Home time.

So, after a good 11 months my French life is ending, with mixed emotions.

Things France has taught me:

1) That I can live alone no problemos and more importantly that I can remove my own spiders.
2)To like salad dressing, fresh figs, duck and square pillows.
3)How amazing pain aux raisins are.
4)That English banks, whilst annoying, are really not that bad.
5)That I am not a surfer and never will be.
6)Useful French, not university French.
7)Think how long your paperwork for something will take then times this amount by 3.
8)French music and TV leaves a lot to be desired.
9)I can live without bacon but I can't live without cheddar cheese.
10)I dress 'English'.

Things I am looking forward to back home:

1. Family
2. Friends
3. Cheese on toast
4. Straight hair (my hair straighteners broke about 2 months ago)
5. Wearing socks
6. Duvets
7. BBC iplayer
8. Bible studies
9. Speaking English in public places
10.Talking endlessly about my gap yah.

:)

And then there were four.

Sorry for the lack of updates, I managed to lock myself out of my blog account. Clever I know. August here has been great apart from this weekend's sadness of saying goodbye to three members of staff, my french roomie and our lovely australian couple. We are now down to four of us working here, so I'm being kept busy.

I have spent the last few weeks living round the corner from the hostel in a friends house (no room in the inn) which was a nice break from the house of madness and boys who like to go surfing at least twice a day. I spent a lot of time watching Gilmore Girls on the sofa eating Golden Grahams and thinking how great my life is.

I thought I'd show a few pics...

Better late than never heh?

To start on a very English note
The weather has been terrible, a week of stormy rain and no sun with terrible surf left everyone pretty miserable. In fact the whole season so far has been over rainy with the occasional day of sunshine. Yesterday the sun actually came out for a bit so we went surfing, where the sea and my board beat me up and I spent most of the time under the water. but it was good all the same. Oh and then, as if my surfing prowess wasn't enough, I further embarrassed myself by falling onto barnacley rocks whilst taking my wetsuit off and now look like my backside was mauled by a tiger.


Picture is of a few weeks back on a trip to 'sunny spain'.

Pranks
The latest ( and the last as far as I'm concerned) we managed to break into our friend's apartment and then put glitter dust in all socks, shoes, pockets, bedroom objects, duvets, shampoos, toothpastes and in the shower head. All light switches, handles, beers, plants- EVERYTHING. The next day, realising what had happened, he put all his stuff in the wash- which spread the glitter even further.

Just for fun
2 nights ago we said goodbye to one of the guys who has lived here for 2 years, his nickname is simba so we all went as lions. For once my crazy hair was a plus.


Things are about to change this week on staff, lots of people are leaving and new staff are arriving. August is fast approaching and then HOME, after almost a whole year away.

A bit more of my newsless life.

Today, after the usual breakfast and cleaning etc. we headed out for a swim at the beach to enjoy the weather. The weather was enjoyed so much that I have my first 'veryenglishtan' of the year. A bright red strip is across my back in perfect luminous line.

Later we went to a really great (but uber expensive) patisserie for hot chocolate and pastry items. It was hot chocolate the way it's meant to be, melted chocolate and cream served with a glass of water on the side.

This week has featured yet more pranks and yet more fancy dress. I was woken up by my roomie at 3am to find this from the bathroom to our door...
The smell for the rest of the day was quite incredible(y bad).

Unfortunatley the next set of prankers picked when we were at church the next night to have a little fun. Everything in our room was reversed. From our posters to our big wooden bunk-bed everything was turned upside down, including the heavy wooden outside door. We were camped out in another room until a kindly guy reversed our bed for us.

:)

No work, all play.

One of the guys I work with had his birthday this weekend, cue 'musician' themed fancy dress party. Me and my roomie went as Simon and Garfunkel.
The only downside was this this weekend has been scorching hot, like standing in an oven at all times. Wearing a wig and a big winter jacket was not comfy, but I was digging my blond 'fro.

