5 metros, 3 trams and 2 buses later... oh and 2 car journies too!

This morning I got up at 8h and left at 9h to allow myself plenty of time to get to Le Resto du Coeur. I took the tram two stops to La Joliette and the found the bus number 35 really easily. It was parked near to the tram stop. I'd been concerned I wouldn't be able to find the stop but I did. I got on and sat down - it wasn't busy at all. Some kind person had left behind today's Marseille Plus so I read that until the bus started moving. Then I got out my list of stops that I'd copied down from the internet and watched them pass by. I therefore would know when to press the bell and get off. I was really proud to not only have found the bus but that I also managed to get off at the right stop. When I got off I wondered whether I was in the right place because it was a main road and there wasn't much around apart from a few industrial like buildings, oh and a newsagents. I went in the newsagents and asked where Le Resto du Coeur was. It was literally next door. I went in and saw that it was only 9h40, I was a bit early, like 20 minutes early! I sat and waited. It was a small desk at the front of what looked to be a big warehouse. There were lots of people coming ang going and everyone kept saying 'bonjour' and fairing la bise. After about 10 minutes someone came to fetch me and she took me to her office. I filled in a form with my name and address and we discussed when I could volunteer. I explained that I was writing a dissertation about les sans abris and that was partly why I wanted to volunteer. She said being able to speak English would help as some of les sans abris are polish for example. I said I found it strange that so much money was being spent to improve Marseille buy yet there remains so many sans abris, she told me that some of them refuse to allow themselves to be intergrated into society and that they are les vrais sans abris. She said I would see when I start volunteering. I said I would prefer to do le Maraude but she said this is the most popular. I said I would also like to see the bus, she said this would be possible as there is a shortage of people to work on the bus. She said she'd call me after having spoken to the person who runs le Maraude and the bus. When I left I had a text on my phone from Rachel asking whether I wanted to meet at 'rome point' at 11h30 for a coffee. I text her back asking where she wanted to meet and she said 'near to the metro'. I nearly text her back asking which metro but I just thought, oh no, it'll be vieux port like always. So I took the bus back to La Joliette and then walked home. At 11h20 I left for Vieux Port but when I got there I thought that she would be working, I re read her text and suddenly realised that 'rome point' was supposed to have been 'rond point' and therefore I was at the wrong metro stop! Ha! I called her to see where she was, she was on the bus inbetween her Lycee and Rond Point. I explained how her text had said 'rome point', predictive text messaging has it's disadvantages it would seem. I got on the metro at vieux port and changed at saint charles to go to rond point and met her in the cafe as usual. After the coffee I took the metro back to La Joliette and then got on the tram to les caillols to go to the supermarket. It's much further than galeries lafeyette but it's less far to walk (as the tram stops right outside the supermarket and right outside le passage de lorette) and it's cheaper. I did my shopping and came home and had a late lunch. I then worked on my pedagogic report researching the french education system. Later on I went to my cours de conversation, you know, the one where I was forgotten last week! This week she was there to pick me up and yes, she did pay me for last week too as it was her who forgot me. I did the bonfire lesson with Dorrean tonight. His English may be good but he finds it really hard to understand. I think we need to do more oral comprehension. He's asked me to go through a piece of work with him next week that he got a bad mark in. After the cours de conversation I had dinner with Christiane and one of her neighbours and her neighbour's two sons. We ate quiche that was delicious and rice with vegetables. Then there were cakes and bread and cheese. It was yummy. After that I left, Christiane took me back to the metro and I came home.

Being a language assistant, ca me plait

It was another early start this morning to get to Lycee for my 8am class. It was my BTS students. I'm getting to know them now. They're nice. We talked about the football - Marseille lost their champions league game last night which means they have to beat Liverpool when they come to Marseille on December 11th - it has the making of a good game. I helped them talk about their work experience as per usual. They are getting better but when I asked them what time they started and finished they couldn't tell me. They didn't know how to tell the time. I find this a lot - no matter how good their English is they can never tell the time. I went through that with them. After this class I had my anglais renforce class with Christiane. They were quite chatty today and struggled to concentrate. I did the Royal Family with them. I showed them photos of each of the members of the Royal Family and they stuck them on the board to create a family tree. I then gave them a quiz about the Royal Family and arranged them into groups and made it into a competition to see who could get the highest score. After this we went back to studying the text that they'd been studying with Christiane. After this class it was break time and then I had Olivia's terminale students which means an image class. I was sent 3 weak and quiet students. It was hard work this week. I did binge drinking with them as I'd done with their class mates last week. After the terminales I had more of Olivia's BTS, this time the accountancy ones rather than the engineering ones. It went well, they were able to talk to me a bit about their work experience before I had to provide the usual model sentences and go through how to tell the time. After this class it was lunch time. I stayed in my room to write a note to the italian assistant who I still have met. I left it on the desk so she'd find it when she went in as we both use the same room and it's only us who use the room. I went for my lunch and during lunch I read the papers I'd picked up on the metro that morning. There weren't any Marseille Plus's today, I was quite disappointed, out of all the papers it is possibly the best one. Anyway, I was free next lesson so I took myself to the computers (as the internet is now working again) and translated some of the text for my 2 terminale students on Tuesday. My next class should have been my other anglais renforce class which I see fortnightly but the teacher was away as her husband has had a heart attack. I went to the lesson anyway because I usually take this class on my own so I thought maybe the students still might turn up. None of them were there so I went back to the staff room and started writing a model commentaire to go with my translation for my 2 terminale students on Tuesday. I had yet another hour to pass. If I'd have known in advance that I wouldn't have this class I could have gone home. Tant pis. 2 of the students from the class I would normally have at this time came to find me, they said it was only the two of them, I said I couldn't do my planned lesson with just 2 of the class so we agreed to cancel the lesson. I went back to writing my commentaire. The teacher for the lesson I have next gave me a students work to read to see what I thought of the level of English. I have to say I was impressed. Question 2 was far better written than questions 1 and 3. I agreed with the teacher - it maybe wasn't the student's own work. I also looked at what I would be working on in my final class of the day - les secondes. At 15h I went to my final lesson. After about 20 minutes and 3 OHP's later we were ready. Describing an image. It was good though, I always enjoy this class with this teacher. At the end of the lesson I went back to the staff room and was invited to the cinema on Saturday with some of the teachers. Andre is going to call me if they decide to go. The film is 'l'autre cote' and is germo-turc, hmm. Apparently, the reviews are really good... I arrived home at about 17h, the metro had been really busy but I managed to get a copy of direct soir which pleased me, I swear I live for these free newspapers! Ha! I came in and had a cup of tea and the mother of Camille phoned me, my new cours de conversation student. I begin next week at 16h30 on Thursday, she lives next to Lycee so it'll be nice and easy to get to and it's 20 euros an hour! Woohoo! But apart from the money I get so much more out of it - I get french conversation myself with the parents and the parents of Dorrean - my student on a Friday have offered to show me around Marseille - it's great! I've been talking to Angeline on the internet and planning how oh how I'm going to get to L'Estaque tomorrow morning to see Le Resto du Coeur people. Well, I know how to get there - it's the number 35 bus from La Joliette to Littoral Pas du Faon. The problem is finding the bus stop at la Joiliette, I can't picture where it is. And then, when I'm on the bus, I have to get off at the right stop... all this and still arrive on time. Hmm, we'll see!

