With the end of term, and Christmas, in sight, I decided to treat my students to a game of Christmas film bingo. I played clips from various children’s Christmas films, including The Muppets’ Christmas Carol, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Arthur Christmas, getting them to cross things off on the bingo square when they saw them in each clip. It was harder than expected explaining the terms ‘wreath’ and ‘holly’ to them, but they participated fairly well. With my older students I repeated the lesson, wondering if they would feel infantilised by the game, but in fact they quite liked it.
However, in the last few weeks I have been teaching some badly behaved children. The 13-14 year olds are rowdy, and so, depending on the class, I can have a lot of trouble keeping them focused on any task. Sometimes I don’t think they see me as a normal teacher, and want to test me to see if I’ll let them do what they want. My best weapon against this is the seating plan; moving disruptive kids away from each other, and closer to me at the front does quieten them down. However, there are some persistent ones that I’ve had to threaten with negative comments, or a bad report to their main English teacher. Sometimes that works, sometimes not so much. I’ve also had to figure out swear words, or ‘gros mots’, in French, because they are used all the time among my students. I asked some French friends here to teach me some of the basics, but there are so many that I can’t always recognise them. When they swear in English (but they can’t remember the word for ‘goodbye’???) I have to work hard not to laugh.
To escape the madness of the classroom, I went to the Festival of Light in Lyon this weekend. In 1643, Lyon was struck by the plague, and the municipal councillors promised to pay tribute to the Virgin Mary if the town was spared. When the plague finally left the city, inhabitants placed candles on their windowsills and a procession to the Basilica of Fourvière (a church on the hill overlooking Lyon) took place. Now the festival has modernised: there is a map of light installations that you can follow in a trail around the city, including projections on buildings, pieces of artwork by local students and artists, dancers and performers, and archways of light. Although there was a large glowing sign installed on Fourvière Hill above the city that read ‘Merci Marie’, recalling the history of the event.
I arrived midday and pottered around the German Christmas Market in the centre of Lyon. It was mostly filled with present opportunities, but my main goal was to find some gluten free food, and was pleased to get my hands on tartiflette (potatoes, bacon, cream and cheese), and then mulled wine. We walked around the city for a little while (I was with some fellow language assistants), before the heavens opened at the very moment my umbrella decided to stop working, and our wandering soon turned into a desperate search for a warm café. After warming up (more mulled wine), we headed out into the gathering darkness to see the light installations as they came to life. There were a whole range, so I will just include some pictures below. It was a good way to explore Lyon, and see it in quite a different way. The streets were packed with people from all over the world, and there were security guards everywhere checking bags. On each street corner was someone selling mulled wine or crepes.
Getting home on the metro was a scramble as there were queues to get into the stations. We were already running late for the train to Valence and then boarded the metro going in the wrong direction, but we made it in time and I arrived back pretty tired.
