Tuesday night, we had an amusing dinner with Sn. and V., two of the surveillant guys. They had us laughing so hard. We discovered that Chauny has a bar that's on a boat, though apparently, it's far to walk to. Although the French person's far and our far are two different things since we have to walk everywhere anyway. There was also some talk about the French version of "moonshine" that's made with fruit and stuff and is apparently illegal, but Sn. "knows some people". Interesting, indeed.

I had a really good class yesterday. Seriously, I love the BTSers. They never fail to crack me up. I thought they would be the most awkward class, because they are all so close to my age (even some are older), but they're turning into my favorite classes. I spend half of my time just laughing with them. It's nice. And there's actually some really good English speakers amongst them.

Katie and I went to St. Quentin for the afternoon. Their marche de Noel (Christmas market) was so pretty! There were all of these trees everywhere, live animals, snow! (fake, in the sense that a machine made it, but not white powder), mulled wine, cute little booths, sledding/skiing, and ice skating. Seriously, it was cute. We also did some shopping.

And then our streak for randomly meeting people continued. There's this one woman that I always see on the train from St. Quentin. This time, she sat right by us. After awhile of hearing us speak English, she asked if we understood French (if not she was going to translate the conductor's announcement to us). She ended up being really nice, and we talked to her the whole way home. She gave us her phone number and said that if we ever need help with anything or just want to practice our French to give her a call. The people in this area are always so friendly towards us foreigners. It never fails to surprise me, but I thoroughly enjoy it.

Yesterday evening, we were invited by Jane (remember that American we randomly met in Chauny) to this Christmas celebration her little village does. There's a German primary school teacher from Alsace who brought this tradition from his region. It's from Germany and Switzerland as well. Every night in December, inhabitants of the town have an outdoors party where they unveil their Christmas window, and then on Christmas Eve, the celebration ends at the church. Jane's village now does this tradition and last night's was at Jane's house. It was a lot of fun! I met a bunch of teachers from the other high school. We drank mulled wine and ate cookies. It was a little cold, but ca va. Jane said that she would have to have us over for dinner sometime after the holidays. That'll be nice.

Today, I've had two classes. One with the class of secondes that I love. We worked with Bushisms today. Basically, I let them correct Bush's grammar. They enjoyed that. Next, I had the dreaded DP6 with Florence. It went okay... we had a lot of adults around keeping them under control, which went even better once we excluded two of the girls from class.

We just had (a very surprisingly yummy) dinner with two of the surveillants, S. and G. I really enjoy having dinner with these two. Seriously, super nice guys. We kidded with S. about his pool game since we beat him at Cuban Cafe last Friday.

In a little while, Florence is going to be picking me up to have tea/coffee with a friend of hers. Her friend is Welsh and apparently enjoys meeting us assistants. Should be fun!

Pictures
Christmas Market in St. Quentin