Real first day - after school

My first day at school has been long and "riche en émotions", for I had to meet everybody, start the work with 4 different classes and remember the name of the students... If at first I was ashamed I couldn't remember everything, at the end of the year, I still didn't know some names and some members of staff - but they didn't know my name as well! Moreover, I was the first French assistant to work in this school. I was a kind of "novelty". One of my friends confessed, during the last evening I spent in England, that the first month I was at school, he didn't know what I was there for...


First French assistant indeed, that's the reason why I wanted to show the people in charge of assistantship in county Durham that I fitted the job. " Your first mission, if you accept it" was to go to a meeting organised in Newcastle, in a university. The only time I had been to Newcastle before was... when I arrived at the airport. Nothing else. After school, Anna told me how to go to Newcastle, and which directions to take from the train station to find the university. Take the bus from Bishop Auckland, go to Durham, take the train to Newcastle, find this street, go right, ...
Well, I had been to Durham by car, I didn't know where the train station was, and I must admit I was afraid to take the train, alone, for the first time... And my feet were crying for mercy in my high heels shoes.


Step one: school- bus station. Easy, I would have to do this every week-day then. Relief: the bus I usually takes goes to Newcastle :-D and as I'm childish, I sat on the front seat of the upper deck. It may seem silly for you, English readers, but for a French girl like me, it's really exciting! And let me tell you my boyfriend was really excited too about sitting in a double decker bus when we met in London!

Let's go to Newcastle. Two hours. I enjoy travelling in general, and then I had my eyes wide open. You see thing differently when you are in the upper deck of a bus. I saw Durham's Cathedral and the castle, Chester-le-street and its shopping center, the Angel of the North, Gateshead and Newcastle.

When I finally arrived in Newcastle, I read the note Anna left me with the directions I should take to find the university. Well... She gave me the directions from the train station, not from the bus station. So, I did as I usually do when I have to find a place: I walked. I saw Haymarket, Monument, the main street with all the shops, stopped to ask two guys where the university was ( "which one?" " what, d'you mean there is more than one in Newcastle?" "yep" "well... the one with a building called Henry V"), stopped again to ask my way to a policeman, stopped once more to check if my feet were still alive, crossed the road, followed a few Chinese girls... who were actually going to the university I was looking for. YES :D

I only had five minutes to find the room. The meeting was taking place in the building Henry V, which was the first building on the left. Easy to find. The room was well indicated, with lots of signs on the walls. When I arrived, I was:

- relieved

- bright pink

- sweating

- thirsty

-on time!

I was offered a glass of wine, sat down and waited for the meeting to start. A lot of foreign language assistants were there with their mentor or their roommate with whom they work at school. I was alone. A girl came and talk to me, Heike, a German language assisatnt in Hartlepool. She was living with her roommate Marion and they were here with another French guy. That guy scared me when he told he had to call his mother about his CRB check, documents for school and NHS... I had nothing of all this. I just wanted him to stop freaking me out! As if I was not nervous already...

The meeting started. The man talked about school and introduced some teachers. It lasted ten minutes. Then, we were told that around Newcastle, the accent is quite difficult to understand, and the vocabulary used is not proper English. NO, REALLY??? o_O what a surprised ><"

He made us repeat the sentence " She sells seashells by the seashore" and told us the world "hinny" stands for "honey" in Geordie. Then, he asked us to leave our internet address to be warned for next meetings. That's all. I spent two hours in a bus, half an hour in the streets with feet on fire for, let's say, a meeting which lasted half an hour, and I had to spend two other hours on the bus to go back home...

I felt like I wasted my time at this meeting - at least, the school had a proof that I was involved. Nevertheless, right after the meeting, I exchanged phone numbers and face book details with Marion. I didn't know it yet, but she was about to become my friend - and a very good friend :)