- 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 ...
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
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
Monday, October 15, 2007
getting into things
so it has been a month since i arrived here in france and i think i am finally starting to feel comfortable. I can get around, ask strangers questions and know where the best place to work in the library is. That said, there as still alot of things i want to accomplish/adventures that i want to have, like making good french friends, understand all the slang/not have any gaps in comprehension when i watch my favorite TV show, and have a really good improv session in theatre class. just to name a few.
but a month isn't a very long time and i have time to work on these things and add a couple thing that i would never even think of before they happen.
I have thinking a lot about teaching lately probably because my placement starts this week. It's an english conversation class with grade 8s and 9s probably two days a week, which is exciting yet a little intimidating at the same time. i met the teacher i will be working with and she says the kids are really good and talkative. i think it will be good for me to get back in the classroom and work with students again. i will let you know how it goes
JY
but a month isn't a very long time and i have time to work on these things and add a couple thing that i would never even think of before they happen.
I have thinking a lot about teaching lately probably because my placement starts this week. It's an english conversation class with grade 8s and 9s probably two days a week, which is exciting yet a little intimidating at the same time. i met the teacher i will be working with and she says the kids are really good and talkative. i think it will be good for me to get back in the classroom and work with students again. i will let you know how it goes
JY
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
pictures of wine making
Yay wine making! It took all day and my back really hurt afterwards, but the weather was beautiful and i thing everyone had a good time here are some pictures of my weekend.
first is Maude working away, what happens is you get a pair of clippers and a bucket, you put the bunches of grapes in the bucket, and then someone comes by with a big plastic barrel on their back and you dump your bucket into that and they dump that into the trailer behind the tractor.
this is my favorite picture of the weekend. it's Grandpa (or Papi) Roger and this lady I forget her name but she and Roger have been friends since childhood having always lived in the same town. she was wearing the baseball cap and glasses (which is very american according to them) and decided her and Roger should change hats. Roger is my favorite carater from the farm, he is this little old man you you will find a the oddest moments working away at something or other. He and his wife have separte gardens because they dont agree on what to grow. He doesn't talk very much but when he does he is very hard for me to understand because its a kind of mix of the local dialect, french and not pernounced very clearly. that said, i dont think he understands me at all, but we always get along anyway.
This last picture is from their wine cave, where they go to press the grapes (in a machine not with feet like my dad thinks) then the juice goes in barrels to ferment and then they bottle them. the cave is actually kinda creepy it's not very well lit, damp and there are all these little cubbyholes filled with wine bottles and weird hallways and on top of all that like these bottles everything is covered in this mold. there are probally several thousand bottles of wine in the cave I dont know how old some of them are but Claude open some bottles from 1976 when I was there (yeah 10 YEARS before i was born)
so overall a great weekend, between the wine making/drinking, watching rugby (France won) eating both rabbit AND cow's tongue i was feeling pretty french.
untill the next adventure...
JY
Sunday, October 7, 2007
episode 6: the return to Marcon
it's amazing how sometimes you can go somewhere and it feels like time hasnt passed at all. Marcon is one of those places. Marcon is the town where i was for my exchange in grade 12 it's kind of amazing that even after 4 years i feel much more comfortable here than in Nantes... or maybe thats normal. Yesterday was the recolte of the grapes for wine making, which is really and neat bacause the get all their friends together and get to work, then they have a big lunch afterwards. It's like a Mennonite get together only with more alchool. I saw lots of people i knew from before, probally the person that has changed the most is Maude my host sister who was 12 the last time i saw her, now she's 16, tall and in grade 12; on monday she going to take me back to my old high school to see my old proffs
well i better go and finish this adventure, i'll try to put up some pictures later.
JY
well i better go and finish this adventure, i'll try to put up some pictures later.
