random photos

Strasbourg

Sessenheim

some photos from Basel

All the truth

So now it's the time to tell you all the truth about my stay in France. What am I doing here? How are my days organized? I'll try to make a little sketch.

Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday: 11.30 - bringing up the children from school by bike (while I'm waiting for my courses for perfectionate driving skills to start, I enjoy riding a bike three times a day); feeding them, playing with them (reading, working with plasticine, learning words in English while playing). At 13.30 children are back to school and I have some time to clean the table, walk with the dog, whatever.. At 16.00 the school finishes. Sometimes we go to the football field to play some... footbal; then we usually do our homework, organize children's rooms if there is already not enough place to walk because of the toys on the floor :)

Monday evening I have courses of French in the neighbour town. Except me and the teacher, all the students there are Germans. But in other groups in Strasbourg where I go every Wednesday, you can find students of all the nationalities! To start with, there is another Ukrainian girl from Sumy in my morning group, 3 girls from Germany, one suiss girl, one English boy called John and a boy from Corea who is doing his studies in painting! There are also two women from Africa, but I haven't  names of their countries yet (shame on me). Not to forget a Spanish man and George from Georgia. :)

In the evening group (the lessons there are usually less fascinating, but you can understand it, as it is pure Grammar course) I met a girl from Russia, we usually sit together as we do with Ukrainian girl in the morning group, so you can say that geographical proximity has its influence on affinity of the souls. From the other side there is an English woman whose name is Elizabeth! (like a queen) and a little further a girl from Brazil who is attending both the morning and the evening groups as I do. Amongst others there are a man from Iran who treated us with the sweets from his country, a German guy who is married to a French girl, a girl from Turkey, then there is a girl from Poland who doesn't come very often and some others. The Spanish girl haven't appeared yet this year (now she did, and we made friends on Facebook:) but she leaves soon back to Spain... ) and a girl from Japan attended our group only once but as she was sitting with me at the same table I took her contact not to miss an occasion to have more exotic acquaintances:) and also because she studies in conservatoire and this type of people was always special for me. Now I've learned that the woman always sitting in front of the class comes from Portugal, and she told me this country is very popular with the Ukrainian immigrants which I didn't know pretty well.  Anna from Finland has appeared just once yet, a girl with long blond hair. And another great coincidence - a girl who I met in Freiburg on cs meeting and didn't get her contact came to our class yesterday, what a surprise!

As I have a lot of free time between two courses on Wednesday (I take the train in the morning and I return only before the supper), I roam around Strasbourg streets and find more and more interesting buildings and places there. As it is sometimes quite wet and/or cold, I spend some time in book stores and in the cinema watching the same film (Les intouchables).  As for the book store, it is huge, has plenty of departments and is situated in the very center of the city. It is there that I bought the textbook for studying Russian. Not for me, of course, but for teaching, as I teach Russian every Tuesday evening for the relatives of the hostfamily who are very interested in Slavic culture and are already planning a trip to Kiev!

On weekend we are very often invited to the friends of the family who also have a lot of children or they come to our house and we organize a little kindergarten. :)

For the moment, I don't travel much, but I've already been to Freiburg, Basel, the termal waters of Baden-Baden (which is  ~30 minutes from where I live), Shtuttgart and Frankfurt. In winter we are planning to go to Austria to a ski resort, and in spring if everything goes well I'll have a chance to discover the castles of Loire.

A good start of the year

Today I've got the resume of my work from the eldest of brothes: "I adore you. You are a good nanny, even if you scold us." It's a good reward for all the efforts.