Le ciel est bleu

Starting with a summary of good and bad things:-
Bad:-
- Camera in protective case, really busy tram, my 50mm lens is quite badly damaged from someone knocking my bag - so much so that the lens and the barrel are now separate entities. So unfortunate, but I guess if you take a piece of kit out you have to prepare for it to be damaged.
- Feeling like the countdown to going home has started, but is not going slow or fast enough for my liking - it's really hard to be split between two places.
- Trams were not working this morning, leaving me with a 20 minute wait and only just making it in to work on time...so much for good impressions!
Good:-
- Neither the mechanisms or the lens seem to be damaged in the lens, so hopefully it will just be a case of going into a repair shop and them slotting it back in. We live in hope...
- Succeeded in making the troisième INTER be a bit more interested in Oliver Twist
- Managed to Skype Andy before bed with an awesome internet connection that meant crystal clear pictures and no beeping...result!
- Had a lovely evening at the Café Polyglotte at the English and French speaking tables and met some lovely new people, as well as catching up of course with the "old" awesome ones! This was followed by a gig in La maison de l'étudiant by a band called Plastic Riot. Great laugh and the band itself sounded a lot like Kasabian actually! Oh, and it was free to go which cannot be bad.


So my day, bar these niggles, has just been a generally alright day! Started my day with the cinquième INTER, who were reading The Landlady by Roald Dahl. Very spooky tale, and was really interesting to see how the pupils analysed it. Pretty much straight from the beginning some of them were shouting about how they thought the landlady was weird!

As said before, the troisième INTER are still working on Oliver Twist. Unfortunately it is really difficult for English children to read, let alone French Anglophones! The students became more interested after I explained to them a bit more about Charles Dickens (he effectively became an orphan when his family was put in debtors prison, and he had to work in a factory), and also a bit more about who read the books (upper and middle class) and how the book was published (in instalments, in a journal). I think by giving them a bit more of a background, not just about what London was like at the time, but what Charles Dickens was attempting to do made them become a bit more interested in what was happening. School finishes at lunchtimes on Wednesdays in France, so I went home and sorted things before going out to see everyone.

Was expecting to take some photographs of people for blip tonight, but a lack of a working lens (*sigh*) unfortunately stopped this. So instead, Room with a View...well this is my view. I took it this morning just after sunrise, as the cloud patterns are always gorgeous.

Words I learnt:-
- Tasse et soucoupe - cup and saucer
- Brouillard - fog
- Bouillotte - hot water bottle
- Nous ne soyons pas fâchés - we are not angry