Sad Times.

A sad thing happened yesterday – I bought my ticket home. On the morning of the 8th of May, I will arrive in Paris, climb aboard a Eurostar, and reluctantly return to England.

I really don’t want to, but it’s got to happen. If I could transport family, Frida and friends (‘the three Fs’) to France, i’d be happy to live here long term, but that’s not entirely practical. Besides, England needs me - I leave for a few months, and the country falls into disarray, with elections, and new Prime Ministers popping up all over the place.

So, in a nice end-of-France post, I thought I’d make a list of some of the things i’m going to miss about France. It’s difficult to think of them all off the top of my head, as i’ll probably only realise a lot of them once i’m back in the UK. Still, here’s a few:

• Fresh baguettes - stereotypical, but true
  
• Trams. I actually love them.
  
• Ordering food in a restaurant, and not being entirely sure what it is until it arrives.
• Complaining about the lack of bacon.
• Being a foreigner.
• Learning a few new words every day. Forgetting them the next.
  
• Getting lost in the city, and simply wandering around until finding out where I am.
• Being able to understand people, when they think you have no idea what they’re saying.
• Being a ‘celebrity’ in school, and having every pupil saying “Good morneeng, Gaveen” as they walk past.
• The more relaxing speed of life. England is too fast, busy and grey. France is the opposite.

Also, i'm not sure what is going to happen to this blog once i've left Nantes. I'd like to carry it on, but my life in Reading tends to be fairly dull. It'd just end up being hundreds of Airfix Models and Fimo Fires. And let's face it, who wants to read about that!

Last Week of Lessons.

So, it's over. Today I had my last-ever class. The seven months have gone incredibly quickly, and I don't really want to stop teaching!

A lot of pupils had made me 'goodbye' cards and posters. Some of them were cute and well-written, some of them were a bit last-minute, and simply a scrawled poster. I have a few favourites, though, such as this one, which was done by a particularly inventive pupil. Apparently it shows the Conquistadors invading South America and the Aztec people fighting them off. An obvious choice for an English assistant.


That's maize they're growing in the fenced-area. This is going on my wall when i return to England.

This one, however, is the best of all. It's a joint effort from a class of 10-year olds. It's not artistic, but the message they wrote on it is the best thing i've ever read:



You can zoom in to see the message, which reads:

"For Gavin I go missed you
A feeling which is down at the bottom of l'heart at the bottom of the eyes a good qu it is necessary to have a good qu it is nessecary to give a mistery which give l'friendship. It adore Gavine passes a good voyage."

It does make me wonder if they've learned a single thing this year. Never mind.

With my two favourite classes, it was not a proper goodbye, as i'll be meeting up with them in a couple of weeks in London. They're all going to be there on a school trip, and i'm going to accompany them for a day around various tourist attractions. Apparently they're looking forward to seeing me in my 'native habitat'..!

Spitfire Stop-motion.

A while ago on the BBC, there was a series called James May's Toy Stories, which basically made giant versions of childhood toys. One of the episodes involved building a huge Airfix model. I'd pretty much forgotten that Airfix existed, but felt briefly inspired to build a Spitfire, before quickly forgetting once again.

Then, Frida sent a parcel to France containing an Spitfire Airfix kit for 'a boring day in the shed'. Today, being Sunday, was that day, and so I made my Spitfire. Not content with simply making it, I decided to make a short (very) stop-motion film of the model, complete with authentic Spitfire engine noises.



Like I said, Sunday + France = Suddenly taking up weird hobbies. Probably need to get out more.

Nantes Carnival.

Last Sunday, there was a carnival in Nantes. A french friend reliably informs me that it's the beginning of a festival-week where Nantais people celebrate the end of the winter, and the beginning of the spring. All I know is that it involved an unhealthy amount of confetti, squirting-string and bizarre floats.

There were all kinds of strange things coming down the road, such as a troupe of Sarkozys, Noddy and friends, and some robots with whisk-hand. People were spraying the ones they didn't like with the squirty-string stuff, so the Sarkozys were covered pretty quickly.


Noddy, PC Plod and Big Ears. Interestingly, in French Noddy is called 'Oui-Oui' (yes-yes), and Big Ears is 'Potiron' (pumpkin).


