Tramway, Tire-bouchons and Travellers

What a week it’s been! I’d like to pick up with this blog on Wednesday as that is when the last few days got exciting. At 12h12 on 12/12/12, Le Havre launched its long-anticipated tram network running two lines around the city. There’s been one or two teething problems (Line A seems to be much more efficient than Line B, possibly because Grand Hameau where the A trams go didn’t have their buses cancelled and Caucriauville near where I live did) but in general it seems to be going pretty well.

Circus, Champs-Élysées, Chartres and Cinema

Is it Christmas yet? If not, it feels like it should be. I’m really quite tired as are the majority of my students. I’m not sure that students in England would cope with the 8-17.30 school day.

The week before last, a few of us went to the Cirque de l’eau, apparently Europe’s only water circus! It was a strange but very entertaining show with clowns, acrobats, balancing acts and animals. I would really like a sea lion. They seem like the kind of animal that everyone needs in their lives.

One Lovely Blog Award

The One Lovely Blog Award is a bit like a very, very nice chain letter. Someone sends you a nomination (Donné, author of Cupcakes and Croissants, in my case) and you then accept it, write seven things about you that people won’t know and then make some nominations of your own.

It’s lovely of Donné to have nominated me because I love reading her blog – I can normally hear her reading it aloud in my head. Perhaps next year when we live together, we should have year abroad reminiscing nights where we all read aloud from our blogs… or maybe not.

Top 10 Things... England

10 Things I Miss About England

I chose to write the things I’d miss about France first because I think that was probably the more beneficial for my mental state. There are so many fantastic things about France and it can be difficult to remember that sometimes, especially if you’re busy filling out a form in triplicate or being glared at by an old person for speaking English in public with your English friends. That said, I come from a wonderful, wonderful country and the things I miss about it are…

Top 10 Things... France

10 Things I’ll Miss About France

With the Christmas holiday and a return to England on the horizon, it seemed a good time to reflect on the things that I’ll miss whilst I’m gorging myself on mince pies, catching up with family and visiting my beloved Londres.

Southampton, Sleepover and Spectating

*Shuffles in nervously*

It’s been a long time since I’ve updated you all on what I’ve been doing, sorry about that. Life has gotten in the way somewhat but I’m back now.

At the end of my last blog, I’d just got back from a lovely weekend in Angers with the glorious Mlle Stam (Cupcakes and Croissants – read it, it’s better than this tosh) and the first French school holiday of La Toussaint was on the horizon.

For the first week of this holiday, I headed back, armed with French pastries, to Southampton where I spent the week with my old housemates. This was a truly lovely week and one which I wish could have lasted much longer. As soon as I arrived at my old house, we ordered Domino’s (it’s good to know some things don’t change) and from that point onwards it really did feel like being home.

Cardiff, Castle and Crêpes

Sorry I haven’t posted for a while. I blame the alliterative blog titles, they’re clearly just too challenging for me to come up with on a regular basis.

One possible reason for this could be that my level of English is deteriorating every single day. ‘Does this sound natural in English?’ is a question which I’m asked all of the time at work and, although I take my best guess, it’s getting harder every time I'm in. I know that when you stop speaking a foreign language it becomes more difficult (Hi there, 3 remaining words from GCSE Spanish) but I’d never have thought that it could happen to your mother tongue so quickly and so easily. Even worse, my English is deteriorating MUCH quicker than my French is improving – they’re completely out of sync. I therefore find myself speaking two languages atrociously without a smidgen of grammar in either – not fun!

Railways, Rouen and Raclette

On Wednesday, I and three of the other English assistants went for another wander around town stopping by the enormous fair which is here until the end of the month and ending up at the Coty shopping centre. The fair had Kinder crêpes for 3€ – pretty ­­­­­­­cheap for a taste revolution! Kinder chocolate seems to be really popular in France, especially amongst my students, and I’ve gotten a little bit addicted. Although it makes me feel like a 5 year old, it’s a lot nicer than Milka which I really don’t like that much!

