Vacations!

One thing on my mind today: vacation. For those of you who don’t know, the French really like their vacations. The school year is about as long as the American school year, but it’s split up by two week vacations at least four times during the school year, as opposed to twice in the American school year. Add to that the slew of days off due to national holidays, strikes (been four so far this school year) or the field trip to London that I chaperoned for a week, it would be safe to say that teachers have it a little better than they do back home.

So then my mind naturally turned to the question of whether I deserve a vacation...after all, my last vacation just ended a little over a month ago. I only technically work 12 hours per week, and I say technically because I’ve been averaging about 6 hours per week for the past month. Yep, you heard correctly. There were the hours when teachers decided not to send me students for whatever reason, there was the national strike that cancelled all four hours last Wednesday, there’s the class that comes to me on a volunteer basis (surprisingly enough, nobody has volunteered to come for the past two weeks), there were the classes that got caught up in the confusion of my recent schedule change, there were the seniors who had the week off to prepare their competitive exams, and there was one class period that I decided not to go to, because I don’t like them.

So in other words, I’ve logged the equivalent of one full-time week over the past six weeks, and for that I am rewarded with a two-week vacation. Don’t you love France?