Another ordinary week (please don't be put off by the boring title)

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It has been another ordinary and pleasant week but I fear that if I go into all the details I will bore you dear readers, so I will do my best to include only the 'interesting' stuff.

After holidays and bank holidays (they seem to have a lot in France) I have finally managed to have a full 'working week'; that is to say both my Monday and Friday classes. And life with children is rarely dull, as I have been reminded this week; challenging and amusing, yes but NEVER dull.

It is Monday afternoon and I am on sieste duty with the little ones as usual: I have four 4-5 year old boys to manage - Florian, Joas, Elian and Josias. We start by making a trip to the toilet (I tend to leave them to it whilst I choose the bedtime story - I don't particularly like the smell). I hear one of them call my name. Oh no, I think with dread, this can mean only one thing. 'Oui?' I respond in a high-pitched, sing-song voice, trying to disguise how I feel. 'I've done a wet poo' comes the reply from one of the boys. Oh,great. I encourage him to wipe himself like a big boy but end up having to do it for him. I grimace, swallow my pride and try not to breathe, setting to the task in hand. If someone had told me a year ago that I would be doing this kind of thing, I'd have told them to shut up. Task done, the little boy starts to tell me about his dad's new brainwave in order to stop him wetting his pants at church. I listen with feigned interest as he tells me with much pride and enthusiasm about his dad's idea to place tissue paper in his pants. Despite being a flawed idea, I say nothing but merely let out a few 'Uh uhs' to keep him happy.

On Tuesday afternoon,I braved my new swimming costume to go swimming with my friend, Rachel. It was with some reluctance that I put on my rather modest and not very attractive swim suit, which Cecile had encouraged me to buy at the beginning of the year, certain that I would need it. Luckily the pool was occupied only by a few old people, who didn't have the most attractive of bodies or swimsuits either.

Despite being good friends, me and Rachel are rather different: her motivation for swimming was to tone up and get muscles, mine was to burn off enough calories so that I could then go and put them back on again with a Macdonalds McFlurry. Eat and be happy is my new motto after days and days of cycling up the hill to Rimlishof (without stopping I might add with pride) and making the most of the calorie-burning sport by eating plenty of food afterwards.

On Wednesday me and Lydie made our usual road trip off around the Alsacian countryside, in an attempt to find the ruins of an old castle, getting hopelessly lost in the process but it was all good fun and we managed to find it in the end, although it was very much just ruins.

Thursday was my first free day of the week and I decided it would be good to spend it with the kids. This meant having a game simliar to monopoly with Samuel (a game which would have never ended if I hadn't stopped it) in the morning. Losing a game like that to a 6-year-old isn't easy but I put a strong face on and got pleasure out of seeing his beaming face when he announced with pride at the end that he'd made twice as much money as me.

And today was another day of classes at school. An attempted debate on school uniform with the 4eme didn't go quite so well but at least I know now that they're incapable of debating in English. And not only that, but learning English doesn't seem to be their number one priority. I do try to make the lessons interesting but there's only so much I can do....

And so dear readers, the weekend starts and who knows what that has in store for me.....

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