En fait, j'adore ma classe de merde

At 6am this morning I dragged myself out of bed and got dressed. I had breakfast, gathered my things together taking my dinner from the fridge (it's got to the point now where I make it the night before so as to have an extra 10 minutes in bed) and left at about 7h05. I arrived at Lycee at 7h45 - it was still dark. I picked up on the metro one of each of the three papers. That is the highlight of my day. As I sat on the bus to Lycee I remember thinking, I only have to do this journey once more this week. To be honest, the bus journey wasn't too bad this morning. I was one of the first on the bus as there weren't many people waiting as one bus had just been and gone. This meant not only was I not squashed in like a sardine but also that I got to sit down - woohoo! - a rare treat when it comes to french buses. In the staffroom before my first lesson Olivia came to me with the phone number of the family who want me to give cours de conversation to their daughter who is in troisieme at college. I have to call them tomorrow to arrange a time for the first cours de conversation. Olivia said that they live near to the Lycee and that she'd show me where at lunch time. I went to my first lesson at 8am and sat down. I didn't expect the students until 8h15ish as I knew the teacher, Isabelle, was always late. I sat reading one of the three papers I'd picked up on the metro. At 8h25 I began to think that they weren't coming. I was half hoping they didn't turn up because I was quite content to sit there with my paper. On the other hand I wanted them to turn up because I'd planned a lesson on binge drinking for them. At 8h45 I resigned myself to the fact that they weren't coming. I wondered whether Isabelle had forgotten to send them or whether she wasn't in today. I she wasn't in then that would mean that my secondes last lesson, aka ma classe de merde, would be cancelled... At 9am I returned to the staff room and did some printing for my anglais renforce classes on Thursday. I went to do some photocopying only to find the photocopier was broken. I ordered my photocopying for Thursday and asked the photocopying lady whether she could do some of the photocopying for me for mes secondes last lesson. I stayed in the staffroom until 10am. I then had a lesson with the 2 terminale girls - Leslie and Angelique. We are still working on the Mafia text. The text if far too hard for them. It's a real battle for them to understand it. They do work hard though. I quite enjoy this class because it's working with the same 2 girls each week and it's working with a text rather than images. At 11am I had my BTS students. 3 of them came today. It went really well. They're really nice and they're oral preparation for talking about their work experience is coming on well. I'm pleased. Afterwards it was lunch and I went to find out if Isabelle was in today or not. She was in the staffroom and apologised saying she forgot to send me the students and besides, she had 'something to finish with them anyway'. Don't you worry about it. If you were to have told me in advance, I wouldn't had to have come in until 10am. Nevermind. I'd learnt some new vocabulary from reading the newspaper and had done my photocopying. She gave me a class list and photos for mes secondes and said she would send me half the class. Olivia said she couldn't take me to show me where my new private student lives but that if I met her at 16h in the salle de profs then she would take me in the car and then drop me off at the metro. I went back to my room at 13h for a lesson with my going blind student - Thibauld. We spoke about Macbeth this week. His English is really good, he is possibly better than my BTS students despite only being in Terminale. After Thibauld it was Agnes dreaded image class that was so diabolical last week. But, in fact, it went really well this week. I had one student talk about the global warming image and another on the famine and size zero image. Both students tried hard and their English was quite good. It went well, I enjoyed it and I never thought I'd say that with that class! At 15h arrived mes secondes. All 10 of them. One of them comes through the door and shouts 'Gill!' Well, at least he remembered my name. They are so noisy. Even when I shout at the top of my voice I can't hear myself. I got them to come in and sit down, that in itself was a challenge. Getting them to tell me their names was the second challenge. I then went on to ask them about November 5th. Not one of them knew it was Bonfire Night. All I got was 'no, it's the 27th today' (in french). I'd simplified the Bonfire Night gap fill I'd done with my anglais renforce in the year above, I even provided a vocab match at the beginning to make sure they would understand the words. They found it hard, very hard. They said to me 'c'est dur'. They couldn't do it on their own, we had to work as a class. They got a bit noisy at one point and I had to tell them that I wasn't obliged to teach them, that it was my choice and that if they didn't behave they would go back. I don't think they understood but the tone of my voice and the fact I was pointing to the door seemed to do the trick, for all of 5 minutes anyway. I gave them the gap fill and wrote the words on the board and told them to copy them down and then fill in the blanks. For saying that I'd just explained to them Bonfire Night, complete with a drawing of The Houses of Parliament, I didn't think it would be that hard for them to do it. I'd pre-taught them the vocab. Again, I had to tell them to behave. There was a lot of speaking french going on on my part. I told them they had to learn the 6 phrasal verbs for next time when I would test them. I also told them what they didn't finish in class they could do at home and then I'd mark it. I got them to put their names on the top of their sheets in an attempt to know who I had in the class because I hadn't managed to catch all the names when they'd told me at the beginning despite me having photos of them next to the names too - they all look the same! We ended up doing the gap fill together because they were finding it hard although I'm convinced that if they were to have shut up and concentrated it wouldn't have been that much beyond them. At the end of the lesson I collected the sheets in and told them again 'il faut que vous appreniez le vocabulaire'. I made them sit in silence and I said 'ooh, it's the quietest it's been all lesson' but I don't think anyone understood. I told them they could go and they sat there looking at me. One of them said 'c'est sonne' - the bell has gone. I said I knew and they could go and all I got was 'mais c'est sonne'. In the end I had to say to them in french 'je vous ai dit que vous pouvez partir'. They all left just as noisily as they'd come in. Despite me calling them ma classe de merde I quite like them because they are lively. I'd rather a lively class than a 'je n'ai rien compris' class or students who sit and don't speak. After this class, surprised not to have a headache, I went to the salle de profs to meet Olivia who showed me where my new private pupil lives. I noted that I could get the number 37 bus to the Malpasse metro stop if I didn't feel like walking back for the 3 or 5 to metro La Rose. Olivia then dropped me off at the metro and I got the metro home. I had a cup of tea and marked the Bonfire Night gap fill. For saying we'd done most of it as a class the marks ranged from 11 out of 18 to 18 out of 18. Next time I see them I'll give it them back, let them read it and then ask them questions on it, as well as testing them on the 6 phrasal verbs I told them to learn. I then started planning a lesson on food and thought I might do text language with mes secondes next time, they might enjoy that. I made my tea and then went chez Rachel for a cup of tea and to return her cheese grater. I came back and showered and I'm now writing my blog. I'm off to bed in a minute because I want to be up relatively early tomorrow as I have lots of random things I want to do.

Les anniversaires d'Angeline et Rachel

Aujourd'hui je me suis levee a 8h30. J'ai pris mon petit dejeuner et j'ai recopie le vocabulaire que j'ai note au cinema hier soir. J'ai netoye un peu l'appartement et puis, a 11h30, je suis allee voir Angeline devant la pharmacie. Nous sommes allees au resto - Chez Noel mais c'etait ferme alors nous avons marche a la Prefecture pour aller a Al Dente. Moi, j'ai pris les raviolis aux trois fromage et Angeline a pris, umm, je ne sais pas comment dire... les pates - tagiatelle avec lardons je crois. Pour le desert j'ai pris le gateau au chocolate et Angeline a pris presque la meme mais elle avait un cafe aussi. Parce que c'etait l'anniversaire d'Angeline samedi je l'ai invite et je l'ai offre. Apres, nous sommes allees a Monopris pour faire des courses et puis nous sommes rentrees chez nous. Quand je suis arrivee chez moi Auriane etait ici et un de ses amis arrivait. Puis, le proprietaire est venu parce que je lui ai envoye un email ce matin pour expliquer que le micro-onde ne marche plus et que le robinet dans la douche est casse. Il a parle avec Auriane et il a dit qu'il va acheter un nouveau truc pour le robinet et qu'il viendra la semaine prochaine pour essayer de reparer le micro onde mais s'il ne peut pas, il achetera une deuxieme. A 17h ce soir je vais au metro Reformes pour voir Louise et on va cuisiner un gateau pour l'anniversaire de Rachel.

Je suis allee au metro Reformes pour voir Louise. Nous sommes allees chez elle pour cuisiner un gateau au chocolat pour Rachel. Quand nous l'avons cuisine, nous avons pris le tram au Sadi Carnot pour aller chez Rachel. Quand elle a ouvrert la porte elle a vu moi et Louise avec un gateau et deux bougies allumees- un '2' et un '1' pour '21' ans. Nous avons chante en francais 'joyeaux anniversaire'. Nous avons mange le gateau ensemble et puis moi, je suis rentree chez moi et Louise chez elle mais Rachel est sortie avec Lucy.