Some of the eleven Sarkozys (Sarkozi?)


Whisky men.


A deep-sea diver with a spider as a hand acting as a puppeteer to the mayor of Nantes. Obviously.


There was a lot of confetti on the floor by the end of the parade.

Now for a blog-first - there should be a video just under here. Apparently Noddy and crew enjoy listening to Muse when they are in procession. How odd.

Salmon Shenanigans.

My trip to Geneva was cancelled, due to an certain Icelandic volcano. This means i've got a whole week to fill. Today, I passed the time by making an overly-extravagant lunch.



I don't know what they're actually called, but never mind. I made a dill sauce out of oil, vinegar, cream, lemon juice, salt and sugar and left it for a bit to make it all dill-y. While I was waiting, I prepared some cucumber, salad, and smoked salmon on a plate, then poured the dill sauce on top.

I'm thinking of trying to make sushi next, but i'm scared I might poison myself. I might wait until i'm back in the UK, where i'm certain of my fish-vocab.

Paris with Swede.

For the first week of my Easter holidays, I met up with Frida in Paris. It's conveniently halfway between Nantes and Reading, and so provided a convenient place to see her.

Bear in mind we're both students, so it was Paris-on-a-budget. The hotel was fairly cheap and cheerful, but it provided a bed and a bathroom, so we can't complain too much.


Frida had a new digital SLR, and thus had to take a photo of everything. Including my camera.

We'd already been to Paris in February of 2009, and 'done' most of the touristy things, such as the Eiffel Tower, the Musée D'Orsay, the Louvre etc., so we tried to find some different, less touristy things to do. The only problem is that the less-touristy things are that for a reason - they're not as good.

Int he five days that we were in Paris, I reckon we walked about 25 - 30 miles. And i'm not even exaggerating. Every morning we woke up at 09h00 and left the hotel, never with any real plan for the day. This resulted in us walking a lot. The weather was amazing for the whole week, and it felt a shame to spend it racing around undergound in sweaty trains.


Spring in Paris means a lot of flowers, most of which Frida has captured on film (/SD card).

We'd already been up the Eiffel Tower in the daytime and at night, so the only time that remained was at sunset. We didn't know it at the time, but the redness of the sky was die to the Icelandic volcano eruption filling the sky with volcanic ash. This meant that the sunset looked unusual, but it also made it very hazy. As we were standing at the top of the tower, they turned the lights on. They have a mix of normal floodlighting and flashing strobe lights. The strange thing is, when the strobe lights are on, there are just as many flashes coming up from the ground level as everyone takes photos of the lit-up tower.


Volcanic sunset over Paris. I never thought i'd type that sentence.


The Eiffel Tower in the evening sun.

Once the sun actually set, it got dark pretty quickly, so we walked by the River Seine for a bit before getting a bit cold and retreating back to the hotel.


A carousel by the Eiffel Tower


A couple were having their wedding photos by the tower. I thought i'd join in.

On one of the days we went to Montmartre, and waled around for an afternoon. I like Montmartre, as it feels a bit like a village within a city. The cobbled streets are narrow and winding, and every corner brings an interesting house, little vineyard or shop full of tourist tat...


A view from Montmartre across a, once again, hazy Paris.

In the five days we were in Paris, I took 384 photos. I reckon Frida took even more. Maybe slightly excessive, but it was such a nice week that it felt necessary to document every single bit of it!

Day at the Beach.

Last time I went to Pornic, it was the 14th of October, a couple of weeks after I arrived in France. I remember the place being nice, but it was a bit cold for too much beach time.

This time, however, it was much better. The weather was nearing 20°c, and it was sunny all day. One of my French friends has a static caravan by the sea, so a few of us went down in a couple of cars for a day-at-the-beach.

The main area of Pornic is a fishing port, but either side of the port are 21 small beaches, varying in size from 500m long, to a few feet wide. As it's still early April, there's hardly any tourists invading the coast yet.


The view from some of the rocks beside the beach.


The marina at Pornic.

We arrived at the coat at about midday, and ended up staying there until midnight. Unfortunately, I spent the majority of the time sitting in one direction, which has resulted in only one half of my face being tanned. Not a good look.


Possibly the world's smallest beach. I could actually touch both sides at the same time. We had to paddle to get to this one.


