janvierfevriermars

I've become really terrible at keeping all this updated with my happenings, but I guess I'm too busy doing things and enjoying life to sit around writing about it. Or the more probable excuse of spending my time at my computer doing more worthwhile things, like checking facebook. Oops.

So what have I been up to since mid January I hear you ask, well that is indeed a very good question. On January 21st the assistant girls packed up and headed to Amsterdam for a few days. This included a very moving walk around Anne Frank's house a very fun stumble round the Bols cocktail museum ending in a free cocktail of choice and two free shots. We went ice skating, danced to Punjabi MC and I managed to leave my entire makeup and toilet bag at the hotel. It was a wonderful weekend, with wonderful company. 

I managed to return from Amsterdam with some form of Dutch plague, so marched myself to the doctors on the following Monday. I was given a giant prescription and a note giving me the rest of the week off work. Having spent the week resting I felt better by the time Saturday (my birthday) came around. 

Both Rowan and my lovely Sheffield friend Alice came to help me celebrate and to my absolute shock/delight we stumbled upon my entire (almost) family sitting in the same restaurant we were going to for lunch. Coincidence? That sneaky Rowan Brunswick. So we had a wonderful lunch and day in Lille with my parents, grandparents and little brother then went home to prepare for the evening's party. Lots of Lille friends came and we danced, drank and had a lovely time. I was so sad to see my family leave on the Monday, as it had been so lovely to see them all again and I knew I wouldn't see them again until I leave France for good.

Everything in Lille plodded along after that weekend. School was fine, the weather was fine and my year abroad project was anything but fine.

Then we get to the winter break. Us lucky teaching assistants in France got a cheeky two week holiday from the 18th February to the 7th March. I decided to use this time wisely to get out and see some more of Europe. So my epic fortnight of travel begin with a 3am wake up call to get to Charleroi airport to fly to Turin. My friend Rachel from the Lakes works there as an assistant so agreed to take me up into the mountains for a few days to ski. I am pleased to say that after 6 or 7 years of not skiing, I still have my skillz :) Despite a poorly leg due to bad ski boots I had a cracking time. We went to two different resorts and skied some great slopes. I'd been really lucky because it had snowed just before I arrived and the slopes were parfait! 

After a quick trip to Brussells I came back to Lille ready to head off AGAIN to Prague with the assistants. Lots of beer was involved and Hana and I became members of the Prague drinking team :) We went on a boat ride along the river and were given lots of gluhwein. The Charles Bridge was pretty spectacular especially discovering that Kanye had filmed a video on it, eh Hana? Downsides to the trip? The freezing weather, despite running like a mad person missing the Astronomical Clock and Alice being ill :( Highlights? The castle and stumbling across a Jacobean Ruff..... brought back so many memories.

So, a week of holidays had passed, another to go. Rowan's uncle was kind enough to let us stay in one of his flats in Neckagamund near Heidelberg for a few nights. It was so nice, really modern and well done up and it was, of course, in a beautiful location. We met up with Anna and Sean in Heidelberg and braved the Bergbahn up to the castle and beyond. I'm not going to lie, I was scared. We went on a lovely bike ride, ate lots of schnitzel and drank plenty of beer. It was a lovely relaxing few days.

For the last few days of my holidays were spent in Luxembourg city with Rowan. He booked us into a hotel for part of my birthday present which was a lovely surprise. We arrived to discover our room had been upgraded and then headed out for a walk around the park. We found the tourist office and went in to see what was going on in the city that weekend. Rowan was close to persuading me to go and see Stromae, of alors on danse fame, until we saw the 30Euro price tag, we opted for a night of tapas instead. The following day we lazily strolled around the market, looked around a museum and wandered around some ruins. Then went to a yummy mexican restaurant and enjoyed cocktails and burritos!

So now I'm back in Lille and counting down those last 5 weeks until I get to see all my lovely English lot again! In the mean time I have a project to do and a visit from miss Hannah Willis to look forward to.

Winter Highlights

So I've become awfully negligent over the past few weeks due to Christmas stuff taking priority. I feel like so much has happened that it'd be awfully boring (and time consuming) to write it all. So here are a few of my highlights from the past few weeks.

