Gites South Brittany

With my shoulder and arm very much improved - nearly 8 months after my accident and I am, at last, mainly pain-free. I still only have limited use of my arm - I cannot get my hand up behind my back or raise my hand high enough to write above half-way on the black/whiteboards in class, but otherwise I'm using it almost normally. I still see the physio (kiné) twice a week, which has to somehow be fitted into my busy schedule.

Talking of work - I am now officially qualified to teach English in French primary schools. Yippeee! What a relief!Months of hard work paid off when, on 3rd December, I had my final inspection. This is akin to the OFFSTED inspections in the UK. Two officials from the Education Authority sat-in on a 45 min. lesson and looked over my planning for the year (including detailed lesson plans, overview of the progression for the year and evaluations of both the lessons themselves and individual pupils). Taking into consideration the number of different year groups I teach (although they were only interested in the year-groups where a foreign language is compulsary - CE1, CE2, CM1 and CM2) this represented a huge amount of work .... and all in French! The main thing is that I passed with flying colours, receiving a lot of very positive feedback from the Inspectors. Obviously, I have to continue to work within the curriculum ("textes officiales"), but there is no longer any question over my suitability for the job! Not that there ever was, but the qualification is obligatory - even Headteachers who wish to teach English here have to go through the same process to qualify ("être habilité").

I have also recently learnt a new skill - creating interactive teaching games in Powerpoint. Thanks to my younger sister's help - she teaches computing in colleges in the UK. My teaching colleagues have taken a keen interest in this idea and I am organising a half-day "workshop" for them at home during the Christmas holidays. It will be useful to exchange ideas and also to pool our resources. All the games I and my colleagues create will be translated into French and made available to children visiting our gîtes - French or English. The children here in all the scchools were enthralled with the games this week and behaved impeccably in order to win the right to participate!

Cheryl and I are continuing to train the dogs to do Agility and also Dancing. We are building quite a repertoire - spins, rolls, weaving between legs whilst walking, looking left and right, giving left and right paws, high 5, walking on hind legs, bowing ...... and the dogs can do quite a lot too! We now need to choreograph it all to music. We have a more professional set of 12 weave poles and Gracie and Ficelle are beginning to develop a really good technique through them.

Harry continues to be the best cat ever (I'm not biased!). He's the first cat we've ever had and he has won all our hearts. He and the dogs still adore each other and play together. He even joins in the agility sessions - today he did the walk over and the seesaw, but his favourite is the tunnel. We have begun feeding the birds again - placing the feeder in the middle of the garden away from hiding places so that Harry cannot surprise them.