Dimanche - cinema

I didn't do alot today. I stayed in and lesson planned. I wrote up my vocabulary from the cinema last night. I did some research for my dissertation but mainly lesson planned for this week. I went round to Rachel's in the evening to borrow her cheese grater so that I could make potato rosti. Lucy was there and they were going to go to the cinema to see Paranoid Park. I didn't really want to go to the cinema again but the film looked good so I said I'd meet them outside the cinema later. The film was quite good and I got more vocabulary! So, a productive if somewhat uneventful day.

Samedi - Louise

My day began when Rachel came round at 9am. The original plan was to go to the supermarket before I went to meet Louise at Bougainville metro station at 10h30. However, by the time we'd drank tea there wasn't really time to go shopping. I left to get the metro from Joliette to Bougainville to meet Louise. We were originally going to meet at Castellane but I asked whether we could meet at Bougainville because that's where the Resto du Coeur bus is that feeds les sans abris. I want to see it and I also want to get involved with Les Resto du Coeur but that is proving quite impossible. I didn't want to go on my own, wandering round looking for a bus at a metro station I'd never been to before so Louise came with me. The bus was supposed to be just opposite the metro but we did a whole tour of the station and couldn't see anything. We asked the metro man and he said normally it's there (points out of the window). Obviously it just wasn't there, nevermind. It's only 3 stops on the metro from Joliette and Louise said she'd come with me again another time. We put ourselves back on the metro and went to Castellane and got the number 50 bus to IKEA - yes, it's becoming a Saturday tradition to go to IKEA! Louise wanted some storage (as her room was unfurnished when she moved in). I bought a bin. It was only 1 euro so it doesn't matter I won't be able to take it with me at the end of the year. It just means I don't have to have a plastic carrier bag lying round for the rubbish. We also went in the supermarket at La Valentine and I bought a potato, some spring onions and a mushroom as well as a box of cereal. We then put ourselves back on the bus complete with all our shopping. It was starting to rain but was still quite mild. We went back to mine and I offloaded my shopping. Christiane (one of the teachers at my Lycee) called me and asked whether I'd like to go for dinner on Friday after my cours de conversation with her neighbour (you know, the one that 'completement oblied' me last week (ooh, franglais!). She said her other neighbour and her 2 sons would also be there. I got the impression maybe there might be the chance for more cours de conversations!! Anyway, later on in the afternoon I helped Louise take her things back to hers and we cooked chocolate scones, I'd never had a chocolate scone before but they worked well. We also ate diner - pasta but it was cheeseless because Louise doesn't eat cheese. Oh well, I'll survive, hehe. We then went to the cinema to watch 'American Gangster' which, because it has only just been released, hasn't yet been dubbed into French. There were however French subtitles. I sat in the pitch black unable to see a thing with my notebook and pen attempting to note down the french vocabulary. I think I did quite well considering I couldn't see what I was doing. The end result was legible if a little comical. But the vocab, I learnt so many new words! The film was really good, I'd recommend it. It's based on a true story. Right, off to prepare a lesson for my anglais renforce class now. A toute!

Vendredi - mars bars

This morning I carried on my research for my dissertation and then took the metro to La Prefecture because I couldn't be bothered to walk. I went into Virgin and bought a DVD I saw the other day with Angeline. It's about Marseille. I also picked up today's copy of the Marseille Plus because there hadn't been any left on the metro. I went into Eurodif and looked at the Christmas decorations and then I went to Monoprix and to the newsagents stands where I saw that L'Express had a special article about the Lycees in Marseille so I bought that and also L'Hebdo. I then came home for lunch. On my way home I called in to pick up some deodrant and shampoo and found mars bars!!! *excitement*. I also saw a man who was just leaving the electrical shop next door with a brand new tv he'd obviously just bought. It was a flatscreen Philips 32" high definition ready tv which was probably not the most expensive tv in the world but still. He was strapping it onto the back of his motorbike with masking tape!! Further proof if ever you needed it that the french are barking. After my lunch I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned so now the appartment is nice and shiny. I have to leave in literally 5 minutes to go to Metro Saint Just for my cours de conversation with Dorean. I can't decide whether to do the bonfire text with him or an article on tatoos. I'm thinking the bonfire text might be more interesting and he might get more out of it because it'll teach him about British culture. I'll keep you posted...

Ha! It was a joke. I spent 20 minutes getting there only to stand in the carpark for 35 minutes waiting and waiting and thenwaiting some more. I called the house and there was no answer, in the end I took the exective decision to leave. So, I waster 75 minutes of my life for nothing. I was not impressed. When I got in Rachel was online and asked whether I'd like to get a pizza with her and Aimee. I left to go to hers. Whilst they were waiting for the pizza to be cooked I went to buy some mushrooms. I was standing in the greengrocers when my phone rang. It was the mum who was supposed to have met me. She was so apologetic that she's 'completement oublied' me - I should think so too! She said she'd pay me double next week, i.e for this week as well, seeing as it was her fault I didn't get to give my cours de conversation. Yes, so I bought my mushrooms and then, when the pizza was finally ready (they cook each pizza ordered from scratch) we went chez Rachel to eat. At 20h40 we walked Aimee to the theatre as she was going to watch a play. I went back to Rachel's and helped her to cook a cheesecake for a thanksgiving dinner she's going to on Saturday which I have been invited to but am not going to. Aimee then came back from the theatre and I went home. Aimee was staying chez Rachel as she had to be at the train station early this morning because she's going to Avignon for the weekend. She lives in the outskirts and because she had to be at the station for 8am it was just easier for her to stay chez Rachel.

Jeudi - rain

This morning at 5h30 I got up and prepared myself for Lycee. I left, as usual, at about 7am and arrived at Lycee for 8h45. It was really dark this morning because it was cloudy and the streetlights had been switched off. Usually the sky is clear and so it isn't dark but it was strange this morning - no streetlights and clouds. I went to la salle de professeurs before my first class and Olivia, one of the English teachers, asked me whether I'd be interested in giving private cours de conversation. One of her friends' daughters is in troisieme and lives 'just behind the Lycee' and her mum wants her to have extra English classes. I said of course I'd be interested. Olivia told me it's perfectly reasonable to ask for 20 euros an hour so I said 20 euros an hour. For my other private student I didn't ask for that but then again his mum does fetch me from and take me back to the metro station. Anyway, my second cours de conversation should be starting on a Thursday after Lycee in a couple of weeks. My first class of the day was one of my many BTS students. I was sent 2 students, one of whom I'd met before. The one I hadn't met before was very very weak. He couldn't even explain to me what he'd done during his work experience. I am still none the wiser now. He worked for 'Societe de l'eau de Marseille' but talked about infra red camera and well, I don't know. My second student worked with elevators. Between them they taught me a new word. I asked them whether they got paid for their work experience and they said no and then something in french and they both fell about laughing so I asked them what it meant. 'radin' is a familiar word meaning 'stingy'. There, you learn something new everyday. My second class was my anglais renforce class with Christiane. I like this class. I went in and, as always, got a good greeting. I teach them for the first part of the class and I can do whatever I want with them. This week I did Children in Need. I began by drawing Pudsey bear on the board and asking whether anyone knew who he was. Nobody did so I played hangman with them until they got 'Pudsey'. Still nobody knew who he was so I wrote Children in Need on the board and then went on to explain. I then handed out the sheet I'd prepared and they had to do a gapfill - all the information they needed was on the board. I went round and monitored and they we went through it. Then Christiane took over and we went back to the text we're studying. After this class it was break time and then I had 3 terminale students which means an image class. Because I get sent all 3 students at once rather than one after the other it means I can alter what I do with them. I'm supposed to give them 10 minutes to prepare an image and then they have to talk to me about it but their level isn't good enough to be able to to do it. So today I ran it as I did with 3 students from this class last week only this week we did binge drinking. It went quite well, they were quite talkative and they definitely got lots and lots of vocabulary out of it. After this class I went home for my 4 hour lunch break. Rachel came round and we lunched together on the sandwich filling I'd made the night before and pitta bread. They she had to go as she had a lesson at 14h. My class wasn't until 15h so I left at about 14h15 calling in at La Poste on the way to post a couple of postcards. I then got the metro and bus back to my Lycee for my final class of the week - mes secondes. But it's my good class of secondes. We were working on the same text as last week. I had to read it out and then we translated it into french. I think I got just as much out of the lesson as the students did! We also went through the exercises they'd done related to the text. At 16h I left to get the bus to go home. It was raining, and not just a light shower but proper torrential rain. There were so many people waiting for the bus that when it did come it was a logistical impossibility to squish everyone on. I waited for the next bus but when that arrived it was already full so I waited for the third bus. Good job they're frequent! I had my umbrella and the rain eased off a bit. When I got off the metro at Colbert it was still raining, grr. I came home and changed my jeans as they were wet before running to Rachel's. And there I stayed in the dry until quite late. Louise came too and we, or should I say Rachel, cooked cheese and tomato cibatti and tomato pasta. We then sat and watched a film on french tv. It was an English-American film with Tom Cruise that was described in the tv guide as a 'drame' but it was more of a comedy. It kept us occupied with our tea and biscuits anyway. Et voila, jeudi.

