Home for the holidays

Bonsoir!
It seems ridiculous to say this, but tomorrow afternoon I leave Rouen for two weeks for the holidays (Toussaint). These past two weeks have gone super fast, even though the first one endlessly dragged. I think it's because we've had so much to sort out these past two weeks that it's almost seemed like not enough time to get everything done. However, we have finally (seemingly) sorted everything out! We signed for our apartment yesterday (took about two hours, and our contract seemed to be about 100 pages long, ridiculous) and so Nathalie is collecting the keys for us and then my parents are gonna start moving stuff in with me on the first weekend in November. When we were at the agency I think the most hilarious example of the craziness of French bureaucracy was the fact that our two guarantors had to write out a whole thing they had to sign that was already typed, so they just had to hand write it for no reason other than French people love paperwork.
I feel pretty proud of myself at the moment because I seem to be able to sort important things out in French by myself such as banking, insurance, wifi. So maybe my French is actually getting better!
It feels very weird to be going home because I'm actually really enjoying living here at the moment. But I am very much looking forward to getting to see my friends from university. And to not have to cook for myself for a while. Lazy I know.
So my first three weeks are over! Now a little break in Angleterre before the next six weeks.

Good news, everyone!

I really hope that the title of this post was read with Professor Farnsworth's voice from Futurama. If not you need to watch more TV.
So it seems that the profs are actually coming through for us and are going to get all of the paperwork they need sorted over this weekend and then we will actually sign for the apartment on Monday! YAAAAAAAAAAAY! Things are finally happening and it all seems good so far. I've made some really good friends and we are finally all exploring a lot of Rouen. This isn't a very informative blog post but it's basically to say I am happy and that is good :)
Oh, and also today I followed around a 17 year old for the whole morning. 2 and a half hours of French philosophy is not fun.

One thing I have noticed since moving over here is that nothing, NOTHING that you want to sort out that would be simple in England is simple here. Wednesday morning Louise and I went to see a few apartments and found a pretty perfect one. It's on Rue Jeanne d'Arc which is a pretty central street (as central as you can really get seeing as from that street you can get to almost every other main street in Rouen. The only downside is it's on the fourth floor and there is no lift so it's quite a work out to actually get to the apartment itself. However, we're pretty cool with this as the amount of crap I'm eating I think I could use the work out. The apartment itself is absolutely beautiful, really spacious and nicely decorated, AND IT HAS A HOB which is a big thing in French unfurnished apartments as they don't usually include any kind of kitchen stuff. So we'll need to somehow obtain an oven. God knows how but somehow. So the fact that we have actually found an apartment we like and that we can afford is a good thing. However, there are of course a million other hoops to jump through. We need this documentation and that documentation and we need a French person to be our guarantor. Hopefully our mentor teachers will do this for us. If not we are screwed. Right now I am praying that the estate agency hold this apartment for us til Monday because at this rate there is no way we are going to get all the paperwork until then, especially as I don't even know if my prof will come through with it or not, I just really hope she will. Sigh.
On a lighter note, here are a few things I have learnt over the past week:
1. FRENCH PEOPLE DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF JELLY. I'm serious. You know how we have stereotypes that French people always eat snails, frogs legs etc? Their one for British people is jelly. They find it the strangest thing ever, they just cannot comprehend it. I thought it was just the students but then a teacher genuinely came up to me in the staff room and started telling me how all English people eat jelly with peas in it (what?) and refused to believe me when I told him that definitely wasn't a thing. If it is then it is probably eaten by like one 91 year old man in a village in Yorkshire.
2. There is a man in Rouen who drives the smallest car ever. It's pretty much half the size of a smart car and it blew my mind so much I almost stopped at a crossing just to take a picture of it. Bright orange too.
3. There is a specific chocolate bar in Rouen that does the best hot chocolates in the world and I will be taking everyone who visits me there. And the waiter is very cute and speaks English.
Right, I'm going to have to go to bed as I have to be at school for 8 tomorrow to shadow a pupil. Joy.

Life goes on!

So, time for another update.
I am no longer living in Karine's house in Franqueville-St-Pierre. Translation: I am no longer in the middle of nowhere. I am now living with my future flatmate Louise in her teacher Nathalie's house in the centre of Rouen. Words cannot even begin to describe how much of an upgrade this is. If I want to go out to get something to eat, I can. If I want to go shopping, I can. If I just want to leave the house and wander around anywhere, I can. I mean, I could do that in Franqueville-Saint Pierre but I would just see houses. And road. And more houses. And a bit more road.
So all in all, I am in a much better situation. BUT. We still have no apartment of our own. We had quite a depressing beginning to the day yesterday where we went round quite a few agencies with Nathalie who all said they don't rent apartments to two people due to students having bad reputations/annoying neighbours etc. THANKS FRENCH STUDENTS. THANKS SO MUCH. But, after what seemed like hours we finally found some agencies who said they did and who arranged some viewing for us. However, nowhere is furnished. So we are going to be those tramps that borrow furniture off people and buy 30 euro used sofas from the French equivalent of the Friday Ad. But I think it'll actually be quite fun to have a weird mismatch of furniture. We'll be original at least. We viewed an apartment yesterday that was just ridiculous, you had to walk up three flights of the most narrow winding stairs you had ever seen to get to a tiny apartment where you had to go upstairs AGAIN to get to the bedrooms. How the hell would we get two beds up there? We wouldn't is the answer. But we have three viewings tomorrow so things are looking up hopefully.
I had a really nice experience at school today where a teacher who I had never met just started talking to me in French and we chatted for a while about how I don't have an apartment yet and he said he would help me by lending furniture and that he would help me make a little poster, and then bless his heart when another teacher came in he asked him straight away if he had any spare furniture! It's so nice to know that the colleagues at my school are all so nice and friendly and willing to help. Oh, and he also came specifically into the staff computer room to play a French version of World of Warcraft. What a cool dude.
Tonight we went out to dinner and guess what? VEGGIE BURGERS EXIST IN FRANCE. There is a great restaurant in Rouen called Holy Cow that sells veggie burgers as well as normal burgers of course and it was SO good.
So all in all, things are going okay at the moment, and once we find our own apartment it will be even better.
Actually there is one more thing: SEAN PAUL IS NOW FOLLOWING ME ON TWITTER. THAT'S TRUE FACTS PEOPLE. THINGS ARE LOOKING UP.
Ciao for now x

