Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.
— Oscar Wilde.
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Quarantine in France – How Life Went from Totally Normal to Lock Down in the Space of a Weekend
It’s certainly been an unusual start to the decade. There’s been Brexit, the assassination of an Iranian general, the US presidential election campaign trail, continued strikes all over France, massive bushfires across Australia…
But if there’s one thing that everyone across the world will remember as the defining event of 2020, it would have to be the novel coronavirus, aka Covid-19.
This previously unseen virus has quickly spread from its first human victim in Wuhan City, China, to virtually every country in the world in the space of just a few months. I remember first hearing about it right at the beginning of January and being somewhat interested in the idea of a virus jumping species, and this new pathogen which our immune systems didn’t recognise yet. I don’t think anyone at that time could possibly envisage the chaos that this virus would unleash on us all over the next few weeks.
For us in France, it all happened very quickly. I know back in January and even early February, a few people were somewhat concerned about catching it, but that was about it. Life went on as it always did. We’d go to work, socialise in the evenings, perfectly normal and no expectations that anything would change. The first big event in Europe was that the Italian government announced a state of emergency in the north of the country, as the number of cases there surged. We spent a week in Chamonix, right on the Italian border, in February, and I was disappointed about it because I’d been hoping to go on a drive through the Mont-Blanc tunnel and see the Italian side a bit, but no longer had that opportunity.
Even as the Italian government shut down the whole country in early March, we still never thought that the same would happen in France. Josh and I were actually hanging out at a pub with some friends the night we found out that Italy was going into lockdown, and we were amazed by such extreme turns of events but we never even talked about the same happening to us.
On Thursday the 12th of March, French President, Emmanuel Macron, announced the closure of all primary, middle, and high schools, creches and universities from the following Monday “until further notice.” All of the language assistants celebrated and joked around on social media that night because we thought we were going to start holidays early. I went to school the following day to work and my supervising teacher was talking about it as if the closure was for a two week period only, which took me by surprise, because I hadn’t heard any such timeline mentioned, and the announcement sounded pretty indefinite to me.
That weekend, the prime minister announced that all cafes, restaurants, pubs, theatres and any other non-essential business would be closed until further notice from midnight Saturday. So much for us assistants thinking we’d just gotten out of the rest of the contract and could make the most of all our free time! Josh and I had been planning a trip to Cassis or the nearby islands for that Monday, and we went to the port to see if we could catch a ferry over, but they were now only running for island residents.
While we were at the port, we saw policemen riding around on bikes, telling people who were too close to each other to separate. So many people were out wearing gloves and masks and it was truly surreal. Just one week before that, we’d met up with someone at the port, and it had still been its usual busy atmosphere then. Now, it was, like, this ominous quiet and neither of us wanted to stay longer there than we had to. That was the last time we’ve been out together in five weeks, the last time we visited the port and the last time we walked around freely.
Ever since then, we are obliged to stay at home unless absolutely necessary, like having to go and get essential food shopping, or medicine from the pharmacy. If we go out, we have to take a note with our reason for being out (which has to be one of a small number of state-approved reasons), remain within a one-kilometer radius of our home, and only be out for an hour or less. Just before lock down, the situation here in France escalated so quickly from being the same as ever, to total quarantine, within the space of a weekend.
So far the government’s saying that the end of quarantine will be the 11th of May – making it 8 weeks total, and only 3 weeks to go. I’m quite looking forward to getting out and about, I must say. In my next post, I’m going to cover ways I’ve been managing to maintain my mental health despite the isolation.
Marseille Bucket List, Revisited
Very early on in this teaching assistant program, I wrote a bucket list of all the things I would like to do during our time here in Marseille. You can check out that post here: https://7mim.travel.blog/2019/10/29/marseille-bucket-list/
With only six-eight weeks left of the program, I feel it’s time to revise and update that list. Of the fifteen items I included, I can already tick off ten, and I know that I’m probably not going to be ordering bouillabaisse anytime soon, or go to the Roman Docks museum, because I feel like I saw enough amphorae at the history museum. So, that just leaves:
-live music at Cours Julien,
-checking out La Friche La Belle de Mai,
-sketching street scenes and rooftops.
Josh and I also really want to take the ferry over to the nearby islands at some point, and visit the nearby town of Cassis, which everyone says is very nice. Oh and of course, the Calanques!
Other things we’ve seen/done that have been worthwhile are riding the 83 bus from Rond Pont du Prado to the Vieux Port. The views as you go down Corniche du President John F. Kennedy are incredible!
