Getting in the Swing of Things

So. It’s been a couple weeks. I’ve been busy. But how can one be busy working only 12 hours a week? Well here are the details.

The last post I made I had just finished vacation. Not going to lie, I laid in bed for like 2 days being sad and missing Jimmy but then it was time to get back to work. Luckily the first week back after vacation, I only worked 7 hours that week because I just did some voice recordings for my teachers at Merville. They use my voice recordings to help the students learn the american accent and pronunciation which is a great idea! One of the teachers I work with Emilie, told me I could make up the hours in 2 weeks when I was back at Merville and I was definitely fine with that. After basically another week of recuperating and getting back on track, I started running more (yay!). My French roommate Laura asked if I wanted to do a 5K race with her in a week (on November 15th) and I said sure why not! My first France race was so much fun and it helped raise money and bring awareness to stopping violence against women. In addition, I got to learn a few new French vocabulary words during the run so I can sound more French lol! Thanks Laura :)

I also got tickets to see Mac Demarco in Lille and met with a ~now~ new friend (she is also an assistant in the Lille region). I bought the tickets and was planning on going alone (since none of my friends really knew of him) but it was great that I was able to met a new friend there and the concert was SO good! Mac Demarco was always on my list of people I want to see and I will link some of his music below. He is a WERID dude, and so entertaining to watch perform.

Mac Demarco!!

Laura and I before the 5k

My next week I spent at Estaires and I did a mixture of games and lessons. At Estaires, I have my own classroom and I get to work with a group of students of about 12-15 for half of the class (about 25 minutes). The teacher sends the other half of the students over halfway through the class and I replay the game with them. I’m not sure if I love this model because I only get 20-25 minutes with the students and it really is not a lot of time to get to know the students and to teach them much. What I chose to do that week was play a game of Pictionary with 2 teams and have each team draw the vocabulary word and then their teams would guess. It was fun to see the kids open up and talk but at times it was difficult to manage the classroom. Luckily, there are usually a few students who are tell others to be quiet so I don’t have to haha! I also did another reading exercise with a class and I played a phrase construction game (forming sentences like “I can run/I can jump). Each day I took the bus to and from Estaires and one day I had to take the train to a neighboring city and a bus in order to arrive on time. Currently, my commute is anywhere from 40 minutes to 1.5 hours (depending if I am in Merville or Estaires) but I almost always have to wait at least 25-50 minutes for the next bus. This has been turning my afternoon commutes into 1.5/2 hour commutes with is sucking up a lot of time. However, I am so grateful that I only have to take one bus from Merville/Estaires to Lille since I know many many people (everytime they commute) have to take trains, metros and buses to their final destination. I purposefully made sure that I got an apartment that is only about a 7 minute walk from the bus stop in Lille so I can roll out of bed and make my way to class in about 45 minutes! Probably the best decision I have made. This commute time turns my days into 11 hour days sometimes. For example, I get on the bus at 7:45 AM almost every morning to make the 8:30 class (or I get a ride from a colleague in the morning, it depends) and I will take this same bus even if I don’t start until 9:30 because the next bus arrives at 9:45 which would make me late for class. Then in the afternoon, I usually take the 4:30 bus home or the 5:30 bus home (if I have afternoon classes which is rather often) then I don’t get home until either 5:45 or 6:45 PM which basically makes for a 11 hour day! Luckily, I almost always have one day off and I had a school that is kind enough to accommodate once in a while for missed days due to travel plans.

This past week, I have been teaching in Merville and it was so great spending time getting to know the students at Merville. Many students have never met an American before so they were almost enchanted by my accent and my native tongue. I started to get the hang of presenting and teaching and each day this week I learned to ways to help students understand concepts without just giving them the answer. I think in this past week alone my skills have grown so much as a teaching assistant.

Now today, it is Saturday, November 23rd and I have officially been here for just over 2 months. I am getting into a routine and figuring out how to "adult". I still have a lot of bureaucratic stuff to do (go to my visa validation appointment and figure out how to get reimbursed for travel and part of my housing which takes a loooooong time) I am so lucky to have the BEST group of friends here which has made my time here so valuable already. I get moments of missing things in the USA such as cheese curds and driving but these feelings come and go. What has helped a lot is that I bought a french version of Catan which has been so fun teaching everyone here. Pretty much all last weekend me and my friends spent 2 days playing Catan and it felt just like home. I am SO excited because in the next couple of breaks I will get to see some familiar faces soon (my cousin Jenna, Emily, Monica and Mira!) and I’ll get to share what life if like in the north of France with them :)

À bientôt,

Kristin