Neglected

Ok, I’m the worst blogger in blog-ville. I know.

And the natives are growing restless and sending emails.

Sorry. I know Gallipoli has been up for awhile and I have like – 5 blogs that have been percolating in my mind.

Sadly, however, my mind melted and dribbled out my ears sometime last week when entering the 7th straight hour of meetings in French.

So you’ll be getting the Cliff Notes versions, d’accord?

First up – school.

Oh my gawd Vanessa,
What a week. What a week.

Working is hard! And exhausting! I remember that now.

I lived an (albeit poor) lady-of-leisure lifestyle in the South of France for sobbing out loud and I chose, nay fought tooth and nail for the right to work crazy hours and stress over syllabus and attend the longest and most pointless meetings ever.

I’m an idiot.

But a masochistic idiot, obviously, as I’m actually quite enjoying myself!



I've already alluded to it, but last week was a seemingly endless stream of meeting that surpassed any meeting marathons I've experienced before. 

First with the association that are my direct employers, then with the three departments I belong to with them (English, Humanities and Theatre – all separate meetings of course) then inductions and full staff meetings at 2 of the 3 schools I’m teaching in (I couldn’t actually work out how to make myself be in 3 places at once and Google wouldn’t tell me, so I had to skip 1 of the 3) then as part of the very complicated French rentrée system, I had to meet with the students at their individual school levels and then the students’ parents.

Just typing that made me tired. It was NUTS.

Then there was trying to sort out parking badges, photocopier cards and codes, alarm codes, keys, intranet systems ... I could go on but it’s boring for me so you must be drooling into your Orange Mocha Frappuccino by now.

And on top was the huge amount of prep work I have and will continue to do as only 1 of my 9 classes included material I have taught before. The rest is new. ALL NEW.

Craaaaaaaaaap.

Did I mention that I’m not only teaching an after school theatre club but that I also have two hours a week of theatre with primary school students.

6 and 7 year olds.

As Keanu would say. Woah.

Angst ridden, hormonal, self-absorbed, narcissistic teenagers I can deal with. They are my bread and butter.

Little people? 6 year olds? Holy mother of God.

I have tapped the resource known as Holly-my-sister – being the child-whisperer that she is, and she has given me some great ideas but I’m still freaking out a bit.

First lesson is this Friday. I’ll let you know if I accidentally squash one of them.


Despite all the whinging, I am actually really happy to be working and teaching again.

I had my first real lessons today (I’m a real boy!) and they went pretty well. My little 5eme (Year 7/8 Aus) History & Geography class were the best, but they are a group C which basically means their English is really poor, and it certainly is, but they were so sweet!

My 1ere (11/12 Aus) English class was a bit of a struggle, a few ‘tudes that I need to stamp down and not giving me a whole lot to work with, but we got there towards the end. I did hit them up with Poetry the first lesson back, so maybe that accounts for their reluctant participation. Dunno.

Poetry’s great, right? Who doesn’t love Poetry???

And my colleagues are really nice – a diverse and interesting range of backgrounds and reasons for being in France but all unilaterally generous and passionate and friendly. So that’s a huge plus.

I’ll (try) to keep you posted. Deep breaths at this stage. Excited and exhilarated but still a bit daunted by it all.

She'll be right!

xx