it's a black fly in your chardonnay

so pere says: "update this you lazy bugger" and i say to pere and anyone else who reads this: comment so i feel motivated to update!!

so i did a stupid thing this morning. i woke up dark and early at 6:30 and got ready, had breakfast, walked to school. then i found out that i have no classes today. i work every other wednesday but with all the strikes and holidays i got confused. brilliant. and so i waited 15 minutes in the teachers lounge until my ears thawed and walked home. i did get to stop at the market on the way and got veggies and i'm making an amazing pasta tonight! but i'm kicking myself for waking up this morning at all.

especially since i was so pooped yesterday evening after work that i was nodding off at 8pm. so i took a nap and woke up at 10 to shower and get prepared for today. sigh.

in other news (cough cough): i desperately want a thick warm, woolen, scarf, beenie, glove set in dark dark chocolate brown. it's all i can think of when i step outside. the wind in this village is vindictive.

tuesday: work was exhausting. i think all the kids were really excited about something happening after school or next year or whatever, but they refused to learn english. all day long they were uninterested, talkative (and that's putting it nicely), and fidgety. i worked with 11-12 year olds all day and the subject of restaurants and the restaurant experience from the point of view of the waiter and the customer. some classes had gone over the vocab and some hadn't. they mostly knew random food vocab and everyone wanted to know what coleslaw was. and what a t-bone steak was. and why a caesar salad was called that. and if cheese cake tastes good because they thought it sounded awful. which you could understand because if you had some french cheese and then thought of making cake with it, it would not sound appetizing. but none of them had a problem with the term 'french fries' and i thought they would surely ask me about that. and these questions were never framed in english. when i asked them to please do so, they looked at me like i was insane. which was pretty funny.

in one class i went over emotions and personalities, focusing on adjectives and adverbs. ex: i am sometimes grumpy but never shy. i went around the room and had everyone tell me what mood they were in at that moment. i had a lot of 'i feel tired' and 'i feel a little shy' and i had three students who were both angry and happy. then we had a discussion about whether a person can feel two conflicting feelings at the same time (in french). most of the class thought so and gave me examples like when you are so happy you cry. and when you are in love but sad. i didn't feel like these were appropriate examples though because the crying is not separate from the happiness and the sadness isn't separate from the being in love. they gave up when i explained that, and decided to yell across the room instead. but it made me wonder.

i thought that they may want to know how to express specific emotions or feelings in english so i asked them to give me emotions in french and i'd give them the english equivalent and we'd make sentences. the words i got however, were: fart, burp, drunk and vagina. this isn't to say that all the students were hooligans, there were a few girls who seemed to want to learn and asked me pertinent questions. god bless them.

this past weekend: i finally got around to heading into beziers. i met up with elaine and we bumped into mariana who is the spanish assistant at my school. the 3 of us walked had a drink, walked around the city, then had another drink. mariana invited elaine and i to a dinner she was having the next evening. she and janet, another spanish assistant were making mexican food for 3 other assistants. so i met 2 other canadians from halifax and an american from spokane. the evening was a lot of fun and much needed. the girls are all very sweet and i'm glad i've finally found people to hang out with down here. dessert was my first ever time eating black forest cake outside of india. and it tasted pretty much the same, though the cherries were a tamer shade of red than at saravanas.

gladys found me a bike! i was up in her kitchen just talking and i mentioned how i was going to ask around at school to see if any of the teachers knew someone who had a bike lying around. and she said that was a good idea and that she would ask her friends for me too. i thanked her and went home. less than 10 minutes later she came down and told me she found me a bike and that we'd go get it the next morning at 8! it's a road bike and it's lovely. and i cannot wait for the weather to improve to take it to the beach.

that is all for now. there is no school tomorrow because it is a bank holiday. and the plan is to head back to montpellier for the weekend.

craving: macaroni grill's mushroom ravioli
currently listening to: aicha- cheb khaled