Long Live the Queen

No, I don’t really care much for Lizzy II, but I couldn’t think of a better title for this post. Most of you probably weren’t aware, but I had the very good fortune of accompanying the exchange trip to Southern England this week. Yves couldn’t make it, and I was the last minute substitute. So pretty much I got a free trip to the mother country and all I had to do was count off some kids every now and then. Here’s how it went…

The Trip:

5h45 departure from school. Early as it was, I was as wide awake as the students. Traveling does that to me. Unfortunately the trip didn’t start off too great because several students forgot their identity cards / permission slips. This resulted in our leader Anne-Helene’s breakdown and rant at Sylvie (the well-meaning English teacher) in front of all the students. I didn’t understand what all she said, but I know it was bad because Sylvie was quiet the whole way to Caen and I could see tears rolling down her face. Anne (the non-English speaking history teacher) and I were beside ourselves. Luckily things picked up after that. I happened to be sitting in front of some very outgoing students who promptly introduced themselves to me. I tried my best to learn their names, and I was pretty pumped that they didn’t treat me like the uncool teacher. When we divided up into groups (one for each of the 4 teachers) the kids from the bus quickly scribbled down their names on a sheet and claimed me as their chaperon. Sweet, they like me. Good start. Their group name: les 7 mervielleux du monde which translates best to the “Magnificent 7.” That may be their name, but I called them (in my head) my little bohemian rhapsodies, because most of them were hippies. Precious.




(In the picture from the left: Charlotte, Camille, Francois, Simon, Gaëlle, Laura, and Benedicte)

We arrived sometime in the afternoon at Ringwood Language School (posh much?). I met my host teacher, Hish. Hish is a physics teacher, and he’s not actually English. He’s Egyptian, which is pretty cool. The downside was that the whole weekend was kind of awkward because I wasn’t sure what to talk to him about. He’s an older Egyptian guy who lives by himself (his son lives with his ex-wife). So the first 2 or 3 days was kind of weird, even though he was super nice, but after that it was good and we got on really well.


The School:


Ringwood Language School is a middle-high school. I think containing middle school aged kids all in one building is a really bad idea, esp for the 8th graders. It’s best to keep them with everyone else, because they’re going through the most awkward age of their lives. Luckily for these kids clothes wouldn’t be a teasing issue because they all wore the same silly uniform. Now don’t get me wrong, I see the point of the uniform. It levels out kids so they can’t be singled out for not wearing something expensive and trendy, but do they really need to wear blazers with the school crest and striped ties?? No they don’t. A tee-shirt or sweatshirt with the Ringwood logo would suffice. I’d even settle for a collar shirt / sweater combo. But a blazer? Really? They looked like mini-adults. Although, I will admit, they managed to look pretty scruffy in spite of their blazers and ties. And I thought a tie was an automatic cleaner-upper… In fact, in the school meeting I sat in on, the head complained that the teachers weren’t making sure the kids looked “smart” enough. Give ‘em a break. They’re kids. You’re luckily they don’t have mud stains all over thier uniforms.

The good part about the uniform thing is that they don’t have to wear one when they hit their last 2-3 years of school. So when they’re old enough to be some-what mature, they can unleash their individuality. These kids are called the ‘sixth form’ kids, whatever that means. I still can’t figure out the English system. Overall, the kids there were pretty pleasant, and they’re super polite. There was one day when I was in line at a sandwich shop behind a ton of students and when they realized I was there one kid said, “hey, you can go to the front of the line ‘cause we’re just students.” I hesitated to skip them all, but they made me. I guess their in-town lunch privileges come with some rules, so as to keep the townsfolk happy. It wasn’t the rule that I thought was nice, it was the fact that they actually told me about it when I obviously had no idea I could do that. I feel like American kids would’ve just let me wait. But, I could be wrong.

