Update.

Ok so I've been here a while now and I have to say its starting to feel more like home. That may be because its started raining though, I'm not sure. I also finally persuaded Southampton's vpn to let me watch Spooks so that might have something to do with it too. Anyway, tasks which a week ago were absolutely terrifying are now only mildly worrying, and some have even become quite enjoyable. If you work at SFR I'm not talking about you. Monday's information day was nothing if not French, since we effectively managed to spend 6 hours filling out one form and turning down extra health insurance, being told the exact same information at least 4 times by a man who clearly thought the women running the day were there to make coffee and needed their speeches to be translated into more emphatic language just in case we hadn't realised that wandering out of a school and leaving a class of seven year olds unattended was not okay. He also felt the need to reassure us that if we ever needed to see a gynaecologist, they could help us out. However, French lunacy aside, it was great to finally find all the other assistants who are lurking around this city. Everyone is really friendly and really open and although I know we are here to speak French I feel a hundred times more comfortable knowing that there will always be the option of a glass of wine and a moan in our mother tongues. Don't get me wrong, I love speaking French, but sometimes a person just needs diphthongs and transgender nouns. Having said that, I've had two really good nights out with my French colocatrice and her friends, who have kindly taken me under their wing a little, and I've actually been amazed at how much I have understood and been able to participate. So, Dad, you can relax. Just daily household conversations are becoming much easier to conduct too, I no longer have to decide on a sentence before I say it, I just speak and all this French falls out. This has pros and cons - conversations are less tiring now, but it does mean that for about the first hour of the morning I only speak in infinitive verbs.


This week I've been to the two schools I will be teaching in and met all the staff who are lovely and who remind me of the staff at Ford House. We all 'tutoie' each other and everyone is really helpful and accommodating. I have just spent today having meetings with each of the teachers I will be helping and worked out a vague plan for the year so I can start to prepare games and things to do with the children which is exciting but also a little daunting. I hadn't realised (although I probably should have) just how dependent they are going to be on me because though I am here as an 'assistant' at least 3 of the 6 teachers I spoke to today have hardly any English at all. Meeting all the kids has been so much fun, especially since now that I have been round the classrooms to present myself - which has made the top ten scariest moments of my life to date - they all love to shout to me when they see me walking around the school. On my mentor teacher's advice I told them all that I don't speak any French at all (only aged 7 would you fail to realise that I speak in French with their teachers when we are deciding what to do..) and so if they try to speak to me in French I make this over exaggerated face of confusion until they cave and speak in English and then run away giggling. I really like how proud they all are of the English that they have, if they say something which I understand they beam and try to say something else. Amongst the younger ones this is a little misguided though, when I asked a class of 6 year olds if anybody could tell me what their name was one tiny girl threw her arm into the air like Nadal serving a tennis ball but when I picked her and she stood up she proudly answered 'onetwothreefourfiiiive'. There might be work to be done but they have an enthusiasm which makes you want to do it, so now I can't wait to start properly. 


What else, what else? Ok, so lets talk about driving. I know I may have turned left at a roundabout today but it was a very small one so it could have been a crossroads and there were no other cars around so its really fine. On the whole, my driving is going well, though I say so myself. Parallel parking is coming along fine, yesterday I managed to do it without tearing up a little so that's a success and I've sort of narrowed it down from approximately 30 adjustments to between 10 and 15 so its going well. A few days ago Kathy and I saw a man reverse into a minuscule space at light speed and do some sort of handbrake turn into it so that his car was perfectly parked in less than 10 seconds and this is now one of my life goals. Not going so well, however, is the old motorway driving. I know that stereotypes are on the whole ignorant and unnecessary but I have found one exception and that is that the French do not know how to drive. Bordeaux's ring road is a duel carriageway which is big enough to be a motorway and has motorway-style slip roads. Ok, so two lanes, then a slip road, like this ll\. So far, at least five times (this isn't even an exaggeration I've counted them), I have been coming down the slip road indicating left with a car driving along slower than the speed limit in the first lane exactly parallel or about half a car's length behind me. I can't slow down, because there's someone behind. I can't pull out, because I'll crash into them, I can't accelerate, because there is no more slip road. I look over to their car to see what they are playing at and see that the whole left hand lane is empty. Just what, what are they doing? I think that I am going to have to install wacky races style flame throwers to my hubcaps because its making me so angry. I'm considering asking Tony Campbell if I can change my year abroad project title to 'The French: Why are they so bad at driving? An ethnological study' and then maybe install sirens to my car's roof so that I can pull these people over and interview them. I'm not sure what sort of health and safety risks would be involved but I genuinely what to know what they are thinking. 


Anyway, I think that's all the news to report for this week. When I find the cable which connects my camera to my computer I may even put up some pictures. Don't hold your breath though I need to take some first. 


A toute à l'heure and all that.