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.
:)