I always think it's silly to say that the weather has an influance on my mood, I guess I think that I should have enough control over my emotions that something outside of myself should affect me like that. But lets be honest, when it's rainy, cold and windy I'm less likely to be happy, unlike today and the last three days which have been sunny and warm (13ish C) and I've felt really good and like things are going well. Nantes comes alive in this weather, people eat lunch outside, musicans play music in the street and just walk in the streets. What's more there is a very intresting "show" going on in the store windows done by a theater company, you can check it out here
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michel_craipeau/
so the idea is that the manniquens are revolting against the stores that they work for, and they change everyday, getting more and more bizzare, out of the 13 window my favorite so far is the one where they are growing butts, oh the French!
well I really should be listening to my history class...
Friday, February 8, 2008
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
yep I'm still around
I havent wrote anything in a while, I guess because I really havent had too much to talk about. Life continues here in France but I'm kind of used to it now, it is pretty routine, and to tell you the truth I've been homesick since Christmas. So what have I learned about homesickness in the past? boredom = homesickness therefore the solution is to keep myself busy. This is a little easier said than done here, but I'm going to try and see how it goes.
Continuing on here is a little french fact:
the dance craze sweeping the french nation is a dance style called "tecktonik" which is a very energtic dance involving large arm movements to electro music (how do you discribe a dance style?) here is a link to an example of one of the best known groups
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7EqlVqZY1c
this trend started last summer i guess and is quite popular here, i think it's kind of funny. On the streets at night you will sometimes see groups praticing, (the other day they were dancing in front of the Cathedreal in Nantes, yep only in France would you find gothic arctecture and electro music) they also have Teckonik battles where one group tries to out dance the other. the style that goes with it is, like in the video, tight pants, pointy shoes and zip hoodies in black and white or very bright colours.
so that is your french fact of the day...
Continuing on here is a little french fact:
the dance craze sweeping the french nation is a dance style called "tecktonik" which is a very energtic dance involving large arm movements to electro music (how do you discribe a dance style?) here is a link to an example of one of the best known groups
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7EqlVqZY1c
this trend started last summer i guess and is quite popular here, i think it's kind of funny. On the streets at night you will sometimes see groups praticing, (the other day they were dancing in front of the Cathedreal in Nantes, yep only in France would you find gothic arctecture and electro music) they also have Teckonik battles where one group tries to out dance the other. the style that goes with it is, like in the video, tight pants, pointy shoes and zip hoodies in black and white or very bright colours.
so that is your french fact of the day...
Thursday, January 3, 2008
The New Year
hey all, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year even if i am a little late, I hope everyone had really great holidays. Mine were pretty good it is always a little odd not to be with my family for Christmas, but the little Christmas fairy (Mom) was here right before and we had a good time checking out Nantes and we also traveled to St Malo, a walled city on the north side of Brittany (I live to the south) which was nice but very very cold, there they have the second highest tides in the world (the highest it the Bay of Fundy in good old Canada by the way) and we ate some delicious (and other not so delicious) sea food. Here we are under the bridge by my house.
Mom left on the 20th and I hung out a home for Christmas, i went to Midnight Mass (it was at 8:00) and was with my host family to eat Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas day dinner. Last weekend i had a lovely time visiting my old host family (from when I was here in high school) which was much too short of a time. New Years Corrin and I babysat 8 kids that belonged to relatives of my host family maybe "babysitting" is a loose term because the parents were there and we had supper with them (the party was supper), so i would more call it crowd control. And that brings me to now where I am just chilling until things start up again on Monday (yes that was three weeks of vacation summerized). talk to you again soon
JY
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Good things about today
- the sun is shineing
- I am done the writing process of my two major papers due week
- due to this I could sleep in today therefore I am not sleepy
- one of those papers is already handed in
- I got a plug at the library for my computer
- four more days of school until three weeks of vacation (true, three of those classes are exams)
- dispite the month of strikes at my university due to good planning on the part of our teacher we havent misses any classes because of it.
- my Kinder chocolate advent calender had a little Beuno AND a little Country in it today
- last but not least... mom comes tomorrow!
these are all very good things which is nice after the stressful, lock-myself-in-my-drafty-room to do homework time that I have had these past couple weeks. That being said that last paper needs to be edited today so I better get going ...
- I am done the writing process of my two major papers due week
- due to this I could sleep in today therefore I am not sleepy
- one of those papers is already handed in
- I got a plug at the library for my computer
- four more days of school until three weeks of vacation (true, three of those classes are exams)
- dispite the month of strikes at my university due to good planning on the part of our teacher we havent misses any classes because of it.
- my Kinder chocolate advent calender had a little Beuno AND a little Country in it today
- last but not least... mom comes tomorrow!
these are all very good things which is nice after the stressful, lock-myself-in-my-drafty-room to do homework time that I have had these past couple weeks. That being said that last paper needs to be edited today so I better get going ...