Then, up early this morning to catch the best waves (apparently its best about 7.30 in the morn) It seemed like a good idea until the alarm went off but it was a nice fun way to start my sunday ( and I discovered how unfit I am.)

Last week we got prank phoncalled by our boss, revenge came in the form of labelling every single part of his car, inside and out- including the engine!! I downloaded the owners manual for his car on the internet and we spent the afternoon in the office writing our 400 post-it notes.



Team has been interesting this week, we are all very different characters which can make for annoyance and fireworks occasionally when you live and work together, but I feel more and more like it's family, and we are about ready to hit the madness that is July and August in the hostel. I love hanging out with the other English girls here, we've been having lots of fun together which I really thankful for after the isolation of Perigueux. Life of the sunshine and beach is bliss (aside from mornings), and I feel massively blessed to be back here again.

In the quieter moments I am missing summer fun with my Bristol lot though...
:)

A collection of bits from my week.

Another week has gone by in a whirl, it has been a whole lot of fun having a room-mate and another girl to help me bully the boys. I feel like there have been a lot of late nights, not due to my wild partying but because of classic films.
For example, on night we realised that we had never seen 'Gone with the wind', we finished at the interval to go see some of the guys play a gig at a local festival, which didn't work that well because our minds were definitely elsewhere we were itching to get back and finish it. 4 hours of tragedy later we made it to bed, emotionally and mentally fatigued only to have to get up hours later to make everyone breakfast.

It was my day off today so I caught up on sleep and beach time.


I wrote a super big message to take a photo for my dad for fathers' day, it was all going well until the life-guards spotted what I was doing and decided to write their names...


Us englishgirls had our first real day of office duty this Saturday, it went really well apart from when our boss decided to prank phonecall us. S was trying not to laugh and making weird faces at me as a guy with a thick accent was asking "are you a party hostel?" and things like "how many people do you think I could fit into a double bed?". A humiliating while later we ascertained it wasn't a genuine phonecall- needless to say we are plotting some kind of revenge.
:)

A bit of news

I have been here two weeks now and it is just flying by in a blur,I finally have a roommate so I am no longer the 'token girl' on staff and she seems to have made the sun come out after what has seemed like a very wet week. I'm still resident cook and cleaner but all is going well. A highlight of this week was sunday night, I was at a bar by the beach after the Hossegor church and a massive storm blew in, me and another englishgirl spent a long time in the pouring storm rain on the beach watching the fork lightning ripping across the sea in neon pinks and greens. We were absolutely drenched and had to survive the long car journey home in towels, but it was well worth it.

Last week Frenchman told us that he had played a joke on us and we would discover it pretty soon, a good 5 days later we still couldn't work out what he had done. We were puzzled until our boss' parents came round for a cup of coffee, and pretty much spat it out again disgusted. He'd switched the salt and the sugar.

Staff seem to have been doing pretty well for food recently, we get quite a lot of the church meal leftovers. Last week we had 12 baguettes to finish, determined to use them we did different things with them all week. Baguettes really don't keep so by the end of the week you could whack it against a table to the detriment of the table rather than the bread. We did French toast and fondue then americanman decided to make croutons with the remaining bits. Unfortunately he forgot he had left them in the oven and went to the beach. Luckily someone found them before the oven completely went up in flames (but it wasn't far off). I came back not knowing what had happened and was delighted that someone had made brownies...

Migrating south west(er) for the summer.

It's been a while but many many bowls of cherries later, a visit from a friend and family, a fair bit of kayaking and a whole lot of packing stress I have made the move down south-west(er) to the sea.

I am now working in a surf-hostel in Biarritz, a big change of pace from life in perigueux. Life is currently a whirl of people, but it definitely feels like home.

Goodbye...

Hello...

:)

When food is seasonal...

It's the season of cherries and strawberries here at the moment, everyday my landlady has been coming round with a bowl of cherries for me as her friend has a tree, I'm not entirely sure what to do with them, I can't quite eat that many per day!

