The Past Few Days

Thursday and Friday passed pretty swiftly and as I’m still mostly observing at school I didn’t do that much! On Thursday I taught the children the days, months, seasons and weather using a calendar wall hanging that my mum (who is a Primary school teacher) lent me. I’m going to use the calendar every day with them and choose a different child to change the labels each day. When I arrived at lunch time on Friday three of the children came running across the playground to give me a kiss which I thought was rather sweet! In the afternoon I attempted to teach the children ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’ which was fairly successful but we’re going to try and perfect it on Monday.

 

The calendar wall hanging

On Saturday I decided to go to the beach, for a couple of reasons- A) it was about 30ºC and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky so it seemed like a crime not to and B) I’d had far too many comments during the week about how white I am! Including my mentor telling me ‘go to the beach this weekend, you need some colour!’ and a little white-blonde-haired girl coming up to me, looking me up and down and announcing ‘you’re all white, like me!’

So I set off through the park down to the beach, however after one too many judgemental looks and a wolf-whistle I concluded that wearing short shorts to walk to the beach in 30ºC heat is obviously not the done thing here! Oops. However, once at the beach I felt rather conservative as pretty much anything goes, that is as long as you’re wearing some kind of bottoms. Even if they are way too small Speedos like I unfortunately witnessed on a slightly obese guy! I stayed at the beach for a while writing in my journal and sunbathing before deciding that my pale skin probably couldn’t take much more and headed home for lunch where I met one of the other students that’s moved back in after the summer.

Walking through the park

On the beach

After a lunch of yummy fresh French bread bought from the boulangerie round the corner it hit me that I’ve been in France for over 2 weeks and I haven’t done any proper shopping yet and I think I was starting to get withdrawal symptoms so I decided to go and get the bus to the big shopping centre just outside the town centre. Bad idea. The bus was packed and I had to stand up most of the way there and endure the delightful aroma of sweaty people for 20 minutes! And to top it off when I got there I was less than impressed with the French clothes shops, they were either pretty expensive or a bit rubbish, or both. So I didn’t end up buying anything. (I think going shopping and not buying anything may be a first for me!) I’m going to be in need of major retail therapy by the time I get back to England! But it wasn’t a wasted journey as I was running out of food so I went to the HyperU. Those of you that are familiar with French supermarkets will know that they tend to be pretty huge, and this one was no exception! I wandered around for what must’ve been at least an hour looking for everything I wanted and of course; being a Saturday it was also pretty packed. But in the end I left feeling triumphant as I had eventually managed to find pretty much everything I set out to buy, including some more clothes hangers and a new microphone for my laptop as the built-in one has decided to stop working just as I want to Skype everyone! Luckily there was a bus 10 minutes after I’d finished in the supermarket so I went to wait at the bus stop to make sure I got a seat as I was feeling somewhat like a pack horse with all my shopping!

When I got home I set about making dinner, which is not as easy as you would first think. The owner of my house lives here too and he provides all the dishes etc and washes them up afterwards as there’s no sink in the students’ living room, and we’re not allowed in his kitchen. That all sounded pretty ideal to me when I moved in, but, he was away for the first few days that I was living here so I slowly ran out of cutlery, bowls and saucepans, making cooking a meal rather difficult! Now that he’s back the cupboard is slowly being re-stocked but the only two saucepans that were in the cupboard before now seem to have disappeared so it’s pretty much microwave or nothing at the moment. Needless to say I am becoming a master at microwave cooking, although I’m not really sure that’s something to be proud of! Anyway I finally managed to scrape together an acceptable meal and while I was eating it the other student that's moved back in arrived home, so I’ve met them both now.

One of the meals I've managed to scrape together using the microwave!

There’s not a lot to do in France on a Sunday but I found out that the local swimming pool is open until 12.30pm and it’s only a 5/10 minute walk from my house. I’d been thinking about going all week so I finally persuaded myself to go and give it a try despite hearing some things about French swimming pools that had rather put me off going! To name just a few- communal mixed-sex changing rooms, cold pools, strict lifeguards and the fact that in a lot of them you have to wear swim caps! But after psyching myself up I got there to find out it was shut this weekend for training, could have said that on the website! So I returned home wishing I’d just stayed in bed! I’ve spent the rest of the day doing some lesson planning and finding some resources ready for my return to school tomorrow.