After this we went to the Monoprix in Coty and discovered that they sell PRINGLES and Tyrells’ popcorn (Sweet and salted in the same bag, existing in harmony. Cinemas, take note). Such a good day for food!

Argent, Articles and Arrivals

Today has been an almighty win of a day, my favourite for quite a while.

My Erasmus cheque arrived at my house meaning that I’m now substantially richer than I was, my parcel from home containing some books that I needed for my dissertation arrived in my pigeonhole at school along with my new photocopy code from the school and (most excitingly for me) the National Theatre Book Shop put my article on understudies published in SUSU’s The Edge entertainment magazine in their daily news update alongside articles from The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph and The Stage. This is the biggest share I’ve ever had and, even better, I didn’t solicit it at all. Wherever they found the piece, I’m very glad they did – it made my day.

Puddles, Phones and Planning

What goes up must come down. I woke up this morning with a headache (champagne does that to me sometimes but I don’t have enough chances to drink it to remember!) and just as I wanted to go out the heavens opened. Not ideal as I’ve already been the crazy English guy soaked to the skin wearing only a t-shirt this week…

I decided to wait out the rain but this came at the price of meeting someone who insulted my French. I wasn’t too chuffed about this and even if I do speak French like a Spanish cow (French idiom there for you, courtesy of my friend Sam) I don’t need to be told – I’d never tell anyone I thought their English was crap, mainly because that’d be bloody rude! As I’ve said in other blog entries, it’s incredibly difficult for me to gauge how good my French is because the range of responses has been so varied. Today didn’t clarify anything. Meh.

Clubs, Churches and Casinos

Today was pretty hectic but awesome. I packed loads of stuff it but had really good fun doing it and the possibility of a trip to Angers in the near future made it even more exciting.

In the morning, I went to Coty to use the internet. I think that the security guards may think I’ve set up office in their shopping centre and, to an extent, they’re right. Having sent my dissertation proposal to my new supervisor for it to be rechecked, I then headed back in the Caucriauville direction to go to the bakery, Le Fournil de Montgeon. I’m now known in the bakery as the guy that orders pizza so I’m glad it was Le Club Sandwich day as this gave me the opportunity to order something different and avoid being typecast. Sandwich in hand, I headed up the hill to the lycée arriving just in time for the start of the club.

Post, Painters and Pens

Today (Wednesday) has been rather a long day. Not a bad one but certainly one full of petty little irritations.

To begin with, the (incredibly efficient and polite) painters arrived whilst I was still getting ready so I just scooped up what I could and headed for school to try to use the internet. I’d been at school for around 10 minutes when I heard a weird noise. It turns out that this was the fire alarm although it was incredibly different from any I’d ever heard in England – it was a drill but all the same I’m glad one of my colleagues decided to swing by the staffroom on the way out and caught me looking confused.

Students, Stalls and Salutations

Gosh it’s a good day to be a reader of my blog. If it’s a slow day where you are, you may now read back through all of the entries that I’ve only just got internet to post – they’re a captivating read, charting the twists and turns of my incredibly interesting life from my moment of arrival in France to the present day.

Alternatively, you may be thinking ‘Actually, I’m good. I have a fairly busy life and I’m just popping by’. In which case, this is the entry for you – the plot’s moved on a bit but if anything it’s only got more interesting. All readers are catered for here at Le Havr’ing a Laugh so I don’t want to catch anyone saying otherwise!

Classes, Cakes and Cell-Phones

Wednesday was an early start – even though I haven’t officially started yet, I went in to observe a few classes to get an idea of how the school works. It was interesting to see the different classes as I was always in pretty much the same set at school and haven’t ever done any work experience in secondary. The difference in attitude and ability from class to class that a teacher has to deal with is crazy.

Mobile phones are a bit of a menace in the classroom but unfortunately for the students the teachers know exactly what they’re doing and the odds are very definitely in their favour. It was a struggle not to laugh when a confiscated phone rang and the teacher answered it to tell them not to call again during lessons – the profs don’t lose.

