Life is good! After living in our apartment a month now everything is FINALLY working; all the electricity, all the plumbing, and all the furniture has been moved in. I mean, we still have some great items like our coffee tables which consist of an amazon box and the box our wifi thingie came in. But that just adds to the glamour of the Year Abroad I think.
The weather in Rouen is absolutely FREEZING, there's no doubt about that. Luckily it hasn't actually snowed yet and I'm hoping it holds off until I'm at home as the last thing I want is to be stuck here alone over Christmas! That's my only worry at the moment. Please ferry company, just take me home next Friday!
Which brings me onto my next happiness, I'm going home next Friday! It will have been almost 2 months away which is the longest I've ever been away from home before. I can't wait to get home and see everyone again, even though I have no idea how I'm going to fit in seeing everyone I want to see in the meagre two weeks we have at home before we have to come back again for another 7 weeks!
So 8 days til home, and 2 days til...DISNEYLAND! Going this weekend with Louise and cannot freaking wait. Gonna be so much fun. Also definitely going to end up buying myself a cuddly toy. At 21 years old. That's okay, right?
As cold as it is, Rouen is still lovely in the winter. We have a Christmas market here which is really cute. Lots of mulled wine and also hot orange juice with spices in it which is so yummy. I also tried roasted chestnuts for the first time! They taste kind of weird. Like potatoes. Not sure really.
So the market is lovely, they also have an ice skating rink by the Hotel de Ville. Not that I would ever do anything more than watch others there. After the Roller Disco Disaster of last year I don't want to add blades and ice to that scenario.
Louise and I are also now members of the SPO Rouen basketball supporters club. Yep. Somehow that happened. All I know is I now have a card that says I'm officially a supporter and I have the scarf and shirt to prove it.
We had our final training day last Friday. I've complained about them a hell of a lot but actually the last two were really good. Especially compared to other departments in France which I've heard not only just gave assistants one but also it had nothing informative or helpful about teaching at all. I now have loads of advice on how to actually be a more than substandard teacher. After the training day we went to the best fast food place in France (in my opinion): Holy Cow. Simply amazing. I've probably talked about it on here before but I don't care. It deserves recognition.
Have I got any more news? Teaching in general is okay. I have my one favourite class that I actually genuinely look forward to teaching every week because the kids are so lovely and actually get into it and enjoy speaking English to me. The rest of my classes are alright, there are a few that I cannot stand. I have a couple of classes that are all girls, about 7 of them or something, and it's just impossible to get them to speak English. They just giggle and talk in French all the time and it's so hard to control them. Those are the classes I cannot stand because I just know we'd both rather be at home. And I wish it was in my power to just say "right, go home, you don't want to be here and neither do I", but unfortunately I'm not allowed to do that.
But apart from those few annoying teenage girls (I hate teenage girls) most of my students are okay. Even if there is far far FAR too much PDA going on in the school corridors for my liking. Also, something I find hilarious is that French boys are too manly to faire le bises (cheek kisses) so instead of just saying hi to each other they have to do some weird handshake. Very amusing to watch.
Also I HAVE A BANK CARD! Which was probably made obvious through the disneyland news.
Right, I'll leave this with a few pictures:
Rouen basketball.
The gals at Holy Cow.
Rouen Christmas Market
Rouen Christmas Market
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