There’s a cafe near Estrangin metro called Cafe de la Banque which really seems like it’s stayed the same since the turn of the last century, with its tables and chairs out on the footpath, zinc countertop and waiters in pressed white shirts. Definitely worth stopping at in Marseille, and the prices of drinks are very reasonable too.
If you feel like authentic Tunisian food, pay a visit to La Goulette, just off La Canebiere. The staff there are really nice and you can nosh on some couscous, veggies, and meat for under 10e. Cheap and cheerful is a good way to describe it. They also sell a locally made, proper lemonade for 2e a bottle. One caveat: we’ve also been there during the afternoon and had mint tea, and unless you take your tea at a 70:30 ratio of honey to tea, probably best to avoid…
Finally, walking through the market at Noailles is always a sensory experience, with stalls and shops spilling over onto the street, crowds going everywhere, the smells of fruit and pastries, young men on corners selling black market cigarettes, huge vats of olives and pickled vegetables… it’s really cool. Just keep an eye on your things.
The Magic of Monthly Museum Rounds in Marseille
Rounds, visits, trips, excursions… there’s no word for it beginning with M (I just checked on thesaurus.com) so the alliterative appellation of this article was marred!
So on the first Sunday of every month, museums here are free to visit. I think this is a great initiative to promote local culture and history, as well as providing something to do on what is arguably the most boring day of the week, when usually everything is closed.
Previously, Josh and I have made use of the first Sunday of the month free museum entry (FSOTMFME) by visiting Musee Cantini in December, to see its collection of contemporary art, Palais Longchamp in February, which houses both the city’s natural history and fine art museums, and yesterday we went to the Marseille History Museum. That’s different to the natural history museum, as rather than fossils and taxidermy, it was archaeological findings and the history of human settlement in Marseille. Actually I enjoyed this one the most, as with 26 centuries of civilisation here, there was a LOT to see! I was impressed by how thoroughly the museum showed life here through the ages, and the exhibits really sparked the imagination about society, change over time, and human resourcefulness.
Technically, there’s only one more FSOTMFME of this program, so we’ll probably check out Mucem then. Until then, here are a few photos from Palais Longchamp from when we went at the start of February!
There is a pretty decent variety of museums here so we have had the opportunity to get a bit more under the skin of Marseille, and it’s always a nice way to get out and about on a quiet Sunday afternoon every month.
Starting to Get the Hang of This Teaching Assistant Lark
Woo, another term’s finished and back on school holidays again 😀 This holiday is especially exciting as we’ve been invited to stay with family for a week in Chamonix!
Finally right at the end of term (and with only one more to go) I’m just starting to feel sorta kinda comfortable and confident in my role. Like I’m not fumbling for ideas or struggling to match lessons to the students’ level or interests so much. I’m not quite at the point where I can just plan a lesson or activity around a given theme, but I’m definitely on my way!
For example, I’ve had some pretty good classes in the last two weeks. With a group of terminales, I showed them a Monty Python clip (the Dead Parrot one) and that served as a launching-off point for an interesting discussion about humour in society, and how humour can differ across cultures. With another terminale class, I had them listen to U2’s “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” and fill in the blanks of the lyrics as they went. Before I played the song, I also showed them a short power point with images and facts about the Troubles in Ireland so that they would have some context for the purpose of the song.
By far my most successful class of the program thus far was a game called Alibi (alternatively, Guilty), where you have to explain to the class that a crime was committed last night, and the suspects (preferably two or multiples of two if you have a large class) are in the room right now. They have to create an alibi, making it as detailed as possible so that when they are individually interrogated by the rest of the class, there won’t be many inconsistencies between their stories. It’s a great way to get everyone talking, interacting and moving. My class got really into it, doing suspect line-up photos, handcuffing the suspects, and coming up with particularly gruesome punishments for the guilty party. I might add that this class has been my most challenging of all – very low level of English in general, disengaged and lacking interest. Sometimes the stress of anticipating this class and how difficult it is, has made it hard to get to sleep the night before, so this victory feels particularly sweet.
For a variety of reasons, I never had the full twelve hours a week this term. It was partly due to strikes, partly due to individual classes having assessments, and partly due to a slip up on my part where I thought a class that takes place on alternating weeks, was on the wrong week (oops!) Thankfully, nobody said anything and I don’t have to make up the hours. Oh, and partly because one of my teachers got to go on a trip to London with his class! I assume my invite must have gotten lost in the mail 😉
So yeah, it has been a bumpy term what with the difficulties of having lots of students, lots of different levels and areas of interest to accommodate, and not a great deal of support. There were a few weeks in the middle where I pretty much lost interest and motivation to actually do anything but the bare minimum to get by, but I chose to turn that around and make more of an effort. I was rewarded by having way more enjoyable and in-depth classes and feeling like I was more on top of my role. Here’s to a restful break, and an even better final six weeks of the program starting in March!