Mercredi - cake and custard

So today I got up nice and early to spend the morning working on my dissertation which I kind of did. I got a bit sidetracked cutting out newspaper articles but I found out about L'unite d'hebergement d'urgence in Marseille which is very relevant to my dissertation. I made courgette and tomato pasta for lunch before leaving at about 13h45 to go to Reformes to meet Louise. I went to the post office on my way to post a postcard and then went to the metro at Colbert. I stopped to pick up one of the free newspapers which meant I had to fly down the escalator to get the metro just as the doors were closing. I then sat down to read my newspaper and got so into reading about pork soup that I completely forgot that the stop I wanted was the one after Saint Charles. I just so happened to look up and see 'Canabiere' and so I ran off the metro just as the doors were closing. The people on the metro with me must have thought me completement folle. Anyway, I went with Louise chez elle and we cooked a sponge. We didn't have any cocoa powder for a chocolate sponge but we did have chocolate so we grated it and added it. We did as the recipe said and made enough mixture to feed four but it barely covered the bottom of the tin so we made the same amount again and added it to the tin and then cooked it. After it had cooked we made the custard and then Aimee arrived, typical, her coming just as all the hard work was done! Hehe. We sat down to eat out cake and custard - real English custard may I add, none of this creme anglaise. It was quite delicious. We were quite pleased. Afterwards we drank tea, did the washing up, went and sat in the lounge. The view over the city towards Vieux Port and Le Panier is beautiful. I was trying to get my bearings and I said to Louise, where's the port then? She pointed where she thought it might be and explained how she'd come to this conclusion. I looked around a bit and then said to her 'would the port not be there (pointing) where the boats are?' Ha ha ha ha. She'd lived there for how many weeks and had failed to see the boats in the port. Hilarious. A while later, we ate and then me and Aimee left for the metro home. I came home and made my sandwich filling for tomorrow which I think will be borderline. I made grated cheese, mayonnaise and spring onion sandwich filling which I'm going to put on pitta bread. Trouble is the mayonnaise is somewhat, umm, odd. But I guess that's because it's french. No Hellman's here. The cheese is also borderline. It's emmantal. No cheddar here. The spring onions looked normal though. But then again, how wrong can you go with a spring onion?! After I'd made my filling and put it in the fridge I realised it's actually a semaine impaire which means I have a 4hr lunch break and so can come home for lunch. So really, there was no need to have prepared the sandwich filling tonight. Oh well, less work tomorrow lunchtime. Yes, so that's been my day. I'm now off to bed as I have to be up at 5h30 for my 8h BTS class followed by anglais renforce at 9h and then, after the break, it's the terminales. Then my 4h break before mes secondes (but it's ok as they are not la classe de merde) at 15h.

Mardi - more strikes

Normally I would have 6hrs of classes today but because of the strikes I only had 2. 2 of my teachers were striking, the other 2 weren't. This left me with my two terminale students at 10h and then Agnes' terminale students at 14h. I was quite pleased my 8h class was cancelled, it meant I could have a lay in. I got up and had breakfast and then left to take the metro and bus to Lycee at about 9h15. I arrived at Lycee for 9h50 and took myself to the staff room where I realised I'd forgotten my board pens - again. Those board pens will be the death of me! I couldn't face the day without my board pens, even if it was only 2hrs, so I borrowed one. I then went off to my first class. I started working on a new text with these 2 girls. I didn't choose the text, may I point out, the teacher did. The text is about the Mafia, it's an obituary from a newspaper and when I read it I thought it was quite hard. Angelique and Leslie found it hard. Very hard. They are really weak students, hence the reason they get an hour of my undivided attention every week. I don't mind them being weak because they try. They work hard. There's nothing worse than students who sit there in silence refusing to speak - it drives me mad! Anyway, we read the text and then I went through a bit of vocab. It then became evident that they were having trouble with numbers so I went through the numbers on the board before moving on to asking them questions about the text. We didn't get beyond the first paragraph but that doesn't matter because, like last week, I felt that they went away feeling that they'd got something from the lesson. We will continue next week. After this class I went back to the staffroom which was practically empty as everyone was striking. I used the one and only computer to print out the lessons I'd prepared the night before and then sat down to plan how I could make a lesson out of the Arctic Monkeys' song 'They say it changes when the sun goes down'. I then went to my next class. Caroline. She came last week but we ran out of time so she only had time to prepare her image - which was on smoking, not actually tell me about it. So, she comes this week a good 15 minutes late and has fogotten her sheet. I gave her 5 minutes to refresh her mind. She was, however, one of these 'je n'ai rien compris' students. She didn't even know how to say 'je pense'... If she can't be bothered, then why should I? I asked her her opinion on the smoking ban and after a long and painful silence all I got was 'je pense que c'est une bonne idee'. Now, if that's all she can manage in French then what hope do we have for any English?! I sent her on her way after I couldn't stand any more. My next student had an image on global warming. His level was better but to be honest, after Caroline, I really just couldn't be bothered. This class is possibly worst than mes secondes which earnt themselves the title 'classe de merde'. I think this terminale group are worst, at least my secondes are lively! Needless to say I made a quick escape when the bell rang and came home. I prepared lentil burgers before going to the supermarket with Rachel. I then came home and ate before helping Auriane with her English work. I am now ready for bed and it isn't even 22h yet! A demain.

Lundi - Angeline

So, lundi. Qu'est ce que j'ai fait? Well, I finally got around to setting up my prelevement automatique. I also emailed Les Restos du Coeur again seeing as they hadn't got back to me. I have to call them on Wednesday. Hopefully it will be more successful than the last time I tried to call them. I'm still not a huge fan of french on the telephone but oh well. At 14h I went to meet Angeline devant la pharmacie comme toujours. We went to H&M on La Rue de la Republique and then down Rue Saint Fe (I really wish I knew how to get my computer to do accents...). We also went to Le Centre Bourse because we both need to do shopping of the edible variety. Afterwards we went home, me to mine and Angeline to hers, to put our shopping away. Angeline then came chez moi for a cup of tea. When she left I had my tea and then did some lesson planning before going to bed.

Week 9

Yes, can you believe (because I certainly can't) that I have been an inhabitant of Marseille for 9 weeks?! 9 weeks! Now, I haven't written my blog for a while so this could be quite a long post, providing, of course, I can remember what I've done this week!





Ok, Monday's events are escaping me slightly but I'm willing to bet any amount of money I will have seen Rachel on Monday. I'm thinking we went to the supermarket together, did we then come back to mine and have lunch? I think we did. Umm, I remember going to bed at a ridiculously early hour because I had to get up for Lycee the next day but apart from that... Let's skip to Tuesday.





