Café Polyglotte

So my day today was really quite interesting. The teacher who teaches history/geography with the troisième INTER emailed me and Kristie (my responsable) at 12.09am to say he wasn't going to be in school, and that he'd "told" everyone (he hadn't even told the headteacher...). So instead of just celebrating a morning off I thought I better go in to school because there would have been no contingency plan for the troisième. Very good that I did actually, as obviously Kristie has a class at the same time so couldn't take them, so I ended up with the troisième, alone, no lesson plan and for two hours! Was actually really fun though, we did some tongue twisters and spoke about characterisation in the book (Boy in the Striped Pyjamas)...and then for the second hour we started working on making leaflets for a tourist attraction of their choice. Only had a quick run in with one pupil, who has good days and bad days when dealing with authority. All I'm going to say is...I won.

Now the leaflets that the rest of the students did were so inventive, and I was so impressed! Some invented their own tourist attraction, and rather than keeping them as a plain piece of paper a lot of them cut out shapes to do with their attraction. One girl cut out circles so when you opened the leaflet it was a pair of glasses! Another cut out theirs in the shape of Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Killer. So glad that they're so enthusiastic...although I'm not actually sure what they were meant to be doing as the normal teacher hadn't given them anything to do. They are definitely not in the good books at the moment!

And then I didn't have my usual two hours of troisième EURO as they were actually on a trip, but again they didn't tell Karine until the morning so she didn't know yesterday. So I had lunch with the teachers, then felt very English in a post office but succeeded in managing to buy a stamp! The letter that I have been meaning to send for ages is now sent. I then went and sorted out my phone contract (sans engagement) so I now have unlimited texts and four hours of calls on my French phone for 9.99 euros a month. Didn't think that was too bad, especially since I've been paying more than that for on a pay-as-you-go sim. Will have to remember to cancel the contract at the end of my time in France though!

Found this gem of a song today. Might have bought their album on the strength of this one live recording, and I have to say I'm not disappointed.

After tea (or dinner for all you Southerners!) I went to Café Polyglotte, found this time at Café Kitsch, where I took this photograph of the fabulous Becky. Now Becky plays a very clever game when I take photographs by always sitting next to me, so today I was determined to get a picture of her! I really hope she likes it...
Anyways, spent the time I was there talking in French with everyone (yey, French immersion!), ate a few nibbles (I love the fact all evenings seem to have free food included!), drank some vin chaud (mulled-ish wine) saw some old and new faces and had a rather lovely time! Was annoying that I had to come home early as I start at early o'clock tomorrow...

Words I have learnt today:-
- Trap - piège
- Up the stairs - en haut des escaliers
- Refugie - réfugié
- Cervoise - a type of French drink - a mix of white wine, beer and lemon syrup, in a pint of course
- Stamp - timbre