A view across the beaches to the town.


Deliciously warm sand.

I took a photo looking down onto a beach from the cliffs, where there were a few groups of people sunbathing under parasols. I thought it made quite a nice picture, until I zoomed in on the picture, and realised it was a 'plage nudiste'. I'm thought i'd best leave that one off of here...

End of Term.

Another Friday, another week gone. Time in France goes scarily fast. It must be something to do with the time difference, or something...

The next two weeks are 'les vacances de Pâques', or the Easter holidays. Easter has already come and gone, but nothing stops the French from having another holiday! The schools are off for two weeks, until the last week of April.

I intend to make the most of the two weeks of sun and warmth before I return to drizzly England, so my schedule is roughly as follows:

A BBQ at the beach this Saturday
Mum, Dad and Ross coming to visit this Sunday
Off to Paris with Frida on Monday
Return from Paris on Saturday
Off to Geneva with other assistants on the following Monday
Return from Geneva on the following Saturday

It's a fairly packed couple of weeks, but I shall endeavour to update this as often as I can.

Joyeuses Pâques!

It's Easter Sunday, and i'm sitting in a shed in France. It doesn't sound very attractive, but you'd be surprised. It's sunny outside, and there were children running around earlier looking for eggs in the garden. This morning, in true Greene-family fashion, I was about to paint a boiled egg, when it occured to me that acrylic paints aren't edible. So, I just ate the egg instead. Never mind.

The best thing about being away from England for easter is that I completely avoid all the 'hilarious' puns which appear at this time of year. This is the poster which was displayed in the One Stop staff room last year:


It actually hurts to read it. And the last part, with 'egg-tra' doesn't even work!

Luckily, the French language is not geared up to such painful punnery - 'oeufcellent' doesn't really work as well, does it? Much as I miss Creme Eggs, i'd quite happily do without them every year if it meant no puns.
And i'm not even yolking.

(Sorry.)

Orléans Part II

After a delay, here's the much-anticipated final part of my trip to Orléans...

On the Saturday night, I went to a UV party in a manor house. And yes, it was as much fun as it sounds! The 'UV' element meant that we painted our faces with special paint, and danced around in a room which had UV lights all around the walls. I took a few photos, but they don't show up particularly well. This photo was taken by someone else, but i'm sure they won't mind!


I thought the man in the picture might mind, so he's been blanked out. You can still see how colourful the party was though.

The next morning, I went to the first annual 'Orleáns Chocolate Exhibition'. It seemed a bit assumptive to call it the 'first annual', as they had no idea if it was going to be popular or not. And, as it happens, it wasn't. You'd think a chocolate exhibition would include demonstrations, tasting, free samples, competitions and the like, but it was basically just a vast, empty chocolate shop. We stayed for about twenty minutes, then returned to the town centre.


The highlight: a Citroen 2CV. Made of chocolate. And why not?

It seemed to rain a lot when I was in Orléans, which somewhat hindered my outdoor adventures, but I still wandered around the streets a bit, admiring French architecture, cobbled streets, and overly-flowery flower shops.


A particularly damp road.


It almost looked like they had all spilled out of the shop and leaked onto the road. Still, it looked nice!

Countdown to England.

As the last couple of weeks of teaching approach, it's dawned on me that I only have a few free days before I return to England. Worrying! To make the most of my remaining time here, I have wandered around taking pictures of anything and everything, as you're about to find out...


I bought these ingredients...


...cut them up...


...and made tomato, basil and mozzarella bruschettas.

I went into town today (a bad idea on a saturday), and saw this strange object in Place Royale. It appears to be a garden on a few metal poles, with balloons and propellers. I'm not entirely sure why it was there, but I think it was something to do with ecology, spring and gardening.



Las of all, I saw this poster at the tram stop a few days ago. It made me feel quite at home!

Bicloo.

Nantes is roughly 300 miles south of Horsham. That's 300 miles closer to the equator. Thanks to this geographical position, Nantes is a lot warmer than England at this time of year. In the past week, it's been up to 20°c most days.