By the end of the day I was prepared to say that I properly hated being a language assistant. I arrived at 8am and had a terminale class. That means images. There were 10, sleepy eyed 17/18 year olds who wanted to be there possibly even less than I did if that's possible. Speaking at 8h in the morning in any language is difficult enough, let alone trying to get them to speak in English. I gave them my football violence image but it was hard work. It was me doing all the talking, trying to encourage them to give me ideas, give me their opinions on violence in football. Talk to me about french football. I remember looking at my watch and it being only 8h35 when it felt like I'd already done a day's work. After that class I had a spare hour which I used to prepare a lesson on Bonfire Night for Thursday. I found a text on One Stop English and got some images from google. It was for my anglais renforce class on Thursday. At 10h I had my second class of the day - 2 terminale students. I didn't have a clue what I was supposed to be doing with them. They arrived with the teacher who gave me a text and a sheet about how to write a commentaire de texte and said that that was what they needed to be able to do but orally. Ok. I had never seen this text before so the first thing I got them to do was read it to me. It was quite a good text. After we'd read it I just asked them comprehension questions to check their understanding of the text. I had to explain some things which they hadn't understood. It was quite a good class because the 2 girls were really trying. Their level wasn't that good and how they are ever going to be able to speak about a text for their oral exam I will never know but still, they are hard workers. It would, however, have been better if the teacher were to have given me the text in advance but still I guess I can't have everything - hard working students and a prepared teacher. My next class was BTS - talking about their work experience. I was sent 3 students. I have lots of BTS classes where they tell me about their work experience, it's getting quite boring now, like the image classes. After this class it was lunch time. I remember thinking 3 hours down, 3 hours to go. But I knew that I had mes secondes as my last class... After lunch I had a one-to-one session with Thibauld. He's already done most of his bac but he's having to redoubler some of it again. He's kind of a special case because he is pretty much blind. He's asked to spend an hour every other week with me because he wants to keep up his spoken English which, to be fair, is pretty good. We talked, well, actually, I did most of the talking like I always seem to end up doing. I'm not quite sure what we're going to talk about every other week. I'm somewhat restricted as to what I can do with him seeing as he can't see. My next class was my 'je n'ai rien compris' class. Image time again. I really need to find some new images even if it's only for my sanity. The trouble is, they're quite hard to find. I had 3 students, one by one. It's hard when I have them one by one because they are so weak. They don't have to vocabulary and so aren't really able to talk to be about the images. I usually end up speaking to them in French, again, another class where it's me doing all the talking. After this thrilling hour of talking yet again about famine and size zero models I had ma classe de merde: Mes secondes. 10 14/16 year old boys. Thank goodness my room only seats 10, otherwise the teacher - Isabelle, would have sent me half of the class and considering there are about 37 in the class... Anyway, their English is really poor and they have absolutely no desire to improve. It really is a class de merde. They talk, they fidgit, they mess around. One boy, sat at the back of the class, was doing something with his hair. When I asked him what he was doing he said 'I measure my hair' - why? because it was a competition with the person say next to him to see who's hair was longest. I told him if he could explain to me in English what he was doing and why then he could carry on. Obviously he couldn't. I told them in about 3 differently worded ways that each eleve had to give me a sentence using 'will' to tell me what they were doing that evening. 2 of them gave me a sentence so when the bell rang I let them go. It was so funny, they had not been interested in giving me their sentence before the bell but as soon as the bell had gone I have 8 15 year old boys giving me their full attention, each one with their hand up! They're an ok class, just a bit lively. I'm going to adapt my Bonfire Night lesson to a lower level to do with them next week because I can basically do what I want with this class. So finally, 16h arrives and I can go home. I actually went for a quick coffee with Rachel and Jess at Vieux Port before, umm... what did I do next? Eat with Rachel? Maybe Aimee. I don't remember. Actually, yes, I do remember, Aimee invited us chez elle for soup so on to the metro we went armed with tarte au citron and 2 baguettes. Then we got the number 40 bus with no clue as to where to get off except it was past a roundabout with an apple on and press the bell when we turned right at the chinese. Amazingly we managed to get off at the right stop! On to Wednesday...

I have absolutely no idea what I did on Wednesday. I remember eating dinner chez Rachel. We went out to buy a baguette and had soup. I remember standing in the lift and complaining about having to go to work the next day. Umm... I really need to start either a) keeping notes on what I do or b) writing the blog more regularly!

Thursday I remember well. I was dreading it after Tuesday but I was surprised. I arrived at Lycee and wasn't able to print out my worksheet on Bonfire Night for my anglais renforce class because the network was down. Luckily I had a copy of the text written in my notebook so I wrote it out by hand and photocopied it. I was able to do this because my 8h class didn't turn up! I was sat in my room waiting for my BTS students but no one came. Usually it would really have annoyed me because I'd got myself to Lycee for an 8h class and then the students not turning up. It gave me chance to write up my Bonfire night text and photocopy it. At about 8h55 the teacher and the whole BTS class arrived to apologise prefusely for 'having forgotten' me. Ha. I explained that en fait, they'd done me a favour. They said they'd see me next week. So, at 9h, off I went, photocopying in tow, to my anglais renforce class. I explained to them about Bonfire night before giving them out the gap fill exercise. I then read the text out. I basically acted as the tape player. I had to read the thing out 3 times for them to get all the blanks and then some of them still hadn't got them all. I could practically recite the text off by heart by the end. For saying this is an anglais renforce class they're not very hard working and their level isn't that good either. I enjoyed the class though. It reminded me of when I did my CELTA course over the summer. I wish more of my classes could be me doing my own thing. My next class was 2 terminales students that I hadn't yet met. The teacher hadn't told me what I was going to be doing with them. She came at the beginning of the class with the students and gave me the text they'd been working on and a guide sheet on how to write a commentaire de texte. Good job I knew what a commentaire de texte was and how to write one! I hadn't read the text before though so I started by getting them to read it to me - good for their pronunciation and also gave me chance to read it. I then asked them basic comprehension questions, making sure they'd understood the text. They'd already written the commentaire. Even though their level is poor they work hard. For their oral exam they have to give an oral commentaire. It's going to be hard for them but I'm enjoying working with texts as opposed to images and they were nice girls. I then had a BTS class. I was sent 2 girls. One was very good at English and the other was a 'je n'ai rien compris' kind of student. Because of the stronger student the lesson went well. I was able to give them lots of phrases for their work experience and at the end there was a few minutes left and we were just chatting generally. The talkative girl asked me whether I'd teach her how to tell the time next time I saw her. It was now lunch time. The morning had been quite good but I wasn't much looking forward to the weekend. It was the teacher who basically leaves me with the class whilst she drinks tea in the staffroom. I was prepared today though when she asked me whether I had something prepared. I could do my Bonfire lesson again. This is also an anglais renforce class but it is smaller and they are of a much higher level so I adapted it slightly. I explained Bonfire night and then gave them the text. Instead of reading it out as a listening comprehension I wrote the words that fit in the blanks on the board and they had to fill in the blanks. I really enjoyed this class. The teacher wasn't there. It was so much like my CELTA course except of course I didn't have all the other people on my course sitting at the back watching me. It was just me and the students and they enjoyed the lesson and so did I. Next I had mes secondes but it was ok because it is a nice class of secondes. I just go round helping the students. They were working on a text and had comprehension questions so I went round helping them. One girl spoke to me, quite deliberately I'm sure, in rapid french. The look on her face when I answered her question in English. Ha! At the end of the class it's break time. I looked out of the window and it was snowing! And no, I am not lying, nor was I imagining things. My teacher said 'mais c'est impossible, il ne neige jamais a Marseille!' and I have to say I agree. I never ever expected to see snow in Marseille! Ok, so it was neige fondue mais quand meme! I got a lift to the metro station with a teacher to save me taking the bus. I then went home and got my burger, which I had cooked the night before. Which reminds me what I did yesterday evening. Rachel and Louise were here. We went to the supermarket and then back to mine and I made lentil burgers. I remember now. So yes, on Thursday I took my left over lentil burger to Rachel's and we ate together.

