dimanche, juin 06, 2010

vacation!!

Things have been going much better at work but that isn't to say that I don't need a vacation!! I haven't had a real one since I started in September! It is tough going from a teacher's schedule with 2 weeks off every 6 weeks + summer break to an office job. In France you earn your vacation throughout the first year to use in the second year. Since I started in September 2009 I earned 9 days vacation in 2009 to be used in 2010... not a lot for Franceland (you earn a total of 5 weeks vacation for the next year).
Luckly I have RTT days. Basically in France the work week is 35 hours. I work 39 hours a week (so does Mystery Guest) and when your contract is longer than 35 hours your employer has 2 options: 1 pay your extra hours overtime or 2: give you RTT days. Essentially the extra hours you work are grouped into RTT days, four extra hours a week being a total of 2 RTT days per month that you can use at any time. You could take off 4 hours a week or group them together for a longer vacation.
Mystery Guest gets paid overtime and I get RTT. Thank god for RTT! I prefer that then getting paid overtime, especially when I don't have much vacation this year. I think the total RTT days for the year are around 25 days.
For our first vacation of 2010 we're going to SCOTLAND a week from Monday! I'm so excited!! I've always wanted to go and never had the opportunity (or a weaker pound, 5 years ago it was just too expensive). We'll be there for 5 days. We've planned the first couple days (Stirling, Edinburgh and Loch Ness) but not sure what we'll be doing the other couple days, hopefully the Isle of Skye -it looks amazing out there! If you have any suggestions... feel free to through them my way!
The rest of my time off this year will probably be 1 week in August to spend some time working on the house and hanging out at the beach, 1 week in September when my Dad and step-mom will be visiting and 1 week in October when my mom comes for a week. I like that, a week off almost every month :-)
The nice thing is being able to take time off during the school year which I was never able to do before.

2 commentaires:

Megan a dit…

have a great vacation!
When I was studying in England my parents came over and we toured all over, including a couple days in Scotland- Edin., Loch Ness, and I forget where.
It was really nice. Good luck understanding them though.
I was able to use my vacation days right away, and I supposedly have one day off every other week, though I often work that day too. Sigh.

Anonyme a dit…

yay! I LOVE Scotland. British Boyf was living in Inverness so we had a bit of time travelling around the place... take a look on my facebook (2008 & 2009), I think I've labelled a lot of my photos as to where they were taken.

With a friend we drove from Edinburgh up to Fort William through Glencoe (amazing!!), hiked Ben Nevis, carried on driving around the Isle of Skye (the town of portree is cute - be warned the roads around Skye are pretty much one-lane further away from towns!), the headed back to Inverness (I think we spent 4 nights away). NW of Inverness is lovely too - lots of cool mountains and lakes!