Yet another example of my French prowess.

My French after 8 months is get-by-able at best, but it certainly does not stand up to large groups with multiple conversations going on at the same time.

Last night I was trying to listen into about 3 conversations at once to find my way of getting involved, (when you don't speak the language well you are a bit behind!)I caught a useful snippet of conversation at the other end of the table, one girl said that she had had enough, I thought she meant enough of the food we had just eaten so I’m like yeah me too I’ve had enough. Turns out she was just talking about dieting. At which point the partakers of that conversation, who are, lets say, large, turn to me with fowl faces, scoff and go ‘yeah ok how much weight have you lost?’.

Now this is not to say that these things don't happen in England too, except when they do you can try and dig yourself out the hole you created, whereas in another language you have got no choice but to stand in the hole you have just made and whimper while everyone else stares from above.

Added to that, they like to water the grass a lot here and whilst walking home I walked straight through a path of sprinklers. haha.

:)

A vital piece of information...

Le Monde (French newspaper)'s website homepage made me laugh a lot today,I just wanted to know what the headlines were...


"Ben Laden, drinker of Coca-Cola"


No more coca-cola for me!
:)

A student's nightmare or a student's dream?

I'm back. (well, since Thursday)

I have 20 days to get this research project done, 20 days and a whole lot of words in French stand between me and freedom.

Interestingly enough It may actually get done, I have never been in this situation before- I don't really have anything else to do!

I'm sat listening to the hum of the fridge in a glorified potting shed in the middle of France, I have no TV and the internet doesn't work too well,all my dvds have already been watched over and over and most of my friends have left. All distractions have been removed.

My house is clean, my papers are organised, I can't cook anything because my gas cylinder is empty and needs replacing. It's too hot outside to work there. All procrastination techniques have been removed.

There are 3 potential outcomes:

1) The project will get done.
2) I will get really really creative about finding things to do.
3) Some kind of madness will set in.

I'm banking on 2.
:)

4 things...

1) I'm melting into a puddle of English sweat. It has been 30 degrees here today which isn't so great without the beach or a pool
2) In order to come home to sane April weather (flooding) I need to print off my ticket. I do not own a printer, there is only one in P. at the library, at the top of the hill, over half an hour away... it was broken down.
3) A tree outside has decided to start growing through my house.
4) I have finished being 'prof d'anglais' forever. :(

I will genuinely miss living here, it makes me laugh on a daily basis :)

Au revoir and all that.

So this week is my week of goodbyes as I do my last lessons in the schools, the territory comes with very mixed feelings (depending on the school!). Today was hard because I spent a lot of time at that particular school and felt like I knew the staff and the kids really well.

It was a happy last day there though, aside from the occasional tantrum from kids who didn't win 'simon says'. I received lots of drawings from the kids to say thanks and even the staff brought me a present to say how much they had appreciated having me around this school year and wished I could stay another. Both kids (and staff!) said how much they have learnt this year and found it really fun, which was my main aim after years of dull language tuition.


Just a few of the many many drawings I received.

I will miss the kids there loads,I quite like being surrounded every break with gaggles of curious frenchlettes. Today Candice and Paulina gave me a 'french lesson' where they listed all the words they could think of and asked me if I knew them. Rather unfortunately the only work Candice wanted to try and learn in English was 'fork' because her dad couldn't remember what it was, although she keeps pronouncing it wrong so I hope her parents don't think I taught her something else...

I made the staff a big fruitcake which was wolfed down by them and really enjoyed (I have, one-cake-at-a-time, spent the year slowly trying to undo French hang-ups about English cuisine). A few weeks back I had been asked for the recipe by a teacher who likes to cook and so was able to give the delighted culinary-keen my translated version.

To get some 'classic English' in, the weather is glorious this week, sunshine and 24-26 forcasted all week.
:)

P.s I'LL BE BACK SOON. Prepare yourself England. I have an awkward habit of speaking English with the occasional 'alors' or 'quand-meme' thrown in. Lets see if I can rid myself of that before I get classed as one of the pretentious people who uses foreign terms because they can.

