The first week

It’s now been a week since I first set foot in Le Mans and it’s certainly been a busy one. The most important aspect of the week was simply trying to settle in, make some friends and find out exactly I would be doing over the next 7 months.

As it is said, we are the ‘Facebook generation’; everything at university is now primarily organised through Facebook - similarly, many English language assistants have a Facebook group to stay in touch and also organised soirées and get-togethers. While learning French is the main reason for the year abroad, I quickly learnt that being on your own in France can be lonely, depressing and extremely stressful.

With everyone around you speaking French at an extremely quick speed, your confidence lowers and it’s comforting to know that there are others who are in a similar position, looking to improve their language whilst also wanting to enjoy their year abroad.

So while I am able to spend time with fellow Anglophones, I try and take every other possible opportunity to speak – and understand French being spoken. After all, even simply speaking the language and being forced to recall the language, I find, helps to boost your confidence, especially when you manage to have a serious conversation with someone.

Who have I spoken to and whose conversations have I eavesdropped into? The random people on the tram coming back after passing their exams, the receptionist at my foyer, the assistants who teach other languages (German and Chinese for example) and even the girl who gives out the 20 minutes in the morning near the station.

Today, we had our orientation in a city called Nantes. While most of it consisted of giving us administrative information, it was a chance to see the city (realising in the process that I will need to return to see it in more detail!) and it also gave us ideas for how we could teach the students.

Our first class, for example, could consist of the assistants talking about their hometown in a little bit of detail and then allowing questions, in the language they were learning of course, about the city. I think that I may do the initial introduction but will then move onto roleplays with students pairing us to participate in conversations that would normally exist in London. I found that in my own lessons with the assistant, students (myself included) would start having other discussions if we were left alone to have such conversations and so I will give the students time to prepare and then will call them to the front to perform in front of the class.

For those of you still wondering what I’m exactly doing, I’m going to acting as an English language assistant to students between the ages of 15 and 18. For the oldest students, I will often be with them on a 1-to-1 basis, helping them to practice for an upcoming exam (the baccalaureate) and with the other students, I will take about 12 students and teach them myself (with guidance from the English teachers).

My final, and ongoing, task is to find my own apartment to live in. While I do have the option of staying in a foyer (essentially, a youth hostel), I would much rather prefer to stay in my own apartment. Somewhere that I can cook my own food, somewhere that I can call ‘home’, at least for the year, and somewhere that I don’t have cigarette smoke wafting into my room when I’m lying in bed! I have a few places that I hope to see so the next time I write my blog, I may be writing from my new apartment. Wish me luck!

Introductions

I arrived in Le Mans on a TGV (think National Rail) train yesterday after making my way to Paris via Eurostar. Fortunately, it didn't take too long. What wasn't helpful though was after that journey, which included lugging around my suitcases in a daze-inducing heat (about 30 degrees), when I got to my foyer,  the receptionists asked me where I was teaching and started laughing. Yes, although I had been placed in a town called Mamers, I opted to live in Le Mans, deciding to make an hour-and-a-half-long commute to work. Why? Mamers has a population of 5000, has one high street, bad transport links and just about nothing going on. More on that later though. You can see more detail on the map.

So there may already be a couple of questions: firstly what is a foyer? Right, well a foyer is similar to a student accommodation and they ask you to pay a certain amount, which includes electricity and water bills. It doesn't include gas bills because most students in France will stay at such places during the week and use canteens and so student accommodations will either have one hotplate or, in most cases, none at all. Fortunately, the canteens are quite reasonably priced although I would prefer to be able to cook. And have a fridge. The room I've been given isn't too bad either. It may be a little on the small side, especially when it comes to finding places to put clothes, but then again don't you always find that your room is too small? Anyway, I've added a couple of picture taken from my window.

And why am I not living in a flat? France has a rather odd system of doing things in that in order to open a bank account, you need an attestation de logement/residence which gives proof of your address yet generally to rent a flat you need to have a French bank account. That reason aside, I thought it would also be a bit easier to have somewhere to stay where I didn't have to worry about other bills and focus on settling in. Now I'm here though, it's time to start finding somewhere to live - and I have to do it all pretty fast.

What now? Well today I managed to sort out a few things. I opened my bank account with Credit Agricole, I tried to get a contract so that I could use my iPhone in France (which I couldn't do because I don't yet have a French card or cheque book) and managed to sort out a few other bits of paperwork. On Monday I have to go to Mamers for the first time and I'll have to go in on Tuesday too, although it'll be mainly just meeting the other teachers and filling in yet more paperwork. It's certainly one thing I've had to get used to from January of my second year; the amount of paperwork that has to be filled in and sent back, by specific dates, seems to be limitless. I also called my responsable today, my contact person at the school, and she let me know that a lot of the teachers at the school live in Le Mans so I might be (and I really really hope that I am) able to join one of the car-shares that they do. It would cut down my journey by about 45 minutes, as my responsable said, it's just a waste of time.

What are you doing by the way? I forgot to mention that in detail, didn't I? I study French with International Studies at the University of Warwick and it is a requisite of my course that I spend my third year in a French-speaking country. Despite my interest in the Middle East, I chose France (instead of the Maghreb) because of the purity of the language and thought that I would aim to improve my French over the course of the year. I had a choice of either studying at a university of teaching and I decided to teach instead and that is what the next seven months will be about.

This blog is here to update friends, family and anyone else interested in my year abroad or thinking about taking one. I also collate all my articles at www.sirajdatoo.com so you can read my other stuff if you want!