Now it’s February – Four Months Down
Well it’s once again time for another reflection at the end of another month of my program! Now that January is over, that’s four months out of seven complete. There’s only three months left to go until the program is over, which will officially be on the 30th of April. Actually, I’m trying to get out of the very last week of the program by making up those hours, which will allow me to finish on the 9th, because of the way school holidays fall. And I’ll still get paid for the entire month of April, so win-win!
Alright, now back to January. Even though it felt like it was a long, cold, quiet month, now that I think about it, quite a lot did happen.
Kicked off the month, the year, the decade, with a coffee (for me) and ice cream (for Josh) at the very cool EGO cafe. They must have about 50 flavours of ice cream, which is all self-serve. This time Josh chose coconut and also blackberry, neither of which we rated as highly as the rosemary-honey flavour he had last time, although they were still quite nice. EGO is in Cours Julien and it’s one of our favourite cafes in Marseille.
The day after I woke up with what may very well be the worst cold of my life. Not the best way to spend the last of the school holidays but oh well. I got over it.
I went to school in January for the first time ever! It’s still so weird to me that the school year and the calendar year don’t line up, although of course it makes sense given that summer here is in the middle of the year. I remember at the start of the program, in October, a teacher was telling me how he’d been working on a project with the students “since the beginning of the year,” and I sat there wondering how on Earth he’d been able to work on just this one thing since February! LOL it took a while to click that he meant since September, the beginning of the French school year – d’oh!
We’ve definitely been thankful that we ended up in a relatively warm and sunny location. It barely rained at all and although by Perth standards it’s been cold, it has been tolerable with temperatures averaging around 13C, and sometimes getting up to 15-17C. Our weekend in Vienna just prior to Christmas really made us appreciate this aspect of Marseille because we were numb with cold up there!
January in France is the time to eat a special type of pastry called “galette des rois,” sort of like a flat disk stuffed with almonds. It’s to celebrate the Epiphany, which is when the three wise men arrived to pay their respects to the baby Jesus, or so the idea goes. We got the chance to try some when our residence provided some for a little soiree the other week.
Australia Day was a bit of a let down: I did a Google search to find out if anything was happening here, and the only thing that came up was an event at a pub. I sent messages on a Whatsapp group for local language assistants, and also invited our expat friends (all of whom had prior arrangements though). We got there all geared up for a party and to hopefully make some new friends…and the pub was empty. Bereft of almost anyone and certainly no other Australians. We each downed a pint, had a round of pool, and went home again.
Strikes have been ongoing intermittently still. The teachers are determined to win, even though you can see the strain it’s putting them under. I’m really impressed by their resilience and spirit even though things have been tough after striking for so long now. It’s not just the teachers, either: the rubbish men have also been on strike and the rubbish has been piling up on the streets:
Well, that’s it, really! A fairly quiet month of working and keeping on. In February I’ll have two weeks of school and two weeks of holiday, and we’re planning a trip to Chamonix, in the Alps! I’ll put a post or two up about how we get on so stay tuned.
Our Next Steps
So I may or may not have had a spectacular meltdown in the staff room at school today at lunch time. I opened up to a teacher about how down I’ve been feeling, which is resulting in lack of motivation to participate in my language assistant program, and that opened up *quite* the can of worms.
Basically we are really struggling financially and the assistant’s salary is not enough to cover one person’s needs, let alone two. We’ve been desperately searching for more work but not getting anywhere, and my homesickness is still yet to abate. Both of us dislike Marseille. In a nutshell: disappointment.
All I really want to do is go home, but I don’t know if that is the answer. We packed up our lives there with the intention of being away, living overseas for an extended period of time. Secondly, with the market the way it is over there, jobs are like gold dust and I can see us struggling there just as much as we are here. There’ll be no hope of being able to pack up and go to a nearby city in the hopes of finding jobs either, because this is Perth and there are no nearby cities. We invested so much energy into coming here, I don’t want to give up now.
In terms of our options post language assistant program though… I keep running into brick walls. Josh can’t work in France due to the language barrier, and he can’t get a visa to anywhere else without going back to Australia to apply for it. I still haven’t given up hope that we still might find a loophole or something that permits him to get a visa for Germany or somewhere else where they’re good at English, but I’m not holding my breath there.
