5 more days at work till Christmas holiday!!!

It's Sunday again, which means everything is closed and I usually do quiet things at home like sleeping in, blogging, etc. Today Leigh and I actually got out of the house and did something though. For the first time since we moved away from that horrible studio, we went back to Cap d'Antibes to hike from the Port de la Salis up to the Chapelle La Garoupe to see a view of the city and region. Since buses don't run on Sudays here we walked about 1.5 miles just to the bottom of the trail, then uphill for about 20 minutes and then through a secret garden on the way back down. It was a really nice way to get some exercise and enjoy a sunny afternoon.

Aside from today being kind of nice, France is really starting to wear on me. I have been having some trouble with my bank account at HSBC and am finding the employees there very hard to work with. I ended up ordering a new debit card and PIN, hoping this would solve my problems. The PIN came in the mail, then the card, so I went to the ATM to activate the card and it ATE MY NEW CARD. This was strike three for HSBC, so tomorrow I'm going down to Societe Generale to open a shiny new account. I have to keep the old one open until I get paid for December, but in the mean time I can start using the new account for daily spending as soon as I get the card and stuff in the mail. I think this will be a good move because Soc Gen has free accounts for under 26ers and they give away free stuff all the time. Plus I've met the guy who is President and Founder of the NewEdge Group in the States, which is closely linked with SocGen, and he's a standup guy if that means anything for me on this side of the world.

This week has been kind of tough all the way around. I've had some trouble at work- nothing major, but enough to make me stressed and angry with a few of the teachers and so very ready for the Christmas holiday. In addition to this, the sister of a very good friend of mine died of cancer on Friday morning. Even though I didn't know the sister very well, I still cried quite a bit when I heard the news. I think it was a combination of my own stresses, being very tired, and knowing that my very dear friend has now suffered a terrible loss in addition to several other recent losses. Even though I never knew the sister particularly well, she was a very kind person and, from what I gather, a good friend to everyone who knew her.

So now I am looking forward to getting through the next week and a half of work, which includes 5 days of teaching and three shows of the play I have been helping the 4eme class put together. After that I can look forward to two whole weeks of holiday travel with my beloved, taking a real break from school, Antibes, school children, and temperamental teachers (being by far the worst stress of those listed here).

In the meantime I really need to start working on older entries on my website. I'm thinking I should definitely try to fill in the Alaska section since I've only been to four or so communities throughout the state. I started the website to give myself a project for my down time while I'm not working very many hours but so far I've just been writing about places I've visited since coming to Europe. I should really start putting some effort into the other projects I wanted to tackle this year like knitting, learning to bake French pastries and other yummy things, painting and, oh yeah, learning French (geeze, it's amazing how far I've gotten with the 12 verbs and 3 verb tenses I remember from high school).

Well, tomorrow starts another week. My goals include 1) opening a new bank account, 2) putting the final touches on my Christmas travel plans (i.e. making a Type A Personality Itinerary), 3) updating my website, 4) helping to get the school play ready to open next week.