C'est quoi ça?

First of all, a massive apology for not being around much these past few days, I've had a pretty hectic time...with no time to write my usual soliloquies.

In terms of the daytime, apart from having my quatrième INTER class in the morning, I spent it getting my room into some sort of order for the arrival of Beth, who was coming for the weekend. Rather excited to see her, as it feels like absolutely ages since we last caught up! As she lives in a small town in France, I wonder whether Caen is going to be a bit of a culture shock, but new experiences are always the best. Already got planned what we're going to be up to, and it is very interesting and exciting. Anyway, back to my class. So we're watching 'Brave'...both for entertainment purposes, but also because they all have Scottish accents (one of the hardest for the French to understand) so the class was half vocab, half film. I also played them a recording of Robbie Burns' 'To a Mouse, upon turning her up in her nest, with the plough'. Not going to lie, it was pretty hilarious to see their faces when they realised just how strong certain Scottish accents are! Luckily, the film has less strong Scottish voices; otherwise we would definitely have problems. I was told by my responsable that they were still talking about the lesson in her class later that afternoon...so that was nice to find out that they enjoyed it!

My early evening was spent with Mathieu, this lovely guy pictured today, in Café Latin. Another first-timer in front of the lens, I think he got more comfortable once he realised I wasn't going to stop until I got a nice picture of him. The light in Café Latin is pretty harsh, but makes quite nice dramatic photographs. With Mathieu I also had the quite worrying discovery that in the French version of the song 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' the lion is dead! Proof.

Dans la jungle terrible jungle
Le lion est mort ce soir

The reason being that dors just does not fit in with the song. So the next question is how we got onto this topic...well, Mathieu is training to become a primary school teacher (he will be awesome at it, I just know it!) and ended up playing the guitar and having a sing-a-long with the students! We also ended up chatting about the fan clubs that young teachers and trainees have within schools...as both of us have them. I am genuinely uncertain to how I'm going to cope going into work/university without an entire army of people all coming up to say hi to me...it is a little ego boost every day!

After a few hours I had to rush home to Skype my parents, as they are off on holiday for their Wedding Anniversary for the week, conveniently missing the forecasted snow for England! Lucky lucky people, they got to watch me eat my tea as I was also heading out to Bar'O for a Soirée Frenchie....arriving two and a half hours late to find that most French people had also not arrived (French style)! It was actually perfect for me though, as Becky, Claire, Laura and I got to catch up properly before everyone else arrived and the serious drinking/dancing etc. started. To be completely honest, I was debating whether or not to miss out on Le Depot (the nightclub) and heading home...but I am so glad I did not! The mix of people (Thomas, Baptiste, Simon, Astrid, Flavie, Gaëtan, Pierre, Thibaud, Justine etcetc.) was brilliant, and everyone was more than happy to dance (rather rare in France!) and the night ended up being just one of those great spontaneous nights out that happen once in a blue moon. As I usually say, will regret it tomorrow...