First of all I have big news.. I finally have a French bank account, with money in it and a working debit card.. YAY! It’s so nice to be able to lift money when I want (for you people who aren’t Northern Irish this means getting money from an ATM, I’m not stealing just to clarify) and use my card in shops. The downside is because it’s a French account, they think I’m French so no longer translate the screen messages at the ATM into English.. sad times! I think I’ll live though :)
I’m still really enjoying teaching and most of the kids are brilliant to work with, although I’m still practising my shouting French voice a little, especially with the younger classes. Some of the pupils from one of my cinquième classes at the beginning of last week just wouldn’t listen and every time I turned my back to them, they would start talking! In the other half of the class, with the teacher, some were bad too so we ended up putting about 7 of them in after school detention.. scary biscuits! I’m getting well in with the teachers now, and as I get to know the pupils better, I can contribute to staff room banter. All they do is moan about the pupils and the marking and how tired they are... haha it’s rather amusing! The fave staff room phrase is, “J’en ai marre...” which means “I’m fed up...”. The best way to get to know the teachers is to have canteen lunch and sit at the table with them, so I have lunch there 3 times a week :) of course they have a casual bottle of wine or 2 on the teachers’ table at lunchtime... only in France :P
The weekend just passed was definitely my busiest since I arrived here... everything suddenly came at once! I went to the English teacher’s (Françoise) house on Thursday for dinner. I went home with her straight from school and first we went for a walk along the beach by her house – it was lovely :) then she made dinner while I sat in the kitchen talking to her and her husband. He is English, from Canterbury, so we spoke in English obv... it’s so nice to be able to just talk normally and not worry about people not being able to understand you! Her daughter, who is 14, came home with her German exchange partner who was visiting, and we all ate together. We spoke mostly English with a bit of French and I tried a bit of German, but failed epically! Speaking German while in France is the most difficult thing ever! I never thought that it would be easier for me to speak French than German – crazy! We talked about speaking different languages and came to the conclusion that you have a different personality for each language that you speak, depending on how fluent you are and who you speak it with. It’s so true! I feel like as if the only people who really know me here, are the people I can talk to in English... the English teachers know a very different me compared to the other teachers. I’m very quiet in big groups when talking French, although I’m slowly finding my French voice! Lol it’s better in a one on one conversation because you have to speak more, but to be honest, it’s probably a good thing that a talk less; it really means that you think about what you’re going to say before you say it.
The rest of my weekend was crazy, but amazing. It involved watching the rugby at a friend’s house with lots of Frenchies, getting very tense in the last 10mins (probably one of the most tense 10mins of my life), and drinking beer at midday in order to celebrate said rugby result (only in France...)! I ate an epic seafood lunch at the house of a fisherman and family, watched some beach cross (racing quads and motorbikes on the beach) at a huge rally, went go-carting, resulting in serious whiplash the next day! I ate lots of yummy French food and way too much cake, did a bit of karaoke, laughed a lot, went out for lunch again, went to a taste festival and shopped! I met some really lovely, wonderful people, and got to know people I had met before even better :) all in all, an epic weekend and a really amazing memory to have of my French life just before I head back to the UK for holiday times. I really feel like I’m getting a little group of friends going here and I even went for my first coffee today... which lasted 3 hours... yes I can manage long coffees in French too – I told you I was finding my French voice ;)
So yes, very very good times J Getting very excited about the holidays now and being reunited with all my lovely Yorkies, and Aimée in Cambridge! I had better get to bed as I’m doing a charity cross country run with all the pupils in the school tomorrow afternoon... nobody can say that I don’t get involved! Loving life.
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