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!

Firstly, I am still without the internet. I say without it because that is the case 90% of the time although I admit that I do have some access on my phone (expensive and heavily restricted), limited access at work and some usage at my highly generous prof’s house. This is a work in progress – hopefully soon we’ll have found a solution and I’ll be able to reply to things a bit more promptly and just generally be a bit more ‘in the loop’.

I am massively less tired now. For the first few days in France I was a complete zombie, something which I really hope didn’t lead anyone to think I was being rude. It’s been much easier to strike up conversation and to be excited about life this week now that I have a bit more energy. I think I’ve also almost mastered the greeting system now although it’s pretty complicated compared to the English system of ‘Say “Hello”’.

Yesterday I met a newly-arrived English assistant named Sam at Coty (Le Havre’s main shopping centre). As much as everyone in France has been lovely, and they genuinely have, it was ace to speak to a native speaker as well as someone that understands what it’s like to be an assistant. She’s also seen Avenue Q – as anyone who knows me in the slightest will tell you, this wins you unlimited brownie points with me. We’re going to try to meet up once a week to explore the city a bit and to chat about year abroad type things which’ll be lovely.

Having observed classes last week, I got stuck in today. I definitely like the classroom atmosphere in France – it’s very academic and focussed and the lessons are a lot less bitty than a lot of classes in England.  The second class I did involved me introducing myself to students and them giving me questions to answer – some very interesting questions came up but it was a nice class! Between lessons I went to the market and the bakery – there’s so much good food in France that it’s sometimes difficult to know what to buy!

Coming up I have another day of classes tomorrow followed by Le Club Sandwich (I’m assuming the play on words is intentional, it’s far more fun that way) on Friday which is a monthly session for anyone interested in speaking English. I have no idea whatsoever how good my French is (in a typical day, I get responses ranging from surprised compliments to utter blankness) but I’m fairly confident that I can handle speaking English for an hour!