Friday. I met up with Angeline and then, in the evening, I went, with Rachel, to Jess's. She cooked mushroom risotto and then a chicken dish. Saturday was spent at a vintage festival at Parc Charnot and we were supposed to go to the races but didn't get round to it. And then in the evening I ate cheese and tomato omlette with Aimee. Et voila, week 9 as best as I can remember. A+

A day trip to IKEA

Saturday was supposed to be a relaxing, resting day. It didn't quite happen like that though. Towards lunchtime Rachel came round for a cup of tea and then we took the metro to Castellane to meet Aimee and Louise. We then put ourselves on a very crowded number 50 bus to IKEA. We spend several hours wandering round IKEA. Louise bought a clothes rail for her room because it wasn't meubleed. Rachel bought a present for Fanny (the student who put her up when she first arrived whilst she was looking for an appartment). Aimee bought a drainer and chopping board and I bought a radio and a red fleece throw thing as well as 6 wine glasses. It was so cheap - 6 wine glasses for 1 euro 50 and a huge red cosy fleece throw thing for 3 euros 98! Bargains. We then got the bus back, each with our blue IKEA bags... That was interesting because the bus was really really busy and we were taking up a considerably large amount of space with all our purchases. Me and Rachel went back to mine, buying a baguette en route, and had soup chez moi. Later on in the evening we took the metro to Rond Point to meet up again with Aimee and Louise. We then took the bus to the beach where the wind was ridiculous. We went for dinner in a mexican restaurant. It was very very nice. We then had to walk back to Rond Point and take the metro back to our various stops to get home. I went home, showered and collapsed in bed completely exhaused.

Le Mistral, brr

Dragging myself out of bed this morning I made my way to La Joiliette metro to go to Rond Point to meet Rachel. She had had a class at 9am and we agreed to meet for coffee after, before her next class. We went to a cafe opposite Le Stade Velodrome and had deux cafe au lait. Afterwards I went to Vieux Port to meet Aimee, we had lunch. It was good because I hadn't see her properly since before I went to Nice and Monaco. Afterwards she had her Russian lesson and I had to make my way to Metro Saint Just for my cours de conversation. It was freezing, and by freezing, I mean really freezing. The wind was extremely strong. I thought it got windy at home but it's nothing compared to here. The mistral is so so so cold and strong, it's unbelievable. The weather forecast had said winds of 120kmph but I thought he'd been exaggerating, but oh, no. It really was that windy. I had to wait at Metro Saint Just for the lady to come and get me and then when we got to her house her son wasn't there. He is never there. He is always late. I find the hour for the cours de conversation goes so slowly. Tonight I told him about my holidays and then asked him to tell me the story back again. He said 'but I know what you did in the holidays'. I said, 'well, tell me then' and he couldn't because he hadn't understood. It was hard work tonight. Next week I've been told not to do until slightly later because he's never there anyway. After my cours de conversation I went round to Rachel's - we were going to cook my favourite meal ever - cauliflower cheese! (Well, a variation of it anyway). Aimee and Louise joined us and then Rachel's colocateur arrived and ate with us too. It was a really good evening but I was tired. After we'd eaten we walked Aimee and Louise back to the tram and I went home, showered and went to bed. Zzzzz.

Une rentree de merde

So, just as I thought the first day back couldn't get any worse... I left for my 15h class at about 14h15 and arrived outside the classroom at about 14h55. Shortly after the students began to arrive. We waited a while but there was no sight of the teacher. Olivia (another English teacher) came out of her classroom to see why we were standing outside. She said that she hadn't actually see our teacher (Marie Jose) today and, come to think of it, neither had I. I went to le secretariat to ask and was told that actually she wasn't in today, she was ill! Grr. Why hadn't anybody bothered to tell me this in the morning?! I could have gone home and stayed home, done something useful with my day instead of travelling for45 minutes to get to Lycee to find the class had been cancelled only to spend 45 minutes travelling all the way back again! Argh! I went to the library on my way home and borrowed some book before heading home. Rachel text me to ask whether I still wanted to cook together (we'd said we'd cook burgers together). I text back saying no thanks and asked her how her first day had been. She said 'merde' too so I said we should cook together and exchange stories. I went back to mine, got my lentils and then headed to hers. We cooked burgers. Delicious. Une soiree s'est deroulee qui etait beaucoup beaucoup plus mieux que la journee...

Despair

So, at 5h50 this morning the first of my 3 alarm clocks goes off, followed shortly by the second and then the third so how oh how did I manage to fall back to sleep until 6h30??! It meant there was only 30 minutes to get ready. Good job I discovered last night that it is a semaine impaire with enough time to come home for lunch because there certainly wasn't enough time to make lunch this morning! I got to school for 7h50 to discover there had been a break-in over the holidays meaning there is no internet, no IT facilities and more inportantly, for me at least, no printers, grr. That completely throws my lesson plan for Dorrean (my private student) tomorrow. Nevermind. Off I went to my first class of the day - a BTS class. I noticed there was a tick besides them on my timetable, that means I like this class. I was just sent 2 students today, one of whom I'd seen before. He had obviously worked on his report about his work experience over the holidays. It was good, I was impressed. The other one however hadn't even brought with him the work he had done so far! (Presuming of course he had done some work so far) Some of today's mistakes included 'my school called Lycee Artaud' and 'the firm created in 1985'. They were also having major problems with making the third person singular agree. I think I need a huge 's' on my wall that I can point to everytime. My second class of the day from 9am to 10am are supposed to be 'anglais renforce' but, believe me, there is nothing 'renforce' about this class! I asked them about their holidays, what they had been doing. It was like trying to get mustard from a pickle jar. One of the students mentioned Hallowe'en so I asked whether they knew what it was. I explained trick-treating and dressing up. I then asked them what was special about November 5th. They had no idea, none what so ever. That's what I'm doing next week. 15 minutes at the beginning of the lesson on November 5th. Poor kids, completely deprived, not knowing what bonfire night is! We then progressed on and looked again at the text 'An unkindness of Ravens' by Ruth Rendall. Yes, we are still working on the same text. The same questions every week. When I first saw this extract I thought what a good extract it was and and how I'd like to read the book. Now I think if I ever see this extract again I'll scream - ear plugs at the ready for next Thursday when, guess what, we'll be working on the same text. I ask them a question, a question I am sure I have asked week after week after week and they don't even look at the text! How are they supposed to find the answer if they are staring into space??! I actually said to them at one point 'you need to look at the text to find the answer'. And when you pick on a particular student they just say 'Pouvez vous le repeter?' ou 'Je n'ai rien compris?' Argh! After this class I had my third and final class of the morning - a terminal group. I couldn't believe it was only 10am. It felt like it should be at least lunch time! It was at this point I realised I'd forgotten my board pens - could the day actually get any worse?? Yes, it could. I was sent three students who may as well have been mute. I felt like hitting them over the head. When they told us at le stage to 'ne pas frapper les eleves' I thought it was ridiculous. Now I see why they did it - they knew how tempted we'd be when faced with a wall of silence and blank looks! Their reluctance to speak coupled with being faced with the same picture of the Sudanese child and the size zero model is enough to have anyone looking at their watch. What?! Another 30 minutes to go. Someone help me please! If I hear one more time 'je n'ai rien compris' where 'rien' sounds like 'reng' when said with that lovely Marseilliese accent I will cry. There is only so slowly I can speak, there are only so many ways I can phrase the same thing before I give up and just give it to you in French. I think it does them good to hear me make mistakes in French, it shows them it's ok to make mistakes. I don't care if they make mistakes when they speak English, just for them to speak English would be a start. In fact, no, just for them to speak would be a start! Spanish, Japanses, Arabic, anything, please, just speak! Argh! Never has a morning been so long and so hard. After that lesson I put myself on a bus and then a metro and I am now at home having eaten the second half of last night's tea with a mince pie. Yes, I know, it isn't Christmas but I think I've earnt it! I am also on my second cup of tea and am now beginning to mentally prepare myself for going all the way back to Lycee for my last class at 15h. It shouldn't be too bad. I will be in the classroom with the teacher. The class is nice, I like the teacher. It's the one where she said I could do the grammar. It can't possible be any worse, surely?! I'll get back to you.

