Le Lycée Raoul Vadepied, Evron

This is where I work (thank you Google Maps)

(1) This is where I get dropped off in the morning. This is also where I wait for 20 or so minutes every day after I finish work, until Dave arrives. And lastly, this is where I have my cigarette break every hour or so, trying to avoid the 3ème (same age as year 10) who all pester for cigarettes.

(2) This is G building. I teach about half of my lessons in here. This is also contains the staffroom, where I spend a lot of time on Facebook. I am usually sat at the very bottom of the left bracket.

(3) This is J building. This is where everyone swears at me. Coincidently, this is also the vocational building. I teach the other half of my lessons in here.

(4) This is the canteen. I have very rarely been in the canteen because a) I sit with the teachers in their dining hall, and I can't tell what anyone's saying in French because there are loads of people talking loudly around me and I feel like a dick when I can't tell what they're saying and b) the food frightens me.

(5) This is the staff car park. This is where Dave could park should he be on time, but he doesn't because he's frightened of it.

La Banque

Today I had a meeting at half 10 at the bank to open up my bank account. To cut a long story short, the bank account is open, but he needs proof of address within a month, or it will be closed. So we need a rental agreement off Julie, the estate agent, so she's going to do one for us, and we're going to meet her in town tomorrow at half 9.

So, because I have a bank account that has money in it, the phone line and Internet will now be under way tomorrow, and within a week or 10 days I think, we should have a phone and Internet! I can't wait, I hate not being able to use the Internet when we're in our house.

After that, we went in and paid our house insurance for the year as well. £100 and that covers everything in the house, and also covers us if we get sued for knocking someone off a ladder or something.

So I now have bank account details, I just need my European Health Card to come through, then I can sort out my sécurité sociale (health care) with the school. And I need to ask them to help me find the housing benefit forms on the Internet, because the government website is like a bloody maze! You can't find anything.

Tonight I think there's some sort of football match on, so me and Dave might be going into Le Mans with Adam, Danny and Jordan to the Irish bar to watch it.

Nous sommes arrives!

I have been here for nearly 48 hours, but I only just feel ready to post after that journey! I’d had about an hours sleep when we got here at about 3pm on Wednesday afternoon, so when we couldn’t get through to my Grandma to find her house (it doesn’t show up on sat navs) I burst into tears and rang my Dad! I soon recovered though, and we just nipped into town to see where I was working, and got a jus d’orange in a café. I slept so well that night!



On Wednesday, we went to Evron market in the morning, for a look round. It was a typical French market – loads of cheese, fish and meat. We also saw some lobsters for Jack!

At 2pm, we had an appointment at the estate agents. She spoke a little bit of English, so we muddled through in a mix of French, with some English when I didn’t know to say something, which seemed to work quite well most of the time.

But most of the students moved in a fortnight ago, and have taken all the good places to live. We looked around a furnished flat (was a bit grotty inside) and an unfurnished 3 bed house (absolutely gorgeous but we couldn’t afford to buy furniture). But it turns out we couldn’t rent either of them, because we needed a guarantor who had a French tax number (or something, I still don’t understand it!). Pretty much everywhere we tried to rent would want this, unless we could pay the full 7 months rent up front.

So the English estate agent lady (Julie) who my Grandma rung up to ask what we could do, said our only option would be to rent off the English people who have holiday homes here. She knew of a few. Last night we went to peep a gite that a friend of my Grandma's friend was renting out, but it was absolutely tiny (4 metres x 4 metres, one room on the bottom, and a bedroom and bathroom upstairs), and it was also really isolated.

This morning, Grandma rung back Julie, because she had left a message when we were out looking at the tiny house, and she said would we like to look at a little one-bedroomed house in Voutré, a village 10 minutes from Evron, and 10 minutes from my Grandparents house. It’s a small village, but it has a barand a shop. For anything else, we can drive into town. So we went to see that at 11am.

It was lovely. You walk up some stairs to the right of the house and enter on the top floor. There is a kitchen, bedroom, lounge with a sofa bed, and a dining room. Then there is a massive basement on the bottom floor the same size as the top of the house, and a decent sized garden at the back

So we decided to take it, and we’ve got a really good deal. We might change a few things because some of it isn’t to our taste, but there’s plenty of storage room in the basement.

We move in next Friday at half 10 in the morning.

Tonight we are all going into Le Mans for a few drinks. Tomorrow, maybe sim cards or bank account.