Andégo Abroad Gap Year: English Teaching Assistant

My trip was full of firsts; from haute cuisine, to high speed rail travel, to my first time living alone, I was inundated with all sorts of things that I'm still processing and looking back on in amazement. As soon as I stepped out of Annecy's train station to try and find the Priest that was to give me a ride to my host school, I was immediately drawn up and out. The summer colors on the mountains, the bustle of people, the beautiful architecture, all flooded my frankly unprepared brain with excitement. Once I was shown the amenities in my dorm room that I'd be staying in during the school week, I didn't think it could get much better. But then they showed me the cafeteria. I was well fed, well-housed, and well worked-- emphasis on well-worked. After taking about two weeks to get situated and to begin helping with all of my assigned classes, I was working with French kids aged 10 to 15 for about 35 hours a week, not including the time it took to prepare presentations or other materials for the classes. Included in the 35 hours was also work in the dorms of the boarding school, and that took up most of my evenings. This work ranged from inspecting rooms for cleanliness once a week, to helping keep the order in the nightly study period and during unstructured time the rest of the night. This was a lot for an 18 year old me, and unfortunately, the work during the day at the school, combined with a good chunk of my evening being taken up, did leave me feeling a little isolated from experiences outside of the school and somewhat stressed. This was especially so during the first month, when I didn't have a host family to ease me into French life. However, once my French caught up a little bit to the native environment and a host family was found for me, feelings of isolation became dwarfed by my enjoyment of the town and the people in it. I was also decently paid, which made things easier for myself and those I was with. In the end, my trip was cut short by mishandling of Visa troubles, which detracted a little from experience. However, it has been made explicitly clear to me that similar issues will not be permitted to arise in the future. Also, what I was able to do before my premature departure was extraordinary to such an extent that no amount of misfortune could mar the memory of having done it and the subsequent learnings and discoveries. From helping me learn not to eat too much unpasteurized cheese in a day, to helping me walk the lit streets of Paris at evening time, to helping me learn I can do much more as a single person than I ever thought, this internship simply left me a better person for having participated in it. So regardless of potentially taxing work environments and Visa complications, I would still say with certainty that I heartily recommend this program.

The Andego program offered me something I never would have thought would ever happen to me in my life. I never would have thought I would be going abroad. I am so happy and grateful that I was given the opportunity to go to France because now I have Friends all over Europe. I now have a family to go back to in France. I made life long friends who I can now call family. Also now I speak French! My French is now so good that French people think I am French! Teaching was so much fun as well! My most valuable memory would have to be when my students began to speak English while I spoke French to them. Overall a very great experience and I would do it again! Merci Andego.