'appy new year

hello 2011!

firstly, an apology: each time i remember to blog, i close by promising to write more frequently. such is the exciting pace of life here (teaching, essay writing, going out for wine, watching iplayer/megavideo, eating cheese) that it always slips my mind. once a month is a poor, poor average. rumour is that at the start of a new year people try to make resolutions to do things, so i'll try to make this one of mine.

so i have a few loose ends to tie up - the thanksgiving dinner was a success! discovering that i could cook some yummy roast potatoes in my tiny electric oven was a special moment, and since then i have tried to be a lot more adventurous with my cooking. i have cooked two roast dinners for myself and my friends, and have sandwich bags full of various different meals all sat in my freezer. trying to be organised and healthy (so as to avoid dinners of baguette and cheese) is another of my resolutions. so far so good.

I went to spend a weekend with my friend, Kathryn up in Paris in december. Kathryn is another assistant, working in secondary schools in an affluent Paris suburb. It was lovely to go up and visit her and see how her life here differs from mine. Being in Paris would be really good, but it's so so different to how it is in provence. the pace of life, the countryside and even the accent is very different. She is coming down to stay with me for a weekend in a couple of weeks, which i'm really looking forward to. it'll be good for her to see la vie au sud!

Just before the christmas holidays, my brother flew down to marseille to stay with me for a few days, and we travelled back for christmas together. I think he enjoyed seeing where I am living for these months. my parents and my grandmother helped me move in, so it felt right that he came down to see where i am too. we went out for dinner and explored the christmas market with a nutella crepe each, before heading up to paris for a couple of days to explore there. Being in paris was really good fun. we discovered that if you are under 26 and from the EU you can get into loads of places for free!! since the weather was pretty crappy, we took advantage of this in a big way, and got into the pompidou centre, the louvre and the arc de triomphe for nothing. and got half price entry into a photography exhibition jack wanted to see.

Jack with his 'planchette' of salami, brie, paté and gherkins with toast, at one of my favourite restaurants in Avignon, ginette et marcel's.

yum yum.

unfortunately, our stay was somewhat dampened by our journey home to england, which involved standing in a 'queue' in gare de nord for about 4 hours. we finally made it back to the homeland in the early hours of the morning, and i spent a lovely two weeks back home with friends and family for christmas. as always, i really enjoyed being back in england. spending the days skidding about on the icy roads, stuffing yourself with twiglets/mince pies/roast dinners and lounging in front of a log fire is something i began to really crave towards the end of the last term. i have come back to france feeling rested, but two weeks is definitely not enough time off. we british kids are spoilt with our month long holidays, that's for sure.

that said, at the point of writing this, i have less than six weeks to go until i am home again (bringing an american with me this time), and after that there are only six weeks until my contract is finished. i think these remaining months will go really quickly, and although i am slightly homesick (i really really need to stop smelling laundry that 'still smells like home'), i'm also fully aware that this time is precious and it will whizz by really fast. so definitely going to try and make the most of everything this year.

school is still going well, and i am beginning to see improvements in my students' capabilities, which is quite amazing. i don't think i ever expected to be teaching things that would be retained, so feeling quite happy about that. doing this job has really made me think about how i have been taught in the past, and there are certainly things i was taught in french lessons at school all through my education, that i still rely on now. one of the first things i remember being taught at primary school was how to say 'au revoir, à bientôt!'... and now i'm wondering if when i got taught that, i knew what it meant? i don't think i did. but it stuck. scary to think that i am doing that to my kids when i leave the classroom by saying 'bye, see you soon!!'

i am also slowly beginning to be firmly enrolled into the french bureaucratic system. a few forged signatures here and there (i am an official birth certificate translator, don't you know), should hopefully mean that i won't receive any more letters asking me for various different documents. i have also already been reimbursed some of the cost of my doctors appointment and prescription from when i had bronchitis in october, and i should be receiving 250€ish of housing benefit in the coming weeks courtesy of the french government. wahooo more free money!

It will sound weird, but every now and then, i get these strange moments where i suddenly realise that i am living in France. up until now, France has been somewhere i've only ever been on holiday or on school trips, but now it's somewhere i live. i wouldn't go as far as to say that this is my home, but it is somewhere that i now feel comfortable, and strangely, it doesn't feel at all foreign. it's the times when i get glimpses of 'holiday france' when i'm going about my everyday business here that i remember where i am.

the weather too, has been absolutely blinding the past week. from what i can gather, weather back home in the uk at the moment is fairly dismal, but here there isn't a cloud in the sky. it's so good to just be able to sit outside and just feel the sun's warmth again. hopefully it will continue!

I am off out tonight to see a cello/piano concert at the opera house in town, which i am really looking forward to. i'm trying to be more cultured while living here. that said, i am also currently watching 'tool academy' on 4od, and spent the majority of this morning watching 'the biggest loser usa'. so everything in moderation...