March: the month of Covid scares and TikTok

On March 28, 2021March 28, 2021 By notyouravggiraffeIn TAPIF2 Comments

The penultimate month of my contract in Dijon, and ironically, the only month with no time off due to breaks. I had hoped that this month would be more interesting to write about, and it indeed has been the case (although not necessarily for the right reasons). The time on my contract is steadily running out, which brings about questions about what’s next (please don’t ask, but if you want some insight, I wrote a post for Queen Mary about how study abroad has directed my potential future path, which you can read here), but instead of focusing on that, let’s dive into Miriam in Dijon: March edition!

Covid Scares

I suppose I should be grateful I made it until March without having any “scares,” but that’s as far as it went. In the penultimate week of the month, one of the classes at my middle school had to close due to having too many cases of Covid. I interacted with this class a week before they closed, and therefore found out on a Saturday that I was considered a cas contact, and needed to go get tested. I was able to get tested due to the fact that it had been seven days since I interacted with that class, and you have to wait that amount of time before getting tested anyway as a cas contact. Ensue the panic of trying to find a lab open on Saturdays, and one that would turn around results quick enough to know before I had to teach on Monday. Getting tested itself was a pretty straightforward experience. I showed up at the lab, gave them my Carte Vitale, explained why I needed to be tested (the lab where I went only required an appointment if you were presenting symptoms), and then I went into a separate little van thing outside in the parking lot to have my nose swabbed. Let me tell you, the French take no prisoners with the nasal swab. It’s a fun little burning sensation, and then immediately my eye (singular because only the eye on the side where they swabbed seemed to react) started crying, which of course I couldn’t stop because it was going under my mask. Fun times. I was in and out in under ten minutes and got my results seven hours after I had it taken. They were negative, thankfully, but I truly could’ve done without the stress the whole ordeal caused. Interestingly, that day was actually the first time where I genuinely had a thought about wanting to just go home. Obviously I knew it was a risk coming to France to work in schools, and is something I think about every day as I get ready to go to my classes, but it took on an additional level of “real” that day. Ironically, for all the snail’s pace of French bureaucracy, they’ve miraculously seemed to avoid that when it comes to getting your Covid test results back (and I’m not complaining about that).

It’s truly frustrating that the French government won’t close schools and has essentially left it up to individual institutions on what to close and when. If a class has a certain number of positive cases, the whole class will be sent home for at least a week, and then are told to test after that. Starting the weekend of March 27, the government has asked that classes close with one positive case, but who knows if that’ll actually happen. There has been no data released in relation to how many of the weekly cases come from schools, which at best is an oversight, and at worst is an attempt to cover up data that would go against current restrictions (who knows with this government). At midnight on March 20, sixteen départements went into confinement due to having high rates of incidence in comparison with the rest of the country, and three more joined the following week. The problems with this? Firstly, schools are remaining open, even in those départements. Secondly, unlike the other two confinements France has had, people living in those départements can walk around during the day within a 10km radius of their houses, which is very much the opposite of the 1km radius with which the other two confinements came. Essentially, the only thing that has locked down are non essential businesses, but this confinement is in name only, not in action.

For the whole country, France also pushed the curfew back to 19h, which on one hand means that people have a little bit more time between the end of the work day and the start of curfew, but on the other hand seems counterintuitive. It’s very much a hand wavy way of saying they’ve done something when they really haven’t, because the “confinement” (and I use that term loosely) is essentially “do whatever you want but be back by 19h, you just can’t travel outside your region.” The government is recommending work from home 4/5 days of the week as a decent percentage of current cases are coming from work environments. Schools, however? No word about them other than to “keep doing the same thing.” Ostensibly Macron will be speaking on the 31st of March, but there’s been no indication of what that will entail (I’ll report back). It’s absolutely frustrating and I feel so bad for teachers having to deal with this all. I know that I have the privilege to be able to leave France, and get out of the school environment at the end of next month. The teachers with whom I work don’t have that luxury, and they’re no closer to getting vaccinated than they were when the campaign started (Macron has said that he wants teachers to be eligible by mid-April, but I’m not sure if they’re progressing fast enough for that to happen. Unfortunately, timing wise, I’d be unable to take advantage of that if it were to be the case, but if they did do that, it would be better for teachers than where they currently stand – although five months in to make teachers eligible isn’t a great look either).