Mon anniversaire.

It was my first birthday away from home (it has always been the Easter holidays!) but despite the weirdness of that I had a really nice day. It felt a bit strange having to get up early, go to school and work on my 21st- but it will definitely be a birthday I won't forget. It was a beautiful day, 24 degrees and a pure blue sky. It was just nice for me to relax when I wasn't teaching, open cards in my lunch break and justify eating chocolatey goodness all day. The kids were relatively well behaved, I didn't even have my worst class which was a great birthday present! One class even sang me happy birthday in English!

One thing that I am really good at is eating, so I decided that to celebrate I wanted to have a evening picnic by the river. Here there is an Irish Pub that does fish and chips every Thursday so we took our battered cods and english chips to eat on a wooden jetty with cushions and candles. Then, as if that wasn't enough food for one night, we went to a restaurant and had ice-cream sundays. It was really chilled out, nothing big or fancy, but just how I had wanted it to be.


Spring is springing

We had a great view from our jetty

Fish and Chips by candlelight.

Thank you all for you amazing presents, cards and messages I felt incredibly loved even though I was so far from home.
:)

Road Trip to Arcachon.

A big thanks to the lovely people who took some of these

On Sunday we managed to borrow a car from a nice teacher that one of the others knows and we took a road trip to Arcachon (coast south-west of Bordeaux) we spent the day eating and enjoying being by the beach, then early evening we took our picnic tea to the Dune du Pyla to watch the sun sink into the sea. It was the perfect day out apart from the bit when I fell on some oysters and cut my hand (as you do).

The Dune du Pyla is the highest sand dune in Europe, I went when I was younger and remembered it being great but I was a bit apprehensive that it wouldn't live up to being the place I had fixed in my mind- I always say it is my favourite place I have ever been (combining my love of the beach, good views and sunshine!). Plus, this time I had persuaded 3 other people to come with me so it had a lot expected of it.

I need not have worried, it was every bit as breathtaking as I remember it to be, more so in fact because there was hardly anyone there. Pictures really don't capture it, it's really high, the forest stretches out on one side on it and the sea on the other.

On a different note, I have 2 and a half weeks of teaching left! It's a mixed feeling of sadness to be leaving the schools and relief, because it appears that children are exactly like goldfish, 7 second memories and when it gets warm they get hyperactive.
:)

I lick strawberry but I don't lick peece.

After 6 months I may still be speaking French like a Spanish cow (a french expression I learnt this week) BUT I think I'm about there with knowing my food favourites. I may not be able to tell the gender of a certain noun but I can tell you where to get the biggest chocolate pain aux raisins, the best almondy croissant, the best crepe, three-course meal or baguette. At least I can leave here knowing I have achieved something very worthwhile.

School is being its usual self, although, because I haven't got that much time left teaching I can definitely feel my motivation going. This week I got fed up of seeing a class full of 5/6 year olds and them all wanting to do the French 'bises', which, whilst cute, they are snotty little things at a much lower level than me, so I have now introduced the high-five. "Oh yes, in England we high-five" I reassured them all.

I had a week including kids thinking 'food' meant football and that the plural of brother is sister. One class found themselves facing my wrath, sitting in silence and writing lines, another of my classes was yet again observed my 2 trainee teachers, who were much older and much more trained than I am. The week also featured a few "grandmonster"s and many many "I lick bananas" despite my constant correction to "grandmother" or "I like".

:)

Time flies when you are having fun, in the sun, making an inordinate number of chef's hats.

SO, what have I been up to? Well that is a very good question and I don't really know where all my time is going, the weeks are passing très quickly (potentially because I have the next part of my uni dissertation due in at the end of March and I thought it was for the end of April, thus I have lost a month). Eating, sleeping and lesson planning are my regular activities, I had to make rather a lot of paper chef's hats for the kids this week so that was my 'free' time.

