Outside of the Cappelaere family

I've been going to my French language classes twice a week, except when French railway workers decide to remove the opportunity through crippling nationwide strikes, and meeting Michelle at least two days a week as well. We continue to explore Lille together and have found some fabolous places for ethnic food and some classic (stereotypical but authentic) french cafés. She's been out to Wavrin a few times as I have out to Armentiéres, but I still don't have insurance to drive the car, so I'm eagerly waiting for that to come through so I can do things in the evenings after looking after the kids in the afternoons.
Last weekend I went with Michelle to dinner at Valerie's house, an English teacher at Michelle's school and Michelle's go-to person. We had a wonderful time and stayed overnight even checking out some local art on the Saturday.
My day-times have been pretty empty when Isabelle, Benoit and Michelle are working and the kids are at school so I decided to fill some of them with language exchanges. I've had loads of interest and met with one lady on Thursday to commence my first one. (For those who don't know it's a free mutual conversational language lesson where you speak one language (ie. English) for half the time and the other (ie. French) for the other. I go into Lille normally on Mondays and Thursdays anyhow, so it makes it pretty convenient to meet people there on those afternoons.
Starting this weekend is the Toussaints (all saints) holiday which lasts a week and a half. Michelle and I don't have classes but neither do the kids so I'm full time this week while Michelle visits John (English friend from Freiburg) in Lyon, where he's teaching. My reward though is meeting the two of them for a four day weekend in Paris while Isabelle and Benoit and the kids go away for a couple of days. Paris is only an hour away on the TGV (the world's fastest passenger trains) and I got a really good deal with my under 26 card which Michelle and I bought at the start.