Culture Lessons:

First and foremost, driving in England is terrifying, and it’s not just the wrong side of the road bit. Some roads are not big enough for two cars, but somehow two cars still pass each other on them (at a fairly fast clip too). Hish said there are A roads and B roads. I was scared of the A roads (the bigger ones) until I saw some B roads in the New Forest. They were seriously big enough for ONE car. And Hish was not a cautious driver. I was a nervous wreck as we drove through the winding roads. Somehow we made it through okay, but you better believe I’ll take the roads into consideration if I ever want to live over here…

TV is bizarre over here. First of all, the BBC has a monopoly over the news, and they do the same dang story over and over and over again all week. I got real sick of hearing about the obesity crisis, the postal strike (yes England is turning into France), and the rugby tournament (in which, if you care, France lost to England in the semifinals much to the dismay of all my students, but England in turn lost this Saturday to South Africa). I also watched Hollyoaks, which could give the OC a run for its money. In one episode half the cast almost died of CO2 poisoning and some girl’s sister was accused of sleeping with her sister’s husband. It was great in a trashy-pointless kind of way. The other show I briefly watched was show called Doc Martin, which was terrible. It was about this doctor in Cornwall and these really weird town people. I didn’t care for it much. And sadly, I saw Randall and Hopkirk on one channel all week that Hish’s tv didn’t pick up (yeah KC, it was a let down)! Oh and for a few seconds I watched the kids show called Stupid. Terrible. I didn’t get it at all. It had a king and some midget guy. The British sense of humour baffles me sometimes.

Alex, Hish’s 6 year son, spent the weekend with us. He was a doll, and I think we’re friends now. He taught me all about Bionicals, these cartoon things that you have to build on your own and they become these robot-monster thing. Oh and he showed me Dr. Who toys (some supersonic screwdriver/pen?). Whoever that is. Apparently Dr. Who is the British Star Trek as far as a sci-fi following goes (says Hish). Not sure if I think the Dr. Who fans come close to Trekies. Oh and Alex is a pretty deep kid. We were talking about infinity, for some reason, and I told him that it’s so big the numbers never stop. He said, “But numbers have to stop. If everyone died, who would be around to count?” The old lady behind us thought that was precious.

Pubs. Three students in my group were doing their project on English pubs. Apparently pubs are not the same as bars, according to the owner of the Crown tap. Bars are ‘smarter’ than pubs and serve fancier drinks like wine. Also, beer in England is not like beer in America. English beer is ‘real beer’ and American beer is what they call ‘lager.’ Whatever buddy. I’m from Wisconsin. We have real beer, or something. Not that I really know, but supposedly we brew some decent stuff.

And now for the food. I actually didn’t have that much authentic cuisine, cause Hish is Egyptian and doesn’t know how to cook (which I can’t blame him for, since I can’t either). I did have fish and chips, which were lovely but nothing special. New things I tried include plaice (flatfish), scampi (delicious), blackcurrant juice (do we have that in the US, because I’ve never heard of it but it tasted familiar), and a Cornish pasty. The pasty (pronounced with a long ahhh sound, fyi) was better than I anticipated. It was originally made in Cornwell for the miners because it’s an easily portable meal (an enclosed pastry-like thing with meat and veggies). The funny part is I faintly remember learning something about them in my online folklore class last semester, but for those who remember how that went you can probably guess just how much I did remember. Oh and I didn't have any tea.

The Sites:

Bournesmouth:

I went to this southern port with Hish over the weekend. It was a cute beach town with the whole pier-amusement ensemble of stuff to do. Unfortunately English weather was true to form that day, and the skies remained cloudy and gray so it was hard to imagine how bright the town must be during the summer.

New Forest:

This is a picture of Hish and the donkey roaming the streets of Burley, a town in New Forest. New Forest was supposedly made for some king who was bored with his usual hunting grounds, or some such nonsense, and so they planted him a 90 mile forest. It’s actually really pretty, and there are wild-previously-domesticated animals everywhere (donkeys, ponies, horses, cows, pigs, etc). If you live in New Forest then you have the right to let you animals graze anywhere, and even though the animals are ‘yours’ they kind of just roam free amongst the towns and forest. Everything in New Forest was ‘quaint’ and rather how I would imagine Elizabeth Bennett’s setting in Pride and Prejudice. But that’s just a thought. Check out this cabin, it cost close to a million pounds. Ridiculous. I guess this is a posh area, despite it’s country façade. All the property is crazy expensive.