TikToks

I put this in the title, but you might be asking yourself why. Ever since everything shut down in March 2020, I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve been using TikTok as a distraction app, and I do in fact enjoy it. I’ve kept that up in France mainly as a way to pass the time when I’m not working. It’s a coping method of sorts. I won’t pretend to truly understand how things work on the app, but in early March of this year, I made a video to the Agatha theme song from WandaVision “criticizing” the French government that somehow took off, and since then, my niche has become making videos about what’s happening in France (mainly expelling my frustrations about the absurdities of the French government). It’s somewhat reassuring to get comments from people who have similar thoughts to me, and I enjoy the fact that it’s essentially a lighthearted way to deal with everything. I’m not sure what I’ll do once my time in France is over, though! For the time being, I’m definitely enjoying using it to get out the many frustrations of the past few months, and if other people enjoy that too, I’m not going to complain. The things we do for internet fame (just kidding).

Passover in France

The end of March also brought with it Passover, which is a pretty difficult holiday to observe in the land of pastries and baguettes. As I wasn’t sure where to go to buy matzah, I reached out to the local synagogue for help in finding it and found out that there is no place in Dijon to purchase any Kosher for Passover food. They were kind enough to supply me with two boxes of Matzah, for which I am eternally grateful given that I wouldn’t have been able to find any otherwise! I, of course, also had to splurge and buy a jar of Skippy peanut butter for my matzah needs. It’s not something I make a habit of purchasing as it’s more expensive than what I’m used to at home (it’s hard to justify anything more expensive than the JIF Costco sized jars), but it’s worth it for the eight days of unleavened bread consumption. Unfortunately due to the pandemic, there will again be no seder this year to attend, but hopefully this will be the last year for which this is the case.

I’m always thrilled to have some peanut butter!

Exploring New Places

In my quest to explore more of Dijon before I have to leave, I have tried on nice weekends to venture beyond my usual walks (we had a long stretch of cold weather and rain, which when coupled together do not make for ideal excursion weather). This month, I went out to Lac Kir, which is about 45 minutes away from the lycée. The lac is a big lake, and you can walk around the whole thing. There’s a playground for kids, tennis courts, mini golf, volleyball courts, and even a little beach complete with actual sand! It was well worth the trek out to see this very nature oriented space on the outskirts of Dijon, and to get to see another park space here.

Young woman stands masked in front of a railing with Lac Kir in the background in Dijon, France — Lac Kir in the background – I promise, I’m smiling under the mask!

Panorama of Lac Kir with some of Dijon Plage visible in Dijon, France — Panorama of Lac Kir with some of Dijon Plage visible

Visiting the Dentist

Since it’s been over a year since my last dental visit, I figured I should try and be seen in France before I go back to the US, considering I no longer have dental insurance in the states (love the way that works). I went to see the same dentist who did my retainer back in January, and getting your teeth “cleaned” in France is very different from the experience in the US. For one, they call it a “check-up” (perhaps cleaning is a separate appointment, who knows), and they don’t give you sunglasses! I was in the chair for maybe ten minutes, which was the dentist running the mirror over my mouth to check for cavities, and then doing what’s called détartrage, which is basic cleaning between the teeth with that utensil that makes very high pitched noises. That was it! No scraping, or flossing, or any of the other fancy things the hygienists do during cleanings in the states. Maybe I screwed up and didn’t ask for the right thing, or maybe that’s just how it’s done here, or maybe even there are Covid protocols in place of which I wasn’t made aware, but that was what I had done. My “cleaning” was 43,10€, and I received 30,36€ in reimbursements four days later! About the same price as what I would’ve paid under my insurance in the US, but still cheaper than uninsured dental visits. Talk about rapidity on the reimbursement front, though. I fully was expecting it to take a while, but clearly, getting the Carte Vitale works wonders (in France you pay for everything upfront, and then are reimbursed 70% using sécu – you can get the remaining 30% reimbursed with a mutuelle if you choose to purchase one). I’ll be honest in that (even if the fault’s my own), I still don’t necessarily feel confident in the status of my teeth after that quick check up, so I might end up visiting one in the US anyway if I can swing it.