It made sense to make the most of the warm weather, so myself and another assistant hired Bicloos for the day. The 'Bicloo' system is a bike-sharing scheme, with a network of 'bike-stops' across the city which are available to hire. It only costs 1€ for the day, and you can go pretty much anywhere you want within the city. Best of all, it's actually exercise, and healthy!


Becky on her Bicloo. Taking this photo almost made me fall in the river.

We cycled around the Ile de Nantes, which is the big island in the River Loire home to th former shipbuilding yard. It's nice and flat, with virtually no traffic, so it's a perfect place to ride around!


The Ile de Nantes.

It took about two hours to go around the island. This convinced us that we were definitely entitled to eat vast quantities of unhealthy food, so we went to the nearest Subway and each had a huge sandwich.

I'll leave you with a few statistics:

• You burn about 800 calories during two hours of cycling.
• A 12" Subway sandwich contains about 700 calories.
• Sitting quietly for two hours burns about 150 calories.

It would've been healthier to watch TV. Oops.

Unusual Events.

Life in France is very different to that in England. I don't know why, but things that would seem odd or unusual in the UK seem pretty normal here.

Take yesterday, for example. I woke up, and went to school at 07h30, as per usual. However, when I got to school, there was a van outside. But not a normal van. This particular van had exploded a couple of hours earlier, leaving a smouldering shell outside the school. I have no idea if it was a bomb, a gas cylinder or petrol-related, but i'm pretty sure it's not normal?! Plenty of people were walking past, but no-one seemed to bat an eyelid.


The sorry-looking remains of the van.

Then yesterday evening, I went with a couple of other assistants to see 'Alice au Pays des Merveilles' (no prizes for guessing the translation). We just missed the tram on the way back, so decided to walk. Halfway home, we suddenly became aware that there were rougly 200 people on rollerblades up ahead, skating down the road complete with police escort, at 11 o'clock at night. No idea why. Again, a pretty weird event, but apparently normal for France...


The stragglers from the rollerblading rabble.

Three Weeks Left.

It occurred to me today that i'm only in my schools for three more weeks. As I have some classes every other week, there's only one lesson left with some classes. I never thought i'd be saying this, but it actually makes me quite upset!

This morning, I had my 4ème€ class, who are my favourite pupils. It's almost like spending an hour with friends - we chat about anything, from how their week has been, to what they want to do when they visit England in May. They have no idea they're actually learning English at the same time. Sneaky, eh!

I'm actually really going to miss them when I leave. They came up with a cunning scheme to kidnap me when they're in England and take me back to France on the coach. I imagine it'll be the first time that immigration have ever caught a person in the hold of a coach trying to sneak out of England...

Orléans Part I

As part of my mini cultural tour of nearby France, I visited a friend in Orléans last weekend. Orléans is a large town about 80 miles south of Paris, which is most famous for its various connections to Joan of Arc. If you don't know that before you get there, you certainly will when you leave. There is, in Orléans: a Joan of Arc House, a Joan of Arc statue, a Joan of Arc memorial, another Joan of Arc statue, a Joan of Arc café, and a Joan of Arc restaurant. You get the idea.


One of the Joan statues. Here she has a sword.


You can tell you've spent too much time in Nantes when trams are a tourist attraction.

My friend in Orléans is an English assistant in a nearby village called La Ferté Saint Aubin. On the Friday night, his school was putting on a dinner/concert in the village hall, so I went along to see it. How long does an average school concert last? An hour and a half? Two hours, maybe? Not in France. Seven hours. Seven. We didn't get home until 3am.

It was a strange set up, with the 40 pupils serving as waiters and performing the concert - those who weren't participating in a particular song would come out and bring the food to the audience while the others performed.

Some of the pupils were absolutely incredible at singing. There was one girl, who must've been about 15, but she had the most amazing voice i've ever heard. We sat on the teachers' table, so we got the inside information on various pupils who were performing. The incredible 15 year-old girl, who had the confidence to sing a solo in English, in front of 400 parents, is apparently too shy to put up her hand in lessons.

The evening was made up of a mixture of French songs, and English songs. Everything was covered, from Les Misérables, to Abba. There was even an hour-long rendition of the musical 'Wicked'. Every single word was learned off by heart, even down to the the dialogue between songs. How a 13 year-old cast can even sing in English, let alone off by heart, baffles me. It was a seriously impressive spectacle. It also made me want to become a music teacher in a French school. Now just the lack of musical skill and French to overcome first.