JY
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Monday, October 1, 2007
Episode 5 - le week-end des motards
so when people ask me what i did last weekend i can honestly say i hung out with a biker gang and biked around the french countryside with a random french guy. it sounds funny but that is what i did last weekend, let me explain.
so my host family is part of this local motorcycle club and every year they do a moto rally (a kind of traveling obstacle course) this year was my host family's turn to plan it so they invited me and Corrin along to see what it's like. so bright and early Saturday morning about 50 motorcycles arrived at the farm, most of them were what i call street bikes there was onlu one harley and abunch of really fancy BMW touring bikes. to start the rally the theme was potatoes, so every team had pick 3 potatoes that they had to keep for the whole day and do various activities with them. there were several stops on the that we drove (in a car) with my host family to, it had a lot of waiting around for the bikers to show up but wasn't too bad. For lunch we had a picnic that included oysters which are slimy and taste like the sea (salty). at night we all arrived at a high school (it had living quarters) where we had supper and partied it up (ok i went to bed pretty early). in the morning our host family said that they found some people to take us on the "promenade". So i hopped on the back of this motorcycle and all 50 bikes took off on a little ride through the countryside which was really awesome and then we stopped (where else) but at a winery had a tour of their winecave (it really was a cave) and tasted some wine hopped back on the bikes and headed (very quickly) back to the high school for lunch. so a pretty interesting weekend all around and something i would never get to do at home. so about me buying a motorcycle when i get home...
so my host family is part of this local motorcycle club and every year they do a moto rally (a kind of traveling obstacle course) this year was my host family's turn to plan it so they invited me and Corrin along to see what it's like. so bright and early Saturday morning about 50 motorcycles arrived at the farm, most of them were what i call street bikes there was onlu one harley and abunch of really fancy BMW touring bikes. to start the rally the theme was potatoes, so every team had pick 3 potatoes that they had to keep for the whole day and do various activities with them. there were several stops on the that we drove (in a car) with my host family to, it had a lot of waiting around for the bikers to show up but wasn't too bad. For lunch we had a picnic that included oysters which are slimy and taste like the sea (salty). at night we all arrived at a high school (it had living quarters) where we had supper and partied it up (ok i went to bed pretty early). in the morning our host family said that they found some people to take us on the "promenade". So i hopped on the back of this motorcycle and all 50 bikes took off on a little ride through the countryside which was really awesome and then we stopped (where else) but at a winery had a tour of their winecave (it really was a cave) and tasted some wine hopped back on the bikes and headed (very quickly) back to the high school for lunch. so a pretty interesting weekend all around and something i would never get to do at home. so about me buying a motorcycle when i get home...
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Episode 4 - the french theatre adventure
this summer had me thinking a lot about the "box" that i live in. I very much like it there, I'm comfortable there, i have my family and my friends, places i know like home and grebel and things like the blanket I like to sleep with because I never get to hot under it and so on. I always have a hard time getting out of the box and adding new things to it. So coming to France was semi-out of my box yet i had been here before, can speak the language and have 30 english speakers here with me so i kind of had a pre_made french box. But i really wanted to get out of that box too so yesterday i did something odd, i went to a theatre class in a place i didn't know (not even on campus but at some random cultural center in Nantes) with people i didn't know (non-english people) trying something that i wasn't too sure what to expect (french theatre is a little crazy sometimes) and... it was fabulous. I had a lot of fun we just did some theatre games, getting to know you type things, i talked to french people who were my age and very friendly and curious about Canada and how to pernouce my last name. So I'm going to keep going and will see how it continues but i think i just made my box a little bigger, and maybe gave myself some courage to leave it again next time
JY
JY
Monday, September 24, 2007
Episode 3 - 2 weeks in and still alive
so I finally have wireless (at school any way) so i will take some time to discribe life in france.
