A small parcel arrived today with a Christmas present for Maxime and one for Esther. It was caught in the backlog after the snow hit the UK before Christmas.
Category: Daily life
A matter for thankfulness
I don’t usually like to receive letters from the tax office. But the last two have been good news. The first one informed me that I had paid too much tax in the UK in my last employment. Then today, I received a check through the post.
The school’s Christmas show
The school’s christmas show took place last night. The timing was a bit strange: 7.30 pm. It was sad that from what saw, there was no reference to Christmas in any of the performances we saw, only a remote reference with the smaller ones with the music of Jingle bells in the background. Christmas seems a very sad and empty thing when it has been emptied of it’s substance.
We left at the break half way through as it had been snowing and the road was quite slippery.
L’institutrice/the teacher
We went to see Jean-Baptiste’s teacher yesterday. She had said we would meet and chat about Jean-Baptiste’s progress at some point. She was quite positive, impressed with his improvements in French. He has a lot of vocabulary to catch up, but that’s fine, some of the monolingual kids have done worst than him in the recent vocabulary tests. His understanding is also good, again , doing better that some. Writing is a bit more tricky, but she is not worried about it and is confident he will continue to improve. Numeracy is also coming slowly but he understands well.
On the behaviour side, she said that he is a boy, quite lively, mostly good, but can get carried away. For example when the children are instructed to walk calmly to the toilets, he is be the type to run rather than walk. But she usually only needs to look at him to bring him back on track.
On of our encouragements is that she understood our desire to bring Jean-Baptiste up bilingually and she understands the challenge it is. She did not discourage us to do it, and she’s had bilingual children before. She has observed that although bilingualism will be an advantage later, it can be a bit difficult at this stage. Good meeting, we were glad to meet up with her.
Dysgu Llydaweg neu beidio dysgu Llydaweg/learn Breton or not to learn?
Jean-Baptiste and myself were shopping when an elderly lady I’d just helped for something started speaking Breton to me. She thought I was speaking Breton with Jean-Baptiste and looked quite excited. But I disappointed her by explaining it was Welsh, and I couldn’t speak Breton.
We’ve been wondering for a while whether we are going to learn or not. The Breton speakers we’ve met are very negative about the language. One said that he wouldn’t speak to a learner. But the experience today was encouraging. Maybe we’ll give it a go.
The snow is gone
We had about 20-25 cm for a few days. The schools were closed for two days. But the rain has come back, and it is almost all gone. That’s a pity, it looked so nice.