The weather has been loads better, I am no longer freezing, we actually had a whole week of sunshine but we've hit cloud again now, it was so good to be able to sit outside and read in the sunshine, I found a really quiet spot by the river where I live. It was funny to watch the old 2cv's hurtle round the country lanes over the river- it all felt very 'French'.

What else is new? Well, my church has moved buildings because it was too big for the old room we met in, it is now a 40 minute roller-blade along the canal for me to get to church and, so far, the weather has been kind. They got me to write the sign outside for them, which I thought was a big risk considering I did have to ask for the gender of a few words.

AND,I have booked my flights home for Easter- very very very very exciting to be popping back to good ol' England.
:)

p.s the lovely bloggy people have let me add a 'reactions' bar at the bottom of my posts, so go on, react. I have provided tick boxes for the full array of human emotions that can be evoked by my writing.

The thing that is beginning to bug me...

As l'anglaise in France I get a lot of 'Oh you are from England, where it is cold and rainy and you have bad food and a bad healthcare system' and as much as I can find all that funny, the thing that is really getting to me after almost 6 months is the use of English words in French. There are quite a few of them, often to do with the media, technology and British/American food. As an English speaker encountering these words you think, wahey, this word is easy to say, then you say it and nobody understands you. Issue.

Gnahhh so here commences my rant about how the French around me seem a little narrow minded, it's just like they dont want to understand what I'm trying to say. For the English words I have to think about it and put on my best mockingthefrench accent to say words such as 'burger' 'brownies' 'earl grey' etc. Today a group of frenchies had NO idea what I meant when I said 'pesto', when my french pesto pot definitely said 'pesto' on the side. Apparently it sounds more like 'pestu'. How is that so much different that they fail to understand what I mean?!? I don't think it takes a genius to work out what I'm trying to say when there is one tiny difference between the two languages rather than making a foreigner, who really struggles with the language, feel like an idiot. I got a little annoyed and pointed out that actually it is an Italian word anyway.
At least they have stopped screwing their faces up in a 'I-dont-understand-you-foreigner' way every time I talk.

I think perhaps I am more annoyed at myself that I can't pronounce the new words I'm learning. My brain can form the sentences but my mouth can't speak them. AND, reflecting on this a bit, I bet the French feel the same when beached in England and deemed incomprehensible when pronouncing the billions of French words we have. So I shouldn't feel so touchy about it.

Rant over and out.
:)

What I did with my paid two-week holiday...

Holidays over I thought it was about time I caught you up on what I got up to. Well, after spending the first chunk of holiday doing uni work I went to Biarritz for a bit of a break, to see some great people and catch up on bit of their news.It was so lovely!

The train journey down was great, countryside between here and Bordeaux then completely flat pine-forests the rest of the way. Forehead pressed to the window,I'm sure all the people around me must have wondered what I was grinning at as I saw the pyrenees in the distance.

It was just such a lovely change of scenery and life for me. A life filled with the buzz of people and lots of English speakers! I went to a church dinner and a lunch,a girls night, saw the sea, made lots of beautiful cupcakes and got to talk about pretty much everything.



Some of the cupcakes- they looked a whole lot better before I took them on 2 trains and a coach.

It felt good to be back there again and even better that this time I was able to understand the French being spoken. Even if my speech isn't exactly flowing at least my ears are now working. It was also cool to see a bit of what my friend Lauren is up to as a missionary in the South West of France. She's great and what she does is great but instead of me waffling about it all you should go and see for yourself and check out what her and the team are up to down there.

Annoyingly, my good time was slightly spoilt at the end of my stay when I got some kind of tummy bug. I'm pretty much recovered now though, which is good seeing as I started back in school today.

Weirdly enough I am on my last stint of teaching as my contract runs out at the end of April. "But where am I going to get my blog fix from?!" I hear you cry, well, fear not, I'm actually going to be moving to Biarritz for the 3 months after so I'm sure I will have new humiliating experiences and cultural differences to waffle about.

