Three Weeks in Rennes - Already!

It has been one week now that much of France has been on strike, including many teachers and students, protesting the French government's plan to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 by 2018. Because of this I have been teaching less classes than I normally would, and today is no exception. Normally, I have 5 classes scheduled for Tuesday. It looks like I will be teaching one day, that is, if the students show up! Several classes last week had zero students. It was just me and the teacher, waiting. I didn't mind too much though as this happened to my last class twice, and meant that I ended my work day a bit early.

I arrived in Rennes three weeks ago today, and have been quite busy in that time! I started working in my lycée two weeks ago today. I work 12 hours a week, and I very rarely see a group of students two weeks in a row. Many classes I see every other week (usually about half the class each time), and otherwise I work with small groups within the class, in which case it will be quite a while before I see the same students again. The level of English that the students posses varies surprisingly from within the same group. Especially when working in small groups of four, it becomes apparent when some of the students don't understand a single word I say, whereas others easily get it and tend to translate for their less fluent companions.

At this point I have navigated most the of French bureaucracy necessary at the beginning of my stay. I have completed all the procedures to validate my visa, signed papers, opened a bank account so that I can get paid, and, most unexpectedly, I was able to receive a six-month pass for free public transport in and around Rennes! I have also purchased a cheap bike from an older French fellow who's advert I found online. I have purchased a banjo from a really nice French man with a healthy appreciation for Old Time and Country Blues. I am staying at my school for the moment, and though it is a bit out of the city (40 min walk), I can catch a bus into town in 20 minutes, or in 6-10 minutes to the nearest metro station, which quickly zips customers anywhere they like along the line in a much more pleasant atmosphere than bigger city metros.

I hope that this blog will prove useful and/or interesting. At any rate, it can serve as a record of my professional life and cultural experiences in Rennes. Perhaps it will be of use to other English Teaching Assistants in the future. For now, I leave you with this thought:

The grapes in France have the seeds in them. This seems quite natural, except for the fact that as an American I am quite unused to eating grapes with seeds in them. Must one extract the seeds from each grape and place them in a little pile at the edge of the plate? This makes eating grapes very time consuming. Is it acceptable to merely chew and swallow the grapes as if the seeds were not there? The loud crunching coming from the grapes is rather disconcerting. Hmm... ponder at will.

Update:

I had no classes today! There weren't any students to teach. Blogger.com is blocked on my school's network (where I also live), so unless I find a way around it my blog posts will not likely correspond with when they are written.

Also, today at lunch I sat next to one of the English teachers I work with in the school cafeteria. She had grapes! I observed her removing the seeds from each grape from her mouth and placing them on her plate. Yet, she still seemed able to consume them at a reasonable rate. Perhaps it just takes practice.