1.Pre-Christmas meet up- so all the assistant girls did a Secret Santa swapping/last supper type night which was so much fun. We went to a nice bar to swap our pressies. I was literally so chuffed when I opened my shisha pipe from Flora.... she knows me so well! Then we went out for a posh burger. Feeling rather homesick I ordered the "British Burger", which included cheddar cheese and actual bacon. Yum! it was a very nice send off to what had been a very good term with some excellent people.

2. Christmas- going home for Christmas was excellent, I was so looking forward to it and felt like I was seriously in need of a well-deserved break. France had just started to stress me out so much due to the numerous problems I'd been having. It was great to get home and see all the family- including the infamous G&G. Christmas day was great, we had a bit of a houseful as Nick and the family came to stay so I was on babysitting duty a lot of the time. Everyone liked their French themed Christmas presents and having all put on our Christmas best we headed to the pub. Mulled wine was flowing, and it was lovely to be in a room full of familiar faces, but not so lovely answering the "how's everything in France?" question for the 20th time! My mother outdid herself once again with Christmas dinner and I was so stuffed that I had to join the rest of them in the living for a nap in front of the fire.

3. New Year- Okay so this isn't exactly a highlight, but I felt it was be worth noting. I was quite ill over NY so spent most of the time lying on the sofa looking after the children. I guess I caught the bug, as both my sister and my dad were under the weather too. I really didn't feel great and then began to dread the drive back to France on the 2nd. So dosing up on paracetamol I headed down to pick up Hannah for our drive back to Lille ready to start work on the 3rd (URGHH!)

4. Catch Ups- Since getting back to Lille there have been lots of excellent catch ups with all the girls, we went for a nice meal in an old brothel when we were all back and then went ice skating. I didn't manage to fall on my bum as I predicted I would and I actually had a great time! Really want to go again now. We also had an excellent soirée chez Emily last night, it was really good to have a few drinks and chill out. I just wish I'd been told how much food Emily and Nick were going to be making, 3 types of cookies and taco salad was enough to make me wish I hadn't had that third Veggie Fajita before I went out! 

5. Close Shaves- Me and Hannah were on the Metro with our new friend Cait, who will be greatly missed, helping her get back to get stop and we got ambushed and the first station after we got on. Green guards were everywhere and we didn't have a ticket, we thought it would be clever to risk it at 9pm. Cait had spares and quickly past them on to us. Then the guards looked at our tickets," C'est pas bon, venez", so we followed him off into the station and decided to pretend we didn't speak French. The guards were determined to fine us, but we just carried on playing dumb and speaking really fast English and somehow managed to get away with it! God knows how. 

All in all, it's been a good few weeks in Lille. Very much looking forward to my birthday and a trip to Amsterdam next weekend.... watch this space!

The past few weeks have been really great, there have been trips, drinks, Christmas Shopping and plenty more reasons to despise living in France, but I'll get to that in good time.

My lessons have been going pretty well. I'm beginning to get some favourites in some of my classes. I know it's bad, but it's difficult not to like the kids who always listen and answer the questions correctly. I particularly love my class of CM1s (the second oldest in primary schools), normally me and the teacher take half the class each and work on the same topic then switch on the second class. We've successfully done numbers, colours, pets, days of the week, months and after this next week they'll have an excellent Christmas vocabulary. It's very easy to see the difference between good teachers and bad teachers, it is really reflected in the students. Madame Lagache's CM1s work so well, they don't fool around and always listen but are still lots of fun at the same time. I think they are probably scared of her. I don't really blame them, as me and Gisela the Spanish assistant are also pretty terrified of her. But in my other school there are some terrible classes, they are so difficult to teach and really don't want to learn, and you can tell that this is because the teachers are much softer with them.

I'm really excited about Christmas now. It's feels like this year is going to be really good, not only because I have the money to get my family decent presents this year but also because I feel like it's more of a big deal going home because I'm coming from France. Lille is so Christmassy, there is a massive wheel on the Grand Place and there is a cute little Christmas Market. This week I'm going to carry on teaching the kids Christmas vocab, including reindeer which will be taught through pin the nose on Rudolph.

Obviously I wrote this quite a long time, and rather than bombard everyone with posts about events I can't really remember I'll reflect on the past few weeks and write a new post in the next few days.

A bientot