location 1: the farm
I am really glad that i decided to get a host family and that they live on a farm. There are 8 people in the house total on a weekday there is the mom, the dad, their daughter Emeiline (12) their adopted son Steven (9) and two foster kids Romain (12) and Camille (18) both of the foster kids are handicapped and have special needs Camille doesn't talk and Romain is very chatty. then to make 8 there is Corrin and I (Corrin is an other Waterloo student) our rooms are above the garage. my room is pretty big, with a bed a desk, a tv, a couple chairs and a big window with a view of the back yard and a Field with cows in it. the mom also has two grown up kids from another marriage we met Anne Claire this weekend and her daughter who is almost two and extremely cute, she calls the dad "Grandpa Mustache" (thereby making the mom "grandma mustache). the farm has cows, and they sell their own milk and cheese, they also have pigs, chi kens, ducks, geese, 3 dogs,(not including the neighbour's dog which is little ugly and brown and called Sushi) and several cats. needless to say it is a very busy place but i like it, i'm sure i will have more stories from there
location 2: school
i dont really like that there are so many of us canadian students together (and therefore all speaking english) most of our classes aren't actually on campus but down town and the international student office we have Medieval Lit. 18th century lit. french history after the french revolution, french thought (philo), and... grammar. in total 10 hours of class a week and Mondays off. we also have the option to volunteer in the local catholic school board as English assistants which i will be doing as well. the actually university is quite large but like most french public buildings seems to be falling apart (hence the horribly peeling ceiling of one of our class rooms) we finally got our student cards the other day so we can go on the Internet and eat at the cafs the food is pretty good so far and cheap at 2€80 per lunch (which is roughly 4.50 CND) includes appetizer, entree, bread, and dessert.
alright i better get going as my battery is almost dead.
talk you you soon
Janna Y
location 1: the farm
I am really glad that i decided to get a host family and that they live on a farm. There are 8 people in the house total on a weekday there is the mom, the dad, their daughter Emeiline (12) their adopted son Steven (9) and two foster kids Romain (12) and Camille (18) both of the foster kids are handicapped and have special needs Camille doesn't talk and Romain is very chatty. then to make 8 there is Corrin and I (Corrin is an other Waterloo student) our rooms are above the garage. my room is pretty big, with a bed a desk, a tv, a couple chairs and a big window with a view of the back yard and a Field with cows in it. the mom also has two grown up kids from another marriage we met Anne Claire this weekend and her daughter who is almost two and extremely cute, she calls the dad "Grandpa Mustache" (thereby making the mom "grandma mustache). the farm has cows, and they sell their own milk and cheese, they also have pigs, chi kens, ducks, geese, 3 dogs,(not including the neighbour's dog which is little ugly and brown and called Sushi) and several cats. needless to say it is a very busy place but i like it, i'm sure i will have more stories from there
location 2: school
i dont really like that there are so many of us canadian students together (and therefore all speaking english) most of our classes aren't actually on campus but down town and the international student office we have Medieval Lit. 18th century lit. french history after the french revolution, french thought (philo), and... grammar. in total 10 hours of class a week and Mondays off. we also have the option to volunteer in the local catholic school board as English assistants which i will be doing as well. the actually university is quite large but like most french public buildings seems to be falling apart (hence the horribly peeling ceiling of one of our class rooms) we finally got our student cards the other day so we can go on the Internet and eat at the cafs the food is pretty good so far and cheap at 2€80 per lunch (which is roughly 4.50 CND) includes appetizer, entree, bread, and dessert.
alright i better get going as my battery is almost dead.
talk you you soon
Janna Y
Thursday, September 20, 2007
ok
hey once again things are good here i love the tram, my host family is pretty haliarious and classes finally started and oh my goodness we actually have home work.
last weekend the canada group when en-masse to the beach which was beautful and cheap (7 euros on the train) on sunday our host familly took us to some friends of theirs which was neat and then we went on this long walk on a local nature trail. again i don't have much time to write internet sucks here. so here's to hoping that i will have a better story next time ....
JY
last weekend the canada group when en-masse to the beach which was beautful and cheap (7 euros on the train) on sunday our host familly took us to some friends of theirs which was neat and then we went on this long walk on a local nature trail. again i don't have much time to write internet sucks here. so here's to hoping that i will have a better story next time ....
