French Only

I've been told off by my sister for not writing in a while. I do apologise folks, it's been a busy week and a half. Most importantly this week I started my French classes. Finally. It's a really good school in central Paris but it's very strict. NO TALKING ENGLISH IN CLASS!! Ever. En français seulement. We started off with the basics, the very very basics. The alphabet, numbers, days of the week etc. It's stuff I already know but it's good to go back over it and perfect pronunciation. And after the first couple of weeks, the professeur said, it will go very quickly. So maybe I'll start writing my posts in French as well to help me improve. Well, we'll see. After the class I was chatting to some of the other au pairs who speak English, but they insisted we talk in French. With so many people enforcing French around me, I suppose I better learn vite vite vite!

Tom came to stay last weekend too and we had a lovely weekend strolling around Paris. We went to the musee du quai Branly which is a slightly odd museum celebrating ethnic or 'primitive' art. An interesting concept but it ended up being rather uniformative and it didn't offer any distinct ideas or facts about all the thousands of tribes in the world where the displays came from. Tom has a favourite restaurant in Paris called Chartier (M. Grand Boulevards) which he insisted we went to - it's a bistro style place where the waiters write down your order in the tablecloth. It is good, basic food and for Paris, very reasonable priced. Worth checking out especially as you don't need to book so can just turn up. We also wandered around the Marais which I've been wanting to do for ages. It's a really pretty area with lots of shops and cafes and places to explore all set in little cobbled streets and beautiful architecture. Patricularly worthy of note is the best falafel shop in town the Jewish quarter; l'aus du falafel.













I've got my next French class tomorrow and on Friday I'm teaching English to a 12 year old girl in the village. Any ideas on methods/games/activities to teach English?