So. Two weeks into the new year and here's the progress of the new me, slowly but surely...

French: Since the internet is no longer the vaccuum that sucks away all my free time, I'm already halfway through reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog (in its original French version, duh), which my mom recommended to me after reading it in English.  I also finally got to the movie theater here, where they play mostly American movies dubbed in French (so lame), so Sam, Marta, and I went to see one of the few French movies showing there because what's the point of seeing movies dubbed in French.  Anyway, the movie was Les émotifs anonymes, which was a very cute film about two people with anxiety problems (the actual translation of émotif, which does not mean "emotional" as I had previously thought) who meet as a result of their mutual love for chocolate, and fall in love.  But they both have super anxiety and are afraid of everything, especially of other people, resulting in some hilariously awkward scenes that had Sam and me crying with laughter. 

School: my new positive attitude towards my students has been holding up pretty well, with the exception of a few particularly trying groups we all seem to be enjoying ourselves more in class.  I have one class that just loves everything we do, which makes it kind of difficult when I have a lesson that I planned to use with other groups and I think "oh yeah, this will be a good one!" and then the next group is totally underwhelmed by it.  But anyway, it's the good classes that make up for everything else.  I'm usually surprised and flattered when the teachers come to me the next day and say "my students said they had a lot of fun with you yesterday", because most of them try never to act like they are having fun, but I have one group that I see at the end of the day on Mondays that are so enthusiastic and fun that I always leave school smiling afterwards.  They are a pretty creative group, so I try to think of fun/creative activities for them to do, and of course all my other classes benefit from this as well, even the ones who I don't think "deserve" the fun activities.

Other news around the town:
Sales.  Unlike in America, where the big stores use any excuse to have a sale (hello, Presidents' Day sale, anyone?), French stores only have sales twice a year, in January and July.  The January sales officially started on Jan. 12, yesterday, and the streets of Tarbes were totally overrun with frantic shoppers.  Unfortunately it also happened to be Wednesday, the day when the students don't have school in the afternoon, and unfortunately I had used the morning to go to the pool, so we had to compete with the entire town, who all seemed to have taken the afternoon off to go shopping.  Anyway, I found some great leather boots that were half price! so yeah!

La Galette des rois. January 6th is Epiphany, which translates in French as the Feast of Kings.  There is a special cake for this occasion, and the tradition is that there is a fava bean inside of the cake, and whoever gets the piece with the bean is the king or queen for the day.  I'm not quite clear what it means to be the king because some of the teachers told me that for them it means that you are responsible for buying more cake for everyone but others just say it means you have good luck.  Anyway, this Tuesday the teachers ordered a ton of these cakes as well as several bottles of cider for us to enjoy during the morning break.