We’ve finally moved all our stuff out of storage and our landlord kindly moved some of his furniture out of our airbnb to make room for ours. We’ve got our nice sofa bed back now so we can potentially host people. We’re going to put some pictures on the wall and we’re going to sort our own bills out so we can have a proper proof of address. Our post box is currently a metal box that just lies on the road getting pooed on by birds. It also doesn’t have a key, anyone can open it. Once a delivery guy asked me if that was our post box and then he just laughed at it. I’ve never been ashamed of a post box before.
I spent all month trying to sort out everyone’s English lessons. There’s a couple of simple people who picked a date and stuck to it, but I have several people who constantly want to change their day or only want lessons every other week, or cancel at the last minute. The amount of time I spend planning and messaging people which I have to always do in French, is longer than the time I spend actually teaching. Also I spent quite a bit of money on Facebook ads for my kids group at my house and I had a few enquiries, but at the moment I am running it with just two kids. I love those kids and I would carry on with just those two, but one of them is moving away soon so the group will sadly have to close. But on the positive side, I’ve started a new group that meets in a school that’s going well and I’ve got a few new private students.
There some moments when I do love teaching English. I have two teenage girls that speak good English and we were playing a game where you had to write down two truths and a lie and then work out what is true by questioning them. My lie was that I spoke German, which was immediately found out when they asked me to say something in German. And we all had a good laugh at me trying to remember any words in German. And then even more ridiculously one of the girls had misunderstood the task a bit and had written for her lie, “I have three eyes.” Which would have been an epic fact if it were true.
I’ve started making art again, it was quite a long break in the summer where all my art stuff was in storage. And then I was very busy trying to get stuff back to normal and advertise my English stuff. But I decided I need to make time to do art or else I will basically not enjoy life. Art’s not the only thing that makes me happy but a lot of the other things that make me happy are hard to do here, like being a comedian and seeing friends and eating hobnobs. On a Wednesday I work hard all day because primary kids are not at school so that’s the day everyone wants to learn English. I get home from my last lesson at 7:30 and then it’s really nice to have Thursday as mainly a fun day. I’ve just finished a new cactus oil painting.
And I am in a big group exhibition in Port Vendres. If you know where that is you should go, it’s on until next weds.
I’m hoping I’ll get a few more art opportunities this year. Every year I’ve seen some artists painting these big cubes with murals and I’ve always thought, “how do you get to be those people?” And this year I’ve actually found how you can apply so I’m working on that. I also have tried to get a bit of work doing painting on windows. In previous years I’ve tried this, but not very hard. This weekend I went round some cafes and shops in town, particularly ones that I’ve seen with terrible window art previously and asked them if them if they’re interested. One guy was definitely very interested. I’ve taken a photo of his window and worked out how to digitally draw an example on to it. If anyone local wants pretty windows message me!
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| A design I did digitally |
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| A real life design I did last year. |
Percy is doing well in school, he’s got given this little laptop that he’s very excited to have, unfortunately the school have blocked everything that’s fun on it so it can be only used for work. And it goes off at 8pm. Which is pretty cheeky when on some days school doesn’t even finish until 5pm.
School is pretty strict in France, when a teacher walks in the room they have to all stand up as if it’s the Victorian times. What is the point of that? Is there any real life situation where you have to do that? If you fail the exams you have to resit the whole year. Not all kids would do well in that environment, I don’t know if I would have, but luckily Percy is doing well and got above average in his first exams in all the subjects which is impressive given that he didn’t know any French 4 years ago.
Eric’s doing ok too. I think he’s missing having Percy at school with him, but he’s really loving tennis which he does at school. He wants to join our local kids tennis club. I’m sadly not joining a club this year. My roller skating club that I’ve been part of for 2 years isn’t doing the roller dance bit now, which was by far the best bit.I tried out another club that had just the roller dance bit without the regular skating but the hall was pretty small and the dancing was mainly on the spot, just like you would for normal dance, except it was much harder and more annoying because your roller skates were weighing you down, and I just didn’t see the point. Whereas my previous group there was only about 5 of us in a big hall and we’d skate round fast with a partner one going forwards and one backwards but continually switching while moving to the music. Once I smashed right into the back of the old guy who taught us and we both fell over but it was really fun. (In general not specifically colliding into an old man.)
Dan has a new vehicle. It’s been a pain trying to share the car, and on the days I’ve had it he’s been cycling to work but it’s really way too far to cycle (14 miles). So he’s now bought a motorbike. It’s a 125. Which if you don’t know, it’s a bit lame but not the worst of all the vehicle options. Ages ago when we were first getting together he had a big motorbike, a 600. But when we moved to France and he switched his UK licence for a French one they erased his bike licence. It’s a big hassle to redo the full licence but to just drive a 125 you can do the training for it in one day, and for just going to work it’s a big enough bike.
