Tuesday

Not one to rest on his laurels, today Al decided to tackle the task of getting to the Institute on the bus. There is a bus, well, actually, two of them, that leave Aniane in the mornings to go to Gignac, where you can get one to Montpellier. He took the later one, at 7.30am, made the connection, and then caught the tram up to the Hospital district without any problems.

Tomorrow we are going to try again to get to the Institute in the car, as on Wednesdays there is no school. However there is school on Saturdays – just mornings I think, although among the notices that E brought home last night from school, there was a list of free Saturdays. We had to get the dictionary out to read the notices, but there was one that was quite clear – that there is absolutely NO PARKING OR STOPPING on the road outside the school during the times that children are entering or leaving the building. It’s impressive how well the children are cared for. Every morning, lunchtime and evening there is at least one uniformed policeman on duty at the crossing – sometimes they are both there, stopping traffic so that the kids can cross safely.

No sign of the modem for our internet connection yet unfortunately. We did sign up about a week ago now, and we have received the confirmation email, which said that we would receive the modem in quelques semaines, which looked to me like ‘some weeks’, but our friend reckoned would be a couple of weeks. I hope it comes soon. I feel lost without an internet connection and although the guys in the computer shop are really nice, it takes me ages to write the blog and answer emails, so I can’t really do it there. So if you are waiting for an email from me, I hope I will be able to reply to you soon!!

I had thought that having Em come home at lunchtime would be a pain, it would break up the day, I wouldn’t be able to get anything done etc and if I needed to travel to Montpellier or anything that would be true. However, so far I am enjoying it. She’s not too tired at lunchtime, it hasn’t got too hot, and we pass a pleasant couple of hours, having a bite to eat, walking back and forth and chatting. At home I could hardly be bothered to have lunch, unless I was meeting a friend. Then I would get hungry and grouchy in the afternoon.

She had another good morning – she told me that school was turning out to be better than what she had thought (although goodness knows what she had thought). She finally understood what one of the girls was asking her this morning – to join in a game, which is great. I can’t wait until she starts correcting my pronunciation! The locals (mostly shopkeepers and the teacher at this point) who I manage to engage in conversation currently correct my pronunciation. I’m not sure if I am making any sense to them, but they are starting to make sense to me, and I had a nice chat with the lady in the Bio Co-op (organic shop) this morning about getting lost in Montpellier ... at least I think that’s what we were talking about ...