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!