A few more things I've noticed...

• Some things, with children, are known internationally. I was walking through town yesterday and I saw a child holding hands with both her parents and on the count of three, the little girl was lifted up and swung forward. I remember doing this as a child and I've done this with my nephew and nieces. It really made me smile.

• The ready meals in France are of a better quality than at home, as is a lot of food, some would say. Whilst, tonight, I had my second ready meal since I've been here (this might be a huge surprise to some of you), I've already noticed this difference. For the equivalent of about £1.60 (2€), I have just eaten, chicken, couscous and vegetables. The couscous was not all hard and stuck together, the vegetables were still crunchy and the chicken was there in a reasonable portion. At home, you can pay less than £1 for a value brand meal which only suffices as a 'really can't be bothered to cook/don't have the money' meal or for about £2 you can buy a supermarket's own ready meal, but in my opinion, unless this meal is of the Italian pasta variety, the meal isn't that delightful, mainly because of soggy vegetables.

• Sometimes, the French and the English have the same attitudes, in particular when it comes to roadworks. I walked past a sign which told me that the (pedestrianised) street I wanted to go down was blocked. As I was about to go a slightly longer way, I witnessed a load of people walking straight down the street, without a care at all. I followed them.

• The attitude towards recycling really depends on what you're doing. In the school I work at, many of the students' worksheets are on the back of  waste paper. The other extreme, however, was witnessed the other day when I received 3 or 4 separate letters (all in one envelope, to be fair), all of which were about 3 sentences long. Why they couldn't all be merged into one average length letter, I do not know.

• The trains over here really are a lot more expensive than I thought. I, wrongly, came over here with the impression that UK trains were the ones with rip-off prices, but no, even with a railcard, I'm looking at 100€ to get to Paris, which is ~4.5 hours away. At home, I could do that (say to Brighton or Portsmouth) for £30-40. The coaches are really well priced though, I'm looking at getting a return coach ticket to Germany for 95€.