Back again

Back indeed.

I had a lovely time over Christmas, and certainly did not want to come back to France! I had family, Paul, heating, laundry done for me, hot, powerful showers that I could spend more than ten minutes in, decent clothes shopping. And here I have French people, spiders, slugs and loneliness. Luckily it hasn't actually been too bad. I've seen a fair amount of the other assistants - went out for dinner with pretty much everyone on Tuesday, had dinner with Dana and Deborah on Wednesday, and of course, school is nice, and the kids still lovely and cute. Unfortunately Joanne has been ill with Bronchitis (!) and so I have had two days off already this week! Also unfortunately I have picked up a cough from somewhere, and it's annoying me :(.

On a plus note, after not having received anything from the Social Security people except a letter asking for a birth certificate (which I had already given them!), I went to their office with Dana and sorted it out. They found our birth certificates and gave us a letter with our numbers on, and hopefully we'll get the 'Carte Vitale' soon. By French standards :P

Also, another plus, the CAF people got back to me in record timing (under 2 weeks after application!) and are paying about 2/3 of my rent for me. SO the system does work. Also, the water people wrote too me and actually apologised (!) about their cock-up with my water bill. So France is actually working at the moment :P.

Think that's about it. Will probably hit the massive soldes (January Sales) soon and buy clothes...as long as they're nice.

Love to you all

Nielle xxx