"De nos jours, on peut partir le matin enseigner et revenir le soir... en saignant."

The title of this post loosely translates as "Nowadays, we leave the house in the morning ready to teach, and come back in the evening as savages.", although it's a lot funnier in French with the word play and all that.

Another brilliant quote from today was from a fellow teacher. Sat on a small table in the canteen and joking around (I ADORE the notion of bottles of wine and cheese plates for the teachers in this canteen), Mickael took one look at what cheese i had smeared onto my bread and said:

"Don't eat that, that's cheese for lesbians, too soft. You need a cheese like this (waves smelly green and brown coated cheese in front of my face), with a moving, all-singing, all-dancing CRUST!"

Fantastic.

So, if some of you have been living under a rock or something, you'll know that TEMPETE XYNTHIA came to pay us a very cruel visit last Saturday.

There are 5 people dead in Les Boucholeurs, just south of where I live... it's totally crazy. Bex, one of my assistant friends here, was evacuated from her house on the Saturday night. My french family and I spent all day monday clearing up the mess left in Les Boucholeurs, helping Daniel's friend clear out his home, not managing to salvage anything... his interior walls had collapsed, his crockery was smashed into millions of pieces and was strewn all acros the street, no glad remained in any window frames...
Even now, over a week after the storm, people are still pumping water out of their houses and some schools are still cancelled. The railway tracks from La Rochelle to Rochefort have been uprooted and have snapped under the force of the water so there will be no trains running past our house until April 1st at least... meaning Caroline can't get to school! :(

I've been cycling a lot more recently; Xynthia seemed to take with her all of the rain we were having (a rather destructive way to do it, if you ask me) and it's been lovely. Also, the pool I usually go to is still under 2 metres of water, so no swimming soon for me, and it's nice to get out and moving! I did a 14 mile bike ride by myself last week, around Salles-sur-Mer and La Jarrie, looking for pretty places to visit, and then this past weekend I cycled 20 miles in total!
This past weekend we spent at Lee and Laura's again, making the most of 'free museum day' which happens on the first Sunday of every month. However it was FREEZING when we went yesterday so we cut our day short!

It's less than 2 weeks until I go back to Bath for a long weekend, and I'm seeing Fran, a friend from uni who is an assistant in Nantes, this weekend :)
After today at school, only 15 more days of school EVER again in France. Wow...