So much brie it hurts

Bon après-m tout le monde. 

I've just made the tastiest courgette and brie soup, with a swig of wine and eaten so much of it that it hurts, as is evident from my title.

It's now only 3 days until I return to the land of baked beans (even though I did find some this afternoon in Leader Price. I became quickly angered though, when it suggested to cook the beans in a bain marie. What on EARTH are you thinking France? Bung them in the microwave), pubs with English beer, tea time and trains without the SNCF jingle, which will now be ingrained into my memory until the end of time. Which apparently could be just 3 days.

Last weekend I made the brave and treacherous journey to Albert to see Mary. This was made all the more treacherous when I decided to take a liking to the wrong train station, a rather pitiful place called Longueau. Added another hour to my journey, as well as a bus ride, complete with staring cailleras and some rather interesting graffiti. Having arrived in Albert, it was lovely to see Mazzle P and we wasted no time in having a good chin wag and trotting off to the shops to get some dinner (nom moussaka). Although I thought Albert might be quite similar to Nogent, it had a completely different vibe and I came to the conclusion that the statue in the town depicting a woman holding up a child definitely bore a striking resemblance to The Lion King. The next day we shot off to Amiens to peruse the Christmas markets and I ensured that I forked out plenty off euros. Bought a few cheeky Christmas presents, some delicious food (including tartiflette and the classic vin chaud, nom nom NOM) and even a couple of bits and pieces for moi-même. As the evening drew in, we popped to the cathedral to watch the light projections there, something which seems quite popular in France. The long and short of it is, is that they project a load of images onto ancient monuments, in this case, to show what it was like in the "olden days" when each statue was painted. Really quite beautiful and a nice experience.

We headed back to Mary's and got a nice kip before I whizzed off the next morning. All in all, a really lovely weekend, especially good for getting in the old Christmas spirit. 

This evening, I am off to do a bit of tutoring followed by dinner chez la famille. Hooray for no cooking!

I feel like I am really starting to settle in here. Even this week, I have noticed that people at the lycée have been shooting the old bonjours out left, right and centre. Maybe it's because people are feeling particularly generous at this festive time of year but it definitely makes a huge difference to how accepted I feel. I really feel like my French is improving too. Sure, I have days when I feel like I'm communicating in the same way that a toddler would, but I'm mostly pretty proud of my progress. I'm certainly noticing that it's taking less effort to strike up conversations. And perhaps in turn, that has led to a better level of acceptance.

Enough of this self analysis now, I'm off to teach French kids about English Christmasses for perhaps the 40th time this week.

Bisous!