The first taste

I just got back from visiting Blois. How can I sum it up? It's very pretty, they eat a LOT of ham, and the people there are really, rather worryingly friendly (perhaps I'm used to rude parisians). The town itself is very quaint- gorgeous chateau and a river, winding little streets and boutiquey type shops. We went to the weekly market on saturday, which was fabulous, everyone wandering round all très bohemian with their wicker baskets filled with all manner of fruits, cheeses, fish and donkey sausages. Yes, the French really do eat anything that moves! Speaking of which, I had my first ever taste of escargots. They were quite tasty, surprisingly, but as I swallowed that first bite I was very, very aware that I'd just eaten a snail.

I managed to cry only twice in three days, both luckily in the privacy of my hotel room, mid-panicking that I really am doing this. It may sound silly but it's not so much the living in another country, as speaking another language. I have very little confidence speaking French :I had to psyche myself up for about 10 minutes before I called my co-ordinator at the school... and we ended up speaking in English anyway after my french rapidly disintergrated! And the smallest things like buying a phone become so much more difficult when you have no idea how to say you want a pay-as-you-go phone, not contract. It's just so mortifying standing there not understanding what people are saying to you, and then you just get more tongue-tied, I hate it! I have however learnt several new words thanks to the marvel that is french TV. Why, just by watching 'Superchien' I gleaned 'le laser' and 'les supers-pouvoirs'... I also watched Sponge Bob dubbed in French. It doesn't get any better than that...!

New vocabulary aside...I managed to see a really nice apartment right by the lycée I'm teaching at, Augustin Thierry (which embarassingly, I keep referring to as Lycée Thierry Henri) which has 4 bedrooms- so if the other assistants want to live there I will definitely go for it. I also visited a small evangelical church on sunday and completely coincidentally met the head of English at the collège I'm also teaching at. They were all very friendly and I'll definitely go again. I feel so much better having seen the town, seen the schools, found a church to go to, and found a place to live (I hope!) I can't believe I'm going in 3 weeks. Scary stuff.