Routine, Rain and Sharks teeth.

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Ok, so today i have been in France for 2 weeks. I have met 2 english people here - a couple from southend and there is also a fairly odd elderly dutch man with whom i attempt to converse in english. He is mostly understandable and it is his unfortunate propensity to whistle through his teeth when talking rather than his accent which makes our conversations awkward.

Firstly i would like to reassure everyone who has been uninvited to my private blogs was that you have not offended me in any way - i simply have no intention of writing a private blog, if i'm that traumatised about something that i need to tell specific people i'm probably not gonna care about that fact that it'll cost me money to call. You can still access everything - please do not panic.

Now for the small details of my life which im sure you are all missing terribly. I've pretty much settled into a routine here and i think its all getting slightly easier - but that's probably because i had this morning off and spent most of this afternoon by the pool so i'm in a good mood. If you catch me at another time i might tell you that the whole concept of learning french is ridiculous and i want to come home because i understand nothing. But today we are happy :-)

My housemate Marie does most of the cooking and i the cleaning - fairly good deal and she is generally nice. She does some strange things though - im pretty sure she chats to her boyfriend on the phone when she is on the loo. Which i find weird. She is also a non-flusher. Hmmm. I'm also pretty sure she casually dropped into conversation the other day that she used to be manically depressed - I would like everyone to remember at this point that this conversation took place in french, we had also previously been discussing croissants and brioche - so this was an odd addition and as usual my comprehension was about 3 seconds behind her speech. The words "depression" and "slit my wrists" being wholly unexpected i continued to smile and nod for about 3 seconds. Then the meaning of them dawned i gasped and my facial expression changed dramatically to wide - eyed and concerned. It then almost instantly occurred to me that this was probably not the correct reaction so i pretended to have banged my knee on the table and returned to nodding but this time with a mildly concerned expression. Basically i looked like an idiot and i have no idea what it was she continued saying as i went through this transition - which im sure is a bit of a blessing. Her mood swings do occasionally make me wonder if her use of the past tense wasn't slightly optimistic. But she is lovely 85% of the time - which does me fine.

Our obligatory work T-shirts have arrived. With size Large for me. So i have cut one, tried to shrink another in a hot wash and wear the others only when i have a hairband available to scrunch my t-shirt up into Britney Spears style.

We've had a few cold days here - when i resorted to wearing leggings and long t-shirts - something i'm sure everyone remembers well from revision periods. We have also had rain. I know - i didn't sign up for that. This was only a problem when my drying clothes were caught in the downpour one night and the following morning i had to wear my sports bra for aerobics completely soaking wet. As you can imagine this effectively created two large wet areas on my t-shirt. Despite some funny looks and what i hope was a joke about having a baby at home, i persevered with my approach of utter denial that i had lactation marks and the class progressed as normal (except that i was bright red.)

People are asking me how my "jobs" are going and i feel this a good forum for response. The aerobics and aquagym are ok. Some days better than others - i've basically taken to copying routines off of varying overly enthusiastic american instructors that i found on Youtube. Oh and i managed to fall in the pool 3 days ago. I was in the middle of leading the SKI part of the routine (enthusiastic lunges with corresponding arm movements) when my right foot encountered the slippy blue plastic which surrounds the pooledge. My right leg without warning went from under me and charged into the pool. The rest of my body tried to continue with the dance move but alas this resulted in me throwing my arms in the air, yelping and sliding in slow motion (without a modicum of grace) into the water.

The kids club is good. We had 13 today. Age range 4-11. Difficult to cater for sometimes. But i have only actively disliked 2 children so thus far it is the easy part of my day. Although it is making me reconsider wanting children in my 20's. Its the clinging and inability to share adult attention - even amongst siblings - that i don't understand. I only have 2 hands!!!!!

Other than that my life is fairly boring. The typical french woman who exists everywhere there are tourists sits just outside my house selling shark tooth necklaces. I'm starting to doubt that all these women actually have access to shark teeth - there can't be that many sharks who die each year proffering up their teeth, can there?

Well done to Annabel and Matt for finally trying the couple thing that we've all been waiting for for a year now. And well done to Ed for completing the Etape (part 1) in a bloody quick time despite a crappy knee.

Love you all lotssssss xxxxx

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