Yay la rentrée

Its finally La Rentrée (or back to school) for me. The great thing about teaching is the long summer holidays but for me it nearly killed me! I didn't leave Paris due to budgetary restraints, so it was a LONG HOT STUFFY summer of doing not much! I'm the type of person who is better being busy, so I nearly lost my sanity!

Needless to say I'm going around with a big smile on my face now that the academic year has started. I've taken on alot of work this year, but am attacking it with gusto.

So during the break I tried and tried to work on le francais. In fact I signed up for a group French class but lasted one day. I just couldn't do it. So I switched to auto apprentissage, which meant working by myself in the library and someone checking up on me once a week. It wasn't that successful so now I'm trying a different approach. I'm trying a language exchange. I've found a mature student who studies in the area I teach who wants to learn English. So she's going to work with me on my written French and I'll work with her. This could be brilliant or a disaster but the price is right so I'm giving it a go.

Autumn has been gorgeous in Paris. Lovely warm sunny days, chilly nights. The market out my window has changed to lovely earthy fruit and veg, lots of peaches, pumpkin, artichokes etc. Due to ongoing financial embarrassment (long boring story of people not paying me and being VERY late) I've been shopping religiously in Chinatown in the 13th. I cannot stress how bloody cheap it is there. Last week I got a weeks shopping for €8, supplemented by €3 in a normal supermarket (for porridge and a small splurge on chocolate and a can of coke! Milka Daim chocolate... YUM) and it did me exactly a week. Granted I ate a lot of rice noodles and rice paper rolls, but luckily I like them and bonus they are low in calories, so I'm feeling good! I've decided not to spend any random money, so most days I spend nothing. It's weird but good. And there's certainly a lot less spontaneous junk food buying, in fact its completely stopped!

In other good news from my classroom this year I have a view of the Eiffel Tower! I'm delighted, especially as I teach til 22h one night, so I'll see the twinklies to keep me going :)