Project#366 Week 44

This week has been miserable. The weather started cold at the beginning of the week, and has encompassed wind, heavy rain showers and hailstones as the week has progressed.

Sunday 28th October 2012
 Starting to get life back to normal now. Last nights tennerfest at the Moorings, with the musicians, was very good and tonight's dinner is Chez Nous! We went out for a walk as the weather was dry and cold and crunched through the leaves in the valley. The forecast for the rest of the week is wet and windy, so this could be the last chance before the leaves are swept up and used for leaf mould.


Monday 29th



Teaching as normal today. I have a couple of 1-2-1 classes, which is a nice way to ease me back into teaching, instead of training. The weather has turned with a vengeance! Everything is cold and wet and at our lunchtime meeting we were told that JPs funeral is to be on Thursday, so we will need to rearrange our daily teaching schedules to get the time off. Starting early and finishing late on the other days will give us a free afternoon, but the teachers of teenagers, and of quiet classes, will find the hour extra long. I haven't yet met my afternoon class so I'm reserving judgement:-)

Tuesday 30th

 I must have been saving up good things!  My afternoon class are a dream- you wind them up and they are happy to talk for hours. Even the extra hour didn't faze them! In fact they were surprised when I gently called a halt to their discussion. I hadn't found any nice flowers at the weekend- the flower stall was selling what my husband calls -cemetery flowers! You know the kind that are sold outside cemeteries in France- chrysanthemums etc. Anyway, my window was looking empty, so I popped in to the local farm shop and found some amazing oriental lilies.

When I got home I put them in a vase- and then lit the fire- two quite incongruous images, I feel!
Wednesday 31st
Halloween.The kids at the college were carving pumpkins and decorating the coffee lounge for a party. I decided to buy some sweeties in case any of the neighbourhood children came knocking on the door. I  was unable to catch the lunchtime  #eltchat due to the funny timetable, but ended up writing the summary anyway. This allowed me to upgrade my badge for #ELTchat blogger from Bronze to Silver :-). During the evening chat I spent the time getting up to answer the door to lots of costumed youngsters and gave away nearly all of the chocolates I had collected!

Thursday  1st November

R.I.P.

All Hallows/ All Saints Day- and JPs funeral. When I got to work the mood was sombre, and all my colleagues were dressed in black, as was I. We got through our morning and then climbed into the minibus for our trip to the crematorium. Cairis and her father were waiting for me there, as were many of my colleagues' partners. The ceremony was beautiful- modern music and beautiful tributes. We were all in tears throughout the service as everyone loved JP. We were then invited by the family to the Watersplash, on the West Coast. JP was a surfer, so it was a fitting place to say goodbye. The nice thing was having a chance to catch up with so many of my ex-colleagues, some of whom had flown in specially for the occasion. The weather was grim, until the end of the afternoon, when a watery sun came out over the bay.

Friday 2nd November

Winter has arrived- not really- but Malcolm has decided to put his boat to bed for the winter. When I got home he was removing the sails from the mast, in the hallway, which fortunately is long enough for the task. His plan was to take the sails to the laundry, but one of the cats got shut in with them in the back room- and the inevitable happened! Now they need the laundry more than ever:-)
The gang are out to the pub tonight but I have things to do, so we decided not to brave the weather, and  finally curled up by the fire with a good book

Saturday 3rd November

I booked a tennerfest in the brasserie at the museum for this evening. First I have to go shopping, do some housework, write an eltchat summary, sort out my transport for TesolFrance, join the IH online conference....... phew! I also went for a walk along the sand dunes with my friend and her dogs. Housework can wait until tomorrow :-)