That’s been my March! Exciting and eventful in some ways, and yet still managing to remain relatively low-key in others. It’s really hard to believe that I’ve only got one more month left on my contract, and two of those weeks will be spent on break. It doesn’t necessarily feel like it’s been as many months as it’s been, and it’s certainly difficult to wrap my head around the fact that I’ve been in France since the end of September. It’s a little disheartening for the situation pandemic wise to be essentially the same as what it was when I arrived, and it does make me a little sad to know that I won’t be leaving France better than it was when I arrived. I’m still working on departure details, but unless things miraculously change in the coming weeks, there won’t be any travel for me post contract. In the meantime, I’m trying to make the most of my remaining time, and with the weather picking up, it’s easier to do that (although that does mean more people are out and about as well). Daffodils are firmly blooming everywhere, the sun is shining, and spring has certainly sprung. I hope that the nice weather continues throughout the rest of my time in Dijon!

Daffodils in the jardin de l'arquebuse in Dijon, France — Daffodils are in bloom which means it’s spring!

Budget and Schedules: TAPIF in Dijon

On March 20, 2021March 20, 2021 By notyouravggiraffeIn France, TAPIFLeave a comment

I know when I was first accepted into TAPIF, I had a lot of questions about what it might look like once I got to France. My biggest questions were about finding housing (especially housing that was affordable on the assistant salary), and what my schedule would look like. There’s no one answer for that question, as budget and schedules will look different for every assistant, but I figured I’d contributed to the wealth of literature out there with my own experience, in case it might be of some assistance!

Budget for TAPIF in Dijon

I’ll admit, the salary for TAPIF is less than ideal. It hasn’t changed in years, which is a reflection of the lack of pay raises for teachers in general, and it also doesn’t really reflect how much things cost now. Moreover, the estimate you’re given is just that as some academies tax differently than others (heaven forbid things work in a universal manner). You receive your salary once a month, at the end of the month. I’ve mentioned in other posts that the first month will only be 70% of your salary, and in order to receive October’s salary at the end of October, you usually need to submit your bank details by the 10/15th of October. Starting in December, your pay will be normal with no adjustments from that point. With my transportation reimbursement, I received 800€ a month, meaning my pay before the reimbursement was 785€. Be sure when looking at the salary for your budget to use the net value, as tax rates are higher in France, resulting in a decent difference between your brut (gross) salary, and your net salary.

Expenditures

I lucked out in Dijon when it comes to housing and rent. I live at the lycée where I work, which means that my rent is very affordable. I pay 90€ a month, which includes my water, electricity, and heat. It’s not a luxurious space, and doesn’t really have a kitchen area, but it’s worth it for the money I save. I want to point out that rent this low, and rent including all those utilities is very rare outside of living at your school. I found nothing lower than 300€ a month in Dijon when I was initially unhappy with my living situation and looking to move elsewhere. I know that my monthly expenditures are lower than the average assistant because my rent is so low, for which I am eternally grateful. [As a quick comparison, my rent in Angers at a FJT was 468€ a month before CAF.] My living situation was also eligible for CAF (housing assistance, which I’ll touch on in a bit), so I saved even more money in the months where I qualified for that assistance. Living at your school is typically only an option at the secondary level, but is always worth inquiring about once you get your school placements. I am responsible for purchasing my own food, so I make a weekly trip to Carrefour, as well as my own laundry, which involves a trip to a laverie. The latter wasn’t something I had budgeted for as when I lived in a foyer in Angers, the laundry was heavily subsidized, and added to my rent at the end of the month. I have to pay for my laundry in cash immediately when I do it in Dijon, and it is not nearly as cheap as it was in Angers. The laverie where I go has five washers and three drum sizes. The bigger the drum, the more expensive the cycle. I use the 10kg washer, and to run a wash cycle, and a 12 minute dry (which isn’t enough for heavier items, but is fine for most of my clothes), it costs 9,50€ from start to finish. I do my laundry every other week to cut down on costs, and am lucky to have my linens (sheets + duvet cover) laundered and provided by the school where I live.