Hopefully things in the next few months here will be great,at least it should thaw out a bit. The first daffodils are out, a bit of blossom is featuring and there are definitely green shoots on the plants in my garden. YEY for the prospect of spring.

Still here, will update soon.

So I'm nearing the end of my holidays and will fill you in at some point soonish, just not now because Im recovering from some kind of stomach buggy thing and even typing feels like doing too much. yuck.

I am currently being invaded by the cat who is purring maniacally and doesn't seem to understand the notion of 'personal space'.



:)

Whatever happened to eight year old me? Hard work induced musings.

I was looking after the dog and cats this weekend and as a thank you my landlady brought me back some plant thing which apparently is Mimosa- it is so beautiful and smells incredible.

I'm mainly writing this because I'm meant to be working on my Uni dissertation thingy which is DULLLLLLL and makes me read about syllabification and trochaic articulatory filters and other things that I'm struggling to understand in English, and haven't got a hope of translating into French.

Ma vie over here is going pretty quickly, 5 months in and I'm used to it all but it doesn't stop me having moments where I realise where I am and what I'm doing, those strange moments when I stop and think and the weirdness of it all hits me.

My family are miles away, a distance that often feels more than it actually is. I live alone in a small chalet type thing in a garden in south-west France. I have a salaried job where I am responsible for the education of others. I have to deal with bills, paperwork, cooking, cleaning and mending things without assistance or moral support. And the only time I'm likely to be at my family home this year is Christmas and Easter.

I think it's the realisation that somehow without me noticing I'm beginning to grow up. It's funny how 'home'is a physical place where I spend less and less time but one that consumes my thoughts everyday, no matter how long I spend in other places it's always my most important place.

I'm sure everyone has these bizarre realisations when they take a look at their lives and realise they aren't actually that eight year old any more, thinking 'Anon' is a famous poet and 'Scotland Yard' is actually a yard in Scotland. And it's not bad, just weird.

have a happy Tuesday
:)

Ma vie à péri.

Late afternoon by 'L'Isle'

Life still seems revolve large amounts around food and meals out, I won't bore you with the details because I will be accused of becoming 'French' due to my talk about food and nothing else.

This week was a pretty normal week, it's so almost the holidays (2 week half term so the French can go skiing) the kids are getting tired again so I will be a glad of a break. I have been doing all the normal things, like the gym, where we had to do some push-up type things using a step and I ended up just lying there after about 4, arms and legs dangling, looking like a beached whale. Sadly the instructor saw this, mainly due to the giggles of those around me, and decided to stay right by me watching to make sure I did it. I cannot now lift my arms, thank you gym class, thank you very much.

Recently I have really been missing doing a Bible study with someone, so I asked Janny, Nicaraguan girl, if she wanted to meet up and do one. It's difficult/ bordering on comical because our common language is French, but well worth it. I was also missing caramel chocolate, but then outoftheblue I got sent some. YUM.

Something that has been amazing this week is the weather, cold mornings but clear, sunny and gloriously warm afternoons. It's easier to remember why it's great living here when it's nice outside, and here are some photos...


Wednesday's rollerblading (I'm that cool)


Having a 'coffee' break with the other assistants on market day.

:)

Colourful cakes and cauchemars

A friend here is one of the assistants for Spanish, she happens to come from Nicaragua and she is a Christian so I see her a fair bit at church and we chat (badly) in our common language. This week it was her birthday and I volunteered to make her a cake.

She said that she wasn't a particular lover of chocolate so that wasn't an option. I was a bit stuck because I wanted to make this cake really fun, then suddenly remembered a cake that one of my friends told me about, a rainbow cake.

So, six bowls and an obscene amount of food colouring later...

Sadly the colours weren't as bright as when I have made this one before, and I'm not quite sure what the frenchies made of it. Some liked it, others didn't really appreciate a good-old English sponge cake, which is basically what it was. One person explained to me that he had once tried scones in Ireland and not been able to go to the toilet for days after. I think generally they do find our cooking a bit 'heavy' compared to theirs!

