How do you say "la fève"?

Settled back into life, and I have a major apology to make.

I offer my unrepentant apologies to the city of Limoges. You are an under-appreciated gem, and have been far too easy to blame these past months. The truth of the matter is that Limoges itself is pretty great - nice enough town, safe, (some) stuff to do and it has a Monoprix, which puts it way above many smaller places in France.

These past months I seem to have done nothing nut complain about this and that, when really I have had it easy, and I'm starting to really love it. The life is easy, the food is great, and it's overall just a very relaxing experience. I have no deadlines, no exams, no pressures - I only work 12 hours a week and the rest of the time I spend doing whatever takes my fancy - how could I possibly have complained?. (well, I know why, and I won't completely apologise - it has been tough) What little work I do do is also very rewarding, fun, exciting and challenging - and I am appreciated at school as far as I can tell.

The amount of English I speak has been one thing that concerned me, but soon came the realisation that you cannot live in France without developing your language, and reassuring compliments from French cohorts have boosted my spirits in this department too.

Since getting back from the Christmas break I have also decided that I will take any offer, and not worry about feeling awkward, shy, lazy or dis-interested. This meant taking Monsieur up on any offer (well, not quite any offer - keep your perverse thoughts to yourselves...) and going to lunch or dinner with him and his friends. I've met a lot of them now, and they are all very nice. It's also the best opportunity I get to speak real French, and develop my skills in talking about not very much at all - one of the hardest things in learning a language is small talk (in fact, that's hard in English too, non?). This has led to me "making friends" with a lot of middle aged folk, one of whom fixed my jacket in return for me fixing her internet. The French are so very polite that any sort of meeting must result in at least a coffee and more often than not a 4 course lunch.

Work has been good, but I'm worried that I'm running out of time to do the things I want with the classes, and doing anything that spans more than one lesson is complicated because of my 2 week timetable. It doesn't help that my classes are often cancelled - they have a test, the teacher is ill, I am ill, there is a strike (the latter happens much more often that you might imagine, today for example). Aside from that, what I am doing seems to go really well, and the kids constantly surprise me with some excellent English.

The weeks have been flying in, and its now only 2 weeks till I fly home for the February break. This weekend promises a visit to Dijon, with all of its mustardy temptations.