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Teaching Placement
I'm taking a little break from researching the Dreyfus Affair to write a little about my teaching placement. So to explain a little I a teaching assistant in english classes at a local "college" (a middle school here) which is grades 6-9 (or in their system grades 6-3... you remember in french class when you thought that every thing in french was backwards, it's true in the school system too)
I work with 4 different english teachers and am in classes in about all the grades. It is a program that is through the local catholic school board and the first thing that struck me about it was how little I had to do to be part of it, true this program has been happening with Waterloo and Nantes for several years but there was no need for a resume, a reference, or a police check to volenteer in this school. My main job is really just to talk with the students in english, usally the teacher gives me a subject (yesterday I talked about Thanksgiving, what we eat, what we do, the difference between Canada and the States) or the kids will ask me questions about what they are learning (for example when they were learning about healthy lifestyles "How often do you play football?"). The students are usally great, they are intrested in learning english and learning about Canada too.
I'm learning alot about the french school system and how things work here. For one thing the students have to stand up when a teacher enters a room and can't sit untill the teacher says they can. Although this is a little odd, I did notice that it focuses the kids at the begining of class. Also the teachers often ask the kids for feed back on how they think they did on something or their opinion on an other student's work. Say after a presentation the teacher will ask the class what they thought and usally the kids are quite honest about it, if it was good they say so, and if it was bad they will say why they thought so or maybe give a suggestion to make it better.
My next challenge is that I'm getting 15 grade 8's to do extra english lessons with separate from their normal classes (see they really do want to learn english), whatever I want to teach them. So I have to think about that a bit...
I will keep you posted on how that goes
well I better go have lunch before the caf closes...
Janna
I work with 4 different english teachers and am in classes in about all the grades. It is a program that is through the local catholic school board and the first thing that struck me about it was how little I had to do to be part of it, true this program has been happening with Waterloo and Nantes for several years but there was no need for a resume, a reference, or a police check to volenteer in this school. My main job is really just to talk with the students in english, usally the teacher gives me a subject (yesterday I talked about Thanksgiving, what we eat, what we do, the difference between Canada and the States) or the kids will ask me questions about what they are learning (for example when they were learning about healthy lifestyles "How often do you play football?"). The students are usally great, they are intrested in learning english and learning about Canada too.
I'm learning alot about the french school system and how things work here. For one thing the students have to stand up when a teacher enters a room and can't sit untill the teacher says they can. Although this is a little odd, I did notice that it focuses the kids at the begining of class. Also the teachers often ask the kids for feed back on how they think they did on something or their opinion on an other student's work. Say after a presentation the teacher will ask the class what they thought and usally the kids are quite honest about it, if it was good they say so, and if it was bad they will say why they thought so or maybe give a suggestion to make it better.
My next challenge is that I'm getting 15 grade 8's to do extra english lessons with separate from their normal classes (see they really do want to learn english), whatever I want to teach them. So I have to think about that a bit...
I will keep you posted on how that goes
well I better go have lunch before the caf closes...
Janna
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
I'm back
Hi sorry if you have been waiting for me to post, i've been waiting to get some of the pictures from my trip to show you but i havent yet. you see something terrible happened to my camera... i forgot it on the train from Austria to Germany. Overall the trip was amazing we did the wirl-wind tour of London, then hopped to Austria (as one of my post cards says home of Mozart and THE SOUND OF MUSIC) and then to Munich where it snowed and we did this really great walking tour that showed us alot of the city. So it was a very busy week but also a lot of fun. I will try to get some pictures up about it.
Since then I've been trying to get lots of work done, minor problem about that is that the majority of France is on strike (for example today on strike there is, the train workers, the post people, natural gas, electrity workers, teachers (grade, middle, and high schools) the telephone people, the weather people and many other government workers. The university students have been on strike for the last two weeks and have blocked off the campus and the now library, the canadians (including myself) still have class because our main classroom is downtown, but it seems I am getting the full french experience.
talk to you again soon!
Since then I've been trying to get lots of work done, minor problem about that is that the majority of France is on strike (for example today on strike there is, the train workers, the post people, natural gas, electrity workers, teachers (grade, middle, and high schools) the telephone people, the weather people and many other government workers. The university students have been on strike for the last two weeks and have blocked off the campus and the now library, the canadians (including myself) still have class because our main classroom is downtown, but it seems I am getting the full french experience.
talk to you again soon!
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Getting ready for a crazy adventure!
hey there all. So i haven't written in a while and really it's been pretty much the same old stuff lately I've been pretty busy with school and my teaching placement (which is going well) and fighting with french libraries (oh you cant take that book out, or only library staff can get that book for you, or no you can't get a library card without a note from your host family and so on) but next week there is something very exciting... it's our fall vacation and I'm going on a crazy trip from London to Austria to Germany which i agree is a lot of countries for nine days but I'm very excited about it and I'm sure i will have some good stories when i get back. so until then...
JY
JY
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