wine tasting, competitive teachers and a french Liam Neeson...

Another exhausting week in my new French life. After a long summer doing, well, absolutely nothing, waking up at half past 7 for a 9am lesson has come as a huge shock. I may or may not have forgotten that this time exists, and frankly I preferred when I didn’t acknowledge it.

Lesson planning kicked in this week, as did the urge to reply to the students in French. I found myself saying “alors…" when starting something, and “oui, d’accord" when agreeing with a student’s barely understandable answer to a question. Seeing as I’m constantly being reminded by teachers that I am being paid solely to speak English when in the school, these habits need to stop. Compared to other assistants’ schools, mine is strict and way too up themselves. One teacher actually told me, “we are all in competition here. Zee teachers, zee students, even zee cleaning ladiez. Everyone seems nice, but zhey gossip so watch out" - thanks, really, I now feel absolutely crap and wary everytime I walk into the staff room. The bratty kids were even more bratty, and the nice ones even more complementary. A good week at the lycée then..

On Wednesday we took some time out from our strenuous day of speaking English, and went to see Taken 2. However, the French never like anyone tainting their brilliant culture, so put awful dubs over every American/English/generally foreign film, and Taken 2 was no exception. When Liam Neeson started talking, I died a little inside. The voice over they had for him was so wrong. If he had an infamous speech like in the first Taken, I wouldn’t have noticed. Moral of the story: it is impossible to replace Liam Neeson. Nevertheless, I managed to understand 90% of what they were saying, not that the action doesn’t speak for itself… but I felt proud anyway.

Thursday, a wine and music festival came to town. There were big white tents surrounding the fountain of the main square, Victor Hugo, and for €7 you could buy a  glass and taste every single wine/champagne/fruit juice at the stalls. I couldn’t have felt more French. I even fancied myself quite the wine connoisseur - swirling wine about and attempting to describe the taste, “yes, this one erm… you know, has a weird taste". Surprisingly, I had absolutely no idea and looked stupid.

This week has been an “immerse myself in French culture" week - even if I taught English, saw an originally American film and the wine sellers replied to me in English. Damn, gotta work on that accent…