Keeping busy

It was a pretty uneventful week. Dance was cancelled on Wednesday due to a powercut which I was pretty disappointed about - it was the one social activity I'd had planned during the week.
We at least had a nice little soiré between all the English assistants; Me, Katy and Libby (College, Secondary, Primary). The idea was to have a film night but instead we spent four hours discussing grammer, pronounciation and other language related topics. Oops. #languagegeeks?
(It's also recently been revealed that the French will now be replacing "hashtag" with "mot-dièse" or "sharp word" as it's literally translated)

The rest of the week passed in a haze of classes, lesson planning  and admin; trying to work on my Argentine project, sort out a SURE partnership in Sheffield for summer and breifly tossing up the idea of abandoning my studies to go and work in Peru. Result: shattered and with absolutely no desire to do anything on Friday night.

Despite missing out on dancing on Wednesday, Marion (the dance teacher) invited me to go to a salsa night in Saint Etienne this Saturday weekend so all was not lost!! I spent the day at home trying to prepare the classes for the coming week, two of the teachers are away at conferences so guess who gets to cover.... I'll give you a clue, starts and ends with "H"....
Fortunately they've given me most of the material to work with so it's just making sure I know what I'm doing in the class even though frankly, it's not my job and I'm not qualified. Nevermind eh.
I was picked up in the evening by one of Marion's friends and her sister who were passing through Monistrol on their way from Le Puy to Sainté (as it's known locally). They were a good laugh and made me feel comfortable immediately and apparently I have a slightly south american accent when I speak French... 0_o

It was really nice to be out of Monistrol and meeting some new people, and actually getting to speak some French!! We met some more of Marion's friends at the bar and sat around chatting, on of the girls was an English teacher and had spent her year abroad in......

.... da da dataaaaa .....

.... St. Leonards on sea!
(My home town for those who don't know)

Small world! So that was a bit weird. We talked a bit about her stay but she couldn't remember much as it was 10 years ago that she was there! So from that info I reckon the group are around 30. So a bit older than me, but they all have cars, so in my present state of being friendless and in the middle of nowhere, that's definitely no bad thing.
The girls were all annoyed at the amount of salsa going on at this so-called salsa night and left disappointed. I was just happy to have gone out so wasn't really that bothered but they've promised me a "proper" outing next weekend so I left content!
Marion's also offered to pick me up on the way to/from dance on Wednesday since she has to drive through anyway. :)

I was dropped back home at 2am, which allowed me a reasonable amount of sleep before getting up to get ready to go for lunch with Marie-Hélène and her family, one of the English teachers at school. It was a proper French lunch with snack, apéritif and a four course meal: starter, main, cheese, dessert.
And it was all homemade. Delish.
Her two kids (8 and 11) soon got over their initial shyness and after lunch, they introduced me to the French game bilboquet which consists of trying to get a ball on a string to land, correctly orientated on its little post.

After watching the daughter failing multiple times, her dad showed us how it's done, after which I managed to successfully get the hang of it. A feat which, surprisingly, I managed to repeat twice more, both with my left and right hand!!


After lunch, as is tradition, we went for a little walk around the town. The countryside really is beautiful down here. So even if there's not a lot to do, you can at least appreciate the view.
I'm looking forward to some better weather to go exploring and give my walking boots an airing.

Sorry for the lack of photos, will try harder next time!