35 Hours

And we're off!!

All packed. Pretty sure I've forgotten stuff, but don't actually care - we're going home!!!

I'll be back in 2 weeks.

Merry Christmas everyone - hope your holidays are joyous and food-filled -

mine will be!

xxx B

Happy Birthday to me!

The actual day of my birth won't be celebrated for another week.
But we got started a little early chez nous as I collected my birthday/Christmas present from M today.

And I tell you what - the boy has done GOOD. *pats head*

I am the very happy recipient of this little bad boy:

yes my friends - that would be a Sony e-reader Touch.
Capable of storing up to 1200 books.
2 full weeks of reading without charging.

But this bears repeating - 1200 books at my fingertips!!!!

I'll admit, I was a bit unsure about the whole e-book idea for awhile.

Ya'll know how much I love books; the look, the physicality, even the smell (yeah, I'm weird, deal with it). And that hasn't changed. I will continue to be thrilled when stumbling across a new bookstore, especially in a foreign city. I will still happily spend hours wandering the shelves of all my favourite bookshops and literally judge a book by its cover, make the purchase and walk away excited about the new reading adventure ahead of me.

But I also have a "to read list" that is teetering around 55 books. And an Amazon wish list that is getting out of hand. And on holidays I've been known to take 4+ novels away with me. And storage of all my books is getting to be an issue.

So the e-reader makes a whole lot of sense.

We went the Sony e-reader over the Amazon Kindle simply because with Amazon you are tied into buying e-books from them ONLY, and their content in France and Australia is incredibly limited compared to their UK/US content.

With the Sony you can upload e-books that you've purchased from anywhere.
For example I bought Kathryn Stockett's 'The Help' last night from Kobo for €6 and downloaded a few freebies too.



The only tough decision now with some books - like Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom" - is do I want this in "hard" copy or electronic? Decisions, decisions....

And how do I convince M that I need to buy a whole lot of e-books right. now.?

Wish me luck!
And happy reading
xxx

Me so stupido

Well. Today has been interesting.

I just broke our TV remote. For reasons I can't explain I had it in my hand when I walked into the bedroom, I slipped on a plastic bag on the floor, dropped it, and we are now unable to change the TV channel. When, exactly, did TV makers stop butting basic buttons on their TVs??

So now I have to add a trip to SFR onto my never-ending list of things to do.
Why so unco?



I also continued my streak of embarrassing myself at the Garage when I went to pick up the car after it got new tyres.

Firstly - the word for tyres in French "pneus" is the HARDEST word to say.

It's more a sound you make when something that smells mildly unpleasant passes you by: "pneu"

Secondly, for some reason I had thought that M told me that it was going to cost us €139. That's what I had in my head. So when the dude told me it was €165 I gently told him he was wrong.
He disagreed.
I disagreed.
He looked for the "avis" or quote but couldn't find it.
He started processing the payment for €139.
Then he found the quote.
It said €165.
He looked at me suspiciously.
The little old lady waiting her turn looked at me like I was some sort of a petty thief.

How do you explain that you weren't trying to scam some kind of discount (although what does it say about their pricing when he was happy to give me €139!!) but that you are kinda stoooopid and have problems with numbers?

So I skeedaddled out of their pretty quick.
Except we need to take the car back for new brake pads soon.

M can finalise the payment next time ...




And this morning I took a relief lesson for one of my colleagues. It was a 3 hour primary beginners English class. The students were very sweet and sooooo eager. When they put their hands up to answer a question, it's like life or death whether they get picked. Cute.

Less cute is the fact that the colleague left only very basic instructions (which is fine, it wasn't hard to work out what do do) but more annoyingly, didn't include a lot of the resources that I needed to conduct said lesson.

Practically every task required a series of "flashcards" with pictures of various toys on them.

So as quickly as I could I drew a doll, a robot, a car, a lorry (WTF? I know. I think it's called a truck, but just following orders) and various others. They were all uniformly terrible.

One of the activities had me pointing to the pictures and asking the class "What is it?" - I was pleasantly surprised when they managed to guess every one. Even my car/blob with wheels.

M is clearly not as smart as 8 year olds though. He glanced at my pile of papers earlier and said:

"umm.... why do you have this weird picture of a kangaroo with a foetus head?"

I resent that.

Grrr. Arggg. Dinosaur.



And one last thing:
Glee's Special Christmas Episode - didn't float my boat. And I am all about Christmas songs.

However, this video of a Hallelujah Chorus flash mob made me tear up.

I'm offically losing the plot yeah?
Yeah.

7 days of school left.
xxx

Quality?

A quick funny I feel the urge to share from today.

While my sixième students (Grade 6) were doing a test in class, I was marking some activities they'd done for homework.

They had to give definitions of various terms we've been looking at (population, development and 'Living in the City' comparing Chicago and Mumbai if you're interested!)

This is what one boy wrote on 'Slums"

Slum or slum-living is when people or the population is very poor, has low standards of living, low paid jobs, lots of hand jobs and bad quality of life.

A few people would disagree with you about the bad quality of life bit buddy ....


snerk.


Nice to know they're learning something.


xxx

All work and no play ...

I'm sorry for the lack of (dull) updates lately.
I'm half way through the battle to the end of term and although the finish line is in sight, it doesn't feel like it's getting any closer.

On the weekend I completed my 142nd student report. In French.
IN FRENCH PEOPLE!
Report writing is usually the bane of my teaching existence.
Add in the extra fun hurdle of a forgein language and a very different system of grading and commenting.
Stab stab, kill kill.

We also have a nifty little thing here called "conseils de classe" which is where all the teachers of a particular class get together in the evening to discuss/debate/argue over each individual student in that class and decide what the overall "appreciation" will be.

Very democratic. Very time-consuming. There's a parent and student representative present too. Listening to the teachers argue about all the students' results and their attitudes.
I've already been to two.

It's ..... umm........ an experience...... ??

And that's why we moved to France right?
Right?
RIGHT???
*deep breaths*

So - my brain is officially fried.


I'm also trying not to freak out and lose my shit about how much we have to do in the next 2.5 weeks before we fly home (which we are both getting ridiculously excited about)


Christmas shopping .... um .... yeah ....
Everyone likes Duty Free booze right?



In the meantime - continuing with my tales of weird things that happen when I go to the supermarket:

This is what I saw today:

oh France. I'm so disappointed in you.

I thought you were the last bastion of good taste.

I thought you would hold out against this infantile infection.

Alas non.

Although I seem to have solved my Christmas present problem ....


Final tid-bit:
We have Wal and Lo visiting us this weekend, which will be great a) to see them and b) to get me out of my work induced funk. We had such fun with them in London a few weekends ago.
Hopefully the miserable weather abates so we can get out and about. It's damn cold! No snow here, but veeery close.

Bring on balmy summer nights in Adelaide.
2.5 weeks
2.5 weeks
2.5 weeks
So excited.

PS - If I get time in the next few days, I'll try to blog about my fun trip to the medecin du travail yesterday. Surprise urine tests for everyone.


xxx