Halfway through....

I feel terrible I haven't contributed to this until now but Ben summed up our first week rather well in his blog. Like he mentioned, our arrival was very smooth and I know that mine, Ben, Lisa and Jocelyn's welcome to our school was very formal indeed but so professional. I assumed everyone's school would have been equally as prepared as ours but apparently not. I was introduced to my teacher, Nicole Adrey who has the most perfect English I've ever heard from a non-native English speaker and who was extremely happy to have us there in the school. She looked over my timetable and warned me about a troisieme class who were so difficult she said she should just teach them and I should always observe that class. AS IF! I told her in a more formal way that i'd whip them into shape. Having completed two weeks of classes I am familiar with all my classes especially the tricky one and was astounded that my teacher Nicole hadn't separated them sooner. I started with a quick game to get them to swap seats so it didn't look like they were being picked on and wouldn't you know it, they shut up. I've been doing a lot of "kill the teacher" lessons and they seem to take to that almost too well....I mean, some guy used a tomahawk to dismember me. Maybe i'm not as popular as I originally thought. We're quite lucky with our College Alphonse Karr because it's only a half an hour walk through the town of San Raphael whereas everyone else has to rely on the buses which come once an hour. Our accommodation is very reasonable with bunk beds and and sofa that pulls out into a double bed. I'm sharing with Jo and we decided she could have the sofa bed and i'll take the bunks as I would sleep on the floor and still sleep like a baby. Either way, someone's getting disturbed as she has to come past me to go to the bathroom and I have to go past her to get to the kitchen. But it's all good, we're all on the same two floors so we've all been able to help each other with lessons, resources, food and anything else that might crop up. For instance, i'm about to go and ask Sally for a sewing kit as I fell spectacularly on my face earlier in Cannes and actually ripped the knee of my trousers. I kind of fell in such slow motion I was getting bored with it. I did however, knock a moped which was in the middle of about twenty others so will be eternally grateful that I didn't create a domino effect and have to leg it before someone realised. As weeks go, this one has been FAR less eventful than last. However, equally as enjoyable and educational. Our French was coming on leaps and bounds last week but I feel like I've spoken more English this week than I would back home! I was even saying 'un' wrong like an idiot. But we did get to visit Monte Carlo and go to Cannes on the weekend of the festival thanks to the almost unbelievable amounts of bank holidays France seems to have. Also, it was both Mary's and Ben's birthdays this week so spirits were as high as the temperature (i.e. very) as we all helped them celebrate together. I look forward to the next two weeks and I can safely say I will be very sad indeed when I have to leave this petit paradis.