Language Assistant in the Dordogne

Had a really fun weekend really. Surprising how an extra day tagged on to the weekend has just made me really chilled out and stuff. although I have been missing Joe lots.

We were all at Eddie's yesterday afternoon/evening which was really cool. We all took along food...I LOVE Molly's broccoli salad and Katie made a gorgeous desset. Later in the eve Eddie got his guitar out and we had a good old sing along which was really fun. Also Lou knows all this old camp-y songs which was funny....if you're going to be in a small town with limited entertainment for 9 months having someone who works on kids camps around seems to be a big advantage. Got to catch up with Rach and a couple of the Bergerac girls and came home and watched Gavin and Stacey in bed. Lovely jubbly.

Lesson planning now and Molly and Cecile coming round to watch Fawlty Towers.

Couple of good websites:

http://rustrel.free.fr/expressions_imagees/idiomatiques_anglais.htm

http://www.uebersetzung.at/twister/fr.htm

Have been to Mass at the Cathedral (Saint Front here in Perigueux) this morning. Had been meaning to go and check a service out there for a while and figured the happiest day in the Christian calender was as good a day as any. Was a nice, pretty standard Catholic service (but with a cool African choir who sung a couple of the bits) and the cathedral was packed today...as well as Easter there was a baptism. Not enough congretational singing for my liking though...no hymns really and even the service bits people didn't really join in with. On reflection I should really have gone to the 9pm Vigile Pascale yesterday...I was in Cyprus for Easter last year and this service was lovely with all the candle-lighting.

My mum sent me a really cool box of little Easter treats :-) so have been enjoying those. Here in France the children are told that the bells bring them their chocolate eggs from Rome when they start ringing again on Easter Sunday after two days silence, some familys also do hunts and the traditional dinner today is lamb. The chocolate shops and supermarkets have had eggs in for a while now, but there were no Hot Cross Buns on Friday. Town was actually really busy...surprisingly most of the bakers are open today and tomorrow (even though it's a bank holiday) and the market was there with lots of people getting their veg and nice pastries and things.

We're going up to Eddie's this afternoon for a big get together, and our own Easter Feast! I've made this random but yummy looking jelly, stawberry, meringue and chocolate concoction! And day off tomorrow :-)

Yesterday afternoon I went round to Muriel and Nicolas' lovely new house: had sables and some "Lemon Curd" I took round for them to try. Also played two traditional French games with Maya: "Le jeu de l'oie" (The game of the goose) and "Le cochon qui rit" (The laughing pig). Was fun! Then had a nice refreshing stroll back from their place and an early night!

Happy Easter!

Well random but fun night last night. Went out for a "coffee" at 8pm which turned into a couple of glasses of wine...which turned into a different bar and a group of us getting a "giraffe" (metre) of beer, and then onto Hari's and didn't get in till almost 5am, the birds were chirping! Totally wasn't expecting it but was very fun to chill-out, have a laugh and get a bit tipsy.

Up this morning for a skype date with my friend Jo and now I have to go mobile phone shopping cause mine is broken....rubbish. But Muriel's for "tea" later and then Easter at Eddie's tomorrow.

xxx

"It's the first day of Spring today and it's quite sunny but the cars were still frozen this morning"

I don't think "frozen" is quite right here but this is the phrase I've had from 3 Frenchies today (2 teachers and a lady at the bus stop) and right now after an hour of trying to come up with some inspiration for teaching tomorrow I'm too tired to think of what I mean in English. But yeah just wanted to share that with you!

Teaching went loads better today...solutions...

CE1= girls v boys. Soooo magical. Especially when points can be LOST when I hear French without seeing a hand in the air

Really bad CE2 class= "On va faire une EVALUATION la semaine prochaine"

CM1/CM2= The promise of looking at letters from penfriends in the last 15 minutes if we get everything else done which I'd planned.

It's all about the carrots and sticks. I spend so much time thinking about what's going to work well/whether something is "right"...for example the girl v boy thing, should I be encouraging that? But generally I reckon you just can't get everything right (especially with no training!) so if they're kinda happy and kinda learning something that'll do me. That's the name of the game.

Oh dear I am sleeeeeepy. Goodnight.

P.S. Went swimming today! Starting Spring as I mean to go on...