St. Patrick's Day.

It's been over a week since I last updated this. Poor effort, I know, but i've simply been too busy! Luckily, the French have realised this, and hastily arranged a strike for today to let me catch up.

I'll start with St. Patrick's day. No, i'm not Irish, and I don't think I have a drop of Irish blood in me, but when there's an English-speaking celebration in France, I have to join in!

Now I don't know about Ireland, but in England, St. Patrick's day is a fairly understated day, where the pubs try to take advantage of people by putting green dye in their beer and charging them double. In nantes, St. Patrick is a major evening out. There's three 'Irish' pubs in Nantes, and we were going to wander around them and see which one had the best atmosphere. That was, until we saw this:


You'd never even know it's France.

John McByrne's was overflowing, with hundreds of people int he streets, and all the pubs in the area had brought out portable bars into the road. Irish music was being blasted out of the speakers, and everyone was having a generally good time.


Not a particularly good photo, but there were a troupe of bagipipers who marched throught the crowd at one point.

We stayed until about midninght, as I had a full day of teaching the next day. In the four hours that we were there, I met only one Irish person, and i'm pretty sure that he was putting the accent on himself. The only words he seemed to say were 'Guinness', 'Paddy' and 'potatoes'. Suspect.

La Baule.

Normally in Nantes, it's either freezing cold, pouring with rain or a combination of the two. On Saturday, it was neither, so we decided to make the most of it and go on a trip to the coast.



'La Baule' is a small town which boasts the longest sandy beach in Europe. They're not joking when they say it's long, either. It's 12km long. As the average human walks at about 4km an hour, it'd take you three hours to walk from one end to the other. For Horsham people, that's like walking into town from my house six times, and still having a kilometre to go. It's a seriously long beach.


This photo was taken from about halfway along the beach. There's the same distance the other side.


I stole this from Google, who very nicely sent up a plane to show just how long the beach is.

It wasn't the sunniest of days, or even the warmest, but it was nice to escape busy Nantes for an afternoon and sample some town-life.
The not-particularly-summery weather didn't stop my seaside spirit, however, and I cautiously went for a paddle in the sea. My feet went blue, but it was worth it! I also built a small sandcastle, but couldn't find a bucket and spade shop, so had to make do using just my hands. it restricted my multi-storey castle dreams somewhat, but was still fun.

Sandcastles aside, the architecture in La Baule is very different to that of Nantes. Every other building seems to have a turret perched on the roof, making each house look like a miniature castle. I had a look in the local estate agents, and the average selling-price for such a house seems to be about 750,000€. Mini-chateaux don't come cheaply!


One of my future houses.


Even the station was in a nice building!

I plan to return to La Baule late in April, when the temperature's nearer 25°c, the sun's sunnier and the sea is less foot-numbing. And next time, with a proper bucket and spade.

Another week.

Nothing out-of-the-ordinary has happened this week. It's the middle of the term, so the pupils are starting once again to become unruly. It's as though they forget how to misbehave in the holidays, and then gradually remember that it's what they do.



I forgot to mention - a few weeks back I tried frogs' legs for the first time. They tasted of garlic and oil, and were fiddly to eat. Also, the restaurant decided to add in some baby eels, so I had no idea which bit was which.

I have a few interesting bits and pieces to report. I use 'interesting' in the loosest sense of the word. You'll see...

• Some French ambulances use the font 'Comic Sans MS' for the writing on the vehicle. It makes emergencies look like Year 8 geography worksheets.

• This is the closest i've ever lived to traffic lights in my entire life. (Told you it was 'interesting'.)

• Two days ago, I saw a man with a machine gun walking down the road. I think he was a plainclothes policeman. I hope he was.

• One day ago, I saw a man sitting in a van with a shotgun. It was a Loomis (Securicor) van, but it still scared me into crossing the road.

• I haven't seen a gun yet today.

• I had an entire class of pupils who thought that 'boarding school' is where you learn to surf.

• French pupils get excited when you say they can keep the Tube map. One put it on his wall.

A Very French Day.

Yesterday was possibly the most French day of my life so far. Apologies in advance for the rambling nature of this post.

