Je n'ai encore pas trouvé ce que je cherche

If you are bored: Pretend to be a car
(Amusement Potential: 5-10 minutes)
Instructions: Make appropriate revving noises in your head as you walk along and add a racing commentary as you pass strangers in the street. Use blinking eyes as indicators for extra authenticity.

Luckily today was not a boring day at all, instead being a very fun one! The reference to cars will all become clear later...

So I began my day with the lovely sixième INTER, who were working on the not-so-lovely English grammar. Had a bit of an oh merde moment when I realised that I wasn't entirely certain myself about the difference between and adverbial phrase and an adjectival phrase! For anyone who is interested:-
- Adjectival phrase: a phrase the head word of which is an adjective, e.g. fond of steak, very happy, quite upset about it, etc. The adjective in an adjectival phrase can initiate the phrase (fond of steak), conclude the phrase (very happy), or appear in a medial position (quite upset about it). Adjectives and adjectival phrases function in two basic ways in clauses, either attributively or predicatively. When they are attributive, they appear inside a noun phrase and modify that noun phrase, and when they are predicative, they appear outside of the noun phrase that they modify and typically follow a linking verb.
- Adverbial phrase: a linguistic term for a group of two or more words operating adverbially, when viewed in terms of their syntactic function. Adverbial phrases are phrases that do the work of an adverb in a sentence. They, like adverbs, can describe:
1. Time (answers the question 'When?')
She will be arriving in a short time.
2. Place (answers the question 'Where?')
He is waiting near the wall.
3. Manner (answers the question 'How?')
They are discussing the matter in a civilized way.

If I was confused, think about these poor ten and eleven year olds! My day continued with the normal troisième class, who only realised today that I could speak French (I've been working with them since October!) after I caught the boys wondering whether or not I was single!! My answer was of course definitely not, them being fifteen years old among other reasons! Can't believe they thought that I would have just come to France and not even picked up a smattering of the language! So they are researching the Native Americans at the moment (no idea why, not my idea or choice of topic!) and spent their hour on the computers attempting to understand some rather complicated English...the number of times I was called over to translate something from English into French now they knew I spoke it. Don't know whether that is for the better or for the worse to be honest!

So, car reference. My afternoon was spent with Thomas and Pierre; chatting, watching fashion shows and playing MarioKart on the Wii. To say I am rubbish is probably an understatement! Even for someone with absolutely no experience of the Wii I think I "died" a few too many times to be excused as being a newbie! Oh, and this picture is Thomas and Pierre...you might recognise the background from a few days ago (yes, I spent a lot of my life here, but they haven't told me to go away yet!).

The only inconvenient thing about Mondays is the three and a half hour gap between lessons...and then my final lesson only being for half an hour, but it is the only time the student can do and being English I just can't seem to say no! I seem to be conforming to the stereotype that the French really are one of the most persuasive race of people, and the English the most persuadable. A mix of these facts means I'm actually working a lot more than I should be...next week in particular I've promised to come in for a morning (I hate mornings) and a full day extra more than I should be to look after some Finnish pupils (I know, no idea either!) because I couldn't come up with an acceptable excuse quick enough! If I was French, I would have just said no...

So my evening was spent; well, at Le Sémaphore, but I popped in to see Thibaud and see if my costume was acceptable enough to go to a costume party French-style. Stayed a while talking about futures, lives and god knows what else but as I was already late I had to go sooner than I might have otherwise (even in French time I was late!). So, my "costume" was une Française! Well, if you only have an hour or so to rustle something up and you have some black clothing and some red lipstick it kind of works (plus the fact that this would be a genuine fancy dress costume in England)! And I must have looked alright as T didn't take the Michael out of me...

Anyhows, back to the evening...ended up chatting with Thomas, Pierre, Simon, Nora and Flavie as well as some new faces. Was really lovely to spend an evening with people who kind of accept the fact that although I might not be the best at trying to speak the language I still give it a good go! Still get really confused with bisous though, and when I'm meant to be doing them and whether it is socially acceptable to bise a person who is pretty much a total stranger to you. I'll get there eventually...