Since I’m a British citizen, I understand I can apply for French permanent residency post Brexit as I’m employed here. This would a, allow me to stay in France and work indefinitely (provided I can, actually, find work), or b, allow me to apply for a visa for another country and work there. Whether or not said work would pay enough for the both of us is, of course, another matter entirely. Obviously, being a British citizen, I can also get work in Britain. Well, when I say “can,” I mean, I have the right to do so, but. This could be a solution, however, my teacher warned me that I would basically be busting a gut working all the time to cover the bills and not travelling at all – AKA the exact same situation as here in Marseille. So, that wouldn’t be worth it either, I don’t think.
You know, Australia is so far away and coming here was meant to be the beginning of a dream that we’ve nurtured and cherished for so many years now, travelling and seeing as much of the world as possible. To go home before it ever really got off the ground would be more awful than I can even put into words. But currently I don’t see that we have anything else we can do.
First Day of Term!
After quite a long time away from this particular school, because of the teacher strikes immediately followed by school holidays, it was exciting to return and actually be a language assistant again. I didn’t quite realise how long it had been until I walked my usual route and noticed how much I’d missed it over the last month or so.
Out of the five classes that I’m normally scheduled to have today, three were having assessments, so I didn’t have to go to them. Meaning I got to start late AND finish early – jackpot!! A real blessing, since I’m still trying to get over the cold from hell.
I had secondes and premiers today, equivalent to Years 10 and 11 in Australia. For both classes I took a handful of students to another room and we played games, quizzes and discussed the catastrophic bush fires in Australia. The kids were genuinely heartbroken about what is happening back home and wanted to know more, so I explained about how over 5 million hectares have been burnt so far, and that the scale of the disaster is due to climate change. I didn’t want to get bogged down in too many depressing details so I steered the discussion towards how it shows we need to do more to protect the environment, and show solidarity and resilience in face of the crisis.
One activity that I’d been wanting to try for ages, and that worked really well, was a game known as Running Dictation. It’s where you get students to partner up, with one having to read and memorise a passage at one end of the classroom, and then run up to their partner at the other end and whisper the text to them so that they can write it down. The kids loved it – it got them moving, it was competitive, and they got to practice reading, writing, speaking and listening all in the one package! Definitely going to do that one again 😀
Over lunch in the staff room the teachers had another meeting about the current pension reforms and the prospect of going on strike again (which the vote was almost unanimously for). It’s so nice being basically a fly on the wall in the middle of these meetings and, even though I’m far from understanding every single word, it’s still an interesting insight into a less common aspect of professional life here.
All in all it was a good day at work, although I think I might have pushed myself a bit too much as my cold feels a bit worse now. No idea when I’ll be going back, thanks to the strike!
Bratislava: A Little Gem of a City
OMG OMG OMG! We finally visited Slovakia!! One of my dream countries to visit for years!
Yes, I know it’s a fairly obscure dream destination, but as far as I’m concerned, it should be on everyone’s list. It’s a small country with beautiful scenery, nice people, good food and good shopping. Public transport is efficient and the buildings (at least the ones built before Soviet times) are very pretty. We didn’t see anything not to like about Bratislava, even if we did only stay there for two nights.
Coming from Marseille, Josh and I couldn’t help but notice the cleanliness and distinct lack of trotinettes. And on top of that, cars actually respected zebra crossings and were polite to pedestrians and fellow drivers! And everything was so much more affordable than in France! I could go on espousing every virtue of this city, but I will restrain myself now.
A short distance from the bus station where we arrived from Vienna, we stumbled across a very unique church – namely, the Church and Convent of St Elisabeth, or simply, the “Blue Church,” for reasons that will become obvious when you click on the link. It looked like a gigantic, church-shaped cake with blue and white icing. Really cool, although it was closed and we weren’t able to go inside.
The plan was then to go to a nearby shopping centre and buy a pair of winter boots for Josh, but we got as far as looking at the selection of boots on display and then decided we were way too travel weary for that sort of decision making. We managed to procure boots the next day 🙂
We spent some time wandering the old town of Bratislava and found both a small exhibition of sustainable fashion, with clothing made from poppy seeds, and also the Slovak National Gallery, which was free to enter and check out the art. It was a small building and it didn’t take too long to have a look at everything. The art was very… contemporary. Josh was not impressed, but each to their own I say.
There were two Christmas markets in Bratislava, each selling generally the same sort of thing. You could buy hot mulled wines, in such flavours as honey and ginger, black cherry, or plum, along with many others, as well as traditional Slovak treats. There were hand-knitted gloves, socks and beanies, toys, glassware, ceramics, soaps, candles and Christmas decorations. Mostly though it was all about the food and drinks! At night time, which was really from about 3:30-4:00, the atmosphere was really wintery and lovely.