Al Dente

It was Rachel's last day chez moi today. It's Tuesday and she can move back into her appartment. It'll be lonely without her. We've just spent two weeks together, 24/7 and now she's moving out as the holidays draw to a close. We went to meet Angeline devant la pharmacie at 11h30 and she took us to Al Dente - an Italian restaurant. Why haven't I discovered this before?! It was delicious. I had cheese ravioli with tomato pesto sauce followed by ice cream. We definitely have to go back even if it's only so I can work my way down the dessert list! After lunch we walked to Cours Julien and then back to La Canabiere. I gave Angeline her camera back and she said she'd put all 175 photos that I took in Nice and Monaco on to a usb stick. (I had to borrow her camera when I went to Nice and Monaco because mine has broken, grr). We all then came back to mine for a cup of tea before Angeline went home and me and Rachel moved all her things back to her appartment. We then noticed that OM were playing Porto and so decided to go to the supermarche and buy something for tea. On our way to Monoprix we bumped into Aimee and Louise at Vieux Port so stopped for a minute or two to say 'hi'. We then bought cheee, potato and ice cream from Monoprix before going back to Rachel's and cooking and watching the football. I left at about 11 and came home back to my quite, empty appartment. It was strange!

Wednesday was the last day of les vacances. It's sad it's over. I don't want to go back to work! Forcing french kids to speak English. Today I met up with Rachel and we went shopping together. I then went home and had baked beans and scrambled eggs on toast before going out to meet Angeline devant la pharmacie. We then came back to mine and she put the photos on my laptop! She also showed me her photos of Vietnam. After she'd gone I cooked tomato and courgette tagiatelle with enough left for lunch tomorrow before looking at my timetable and realising it's a semaine impaire!! I was so convinced it would be a semaine paire because the week before the holidays had been a semaine impaire. But this week is a semaine impaire too which means I get four hours free from 11h to 15h and can come home for lunch! woohoo! I still have to be there for 8h though which means getting up at 6h and leaving at 7h. *sigh*.

So, back to work tomorrow. Holidays are over. The weather is getting colder and there are no more holidays in sight until Christmas. Thank you to Angeline who lent me her camera and to Rachel who came travelling with me. Thank you to Alex for coming to visit and Rachel (again) for keeping me company.

Now I see what you mean...

Above - the ghetto that is Marseille

We got up on Monday morning at 8am and packed. We went to return the broken cork screw but it turns out that french supermarkets don't give you your money back, you have to exchange. The woman didn't even seem that surprised it was broken, I did wonder whether they would take it back with the cork still attatched. We had tried and tried but could not for the life of us remove the cork from the cork screw - removing the cork and corkscrew from the bottle had been hard enough! We exchanged it for a different bottle opener as Rachel needed one chez elle anyway and I got a garlic press as I am fed up with mashing it with a fork. We went back to the hotel and got our things. We then paid and left. We walked back to the station, each of us with a carrier bag more than we'd come with what with everything we'd bought and then the hot chocolate, strawberry jam and sugar we didn't want to leave behind. We bought tickets at the station and got the 11h12 train back to Marseille. Nearly three hours later we were pulling into Gare Saint Charles and I began to see what Alex meant when he had text me to say 'We are just pulling in now to the ghetto that is Marseille'. There is graffiti everywhere, it looks dirty and messy and well, pretty drab really. We got off the train and headed for the metro where my metro card wouldn't work because a month had passed so I had to recharge it. We then took the metro one stop to Colbert and walked along La Rue de la Republique picking up a baguette en route and then through Le Passage Lorette before returning chez moi for a well earnt cup of tea and some lunch. I think if that is your first impression of Marseille then you can be forgiven for having mistaken it for a ghetto! After Nice and Monaco it was dirty, messy, run down, drab, pretty depressing really!

Sunday

Top - sunset over Nice
Second - desert!
Third - the flower market
Fourth - Centre of Nice
Fifth - View over Nice from the castle
Bottom - Nice's tramway

We walked to the flower market on Sunday morning and then around the old part of town before climbing goodness knows how many steps up to the castle. It was warm and sunny and the views were amazing over the port and out towards the sea, over the town. We stopped in the old town to have a coffee and whilst we sat there we saw a man trying to back out a car. All he had to do was reverse in a straight line. Simple. He had no fewer than 8 people standing around him waving their arms yelling directions. Since when has it taken 8 people to reverse a car out?! A man then came along wheeling a trolley of shopping and dropped a glass jar of sugar in the middle of the road. Before he could come back armed with a cardboard box and brush a landrover had driven over it! Free entertainment with our coffee in the old part of Nice, it was so good infact that we had a second coffee! After the coffee we went into a little toy shop where I bought a birthday card which I later noticed over lunch was printed in Ludlow! I can't believe I come all the way to live in the south of France and go on holiday along the coast and end up buying something I could have got at home! We stopped at a restaurant along the sea front for lunch. I had a croque monsieur sans jambon and une glace which, I must say, was delicious. We were there for quite sometime, there was only one waiter and, bless him, he was rushed off his feet. If I'd have been him I'd have given up when the lady at the table opposite us clicked her fingers at him when it was obvious the poor man was struggling to cope! After lunch it was getting towards 16h. We took Le Petit Train Touristique around Nice which wasn't that much different to Le Petit Train in Marseille. It was a good way to see all the main tourist bits of Nice though. After Le Petit Train we went back to the hotel and cooked pasta. It was our final evening in Nice. I couldn't believe how quickly it had gone!

Monaco

Top - A typical Monaco street

Second - La Casino a Monte Carlo
Third - Monaco's Port

Fourth - Le Palais
Bottom - Monaco

We got up and Rachel went in search of a boulangerie to buy croissants for breakfast. France has loads of boulangeries, it shouldn't have been a problem but after she'd been gone about 15 minutes she called to say she was lost! Ha! Not a boulangerie in sight. Brilliant. She wasn't defeated though and eventually, after having walked the length of Nice, came back with croissants! We then caught the bus to Monaco. We walked from our hotel to la gare routiere and bought a ticket which only cost 1,30 euro! 1,30 for a 45 minute bus journey?! Bargain! Monaco is even cleaner than Nice. It was so small and finding anyone who spoke french was an impossiblity. If you hadn't have told me I would have thought I was in Italy. It was beautifully warm and sunny and everything was so tidy. It almost looked fake. There was no litter, no graffiti. Even the building looked like something out of a dolls house. It was good for a day trip but how you could ever live there is beyond me. There is nothing there except the tourist attractions and a million souvenir shops and restaurants. We went to the palace and saw the guards, we went to the casino and Monte Carlo and walked all around the port which had some huge boats in. I bought some souvenirs - a book about Monaco, some postcards and coasters. We then had lunch in an Italian restaurant which we thought quite appropriate seeing as everyone was speaking Italian (even the tv channels in our hotel were in Italian!). I had a mozzarella and tomato salad with a glass of orange juice. In the afternoon we walked around the port and to the casino before getting the bus back to Nice. The traffic was bad so it took longer but it was getting dark and we were going along the coast and we could see the sun setting and pink/red sky. It was beautiful. When we got off the bus in Nice it was quite cold. We went to the supermarket to buy a bottle opener and then went back to the hotel and I made a cheese and tomato omlette whilst Rachel tried to open the bottle of wine. The cork screw was broken and it got stuck in the cork and no matter how hard we pulled it wouldn't come out. It was the most hilarious thing ever but I guess you have to have been there to find it funny... Rachel was holding the bottle and I was pulling the cork screw. One of us was going to get covered in wine... When the cork finally came out Rachel got a nice wine shower! It was hilarious. I don't think I've ever laughed so much ever. But I guess you have to have been there... After dinner we went to find an internet cafe and then for a walk along the seafront before going home to bed.