I mentioned a transport reimbursement earlier, and I am eligible for this as I work in another school to which I can take public transport. If you opt to live at your school where you also work, and are only contracted in that school, you are unfortunately not eligible for the transport reimbursement. If you need a travel subscription for work, you can get 50% reimbursed, which is added to your paycheck every month. You have to purchase either a weekly or a monthly subscription, and then of course submit paperwork for it every month, but it’s pretty efficient as a system. The monthly plan for 18-25 year olds in Dijon costs 30€, so with the reimbursement, I only pay 15€ a month.

In addition to rent, laundry, groceries, and transport, there’s also your monthly phone bill. Before you leave for France, make sure your phone is unlocked (you can check with your provider at home if this is the case, and if not, what you need to do to make it so). Once your phone is unlocked, you can easily swap out the SIM card with one in France, meaning you don’t need to get yourself a whole new phone. I initially started with a Free Mobile plan, which was 19,99€ a month for 100GB of data, unlimited texts, and unlimited minutes. I had chosen this plan because my accommodation at the lycée didn’t have internet so I wanted as much as possible. When I opened my bank account, however, my bank had a promotion for cell plans, with a six month plan identical to the one I had with Free for only 4,99€ a month. Since those six months would cover my remaining time in France, it seemed like a no brainer, so after one month, I switched over to the plan provided by my bank to save some money. In my first month living in France, I realized that 100GB was unfortunately not enough for me to stream Netflix, do the work I needed to do for school, and surf social media. Due to living at my school, I wasn’t able to get an internet box from Free, or any other mobile provider, but once again, my bank swooped in to save the day! They had a wifi box plan for 29,99€ a month that comes with 300GB of internet, and can be used on multiple devices. It’s worked perfectly, and it just plugs into my extension cord, so there were little issues with setting it up. Between my phone and wifi plan, I haven’t run out of data, and it’s been a pretty good system.

In case it’s hard to visualize my monthly expenditures from that huge block of text (apologies), here they are written out in a handy table format! I have only included the guaranteed costs I incur every month, and haven’t added casual expenditures like travel (of which I did little this time around), treats at the boulangerie, pharmacy visits, or any other small expenditures during the month.

EXPENDITURE	WEEKLY	MONTHLY
Rent		90€
Groceries	~40€	~160€
Laundry	9,50€ (x2)	20€
Phone		4,99€
WiFi		29,99€
Transport		15€ (with 50% reimbursement)

TOTAL		319,98€

Monthly expenditures in Dijon

Income

In addition to the ~800€ salary I received as part of my job, I was able to find some tutoring opportunities for some additional pocket money. If you are on a visa to be an assistant, it’s important to note that you cannot officially hold any other employment, but many assistants do work like tutoring under the table. We were told at orientation that as long as there’s no paper trail and they can’t prove that you’re doing it, you should be fine (and note that you can’t advertise your services at your school. Other teachers can do it for you, but you yourself can’t). Through teachers at my collège, I was connected with two opportunities to tutor weekly. Through those two weekly one hour sessions, I was able to earn a little bit of money (we’re not talking big amounts here) to help justify some pastry expenditures.

My collège also offered me the opportunity to work some extra hours between November and January. That was a process that required approval from the rectorat, and some additional paperwork, but I was able to earn some additional money in those few months by working extra hours. This is, unfortunately, not an option for non EU citizens as the visa restricts your hours, but can potentially be an option for those who are allowed to work more than 12 hours a week (there are some visas that will allow this, but not the specific visa given to assistants).

As an EU citizen, I am extremely lucky to benefit from the prime d’activité. This is aid for EU citizens aged 18-25 to help support themselves. If you are an EU citizen, you can apply for this after you have worked in France for three months (if you start in October, you are eligible in January). This aid is through CAF so you must already have an account through that system, but even if you are receiving CAF, you have to apply for the prime separately. You will provide your monthly income for October – December, which will determine the monthly aid you receive January – March. You can continue to fill in your ressources trimestrielles every three months for as long as you have income in France for the three previous months. You must file every three months to continue to receive the aid, and it is paid to you at the same time as housing assistance (if you qualify for that).

