief I thought the film was an amazing piece of cinema and deserves all of the recognition it is getting. It is three hours long, but not once did I look at my watch or notice the time, which for me is a sign of a great film. As for the sex scenes - yes they were graphic, verging on pornographic, but they work as part of the film on a whole and also with what the director was trying to achieve. Never have I felt so involved in such an intense relationship on screen. For me, the only problem with the sex scenes was that they were so long and so graphic that I found it hard to watch them without thinking of the two actresses and how hard these scenes must have been to film, something that has also been talked a lot about in the press.

My final cultural adventure of the week was a late Friday night trip to the 'Finale Coupe de France des Rallyes'.

At around 9pm we drove about 10 minutes out of Oyonnax up some mountain roads to a pitch black forest full of cars and caravans and people stumbling around with torches. As we walked towards the sound of rally cars everyone else was walking away telling us it had finished, but we did still manage to watch the last hour or so. We scrambled up the side of the road into the trees to get a view over the sharp corner in front of us. The atmosphere was great and it was exciting watching all of the cars try and make the corner - and when some of them didn't the crowd got pretty rowdy.

The next two weeks are looking pretty exciting for me as schools are on half-term and I'm putting my cultural adventures in Oyonnax on hold as I travel to Paris and Granada! However, before I leave I'm doing three days of extra holiday work which means I have spent my weekend preparing 9 hours worth of teaching material... tomorrow's three hour lesson (yes - three hours straight each day with the same 10 students) starts with this great article which pretty much blows the age old French stereotype out of the water http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/15/wiltshire-dig-frogs-legs-eaten-british-before-french

à bientôt!

Tuesday 8 October 2013

Video Blog No.2

Hello! It has taken a while but I have finally made a second video blog!

As promised, below are some photos of everything that I have been getting up to here in France. Today I had my second day working at the school and I have two more weeks of work until a two week holiday! Yes, French half term is two weeks and I can't wait to spend my holiday in Paris and Granada!

Also, I had a bit of a nightmare today when I was walking to school and my jeans completely split at the crotch... It was too late to turn back and I had to spend my lessons positioned carefully at the front of the class trying very hard not to flash my boxers to the onlooking groups of 15 year olds.

Anyway, thank you for reading and watching and I will try and update the blog again before I head of to Paris. If you want to keep even more up to date with everything I'm doing then just follow me on Instagram or Twitter.