So, this is a belated update about my trip back in February. Better late than never:

I’m back from my two week, mammoth trip round the south of France, of which I loved nearly every minute; it was the first time I saw the Alps, the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean and also the first time I couchsurfed. Here follows a correspondingly long account of ( Read more... )

I haven't blogged for about two months now. The reasons for this are manifold, but the most important has been a lack of time despite working only twelve hours a week. After getting back from my February holidays in the South of France, my life in Tours has entered a kind of golden age. A new group of friends - formed of members of several older ( Read more... )

So I haven’t blogged in about two weeks. This is due to having no internet at home and to being exceptionally busy. My first week back was largely taken up with doing stupid things such as making my students prepare to be dinosaurs from QWANTZ and attempting to watch all three extended editions of LOTR in one day (we managed 5 discs and all hated ( Read more... )

I flew home on the 22nd of December and back to Tours on the 2nd January, giving me a grand total of 12 days in England - 11, really, considering all the flying time. This is not a lot of time anyway, but given that this holiday had to squeeze in Christmas, my birthday and New Year’s, it really flew by.

Christmas went well and much the same as ( Read more... )

I watched 300 a few days ago and disliked it less than I thought I would. I then spent two days reading about the Greco-Persian wars and finally feel reasonably informed on the matter.

So, things I liked about 300: it was visually very satisfying. It tried to emulate the comic book and, having never seen the comic, I presume it was very successful. ( Read more... )

So, I was all alone in Tours for Sunday and Monday. Saturday was spent saying goodbye to Diana, my last friend to leave, who I accompanied to the train station. I had to wait until this morning to leave, so I had two days to kill. I originally bought tickets for todaybecause I presumed I would be working on Friday and didn’t want to rush my packing ( Read more... )

I am beyond disappointed. Apparently, the word Schnee is pronounced [∫ne], not [∫ni] as I have been pronouncing it for about nine years. The correct pronunciation is far less fun.

Anyway, yesterday was a snow day. It didn’t start off as one - I turned up to school in the morning and attended one lesson where I didn’t really do much. During this ( Read more... )

On Thursday night, I went to my first local board game society night with Diana, an American friend. It was really fun - I love board games, and I don’t think I realised how much I missed playing. They have literally hundreds of games at the club; one group of people were playing Settlers of Catan, but I decided I wanted to start with something ( Read more... )

On Tuesday I met up with all the English assistants at secondary schools in the departement - about 30 of us - for a meeting about how being an assistant was going. I got a few good teaching ideas out of it but overall it did seem a little like a waste of a day which was only slightly ameliorated by getting to see people I haven’t seen for a while ( Read more... )

So, the language festival was interesting - the turnout was low, as expected. I didn’t feel too guilty about not preparing my Gujarati lesson properly when only one man turned up. He wasn’t even interested in learning Gujarati; he just wanted to “meet the other Indian” as he was from Pondicherry. He also went to fetch his son, who was 16, and I ( Read more... )