Update for my life

Okay, so this is the first time I’ve had internet in God alone knows how many days. Here is possibly the longest blog post I’ll ever write seeing as I have to sum up everything that’s gone on since Sunday when I last entered the realms of the internet.

I am in an incredibly strange living situation at the moment. I’m still staying with my prof referent but I’m literally living in one corner of one room because she has just moved into this house so my ‘room’ is full of boxes. I can honestly say I don’t feel upset, I don’t feel ‘homesick’ per se I just feel a bit awkward living here because it’s not the best environment at the moment…there is a lot of stress due to her and her family still attempting to sort their new house out and also move everything out of the old one so I’ve spent quite a few evenings sitting in my room listening to screaming matches between them all. All in all I cannot wait to move out of this room and stop living out of a suitcase. And start cooking for myself and basically just stop feeling like such a flipping burden the entire time! So that’s my living situation at present, I am stuck in Franqueville-St-Pierre with no internet (until now) and no one nearby so I basically spend most evenings sitting in my bed (in, not on, because it is freaking FREEZING in this house and in this region of France in general I suppose) and watch the extensive DVD collection I brought with me and try to ration my Game of Thrones book as I only brought one other book with me and if I finish both before I get internet access then I really do think I will go mad.

Right, let’s move onto a more positive note!

Rouen is an absolutely beautiful city (even though I’ve only managed to go round it TWICE after being here for six freaking days, six days that feel like 20) and I can’t wait to live there. And not here. I’m currently searching for apartments with two other English assistants who I met at the training day who also don’t have apartments yet, one of whom is eerily in the exact same situation as me with her prof referent moving house currently! I went round her house to search for apartments with her as the other assistant lives quite far away, and it was such a different atmosphere! Even though she may be moving out it is so much calmer. I suppose it’s due to the fact she just lives with her 16 year old son whereas here there are three boys, 8, 10 and 12 as well as husband and wife so the stress is massively intensified. But anyway, the point is that the apartment search seems positive and hopefully I’ll find somewhere decent soon and get out of this mad house!

More positives, my school seems genuinely really good. The actual layout reminds me of one of my University buildings more than a school, but maybe lycées are different from regular sixth form colleges in the UK. There are 1400 pupils who ALL study English as a compulsory subject so how the hell I’m meant to see all of them in 12 hours a week I have no idea. I guarantee by the end of my seven months there will still be students I’ve never met. The colleagues I’ve met seem really lovely, all the English teachers are great, some are a really good laugh and also all the other French members of staff seem really welcoming. My French is bloody abysmal though, I don’t know what is wrong with me, I mean I’m meant to be doing a degree in this bloody language. I think it’s because some of the conversation French is different to how we’re taught it in school, so for example no one has ever asked me in French ‘where do you come from’ before because in school we were always taught simply ‘where do you live’. So yes, I am genuinely stumbling in my mind when French people ask me where I’m from. Eventually a lightbulb in my brain turns on and I tell them Brighton. They all love Brighton because it’s so close. One of my fellow English teachers (can I even say that? I mean am I really an English teacher?) kept making the same joke every time he introduced me to someone: ‘she comes from Brighton! The British Riviera!’ Bless. Here is my first observation of French people: if French people wear glasses, they only wear what is known among the Warwick French students as ‘Béatrice glasses’. These are the little round spectacles, kind of like the ones that elderly senile lawyer from the Aristocats wears, you know, the ‘TARARABOOMSEYAY’ guy. Anyone who gets that quote is my new hero.

I’m teaching kids aged from 15-18 and their levels are INCREDIBLY varied. You get one class of 15 year olds whose English is genuinely good and are eager to speak to you and then some who genuinely look at you like you’re an alien. Same with the 18 year olds. I'm meant to be following one of the 18 year olds around and seeing all her classes next Friday...might be a bit weird.

I finally have a bank account now, got it with the post office and EVERYTHING was free which was fantastic. Still don't have a French phone number though. Watch this space.

One of the strangest things about central Rouen is there is this man who walks around trying to get charity money from you with a trolley...of three cats and a rabbit. I just don't get it. I mean the cats themselves must have cost money as they're Burmese cats which cost like £200 odd in England...it's just the weirdest thing ever.

I'm still searching for a bookshop.

Tomorrow I have to go to Dieppe to get my birth certificate translation from this translator who has been dodgy as, she's messed me around LOADS so if she doesn't turn up tomorrow I will go mental seeing as I'm already paying 35 euros on top of 16 extra to get the train to Dieppe and back! Really not impressed. My advice to any students next year who have to get a certified translation of their birth certificate is email all the translators to find out how near they actually are to the town centre so you don't get messed around like I have! At least I'm going out for drinks with the other assistants after so that's something to look forward to.

Right, I'm going to go to bed now and leave this here.

Bisous!