Lunch, Legacy and Le Havre

Tuesday morning was awesome. This may or may not be related to the fact that I spent all but an hour of it asleep. At 11.30, I went to the lycée as my prof had arranged for me to have lunch with some students. It was nice to talk to some people around my age and the lunch was pretty nice too – bonus!

After lunch, I took the two buses to my other lycée. One of the lucky things about the first lycée is that they didn’t haven’t had an assistant before which takes the pressure off a bit. The second one, on the other hand, had an assistant who seems to have set quite the precedent to follow. Hopefully they’ll like what I do just as much.

I met the headteacher of the school who has only been in place a few weeks herself. In France, the longest that a head can stay at a school is 5 years so they change quite often. Although the head was the person I spoke to for the longest, it was another case of meeting a heck of a lot of people in a short time – hopefully I’ll remember at least some of their names! The teacher overseeing my timetable and my work at this school is also very nice. He’s incredibly enthusiastic and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the history of Le Havre, Normandy and seemingly France in general, something proved by an incredibly detailed car tour of Le Havre and the surrounding area. He also has a set of autographed Amélie Nothomb books which I’m sure some of my lecturers would love to get their hands on.

All in all, another good day.

Buses, Banks and Blunders

Having survived an entire waking day in France, I was feeling pretty good about my chances of surviving day two. I visited the lycée part of where I’m living with my prof and met what felt like ten million people in the process. It’s going to take a while to learn everyone’s name but everyone at the lycée is very friendly and helpful. It’s a great environment, plus the school has its own beehive. What’s not to love?

I would never have believed this but speaking more than one language is physically exhausting. I expected it to be mentally tough but I had no idea how knackered I would be after just two days. It isn’t so bad when you get to stick to one language for a while – in fact, that’s what dreams are made of at the moment – but the swaps can really catch you off guard. Before I can process what’s been said, first I need to work out what language it’s been said in and whilst that should be easy (one language I know, the other not so much!) it’s surprisingly confusing.

The Journey to France and Day 1!

The Journey to France!

To blatantly plagiarise Miranda Hart: ‘Hello and thanks for joining’. My last post left me fairly stressed at the prospect of the year abroad but I can now report that I am here and at the time of writing (Wednesday night), I am alive and well.

The Day the Nerves Struck...

...Or yesterday, as it's also known.

Up to that point, as discussed in my last post, I'd been a bit too cool for school about the whole 'emigrating to another country for 9 months' thing. It hadn't phased me. Life was good.

The first thing that set me on edge was having not received my grant cheque even though everyone else that I spoke to had received theirs last week. I now know that it's because the uni haven't posted it yet (that's a whole other story) but being £300 down did temporarily cause a lot of panic.

Time is a Snail

Wow, look at me being all metaphorical! In all seriousness, it seems that the closer I get to leaving for Le Havre, the slower the days are going.

I'm a bit odd in that I plan obsessively weeks (sometimes months) in advance and yet I absolutely HATE waiting - whilst other people forget their exams as soon as they sit them, I'm like a cat on a hot tin roof until I get my results. The longer I have to wait in life, the more irritated I get and the year abroad is no exception. I'm not at all nervous, something I put down to the the idea of moving to a different country being so strange that I won't believe it until it happens.

A Guaranteed Audience of None

As I'll be stepping off the ferry into my French experience three weeks today, it seemed like the perfect time to start writing my year abroad blog.

A lot of year abroad blogs make light of the fact that they have at least one reader in the form of their mum. Having not (actively, at least) shared the link to my blog with my parents, I have a guaranteed audience of none. This being the case, the plan is to just write about my experiences in a way that makes me smile and will hopefully entertain anyone else that wants to read about them too.

I'm incredibly excited to be heading out to the city of Le Havre which will be my home over the coming months. As a small dock city it may prove to be not that different from my beloved, slightly dodgy home of Southampton but, let's face it, that just sounds a little too convenient and simple. Whatever happens, I'm glad it's getting closer and I can't wait to live it.