Monday, 20 October 2008

Our house... in the middle of the street


My pretty sweet kitchen


My street (my house is one of those in the background)


My bathroom


The view from my bedroom window, on our huge back garden



My new bedroom... Home sweet home


FINALLY !!!!!!
I have a house, yay! We signed the papers at the agency last Monday, gave them the money and they handed us the keys to our new home… As soon as we left the agency my housemates and I rushed to Tesco (sorry Oscar who thinks they’re evil) to buy necessary things like duvets, pillows, towels, mugs, plates, cutlery, pasta, chips, alco…, erm, I mean, sparkling water :-p We looked quite funny, the four of us at the till, in the bus, on the road, carrying our huge bags. I felt sooooo happy and excited!
When we arrived at the house we saw that there were actually a lot of things already in there! The kitchen had almost everything: cutlery, mugs, cups, plates, knifes, pots, pans, even the oven glove and wooden spoons! The landlord had also left cleaning products, garbage bags, a vacuum cleaner, a mop… The lounge had a band new couch and armchair; I think my double bad is brand new too, and the landlord had put two Ikea boxes under my bed… with brand new cupboards in it that I only had to assemble! In short, I was on cloud nine. Anyone who wants to visit is welcome, there is plenty of room for guests!!
My housemates left to go back to their respective places because they didn’t have the time to move all their stuff that night; I, on the other hand, was able to go fetch my suitcase at X’s place who lives about 5 mins from our new home (thanks again for hosting me for so long!!!) and so I was the first to sleep in our home, along with J, my Québécois friend who was there to visit the lovely city of Slough (ahah)

After this first night I went to work on Tuesday with a big smile on my face and made my students listen to a song (‘La Belle et le Bad Boy’) by Mc Solaar, one of the most famous French rappers. They found it a bit difficult but very interesting and poetic, and we had great talks about the situation of young people in the French ‘banlieues’ (suburbs)
Then as I was waiting for one of my students, a teacher told me that he was at the Merits Awards ceremony. What is this, I wondered. So I followed all the students to the hall and my colleague K and I witnessed a really strange ceremony, something very different from ceremonies in French or German schools. So formal! A girl told off because she was wearing earrings, another was told to swallow his chewing gum. A student played a piece of music then there was a speech by the Head of School, who introduced the Sheriff, a woman officially representing the Queen. She gave the awards to about 50 students, and then did a brief summary of what it was to be a sheriff nowadays compared to before (when no one wanted to be one because it meant being hated by people for collecting taxes) She explained what her strange uniform meant, and put on her big hat with ostrich feathers on it :-D She told the high schoolers that when she was at a Merits awards ceremony back in the days, it was interrupted by the news of president Kennedy’s assassination… I found the speech quite interesting though a bit long (esp since I had to stand for the whole ceremony) Overall a very interesting experience for me who had never seen such a ceremony before!
Tuesday evening was our first dinner all together with my housemates. I had a very nice time, and I think it’s going to be a pretty good year socially speaking :-)
On Wednesday morning I went back to the primary school, and taught the Year 4 pupils about words for mother, father, sister and brother, using the Simpsons family as an example. They all knew the series so it was a success, we made lots of little games, with girls against boys who had to answer correctly to my questions, or in little groups and they had to imagine a family, etc. They were really cute, very lively and eager to learn. At the end I taught them a nursery rhyme about a turtle family that goes like this:

Jamais on n’a vu jamais on ne verra
La famille tortue courir après les rats
Le papa tortue et la maman tortue et le bébé tortue
iront toujours au pas.


With the Year 3 class, that is, the ones that never studied French before, I taught them the different ways to answer the question ‘Comment ça va ?’ (‘How are you?’), doing the gestures and playing games.
I was pretty happy because I was dreading this lesson (primary school kids have a short attention span and you have to talk all the time, keep them busy without losing them) but it went really well after all. I think they like it when I joke and make strange gestures, I probably inherited this from my mum ;-)
I’ll stop this article here otherwise it will be too long and I will talk about my busy weekend in the next one…

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