Other than that, this week has been pretty standard, lots of singing songs about the months of the year and important things like that. I went to see 'The King's speech' at the cinema the other day with some other assistants, we actually found a time that it was on in English with subtitles. Really enjoyed it, although I felt sorry for the French because the subtitles really weren't a very good translation of the dialogue so they missed lots of funny bits, "pop" and "hubby" really didn't translate that well.

I feel like I should update you on my French too. Language wise I can have good days and then terrible days, sadly the terrible days are more frequent. I was told that when you start dreaming in French you are doing well. I dream in French, but only my nightmares are in French- coincidence? I think not.

:)

Food for thought.

Recently word had spread amongst us assistants that you could buy cheddar from the deli-counter. Sold in tiny tiny amounts, they would really not approve if they new about the giant block of rubbery cheddar that, as a student, gets put with most things.



At the supermarket it's easy to stock up on the basics, like horse. Did the french never learn the song, 'I knew an old lady who swallowed a fly'? What was it that killed her again...?



There is a large problem with baguettes. They are not wrapped. Wrapping is hunger proof, you can't take wrapping off subconsciously in a moment of craving food. With baguettes there are no barriers, it's fresh bread goodness and my mouth. I live about a 15/20 min walk away from my bakery, I'm hungry, it's in my hands, the top out of the paper yelling "EAT MEEEEE". Often, I get back home and put it on the table and stare disappointedly, wondering where half my baguette has gone.

:)

vendredi et samedi.

I'm not particularly newsfull right now except to tell you that the next part of my Uni project was done quickly and painlessly (which made me instantly think I'd done it wrong).

Oh and the Pastor of the church here phoned me up and asked me if I could share a bit at church on Sunday about how I became a Christian and the difference this makes in my life. I wasn't thinking and agreed wholeheartedly, I even said it was a 'bonne idée'. Put the phone down and realised what I had done. I don't speak French. Well at least not a monologue.

So, I am going to cheat. I spent the WHOLE afternoon writing it down and I'm going to read it. It was massive brain strain even writing it though, the number of tenses you use in these kind of things!

AND for your own amusement-
:)

I have no fancy title but there are pictures today.

I had a bad week last week, the January blues I think, just lacking in motivation to speak and live all things French, I just wanted be back in England.

Things have already been better this week, back to normal routine life, I'm still making mistakes daily, I get confused between words a lot! Yesterday talking about bent 'jambon' (ham) rather than bent 'jambes' (legs)

The kids are still amusing/bemusing/annoying, a fair few of them aren't the brightest things ever (putting it mildly) but they are teaching me patience like nothing ever has done before.

After 2 weeks a parcel my mum sent me finally reached me, I now have my new camera charger so went round today 'like a Japanese tourist' as one of my friends put it. BUT, it does mean that you have pictures from now on!

At the market today I didnt need a bag because I had brought my own and the lady said that if you didnt need a bag you got this- and handed me an armful of freshly cut parsley.

Yeah, so what do you do with parsley?

Food is ridiculously good, fresh warm baguettes and a boulangerie every 5 metres mean that I might have to book myself two seats on the plane home. This is not helped by the fact that after gym class last night there was a cake and cider social. When they mentioned it the week before I thought I had misunderstood it or something, but no. Eating straight after ab work it was. See this is why my abs are absent (see what I did there?)


My cheeky pastry of choice today.


:)

Stick to your story (whether or not you know what you said)

I spend a lot of my time feeling like a real idiot out here, I can't say that I enjoy the feeling either.

So, often now I don't listen carefully enough to what people are saying to me and I think I can just reply quickly and something will come out of my mouth that makes sense. However, this has a tendency to backfire on me. Yesterday my landlady asked me how I thought my French was and I somehow replied 'it's super'- showing just how bad my French really is. So, I spent the rest of the car journey trying to undo what I had just said, not by going back on my word ( because then she would know that I clearly hadn't comprehended the question) but by chatting about what I was finding hard, all the while trying to use my best French to uphold the image that my French really was 'super'. These are the kinds of linguistic knots I get myself in on a pretty daily basis.

