Hi everyone!
So this week’s blog is going to be a bit of a break from my adventure in France and talk a little bit about life in France, specifically my sister’s life and how she ended up teaching English to French elementary schoolers.
Emily took French for 5 years before college, and double majored in French and Anthropology in college. She also studied abroad in France for a semester, so she is pretty good at French (I tried to follow in her footsteps but gave up after 5 years in high school). If you are thinking of picking up French or curious to test your skills, check out this
basic French quiz. After she graduated college, she received an offer to teach in France and decided to take a gap year (in Gap, haha get it?) before going to grad school.
The French lifestyle is very different from ours here in the United States. They are very laid back and easy going, especially when it comes to work. Emily works 12 hours a week teaching (there is no school on Wednesdays), and in France there is a two week break every 6 weeks of school. She shows up to her classes for their 30 minute English lesson, but many times the kids are still out at recess. The kids basically stay out at recess however long they want, and the teachers just wait for them to come back in to keep teaching. This means that Emily has sometimes waited the whole 30 minutes of her lesson and the kids just stayed at recess. Sounds like a pretty easy job to me. However, the French school system gets very rigorous in high school, which I suppose makes up for the leisure in the early years. Students have to take a very difficult exam at the end of their senior year to graduate, and those who don’t pass have to do a 5th year of high school to study for the final exam. If you want to check out more about the French school system, here’s a link. I was most surprised that they get an hour and a half lunch break!
When Emily is not teaching, which is most of the time, she likes to hike in the Alps and spend time reading with Toupie by the fire. She has made some friends with the other English teachers in her same program, and she visits them in other towns. She also spends a lot of time sleeping and playing Sims, which honestly sounds like a pretty good life to me and I’m pretty jealous. She just snapchatted me last night saying that she slept for 17 hours straight! It’s hard to imagine a life that relaxing while being here at college. She gets her groceries at the cute markets in the city that my family and I visited while we were there. Though, some of her favorite foods pretty much don’t exist in Gap, like peanut butter and taco seasoning. She had us bring some when we came to give her a taste of home. If you are curious if you will be able to find your favorite foods while abroad, check out this list of American foods that don’t exist in Europe.
I hope you guys liked learning about the French culture and we will be back to our normal adventure next week!