Holidays are coming, holidays are coming!

Dear friends,

Christmas is a mere week away and I will finally be home in Jersey with my family on Saturday evening (provided that the end of the world doesn't occur). Today I had a lovely Christmas lunch with the teachers at school. We had some appertifs with some little canapés then a lunch of turkey with roasted potato swirls, fois gras with toasted brioche, fruit, yoghurt and two types of cake (chocolate and fruity mousse). J'adooore!

I also managed to buy a little Christmas tree to spruce up the apartment to make it look a bit more festive. €2 tree, some baubles and a single strand of €1 tinsel? Bargain. I even found some fairy lights that a previous assistant had left behind at some point.


This week I've been doing lots of Christmas themed lessons. I've been teaching the younger ones the song Merry Christmas Everyone by Shakin' Stevens which they've loved. With the older ones I've sort of been showing them some more songs and also some of the Christmas adverts from John Lewis. One of my classes of 3e have completely fallen in love with the idea of the place and are just dying to go. They asked me if there was one in France. Not going to lie, at teacher training there was this awkward moment when we watched some of them together in class and Imogen and I started tearing up a bit. Oh John Lewis :') For those who haven't already seen this year's one, it's call The Journey (see below).

In past few weeks I've been to Rouen and Amiens. Discovered some of the best burgers ever at a place called Holy Cow (Rouen)! Also did some Christmas shopping (mostly for me). Got myself a weekend bag for more weekend excursions for €17,50 in New Look. It even has wheels - though I'm not sure they're going to last long anyway haha. Imogen, Lauren and I had a minor panic for the Amiens trip as we thought there would be buses to take us back from the train station (forgetting that it was a Sunday and there wasn't any). Luckily I put out a plea for help in the staffroom and a very nice French teacher called Martine volunteered to drive us back to Bolbec where my car was parked. We chatted lots in the car, turns out her husband has started a little Australian football club in Breauté - weird but awesome!

I also had an awkward moment when I went to the Mairie (the mayor's office) in town to talk to a woman there about the water purification centre that they've built from my Cultural Report. She basically talked at me in French for 35mins while I frantically scribbled down notes. I mostly had the vocab sorted until she decided to explain to me in detail how the whole thing worked. It all got very technical and I was woefully unprepared with my vocab at this point so I had an awkward moment of panic where my brain just shut down and went 'She's speaking French. I know how to speak French! Words are coming out of her mouth and I have no idea what's happening. Crapcrapcrap!' Thankfully, the woman was very understanding and said that if I ever wanted to know more I was welcome to come by again.

Internet issues
Most of you have probably heard about my massive ordeal trying to sort out internet for my apartment. At present I am using the collège's internet but the signal can be pretty temperamental so I decided to sign up so my own internet connection through SFR. Spoke to the principal to see if that was okay and she said it was fine and even gave me the old number. Went along to SFR to sign up, they couldn't find the old line so they said they'd have to create a new one. Okay, no problem, signed the contract, gave them my RIB, copies of my passport. 'The box will come in one week and we'll contact you then about having an engineer come round' they said.

Two weeks went by and I had no box. I went along to the shop again. Thankfully the same girl served me and the manager came to help out too. They said it was definitely their fault and that I was right to come in. They sorted it all out, said they'd keep an eye on my account to make sure everything was getting done and even set up the engineer appointment for me right there and then. I even got given the under 26 10% discount which they had previously said was no longer available. Bonus!

A week later my box arrived and I was happy and full of hope... until I got a text at 8am the day before my engineer was supposed to come saying that my rendez-vous had been cancelled. No reason. What a sucky way to be woken up on a Wednesday morning! I genuinely screamed into my pillow for a bit and hauled my butt out of bed to call them and ask them to explain themselves. I totally forgot that speaking and listening in French is a million times harder on the telephone but the woman on the line gave me no reason but checked my address with me. For some reason no one can understand that I live at the collège but I think she finally understood when she found my neighbour's place. Then she said goodbye. Still no reason found. Thinking that I needed to be French and assertive to get anything around here I marched back into the SFR store in Bolbec and spoke to the manager again. First thing I said was 'Hello, do you remember me?'. He did. So I explained what happened and he ended up on the phone for half an hour trying to find out what was wrong. He ended up speaking to several different people and telling them my name, spelling it all out and then giving them my phone number. I don't think he'll ever forget me now.

Skip forward a couple of days and I get a phone call where I can arrange my appointment again. In theory it should be on Thursday... sometime between 8am and 10am. Joy. The sad part is that the internet might not actually kickstart properly for a couple of days after the engineer comes, by which time I'll be back in Jersey for a couple of weeks. At least I can hopefully come back for functioning internet!

Yesterday I got a phone call where SFR were asking where exactly I live again (they still don't get it). 'En fait, j'habite au collège' I said. I even explained in detail where it was. This phone call, I hope, is a good thing.

FINGERS CROSSED FOR INTERNET 2013.

Merry Christmas everyone!

PS: Discovered that the other cat's name was actually Loukoum (which means Turkish Delight).

Un chat qui s'appelle Tupac... oui, comme le rappeur

I've met a cat called Tupac. He's a fat ginger cat that belongs to my tutee's family. They also have a very fluffy grey one called 'Loo-Coom' (I don't know how to spell it). He's very friendly and sat on my lap for part of the tutor session and also went for part of my lunch which consisted of pickled cabbage, sausage, ham and potatoes (not my favourite food). I also jokingly told the family that I'd like to put him in my bag and take him home. To my surprise the dad picked up the poor dear, put him in my bag and handed it to me. I let him out and he cowered under a kitchen unit until after I had gone. I felt pretty guilty.

It's taken a while for me to write this post because I've been knocked down with another bout of flu. I even opted for a quiet weekend to make sure it was completely gone and I wasn't going to relapse again like last time. Absolute nightmare trying to teach on Monday and I basically was bedridden. Thankfully when I was at my worst I only had to teach one class which was torture but I didn't want to lose out of pay. My neighbour saw me leaving for class looking pathetic and sorry for myself and he kindly offered to take me to the doctor or to the pharmacy, even to offer me some kind of French Lemsip - thankfully I had thought to stock up on the essentials before I came to France, though my paracetamol is running a little low now.

So last weekend I had a pleasure of having my first ever Thanksgiving dinner with some of the American assistants. Tatiana, Nick and Kaylin must have slaved over the meal for hours but it was so delicious. I think my favourite thing was Tatiana's stuffing made with baguette, chicken, chorizo. I also had the infamous pumpkin pie for the first time! It was surprisingly tasty given that pumpkin isn't exactly my favourite vegetable. Later on a couple of actual French people joined us and I ended up chatting to one mostly about music and it was pretty cool being about to apply language to a proper conversation as opposed to just the 'Salut, ça va?'.

So as well as having an awesome Thanksgiving, I found the CUTEST little teashop in Yvetot when we visited Natalie who's from Canada! This teashop had a shop window full of the most amazing Christmas goodies. It was so enticing we actually waited outside the shop until it opened again after their break. We definitely looked like over keen tourists. The lady in the shop was really great and spoke to us in English but we said French was fine, given that we could all speak French (she later jokingly told us off for speaking in English while we were looking around). She opened up this amazing canister of loose leaf 'Christmas tea' and let us smell it. It smelt sooo good like marzipan and spices and I knew I just HAD to try it so we did. It's very cosy and the mugs and teapots are so cutesy. Essentially best place discovered in Upper-Normandy thus far!

The shop of joy!

ttfn x