I awoke at the rather early time of 7am, and opened the curtains to find the sun peeping over the trees, sparkling onto a dew-encrusted spider web on the window. For breakfast, I made myself a couple of cheese-and-ham croissants, and ate them while watchin Télématin (the french version of BBC Breakfast).


Delicious, but probably/definitely bad for me.

I had only one lesson, with the 3euro, the best class in the school. We talked about films, and described film posters, while sneakily learning vocabulary along the lines of 'foreground', 'background', 'next to' and so on...
After my lesson, I ended up talking about French literature to one of the French teachers from my school. She was impressed that i'd read Sartre's 'Huis Clos'. I didn't tell her we were force-fed it at university, but managed to hold a fairly reasonable conversation nonetheless.

After such a strenuous day at work, I caught the tram, and helped an elderly lady carry her shopping trolley onto the tram. We then talked all the way back to my tram stop - she told me about her grandchildren, and the time when she visited London with her husband, which was in the 1960s. At my tram stop, I got off, and popped into the bread shop, where they knew what I wanted. I feel like a proper local now!


Flower in the shed!

I ate my lunch (tuna baguette) in my little garden - it's March 5th, and already outside dining! Oh, and my narcissus is flowering now too. Spring! In the afternoon, I wandered off to town. The temperature was 15C, and i've never seen the sky so blue! The town centre was bustling with people, many of them sitting outside cafés in the sun. I joined them, and had an ice cream which looked like a flower. It was delicious!


The vanilla ice cream


Ridiculously blue sky. Exciting photograph.

In the evening, I went to a party at another assistant's house, which is actually above a church. A bit of a bizarre location, but it was a good evening. We got there a bit early, so we went to a nearby bar beforehand. It turned out it was very much a bar for local people, and we got stared at by the seven people at the bar, until they found out we were English, and therefore 'interesting'. We spoke to a few of them for about half-an-hour, then went on to the party. There were people from all over the world at the party, and the most communal language was French, so I spoke a fair amount.

I got back tot he shed at 3am, and made myself a nice cup of tea. The day had been so French that I needed a nice cup of PG Tips to remind me i'm still English. I even drank it with my little finger stretched out.


No idea who this guy is, but he's kindly demonstrating my tea-drinking pose.

Year Abroad in Nantes help.

I can see from the magical see-who's-looking-at-my-site program that there are a lot of people visiting this site after Googling 'Year abroad Nantes' or something along those lines.

If you're one of those people, I recommend going to this website:

www.assistantsinfrance.com

Ot has everything you need to know: what to pack, where to go, what to say etc., as well as a chance to talk to the other assistants who'll be in Nantes next year. Definitely worth a visit!

A bit of Londres.

I know the title says 'Gavin's life in Nantes', but I thought i'd say a bit more about the holidays I spent in England.

I went for a midweek-weekend in London with Frida which included a We Are Scientists gig, and a snazzy hotel.

The hotel was the Wyndham Grand, in Chelsea. Being a 5-star hotel, it's normally about £500 a night, but they were refurbishing the gym and the restaurant, so we managed to get it vastly cheaper. We weren't planning on exercising or restauranting anyway, so it made no difference to us!


Frida relaxing in the lounge area


One of the TVs


Masses of marble

The hotel suite was the poshest i've ever seen. It was almost too extravagant, with two flat screens TVs, a bathroom with more marble than Lord Elgin, and a bed roughly the size of Belgium.

The We Are Scientists gig was in a tiny venue called The Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen. There were about 200 people there, and many of them seemed to be press or radio DJs, as the show was part-previewing their new album.

Before the show, Frida and I spied the singer sidling past the bar, so we went up, said hello, and got our photo taken with him.


A rather blurry, but vaguely-alright photo of the gig

Frida, Keith Murray and Me

The next day, I foolishly decided to accompany Frida to Oxford street. For those of you who do not know her particularly well, she likes to shop. A lot. Luckily, i'm quite good at moaning, so we eventually compromised and went shopping, but for coffee. Yum.

From a teaching point of view, visiting London is good, as it seems to be one of the pupils' favourite post-holiday question: "Deed you go London et see ze qween élizabette two? ". This time, I can actually say yes, and tell them all that the Queen is very well, thank you very much.