Friday, 5 October 2012

“Hmm…Does it smell good?” Understatement Mr French Brasserie-Man; Earl Grey is my 5-a-day bergamot and citrus massage for my stressed and troubled brain.


So I took my mum to the station on Monday and it is now Friday and already it seems like a lifetime since she left.  Not that I’m counting the days by the last time I had any proper company or a proper meal (but if I were, I have definitely have to say it’s been four days, as my cooking skills have drastically deteriorated over the summer, and so far this week I’ve managed to burn a Halal Pizza to a crisp (that’s a different story) and since then have stuck to a simple bit of baguette with cheese and tomato), and I’m not being a massively emotional about my mum leaving or whatever, I can look after myself pretty well (cooking aside), but it has been one of the longest weeks of my life.
So, Tuesday was the day I met my first class.  There’s that stereotypical dream (that I swear no-one has ever had) about getting to school or work and realising that you’ve forgotten to get dressed or whatever, well meeting the class for the first time felt just like that; the teacher got me to stand at the front, introduce myself and then asked me to talk about England – for fourty-five minutes – to a group of teenagers, of which at least half couldn’t care less and were probably not listening and were just wondering when they were going to get their next nicotine kick (incidentally, it’s SHOCKING how many of the students smoke, like when you walk up to the school at lunch-time, literally every single one of the pupils you walk past is smoking).  It was traumatic. For them. For me. For all involved. Honestly, I wanted a cigarette afterwards, let alone them.  I went straight to my brasserie afterwards. It took two coffees and three mini biscuits to snap me out of my ‘omigosh-that-was-horendous’ stupour.
And on we go to Wednesday. I had to be up at 5am to get to Dijon by 10am; oh my, 5am is a disgusting time.  It might not have been so bad but I hadn’t slept very well that night thanks to Herman and the girl he brought back -_- way to many chinchilla antics to sleep. Anyway, so off I trudge at 6am to the gare, (which is another dark and cold hour which I very much dislike) and several trains and buses later I am in Dijon and have met an load of really nice people, who I really hope to meet again during this year, three of who are in the Dijon academy from my university!  What a small world.  And I met another girl there who is from Derby, even smaller world, haha.  So that was a good day :) apart from it being very long.  After stopping for two coffee’s (they’re 1€ each and small so it’s not too excessive to buy them in two’s :p) I bought a bottle of wine on the way home to make Kirs, but I was so tired, despite the coffee, that I couldn’t stay awake long enough for it to chill.
Thursday, I spent all day until 3pm in the Brasserie having Earl Grey after Earl Grey after Earl Grey trying to stay calm doing paperwork and admin rubbish, and then spent an hour and three quarters setting up a bank account in a French bank in French. ‘Nuff said.
Today, I met two more classes and had one-on-one sessions with them, which was fun because I got to just take the reigns for a bit and structure what I did in the sessions myself.  After that I did yet more admin, then came home and drank a lot of wine and now I’m on the sofa writing this.  Blame the wine if this entry is rambling and boring, it’s a pretty good reflection of how rambling and boring this week has been.  I can’t wait for next week when I get to properly start with the students and get into a semi-routine. Oh and I’ll finally be able to get some internet or a phone :) maybe one day I’ll even be able to post this blog :p

No comments:

Post a Comment