Currently in France..

In case you haven’t heard, there is a massive strike going on. I believe it all started around October 11th. It all has to do with a shift of the retirement age from 60-62. France (like the US and many other countries) can’t afford to give out full retirement pensions anymore (especially with the baby boomer generation reaching the retirement age) without raising the age. France also has one of the longest lifespans in the world, so more people are collecting more retirement money for longer. French people are outraged by this shift in retirement age. And EVERYONE is protesting. Transportation workers, schoolteachers, even students (I mean, really, at 17 do you really care about retirement? Because I know I don’t, and I’m 5 years older than you!). A couple of weeks ago I got a day off school because all my teachers were on strike (and students don’t even usually bother showing up on those days). On the worst days several bus lines have been cancelled. It’s also been over a week now that several of the trains every single day have also been cancelled. In that case, it may be better that I didn’t have set travel plans, but it is still frustrating to check every day and see the majority of regional and TGV trains cancelled, making the trips I did want to take practically impossible (or actually impossible when either all trains are cancelled (the case for Geneva – the one place I really wanted to go!) or the few trains that are running are sold out (the case with the big trains that require reservations, like to Milan)). This picture from the train strike website gives a good picture as to what a typical strike day looks like. Trains highlighted in grey are cancelled, due to “movements sociaux SNCF” aka “SNCF (train company) strikes”.



I’m currently on the vacances de Toussaint, a week and a half break for All Saints’ Day. This is why it sucks that practically no trains are running, because I’ve got lots of time and not a lot to do! Not to mention that the last real conversation I had with a person in France was Tuesday (today is Thursday), with the cleaning lady. Before that, it was last Friday, with a teacher at school. In between and after those times it’s just been store clerks or.. cats. So maybe I’m a little bored..


In Aix-les-Bains there are 4 teaching assistants (all teaching English), including myself. One (American) lives in the next town over with some Americans, one I have never met (I couldn’t find her at orientation), and the other one (British) lives in downtown Aix. So basically, I know one person who lives here, and I see her maybe once a week, when we meet up on one of our days off. Oh well I guess I know maybe two people if you count the couchsurfer I stayed with. But teachers aside (who are all obviously older than me, and while nice, have families/lives/don’t even live here), and the woman I live with aside (who is also nice, but our interactions are pretty much limited to conversations we have while passing each other in the hall), I know a total of two people here in Aix. TWO PEOPLE.

This segues well into my general rant about this program. Where do I begin.. I guess it’s just not what I expected. It probably doesn’t help that I was really hesitant about coming over in the first place, but the lack of help pre and post arrival here in France didn’t do much to comfort me either. I know this is the “real world” and I know I’m an adult and am supposed to be able to do things by myself, but when I’m uprooting my life and moving to your country to work in a very low paying job with minimal hours and little chance of securing outside work, you would think you would be a little more welcoming/helpful!

Now I know that every situation here in France is different, and a lot of what I have experienced is specific to my region/schools. I know this by hearing people’s personal experiences at the orientation, and sometimes by glancing at blogs of other assistants (posted on the forum) or the assistants’ forum itself. I just wonder sometimes how I ended up with the short end of the stick, getting placed in a smaller town without many other assistants (sometimes there are even multiple assistants in one school), in three different schools on opposite ends of town, contacts who don’t get back to me, unhelpful staff and just general chaos.

I’ve lived in France before, I’ve had to deal with the general chaos that is French bureaucracy, but even this was beyond my expectations. One thing I want to make absolutely clear, that was made absolutely clear to me quite quickly – this is NOT study abroad. Study abroad is a piece of cake compared to a program like this, and yes, I loved study abroad, and yes, that made it seem like this was an ideal program for me, but again, the two are not very alike.

Study abroad is a nice little program where everything is essentially figured out for you before you even get there. You know where you’ll be living, with whom, what you’ll be doing (for the most part), and probably the best part, a group of people in the same place doing the same thing as you; an instant friend group. Here, even if there are people living in the same town, they might be working at schools in different parts of town and you might not have any sort of contact information for them until you show up to orientation (by which point you will hopefully have secured some type of housing, as the first day of school is the following day), and you might not even want the same type of living arrangement. The American embassy thought they were doing us some huge favor by sending us everyone’s emails (meaning all American teaching assistants emails), but not everyone responded to those threads and once people started arriving to France and everyone was all of a sudden internet-less, you couldn’t even get in contact with those whose emails you did have.

As surprising as it must be for someone else to hear me complain about France, it’s almost as surprising to me how disappointed I am with this program. Sometimes I read the hopeful applicants’ comments on the Facebook page for TAPIF and want to be like “Noo! Don’t do it! Don’t apply!”, but again, I’m hoping that my negative experiences are specific to my situation, and that in general France has it’s stuff together (this is kind of a big ‘maybe’ though). I too thought that since I loved study abroad this would be ideal. I thought I would show up and love teaching French kiddies so much that I would apply to do it again the following year (yeah, I’m not planning on doing that now.. even I applied for another region, I feel the risk is too great that I will end up in similar situation), and that I would have lots of free time and travel all over the place with other assistants. I do have lots of free time (LOTS) but I live alone and don’t have steady enough contact with other assistants to even make travel plans (hence why I’ve sat around all break so far). I know this could change, especially since this break was so soon into the school year and everyone is still trying to settle in. And I know that I’m not the only one having a bad time, as there are a couple of threads in the forum titles “Rant about life outside of school/teaching” and “A very big rant about how awful the first 2 weeks have been”. It makes me feel a little better to know that I’m not the only one having a hard adjustment to the program/life here in France. I just can’t help but think that this is actually the hardest thing I have done in my life, up until this point. Besides the fact that this is my first “real” job in the real world (which I figure is a transition in itself.. can’t I just go back to UMD?!), the disorganization and lack of contact with others have just pushed it to the top of my list. I’ve pretty much been overwhelmed (if that word can even begin to cover it) since I arrived, but I’ve stopped randomly bursting into tears in the middle of the street, so I guess that is an improvement! And I thought nothing could ever be as stressful as having to pull all nighters during finals week! The real world is so much worse..

So it’s a lot to take in. I waver between feelings of loneliness and homesickness and frustration, some days worse than others, and I’m counting down the days until my flight back to America for Christmas break. There are, however, with some positive moments thrown in there, too, but I guess sometimes they just feel few and far between, and are not always enough to compensate for those less than positive moments. But now I need pull myself together and start planning actual lessons and stuff, because those preteens will not necessarily listen if I tell them to! Worksheets and punishments, I’m thinking. Maybe even homework if they are really bad!

Also I don’t know if I like teaching, or if it’s something that I want to do forever (which I guess I thought I would have magically figured out after 3 weeks??), but everyone is already asking me what’s next. Well I’m starting to look into programs, and a lot of them look like teaching English again.. so hopefully I like this, because I don’t really know what else to do. Suggestions welcome!