It's been a while since I last blogged, and I've done a lot in that time. I had 2 weeks of holidays and so I went to Lille with Natalie, and we had a great time looking around the (rather limited) attractions, getting drunk and eating burnt pizza. We came back to mine for a couple of days with the intention of seeing Valenciennes, but it was raining... so we stayed inside, drank more alcohol and watched C4 documentaries on Youtube. All in all a lovely first week. The second week I decided to go back to the UK, as there is so little to do in Aulnoye, and I fancied a trip to Sheffield. First of all, though, I had the joy of an 11-hour journey home, as I decided to get the bus instead of the far too expensive Eurostar. It wasn't all bad though, as I met some really cool people on the bus who are also on their Year Abroads in the area, and it ended up being a lovely megabus trip. However, when I reached London, I realised I'd forgotten my Oyster card, and so I had to face ridiculous queues to buy a ticket, all the while panicking I was going to miss my train. It all worked out fine in the end and I had a fantastic time with my family at home and people in Sheffield, although it barely felt like I'd had a holiday when I set off at 7am for the megabus back to France... armed with a whole suitcase full of things I felt I 'need' in France. (Yes, about half of it was quorn, but not all for me!) By the time I arrived in my final destination, I felt as if I'd had a full workout, but at least I had veggie Percy pigs to ease the pain.
There was a point to all of this though: I wanted to show the kids in my school some 'typical' British foods. I did go out of my way to find the strangest ones: marmite (of course), crumpets, skips, wasabi peas, but I did bring things like malt loaf and ginger nuts which I thought might go down better. I definitely should have captured the kids' reaction to the marmite on video, it was so hilarious. They were shouting, making horrible faces, asking if they could spit it out or even be sick! I, however, was happily eating my marmite on toast and dying of laughter at the front of the classroom. In the end though, it was quite eye-opening for everyone- I became aware that the French really aren't used to anything at all spicy (which apparently includes ginger nuts) and it seems like food in the UK is generally a lot less salty and a lot less sweet.
Other hilarities in the week include when I was asking the 2 and 3 year olds what they wanted to sing next and they all just started singing Papaoutai and having to explain to 9 and 10 year olds that j'aime in the past tense is j'ai aimé or j'aimais...
I also got up to some fun stuff this week- there was a meeting for all the Comenius Assistants teaching at catholic schools in Nord-Pas de Calais, and so we went around the Louvre-Lens with a super boring guided tour, got a free lunch, and a couple of us explored Arras (which is actually incredibly pretty). I also went along to a kayak club, as an idea of something to do with my Wednesdays, and it was really fun, although I did ache like nothing else all Thursday and Friday and wasn't even able to cycle to school. Yesterday I met up with Taz (who I met on the megabus back to the UK) in Lille and had a lovely lunch, so all in all I've been pretty busy. Oh yeah, and there's a new supermarket just opened about 5 minutes from my house, and I think that's where the whole population of this town were yesterday evening....
