Christmas Countdown, Cold and Cheesy Snaps!

It's a pleasure to be blasting out the Christmas tunes as I'm writing my latest blog update! The Christmas playlist is on every morning on the way to work (thank you Matt for spotify!) and it's getting ccchhhhhiiiilllyyyyy! Fortunately for huge scarves, hot chocolate from Germany (Merci Eloise!) and amazing Christmas lights in Douai!

My personal favourite is the penguin, it means I've arrived safely off the train!

Last weekend I spent from Friday to Monday morning at Caroline's house (my Prof)! It was an absolute pleasure to feel part of her family as always, spending the evening eating and of course drinking aperitifs! Highly important cultural rule now...I'm going to miss this! Saturday was a huge trip to Lille to help the family do their Christmas shopping, and they kindly invited me to Tiger Wok. For those that don't know, it's a buffet restaurant where you pick all kinds of veg, meats (including FROG!) and then have it fried with noodles in a giant wok! It's incredible and now my favourite place to eat! I also got a cocktail (Sacré Caroline!) The day was so lovely, and I never feel far from home when I have this family. I'm really lucky! I'm going to be really sad not seeing them for a whole month! I've made friends/families for life!!!!

Can you spot the frog's legs?!?!

Sunday was a day of lesson planning, helping Eloise with makeup tutorials and then relaxing! I really enjoyed not having to be up early on a Monday too! Overall a fantastic weekend...possibly coming home with TOO much alcohol sorry Eurostar..

It's nearly CHRRIIIISSSTMASSSSS! Which obviously means beautiful decorations, food, food and more food...as well as Christmas Markets! Friends at work often said the Arras Christmas markets were a MUST as it's now in the top 5 of the Xmas Markets in France! Jess P suggested we go and I couldn't refuse! We asked the other assistants and Luke, Becca, Lauren, Nia and Claudia all joined us! Shout out to Lauren for meeting me so early for "quality Loz and Jess time" so much love!

The famous 4?

Santa's Groto how adorable!

The markets of course, are nothing like the Birmingham ones, but sooooo much better than Lille! It's a pretty big market and I even found it far more traditional and lovely than the Parisian ones (sorry Paris!) So it's a MUST if you're in the North! I really enjoyed the day out, especially busting some moves to Christmas songs with Jess too!

The day however was FREAKING FREEEEZING! So temperatures are really dropping in the North (welcome to England?), but I'm still aiming to really enjoy myself as much as I can despite the cold! My scarf is now my new best friend *soz Matt* and thankfully my trains put London Midland to shame!! They're always so clean, quick, and 9/10 on time!!!!! I really enjoy how modern they are too, some even have sofas inside?! Us English have to take all the positives!! A little fact, today Paris has made ALL it's public transport free....lucky sods! But this is due to the pollution...oops.

So how's my language going? Well I've mastered the "fluency and comprehension" so tick tick tick, but the accent is driving me crazy. RUE or ROUE?! I hate the "OU" sound. This is causing so much problems. As much as Isabelle is amazing at training my language, this "OU" sound never seems to stick, and even when I'm thinking I'm pronouncing it right...I'm not. Today, however, may have changed things for good! When sitting in the staff room writing up an idea for a quirky literature article, I was introduced to Martine, possibly the saviour of all my problems with pronunciation! After telling me my French was incredible, I replied with my normal response "Wow thank you so much, but actually it sucks. My accent is awful and I want to be like une française at the end of the year...but I'm very strict with myself..my OU and U's are awful!"

This lovely lady then said to me hold on, let me think about this for a second, leaving me to continuing my writing. The strangest thing was to hear this woman clicking her tongue and making small noises to herself..I did honestly think something was wrong. The next thing I knew she's produced the most wonderful thing for me:

I just so happened to have bumped into a woman who had spent the majority of her life helping younger children with pronunciation problems and speech impediments. I couldn't have been more grateful, as a complete stranger, she sat with me, showing where to place my tongue (weird but it works!) and why, for all this time, I was going so wrong. So now, I have to practise!!!!!

WORKWORKWORKWORKWORK - I'm really enjoying myself as I've started working in a Primary School now in Biache too! After only 1 hour of being there I've received adorable drawings from the kids, telling me they loved me, English and of course, Winny the Witch! My other classes have really taken to me too. With Max sending me videos from the Radio Studio, my Mom of Xmas decorations, they're really lapping it up! I'd recommend doing this, anything authentically English, that isn't some boring text book, really makes my lessons jazzy!!!! Thank you family for always being so supportive!

So tomorrow I'm off to the Louvre Lens in Lens with Biache, giving students tours in FRENCH. Nothing better for the CV is there!?! I'm then off to spend the weekend at Lauren and Becca's IM SO EXCITED GUYS! Can't wait! We are off to Belgium Saturday and then having a Christmas day Sunday! Next week I'll be seeing Julia and Nia for Le Petit Prince at the theatre, then meeting Vanessa for lunch too! What better way to spend the last 8 days?!

See you soon Bloxwich!

JR

xxxx