Lycée Jean Zay

We all met at the cantine at 8 o'clock to have a breakfast of croissants, rolls, cereal and coffee or chocolate. The two groups stayed fairly separate with the exception of Sajid who sat with five of the French pupils. The two deputies and the head came to see us and the head took photos, including one of everyone jumping in the air much to our consternation.

The French went off to lessons while we went to the CDI to write about our first impressions. Madame Lalloz was impressed with the levels of French of all the pupils and I have to say it was the most productive group I've ever taken. Patrick got particular praise for using the perfect subjunctive correctly with no help which she said most French pupils wouldn't be able to do. 

There was a tour of the new lycée and Ruby was able to show Ben the correct way to hold a baby when we were in the social care rooms as he seemed to be struggling. We were also impressed by the 3D printers that we saw in technology. All the pupils remarked on how bare the walls were but the brand new building is impressive.

Then it was in to lessons and pupils enjoyed taking part in maths (they understood nothing) and English amongst other things. Billy, Patrick and Luke had to talk about their hero to the English class which was quite nerve racking. 

A lot of pupils are in the cantina at lunchtime and we met Florian who was on the last exchange last year. He had a chat with Isobel and some of the others and reminded us of the slang that our group taught the French last year.

In the afternoon we were more split up with some of our group being able to go home early as their partners' teacher was absent - a novel experience for our side. Some were their till five because their partner finished at the normal time.