Being travel-weary, all we really wanted to do was to find some quiet little cafe and sit down over a nice hot chocolate. It took us a while but we eventually stumbled across a sign for one and gratefully went in out of the cold.
If I can say one thing about Bratislava, it’s that they do hot chocolates RIGHT. I think it must be one of those cold climate sorts of things but there was no pussy footing around with these drinks. In fact, desserts would probably be a better word than drinks. Think mousse-like, rich dark chocolate, topped with a healthy swirling of whipped cream and served piping hot in a glass mug. Ooh it was medicinal after wandering around in the frosty air for the past few hours.
Since other customers in this cafe-bar were smoking inside we finished our dessert-drinks more hastily than I would have preferred, in favour of finding somewhere without cigarette smoke. Alas, the highly atmospheric underground pub we found was also smoking so we figured we would just have to deal with it… over massive glasses of Czech beer!
That was our first day in Bratislava! It’s a pretty great place, wouldn’t you agree?
Another Of My Seven Months Down: Reflections on December
And suddenly, only four months to go until the language assistant program is over…
December was definitely a quiet month. We’d spent a month already in our studio apartment and so we could enjoy starting to be in the swing of things, after the stress and new beginnings of both October and November.
During December we travelled to Vienna and Bratislava to see an old friend and experience Christmas markets in both cities. Josh’s little sister also spent a weekend with us here in Marseille. She’s currently on a working holiday visa in the UK and it was nice to catch up with her.
At the beginning of the month, Josh turned 31! We celebrated with some friends of ours, who very kindly took us to the beautiful seaside town of Sanary-sur-Mer, which is approximately a forty-five minute drive east of Marseille. It was entirely decked out for Christmas with fairy lights over everything: lamp posts, buildings, even all the boats in the harbour. It was such a sight to behold – the only word for it is magical. After we’d had enough of the Christmas lights, we all went and had some scrumptious crepes for dinner. It was a wonderful evening with great company, atmosphere and food.
There was the UK general election on the 12th of December, with the very surprising result of Boris Johnson winning. I actually cried out in horror, “oh my God!!” right in the middle of the staff room at one of my schools upon reading the result on my phone. Since I hold a British passport, I had been very much hoping that Brexit wouldn’t go ahead after all and I could continue living in the EU unrestricted, indefinitely. Oh well, wait and see what happens next.
I didn’t spend very much time at all at school due to the strikes, which are still happening and look set to become the longest running in the history of France. Happily I am still receiving my salary even if I don’t have any classes to go to. Actually, it was school holidays this week and the last. I’m supposed to return next Tuesday, but one wonders if the teachers will *still* be on strike.
And to wrap up this monthly reflection, here is a selfie of Josh and I in Bratislava. I shall try to get better at including photos in all my posts from now on!
Just Made it Onto Our Plane!!
Josh and I tried out the car pooling service, Blablacar, for the first time to get to the airport for our flight to Vienna last week.
The trains are *still* not running due to on-going strikes, and the bus tickets are a hefty 10 euros per person each way. So when I found this blablacar option, for 8 euros total, this chronically broke language assistant snapped it up!
I was a little apprehensive since we would only get to the airport one hour in advance, and since we were going on an international flight I wasn’t sure that it would be enough time, but I threw caution to the wind and booked it anyway.
If everything had gone according to plan, getting to the airporta whole hour in advance would have been heaps of time. However, things most definitely did NOT go according to plan…
We got to the meeting point on time but then another passenger was running behind and so we waited ten minutes for her.
The traffic was very heavy on the highway thanks to all the public transport strikes and it being rush hour anyway, so despite our driver’s best efforts at getting ahead of cars and weaving in and out of traffic jams, this added another ten minutes to our drive.
Then, once we got there, our driver made a wrong turn and parked in the wrong terminal’s car park, so we had to walk over to the right one.
By this point in time, I think I’d gone so far past the point of anxiety that I’d entered a new and weird state of equanimity, like, “oh well, better luck next time!”
By the time we’d made it through security, it was twenty minutes to take off, and we knew that the airline was meant to close the gate thirty minutes prior. Sooo we thought we were screwed but of course we’d come too far to just give up.
We ran around in circles a bit trying to locate the gate (the equanimity was back to anxiety again now) and eventually found it and gasped out “Vienne??” The ladies doing the passport control told us they’d been going to close the gate in sixty seconds which did nothing whatever for the old anxiety.
We were the last on the plane but thankfully it all turned out OK! Nothing to stress out over after all…
Next up: a post (or two) on our stay in the very pretty, historical city of Bratislava!
Seven Months in Marseille 