Salisbury:

During the week we took day trips, and one of our destinations was Salisbury. Pictured here is the lovely cathedral that is home to one of the four surving Magna Cartas (yeah there was more than one, who knew?). It is rather pretty, but I suppose cathedrals tend to be. I get all quite and pensive when I’m in them, and I’m not sure if it’s because part of me feels like I should be or if it’s because they really do render a sense of awe. I’m undecided. Either way, it really is cool to see such a beautiful structure dedicated to God. When I was wondering around inside I ran into Simon, one of my 7, and I asked him what he thought. He shrugged his shoulders and said (in French of course), “It’s pretty, but you know, it’s not a big deal (or it’s not that great).” Of course I asked him for an explanation and he told me, “Well I guess if you’re a believer it’s important, because, you know, it means a lot more. But if you don’t, then it’s just pretty, and that’s it.” Imagine my surprise. Deep kid. I told him I think he’s probably right. Simon, by the way, is one of the best English speakers in the group because his dad is English (though Simon claims his dad doesn’t speak much English at home), but for the first half of the trip he refused to speak English with me. The others did, fumble as they may. But by the half way mark I think he decided I was friend and not foe, because I asked him a question in English and he responded in it. I was like, wow Simon, you spoke in English, and he nonchalantly replied, “Well you asked the question in English.” We’re friends now though, and even though the other teachers told me he’s a slacker and refuses to do work, I never had a problem with him. I think it’s because I respected him, so he respected me. Some of the teachers here should try that approach (I remember my mom telling me that before I left and it really does work). The same with the other kids in my group and the random others that I met, we’re friends but they still respect my authority as a teacher (surprisingly). On the trip home, actually, the ‘bad boys,’ as I affectionately call them, started singing loudly and it was close to midnight. The other teachers started looking pissed, so I turned around and yelled “Arrete!” and they started laughing and kept going. So I got up and went back there and said, “Hey, can you guys stop or sing softly because the other teachers have headaches and people are trying to sleep.” They tried to argue with me, and joke around, but when I turned around to go back to the front they immediately stopped and quieted down. It was amazing. Ha! I can do this. When I got back up to the front the other teachers looked at me like I was the kid-whisperer or something.

Back to the Magna Carta. Who doesn’t know what that is? No one, I hope. We Americans should have all learned about it way back when and should know that it was an important step towards human rights and limiting the power of government. But NONE of the French kids had even heard about it. Some came up to me and were like, “So what is this thing??” What? You’ve never heard of it? Are you joking? So I patiently explained how it was the first time the people limited the power of the king and claimed a variety of rights that were untouchable by the sovereign. I also explained how it was a big step in the direction of the Glorious Revolution in England, the American and French Revolutions, the Declaration of Human Rights, etc. “Oh,” they said. Oh. I did my best. I told them that it was a big deal for American school children. But, maybe I was wrong, maybe only I care. Maybe most Americans don’t even know what it is. How sad would that be? Well whatever, I saw it, and it was awesome. So there.

Stonehenge:

When we went to Stonehenge the weather was wonderfully gloomy, as one would hope for when seeing a pile of ancient rocks. Don’t get me wrong, it was cool to see it, but it really was just a bunch of rocks. They are really old, I guess, but no one knows what they were really for. Some people said the devil was taking rocks to Ireland and dropped them here, others say they were people turned to stone for dancing, but those are just legends. I don’t think it was worth the 6 pound entrance fee (that I didn’t have to pay, yay for being a teacher). I did take like 60 pictures though; I just couldn’t help it!


Bath:

This was a beautiful city, famous for the ancient Roman baths as shown here. The Romans were a cleanly bunch, unlike the uncivilized Britons… So we wandered around the baths, had a money fiasco with Anne-Helene, and spent some time exploring. This is where Jane Austen lived for a bit of her life, which is pretty cool. Jane’s pretty sweet. I even got a picture next to the plastic statue of her outside of the Jane Austen centre (which I won’t put here because, well, it’s slightly embarrassing). In fact, there was a dude with a top hat and all next to Jane and I wanted him in the picture but he asked if I planned on coming in and I said probably not so he walked away! In the circus, a circular apartment design thing, I saw the old house of David Livingstone, which was neat. And the street sweeper tried to convince me that Nicolas Cage lives there, and I don’t think I believe him. But it was hard to tell, oh well. Oh, and my group was lovely because they got me a gift. They bought me a hippy bracelet, and they all got one too, and we took a picture of all of our bracelets together. Such sweet kids.

And home :

By Friday I was ready to go home. In fact, the weird part was that I identified Avranches as home. I wanted to go back to my bed and my flat, but Avranches has only been my home for 2 weeks. It’s strange how quickly you adapt. So yeah, Avranches is home now. Check out this picture from the ferry. I got to watch the sunset over the English channel. It was pretty amazing. Now I’m back and it’s time to work for a week and then I have a week and a half vacation for Toussaint! French life is wonderful, let me tell you.