JY
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Episode 2 - L'arrivee
bonjour!
i can say that now because i am presently in france sitting in a cafe sipping an expresso... ok you know i dont drink coffee it's an ice tea. things are good here i live on a farm with cows and chickens, it's pretty nice and it's easy to get around on the tram and bus (although Corrin and i got pretty lost yesterday) there are lots of paper work to do here it seems. Classes don't start untill tues. we have monday's off which is nice and onlu 10 hours of class well i better go i'm using someone elses computer but i got here safe and every thing in good so far
Janna Y
i can say that now because i am presently in france sitting in a cafe sipping an expresso... ok you know i dont drink coffee it's an ice tea. things are good here i live on a farm with cows and chickens, it's pretty nice and it's easy to get around on the tram and bus (although Corrin and i got pretty lost yesterday) there are lots of paper work to do here it seems. Classes don't start untill tues. we have monday's off which is nice and onlu 10 hours of class well i better go i'm using someone elses computer but i got here safe and every thing in good so far
Janna Y
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
the opening credits
hey there as promised I will now do the official intro. So considering that I feel like a total nerd now that i have a blog i feel that i should just embrace it and as things happen in the real world i can think to my self " wow this will be perfect for my blog later!" and similar exclamations. So i'm a bit of a rambler by nature so here it goes...
Janna's Adventures in France Land: Episode 1 - the preparations begin
for those of you who might need an update I'm getting ready to leave for a 2 terms of study in france. this is my second time going to france and I really excited to go back and see a different view of the country. right now I'm just finishing up at the historic park i have been working at. it has been a interesting summer there to say the least it's really weird to think that I spend my days wearing 18th century underwear as one of my 6 layers of period clothing as i bake cookies over an open fire and try to be nice to the 50th tourist that day to ask "aren't you hot in that?" it will be good to start something new even though part of me just wants to run back to grebel.
i leave on the 10th so i have about 12 days of craziness ahead of me. the good new is that i do have a place to live, it's with a host family i don't know too much about them but they live on a farm and make cheese... odd that actually sounds like my kind of place. i will be living with another girl i know from my program and i think that will go well, as long as we don't speak English to each other.
so that is the update so far what else can i think of... oh by the way the name of my blog is kind of a rip off of the adventures of Tintin which is my favourite cartoons/BD, which happens to be french (well truth be told Belgian) and involves crazy adventures, so that hopefully my adventures will at least be at least somewhat as int resting as his although, i won't have a white dog helping me, hopefully there will be no bad guys attempting world domination and for my own health i hope that i dont get knocked out every other page as Tintin is (you would think that that would affect his brain but he always seems pretty smart to me)
so there in the intro as i said 12 days...
Janna's Adventures in France Land: Episode 1 - the preparations begin
for those of you who might need an update I'm getting ready to leave for a 2 terms of study in france. this is my second time going to france and I really excited to go back and see a different view of the country. right now I'm just finishing up at the historic park i have been working at. it has been a interesting summer there to say the least it's really weird to think that I spend my days wearing 18th century underwear as one of my 6 layers of period clothing as i bake cookies over an open fire and try to be nice to the 50th tourist that day to ask "aren't you hot in that?" it will be good to start something new even though part of me just wants to run back to grebel.
i leave on the 10th so i have about 12 days of craziness ahead of me. the good new is that i do have a place to live, it's with a host family i don't know too much about them but they live on a farm and make cheese... odd that actually sounds like my kind of place. i will be living with another girl i know from my program and i think that will go well, as long as we don't speak English to each other.
so that is the update so far what else can i think of... oh by the way the name of my blog is kind of a rip off of the adventures of Tintin which is my favourite cartoons/BD, which happens to be french (well truth be told Belgian) and involves crazy adventures, so that hopefully my adventures will at least be at least somewhat as int resting as his although, i won't have a white dog helping me, hopefully there will be no bad guys attempting world domination and for my own health i hope that i dont get knocked out every other page as Tintin is (you would think that that would affect his brain but he always seems pretty smart to me)
so there in the intro as i said 12 days...
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
First post!
hey there people in the world so here I'm going to try and keep a kind of record of the next eight months or so to have for myself but also so that other people if they are curious about my doings and check it out. I'll do a real intro next time d-day till then...
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