A Year in Villefranche sur Mer - Moving to France

Day 782 (Wednesday) 31 st July 2019 I was feeling slightly better this morning so Huw kindly gave me a lift to school on Kisbee. By the time we got there I regretted my decision, as I was hurting again but not too bad. I think Melissa was happy to see me as she said that she and Helena struggled a bit yesterday. We divided the classes into three levels and it all went well but I was surprised when Marsha told me that all six Armenians are finishing tomorrow so Friday will be quiet and we’ll only have two levels to deal with and then it’ll all be over – HOORAY! William phoned me and asked if I could work the last week in August with one student studying for the IELTS exam. I dearly wanted to say no but felt that I couldn’t so I reluctantly agreed to doing an hour and a half for four days. I know it’s not much but working the morning in Nice will bugger up all those days. I did tell that I won’t work on the 27 th because it’s my birthday. How come the whole of France gets...

Day 781 (Tuesday) 30 th July 2019 When I woke up this morning I was still in quite a lot of pain so I sent Melissa a text saying I couldn’t go and she was very forgiving. I had prepared everything yesterday and sent it to her and she has another intern to help her and I have every confidence that Melissa will be able to deliver it all confidently. I am really not good at doing nothing and I managed to lie down till about 11am but it wasn’t very comfortable and I was bored. Luckily our new armchairs are very comfortable so I sunbathed on the balcony for a few hours reading my book. I also did quite a few French lessons on Duolingo and I think I’m starting to get the simple past. There is definitely some French going in but I’m still struggling to get it out. Huw says that even though he isn’t mastering French he is actually losing English words. This has happened to me on occasion and I find it hard to believe as there is no way in the world that I’m learning en...

Day 780 (Monday) 29 th July 2019 I hurt my back the other during a stumble on the beach so yesterday I took it really easy in the hope of it getting better but this morning it was still very painful. I knew I wouldn’t be able to walk the usual 5kms to work and back so Huw kindly took me in on the scooter carefully avoiding all the bumps in the road. I had three new students today and all the Russians and Armenians were back, as expected. I tested the three new ones and two of them are almost beginners so they joined Melissa’s group and the other one who is also Russian joined my intermediates. I gave the three advanced students some quite difficult grammar exercises on dependent prepositions and they happily got on with it while I worked with the intermediates. It was a tough morning physically as I was in a lot of pain and Marsha (one of the advanced students) acted as the teacher and wrote all the answers on the board for me. Huw picked me and when we got home ...