meilleurs voeux!

Hello, everyone! It's Sunday again, so that means the weekly email. I'm sure you're all thrilled.

It was back to school this week, which was lovely. Lots of new years' wishes, lots of kissing on the cheek (extra kisses for the new year, apparently). It's so pleasant to see how much all the teachers I work with like each other. After a break of two weeks, they were all chatting happily and looking so glad to see each other. Sometimes the others complain about their teachers not really liking each other or not really talking to each other - at the teacher training days we heard horror stories about profs who won't speak to anyone else in their department - but my teachers are friendly and wonderful. My contact prof was stressed the other week and one of the others gave her a quick shoulder rub as a pep talk, and they all poke fun at each other and they're just comfortable and happy together. It's very nice. People will come and drop into the next chair when I'm sitting in the loung with my laptop doing nothing and advise me on how to play spider solitaire, or ask me to play some music.

I've got mostly new students this semester and so I get to do introductory classes all over again for a month, which is half boring and half entertaining - it's fun to see the new kids coming in, already perhaps knowing a little about me (like the students who belong to my contact teacher who came in and said, "You are Mary Parker!") but perhaps knowing nothing at all except my face. The seconde are really funny in general. I like this group: they're old enough to be fairly advanced in the language, but not old enough to be indifferent to school, so they talk a lot more than my terminale and premiere groups. They're a bit chatty in French, and some of them are a little shy, but overall I think it will be a good semester. I have a way to get the kids to come to class now, because I have proper lists of which ones are supposed to be with me when, and anyway, seconde aren't old enough to realize they can skip class. I have all of my students scheduled during their study hours, though I'm supposed to have them during their English classes, but the teachers and I agreed this was better: I don't want to take up half of their classtime doing pointless things (well, not pointless, but less valuable than their regular lessons except in terms of conversation) when they only have two hours of English a week anyway, some of them, and I'm certainly competent enough to take groups on their own.

It's been a funny week. The weather's alternately miserable (cold, windy, drizzly) and gorgeous (like today, all sunshine). The plants are all confused as to whether it's winter or not. I cut myself on a fish this week: Steffen caught a big pike and called us out to see it, and I got to put it back in the water, but it turns out they have spiky gills and both of us had little cuts. Friday night we went to a French party with actual French people: for Epiphany (or roughly around that time, apparently), everyone eats the galette des rois, the king cake, though it's a different recipe from what people eat for Mardi Gras. It was nice: lots of French grownups, people who aren't from Cambrai who've come to work in Cambrai, and they were all curious about us, so we got to do a lot of talking and explaining. Matthias got the lamb in his piece of cake, so he was the king, and there was a cat wandering around and a few kids. It's always nice to see kids we're not expected to teach, and very sweet how they all automatically come and kiss you. Plus, the party got us to speak a lot of French, which reminds me both that my French is much better than it used to be, and that it's still not perfect. We need to speak more French at home, but somehow it always slips into English. Dommage. At least now I have the grammar book I bought from the vending machine at Montparnasse.

Yesterday was pleasant. We went to Saint Quentin with Max and Ellen, because Max has a car. It wasn't really for any purpose; we just wandered around, looked at the church and the town hall (very intricately carved facade, quite lovely), did a bit of window shopping since the huge sales are on, picked up a tarte or two at the cafeteria in the mall. Highways are the same everywhere, I think, or at least they give the same feeling of suspension, of movement and non-movement. It's interesting to go in the car, since we take trains and buses everywhere generally. Last night we broke out some board games (thanks, Mom and Dad, for sending them on) and figured out the rather complicated (at first) rules of Puerto Rico (which Catalina doesn't mind, fortunately). It turned out to be an excellent game (perhaps because I won?) and a nice change from cards. We watched a couple of episodes of Green Wing as well: television doctors are the best entertainment we've found since Incroyable Talent stopped airing. Then this morning we got up and cleaned the house pretty thoroughly. You know it's bad when Steffen steps in the door and asks if a bomb has gone off (realistically, it was just the day's clutter of jackets and bags, but some sweeping and mopping were in order as well).

Off to take a bath, do some more cleaning, and minister to Cata's cold, I suppose. We've been remarkably healthy thus far in the white house, but hey, germs catch up with everyone sometime.