Je Mange.

I have just officially clocked off from my first day as an au pair but more about that after.

First up, let's all appreciate Chez Kate, it's not quite 22 Mill Street but it'll do

Panoramic shots are really hard

I have a flying chicken, anyone got a good name?

This might come back to England with me....

The courtyard and exit to the street

The downstairs study

 So viola! It's small and perfectly formed, I'm spending quite a bit of time here (and in the main house) at the moment, but as the years activities all start, children's and my French classes and hopefully I get a social life I won't be here as much! Here's hoping anyway.

Best part of life here so far, the family are amazing and part of my families life is food, oh how my eating has changed! Since being here I (mum) has outstanded me with what a busy Parisian mum can throw together, fish has featured heavily (not always known what it is but it's always been yummy); fish with lentils, fish with rice, fish with fennel, fish with carrots. Yesterday was the first time we'd not had fish and it was cured beef with beetroot salad, AMAZING. Saturday night D&I threw a dinner party, wow, this was fish with fennel night but also on the menu was Normandy sausage (love sausage), some little bites of heaven in the form of choux pastry and cheese (made by the children's adopted grandma who I have also now adopted) and some kind of wonderful fig gratin, what was done with those figs I need never know but it was insane. And let's just take a moment to appreciate the cheese every meal thing I have going on here, I can die happy knowing somewhere cheese all the time is acceptable; I've had this brie but 100% times better then the shit we get in England and so many more that to be honest I have no idea what they were. I've also eaten more fruit in the 6 days I've been here then in the last year (that's not an exaggeration). Even then McDonalds is better here, not that I would know of course....

Anyway enough of me waxing lyrical about food, let's talk au pair life. Honestly I don't feel like I have a job, I spent the first morning of official employment shopping;  and being really proud of myself for managing my parlez Francis with the shop assistants really well (except maybe the man in muji who was either telling me something really important or selling me a store card). Then I had a leisurely lunch whilst getting some teaching tips from the sibs (if all your teaching ideas are as good as that JP you're gonna have teaching down to a, well, T) and vacuumed around whilst banging out AWOLNATION 'Sail'. I got the children's post school snack ready, loaded up my canvas bag (Rachael, got a feeling this will be well used sis!) and caught the metro to the children's school. It was so fun collecting the children, E couldn't wait to show me everything from here first day at big school, so sweet. I took the children to the park after school were we played uno, read Frozen, ate our snacks, sang 'row row row your boat' and E&A ran off all the excess energy from school. Back home was English time, I taught them 5 words all relating to 'busy' which they hadn't understood yesterday. Then it was 15minutes on Ceebies word game, which they loved then as a well done they watch Horrid Henry on youTube. If anyone knows any good teaching English internet resources please comment and let me know! It all went very smoothly, the only niggle being having to overcome 'but the old au pair did it this way' line every time I explained what we were doing, hopefully somewhere along the way that will fade out, perseverance is the key!!

So that's it, the final snap is just to illustrate how pretty the Eiffel looks looming over the 15t more updates soon x