Speaking of CAF, let’s get into that! As soon as you have a permanent living situation, start your application for housing assistance through CAF. The first step is getting a numero allocataire, which will of course, come to you by post. If you have a CAF account already and have switched départements, you will need to go in and change your address in the system, which will send you a new numero allocataire (naturally, you can’t have one number for the whole country). Once you have a numero allocataire, and your passcode, you can log in and start filling out a dossier for the housing assistance. The reason to do this ASAP is that the aid you receive is based off the date you submit your dossier, not the date you moved into your housing. Even if it takes several months to receive your first payment (and believe me, it most likely will), you will be back paid from the date you submitted. The amount of aid you receive is based off a combination of your income, your rent, and the amount of money you earned in the last two years. If you haven’t earned anything in France in that time, you can put 0€ as income because let’s face it, they can’t check. If you’re a renewing assistant, or have income in France for whatever reason in that time, you must declare it. You can keep track of your dossier on your CAF account online, and that is also where they will alert you if any documents are missing. Once you’re approved, you don’t need to do anything else until you leave France. I was initially eligible for housing assistance (for the months of November and December, I received 68€/month in assistance towards my rent), but because of my slightly unique situation in having had an account before with a massive time gap in it, I had to declare my situation from back home during the year and a half I wasn’t in France. My income disqualified me from housing assistance, but luckily, I’m in a situation to not need it as much this year. For a timeline of my CAF journey this year, I applied in November 2020, and received my first payment in February 2021. Every département works on their own timeline so some will be more backlogged than others.

Schedule for TAPIF in Dijon

What your schedule as a teaching assistant will look like is going to vary based on so many things. Some schools are more willing to work with you to have an “ideal” schedule, where others will have less flexibility due to how the classes are scheduled. While you do only work 12 hours a week, that is purely the amount of hours you spend in front of a class. That is not the number of hours you’ll spend in the school during the week. Many schools will do their best to ensure you don’t have horrendously long gaps between classes, but sometimes it can’t be helped. You can talk to your prof ref/conseillier(e) pedagogique to see if they can accommodate certain things in your schedule (i.e. a preference for no early mornings, or not five days a week), but at the end of the day, you can’t dictate your schedule. It’s sometimes just crossing your fingers and hoping it’s not too inconvenient. I had no say in my schedule, although my prof refs did do their best to make it workable. Since I work in two schools, I know there were initially some issues with deciding what days I would work at each school to ensure that they both got the hours they had been allotted with the English assistant.

My schedule at the lycée varies from week to week because they have A weeks and B weeks (I’m not even addressing the never ending changes in relation to hybrid models). I still work my given six hours, but how that looks varies slightly based on the week. My collège schedule never changes from week to week (barring class cancellations). Since I live at my lycée, I can usually spend downtime in my room, but when I have it at the collège, I’ll spend it in the Salle des profs. I work Monday/Tuesday at my lycée, and Thursday/Friday at my collège with no classes Wednesday. Side note: the last time I was an assistant in Angers, I also only had Wednesday off, and my schedule was far less forgiving in terms of breaks because my commute was so long to my schools. As such, I spent all day on my work days at my primary schools, which is quite different to my experience this time around in Dijon. Compared to when I worked at the primary level, I also have later days this year, due to the fact that secondary schedules go later in the day, and that is when some of the English classes I have been assigned to assist are. Here’s what my schedule looks like on paper!

That’s what my schedule and expenditures have looked like this year as an assistant in Dijon! Some things are a bit different this year given the pandemic, but I thought it still might be useful to see it mapped out (hopefully for at least one person!). I’ve saved some money by not traveling during the breaks (which wasn’t the case when I was an assistant in Angers), but I do want to point out that every assistants’ budget AND schedule will be unique to their combination of living situation, city, schooling level, and in how many schools they work. There’s no way to predict exactly how things will pan out, but getting in contact with previous assistants in your academie, and later on with the previous assistant for your schools (if there was one), is a great way to start mapping things out. I found my living situation in Angers through a previous assistant, and this year’s through my prof ref, but speaking with previous assistants is a great way to get first hand information about your schools, and the city where you’ve been placed!

Not Your Average Giraffe

Month: March 2021