Nice

Top - Le Promenade d'Anglais a Nice

Second - La mer a Nice

Third - La plage a Nice

Fourth - L'hotel avec Rachel

Bottom - L'hotel avec Rachel

I went to Nice on Friday with Rachel. Our train left Gare Saint Charles at 11h58 so we got up and packed. I took my little pink suitcase and even though we were only going for 3 days it was hard to get everything in! We then went out to return our library books and Rachel wanted to buy some wrapping paper. The library was closed. It doesn't open until 11am! We went to Eurodif for a roll of wrapping paper and to the post office to post some postcards. I also bought a magazine - Le Point, very intellectual. We then went home for a cup of tea and Rachel wrapped up the cards she'd made for her friends back home. The day before Rachel had borrowed Mairead's camera charger (because they both have the same camera and Rachel left her camera charger at home). She needed to return it and we still needed to take our library books back which were due back. At 11am we both left, suitcases in tow. Rachel went to meet Mairead and I went to take the library books back. We then met at the station at about 11h45 only to see that our train was going to be 25 minutes late! When we finally got on the train it was about 12h25. We bought lunch at the station and ate it on the train. The train journey was really pretty, it went along the coast through Toulon, Saint Raphael, Cannes and Antibes. It took us 2 and a half hours to get there and when we got off the train at Nice station is was about 10 degrees warmer than it had been in Marseille. There we were with our coats and scalves and gloves because it had been so cold in Marseille and in Nice all we needed was a t-shirt! We navigated our way out of the station and to the tourist information office where we got a map of Nice. We found our way to the hotel, it was about a 15minute walk. The hotel was about a 5 minute walk from La Promenade d'Anglais with the beach and sea. The hotel itself was called Le Lido. The man was there to meet us and show us our room. It was a small hotel with only 6 rooms. Our room was room number 6 and it had a bathroom with a toilet, shower and wash hand basin, there were 2 beds and a table for eating, a tv and a small kitchen with a fridge and sink and two hobs for cooking on. There was a window too that looked out over the garden. After we'd unpacked we went for a walk to the beach. It reminded me of Brighton because there were steps down to the beach with la promenade d'anglais before the road. All it needed was the odean cinema and the grand hotel, a few clouds in the sky and maybe 10*C cooler and it could have been Brighton! After the beach we went to the supermarket and bought some food. We then went back to the hotel and made pasta and cheese sauce before going back out for a walk around Nice. We walked along the sea front towards the old town which is a bit like a cleaner version of Le Panier!

Alex (and the washing up)

Top - Marseille's very own Arc de Triomphe (Porte d'Aix) near Gare Saint Charles

Middle - Rachel and Alex a la plage

Bottom - The sunset from le Palais du Pharo

Monday. Alex was coming to visit today. It's the holidays for the best part of two weeks so he said he'd come down to visit Marseille. He's a language assistant like me but in Chambery, near Grenoble. His train was due to arrive at 14h23 so me and Rachel went to La Poste in the morning as I had a parcel to collect. Never again. In the future all parcels can go uncollected. It's always busy in La Poste but this was ridiculous. We went in and there were about 4 or 5 people infront of us in the queue. After about 50 minutes of queuing the man closed his counter much to the anger of all the people still waiting to be served - including us. We were now only 2 people away from my parcel. The man behind us went completely mad so the cashier agreed to serve up to this man. When we finally left La Poste, complete with parcel, it was over an hour later. An hour we'd been queuing for this parcel, an hour! Ridiculous. We went home and had omlette for lunch only to realise we were now going to be late meeting Alex at Gare Saint Charles, oops. We weren't that late and well, it served him right for calling Marseille a ghetto. Although arriving on the train and then walking back to mine through Le Passage Lorette doesn't exactly make for excellent first impressions of Marseille... Infact, I doubt it could get much worse. We came back and did the washing up (we hadn't had time to do it before going to get Alex). Later on we took Alex to Le Palais du Pharo where we'd been the day before with Aimee and Eleanor. We stayed until it was almost dark and then we went to the supermarket to do the shopping. We went to Rachel's (because she has an oven) and cooked Macaroni Cheese. We bought Pastis to try as it is the local drink of Marseille. It was disgusting, they can keep it! We then went to Le Vieux Port to Exit and to Le Bar de la Marine where Love Actually was filmed.

Tuesday. We had to go back to Rachel's to do the washing up because we'd left it the night before. Now I know why I always do the washing up before I go to bed. There is nothing more depressing than going into the kitchen to find yesterday's washing up. After the washing up we went to the beach. It was really cold and windy. The waves were really impressive and there was lots of people windsurfing. We ate at Patacrepes and went to Parc Borely. In the afternoon we went to Le Palais Longchamps and then returned home on the tram. That meant that we had used the bus, tram and metro. We later went to the supermarket and did more shopping. We cooked burgers for tea. Vegetarian ones for me of course! We then went to watch the football. OM were playing Metz and there was extra time and penalties. Eventually Marseille won as Metz missed their fifth and final penalty.

Wednesday. Saint Charles. We went to buy Alex's return train ticket and mine and Rachel's carte 12-25. We queued for about half and hour. There was a really really rude man behind us in the queue who could not have stood any closer to us if he were to have tried. Argh! He seemed quite shocked when I answered his question in French, ha! Yes, I can speak french! I am not just some rude ignorant English person as you are a rude ignorant French person. After we'd got our cartes we walked down Rue Saint Fe to La Prefecture for lunch. The service was awful, the lady was bordering on rude, she just seemed to ignore us even though it was obvious we had finished eating and therefore would like our plates cleared away. And surely standing there, money in hand is enough of a clue for 'l'addition s'il vous plait' even though we had already tried to ask for it several times. Argh! What is wrong with people?! We went home after this and cooked cous cous stuffed peppers. Angeline then came round with some dvd's because we had tried and failed to find the video store. None of us realised we could just have gone to the library to borrow a dvd... oh well. We sat and watched Ratatouille - brillian film. Almost made me like rats... but not quite! We then had chocolate ice cream and watched a second film - Momento but I have to admit I did fall asleep towards the end. I wasn't the only one though! After our movie evening I went for a shower and then 'Gill, would you like to watch Scrubs?' 'Yeah, I'll just be a minute' was my reply, I then got sidetracked doing the washing up and well, by the time I'd finished Scrubs was finished, oh well... at least the washing up got done.

Thursday. The week is flying. Alex went back to Chambery today. We took him to the station for his train at 11h30, it was sad that he had to go. After he'd gone we went back home and had soup and bread for lunch. The appartment was so quiet! We then went to meet Louise and Mairead at Le Vieux Port and John and Dan were there too. After we went to Monoprix and I bought the french equivalent of a scrap book. We then came home and Angeline came round to lend me her camera because mine seems to have broken. It looks like my Insurance with Ensleigh might come in use... After Angeline had left, me and Rachel made the burgers again and we are now packing because tomorrow we are going to Nice. The train leaves at 11h54. We're staying in a hotel as it was pretty much the same price as a hostel and the location is really good. Anyway, I'll keep you posted.

Le Palais du Pharo

Top - Aimee, Rachel and Eleanor

Middle - View of Le Vieux Port from Le Palais du Pharo

Bottom - View over Le Panier with La Cathedrale from Le Palais du Pharo

Sunday. Me and Rachel. We went chez Rachel in the morning to pick up a few things and then returned to mine to cook peppers stuffed with cous cous for lunch and then Aimee called me and asked if we'd like to join her and Eleanor - a friend from uni who was visiting her, they were going to Le Palais du Pharo. Neither me nor Rachel had ever been so we decided to go. We met them at Vieux Port and walked up to Le Palais du Pharo which is not far from Le Vieux Port. It was beautiful albeit a little cold. There was a lovely view over Le Vieux Port and we took photos and walked around. We then went back to Rachel's for a cup of tea before deciding to take the french version of the film 'Hitch' and go back to Aimee's on the tram to watch it and eat. We picked up a pizza en route and had it with salad chez Aimee whilst watching 'Hitch'. Rachel and me then went home, it was quite late but it had been a really good day. Eleanor is really nice, she's an assistant in Belfor in mid-western France, she goes to university in Scotland with Aimee but lives in Sunderland. They're both studying French and Russian but Eleanor is studying Spanish too.