"La grêve? It’s a French tradition!"

Today ended a long week full of travel, orientations, TAPIF, and meeting awesome assistants. 

After hitting the snooze button a few times after hearing my 5:30 alarm, Amy and I hopped on the bus to Avignon at 6:15 this morning. We had gotten about 5 hours of sleep and after all the traveling we had been doing, we were dreading another day full of travel and orientations. We got in at 7:45 and since both of our orientations started at 9:00, we decided to sit and have a relaxing petit-déjeuner, complete with un chocolat chaud and un pain au chocolat.

As I had never actually been in the city of Avignon, I really enjoyed my limited amount of time in the city today. It is a nice clean city, filled with white and off white typical provençal buildings with periwinkle blue shutters. It still has that small town feel with the size of a nice city, plenty of shopping and cafés to explore. I am thinking many trips to Avignon are in the future, as it is the closest bus ride away!

The meeting that required me to be in Avignon today was the formation pédagogique, or the teacher training. I got to spend this session with the other English speaking secondary assistants in my department (the collection of cities surrounding Avignon). We spent the morning defining some words and phrases that we might encounter during our time in the secondary schools. As I had seen many of these before from living in Lycée Charles de Gaulle, it was great to get more clarification on this stuff.* After lunch, they presented us with many examples of different activities we can use with our students during our lessons. 

Coming from the perspective of an assistant who already has a degree in education and a teaching certification, I didn’t learn honestly much new in terms of the types of things I can do to facilitate learning. A lot of the activities shown were activities I have done in my French classroom, just now in English. I don’t want to say today was a waste of time – I can always improve on my teaching, and this assistantship will give me even more experience in the classroom. For that, I am grateful. I am just saying that today I got a little bit bored. Especially with being so exhausted from the past few days of travel.

After the training, Amy and I caught the bus back to Apt and ran into a problem we had yet to experience: Friday rush hour traffic coming out of Avignon. Typically, the bus we take gets us to and from Avignon in an hour and a half. Coming back today, it took 2 hours. For a half hour of it we were in standstill traffic. Oh the embouteillage! Which reminds me of something I have been noticing quite a bit this week: the serious craftsmanship that is driving a bus in the South of France. I remarked to Amy on our windy bus ride down the narrow alleys of Marseille the other day, I seriously don’t know how these people do it! They maneuver these machines like they are compact sports cars, all with complete ease and (though sometimes a bit scary) intense speed. And to top it all off, the drivers are always so kind, never forgetting to tell you bonne journée as you leave the bus. So gentille!

With the craziness from this week dwindling down, I can now start to enjoy a relaxing weekend in Apt, filled with the market, a potential Sunday hike and pique-nique and watching Mean Girls in French. I mean, how else would you spend the weekend after October 3^rd?**

*And herein lies the origin of the title of this blog. In starting to talk about strikes, and the inevitable possibility of teachers going on strike during our assistantship , one of the teachers leading the training said “La grêve (strikes)? it’s a French tradition!” Nothing could be more close to the truth.

**If you don’t get this reference, you’re dead to me.***

***I’m only joking. But you seriously can’t sit with us.

 

Marseille - the city of bouillabaisse, boats and bureaucracy

Marseille. I had never actually been to the city itself, only had been in the airport before these past two days. At first glance, Marseille is a huge city, with numerous arrondisements and windy, narrow alleys. In fact, it is the third largest city outside of Paris and Lyon, in terms of population size. It is also a very dirty city, quite industrialized with loads of graffiti and saying that the people are friendly is putting it nicely - lurking might be a more accurate statement.

We arrived into Marseille St. Charles TGV at 10:30am Wednesday morning. After getting a bit lost and thankfully using Amy's phone to recover a map, we found the hotel. Upon asking when we could check in, they said not until 2:00pm in the afternoon. Quoi?! We didn't want to carry our bags around town with us, so we asked if they could keep them here. We placed them in the breakfast room, noticing that the door was unlocked, so we gladly took our valuables with us.

Then, we walked down to the Vieux Port. This area of the city is not dirty at all, it’s actually quite nice. You can see boat after boat in the harbor lined with café after café, perfect for wasting the day away by basking in the sun and people watching. We chose to eat at one of these cafés for lunch, as one of the plats du jour was mussels, one of my favorites. It came with some deliciously seasoned fries and I topped it off, of course, with an Orangina.

