I've been accepted into the Teaching Assistant Program in France, in which young people like myself are temporarily employed by the French government to teach their native language to French public school students. I will be teaching English to primary and secondary school students in a small town in Brittany, northwestern France. My contract is from October 1st to April 30th, though my visa allows a little leeway on either end. To find out more about the program, follow this link: http://www.frenchculture.org/spip.php?rubrique424&tout=ok
It was a blissfully uneventful series of flights that took me from Portland to Seattle, Seattle to Reykjavik, and finally Reykjavik to Paris with Icelandair. I met other teaching assistants in Reykjavik, heading to other parts of France. One of the girls was on her second round of assistant teaching in France.
Once in Paris, I headed straight for Aloha Hostel, located in the 15th Arrondissement. It was the closest hostel I could find to the Montparnasse train station, where I would be taking the train the next day to Rennes, and finally to Dinan. It was a fine hostel, despite the silly name. I picked up a deliciously greasy kebab from a restaurant nearby, found a bank, took out some money, and went so sleep at around 7pm.
The next day, I met with my good friend Nayla for coffee before rushing off to the train station. My contact person in Brittany, Madeleine Reux, came to meet me at the train station in Rennes. She is the head of languages for the primary school district of Dinan, where she trains teachers to teach English. She is a kind and very funny person, who I've gotten to really like. I ended up staying with her for the next week, as it turned out that the hostel in Dinan, which I had contacted before leaving, had decided to close early.
To make a long story short, I eventually found an apartment with the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs, an organization that provides housing for young people, and have now settled in. I have made friends with the 4 other assistants assigned to Dinan; 2 Spaniards and 2 Australians, but one of Spaniards, Lidia, has broken her foot and will not be able to join us for awhile. I went to visit her in Rennes last weekend. We communicated a lot by email before I left because she is also the only other assistant working in primary schools, like me. The other three work in the high school, where they are also housed.
My first week of classes was a bit rough; I realized how little experience I have actually teaching little kids after my first class with rambunctious 7-year-olds. I left crying after class #2, when I completely lost control of the class. It's not that they are intentionally badly-behaved; they are really sweet kids one-on-one, I just hadn't learned how to handle a class by myself. This week was better, though it's still scary.
Dinan is a lovely town. Surrounded by medieval ramparts, the town center is full of half-timbered buildings, cobblestone streets, and two churches. There's an open-air market on Thursdays, where I do most of my shopping for the week. Cider and buckwheat crepes are the traditional specialties here.
