New job

As you can probably see, I am not so into blogging any more. Life has taken on some sort of a  routine, and I am not so motivated to write, as the novelty of France turns into normality ... but maybe this is the start of something new!

I started my new teaching job 3 weeks ago and I absolutely love it! after a summer of chilling (or sweating) out in the amazing weather, taking holidays, receiving wonderful visitors, and taking and trips to the beach and the river (see below) and working a few hours per week in a restaurant, I feel like I have finally got a routine in my life. I now work in a language centre giving individual lessons to everyone and anyone. I have a big variety of students, from teenagers needing help with English for their exams, to housewives, to army officers, and people needing English for their work. I really love the variety and meeting so many different people. The biggest challenge of all has been explaining some of our tricky and sometimes completely random grammar rules to students, but I am getting there. . . The TEFL course was definitely a good decision!

More from me soon!

Le Gardon, Collias, Juillet 2012

Life in Nimes

Hi everyone,

Many apologies for those who like to read this, (no idea how many of you there are) but I realise I have not written for weeks and weeks. I have been in Nimes nearly 6 weeks.
What to say?
I am sitting in my room in my apartment looking over red roofs at a flawlessly blue sky (which appears 95% of the time here) contemplating the last 6 weeks and how much life has changed!
Well... yes, life has changed. I am no longer living in wet England, I am not near friends and family. But my life has been changing for the last 6 years on and off. And I am happy to say that although I could have moved 900 miles south, I'm still completely myself, God is still as close as He has ever been, and I am still living...
As of two weeks ago, I am waitressing, yet again. But this time in an Italian restaurant in the south of France where I spend 20 hours a week running around in varying degrees of heat, serving people in French and using a crazy auto-command system. But to be honest, it's still waitressing. (Minus the generous tips I was used to back home - French people just don't seem to tip that much!)

I am starting a 'proper grown-up job' in September in a language school where I will be teaching English to the general public, and doing some private tutoring on the side.

Quite frankly, when I felt God tell me to move to Nimes a few months back, I had to completely trust Him. I had no idea what was going to happen. I had four weeks to find somewhere to live, I had some money to live off for a couple of months, and a wonderful man to finally (after a year of long-distance) be near to. After a couple of weeks (and an unreasonable amount of stress on my part) I found a reasonable flat-share really near to the city centre and sorted it all out with the landlord over the phone, and JB went to collect the keys before I arrived. I continued to search for jobs online, and got an interview for the day after I arrived.

I only just heard back from that interview. The response was positive but I had to turn the job down, because since that time, (after about 2 weeks of being here), God had not only provided me with one job, but several. In a week, I was offered work in a childcare agency, was interviewed for the language school job, and was offered a summer job in the restaurant. I took the summer job, and the English teaching job. I am going to do some extra childcare work when I can, and I have also had several responses to my personal tutoring advert. God has abundantly blessed my job search and made me realise that trusting Him with my life was the right thing to do. Is the right thing to do, for all of us, all our lives. He will never let us down. We just need to have faith. In His love for us, in His provision and in His timing.
This life is a massive journey, right now I'm in Nimes, and I feel completely peaceful here, learning new things, gaining new skills and to be quite honest, enjoying an amazing summer!

So many things have happened since I've been here, but there will be more form me soon :)

Day after I arrived - white English person! I'm much more tanned now, promise ;)

Blessed, blessed, blessed.

The sun is finally here in England. Today was warm and beautiful and the air full of fragrance as it so often is in May.

I just spent a lovely evening with my amazing best friend, her parents and three french people. Life is so interesting sometimes!

2 weeks to go until the big move and England is looking so beautiful to me. I'm almost seeing things in a nostalgic light now, it's bizarre....

Moving back...finally!

On June 4th 2012, I will officially be moving back to France. Not back to Nancy - this time I am moving to the sweltering South, to a town called Nimes where a certain Frenchman currently resides.
After a lot of time spent back in the UK thinking, praying, studying, working, I finally felt like June was the right time to do this. And although I don't actually have a job to go to - yet, and am only just sorting out housing (in a house-share with two randommers), I am pretty sure God has got this one for me. I just have to trust that things will work out - they always do.
This is going to be a new challange. Real life - compared to a year Au pairing, which now seems like a kind of blissful bubble with no worries or concerns. But it's time, it's time to enter the next phase of my life and to be changed more and more through relying ever more on my Maker.

TEFL

Absolutely loving my TEFL course right now - getting a right passion for teaching and so excited!! Hoping and praying I will get a job :D