Vieux Port

View from lunch, you can Notre Dame de la Garde on the top of the hill in the background.

MUSSELS. (Yes that warrants all caps)

Then we headed back to the hotel to check in, drop off some stuff and head back to the harbor. We were SO happy to see that we had free Wifi in the hotel for the stay - as we ran out of internet at our apartment back in Apt. That is one problem that has remained persistent in the small town we live in - lack of Wifi and internet connection. I have spent more in internet this month then in rent!

Once we reached the Vieux Port again, we decided to take a boat ride to see the calanques, these wonderful cliff valleys that are partially submerged underwater and can be found on the coast of Marseille. When buying our tickets, both the woman working at the desk and the ticket taker warned us that it was a little venteux, or windy, asking us if we still wanted to go. We said sure, I mean, how bad can it be?

It was pretty bad. I mean I have only got seasick one other time in my life and, although I didn't get sick today, it was pretty close. I have to say that even though it was rocky, the boat was a lovely way to spend the afternoon. With the beautiful sun, constant breeze, crisp blue water (with copious splashes thanks to the harsh wake), and stunning views of the calanques, it was hard not to smile while being thrown around by the waves a little bit.

 

View of Old Port from the boat

Calanques

Amy enjoying the sun!

It is difficult to see but there is a little village of about 15 houses in that valley. Or should I say vacation shacks.

After soaking up the sun, we got a quick scoop at the Haagen-Dazs shop in port before our next adventure. We decided to climb to the highest point in Marseille - Notre Dame de la Garde - which promised stunning panoramic views of Marseille. After a steep hike up several steps, the view we were promised did not disappoint.*

Marseille

It is actually a quite massive city. But look at that hill/mountain in the background!

View of Notre Dame de la Garde on our trek up.

We took a bus back to Old Port (too tired from walking) and decided to sit at a cafe and have the delicacy of Marseille: bouillabaisse. It is kind of like a fish soup, which included mussels, fish, potatoes and a broth. The broth was delicious, and Amy and I agreed that the rest was sub-par compared to the amazing mussels for lunch.

Sub-par fish soup.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel, to recover as we were up the next morning for orientation at 7am. Orientation was a long day. In the morning, they took documents for salaire and securité sociale and just explained all of the things we needed to do administratively as assistants getting settled in. This is where I say again: the French have a form for EVERYTHING. Then, we had lunch, made a visit to the Maison de la Region and the American assistants went to the U.S. embassy in Marseille. Which was kind of a big deal. I mean it took a half hour to get through security. And we got to each personally meet the Consulate General. Pretty cool. Something else that was pretty cool: all the amazing assistants I met from my academie. So great to have some new friends close by in many different cities!

However, I noticed firsthand what I have only come to observe from the outside - French bureaucracy is time consuming. They like for everything to be incredibly specific to their standards (in terms of required documents, to filling out a form exactly to a certain tee, to signing your name in the specific format that the French sign it). I don't mind this so much - I am a very detail oriented person. But the thing that really gets me is that they are specific but still take their time to get anything accomplished. I can count numerous times during my orientation day in Marseille where I was standing waiting around for at least 30 minutes waiting for the next presentation, for someone to arrive, or to walk together somewhere as a group. Coming from my "time is precious" mentality, it is really hard for me to get used to this laid back nature of the French's "ça prend du temps" way of thinking. French bureaucracy, nous ne sommes pas les amis!**

After rushing back to Apt by train and bus, Amy and I got in with just enough time to look up things for our pedagogical orientation in Avignon the following morning and to set our clocks for an early 5:30am wake-up. On the way back on the train we decided - we did not like Marseille, and we would never return***. Although it was nice to say we had visited and to tick that city off our lists, it honestly was a city that made me feel quite uneasy - maybe I am a country girl after all!

*There was a little disappointment when we reached the top - the church was closed so we couldn't get panoramic views of the sea, just the city. But still, did you see that view?!

**Translation: we are not friends.

***Only exception is a connection at the train station or to fly out of the airport.