It's holiday-time!

I'll start off with some observations/little anecdotes:

• (I realise this is quite boring and trivial...) Although food may be more expensive here than what I pay for at home, there is one thing that I am never going to buy the 'Carrefour discount' version of, ever again. Yoghurts. At home, I am more than happy to eat Tesco value yoghurts, no problem. These Carrefour one though, they look like and have the texture of curdled milk. The only thing that is good about the yoghurts, apart from the price, is the 'aromatised' part.
• I found a slug in the kitchen sink the other day. What the hell? 

Last week was the final week before half-term, or All Saints holiday and there's not that much to say about it, really. Monday was the first time where I had a difficult group to work with; I couldn't get them to listen to me or to speak in English, they always relied on the two British guys to translate for them and didn't really get involved with the activities I set. After the class, I spoke to the teacher and he said he would talk to them. I do believe something will happen; this is the teacher that makes the student wait to be told to sit down. The rest of the week was pretty boring, nothing exciting or unusual to report. Thursday, with one of my favourite classes, I took a lesson on equal rights which went really well, the only downside is that I ran out of time to have a proper debate.

I had no classes on Friday and have since then, been on holiday. I've met up with the other assistants in my town a few times for drinks. On Monday, I went to Morlaix with 2 assistants, stopped on the way to go to the beach and flew a kite, then when we got to Morlaix, we just had drinks and walked round the port because most things were shut.

Tuesday and Wednesday (yesterday) were spent in Rennes. On Tuesday we went to the Jardins de Thabor and had a nice walk round - both days were really sunny so we were really lucky. After visiting the gardens we were given a little tour of the city centre because we had met up with one of my friend's friends, who is French and lives in Rennes. After sitting in yet another café/bar, we then decided it was time to have dinner.  Now I'm a fan of pancakes, but there might have been a bit too much that night. For the main meal we had a galette, which is basically a savoury pancake, mine had chicken and cheese in it and an egg on top. Oh and butter. Lots of butter. So much that my plate was still swimming in it after I had eaten the galette. It was sooooo filling and nice though. Normally, I am the first to want a dessert, but that night I could have passed on one... wish I had. For dessert, we all ordered a crepe, a sweet pancake, mine had Nutella in it. I managed t eat it, but oh my, I was full afterwards. Wednesday, we didn't do much. Just went to the local market, walked round, went to another café and to a boulangerie and then made the 2-hour journey back to Lannion.

Today, I'm just staying in and chilling a bit (literally, if you think of how cold my room is). In between relaxing, I've cleaned the kitchen, well almost all of it. I still need to clean the floor and leave passive-aggressive post-it notes for my housemates for when they return. I am not an obsessively clean person, I would like to think that my cleanliness habits are about average, but I could not take it anymore. In the sink were pots that had been left there for about 2 weeks, if not longer, and there was no sign of them getting washed up soon as my housemates have gone (somewhere) for the holidays. So I bought some washing up gloves and got cracking. *shudder* It was vile. Tomorrow I plan to finally make the trek to Leclerc and buy a light bulb to replace the one in the shower room. 

Other things to mention in this post include:

I found a really cheap return flight from Dinard to East Midlands for Wednesday (31/10) and return on 07/11 but I didn't buy it for two reasons. I was running out of money and I had no idea how to get to the airport and then when I did find a route, it looked rather long-winded and expensive. So, I didn't get to go home during the holidays even though I'm very jealous of all of you who have been able to.

I said that I was running out of money. My money situation has now been resolved. I, surprisingly, got paid on Tuesday, so that's a nice 794€ in the bank. I honestly didn't think I'd be paid on time because of the whole French bureaucracy thing, but also because I thought that my Social Security hadn't been sorted out completely. I must have been wrong. I'm still waiting for my carte vitale though.

More money situation has been sorted, I think Student Finance has finally, that's finally realised, that my parents' income is well within the eligibility area for the maintenance grant. After filling in more forms, sending more letters, photocopies of P60s and getting the Erasmus lady from uni to contact SFE, I think it is sorted. I'm just waiting for the letter to confirm this and for them to tell me how I can get the money I am missing from the first installment. Talking of Erasmus, the first part of that has gone into my bank too. Oooh it's so difficult to not buy ALL the things.

With the rest of the day I plan to buy some birthday presents thanks to good ol' Amazon and snuggle up in bed, keep warm and watch back-to-back episodes of Ellen.

(NB: Captions mess up the layout of the post. The first picture is from Les Jardins De Thabor and the second is the Hôtel de Ville, Rennes).