It's like when you just begin to learn a language and you can only say a few things so you end up lying in all your exams... if anyone ever talks to my old German teacher I do have a sister and I did do my work experience in a shop.

Also, today I had to go home from school because I was feeling ill, this hasn't happened in a very very long time. I wanted my mum to come and pick me just for nostalgia's sake.

Ne t’inquiète pas, I think its just a migraine or something, I got off the bus seeing double and with a splitting headache and feeling sick. Not what you want when you have to attempt to teach 6 classes of children. I was thinking yesterday how well I was doing to not come down with the flu, stomach bugs, head lice, cooties, rabies and whatever else these small children have.

:)

They may as well have provided live cows for us to bite into.

Every Tuesday I'm too far away from home to have lunch at mine so I to the school cantine, it's pot-luck how good it is and school lunch this Tuesday really wasn't so great. I'm pretty sure I ate raw mincemeat slightly mashed together to resemble a circular burger thing. Being immensely and stubbornly English I cannot get used to the French tendency to eats animals that are pretty much still alive. Our plates were covered in red cow blood at the end but the other teachers proceeded to mop it all up and eat it with a spare bit of baguette.

So, after the cow ordeal I returned to the staff room whereupon I discovered another teacher eating his lunch. He had brought in something I would say is pretty un-french, a microwave-meal. On closer inspection, the label informed me that what he was in fact eating was delicately named 'hunters rabbit' and that the chunks of meat he was eating had once been a poor little bunny.
Tesco are missing a trick here, microwavable rabbit anyone?

:)

My camembert is missing.

I dont really have a whole lot to say but I feel like I should blog seeing as I have been back here for a week.

All is pretty much the same is it always is, working, eating, planning, meeting and eating some more. Teaching is going fine but and I'm having to keep topping up my patience due to what seems to be a large number of slow-to-learn children, ceaseless paperwork keeps being sent to me with no explanation of what it is or what to do with it and I lost a Camembert somehow this week. (bought it then couldnt find what I'd done with it...! so if something starts smelling in a few days time...)
:)

Chez moi encore.

Getting here...
I left home at 8am ish and got into my house in France at 9.30pm- I'm sure you should be able to get somewhere really hot in that amount of time.

I was a bit nervous/upset about leaving my lovely home and family again but when I got to the airport one of the other assistants for P happened to be there and was taking the same flight, I instantly felt better and it was so much nicer doing the journey with someone else (even though we were ridiculously tired). My rucksack was so heavy that I bent forward to pick something up and fell over backwards, arms and legs flailing much to everyone's amusement!

There was a fair bit of waiting around in cold stations and then the task of getting a taxi once back in P. Before I left my Mum had kindly reassured me that 'even in deepest darkest Cornwall you can get a taxi from a station'. We did manage to get a taxi but we had to ring up then wait. Then the guy came but it was for someone else who had been waiting over half and hour. Apparently there is only one taxi driver in P on week-nights, so we waited some more for our turn.

Being back...

I had forgotten just how much my little home smells like a wooden cabin, and I had also forgotten what cold feels like. I wore most of my wardrobe last night but still couldnt get off to sleep because my nose felt like it was getting frostbite. I ended up getting up in the night and leaving the heater on. Don't worry about me, this worked rather well.

I was concerned about doing a full day of teaching on very little sleep, but again, prayers uberly answered, I managed the super early start. The French soon kicked itself back into my head and after taking my first lesson (at what was, for me, 7.30 English time)I got to see a beautiful sunrise and eat my bag of cereal- breakfast!

I'm very much back, which is weird, sad and lovely all at the same time, and I'm looking forward to (hopefully) amusing you encore with my French 2011.
:)